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A little update on how I have been navigating the journey of pregnancy. Moving from maiden to mother is the biggest life transition I will ever face, and within this journey I have learned some profound life lessons that are applicable to anyone moving from one season of life to the next! So Ive decided to share them with you, enjoy! Come hang on insta Enrol in Soulful Sisterhood

We have trouble believing you haven’t already heard of our guest this week, Susan Wiggs, but just in case—she’s the author of many many novels, a multiple #1 New York Times bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. Her current novel, The Lost and Found Bookshop, is on sale now and her most recent bestseller, The Oysterville Sewing Circle, is just out in paperback.We talk crafting a story, starting from the emotional journey versus the physical plot, building a character, choosing a setting and our collective addiction to writing books, and Susan reveals that she does indeed read fiction while she’s writing fiction—and it’s a good thing, too, because her reading list is long indeed. Links from the PodWriting the Blockbuster Novel by Albert ZuckermanThis American Life, Promised Land (the “I Wish” song episode)#AmReading (all Susan, and you’ll see why)Aging in Place by Aaron D MurphyBeing Mortal by Atul GawandeOn Ocean Boulevard by Mary Alice MonroeHouse Lessons by Erica BauermeisterUntamed by Glennon DoyleThe Splendid and the Vile by Erik LarsonSabrina and Corina by Kali Fajardo-AnstineThe Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins ReidThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey, fellow writers this week we've got an outright amazing conversation with Susan Wiggs. Many, many times bestselling author of many, many novels, who really knows how to construct a story. And when getting the work done doesn't just take talent and dedication, but an understanding of the craft of creating a story. If you'd like to work with someone who understands that craft, head over to Author Accelerator and look into finding the right book coach for your work, or if craft is your jam, learn more about becoming a book coach yourself at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording? Jess Lahey 0:36 Now it's recording.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:39 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Jess Lahey 0:43 Alright, let's start over. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:44 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast, the weekly podcast, about writing all things, fiction, nonfiction, short things, long things, pitches, proposals, everything you have to write before anybody lets you write anything. And in short, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting that work done.Sarina Bowen 1:16 And this is Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 35 romance novels. You can always find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:26 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters, and also the book How to Be a Happier Parent, former editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog, and still sometimes a contributor there. And we are so excited to welcome our guest this week. This is the first guest we've ever had that has rivaled Sarina in prolificness. We're so excited to welcome Susan Wiggs. She is the author of (I think I counted 37 but as soon as I let her talk, I'm gonna check) novels, multiple number one New York Times' bestseller and an overall amazing storyteller. When you pick up a Susan Wiggs book, you know that you're getting a fully built world and a story that's going to grab you and hold you tight and that you're going to be sorry when it lets you go. Her current novel is The Lost and Found Bookstore. And she's also got another novel just out in paperback - The Oysterville Sewing Circle. That one's just out right now. Am I right?Susan Wiggs 2:29 That's correct. It's just out in a paperback, the book club edition just came out.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:35 Ooh, cool. I love the whole book club edition and this edition.Susan Wiggs 2:41 I just love book clubs in general. So yeah, thank you so much for having me. This is such a thrill to talk to somebody who's not a fictional character.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:51 Yeah, we don't do much of that right now either. They're either fictional characters or they live in our house, that's all we got. So yeah, we are really excited - so, how many books is it before I even get started? Susan Wiggs 3:02 Oh, I knew you're gonna ask me that. And you know what? To be honest, I don't have a count. But I can tell you my first book was published in 1987. Huntington Zebra books, and I've published a book or two every year since. And so I've stopped doing the math. I just write my next book.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:27 But we will ask, you just because our listeners always want to know. How did you get started? Tell us how that first 1987 book happened, travel back in time with us.Susan Wiggs 3:40 You know what, you always remember your first time and I'll just leave it at that. I'll leave that to your imagination. But honestly, I was a young teacher just out of graduate school. I got myself through graduate school by reading really big, thick, romance novels, you know, the real bodice rippers all through the 80's. And so yeah, I had such a taste for them, and such an affection for them and a love for the form that I just wrote one. And I had no idea what I was doing. I wrote it on a typewriter. I didn't know about any writer's associations. I knew Writer's Digest, I was a subscriber to Writer's Digest, I always knew that I wanted to write and so I wrote a book called Texas Wildflower and I wrote it on a typewriter. It was this huge, unwieldy pile of pages. I was very proud of it, but I didn't know what to do with it. And so somehow, I wormed my way onto an editor's desk at Kensington Books, which had and probably still prints Zebra, Pinnacle, various ones like that and they're still up and going, and the editor's name was Wendy McCurdy, and she's still in the business. I believe she may be back at Kensington now. Anyway, she was delightful. You know, very young, probably as young as I was at the time, editor who called me up in the middle of a very busy life. I had a toddler, and dogs, and a house, and a teaching job. And I was very overwhelmed. And she called me in the middle of all that and said, 'We like your book, and we want to publish it.' And I was just floored. Yes, I was stunned. I didn't have an agent. And so I just said, 'Yes, where do I sign?' And so it's interesting that we would be talking about this right now because one of the things that I did because I didn't have a literary agent, I didn't really know how to negotiate any sort of contract. And one of the biggest blunders that I made that is turning out to be kind of a very funny and happy accident was I gave them the copyright back then. And I think now copyrights revert to the author if the book is out of print and unavailable for, I believe, three to five years. And I think I signed my name to something to say it was out of print and unavailable, but they had 16 years to reprint it. And in those 16 years, my books became rather popular. And so they never wanted to revert the rights to me because I would always say the book's not out, it's very old, don't you want to revert the rights to me? Because that way, the author controls his rights and creative control over that property and you know, you can resell it and things like that, but no, they kept hanging on to it. And so I'm sitting here, it is 2020 and I'm looking at a royalty check dated May 26, 2020 for that book, for Texas Wildflower that was first published in April 1987. Because they keep reissuing it, they still have it in print, they reissued it numerous times in different packaging. And as my books have evolved, the very original cover (you can probably find it on my website susanwiggs.com) was a very, very in your face bodice ripper cover. I just loved it, I thought was really cool. But as my books have become more mainstream and evolved into general fiction, or mainstream fiction, the covers look very upmarket now and rather sophisticated. It's basically the same book - at one point I did go in and do some light editorial work, and, you know, cringing the whole time because obviously after you know, 50 something books, I'm not that same writer that wrote Texas Wildflower - and so I had some rookie moments in that book, many of them, and yet readers still, they're drawn to something about that book. So, you know, it's still in print. So thank you, Kensington Books for keeping me alive on your list.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:40 That's a great story. And I love that it is still out there. And the cover thing is really funny because we have talked to a lot of authors and we've seen that same evolution many times. And I know Sarina and I are both really fascinated by cover art and why publishers and authors pick one style over the other and the new trend towards the sort of drawings instead of actual pictures of people.Susan Wiggs 8:48 All authors are obsessed with cover art. You know, even before I was published, I was designing the cover in my head, and I'm terrible at it, but I'm always gratified when I see the way that my books go out into the market because usually it's spot on, there have been some turkeys in my repertoire - no fault of mine or the publisher, sometimes they just don't turn out well, but the new book, The Lost and Found Bookshop, did you guys get a copy of it? Or the advanced reading copies? KJ Dell'Antonia 9:23 Yes, and I really, really love it. But do you know what, my copy doesn't have a cover. So I haven't seen it.Sarina Bowen 9:32 It's beautiful, though. I love the cover. Susan Wiggs 9:35 Well, the journey - that cover went through so many iterations. And the reason is that they try to build and this is a really great thing about publishers, if they're committed to an author, they really try to build you as a brand. And so you don't want each cover to be so unique that it doesn't even look like it could be by the same author. And so I had a rather good hit with The Oysterville Sewing Circle last year, and one of the big pieces and one reason that that book really struck a chord was it had an incredibly striking cover. It was like stark white with this blood red spool of thread on the front with a sharp pin sticking through it. And they wanted to build on that. But I wrote about a bookshop, so there's no sharp needles or anything. And so we really struggled with what this new book should look like so that it kind of accesses the spirit of the previous book, but also is inviting and beautiful enough to attract new readers as well. So I hope this cover does it. It hasn't hit the shelves yet, so I guess we'll see.Sarina Bowen 10:43 It's very beautiful.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:45 Yeah, I agree. And I can see how it looks with The Oysterville Sewing Circle, I've just pulled it up. Sarina Bowen 10:52 It's a lovely analogy to that other book but I also noticed that your that Oysterville has a new cover, too. Which is also very beautiful, and sometimes publishers do that. If they don't like a cover, but sometimes they do it just to catch the eye of people who didn't grab it the first time.Susan Wiggs 11:12 Yes, there's been three iterations of the Oysterville cover. The first one with a big spool of thread was the hardcover. And then there was a mass market paperback that came out in January. And because of the timer in the pandemic time, it was widely available only in essential markets like Walmart, the places that could stay open during the pandemic. And so it sold like wildfire. In March, it was the number four New York Times' paperback. And so there was this little paperback edition of it and then they decided for this summer to do a premium paperback, they're called trade size paperback, and it's a bigger edition and they add extra content in the back. I think there's a reading group guide, and article, and a recipe, and some other materials back there to give reading groups something to chew on. And then they decided, let's use a new image on this cover and the one that they did on that edition was actually a rejected hardcover look, you know, they they tried several looks, and they knew it was a pretty look, but they wanted to go out in trade paperback with that one. So no effort is ever wasted. That's what I am finding out. Yeah, my agent calls it four bites at the apple because the fourth bite is the audio book. And audio books are quite a big category these days and there was a slump during pandemic but as things are opening and people are going back to work and commuting again, there's an upturn in audio sales.Sarina Bowen 12:12 Mm hmm. Yes, I definitely felt that audio slump in April.KJ Dell'Antonia 13:04 I want to say, You have so many books under your belt and you were talking about how that first one is very, very different from the writer that you are now and we wanted to talk about how you go about now, structuring a new story. Because your stories are so - I've only read your later stuff, so I didn't read the earlier stuff. Your stories now are so tight, and they really don't have a lot of extraneous stuff, and I really would love to hear where you start from and I guess we'll start with that. Where do you start when you're looking to start a new book?Susan Wiggs 13:54 That's one of those things that probably didn't change a lot from the very beginning. What inspires us, you know, something has to grab you, and it's almost visceral. And for example, in The Lost and Found Bookshop, it was a very stark moment that I had. I was speaking with some elderly people that lived at my mother's assisted living place, and I'm in charge of my mom's elder care, she now lives with me. And so I do a lot of speaking with groups like that. And one question that I love to ask older people is, what if you got to have a do over, you know, what if you got to make a different decision in your life? And so, somebody said something like, 'I would have been a meteorologist, but women weren't allowed to do that back then.' And I thought, wow, you know, I want to write about somebody who does get that opportunity. You know, she does get to walk away from her very steady, predictable, corporate job and life. Unfortunately, what drives her to that point is very tragic, but she does get there. And suddenly she gets to make a new blueprint for her life. And so I was very inspired by that. And I realized that with every book, even from that very, very first one, it's a moment of profound change in a character's life, whether it's a decision that she has to make or some situation that's forced on her. And so I'm most fascinated by that. And it's always, you know, my characters, there's a lot of variety. They come from all walks of life, but she's usually the smartest person in the book, but she doesn't know it. That's the one thing I would say they have in common, but from there, the process has become not a routine for me, but definitely a journey that has familiar signposts, you know, I have to know my character and I get to know her in ways that come to me subconsciously or I consciously research her world. I build her world around her, what did she do? What does she fear? What was her family of origin? Like that's huge for me, because I believe that people, as adults are the sum of their family of origin, good, bad, indifferent, or usually a mixture of everything. And I sort of build the character, psychologically and physically, that way. And at that point, I kind of have a sketch. It's usually written down in sketchy notes, and then I figure out what does she want, what is her utmost desire? And I try to figure out what that is and then find ways for her to not be able to have that. I know, it's kind of mean, but that's where the story comes from. Because people read for the struggle, I do, you know, somebody wants something, you know, Dorothy wants to get back to Kansas or Luke Skywalker wants to destroy the Death Star. Whatever, the main character has to want something that is profoundly important to them. Whether it's you know, to revive a failing bookstore and look after her elderly granddad, or to create a women's support group for domestic violence survivors, which is The Oysterville Sewing Circle. There has to be a really powerful want that I believe I relate to and readers might relate to and once I have that, I'm off to the races. I sort of pick the setting, and I populate her world, and I create a plot, and I write an outline. And I say outline, it's really just a 5-10 page present-tense narrative that I then pitch to my literary agent and my editor, sometimes separately, sometimes, simultaneously and they usually have some feedback for me. I have a writing group that I meet with regularly here on the West Coast up in Puget Sound, which is where I'm broadcasting from. And through that process, I get a roadmap for my book and then I kind of disappear with my pen and paper for about six months and I do write with pen and paper it's kind of old school but it keeps the distractions at bay while I'm drafting the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:41 Wow, I want to come back to drafting with pen and paper. But Sarina and I often talk about (I'm only on like novel number two in terms of anything I'm going to try to sell) but...Susan Wiggs 18:53 Then you are light years ahead of 99% of everybody else, believe me.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:58 And I don't discount my treatment I'm super excited, my debut is coming out this summer, everything is going great. And I'm just literally, like, painful minutes away from giving the draft of the second book to my agent so we can figure out if maybe we can go out with it before the first one comes out. Susan Wiggs 19:23 You know, every writer is convinced that all the other writers have the answer. And we always want to pick each other's brain.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:29 Yes, it's easier for everyone else. Susan Wiggs 19:30 I want to hear how everybody else does it because I'm doing something wrong because I'm so stuck right now.KJ Dell'Antonia 19:36 Well, we often talk about whether you start from the emotional story or the plot story and it sounds like for you, it's almost always the emotional story.Susan Wiggs 19:46 Yes, because I have to have some sort of connection. Otherwise, I'm just writing a work report. And there's also something that really resonated with me, it was on that one of the very first podcasts of history This American Life, probably familiar with it, with Ira Glass. I don't remember the the specific episode but he talked about something called the wish song that appears in every Disney animated musical. The main character looks out at the landscape whether it's in the little French town for Beauty and the Beast or in the wishing well for Snow White or whatever and they sing a song, and the song expresses their wish. And so I don't give my character a wish song but I look for that deeply held emotional and sentimental desire, you know, the yearning that the characters expresses. And when you build the story around the character, then her emotional journey is really the plot. She has to do something she has to be in a world in a situation but her emotional journey is really where I go to get my deepest pieces of the story.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:39 And then when you're trying to take that emotional journey and marry it to a physical journey. Do you generally know where you're going from the beginning? Is it hard to figure out what physical journey will best tell that emotional story? I'm sure you're really good at by now...Susan Wiggs 22:00 Well i don't know but I do know that it's the fun part for me because I love to explore different settings. There are some writers who go back to the same setting again and again and it really works for them and they get known for being a writer of a certain region or something like that. For me, I love to travel and I'm such a fan of world travel. So I love to find what will bring out the deepest aspects of this character. Is it a city, is it a beach, is a lake, is it somewhere out in the countryside? What time period is it and so I have all these different explorations that I do where I find the perfect pairing. Because some of my stories, like The Oysterville Sewing Circle, it could take place anywhere in the world. It's a woman on a career path, who has a big complicated life situation, and she ends up forming a group for domestic violence survivors, but I ended up setting it in the most remote town in the most remote piece of beach on the Washington coast called Oysterville, because I felt like that was a metaphor for you know, this woman going out on a limb. And on the other hand, The Lost and Found Bookshop, I wanted a bookshop on like the cutest vintage street in San Francisco. Usually my setting is a place that I would love to be, a place I would love to visit. Some of my favorite books are books that make me want to go there, want to be there. So I've got a stack on my desk right now - I've got Ocean Boulevard, and there's a beach picture, and I've got hello summer, and there's another beach. We've got a theme going here. So the setting is something that I hope will play up aspects of the story and character in a metaphorical way. And so that's one of the things and then the other thing that I love playing with is, as a writer, we get to live so many different lives, we get to have so many different jobs. And so every main character I've ever written has a job that I fantasize about. She's a photographer, she's a dancer, she's a writer. Well, I don't fantasize about that, I know the grim reality of that, but I've always wanted to be a bookseller. And so The Lost and Found Bookshop was gratifying for me to write about that. But we're very lucky because we get to experience these things vicariously through our research and through the people that we write about. So it keeps it very exciting and fresh. We don't go back to the same job day in and day out.Sarina Bowen 25:08 Right. And a bookseller is an interesting observer of humanity in terms of who comes in to look at what. That's a really durable archetype, which is amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 25:24 Hey, listeners, KJ here, before Susan tells you what she's been reading, let me tell you, that's a lot. Let's talk about what you're writing, or rather where you're writing, Sarina and I have been loving our new Dabble Writer software. I've already raved about how intuitive it is, and how much we love the plotting tool. But since this episode is about beach reads, and I hope you're finding a way to indulge in a summer getaway, I want to tell you that another cool feature of dabble is that you can use it anywhere and on any device. Online, offline, PC, Mac, Chromebook, Mobile, they all work and they're always synched up. So the edits you jotted into your phone yesterday are right there on your desktop today. We really think you'll like it and we'd love to hear what you think. So check it out with a free trial at dabblewriter.com and then get in touch.Sarina Bowen 26:25 But I wanted to take you back a second to the Disney wish song because that was really interesting to me. I'm actually not a big Disney watcher, as my kids are a little older now but, I hadn't really realized that before. And I love that you start from the character's wish. I find when I start, and I'm wondering how you get past this, but sometimes does that wish feel a little bit thin to you until you really dig in. It's like the chicken and an egg of character conflict.Susan Wiggs 27:03 Absolutely, totally. And I'm always so envious when I open a book, and the character has this life or death problem or situation, because my books are really personal and they're kind of intimate and they're very much about a woman's desires in her everyday life and she's not out saving the world or vanquishing bad guys or something like that. And so my stories - until I really dig into them - feel a little every day, a little mundane. And so I'm very sensitive about that and it possibly makes me work harder, all the harder on the aspects that are really going to bring the story to life for the reader and really going to get the reader involved and behind the character. And with The Lost and Found Bookshop, one of the things that the publisher did is they sent out a lot of advance reading copies to working booksellers, or actually furloughed booksellers because of the time that we're in, and the feedback that they got was so extraordinary that they ended up making a deck of quote cards with feedback from these booksellers. And it was really extraordinary to see how they experienced this book and what their feedback was. And so even though it was a woman who doesn't consider herself anything special, she was really special to these readers. So I'm really hopeful that when the book goes out into the world and is not my baby anymore, the readers will relate to that.Sarina Bowen 28:51 That's wonderful. And as you point out, those of us who write emotional journeys, you know, some days doesn't it seem super tempting to just kidnap your heroine on the first page?Susan Wiggs 29:02 Yeah, it does really and you know, have her like swept away by pirates or something just to get the action going, when instead she's got to give a presentation at work and it sucks and, you know, something like that. Actually, that's interesting that you brought that up because my original opening scene of The Lost and Found Bookshop was pretty much exactly that. She had a work situation at her corporate job and it does not go well. And it's very important to her. But I was concerned that the readers might not hook right into her because she's a little challenged by the situation and she's not a warm, fuzzy person in that moment. And that's a little risky to do, because you want your reader to like your protagonist right from the start. And so, I was apprehensive about doing that. So what I did is I added and this is something I sometimes do, I sometimes don't, I added a prologue. And the prologue put her in the most emotionally stressful situation I could find for her at that moment, so there's like just a one page prologue, it's really quick, but it's like, everything that I wanted the reader to know about this character, so that when they turn the page, and there she is in her work meeting, and she's sweating and nervous and that sort of thing, they can relate to her in a different way. So that was actually a writing craft moves that I made, you know, a lot of writing is inspiration and it's art and it's talent. But a good other segment of it is just knowing how to manipulate your craft and steer your craft towards the best experience for the reader.Sarina Bowen 30:59 It's been Powerful to realize at some point in your development as an author that you have got the spotlight in two hands and you can point it wherever you want.Susan Wiggs 31:10 It is and hopefully we know what to do with that spotlight. That's generally what revisions are for, right?KJ Dell'Antonia 31:19 Yeah. I sometimes find myself just thinking, I don't know, it felt kind of like this last time and it kind of worked last time. So I'm just hoping it's working now.Susan Wiggs 31:32 Yes. And it's hard when you're deep in the weeds of your draft of your novel, it's really, really hard to have the perspective that ultimately the reader is going to have and sometimes you just have to forge ahead on faith. KJ Dell'Antonia 31:48 So when you are lost in those weeds do you find yourself going back to that 5-10 page narrative that you mentioned at the beginning? Susan Wiggs 31:56 Um, no, what I usually do is go pull weeds in my garden or hike with the dogs or something, and try to walk away from it for a bit. And then I also do more research, a lot of times I'm stuck at a spot in the book, and I just need to read more about the situation, you know, whether it's more articles about elder care or more articles about this Spanish American War, which has a very weird, kind of interesting little spotlight in the book. So sometimes I just do more research. There's a very good book, there's so many good writing books, but one of them that was quite instructive to me a million years ago, it was called Writing the Blockbuster Novel by Al Zuckerman. He was (maybe still is) a big agent in New York, and he was Ken Follett's agent and he talks about when you get blocked the first thing you should do is go back and do more research into your setting, and your situation, and into the character's job. And I don't know that that resolves it every time for me, but it's very helpful.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:11 I love books like that. I love books that at least just tell me something to do when I'm stuck, anything, just just give me something I can get my fingers into.Susan Wiggs 33:24 Yeah, I'm a writing book junkie. I have probably 16 linear feet of books on writing and I have my favorites but there's always something that I can glean from most of these. I don't always work through them cover to cover but I love browsing through them, that's always inspiring to me as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 33:48 I love hearing that because I am so there. I love stuff like Save the Cat Writes a Novel and Write Your novel in 90 days and it doesn't have to be great. I don't know, I like dipping out and finding a roadmap from time to time, I think.Susan Wiggs 34:06 Yeah. It goes back to writers being convinced that every other writer has a secret and they're hiding it from us. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:14 I do have the secrets to how other people can write them that turn out to be the problem. Well, this is a great time to shift into talking about what we have been reading. In every episode, we like to just shout out something that we've been enjoying lately. And so I hope you've had some time to read and have something in mind that's been keeping you entertained when you're not writing right now?Susan Wiggs 34:46 Absolutely. I'm always reading and I've always got a couple of books going - one on the nightstand and one in the living room and one wherever I happen to be. And right now some of my books reflect where I am in my life. I think I mentioned that my mom has moved here, she's 90, she's a bit high maintenance right now. So I'm reading. Let's see, I've got a stack here. I'm reading Aging in Place by Aaron D. Murphy. Not very interesting, except when you need it. But the other one that I just love, and I've read it before, but I'm rereading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Medicine and What Matters in the End. And then for light hearted reading, I have the new Mary Kay Andrews, Hello, Summer, was just published. And a good friend of mine, Mary Alice Monroe has a new book out called On Ocean Boulevard. And it's like the ultimate summer read. It looks like I haven't started it yet, but I'm looking forward to that one. I have a book here that is a memoir. Because one of the things that my husband does, he does a lot of things, he's a designer, but one thing that he's been doing is he's been renovating old houses. And he's not really a flipper because he renovates them beautifully and then sells them or rents them. But anyway, I'm very preoccupied with old houses these days. So I found this book House Lessons by Erica Baumeister, who's written some of my favorite books. She wrote a book called The School of Essential Ingredients that I loved. And this is a memoir of restoring an old house called House Lessons: Renovating a Life.Sarina Bowen 36:58 And then for my birthday my husband got me Untamed by Glennon Doyle, amazing, amazing memoir about a woman's very extraordinary journey.KJ Dell'Antonia 37:15 I'm in the middle of that one might now myself.Sarina Bowen 37:18 She's a wonderful writer and then I bought well because Father's Day is coming up and and Jerry is not my father, but his sons are probably going to forget. So I bought him the new Eric Larsen, The Splendid and the Vile, which is a history of Churchill during World War Two. And I just love Eric's books and Eric's a good friend of mine and so I tease him I say that he's everybody's father's favorite writer. You could always count on somebody's dad liking an Eric Larson book, just like you can always count on somebody's mom liking a Susan Wiggs book. And then two more on my nightstand. This one is a collection of stories called Sabrina and Kareena, there was a there's a lot of controversy about a big book that was out earlier this year called American Dirt. And it focused some attention on Latino writers or Latin ex-writers. And so I decided that I did not have enough on my shelf and so a bookseller recommended Sabrina and Kareena by Kali Fajardo-Anstine. But it won the National Book Award and the stories are just lovely. I love them. And then finally, I just started this morning over coffee The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid and If you haven't heard of her, you will soon because her book, which was called Daisy Jones and The Six is about to be a very big series on, I think Amazon Prime, or maybe Netflix, and quite, quite the big hit. And I adored that book as well. So I know I'm gonna like this new one. And you wonder with all these books that I'm reading, do I have time to write? No, I don't. Do I have a deadline? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:26 We fully understand.Sarina Bowen 39:29 But you know what, reading books keeps the craft alive. As a writer, you read a book differently than just a reader. And I say just a reader with a lot of respect, but it's kind of like my husband's an apparel designer. And he can look at any garment and see what it took to make that garment and he knows a lot of technical things about it that the casual person wouldn't even know and I think the same can be said, of writing and it is a little harder for me and probably you guys to, to really get into a book. Just because we're also noticing things that are not supposed to be noticeable.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:14 Every so often I'll be like, Oh, I bet that was a major subplot at some point, there's a reason that that dog is a German Shepherd or whatever, you know, and but now there's not and you can go in and out of that mode, right? Well, so it I think rather than say anything that I'm reading, just because we have a great list here, I'm gonna just ask you one last question, which is - do you read fiction while you're writing it?Susan Wiggs 40:49 Always? Yes, I do.KJ Dell'Antonia 40:52 We do, too! So many people don't - or say they don't. Susan Wiggs 40:56 Um, I would probably go through withdrawal symptoms if I couldn't read fiction, and so for some reason, it's not a problem for me personally to distinguish what I'm writing from what I'm reading. And you know that I don't know if that's true for everybody. But it doesn't seem to be a problem for me. Maybe it's telling that one of my first things that I remember writing for publication was when I was in seventh grade, they decided to publish a book report that I had written in the newspaper because I was supposed to do a book report on Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. And I was so destroyed by the ending of that book that I rewrote the whole ending of the book, and that was my book report. So my seventh grade teacher thought that it was interesting enough that you know, she published it in the newspaper. So that was one of my first publishing credits. I was rewriting John Steinbeck. So, I don't know maybe you need maybe you need that level of arrogance to kind of push your way into publishing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:06 I think that you predicted your own future. Well, we have to respect your time but we are so grateful that you came and did this. I think this was a fantastic conversation about writing. I enjoyed it so much. Thank you.Susan Wiggs 42:21 Thank you so much. I'd love talking shop with you guys. You're amazing.KJ Dell'Antonia 42:25 It's great. So for our listeners, you're definitely going to want to look for The Lost and Found Bookshop and also maybe take a look at The Oysterville Sewing Circle. So, Sarina you want to take us out with our with our always final saying?Sarina Bowen 42:56 Until next week everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

This week, I bring you the utterly sensational Glennon Doyle. She is the author of three books, the latest of which, Untamed, is a memoir that defies easy categorisation - somewhat like the woman herself. Untamed is thrilling, original and brave. In it, Glennon dismantles our socialised preconceptions of what women should be and challenges us all to look at the boxes we're trapped in that are not of our own making. She joins me to talk about all of this, and about why women are taught to 'look outward for permission, approval and consent' when we should be looking 'inward for wisdom' (I KNOW! THIS IS GENUINELY HOW SHE SPEAKS!) But, don't worry, there's also plenty of amazing stuff in here whatever gender you are.  We also discuss her failure to have a thick skin (and how she protects herself from judgement), her failure to keep her family together (and what this taught her about love) and her failure to be fully comfortable with her own body image (despite years of trying). Every sentence she utters contains a revelation, which is why when the time came to edit this interview I just...couldn't. So I've let it run at full length, with no cuts, exactly how it happened.  Enjoy. * I've written a new book! Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong is out in October. It's a practical, inspirational and reassuring guide to the seven principles of failure I've developed since doing this podcast. Packed full of contributions from loads of former guests, as well as listener stories, it is also beautifully illustrated by Paul Blow and I would love it if you wanted to pre-order a signed copy here.   * How To Fail With Elizabeth Day is hosted by Elizabeth Day, produced by Naomi Mantin and Chris Sharp. We love hearing from you! To contact us, email howtofailpod@gmail.com *  Social Media: Elizabeth Day @elizabday Glennon Doyle @glennondoyle How To Fail @howtofailpod                   

Meet two people with diabetes making a difference in very different ways. We're talking to dietitian and strength coach Ben Tzeell & teen author Morgan Panzirer.  First, if you've sort of fallen off the nutrition and exercise wagon in the last few months, you’re not alone. But getting back in the game doesn’t mean going to extremes. Ben has advice about starting small and making changes that stick. Morgan was diagnosed with T1D at age 6. She's now 19 and just wrote a book about her life – so far – with diabetes. It's called Actually I Can. Ben's Blood Sugar Boss program Megan's Book (Amazon) This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription  Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes, and by Dexcom, take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   This week, I talked to two people with type one making a difference in very different ways. First, if you've sort of fallen off the nutrition exercise wagon in the last few months, you're not alone. But getting back in the game doesn't mean going to extremes.   Ben Tzeel  0:37 Life is too short to not enjoy food like that. And the last thing you want is you're constantly eating air quotes healthy, and now you're feeling deprived when you see all your friends eating these other things.   Stacey Simms  0:47 That's dietician and strength coach Ben Tzeel. He's got more advice about starting small and making changes that stick in Tell me something good. I'm talking to Morgan Panzirer diagnosed at age six. She's now 19 and just wrote a book about her life so far with diabetes.   Morgan Panzirer  1:05 And I vividly remember being in the car driving to New York City The following day, and saying to my parents, everything will be fine as long as I don't need a shot.   Stacey Simms  1:15 The book is called, actually I can, and after talking to Morgan, I can tell you better believe she can. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of Diabetes Connections. I am so glad to have you along. Welcome if you're brand new, we aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed right before he turned two. He is now 15 and a half. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I don't have diabetes. I have a background in broadcasting. And that is how you get the podcast. I have been so busy the last week mostly because for whatever reason, sometimes podcast interviews seem to come in clumps. So I had a lot of interviews to do and a lot of production I take care of a lot of it before I send it over to my editor who I've mentioned before, but also I've been busy with my Friends for Life presentation, Friends for Life is the biggest family conference all about diabetes in the US, possibly the world. And instead of having an in person conference this year, like everybody else, they're having a virtual conference. And so I decided, and boy, I thought this was a good idea that I would do my usual game show I usually do a game show presentation as one of my talks for them. But I would do Hollywood Squares because boy zoom just lends itself to Hollywood Squares, doesn't it? That's what I at least what I think of and I gotta tell you, I'm thrilled with how it came out. But I also got to tell you, I'm not sure I'll ever do it again. We had to get eight people I was the ninth you need like a tic tac toe board right for for the Hollywood Squares. The FFL-Wood squares excuse me, that's Friends for Life, FFL. So FFL-Wood squares and I decided to go big and I got people from all over the world, different time zones. Day here night here. Early morning here, it was amazing. So huge credit to my cast of characters. Thank you to the contestants. I cannot wait to share it with you. The conference itself is mid month. If you've signed up for that you'll see it then. And then we'll drop it as a video in a podcast episode. Shortly after that. That's one of the really fun things that I get to do, right. I mean, you have an idea you get to try it. You see if it's a disaster, you see if it's fun, but you know, it's it's never boring, that's for sure. Okay, interviews coming up in just a moment with Ben Tzeel and Morgan Panzirer, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop. One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes for people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device. It's sleek, compact, and seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app, sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends. And with a One Drop subscription you get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door every One Drop plan. Also in access to your own certified diabetes coach have questions but don't feel like waiting for your next doctor visit your personal coach is always there to help go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. Unusual show this week and that I have two guests two separate interviews. And if you're here only for one or the other, that is fine. I can tell you that Morgan's interview starts about 22 minutes from now, so you won't hurt my feelings if you skip ahead. But I really think you'll like my first guest, Ben Tzeel. we first talked to him last year. He's a dietician, he's a strength coach. And Ben says eating and living with diabetes should not be boring or feel like punishment. We had a fun conversation about what that really means good intentions about eating well, and exercising and quarantine and more. Here's my talk with Ben Tzeel. Hey, Ben, it's good to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on.   Ben Tzeel  4:53 I'm just so thankful to be here. And it's so awesome. It's just amazing. Thank you.   Stacey Simms  4:58 You're really well. We'll see about But   Ben Tzeel  5:02 it's human. It's human interaction right now we don't have much of that these days do it.   Stacey Simms  5:06 Well, let's start talking about that. I mean, how have you been living since the stay at home orders? What's your life been like?   Ben Tzeel  5:13 I just don't go anywhere. I've been living in Florida, not nothing against Florida, but I feel like the cases go down and then the cases go up. And that's just what you hear about everywhere. And I just figure it's just not something I'd rather really want to deal with if that makes any sense. Do you live alone? I actually live with my girlfriend and fortunately for me, she's willing to do a lot of the grocery shopping and a lot of the day to day stuff at the pharmacy but honestly, we just don't go anywhere because she works in the ICU as a pharmacist and she sees all this stuff firsthand. Wow.   Stacey Simms  5:44 That's gonna be interesting job to have right now.   Unknown Speaker  5:47 Oh, yes.   Stacey Simms  5:49 Assuming that you've been doing this since mid March, yo, how's your health? How are you keeping up because you're pretty intense person when it comes to fitness?   Ben Tzeel  5:58 Yeah, I definitely like to thanks. So it's something where I've had to get creative. I've had to step outside of my comfort zone and really look at what I have and say, Okay, what can I do with what I currently have? And slowly, you can assemble a little mini gym at home and things like that. But I've really, really taken time and effort to focus on what can I do instead of, well, this is out of my control, I guess my fitness is gonna go away. I guess all of my other habits that I've worked so hard to develop are gonna just fall by the wayside?   Stacey Simms  6:26 Well, I think for some of us, those things, the second part, those things have happened, right? Because it is hard to maintain a routine It is hard to, you know, especially when, and I'm gonna get personal here for people like me, you know, you're a strength and conditioning coach, you know, this is what you do. I'm a suburban mom who walks her dog and goes to the gym a couple of days a week. And it's been really easy for me to fall out of those good habits over the last couple of months. You know, do you have any advice? If people are listening and thinking, Well, I haven't kept up so it's too late now.   Ben Tzeel  6:56 Well, it's first one of those things is to your point where you mentioned It's too late. Now, it's never too late to actually start and say, I'm gonna look back and say, This is what I did before, this is what I was doing. And maybe I won't be at that same point right now, because I have let myself fall off because I have fallen out of this routine. But what is something I can do today that small to just build a little bit of momentum. And as you build that you take another baby step, another baby step, and suddenly, you're taking strides to get back to where you were. So if you start from that mindset, and that point, just make that tiny little shift, you end up in a situation where suddenly three, four weeks from now, you're thinking, wow, I'm already almost back to where I was. Because your muscle does have a memory, it is going to remember where you were. And as long as you put in those same habits you previously had, you should be totally fine.   Stacey Simms  7:45 It's funny when you talk about, you know, getting back into routine because I think at the beginning of this, I don't know if this happened to you, me and my daughter, and I think a lot of people and my daughter came home from college, and we said All right, we're going to do yoga on YouTube. We're going to walk the dog like five miles every day, and we're gonna get really, you know, in great shape, we have a stationary bike, and we're going to do all these bikes and all these rides and, and we really haven't done much of it at all after those first couple of weeks, and I've seen some really funny parody videos on that and a lot of people who have felt this way, but I want to flip that around and say you have taken as you said, You've gotten creative in your house, can you tell us a little bit of some of the things you've done to make your your home gym, I'm assuming that you didn't run out and buy a whole bunch of, you know, gym radio equipment?   Ben Tzeel  8:29 No, I was fortunate that I my parents don't live too far away. And I had a bunch of dumbbells and a bunch of things from my youth that I was able to pick up. But beyond that, I mean, I was pretty much in the same situation that everybody else was where I had a few resistance bands and a few dumbbells and a few little things and had to start realizing. All right, well, I want to keep my insulin sensitivity good. I want to stay on this track of that I've been working so hard to be on what can I do. And so maybe that requires you sitting down and saying Alright, I'm going to restructure my workouts, I'm going to tell myself maybe I was doing four days a week before an upper body and lower body, you can still do that. But you may have to adapt. Instead of using a cable, you may have to use a band instead of using like a barbell or instead of using a heavier weight, you might have to go more reps at a lighter weight, or incorporate pauses or incorporate other bodyweight movements that can be just as challenging. And honestly, the first few weeks of the quarantine, stay at home, whatever you want to call it. I actually felt like I was more sore than when I was in the gym because I had to push harder.   Stacey Simms  9:34 You've mentioned your blood sugar several times you've lived with type one you were diagnosed when you were a kid. I've heard two schools of thought here over the last couple of months. One is you know, my blood sugar's are all over the place. I'm stressed out I'm so worried and you know, things are crazy. And then the other side of the coin is my blood sugar's have never been steadier. You know, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not eating restaurant food, where do you fall in on that?   Ben Tzeel  9:56 I would probably fall. That's it. I mean, I'll Honestly, it's a good question because I see it a lot from the first perspective. So I feel like I then kind of translate that to me. But it's actually my numbers have been in better control since this all began. Because there haven't been as many extraneous factors. I'm not going places. There's lots of unknown variables introduced. But I just I feel for a lot of the people that are in the first situation because there is that lack of routine and that lack of structure. And while everybody says, Oh, I, I wish I could be home more, I wish I didn't go to my job. Taking that structure out of the picture can really make it difficult to stick to that exercise program really stick to the food and the nutrition that's been making you feel good with good blood sugars, and you ultimately fall off that path. And when you do your blood sugar's kind of take over everything else. And during a time where there are no sports, there's not lots of distractions, there's no big gatherings, there's no concerts, your blood sugar's can literally become the one thing that you hone in on and focus on way too hard.   Stacey Simms  10:55 That's funny because I thought you were gonna say there at the end that you can really you can focus on And really make a great difference. But you said you focus on and you know, it can it can not be a great thing. Can you expand on that last thought?   Ben Tzeel  11:08 Sure. And I mean, of course, I can tell you it, there's ways to get around it. But a lot of people what will happen is, I mean, think about it like because there aren't tons of social things to be doing. And there's not tons of activities and tons of distractions, you start to look at the few distractions you have in your life. And one of them would be, I wouldn't call diabetes, a distraction, but it's one of the big prominent parts of your life if you have it. And it just starts to become a bigger and bigger and bigger thing that you just the more you focus on it, the more it expands and the bigger role it can take in your life. So I've watched a lot of people people I've worked with people I've interacted with on social media, that they end up in a situation where their blood sugar's just take over their entire existence where they're looking at their decks calm every five minutes, wondering what's going to happen and sometimes that leads to great results, but other times, it just drives people crazy. He drives up their stress level and they get into this loop of frustration. Oh, my blood sugar's high. Oh, I'm a failure and they go down the spiral that is very counterproductive in terms of living like a really as free of a life as possible to do right now.   Stacey Simms  12:14 Yeah, I would also echo that for parents as you were listening. I think it's super easy. And I found myself doing this too, with Benny home a lot more. It's easy to focus on our kids blood sugar's more, right? They're not going anywhere. They're not go to the movies, they're not hanging out with friends. And it's easier to make that a bigger focus than it needs to be. So I'm kind of listening to this and taking it to heart. But you know, one of the things you're really known for in social media is these these crazy foods, right? We talked about this last time when you were on, you know, giant donut, big meals and stuff. And I'm curious if there's, you know, we often figure especially newly diagnosed, we often find out that we love restaurant food because it's full of hidden fats and sugars and you know, salt and butter and all those delicious things that We love and that's what makes restaurant food so good. But it's kind of hard to bolus for that stuff. Are you finding it easier? I mean anything on that in terms of home cooking, which I'm so sick of Ben, I am so tired of cooking. And my husband helps if he cooks too, so I'm just sick of it.   Ben Tzeel  13:13 Well, I can't blame you for being sick of home cooking because it gets to a point where I'm probably three months or so from having had something from the outside. And it's I'm just craving something   Stacey Simms  13:26 brought in a meal. You haven't brought anything in.   Ben Tzeel  13:28 I just maybe I'm paranoid, but I just I just would rather be like, you know what, at least I know, I'm dealing with the prep and I'm dealing with everything else. And when this starts to settle down, then I'll start to venture out and have all of the fun food again. Not that I haven't had fun. Trust me. You can make many fun things at your house. I know what you're making.   Stacey Simms  13:45 Yeah, no, I have friends who haven't brought any food in. I mean, we're not in that camp, obviously. But I know a few people who've done that   Ben Tzeel  13:51 Emilio wants me to really bad so we're working on it. We're in a negotiation right now. But to your point, I would say when you know All of the factors within what you're eating. So of course, you know that you've prepped it, you know, what you've put into it, you know, everything and everything. And there's no variables, there's no question marks. And we're not talking about the COVID part, but just about the actual composition of the food itself, then it's a lot easier to bolus for because you have all the answers. You have all the math right there when someone else creates something, even if it's something that, you know, Oh, I know, this is a bacon double cheeseburger, and I know I've had them before. And this is what happens. There's some sort of variability because that part of it is out of your control. And that lack of control can be difficult to account for granted. There's ways to take it in to consideration and be able to say, all right, this is what I'm going to do based on experience based on other knowledge, like put numbers and experience together and make a very educated decision and dose and do amazing with it. But just that little factor of there's other stuff in here there is that hidden fat you were describing. There's sometimes things are cooked in, in oils we don't know about there's sugar that might got thrown in there that you don't know. And then you end up eating some foods like that and you get frustrated you you have chicken alfredo and your blood sugar goes up to 320 for the next seven hours, no matter what you do no matter what you dose and you're just full of frustration the whole time.   Stacey Simms  15:14 So you work with a lot of people with type one and your background is nutrition. You have a master's degree, you're registered dietitian. I'm curious what the first change you urge people to make when they come to I know not everybody's the same. But you know, one of the questions maybe that you ask,   Ben Tzeel  15:30 I guess, coming from me, the first things I want to know is where people are starting out right now. Like, what are you eating? and kind of just getting you aware of what are you eating because as evidenced during this time, and this time, please put a magnifying glass on it more than anything else. But people kind of just go through the motions. They don't pay as much attention to, oh, I'm eating X, Y and Z. They just say oh, I'm gonna make whatever I can grab and I'm just gonna go for it and eat and then continue and a lot of people can't tell you what they ate for lunch yesterday. So my first goal is get them really aware, what are you eating? Start to kind of get a sense of it and then get them understanding. Are you making the meals complete? Are you getting your proteins, your fiber, your veggies? Are you getting them to the point where you're getting the nutrients that you need for both the body composition that you want, but also for the blood sugar control, because once you have the blood sugars and control, the body comes a lot faster, whether you want to lose weight or get strong. And once the blood sugars are controlled, you can do all the things in life that you really want to be doing.   Stacey Simms  16:30 I'm always worried about talking about diets, right? Because people want to lose weight, they go on a diet, people try all sorts of different things. We've talked about this in the past to me low carb, high carb, whatever it is, what do you find works overall, in general, for the people that you work with.   Ben Tzeel  16:45 For the people that I work with. I've had people on 400 grams of carbs, I've had people on 40 grams of carbs. The most important factors that I've noticed are getting enough protein into your life and I know a lot of people are concerned Oh protein is going to Your kidneys. But all the research, if you dig into it has shown that a higher protein diet is actually advantageous to the kidneys. I'm not saying you need to eat like five chickens a day, but at the same time, a substantial amount of protein. I would also say making sure you do get the fiber. That's why I tried to hit on those big three the protein, the fiber than the veggies, the fiber is going to be important whether you get that from veggies and fruit or whether you do get that from some grains. Some people do well on a decent amount of carbs. Again, it's that carb side of it is preference and everyone in diabetes is so fixated on it, when I can't stress enough where people that I've worked with are super successful on all levels of carbs, but having the protein, having the fiber, having enough of the veggies, those three things and then the other thing would be the 9010 rule. And that would be something where I would I don't know if it's actually a rule I may have made it up but it's 90% of the time you're eating on point you know what you're doing, you're making quality choices and that other 10% of the time you're enjoying the sunset You're enjoying the desserts, you're enjoying the finer things that life has to offer. Because life is too short to not enjoy food like that. And the last thing you want is you're constantly eating air quotes healthy. And now you're feeling deprived when you see all your friends eating these other things. And as long as you have a strategy on how to dose for it, so your blood sugar is going to be ultimately good. There's no reason to deprive yourself of having that and so many people are living limited in that scope of I can't have that because I have diabetes, that food scares me. This is awful. Like, I wish I could have that and you can have that. But allowing yourself that wiggle room of 10% that is usually enough to say hey, I'm gonna get the results I'm putting into a effort 90% of the time to get the blood sugar's get the body but then the other time I can enjoy everything.   Unknown Speaker  18:50 What's your big favorite 10% fool?   Ben Tzeel  18:53 That's Oh, that's a loaded question. I was gonna say there's a restaurant here called dance and dance. And Tampa has these loaded nachos that are so good. They're like a once every six month kind of thing, but they've got like the cheese and the pulled pork, and they've got the beans and they've got the ground beef and honestly, it's actually not a terrible meal in general but there's just so it's so calorie dense. That would be one cookie dough for sure would be one. The edible cookie dough not like cookie dough. That's raw eggs. And then Honestly, I have to say this but have you had cookie butter before? I have not had cookie pokey buttered so I love cookie. What is it cookie butter? It's I don't even know how to describe it. There's like this. I know the first time I had it was from Trader Joe's and then they have some everywhere apparently I didn't know it was a big thing. But it's literally like the butter form of cookie. It's like imagine peanut butter consistency but it tastes like a cookie and it's basically straight fat and straight sugar. But it's so good. Oh my God. That is my guilty pleasure. I will not lie. That's It's so good. That Great,   Stacey Simms  20:00 okay, he's got some advice. We've You know, we've gotten some insight into how you operate. I know you have a new program that you're working on, tell us what this is all about. How can people take part?   Ben Tzeel  20:11 Absolutely. So I have a program called blood sugar boss, because everybody wants to be a blood sugar boss, you want to be in control of your blood sugars and in control of your life, getting the body that you want, and literally living life without any kind of limits. And so the premise is, you're going through and restaurants become no big deal. You can walk into a restaurant by the end of this and point out what you want on the menu and say I want that and know how you're gonna dose for what your game plan is going to be. No questions asked, like the on the exercise side of things with respect to blood sugars going low constantly, that part's eliminated. You know, you go and exercise no matter what you're doing. We're eliminating the lows. we're eliminating the highest you can truly do what you want to do without having any concerns and actually focus on The exercise instead of Oh my god, what is my blood sugar going to do? Then of course talking about the food side of things to make sure that you know what choices need to go into that 90% what choices need to go to that 10% and when you do go in that 10% How to dose so you're not concerned? Oh, man, I'm going to be 300 for the next six hours. I know exactly what to do for that. I mean, we're going into travel when travels the thing again, you know, we're making sure that you go on a trip, you're like, Okay, instead of vacation being stressful, this is no big deal. We're hitting everything on all different kinds of angles. And by the end of it, you can walk away from it saying, I am in control, no situation will faze me and this is literally everything I need to know about diabetes, and I forgot one of the other big things were kick starting your metabolism up. So you're going to be able to be prepared to get stronger and lose weight. At the same time. I'm curious you you share a lot as I mentioned on inside on social media, and the other day, I saw you share a post where you were over 300 for a while, you know, you had I think it was at a Ben canula or something like that. Are you concerned that when you share something like that, right? Do you get feedback from people saying, how could you that's so dangerous? Or, you know, how could you let that happen? I'm curious what kind of feedback you get when you are that transparent, because, you know, we all know that's gonna happen, right? And I think if there's a lot of people out there that go on social media, and they act a certain type of way, and they say, Well, my blood sugar's are great all the time. And my numbers are always the decks combined, it's flat, and everything's awesome. And that's cool. You can share that. But that's just sharing the highlight reel of life. People are almost afraid to show the authentic side of the side of them that shows I'm human that I get that annulus to these things do happen. And so I feel like by showing that, it's like, Look, I'm not perfect, I've never been perfect, and there are people out there who I'm sure have had that situation happened to them. And if anything, I think it makes you more relatable. And it's okay to put yourself out and say, Hey, this does happen to everybody. Oh, my goodness, you can eat the same thing at the same time every single day and get a slightly different result. So, in that situation, it's part of life. Everybody goes through it.   Stacey Simms  23:15 Before I really let you go, I had to laugh when you said blood sugar boss. Because when Benny was was little, I mean, he was diagnosed before he was two. So we had to use all these, like really kid friendly ways of talking to him about diabetes. And I remember when he was about four or five years old, we started talking to him about like, being the boss of diabetes, you know, and little kids like to boss stuff around. Little kids have no control over anything, right? Everybody tells them what to do and where to sit and when to wake up, or when to go to bed and what to eat. So they have no choices, and sort of get to be the boss of something was really cool for him. And then the flip side of that was I had to say to him, Look, if you were if you're not the boss of diabetes, it's going to become the boss of you. And it really worked for a long time to help us teach him and but it's so funny. I forgot all about that. Until you mentioned The name of your program. So thanks for bringing that memory back up. It wasn't something that I had remembered. But it's so important because if you don't take control over it, you mean, you have no choice, it will take control of you.   Ben Tzeel  24:11 Absolutely. And that's, that's the whole goal here is like you said, you have to be the one that's saying, I am going to actively take control over this because otherwise your life is run by diabetes, whether you allow it because you allow it to you don't take back the power from it, and you don't say, this is my life, this is what I want to do. And if you don't actively make that decision, it's gonna make it for you. And you don't want someone else or something else. In this case, diabetes making that decision for you want to live life on your terms. So you need to make sure that you are a blood sugar boss.   Stacey Simms  24:43 I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for sharing the program all the best with it.   Ben Tzeel  24:47 Oh, thank you so much. I'm just glad to be able to help more people in our community and I'm just thankful for the opportunity to chat with you as always, that's always an awesome time on here.   Unknown Speaker  25:01 You're listening to diabetes connections   Unknown Speaker  25:03 with Stacey Simms   Stacey Simms  25:06 more information about Ben's program blood sugar boss in the show notes and I'll link up his Instagram account as well now I'm gonna have to go back and look now because I do get a kick out of the bonkers food that he posts like these big portions and you know wild desserts and things once in a while, but I'm thinking now he said that they had been eating at home and creating their own stuff since the stay at home order. And now I really want to take a look and see what they've been making because we've been cooking a ton I think just like everybody, right? But I haven't been baking or making desserts. My daughter I have an 18 year old daughter and she likes to bake and she's been making cookies and brownies and stuff like that, but I'm not getting creative when it comes to desserts. I like to eat desserts, but I'm not making at this point. I am barely making dinner. I am so sick of Okay. All right. Well, you know good problems to have, I suppose. The author of the book actually I can is our Tell me something good this week, but first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And we've been using the Dexcom G6 since it came out two years ago now, and it's amazing. The G6 is now FDA permitted for no finger sticks for calibration and diabetes treatment decisions. You do that to our warmup and the number just pops up. I know it sounds funny if you're newer to Dexcom but we've been using it for seven years now. And when you're used to calibrating you know, and not getting that number automatically, it really does. It just seems so different. The G6 has longer sensor we're now 10 days and the new sensor applicator is so easy to use, but he does it all himself. Of course we love the alerts and alarms and we can set them however we want. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G6 do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more, go to Diabetes, Connections comm and click on the Dexcom logo.   Morgan Panzirer is our Tell me something good this week she was diagnosed With type one when she was six years old, that's obviously not the good part. She is now 19, a college student who would like to become a pediatric endocrinologist. Now her sister also lives with type one. Morgan started writing the book that we're going to talk about here in middle school. It's called actually I can, Morgan was great to talk to you. She was very patient with my questions and my ignorance about equestrian sports. Here's my interview with Morgan Panzirer. Morgan, thank you so much for spending a few minutes with me. I'm really excited to hear the stories behind the book. Thanks for coming on.   Unknown Speaker  27:32 Yeah, of course. I'm so happy to be here.   Unknown Speaker  27:34 What gave you the idea to write this book?   Unknown Speaker  27:37 I started writing it in seventh grade for two main reasons. The first was I was fed up with all the misconceptions that people with type 1 diabetes hear every day, for example, Oh, you got diabetes, because you ate too much sugar things along those lines. So I decided that maybe if I could tell my story, I would be able to kind of change the way the general public views this disease. The second reason I wrote it was because I really wanted to empower others living with Type One Diabetes and show them. That doesn't have to be something that holds you back. Rather, you can use it as an opportunity to do whatever you want to do. So   Unknown Speaker  28:14 you started writing in middle school, but you were diagnosed at age six, much younger than that. Do you remember your day? Your diagnosis story?   Morgan Panzirer  28:21 Yes, I'll never forget. It is so clear in my mind. I had been drinking and peeing a lot. So my mom knew the signs of Type One Diabetes because she was a nutritionist. Yeah, so my mom knew the sign. So she decided to ask my pediatrician to test me just to humor her. She was sure it was nothing but she said, just test it anyway. So she did and a couple days later, my pediatrician called us I'll never forget exactly where we were in the car. And she said to my mom, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but Morgan does have type one diabetes, and my mom just immediately started crying. We were all shocked. We went to the Naomi berry Diabetes Center at Columbia the following day. And from there, it was just, let's get through this.   Stacey Simms  29:07 So your mother was a little bit familiar with it, but in being a nutritionist, but I can't imagine you knew at all who you're in for, and especially at age six,   Morgan Panzirer  29:15 no, I had no idea. And I vividly remember being in the car driving to New York City The following day, and saying to my parents, everything will be fine. As long as I don't need a shot. Little did I know, every day of my life, I was gonna have multiple needles among the finger sticks and other things. So my parents didn't really know how to explain it to me, and it was definitely a rude awakening for the next few days to come. When you started writing, did you share it with anybody else? Was it just for you at the time? Yes, it was just for me at the time. No one. I didn't really tell anyone about it. No one really knew that I was doing it at all. I was very private about it. But as the years went on, I eventually decided to tell my parents and they were like, you are What? So it was kind of fun. It was. It was a long process. But yeah, the beginning it was definitely just a very personal thing for me. And then your younger sister was diagnosed as well. What was that? Like? How old was she? How old were you at the time. So she was 13 when she was diagnosed, she's now 16. So I was 16 when she was diagnosed, and that just broke my heart because I had had diabetes at that point for 10 years. So I totally knew what it was like, and it made me think I would not wish it on anyone, especially someone in my own family. So to see her kind of struggle with it, and because she was diagnosed a lot older, I think it was hard for her to kind of get through it because she knew and remembered and understood what life was like prior. And now the fact that you have to make put so much thought into eating an apple, I think really kind of threw her for a loop, but I was really happy that I was there and could kind of show her the ropes and show her that this doesn't have to be the end It won't stop her. She doesn't want it too.   Stacey Simms  31:02 It sounds like you have a really good relationship with your sister. But you know, it's gotta be hard to you know your sister. So I don't want to make it like it was a perfect relationship, but due to diabetes in some way for you closer, I mean, I kind of hate that because it's a cliche, but you to share it and experience that nobody else in your family could really understand in the way you were going through it.   Morgan Panzirer  31:21 Yeah, it did. I would definitely say that it brought us closer. I mean, we always had a great relationship growing up. I mean, she was the only other girl in the house besides my mom. So we did everything together anyway. And we did have a really good relationship. But this definitely was something that I could share with her and I couldn't really relate to something like that with anyone else. So I think we, I mean, we don't talk about it a ton, but it is something that if I'm having a terrible day, I'm like, Oh, this stays the worst. And she's like, Yeah, I know what you mean. So I think in that way, it definitely makes it easier for sure.   Unknown Speaker  31:57 Okay, so you grew up in a household where After your diagnosis, your parents jumped in with both feet for advocacy. And they jumped in in a way that is unique because your dad is a trustee of the Helmsley trust, which is a as you listen, if you're not familiar, just an unbelievable funder of so much Diabetes Research and so many diabetes advocacy causes and effect. We had your dad on the show last year, but he is a very passionate person, as you know, Morgan, where he was really talking about the need for better education when people get great diabetes devices. And you know, trying to help in that respect. What was it like to know that what happened to you affected what your parents did with their lives? I mean, there's put so much time and energy into this cause,   Morgan Panzirer  32:39 oh my gosh, yeah, it was unbelievable. I mean, my dad became a trustee shortly after my diagnosis. So again, at six years old, I had no idea what that meant. But as I grew up and saw the impact he's having on this community and everyone with this disease, I'm so grateful that he went this way because I really do believe that he's making enormous differences in this community. I've already seen tons of new technologies that have come out, in part, thanks to his funding. So I'm so grateful. And my mom actually has she's a big runner. So she's run numerous half marathons and marathons with jdrf to raise money. So the fact that they're just all in for me and my sister is, there's no words to describe it. It's unbelievable. You've been able to do a lot of things yourself. You were a children's Congress with jdrf. That was in 2009. So how old were you when you did children's Congress? I was eight when I when was that something that was meaningful to you? Yeah, it was a really monumental event, I think because it really marked the beginning of my advocacy. And especially being that little I didn't really understand that I could make a difference prior to this. But when I got there and saw oh my gosh, all these kids are going through the same thing I'm going through and look at this difference we're making on a national level, I think it really showed me that I did have the ability to make a change if I wanted to, and if I set my mind to it. So it was definitely a big step for me and understanding that I had the ability to make a big change for everyone with this disease. And it definitely marks the beginning of my advocacy, as I mentioned prior.   Unknown Speaker  34:19 So tell me about advocacy for an eight year old. I know because I just people listening are kind of thinking like, well, what else? You know, there's children's Congress vote what really can an eight year old do?   Morgan Panzirer  34:27 It was crazy because we're at Children's Congress. We're talking to our senators. I didn't even know what a senator was. I was like, Who are you? Like, you seem really important, but I don't know what you do. Um, but it was really just a place for me to learn and understand and it opened a bunch of doors for not necessarily when I was eight years old still, but when I was older, it really just allowed me to understand, okay, I can do this and I can make a change and talk to these super important scary people. If I want to so I wouldn't say necessarily started my advocacy at eight years old, but it definitely opened that door and set that path or the years coming up.   Stacey Simms  35:10 So in the book, actually, I can you mentioned, you know, sugar and misconceptions.   Morgan Panzirer  35:15 Are there actually, as I say, actually, are there questions that that really have followed you that you would answer? Actually, I can. Oh, there's so many. It's funny, you should say that. Because one of the chapters towards the end of the book actually has a bunch of things that I've heard people say prior about this. And my answer to each of them is actually I can so that's really funny. You should bring that up. So yeah, it's all surrounding kind of the sugar aspect. And that always drove me crazy. Like, oh, you Sorry, you can't have this ice pop. It's not sugar free. And to that, I would say, Actually, I can. So it's really funny that you should bring that up.   Stacey Simms  35:53 Well, I mean, it's something that I think many people with diabetes experience over and over again to the point where you have to decide Are you going to be annoyed and be sarcastic? Or say nothing? Or am I going to be annoyed and continue to educate? Right and that second one, even just as a parent of a child with type one, I try to choose the second one as often as I can, but it really does wear on you. So when I saw the name of your book, I was like, totally can relate.   Morgan Panzirer  36:19 Yeah.   Unknown Speaker  36:20 And you ride correct. That's your sport is, is I'm gonna say it incorrectly as horseback riding.   Morgan Panzirer  36:26 Yes, that is my sport. How do I say that? What's the real sport? equestrian sports? Thank you,   Unknown Speaker  36:33 bro.   Unknown Speaker  36:35 I've not talked to somebody with type one who is you know, involved in equestrian sports. Can you tell us a little bit about how you go about doing that? I mean, because obviously, there's got to be equipment, requirements of the sport and concerns about a pump and a CGM. So   Morgan Panzirer  36:50 what do you do? Absolutely. So I started writing actually right after my diagnosis, and at the beginning, it was fairly easy to manage my blood sugar's Because I was young and just doing beginner things, but as I got older and obviously I started wearing a CGM a little later I got a little more difficult because I was riding for longer I was doing more difficult things. So it became a game of trial and error to kind of find the balance of Okay, I need to cut back my Bazell this this much time prior to getting on and then afterwards, I should sip on a Gatorade. So it was a big game of trial and error that definitely got frustrating at times. But then the whole other battle was at horse shows because when you horse show, you're not allowed to have a phone or any sort of electronic device on you. So I'll never forget there was this one show I was competing in and I go in and I do my course. So I do the jumpers for anyone that knows. So I go in, I jump my course and I come out and the judge walkie talkie over to the end gate where you enter the ring and said she has to be disqualified because she has a phone on her and I was like I don't Promise you like, I'll show it to you. It's not a phone. So they ended up being understanding but after that I had to really be conscientious about prior to stepping in the ring, having the person that was managing the in gate radio over to the judge and say she's that does not have a phone. She's wearing an insulin pump. So that was something I found really interesting. Um, but yeah, it was it's definitely an interesting sport to have type one and do for sure. Well,   Stacey Simms  38:28 you know, and obviously, you had to educate them and now hopefully the next time somebody comes through that way, they would know that a pump isn't a phone, but I'm curious too, you know, obviously writing horse is not driving a car, but it is one of the few sports where you're, you're not alone, right you have to stretch but work with me here. In a way you're you know, you're controlling the horse you're in charge, you have to be in your you have to have good enough diabetes control, that you know, if you're going low, you can Have you could have an accident you could get seriously injured for sure. Yeah. I mean, that's got to be something that I know your parents would be worried about. But as an athlete, it's it's a little bit more consequential in a way than like my son. He's played every kind of sport but if he goes low and basketball, he's probably you know, he's just gonna get himself off the court. He's he's not taking a horse   Morgan Panzirer  39:21 Yeah, it's, it's interesting because there have definitely been times where I'm so invested in riding and what I'm doing that I don't even realize how low I am. So I really have to be careful and always be watching I wear my Apple Watch which is a huge help because I just clicked the Dexcom app and my blood sugar pops right up. So that's made it a lot easier but as you said, there's definitely an added component of stress because if something happens to me, I'm either a gonna fall off and get seriously hurt or be by horses going to be running around loose in the ring. So   aren't really ideal circumstances. For sure,   Stacey Simms  40:00 my apologies to you and anyone listening who is familiar with equestrian sports hearing me painfully make my way through trying to describe. But I appreciate it. Obviously, your parents have read the book, and they must be so proud of you. But was there anything in there that you thought? I don't know if I want my parents to read this? Are you? I mean, I know it's nothing terrible. But you know, in terms of, I think sometimes the people I've talked to with type one, are worried that they're going to make their parents worry more, even as adults, they just don't want their parents to worry. And I was curious if that went through your head at all, as you were releasing this book?   Morgan Panzirer  40:35 Yeah, I mean, there's one chapter in particular that comes to mind where I'm just very raw about my emotions. And at home, I'm not someone who's like that. I'm very quiet. And if something's bothering me, I'll go to my room and deal with it there. So I think putting that all out on paper and having that kind of out to the world and then have my parents read it. I don't want to say I was hesitant, but it was it was interesting because I didn't really know how they were going to react to me being like, Oh, I broke down into tears because they don't usually see me do that very often. So I was, I was a little scared as to what they would think like, Oh, no, is she like crazy at our room? Like what is she doing all the time, but I think they just they were very understanding like, if this is how you want to deal with it, this is how you deal with it. You do whatever you need to do.   Stacey Simms  41:25 When I was looking it up on Amazon earlier, I laughed because you know, Amazon has that if you bought this, you might buy that or, you know, bought and there was my book, there was the world's worst diabetes mom and a bunch of other great diabetes books too. But I laughed because I guess with the teenager in the parenting, maybe they put it together. You know, the world's worst diabetes mom is not about really being a terrible parent. It's about the insecurities that we as parents have when we make mistakes with our kids. I'm curious for you. It sounds like your parents gave you an awful lot of independence and had a lot of confidence in you and I Assume your sister as well. Any message for parents of kids with type one who think we're just messing up and we're the worst?   Morgan Panzirer  42:07 You're not the worst, I can start by saying that. I think I would say try to give your child as much independence as possible without making it unsafe. My parents, as you said, gave me a ton of independence. And I think it worked really well for me, but it's also really different. So what works for me may not work for my sister. So you kind of have to be willing to cater to your child's needs and what you think will suit them best. But independence for me was key.   Stacey Simms  42:36 And then I'll flip it around and say, okay, you're you're a college student. Now you're you're not you know, you're not quite done with being a teenager, but the high school experience is behind you. Any advice for teenagers? type one?   Morgan Panzirer  42:47 Yeah, I would say teenage years are tough just because your peers are naturally a lot more judgmental than they are when they're adults. Do what you do. Don't hide anything. If they want to be jerks about it. Let them be jerks about it. That's their problem. And just don't let them get the best of you because I was bullied by freshman year of high school for wearing a CGM on my leg and was shorts on and things like that. So I would just say, don't let the haters hate who cares, they can do what they want.   Unknown Speaker  43:18 And for you now, what are you studying? Did I read you want to be an endocrinologist?   Morgan Panzirer  43:22 Yes, I am studying biology in Spanish on a pre med track. And I'm hoping to go to medical school for pediatric endocrinology. Did you have an endocrinologist growing up that inspired you? When did you realize you want to do something like this? It's funny, it was kind of the opposite. Hopefully, he's not listening right now. He wasn't bad by any means. But I just thought it would be really cool if I had an endocrinologist who also has type one who can relate to what I'm going through and make me feel like I'm not alone. So if I want that from my endocrinologist, I want to be able to give that to others. So I'm hoping that eventually, if I make it through med school, I'll be able to give that experience to younger children who are also fighting type one. That's great. And then someday you could do the next book, which is actually you can Exactly.   Stacey Simms  44:18 Work it. Thank you so much for talking with me. often don't hear about those teen years and growing up with type one until people are adults, so I can't thank you enough for sharing your story. I really wish you the very best with this.   Morgan Panzirer  44:28 Of course, thank you so much for having me.   Stacey Simms  44:33 I will link up more information about Morgan's book, just go to Diabetes connections.com click on the episode homepage. As usual, there's also a episode transcription. I started doing that in January of 2020 of this year, we're slowly going back the catalog I'll probably put the transcripts in for past shows as well. But you know, there's a lot of shows we're up to episode This is 310 if you're keeping track so I'm doing the best I can with transcriptions but 2020 and going forward getting great feedback on that. And thank you, I really appreciate hearing from you. If there's something that you really like or don't like with the show, and the transcriptions have been a big hit, people listen to the show people read the show, and some people listen while they read the show. However, I can serve you That is what I'm here for. And I'm kind of laughing. But really, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to add the transcriptions. I think there's some excellent information. It's not about me, it's about the information and if you can read it, I know some people just prefer that. So very cool. Thanks again. And, you know, when you go to Amazon, and you see, it just makes me laugh, right? The you see Morgan's book with my book. I don't know why it makes me laugh. I mean, I'm a serious author now. But I do get a kick out of serious author (laughs). I do get a kick out of seeing people I know or have met, along with my book. It's just really a lot of fun. I don't know. Maybe it's silly, but I really get a kick out of it. All right, great month of shows coming up. I'm very excited about July because we're going to be talking about selecting an insulin pump, not which pump is best, but how do you select one that's like the number one Question all these Facebook groups? What pumps should I get? What pumps Should I get my kid? We're also gonna be talking about pancreas transplant. I've wanted to talk to somebody who had a pancreas transplant for years and years because you hear you know how difficult it is or how does it even happen. And so we've done that and I'm really thrilled to share that interview with you in the coming weeks. And of course, the fiscal would squares. That chaotic show will be out soon as well. So lots of good stuff coming up. More on the way. Thank you to my editor, chunky tennis solutions. And thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, kind to yourself.   Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Zach sits down with activist Tema Okun, author of "The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race And Racism To People Who Don't Want To Know," to have a chat geared around white supremacy culture at work. She and Zach take a deep dive into a piece she wrote on the subject, dissecting several of the named characteristics present in the document. Check out the show notes to reference the piece and to find out more about her work!Connect with Tema on Twitter.Read her "White Supremacy Culture" piece by clicking here.Interested in her book, "The Emperor Has No Clothes?" Check it out on Amazon.Donate to the Justice for Breonna Taylor GoFundMe by clicking here.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Check out our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and, you know, we continue to live in really extraordinary times for some people. Frankly, these times have been this way for a while for many of us, but we have this, like, seemingly [?] to awareness and consciousness, and so I want to respect that. I want to respect where we are. And, you know, we've actually shifted up our interview schedule, and we're having more and more pointed conversations about the reality of white supremacy. So you've probably noticed a few episodes, and we're gonna continue to do that. You know, I shared on Twitter a couple days ago that, like, I think my baseline is just much angrier these days, and I'm at peace with that. And so with that all being said, you know, we have conversations on Living Corporate that center marginalized voices at work. We do that by engaging thought leaders from across the spectrum to really have just authentic discussions. Today we have a phenomenal guest, just like we do every single week, but it makes no less true that we have a great guest today, Dr. Tema Okun. Tema has spent many years working for the social justice community. For over 10 of those years she worked in partnership with the late and beloved Kenneth Jones as part of the Change [?] Training Group and now facilitates long-term anti-racism, anti-oppression work as a member of The DR Works Collaborative. She is a skilled [?] facilitator, bringing both an anti-racist lens and commitment to supporting personal growth and development within the context of institutional and community mission. She holds a BA from Oberland College, a Masters in Adult Education from NC State University, a doctorate at NC Greensboro, and is on the faculty of the educational leadership department at the National Louis University in Chicago. She is active in Middle East peace and justice work with Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions USA. Dr. Okun, how are you?Tema: I'm great, and I want to apologize upfront because some of those biographical facts are no longer true. I left the faculty of NLU several years ago, and I'm now active with the Jewish [Voice?] for Peace. Just to update everybody so that they don't think you or I are lying about [?].Zach: Thank you for correcting me, I appreciate that. So, you know, you've been in this work for quite a while. Like, we talked some months ago actually before my daughter was born, and--Tema: Oh, you have a beautiful daughter.Zach: Thank you very much. Yes, yes, you've seen her. Yeah, she looks great, and she's getting bigger every day. It's just so cool that she's changing all the time. What I'd like to know though is if you've ever seen anti-racist, anti-state-sanctioned violence protests like this in your lifetime in terms of just scale and scope?Tema: You know, you gave me that question ahead of time, and I want to say both yes and no, and I want to say yes because [?] during the Vietnam War protest time period and I lived during the AIDS protest time and the growth of the LGBTQ movement, and I do want to acknowledge that the grief and rage and resistance that we're seeing today is part of a longer legacy of people who have been full of grief and rage and resistance before us so that we don't isolate ourselves and we also take credit for this particular moment, which is unique in the sense of the reach, the brilliance, the clarity about the demands, and I'm very excited about, you know, the defund the police direction that this is taking, and so it's a yes and no answer. I'm so excited to be alive in this moment, and I feel like I was honored to live through those other moments as well.Zach: And, you know, it's interesting because it's easy to kind of forget about the history of protest or the history of, like, anti-racism work, and so then, like, things kind of come in cycles, and so, you know, new voices come up in new generations and it's almost as if these conversations have never been had before, but, like, I'd like to get your perspective on really, like, just these concepts, the concept of whiteness and then also, like, the concept of anti-racism. And I know those are big questions. I'ma give you space, but I'd love just to hear you talk about that.Tema: Well, I think part of what's really unique about this moment is that these concepts are more broadly understood within the resistance movement that we're seeing now than they ever have been in my lifetime, so that part is definitely true. When I started doing this work a gazillion years ago, [?] years ago or so, you know, a lot of people--there was not what I would call... I don't want to use the word sophisticated, so the deep understanding about what whiteness is, how white supremacy operates, how white supremacy is the culture that we're swimming in, how it informs who we are although it doesn't define who we are. There was not that clarity, and I feel like I've been a part of the generation of people who helped think about, develop, and--and I'm not taking credit for it. I mean, I'm part of the wave of people who sort of understood that it was important to ground us in understanding that, understanding the ways that white supremacy, capitalism, patriarchy, all of these symptoms of oppression have really shaped who we are, and we need to understand how they operate if we're gonna do something different and have a different vision. So what I'll say is I think--and this might be one of the questions you're gonna ask later, but I think that the thing that we need to be careful about is that white supremacy and capitalism and patriarchy are very, very ingenious, and what we've seen happen in every movement that has ever occurred historically in our country is that they get diverted from a justice focus to an access focus and that capitalism and white supremacy know how to lure us just enough to say, "We're gonna let you have power of a certain extent in our institution. We're going to let you have access. We're going to say good things about you. But don't rock the boat too much." Leaders going, "Defund the police? It's too vague. You don't have a plan." You know, when we talk about access to healthcare, people don't demand [?]. It's like, "Yes, we have a vision. We have a vision of communities where the billions of dollars that are spent on militarized police are spent on schools and community centers and making sure people have enough food to eat." That's the vision that we have [?] defund the police, and that's what we're gonna do and not get distracted by--so part of the backlash is gonna be fierce and hateful and violent, but the more dangerous part of the backlash is gonna be accomodation.Zach: It's interesting, to your point around, like, respectability, right, and so how people, like, use the concept of civility, like, as a cudgel, right, to really stymie progression. You know, we had Dr. Robin DiAngelo on Living Corporate a few months ago, and we talked about her work in studying white fragility, and, you know, and--and, not but... not but, but I've listened to perspectives on how white fragility is not necessarily, you know, anti-racist work. Can you share your perspective on that?Tema: Sure. One of the dangers of our movement--and, you know, I love our movement, and I love many things about it. One of the dangers of our movement though is that we can get really [?] about what being in the movement or what activism is, and so my feeling is--so I'm 68 years old. I've been around a long time, and [?] point in my life is that we need it all. We need it all. This is not a competition about, you know, who's doing it right and who's doing it best and where the focus needs to be. So our frame, the way--The DR Works Collaborative has also been closed for about three or four years. All of our materials are on our website, which we can share the address later, but what we--our frame is that typically racism shows up on three levels, on the personal level, the ways that we are with each other and ourselves, on the cultura level, the beliefs and values and standards and norms of the groups of people that we're operating within, including sort of white supremacy culture overall, and then our institutional policies and procedures and practices, and one of our racial equity principles is that you have to work on all three levels. And so what I hear Robin saying, and I think it's really important, is that those of us are white who work pretty consistently on our conditioning, [?] the invitation that we are extended to join whiteness and, in joining whiteness, to both disconnect from people of color, disconnect from other white people and disconnect from ourselves, because that's what the invitation is. An example of white fragility is if you are angry, if you are in full grief about what's happening and my fragility says, "Well, you need to tone it down, because I can only accept your [?] if it comes to me in a certain kind of package," then I'm completely disconnected. I'm disconnected from you, and I'm disconnected from myself because I'm not allowing myself to feel my own grief and rage, right, because I'm so scared of yours I'm certainly not gonna feel my own. So I think what you're speaking to, you know, there's a thing that people say about white people and navelgazing and that we just like to navel gaze, and what I like to--you know, we like to agonize, and Maurice Mitchell talks about how his liberation or the liberation of black people, of people of color, is not tied up with my anxiety as a white person about getting it right. So I think that there's this balance between [?] our personal work, because all of us have invitations extended to us by white supremacy in some form or another. So all of us doing work on our internalized self and then continuing to be in the world and relationships and figuring out what our role in this resistance movement is. So it's not an either or. It's very much to me a both and, because if we don't do our personal work, then the way that we're gonna show up is just gonna replicate all of the [BLEEP] dynamics and clinging to power [?] and not understanding who we're accountable to and posturing and, you know, just things that aren't helpful, and fear of our fear and all of those things. I think it's a both and, right?Zach: I appreciate that, and I agree, right? I think one, white fragility is just so real, and it creates so many barriers and, frankly, causes so much harm in ways that we don't even consider, like, literally every single day, and because white supremacy is such a reality, white fragility impacts behavior of black and brown folks even when white people aren't around. So to make sure that those who are in power are examining and interrogating themselves, like, that's critical. That doesn't mean it's the only thing, but it's important to do.Tema: Yes. I think that living in white skin in a white supremacy culture obviously confers power and privilege, but not to everyone, and not in the same way, right? And so I think that it's really important, for me--'cause I'm speaking for myself--to understand how many white people are caught up in the same crapola of white supremacy and the ways that racism targets people of color, are caught up in that without [?] seeing it clearly. And I'm not saying that racism targets white people, I'm saying white people who are working class and poor or white people who have had no opportunity to understand how whiteness operates are swimming around in ways that are completely not in their self-interest, and, you know, are continually encouraged, for example, to look to middle class wealthy white people as their community when in fact their community are other people in the same economic and social situation that they're in. So, you know, I'd like to make sure we understand how many white people are hoodwinked by this whole thing as well and invited to participate in ways that make no sense [?].Zach: I think that's a really good point. One piece of literature that has really gotten, frankly, over the years consistent attention, but at this time it continues to get attention, is "White Supremacy Culture." It's something that you wrote, and we'll put the link in the show notes for everybody, but we're gonna walk through this research, this document. But before we do that, can you talk to us a little bit about how you arrived at the points that you made within the work that you wrote?Tema: Sure. So I've only written one book, and it's called "The Emperor Has No Clothes: Teaching About Race and Racism to People Who Don't Want to Know," and it basically was a chance for me to sit down and write all the things I and other colleagues have learned about teaching about race and racism to people. So that's what that book is, and White Supremacy Culture was written before the book, and I wrote it in either [?] or [?], so a long time ago. Kenneth and I were doing a lot of work on the West Coast, and I had just come from a People's Institute for Survival and Beyond workshop with Ron Chisholm and Daniel Buford and probably a few other people, and The People's Institute is based in New Orleans and is sort of, in my view, the grand daddy of people doing anti-racist education and training in my lifetime and so were our mentors and, you know, people that were doing the work that we were doing, so I was full of their wisdom when I wrote the piece, and I also had--and I can't remember the meaning, but I had just come from a meeting of predominantly white people where pretty much every dynamic in that sheet of paper, in that article, showed up, and I was frustrated beyond belief, and people say this, and this is my only experience of this phenomena, which is that "it wrote itself." Like, I didn't--I sat down at the computer and it wrote itself. Just sort of "This behavior, this behavior, this behavior, this behavior." It was like I was in a fury, and then I showed it to my mentor [?] Martinez, who was running a challenging white supremacy workshop at the time in the Bay Area, and she said, "You can't just list the terrible behaviors. You have to list antidotes. You have to talk about what to do," and so that was such good advice, and so I added those into it, and I will say--so it was written a long time ago. It was written without a class lens, which it needs, and it [?] things out, and it didn't--so I'm actually, in this moment, my project is creating a website rather than another article, but rather a website based on the article so that it can be more flexible. Lots of people have used it and adapted, and all the ways that people have used it and adapted it I'm gonna add a class lens, tell some stories, give examples. So that's my current project.Zach: Can we talk about, like--because in this document you essentially have these different characteristics. I'd like to walk through the characteristics that you list and then really just have you talk about each of them, because again, there are a lot of people that I respect, and I'm gonna shout-out Dr. Oni Blackstock because she's one of the most recent people who I saw tweeting about this and talking about this, but it's all over YouTube. Like, I don't know if you know this, but I just saw a video where somebody put this document up on a video and then, like, slow-scrolled it and talked about it, but I caught myself reading it and I said, "This is exactly like every work culture I've ever been a part of." So let's do this. Let's do each characteristic, and then you just kind of explain, you know, how these attitudes and behavior, you know, reinforce or drive white supremacy at work. Can we do that?Tema: Sure.Zach: So you start off with perfectionism. That's your first one.Tema: Mm-hmm. I started with that one I think probably because that's the one I'm the most guilty of myself. So, you know, I talk about how white supremacy culture is--the purpose of white supremacy is to disconnect us from each other [?] so that a few people can exert their control, cultural control, in ways that allow them to profit at our expense, and so perfectionism is this [idea?], it's very connected to professionalism, and it's this idea that there is a perfect way to do something, which is completely nonsense, and that there's somebody or some group of people who can determine what that is and encourage you to aspire to it. And then we internalize that, and I don't think I know a single person who actually feels completely comfortable with who they are and how they show up and how they're doing things, because the culture is so [?] I feel like we're continually falling short, and if we're continually falling short, then we have to buy products to make ourselves look better and feel better, and it's just a vicious cycle. And another thing I'll say about this list is that these things aren't just used to perpetuate racism and white supremacy and to target people of color in different ways at different times. They impact everybody, and they're toxic. There's nothing good about them at all at any time unless you're the one trying to control other people, and then you're so disconnected from yourself it's not even--Trump is a very good example of someone who's completely disconnected from anything. So I think that perfectionism is used as a tool of professionalism and as a tool to keep people from positions of power and also to keep people off balance about who they are and their worth and their value.Zach: You know, it's interesting. One of the things you say in here is, "Little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing, appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway."Tema: Mm-hmm, yeah, exactly. And then the way that we internalize that, even when we're fighting hard not to. You know, I was talking to a friend yesterday who was applying for a position at a foundation. It's completely, completely clear to me, and I think to her, that she is not only qualified for the job, she is over-qualified for the job, and my guess is they won't hire her because it's clear to them too, you know? And it's so pernicious, the way that that works, where a lot of white people here who are not called to account for our lack of understanding about how racism and white supremacy works because it's not ever part of our job qualifications. No one is evaluating us based on our ability to understand how that works, and we're about to invite somebody in who does understand, and that makes us really uncomfortable, so maybe [?] somebody who's gonna not make us feel uncomfortable all the time. That's part of how that works.Zach: And so it's interesting. So I was about to move to sense of urgency, but to your point, in the recommended antidotes for racism you have "develop a culture of appreciation where the organization takes time to make sure the people's work and efforts are appreciated. Develop a learning organization where it's expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer an opportunity for learning." It's interesting, even in organizations where they'll say things like, "Oh, it's okay to make mistakes," I've noticed that--and this is a common experience for most black folks at work, black and brown people to be clear, we don't have the same grace to make mistakes. It's interesting because--and I've had this conversation already with a colleague, but there was a time at work I put a PowerPoint together, and one I just think PowerPoints overall have to be one of the biggest examples of, like, subjectivity to the max, because what you think is a good PowerPoint or nice design I may genuinely think is abhorrent. I may really not like the design of your PowerPoint, right? Like, I might hate it. But anyway, I did a PowerPoint. Someone didn't like it, and so then that PowerPoint and then me, in their eyes, not doing well on a PowerPoint, was then a justification for me to blocked from [a multitude] of opportunities in very public ways, right? And so it's like, what does it look like to really create objective, safe, equitable spaces for everybody?Tema: Right. And what does it look like for that particular person to admit to themselves that they may not have the corner on how something needs to be done? I mean, I remember--each one of these, there's so much that's also interconnected, and two things come to mind. I remember Kenneth--so Kenneth was my mentor and my colleague for 12 years, and he died way too early in 2004, but as we were working together I remembered saying to him... 'cause my style, we were both about the same age, and my [?] style is sometimes to say or admit I've made a mistake or to show some vulnerability, and I said to Kenneth, "You never do that, you never show any vulnerability." "Tema, I can't afford to do that. People are watching me, waiting for me to make a mistake. So even if I make one, I'm not gonna say that I did because people are ready to pounce all over me for it." You know, and again, just another example of how long it took me to learn that, he had to sort of say that out loud to me [?]. So yeah, I think there's that part of it, and I had another thought, but I'm sure it will come to me as we keep talking. So here's the other story, which was that I seemed to be the details-oriented person, and sometimes I'd get really frustrated because I felt like he wasn't paying attention to, like, air fare or flights or when we had to be somewhere, and so I started to develop a little bit of an attitude about how I was doing so much more than he was, more important [?], and we were having a discussion and he said something to me like, "I talked to So-and-so the other day," and I said, "So-and-so? They were in our training a year ago," and he went, "Yeah, yeah." I said, "You're talking to them now?" "Oh, yeah, yeah," and then he proceeded to tell me that he was fostering relationships with most people in almost all the trainings over time and that that's what he did, and it just was such a lightbulb moment for me. I'm like, "Oh, my God. This man," who was a brilliant trainer, there was no question about that, "is leading and offering things that I've never even dreamt of being able to lead or offer that makes such a difference in this work, while I'm sitting here feeling all superior because I know how to schedule a plane flight." It was just like... so many of us, and so many white people in particular, but so many of us are walking around thinking that we know how things should work when we don't know at all, [?] open to how other ways of doing might actually offer so much more. So yeah.Zach: I appreciate that, and that resonates with me too because I think about, especially if you have, like, these majority white organizations, you know, again, people attract, or they're attracted, to people that are like them, right? And that's not just in appearance, but also in, like, ways of thinking and doing, and so, like, if you're in this space, the majority are really good at tasks or really good at [?] things off a box, if there's someone who can do those things but that's just not their wiring, then that person's automatically seen as a problem or as inferior in some way. In reality it's like, "Okay, I don't need--there's eight of y'all who tick off boxes and who are very, like, transactional. Is it possible for me to be different and at the same time be just as good if not add more value than you do perhaps?" I think, for me transparently, one of the biggest mistakes I think I've made in my career is that I think I've been too transparent and vulnerable about me wanting to learn and grow, 'cause I say "Hey, I'd like to learn this. I don't know this," but I've learned, in the spirit of perfectionism, when you communicate that you don't know something or you're new to something, I've just learned that we don't know, black and marginalized people, just don't have the grace to communicate that they don't know. They don't have the grace to grow. They just don't.Tema: Yeah, and it's infuriating. It's completely infuriating, and it's a complete loss. I think the thing that I would like to get across with my audience, my commitment to working with other white people, is for those of us listening to this to understand the deep violence in that, you know? In working side-by-side with people who feel like they are not allowed to offer their vulnerability or their desire to grow and learn because--my God, it's intense.Zach: So you have a lot of terms here, and you know, we might have to do a part two, but I want to see how many of these we can get through so I'm gonna back up and let you talk more. Sense of urgency.Tema: I think that, again, the point of urgency--so every organization I've ever worked with operates with a huge sense of urgency and everything is so critically important right this minute, and it completely perpetuates racism because--the example I'll give is we were doing work with an organization of mostly lawyers that do very good work on a state-wide level, and they had just sort of unpacked all the ways in which [?] of color on the staff and in the community that they served were not feeling heard, were not included in decision making, their ideas were shut down, sort of what we were just talking about, and then an emergency came up, and I think there might have been an arrest, but something urgent happened within the community, and the white leadership, the white lawyers, felt like they had to respond right this minute and if they didn't the organization would be at stake, and right in front of our eyes all of the dynamics were playing out in front of us, and the two of us who were facilitating the workshop tried to suggest to them, "This is happening right in front of our eyes. We know that this is urgent, and we suggest that you sit down and you take a breath and you understand there are other people in the community who are handling it in this moment and that what you all need to do is really sit and take a breath and see how you can approach this differently," and so they just repeated the--you know, you could see it. The white people were circled around, making all these decisions, and the people of color were [?] them on the outside, trying to listen in and then getting disgusted and walking away, and it was just--when things are urgent, if we're not paying attention and we haven't set up the relationships and we haven't set up the procedures to say when things get literally urgent this is what we're gonna do, when things feel urgent but they aren't this is what we're gonna do. Is this really as urgent as we think it is? Because it's urgent we need to take a breath, we need to take a breath and make sure that we're all in this together rather than walking all over each other in our attempt to prove something, which is to prove that, like, we're the organization that's gonna respond like that, even if the way that we respond, you know, tramples over people. And then I think a lot of us internalize urgency. A lot of white people feel like, "If we don't act right now, if I don't fix this right now, then I'm not gonna be able to prove that I'm a good white person," so then we go in and fix something and we make it worse because we haven't stopped to take a breath to consult with other people, to see if our intuition, our impulse is actually the right one. I've seen that happen over and over and over again.Zach: Let's talk about quantity over quality.Tema: Well, you know, we live in a capitalistic society, and we love to measure things, and we love to believe that value has to do with amounts of things, usually money. And again, so I see some of the [thunder patterns?], all of the thunder patterns that I've seen in my lifetime and work, is thunders trying to get people to prove that they're effective by the numbers of things. "How many people did you impact?" Not the quality of things, not the depth of things, not the sustainability of things but, you know, the number of things, which is such a limited measure of how we're doing, and the research I've done on culture shift shows that it's actually not a numbers game. We don't need a majority of people to shift culture. We need deep relationships, we need generational change, we need clusters of people coming to new beliefs simultaneously, but they don't have to be a majority. So I just think it's good to be able to have a sense of what we think progress is, but often we aim towards--I do a lot of work in schools, and the story I often tell--so I'm sorry if anyone's heard this before--is how our schools often, if not always, have a story that what they're trying to do is prepare students for success, and what they mean by that is "We want students to stay in school, get good grades, graduate, get a job, and go shopping, and if we can measure that we've done that it doesn't matter if our students are leading meaningful lives. We're not measuring that. We're not measuring if students know how to find themselves. We're not measuring if students have gotten in touch with their spiritual side or their artistic side. We're not measuring whether students know how to be in a relationship with themselves and with each other. We're not measuring the things that matter, you know? We just don't know how to measure those things. We're obsessed with graduation rates and, you know, how much money people are making.Zach: You have another one here about worship of the written word.Tema: Mm-hmm. So I'll give an example if you'll give an example, but this is our history, sort of the theft of indigenous land, the theft of land from Mexico, the broken treaties, the enslavement of people, it's all built on worship of the written word and the whole, you know, all of our Southwest and Midwest states that became US property after the Mexican-American War and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, all of that theft of land was made possible because Congress passed all kinds of legislation requiring people to [?], and most people lived in a culture where that's not how people [?] that they owned land. So that's just one example, and just the ways that we hide behind "If it's not written down, then it doesn't exist." "It's only wisdom if it's written down," and then only if it's written down by certain people. What comes to mind for you?Zach: So here's where I found the application interesting. So there's a way that I believe those in power and in the majority will essentially place the burden on the oppressed to have evidence, like, tangible, documented evidence, but then in the instances where that evidence is undeniable, then at best it simply just saves that oppressed person from being harmed, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee justice for that oppressed person.Tema: Yeah, or they'll say it's not written right or the form was not filled out correctly or--Zach: Right, or "We still don't have all the facts," or "What about the other person's side?" And so there's still this--it's such a jig, because you're gonna lose, but the question is "While this may have saved you from getting fired, it's not actually going to absolve your name completely after all. These other people said something." Right?Tema: I think about when Bhagat Singh Thind sued the Supreme Court for citizenship, and he was from India, and he was suing based on how science classified people from India as Caucasoids, and the year before a Japanese person who had done the same thing lost the case because people from Japan were classified as mongoloids, so they were not white, but the Supreme Court said, "Well, it's true science classifies you as Caucasoids, but you're not seen as white by the common white man, therefore you're not white." So it's the written word, but also the word is, as you said, controlled and considered by those in power, and whose written words will be paid attention to and whose won't?Zach: Yeah. I think about Breonna Taylor. We know that she was murdered by the state in her own bed, but then when you go back and you look at the report it's completely blank, right? And so, like, anybody with good sense should be able to understand that Breonna Taylor's bullet-ridden body and that piece of paper are not congruent. So one of those [?] is lying. Breonna's own blood testifies that she is not lying, so why are Breonna Taylor's murderers still free? It's the worship of the written word.Tema: Yeah. Sandra Bland, all of that, yeah.Zach: Yeah, Sandra Bland as well, right? And countless others. Tony McDade. And it's frustrating, but I think about that. I think about how manipulative and--you used the word pernicious, it's a really appropriate word in that, you know, documentation really matters until it doesn't. I always tell marginalized people to document everything, because again, while documentation might not ever hold any accountable, it at the very least can make sure that you don't get fired, or it can delay you getting fired because you have something, hard evidence, that if someone says something, you're like, "Well, what you're saying is clearly not true." Okay, so paternalism was another characteristic that you had in your research.Tema: Yeah. I'm gonna bow here to a man named Paul Kibble, who does a lot of writing on Christian hegemony. It's just the way in which--and so many of these intersect, and I'm adding one called "qualified." I don't know if that's on the list explicitly there, but it's the way in which white people assume that, because we're white, we are qualified to act and make decisions that are outside our lived experience, and I think about--when I taught it, when I wasn't on the faculty in educational leadership, when I taught undergraduate students in education, you know, most of them are young, white women who were coming into teaching because they loved to--and please know I admire teachers beyond belief because they work so hard for so little, and yet they come in, these young white women come in very idealistic and very hopeful, and they have no experience, most of them, working with people of color and very little preparation for doing that, and yet have not internalized that they're not at all qualified to do the job, and the education system hasn't internalized that either, and so just the ways in which we've got almost every [?] institution is operating out of a sense of paternalism. Like, "We know what's better for you without consulting you or asking you about your lived experience." And I think about doing work with the department of social services where it's about a woman who, in order to make it through her week, had to visit 11 different offices in the Department of Social Services to account for herself, you know? And it's the way in which--if we look at Congress. Banks are completely involved in writing policies having to do with banks. Poor people and working people have no say in policies that impact their lives, and the laws that impact their lives are written by people who think that they need to be punished for being working class and poor or who think that they need to be exploited or, you know, who have absolutely no care or concern or lived experience, for the most part, of what it means to be black, brown, working class poor, and paternalism is just this idea that "We know better than you," and it can be very deeply embedded in religious thinking, in Christian thinking, and [?]--it's just sort of the idea that "We know best. We're going to convert you to our ways," and that's white supremacy is all about. The goal here [?] is "Act like us if we can exploit you more that way." Assimilation, and if not assimilation exploitation and violence, you know? It's just all based on this idea that we know better, and one of the things that we know better is that [class?] is more important than people.Zach: I think that's true. I think it comes down to a lot of power and control. So, you know, one of my larger concerns right now, even as corporations and larger organizations are looking at Black Lives Matter and people are taking these statements and stances, and organizations are mobilizing their employee resource groups and different things to have these conversations and do real talk and all this kind of stuff, and how much of this is about really hearing and including their marginalized employees, and how much of this is about, like, really making sure that you're retooling, reshaping your organization to be equitable and inclusive, or how much of this is really about you just trying to put some gates and borders around this to maintain control, right? That's my biggest concern.Tema: So I think there's two parts to this. So I think there can be conscious paternalism and there can be unconscious paternalism, and probably lots of gray [?] in between, and so I for one completely hate the terms diversity and [?] because I don't think that they--it's about window-dressing or table-dressing or whatever term you want to use. It doesn't ask the question, "What are we including people into?" Because if we were to ask that question, we would have to admit that a lot of what we're inviting people into is toxic. So it's not about including people. It's about reshaping everything, and I think that's what I was talking about in terms of what we need to be wary of, that some of the backlash is going to be very direct and hateful. Now, a lot of it is gonna be about accommodation, and forget about justice, let's just accommodate, accommodate, accommodate. And paternalism really plays a role there, and we can see it reflected in older leaders often, people who have been around a long time, who are scared they're gonna lose power by these young people who are coming up full of fervor and demanding justice, and some of us have accommodated for so long in order to just often survive that we've forgotten what the goal is, and some of the paternalism is--I'll speak for myself--is internalized entitlement, the internalized belief that I'm qualified to do things I'm not qualified to do, and it didn't require any intent on my part. And I tell a story on the website, and it might be in the book I can't remember, of essentially pushing my black colleague aside in an environment where I knew absolutely everything. This was a different colleague, a colleague named Kamayu [sp] [?], an incredible organizer, and he was in [?], the room was packed full of African-American people living in the [?], economically poor, culturally incredibly genius and rich, and, you know, I didn't think he was doing a good job, so I walked up to the front and I pushed him aside, and I didn't know anything about [?] in the [?], right? But I had this instinct in my body that he wasn't doing it and I needed to fix it. It was--so there's that, the way I internalized this paternalism and this idea that I know how to do things. We just cause so much harm, and again, it's a complete tribute to Kamayu that we're still friends. He actually didn't say anything to me for years, and finally I started to think about it and I'm like, "Kamayu, what about that day?" And he went, "Oh, I figured you'd figure it out sooner or later." You know? So there were, like, five years in there where Kamayu was not--I was not in a genuine relationship with him because he was waiting for me to figure it out, you know?Zach: To your example, I think about it in ways that, like--so it's interesting, you have these cultures that are very racist, right? Like, you have these organizations that have harmed black people for a while, but it just so happens that there's a certain confluence of events that are forcing organizations that have been historically harmful to black and brown people, now they're having to do things differently. But what's challenging, what's interesting, is that some of the people who just six months ago were very harmful are now self-appointing themselves as leaders to have these conversations, right? And, like, there's a certain--of course that's emotionally inauthentic, but I think there's also a certain level of entitlement and paternalism in that.Tema: Yeah, totally. And again, I think--so this is my job, it's not your job, but as someone who identifies as white, who is white, who lives a white life and thinks a lot about what it means to be in relationships with other white people, part of [my job?] is to encourage myself and other white people to think about, "What are we doing here?" And what is the cost to you of this posturing, and what would it be like for you to actually authentically sit down with yourself and go, "Okay, what am I afraid of? What kind of help do I need? What are the things I really need to change?" And I think all of us need to develop a much better practice of what I would call radical honesty with ourselves about why we want to live in a world where we actually are able to have authentic relationships with other people and ourselves and live in a world where people are well-cared for and people can thrive and we don't have to be so afraid of [?] and all these other things. So yeah.Zach: So I'ma pick one last one. Fear of open conflict.Tema: Yeah, that goes back to perfectionism and some of the other things that we talked about. The story I'll tell is that--well, it's a common story, which is that some racism is happening, and rather than deal with the racism that's happening we will label or target the person who's naming it, and sometimes that happens to white people too because we're so afraid of the truth-telling that's gonna happen of how racism is happening. So it's just this--we're too afraid to talk about things that are real and are gonna have emotion attached to them and might lead us, as white people, to feel like we've done something wrong or that we may even essentially be bad in some kind of way, so let's not talk about it. Let's blame the person who's trying to make us uncomfortable. This is attached to "right to comfort." Let's blame the people who are calling us in and say that there's something wrong with them so we don't have to feel our feelings, we don't have to be uncomfortable, we don't have to look at ourselves. We can stay in what feels like control, and it's such a--again, it does such harm, to other people and also to ourselves. The ability to sort of say, "Bring it on. Okay, tell me more. Tell me more. That was so racist? Okay, tell me more. I want to know. Tell me more." It's such a different energy. It's opening. Or "You're racist." "No, I'm not." "Yes, you are." "No, I'm not." There's nowhere--it's, like, you're building conflict and you're not--it's like, "So tell me. How am I racist? Yeah, I want to know, because I think I probably am. So tell me." There's so much more fruit there, even if you end up not agreeing with what they say it's like there's more fruit, more juice, more ability to--it's like, "We can handle this. We can sit in this discomfort, and in fact, if we don't learn to do that we're not gonna get anywhere."Zach: But see, I think that in the context of, like, a business, like, the fear with that is that if I admit that I'm racist, if I admit that I've harmed you, then that gives you byway to pursue the company, right? And so there's this fear of creating risk or opening your company up, opening yourself up to risk by admitting your faults, you know?Tema: So people just need to figure out a way to deal with that.Zach: [laughs] I love how you just dismiss that.Tema: Oh, come on. I don't--you know, legalese and laws and policies [?] in service of connection and not in service of fear and abuse, right? It's like Trump saying you can only come to the thing if you're not gonna sue me if you get the coronavirus. Like, no. And I would also say, for me, one of the racial equity principles [?], you'll see this list of characteristics, and you'll also see our racial equity principles, and one of the ones I love the most is called Organizing Mind, and what we mean by that is you start with the chorus. People go, "Oh, you're preaching to the chorus," and I go yes, because our chorus is very out of tune, so let's get in tune, and then we can start preaching to people outside the chorus and bring them into the chorus. So it's, like, start with the people who want you want, and figure out what your power is, figure out the risk that you're willing to take, and from there each one reach one teach one, as Sharon Martinez would say. So in a corporate environment it's, like, figuring out what are the roadblocks that we need to get rid of so we can actually do this, or whwere are we willing to have authentic conversations regardless of the risk and can we start doing that? So figure out what's within your power to do and do it. Don't wait for permission. Don't wait for--you know, there are lots of things that we can do and build our power that way without people giving us permission to do it, as we are witnessing across the country and across the globe, right? All these beautiful people, many young people, not waiting for permission. Bringing down statues, [?], and it's a beautiful thing to see right now.Zach: It's brought me joy, frankly, to see. Dr. Okun, this has been a phenomenal conversation. I just want to thank you so much for being a guest. I want to make sure that everybody knows that the document that we were walking through and that I picked a few characteristics out of for our guest to beautifully expand upon is gonna be in the show notes, and we're going to also be promoting it--you'll see it this week on social media and things of that nature, so make sure that you check it out. This has been Living Corporate. You know, we do this every single week. We're having conversations, real talk in a corporate world, that center and amplify marginalized voices at work. We'll make sure to catch you all next time. In the meantime between now and next time, we're all over Beyonce's internet. You just type in Living Corporate, we'll pop up. Catch us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, and man, if you have anything you want to talk to us about, just contact us through the website, living-corporate.com. Please say the dash--living dash corporate dot com. 'Til next time, y'all, this has been Zach, and you've been listening to Dr. Tema Okun, activist, educator, speaker, organizer. Peace.

First Thessalonians 4:3-5 is one of the most powerful passage discipleship and sexuality in the New Testament. Sex and sexuality has been co-opted by Satan and the fallen world, and is thus a major area in need of resocialization when someone becomes a disciple of Jesus. Unholy sex is a problem, a real problem, in a fallen world! God has a better vision for sex and sexuality.  1 Thessalonians 4:1-5 Finally then, brethren, we request and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us instruction as to how you ought to walk and please God (just as you actually do walk), that you excel still more. 2 For you know what commandments we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.  3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification; that is, that you abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in lustful passion, like the Gentiles who do not know God; Preston Sprinkle - The Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender: https://www.centerforfaith.com Connect with me: The #1 key to becoming like Jesus is living our life attached to him. So I've got a gift for you on my website ... a free video series designed to teach you how to read the Bible in a way to deepens your attachment to God. Click the link below. https://www.johnwhittaker.net   Thank you to all of you who make this ministry possible by your financial support! Do you want to join the team? Set up a one-time or monthly donation at the link below. http://worldfamilymissions.org/john-whittaker/     I'd love to connect. Here are some ways to connect with me: ▶️Social Media-I would love to connect with you on facebook and instagram   ▶️Email - john@johnwhittaker.net   As always, if you appreciate this teaching leave a review and share freely - on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, via email.

Redeem Your Time; Reframe Your Tasks. This is something disciples of Jesus must learn to do, but it's not as obvious as others. God has a different view of time than the modern world. God has different goals for the use of our time than the modern world. So as disciples of Jesus we have to learn to tell time God's way.  The Bible and Time and Tasks Eph 5:15-16 15 Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, 16 making the most of your time, because the days are evil. 17 So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. James 4:13-17 13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” 14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that.” 16 But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin. Ps 90  - 90:1-2 Lord, You have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. - 90:12 So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom. -90:14 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us; And establish for us the work of our hands; Yes, establish the work of our hands. The #1 key to becoming like Jesus is living our life attached to him. So I've got a gift for you on my website ... a free video series designed to teach you how to read the Bible in a way to deepens your attachment to God. Click the link below.  https://www.johnwhittaker.net Thank you to all of you who make this ministry possible by your financial support! Do you want to join the team? Set up a one-time or monthly donation at the link below.  http://worldfamilymissions.org/john-whittaker/   I'd love to connect. Here are some ways to connect with me:  ▶️Social Media-I would love to connect with you on facebook and instagram ▶️Email - john@johnwhittaker.net As always, if you appreciate this teaching leave a review and share freely - on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, via email. 

Perfectly GoldenBy Angela Garbacz Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.Angela Garbacz: Hi, I'm Angela Garbacz, And my new cookbook is Perfectly Golden: Adaptable Recipes For Sweet and Simple Treats.Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now, on with the show. Since opening in 2015, you have been recognized by Food and Wine Magazine, as one of the most innovative women in food and drink. You were named a Chef To Watch by Plate and ranked on Cherry Bomb Magazine's coveted 100 List of Inspiring and Creative Women. You're also the founder and head pastry chef at Goldenrod Pastries, an all-women run pastry shop located on a picturesque corner in Lincoln, Nebraska. Kick things off by talking a bit about leadership, how you were taught, and how you lead your team.Angela Garbacz: That is great question. I was taught by a lot of different people in different kitchens, and everybody's leadership models were really different. And I have to say that when I started Goldenrod Pastries, one of the scariest things for me was defining my leadership style. And I knew that there were some things that had been taught to me in kitchens, in really great kitchens in New York, where I learned a lot, but there were a lot of techniques of fear, and a lot of aggression. And I knew that that was a leadership style that I didn't want to carry on. And so I had to define a new leadership style for myself, and I knew that first and foremost, I wanted to have a very open and compassionate environment. I wanted to be open with my team about where we are as a group, where I am personally day to day, so that they can give me that same feedback. Because I feel like success for individuals and success for a team really rides on how each individual person is doing and living. And so, I really try to lead with compassion and understanding first and foremost, and teach people as much as I can along the way.Suzy Chase: So this pandemic has upended so many businesses. How are you pivoting to take into account our new normal?Angela Garbacz: Ooh yeah, a lot has changed. So I've shut down both of my stores on March 26th, and I took a few days to gather myself and figure out what we could do from there. And so we started selling online, and made an online storefront in, I think, 24 or 48 hours. And we were shipping our merchandise and cookies across the country, which is something that I always said we would never do, but it was the only way I could think to make money at that time, because I could keep my staff really small and not have customers coming in. And shortly after that, we pivoted to do flash sales and pre-orders through that same online store. So because as a food business, if I'm baking every day and I don't have a set number of customers coming in, or the usual customers coming in, I am wasting so much food, and I'm wasting so much labor. And so, we started baking to order. And so we'd placed flash sales on the website on Tuesday, for example, and then you would come and pick them up on Wednesday. So when my one baker came in on Wednesday morning, she was baking exactly to order. So we've been doing that for the past eight weeks, nine weeks, and we're just now starting to do a takeout model. I also opened a second store in March, right before this happened.Suzy Chase: Oh, no.Angela Garbacz: Yeah, on March 9th, I opened. And we've been operating out of that new location, because it's a lot bigger and we have a lot of space for people to have their space around them. But we're just now starting to do takeout at my original location that's a lot smaller, and bringing people back.Suzy Chase: So you emphasize inclusivity by developing recipes and baking for people who are dietary sensitive. Tell us a little bit about that.Angela Garbacz: Yeah, so when I started my business, I really started it as a blog in 2014, and it was called the Goldenrod Pastries as well. And I started that because I have always been sensitive to dairy, but I really decided at that point, I just can't do this anymore. And I had been trained in French pastry, and worked in pastry with using butter, and cream, and milk for 15 plus years. And so, I needed to find a new way to make food, because I think that treats are very important, and it makes me very happy. So I needed to find a way to make food for myself. So I started Goldenrod Pastries as a blog to start chronicling my journey through that and sharing recipes. And what I found very, very quickly is that there were so many people, who maybe it wasn't dairy for them, maybe it was eggs, or wheat, or soy. But they hadn't had a birthday cake for 10 years. Or, a 35-year-old guy came to me and he hadn't had a donut since he was six years old because of a gluten allergy. And I couldn't turn these people away, even though I didn't know how to bake for them, but I'm a chef first and foremost. And what we love to do is feed people. And so I found a way to make food for these people, even though I didn't really know how. And the orders just came flooding in as soon as I started saying yes to people. And a year later, I opened my store with that mindset of, we have to make food for as many people as possible, so that we can really invite more people to the conversation. The same is true with my book. With Perfectly Golden, I wanted to make a book that invited as many people to the table as possible.Suzy Chase: That's so fascinating to me, because I grew up in Kansas City, where it's just like Nebraska. It's everything conservative, everything, "Traditional." So, I'm so curious to hear how your bakery was received in Nebraska.Angela Garbacz: I'm very, very thankful that we've always been very busy. And I really think that one thing that's a cool measure of what we do at Goldenrod, is that our morning buns do have gluten in them, but otherwise everything is gluten-free, dairy-free, or gluten-free vegan. And most of our customers do not need those things. And so I think that that speaks volumes and a lot of people would never know. Right now we have these rhubarb strawberry shortbread bars, and those are gluten-free and vegan. If you are a person who needs that, then you see that called out on there. But if you aren't a person who needs that, then you just don't notice. And so I think it's really important for me to make food that's good for everyone and anyone. My dad is a really great judge for me, because he's super sensitive to anything being a little different or weird. So when he tries something, and when I was getting started, I had them try our buns that are vegan. I had him try all kinds of things. And he's like, "Is there anything weird about this?" And I'm like, "Well, yeah. It's gluten-free and vegan." And he's like, "I don't know. I can't tell." And I'm like, "Okay, great. Then that's what we're going to keep doing," because I think it's important to include everybody, or as many people as possible. That means the people who have a traditional diet as well.Suzy Chase: So you have little, you-do-you icons at the top of each recipe. Can you describe these?Angela Garbacz: Oh yeah. I love this little section. So it's a little checklist at the beginning of each recipe. And so it says, "You do you. Make this vegan dairy-free, gluten-free, traditional," and there's little checkboxes. So I just opened the book, and I opened it to crumble bun, which is a bun that we make. It's swirled up, and filled with preserves or curd, and topped with strudel and glaze. And so all four of those boxes are checked. So you can make it vegan. You can make it dairy-free, gluten-free, or you can make it traditional. And in a lot of cases, that checklist is redundant, because pretty much all of the boxes are checked for all of the recipes. But for me, when I'm looking at a recipe, I just want to flip through a cookbook and know if this recipe is going to work for me or not, if I can make it dairy-free or not. It was really important to me to have that called out for people, because you really have to try hard in a lot of cookbooks to find if it works for you, and I wanted this to be just a really simple roadmap for people.Suzy Chase: So one piece of advice you've gotten along your journey is other women are not the competition. Personally, I find in the food world and with what I'm doing, I received my fair share of aloofness from women in the industry. But I'm not going to talk about that. Can you talk a little bit about the article, your friend Elizabeth shared with you about this topic?Angela Garbacz: There's always been women's rights movements, our great movements, but what we are experiencing now in terms of female empowerment is very different than it was in 2012. I feel like it was just different then, and different when I was growing up. And I read this and it was like, "There's there's room for more than one of us at the top. Because you think about it, and for a long time, if you saw one woman at the top and you're like, "Well, she already did it. I guess, that's it. She's already the best female baker, so I guess I'm done. There's nothing else for me to do," or, "She's a great food media professional, so there's no room for me." And I think that it's a very easy mindset to slip into. And this article was just talking about how that's not the case, and there's room for more than one woman at the top. And to me, that was like a revolutionary mindset. And there were these series of events that kept building up for me. Like, I went to a blogging workshop where somebody said, "You don't have to be who you've always been. You can choose who the future you is." And I was like, "Oh man, that's a really crazy thing to think about." And realizing for myself, there's room for more than one woman at the top. These were all things that kept building for me. And I was like, "That's right." Even if I've had not great relationships with women in the past, or they haven't helped to make me feel empowered, that doesn't matter. I can forge my own path, and I can still be strong for myself, and be strong for other women. And I mean, you already said this yourself, we've all experienced this, the aloofness or the, "Well, I'm going to ignore that she's doing that, because it's similar to what I'm doing."Suzy Chase: Yes.Angela Garbacz: So if I give her praise for it, then that means that I'm not doing well. Yeah.Suzy Chase: Exactly.Angela Garbacz: I think the more that we build each other up, the better we all are.Suzy Chase: Amen.Angela Garbacz: It's a lot easier, too.Suzy Chase: I know. And then we all win.Angela Garbacz: Especially with everything else going on in the world. Just support each other. It's a lot easier. It takes a lot less time.Suzy Chase: What bit of advice would you give someone with a baking blog who wants to start her own bakery in the post-COVID world?Angela Garbacz: In the post-COVID world, oh my gosh. It's just crazy how fast everything has changed. There's been a lot of women who have started their businesses similarly to mine. And we chat. They come into the bakery. We talk about things, and I'm always happy to help them figure out what equipment to buy and everything. But I think that moving forward, it's going to be more like, how can you partner with brands, and do things from your home? And how can you do mail order? I think that it's going to take a long time, personally. And sadly, I haven't thought about this, but it's going to take a while for new businesses in the food world to pop up again.Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about how the future of food is being mindful of the ways people choose or need to eat.Angela Garbacz: I just think that the more inclusive we can be, the better. And it might be an allergy, but I just know that I don't feel well when I eat something. And I feel like a lot of times in restaurants, in bakeries, I feel like I have to say, "I have an allergy," for people to take me seriously. In my world, in my Goldenrod world, I don't really care if it's a serious allergy. I don't care if you prefer not to eat it. I just want to make food that makes you feel good. And I hope that the food industry as a whole will move over to the mindset of, "How can we just serve our customers better? How can we serve our community better?" Because it's not up us, how people choose to eat. Our job is to make food that makes them happy, and I think that's kind of the most important thing.Suzy Chase: How did you choose the name of your bakery, Goldenrod?Angela Garbacz: That's a great question. So Goldenrod is the Nebraska state flower, and I use a lot of gold in the things that I make. I feel like yellow and gold are things that I was always drawn to. And so I played with a lot of names that had gold in it, and they were just a little floofy and frilly for me. And I moved away, and worked in New York, and went to school in New York. And my husband went to culinary school in Oregon, and we both made the choice to come back to Nebraska. And I wanted to signify that in some way, and include this state, and where we chose to be as part of this journey.Suzy Chase: Tell us about Empower Through Flower.Angela Garbacz: Yes. Empower Through Flower is my annual Women's History Month campaign. I started it three years ago, and we partner with nonprofits that help to empower young women. We work with pastry chefs, restaurant owners, bakery, any female identifying people in the food industry, influencers, otherwise who can make a product, or whatever that looks like for their platform. And a portion of the proceeds from everything that they sell, or any money that they generate from that product goes back to the nonprofit that we work with. And we've had exponential growth every year with the number of people participating and the amount of money that we've made. Unfortunately this year, it was going to be our biggest year yet. We had great publicity on the today show. It was going to be a great, great year for Empower Through Flower, but Women's History Month is in March, so that got shut down pretty fast.Suzy Chase: Oh, man.Angela Garbacz: Yeah. But there will be a next year.Suzy Chase: Yes.Angela Garbacz: It's a cool thing for me. I started it because I just felt like we had to do something to give back. I love doing that. And then it grew into, there were all of these pastry chefs and female chefs in the world and the country who I really idolized. And I thought they were incredible. And I was like, "Well, this is a way that I can connect with them other than just commenting on their Instagram posts." And one of those people is Caroline Schiff, who's an incredible pastry chef at Gage & Tollner in Brooklyn. And I just admired her so much, and I loved her work, and I thought she seemed like a really cool person. And she actually came on as a co-founder with me this year, and now runs Empower Through Flower with me. And we connected through her being a participant. And now she's one of my greatest friends in the industry, and runs Empower Through Flower with me.Suzy Chase: So the other day, I made your recipe for Confetti Cake with Vanilla Buttercream on page 200. This is one of your most popular cakes at the bakery. Can you describe this recipe?Angela Garbacz: You don't cream any fat or sugar. It's just eggs, and sugar, and oil at the beginning, and you beat that until it's nice and fluffy, and add in your dry ingredients, and stream in some milk, and vanilla, or almond extract, if you like that kind of confetti cake, and add a bunch of sprinkles. I love the texture of this cake. It's not super sweet, which sometimes confetti cake can be. The frosting makes it extra sweet, but it's just a really nice cake that's easy to make if you don't have a mixer at home as well.Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all-time favorite cookbook, and why?Angela Garbacz: I got to go with this, my Grandma Garbacz's Betty Crocker cookbook that she gifted to me that had her yeast roll dough, her sweet roll dough in it, and it was circled, and she just had star asterisks next to it. That's one of my most prized possessions.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, social media, and in Lincoln, Nebraska?Angela Garbacz: So, you can follow me on Instagram, @AngelaGabacz_, with an underscore at the end. You can follow my business @GoldenRodPastries on Instagram as well, and on Facebook. And we sell copies of Perfectly Golden as well at shopgoldenrod.com, but you can also buy it wherever fine books are sold. And Goldenrod Pastries is at two locations in Lincoln, Nebraska.Suzy Chase: Awesome. Well, thanks Angela for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Angela Garbacz: Thank you so much.

Welcome! Craig’s walking you through a deep dive of the Pros and Cons of Online Collaboration Tools for Businesses and the Security implications for Businesses who have Regulatory Requirements.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Twitter wants to know if you meant to share that article DHS Warns on New Exploit of Windows 10 Vulnerability FBI Says Sudden Increase in Mobile Banking Is Heightening Risks For Users What COVID-19 Teaches Us About Social Engineering UPnP flaw exposes millions of network devices to attacks over the Internet --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Well, we've talked about GoToMeeting. We've talked about Zoom. We've talked about Microsoft teams. Now it's time to talk about my favorite. How should you be collaborating in your business? Maybe your organization, your agency there's really. Only one solution and I'll tell you why [00:00:23] Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig, Peterson here, we have had quite a week this week and it's been quite a year, right? It's a Jumanji season. I don't know if you ever saw that movie, but I think somebody playing Jumanji was set here in New Hampshire. The latest Jumanji movies out is actually pretty good I watched it with the grandkids. [00:00:47]I quite enjoyed it. And they're always right. There are some issues with it and yeah, you have to just ignore you, ignore those things. but anyway, that's me. Right? [00:00:59]We've been talking about online collaboration tools. Now, if you're like most of us and you had to have some people working from home. [00:01:09]Even if you're. A business that was considered essential. And you had people who were in the office all day, maybe your accounting people worked from home. Maybe if you had to deal with an attorney, it was remotely. It was from home. And how did you do that? We've been going into businesses lately that have been having troubles and having a look at this very question, how did they do it? [00:01:37]I think really it boiled down to one of two products that people were using. One of them was the Microsoft team's product. I was actually quite surprised to see the number of companies that were using the Cisco WebEx teams. Now I was surprised because I didn't know that many people really knew about it. [00:02:02] How many people knew about WebEx teams? It was a frankly, it was a surprise to me, but WebEx teams is the only product out there right now that is fully compliant with the federal government requirements. So that includes things like DFARs, fed ramp, et cetera. Microsoft is promising that they will be compliant sometime in July. But at this point, they're not compliant. So if you have HIPAA regulations that you have to follow, or you have  ITAR or any of these other federal government requirements, there's only one option, that's WebEx teams. Now, oftentimes when there is a government mandate to use something and it's terrible. [00:02:57] Right? How many times have you had that? You have to get her driver's license in order to drive on the road, not only in your state but another state. So that. It is a terrible experience, right? Going to the DMV, trying to get that all taken care of. It's not something I look forward to, but you get even into worse spots. [00:03:18] I remember doing some work for the US Navy. As a subcontractor and all of the hoops who had to jump through all of the things that we had to do. And that was a few years back. Now, we're doing work with government subcontractors that are doing work for the US Navy. And I thought after these years, things would be a lot tighter. [00:03:42] And in fact, they are. In fact, the new regulations, the CMMC regulations are much tighter with way more teeth on them. People will be going to jail. We're talking about huge multi multimillion-dollar fines. Even for a small company. So it is a very bad thing here to mess up on some of these regulations. So I've been surprised when I go in and find them using things like Microsoft teams, heaven forbid they've been using Zoom, which they have been. [00:04:22] And they are a federal government subcontractor, in fact, for the DOD department of defense. Because again, what did we talk about? Then, all those stuff routed through China. China isn't just looking for military information. China is looking for information from our companies that they can use to compete against us are designed so that they can use they're selling it to their allies. [00:04:49] The same thing is happening over North Korea. An article came out just this week, that North Korea has 7,000 highly trained hackers. That is aiming directly at our businesses here in the US in order to cause economic harm, but also those hackers to gain access to potential military information. So think about that. [00:05:15] Think about how bad all of that stuff is and companies just don't understand what they should be using. So yeah, you had an excuse during COVID to not use something that's secure. I do get that. Believe me, don't know that the government regulators are going to be happy with you. You may go to jail, but I understand it. So for instance, for the HIPAA requirement, those were loosened because of COVID-19 the federal government said, Hey, listen, if you're a doctor in one state, you don't have to get licensed in another state in order to do the telemedicine stuff that made just a ton of sense They also, because of that loosened some of the HIPAA regulations, which they pretty much had to do. [00:05:58] Right. Cause they didn't loosen the HIPAA regulations. You couldn't do the Teladoc across state lines. And you sure as heck could not do Teladoc using Zoom. So they just loosened it all up, but that's not going to last. All right. So start paying more attention to some of this. And some of these Teladoc things have their own platforms. [00:06:20] Your doctor, you get paid per whatever it is, hour or patient, whatever it might be. And you're not worried about the platform. And you're probably okay. If that platform is not secure in just speaking in general terms. Because you don't know anything about it, but some of these telemedicine companies that have these apps, et cetera, should be anyways, that gets into WebEx teams here. [00:06:46] Some of the advantages that have made it the most popular web conferencing solution today. Number one, it's a software as a service. You just have to subscribe to the surface, you have internet access and you're ready to go. WebEx teams is also one of the oldest out there that you can use. And I think that's really kind of cool when you get right down to it. [00:07:12] And remember I mentioned a little bit early. that, it was the GoTo meeting was one of the older ones that were out there. You might remember some of the ads I do from WebEx, that it has been around a long time, but WebEx was founded in 1995. It really is the grandpa out there. It has been doing the software, this meeting software for a long time. [00:07:38] So it works everywhere. Unlike zoom, you do not have to have a desktop app to do pretty much everything or anything that you might want to do on WebEx, which is a very big advantage. You don't have to have a download your audience doesn't need to be a subscriber to watch and listen. Which is not true for some of these other products that we've talked about today. [00:08:01] It also, I think it very, very successfully combined your online viewing with the ability to teleconference easily. And you can connect to the webinar via just the webinars access code. You can have passwords and whatever you might want to do. And this lots of presenters know who is actually there during the presentation. [00:08:24] You don't have to have a time consuming, roll call or anything else. It's right there. You have. Also, of course, the chats, you have the questions and answers and you can have automatically in this space, a meeting, just take place as scheduled one or just ad hoc. So let's say you have a space in WebEx teams, that's for the team to discuss some part of some project. [00:08:50] And so you're going back and forth, back and forth. I said, okay, look, let's just hop on right now. You, you just hit the button, the meet button, and poof in comes. You're now in a meeting and people can call in on the phone. They can connect via their smart device. Anybody that's in the room's going to get notified that there's a meeting on right now can go from your desktop. [00:09:09] It is phenomenal. Just a simple click is all it takes. Then anybody who's in the meeting can present. You can use a built-in whiteboard, it can take remote control of your computer. Are you kidding me? Why would anyone not use this? And it's using the military-grade encryption that we were kind of talking about earlier, right? [00:09:31] The exact opposite of what zoom has been using it also. It allows you to do what we do ourselves and what we do for our government subcontractors. And that is we host the encryption key for all of the meetings and all of the communications. So the only way anyone can see any of this stuff, There was in a meeting is to have this encryption key. [00:10:01] It's absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely phenomenal. You also have your own site. So for instance, my company has a site at, you know, company named.webex.com. If you want to meet with me again, it's just. Company name.webex.com/meat sauce. Craig Tata, you are done. They've got tons of training articles for subscribers to use. [00:10:24] It uses a proprietary network that has nodes all over the world. It's reliable. It's secure. It is absolutely amazing. You have to use it. You have to try it. And I advise people to use WebEx over anything out for almost anything. All right. You and you can have conferences. For instance, my room allows up to 10,000 people into it, 10,000. [00:10:53] You know, where else can you get that? But you don't have to have that bigger room if you don't need it. It is just phenomenal share files. Oh, videos, chat back and forth. Multiple spaces are what WebEx calls them. Ad hoc meetings, conferences. It is the tool to use. And you can find out a lot more by just going to webex.com. [00:11:20] If you would like a demo, you can just get one right there. You know, I'm not going to make a dime off of it. Okay. It's not like I own WebEx or own any stock in it. Cause I don't, but it is the way to go. And if you'd like me to help you with it, well, that's a different story. You can get help from me about almost anything we talked about here on the show. [00:11:41] You can just email me. M E at Craig Peterson dot com and we help people out every day. It doesn't have to do with WebEx. It doesn't have to do with anything that you're buying from me. I just make myself on my team available. We have a, an offer going where we had 20 companies that we selected from people that applied, that we provided an hour of tech support for anything they wanted. [00:12:09] So that went really well. We've done that before. We may be doing the. The whole cyber health assessment thing. Again, we'll see how that goes. We did those for free about a year ago. So we may do that as part of our security summer this year, but the only way you find out about all of this stuff is to be on my regular emails, my weekly emails. [00:12:30] And you do that. By going to Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Make sure you're on that list. You'll get my weekly show notes and you'll find out about all of the extra free stuff and services that we provide. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

In this interview Lisa and Dr Wayne delve deep into  what Prolotherapy is and how it can be used with joint, tendon and ligament problems, what Prolozone is, what Ozone therapy is,  it's mechanisms of actions and much more.   With nearly 30 years experience Dr McCarthy has used these therapies on thousands of patients and teachers other doctors and medical specialists in these therapies.  You can find out more at https://waipunaturalhealth.co.nz/   Prolotherapy & Prolozone therapy Prolotherapy is a non-invasive, cost-effective solution to many problems associated with the wear and tear of joints and back problems.    Especially effective with knee and shoulder damage and lower back issues. An injection of dextrose and lidocaine are used to perform prolotherapy.  The injection is given into damaged tissue (ligaments and tendons) which causes it to inflame and then heal.  In the healing process more strength is added to bony connections.   Ligaments hold joints firmly so they move in correct alignment.  Tendons attach muscles to bones. Tearing of ligaments and tendons off bones causes sloppy joint movement and pain. Prolozone involves injecting ozone into the painful or inflamed areas, similar to prolotherapy. Once repaired non-surgically with prolotherapy, muscles can then strengthen around the joint.  Once the joint is strong, it remains so unless another accidental injury occurs. Prolotherapy increases circulation and nutrients that help tissue repair itself.  This collagen strengthening technique can be used for all joint injuries, old or new.   Ozone Therapy  What might it do for you? Essentially ozone restores oxygen saturation to the body's tissues. With any form of illness the oxygen levels drop and if they get depressed 40% below normal cancer is encouraged to grow. Low oxygen signals fatigue, usually becoming chronic. The oxidative (Life Force) power of the body is reduced and metabolism goes down to a less efficient level. Conversely, when the oxygen saturation is returned to normal there is a strong chance of recovery of normal physiological function i.e.: A return to better health. Ozone therapy is unsurpassed as a method of oxygenation and is a cousin of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Six treatments are required to receive the ozone effect and as metabolism improves vastly resulting benefits are very long lasting.   Using the body's own inherent self-healing properties to regenerate tissue in the body. Ancient systems of medicine such as acupuncture and manipulative medicine have tapped into this capability to varying degrees by enhancing blood flow, nerve conduction and oxygenation to areas that need to be healed. As our understanding of the body's own mechanisms for healing has matured, we have developed new techniques with a more robust healing potential. In the field of Musculoskeletal Medicine, Prolotherapy, using a concentrated Dextrose (corn sugar) solution injected at the area requiring regeneration, can initiate the healing response. The first phase of healing is inflammation, where the blood flow to the area is increased bringing white blood cells to clean up the area and platelets with growth factors to stimulate stem cells to regenerate tissue. The next evolution of Prolotherapy involves isolating the growth factors found in platelets and white blood cells in the blood and injecting them directly into the area to be healed. This is called Platelet Rich Plasma. Platelet Rich Plasma can be used to stimulate regeneration of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage, and it can also be used for a variety of aesthetic conditions like hair regrowth, facial regeneration and scars. Dr.Wayne McCarthy N.D. is a Naturopathic Physician. Wayne's background is as a practicing Naturopath in New Zealand until moving to the U.S.A in 1989, where he furthered his education and training by going to a private medical school in Oregon called National College of Naturopathic Medicine. After graduation Wayne was licensed as a primary care physician in Hawaii where he practiced for 15 years. Wayne is registered with NZNMA, and certified by Natural Health Practitioners of New Zealand in Naturopathy, Nutrition and Herbal Medicine. Email Wayne, Waipu Clinic: 09 432 1325 Websites https://waipunaturalhealth.co.nz/ and https://nehc.co.nz/   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/running/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetu-mindset-university/   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   We are happy to announce that Pushing The Limits rated as one of the top 200 podcast shows globally for Health and fitness.  **If you like this week's podcast, we would love you to give us a rating and review if you could. That really, really helps to show get more exposure on iTunes**   Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits. The show that helps you reach your full potential with your host. Lisa Tamati brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) Today, I have the wonderful Dr Wayne McCarthy, who is a Naturopathic physician primary care physician up in Whangarei in New Zealand and works at the Waipu health center. He is a specialist once again, in ozone therapy. We've done a couple of episodes on ozone, but Dr. Mccarthy uses ozone in a couple of different ways, as well as the standard practices. And he shares today a little bit about Prolozone. He also talks about prolotherapy, which is all about fixing a joint and ligament and tendon damage. So if you're struggling with an injury that you can't fix, you want to tune into this episode. We also talk about his approach to natural health and how long he's been doing ozone therapy, all the things that he's studied around the world. So a really great episode, especially off the back of last week with dr. Speaker 2: (01:10) Tim Ewer, who I head on another integrative medical specialists. And you know, I think between the two of them, these two doctors both in New Zealand are absolutely fantastic people to be listening to and finding out about more. So I hope you enjoy this interview with dr. Wayne McCarthy. Who's given up a Sunday morning to do this with us. So I was very, very lucky. Before we hit over to dr. Wayne just want to remind you, my book relentless is now out and available. It's available in bookstores throughout New Zealand. It's also available internationally on Amazon, on audio books or the audio book platforms as a Kindle, as an ebook, pretty much you name it, it's out there. You can find it on my website at lisatamati.com. Also. It's yeah, it's been out there for a few weeks and now that we were at a COVID, if you want to just pop into your local bookstore or store, if you're in New Zealand, you can do that. Speaker 2: (02:04) And just a reminder, too, that every couple of weeks we're holding a live webinar about epigenetics health program. This is all about utilizing your genes and understanding your genes and how to optimize your genes for your, for your optimum health, from nutrition, right through to your social environment, your work environment. This is absolutely powerful wellness program that we're using in the corporate setting. It's also very good for individuals, for athletes wanting optimum performance, as it covers off every area from your nutrition, your exercise, right through to your how your brain works, your dominant hormones and neurotransmitters, your it's, everything, everything is covered covered on this. It's a really a amazing program that we're delighted to be able to deliver your, you you can join us for that live webinar, which we're holding pretty much every second week the moment you can find out when the next one is at epigenetics.lisatamati.com. Okay. EPIGENETICS.Lisatamati.com if you want to find out anymore. Speaker 2: (03:12) Let me know. And as always, if you enjoy the show, please give us a rating and review because that really helps the show get exposure. And on that point, I just want to thank you all for those who have listened to have done ratings or have done reviews, because we're now ranked as one of the top 200 podcasts globally for in the health and fitness genre. So I'm really, really appreciative. It's a combination of five years of hard work, and we're really, really stoked to be in that top 200. So thank you to everyone who has done a rating and review or share this with your friends and made that happen. Now over to the show with Dr. Wayne McCarthy. Speaker 3: (03:54) Well, hi everyone. Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits. Fantastic to have you back again. I am sitting with a lovely day, Dr. Wayne McCarthy, who is sitting up near Whangarei who is the a founder of the Waipu natural health, and also is a doctorate, the natural environmental health clinic. Welcome to the show dr. Wayne. Speaker 4: (04:19) Good morning, Lisa. Nice to be here with you. Speaker 3: (04:22) It's fantastic. I've Sunday morning, no less cutting into your family time. So I really, really appreciate you coming on the show today, but we had a fantastic discussion yesterday. So I've been really, really excited to talk to dr. Wayne today and to share some of his insights and some of the work that he's doing in his clinics. Dr. Wayne, Can you give us a little bit of a background on, on who you are and what you do? Speaker 4: (04:49) I'm in New Zealand, I started life as a natural path osteopath. I went to Speaker 3: (04:58) The Speaker 4: (04:59) Natural therapies college in Ellis Lee, and then after five years in practice, I went to America and got an opportunity to go to national college of naturopathic medicine in Portland, Oregon, where I trained and studied and also taught. And then I got licensed as a naturopathic doctor in state of Hawaii where I practiced for 15 years. Wow. so in America we call primary care doctors, but we're working as a GP would work here in New Zealand. Speaker 3: (05:35) hmm. Speaker 4: (05:36) During that study at a national college of naturopathic medicine. I met James Hutton who was a year ahead of me as a student, but he was the understudy of dr. William Tesco. Now William Tesco was a naturopathic medical doctor. One of the first doctors to come to America from Germany. He was an ozone doctor. He wrote the first papers on bio oxidation. And I think of bio oxidation as the life force, if you want to sort of give it a lay term. And he was the understudy of Dr. Tesco. So he was telling me about ozone while I was at medical school. And then when I graduated, he taught me how to do ozone therapy. From that time forward, ozone therapy became my main therapy and I just, it's what I do with every person I treat. And that's how I got the name, dr. Ozone back then, 25 years later, I got an opportunity to go and train with in Russia. Speaker 4: (06:39) Initially Novgorod 500 K's East of Moscow with professor oly and professor Claudia of consortia Kovar, the mother and father of those own therapy and Russia. Now, the important thing about Russia is that they've been using ozone for decades in their hospital system, across all their medical specialties, oncology, gynecology, obstetrics, neurology, dermatology, pain, medicine, burns, and many other areas, neurology. So they've had the, they've done the most research of any country in the, in the world. And I trained with them for two weeks. It was one on one and I had a, a Russian lady Eugenia, Shasta Kober. Who's my interpreter. And I'm still in touch with her. We communicate regularly. She sends me information on Russian research. I collaborate with then two years ago, I went and trained with dr. Adriana Schwarz in Honduras, but she also works out in Madrid. She's the president of the international medical ozone Federation and the secretary for the international scientific committee on ozone therapy of which I'm a member. And our mandate is to improve and update the Madrid declaration, which is the world standard on how to use ozone medically. Speaker 3: (08:12) Fantastic. Okay. So ozone therapy my listeners have heard a little bit about ozone therapy at all, but you are, you know, dr. Ozone, as you say, in New Zealand, you've been practicing this for over 30 years. Speaker 4: (08:27) I've been practicing for 27 years since 1993 Speaker 3: (08:33) In the law. I want to go into some of the therapies that you use and what's actually happening with the ozone. Like I know that you said to me yesterday, you're trying to get it into the mainstream and New Zealand. How, how has that looking Speaker 4: (08:48) It's already starting to happen because we have GPS around the country starting to pick up train with us and use ozone therapy because I'm, I'm in Amer the Australasian integrated medicines association. And basically these are like-minded doctors, GPS mostly, but there are natural paths in there as well. So we're really having to greater the medical and the naturopathic through this association. And there's a lot of holistic medical doctors. And so this is sort of my clan. And if you will pick up my only naturopathic doctor in New Zealand, there might be some others, but really, I think I'm the only one just by the mere fact that nobody else has gone and trained in America where I did. Yep, exactly. Okay. So this is great because it means ozone. It is it's hopefully going to be accepted into the mainstream soon because in 12 countries where ozone has been regularized, and we believe we have all the documentation to go to our ministry of health and say, here's a new therapy. Speaker 4: (10:00) We want you to regulate it. They would look at all the work we've done and they'd go, well, you haven't left much for us to do this already. Self-Regulated, you've done a really good job. We know, yeah, you've really done the race. Now we can start to train other people. So I've trained two natural cats that now work with me. But they've upgraded to be ozone experts. All the ozone therapies are done intravenously or by injection. So it's always needles, but it's a feel good therapy. It leaves people with an overwhelming sense of wellbeing. And the primary function of it is to saturate the body with oxygen. This will do several things. It will improve athletic performance by giving the athlete the five to 8% endurance advantage, which means that it prolongs the time of maximum anaerobic output before you hit the wall and I've worked with triathletes and the iron man in Hawaii, and I've worked with many other athletes would chop those canoeists Walker, armor, paddlers people who are doing tennis, some of our out Ines players and New Zealand and swimmers. Speaker 4: (11:29) And of course you work with every form of illness that comes our way. We do see quite a few people that have various forms of cancers and the primary cause of cancer, doctor Otto Warburg won two Nobel prizes. And he proved that the primary cause of cancer is a lack of oxygen. The tissues, wow. Though, the respiratory enzymes have been toxified and therefore the body cannot process oxygen. So what we do is we saturate the body with oxygen, removing the prime cause of all cancers. So that's all I really want to say about that. That's the rationale we don't, we don't actually treat diseases. You support health. We treat people when we treat people and we're just pushing them toward greater health by restoring their bio oxidate of capacity in the body. As you know, the main cause of a lot of underlying the underlying cause of most chronic diseases is a chronic inflammation, which is free radical damage, ozone reverses, free, radical damage. Speaker 4: (12:51) Wow. So that's the key point of it. And it also, so it's oxygen is three and it's we talked briefly yesterday about it being a relation of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which is also increasing the amount of oxygen getting to tissues. That's right. So hyperbaric oxygen, H202, which is hydrogen peroxide, vitamin C therapy, high dose intravenous and ozone therapy, intravenous they're all in a family called bio oxidate of therapies and hyperbaric oxygen. We use it it, that is better for central nervous system injuries, brain damaged spinal cord ozone is better on infection and improving circulation. So they have some overlap. I've chosen to do exclusively ozone therapy for the fact that it's cheaper to administer. It's a lot more readily available and it's a lot more versatile because I can treat the blood with it, but I can also inject it into joints or I can inject it into pain and pain is shortage of oxygen in the body. Speaker 4: (14:10) What we've learned as ozone therapists, where we inject those own pain will go really. So I can just sort of go into a little bit of that on the sports or athletics side, I feel like we'll sort of go, well, I'll start with the ozone therapy. So where does pain in the muscles? We can inject those zone and saturate those tissues with oxygen that will remove the lactic acid. And the athletes will have a faster recovery from their training and we saturate the blood and the body so that the is processing oxygen much more efficiently, which gives us a higher prolong, physical energy output during sports, the international Olympic committee. I have read their documentation on blood doping and, and how we can't cheat. You know, we're not, we're not supposed to cheat. So their ruling basically is ozone could be used for a medical purpose with an athlete during times when they're training. Speaker 4: (15:24) Yes, that's legal to treat an athlete, just cry to a competition would be considered cheating a bit. Not that you could really pick it up, cause I don't think it's terrible in the body. However, they could see that the the saturation of oxygen and their blood would be very high. It would be a bit like a altitude training. Yes. Blood doping or altitude training. It has a very similar effect, which is athletes could do ozone therapy and their training periods to recover from training. But we just wouldn't do it within sort of three or four days before an athletic event. And no one can hear enough. Okay. So how does it increase? Like what is the mechanism by which it increases the oxygen carrying capacity of the red blood cells. Now I understand from the Realogy, Oh, the red blood cell increases the, what would you call it? The pivot, the flexibility of, of the red blood cell is that correct? Speaker 4: (16:33) Makes the red cells more pliable, more slippery, more flexible. So they can squeeze through the small cappelary and get to even the hardest to reach tissues. So if you've got damaged or inflamed tissues yeah, that's right. Any kind of injury where you've got inflammation, swelling, pain. Mmm. We save limbs from amputation with those own. Wow. Because we restore a good blood flow. Also the red cell, we increase a enzyme on the red cell called two, three di phospho glycerides two to three DPG. We call it what that does is it weakens the bond between hemoglobin and oxygen. What this means is blood flowing through the lungs will still pick up at school compliment of oxygen, but it will release it to the tissues a lot more easily. It's like a, it's like a wind that's blowing into the tissues rather than having to pull the oxygen off the red cell with osmosis, trying to use energy to tug it off. Speaker 4: (17:48) The blood's just good sort of way more freely. And in this way we saturate the body with oxygen. I believe it's the only way of doing it. Unless you have a hyperbaric chamber and this would be a really powerful combination I can see. So it's, it's pushing, it's basically pushing the oxygen into the tissues as opposed to it having to be pulled. Now, like as someone like that, I'm an athlete. Mmm. I've had problems constantly with anemia and not enough red blood cells. Mmm. And getting enough oxygen carrying capacity to work the muscles. Does it help with that? Or is that, it's just that that's an independent thing because number of blood cells, no, I'll speak to that issue, Lisa, because we see people that are me anemic often kicks, you know, they're wasting away. Yep. They've got bone marrow suppression, not producing enough red cells or white cells or just whatever it might be. Speaker 4: (18:46) But when we treat with the, when we treat the blood where those zone, where rejuvenating the bone marrow. Wow. And so the bone marrow starts to produce, what's called super gifted red cells. And that's actually the scientific term, super gifted. So real knife gifted, dr. Bilio Bachi Theo CCI. He wrote the book ozone, a new medical drug. And I work with dr. Adriana Schwarz, who was Dr. Bachi Sort of Lieutenant right hand person, you know, his protege really. And she's now leading the charge around the world, promoting ozone therapy, God gives excellent courses. Where was I going with this? You were talking about the Realogy and the, the, the really bad cells, the red blood cells coming out of the bone marrow are called super gifted, which means they're more resistant to oxidative stress and they're better at delivering oxygen around the body. Speaker 4: (19:53) So even when we've stopped and ozone, even though we've done a course of, let's say six to eight ozone therapies, let's say we're treating a person for a condition after six to eight ozone therapies. We've usually established a healthy bone marrow production of red cells overcome anemia. Wow. And the person is starting to feel a lot more energetic and the overnights will last for six months in the body. So they just have to realize ozone is a very reactive molecule. So when we're treating blood, the ozone has reacted with the red cell within nanoseconds, it's gone, it's undetectable and it becomes a nose annoyed. It becomes a nose denied, which is a weaker form of ozone. Or we have a it's more durable and they last six months, wow. Are there for after we finished the course of those own therapy, the patient basically to put it sort of bluntly gets their money's worth during the six to eight treatments. Cause they feel great. And their blood work's usually improving. However, over the next six months, they will be continued improvements even though we've stopped the treatment because the theology of the body has improved. We've blown all the cobwebs out of the bio oxidate of pathways or the hundreds of enzymatic pathways in the body, such that the biochemistry is now working perfectly or optimally. And remember oxygen is the primary, primary nutrients for optimum health. Absolutely. Speaker 4: (21:42) It's used at every step of every chemical reaction in the body. And we see that the underlying reason for chronic illness is the body is not processing oxygen. Speaker 3: (21:56) It's just what you see. And this isn't, Oh, well, I'll just take a big, deep breath of air. And then there I go, I've got my oxygen back. It's a little bit more complicated than that. Isn't it? Speaker 4: (22:06) No, not really. I'd say that people breathe easier. They feel normal again, and they've recovered a healthy metabolism. Speaker 3: (22:14) But when I say like we don't take my SPO two sets here at senior level, I'm at 98, 99%. So I'm like, Oh, well my oxygen's okay. I don't need extra oxygen support, but I know with like with hyperbaric, I can get a heck of a lot more like up to 12 times the amount of oxygen and the right and the right. Speaker 4: (22:37) Yeah. So what's happening there. Lisa is, you're measuring the SPO2 of the blood. You're measuring the oxygen saturation of the red cells and the blood. And they may be 98 or 99%. However, when we treat somebody we'll often see that 98 or 99% straight after the treatment has dropped down to 95 or 93%, where's all the oxygen gone. We've just poured it into the blood. Where's it gone? Speaker 4: (23:11) Well, it's absorbed into the tissues of the body that were desperate for it. And that were low in oxygen. And it's this way that we saturate then very quickly that oxygen level return back up to 99. We know the course of ozone treatment is complete. When a patient comes in they're 98 or 99%, we treat them and the blood is still 98 or 99 cent. It didn't drop. Therefore that tells us the body is saturated. Blood is saturated. They now have what we call the effect and they will stay self saturated at a very optimal level for a very long time. Speaker 3: (23:53) Wow. So if, if I want to, you know, like I'm definitely coming to see you, doc, Dwayne, I'm going to bring my mum. Then we're going to get some treatments as soon as I can get up to away. It's a long way away. But w H w over what period of time would, would, it would a person who's traveling to see you? How many, like the six to eight is required? How many do they need sort of back the team they get back to back. Speaker 4: (24:19) So over a period, what we do, people that come from South Ireland or Australia or Singapore or overseas, we get people from everywhere. We ask them to come and stay in the Waipu area, and then we'll treat them nearly every day for about a week. Wow. Okay, great. Yup. And we see a lot of chronic conditions where everything else basically is filed. And so therefore we treat people every day. We start with a very low dose of ozone because we're working in millions of a gram. We work between zero and 80 micrograms, which is zero to 80 millions of a gram of Bozon middle of, of oxygen ozone and the syringe. So we're working with micro dosages, but we've got equipment that we can dial up. Yep. 1000000Th of a gram. Speaker 3: (25:15) Yup. Speaker 4: (25:16) And so we can do one or two or three or up to 80. So we start with very low concentrations. And over the course of the treatment, we build it up to a maximum. So we might go up to maximum for us would be 80 micrograms. And then we drop it off again, the last several treatments back down to about 20 micrograms. So we vary the concentration and the dose in this way, we will, we will be constantly building up the antioxidant capacity or the antioxidant reserve capacity in the body so that that body can now tolerate a higher level of ozone. And so we can build the dose up like that. And that's how we, that's how we pull people up very quickly because we keep increasing their antioxidant capacity. As we increase the dose of those zones, then we drop down at the end, but we leave them with a seriously improved antioxidant capacity, which means we leave them with a permanent or very longterm ability to overcome chronic oxidative stress and or free radical damage. Speaker 3: (26:26) Okay. So then, then if you wanted to stick, say other oxidative therapies or vitamin C infusions or other things that would have more of an effect, or even even supplementation with antioxidants or good food would have a better effect on the body. Speaker 4: (26:40) So we do do that at Northland environmental health Center where I work with Damien Wojciech and we do high dose vitamin C therapy there, he goes up to 200 grams. Wow. And he does culation therapy and high dose vitamin C therapy as well as being a general practitioner. So collation therapy, some patients come in and they have, you know, vitamin C one day ozone the next vitamin C ozone like that. Wow. Yup. Yup. That's a very good protocol. Fantastic. And he does collation therapy, which is heavy metal detox thing. So I'm hoping I can get him on the podcast as well. That would be fabulous. He's a, that's an area that I think a lot of us need to understand as well. The heavy metal detoxing. Yeah. Dr. Wayne. I wanted to pivot a little bit and go into prolotherapy. We discussed prolotherapy and I was really excited to hear about this yesterday. Speaker 4: (27:42) There's something I haven't really being aware of. Can you explain what prolotherapy is? Okay. So we're leaving ozone therapy. Now ozone is for general health improved performance of our bodies. And just before we do leave ozone, go back to it a little bit, but we leave the topic and we're going to prolotherapy, which is proliferance therapy. This is now musculoskeletal. We look, we're talking now about injuries, physical injuries to the joints. Fabulous. What were you gonna say? I was just going to say with the ozone, cause we, we haven't touched on the, the they at home remedies, but we have talked about them in the past. I'd like to address this issue because it's an important one. Two years ago, we formed the ozone therapy association of New Zealand and we're taking applications now. And mostly for doctors we have some nurses, some natural paths. Speaker 4: (28:53) But we've also opened it up because we know that there's a lot of people in New Zealand who are practicing those own using what we call lay methods. You use that term it's respectfully used and they're doing all kinds of variations. There can be insufflation of the colon, vaginal insufflation air, insufflation cupping, limb bagging, whole body bagging. There's the hocket, which is the ozone steam sauna. Hmm. Which is actually a very good treatment. And ozone can be used in facial treatments and for beauty therapy with beauty therapists. So what we're looking to do is to regularize the practice of ozone and New Zealand so that these can all have access to a professional body, guide them on safe and effective methods to use at whatever level they're trained. We're inclusive, include everyone that's doing ozone. So that patients, athletes, the interested people who want those zone, I can get it throughout New Zealand, just depending on what their needs might be. Speaker 4: (30:09) So quite often what will happen is people will come to us. We'll do the intravenous methods. And then where do you live? Right. You're in Palmerston North. Okay. So let's see, who do we have in Palmerston North? Well, we have people using cockpit, which is the ozone steam cabinet, and we have people doing installations. And so on where the ozone gas is put either into the rectum or the colon very simple, safe, easy to use method or vaginally or other topical way, or you should make ozone oil for rubbing on the skin for dermatological conditions. You can make those, the naked water. You can breathe it. Yep. We also use ozone generators that we get from Kim sex and violence. Speaker 4: (30:57) She provides really nice equipment that we can use for ozonating the clinic meeting, any building remove smells or toxic odors and that sort of thing. And so when we were gearing up for the recent epidemic, yes, we were. Ozonating our doctors and nurses and our staff. I was receiving intravenous vitamin C. This is for our protection. And the clinics were being ozonated every morning at 3:00 AM automatically. Yep. With Kim's can Sexton's machines. Fantastic. And therefore we knew we were coming into a sanitized environment and then we treated one suspect that COVID patient. And then we saturated that room with those own immediately afterwards, it was off clinic. It was outside in the carport, the old sauna room. And so we knew that room was now sanitized. So if we had another COVID patient, we'd be able to go into that room, be sanitized. We were safe wearing our PPE, but we can deliver the treatment. Speaker 4: (32:03) Fantastic. And we will get up for that. So, and this has been like, just to briefly touch on the Corona situation. There is now proven studies coming out of Spain. The ozone is affecting the client of ours. Yes. There have been clinical trials in China and Spain and the conclusion at the moment. It hasn't all been gone into print yet. I don't think we ever, because we're working with doc date around and Schwartz, she was on the front lines and Spain treating COVID and the reports coming back, or that ozone was effective phenomenally. And what that meant was patients were recovering within 24 to 48 hours after one to two ozone treatments, they were fully recovering. And I think 98% of the patients that were in serious enough conditions that they were going to be put on ventilators. 98% of them did not need to have ventilation. Speaker 4: (33:06) Wow. Which is a good thing because nine out of 10 people who get ventilated die. Yeah. It's not really an effective therapy for COVID, but ozone proved to be very effective. We know this because we've been treating all viral conditions since since day one, really a hundred years with it's a hundred years with research and ozone. Now I have to say, it's not the only thing that will do that. High dose vitamin C will do that. I've heard an India homeopathy was very effective. And if you read the journal of the New Zealand journal of natural medicine, I don't know if you know of that, but the New Zealand journal of natural medicine, there's lots of articles in there on other useful natural therapies. And they all work pretty good. So actually there's a plethora of effective treatments that we can use against this horrible thing. That's why we weren't afraid to treat people because we knew we were safe. Speaker 3: (34:13) Yup. Yup. And I had dr. Rob dr. Rowan on last week and it's talking about Ebola and his getting shut down, unfortunately. But Speaker 4: (34:26) That's right. He went to him and Howard Robbins stopped. The Rowans went to Sierra Leoni and they were invited there by the minister of health. They treated doctors that had got Ebola. Some of them opted for the ozone, all the ones that are all the ones that said yes to ozone therapy, survive all the ones that denied it and said, no, I don't want it. They all died. Speaker 3: (34:53) And then he was shut down. Unfortunately, Speaker 4: (34:55) When he got shot down, you can't be using effective therapy. Speaker 3: (34:58) No, it might mitigate the drug sales. We can't have that comment. Right. Moving right along. Let's talk about therapies, prolotherapy. Cause this is a very, Speaker 4: (35:14) Yeah. Sorry. I don't want to confuse everyone. So everyone on the side. Yup. We're on a different topic. We're now looking at joint pain. I'm very excited about Prolotherapy because it will effectively treat all musculoskeletal injuries. It will, it is an effective treatment for all sporting injuries. And it's permanent. This is amazing when you've done product therapy, you'll no longer have knee pain, back pain. Retruding disc pain, low back pain, ankle, elbow, rotator cuff, you know, anything like that, anything where the ligaments tendons are involved in the is involved. That's right. So let's just talk about knees. Cause we see a lot of those. So what we do is somebody comes in, they've had a knee injury, the body is healed, but the injury doesn't go away. It keeps flaring up when we strain that joint. And it's because the ligaments and all the tendons or the cartilage have thinned, you know, if you could imagine stretching a thick, rubber band over a rock and then just tapping it with something sharp or happen, then that rubber will just split. Speaker 4: (36:36) It'll still be in tech, but not as strong. Think of your ligaments like that. Now you've got a little bit of a slop in the joint and that's what causes pain. And it's what grinds away the cartilage. So what we can do now is we can do prolotherapy, which is proliferant therapy. And we inject a thick solution of dextrose. So it's a sugar, but it's hypertonic, which means it's extra thick, especially compared to the body fluids. So when we inject that into a ligament, it will stimulate the fibroblasts to create more ligament. Yep. What that means is we thicken and then shorten and tighten that ligament that returns the joint back into its normal alignment. Cause that's what the ligaments do. They hold the joints in the alignment for the movement that joint has to me. Yep. And so we had this week or Lex ligaments, they've stretched, they've torn off the bone partially and it's always easy to find. Speaker 4: (37:47) You can just poke on them. They do it. And people jump you inject bet spot. And what will happen is new ligament will grow over a three week period and return 50 to 80% of the strength. Wow. Then we need to repeat it a month later. Again, you'll get 50 to 80% improvement. So after generally two or three treatments, we've got a hundred percent improvement. Wow. At that point it's permanent and you'd no longer have that injury. You no longer have a weakness there. Your mind can let go of the doubt of your ability to use that learning in a maximum athletic, competitive sort of attitude. So you get your confidence back and your athletic performance is not hindered by chronic injuries. And so we treat a lot of athletes and we keep the top people in the game and young, young athletes sometimes in their teens, cause we work with some calm, competitive swimmers and they, you know, they pushing their bodies to the max, pushing the limits. As you say, they get these tears. Now that would, that would slow the down their training. And of course, if you have a week off training, it takes three weeks to get back to where you were, where you had the injury. So you lose five or six weeks really out of your, out of your schedule with product therapy, we can keep those athletes performing without pain. And this is something so simple as, as dextrose. Speaker 3: (39:30) This is so is this like reconstructive therapy? I had a, Speaker 4: (39:34) Yeah, yeah. It's called injection reconstruction therapy. Cause I had a, Speaker 3: (39:41) A boyfriend back in my early twenties who had a very bad ankle injury and he had to go to America for, we construct a therapy. It was called Speaker 4: (39:50) Yes. Will be injection reconstruction therapy probably mean it is an American technique. Yep, yep. I did learn it there. Yup. Speaker 3: (40:00) And the body's own reaction and info. This is where information is so interesting. Isn't it? Because inflammation, when we, when we cause an injury to the site we've deliberately actually causing and introducing something that's gonna irritate and cause injury. And it sends the body's a body starts to send fiber blast to actually make it stronger. So we're using a game just like with the ozone and with hyperbaric, we're using the body's own resources at the end of this. Right. Speaker 4: (40:27) Which is where natural path. So we're, we're always working with the body's own natural healing abilities. And with those own and product therapy, we feel like we can get maximum advantage there. Yup. So we also get a lot of patients often in their forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, even eighties and nineties who have health conditions and the generative joints it's often called osteoarthritis, which I believe most people think if they're told they have osteoarthritis, they get this idea in their mind that it's something to do with their bones. Yes. Is that your take on that? Yeah. I would say it's inflammation. Speaker 4: (41:19) Yeah. Most people would say it's bones. They think it's bones and we think we're bones as well. It's my bones, they're old and they're down and so on and nothing really too much you can do for bones. Well, we, we don't take that point of view. We see osteoarthritis as joint inflammation, so it'll always be the soft tissue, the ligaments, the cartilage and the tin. And we can repair all of those now. Yeah. So by injecting product therapy into a knee joint, for example, we can reconstitute the cartilage. And so we take people with bone on bone. Wow. And we can, we can thicken that Cartlidge enough that it takes the pain away and on x-ray we'll see an increase in the lower back, you know, like a lot of us, me included, I've got like four different set of basically go on by nonbinary, very close to being bone on bone. Speaker 4: (42:17) Okay. So I'll come at this from two angles. Number one, where you've got a bulging disc, the surgeons have told us, and we've known this since the 1950s, is that the ligaments on the posterior aspect of the vertebra or the vertebrae, you mind those posterial ligaments, the inter spinus and supraspinous ligament, usually a weak and stretched. And so one of the vertebra has moved forward slightly and it's put pressure on the disc and pushed it out, all that space in between the, when a disc protrudes, the chances are that it might impinge on one of the major nerves coming out of your back and going either down your bottom or to your internal organs. So what we do there is we prolotherapy the ligaments on the backbone that we'll tighten those up and it'll pull that vertebra back into its correct alignment, thereby taking pressure off the bulging disc. Speaker 4: (43:31) Wow. Then we have two ways that we can treat that bulging disc. We can either inject those zone down the spine in the muscles, running down the spine as close to the disc, as we did go and inject ozone, it only takes a few minutes. It's 98% effective for joints for bulging disc 98% effective. That's where you expect to win with bulging discs every time it's insane. And sometimes we can go in through the quarter, which is a little opening at the base of the sacrum. And it allows us to go into the spinal cord. I know this sounds risky, but actually it's a very safe procedure and we can inject those own into the quarter Aquinas. Which thing goes, the ozone travels up the spine to about thoracic that are bred number 10. Speaker 3: (44:35) Yup. Speaker 4: (44:36) Mmm. Which means it travels all the way up the lumbar spine and into the first few discs of the thoracic spine is where the ribs start and 98% effective for reducing bulging discs. So we prevent a lot of surgeries. Speaker 3: (44:55) This is what I mean, this is what, Speaker 4: (44:58) Mmm. Speaker 3: (44:59) Surprises me that, you know, this isn't more known and it isn't out there. And I did know of this 20, like I said, 20, 30 years ago, but this was an option and I've never seen it come back or, you know, proliferate and then people know about prolotherapy and certainly not Prolozone this is good. This is definitely going to help people avoid having to have surgery. And, and, and you'd think this would be well, let's try this first. It would be a great approach. Why isn't this right throughout everywhere? Why, why isn't every doctor offering this or is it a very specialized difficult thing? Speaker 4: (45:36) You know, I can only relate to it in terms of my own personal history. You know, I went and trained in Oregon and I learned things that are not taught here in New Zealand. One of them was the other one product therapy and actually put product therapy in its basic form was actually taught to me by a osteopathic surgeon. I'm just trying to think of his name now. I'll dr. Wilson. I think it was, he was a Harley street physician. He was doing it back in the day. And so we learned some of that often in, there was a famous New Zealand doctor called dr. Only who went and did product therapy and he was doing it in Mexico. So a lot of Americans would go down to Mexico. A lot of Gridiron athletes would get prolotherapy injections. So I heard about him and it turns out he was in New Zealand. Then when I came back 14 years ago to New Zealand, I trained with dr. Ken or Speaker 4: (46:45) Which he dr. Ken or at that time was I think, 92 years old, gosh, and still practicing and Remuera. Wow. And and I still liaise with Fraser Berlin, who was his nephew and doctor, or he was sort of a phrase, a Burling was dr. All's sort of protege if you will. And so he treats a phrase that treats a lot of people that have, and I always get this name wrong, but yeah. Disease, which is a, I think I've pronounced that. Right. It's an odd one. So sometimes I mispronounce it. Anyway that's a generalized disease where ligaments just sort of dissolve. So it's a serious condition. There's about eight or 900 people in New Zealand. Well, he's treating all of them with prolotherapy and it's the best thing they've ever had. So he's another doctor, great work there with prolotherapy. He uses stronger prolotherapy agents than I do. Speaker 4: (47:55) He uses if the NOLA mean and Tetra or sulfate, I believe which is a stronger tightening agent, but you know, we're natural paths. We like to stay with the more natural methods I have used other substances like fish oils, sodium moral weights. You can use those in eyes, blood, you can use vitamin B 12, you can do strong ozone and do the prolotherapy with strong ozone. That's what they call pro Prolozone. But I use dextrose, I use dextrose and I treat the ligaments and then we inject those own around them. And we usually put ozone into the, into the joint. Wow, this is this is incredible. And I think you probably going to be inundated with people wanting to come and see you because it got to be I didn't have a life outside of, and so, you know, I had to train other people. Speaker 4: (48:57) Yeah. I could have time to smell the roses or, and buy things. Exactly. Cause yeah, I mean, you're obviously very, very passionate about helping people and getting the most out of your time. And I mean like just, just you giving up your Sunday morning and spending an hour with me yesterday too on the phone, just so's what sort of a person I had dedicated you are to, to this. And I think that that's just absolutely fantastic. And to have someone with this sort of knowledge and background, a very different approach to what we're perhaps used to seeing here is exciting for me because I can see this is great changes happening. And Amer I think is going to be the, the association for integrative medicine, I think is going to be a fantastic thing. I'm, I'm trying to I want him to become a member. Speaker 4: (49:53) I think it's a, that's the things that are coming down the line now. Pretty exciting aren't they? Oh, they are. And what's happening is doctors and therapists sort of the lines of demarcation are breaking down. Yes. Because it becomes more, not about the doctor. Well, the practitioner it's really about the patient and what are we going to do to help the patient. Yep. And that's because we're all coming from that angle. Yep. We just always looking to, with people of conscience and we're doing the best work we can to recover the health of our population. We use all methods that we think can work and ozone and prolotherapy have enough scientific research behind them. We, we, we can explain in detail exactly why they do work. Yep. And this is, this is just brilliant. And so critics of which, you know, usually I just people that don't know, they just don't know about it. Speaker 4: (50:54) We've been, we've had critics. Mmm. Yeah. We've had mid safe and ministry of health. Everyone's investigated us. And yeah, we provided them with dr. Work, you know, we've provided the scientific literature. Yup. That proves what we're doing is safe, efficient, effective. And and this isn't like, this is really become a family is critical and many of them become active supporters. So we can turn a critic into an active supporter just through education. Gosh, that would be great because I do, I do find in the, you know, the, the straight laced allopathic medicine is still so blinkered. Certainly in my experience and I can say this cause I'm a non-licensed nonmedical professional. It has been very, very frustrating in my own, you know, with my own family's health with my mom's journey, for example. And, and I, and this is one of the reasons why I do the show because I want to create change in movement. And it's not all about pharma pharmacology. It's not all about just surgery. Those are great. And let's look at those, but let's look at the other sides of the coin in trying to connect fantastic people and share this education worth the public. I mean, last week I had Dr. Tim Ewer. Speaker 4: (52:23) I know he's fantastic. And he was on the show last week. And again, he too has had, you know, I know issues okay. The, the, the approaches that he takes, I mean, there's a reason why there's such a mess of waiting lists. And so many people wanting to see people like you because it's not being offered. Unfortunately, you know, dr. Terms down, down South, you're way up North, it's hard for a lot of people. If this was this sort of thing was available. And every time we'd have a lot less people, we would, and we'd save our country, billions in healthcare costs, but really you'd have a happier population being able to work to their full potential rather than have their abilities curtailed because of pain. Really. you asked me why aren't more doctors doing it. I think what's happened is ligaments and tendons have really just basically, I'm going to use the word overlooked. Speaker 4: (53:24) I think doctors are really just overlooked. They'll treat organs and muscles and such but ligaments, well, what, what are you going to do for ligaments? Well, we don't, you can't do anything for ligaments. So we won't put too much attention there cause we can't do anything for it. Yup. Yup. Well, the gap that is the gap in the system where we've come in with product therapy, that's our specialty. We treat ligaments, but all chronic injuries are ligament based. And so our typical patient has been to acupuncturist, osteopath, chiropractor, orthopedic surgeon, GP, soft tissue therapists, CMA, if they've done everything. And when we start to hear that history, it confirms for us, this is great. It's telling us it's a ligament problem. Or yep. Then when we investigate, by the way, all those therapies are very helpful. But if they don't resolve the issue, we know it's a ligament problem. Speaker 4: (54:26) So then we do our injections and the pain goes away. People recover the function of their alum and they ask, how come I never heard about this before? How come no one's ever told me about this? And I said, but we have told you about it. And now we've treated you, what's the issue. You know, people find things when they look for them, but this is, I just wish it was, you know, and this is why the show's important. And this will have a small portion of people that were here at, and hopefully the people that go come to you will also share their experiences, but it's a very slow process to get it out to the, the 98% of other people who are unfortunately unaware of it. I mean, yeah, deep into all of this sort of stuff. Zealand, we only have what, two degrees of separation here. Speaker 4: (55:18) So the work that I'm doing, I know is sprayed right throughout New Zealand, because lots and lots and lots of people have now heard about it. So I've been doing it for 14 years here. And so within New Zealand, most people that have these types of problems, my, my past patients usually we'll tell them to come and they have at least have a look at this therapy. And so I think we have New Zealand pretty well covered. Yeah. This show maybe more people might even think about prolotherapy is that yes, it's needles. Yes. It's injections, but you know what? It only takes a minute or two. But when I start working on a joint within a minute or three, I'm usually completely finished with that area. Fantastic. And then they've got lifelong strength back and it's, you know, $300. Yeah. As opposed to a surgery or continual care that costs over years, many thousands of dollars and especially avoidance surgeries, which can be very expensive. Speaker 4: (56:31) We prevent a lot of knee replacements. We get people that have had knee replacements or joint replacements where it hasn't worked perfectly. They're still in pain. So, you know, you hear, you do hear a lot of horror stories, but I also hear a lot of people that have had joint replacement that they're very happy with. So I'm not sort of a critical of it, but if you've had a joint replacement, you're still in pain consider product therapy because he taught me. And so the doctor can, or that we can do product therapy around a joint replacement and it still works very, very well surprisingly, but it does. Speaker 3: (57:12) Yep. Fantastic. I mean, I, it makes sense to me. You know, so I think, you know, dr. Wayne we've covered quite a lot of territory today. We we've done, I was on therapy, a little bit of the background, what it's doing now, how it works, we've gone into prolotherapy and even into Prolozone therapy. Speaker 4: (57:32) Yeah. Prolozone is doing prolotherapy, but just using strong ozone irritating and you just inject the gas. Cause I was owns always a guest. We inject strong ozone into the ligament using the product therapy, needling technique. Mmm. Because just the needle itself going in and out through the ligament creates the ligament, the bikings use fish phones and they would just prolotherapy a ligament with fishbone. Oh, sounds terrific. Shot. And it would create new ligament by us doing a little injection at the end of it. We of course maximize the effect. Mmm. Speaker 3: (58:13) Well, if you think about it, anything that causes a rotation, the body seems more stuff there to fix it. Speaker 4: (58:19) Mmm. You know, Speaker 3: (58:21) So dr. Wayne, I want to say thank you very, very much for your time today. I really appreciate it on a Sunday morning. We can people find you and we're, you know, where's the best place to connect with you and come and see you. Speaker 4: (58:34) You can look up waipu natural health, waipu natural health. So we're in Northland or they can look up dr. Ozone doc, T O R O Z one, So doctorozone1@gmail.com contact the Northland environmental health center in camo. And we do all these therapies there. Speaker 3: (59:05) Fantastic. And I would love an introduction to dr. Damien Wojciech at some stage. That would be really fantastic. Speaker 4: (59:13) I'll share with them that while I did this podcast. Yeah. And I can put you in touch with them. Speaker 3: (59:18) Sounds brilliant. Dr. Wayne, thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate the work, the passion, the education that you've invested in all of this and bringing this to New Zealand that's really, really appreciate it. Thank you, Lisa. Thanks for the opportunity of sharing it with our people. Oh, it's fantastic. Speaker 1: (59:36) That's it. This week for pushing the limits, be sure to write review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.

Zach welcomes Dr. Janice Gassam, Ph.D. back to the podcast to talk about the concept of centering Black experiences. She and Zach discuss the tremendous impact of enduring continuous emotional labor and implore any and all aspiring allies and/or white executives to compensate Black people when they're asked to speak about their feelings, and Dr. Gassam also shares a bit about both her podcast and new book, both titled "Dirty Diversity" - check the show notes if you'd like to find out more!Learn more about (and buy!) Dr. Gassam's book "Dirty Diversity" on Amazon or Audible.Interested in the Dirty Diversity podcast? Check it out on her website.Read Dr. Gassam's "Dear Companies: Your BLM Posts Are Cute But We Want To See Policy Change" piece on Forbes.Connect with Dr. Gassam on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and look, you know, you know what we do. We have real talk in a corporate world, and we do that by centering marginalized voices so that we can actually amplify and center marginalized experiences at work, right? And so we're having these conversations with thought leaders, with educators, with writers, with executives, with entrepreneurs and social influencers and activists and elected officials - anybody, really - all around, again, centering and amplifying the most marginalized voices in the workplace, and so today we have a returning guest - frankly, a friend of the show, you know what I mean? Dr. Janice Gassam. Dr. Janice Gassam is an educator, public speaker, a consultant, and a senior contributor with Forbes. Dr. Gassam, how's it going?Dr. Gassam: It is going well. Thank you so much, Zach. I really appreciate you amplifying my voice and consistently amplifying my work. I love that we, like, you know, have built this support system, and I think that's so important, that we are, as quote-unquote marginalized people, we're supporting each other.Zach: Well, I mean, it's not--you make it very easy. You do great work, and your work really is what needs to be centered and focused on right now. I'm really curious, you know, as white folks are apparently learning what racism is for the first time, how have your--what does it look like in your field? Like, are you getting more requests right now? I know last time you were on the podcast we talked about the fact that a lot of folks would ask you not to talk about race. You know, what does it look like when you have clients reach out to you with requests?Dr. Gassam: Wow, that's a great question, and things have blown up and have exploded as far as I've been getting so many requests for racial equity workshops, and that's--you know, I'm partial to those workshops. Those are my favorite, but it's just so ironic because even, you know, less than a year or so ago I would have these discovery calls with clients, you know, who want me to come in and do a workshop or a training, and they have specifically said, "Do not talk about white privilege. Do not talk about race." They preferred me talking about the safe subjects like emotional intelligence, which I'm fine with talking about that, but I think that it's limiting in that if you're not willing to engage in the conversation nothing is going to change. So I'm very--I'm cautiously optimistic, and I hope that the momentum is still here after the summer is over. And I try to impress upon these leaders that, like, one workshop is not gonna change anything. Whether it's me or somebody else, you need to be bringing people in to facilitate to these continuous conversations. I think that that is really important, and people seem like they're starting to get it, so, you know, I'm just excited about this moment in time right now. I've never been busy like this before since my career started. So I think it's an exciting moment, and I'm trying to take advantage of it.Zach: And so let's talk about that. So, like, you know, again, in the past people would say, "Don't talk about white privilege, don't talk about Black experiences, Black female experiences. Talk about gender, but don't intersect that at all with ethnicity (or) race." What does it look like now when people hit you up? Like, what are they actually saying?Dr. Gassam: So, you know, I get emails primarily, and they're like, "Hey, my company wants to--" And what's funny, Zach, is that, like, there's such a sense of urgency now, you know? These same companies that--I'm gonna be [?]. I'm gonna keep it 100,000% real. Some of the same companies that didn't have money once COVID hit magically found the budget. You know, I had things lined up. And I get it, you know? They came back to me in March and April and said, "We don't have the budget." Cool. So now in June y'all found the budget, I guess. You know? Which I'm like, "Obviously you're realizing diversity, equity and inclusion is a priority." So it's usually--you know, the requests come in the form of an email. I appreciate that people have really been sharing my content on social media. So people often find me either through LinkedIn or through Instagram and they say, "Hey, I saw you talk about race, and we need this at our company. So when can you find a time to speak? How much do you charge for a workshop? What do your workshops entail?" So that's pretty much what it seems like, but with some of these requests it seems like there's such a sense of urgency, and that worries me a little bit because I think that it's not, like, a quick Band-Aid. You know, I'm happy to do the workshop. I've been doing these workshops. I've done many workshops, and I already know the structure and everything. However, I think that you have to have long-term objectives, and I don't know if a lot of these organizations have long-term objectives. It just seems like they want to do something so it looks like they're not doing nothing.Zach: Right, right. What is concerning about that, anxiety-inducing for me transparently, right, is it's very reactionary, and it reminds me of Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Like, that portion where he talks about the white moderate and, like, how they're more concerned about false peace [than] with an absence of justice. And so even now in this moment I'm like, "Okay, are y'all just trying to mobilize something really quick just to say that y'all did something so that you don't have uprisings within your companies, or are you really looking to create equitable and inclusive working environments, not just for the next couple of days but for, like, the foreseeable future as your company moves forward in this new normal?" Like, that to me continues to be, like, my ongoing question. I mean, I've had people reach out talking about, "Can you come in and do some unconscious bias?" No.Dr. Gassam: And that is the worst. I don't think unconscious bias trainings are trash by any means. I think that most companies are not doing them effectively. That's, like, a nice way to say it, 'cause I think unconscious bias training doesn't do a lot. "Hey, I go through this training and I find out I have a bias against Black people." You might take an [?] association test and see, "Hey, I have a bias toward or against women, so what do I do now?" It's like, "Cool, now I recognize my biases," but if there's systems in the organization that allow bias to persist, it doesn't matter that now I know how to not say micro-aggressive statements, because there's, like, bias entrenched and baked into the fabric of the company. Like, in the way that they hire employees, that they're using a referral--many of these consulting companies, it's all referrals, it's all Jim knows Bob who knows John, and that's how you get jobs. It's primarily who you know and not what you know, and I think that there is benefits to referral hiring programs and systems, but I think that the way they're currently being done is just, like, creating this echo chamber of the same types of people. So I always encourage organizations to look at their systems and say, like, "Are Black people being promoted at the same rates as other people?" Because it's cool for you to say, "Look, no, no, no, we have a lot of Black people," but they're all in lower-level positions in the organization, but are they in senior-level positions, and if they are, how long are they staying? Because a lot of these tech companies, I love that they're being transparent and putting out these diversity reports, but they're not telling us how many of those Black people or those Latinx people or those women are staying in those roles, 'cause they're like, "Look, 13% of our population is Black [?]. Yay! That went up 1% from last year. Yay!" Like, but it's like, are those the same Black people, or did you just hire a bunch of new ones, and then those same ones with quit next--you know? So I think, like, looking at why there's this revolving door, particularly of Black people, you know, like, in the tech industry and all of these industries. The fact of the matter is that, like, Black people, a lot of us are not staying in companies, and part of the reason--a large part I would say--is because of the hostile work environments that we're working in. Zach: 100%. I mean, so Living Corporate, we've put out a couple of whitepapers, but, like, there's a few different reports, but they're, like, very rare, that talk about, like, turnover percentages. So I've yet to see anything that explicitly says "The turnover for this group is this." I've seen, and we've cited, sources that'll talk about the fact that Black and brown turnover is, like, two or three times higher than their white counterparts, but you're right. Like, there's no annual reporting that shows, "Hey, you know, our Black employees are four times more likely to leave within their first two years than their white counterparts." Like, that's not anything--those rates are never discussed. But you're absolutely right.Dr. Gassam: I think it's important, I mean, because these companies tout that they're so diverse, and I think that that's something important, that not just--we focus so much on the diversity piece. That is important to say, "Hey, look, we actually have diverse representation," but also, like, are they staying? Because if you're using stock images with Black people that look diverse that make your company look diverse but then I get there and I'm like, "Hm." I'm, like, the only Black person. That's, like, false advertising, and there's a lot of that going around, you know? I know the new buzzword is, like, performative allyship, and there's a lot of that going around with a lot of different companies that shall rename nameless, but yeah, I'm glad to see people are really calling them out, these companies out, and saying, "You posted Black Lives Matter, but you asked us not to wear Black Lives Matter stuff." Or "You have no Black people in senior positions," or "You have a hostile work environment where Black people don't feel comfortable." So, like, it's cute to--I wrote an article, like, "It's cute to post Black Lives Matter, but we want to see, like, policy changes." That's nice and fine and dandy, and I appreciate your statement because, you know, that's better than your silence, but I want to see more, and I'm glad that people are demanding more of their company.Zach: I wonder... I still don't think that organizations--and your piece was incredible, and we're gonna make sure that we link it in the show notes for those who didn't see it, but what I don't think organizations understand is that, like, if they come out here really loud externally about all these things they're gonna do to combat racism and inequity and things of that nature, but then, like, internally their policies and their cultures, their practices, their behaviors don't change, like, that's going to create more resistance, higher turnover, higher disengagement, than they had in the first place.Dr. Gassam: Mm-hmm, and as an employee, if I worked in that company, I would just be looking like, "Okay, y'all are, like, not really about that life." And I'm not about, like, exposing the company that I work for unless I feel like I've been completely mistreated--and I've definitely felt like that in workplaces, but my industry is very small, so I just silently exit a company, and I might speak of it but not give specifics and names and things like that. But I think that you're opening your company up to that type of negative publicity from employees if you're not, like, authentic in the things that you do, and I mentioned this before in a few speaking engagements I've done, but I have a friend that works at a very well-known consulting firm. She's been there for four years, and she said that--she belongs to a marginalized group. She's considered brown, and she said that since--her company has a diverse referral program, but she said since she's been working at the company for the last four years, they've never hired anyone from that diverse referral program. But it's just, like--I call it cosmetic diversity, where you have something in place just to look like you're doing something, look like you're actually about that life that a lot of these companies are not about [that life]. So I think that that's just not a good look. If you're gonna like the talk, you have to also be doing things that show that you're actually putting your words and your intentions into action.Zach: I agree. And to your point around, like, negative press or attention, it's--I think also, and all of this generational, because even I--you know, as someone... I'm 30, right? So, like, I'm not young-young, but I'm not older. I'm not old. So I think I probably still don't fully appreciate how easy it is--like, for something to go viral, especially as something negative, but it's, like, really, really easy. Like, there's so many avenues and mechanisms to, like, share your voice now, and I just don't know if organizations appreciate that AND the fact that, you know, doing that today, like, airing things out, putting people on blast, is not an automatic career ender like it might have been, like, five or six years ago. Like, if you put somebody on blast now, like, that doesn't mean that your career is over. It means you just--like, you may be actually heralded as a hero depending on how you do it, right? Dr. Gassam: Yeah, you're absolutely right, and just like a lot of these racists who say and do things after a year or so and the public forgets and they're able to go and get jobs, the same I think could be said for employees that put their companies on blast, because so many things are happening in our lives that we forget. Like, I don't remember all of these people's names. Are we still gonna remember Amy Cooper? Well, I guess there's a law now with her name, but are we gonna remember all of the Barbecue Beckys? Like, what their actual names are? Probably not. So I do think that you're absolutely right in that companies I don't think quite appreciate and understand how easy it is for people to get information out and just share their story and just share, "This company has a crappy environment." And you actually shared with me last year that internal memo, that Medium article, that those Facebook, those Black--I believe they were all Black, or some were Latinx--Facebook employees wrote about the toxic work culture and, you know, there's so many avenues to write anonymous memos and things like that about your company, and so that's not the type of press and reputation that you want. So I'm really happy that people are like, "We need to change. We are really--" Like, I've been getting requests, Zach, from, like, the most fascinating, like, industries that I never even expected, like, this person is reaching out and that person is reaching out. A fitness company reached out to me and said that they wanted me to do a webinar. A jewelry company reached out to me, and I was just like, "Wow." So, like, it's every industry. It's industry-wide. So, you know, I think that has really been interesting to me, that everyone is waking up and saying, "Whatever industry we're in, this is a problem that is, like, not specific to our industry. Everyone is having these issues and needs to figure out how we create an environment that is inclusive to Black people specifically," because I think that a lot of times the conversation gets watered down and we talk about other groups but we don't focus specifically on Black people and Black liberation and things like that, and I think that that's a huge part of the reason we're here, that we have more ease with talking about LGBTQ+ issues or gender issues than we do racial issues.Zach: You're absolutely right, and I think a large reason for that is because white people can be women and white people can be gay, but white people can't be Black. So it's like what does it look like to really shift and, like, have authentic conversations that center marginalized people? And it's interesting. I was talking to some colleagues a little while ago and was talking about the concept of, like, decentering whiteness, and they were like, "What do you mean?" And I was like, "A large way that we center whiteness is just in our language, right?" Like, a lot of the terms and things that we've created, we create those terms to avoid Blackness and to avoid the reality of harm. So it's like, we'll have these conversations and we'll talk about--you know, we'll say bias when it's like--and bias is, it fits technically, but what you're also talking about is, like, white supremacy or just racism, right? Like, we're not talking about--this isn't, like--like, bias softens it sometimes. In certain ways, bias softens it in the same way that, like, you know, it's not like I have a bias towards Coca-Cola versus RC Cola. Like, no, I genuinely think this person is less than me and, by relation, because of that, I treat this person differently. Like, that's different. And, you know, even--yeah, so anyway, not to go on a rant. So I do think this segues well though into your podcast, Dirty Diversity.Dr. Gassam: Yes. Yeah, so I actually started the podcast during Black History Month, and it was important for me to not only start it during Black History Month, but, like, the first episode was ironically, like, why your Black employees are leaving, because I don't think that we're talking about these things, and I think that we conflate people [of color?] with Black people, and we lump everyone together, I think for the sake of, like, conversation, it's easier to just say "Black and brown people," and it is, because a lot of these--your closeness to Blackness will impact your experiences, you know? And there's Latinx people who are stopped as much as us when they're driving, who experience racism just like us and things like that. So, you know, I think it's easy to say that, but I think it's important to put a particular focus on the unique experiences of Black people, and I don't think we do that enough, and when I'm asked to do these trainings there isn't a focus on--when that is the problem, Zach, it's that you're not able to retain Black employees. They're leaving, but you want me to come in and do inclusion training. Your problem is not inclusion. The problem is you're not creating an environment where Black people feel like they're valued and they matter, so we need to focus on that specific problem, and I think that watering it down is what we've been doing for so long, and that hasn't produced positive results or changes, so we have to just be bold and call it out for what it is. And I'm so excited, because I feel like I have been censoring myself--I censor myself on social media a lot because my colleagues follow me, so I can't be like, "White supremacy--" I can't be using that language a lot because, you know, my colleagues [?] me and all of these things, and I know in my field that's gonna get you--that sort of thing is not gonna sit well with... but now I feel like I can say what I really want to say, especially in the workshops, and I think that that's gonna make people [uncomfortable,] but for me, my goal isn't to make people feel happy. My goal is to help you change and help you create better organizations, and the way to do that is I'm gonna have to say things that are uncomfortable and you're gonna have to evaluate your role and how you've contributed to inequitable systems and oppression and things like that. And for a lot of people this is the first time that they've ever taken a look in the mirror, and just with speaking with different white women, they've said--and they're millennials, you know? Like, they're young, and they're like, "This is the first time I've really taken an honest look at myself, and even though I have Black friends and, you know, I dated a Black guy, you know, maybe I have white supremacist views," and it's like, "Yes, you do." Every white person who's born and raised in the U.S. have internalized white supremacist views, and a lot of it is just baked into our American fabric, so it's, like, recognizing that and using your privilege and your power to impact change.Zach: And, you know, I think that really leads us well into the book that you recently--I think by the time this airs it'll be published, so, like, let's talk about the book.Dr. Gassam: Yeah, and thank you again for the opportunity to just share my work with your audience. You know, I was--it was important to create the book, but now I'm already [thinking about] book #2 and how it needs to focus specifically on race. So I wrote "Dirty Diversity" as, like, a very simple, practical guide [for] implementable ways that you can create more inclusion and equity into your workplace. The thing that I've learned in the years that I've been--I've been in consulting now for, like, two years or so, and I've learned so much. When I started doing these diversity workshops, I knew nothing. I didn't know anyone personally that was close to me that did any sort of--I didn't know consultants like that, you know? Just people I went to school with who work at large consulting firms, but I didn't know independent consultants, so I had to figure a lot of things out on my own. I had to bump my head multiple times. So the book is written in three different sections, and the first section is for managers, and it's things that are so simple and easy to implement into your workplace you might say, "Why didn't we think about this?" Or "Why haven't we been doing this?" But it's simple ways to create more inclusion in your workplace. The next section is for people who do diversity, equity and inclusion consulting and things that I've learned from creating workshops and ways that you can improve the effectiveness of the workshops, but one of the things that I emphasize is that one workshop or one training is not gonna make a change. You have to encourage the organizational leaders to do multiple trainings and multiple workshops. And then the third section is written for employees and just, like, simple ways and simple things you can include in your workplace to create more inclusion as an employee, 'cause I get that question a lot where people say, "How do I get my manager to care about diversity? And how do I get my manager to--" And I think that it's not just get managers to care and to--it's understanding the value of what this can bring into your workplace, but there are things that you can do yourself. Like, you know, I talk about an employee book club, and that's something, like, super easy, and maybe petitioning your employee to sponsor an Audible membership--because everybody doesn't read. For me, most of my books I consume them now on Audible. So, like, if you have an Audible membership, you don't have an excuse now to say, "Oh, I didn't have time to read." You could, like, take a [?] minute walk and listen to a chapter of a book. It's very easy now to me to, like--for things as an employee that you can implement into your workplace. So I felt like this book was really necessary, and I didn't--I had no idea all of these events would be transpiring right now, so I feel like it's even more relevant. And there's so many--in the book I talk about some really simple things, low cost or no cost things, that you can implement to create more inclusion, and I think that there's a perception that you have to spend a lot of money--which I do think you should be adequately compensating your consultants that come in, and a lot of times people ask me to come in and they expect it to be free, so I think that is part of the problem, but there are things you can do, like having a panel in your workplace. That's something that is a really simple way to create inclusion that you probably didn't think about. Inviting someone like you, Zach, to come in to speak with employees on a panel just about equity and inclusion and different things like that is just, like, an event your company can host, and often times on panels people are donating time or, you know, giving up their time for free. So, like, there's so many simple ways. It doesn't have to be this, like, extravagant sort of, like, training program that could help you to create equity and inclusion. So that's pretty much, like, the goal. It's a simple read. It's, like, a little over 100 pages, and I think it's just filled with things that you can do and can easily implement into your workplace to create more equity and inclusion. I mean, I'm excited to--I've already got a copy, okay? So we're gonna--Dr. Gassam: Thank you so much, Zach.Zach: No, no, thank you, and so we're gonna make sure we put a link in the show notes for everybody to get a copy as well. And the book's title though--is the book's title "Dirty Diversity?"Dr. Gassam: Yes. So same title as the podcast. The reason I titled is "Dirty Diversity" is because diversity has definitely become a dirty word. People are not into having diversity trainings. There's a misconception about what diversity is, what it brings to an organization. There's still diversity resistance and pushback. So when you say, "We're gonna have a diversity training," people in their minds have an idea of what that is. There's a lot of research that indicates diversity trainings are not effective. So I really was kind of focused on, like, what are some things, in addition to workshops and trainings, that you can--what are some ways you can create more inclusion? Because I kind of resent the fact that--I've seen this meme going around, and I disagree--I think it's cute and it's funny, but it's like, "The revolution will not be in diversity and inclusion training," and I disagree with that. [both laugh] Have you seen that meme before? Zach: I have. I don't--I hear you though.Dr. Gassam: I was like--I don't agree fully. I think when done effectively workshops--if you're having workshops every month in addition to a multitude of other things like mentorship programs, I think they can be effective.Zach: I think authentic, intentional workshops paired with other systemic solutions are effective. I think most people when they think about these workshops, they're not talking about the type of work that you do or the type of work that, like, Dr. Erin Thomas at Upwork, that she does, thinking more about the--you know, the very white comfort-centered diversity of thought -type workshops. Those are not gonna lead us to no revolution, but I agree with you about, you know, intentional, intelligent, competent workshops along with other things are very effective.Dr. Gassam: Yeah, yeah, and that's--you know, that was my thought. You know, everybody's kind of--you know, and I try not to curse, but everyone's kind of, like, crapping on diversity and inclusion trainings, and I do think that in itself one training is not gonna change anything, but the problem is those companies don't even have ongoing trainings or workshops. They have one once a year if that. A lot of them have never had any sort of training, yet every year they have sexual harassment training, which I find to be interesting, you know? Zach: Well, it's typically to check a box, right, from, like, a legal perspective. Like, that's typically what they're doing so they can at least say, "Well, we do this, and we do it regularly," you know? It's not really about any type of behavioral change.Dr. Gassam: Exactly. Yeah, so it's like to check a box. So really, like, how to overcome this idea that diversity has become a dirty word. What are some really simple things? And I'm telling you, it's such a practical, simple--I'm not using any, like, jargon that you wouldn't be able to understand. It's very, like, a simple guide. You open it, you read it and say, "Oh, this is something, like, so simple. Why aren't we already doing this in our company?" But you'd be surprised. To me, like, something, like, a blind resume system. When people tell me they can't find Black candidates, can't find Black engineers, I'm like, "Do you have a blind resume system?" And they're like, "No, what's that?" And that to me is something that I think is so simple but a lot of people just don't know. So that's really, like, what the purpose of me writing this book was. Like, simple things that you think a lot of people know but they might not, and it's just, like, so simple to implement into your workplace. It's not complicated at all outside of just workshops that you can do to create more inclusion.Zach: Man, this has been super dope. What else do we need to talk about, Dr. Gassam? 'Cause I want to make sure I give you your space. So we talked about--Dr. Gassam: So much! Thank you. [both laugh] You know, there's so much. All of the performative allyship, all of the--Zach: Oh, yeah. Let's go in on that real quick actually. Yeah, no, this is good. So side note, y'all, for those who are kind of behind the scenes. Typically I send out, like, these very detailed questions before each podcast, but, you know, for people that like--you know, we kick it or, like, we kind of get each other's style or energy, we kind of freestyle. So this is actually a freestyle, y'all. That's why we're, like, actively trying to think about what we talk about next. We have a little bit more time. Dr. Gassam: And I really appreciate that, and we'll talk about how to support each other after we get into the performative allyship.Zach: Yo, let's do that. Okay, so this performative allyship stuff is crazy, right? Like, I'm so tired of these people--and you know what's really wild? It's like--what we don't talk about is, like, just... we don't talk about this enough I think just, like, culturally, the importance of authenticity, right? So, like, I've had people who have harmed me with their racist behaviors hit me up now talking about, "Hey, just thinking about you." Like, what are you talking about? Why are you talking to me, and why would the first thing when you reach out to me not about the harm that you caused, that you KNOW you caused? These are, like, [?], right? Like, these are things that, like, you gravely harmed me personally and professionally, right? It's not like you walked by, you touched my hair and said, "Oh, this is like my little pet lamb's hair back in my Meemaw's house." Like, no. This is "You harmed me." And so it's wild, like, that we have--how members of the majority... go ahead.Dr. Gassam: I know. It's just like--I'm getting a lot of people hitting me up, like, that are--you know those people that are in the periphery of your life? They're not in your life, but they're just, like, there watching from the--I get a lot of those, and there are people who have actively done things to prevent me from being successful, and they reach out to me, or on the other end people are asking of me, and I won't get into too many details, just, you know, to protect myself, but there are people who are actively asking things of me without consideration of the events that transpired. You're asking for projects from me and things like that, and I'm like, "Well, I'm not in a mental state--" And I've had to send emails like that where I'm like, "I'm not in the mental state to produce what you're asking me to produce because there are Black people being killed and slaughtered, videos," you know? And I just--and it's "Oh, my gosh! You're so right! I didn't even realize it! Oh, my gosh. Like, it's all because of Trump. This would have never happened if Obama was president!" [Zach sighs] And it's like... I mean, it did happen when Obama was president.Zach: It happened a lot [?] though.Dr. Gassam: I was just like... "Okay, but thanks." So I get those, where people are completely, like, oblivious to what's going on and what's happening and how maybe the Black [people] you know are impacted by this, so maybe I shouldn't be asking for X, Y and Z, and I've had to let people know, but I've also seen, yeah, like you said, people who have actively caused harm to you, "Hey, how are you?" Without any acknowledgement of what was done, what was said, your role in how you contributed. Lots of snakes in the grass.Zach: A lot of snakes in the grass! I think also just, like, the psychological--and, like, I don't even think, like, even just considering the additional mental and emotional toll you put on that other person when you do that. So, like, now, as the person who's receiving your random message after a year or after six months or however long, now I have to do the mental calculus if I'm gonna even gonna respond and then make a decision if I respond, "How vulnerable do I want to make myself in responding to you?" Knowing that if I respond to you and you get upset it could harm me even more. So it's just so... so that alone is, like, ugh, such a rant. Such a rant-worthy topic. I do think that it's, like, when we talk about allyship and--I just wonder, are people--I'm not curious about it. This is my belief. I don't believe that members of the majority have the capacity to, like, really deal with being explicitly anti-racist for more than, like... like, for a sustained amount of time, right? Like, you're already seeing on Twitter, people are getting burnt out. Like, "Ugh, I know that you guys are probably tired, but here are some tips that you can--" [Dr. Gassam laughs] "Make sure you drink your [?] tea."Dr. Gassam: You're absolutely right, and it's exhausting in that--and I know a lot of white people are confused, because in one breath we say, "You should be checking on your Black friends," but in another breath it's like we're getting binged and pinged and all of this, like, left and right, and then you have to keep having to revisit the conversation of, like, you know, "Why aren't you answering my text messages? I hit you up to check on you." 'Cause I don't want to keep talking about the same--like, I appreciate that you reached out. I don't--I'm not in the mental state. I want to go on a bike ride and just have the sun on my face and just not think about Black people being killed. I just want to listen to a podcast while riding a bike. Sometimes you just don't want to keep talking about, keep talking about it, and what I've found is that--it's interesting, companies want to give us space to talk about without asking us if this is something we want to take part in. A close friend of mine worked in a healthcare system, and she said her company was like, "Hey, can you be on this panel? It's all Black people talking about their families," and it's like, "I don't want--like, why do I gotta--you don't even--" Like, it's really like, "Hey, we want you to be part of this panel." "No, I don't want to." I had another friend who was asked to talk about white privilege, and she was like, "This isn't even my scope or my domain. I'm in PR. Why are you asking me to talk about white privilege? This isn't even, like--what, just because I'm a Black woman you want, "Oh, yeah, have her talk about--"" She was like, "What?" And I had to send out an email to somebody that asked me to a part of a panel, and I didn't want to be mean, but I was like, "When you're asking me to regurgitate and keep repeating why I feel bad as a Black person living in America, like, you should be paying me," you know what I'm saying? And I know that sounds like--it's not a matter of being all about the money, but it's a matter of, like, this is emotional labor, and this takes an emotional toll on me to be on 80 million eleven panels talking about why, what I feel as a Black person and all of this, and it's just like--the idea of paying a Black person doesn't often cross these people's minds who are organizing these events, and I'm just like--at this point, like, my mind [?] so busy with these workshops--and also I teach as well, so it's like with teaching and doing the workshops and promoting the book, like, I'm not gonna just be on a panel talking about how sad I am and my experiences as a Black person. There's so many thinkpieces online with people giving this information to you already. You don't need me on a panel to talk about what it feels like to be Black. And I hope I'm not being too raw, but it's just that's how I've been feeling lately.Zach: No, you're not being too raw at all. I see where you're going and I will meet you there. So look, folks who are asking--please stop asking us to talk about our feelings for free. I need y'all to stop. Many of you listen to the podcast, right? And, like, when I say you I mean aspiring allies and white executives. Stop. Now, look, especially--like, not to be classist, but especially don't be asking a bunch of degreed people to be doing it. Like, that's crazy. You have people out here who have whole doctorates in sociology and psychology and you're asking them to come on these panels for free. It's like, "No." Like, "I have the Western colonized expertise from an actual [?] institution, and couple that with the expertise of my lived experience, when you ask me for my time, I need you to pay me. Don't even ask." I've had people ask me for my time to do things and I'm like, "First of all, do you understand how much--" Like, I'm gonna feel drained after this, because I'm gonna talk about all these things and no one's gonna come back to me with, like, any tangible resources or support. It's just gonna be me, like, giving out.Dr. Gassam: And it's like--you have a podcast where you talk about all these things. You invite people to talk. You have--and then it's, like, on top of that you write about these things, on top of that you work full-time, on top of that you're a father and you have a wife. It's just, like, y'all gotta think about all of these things. It's like, "Hey, can you explain to me, like--" No, I can't. I'm sorry.Zach: No, I can't. And shameless plug, like, Living Corporate, it's not like we're just, like, a random podcast. Like, you can go on our website and type in anything and a bunch of stuff will pop up. Like, we have a whole database, so you can educate yourself, and, like, there's other free resources. I think it's so inappropriate during this time, like, going back to what you said earlier about organizations and, like, predominantly white leadership who have, like, either intentionally or unintentionally been the cause for people to exit their places of work are now, like, sending out these emails with a bunch of different options to have quote-unquote "real talk sessions," and, like, who made you a luminary on the subject one, but then two, like, why do you just presume that I even want to do this? But the challenge, Dr. Gassam, is, like, there's also the reality--which we don't talk about enough, and, like, shout-out to Brittany J. Harris of The Winters Group. I see you. She talked about it, like, explicitly--this was some months ago--about the fact that, like, power is, like, the silent "P" in DE&I, right? It's like--we don't talk about the fact that, like, yo, if a senior executive sends out something to talk, have one of these conversations, there's gonna be a certain percentage of marginalized people who feel pressured to join it simply because the person who sent out the invite is in power, right? Like, there's a power dynamic that we don't want to address, and also when you ask people to do things--like, nine times out of ten the Black and brown folks you ask to do this type of work or, like, to randomly jump in this and it's not even their expertise, they're gonna feel pressured to say yes because you're in charge, and then when they show up to do whatever you want them to talk about, white privilege, their own lived experience, whatever, they're going to be pressured to not be as honest as they would even like to be because they know that they might get fired or they may be opportunities withheld from them if they say the wrong thing.Dr. Gassam: Exactly, exactly, and I'm actually doing a workshop tomorrow, and the two individuals who reached out to me to do the workshop, they had told me they don't want to be part of the facilitation because there are--there's 500 people who are a part of this workshop, and they're worried because in their industry it's, of course, not what you know it's who you know, and I sympathized with them 100,000% because I'm still--you know, I work in an institution, and I can't fully say--I can't go out and jump on a limb and say everything that I would want to say because of that power piece and because I know that there's still many people who are uncomfortable when you're speaking the truth and when you're trying to--so it's like you can only say but so much, and unfortunately it's like--we need the raw, and we need it to the point, and I'm glad people are more open to that right now, but it's still, like, a concern for us and for people who do this work and, you know, even you as a--not only as an employee but as someone in the podcast space, I'm sure there's topics that you can venture into but not too, too much because you don't--Zach: Oh, Dr. Gassam. Ooooh, bay-bay. [laughs]Dr. Gassam: You know? 'Cause it's like, "I know my audience." You know, there's stuff--I'm sure there's a lot of stuff you want to say but you just--one day [I'ma?] have a tell-all.Zach: Listen, one day--no, I literally tweeted this the other day, I said, "One day I'ma let these @s fly." Like, I'ma really talk to y'all. But no, you're absolutely right, the power dynamic, it dictates, like, literally everything. So, like, you know, I talk differently now because I work--I have a 9-to-5 job. Like, the day that I do Living Corporate full-time, I'm still not gonna be able to talk as free because I'm gonna have clients, and my clients need to know and respect the fact that, you know, I won't air them out one day, you know what I mean? So, like, the only time that I think you ever really hear, like, Black people speak the truth, like, unabashed truth is when they have a lot of money, right? So you think about--you know, you think about, like, the Will Smiths and Kevin Harts and Dave Chappelles and Eddie Murphys of the world, the people who just--or people who just don't care at all, and those voices are needed, but it's just, like, I can't shame people for not being 100,000% raw all of the time when, like, our survival is predicated on some degree of white comfort. It just is. We can't just say--we can't speak the truth like we want to. Like, I believe I speak the truth pretty consistently, don't get me wrong, but there are certainly--like, I'm halfway joking, but there are things that I would like to be much more explicit about, but I can't, you know? Especially [because] I have a daughter, you know what I mean? You have to be careful. So let's talk about this. Let's talk about supporting each other during this time. So we're talking about, like, the emotional labor that we sometimes get pressured into performing or just the increased emotional labor during this time, but also just the general amount of labor just in being Black and brown in majority white spaces. When you asked or when you kind of suggested talking about supporting one another, like, what comes to mind for you?Dr. Gassam: So many things. You know, I think that besides the Candice Owens and some of these people out here that maybe don't [?]--Zach: Oh, my gosh. Please don't ever say her name again. Nope.Dr. Gassam: [laughing] I'm sorry. Some of these people, you know, these people, I think for the most part we got us, and the community that we're building and that we've built and the support that I feel from my fellow Black people just makes me really proud to be Black, and I have to say that in a lot of the--in April I was offering these complimentary workshops because I was transitioning from in-person trainings and workshops to online and I was acclimating and getting myself used to Zoom. So I was like, "You know, if your company wants a complimentary workshop just reach out." And let me tell you, I did 7 complementary workshops that month, and all of the people that reached out to me were Black women. I love that Black women are always, always at the forefront of putting other--we're always... I feel like we have such big hearts and we're always trying to, like, save the world, and people need to listen to us more, but I just think that in a moment like this, the support and the camaraderie that I'm seeing among Black people but particularly among Black women is just what, like, warms my heart and reminds me why, despite all of the B.S. and what we're going through, I'm so proud to be a Black person and to be a Black woman. So I think that just supporting each other, supporting Black businesses and things like that, just reaching out to your Black friends, I think--one of the many things that I love about us is, like, we're gonna have fun and find entertainment in anything, and I've been like--we've been crying a lot, but I just find that we just make anything into, like, something funny, into a joke. Like, after the Verzuz of Beenie Man and Bounty Killer, I was just, like, so entertained by the memes and the gifs, and I was just like, "I love us." Like, we are just so funny, and we're just like--so that's, I think, like, the fact that us coming together and just laughing and doing things that bring us joy and just, you know, the community I think right now is we're building that and we're creating these groups, and so I think that we should all be doing one thing that makes us feel joy, and whether that's, like, meeting up with a friend, grabbing some ice cream, riding a bike, I've been trying to do that more and more. And just, like, [supporting] each other. I have friends that reach out to me and say, "Hey, I want to bring you into my company," and it's like, just that support of, like, "I see you, I see the work that you're doing and I'm trying to put you on," is I think what we need more of and what I've been seeing a lot, and I just love that.Zach: Man, I love it too, and, you know, with that being said, if you haven't yet, make sure that you get a copy of "Dirty Diversity," Dr. Gassam's--it's your first published book, right?Dr. Gassam: Thank you so much, Zach. Yes, my very first published book, so I'm awaiting--it is gonna be available Juneteenth, on June 19th, and both the e-book and the paperback will be available on Amazon, but I'm also awaiting Audible approval because I recorded the audiobook, so I'm just waiting on that process now. Hopefully it'll all be good by June 19th, but I think by the time this episode drops it'll be available via Audible as well.Zach: Well, that's dope, and yeah, we'll make sure that we signal boost any of the promotions and advertising for it on Juneteenth, and then we'll also make sure that y'all check out Dr. Gassam's Dirty Diversity podcast. So Dr. Gassam, you know what I'm saying, she's way more fancy than me, so her guests--I mean, we have great guests, don't get me wrong. We have amazing guests, so let me not play, but I'm just saying, like, she's--Dr. Gassam: Yeah, you guys have amazing, amazing guests.Zach: We have dope guests, but I'm saying your guests are nothing to sniff at, you know what I'm saying? So make sure y'all check out Dr. Gassam, you know?Dr. Gassam: Thank you so much, Zach. I really appreciate it. Thank you for amplifying our voices and trying to use our platform to put more of us on. I think that that's an inspiration to me, and that's what I think we should all be doing, using our platforms and our power to put other people on, you know, other, our people on. But thank you so much, Zach, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your weekend.Zach: Yo, same to you. Listen, y'all, this has been Zach with Living Corporate. You know what we do. We're having these conversations weekly. So again, this might be your first time listening to Living Corporate, so as a reminder or as an FYI, we have Real Talk Tuesdays--that's when we have these, like, you know, 1-on-1 conversations. We then have Tristan's Tips on Thursdays, and then we have The Link Up with Latesha or See It to Be It with Amy C. Waninger on Saturdays. Like, those kind of interchange, and so we have essentially three different series a week, so make sure you reach out. We're all over Beyonce's internet, you know? Just type in Living Corporate, we're gonna pop up. And then yeah, you've been listening to Dr. Janice Gassam, public speaker, entrepreneur, educator, consultant, podcaster, and writer of "Dirty Diversity." That's also the podcast. Make sure y'all check out all the links in the show notes. 'Til next time. Peace.

- Fred Brown That was difficult. And that the kind of person I am or what people expect from me is to not flinch in the face of adversity. I could never grieve. In a meaningful way. And I've never grieved in a meaningful way because. The role I typically play in this society that I live in is the caretaker provider and supporter. So. You know, I remember one time I got emotional and people looked at me and it was like. Their whole construct of strength was like in question for years and years and years. I just held onto OK. You can't cry. You can't be emotional. You got to hold. People are counting on you to lead in this moment of crisis.   INTRO   I have such an engaging, important episode for you today.  My guest is Fred Brown, the CEO of the Forbes Fund.  More on the Forbes Fund in just a little bit.  Fred ushers us into his experience as a Black man in America, delving into his personal losses, reflecting on the murder of George Floyd, and talking about the head trip of anti-black racism that caused him to question himself over the years as he advocated for meaningful, systemic change.  His story is compelling and immediate and important.  And I will introduce you more fully to Fred in a moment.    But first, I’d like to thank our two sponsors.  First is Fullstack PEO.  FullStack PEO is an employee benefits provider for entrepreneurs and small business owners.  In these uncertain times, benefits provide a sense of security for your people.  Let the talented staff at FullStack take care of benefits so you can grow your business.  We are also sponsored by Handle with Care Consulting.  With a range of trainings, keynotes, and online options, Handle with Care consulting empowers you to come alongside your people with empathy with they experience disruptive life events.   Now, back to the interview and Fred Brown.  Fred lives in Pittsburgh and has six children.       - Fred Brown My oldest sons. The engineer works for Caterpillar. He lives in Kansas. My next oldest son is 18. He's headed off to college. My next oldest son is 16. He's at home with us. My 18 year old is at home with us currently. I have a 13 year old daughter, my six year old daughter, and my four year old daughter and my wife. And so the seven of us. In the house all the time.   - Liesel Mertes We covered that full house and lots of opportunities for, I'm sure, all kinds of interactions. I am. I said I said to my husband recently, I said, thankfully, you know, I haven't wanted to divorce you. As a result of this, I have thought about if I could possibly divorce my children because there's so much always going on. So I hear you in that.   - Liesel Mertes Are you a man that has space for any hobbies or when you are not working? How do you like to fill your time?   - Fred Brown I like to fill my time of exercising. I used to like to fill my time reading. What with? Five kids in the house and school. You know, five different schools or three different school systems. That's difficult. Have family night every Friday. So, we do a family activity. We like to go camping before COVID. We used to like to go out every now and do some things. But since COVID, we've really begun to have deeper dialogue about race issues, about being an entrepreneur.   - Fred Brown And so, my hobby, the thing I love to do pre COVID is, I have a very stressful job, so I need to let my energy flow in a way it is positive. So, I like to work out. Yeah. And yeah, I like to work out a lot. I used to be ranked 13 for the country as a proud power lifter many moons ago and about 40, 45 pounds that goes with it.   In addition to being a self-described “gym-rat” who enjoys outlifting men half his age, Fred is the CEO of the Forbes Fund, a 37 year old institution that comes alongside struggling non-profits.    - Fred Brown When I ascended to the role of president CEO of the Forbes Funds in 2018, I immediately began to explore like the intersection of how can we promote the great aspects of organization is honor our history of being a supportive organization.   - Fred Brown Look at the role of technology and create a pivot that looks at what is emerging in the belly needs in this sector. And so we began to look at this notion of systems design and ecosystems development taken into account at every community, had its own typography, its own unique DNA. And then we don't want a cookie cutter approaches,   - Fred Brown We work with about a thousand non-profit organizations a year. There's about 20, several hundred in our area. And in southwestern P.A., there's over 80, 500 nonprofits.   The Forbes Fund has a strong team and are doing innovative things like funding catalytic community cohort, C3, that utilizes collective genius and mentoring relationships.  They have also just launched the Forbes Funds University in partnerships with local institutions that provide non-profit leaders with credit and continuing education opportunities.    Earlier that day, he was offering his expertise and leadership in a call   - Fred Brown And these kind of pivots have created phenomenal exchanges between philanthropy, between non-profit sector universities, community stakeholders and businesses. And I'm just excited about this stuff. I'm in the middle. And I just wish I was able to do more things.   - Fred Brown I yesterday, we were on a call with a group that wants to start a gardening program. And this is where being a thought partner is part of a role we play. So, we started talking about institutional racism. And they started to talk about the historical trends in their community. And we said, well, what would the metaphor be for digging up the earth and planting and see and nurturing a foster new growth of plants to be eaten and used by the community?   - Fred Brown Well, what would the metaphor be that you can rebirth a community? Put your hands in the soil? There's a cathartic experience there that could address racism, social injustices.   It is a powerful metaphor.  And as you have already heard, Fred is a savvy, smart practitioner who cares about the holistic person and the toll that racism is taking on the bodies of Black and Brown Americans.    - Fred Brown As people of color manage, we stay here for a while, for over two hundred years. There's an illusion that we're OK. And even in our own way, we convey that we're OK. But the data says other data says although we're managing, we have on average an eight year lifecycle difference we have financially we made. I think 70 cents on the dollar compared to our white counterparts.   - Fred Brown And we carry a burden of comorbidity issues, which has an aggravated impact on diseases and viruses like COVID, which in many cities we have three times the death rate as our white counterparts. And so although we might be managing the burden of being black in America is not without a cost.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah, yeah, I am. There's an incredibly impactful book that I've read with and I've read now a couple of times within the last five years by Dr Bessel van der Klerk. It's called The Body Keeps the Score, and it's all about trauma and embodied trauma and just the fact that it shows up in our physical health. And it's been something that I've pondered in my own journey. And as I over the last couple of months have extended my imagination into more of those data points, whether that is, you know, like the neonatal care and pregnancy complications.   - Liesel Mertes And just regardless of, you know, education level or economic level, that there's so much lower, you know, for black Americans.   - Liesel Mertes And to think like, yes, that's because the body is literally like holding on to generations of absorbed trauma. And just as I as I avail myself to listen to more stories and try to think like, what would it feel like if when I sent my 10 year old son out bike riding, that I was just worried about his, his safety all the time because of how he looks, you know, like I can't even extend to imagine that. But I, I don't I, I don't understand.   - Liesel Mertes But I'm hearing differently being like. Yeah, what a horrible toll on your body.   - Fred Brown You know, I think that many of us. We arrive at a point in our existence where we just accept what is. And we. We learn how to navigate that. How can you accept being killed? Over possibly a fake 20 dollar bill or selling single cigarettes or. Sitting in your car and reaching for your license is very different. You know, when I talk to other people and they never worry about these things, they don't ever have to tell their kids the story.   - Fred Brown OK, do this when the police pull you over and you're going to get pulled over. Do this in the store when the police are a private detective, ask you, what are you looking for? Do this when you drive into community. And his gaited. Is there is this these next level? Requirements that you have to educate your kid on. You know, they're really. It's common place for us. But this is not natural, mother, other people are not doing that.   - Fred Brown So I think there's an extra burden both on the child. You know, my four year old. I took her my daughter would go bike riding every night are my six and my four year old. So we're all riding last night. And we're eating some French fries and corn and, you know, just took a break from writing. And some people came up that I know and they came to talk to me and she said my four year old said, white people kill black people.   - Fred Brown She's four. Yeah, her external expression that people know is that they're going to kill me or they go kill somebody black. And I said, where'd you get that from? She said, "that's what they said on the news."   - Fred Brown How did you. I don't know. I don't know. That's difficult. But, you know, I have to sleep on that.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. Well, there, you know. I there are that you wish that you could say it was like a boogie man, like, no, that wouldn't happen to you. Like, no, you're safe. Like we want to extend to our children a sense of. There's so much we do as adults to protect them.   - Liesel Mertes And there are the is that we can't take away, you know, and. I can't imagine in this room what that's like. You know, as a parent in. In my own experience, there's, you know, my, my children have had a sibling die. And I would love like they have a really real sense of like will another one of my brothers or sisters die. And I'd love to be like, no, that will never happen.   - Liesel Mertes But that wouldn't be true. Like, that could happen. And I can't imagine to extend that to just meta like deeply a sense of, that is a possibility. And that kind of way.   - Liesel Mertes You've as we mentioned at the top of the interview, you've you've had, your father's died within the last three weeks.   - Liesel Mertes You lead an organization that is really attuned to the needs of your community. I imagine that watching these events on the news also connects to, like your own personal experience of life as a man in a black body. What has it? What is what is it occasioned? What is that felt like for you to live the last three weeks?   - Fred Brown That's a heavy question. Not that it's not real. So in 1996. I began to do some social justice and environmental justice work, and at that time a young black man was killed in Brentwood, Brentwood. P.A. as a result of a truck traffic stop. Named Jonny Gammage.   - Fred Brown And so I helped organize the city. The black community around protesting, peaceful, protesting, marching, demanding more laws to protect citizens and accountability for police. And so I thought, OK, we did that work. We made some progress. Not a lot, but somewhere in my psyche, I thought, OK, that was done. And I'm onto the next thing.   - Fred Brown The next thing was I began to ramp up my work as a probation officer and I buried about 50 plus kids from gang violence during that same period and so I had gotten accustomed to go into funerals and and such.   - Fred Brown And 2001, when I was in graduate school working on my PTSD in a six month period, I had six family members and friends there. My grandmother, my uncle, two cousins, my best friend's mother and a friend. And it it became a burden.   - Fred Brown And I told somebody in an interview one time, I feel like I'm walking around a coffin on my back, literally. So, you know, I realize I'm getting crispy burnt out in this work with kids. And I think they're so important that I don't want to stop the work. So I continue to do the work and I continue to rise up in the system.   - Fred Brown So my thought process and theory changes if I get high enough in the system. I can promote systems change, which will alter these kids lives.   - Fred Brown So I do that now, figure out as I get up, work into the system. The system has no desire to change. It has no desire to be different. It has no desire to meet people way of way.   - Liesel Mertes And so can you tell me a little bit more about that? I feel like that is a powerful statement that I would love for you to unpack a little bit more. What were you observing?   - Fred Brown I was observing that there is a level of institutional racism within the system that perpetuates the need for actors to be arrested for not have a resolution to common problems, i.e., a kid could not get off her probation unless they paid their restitution. A kid couldn't get restitution paid for in a job because they were on probation. And so, it was these kind of vicious cycle is where you looked at the common person, what they just they just need to get a job and then they can get off a restitution.   - Fred Brown Well, how does that work? A kid with a juvenile record with a record who's supporting that? And then if the kid is a juvenile, you've got to get special permission to work. You know, it's just it's just a burden and it creates a condition where there's just a vicious cycle. And then you see that the cycle trends upward as these kids who can't break the cycle as juveniles become adult offended, they just continue to recidivate. And you see very clearly there were point points of departure where people could have did something different.   - Fred Brown And they, they didn't or couldn't. And, you know, I remember another experience when I worked on South and Charlotte. And this was probably most difficult job I've ever had is a PP social worker, a permanency planning social worker. And basically, in short, you determine whether if we came to your house and your husband and God forbid, got into fisticuffs or fight or whatever, and there was some concern about the kids, we might remove the kids.   - Fred Brown You guys sort that out. Or if you put your hands on a K is doing a fisticuffs and that kind of stuff. And so we kind of determine whether or not people got their kids back. And what I noticed in that system was middle class people fared better than everyday low income people.   - Fred Brown Training might be scheduled for you to go to five classes on parent engagement, behavior modification, anger control. You know any of these? No classes. The classes were usually offered dawn workday. So a person that is middle class or has a job, the salary. They can go to their boss or be the boss or just say, hey, I'm going out. I'll be back at this time. No questions. But an hourly worker had to go get permission from your supervisor to miss work.   - Fred Brown And inevitably, the supervisors will say, hey, if you know I you're going to get fired.   - Fred Brown I don't know about whatever you're talking about because at the same time, you're not trying to tell somebody, hey, I got go to these classes to get my kids back. Right. There is a certain level of discretion you're trying to to manifest just for your personal well-being. And so I just saw. Case after case where poor people were get were not getting the same benefit.   - Fred Brown And I took this concern to management. My supervisor told me to take it to higher levels of management. And I talk to the manager, the highest level of management. That's a set of choices because I had been doing this work for. 20 something years, and I knew about nontraditional service provider systems, social service networks and such. And I presented models to this director that maybe there's a way that we can mitigate the risk. And the director looked at me and said, why would we do that? And I said, because there's a disproportionate impact occurring to certain families based upon socio economic strata, which is having an adverse effect on their ability to get their kids back.   - Fred Brown And the highest ranking person in the institution said, we're not going to do that. I'm not interested. And I just in that moment, something that in me about humanity, something dad and me about, well, maybe they didn't understand. Maybe I wasn't a good communicator. Maybe. I didn't do a good job of explaining what I was talking about. So I went back and talked to other people. They were like, no, you were very clear, you know.   - Fred Brown And the thing that broke me was broke my spirit was to have a grown man come to your office and start crying and said you would destroy my family and you said you were going to help me. There's nothing you've done to help me. The services you need me to attend don't work on my for my hours. The restraints you have on me, Sam Martel, don't work for my hours. And so there was just a series of unparalleled opportunities. Supported all families. And it just got me to start thinking about, well, who writes these policies? It's not poor people.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah, and I hear I hear in that even like just to interject before we get you for the head trip, also that systemic institutionalized. Yeah, antiblack racism is in some ways in that, like you, you had to come away and think wasn't my fault. Like, did I not explain myself well enough like that? It turned inward like that.   - Fred Brown Like, well, maybe I didn't do a good enough job when really it gets back to. Like, no, we we purposefully want to keep it this way, whether by design or just general apathy. Because it doesn't matter enough. So yeah, I imagine that’s the nuance of what it does. The self questioning. What causes you to have somewhat of a psychosis about? Are you in it? Are you in the Twilight Zone?   - Fred Brown Are the things you're suggesting just so unrealistic? Or is there a, is there a strategy here that intends to keep people in the places that they're in and you don't want to believe that because you're working on the side of justice.   - Fred Brown You're working on the side of equity. You're working on a side of this notion. And I struggle with this when I was a probation officer. And I'm going back now. I'm more forward and I'm going back with, you know, as I became more a flaw with the court system and working with judges and dealing with a lot of gang stuff and not really understanding the plight of the state of these kids and their neurological pathways for their criminal thinking errors.   - Fred Brown And just you start understanding the science of this work, the human aspect of the work, the economics of the work, the poverty community, social structures. It's just there's a plethora of things that contribute to it. But when you start to peel it back. And you realize that you like doing this work because you actually think you can make a difference. And there's always a few people who make it like they, they create. And I call this the illusion of progress.   - Fred Brown Right. Just always has to be somebody that makes it, because if nobody ever made it, two people would stop having hope that there's a possibility to change. So I think the system allows for certain few people to make it. And I will say and those people do what they need to do to get through. All right. But over all, when you look at the preponderance of people who go through the system, the statistics on who's successful in it is not high, as you have to start wonder.   - Fred Brown Like, why is that? Why if our goal is to restore humanity and people, why do we say after somebody serves time for an offense? That they're a felon. But they did their time. Why are we now labeling them? And we know that that label is going to discredit their ability to have any measure of response and opportunity back in society. And now that label for act, they did time for which Anan's. I mean, it's like.   - Fred Brown If you put you and I have kids, if we put our kids on punishment. And at the end of the punishment, you're still seen as being criminal. How does that work like you. Did your punishment? OK, let's start over. You got a clean slate. Mommy, daddy ain't mad at you no more. But here's what you need to be aware of, if that happens again, the punishment is going to be more severe or whatever that is right.   - Fred Brown But there is a point where a person is held accountable and then they should be allowed to restore their humanity. And get a fresh, strong start. They should be able to. Acknowledge their wrongdoings, come to grips with that and decide how they can move forward. Well, the first thing they have to do is reestablish yourselves economically to take care of ourselves. And that's a burden that they can't even get a job and housing. Yeah, then we are by nature.   - Fred Brown Knowingly, willingly, intentionally creating a dynamic that people are born recidivate. You're not giving them a chance to. Return to society, healthy and whole. You ask me to run a society where they sped up a race with one leg and with the title where you hit X.   - Fred Brown Yeah. And I just you just have to wonder, like. Nothing's changed since we've been putting people in jail and per capita, we have the house arrest rate and incarceration rate in a world. Yeah, it's an interesting, you know,   - Liesel Mertes Even, even just to take it to the really personal lived like level. You give the example with parenting. You know, if I have a child who lives and I punish them for lying, but then what it would it would be if I just you know, I was like, well, this is Ada the liar for the rest of her life. Why just that totalizing identity then to take on, you know, of every time I introduced her? This is Ada. She's a liar, you know. Yeah.   MUSICAL TRANSITION   - Liesel Mertes So we talk about disruptive life events on the Handle with Care podcast and the more interviews that I get to do and just in my work as a consultant. Grief is always localized within a particular community and that community is shaped by by family habits. You know, some people it's like grief is very taboo. You know, we keep a stiff upper lip. It's also shaped by, you know, by aspects of just communal norms.   - Liesel Mertes I can think of Karen, who she is, a Chinese American, and she talked about walking through her sister's suicide and like the very entrenched taboos of a Chinese, specifically a Chinese American culture and what that allowed her to do or didn't allow her to do. And so, this sort of specificity to community in dealing with hard things. And it's always like its own burden to ask someone to speak for an entire community. But I'd love to hear just from your personal experience, as you talked about, you know this.   - Liesel Mertes I think you use an evocative term. It when when the six people die that you were getting, it was   - Fred Brown Like walkin' around with a coffin on my back.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. Yeah. And that you you just were lacking resilience. What was it like. What. What did your community offer you in ways or. First, let me just start with tell me more about what it was like to be walking around with a coffin on your back.   - Fred Brown That was difficult. And that the kind of person I am or what people expect from me is to not flinch in the face of adversity. I could never grieve. In a meaningful way. And I've never grieved in a meaningful way because. The role I typically play in this society that I live in is the caretaker provider and supporter. So. You know, I remember one time I got emotional and people looked at me and it was like. Their whole construct of strength was like in question for years and years and years.   - Fred Brown I just held onto OK. You can't cry. You can't be emotional. You got old. People are counting on you to lead in this moment of crisis. You're a leader. And so for years, I just. So I've got to leave. You know, when I was in graduate school and all of those deaths happened. I remember going to talk to people. And somebody asked me, why are you still in school? Why? What are you trying to prove?   - Fred Brown Like, want to go take care of your family? And deep inside my thinking and being was, I've never quit, so I can't quit now like I've gotten this far. And a PhD program, I'm from the hood. Nobody thought I would be here. Me quitting is just that's not an option. As I started to talk more more to people, what I would like has taken a toll on you. Is it worth it? Like, what are you having to prove?   - Fred Brown And a friend of mine is a mentor of mine. I say that's a piece of paper. The work that you do is transformational. You don't need a piece of paper to be transformational. And what what you said,   - Liesel Mertes I want to I want to just go back for a moment, because that is really interesting to me that that sense of where you'd come from, like you come from the hood you'd come so far. Was it. Was it.   - Liesel Mertes Was there an element that you felt of like a fear of like if I stop pushing, I might not keep going? Or like. Was that was that given to you by other people in your community who had celebrated how far you come? Did you feel like you were held up as something that you didn't have space for that? Tell me.   - Fred Brown Right. I would say that nobody told me I couldn't quit or nobody said if you quit your this or that. But. I'm celebrating. Whether I like that or not, people see me as somebody who's navigated the streets and made it. And so. Good, bad or indifferent? Live with that identification. This has driven me to push beyond my my bounds and understanding of my capacity.   - Fred Brown And, you know, one of the things I told the doctoral program, you know, because I was working on a degree and I was my dissertation was focused on Afro centricity as a theory of change.   - Fred Brown And I cut a lot of flack for taking up that mantle. But that was the origins of my existence. And so, I wanted to show that ethnocentricity was indeed a universal practice that could be applied across multiple ethnic groups and be successful. And I was actually doing that in a successful way.   - Fred Brown But want to get the piece of paper to say Dr. Brown wrote this book and he said this and that. And so, you know, the community was counting on me every time I went in.   - Fred Brown Some places there's like there go, he's going to be a doctor. That's Dr. Brown. So there was just this. And it wasn't intentional, but there was pressure like, you can't fail. People are counting on you. You will be the first doctor to ever live on this street. You know, people know that. And you give back and you're not protected. You're not going to move out and leave us.   - Fred Brown And so there was this symbiotic relationship with the community that I felt I had to uphold. And the reason that I saw myself even being capable of being in a PhD program was nothing added. But it was everything, the community important to me.   - Fred Brown So I never saw my experience in school as my experience. I saw it as the community's experience. And I was just a vessel of theirs. And so that that was very difficult that I use. The word broke me and I'll know if that's the right word. It humbled me, but it hurt. Yeah.   - Liesel Mertes You mentioned that mentor who is saying that he saw a tool that was taking on you. Were you seeing that as well?   - Fred Brown I thought I knew it was a toll, but as a man who's a power lifter and who has this illusion that everybody thinks I'm in, you know, I shouldn't be bothered by stuff and I've taken on taking on that persona. I just saw it as another test. Like it was just like, OK, you've got to pass this test.   - Fred Brown You have to have a story to tell people like when this happened, this is how you did it. Like people are looking to you forces for solutions in the face of adversity. So adversity is part of your eco system. So this is no different. So why are you getting personal and breaking down? And, you know, why are you hurt? And, you know, and I was like. I've never. Was able to really. Deal with that.   - Liesel Mertes Mm hmm. Yeah. I am I'm struck that there is a certain distrust that white majority culture has towards strong emotions, specifically from black men and women. You know, I feel like you're so often labeled like this is this is an angry black man or angry black woman. And just that that big emotions are something that, you know, the majority culture doesn't really want to see and doesn't want to deal with. And that perhaps that that could also, you know, there could be a certain expectation as it relates to other strong emotions like grief or sadness.   - Liesel Mertes Did you feel any aspect of, you know, there's like community expectation, your strength, but just of you can't have too strong of an emotion like that that wouldn't be professional or possible? Was that any part of an expectation at all that you felt?   - Fred Brown I felt. Yeah, I felt like. I did show this pressure that I had to have equilibrium. I felt that. If I lost it, then that would signal to other people, it's OK to act like that and so that.   - Fred Brown I was always in this place that I was trying to get white America to realize that everybody is black, is not all drugs a gang member just making babies and not taking care of. And the greatest challenge that most black men is my size at that time. And intellect is you threaten white people when you walk in a room and you ask the intelligent question, especially one they don't anticipate. And so if I became passionate about things in particular around the death of black kids and talking to people, I was the angry black man.   - Fred Brown If I started asking too many questions, I was trying to be smarter than everybody else. So there was always this. Notion. Like, how did you create balance in the face of. The rhetoric that's not real. But. Is pervasive and dominant culture of pedagogy. This is very similar to what's going on now with many of my friends and colleagues.   - Fred Brown Now, as a result of seeing George Floyd's murder on TV and seeing the face of the actor not being moved, not having any compassion. Now people are like, OK, I get it. And the struggle that we have is people of color who are friends with those individuals is once again, was I not telling my story. Clear enough? Was I not a good communicator? Did you not hear me say just buried over 50 caged like is these just things is rolling off my mouth. It off my tongue to interpret subconsciously as not being real tangible. That that like.   - Liesel Mertes Man, if you could see my face, that just that's breathtaking. That. Of course, that feels like just one more iteration of feelings that you've had through the years. Yeah, that's powerful. It's I is a hard position right now.   - Liesel Mertes When I know I feel like, you know, tap. It happens a lot. People want to go and say, like, teach me, teach me about racism or or things like that. So not to not to ask you for, like, the history of it.   - Liesel Mertes You know, as, as we discuss empathy on the podcast, if there was something that you could just insert into the consciousness of white Americans as it relates to empathy for you as a black man right now, what would you want them to understand differently?   - Fred Brown That's a great question. I think one of the things I would want. Is. For them to see. Me and other black men and women are just as human as.   - Fred Brown As people were families, that. Really want the same things they want. We want the same kinds of attributes. We want the same acknowledgements. We want all of those things. And, you know, we we want a good space.     - Fred Brown Because I have to believe that the people I'm cool with that call me and ask me, you know, I was talking to somebody else today and they say, did you get the call?   - Fred Brown And as black people, we know what that means. Like, whenever something tragic happens, our white friends call us and say, and I feel so bad. I want it. And we don't think there's nothing wrong with that.   - Fred Brown But then people say, what can I do? And it's like, well, did you not see? Or hear me for 35 years complaining about this. Did you not, like hear me say I buried his killers, just came from a funeral?   - Fred Brown I had a rough week, you know, with a judge. Like, I got pulled over and it's like, so when I told you I got pulled over and I didn't do anything. Agent in the back of your mouth, were you thinking? Yeah, you probably do somewhere you wouldn't get got pulled over. And so you got upset. So it just makes you caucus. Now that. When you're talking to your friends or they. Listening or did they hear you?   - Liesel Mertes Right. Know, I hear that. I'd like to just because I know you have to go. When you were going through this period of loss or even as you're grieving now, two questions.   - Liesel Mertes First, I'd love to know what people did that made you feel supported. And then lots of times people do stupid stuff when they're trying to comfort. That actually doesn't hit the marks I want. I would love to know what made you feel supported and what made you feel totally missed, that you'd say don't do this stuff, It's just bad.   - Fred Brown I felt supported, especially in the last three weeks by my board or my team. And my special assistant cleared my schedule, not telling people particulars, but just saying he's out. He's not available. And then stepping into the role of all the things I do, a lot of people don't know I do. And that. Missing a beat. Just stepping into it and managing that.   - Fred Brown I think the second thing that was rewarding was my colleagues I work with around the country in the world to send flowers and plants or plants, not flowers, plants and cards.   - Fred Brown And I haven't read all the cards and just know people said, I want to talk to you, not send you a card or text you. And then in an. Kidding, having this happen while the George Floyd case occur. There's been a lot of people I work with having epiphanies about. I really wasn't listening to you. I really couldn't hear you. So, it's a watershed moment. I think the thing that. This is problematic.   - Fred Brown And I don't think this is anything anybody's done to me as much as it's something I've done to myself, which is I had this process in my mind and I could just turn it back on my creativity. So, I have four outstanding things I told people I was going to get to.   - Fred Brown Two weeks ago. I just have not had the mental space to do it. And it's not. And this and people are not. Not expecting it. They are expecting the innovation.   - Fred Brown And I'm so used to just coming through as I've done. Year over year in the past, where even in the face of adversity, actually some of these things make me dig deeper into. I need to answer. I need to answer. In this particular case, I'm tapped out.   - Fred Brown I'll have to answer a personal loss triggering another black man being a martyr in the work I did in 96 to now it just trigger a cascade of historical events and current events that are going harder is not going to resolve. And being innovative is not going to resolve.   - Fred Brown And so, I you know, and I'm inconsolable because I think I crown and said I'm not a outwardly cry, emotional guy set for when I'm angry. And so, because I walk into space and I'm in a meeting, I just facilitated a workshop.   - Fred Brown And people's work is perhaps this pass. And I thought he was off. And, you know, so I've been in what I would call high level of things. I didn't want to not I didn't want to fall apart or not move forward.   - Fred Brown And I knew people expected me to be there. So, I was there, but I was just there and. And body, not by spirit or soul. And, you know, interesting enough, today, my board and my board meeting, you know, my board was like, we need you to take a break.   - Fred Brown And it was interesting because one of my board members say we need you back at 150 to 200 percent. Like you always been not 100. Right. So, my board already is acknowledging you don't function at 100 percent. Yeah. You function at a 150 and 200 percent. And so, whatever you need to do to take a break, that's what we need back. We don't need this guy limping in at 100 percent because that's not who you are. And so that was compelling today to hear my board say to.   - Fred Brown And just acknowledge, like, dude, this is how you roll. Like, this is what he brought to the table. And so I'm conflicted with. How sustainable is that and. Is that what I need right now and cannot allow myself to grieve? And what does that look like? I don't know what that looks like. I know what I do when death occurs. I know what I do when tragedy occurs. I go to my office and that idea, I come up with solutions.   - Fred Brown And so, the next day people are like, well, what are we going to do? Would I say, here's, here's what I'm thinking. And peoples like, wow, that's a good idea. I didn't think of that. Are we going to do that? And everybody's like, yeah, we're gonna do it.   - Fred Brown And so, I'm just used to being able to turn it on. Hit the switch, go to another level. In this instance, there is no other level that I'm aware of. And it's not coming to me. I'm not having great insight. There's not a voice speaking to me. There's an emptiness that is compelling because the emptiness is in conflict with what's in my mind. Mm hmm, yeah. If that makes sense. Right on much swirling.   - Fred Brown Yeah, I'm. I'm able to write and create because of something that's in my heart disconnected to my mind that comes out to my ability to articulate that. But I realize in the void that exists exists now cannot conjure up, even though my intellectual thought process is driving solutions because my heart and soul have been eviscerating.   - Fred Brown I can't even grapple with the ideas not percolating to the tangible thoughts on paper. And I'm in this crazy because it's keeping me up all night, like I have these ideas, like I will do this and I would do that. I write it down to energy to to actually do the writing and to put everything together and create a serious change. It's not there. That's what I told my board. I say I'm not here. Like at an all my life I've been in all these places and doing all these things.   - Fred Brown I am not here right now and I have to acknowledge to my board because I have a responsibility to let you know that I am not all here. And. And at the same time, I'm not trying to sit up and say, I got a problem, like I need this, I need that, you know, because I want people to blaze. He fit, not fit to lead. You know, and so it's a conflict. Right.   - Fred Brown And you have to take time. And I haven't really taken time, like up almost every day. I was off, I did something, at least three things now compared to nine things.   - Fred Brown Three things is better, but still, right? Yeah, it's three things. It's work things. Right. You know, so like today I'm going from seven to nine.   - Fred Brown Yeah. All right. And no, nobody is thinking that's a lot. Or did he just have a tragedy? I think they think and that's just what he does. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.   - Liesel Mertes That, you know, those are important questions and. What, what it reminds me of, like I you know, when my daughter died, one of the the hardest voices that I had to deal with was my own, like, inner judgment, because these things that had come so easily and naturally, the things that it was just like, you know, like water off a duck's back, like, of course, I could, you know, execute on these projects and I'm in a graduate program and do all of it easily.   - Liesel Mertes Like all of those things were hard and grinding. And it was this sense of like, I don't even like myself that much if I can't, like, produce the way that I. And there was that own sense of, like myself judgment that was really hard to reckon with. And, you know, there is just like somewhat similarly, I'm a person who I render myself in words and actions. And to feel like that capacity, which was like my most natural language of expression, just was like.   - Liesel Mertes I had to struggle so much for that, and it was like, if I can't like, if I can't render myself that way. In this thing that matters so much like it was a sense of intense dislocation with myself. There was really heavy.   - Fred Brown So let me tell you, was heavier ball, which you just said is. You said this twice on this call. And I heard it the second time about your daughter. And that's an example of.   - Fred Brown I heard you, but I wasn't listening. And I'm struck by even more. Oh. Lack of. Acknowledgement that our hurting. So, let me first say my heart goes out to you as a parent for that loss. My heart goes out to you as a mother for the loss. My heart goes out to you as a human being. Who has to bury their child? Yes, the unnatural consequence. And I'm so unfortunately aware of that because of the many kids that I had to.   - Fred Brown Be a part of their transition. And listening to you and and understanding now. I think why you do this show. Is incredibly moving and. Courageous to do this over and over again when every time you as these deep penetrating questions, it's a reflection of your own experience with your own child. Like deep. Somebody to me, that's how I interpret that. Like how? And you know, I will tell you this. I have a litany of things to do that are canceled, but this was not one of them.   - Fred Brown I needed to be on here because I needed to talk. Right. No matter what it was, I need to be able to talk without an expectation, I had to do something right.   - Fred Brown I need to get my emotional content out in some form or fashion. What I'll say. OK, I'll get this proposal to you by tomorrow or so, because I know I know for a fact my team was wonder why I had this call. Like like why you to have this call with all this stuff going on. And I couldn't explain to to them that I needed this. I need this for me, I need to have some emotional exchange with someone that's not kov.   - Fred Brown It does not. George does not. Other is slight. I don't even know what it would be about. But, you know, depending on how you brought the story to life, I just need to be able to talk. From an unbiased perspective, without expectations and be authentic and courageous and listen intently. So thank you. Thank you for being patient with me. Even getting this set up. And I think you're a fantastic interviewer. You're very fluid and nonintrusive.   - Liesel Mertes Well, thank you, I I receive all of that wholeheartedly. And I can see even that that is a kindness of you even to, you know, I, I, I. It touches my heart that you would pause and say that because you're a man in a lot of his own intense moments. So, thank you for that gift of empathy, May I ask. Let me just the exchange names my daughter's name who died was Mercy Joan Mertes. What was the name of your father?   - Fred Brown My father's name is this transition is James Moler. It's a powerful thing to also know the names of someone is. Mercy,   - Liesel Mertes Mercy. Yeah, it was when we were we were praying and hoping for. Yeah. And even as I think of of calls for mercy and justice, she, she gets to be before me as something not yet actualized,   [01:11:55.930] - Fred Brown but beautiful. So. Wow. Powerful. Great story.   [01:12:07.300] - Liesel Mertes Thank you.   MUSICAL TRANSITION   Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Fred Systemic racism in America is real, insidious, and persistent.Fred talked about personal grief over the state of things, the way that systems, whether that was the probation system or family reunification system, were established and maintained in ways that hurt lower-income black men, women, and children.  I have not been wounded by these systems, but it is important for me to listen to the stories of those that have, to believe them, and to advocate and usher in meaningful change.  If Fred’s story piqued your interest, there are links to the Forbes Fund as well as to a good primer for educating yourself on these issues in the show notes. Be careful what you convey/expect from a leader that is grieving.Are you expecting them to just keep on churning, without pause?  Fred has a beautiful commitment to his community.  He felt like his accomplishments were not just for him but also for his community.  He felt an expectation of strength and persistence from his community and that messaging kept him (in part) from fully grieving.  We all need a place to grieve and just to be, without an expectation of performance.Fred talked about feeling compelled to keep our interview date, even with a dozen other pressing commitments.  That having an unbiased listener allowed him to be authentic and courageous.  His words towards me were kind…and this show gives me the opportunity to really listen to a story.  But it can be hard to do in our personal lives, when there are so many demands and questions that we want to ask and subtle agendas or conditioning that keep us from really being available and showing up.  May we be and may we become a safe space for those that make up our community.   OUTRO   Link to Forbes Fund:  https://forbesfunds.org/ Workplace and Rcae Reading List:  https://hbr.org/2020/06/confronting-racism-at-work-a-reading-list Anti-Racist Resource List (books, movies, podcasts, articles). https://medium.com/wake-up-call/a-detailed-list-of-anti-racism-resources-a34b259a3eea  

Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon, fuel your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're gonna find this book on Kindle, Amazon and as always on my website, samknickerbocker.comWelcome back to fuel your legacy. And today we have another incredible guest I love bringing on people from all different walks of life, people who have accomplished different things and are really focused On, on different aspects, they're bringing their light their love to the world in different ways fulfilling and sharing with other people. Billy Bross is someone you're gonna want to go follow him on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, these places, but he, he loves just helping online education companies and course creators break through the noise and fill their programs with committed high quality content and students students, right so part of its getting the students in part it's making sure their contents ready for that. He left a really great career honestly in renewable energy industry to go full time into his side hustle, his heart, his hobbies and ultimately his passion. So that's what I love about the people that I'm bringing on is that they've made that transition, and they're able to give us a light and knowledge as far as how we can make that transition in our own mind. He also runs a home and online home beer brewing school, so if you've ever wondered how to make Your own bruise and go check him out, he's awesome. Okay, so with that, I'm going to turn the time over to him, but I want him to be able to share his story and why he made the transition, how he made it, and how did he know when it was the right time to take that leap, quit his promising career and jump in full time to what he loves doing. So. Billy, thank you for being on here. I'm excited to hear your thoughts and and what we can do to become are following your footsteps. Awesome. Hey, thanks for having me, Samuel. And yeah, if anyone needs a good beer brewing recipe, then I'm your guy hit me up. Are you a craft beer fan?I actually don't drink alcohol at all. But I have family members who do and I know a lot of people who do.It wasn't a we'll talk about the business. It was a lot of fun, although it wasn't the healthiest business to run.Yeah, so thanks for having me again. And yeah, so you know, I I'm not the typical entrepreneur Am I very much like school, and a lot of entrepreneurs you hear dropped out of high school, or they kind of bash college and say, just get out there and start selling stuff and growing businesses. I actually liked learning and that's a theme that you're gonna hear from me. I love education. I'm very curious. I've always loved learning new topics. I remember in fifth grade, I was really into reading Popular Science Magazine. I would only read two parts, I would read the very front and the very back. And the front, they always had the section called what's new, and it's about all the cool new typical technology fields. And then in the back, it was always a classified section. And they're always like these really like kind of interesting, quirky ads. And I was I was like, wow, that's, that's kind of cool. You can build a helicopter, and then you can fly around. You can like buy a DIY kit on how to do that. That's really interesting. So I've always been interested in both science and art. So in business and creating new ventures, so I went through, went through all of high school, went through college, and then I went to grad school and got my MBA. So I took the very traditional path. But when I got that first job, which was a great career, I'll go into that. When I sat down the very first day at that desk after that, my boss remember, he gave me a tour of the office and everything and then finally sat me down and I was like, Okay, now this is assuming I don't do anything. And I just say the past, this is my life. I'm gonna be at this desk an awful lot. And I was excited to be there. But at the same time, I said to myself, this ain't gonna last too long. And so it wasn't too long after that, that I started on the side because I had this free time during nights and weekends, I started a beer brewing blog. So got really into brewing craft beer in college, really geeked out on like I do with a lot of things and decided to start writing about it and posting homebrewing tips and videos and things like that. So eventually, that was what allowed me to this was six years later jumpship when I was finally ready to leave that job and that career, I had this side hustle going, as you mentioned, and that was what enabled me to really forge my own path.That's awesome. So I'm curious. Because I mean, I know you say you're a proponent of education, and, and schooling, where would you I mean, do you feel like there's a line between schooling and education?Is there well, you can certainly have education without depends on what type of schooling you're talking about. And I think there certainly is a place for traditional education. But I think the whole I know the whole industry is getting disrupted right now. And I and I work with because I I work with online educators now online experts, teachers, teacher entrepreneurs, who are working in these areas. Well, for example, I have one on my school I'm working with and they teach artists. So digital artists, mainly people who do concept art for movies and video games. And traditionally, they would have to go to a university to get these skills and pay $100,000. And then they're not guaranteed anything afterwards, not guaranteed income or jobs. And now you have this online school, who I'm helping, and they help these artists they do it through $500,000. Sometimes a little bit higher price courses are still premium price for online but much cheaper than $100,000 for a traditional University. And the best part is these course creators are practitioners in their field. So they're in the trenches, they're, they're working in this area, and so they can tell their students how to succeed not just in their craft, but in the business side of their craft, which is so important. And now they're even starting to pass on jobs to their students as well. So, you know, there's certain there's certainly, there are places for traditional education. I mean, you wanna become a lawyer, you want to become a doctor certain fields like that engineering, but for, for some of these other fields, that's not necessarily the best path.And I think I think, for my cuz of how you caviar, like oh, I'm not one of those entrepreneurs that bags on it. I think that most for my experience, I all I do pretty much is an interview entrepreneurs of some sort CEOs, people who are successful in business or on the other side, mother's father, and just like, I guess I do interview a wide range of people. But I think most of the entrepreneurs that I interview there, although I would consider myself in this category, I bagged on traditional education, to a degree, but only to the extent of, I think that you could go get the same or better education from an online course. With somebody who is still practicing in the industry, and has some real life experience over going to a college, where that may or may not be the case, as far as crack practicing, and as you said, you pay now you walk away with $100,000 either spent money or debt with no guarantee of a job. And so, I think that's where, at least from my experience of talking to people, that's where most of the if you want to call it animosity comes from in that conversation. It's not that they think that to become a doctor, you shouldn't go have somebody practice and teach you that. But even even with that, being a doctor, being a lawyer, I hope not true, but I would say even with that, there's a lot of people who have gone through all of that education, formal education to get their degrees and in the process, they found that they actually are better able to serve clients or patients by you. Using methods that aren't necessarily taught in school, but to be able to use those methods, they have to have the credentials. And then they end up going off and doing functional medicine, which they could have done. They just want to have the licenses to do so without the formal education. So it's an interesting balance. I think education is everywhere. I don't think you should go fail.I shouldn't. How do I say that?I think failure is essential. Okay. I think we should be willing to fail, but fail different than the people in the past. Like if you're going through and you're making all the same mistakes that everybody else made. You didn't learn anything. Yeah, you know, guys like my point you need to go and create your own.Like, take and this is what this is one good thing that I think I gained from public like from my college years that I don't, I don't Where I would have got this otherwise, sure there's places, but how to conduct effective research is a very, like, if there's nothing else you learn. That's a pretty dang good thing to learn. So you can actually read medical journals and say, Okay, what exactly like how are these samples done? What's it? How are they using statistics? How are they doctoring statistics, not just medically, but business wise, if you're walking into a business and they lie, whereas $4 million company and you're like, Okay, and you have $10,000 extra every month, because your operating costs are like you're barely surviving doesn't matter that you're making $4 million of revenue, if 3,000,900 you know, whatever, if it's all going out in expenses. You're, you're struggling, right, one bad month and you guys full, that's different than somebody who's netting $4 million every year, you know, so, being able to read, statistics read and be able to research stuff i think is important. In in that so something I feel like I'd be Effective from there when you're helping somebody build effective content. What does that look like?Well, the important thing is to always start with the audience. So a lot of this is a trap that a lot of and I fell into this trap, too, that a lot of experts and people are just subject matter experts, people who know a lot about their topic. They become obsessed with the topic, and obsessed with the content. But it's that whole set hole, if you build it, they will come thing not being true. When it comes to selling education online. A lot of people think it is though. So you want to start you want to find products and content for your audience, not customers or an audience for your content. And there's a big difference there. So the most important thing is to focus on what is the problem to be solved, or what is the thing that they want, and then try to in as few steps as possible. That's a big mistake, too. You don't want to over people are overwhelmed with information. You don't want to just dump a bunch of insight PDFs on their lap. So you want to get them from really our noun to that endpoint and as a efficient manner as possible.I agree. And so with that, just because you're you have helped over 500 companies accomplish this. How do you address it? I guess if it's online, when you're doing online courses, how what percentage of these online courses have an active teacher, somebody who's involves teaching in it, and how much what percentage is just recorded content, like an online course is recorded, and they're gonna buy it and pay whatever and it was made once intellectual property and they resell it multiple times without updating? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So so it's shifted over the years. So it's very different than how it was when I first got started in 2009 2010, where it was a lot more self paced, more on demand more of a separation between the teacher and the students. And now what we're seeing is The model that we like that we see working in that we teach is more so that other end of the spectrum, or more closely resembles a true college class or college semester, where you're taking people in, you're taking them through as a group, we often call it call it a cohort, kind of nerdy term, as we call it. And, and it can be 100% live teaching, it can be pre recorded, plus maybe some office hours or some support calls. But usually, there is some, I think, going forward, the way of the future is there's got to be some kind of support some kind of live interaction, because if not, I mean, the, the, the numbers right there. I mean, the lesson is right there in the data, and that only one to 3% of people actually complete online courses as just as terrible. It's terrible all the way around. It's terrible for the students. It's terrible for the teachers as well, any entrepreneurs because, you know, most of a business's revenue should be coming from repeat customers. Because the most expensive thing you can do Doing a business's get a new customer. So if they're not if they're failing at that initial product, initial product is not working for them. What are the chances that they come back for more?I agree. Have you add sure you have in this space heard of lightspeed, VT said again? Have you heard of lightspeed vt it rings a bell I'm not too familiar with it though. Brad Lea is the creator CEO of the of the service, I would highly recommend looking it up his his service what I like about his service, and this is not necessarily a plug for him, but why not? You're listening. You want to create an online course, why not plug for guy he's awesome. Um, but it's a very interactive so unlike a typical video course where it's like, you use watch it hope they watch the help they got out of it inside of the video. There's a lot of interactive things, you can click on. And it's like building a sales funnel. But in video course form, so like, I could be having this conversation and then say and what's what level was your income? I'm, I'm fine. And so that makes sense, right? What level is your income 50,000, whatever. So they're gonna have three options they pop up after me and based on which button they push, then they're going to hear different content from me based on where their level of knowledge is at, or it's going to relocate them back to where they need to hear, hear what I just said. So they can so we can contest comprehension contest, make sure that the people are getting what they need because you may have somebody who's taking an elective class or taking a course just because like they need the basics but they already understand half of the what the content and most courses and make you go through the same like the same path. And so they're they're only getting, like everybody's getting the same cookie cutter information rather than saying okay, I want to buy this course on so Media, for lack of a better word, right? There's people who don't even know that on social media, you should have all of your profile pictures be the same across social media, you should have all of your banner pictures be basically identical, you should have all of your your descriptions about who you are like there's, that's like step one, before you get started on marketing before we get started I that have uniformity, like that's important. So that person, maybe that's where they're at? Well, the other person may already have all that done already have been paying for ads for a while, but just needs to know how to write more effective copy, right. And so for that person, they can go through and get the first half of the course done, still get credit for whatever, but they get the first half of the course done super fast, because they have advanced through that they already know it. And then they can move on to the part that they actually want to do faster versus having a course where they're bored for the first half of the semester lose interest before they actually get the content that they wanted and then they don't complete it. So anyways, it's a personalized learning paths. No, those are excellent. Yeah, and it's a, it's one of the cool things you can do with online education technology. And it's a great way to increase results. So I love that. I'll check that out.Yeah, he's said he would be actually a good. He's super, super cool. If you reach out to him on Instagram. He's in. He's in Vegas. And he doesn't do interviews unless you come to his office. So that's a thing there, but he would be a great person, I think, for you to be on his podcast.Cool. Yeah. That was my mom go to Vegas. Yeah.Yeah, no, it's uh, and he's super chill. And he also I shouldn't say loves beer, but he drinks beer. So you'd have to be able to contact or like, my kind of guy.Yeah. Um, anyways, so So let's talk about this. When did you I mean, you got out of your working your corporate gig. You've got out of beer, I mean, creation, I guess craft beer education. So was that really That the transition from like, how did you transition from your corporate job to teaching people how to create educational, like content?Yeah, good question. Yeah. So so I left the full time job in the, in the renewable energy industry to run this beer website. And so fortunately, you know, again, I'm not the traditional entrepreneur, a lot of entrepreneurs were just like, jumped ship, I wanted to have money in my savings account, I want to have a decent amount of consistent income coming from that website. So I got to that point where I felt really confident that I could cut the cord with a full time job and have a viable business. And unfortunately, that happened, but it was really more of a springboard that website into where I am now. My intention really wasn't to be the beer guy my whole life. That was just a cool project that I was working on and I want to be experienced doing it and of course, wanting to use it to leave my job. But I really missed working with with other things. People on teams and collaborators, really smart people like I was doing. I didn't, I didn't have that anymore when I was running the beer website. So So I started joining these online forums and communities and meeting other people like myself in all different niches. And even though a lot of them were beyond me, they still I can still notice things in their business gaps, especially in their marketing, where I would say, hey, if you just move this thing over here, or just do this or get this page up, it could really explode your growth. And so more and more of them start to reach out and I started doing some consulting on the side. And that eventually became my main passion, helping people like myself who had the subject matter expertise, but didn't have the the business expertise or the marketing expertise to get it out there. And because I had learned that and I had this traditional business background, that combination of skills, put me in a good position to help them grow their business, and that's what led me to where I am today. So I sold the the beer website actually a few years ago. So that's now in someone else's hands. But but he's doing a good job with it. We're still in communication.Good hopefully hopefully turned to pretty penny that Scott. That's awesome building websites, I didn't know how like that I don't have anything that gets a ton of traffic. But you can just like go by URLs and or domain names. And if you put something on there and get a little bit of traffic and like build up the name on Google like you can that's a way that's a form of investing right there it's kind of interesting business model but it's it's cool to see like how much what I paid for my my domains and then how much they've increased in value since I've put content on their websites and add things pushed to them create a connection. So it's a cool it's a cool thing to see. So I'm curious. I liked the way you said this, I guess is you had a bigger goal and so many people they think, Oh, I'm I'm in this business. For me. I work in finance, right? My objective is not it is my objective. is financial but I'm in finance because of the the bigger goal, right? The bigger goal for me being in finance is to help people with well, as they understand how money works, then they it decreases statistically decreases causes of depression, anxiety, suicide, domestic violence, malnutrition. And those instances decrease when there's higher income, or at least understanding how money works in a home. And so although I work in finance, that's not my main gig, my main gig is what it produces. At the end. I think that's important for people to understand, especially when they're trying to identify well, do I jump ship? Do I go do my own thing? Or what is it exactly that you're jumping ship from and to? I think that's a huge, huge, huge question to be answered. Before you quit your day job before you go anywhere. What exactly are you jumping to? And as Billy said he wasn't jumping to the beer company to become the beer guy. That wasn't as objective. He saw that as a project as a current way of expressing himself in, in other forms of creation. And I think that's important because so many people will get fixated on a certain thing. And they'll say, Well, I don't know anything. I only know how to be a mom, I only know how to garden. I only know how to create videos, I only know how to make beer, right? And so they don't see their value outside of the task that they're doing. And this holds people back. So many people back even in their corporate jobs, because they think I'm only good for what I'm being paid for. Instead of recognizing that the value that they're adding to that company is so much more than the tasks that they're fulfilling. And if they were just to go market, just the value that they're adding, personally, they could probably increase your income, even if they didn't want to change what they're doing. They could take that out of a corporate And go perform those tasks by themselves and be able to create the same or more income more regularly and be in more control of their income. So that's a huge thing. And then understanding that this happens. I would say this happened to me as well, especially with this podcast. Like just kind of the the germination of this podcast is I was doing Facebook videos about different topics. Facebook Lives, I did them every day for I think a month did a month of Facebook lies every day. And what I found was people were reaching out to me and saying, Man, I would love to listen to all of your content, but I can't leave Facebook on all the time. You should turn it into a podcast. I was like, Oh, I never think about that. But I'll turn into a podcast then. And so so so many times, think about what are you complimented on the most? What What do people compliment you on? What do you think? What do people say? And if I Just think like that. Or if I could just do that, what is the most common thing that people say about you in that context? And then reach out to Billy and say, Hey, Billy, how do I turn this into a course? Yeah, I turn this into an online course. Because clearly if there's enough people who recognize my gift, even though I don't recognize my guests, how do I make this gift? able to reach more people? And how do I monetize it? Right? How many times does that happen to you, where you have somebody who comes to you who wants to create a course isn't quite sure exactly how to do it. They know their audience, they know what they what they're trying to teach, but they just have no idea how to monetize it, how to make it effective for their end consumer.Oh, it happens all the time. Yeah, it happens all the time. And and I'll tell you what I tell them because the wrong way to go about it is to go disappear into your basement for nine months and go record some amazing video course. It's been a ton of fun. On software and lighting and microphones and all that stuff, editing, distribution, and just to find out that no one really wants the topic, no one really wants what's being offered. So, this is good news. This is good news because you don't need to put so much pressure on yourself to have something completely polished and dialed in. The way to do it, especially now going going forward is to take that audience first approach, like I talked about, start to build a following get in the trenches with your audience, hop on the phone with them even I've talked to dozens of my customers and email subscribers when I was running that beer brewing website, not selling anything, just hopping on the phone and just asking questions. And look, I was part of my market. I was brewing up a storm. So I but I still my mind was blown all the time. And I was surprised by the things that people would say and what their problems were. So don't fall into that curse of knowledge. You know, where you think that you know it all. The market will tell you and you'll often be surprised. And then just get something out there. Just get something out there. Take an iterative approach. And this is really my approach to to life, you know, and the value that I provide. And like what you were asking earlier. I mean, I see myself in a really strong point of leverage for two reasons. One is I think personal growth is the most important thing in the world. And one of the ways that we can solve a lot of the problems that we have in the world, yes, there are a lot of problems with society and the economy and all that. But if everyone really focused on themselves, and focused on if I focused on making myself better tomorrow than I am today, and I did that consistently, every single day, if everyone did that, we'd be in a really, really good position. And one of the ways to do that is through education, through online learning online courses, and it doesn't matter what niche you're in. What tends to happen if a person is improving in one area, even if it's something sort of like insignificant by most standards, like brewing beer, people don't think that's entirely a life changing thing. But it is and I would see how my students would come in and they would fall in love with this hobby. And that passion would exist. from them, and it would spread to their family, their wife, their kids, they would all see it. And next thing you know, everything in the household is uplifted. Right. So that's one leverage point working directly with them. But I took a step back and said, Okay, let me work with the entrepreneurs and the teachers, the teacher entrepreneurs who serve them. And now we get into, so now I'm able to help them reach more people. So improve this collective personal growth going on throughout the world. And also, I'm a big believer in small businesses, they really are the engine of the economy. So that's I love working with entrepreneurs. Now, they're the innovators, they're the job providers are the ones paying a whole lot of our tax dollars. So that's what gives me a lot of fulfillment. I see myself really in a great place of leverage and aligns with my values. The main one being personal growth.Yeah. And I think that that's the key is identifying what isyour personal value and how are you aligning yourself with your personal value, I think once so I have a I have a my journal, a journal that I created. But it's called the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. And the focus is identifying who why why would it be important for you to actually exceed or succeed in life in general. And it's part of a grander process of identifying your identity. And as you said, your your values for me my core values are candor, integrity, and gratitude. Those are like more important than just about anything else. And when I really analyze who I am, without any fear of judgment for not saying God or saying family or whatever, without any fear of judgment of anybody else, what am I personally internally committed to more than anything else in my life, and it's those three those three values and so I built my business I built everything I do in my life down to my marriage, my children, my everything, based on those three values and all of these need to be present in everything I do. I'm not interested. And when you're looking at jumping ship or going something new again, Be aware of what you're leaving and what and where you're going. Because I'm sure I want you to tell me some failure stories of people who have done this what I'm about to describe, hopefully, some, if you don't, that's amazing, but I think you probably will, but people who they, they were doing this, I decided to create this course or education, out of desperation, because rather than running towards what they were passionate about, and running towards what they love doing, they were running away from what they didn't like doing. And that distinction is huge. just choosing to try it, try and create as, as you would say, try and create a product that you can sell just because you don't like what you're doing right now. Your current, your current work. That is not the way to move forward. It's not I think it has a short lifespan. You're not going to be a long lasting educator or innovator anything but if you are passionate about something and you're running towards what you like, you're gonna have different results. So tell me a story of where you've had Somebody who is running from something rather than towards something.Yeah,well, I can give you my own example. Sure, sure.Yeah. So when I, when I made that transition from running the beer site to doing consulting full time, I was doing some service provider work. So I wasn't just consulting, I was also helping people build and maintain their Facebook ad campaigns and the natural path. And so I eventually pulled back from that because the natural path if you start doing that is to grow an agency. You know, so you start to look at Okay, how can I get more clients? How can I do a better job with this and you're just gonna wind up in that agency playground. Turns out I didn't really didn't want to run an agency. It just, it doesn't align with what I enjoy doing. It's not me, much more of a strategist, much more of an architect. I don't want a big team or anything like that. It just didn't match up with the lifestyle that I wanted. And I always start with the lifestyle and reverse engineer that So I started to go down that path, but then quickly pulled back because I had that feeling like and yeah, I can deliver value here. But this isn't, this isn't my zone of genius. So a lot of my life has been like that testing different things, seeing how it feels. Sometimes you just have to write like, I didn't know what that that day to day was like, it looked good on paper, running an agency getting a lot of clients. But when I was actually in the trenches of it, I said, No, I don't feel so hot. Let me go back this other direction.Yeah, I think that's that's huge. Being able to dig, like to determine and decipher between that What are you running from something you write to something and making sure you're running to something that you love and that you're going to bring the light and Joy to the world not just from what you don't like because it's just barely I haven't seen it pan out very well for many people. And it's good that you were able to recognize that before you got too deep into something you hated and decided to. You never know happens honestly. So I'm curious when you did make the jump though. What was your? Did you Who are your biggest naysayers saying no, don't do that. Why give? Why are you giving up this great job? Tell us the story of your biggest naysayers and how you overcame them.I have been really fortunate in that I've always had a tremendous support system. I really can't think of one person I'm close to. I can't even think of one person who said, You're dumb. Don't do that. Don't leave that full time job. It's great. Everyone was just like a really great cheerleader. Just Hell yeah. Billy, go for it. So I've never had anyone say that, fortunately. But I have had haters, you know, running. You wouldn't believe that running a beer website. You get haters, like, I remember I was. I was, uh, I did some videos about a beer cocktail and some British one. And I guess they're very strict about how they make these beer, beer cocktails where you mix two beers together a beer and some other kind of a silly thing. But people will get on YouTube get really upset and passionate about pretty trivial things. So I'll get flamed in the comments if I made the recipe wrong or something And then and then I would have people just generally upset that I would sell information. A lot of people just see that as a big No, no. How could you possibly sell this, especially in a niche, like an enthusiast niche? You know, the beer market? People are a little bit touchy about that. So, so yeah, I certainly had my fair share of haters, but but no one no one saying, hey, you shouldn't be doing that as a career or a business fortunately.Right? So how so? How did you overcome that? Because there's people who, maybe they have support in their career, but when they see those comments online, when they see that the haters, they're like, Oh, no, am I doing something wrong? Maybe I should adjust my my approach my market like maybe, maybe I should change maybe I get doing whatever I'm doing. So how did you learn to just let that roll off of you or not give it any credence? Like how did you move past that and say, Look, I'm doing me you do you and you don't want to do it, whatever. If you want to post crappy things, that's fine, too. Whatever.Yeah. So a big Part of it was looking to mentors. So looking to people who either mentors I knew personally or mentors from a distance I just followed online, who were a few steps ahead of me, or many steps ahead of me and had way more haters than me and seeing them talk about it. I remember I think it was a roommate safety, if you know who he is heard of him? Yeah. And he had his own version of Have you seen mean tweets against what he's called Jimmy Fallon, one of those late nights? Yeah. President Obama will be on there reading all the mean tweets about him and he makes it funny. So Remi did something like that, I think was him and maybe James altucher. And they're reading all the tweets. It was like this funny, they're sitting around the fireplace drinking whiskey or something, and reading some of the hit the April comments on their YouTube videos. So I've Oh, I'm a big fan of humor. So I used humor to approach it and just kind of have to laugh at them. You know, it's silly, right? And I don't take it personally. And I realized that they only see they only see a sliver of me and my personality. Right, like they saw maybe just the first three minutes of that YouTube video and that's all they know about me. Right? So I have a lot of empathy.I think I love that. I think that and that's really the whole purpose of my book or one of the major purposes of my book is exactly that. How do you like gain perspective of what's really happening? So often in our world today, we get sucked into like, Oh, this is such a big deal on Facebook. It's like no, like, literally in two days, nobody's gonna remember this thread even happened. We've got it got to keep in perspective there, how much they know about you. It's not an attack on you. It's an attack on their perception of, of what's happening, which is entirely different than on you. So I love that what would you say your your secret? If you have like a specific habit, mindset or behavior that you have participated in regularly to build your legacy? What would you say that is and how could we adopt that into our lives?Yeah, so it's really I'm a big fan of positive habits. So having a strict morning routine. Having a strict nighttime routine? And then and then self reflection. Am I improving? Going back to what I said earlier? Am I a better person than I was yesterday? Am I smarter than I was yesterday? Am I more skilled in this area than I was yesterday? And if you just do that day in and day out, I forgot the exact numbers are. But I think if you if you improve 1% each day after 70 days, then you're twice as good as you were before. That's been the biggest thing for me again, personal growth.Yeah, no, I love that. It's awesome. So how could we support you if we wanted to get in touch with you? Let's say we have a course that we want to create. Or we'd like to maybe take part and see what see what courses you helped to create and just take part in some of those that you've already helped create for other people. Do you have a list of all the companies you've worked with? And so we'd go cruising back. Oh, yeah, he's helped dessert. I'd like that type, of course. And where do we get in touch with that and how do we get more involved with what you're doing?Yeah. So nice and simple, best ways to get around. My website Billy bras calm b i ll y VR OSS calm. And yeah, there's a bunch of case studies on there. And you can see a lot of the courses that I've worked with and a lot of the niches that I've worked in, you can hop on my email newsletter, I send out a almost daily email newsletter. I'm a huge fan of email marketing as a channel. I just think it's the most intimate, personal way to communicate but I do it very differently than how most people do it. So So yeah, that's that's a very popular.Okay, cool. So here's the here's the last two sections on my podcast are some of my favorite. So this this second last section is called legacy on rapid fire kind of like a game show. But there's, there's no right or wrong answers. But there's five questions. And we're looking for one word, one sentence answers. I may ask you to clarify any one answer at any given time.Fair enough. Let's do it.Awesome. So legacy on rapidfire number one, what do you believe is holding you back from reaching the new Next level of your legacy.Hmm.sorting the great opportunities from the good opportunities. That's the constant challenge.That is and what have you found to help you in that endeavor?There's actually I actually have a really tactical thing that I use. It's a formula that I've discovered by Brendon Burchard. And I can't remember the little complicated, but you essentially look at everything that goes into an opportunity, the resources, the time, the money, the sanity, that you need to invest into it, and see if the payoff. So the financial payoff, the doors that it opens and how it fits into your lifestyle, how those balance out, it's kind of like a scale. So it's not perfect, but it's a good framework to use to evaluate opportunities highly recommended. No, that's awesome. I agree that you have tohave some formula of determining how You spend your time and where you spend your time. And I talked about it from a perspective of, you've got to become the CEO of your own life. And that's the CEOs job to determine like, hey, which contracts we're getting in? How are we increasing the value to our shareholders, if it doesn't weigh in the favor of increasing the value to our shareholders, now worth my time, and, and being able to hold that standard to yourself and for others, it's a nice school concept. I love it. It'll be a book one day, but like that might be a course before it becomes a book. I'll see. So what do you think the hardest thing you've ever accomplished has been to this point,running a marathon?I haven't done that. So I will, that I would tend toseegoes to the head and then like 10 or 11 years old, and had no not no intention of running this half marathon. On, but my, we were all showing up. We all showed up to support my family and my older sister who had been training while she was warming up that day, she pulled a muscle or something so she couldn't run. And so she's like, Well, does anybody else want to and I was like, I have two or three other brothers who are running. So I, you know, like sketcher Skechers. The shoes had like a leather, almost like nice, classy leather. Skechers shoes. That's what I had on. And I was like, y'all run? Why not? So I ended up running this half marathon in Skechers shoes. I was like 10 or 11. I was like, That will never happen again. So I haven't ever thought to brave another half marathon and

This week, the How to Launch a Book series continues with everyone’s favorite: book launching on social media. Twitter. Instagram. Canva. PicMonkey. Crello. Pinterest. Linked In. Head blowing up yet? We talk about planning your launch social media, how to use social media and image-creating apps to share and promote and why you shouldn’t feel one bit like you’re talking about your book too much when you’re launching it into the world.We also fall apart a bit, here and there, because these are falling apart times, and we feel it.#AmReadingKJ: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia OwensJess: The Secret History by Donna TarttHow to Be an AntiRacist by Ibram X KendiMiddlesex by Jeffrey EugenidesSarina: Pale Rider Laura SpinneyDon’t forget to check in with our sponsor, Author Accelerator. They’ve got a special book coaching class happening in June on coaching historical fiction, which I would love to be a fly on the wall for—as well as introductory and master classes on book coaching, and, as always, the ability to match you with just the right book coach to help you move your work forward.As for us—we send out a MiniSode or a Writer Top Five every Monday to our supporters. Your support pays for the production and transcription of the podcast, and is the reason why, this week, you don’t also hear my conversation with the child who walked in while we’re recording. Also why there’s music and a fun opening. Because we hired a professional, because it’s good to do these things right. So thanks for chipping in—and if you’d like to join us, click the button.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:01 Hey writers, it's KJ. This week we are continuing our book launch series and Sarina is schooling me on getting all my social media ready for a fiction launch. At our sponsor, Author Accelerator, they're offering some different schooling this month, June of 2020 with classes in book coaching. There are introductory classes, master classes, and (this fascinates me) a special class this month on coaching historical fiction. I love that they're getting so specific, and I would love to listen in on that one. If you're intrigued find out more at authoraccelerator.com. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 0:40 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 0:43 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 0:47 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:48 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three. Hi, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting, the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, pitches. In short, this is, as I say every week, the podcast about settling down and getting your writing work done.Jess Lahey 1:18 This is Jess Lahey I am the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my work at the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and The Atlantic, and various other spots.Sarina Bowen 1:29 I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of 35 romance novels and the most recent one is called Sure Shot.KJ Dell'Antonia 1:35 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of the novel The Chickens Sisters coming out July of 2020 and the book How to Be a Happier Parent out in paperback now, as well as the former editor of the Motherlode blog and column at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. That's who we are. And this week, we're continuing our how to launch a book series, in which we sort of try to cover all the different arenas of things that you can get ready for before your book launches. We've done Amazon, Bookbub, and Goodreads. We've done websites. And now we're going to turn our attention to social media.Sarina Bowen 2:22 That beast called social media.Jess Lahey 2:24 Such a powerful tool sometimes. Well, and I know for a fact that when I talk to authors who are sort of contemplating the social media sort of for the first time in a professional context, they're just so overwhelmed. They're like, do I have to do all of it? So Sarina, do we have to do all of it? Do we have to do Pinterest, and Instagram, and Facebook, and do we have to be good at all of it? Because that's the thing that seems to overwhelm authors.Sarina Bowen 2:52 Absolutely. You will find it overwhelming because it is overwhelming and you don't have to do it all. You absolutely have my permission not to do all of it. So, of course, everybody has their favorites. So you really need to ask yourself two questions. And Jess, you've been super articulate about this, too. Like, the two questions really are, which platform is your favorite or which platform makes you hate it the least? And the corollary question, which is almost as important, which platform is your people?Jess Lahey 3:45 Yeah, where's your audience?Sarina Bowen 3:47 Yeah. And you and I have discovered that our answers to this question are like 180 degrees different, whereas you talk to educators all the time on Twitter, and my audience is really on Facebook and Instagram.Jess Lahey 4:04 Yep. How did you figure that out? I mean, for me, it was fairly obvious from the get go because I think I started learning about personal learning networks and realizing, oh, that's where all the teachers were. And I was using it for teaching. But then, of course, when I started writing something that was about teaching, it was sort of a natural fit for me. But did you have to go looking and sort of figuring out where all those people were for you?Sarina Bowen 4:28 I really did have to pay attention because there are a lot of authors on Twitter. But at one point, somebody said to me, Twitter is where I go to talk to other authors. But I reached my readers on Facebook and I thought, okay, well, that feels a little bit familiar. But I'm a really analytical person and I like data. So of course, I've been using all of these sites, at least partly, for kind of a long time. And I realized that my Squarespace website (and every website does this in some capacity, you just have to find it, but it has really good data about this) it's called traffic sources is the page that I look at. And under social media in the last 30 days, you can see, or maybe I'm at seven days here. But over some period of recent time, I have gotten 816 clicks from Facebook, 158 clicks from Goodreads, and 78 clicks from Twitter, and 18 clicks from Pinterest. So that tells a really clear story immediately about what's working. And of course, we post fewer links on Instagram and my Instagram shows up on this other page because I use a program for this and I'm getting like 200 off Instagram.Jess Lahey 5:54 Wait, what do you mean when you say that your Instagram is showing up on another page and use an app for that?Sarina Bowen 6:01 Well, let's let's just dive right into Instagram because lots of authors love it. So anyway, what I was trying to say is that you, you can be given permission to cut one of these out if you can see in hard numbers where people are finding you. And of course, a lot of the links that I post on social media do not lead back to my website. So this is just a little subset. But I still find it quite telling and it gave me permission to walk away from Twitter without really looking back and I actually changed my account there. It says now that it's a Sarina Bowen update account infrequently monitored, because I'm not part of the conversation. And it basically says, this is a promo account, you know, do with that what you will, I don't expect to have a grand, wonderful following there, because I have chosen not to pursue it.Jess Lahey 6:57 You know, it's really interesting. I have a column up in TweetDeck - one for you and one for KJ, because I like to keep tabs on what people are saying about my peeps. And occasionally I'll find stuff before you guys see it. But what I often see are cross posts from Goodreads with a tweet saying what percentage they are through him via Goodreads. And it's really clear that people are letting Goodreads cross post to Twitter for them. And that's the majority of what I see from readers regarding your books, which was a really interesting realization to me that it's sort of not that the readers are necessarily there, but that they're letting Goodreads cross post for them.Sarina Bowen 7:39 Yeah. And can we just back up to the part where you said you have a column on TweetDeck, but that column is a special thing. That's a search column, right?Jess Lahey 7:48 Right, right. Meaning I have a search column with quotes around your full name and a column for you on @SarinaBowenUpdates or whatever your handle is. Just because I like to just know what's happening with my people. Sarina Bowen 8:05 That's amazing. Jess Lahey 8:08 It's fun, I like to see what people are reading of your stuff. And you know, it's always fun to report back that when people are saying nice things.Sarina Bowen 8:15 You know what, at one point I had a column like that. But I found that I didn't always want to know all the things that were showing up there. Jess Lahey 8:26 That's probably true. I've seen some things that I didn't necessarily want to see. But that's also how I found out about that thing where I was my one of my essays was on the SAT, because people weren't tagging my handle on Twitter, they were just saying mean things, and making memes about me using my name and sometimes misspelling it, but either way, that's how I found out that I was on the SAT and that all the high schoolers in the country hated me that year.Sarina Bowen 9:05 We're still on Twitter, so let's let's finish Twitter because I want to know something that I'm not good at on Twitter because like I said, I don't use it that much. But how do you use hashtags to find your audience?Jess Lahey 9:19 Well, it depends. I use hashtags on Twitter for education stuff, simply because they're chats that happen, like more chats than I can even tell you. If you do a Google search on education hashtag Twitter chats you will get this table that has hundreds of Twitter chats. So occasionally, I'll use them for things like you know, I need a particular book for kid a particular age and then I'll hashtag a couple of reading or teaching literacy hashtags, but I actually don't use hashtags very often on Twitter. It's not so much my jam.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:03 It's not like Instagram, there's not a lot of room for them. You just use a hashtag, unless you're joking.Jess Lahey 10:10 There are exceptions, though. I mean, like if a big education conference is going on, I'll throw up a column for that education conference and follow people at that conference so that I can see what's going on, and find out what people are talking about, and things like that. But for the most part, yeah, I don't really use hashtags. I don't use hashtags the way people use hashtags in Instagram. It seems to be a bigger deal in Instagram than it is on Twitter, at least for me, that may not be the case for everyone. But definitely for me, hashtags are not as much a thing on Twitter.KJ Dell'Antonia 10:42 I think that the reason to use them on Twitter tends to be because your being part of a conversation is around a hashtag. So it's often political, but not always. I mean, that's why. Whereas on Instagram, because people rarely reshare because Instagram makes it hard, I will follow certain hashtags. And then from those hashtags, I might find new accounts to follow. Because for example, I'm actively looking to follow people who write about the kinds of books that I write. So I follow a hashtag for that. I don't do that in Twitter for a lot of reasons. One of which is that I just don't go on Twitter anymore.Jess Lahey 11:30 I absolutely just misspoke though. Because in looking for this new audience for the new book, I actually do have a list around people in recovery and then I also do have a column for hashtag recovery or hashtag sobriety or hashtag sober so that I misspoke. Because I don't know the audience as well in the recovery world as I do in the education world, I do occasionally go mining and looking around just to see who's who, who's talking about what, who's reputable, who's not, sort of who's in the conversation, and those hashtags can occasionally help me access that.KJ Dell'Antonia 12:09 And I think the thing for Twitter is that if you're a nonfiction author, especially, but it probably works in fiction as well, is that you can end up in a conversation with an expert that you might want to reach or a fellow author that you might want to reach because if they're putting out a tweet, and you reply to it, it's just different, then they might tweet back. And because they're actually actively on there, well depending on whether or not they've scheduled their tweets, but usually the kind of thing you'd reply to isn't that, so there's an opportunity for connection there that's a little bit different, but I don't know. It's sort of more general. It's not a lot to do with launching your book. Jess Lahey 12:57 Well, for me though, the one thing I do though is if I find someone who's in my demographic squarely, someone who I really am interested in following on Twitter, and who I think really follow some interesting people, whether it's recovery or education, I will go through who they follow and sort of say, oh, look, there's some people I don't follow and follow those people. So that can be really useful too, if you're new to a field. Going and looking. For example, if you were really interested in like COVID stuff, and PPE, there's this woman, Dr. Megan Ranney, who's out there in the media a lot and Megan would be a great person to go follow and then look at who she follows because she probably follows a really reputable group of people within that field. So that's a really great thing to do, too. For example, if you were writing your first novel, and it happened to be a women's fiction novel, go look to see who like Jennifer Wiener or KJ Dell'Antonia or Jodi Picoult, who do they follow? And obviously, there might be some interesting people for you to follow in there as well. So that's been really useful for me.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:05 But to specifically bring us back to book launches, I will say one thing that I did on Twitter with my nonfiction book launch, and I think Jess may have done some of the same thing, is to tweet everyone I quote in the book. So when I was launching my nonfiction, I prepared in advance a bunch of tweets that were like, 'Thanks for your help with How to Be a Happier Parent, Jessica Lahey, it's out now.' They were a little better than that and I had those all revved up and ready to go and either scheduled or not, so that's a way to let people that were helpful to you know, so that hopefully they will share. So that's one way to use Twitter. And another way is to ask other people to tweet for you.Jess Lahey 14:50 Right. And, you know, our groups of friends can be relied on to really boost us if we need them. But it's been really fun watching for a friend. Like when Catherine Newman's book was first up on Amazon, and you know, it'll be out by the time this podcast goes up. She did that. She said, I want to thank @JessLahey for supporting me in this book by blurbing it and blah, blah, blah. And that sort of reminds me, oh, yeah, I really support this book I want to help. So you're right, that's a really good way to do it as well.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:25 Right. And so then another thing that you can do within Twitter is to create tweets about the book that people that are on your email list could send out. And if you go to share link generator, you can write a tweet that then you can create a link and you can put it in an email, you can put it in a blog post, you can put it on almost anywhere and say click to tweet. And if someone clicks that, then their tweet pops up, it's editable. So what I do with that, is I send it out to a bunch of people that I know, but maybe my email list, maybe my launch team, maybe just 20 people that I have collected, and I say, it would be awesome for me if you would tweet about the book. Here, I've made it easy. Click here, and you get an editable tweet about the book with all the links. And the person clicks. And it says, 'Hey, I'm so excited to welcome KJ's new book, The Chicken Sisters into the world.', and they can change that too. You know, 'I've read this and I love it' or 'I hated this I never want to hear from this author ever again'. You know, they can change it to anything that they want. But it's already there. And it has the links and it makes life so much easier. And I always kind of boggle at people who don't. People who just send me an email and say would you mind tweeting about the book? To do that I have to go find the link, and then I have to think of something to say, and I have to go on Twitter, I mean, there's like four steps in there. Whereas with share link generator, you can make it a one click deal. It also works for Facebook, but we're not on Facebook yet.Jess Lahey 17:09 All right, are we done with Twitter?Sarina Bowen 17:11 I would like to propose one last thought on Twitter that's actually applicable to all of the platforms we're discussing today. Which is that by the time any author gets to her launch day, she feels as though she has been talking about nothing except her book since the beginning of time. And she is a little bit sick of herself and the whole topic. But I would just like to say that Twitter specifically has a sort of short half life of each tweet. And even if you feel you've been discussing your book way too much, launch day is not the moment to change your behavior. Like it's the one day when everyone will forgive you for talking about your book launch a whole lot. So you know, hang tight and put out yet another tweet about your book on that launch day because that is your moment. And not that many people will see that tweet, even if you are sick of yourself.KJ Dell'Antonia 18:14 And to save yourself the agony of spending your launch day writing 10 different tweets about your book. Write him ahead of time. I mean, then you've got them. I've got a Google spreadsheet going in which I'm just dumping possible posts or make the images that you're going to use have them all ready and just know what you're going to put out there so that you don't have to generate it while you're sort of feeling that 'Oh my God, I've been talking about this forever.'Jess Lahey 18:54 This week coming I believe is my copy edited manuscript and I have scheduled for when that has to go back in and then I'll have another date coming when I'll hopefully get my galley proofs. And my plan is to go to those looking at my copy edits with a highlighter so that I can highlight a few tweetable, Instagram-able, quotable things that I can make Canva cards for from the get go. Because I'm probably not gonna want to go through the manuscript to the fine tooth comb again, after I do it for all these edit things. So why not do both at the same time?KJ Dell'Antonia 19:30 I did that with the novel as well.Jess Lahey 19:34 So smart...KJ Dell'Antonia 19:35 Sarina, you do something a little different. You do sort of the 'Here's what you can expect to find', which I always think is really fun, which I am also doing now.Sarina Bowen 19:49 Well, Jess mentioned Canva cards, and let's just spend a minute on Canva, because it's a really useful tool of mine. Canva is a graphic design program at least that's what it calls itself. And there are many there's one called Crello there's several versions of this beast, PicMonkey, lots of places where you can use templates and make cute designs fairly easily even if you're not a Photoshop human. But what I love about Canva specifically, and I actually have the paid version of it, is not only is it good at designing stuff, but it will save it for you for later. So when I'm feeling it in terms of promoting my book, and I'm not sick of myself on a particular day, I can go into Canva and mess around with things like quotes from the book, or thank you for your support, or anything that has to do with that design. And you can actually make pages each Canva document, you can just duplicate the thing you made, and delete the quote and put in a new one. So it's really good at sort of holding your design brain in one spot.KJ Dell'Antonia 21:10 And you can resize it for something else. So you can duplicate it and then resize it into Twitter size, or Facebook size, or LinkedIn size, or Instagram story size, instead of Instagram post size.Sarina Bowen 21:25 Right. I think the resizing is part of the paid portion, or at least it used to be, but that was definitely something that I enjoyed getting after I became a whatever it's called pro member. It's not very expensive either. It's like, the whole year costs $200 or something like that. So Canva is definitely a great tool for when you're switching from Twitter to Facebook or you want to play around with a checklist. Those checklists you were just talking about that I make are also wonderful in Canva. And another thing I do if you have chapters in the book that you're launching, and those chapters have titles, I like to make countdown chapter titles because as you hurtle through that month towards your book launch, it's great to be newsy. And so I will make let's say, chapter eight of my book is called, 'Is that really a duck?' I will make a Canva card that says in eight days I will bring you chapter eight, 'Is that really a duck?' And then the next day, I'll have one to post that says, in seven days, I can bring you chapter seven, 'The duck went fishing', and on and on because I've taken the trouble to give my chapters funny titles or informational ones, and it just gives you something newsy to put out into the world as you count down to your terrifying book launch.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:04 I did that with nonfiction, too. I did it with How To Be a Happier Parent and it was fun and it was helpful and it was just it just felt like something to say. And I made little cards, and it kept me busy, and gave me something to say. Jess Lahey 23:25 I just want to underline this whole planning ahead thing, because if you are waiting until the very end to think about doing these things, you're going to just be so overwhelmed. So the clear message here is be thinking about text, tidbits, strategies, things you want to do ahead of time so that you're not overwhelming yourself the week of pub date.Sarina Bowen 23:45 Definitely.Jess Lahey 23:46 Because that would be insane.KJ Dell'Antonia 23:48 And let's talk a little about the goal of all of this. It's not going to sell millions of books, you're only probably reaching... So when you ask other people to share on social media, you're reaching their followers and when you're sharing you're mostly reaching your own followers and some retweets. But I think something important to remember is that people need to see the book more than once, usually before they head over and click and buy. And sometimes they don't even remember where they saw it or how they saw it, it just becomes familiar because you've posted a lot of imagery around it. But you haven't made it annoying, you've made it fun, you've made it entertaining. So when people see that title, when they're surfing a book site, or hopefully in a bookstore, it makes them go 'Oh yeah, I've been thinking about that one.' Jess Lahey 24:44 I definitely hear that a lot that you know, we've talked about this before, that it's the repetition and sometimes it's the second, third, or fourth time that someone says 'Oh yeah, that book that I meant to buy the first time I heard about it, but didn't.' KJ Dell'Antonia 24:57 So to some extent, that all means that if you don't do it during launch week is just an excuse to do it. If you don't do it during launch week, fine, the next week do something different, create a bunch of things, and start putting your book out there. We don't need to panic if we don't get it all out there on launch day.Jess Lahey 25:24 You know, what's so interesting about the social media thing too, is that there have been all kinds of attempts, there was that thunderclap thing that was a couple years ago where you'd ask people a favor to all tweet and post something to social media the same exact time and I don't think that that had any kind of effect and it was a huge amount of effort. And it sounded like you were getting something done, but I don't know that it actually had any major effect. So when we talk about these things that you're supposed to do on social media or that you could do on social media, we're not saying that you have to do all of these things and they're going to have a major impact on book sales. But every little bit, you know, can help. And as we always like to say, we don't want to get six months out from book release and say to ourselves, 'Oh, I could have done that other thing. I wanted to be able to say, we did all the things that were under our control that we could do to help our book do well on launch day. But that thunderclap thing was very weird, I think anyway.Sarina Bowen 26:26 It was an attempt to make virality happen where it wasn't destined to.Jess Lahey 26:33 Exactly, to force a lot of noise all at the same time in the hopes that it would catch fire. And I don't know, I just mixed metaphors. But I don't know that that was a particularly effective thing to do. And I like to be sparing and what I ask other people to do to help me out and being a part of something like that wasn't something I was particularly interested in.Sarina Bowen 26:54 Right. I don't think I once participated, but it was an interesting experiment.Jess Lahey 27:00 Alright, anything else that you want to add to this discussion about Twitter or Instagram?KJ Dell'Antonia 27:07 We didn't do Instagram...Sarina Bowen 27:09 We should do Instagram, which is growing faster than the other services that we've been talking about. Jess Lahey 27:17 Sorry, in my head I kind of thought we had sort of done Instagram because in my head I associate Canva with Instagram, so mentally I had gone there. So my apologies. Sarina, Instagram. Sarina Bowen 27:59 Instagram is a platform where sharing doesn't really happen very often. So you kind of have this one moment to put something visual and beautiful in front of people and hope that it sticks with them. But discovery on Instagram also works a little differently than it does on other platforms, which is that hashtags really matter on Instagram. So, before you are launching your book, you want to figure out what hashtags people are using who are looking at books like yours and I have a little collection of these I keep it handy.Jess Lahey 28:42 There's a lot of them for authors and writers and books on Instagram. There's a ton of them, so good for you having a list.Sarina Bowen 28:50 Well, I have several lists, honestly. So if I'm talking about my own book that's coming, I will use bookaddict, booknerd, bookworm, booklove, booklover, contemporaryromance, romancereads, IGreads, oneclick, alwaysreading, you get the idea. There's a lot of these.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:08 And let me guess that you have a list that is pastable. Sarina Bowen 29:11 Oh, yes.KJ Dell'Antonia 29:12 So where do you keep that? Sarina Bowen 29:14 I happen to keep it in notes, that little yellow app on all things Apple that is just really handy. But you could use Google Keep for this, you could use any program that you keep handy. KJ Dell'Antonia 29:26 I use Evernote and I have thought about using Keystrokes. Because since Instagram really requires that you use the phone. You know, you can't post to Instagram except on a phone. So if you go (in an iPhone, at least) into general, and you go to keyboard, you go to text replacement. You can make a series of letters and put them all in there and then when you type that series of letters they will all pop up. Sarina Bowen 31:00 KJ taught me this nifty trick because actually I use it on Instagram too, which is that I have thank you and some longer phrases for thank you spelled out in German, French, Italian, and Portuguese, because Instagram is a really international platform. And at least half the tags that people are using for me on Instagram are in German, honestly. God bless German instagramers. So I have three different German phrases saved in those Keystrokes that I apply when somebody takes some beautiful picture of my German book and tags me in the post so that I can be thankful without writing danka, danka, danka, danka all day long.Jess Lahey 31:50 Yeah, that's really brilliant. And I'm actually going to need your help because I got tagged in a couple of things that I needed a Portuguese thank you for and I didn't have it. So that's really smart and really thoughtful. Sarina Bowen 32:06 So, that whole keystroke thing and being made to create stuff on your phone is kind of a drag. Thanks, Instagram, you can actually hack your way around this by installing a Chrome plug-in that fools your Instagram into thinking you're on a mobile device when you're not...But my current setup is that I probably have the picture on my phone anyway because I use an iPad to create a lot of imagery, and then I type whatever I want onto my notes on a laptop, and then I just open it on my phone, and copy and paste, or I rely on Bluetooth to copy from one device and paste into another. Because I am never, ever composing an Instagram caption on my phone, my thumb's are not that good at typing, it's just not happening. So there are several ways to keep your Instagram feed looking good. And you don't need to do that. Like you don't need to become obsessive about the beauty of your Instagram feed. But, there are moments when I want to kind of work hard on this. So I have an app called Preview that I use to look at what the grid will look like before I post and some people use one called Planoly. And there's also Later which is a posting to Instagram app. And if you change your Instagram to a business account, you will be allowed to schedule via some of these third party things so that it could post automatically. I don't actually do that, I don't need to post Instagram so often that scheduling is super helpful for me. But I know that a lot of people like to do it that way.Jess Lahey 34:13 But if you want to see a beautiful Instagram account, go check out Sarina Bowen's Instagram account. The gold standard seems to be what some book bloggers and some romance readers in particular seem to do for the authors that they love, and the people who create these gorgeous Instagram posts for you just blow me away. I'm amazed by the kind of artful creations that your readers create, and that you create for your books. They're really beautiful.Sarina Bowen 34:45 They blow me away, too. KJ Dell'Antonia 34:47 Well, you can use those when someone else makes a beautiful image of your book or just makes an image of your book because my goodness, thank you very much. You can do a couple of things. You can post it to your story, which is only polite I think and quite common, but you can also use an app that will allow you to repost and in this case I use Repost. And if you're using an app like that, then when somebody else posts about the book, you can take their post and use it in your feed. Thus, you know, adding to your number of images that you have without you're having to create an image which is really cool. And there's the opportunity to sort of say, you know, thanks bookstagrammar for writing this lovely thing about my book, and then you can share the lovely thing.Jess Lahey 35:38 What's always weird is when someone thanks me for posting something beautiful they made about my book to my story, and I'm always like, 'Oh my gosh, thank you. This is the most beautiful thing ever. And it's such an incredible honor to be able to repost that.' So it's a wonderful, it's also just a great way to sort of connect with readers. I love it.Sarina Bowen 35:56 Repost and those apps also will copy the entire caption that the other person wrote...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:04 Including the hashtags.Sarina Bowen 36:07 Yeah, exactly. So that not only are you assured an easy way of giving credit to the person who created that thing, but it's very easy to share. So because we never want to get into trouble and have any creator think that we've stolen their work for our own. KJ Dell'Antonia 36:28 Yeah, that's the nice thing about using the app instead of screenshotting it, is that it makes it very clear where you got it. And it's just socially acceptable.Sarina Bowen 36:38 Yep. My other trick for working ahead on Instagram is that I don't commonly have more than a small handful of paperback arcs to give away ahead of the launch. So I went to Moo and I made a bunch of these beautiful five by seven postcards. Like I'll do like 150 five by seven postcards of the book cover. And I will mail them all over the world because like I said, Instagramers are very international. And then I will see those postcards pop up all over Instagram during launch as well. And they cost a lot less than a paperback arc and it's honestly really about the shipping, I can put $1.15 stamp on one of these cards and send it all the way to Australia, whereas shipping a book to Australia costs $25. KJ Dell'Antonia 37:38 And that sort of gets around you know, if you want to be sharing arcs, they can be digital, but there is something that people can take a picture of, which is really nice. People love having something to take a picture. I love having something to take a picture of. I don't do LinkedIn, but I have some friends that do it really well. And so I'm just gonna ask them when my book comes out will you post this on LinkedIn, please? But if you are a business writer, you probably should be.Sarina Bowen 38:22 Definitely.Jess Lahey 38:24 Absolutely. The business world is very much about LinkedIn. And you know, I will post things there but I actually don't see a ton of interaction with the stuff that I post there. So it's often an afterthought for me. Alright. Can we talk about what we've been reading? Pretty pretty, please. Sarina Bowen 38:53 Absolutely. Has anyone been able to read?KJ Dell'Antonia 39:00 I will note before we talk about what we've been reading that we didn't talk about Facebook.Jess Lahey 39:05 I think that's a whole long discussion in itself. I mean, that's just me, mainly because I hear Sarina talking about the stuff that she does there. And she's on a whole other level with Facebook and I sort of have the feeling that that's its own episode in and of itself.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:23 Okey dokey. There we go. Stay tuned. We got one more book launch thing to go. Jess Lahey 39:34 KJ you have been doing a beautiful, beautiful job, by the way, speaking of Instagram of talking about what you've been reading, and you've really done a great job of doing these capsule reviews of books, and you've sort of set a standard, I think, for me anyway for understanding how to do a really quick review of a book. So I just wanted to tell you that I have been appreciating those a lot.KJ Dell'Antonia 39:56 Why thank you, I'm actually planning to up that game. So, I've been creating a whole list of books that I want to make sure get shared. This is partly just the the whole let's help make book book launches still work. So I've got a whole great list of books that I want to share with people that are either books that I recommend and here's why, or books that I have had an arc of, or books that I'm super anxious to read. And I've been putting together ways to do that. So yeah, I've been having fun. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Today, I’m going to introduce you to one of my favourite people. She's a master of having a flash of inspiration and then running with it.   She's got a deep understanding of the principles behind clarity, and at the start of this year, she found herself wondering...   "What would it be like to live in in a town where we had the time and energy to connect with friends, and family and the wider community?"     Clarity Coach Liz Scott asked herself this question in January and started a 3-month experiment exploring wellbeing in her local town of Ivybridge.    So how did it go?   Put it this way. The experiment has been extended for another 6 months!   In fact, Liz is now running online 'Wellbeing Listener' programmes supporting those in the community who want to be better listeners for friends, family and work colleagues.    And here's the cool thing... Few of the participants have ever even heard of the Inside-Out understanding.   But based on their experience so far, they're very curious to find out more.    Lots of people have already joined in with the Wellbeing Listener webinar including people from charities, volunteers, listening services, the community connector, business-owners, parents, change-workers and educators.   So I've asked Liz to join us here in to share - her inspiration for the project - how she got it off the ground - and her ideas about where it may go next   And here's the thing: because these principles are playing out for *everyone*, this conversation will be a great opportunity to have insights and realisations for yourself into the principles, and how you can share them with others.

Today, I’m going to introduce you to one of my favourite people. She's a master of having a flash of inspiration and then running with it.   She's got a deep understanding of the principles behind clarity, and at the start of this year, she found herself wondering...   "What would it be like to live in in a town where we had the time and energy to connect with friends, and family and the wider community?"     Clarity Coach Liz Scott asked herself this question in January and started a 3-month experiment exploring wellbeing in her local town of Ivybridge.    So how did it go?   Put it this way. The experiment has been extended for another 6 months!   In fact, Liz is now running online 'Wellbeing Listener' programmes supporting those in the community who want to be better listeners for friends, family and work colleagues.    And here's the cool thing... Few of the participants have ever even heard of the Inside-Out understanding.   But based on their experience so far, they're very curious to find out more.    Lots of people have already joined in with the Wellbeing Listener webinar including people from charities, volunteers, listening services, the community connector, business-owners, parents, change-workers and educators.   So I've asked Liz to join us here in to share - her inspiration for the project - how she got it off the ground - and her ideas about where it may go next   And here's the thing: because these principles are playing out for *everyone*, this conversation will be a great opportunity to have insights and realisations for yourself into the principles, and how you can share them with others.

Road bikes, cyclocross bikes, mountain bikes, and motorbikes — Neff loves riding them all. On this episode, the multi-time world champ talks about the special Swiss cycling programs that helped propel her to the top. Bobby and Gus speak with Neff about her early days of competition (she won the first race she entered at age six), overcoming injuries, and her new series Jolanda Land on YouTube. After getting stuck in the U.S. for 2.5 months because of travel restrictions, Neff is back in Switzerland now for a national training camp, where eight of the nine riders have world junior titles to their names. How does Switzerland create such successful riders? Part of it, Neff believes, is the unique race formats for young kids that prioritize handling skills and not just pedaling. Like many Olympic-bound athletes, the coronavirus pandemic has changed Neff's life and timing, but after the Swiss star suffered a terrible crash in December, the extra preparation time is probably a blessing. Neff, a veteran of the Rio Olympic where she placed eighth in the road race and sixth in the cross-country mountain bike race, talks with Bobby, an Olympic medalist himself, about lessons she wants to take into the Tokyo Olympics. Forefront among them, is advocating to have trusted female staff with her. "I need to have the people around me in those days before the Olympics and during the Olympics that I've been working with for years," she says. "In Rio, we did not have one single female person on staff. I get along great with men, that's no problem. But at the competition, you need a certain balance and especially for me, my physio that I've been working with for years, she is a girl. She was not selected to go to the Olympics. So I've been working on that very much." At the coming Olympics, Neff will be unable to race both road and mountain because the two competitions are on the same day. Outside of the Olympics, Neff recently launched a YouTube channel. "I want to show people cycling is social. It's fun. It's great. It keeps you fit. I don't want to show like, 'ah, it's so hard to train and everyone who's at that level has to put in work and has to train hard,'" she says. "For me, what got me into mountain biking and what I want to inspire other people to get into mountain biking is the fun, the social aspect."

Gleb Tispursky  0:00   But what happened was that they were letting their intuitions lead, letting the gut reactions lead and their gut reactions told them that we can't afford to lose. We can't afford to lose our social status in the eyes of the tribe, in the eyes of our peers, and therefore, we'll make these bad decisions, which will prevent us from losing social status.   Intro  0:20   Welcome to C R E P N Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you're an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant We are here to learn from the experts.   J Darrin Gross  0:39   Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks CREPN Radio, Episode Number 252. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is the podcast focused on commercial real estate, investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. Let's get into the show. today. My guest is Gleb Tispursky. He is the CEO of Disaster Avoidance Experts. And he's on a mission to protect leaders from dangerous judgment errors, known as cognitive biases, which devastated bottom lines and bring down high flying careers. He's authored hundreds of articles and written multiple best selling books, including Never Go with Your Gut, The Truth Seekers Handbook and his newest book, Blind Spots Between Us. He received his PhD in History of Behavioral Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. And in just a minute we're going to speak with Gleb about decision making for your business. But first a quick reminder. If you like the show, CREPN Radio Please let us know. You can like, share and subscribe. Also, if you'd like to leave a comment, we would love to hear from our listeners. And if you would also like to see how handsome our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. And you can find that at commercial real estate pro network on the YouTube. With that, I want to welcome my guest Gleb Welcome to CREPN Radio.   Gleb Tispursky  2:29   Thank you there. It's a pleasure to be here.   J Darrin Gross  2:32   I'm delighted that you were able to join us today. And looking forward to our our talk this afternoon. Before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with the listeners a little little more about your background.   Gleb Tispursky  2:48   Sure. So I've always been fascinated with decision making ever since I was a kid because the typical way that we are taught to do decision making. The way you've probably heard a lot is to go with our gut, follow into Question. That's the most typical advice about decision making. everyone hears that. Well, my parents were very much gut oriented decision makers. So they felt something was right. Their intuition told them it was right. And they did it. Unfortunately, often their intuition opposed each other's intuition. So for example, my mom liked to buy nice clothing, and my dad was kind of a cheapskate. So she'd go out and she'd buy a $50 sweater, and she'd come home and he'd yell at her say that, you know, sweater shouldn't cost anything more than $20 and stuff like that. And then they'd be off and fighting and so on. And already as a kid, I said, that was kind of dumb. It wasn't really helpful. The question wasn't resolved, and they still kept fighting and fighting and fighting wasn't good for their relationship. So and it impacted me as a kid, obviously, to hear my mom and dad yell at each other. But the worst time was this one time when my dad so my dad was a real estate agent, and he had a variable salary based on commissions. And there was a period of about six months where he made a lot of money, but he hid it from my mom. So he made Available money probably didn't want her to spend on sweaters. And so she bought an apartment elsewhere and leased it out to some folks. And about a couple of years, my mom found out about it. And she was so mad. She was so pissed there was a huge big blowout fight actually end up separating for a while. And so I lived with my mom and didn't see my dad much in that area. They eventually reconciled but you could never really trust them again. So I saw that my parents make terrible decisions about financial matters. And so that really impelled me to try to figure out why do we make such bad decisions? Why does nobody see set us down? Why did nobody sit me down? And tell me now Hey, kiddo, here's how you make decisions that my parents didn't do that. I wasn't taught how to make good decisions in school, or even college. Once I got to college, nobody taught me to make good decisions. They taught me math. They taught me geography but not decision making. Even though decision making is so fundamentally important. Everything, everything, everything we do in our lives, from business, to personal lives to relationships. I mean, Let's not even talk about relationships. I mean, there's a reason there's a 40% divorce rate in this country. So, I decided to study decision making, how we make decisions badly and how we can screw up our decisions and how we can fix the screwed up decision making that we tend to make. So I studied this topic and I started as I started studying this topic, people became interested in what I had to say. So I became a trainer, consultant and coach, which I've been doing for about 20 years and working in this field. At the same time, once I exhausted the very slim pickings that were on how to make good decisions and popular media, I went decided I need to actually study this formally. So I went in Taka Jima, and that's where I got my PhD in history of behavioral science, looking at the cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics of decision making. So cognitive neuroscientists and behavioral economists, they spent about 15 years in academia, including seven years, Ohio State as a professor teaching about this stuff and researching it. And so that's where my the book never goes. Got how pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business disasters came about combination of by consultant coaching experience, plus the actual cognitive neuroscience and behavioral economics of decision making. So that's what my background is like. And of course, all my other books also touch on various things. The blind spots between us talks about professional personal relationships, and the true secrets handbook talks about decision making in personal life.   J Darrin Gross  6:26   Got it.  That's fascinating life story from a standpoint of being a something that affected you in your childhood, how it made such a big impression and kind of a drove your, your career that's, that's really cool because I think so many times, people, especially if there's any kind of pain involved, but you hear about more people trying to avoid something or, or and I guess in a way, maybe that's it, that's what you're trying to do is avoid the pain of your childhood by understanding it better.   Gleb Tispursky  6:57   That not so much the pain of my child output, but I really care about people. I've always been someone who care who has a value side of utilitarianism, meaning wanting the most good for the most number. You know, it always hurt me to see people suffer. So the fact that so many people suffer, I mean, I suffered as a kid. And you know, I learned a good decision making by myself, but it didn't have to teach to others. The reason I got interested in teaching about it to others in popularizing it and helping leaders make better decisions was that this professionals and so make better decisions because I see all the suffering that comes from it. I mean, think about, let's say, the fiscal, you know, I grew up during the.com, boom and bust when in 1999, I was 18. When all the tech leaders were partying like it's 1999. And then just a couple of years later, there was the.com bust, when the people who are the heroes of the Wall Street Journal suddenly became zeroes. And so many people lost their life savings. So many people. It was a tragedy. I mean, I knew people who really suffered in that period. And so just seeing that was was terrible. For me to just to go through that, and even worse for the bad malicious decisions taken by the leaders of Enron, WorldCom and Tyco to hide their losses of these companies using fraudulent accounting methods. And so seeing the kind of bad decision making terrible decision making by these leaders really made me realize how important business leaders are to the lives of everyone around them. So that made me really passionate and fascinated with how I can make a difference by popularizing good decision making for everyone and especially for business leaders.   J Darrin Gross  8:34   Well, it's interesting, you know, when you think about some of the examples you cited there, I'm kind of curious. Do you have any kind of an insight or a Have you have you come up with a reason for any of those that you cited like the Enron and these others that the reason for the bad decisions?   Gleb Tispursky  8:58   Yes. So with Enron Main bad decision making came from actually what drives us to make decisions. So we talk about our gut, we talk about our intuition. But what is that? Well, it's about our emotions, our feelings. And what the research and decision making shows is that our feelings, our emotions, our intuitions, drive about 80 to 90% of our decisions, so when we just go ahead and let them drive our decisions. Now, unfortunately, our feelings our intuitions, they're not adapted for the other environment. They're adapted for the savanna environment, when we were living in small tribes of 15 people to 150 people when they were hunters, foragers and gatherers. And there are lots of things about the savanna environment, the tribal environment, that are not a good fit for the modern environment, but we're still have the instincts of going forward and making the decisions as though we're in the tribal span. So for example, for survival and thriving in the tribe, it was very important for us to climb the tribal hierarchy. We are the descendants of those who climb the tribal hierarchy and then fry them survived and spread their genes because the people at the top of the tribal hierarchy were the ones most capable of spreading their genes. There is a reason about 5% of us on the earth are descended from the great conqueror gang discount according to extend to recent research. So, there's a reason for that. So we are very strongly pushed to try to climb the social hierarchy to stay at the top of the tribal hierarchy. And the leaders of Enron, WorldCom and Tyco, you know, the burning embers of the world and so on. What we now know about them is that what drove them to make their terrible decisions to hide their losses was fear of failure, fear of being seen as losing social status among their peers. Now, the decision to use fraudulent accounting didn't really delay the reckoning by more than a year or two. And what they got a year more of bonuses for an exchange for what 1015 years of prison. And how much money did they lose while they were in prison compared to what they could have gained. It was terrible decision making on their part, because look at how much they lost. And it's not like they want they actually really seriously lost for using fraudulent accounting methods. But what happened was that they were letting their intuitions lead, letting the gut reactions lead and their gut reactions told them that we can't afford to lose, we can't afford to lose our social status in the eyes of the tribe, in the eyes of our peers, and therefore we'll make these bad decisions, which will prevent us from losing social status. So the fear of failure that drove them is actually when I do consulting and coaching for business leaders. I see it very often I see the fear of failure, the fear of loss, especially the fear of losing social status, you know, the top level when you have plenty of money. What really drives people a lot is not wanting to be seen as a failure or wanting to be seen as a success, and they often make really bad to say Because of that,   J Darrin Gross  12:01   So how can you guard against making decisions based on the fear of failure?   Gleb Tispursky  12:09   What you want to do is distance yourself from this social status seeking recognize that, hey, social status seeking is just an inherent part of what we do as human beings. It's very natural, it's very intuitive, in the same way, that it's very intuitive for us when we come across a source of sugar, you know, to eat as much as possible because in the savanna environment, you know, think about what happened if you came across some grapes or some bananas or some apples, it was very important for you to eat as much as possible in order to survive and thrive. We are the descendants of those who are able to do that, because the other people didn't the other answers the other people who are not ancestors because they died. So we are the descendants of those who were able to do it. Now when we come across a box of Krispy Kreme dozen donuts. We want to eat the whole dozen donuts. That's the intuitive thing. That's in natural thing for us to do that because we're driven to have all that sugar. Now you hopefully have learned over time and develop the mental habit that it's important to not eat a dozen donuts, you know, you want maybe one doughnut, you know two donuts, but you got to stop at the third donut. Don't eat more than more than two don'ts. Not everyone learned that which is why we have the obesity epidemic in this country. But still, hopefully you understand that that's a bad idea. Even though you might end up doing it. Sometimes we have low willpower and and not that I ever did it. So you want to make you want to understand that this is a bad mental tendency that comes around bad reactions. And you have learned to in to restrain yourself from eating all the sugar that you can. In the same way. You need to learn to recognize what are all the dangerous judgment errors called cognitive biases that our brain pushes us to make that our gut reactions, our intuitions when we just tell people to go with their gut pushes on To make, because of how our brain is wired, you need to learn about all of them. And you need to restrain yourself from falling into. And there are specific techniques for doing so. And the social status seeking is just one of those you need to learn to recognize when you are falling into that social status seeking mode, when you're afraid of losing steps in the eyes of those around you, and when that's driving you to make some terrible decisions that will hurt you and others going forward.   J Darrin Gross  14:32   So, you know, it's funny, you bring up the social status seeking mode, which makes me think of all of the social media kind of stuff where you know, most of it's like a highlight reel about everybody winning and, and, you know, I know there's been numerous studies done about just the dopa mean that you know, when you see the reactions to your post or whatever the that gives you a certain pleasure. So, If if that is, and I don't say that's that that's the the tell. But But if the from a decision maker standpoint, you know that you mentioned, you want to try and discipline yourself for not seeking that or be be wary of that fear of failure that that need for social status. So but but if you're somebody that's that's looking at potentially investing with somebody, are there ways that you can identify somebody that potentially may have this kind of fear of failure? You know, that you should be wary of I mean, if you were working, working with or investing in Enron at the time, was there anything that you could have identified or were, you know, things that you could have done to prevent or so you could have gotten out ahead of the crash.   Gleb Tispursky  15:56   So what we know what we know we have some research So I'm going to speak up from what the research shows. We know that leaders, CEOs, whether you know, leaders or financial firms, or other sorts of firms, when you see them appearing often in the media, that is a strong sign that they are overconfident, and that they are displaying social status in a way that's going beyond where they should be. So we know that, for example, we know that leaders who appear, the more often the CEO appears in the media, the more often the more they tend to overpay for a company that they buy. So if you're thinking about like a merger and acquisition, if the leader of a company that's about to do a merger and acquisition appears often in the media, there this is likely to be one of those many, many m&a is that fail. Now, m&a is failed rate of very high rate, they fail at a rate of about 80%. So about 80% of all mergers and acquisitions fail to create value, they destroy value, and the more A leader tends to appear in the media, the more of a failure will be, the less likely it will be to be a success and the more of a negative impact it will have. And there's many other so leaders who tend to appear more often the media who have if you look at the sentiment analysis of the kind of language that they use, which you as a potential investor can certainly look at the language and see if the love language is fluffy if the language is excessive, if the language is hypee, if it's hyping it up, then you're likely to see that later, the company will be worth less than it should have been worth compared to other companies where the leaders don't use the sort of hyped up language. So there is definitely tells that you that we know very clear tells based on the research in cognitive neuroscience that you can use to predict which companies are going to have leaders who make bad decisions, because of their excessive overconfidence, excessive over thing. So these are things that you want to really be careful about and watch out for. Now, leaders who tend to be in the background, those leaders are not don't get nearly as much credit as they actually should. So if you look at the kind of leaders who have the company result in the highest profits, it's very often leaders who are less grandiloquent who speak less, and who actually do more. And those are the leaders. The funny thing is those are not the companies that get the initial investment. They don't get the not kind of the Elon Musk Tesla going through the roof, but they are the companies that get the most profit, so they get the most revenue per share. And those are the companies that value bets that you want to be confident will actually earn you the most money. So that is, those are something those are just some of the many things that I talked about in my book. Never go with your gut. How pioneering leaders make the best decisions and avoid business ancestors. If you want to make smart financial decisions.   J Darrin Gross  19:01   And I appreciate you kind of going through that the majority of the audience is either real estate investor or looking to invest in real estate. And, you know, a lot of the deals that they're I mean, they're constantly making decisions, whether it be on a market or a, you know, a property underwriting a property, maybe be the team that they select property manager. On and on it goes. And, you know, it's funny because you you mentioned this and I think that there's a natural awareness sometimes of of what's presented or, or just the need to, you know, you have to do your homework, whether it be if you're dealing direct with the seller, or if you're looking to invest in a syndication or whatever, you've got to, you know, kind of lift the hood and and, you know, question The information and make sure you get an answer on that. Based on that, I'm just kind of curious if Is there a, like a strategy that you would recommend or, you know, suggest that people like real estate investors consider when investing?   Gleb Tispursky  20:21   Yes. So the book talks about strategies that are relevant, very relevant for investors. And for anyone else looking to make a good business decision. Of course, people who are making a decision in business about which vendor to select, and which whether they want to which clients to work with the client decide making a decision on whether to buy something, you have to make the same sort of decision as an investor. And I described two methods in the book which are fundamentally valuable in addressing a lot of cognitive biases at once. One for casual decisions, meaning casual decisions, which you don't want to screw up but you don't want to maximize where you want to get a satisfactory Good enough decision. And this is a method that takes only a couple of minutes. And it is something that you want to make sure you use multiple times throughout the day for any sort of moderately important decision that you don't want to scrub. There's also long and this is involves five questions. There's also longer eight step method that you want to use for more major serious decisions, when you're actually deciding on whether to take the big deal or not. Whether you're deciding to enter into a partnership or not something that really makes a major impact on your bottom line, and where you want to get the perfect answer or as perfect as possible, rather than a good offense. So but for the good offense. Let's talk about the five questions you want to ask about anything that you don't want to screw up. Let's say you're thinking about writing an email to a potential business partner, and you want to work out a nuanced issue as part of the email. So that's an email the serious email, you don't want to scroll down but it's not going to make her very pure bottom line. First question, you want to ask about five questions. What important information didn't I get fully consider? So what evidence didn't you take into account? Let's say you want to influence your business partner to take a certain decision? Now, have you considered all the reasons why they may not take that decision? That's often evidence that we don't take into account. So we just write the email hoping they'll ignore all the evidence, all the information that they that you would not want them to consider. However, the email would likely be much stronger if you think about their perspective. And if you take it into account and addressing in advance of their concerns, so that's information that you haven't considered now if you do consider it, you could revise your email to take those issues and count and be much better able to influence your business partner to make the decision that you want them to make. So that's the first question and that's an example of high implied second. What dangerous judgment errors Haven't I addressed in this situation? So What cognitive biases might be playing a role that you haven't considered? There are very many cognitive biases. My book talks about the 30 most dangerous ones for investing for deal making, for business leadership for all sorts of things. So you want to take a look at the 30 most dangerous ones, take a look at my book, never go with your gut. And if you want to look at the ones for the relationships, in particular, look at the blind spots between us but for business decision making, never go with your gut. Next one, what what a trusted objective advisor telling me to do so think about someone who's a trusted objective advisor to you, what would they tell you to do? What would derron tell you to do? What would that little angel on your shoulder tells you to do? We got about 50% of this benefit by just asking the question taking out ourselves outside of ourselves. So what would you tell a friend to do about this email in an objective situation, and you get the other 50% of the benefit by actually asking a trusted objective advisor. So call this person or for your millennial text this person. Next, how have I addressed All the ways this decision could fail. So think about the email, let's say your business partner happens to be in a bad mood when they read the email, and they misinterpreted and they get upset. And then whatever you want to see happen doesn't happen. How can you address that events? Well, perhaps read it, read the email, so your business partner receives it when they're in a bad mood, and then address all the ambiguities and uncertainties and lack of clarity in that email. And that will help you address all the sorts of the problems that would happen if the business partners about finally, what would cause you to change your mind about this decision. So what would cause you to reevaluate your choice? For example, with an email, you could say, hey, if I don't get an answer from my business partner, within a week, I will give this person a call. And now once you make this decision, you can just send the email and you can let it go knowing you have a revision point in a week, whereas otherwise it'd be kind of thinking about it all the way. In your mind, you know what? Why is your business partner not responding? Should you send another email should you call whereas right now if you make a decision in advance that if if then if you don't hear from that person in seven days in a week, you will give a call, you just let it go. And you got just go forward. So that those five questions are very effective for addressing a whole range of bad decisions that we tend to make on everyday level, minimizing risks. And this again, is for minimizing risks, not for maximizing rewards, for minimizing risks for anything, but you don't want to screw up.   J Darrin Gross  25:35   So I got a question. If you apply that five step process, how many emails do you write up that you'd like not to send?   Gleb Tispursky  25:47   Yes, that will definitely happen. You'll realize that, you know, maybe that's not the best, the best email for you to spend. So yes, I   J Darrin Gross  25:55   I was going to say, I know I have unnecessary thought of him in those, the one through five there, but I can tell you numerous times throughout the day, I'll start an email or a text or something. And then I realized, you know, what's the point of this kind of thing? It's not gonna, you know, is there going to be any benefit from this? Now, that's I appreciate you taking us through that. And especially I think just the asking these personally, as I've listened that, you know, what, what would a trusted advisor tell me to do? You know, because I think that's that right there is, is making me think outside of just the one to one. Now, if there's any kind of emotion involved in the, in the, you know, the reaction, if it's a reaction especially, I think there's, there's, there's power in waiting, you know, as opposed to reacting like that. So I appreciate you taking us through that. I got I got a question for you. You referred to, a couple of times through, you know, the information about how This is like a historical way we've been been wired, I want to say, No words.   Gleb Tispursky  27:08   Our brains are wired. Yeah. But   J Darrin Gross  27:11   is that is that? Do you find that that's at a cellular level? Or is that more of like, your grandparents did it that way your parents saw it. And it's just kind of a transfer of behavior based on the experience,   Gleb Tispursky  27:27   isn't it? It is at the cellular level, meaning biological meaning genetic in this case. So if you look at babies, you can see that these traits already exhibited in babies, you will can see that babies are things do things like loss aversion, they exhibit things like tribalism. So I talked a little bit about tribalism, so tribalism, one of them is status seeking one aspect of tribalism status seeking another aspect of tribalism is that it was very important for us in the Savannah environment, to be very strongly attracted to people who are like us meaningful like and trust the people who seem to be like us who have our values, who seem to like the things that we like, you know, like the same flavor is right. And to not like people who don't seem like us who seem different from us. So that was very important that environment because if we're going to be kicked out of our small little tribe who would die, and if our tribe fell apart, because we weren't supportive enough of our tribe, we would also die. So we're the descendants of those people who didn't die, because they were very tribal. And we they opposed attacking tribal members, hostile tribes, which wanted to claim their territory. So that's why I don't like other people who aren't like you. So you can see already those sorts of things, those examples. So again, babies were babies, if you show a baby, someone who likes the same thing that they do, and the baby will like that person more will be more attracted to that person. So these are not things that the babies haven't learned about these things yet. They are ingrained in us from when we're actually pretty, that our genetic innocence things. So they're instinctive and that is why they're very dangerous because they're instinctive, but not something we learned from my parents. They're just part of who we are. They're part of our genes, and they are ingrained behaviors. And that's the danger of following these ingrained behaviors that they're not a good fit for the modern world.   J Darrin Gross  29:18   No, it's good. Hey, I want to ask you a little bit about the you mentioned it, this fear of loss, or loss aversion. Can you speak to that and just kind of expand on that a little bit for us?   Gleb Tispursky  29:37   Sure. So here's the really interesting study that was done by a large bank, I won't name it looked at its best investors, people who had it's a, it's accounts for the best people which grew the highest and found that there were two categories of investors that were the best investors, one people who forgot about their accounts and two people who died   J Darrin Gross  30:01   Really?    Gleb Tispursky  30:02   Yes,    J Darrin Gross  30:03   You got it, you got a chance or if you'd if you die, you could be one of the best investors.   Gleb Tispursky  30:07   There you go. Exactly. So because there are so many people who on average tend to, on average, investors tend to buy high and sell low. And that comes from various dangerous judgment errors. One of the biggest cognitive biases that causes this is called loss aversion. So loss aversion is our tendency to want to avoid losses, even at the expense of getting much higher gains. So this is it's a really fascinating phenomenon. If you there's been studies done showing that asking someone hey, here's a coin flip experiment. I'll give you $40 right now, and in exchange, not exchange so you have the $40. Now, will you give me that $40 for a flip of a coin where if you get heads, you get hundred dollars or if it's tails, you get zero. Now, if you get that experiment to people, you'll see that about 80 to 90% of the people choose to keep the $40. They don't want to go to the coin flip. But the coin flip, the equivalent value of the coin flip is $50. It's 50% of 100. So think about what happens with a coin flip. If you do a coin, flip 100 times 1000 times do it 100,000 times 100,000 times, that's a difference of 40 million versus a 4 million versus 5 million. That's the difference between the $40 equivalent and the $50 equivalent, but we are very much so if you if I say that when I say that to people, they say well, you didn't tell me about the repeating scenario. You told me just you know this one time scenario. If I thought about it differently, if you told me it was a repeating scenario, well, our gut reaction tends to see anything that we do as a one time thing. It doesn't see the broader context of the story. veterans that we tend to make, it doesn't go toward that high gain the 50% chance of $50 of the 50% chance of $100 instead of the $40, I can keep right now. So this is one of the biggest problems that we tend to go for, we tend to want the bird in the hand instead of the two in the bush, even when we have a pretty strongly guaranteed chance of getting the two in the bush. And because in the savanna environment, think about it in the savanna environment. We were in a very precarious environment where it just we didn't have banks, it didn't make sense for us to gather resources. It's not like we know we, if you kill the mammoth, you can put all the food in the fridge, right? You can't store up your resources. So in the savanna environment, it made a lot of sense for us to go for the immediate short term gains and to ignore the larger potential gains from investing these resources and to avoid losses because in the picture So in environment, if we, for if we risked our resources, the $40 for the pretty sizable chance of winning $100, then maybe there would be a drought or something like that, and we would die. So that sort of precarious environment, it makes sense to go to avoid losses to make sure to preserve as many short term resources as possible. In the modern environment, it really doesn't. We have banks were pretty well protected from immediate short term losses. And it's so if you make a short term loss of $40, not a big deal, you will still win out over all over a million flips, coin flips and give the $50 million equivalent. However, that's not what our gut tells us. So we tend to when we are faced with the short term loss when we see stocks falling, we tend to immediately want to sell them, even though it might not be the right time to sell. And when we see stocks as going high. We want we experienced FOMO fear of missing out, and we tend to want to buy them, even though it may not be the best time to buy even though they might have peaked. So these are times when we are falling into that loss aversion, we want to avoid the loss of not getting into a good thing. And we want to avoid the loss of   more pain from stocks going down. And we make bad decisions. And of course, this applies to not only stocks, this applies to commercial real estate deals, this applies to all sorts of deals, this applies to our general way of thinking and being in the world. So you need to be very careful and know that, hey, this is a tendency in which we human beings fall into a need to be constantly aware of this and scanning your environment for this tendency, just like you're scared of scanning your environment for the and making sure to not eat a dozen donuts because you know, it's very easy for us to eat a dozen donuts if we're not full. If we're not paying attention to it. It's very easy for us to you know, just come home and play down on the couch and watch Netflix, instead of going out to the gym, which, you know, ideally, you want to do about 30 minutes of exercise a day. But in the savanna environment, you want to preserve all the resources, all the calories that you could and not do exercises. So we're not we are wired to serve at home and watch Netflix all day, you know, the equivalent of sitting in the cab and by the campfire and you know, doing that all day. So this is a problem for us. And we want to make sure to be watching out for all of these sorts of problems, cognitive biases, loss aversion, you know, and all of these status seeking and so on. And so that's loss aversion is one of the biggest ones that investors tend to fall into that causes them a lot of pain like this big bank discovered   J Darrin Gross  35:46   No, it's it's interesting you know, when you think about it based on the the two best investors, the those who forgot about the account or those that died. It sounds like sometimes not making a decision is one The best decisions that you can make.   Gleb Tispursky  36:03   And that's why I was giving the example of when stocks are going up, that may not be the best time to buy these stocks. And when stocks are going down, that may not be the best time to sell these stocks. And that's one of the just one of many reasons why people who do that are often the ones who lose.   J Darrin Gross  36:21   Well, I think it also, especially in real estate, I know I bought at the high and at the low end. But over time, if you if you have enough time, it all works out. It's a matter of you. I think if if maybe the first decision would be can I afford to lose this money? Or can I afford to not worry about it? or How much time do I have? That kind of thing? Because if you start from that standpoint and understand you may need a longer horizon to get to your goal, but you will make your goal maybe just not on such a short horizon and I think right Now especially where we're at, with the cycle of the market. When, when people look at and realize just how low the market was, you know, and the crash does and how far up it's come. There's this natural tendency to think and I think it kind of plays on what we've been talking about here. Is this kind of the fear of the next crash? And then in the news, recently the Coronavirus and you know, other things that suggest you know, there's there's like the antenna or up looking for looking for the next shoe to drop as opposed to, like you're saying the long run is things you know, you flip the coin enough times, or if you buy and stay in enough deals. It sounds like to me that that you know, you're probably gonna be alright, it's more a matter that if you're trying to time it, kind of thing that you might not. He might know when. So,   Gleb Tispursky  37:57   Yes, so you want to make sure that's why valid Investing is a good pretty good bet. You want to make sure if the deal makes sense over time, rather than trying to time the market and time trying to time the market, whether it's the real estate market, or the stock market is usually not going to win out, especially because you're competing against others who are trying to time the market. And when you're competing against the big firms that are trying to time the market, they're often going to be better at timing the market than you are. And so you can actually get the best chance for smaller investors, according to research on this topic is to try to do value investing, whether in the real estate or elsewhere, so focusing on the fundamentals, rather than trying to time the market.   J Darrin Gross  38:42   Got it? Gleb, if we could, I'd like to shift gears here for a second. As I mentioned to you before, we started recording by dam and insurance broker. And as such, we we try and work with our clients to manage risk and There's a couple of different strategies we consider when when trying to manage risk. The first is we ask, can we avoid the risk? If that's not an option, we look and ask, can we minimize the risk? And that's not an option, then we look in and ask, can we transfer the risk? And that's what an insurance policy is, is a risk risk Transfer Tool? and, as such, I have been asking my guests, if they can identify what they consider to be the biggest risk. And just for clarity, I'm not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. You know, I think some people they think because I have insurance. So that's, that's what I'm looking for. But it's not because I realized that risk is, you know, far reaching. In fact, everything we've been talking about here is kind of managing risk from the standpoint of decision making. But if you're willing, I'd like to ask you Gleb Tispersky. What is the BIGGEST RISK?   Gleb Tispursky  0:06   So what is the biggest risk for me? You're asking?    J Darrin Gross  0:09   Yeah, you are however you you know, you can identify you personally. Or if you see investors or how you see people making decisions or however you want to, however you want to frame the question.    Gleb Tispursky  0:21   So for me, and for me, and for many other people who are like me, the biggest risk, I would say is coal is a cognitive bias called the optimism bias. So I tend to be very optimistically biased. What does that mean? It's one of the cognitive biases where people tend to see the future as always bright. As always great. As you know, the grass is greener on the other side of the hill, everything is going to be wonderful, tend to be risk blind and tend to be have exaggerated expectations. So I tend to systematically underestimate the risks for my future for myself, and this is a huge problem. I've run into many, many mistakes and many problems.   That I wouldn't have to run into if I was not risk intuitively risk blind if I was not just focusing on the opportunities instead of the frets. So I've had to really work on myself and train myself and how to get some outside advisors and help to who are pessimistically oriented to run my ideas by because I just don't see the inherent flaws in them, which are many, you know, the kind of first was 28 years before breakfast, and thinks they're all brilliant. Now, to my bitter experience, I've learned they're not, but this is something I know I have to deal with. And this is something that I've learned to mitigate by both calibrating myself better and knowing that I tend to be way too optimistic, and getting outside help from people who are pessimistic who I trust, who I can run ideas by, and who can tell me that hey, you know, these are 20 have baked potatoes and you know, 17 of them don't make sense but maybe these three you could work on and you know, finish baking them into fully baked potatoes.   J Darrin Gross  1:55   That's great. I love you explaning what you were talking about what's just the five questions there is kind of bouncing your ideas off of somebody else there. That's a lot of power now. So, all right, so Gleb before we wrap up, where can listeners go if they would like to learn more or connect with you?    Gleb Tispursky  2:17   Well, my books are available in bookstores everywhere. They're published by great traditional publishers and never go there got this published by courier press, the blind spots between us as published by new Harbinger. The truth seekers handbook is published by intentional insights. So they're available in physical bookstores everywhere. You can check them out in Barnes and Noble indie bookstores, university bookstores and whatnot. And of course, online on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and elsewhere. My information is going to be on disaster avoidance experts.com. And again, disaster avoidance experts.com. There's going to be blogs, podcasts, video casts, guides, decision maids, manuals, services and consulting coaching and speaking and training and so on. You want to especially Make sure to go to disaster avoidance experts.com forward slash subscribe. There's a free eight video based course on making good decisions. So that includes as the first step of the course on assessment on the 30 most dangerous judgment errors in professional decision making, whether business investing and so on. Again, it's disaster avoidance experts.com forward slash subscribe, and I'm very active on LinkedIn. So if you have any questions about anything you've heard, connect with me there and ask me any questions. Doctor gloves support ski, GLEB TSIPERSKY.   J Darrin Gross  3:35   Got it. For our listeners, I'll have that listed in the show notes. So if you're driving and unable to right, find that there.  Gleb, I want to say thanks again for taking the time to talk. I've enjoyed it, and learned a lot. And I hope we can do it again soon.   Gleb Tispursky  3:54   It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for inviting me.   J Darrin Gross  3:58   All right, for our listeners. If you like this episode Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow. That's all we've got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to commercial real estate pro networks. CREPN Radio

Zach has the honor of sitting down to chat with award-winning journalist and author Pamela Newkirk to discuss the historical failure of diversity and inclusion. They talk a bit about her 2019 work "Diversity, Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business," and Pamela explains how and why transparent metrics across the board are the first step to actively addressing any diversity problem. She also implores institutions that truly want to embrace diversity to just stop doing what they've been doing and lean into the successful models that can be readily replicated that already exist out there. Check the links in the show notes to find out more about Pamela's work!Connect with Pamela on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.Interested in Pamela's books? Click here to read more about them on Amazon.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Check out our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and it's a Tuesday. You know, it's interesting--as a sidenote, y'all, you know, we pride ourselves in recording content in bulk, and, you know, we had a lot of different, interesting content that we were gonna share, but because of just where we are, we had to really shift some things. So thank you in advance for the folks being gracious with us, 'cause I know we'll--you know, a little bit behind the scenes. You know, we'll tell folks when we post and things of that nature, and we've had to change a lot of different things just because of where we are as a nation. And, you know, with that being said, y'all should know, if you don't know maybe you're a first-time listener. We actually are a platform that exists to center and amplify marginalized voices at work, and of course, again, considering where we are today, this work is all the more important, and we're really blessed and excited for the guest that we have today, Ms. Pamela Newkirk. Pamela Newkirk is an award-winning journalist whose articles have been published in the New York Newsday, the New York Times, and other publications. She's written a book called Spectacle, which was named one of the best books of 2015 by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Boston Globe, and The Root. It won an NAACP Image Award. She's the editor of Letters From Black America and A Love No Less:" More Than Two Centuries of African-American Love Letters and is the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, which won the National Press Book Club award for media criticism. In addition to this, and what we're really excited to talk to her about today, she is the author of the 2019 incredible seller Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. Ms. Newkirk, how are you?Pamela: I'm fine considering all that's going on in the world. Zach: I hear you. I'm exhausted, frustrated, anxious. I'm still somehow hopeful though.Pamela: Yeah, you know, I think that's kind of where I'm coming out on this. I have seen more progress over the past few days than I have in the 20 years that I've been writing about diversity and race and inclusion. Like, suddenly it seems to be breaking through, and I think there is no longer a place to hide and to pretend you're innocent or ignorant about what African-Americans are living through day-by-day. You know, as if the George Floyd travesty, tragedy, was not enough, we're still seeing constantly these videotaped images of police officers, you know, brutalizing peaceful protestors. So it's like suddenly it's all out in the open, and while those of us who have been living this for our entire lives, none of this is new to us. We've been saying it. We've been documenting it. But for some reason, the constellation of incidents, you know, from Amy Cooper to Ahmaud Arbery to then the most shocking, horrifying video of George Floyd being murdered on camera, this, you know, continuing saga of the African-American experience, to finally break through to the mainstream of white America. Zach: You know, it's interesting that you go there, 'cause I was curious, you know, in your book, Diversity Inc., you talk about the adverse impacts of unconscious bias training and how it's been proven to be ineffective, and yet that still seems to be, like, the mainstay or, like, for some organizations, like, their crown jewel. Like, they build everything around unconscious bias, the concept of unconscious bias, training around unconscious bias, you know, language that really focuses on bias only being unconscious.Pamela: Right. It's like drive-through diversity. You know, drive-by diversity. That's what the civil rights lawyer Cyrus Merry calls it. Companies are willing to spend billions of dollars every year on all of these, you know, the apparatus of diversity, but they're not willing to devote their money to interventions to actually doing diversity, actually hiring a diverse workforce. It's not that complicated, it's not rocket science, and yet, you know, we live in a world where you can go on Google and find out almost anything, and yet even in major cities companies pretend that they cannot find, you know, diverse candidates. It's really absurd, and I think, you know, that the level of frustration and the number of people out on the streets is now really shining a bright light on injustice writ large. It's not only the injustice of police brutality. Racial injustice has just been normalized, you know? Whether it's African-Americans dying of COVID at, you know, 4x the rate of whites, whether it's the radical underrepresentation of African-Americans in practically every professional field. You know, the health disparities. You go down the line, and we have, for centuries, normalized this as if it's, like, determined by God that we should have, you know, these kinds of disparities when it really is a function of policies and practices that are human-made, right?Zach: Right, right. No, I agree with you. You know, I want to ask you a question about the book title before we get to the next question. It's Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion-Dollar Business. Can we talk about what promise corporate D&I has failed to deliver on?Pamela: Oh, God. You name it. I mean... so, you know, in doing the book, I wanted to interrogate the tension between the rhetoric of diversity, the apparatus of diversity, you know, the diversity czars and the diversity studies and the diversity reports and the diversity organizations and all of this--you know, this huge apparatus. You know, the climate surveys, the training. I wanted to look at--you know, we're devoting so much time to that, and why we consistently fail to achieve diversity. Like, what's going on? Why are we spending billions of dollars on something that has been shown year after year to fail? Like, it just... it seems ludicrous, but yet, you know, you have a company like Google that will spend more than 100 million dollars a year on diversity initiatives and year-after-year end up with a workforce in which African-Americans are, like, 2% of the employees in tech. Like, how do you spend that much money and fail so spectacularly year after year, and could that money instead be used to actually hire... [laughs] Silly me! Like, do you really need to train 30 and 40 and 50-year-olds to think differently about people of color who are just, like, totally missing in those spaces? How about bringing some of those people in those spaces? And guess what, they're gonna have to learn how to deal with them. They would be their colleagues. Like, I don't need to be trained on how to deal with diverse populations, but I do need a job, and if I am in a workplace that has people from different walks of life and different races and different, you know, whatever, I mean, I will learn how to deal with that. I don't need to be trained.Zach: And, you know, it's interesting, because to your point, we talk about this training. It doesn't go anywhere, and frankly I'm frustrated by the space. And so as I continue to look at it I see certain patterns, and it seems almost like diversity and inclusion is a space where--I'm gonna paint with broad brushes here, but you know what? It's my podcast and I can do that. So it seems as if diversity and inclusion as an industry is, like, a space where white women can go to, like, help them with their careers or to help give them certain levels of access or profile. So I've explicitly seen white women, like, talk about diversity and inclusion at, like, these big platforms, like, at Davos, right? And they'll stand up there and they'll say something fairly pedestrian if not outright obvious, but they're applauded for it, and it's like they're applauded by other white people. So it's almost like a community within itself, right? Like, they use a lot of language that we really don't understand.Pamela: Right, and worse than that. I'm gonna go further on your podcast. [both laugh] Diversity has come to mean everything and nothing. What is diversity? Most institutions don't even agree on what diversity is. Diversity could be more women, more white women, diversity could be more LGBTQ, and they can be white. Diversity could be people with mental or physical, you know, issues, and they can be white. So diversity can totally eclipse racial diversity and still, to many institutions, qualify as diversity. You know, the diversity czar at Apple went so far as to say 12 blonde blue-eyed white men could illustrate diversity because of their different backgrounds. So this diversity has--which is why, in my book, I focus on racial diversity, because I think race has sort of been set aside, you know? Because supposedly after the election of Barack Obama we were suddenly a post-race nation. You know, people are not saying that anymore. No, not today, but they were saying that, you know, for 8 years, and here we are, you know, with the same issues and with the needle barely moving for decades in most influential fields, whether we're talking about journalism or academia or museums or the law firms. Like, look around, and while all of these institutions will wave the diversity flag, very few of them are diverse.Zach: Right, especially when you start looking higher and higher, right? So when you start looking at spaces for the folks who actually make decisions and really are responsible--like, who own a P&L, like, that's where you start just seeing--I mean, you may at best see a sprinkling of non-white people, and that's not even to say black people. You might only see a sprinkle of just non-white people. And so I'm curious, when we talk about this space, and you kind of alluded to it when I asked you about how you're feeling and talked about hope, but I want to talk about the fact that we had Howard Bryant, ESPN senior contributor, NPR contributor, on the podcast on Saturday, and I shared that I think right now is a watershed moment essentially exposing how by and large inept diversity and inclusion is at really engaging black and brown employees explicitly. And I'm curious, do you think that we're in such a moment?Pamela: You know, I'm hopeful. Of course, you know, the proof is gonna be in the pudding, you know, whether we actually see change, but I do--you know, I'm heartened by seeing so many white people even out on the streets, you know, protesting. You know, that's not something that we've seen. You know, Black Lives Matter has really been limited to black and brown people who have been out there on the frontlines of that battle, and it's almost as if white people have, like, cast themselves as sort of innocent bystanders in this whole racial conversation. Like, they have, like, really nothing to do with it when they have everything to do with it, and so it's really encouraging to me to at least see whites engaging in a way that I have not seen in my lifetime.Zach: It's incredible that you say that. I was speaking to my father this morning, and he said, "Son, I'm 55 years old, and I've never seen this in my life." It's incredible. So here's what's scary, police been beating us, you know, since antebellum, but to see white folks out there getting beat down alongside us...Pamela: Yeah, but we have to remember that white abolitionists were treated [just?] as badly, you know? During slavery, white abolitionists were killed, you know, just as readily as black people were. So it's really not that unusual. What's unusual is that they're out there, you know? They're out there holding signs saying "Black Lives Matter." I mean, that, I do think it's a watershed moment just for that. I think there are people who are being really cynical about the level of activism we're seeing, saying they're performing, you know, racial politics or whatever. All I know is that they hadn't done that in all of the days of my life, and so the fact that many are now openly expressing their horror in a way that they should have all along--I mean, no doubt, but the fact that they're doing it now, I welcome it, because, like, hello, welcome to, you know, your humanity, you know? We're all implicated in this, and black people should never have been the only ones to single out police brutality, racial inequality, the radical underrepresentation in all of these workplaces. That, you know, injustice affects all of us. And, I mean, I do understand that white people have benefitted from inequality, but they're also paying the price of inequality as well. I mean, you know, no justice no peace. There won't be peace in the land as long as you have a system that's so blatantly unjust. Zach: And so, you know, you talked about white folks coming out and supporting and having Black Lives Matter. I'ma tell you, Ms. Newkirk, when I knew it was a thing was when this Amish came out there. [both laugh] I said, "How did y'all even get the word?"Pamela: I guess what got me was the thousands of people in Berlin, you know? And in Paris and in London. You know? Australia. I mean, around the world, you know, the whole world is watching.Zach: And so, you know, we've talked a little bit about what we think this is. There are plenty of organizations, right, that are--and I say this as someone who, because of my network, I'm able to see... like, I know the diversity and inclusion consulting spaces and stuff out there, right? And I'm seeing there's a sharp uptick in demand for [?]. Pamela: Oh, my God. My phone is ringing off the hook and I don't do diversity training, and I tell them I don't do diversity training. "If you've read my book, you'd know how I felt about it." But I know a lot of people who do it and, you know, you're welcome to, like, speak to them. I'm all in for a candid conversation about what you can do differently to change the game, but I don't think it's something that you need someone in week after week--I mean, if that's gonna help you get to a place where you actually, you know, create opportunity for non-white people, if that's what it's gonna take, fine, but all of the studies have pretty much conclusively shown that training doesn't work. The numbers they report year after year show that training doesn't work too because most Fortune 500 companies have been doing this training for years and the numbers don't budge. And yeah, there's that Harvard study by Frank Dobbin that shows that these studies, especially when it's mandatory training, it triggers a backlash among white men who, instead of supporting diversity, it makes them even more resentful of it. And even worse, the study showed that 5 years after this training, the percentage of black women and Asian men and women actually decreased, their numbers in management. So why are companies doing the same things and expecting different results?Zach: And it's interesting because they're coming in and they're doing that, right? Like, the same training. I agree that ultimately--the whole idea of "We need to come and have a dialogue" is frustrating, because I feel like we've dialoguing--I'm 30, and I feel like we've been dialoguing for a long time.Pamela: Oh, my God. I've been in journalism and higher ed for more than 30 years, longer than you've been alive, and it's the same conversation. It's the same conversation from, you know, the 1960s, you know? And I guess the optimistic way of looking at it is--and, you know, after the uprising in the 1960s when the doors finally opened to people of color in fields that had historically excluded them, we did see, you know, the numbers jump up, you know, considerably. We saw more African-Americans, Latinos and others going to colleges, you know, entering fields that they had been excluded from, but as that progress became to metastastize, then we came into the '80s and we had this backlash against diversity, you know, under Reagan, and we had this, you know, systemic dismantling of every policy, every practice.Zach: All those social programs got gutted, yeah.Pamela: Yes, everything got gutted, and then the backlash--we're still living in that backlash to the progress that had been made. So, you know, the interesting thing is that all of these institutions can turn on a dime when they're ready, when they want to. Like, we're seeing companies now suddenly devote millions of dollars. I just heard Bain is gonna, you know, donate 100 million to, you know, black causes, and all of these things are suddenly happening, so it's so easy for them to turn it around, to open that spigot, but what has been lacking is the leadership, the will, and the intention.Zach: Yeah, yeah. And to your point, right, we've seen this organizations--a lot of these organizations, these big ones, like, they solve big problems. They solve really big problems. But the frustrating thing for me I think is that we treat racism as an abstract, right? So we'll say things like, "Well, we just need to open our hearts and minds." It's like, "We don't really actually need to open our hearts and minds. We just need to tie these things back into tangible outcomes." You know, create and add new policies that hold and drive accountability, increase transparency, and make certain demands and expectations, right? Like I said, I'm alluding back to the Saturday episode, but it's just fresh in my mind, because I think about the fact that Howard Bryant, he said, you know, "The reason you come in [and] you don't sexually harass somebody isn't--you know, it may be because you're a decent person." [both laugh] Pamela: It may be, and it may be because you'll get fired.Zach: You know that there's gonna be consequences and repercussions if you come in here acting stupid, harassing women or harassing anybody, saying something inappropriate. You know that.Pamela: Exactly. And do you need a training program to tell you that?Zach: I genuinely don't, and I loathe every single one of them. But you're right.Pamela: Yeah, and the thing is it's not even that I'm just so against the idea of training--even though I kind of am, but if there was anything, any proof, that they actually helped realize diversity, I'd be all about it, you know? There are measures that we know work, and I just don't understand why we keep doing something that has not borne fruit and we ignore the things that do, and that leads me to believe that there's not an honest intention to actually realize diversity.Zach: I agree. So some of it to me is, like, when you talk about, like, programming for diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, it's typically some type of instructor-led training, but a lot of studies continue to show that being able to have authentic conversations and build stories, again, tying and really having the critical conversations to tie goals and values to policy, is really what drives results, but we're just still not there yet. I'm curious, again, there are plenty of organizations who are just now trying to build, like, some type of office, right? Some type of council or department or whatever you want to call it. What would you say are some of the biggest mistakes folks--and when I say folks I mean organizations--commit when they try to launch initiatives or departments or groups like this?Pamela: Yeah, I think the biggest mistake is that the leadership sort of farms out this diversity issue to the most marginalized person in the organization, which is usually the diversity czar, whatever they call the diversity professional in that organization. Usually that person is the most marginalized executive of the team. It's usually a person of color or a woman, and they usually don't have much power, and so don't do that, and if you're going to do that, if you're gonna go that route, then you have to empower that person to actually get results. One thing that we've seen from studies, there was a study done a year ago, a survey of Fortune 500 D&I professionals, and I think it was somewhere around 65% did not even have access to the metrics, the diversity metrics, in the organization they work for. So how could they hope to fix a problem that they can't even see, right? So they're shooting in the dark. We know the most effective way to tackle a diversity problem is first to have transparent metrics across job categories, across, you know, bonus systems, any kind of award systems. Who's getting, who's not? Right? You know, you have to look under the hood and see what's actually happening in these companies, because we know with unconscious bias you can keep blaming everything on unconscious bias, but whether it's conscious or unconscious, let's see how it's working in your organization. Only then can you hope to even have an intervention, you know? Whether it's in your promotion system, it's your hiring system, it's looking at, you know, who's even being interviewed for positions, you know? What kind of outreach are you doing? So you have to have transparent metrics across the board. It is the first step, and once you do that then you can hope to have the kind of interventions that will allow you to actively address the problem. It's what--I do a chapter on what happened at Coca-Cola after they were sued for racial discrimination, and part of the settlement was having this task force that oversaw what they were doing to correct the problem, and over 5 years they were able to make substantial improvements through a system of transparent metrics and accountability.Zach: And, you know, it's interesting because I think when we talk about metrics--and it goes back just to, like, the lack of inclusion in this work, but when you talk about metrics it presumes that the people who are measuring understand what they're measuring for, right? But if you have a group--and there's plenty of articles, you know, op-eds, analysis, reports, all kinds of things about just how behind the majority population on matters of race, so then why would that same population then be responsible for measuring the nuances of race and diversity? [both laugh]Pamela: Are you saying the fox is guarding the chicken coop? Is that what you're saying? [laughs]Zach: Absolutely. Absolutely it is.Pamela: Well, yeah. So if you're not allowing the person charged with increasing diversity, if you're not giving them access to those numbers, you know, you're hiding something for one thing, right? And you're handcuffing them. There's no way that they can hope to correct those issues without having that kind of information. I mean, that's just basic to their job, but yet you talk to most D&I people and they don't have access to that.Zach: And what's also interesting about that is that--I don't know, there's different levels, right? Because the other piece, you talked about power, and I've been--Living Corporate has been a bit more intentional in calling out, like, the ethics of power and how all of these things work, right? Because you just rarely ever see the person who's really driving diversity, equity and inclusion be somebody that really has authority, and they're not respected in the space because typically their role is something internal. You know, they're not necessarily driving any type of revenue, so they're not gonna really be heard. And on top of that sometimes compounded is the complexity that you have organizations that will get somebody who is black or brown, but again make them junior, so not only do they not have the formal hierarchal power, they don't even have the social capital that comes with being white to really navigate and do their jobs well because they're, you know, often times tokenized.Pamela: Right. It really comes down to leadership, because in any organization people know what matters and what doesn't matter, right? You know if a person really has power or if they just have a title. Like, it's not hard to figure out, you know, who you have to respect and who you can ignore and, you know, what they stand for, so it really does come down to leadership and if leaders are gonna continue to farm this issue out to marginalized people, be they consultants or, you know, a diversity person who really has no power, you know? We're not gonna see any progress in that space. And, I mean, looking at all of these fields that have not changed in all of this time, that has to be willful, and so it's gonna take will to change that, and I hope that we're living in a time now where people realize that, you know, this is not a sustainable situation.Zach: It's not, and that actually leads me to my next question. I want to quote an excerpt from your book. "The quest for racial diversity has long been an uphill crusade, but now it's waged in a far more polarized climate in which many whites now claim they are being disenfranchised as others are afforded undue advantage. An NPR poll conducted in 2017 found that 55% of white Americans believe that they are discriminated against while, tellingly, a lower percentage said that they actually have experienced discrimination. A Reuters survey in 2017 found that 39% of whites polled agreed with the statement that quote, "White people are currently under attack in this country," end quote." So I'm quoting this because the reality of this, I believe, is still showing up in 2020 in that a significant percentage of white D&I experts, quote-unquote, they have the opinion that white folks, particularly white men, need to be included, because if you don't include them, then you're essentially violating your own principles by excluding them. [both laugh] And so I'm curious, like, especially as we see an uptick in focus on black lives and really working--you know, there's a lot of folks downloading and buying books on anti-racism and, like, you know, there's really a push for that right now. Do you see this trend increasing?Pamela: Oh, definitely, but we're just weeks into it. [laughs] So I can't tell you where it's headed, you know? But I see that as a good thing, you know, because for years, for decades, you know, African-Americans and other scholars of color and journalists have been doing this work, and often times we're preaching to the choir, you know? And now to see so many whites leaning in to this scholarship and to the idea of anti-racism, not only, you know, relating to members of, you know, skinheads or the Ku Klux Klan, but could implicate the average white person, you know? Reading Robin DiAngelo's work, White Fragility, she talks about the ways in which whites perpetuate white supremacy, but they do it in a way that they feel they're just neutral in it. They don't see how they are helping by either their silence or by just holding these deeply embedded ideas about race and merit and who actually deserves the kind of privilege that many whites enjoy. Like, are they African-Americans? Maybe there are a few who they see as deserving the kind of privilege that they enjoy, but that's the exception, not the rule. So these ideas are so deeply embedded in the white American psyche that it will take, you know, some time to kind of dismantle an idealogy that has been rooted in the history of this country, right, from the very beginning, and these ideas did not bubble up from the ground up. They were taught in places like Harvard and Princeton and Yale and Columbia University, you know? So this whole idea of science, you know, was rooted in this notion of African inferiority and European superiority.Zach: Yeah, measuring skull size and all that kind of stuff.Pamela: Yeah, so we're not that far removed from that. That idealogy is still very much a part of the American ethos, and until that is exposed and examined by the people who hold those ideas, we're gonna continue to see it play out in so many ways.Zach: And to your point, when we talk about racism--there are folks who I have, colleagues, associates, whatever, right, and we'll talk about racism, and a lot of times we'll talk about it, like, in forms--like, "It's out there." Like, it's "out there." Like, that's why George Floyd--because of systemic racism, that's why George Floyd was murdered in the street on camera with no accountability until we had riots, but the challenge and I think the next step as we look at this work, to your point around, like, really addressing and interrogating it, is analyzing what the same systems that allow those types of things to happen, the Amy Coopers of the world, those systems persist here too in work. Pamela: Exactly, and it's being able to kind of position yourself within the space. Like, where are you? Like, how do you benefit from this system, and what do you do with your privilege? And it's not enough just not to be actively racist. Like, in what ways are you anti-racist? In what ways are you working to dismantle injustice? And that's the next step for the so-called decent whites who I don't think are, you know, actively racist, but they're complicit in a racially injustice system through their silence, through their inaction. They work in these spaces, and they're not using their forums and their positions to tackle something that is so persistent and perverse.Zach: You know, I just started really thinking about, again, like, connecting historical racist idealogies and beliefs in America and then, like, how they show up at work. And so, like, an example that I think about, and I'm not a researcher and, like, I've talked to some friends and, like, I really want to put some research together on this, but, like, when you think about the history of black women and how they've been treated in this country and how essentially--there's been all kinds of writing on how there was a belief that essentially black women--black people across the board, but black women specifically--they don't feel pain in the same waysa that white women do, right?Pamela: Ugh, right. The black superwoman, yeah.Zach: Right? So in fact a lot of the understandings that we have about the female anatomy comes from the abuse of black female slaves. But this idea that, you know, black women are just tougher and, like, stronger inherently or biologically, you know? And we see that in sports, right? Like, Serena Williams is, like, a classic example of that and also why she wasn't heard and she almost died when she had her child, but I think that mentality and that attitude, it persists in the workplace as well, and it shows up in the workplace by way of black women being overworked and underappreciated.Pamela: Right. Well, you know, it's what history has demanded of us, right? We had to be stronger. Like, what was the alternative to that? Being beaten more? Being raped more? So paradoxically it's partly true that that's why we're still here.Zach: Right, by means of survival.Pamela: Right, but, you know, we haven't been given the opportunity to show weakness and to cry when things happen, things go wrong, you know? That fragility that may be afforded a white woman doesn't work for us.Zach: And I think we could find, like, similar... I guess my point is, like, that the meta-narrative doesn't stop, and so when you talk about systemic racism--so I'm the son of an English teacher, so, like, I'm very sensitive about words, right? So if you're gonna use a word like "systemic," then be comfortable with interrogating the concept that whatever you're talking about reaches as far as you can see and beyond that. And so, you know, when we talk about, like, we just talked about science and a lot of the racist concepts in considering that black folks were inherently inferior.Pamela: Right. And, I mean, those ideas are still debated, you know, just--like it was, like, 10 years ago, maybe it was a little more than that, when Newsweek and Time had, like, this big debate going about, you know, the bell curve.Zach: People still talk about the bell curve.Pamela: People still do, and, I mean, it's still with us, even if it's not as polite today to [?], it's still very much with us. Even if people don't say it, that idealogy persists.Zach: Exactly, and so it's like, "Okay, not only was this--" Like, at one point in time this was rigorous, firmly accepted, widely, globally accepted academic truth, and now it's waned into being impolite conversation...Pamela: Precisely, but still true. [laughs]Zach: Right, but still believed to be true.Pamela: But it's PC to now say it.Zach: Right, so it's not unreasonable then to believe that majority counterparts presume or have some conscious or unconscious beliefs that black people are inferior, and that comes up in language like, "They're not as strategic," or "They don't think as critically," or whatever, but it's subtle, and [?]--Pamela: Or that they're natural athletes or natural artists. Like, nothing comes out of a thinking place. [laughs]Zach: Right. "They're creative, but they're not strategic," right? And it shows up in a lot of genteel language, but you talked about Robin DiAngelo and you talked about white fragility. You know, we had her on the podcast a little while ago, and--you shared it actually on Twitter. Thank you for that.Pamela: I did, because I think it's so timely.Zach: It is. And when we talk about white fragility--and for the sake of just kind of level-setting, right, it's essentially the low fluency and resilience white folks have with regards to engaging matters of race, especially discussing where they may be the perpetrators of conscious or unconscious racist behaviors.Pamela: But then think about it. There are no penalties for them not knowing so much about the history of race in this country, you know? I've written about this. You could do a doctorate, a post-doc, and never have to meaningfully confront the history of race in this country, you know? You don't have to know about what happened to the Irish and what happened to, you know, Italians and Greek people at the turn of the century and how, you know, they were demeaned. You don't have to know how race operates and how it is just, like, so deeply embedded in the whole system of this country, and so because you may know who some of the major contributors to American history were who happen to be African-American, they never have to know. They don't have to know who Fredrick Douglass is, Booker T. Washington. Like, all of the people who I grew up just knowing because my parents taught me, I would never be penalized on an SAT for not knowing that. So they've been able to skate through life without understanding why it is that we have this kind of systemic imbalance around race, and they think it's because of merit. They think it's because they worked harder. They think, "Well, slavery was abolished in the 1860s, so what's the problem? You've had all this time." They don't look at the ways in which that system is still very much actively working against any kind of racial equality, you know, racial justice. And so when you're, like, just ignorant and not penalized for that ignorance, like, it's not totally the fault--you know, I have white students who sometimes are in tears in my class. I teach a class that examines the history of racial portrayals of marginalized groups, and they say "How is it that I'm in college and I never learned any of this history?" Like, it's not their fault, you know? Because only those who choose to elect--and these are electives that they would take to learn about this--like, it's not required. These courses are so marginalized, and they're so important for white people to have a sense of all of the ways in which they have been privileged throughout history without knowing that they're twicely just ignorant. Zach: And to your point though, right, you have this group who--so, like, let's talk about the workplace. So you have this group that has never had to really critically engage around race, never had to engage around how their own behaviors have been harmful to folks who don't look like them. Now all of a sudden, no matter [?]--like you said, this just really got started, right? We're just a couple weeks in, but let's say this goes on for two years, whatever, you know, suddenly there's going to be--you go from, like, not moving at all to almost running at a rabbit's pace, and I'm curious about with the current client focusing on black people, black experiences and really continuing to unpack that, how would you advise, like, a majority-white leadership space mitigate burn-out? Because they just don't have--again, we talk about white fragility, they don't have the bandwidth and they don't have the cardiovascular, right, to keep up.Pamela: Well, you know, I think they do, you know? I think these institutions have been so afraid to engage these matters and now they're seeing the consequences of kind of their hands-off policy, you know? We've made the progress we have made due to uprisings in the 1960s, because all of that scholarship was out there then, but no one listened until buildings started building and, you know, people started feeling kind of unsafe, and then suddenly everyone leaned in [?], and I think we're in that same kind of space right now where I think people are honestly leaning in--I mean, I've gotten notes over the past week from colleagues who, you know, kind of didn't really--I guess they saw me as kind of a radical, and now all of a sudden they're seeing my ideas as mainstream. So they're writing me like, "Wow, you know, you were prescient." It's like, "No, I wasn't. You just weren't paying attention." Everything that we're seeing has been happening all along. Nothing is new. The only thing that has changed is that white people are suddenly acknowledging the truth that has been with us all of this time. So now that they are, I do believe that we can begin to--first of all, there's so much out there. There's so many scholars of color and professionals of color and people who are ready to, like, get in there, right, and contribute to all of these institutions that have ignored them, devalued them, you know? Not hired them. You know, these institutions are about to be enriched, you know, if they truly embrace the diversity that is available, you know? Well-trained, well-educated, just ready, ready to jump in and help these organizations become more just places, and I do believe that if they continue to lean in in the ways they have over the past few weeks, I think a lot of good can come from this moment.Zach: And do you think--let me ask this then. So do you think that will offset the amount of folks who are uncomfortable and end up, you know, going elsewhere or--Pamela: What do you mean?Zach: Yeah, so what I mean is, like, do you think the amount of folks that come in and they deliver learning and folks grow, and they increase black and brown engagement through hiring and of course, like, retaining the talent that they have, do you think that will offset the amount of white folks who just find all of this offensive and disengage?Pamela: You mean like the 57 police officers in Buffalo that resigned because two of their colleagues were suspended for, like, critically injuring an elderly white man? You know, I don't think that's gonna happen, you know? Because first of all people need employment, and yeah, you know, I think that you're always gonna have that percentage of, you know, just straight up white supremacists who are not going to be in spaces where there are people of color, and, you know, good riddance, but I don't think that's gonna be the biggest roadblock to having diverse environments, because I don't think they're gonna give up all of these fields, you know? I don't think they're just gonna suddenly say, "Oh, here. Take my privileged position at this law firm or in this company," you know? But I think people can learn to work together. In fact, I think that is the best way to condition people to deal with different kinds of people is just to put them in the same space where they see that, "Oh, this person is not, like, a Martian. This person actually has kind of similar values," and then they begin to see that there was nothing that frightening to begin with. But I think when you continue--you know, we live in a rigidly segregated society, and most white people don't have to be in spaces where there are people of color, and particularly people of color who are peers, you know? They may be in the mail room or, you know, delivering their food, but to have people of color who are your peers, many white people don't have that experience, and they certainly don't have that experience of having people of color who are neighbors, who go to the same church, who go to the same--we live in such segregated worlds, and that kind of segregation becomes a self-replicating situation in the workplace, right, because people hire who they know, they hire who their friends recommend, they hire from this very closed off world, and until you can break that up, you know, and have a far more diverse workplace, you're gonna continue to have that kind of self-replication.Zach: Ms. Newkirk, this has been incredible. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. Before we let you go, any parting words or shout-outs?Pamela: Well, you know, I guess the thing that I'm most hopeful about is that there are successful models that can be readily replicated, and if institutions truly want to embrace diversity they need to just stop doing what they've been doing and lean into models that have proven to be successful.Zach: Well, there you have it, y'all. This has been Living Corporate. Like, we do this every single week. We're having real talk in a corporate world, and we center and we amplify marginalized voices at work by having black and brown thought leaders of all types of varieties on the platform. You make sure you check us out. Just Google Living Corporate. I ain't about to shout out all the places we on 'cause we all over Barack Obama's internet, so just type in Living Corporate and you'll catch us. 'Til next time, this has been Zach Nunn, and you've been listening to Pamela Newkirk, award-winning journalist, educator, speaker and author. Peace, y'all.

It is always frustrating to explain something to a person over and over again. But what’s more frustrating is when you are explaining the system of your business to different people repeatedly. This is when “Speaking to everyone” comes in handy. In this episode, Dean explains how to avoid repetition by “Speaking to Everyone,” what it means and why it is essential to your system. Whether you are tired of being redundant or are just curious about what “Speaking to Everyone” means, this podcast is for you. ----- Automated Transcript Below Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes.com and pro sulum.com. And we're here again for another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this. I'm not speaking to you. I'm speaking to everyone. That more coming up so Good morning. I'm here with laluna Meister. we're out and about having our fun. So we just got back not too long ago you're probably hearing this a bit delayed. But as of recording this just got back from Southern California. We were talking at we work W-E W-O-R-K, we work, and at spaces S-P-A-C-E-S. and both of them are co big, you know, obviously very big co working spaces, wonderful people and they invite us to come and speak. So I was doing some speaking engagements there. And came back. I had a we had some really cool engagements there. So, we this is this is one of I Gosh, at least at one of the we works is the third time that we were invited. And we had we had what was it a this is a third type of talk. So the first it's interesting because the first talk is on systems. The second one was on lead generation and the third third one is on podcasting and automating your podcasts just like this. I don't know if Do you realize this but I, I press a button, I podcast, press the button is done. Like it's done. And my beautiful wonderful team does essentially the majority of the rest aside from some technical stuff that I've created for them to help them out. And it's done because there's a system. And so I was able to show that for the first time ever I was able to show this podcasting system to them and they to people and they were blown away. So I actually went out into the crowd and I said, I said, Okay, well let's give this a try. And I press the button I said, Hey, this is Dean Soto with freedom in five minutes and I'm here with the guy was name was Nathan is on Nathan, Nathan, Bob, Bob Bob. And I said, Oh, and thank you, Nathan. Okay, great. And I pressed the button to stop it. And started talking, talked a little bit heard the thing heard my email go which means that meant that the Audio and everything was processed and I press the button. And boom, the podcast was all processed audio with intros and outros and all other stuff on on it. And they were blown away, which is cool. So I've never, like I said, I've never shared that before with anybody. But that's actually not what we're going to be talking about. I was just excited to share that, that we went and had a had a blast doing doing this stuff for people. So what I am excited about sharing is a story. The main story of today. So we have this we have a client who is funny because so they came they came on at the end of 2019. And during the sales call this the initial sales call up my my buddy Paul and I were We were driving back from spaces which was one of the place that we places that we actually are Talk. We did a speaking engagement today. So we, we were driving back from spaces. And it was funny it was it was actually pretty interesting because when we did this when we're on this on this call the guy had a business partner and the business partner was older. So they're, they're kind of in the financial services industry. And the business partner is older. And he saw that what we were doing, he actually became a customer through our cold email system, sending out cold emails that are all customized and scaled to people. And he so so yeah, so he, he, he was we were in the call and he was like, hey, yeah, you know, my, the guy who I'm partnered with he's, you know, he's on the older side. He's probably gonna retire soon. He's not really great with time. Technology not going to really, he's not going to probably he's going to be kind of more of a hindrance than somebody who he'll probably be more of a hindrance than me who I understand what's going on. I understand what you do, and it's amazing what you do, and so on and so forth. And I'm like, Oh, that makes sense. totally makes sense. And so we had several different sales calls. And eventually, they became clients. Well, it turns out, that turns out that this the old guy who's the partner, he is loving the service. He creates videos all the time, he understands the concept and builds out his has been building out processes and systems with his virtual systems architect very easily. Whereas the guy who said that he would be a hindrance is actually having a really hard time creating videos even to this day. I have a meeting with him at one. And, and so. So this morning he sent me a couple of videos that he did for his for his virtual systems architect. And the first thing that I noticed was that he was so this is this is an issue that a lot of people have when they're building systems. For people. This happens a lot with lawyers. This happens a lot with CPAs. This happens a lot with with people who are used to being the bottleneck in their business. And there's a reason why they're a bottleneck in their business, especially when they're training or creating things for other people. And what the thing that I noticed was that he was speaking to his virtual systems architect is VSI And you're probably thinking, what the heck are you talking about Dean? Why does that make a difference? That of course is going to be speaking to us via say that's we sent it in the video too, right? Well, that would be a big wrong. He is not sending his video to us via say. That's not how you want to build systems. When you are building systems, you should not be talking to an individual. Right? You should be talking to everybody, because you don't know if that person's going to be there in the future. You don't know what situations going to change. And so when I saw this video, one of the things that he did was he said Okay, so this is how we, how we manage our LinkedIn profiles. how we manage our marketing on LinkedIn. So the first thing I want you to do is open up the document that I sent you. So what's the problem with that? Dean? What if he sent a document to this person? Well think about Jeff Bezos. I was talking with Marissa this morning about this and she totally understood it and agreed. Of course you better because you my wife, right? Think about Jeff Bezos though. A big Bumblebee flying around me. Leave me alone be. Does Jeff Bezos. If you say he had a creative process for somebody would he say go to the end Now that I sent you, or what do you say, go to the document that I sent, you know, he has thousands of employees, right. And he knows, at some point in time, that employee is going to leave, or that employee is going to change positions where that employee is going to get sick. And so that document needs to be in a place where everybody else can grab it. And the process has to say something a little something like this. You are going to go to the LinkedIn message messaging document, which it is found. If you go to Google Drive, you go to the business folder and you go to this folder, you go to this folder, and it's right here and this is what it looks like this was titled. He knows that it has to be that way. Because he doesn't know if one person is going to be doing in the future or 50 people are going to be In the future, he doesn't want to send 50 emails later on. Right? And he doesn't want to have 50 emails coming to him saying, hey, sir, just, you said in your process that you were you sent me a document, I'm not sure what document you're talking about, can you send me that document? You know, 50 times or 100 times 1000 times having to go Oh, yeah, let me send that document. Let me send that document to you. Let me send that he doesn't want to do that. Right. And so he has to speak to everyone. And this is one of the big pitfalls of a lot of people who create systems or try to create systems is that they are speaking to one person, and they are assuming they're assuming many, many things based around speaking to that one person. And so why is this important? It's important so that as you're starting to create These systems around your business, you the more that you're able to see things as almost like a computer program, almost like an almost as if you're gonna have thousands of users use utilizing what you have created. You know, if you log in to, you know, whatever your favorite thing is maybe a sauna or some Google calendar or whatever. Your name is different than everyone else's, right? Because they realized, well, we have to have a variable that is able to show this person's name of who they logged in. It doesn't just say hello, Google user. No, it says Dean Soto, right. So they created a variable knowing that people, thousands of people are going to log in, thousands of people are going to want to see their name. So we're going to create this variable that is simply their name. That's just one thing. They're thinking about, right. And Google, when you create an account, you don't have to go and email Google with a different email address and say, Hey, Google, can you create an account for me for Gmail? No, they know that thousands of people are gonna want to create accounts are millions, in this case, so they have a whole system that allows millions of people to create accounts by themselves. The same goes with systems. You have to make it whatever information that's needed. You have to look at it and and start and and basically set things up in a generic but specific way. My wife came up with this today. Generic, but specific, generic in the sense that it's a form and this is where the forms that but specific in this is what you do with that form. In the circumstances, right? And so, what I want you to do this week is whatever system or process you have where, where you've created around one person, where you've said, Hey, Michelle, in the in the thing it says, send an email to Michelle, once you're done, and it says actually says that in the process, that process needs to be changed to something like send to your supervisor when it's done, or sent to HR when it's done. Because Because Michelle might not always be there, right? But HR will always be there. Your supervisor will always be there. Your supervisor, my mate might be Michelle might be Georgia might be Steve, it might be Sam it might be Lala, it might be whomever, right so this week, I want you to To make your systems and processes a little bit more generic and a little bit more specific Alright, so this Dean said, Oh, go check out freedom in five minutes dot com you got to. It's about time guys. You got to go check out freedom five minutes calm. It's part of the plan of making it to where you work only five minutes a day and go check out personal comm ProSulum.com. If you want a virtual assistant architect that'll do all of this for you. Five minutes a day train, document everything that you're doing and automate your entire business so that you can work four hours a month. Alright, so there's Dean Soto freedom in five minutes and I will catch you on the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode  

How can brands stand out and drive incredible customer loyalty? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Katie Martell talks about what it means to find your "exceptional truth" as a brand, and why that should be the guide for everything you do as a marketer. As Katie says, "the only thing in the middle of the road, is roadkill," and brands that fail to speak their truth get lost in the crowd. In our conversation, we wade into the controversial waters of whether and when brands should speak out and take a stand, and how to do it in a way that keeps you tightly aligned with your customers. Highlights from my conversation with Katie include: Katie says it is the job of the marketer to understand what is happening in the world. Marketing controls brand perception, and brand perception influences whether someone will buy from you. If you're in marketing, you have to understand where your brand fits in the world of your buyer's identity. When you know what your buyers care about, you can align that with your brand values, and you have an opportunity to take a position that will strengthen your place in the market. Katie says that brands that don't take a position get lost in a crowded marketplace and are not a part of the conversation. By taking a stance about what you believe, you can change the conversation in your market and, in doing so, become a market leader. Katie says brands need to find "exceptional truths" - little kernels of truth that get buyers to stop, pause, and rethink the way they see the world. When you've created that seed of doubt, buyers are open. They're leaning in, they're listening to what else you have to say. And that is when marketing works at its best. That's when they're more receptive to your pitch. This takes knowing buyers so well that you know where they're misinformed or what they don't know or what they don't understand so that you can challenge that. This approach is based on the concepts outlined in the book The Challenger Sale, which is typically used in the sales world but has a lot of application to marketing. Marketers need to be confident to convince the organizations they work for that this type of challenge is the right approach. This can be hard because marketing is a "voyeuristic" profession - meaning that everyone can "see" marketing so they think they are an expert and know how it should be done. As a marketer coming into a new company, its important to determine what your exceptional truth is and then find ways of rolling that out across your marketing in a way that makes your brand unique and different. Resources from this episode: Visit Katie's website Follow Katie on Twitter Connect with Katie on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to hear Katie's take on why it is so important for brands to find their exceptional truths, and how to use that in your marketing to gain a competitive edge. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is Katie Martell, who is an on demand communications strategist based out of Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome Katie. Katie Martell (Guest): Hi Kathleen. Thank you so much for having me. Katie and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I am excited to have you here. For everyone listening, I heard Katie speak at Marketing Profs B2B Marketing Forum in, what was that? September or October? October of 2019. Back in the days when we still went to conferences in person. And I was just so blown away. She gave such an amazing talk on Rabble Rousers and it really not only struck me for the content of the talk, but also, you were just an amazing speaker. We can have a separate conversation about that. But anyway, that's why I wanted to have you on and share some of your amazing wisdom with everyone who's listening. So I could go on and on about you. but before I go down too much of a tangent, I would love it if you would explain what an on-demand communication strategist is and what you do, and also a little bit of your background and how you wound up doing that. About Katie Martell Katie: I would love to, and I have to start by saying thank you for the kind words about that talk last year. So the title of that talk was something like "Market Like a Rabble Rouser" and it came from this fascination I have with the world of politics and persuasion mixed with what I do as a marketer. So I've been a marketer in the B2B realm for 11 years now. And what's been interesting is, I've been marketing to marketers for the majority of my career. And that was first at a B2B data services company. We were an early sponsor of the Marketing Profs event. That was a startup that I grew up to acquisition. And then it was a PR firm, an analyst from my own MarTech startups. So I've kind of lived multiple lives, worn many different hats, but always marketing in this world of B2B tech, and MarTech specifically. So I've been a student of marketing in a time when it's completely changing from what was the kind of capital M marketing that we've known it to be. And so this talk was just honestly, they had asked me what I wanted to talk about, which is a moment in time where you go, "Oh, that's a dangerous, that's a dangerous ask of me." And I was honest. I said, "Let's talk about what's happening in the world of misinformation, persuasion." I'm talking Russian trolls, I'm talking campaign interference. I'm talking all the stuff that, you know, you read on the headlines, on whatever news outlet you choose to follow. And let's talk about what marketers can learn from it. So I get up on stage. I give this talk. It went over a little bit of time because that's, hello, it's me. Well, people were absolutely polarized in the audience. We had half the room, a little more than half, I will say, who were like, "Yeah, we got the takeaway. This is great. Thanks so much." And the other half that I just think, I don't know what, didn't go across as well for many, because I presented a lot of information about Russian trolls and some of the exact campaign ads they used and it was pretty incendiary stuff, but that was the point. I was trying to get people riled up and hey, achievement unlocked. Kathleen: But I also think, isn't that polarized response just such a perfect reflection of why that talk was needed in the first place? Katie: I hope so. I was encouraging folks to really, you know, rouse the rabble, you know,? Create emotional responses, shake things up, and that's kind of what I did on stage. Kathleen: Well, and to be clear, just to interject, your talk was not an inherently political talk in the sense that you weren't taking sides, you were presenting facts, right? And people can take that and do with it what they want, but I just wanted to put that out there. Marketers need to pay attention to what is happening in the world Katie: Well, I appreciate it. And let the lesson and the takeaway here be that we need, as marketers, to pay attention to what's happening in the world. I mean, the world around us, look at this past week and today's date. I don't know if you're going to give the date here. It's June 1st. So we are coming off of a weekend of civil unrest, Black Lives Matter protests. It is a time where, if you check social media, you're bombarded with hashtag activism and names and everybody from brands to individuals getting involved in this current conversation. We as marketers should be watching this and learning. Kathleen: Yes. I mean, actually, it's interesting that we are having this conversation today because I literally, just this morning, was online on social media and I saw one person saying something about how you have to speak out and you have to make your positions known. And another person's literally saying "I'm not going to support businesses that don't say anything." It's interesting. There's so many different sides to what's happening right now, but it really doesn't matter what you believe about the current situation. The fact is that the world around us is going to make judgments and make personal buying decisions. And they could be different ones, person to person, but they're going to be made based upon what you do and or do not say right now, right. So if you're not paying attention as a marketer, you're not doing your job Katie: Because this is our job. It is our job. Marketing controls brand perception, right? Brand perception is the reality for consumers. They make a decision about us before they engage with us by the way we act through marketing. That's the kind of inherent "duh" that we know about our jobs, but what that means at a time like this and what it started to mean over the past, I would say, decade or so as the world of social movements, identity, and brands and corporate world they've started to intersect. And so what that now means is, if you're in marketing, you have to understand where your brand fits in the world of your buyer's identity, whether they believe in the Black Lives Matter movements, right? These kinds of areas that were kind of gray areas before of, we don't want to get political. It's not appropriate for every brand to have a comment on what's happening. For example, we're talking about the treatment of African American individuals in the US, if your brand happens to live values that embrace diversity and inclusion and have large representation from that community and you take steps to make sure that their employee experience is great and yada, yada, yada, you might as well leverage that in marketing. You might as well show the world that you're on the same side as the giant movement that's now building in States and cities around the world. My God, this is a great opportunity for marketers, which I know sounds dirty to say out loud, but it's absolutely a time to take advantage of the global zeitgeist right now, and be part of the conversation, be part of the narrative, earn trust. It might help you differentiate. It is a way of saying to the world, "This is where we play, this is what we believe, this is who we are as a brand" that may go well beyond what your product or your service does. That is an opportunity. Kathleen: I agree with you. This is such an interesting conversation. In the past year, I had a conversation about this with someone who I've always considered to be very much a professional mentor/idol/role model. I've come to realize as I've gotten to know this person better that they feel very strongly about keeping all politics, all commentary on social issues, completely out of business. And that is their personal belief. It has come into focus, I think, with this last election cycle, and we had a big debate where the person was saying companies should never post about politics. I personally don't believe that, nor do I think every company should post about politics. People will disagree with me and that's fine, but I think that it all comes back to really understanding your brand. And in this case, especially for privately held companies, brands are very inextricably interwoven with the person that owns the company. This is going to come right down to the owners of the company and what they personally believe in. There are some companies where the person that owns it is never going to talk about politics because that person, as an individual, doesn't talk about politics even in social settings. But then you have companies, and there's some examples I'd love to cite, like Penzeys Spices. They are a spice company out of the Midwest. I had discovered them years ago because I was looking for some really niche spices. I like to cook and I had followed them, and then I started seeing this stuff on Facebook and they come out really, really strongly. This is a long story, but I got into a really big debate with this person. And the person was saying, you are going to lose customers and that's not good for your business. And you're going to alienate people and that's not good for your business. And my feeling is, that might be fine. If you're somebody who believes that you want to live your beliefs and you want your business to live those beliefs, you may lose customers, but you will probably have the ones you keep drive tremendous loyalty and you may gain as much, if not more, than you lose. So, diatribe over. You're the guest, not me! Katie: Oh, please! I love your point of view. I'm honored to be here because I think you are just brilliant and I love your work. You hit on something really polarizing right now which works at multiple levels. It also kind of hearkens back to the fundamental truth that not all marketing advice is going to apply to every company. And I feel like that's an important disclaimer, because we tend in marketing to say, brands should do this, they shouldn't do that. It's really, to your point, what is right for your business, your customers, and most importantly, your goals. Now that spice company, I don't know them, but I guarantee their goal is not to be the spice for everyone. It sounds like they know exactly who their buyer is and they know exactly what that buyer wants from them. They want a spice company that stands for more than spice. Great. Not all car companies are going to be a car for everybody, right? Just like with Patagonia, right? If you're buying a jacket to go skiing and they have a set of brand values that they know aligns with the subset of the total market, but that subset will be inherently loyal to them because Patagonia is an example of a brand that's been consistent against their values. For years, they've always been kind of counterintuitively anti consumption. They sell retail products. They need to drive consumption. Remember that famous ad that was like, "Don't buy this jacket"? You don't know it. You have to Google it. And it's Patagonia saying "We cause too much waste in our industry. We build products that may cost you a little more, but they're sustainably made and we want you to wear them for longer. We're going to help you repair them. We're going to give you some tools to make sure that you can make sure you get the most out of them. They're longer lasting." These are brand values that the buyer can relate to because the buyer also shares those values. So this really isn't a new marketing problem. We like to think it is because of social media and hashtag activism and all the propaganda that's happening. But this really isn't old school marketing best practice. Know your buyer, know where you fit in their world. Bill Bernbach has a great quote that's like, "If you stand for nothing, you'll find some people for you and some people against you. And if you stand for nothing, you'll find nobody for you and nobody against you." Which is worse for a marketer? To be completely out of the conversation or to be clear about where you sit and stand and who you're intended for? I love old time radio. There's a great Sirius XM station about the radio shows from the era of when that was entertainment. Somebody had this quote in the old timey accent. They were like, "The only thing you find in the middle of the road is roadkill my dear." Right now, today, brands do not have to have a comment on who should be president. That is politics. That is up to the individual. We each have a right to vote. Stay out of it unless you're relating to the campaign or you're lobbying for a certain group. Honestly, we need to have a say about issues that matter for our buyers. That's it. If it doesn't matter to your buyers, it shouldn't matter to you and your marketing. If you're a founder, I'm going to kind of disagree with you on this, but if you're a founder trying to lever your organization for your own political, personal views, that's a mistake because not everyone in your company is going to agree with you. Just like not every one of your buyers is going to agree with you. You have to find middle ground. That's what this is about. When you canvas for a political campaign and you're going door to door for, I don't know, Bernie Sanders, you don't open the door and knock on the door and say, let me tell you why you're wrong about insert political candidate. You find common ground. You say, what do we share? What are we aligned on? And how do we then move forward together? It's not about polarizing. It's about recruiting people to see the world the way you do. And those people likely bring the same set of values that you do. Kathleen: To be clear, I should say because I probably didn't explain this, I'm not advocating that businesses come out and say "Vote for so and so." I'm more coming out and saying that the context that came up when I talked about it with somebody, was that there were things happening politically that impacted other issues, whether that's the environment or social issues, et cetera, there was like a trickle down. And there were businesses that at the time were coming out and standing for or against those environmental or social issues. That was what sparked the conversation. It's very interesting to me because the things that swim in my brain when I get into this conversation are, there is an increasing amount of data that started to come out, particularly with younger generations, that they are actually much more likely to buy from businesses that are willing to say what they stand for. Again, I'm not talking about politics, I'm talking broadly about things that you stand for. And I loved your statement about the only thing in the middle of the road is roadkill. Because you know, you look at social activism and business today and you see companies like Tom's shoes, which stand for something, and Patagonia, which stands for something. These businesses are doing very, very well, particularly amongst a younger demographic. And so I think part of it is knowing who you sell to, as you said. Part of it is also recognizing that over time, things are going to change as this younger demographic ages and people follow them, who knows? I don't know what will happen with the next generation, but today's 20 year olds are going to be the 30 and 40 year olds of tomorrow and the next decade, et cetera. And so as our customer populations age, their preferences come with them as they do. It reminds me of the conversation that I've had with people about niching down as a business. I used to own a marketing agency and agencies talk about this all the time. Should we be the agency for everyone? Or should we declare that we are serving this one niche? And the fear that everybody always has when you get into that conversation is the fear of having to say "no" and turn people away. What most data shows, and most people find when they do it, is that when you niche down, you actually thrive. You make more money because you really find the right fit customer and they have a higher perception of you. They stick with you longer, et cetera. And so, there's an echo of that going through my head as I listened to us talk about this. Understanding your brand promise Katie: Absolutely. And again, it comes back to branding basics. You have to know the promise that you're going to make to anyone. That's what brand is. Brand is a promise. When they engage with you, they want to know that they're going to get something that you've promised them. You don't have to take a stance around hot button issues. Stay away from hot button issues, unless you're ready for that, unless that's really core to your business and your values and live throughout the organization. There are many examples, from our history, of B2B companies that stand for something in their industry. This is where this needs to be applied to B2B. B2B listeners might be thinking, this doesn't apply to me because I sell, I don't know, refrigeration. And I'm here to tell you, there is, within the world of refrigeration, a company called Stirling Ultracold, that was kind of a smaller player within this world of refrigeration. They would sell to pharmaceutical companies, and we're talking commercial grade keeping stuff cold, right? That's the extent of my knowledge, but they are ultra low temperature freezers that companies need. This is a great example of a company in a world that we would think, what is controversial about this space? The way they were disrupting their own industry was just with this idea of sustainability and energy costs and carbon footprint -- these things that their product enabled companies to decrease. They saved something like 70% of energy costs. Energy and sustainability and carbon footprint was never a consideration point for this buyer before. They just didn't look at it along that list of criteria that they're making their decision against. It didn't matter. Suddenly, here's a company who comes forward with a great PR program, really strong thought leadership, a leader who says, "I believe we have a responsibility to have a smaller carbon footprint. And guess what? My products enable you to have it." It suddenly changed the entire perimeter of an industry. That is the exact same advice that you and I are preaching right now. Just take a stance in what you believe in your own market. That's how you're going to change the conversation in market. That's how you're going to find buyers that are aligned with you around this value that now matters, and in a broader sense, you know, to the world, but really in this industry. And that's how you're going to differentiate and earn that trust, is when you declare "Here's what we're about." And you do that with confidence, because that allows the buyer to look at you and say, "I know exactly what I'm signing up for." Change the conversation in your industry Kathleen: I love that. And it reminds me of a talk that I heard by April Dunford. Katie: Love April Dunford, high five. Kathleen: I heard it at HubSpot's Inbound conference. April Dunford is an expert on positioning and she gives this talk about the four different ways you can approach positioning for your business. And I don't remember the nickname she has for it, but the example that she gives for one of the ways is about changing the conversation. And she talks about Tesla and how before Tesla, the leader in the electric car market was the Prius. And the whole conversation in electric cars was about battery life. How long could you drive before you needed to recharge? You could substitute refrigeration, but the bottom line is that, as a new entrant, if you think about coming into an established market, you're not going to have the first mover advantage. You're not creating a category per se. So how do you catapult yourself to the head of that market? You do it by changing the conversation. And so she talks about how Tesla came in and totally changed the conversation by saying, "Yeah, whatever. Battery life. Of course, we all have battery life. It's really all about how sexy is the design and how fast does the car go?" And now, you see a completely different dialogue happening in electric cars. You see Tesla as a front runner. And you see a lot more electric car manufacturers focusing on design and speed because they made it sexy. And that's the new conversation. And it sounds like that's exactly the same thing this refrigeration company did. Finding your "exceptional truth" Katie: They had to. And this is really where I think, and I know I'm a little biased. I come from a communications background. I've seen the power of content marketing and PR and all of that working in tandem to lift up brands. I mean, I'm a startup girl at heart. When you can't be the loudest voice in the room and you can't be the dominant player of which, by the way, there's only one in every industry. So the majority are not dominant players. All of us need to figure out how to get more strategic with the way we leverage PR and content. I think we've fallen into a bit of a trap, and I'll use that word gingerly because of the rise of inbound marketing, because of the rise of the tools and tech that allow us to publish a lot of content. What we've sacrificed are the kernels of little ideas that we're using to seed the market. We've become really good at publishing education tips and best practices, which are great and necessary. This podcast is a great example of one. The issue is that we've lost sight of what creates movements, what creates change in people. It's that little kernel of truth. I call them exceptional truths that get people to stop, you know, pump the brakes and go, "Wait a minute. I've been thinking about things all wrong." And when you get a person, a human being to stop and kind of pause, you've got them, that's it. When you've created that seed of doubt, the way that they saw the world may not be that capital T, truth, they're open. They're leaning in, they're listening to what else you have to say. And that is when marketing works at its best. That's when they're more receptive to your pitch, to your ideas and your path forward, but it takes knowing the buyers so well that you know where they're misinformed or what they don't know or what they don't understand so that you can challenge that. This is drawing from, everyone knows, The Challenger Sale. Applying The Challenger Sale to marketing Kathleen: I was just going to say, I used to be in sales and in the sales world, this is The Challenger Sale. Katie: Yes. I don't know what happened. I mean, how can The Challenger Sale extend its way to marketing? Not to say that it hasn't, but you know, is that a puppy? Kathleen: Yes. I have two who are laying at my feet and every now and then they lift their heads up and say, "Wait, there's a world out there!" They're getting excited about The Challenger Sale. Katie: They probably are just as confused as I am as to why The Challenger Sale didn't work its way into the world of PR and content marketing. To me, we need to challenge the way the buyer sees the world. I think very few brands do that. Kathleen: It's very true. I have worked in sales before and when I was in that job, I read The Challenger Sale. I used that approach in sales and it made me very successful. And you're spot on. That has so much applicability in marketing. I owned an agency for 11 years and I worked with a lot of different companies and there is, in marketing, this lemmings syndrome where we see the lemmings running ahead of us and we want to follow them off the cliff. If they're doing it, it must be the right thing to do. And it extends from everything, from messaging and the way we talk about what we do, to things like brand colors. I used to do websites for attorneys and they all wanted forest green and maroon and these very stodgy, old attorney colors. And I remember I had one client and I was like, "Let's just do something crazy." And they were like, "But nobody else did that." And I was like, "Precisely." There's this inclination both amongst marketers and within the business world to play within the lines. And I think that does hurt us. There's a sea of sameness out there and it's the content we create, it's the colors on our websites, it's the way we message. It's, you know, "Hey, you should or should not talk about this in our industry. We don't talk about that so I'm not going to" and I really think that that has tied our hands behind our backs, Katie: I have a lot of empathy. I mean, I'm a Pisces. I'm gonna look at every situation from both sides. And it's empath to the Nth degree over here. But I do have a lot of empathy for the modern marketer. And this comes from being one, but also selling and marketing to them for 10 years. I've been on the megaphone side of MarTech vendors back in the day when there was a hundred of us, marketing solutions in a world of digital marketing that was now starting to shift. Don't forget, 10 years ago, we now had to be good at becoming top ranked on Google. We now had to start using social media to develop a two way dialogue. We then had to automate everything. Then we had to start measuring everything. Now we're trying to leverage AI. It has moved at such a pace. It all happened in nine years. It has moved at such a pace that the marketer, the poor beleaguered marketing ops person and lead gen new roles that are being created because of this ecosystem in MarTech have inherent uncertainty, an inherent doubt and inherent fear because thinking about it, you and I work, we do marketing for a living. This is our income. How are we going to support our families? This is more than a job and an industry, buyers and marketing. I always had this kind of point of view when I was marketing to marketers. The buyer is more than a director of marketing at an IT company. They are an individual who's just trying to figure it out. And a brand like a HubSpot who comes out right at the turning point of an industry in flux to say, we have 10 ways that you can do this better. And five tips for this and seven strategies for success in that, that brand is going to win. That fearful buyer who's like, I just need a job, and I need to keep ahead. The biggest fear for the marketing buyer is falling behind. If we fall behind, we're no longer relevant. If we're no longer relevant, guess what? There's some 23 year old who's going to come up and take our spot because they know Tik Tok. I'm being hyperbolic, but that's constantly on our minds. And so we have to have empathy for that marketer who's like, we are going to do the things that work and copy the things that work because they work and we need a win. It's really those organizations that can allow their marketing team to do what they do best. That means leave them alone. Let them understand the buyer and the market, the way that they're supposed to. The challenge of being a marketer Katie: Somebody else said to me that marketing is a very voyeuristic profession. Everyone can see it. Unlike finance, unlike R&D or engineering, or even sales, to an extent. Everyone can see marketing. Everyone in a business thinks that they're an expert in marketing because they see marketing all day. They see billboards. They see ads. They feel like they know the science and the practice of marketing. That creates a lot of pressure on the marketing team to kind of do whatever everyone else thinks they should be doing. So we have a department that's not only fearful of falling behind, but also facing pressure from the business to do things that may be counterintuitive to what marketing should do. To your point, the lawyers with the maroon versus doing something different. The telling of exceptional truths, the disruption, the rabble rousing, it works on teams that allow marketers to operate with confidence and hire marketers that are allowing them the space to push back and say, "No, this is what marketing does. Our job is to understand who the buyer is, what they need and why we're uniquely fit that market. And that may look different than what you expect, but that's why you hired me." If you're listening to this and you're young and you love marketing, but you're unsure of the path ahead, that's the strongest thing I think you can do is to hone this sense of what marketing does for business and the sense of confidence that you need to bring to every meeting. You almost have to defend your job at every go, but the more you do it, the more resilient you get, the better you get at it. Kathleen: Well, I think it also points to what you should look for in a place of work. I completely agree with everything you just said, and, and I don't often talk about where I work now, but I'm at this company Attila Security, which is in cybersecurity. I knew I had landed in the right place and I had this sense when I interviewed. When I got into the company and I met with the CEO and I presented him with my 90 day plan and strategy, this was about 30 days in, he said, "Yeah, just do it. I hired you because you know what you're doing", you know? "You don't need my permission." And I was like, "Wow, what a great feeling". When you're interviewing, that's a thing to really watch for and to dig into and to see if that's a trait that you're going to find amongst the leadership team of the company that you go and work for. Katie: I wonder how to ask that in an interview. I'm a startup girl who's just been at companies where inherently, there's no one to tell me what to do. What would you ask if you were interviewing? Kathleen: As somebody who hires a lot, I've always been a big believer in behavioral based interview questions. Those are basically, you don't ask people "What would you do?", you ask, "What did you do?" And you ask people to talk about actual experiences. So I would probably ask something along the lines of, you know and it depends on if it's a company that's had marketers before. I would say, "Tell me about a time when a prior head of marketing proposed something that you weren't sure about or didn't necessarily agree with, what did you do?" And if they haven't had marketers before, if it's a startup, I would probably ask them something about being at a prior company. Or I would say, "Tell me about a time the head of sales proposed something," or somebody else in the company presuming that there are other leaders. Because I think past behavior speaks better than hypotheticals. Everybody can come up with the right answer, hypothetically. For what it's worth, that's kind of the approach that I've taken, but some of it is also just a feeling that you get from talking with people. And I think that's something that you hone over time as you work in more places and you're exposed to more different types of people. Standing out in a world saturated with marketing content Kathleen: But one of the things I was thinking about as you were talking, you mentioned HubSpot and how they solve for something very specific at a time when it was a real need. And, it got me kind of circling back to a little bit of what we started with here, which is this need to tell exceptional truths and should companies go there? Should they not go there? One of the things that I started thinking about as you were talking is that the interesting unique moment that we live in right now is that content marketing has become so commonplace. And there are so many companies creating content that there is this saturation. There's just a lot out there. There's a lot of blogs. There's a lot of newsletters. There's a lot of video out there. We're all busy. Nobody has the time to read all of it. So how do you choose what you're going to consume? And this applies to anybody, any buyer out there has this dilemma whether they're actively searching for something or not. And it seems to me that one of the factors that's really affecting what works now in marketing is that one of the most effective ways to stand out amongst a very saturated world of content is to have a point of view. We've talked a lot about in the marketing world about authenticity, and a hot topic lately has been email newsletters and getting really real in your email newsletters and showing personality and individuality, even in company newsletters. And the reason that that's working so well, I believe, is because it is different. Just the fact that it's different and just the fact that it doesn't sound like everybody else, people gravitate to that. So I'd love to know kind of what you think about that. Katie: I a hundred percent agree. Mic drop because you said it yourself. This idea that everyone is a publisher, everyone can produce content - it makes it more important than ever to do what we were suggesting 20 minutes ago, which is to know exactly who you're talking to, what they value, the ways you share that value and just be confident that that is the niche that you have decided to own. You cannot be all things to all people. I'm hearkening back to my marketing undergraduate. This was a long time ago now. It's the one thing I learned. This is not new, right? We just have a proliferation of information now available to us. It makes it more important than ever to have not only a clear point of view, but first a very clear intended audience. You cannot be the solution, in your case, for all CIOs. You're the solution for all CIOs that are extremely risk averse or something. There's something about your buyers that you are really aligned to. Well, many companies fail to understand what that niche looks like and where that alignment happens. I have a newsletter. I call it the "World's best newsletter." I started it when I started consulting, frankly, honestly, truthfully as a way of reminding the world that I wasn't gone. I was leaving a startup at that time that I had co-founded and I was the public face of, and I needed a way to take that momentum and transfer it into my consulting, speaking, whatever it is that I do, practice. So I started a newsletter. I had no intentions with it. I had no best practices around it. I probably break every rule in the book. People love it. And what I do with it is what I've done from day one. I collect the things that hook my attention throughout the week, that I believe more people need to read, and I send it out weekly. And I say, "Here's what is important to me". I am a human being with other other interests outside of marketing. I'm a fierce advocate for feminism, and I'm a fierce advocate for human rights. And I have a documentary coming out about the intersection of marketing and social movements. And all of that is jam packed into this little newsletter, seven links and a quote of the week. It makes no sense. If you were to tell me, as a marketing consultant, it wouldn't make any sense. There's a lot of marketing stuff in there, but sometimes there's a really important New York Times cover story about racism in America. It works for me because people know what they want from me. It's neat. I have been really reticent to do that. It feels wrong. It goes against everything I'm taught as an email marketer, but you know what? It performs. It might be because it's real. I think it's because it's honestly what people want from me. I think that's really what matters. And they come back to it week after week because it serves that need and it's fresh. They don't get it from other people. Finding your unique brand voice Katie: If you're a business, trying to figure out what to send in your newsletter, think about that first. Just like a product and the way that you develop a product, look at the consideration set. What are you up against? What are the other emails looking like from your competitors or even others in the same general industry? Do something different. Maybe it's just doing it shorter. Maybe it's coming at it from a totally different angle, right? Content and thought leadership should be treated like product development. Not only is it something new and different, but it's like this muscle that you have to work on. You've gotta be really good at coming up with the processes to uncover those insights from inside the business to say, "This is what we believe, what we know." And then really, really good at delivering that in a fresh and new way. That's what makes the job of content fun and hard. But it's not what most people do. Most people opt for the easy ebook, the 10 tips, best practices. And then they wonder why isn't this performing? How to find your exceptional truth Kathleen: So true. So if somebody is listening and they're a marketer, who's come into a company and they're thinking about - and let's talk about startups because I think that's the best way to illustrate how this works. If you come into a startup as the first head of marketing, it is a green field, right? You get to shape the clay. If you're coming into an established company, that's a different story, but it's still, the challenge is still there. It's just how you navigate. It might be different. Putting on my hat as head of marketing at a startup, I'm coming in, it's the first time we're going to have a marketing strategy. If I wanted to come in and really mine the richness of what you talk about as exceptional truths, what is the playbook for doing that? Katie: Well, good luck finding a playbook. The place to start, in my mind, is to ask yourself the question, just like you would if you were starting a movement and activism, "What is the change that you want to see in market?" What is that end result that you're hoping to get people to switch? It could just be, you want them to choose you instead of a competitor. Great. So what does that mean? What belief do you need to shift? What misinformation do you have to correct? What new insight, to quote the Challenger model, do you have to bring to the table to get them to see the world a bit differently? I'll give you an example from HubSpot again, because I think HubSpot did this so well. And it's an example that we can all relate to. Your podcast. The name is a great example of the power of what they were able to do, how this came to market. I hate to say it, they were just a blogging, search engine optimization, social media, and eventually an email tool mixed into one. They were not the only player doing this at the time. However, they thought about this brilliantly. They needed people to see the way they wanted things to change. They were advocating for us to use these tools instead of cold calling, billboards, et cetera. The way that they got people to make that shift was to create a dichotomy or create an enemy. I actually presented on this at their conference two years ago, create an enemy. You can find it on their inbound library. And they saw the world in two ways. There's inbound and outbound. There's the new way forward, Mrs. Beleaguered marketer, who doesn't want to lose her job, the way that you're not going to fall to irrelevancy. And there's the old way that you're going to fall behind if you keep using it. They were extremely polarizing with this perspective. It was just one article that started all of this, right? They were like, "Here's the way forward. This inbound and outbound. One is good. One is bad. White, black, right? Devil, whatever it is." And 80% of the market was like, "Oh man, there's no way I'm going to go there." They were pissed because HubSpot is over here, challenging the existing status quo, the way they sell. 20% saw that and went, "Oh, you're right. Let's opt into this." And so HubSpot now of course built an entire movement around inbound marketing. It is a practice. It is a job title. It is a category in and of itself because they started with that kernel of what changes do we need to create. We need to figure out a way to get people to move from A to B, to go from what they think they know to what we want to advocate for. And then they brilliantly built a movement around it. And they did so with a ton of content ideas, a community of people that were proud to call themselves inbound marketers and this kind of repetitive, consistent muscle they use to push the movement forward, now extending years and a $125 million IPO and19,000 people at their conference. It just has ballooned because they were smart about this kernel of truth that they've never deviated from. Are you going to be the next HubSpot? No. This is right place, right time, right conditions and market. But, you do have to find and be willing to provoke, with purpose, the existing beliefs of buyers, and then be consistent about that. If you can do that, your startup is going to make a lot of noise. You're going to punch well above your weight. Even if you don't have the biggest budget, you're going to make waves and you have to be willing to do that or risk falling into irrelevance. Kathleen: It's a really incredible story, that story of HubSpot and it's certainly not the only one. You have Mark Benioff at Salesforce who famously picketed outside with a sign that had a big red X through the word software. And he similarly named the enemy and it was software and his solution was move to the cloud, software as a service. That is an approach that absolutely works. I would say to go out and read The Challenger Sale. So many sales people read it, but so few marketers do, and I love that you brought it up in this conversation. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: We are going to run out of time soon so I want to make sure I ask you my questions. I could talk to you forever. My first question that I always ask my guests is of course, this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and is there a particular company or individual that you think is just a great example of how to do inbound marketing in today's world? Katie: I think Rand Fishkin and his work with Moz and now with SparkToro which he actually details really well in a book called Lost and Founder. It's a great book. If you're thinking of starting a company read this first. It may scare you away, but he always was the example for me of somebody who was again, challenging white hat versus black hat, giving away all the industry secrets to become a trusted industry resource, to ranked the highest, but it really builds trust in his company and him as an individual. And I think it's just his consistency, Whiteboard Fridays, he was writing five days a week. That's still the best example of consistent inbound marketing. Kathleen: You know, it's so funny because I could not agree with you more. He is somebody that I have followed really closely. I read his book. I read everything he does at SparkToro. I follow him religiously. And I have been very surprised. I think you might be the first person that has mentioned his name. I ask this question of every single guest and that has baffled me because I think he's amazing. So I'm really happy that you said that. Katie: He's also the world's nicest guy. We both spoke at the SpiceWorld conference in, I want to say, 2018. Both of us were speaking in the marketing track and I'm sitting here backstage fan girling because I love him. Who hasn't read his stuff? He comes off stage with the mustache. He's the nicest guy. He's just, you know, very down to earth. And I think that's the secret. He wrote this content to truly help others. And I think that genuine purpose behind the content is really what sets him apart. More people should have mentioned him. Kathleen: Yes. I agree. And maybe they will now because we'll turn them on to his stuff. All right. Second question. You mentioned earlier that the biggest fear of marketers is falling behind. And the second question I always ask everybody is exactly that. It's like every marketer I talk to says, they feel like they're drinking from a fire hose. There's too much to keep up with. So how do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated? Katie: 100% LinkedIn. I'm a huge advocate for using LinkedIn appropriately. I have a big following there, so I love it as a platform, but I also use it to consume a lot of best practices. I ask a lot of questions. I'm constantly looking through comments. It's become a resource that just, I find invaluable. It's a mess. Sometimes now people take advantage of LinkedIn to post some really nonsense stuff, but at the core of it, it's there. Can I give two answers? There's a lot of Slack communities that are being built around specific topic areas. I'm not in marketing, but I'm part of a great marketing operations Slack group that keeps me knowing what's going on. I work with a lot of MarTech vendors still as an amplifier now and a community evangelist. I need to know what's going on. And so even on that, in the practice, these Slack groups are hidden sources of insight. So if there's not a Slack group for your world, your community, build it, invite people. They will come. This is not field of dreams. They're desperate to connect, one-On-one, sometimes outside of the loud world that is LinkedIn. Kathleen: That group would not happen to be the MoPro's would it? Katie: No, but now I want to join that one. Kathleen: I'll send you a link. A guy I interviewed once for this podcast has a marketing operations Slack group that I am in. But I agree with you. I have a ton of Slack groups and there's only like, let's say, two or three of them that I'm religious about checking every day. They're just insanely valuable. But, love all of those suggestions. Again, I could talk to you all day long, but we're not going to do that because we both have other things we need to do. Great conversation. I'm sure people will have opinions, both ways, about what we said here today, but that's okay. That's why these conversations are important to have. If you listened and you disagree, tweet me. I would love to hear your perspective. This is all about learning and listening and I'd love to hear what more folks think about this. How to connect with Katie Kathleen: But Katie, if somebody wants to learn more about you or connect with you online, what is the best way for them to do that? Katie: They can Google me. I'm very, very, very Google-able. You can LinkedIn me. You can find my website. I'm just, I'm everywhere. Kathleen, congratulations on over 150 episodes of this. This is a service to the community and we are grateful for it and it's a lot of work to put these together. So thank you for doing what you do and thank you for having me, really. Kathleen: Well, I very much appreciate it. And I will put links to your personal website as well as your LinkedIn in the show notes. So head there if you want to connect with Katie, and she does produce some amazing stuff, so I highly recommend it. You know what to do next... Kathleen: If you're listening and you liked what you heard today, or you just felt like you learned something new, I would love it if you would leave the podcast a five star review on Apple podcasts, because that is how other people learn about the podcast. And finally, if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, please tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Katie. Katie: Thank you, Kathleen. Everyone take care.

This has been a very difficult week both mentally and emotionally.  So I've decided to share a recent episode from my new podcast This Is Awkward to help continue the necessary conversations around race and inequality. You can check out This Is Awkward at the link below. https://podfollow.com/this-is-awkward ======= This Is Awkward Episode 007 In today’s episode we have the difficult, yet necessary conversation surrounding how every person can adopt a commitment to fight racism both in their home and in this world. ======= Click the link below to get access to all the resources and Instagram accounts that we mentioned in this episode. shorturl.at/ivW48  ======= Connect with us on Instagram! @thisisawkwardpodcast Chris - @popcornfinancepodcast Allison - @inspiredbudget  ======= Special Music By Confused (Afternoons LP) by Loxbeats https://soundcloud.com/loxbeats/confused I Don't Need U 2 Say Anything by Le Gang https://soundcloud.com/thisislegang/i-dont-need-u-2-say-anything

Why stick to any one genre? Our guest this week is Catherine Newman: memoirist, middle grade novelist, etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 65 Highly Useful, Super-Important Things to Learn Before You’re Grown-Up. While she’s at it, she writes a cooking blog, co-authored a book on crafts for kids and edits ChopChop, a kids cooking magazine. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to the New York Times to the Cup of Jo website. In other words, she’s putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciant disregard for any and all advice about self-branding or owning an niche or sticking to one topic or identity.In fact, I’d argue that “insouciant disregard” might just BE her brand. This episode also includes the immortal words “I’ve never had to kill anything during the podcast before,” uttered by Jess—so that’s a reason to listen right there. But there are plenty of others—this is a real nitty gritty episode on building a career and getting things done.#AmReadingKJ: Henna Artist by Alka JoshiRecipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca BarryJess: Sure Shot by Sarina BowenAnimal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara KingsolverMissing You by Harlan CobenCatherine: Know My Name by Chanel MillerSea Wife by Amity GaigeThe Chicken Sisters by KJ Dell’AntoniaThanks to everyone who supports the podcast financially. To join that team, click the button below:But it’s all good. The pod is free as it always has and always will be. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it every time there’s a new episode.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.KJ Dell'Antonia 0:00 Hey writers KJ here. Usually I write down what I'm going to tell you in our pre episode, promotional blurb, whatever you want to call this, and I will say right away that of course we are, as always sponsored by our friends at Author Accelerator, who we love. This week, instead of writing down some great reasons why we love them I just wanted to take a minute to read to you from the email that I got from Jenny Nash this week. This is her weekly email that goes out to anyone who's on the Author Accelerator list, or read every single one of those and I cannot say that about almost any other weekly email I get, there a couple. Anyway, Jenny writes, "I was speaking with a writer this week who could see the light at the end of the tunnel on her novel. She was almost done and she was terrified. She could feel herself panicking and turning to other shiny new ideas. Anything that wasn't this almost done idea. Being done would mean that her work could be rejected. Being done would mean that her work could be judged. Being done would mean that her limitations and weaknesses as a writer would be on display for everyone to see. Being done would mean that whatever she had on the page was as good as she was able to do. Even if it wasn't anywhere close to the perfect story in her mind. Being done would mean that she would be exposed." I could really, really relate to that. And I think I'm not the only one. A lot of us start to let things go the minute we get anywhere close to the finish line, because the finish line is scary. And if that's the place where you are maybe now is the moment when you want to reach out and see about working with a writing coach. You might not need much a few weeks, a little bit of a push, a little bit of help, just to take that thing that you're working on, and get it through to not the almost best you can do (which you know allows a lot of room for imagining other things) but the actual best you could do and then make a real decision about what it is you'd like to do with it. If you're game for that, you should head over to authoraccelerator.com and click your way through to all the great places because we love them and there's also a lot of other good stuff there. While I'm here I also want to say that this episode includes a couple of small swear words here and there and also some weird commentary on vaginas. Because this is one of our dearest friends we're interviewing this week and we got a little bit weird. So letting you know that so if you have tiny ears around that you are concerned about? Honestly, it's no big on this one. I don't think that it will bother you, but I wanted to give you a heads up. Alright. Enjoy it. This is a great episode. Is it recording?Jess Lahey 2:51 Now it's recording. KJ Dell'Antonia 2:53 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone trying to remember what I'm supposed to be doing.Jess Lahey 2:57 Alright, let's start over.KJ Dell'Antonia 2:58 Awkward pause. I'm gonna rustle some papers. Okay, now one, two, three.Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia. And this is #AmWriting. The podcast about writing all things, from fiction, to nonfiction, pitches, proposals, emails, essays. This is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work done. Jess Lahey 3:27 I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and the forthcoming book The Addiction Inoculation, Raising Healthy Kids in a Culture of Dependence, who the subtitles are always so tricky, and you can find my work on the old interwebs at The Atlantic and the New York Times and The Washington Post and lots of other places.KJ Dell'Antonia 3:58 I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel The Chicken Sisters coming out on July 1 of this year, which is 2020. For those of you listening in the future, when I hope things are not what they are now, but that is not what we are going to talk about today. We have a guest, our guest is Catherine Newman, who we've actually been trying to record with Catherine since like since like our 10th episode. But wait, I want to tell you about Catherine, she is a memoirist, a middle grade novelist, and etiquette columnist and now the author of How to Be a Person: 66 Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up.Jess Lahey 4:57 It's actually 65, but I think that we should invent a 66 while we're here.KJ Dell'Antonia 5:22 Okay, no, I wasn't done. I wasn't done - because while she's at it, Catherine writes a cooking blog, she co-authored a book on crafts for kids, and she edits Chop Chop, a kid's cooking magazine, which I didn't even know till I just recently read her bio because I never read the bios of my friends because I'm supposed to know all this stuff, but I didn't. And she pens frequent funny essays for everything from O to The New York Times to The Cup of Joe website. In other words, she's putting a pastiche of writing together and making it work with an insouciance disregard for any and all advice about self branding, or owning a niche, or sticking to one topic or an identity, and in fact, I would argue that insouciance disregard might just be Catherine Newman's brand.Catherine Newman 6:10 Oh, my God, that's it. I just feel like that's the mic drop. I'm so happy. I also feel like you just fully explained all the problems I have. It's my insouciance disregard.Well, I loved your intro. My intro really would have been you know, this is Catherine Newman for me is the writer that, not only a person I adore and know personally, but as a writer she's the one who always figures out the new way to say the thing I have been feeling and yet felt so cliched that I never wrote it down. She always has some new amazing way to state it and then I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, how has no one ever said it that way before?' and it's so true and perfect and beautiful. And you know, for a lot of writers that write about parenting and this whole racket that we call life, often if they have a favorite piece, I often will say let me guess was it by Catherine Newman because her pieces just rank as people's favorites.Jess Lahey 8:00 We love your stuff. But you guys, you and KJ have a much longer relationship than you and I do, Catherine. So KJ, tell them where you guys met.KJ Dell'Antonia 8:09 I don't know where we met. I know that Catherine wrote for me at Motherlode but it must have been Wonder Time. The late great that says that it's not the greatest like the more I say the name now that it's gone, the dumber it sounds, but it really was. Yeah, okay. Soft sigh of regret. And while we're having soft sighs of regret for demises of magazines, I hear Family Circle just tanked. I mean, I know that was like in the fall, but... Catherine Newman 8:49 I know I always feel like I'm there on that tiny little island of sinking magazines.Jess Lahey 8:57 I'm just about to send out an email today saying Hi, want me to write anything? Anything you got - I'll write that thing.KJ Dell'Antonia 9:40 Great. Okay, so here we are, finally, at last.So okay. 65 (not 66) Highly Useful, Super Important Things to Learn Before You're Grown Up. Why that after a resume that includes two parenting memoirs, one crafting book, and one middle grade novel that was my middle grader at the time absolute total favorite, he even reviewed it for Parenting magazine. Yeah, he still looks back on that with fondness because he has a hard time finding books that he likes. Anyway. And so from there you thought I know, the best thing and the easiest thing for me to market next would clearly be a book of useful things to learn before you're grown up. I don't think that's really how you did it.Catherine Newman 10:37 Yeah, no, no, I know. Isn't that crazy? Really, the dirty truth is that I pitched it as a much worse book. I wanted a book, I went to the library to look for a book, I don't know if you ever end up writing this way where it's like, oh, this thing doesn't exist that I assumed existed. But I went to the library to get a book for Bertie, because I wanted her to do more helpful stuff in the house, but she didn't know how to do it. And she didn't want to be taught how to do it by anybody. So this is, second child has been wanting to do it by herself since she was two. And it's really hard with a person like that, who doesn't want to be shown how to do something and then you ask them like, 'Hey, can you clean the bathroom?' And she's like, 'I don't know how to do that.' But then if you try to show her she's pissed. So for Bertie it worked, so I went to the library to get I assumed like DK had made one of those like photo illustrated guides to chores, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 11:52 I might need that, there are things I don't really know how to do. Truth. Catherine Newman 11:57 So I went to get that book from the library, like I walked in confidently, talked to the librarian and they were like, 'Yeah, we don't have a book like that.' So I was working with Story at the time (the publisher)and who I love and my editor there is an old person from Family Fun who I used to write all this fun stuff with. KJ Dell'Antonia 12:22 That was also a fun place to write.Catherine Newman 12:25 Oh my God, so fun. So she and I had worked on a piece that I think killed me called Chores Fun. So I pitched her the book Chores Fun and I wanted it to be photo illustrated, step by step, DK style. And she was interested, but needless to say that got higher up over there and they were like, 'No...'KJ Dell'Antonia 12:50 And me, I want that book. I would buy 500 copies of that book. Catherine Newman 12:58 So they then said, you know, can you expand it so it's not just that? And so the other thing I really had wanted to write was, I want to say etiquette, but I don't mean in the like uptight, sort of like how to talk to the Queen of England sons, just the like how to communicate sense of etiquette, like how to be a person who needs to communicate with other people. I had wanted to write a book about that, too. And so we sort of merged those. And the book for me is primarily that but then we broke it down a little so it seems like it's many more topics than communicating and like cleaning a bathroom. So there's some stuff about cooking, and some stuff about money, and some stuff about just general skills like you know, changing batteries and that's how it came to be. And so I have found both of my kids with galleys of the book open to learn whatever it is they need to do. Bernie has used the book to tie a necktie and swears it works. And when I had asked them to clean all the bathrooms at Thanksgiving, I went in and the book was like, propped up on the counter in the bathroom.Jess Lahey 14:16 Oh my gosh, that's so brilliant. KJ Dell'Antonia 14:17 I had not thought of that. We've been cleaning bathrooms like crazy around here and yeah, I discovered that one child claimed to have been taught to wipe the toilet with a Clorox wipe and then flush it. And when I tell you that we're on septic I can also tell you that that ended extremely badly with men in the basement and saws. Oh, God, yeah, that's not how to clean a toilet. And I really didn't tell her that either.Catherine Newman 14:47 No, I can imagine.KJ Dell'Antonia 14:49 Anyway, I have now taught this skill, but I feel that it needs refreshing so I'm gonna prop that up. Jess Lahey 14:57 I'm gonna do the same thing. There's that forgetting of things that technically they should know. And as we've talked about a bajillion times for me - that one was laundry and we solved that with the dry erase markers on the washer and dryer with all of the instructions and the bathroom one seems to be the next frontier that we have to handle around here.KJ Dell'Antonia 15:22 Well, the truth is that in this moment, any of us who did have someone who sometimes cleaned for us whether that was frequent or infrequent, don't have that. Anyway, most of us are, even if there's stuff that maybe we didn't have to do before, or we were teaching our kids to do it but they didn't necessarily have to do it I could kind of poke at it and that was fine because the person who really could do it was gonna be there in two weeks. So now it's like yeah, this is how you clean the toilet. Jess Lahey 16:17 Here's the nice thing about this book also is that there are so many times when you show a kid how to do it and you're being a little overly controlling or they're like no one else does that, no one cleans behind the toilet seat, Mom, you can show them a book and say, 'Look, this is how an arbiter of how these things should be done is actually doing things. KJ Dell'Antonia 16:55 So what has it been, like getting out there to share this book that is, in many ways, so different than from what you've done before?Catherine Newman 17:18 I could ask you the same. You know, it's funny. The funny thing for me is that my first two books were so intimate that actually, it was really like trial by fire in terms of publishing. So when people would blur together sort of criticizing the book with criticizing me as a parent or even just me as a person, because the memoir genre kind of invites that and it was really little nerve racking, honestly. And so then after that there was fiction, which is so delightful because it's fiction. And there was a book I did with my friend Nicole, that craft book, which is so delightful, because a) it's a craft book, so no one's gonna, like take my character apart over it and b) it was with a friend. So you know, it's like how I used to love co-teaching when I was teaching, like it's so dreamy to have a partner in something because you're not stranded. So this is none of those. This is not a memoir. It's not fiction. I don't have a partner in it, but it doesn't feel dangerous to me. It just feels like oh, kids need to know how to do stuff. And I feel pretty good about it being useful. So I don't have like weird shame, you know the memoirs for me, I promoted them with shame. I mean, I had blathered on and on about all my deepest fears about parenting and my kids and then I had to go sell it and it was so humiliating and I just am feeling a delightful absence of shame around this book. So I don't know if that's what you asked or how I ended up there. So I'm feeling pretty happy. I feel like it's coming out. I actually weirdly feel like the timing for my book is good because lots of kids are home. Jess Lahey 19:46 I'm in total agreement with you on that one. Catherine Newman 19:50 And I feel like lots of parents genuinely need help. So it doesn't even feel artificial. You know, sometimes you have to teach your kids stuff even though it'd be much easier just to do it. I know you both know that because You both have talked to me about that, but I feel like this moment where I can say hey, I am well to welcome someone make dinner you know it doesn't feel like a learning avenue it's just real life and the kids are in it with us and they're old enough to see it, it doesn't feel contentious and so I guess I feel like this is actually not a bad moment for a book like that. You know, I'm so glad I don't have some book coming out about I don't even know. I think we're lucky like KJ I weirdly feel like this about your book too, that your book even though it's fiction, and it's like this total romance, it's so perfect because it offers something that people need in this moment, like I needed to read about these feuding fried chicken places. And it was like this ace in the hole for me that I knew I could just relax and read it and it was so that it was like the most incredibly pleasurable comforting diversion. So anyway, I feel like it would just be terrible to be coming out with a book that was like entering the workforce or you know, something that was like so not the moment for it...KJ Dell'Antonia 22:06 Thank you for saying lovely things about The Chicken Sisters, I'm super excited to share it. And I am kind of with you, I had a lot of angst around How To Be a Happier Parent because I kept going, it's happier, and not better, either. I felt like, you know, who was I to talk and to say those things and so I felt a lot of stress around that, that I don't feel. You know, it's a fun novel. That's what it's supposed to be. And it is that and it's got pretty yellow cover, and I am looking forward to everyone being able to buy it.Catherine Newman 22:54 No one's hoping to solve a problem with it, except maybe just wanting to be diverted. You won't fail, you know...KJ Dell'Antonia 23:17 Did you find people pushing you to do something else that was more in line with what you've done before? You know does your agent say like 'Well, could you just write another memoir? Or a collection of essays perhaps.'Catherine Newman 23:51 The funny thing is I'm a terrible pitcher. Like I really like for people to come to me and be like, 'You know what we need?' And I'm like, 'Sure, you know, because I am, as I have said for 20 years, I'm just a writing tramp. I will write whatever, as long as it doesn't like conflict with my politics, you know, but I've written you know, whatever copy to say that the tampons not gonna fall out of your body without ever using the word tampon or body. I mean, give me whatever and I will write it. Like I even like being assigned weird stuff because then it's like doing a crossword puzzle. You know, it doesn't ask that much of you emotionally. But, all of that is to say that I am not dying to publish another book of essays or another memoir and maybe at some point, I will. I mean, I have a lot of interest in all of us doing an anthology about like menopause. That would be really, really funny. But, I feel like something collaborative that was like more a collaborative essay project. And I feel the same way about writing about older kids. I would love to do it collaboratively. But I definitely don't want to write a whole book about it. My guess is if I do another book after this, it'll be an adult novel. Adult novel always sounds like it's porn... I have an adult novel I want to write that I've been sort of writing and it's that thing where now I don't know how to write it because I'm starting to lose track of the world before the pandemic, even though I lived in it for 50 years. So I don't know, that's always lingering around as a thing I want to write and then, you know, I want to write another book in this genre for Story for sure. And I wouldn't be surprised if that something happened, I don't know if it would be a follow up, or we would have to see, I guess.Jess Lahey 27:25 So for writers that are wishing they can cobble together this Higgledy Piggledy, a little writing here, a little writing there a little of this genre. How I mean, I know it's impossible to say, I'm assuming you're not going to say, Oh, yes, I had this all written out. 10 years ago. This is exactly the path I have designed for myself.Catherine Newman 27:44 You mean when I was getting a PhD for 10 years, but I then went on to not use? Yeah, that really wasn't the plan. Jess Lahey 27:52 Yeah, that was while I was at law school, learning how to be a juvenile attorney. So you know, for those writers who look to us to have some sort of takeaway about how to create a life around writing for themselves? I mean, do you have anything you could share for us in terms of how you've managed to cobble together this really interesting career?Catherine Newman 28:15 Well, thank you for calling it both Higgledy Piggledy and interesting because I think of it really as both of those. Yeah, I guess so. I mean, nothing that you haven't heard on this podcast before. I feel like the old improv yes and advice I do think about, I say no to nothing. Again, only if it conflicts with my politics. So I've never been proud and I continue not to be, I will write most things and I will work on most projects and I will give it away if it's a worthy cause. I'm more than happy to write something for someone doing something that's important. So I ended up with tons of relationships and I know you're both the same that for both of you that sort of one of the treasures of your writing and publishing life is these ongoing really well nurtured relationships and I don't I do it as well as you guys, truly. But that said, I do maintain relationships with everyone I've ever written for and they end up who knows where like, you write the shitty Kotex copy and then that person goes to O Magazine, I just feel all the time like people move around so much. And as long as I make myself easy to work with, and available, then I feel like I get a lot of assignments just because those two things turn out to be, I think marketable skills weirdly.Jess Lahey 30:10 I find it shocking that you say you're not as good at it because we had never met, I admired your writing so much, and you agreed to have coffee with me never having met me before when I happened to be in your town. So I disagree that you are not very good at cultivating these relationships and you know, whenever I talk about your writing, people talk about the fact that they really admire you as a writer, so I think that you do a really good job of that.Catherine Newman 30:42 Well, thank you. I loved the idea too, that you like called me out of the blue. I totally was already stalking you. KJ Dell'Antonia 30:58 Catherine, I think you have a gig right now that a lot of writers would both kill for and also feel like well hey I could do that, I could weigh in on etiquette issue real simple and getting a column is kind of the gold standard of what people want that's hard to achieve and I get a lot of questions about it and I'm not at all helpful. So I would like to give you the opportunity to be not at all helpful - like how did it happen?Catherine Newman 31:36 Oh my god, it was so like a one thing and another and it was exactly the thing of an editor I'd worked with somewhere unglamorous ended up at Real Simple. And then I wrote something for her there and their etiquette columnist was leaving, they asked me to audition which was so nerve racking. so I The question was something like my cousin without talking to us named her twins after my twins like what would you do?So I it was just luck but a lot of my luckiest things (seemingly luckiest things) come from having said yes to really outrageous things either low paying things or things that I wrote for a good cause. I would just say for me, I think almost everything good in my career has come from a certain openness and willingness. You know, it's like when my kids were little and they were writing thank you notes for shitty presents, you know that they didn't like and weren't happy to get and I would say there's always something true you can say that's gonna be real, like someone gave you a gift that in and of itself is something to be thankful for and you can express that. That sounds so corny, but whatever. That's how I am. And I think like almost any opportunity I'm given to write I do feel like there's an opportunity to make some kind of meaning out of it, if that makes sense. Either to take pleasure in the writing or to say something funny or to get a little philosophy into it or a little politics into it. And so I guess I think of even the weirdest stuff as an opportunity, which I think is a head game I play with myself because I'm never going to be successful enough to not need to keep writing all this stuff all the time. You know, I am just constantly writing and that feeling I have of everything being a little bit of an opportunity, you know, we're all writers, because we're curious about the world, I feel like at bottom, that's probably the main thing we all have in common. And you can always express that, you know what I mean? Even if it's something that feels sort of random. So that's a long way to say that I think every writing gig is an opportunity. I mean, unless somewhere wealthy is grossly under paying you then don't do that. Like they can't do that. That's wrong. But I just mean, you know, some of the stuff that isn't like a perfect fit or isn't high profiler isn't very glamorous, those things have always led to other things for me, almost, almost inevitably, in a way that I feel like is karmic in the true sense of what you put out into the world comes back to you.KJ Dell'Antonia 34:51 We talk about things in that category a lot because we make a practice of getting annoyed with each other whenever we say I got lucky because yes, we have been lucky but yeah, fortune favors the well prepared. You know, Dax Shepard can't ask you on his podcast and Kristen Bell can't share your book unless you have written it and perhaps presented it to her. Yes, some things land and some things don't. But if you don't throw any paper airplanes up ain't nothing gonna hit.Catherine Newman 36:05 I feel like it's partly luck and partly this other gendered thing, which is I am a pleaser and I have really mixed feelings about that because on the one hand like I have raised Bertie to not be a pleaser...KJ Dell'Antonia 36:25 You wrote about that for me at Motherlode and it's such a hysterical piece and it made people so delighted and so angry at the same time.Catherine Newman 36:32 Yeah, but I am such a pleaser and that has served me really well in my career. And I never as a feminist, I always have really mixed feelings about it because some of it feels really gendered to me that I'm friendly. Let me say as a side note to my own comment that I was just making. I think one of the beauties of freelancing is that you can't take any of your relationships for granted and you shouldn't anyway, I mean, I really feel that right. If you're in a workplace, you should always be nurturing your relationships and taking care of everybody in that way. But freelancing, no one ever has to hire you again. It reminds me a little bit, if you will, of waiting tables, which I was excellent at. Where you're always gonna do best if you were your sort of best self if what you put out is the best version of yourself it's gonna bring you the best work and connect you to the best people. And the truth is, it actually makes my life good because I mostly have positive interactions and that's so much better for me than getting into bed at night and be like Oh God, I had the worst interaction with somebody. So if something's kind of weird I'll like die about it. And I just feel like freelancing I mostly have to be somebody that people would want to hire. You know, I know I keep sounding like such a w***e. But there it is.KJ Dell'Antonia 38:21 That's kind of how it works some of the time. So Catherine, what have you been reading?Catherine Newman 39:59 So truly The Chicken Sisters was my segue back into reading but I wanted to mention a book that actually I was reading right before that, which was (I don't know if you've talked about it on the podcast), but the Chanel Miller book, Know My Name. I admired it so much. I just love her and I love her as an illustrator and I just love everything about her. And as a memoir, I thought the gift of being able to write about something so terrible, with so much love and optimism just blew me away. Like, it's everything I ever sort of wanted to be as a writer. And that book just killed me. I thought it was so incredibly good. I almost wanted to read it again to study it.Jess Lahey 41:32 I didn't know she was a writer, so I was a little nervous. And then I was so blown away, especially towards the second half. I found there were a few moments in the first half where I wasn't totally with her, but then it just picked up steam in terms of it felt to me almost that she got to be a better writer during the process of writing it and at the end of it I went off for a walk in the woods by myself because I had to sort of just process that book. It was exquisite. It was so well doneCatherine Newman 41:59 I had honestly just the exact same. I read it because I felt like this kind of moral obligation as a feminist not to turn away from the story, was so I felt like I should read this book. I picked it up with a dread of obligation. And then it's just sang, it was so beautiful. So that book and Bertie read it after and was crazy about it. And so that book, I have other books, but I want to hear what you're reading, too. Jess Lahey 42:47 KJ, you want to go next?KJ Dell'Antonia 42:57 I've started some books. Okay. I'm going to tell you that I'm rereading a book, because I can tell you with confidence that I love this book and I have enjoyed it. I think this is a multiple read. I've read this many times because it's just soothing and kind of wonderful. And I think I've talked about it on the podcast. Catherine Newman 43:15 Can I guess? Is it I Capture the Castle?KJ Dell'Antonia 43:19 No, but I do like that. No, not at all. It's a memoir, and it's called Recipes for a Beautiful Life by Rebecca Berry. She wrote it in like 2008 or it takes place in like 2008 so it's got a lot of the the economy crash in there as she and her family are moving. We all know I'll read anything in which a family moves to a small town in a rural place and makes a new life for themselves. Anyway, I have really enjoyed that. So that is what I can guarantee for you. I have started The Henna Artist and I really like it so far. I'm gonna mangle her name so I'm going to look it up for the show notes. At chapter three I'm really liking it, but we all know how that could go, but I don't think it will.Jess Lahey 44:22 Well I have to start with I listened to the audio of Sarina Bowen's newest book Sure Shot and I got to talk about it with her because she did some really interesting things in there and we were talking a little bit. We were talking about authors who are gardeners and they plant seeds for new things and Sarina just did an exquisite job in this book. I love her books from just a listening to the story perspective but I also love watching her go and sort of planting the seeds for the books that will follow in the series because she writes books in a series and this is one of the Brooklyn Bruisers hockey books and I just from a technical perspective adored listening to Sure Shot her new hockey romance. But it's funny KJ that you said the thing about small town and comfort and making a life in a small town thing because my comfort listen this past couple of weeks on and off has been Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver because I've been prepping my gardens, I've spent so much time not writing as much but doing a ton of gardening and so listening to Barbara Kingsolver while I do that has been has been just wonderful. And the last thing I just finished last night was another Harlan Coben, this one was called Missing You and it was really clever. And we have to try to get Harlan Coben on the show because he does this thing that Sarina had told me about that he's known for, which is the the climax at the end of the book, except it's got two peaks, not one. Like you think you've hit the climax and you have the answers and then he hits you again, with a second sort of twist climax. And it's so it's his thing. He does it over and over and over again. And he's so good at it. The guy plots a book like nobody's business, so I'm dying to talk to him. So if anyone out there knows Harlan Coben, I would love to talk to him about how he plots his books. But anyway, so that's been what I've been listening to and it's been all listening. A little bit of reading books in hand but mostly listening because I've been out in the garden. Catherine Newman 47:25 Can I mention one other book? I just so what I just read is my friend Amity Gage's book, Sea Wife. And it's not at all comforting at all takes place on a sailboat. And it's a young family, a married couple and kids on this sailboat and it's a kind of a thriller and kind of a mystery. And I feel like it's one of the best books I've ever read about parenting even though it's a novel, and I tore through it but it's very breathless and like terrifying so...KJ Dell'Antonia 48:10 Well that has its place at the moment, too. Because then you forget where you are. Catherine Newman 48:15 I was really caught up in it and it's also just incredibly lyrical. Like some of the sentences I would read twice just because it was so gorgeous. So I'm recommending that as a total escape-like thriller.Jess Lahey 48:54 I went yesterday, I have to say I went yesterday to pick up a book from the Vermont Bookshop in Middlebury, Vermont, and there was no one at the shop but they had this beautiful cart outside the door with everyone's orders labeled and covered with some plastic and it was just the most delightful way to get out and and go 'shopping' even though I couldn't shop it worked really nicely. Booksellers are working so hard to make that work. Catherine, thank you for being so patient with us while we worked out the details of how we were going to have you on the show. It shouldn't have taken us this long, but we're very happy that you were patient with us.Catherine Newman 49:48 Oh my gosh, my pleasure. Talking to you is a highlight of my week and life.Jess Lahey 49:55 Well, and I'm going to recommend that people go ahead and preorder How to Be a Person...KJ Dell'Antonia 50:03 They won't have to preorder it will be out by the time this is out.Jess Lahey 50:07 It's just such a delightful book. It's such a fun read, I'm going to be giving it as like part of a baby gift. I'm going to have copies around to give to people constantly. I have a neighbor I'm giving it to as a gift. So I'm so excited to have just multiple copies around the house.Catherine Newman 50:26 You guys are so supportive I could cry. Jess Lahey 50:33 Oh Catherine, where can people find you if they want to find out more about your higgledy piggledy career?Catherine Newman 51:06 CatherineNewman writer.com I think.Jess Lahey 51:44 Until next week, everyone, keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

In this interview Lisa interviews top Holistic movement and health coach David Liow of www.hm-coach.com.   Lisa and David do a deep dive into why our circadian rhythms are out of whack, what blue light blocking glasses can do for your health and sleep dysfunctions. They also look into health optimisation and foundational health principles.   David Liow completed a post-graduate MPhEd (dist) at Otago University and became a Occupational Therapy lecturer in rehabilitation, anatomy, and kinesiology, then a senior lecturer in Exercise Rehabilitation and Resistance Training.   While teaching in higher education, he kept following his passion in sports training and spent a decade working with High Performance Sport New Zealand as a lead strength and conditioning coach. This gave him the opportunity to work with a wide range of world class athletes.   Some career highlights so far are: Head trainer for the New Zealand Black Sox for two successful World Series campaigns Head trainer for the New Zealand Black Sox for two successful World Series campaigns Head trainer and regional trainer for NZ Women's and Men's Hockey for several Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Head trainer for the NZ Titleist Men and Women's Golf Academy for several Espirito Santo and Eisenhower Trophy Championship teams. Trainer for numerous Commonwealth and Olympic athletes in athletics, basketball, through to swimming. Regularly speaking at FitEx NZ, Filex, Asia Fitness Conference, ExPRO, Asia Edufit Summit, and other international health and fitness events. Health coaching pop bands on international concert tours around the globe. Co-directing Kaizen Exercise Physiologists to develop a world-class team of exercise physiologists Co-founder of the Kaizen Institute of Health David says the Holistic Movement Coach Programme is the perfect vehicle for him  to live his mission and share his life's work.   He is obsessed with finding the best ways to be healthier and move better.  To balance out his obsession(s) he is also a tai chi and chi kung practitioner and teacher, and practices the lifestyle that he teaches   Findo out more about David and his work and courses at www.hm-coach.com   To get a discount on the blue light blocking glasses mentioned in this podcast use the coupon code Lisa at checkout at  https://hm-coach.com/index.php/store/   Grab your blue blocking glasses here in our shop https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/clothing-and-accessories/products/blue-light-blocking-glasses-v2-0-free-postage   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show:   For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/running/ Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetu-mindset-university/   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening.   "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati brought to you by lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:14) Today I have a special treat for you guys. I have David Liow on the podcast from the sunshine coast, originally a Kiwi. Now David is a Legion and the fitness industry in New Zealand and Australia and Australasia. Uh, he has, uh, MPH ed from Otago university and was an occupational therapy lecturer in rehabilitation and anatomy and kinesiology. And then a senior lecturer in exercise rehabilitation and resistance training. He worked for a decade with high performance sport New Zealand and was the head trainer of the New Zealand black socks, was two successful world series campaigns. He's also worked with golfers and a number of Olympic athletes and athletics, basketball right through to swimming and he as a holistic movement coach. And today we're going to be diving into the topic of light and blue light blocking glasses. Um, something that David has developed his own range of blue locket, blue, blue light blocking glasses and why you should be interested in this. Speaker 2: (01:17) We get into sleep, uh, dysfunctional sleep. We get into, um, holistic movement and what that's all about. So a really, really interesting interview with David. Uh, before I go over to David, I just want to remind you my book relentless is now available in the bookstores right throughout the New Zealand. If you're listening from New Zealand, you can grab it at any bookstores around the country or of course if you're overseas or you want to grab it off my site, I'd love you to do that. You can go to relentlessbook.lisatamati.com To do that. Um, just reminder too, we also have a regular epigenetics webinars that we're holding. Our next one is on the swings day night, but if you're listening to this podcast later, go to epigenetics.lisatamati.com for the next webinar. Now this is all about our epigenetics health program, which is using the latest in genetic science to understand your genes and how to optimize them and what's, what's the best environment for those genes. Speaker 2: (02:16) So information about every area of your life from nutrition of course, and exercise, what to eat, when to eat, how often to eat, what types of exercise will suit your genes right through to your social, your mental, your intellectual talents that you may not be aware of, what the way that your brain works brought through to the neurotransmitters and the hormones that are dominant and how they will affect your personality. So it's a really amazing insight for health program that we're using both with corporates and individual athletes and people interested in optimizing their health. If you want to check that out, go over to the programs tab on our website at lisatamati.com right now over to the show with David Liow. Well hi everyone. Lisa Tamati to hear back at pushing the limits and I am with David Liow How are you doing Dave? Speaker 3: (03:08) I'm very well this morning. Thanks Lisa. You're over on the sunshine coast. I am, which is looking quite sunny this morning and we had a lot of rain last night, but the sunny coast is a sunny coast today. Speaker 2: (03:17) That was perfect. We've already, uh, um, Rick the morning for your whole family, trying to get on the same call and waking your daughter up and getting your laptop and stuff like that. So apologize to you, to your family, but you, we've got you on here, so I'm really, really privileged to have you on. Again, Dave, you're a return offender to my, uh, podcast. Um, you were on a couple of years ago I think goes so well, but so really excited to catch up with you. And today we're going to be talking a couple of different areas and we'll probably wander off path, but today everyone, it's about light and blue light blocking glasses that you may have heard about and why this is important and sleep. Um, Dave's an expert in this area and there's actually gone out and designed his own, uh, glasses for people. Um, so we're going to be getting into all of that good stuff. But Dave, tell us what you've been up to in the last couple of years and what you do over there on the sunshine coast. Speaker 3: (04:12) So in the sunshine coast, I have a exercise physiology clinic, which unfortunately isn't shut down at the moment. So we're on a, we're doing a lot of remote work, which is why communicated well, zoom has become a big commodity here at the moment in my household. So I also mentor a group of, uh, some of the best trainers in the world, many of which are based in New Zealand actually. So I worked with that group there and take them right through their education work. I do a lot of presenting to, so I'm often in Asia and New Zealand. I spend a lot of time in New Zealand. In fact, I was in New Zealand pretty much the whole of February. Just got back in time before things went the Casta key way. Of course, I am of course a Kiwi. Absolutely. So, but I've been, I've been over here for about 10 years now. Um, but certainly, um, I still do a lot of work in New Zealand in particular and a fair bit in Australia, funnily enough. Cause that's where I live. Speaker 2: (05:08) Yeah. And you have a hell of a reputation, uh, in the, in the personal training and the fitness training space. Um, you talk to anybody who's done anything, you know, above the sort of basic stuff and they know who you are. Um, so you've got a long, long history. You are a holistic movement coach. Can you explain what that is? Speaker 3: (05:27) Absolutely. So holistic movement coach, the idea is it's more than movement and that's pretty much what they're, what the logo says. So much more than movement because what I found is, I guess I've been doing this for over 25 years now and what I've, what I've always specialized in is the, the mechanics of the body. Yep. So I look at what's connected to what, look at how the tissues work, look at how joints work, look at how people move. And that was my world. But what I found after a while is that's not enough because we're more than just joints and leavers so much more. So if you don't look after the other part, that's where the holistic part comes in. If you don't look after the whole person after everything from their mindset through to the asleep, through the nutrition, there's just no way you can, you can get your results. So you can have the best training program in the world, the best corrective exercise program in the world. But if, if your minds are, you're stressed out of your brain or sleeping, I don't care what you give someone that's just not going to work. Speaker 2: (06:23) That's so funny that you come to the same conclusion and we, I mean a lot of people have late. I think as we do more research and starting to see also when you're training somebody or two people and you're getting completely different results and you're giving them the same program and the same goals and they're the same type of person and same age or whatever and you're like, why is that person getting results? And they're not. So really being that personal spaces in that holistic looking at, cause I truly believe like our mind is so like important for healing. You know, it's not just mechanical isn't, it? Isn't just when you've got a sore back. It isn't just necessarily about the back. Oh no way. Can you explain Speaker 3: (07:03) cliques and I know you've had some speakers talk about pain as well. Pain is extremely complex. That said output not an input. So certainly when you're talking about pain and injury, there's so much going on with the brain with there. Surely some mechanical parts that can have a role. But I mean the top two inches are just absolutely vital and you know with your background only. So you know that in terms of a high performance, but you can apply that to any field. You know, I guess one of the big differences there that I've come across is we're so focused on loading people. That's been our thing. How do we train people? How do we add more load onto people that's adding more stress on the people. So, and you know, I'll talk at a conference, there'll be, you know, there might be 50 talks on at the conference, 45 of them will be about loading, how to lot people with heel bells, how to load them with power bands, how to, how to Olympic lifting. Speaker 3: (07:55) Those things are great. Don't get me wrong. And I teach those and I do those. But where's the other part about getting people recovering? Well, getting them in the right place. So one of the key fundamentals and holistic movement coach is getting people in the right place so they can accept load. And then that's a really big point of difference. So if you can get people in the right space, then you apply your load, you can apply whatever load you want and they'll be fine. But until you're in that space, you're going to have nothing but breakdown. Speaker 2: (08:24) Yeah, and this is like, this is a real mind shift because like I know you've worked with a lot of elite level athletes and you know, in, in, in my stupid career, and I don't count myself as an elite athlete, I count myself as one of those stupid stubborn ones. But that I had that mentality just go hard or go home, you know, go harder, go harder, go harder. It was always the answer. If I wasn't getting results go harder. And it took me a long time to realize, especially as I got older, that approach was no working. And how do you reconcile that for people that are in the elite space set are just used to going full bore and then that suddenly not getting the results they used to get. Speaker 3: (09:06) Yeah, it's funny, I had a conversation with a group of athletes the other day and what I normally find is you are the classic woman, high performance athlete. You really are most of the guys, well I always find the individual athletes work harder than team athletes. Um, ones that work in funded sports and you know, great athletes here. And this is a massive generalization, sorry guys out there who are listening to this and going, hang on when work with you, I worked hard. But you find that the individual athletes work harder. Most of the men, you need to kick up the ass. You need to hold them back. So you, you're the classic one, but you live, you got smarter as you train. And I've read your journey and how you, how you run. You're constantly there to listen to, you know, when the, when the, when the student's ready, the teacher appears and, and you know, you certainly, um, you know, you figured out some, some pretty cool stuff and you know, that's the stuff that you apply in your program now. So yeah, Speaker 2: (10:14) you know that someone like Neo because I would argue and argue and argue with him, but eventually I came around cause what I was doing was right. Speaker 3: (10:22) Hello. He was right to have it Speaker 2: (10:27) fancy that I had to, Murray was right all along. But it is, it's a really hard shift and I think, you know, cause you get away with a lot when you're 20, well you knew 40 and you're still trying to be at the top of your game or your mid thirties even. You start to have a different things going on and things aren't recovering as well as they were. And even though you're doing the same thing, it's just not more of the same to every decade. I reckon you need a complete new approach. Speaker 3: (10:56) You need to do it smarter. And I've got a guy who, um, is in, he's, he goes to the world championship, um, uh, triathlon every year and he's been doing that for, I've been working with him for the last, since I arrived here, nine years now. And he got a three fastest times last year actually. The last one was blue, which is the last triathlon event before they closed down all the events here. So he's getting faster and faster and faster and know when he sees 50, 53 now. And we had a chat the other day and we were laughing about it and he's saying, you know, my three fastest times I've been in my last, you know, my last year, he said, yeah, we were actually starting to get the hang of it now. So look we can, we can flip the age card. Look there is a part to play I'm getting on as well, but we're looking at that experience you can bring to the table there. And I'm often training with young guys and I'm not going to, you're doing it right for an old guy. And I say, you got really well for young guy. He hasn't got nearly experienced I have, Speaker 2: (11:55) but don't ever compliment them so I can find out the hard way. But there is, it just has to be done smarter, so much smarter. And you know, we all look at ourselves as young athletes and go, Oh man, I had so much raw ability there. But then you look at how you're training now and go, boy, I'm so much smarter now. If you can take the, I'd much rather have a smarter than a roar athlete, get combined the two and you've got something really special and give it time. And I think like now we're starting to crack and this is an area of study that really interests me is longevity for obvious reasons. I'm getting older, my parents are getting old and I want to keep everyone alive and healthy. So that's the focus of my study in a lot of ways. Um, and we are working things out now to slow that aging process and reverse a lot of the danger, a lot of the problems that we've caused ourselves. Speaker 2: (12:47) So, um, I'm excited for some of the stuff I've been getting, you know, reading all sorts of stuff. I'm on peptides and all this sort of stuff and just wishing I could get access to some of the stuff and try it all out cause I'm a tree blew by a hacker, you know, try everything out on your own body, see how it works. Um, and there's some amazing stuff coming in. The information that's coming, uh, down the pipeline. If we can just stay healthy long enough, we, we've got a good chance at living really long, healthy lives. I think, you know, in the next 10 years there's going to be so much change happen that, you know, good things are gonna happen if we're onto it and we know we're aware of what's coming in the space. So I'm really excited for the, you know, being able to maintain performance for longer and have, you know, health and longevity, you know, beyond the hundred. Speaker 2: (13:35) I think that that's, you know, well and truly possible. So exciting. Um, and of course too, because health has that foundation. Yeah. We call it health and fitness. I mean it has to be healthy. Then fitness. You can't have one without the other. I know you had some real challenges in the query there and when that health goes, you can forget about the other part of it cause it's just not going to last year that's still undoing some of the damage I've done to my body. I've managed to save my kidneys and get them back on track, but then, you know, hormones came into the picture and um, you know, uh, troubles in the lady department and all that sort of jazz that's not on a fix and he has a lot to unravel. If I'd done it differently, um, back then. And of course, you know, doing extreme ultramarathons brings with it dangerous. It's not, you know, it's not, um, you know, a couple of hours running around the roads. It's doing really, really at the limit things and what is a coach now, I'm always like concerned. Sometimes I find myself like being that old mother be, it's like, Hey, no, don't push that hard. Go to those lengths because you know, sometimes it's not worth it for a competition. You know, um, one of the things that I often find myself saying to people as they, you know, they, they equate, Speaker 3: (14:52) uh, fitness with health. But boy, you know, sports not about health. It's about seeing how hard you can push yourself before you or your opponent breaks. So, you know, and that is the pointy end of performance. So you know, the way you've been pushing yourself, there's, there's, that's where you've, you've got to have everything covered and that's where a lot of that approach you said about your health and getting all those bits and pieces there. Because if you can get all those, those bases covered, you have got potential to push yourself through. Well, but a lot of people don't bring that health to that, that base health to the Speaker 2: (15:26) they face table. In other words, yeah. High performance sport or extreme endurance sport in my case is not healthy in of itself. Um, and I like, I truly believe like I was extremely fit in one way. I could run for hundreds of Ks, but I was sick. And if I look at myself in the way I looked and the way my body and my phenotype, my body was presenting, I did not look healthy. I look healthier. I look, funnily enough, more athletic now because I'm not holding all the fluid and my kidneys and working again. And my, you know, I was always four or five. I was quite puffy, you know, I was quite, um, I was always a muscular build, but I was puffy and unhealthy looking. And I always sort of was carrying white, you know, and wondering why when I'm doing millions of kilometers a year. And, um, and now I know why. Cause my body was just complete in hormonal hell and adrenal hell and, and, and so I was fit, but I was not healthy. And now for me, it's all about being healthy and longevity in having foundation or health. Speaker 3: (16:36) Yeah. And bringing that to you, you runners that you're working with in your groups. That's, that's, um, you know, that's gonna make, uh, uh, people enjoy what they do, so much more in it, achieve great things. So that's the way it should be done. So good on you for learning the lesson. Speaker 2: (16:51) Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then being able to share the insights. And it's funny that we both come to the same sort of conclusions. Well it's probably logical. I suppose it's also a part of the age that we're at and having that maturity to be able to not just, it's not all just about much Muchow call I go go. It's about being strategic and you know, and I look at you, a lot of young athletes that are, you know, it's all about their abs and it's all about, you know, how sexy they look and that approach has also not healthy. Like it's not going to bring healthy just cause you're like ripped. Um, especially when it comes to woman. I think, you know, like we have this, you know, the ideal that isn't actually necessarily or always a healthy ideal. It's uh, it might look good for five minutes and your beginning ideal, but it's not exactly, we should be health wise and hormonally and all of that sort of stuff. We've gone completely off track cause today was me talking. But I love talking to people like you. So let's get back to blue light blocking glasses. Um, and why, why these are important, what they do and how, how does, um, having the wrong light at the wrong time affect your health? Speaker 3: (17:59) I guess we need to kind of talk about light to start with. And you know, if you think about the foundations of health, we think about the foundations of who we are as as humans we've always been exposed to light and dark. Those are two things that have never changed. We've had ever, and the way that we've operated, well, most and most cultures is that you are active in the day. That's the time you hunt together and at night that's the time you sleep. Because as cave men and cave woman, we were the fastest beings or strongest. So if you go hunting at night, unfortunately that say with two tigers got a better night vision than you have. So that's not a logical time for you to go and do your thing. So we've always been exposed to that as a way of regulating where our systems at and where we are. Speaker 3: (18:46) Every cell in your body has a circadian rhythm. So it's Acadia means about a day. So every cell in your body knows has a certain function at a certain time. And there's a neat little Wikipedia article on this, which basically says at different times where your reaction times best and you know this yourself, you get up, you have a certain routine that you'll go through. There are times you'll feel hungry, there are times you'll go to the toilet. There are times that your your most awake, most alert times that you want to go to sleep. So we have a whole rhythm built into our behaviors. In every single cell in our body has behaviors and actions that are governed by Diana light. So this is one of the foundation rulers of how our body works. Speaker 2: (19:29) Absolutely. So, so, okay, so what we've done in the last couple of hundred years, or I don't know how long we've actually had electric life, but ever since we've had electric glide, we've tipped everything up on its ear and we now have light at night time, whereas in the caveman days, and this is where our DNA hasn't evolved with the way that we've changed our lifestyle so quickly. Um, so we were exposed to, you know, televisions and lights and artificial lights and fluorescent light and horrible, lots of light, uh, at nighttime when our bodies are producing the hormones to go to sleep, your melatonin and things like this. Um, if, if we even go back, like I've just been reading a book by T S Wiley on hormone or health for woman and so on. And she talks about the fact that back in the old days when we were only governed by Moonlight, all woman's cycled at the same time. And I was like, wow. So we used to be all in sync with the moon and, and, and like how much light male camping trips that are out there. Months. We're outta here. But isn't that interesting that we, you said we used to be completely governed and this is, you know, back in the cave man days by those cycles of day and night and now are who is so, um, you know, bombarded with other types of light that are all about cycles, have now become individual. Speaker 3: (20:51) They're that light exposure. That's a better message. That's a, that's a great point because we used to have real light and real dark. So if I'm looking outside now, it's a pretty sunny day here. Um, so lights measured and what the units called a lax. And ALEKS is the amount of light put out by a candle when it's one meter away from you. So that's one Luxe. So, um, if you're looking at Moonlight, we'll go with Moonlight. Moonlight is around maybe 0.5 to one Luxe. So it's a very light amount of light. Well, it's a very small amount of night. So if I'm looking at a room, let's say you're, um, soft lighting in a, in a bedroom that's 50 Lux. If you were sitting in your room, you're in your dark room. That's not a dark room. That's 50 lacks. And what's happening now is with all the artificial light. Speaker 3: (21:38) And um, for me, I live in the suburbs so my neighbors have their light on it. It puts a, you know, I can, if I walk outside I'll see that. So we're not exposed to real dark. Our darks not dark, right. If we flip it the other way too, our light's not light. So I'm looking outside at the moment. I've probably got 50,000 Lux of natural sunlight out there. If I'm sitting in an office though, I've probably got 300 Lux. So when I'm in day sitting in my light, I'm not sitting in real life. And when I'm at night, I'm not sitting in real dark. So now we have 50 shades of gray thing going on at that movie. We've got that all the time. So we're not seeing real dark and real life. Some of the people that probably, well hopefully watching, listening to our interview today, um, they may get up in the morning, it might be dark where they are too. Speaker 3: (22:29) They might flick on a light bulb, they'll hop in their car, they'll go to their office underground, they'll go to their office where they'll sit in their cubicle all day with their first flight. They can't get out for lunch, cause are busy. They'll come home by then it might be getting a bit dark too. They'll go and they'll sit in front of their TV. So I get no exposure to real dark or real life. And boy that is a foundation for how our body operates. You get that wrong, you miss that up. Um, you can get a whole range of interesting symptoms. Every system, every cell in your body is affected by that. So we're at see where it goes. Nobody knows, but it's not going to be good. Speaker 2: (23:06) No. And this is, it fixed. So many systems like we have, you know, a hormonal system as a, as I mentioned before, we've got out melatonin production and now our eyes. Um, and, and also the fact that like, that's getting to the, you know, uh, the subject of, of why sunlight's important and we've all been told like, you know, don't put sunscreen on and make sure you're covered up when you go out in the sun and so on. And that is actually, we're not giving enough vitamin D. I mean, everyone knows that we produce vitamin D when we go in to the sunshine, but I don't think people know how important vitamin D and all of the processes is actually a prohormone. They're calling now, not a vitamin because it's so many parts of the body and so many organs. Everything from your, your mood, which we do understand that, you know, that produces it seasonal, um, disorder. Speaker 2: (23:56) Um, but it also like is, is a, is the building block one of the building blocks of your hormones, of your, your, uh, your mood in, you know, all of these things are being affected. Even your bone health, you know, like vitamin D is one of those crucial things. Um, and we can supplement with vitamin D. And I think for a lot of people that's a great thing to be doing if you can't get the normal amount of sunlight. Um, and I was reading, but yeah, we need to actually go outside and get sun on our eyes and sun on our skin. What actually happens when we go out and we get that sunlight, cause I used to wear a, I still do most of the time because I've got very sensitive eyes to light. So I've been wearing my sunglasses forever and a day outside. Why is it important that I take my sunglasses? Speaker 3: (24:44) So what are doing Mary can mean particularly for people who have sleep problems is they get some real sunlight in your eyes, particularly in that first half of the day. So their morning sun. So that's the most important time. So when that light comes through, so lights made it a whole lot of different colors. So all the colors of the rainbow, the Roy Bev thing, but typically a daylight or or, or a real real life. It's very high in blue light. When that comes through, it goes through your eyes and there's some photo of, there's some fairly sensitive ganglion cells. So there's some specific cells in your eyes which are right in your written to the there which, which sends signals to your master clock in your brain, which then sends signals out to the rest of your body letting you know what time it is. Speaker 3: (25:31) So that morning sun. So sunglasses, I've got no problems with sunglasses. If you're out in the sun all day, but getting up, you know, being in sunglasses all day, that's going to do you a disservice. So ideally you want some, some real light in your eyes. Take the 15 minutes is great, you know, thirties fifteens, but even five minutes better than nothing, right? So if you are struggling with sleep, even if you can eat your breakfast outside or get a little bit of a walking from your car to the office or around the block, getting some real sunlight that will help your brain distinguish, okay, this is daytime. Then if you can get some real dark, okay, then your brain can start thinking, okay, now I understand what time of day it is so I can start getting my cycles right. Speaker 2: (26:14) Wow, that's, that's powerful stuff. And then, and then so many knock on effects for our health and we'll do that and when we do it wrong. And you know what, um, I'm working with a few different people that are unfortunately in hospital at the moment with, you know, various problems, um, delights in the hospital. Like we were sticking our sickest, most vulnerable people under these horrific lights that are going all night. I mean, of course the nurses need to move around and see. So it's a bit of a, I don't know how to fix the problem. Yeah, jeez. Yeah, Speaker 3: (26:44) so there's the fluoro. So flouro and led lights are particularly high in blue light too. So when you're in those hospitals, um, Chang airport says another place if you wish. I'm obviously not at here at the moment, but I go and the amount of light in their places, often they're at 3:00 AM in the morning in between places. Those lights. Singles are incredibly strong and that's effectively that blue light coming from those lights here is telling your brain that it's, it's middle of the day. So I always thinking about the nurses that work in those places too. That's a know that's a real health hazard for them. So unfortunately we've got all these lights in our houses now too. So led lights are very energy efficient but also extremely, extremely powerful. So you've got a whole of intensity but also very, very high in blue light. Speaker 3: (27:34) The old school filament, like light bulbs are very low and blue lights. So the old school lights though, they do more energy. We're actually far better for your health, for your health. Wow. That's no good. No, not unfortunately not. And that's where you, you candle lights really great too. And you know, when we were thinking back to our roots, and this is, you know, if we look in the past to find out how we need to kind of operate for our health today, um, you know, fire is also very low and blue light. So sitting around a fire is actually very common. It doesn't wake you up unless you're sitting too close to the fire. That's out candle lights. Speaker 3: (28:16) Um, just on that, you know, um, a change of temperature, but before you go to bed is also another good sleep. You know, this is why when you, when you increase the warmth or what, um, or even cold would actually, well, as long as you change the temperature that you've been in, that signals to your body is a change coming at something you go to sleep. So that's another little trick and you know why? Probably sitting around the fire that doesn't have blue light and that will help you go, go and not off afterwards. That idea of sleep routines is just fantastic and yeah, you know, and you know, having a good receipt routines, fantastic. And we do this with our kids where we're grading it, you know? Yeah. Okay, we're going to get ready to go to bed now. Okay, we'll brush your teeth. Speaker 3: (28:55) Now we're going to do a story here. Okay. We're going to put on your bedside lamp. We'll turn the light down and we'll go to sleep. But when we're adults, we kind of forget about that. And you go, Oh, okay, I'll watch till the end of this program here. And it might be one big, one time you'll go to bed, might be 9:00 PM. Next one, it's 1130. It's all over the show. We don't do that with our kids. And we forget about those routines. And part of that is, is light light's a big part of that. That's the most important part of your sleep routine is getting your light source right. That's exactly right. And this is why. So you learned this and then you said, right, I'm going to go and buy some blue light blocking glasses. Yeah, I did that too. And um, you know, you go on the internet, you Google up somewhere on Etsy or eBay or somewhere and you buy something. Speaker 2: (29:41) And what did you find with those glasses? Speaker 3: (29:44) Yeah. Um, so achieve one of your, I know we um, a previous speaker you head on was talking about sleep apnea and positional sleep apnea. So look, I've always thought I slept pretty well, but when I started working on my sleep apnea and my breathing boy, I went to another level and I got quite excited about it and once I fell out of a blue light and the effects that have, I thought, man, I've got to get that right. So exotic executive, same as you. I went out and I bought about 20 pairs of glasses from, from all sorts of people. And when I did my research there, I found out, okay, I need to find out about transmission spectrum or in other words, what colors or what, what frequencies of light were blocking, uh, with those glasses. So every pair of glasses that I bought, I emailed the manufacturer and said, tell me about your glasses. Speaker 3: (30:36) What transmission spectrum are they are and what have they been tested? Most of them never even got back to me. And the ones that did had no idea what you're doing. I started thinking, well come on, this can't be right. And it didn't seem to matter what price I paid for those glasses either. Even some of the so called blue light glasses websites. They had no idea or no data supporting what they're actually doing. So what you were getting was all over the show. Sometimes I'd actually find, I'd get the same pair of glasses from, from two different manufacturers and they were the same pair of glasses, but they were totally different. I had totally different stats on them. All the lenses were different colors and they said they were the same. Speaker 3: (31:17) Absolutely. Here's an example of when I got here and I'll just put that this is what a typical, yeah, blue light glass looks like. It's got a slight orange tinge to it and that blocks certain colors. So particularly the blue is the color we want to block. And what that does is that takes away the signal to our brain that it's, it's, it's daylight. So the idea with blue light blocking glasses is to tell your brain you with them at night to tell your brain that it's not daytime. So that was a so called blue light blocking. These are cheap here. I think that was maybe, maybe 40 bucks or something off some internet site and that's mine. And if we have difference in color block the same amount of light. Wow. I completely different. No they don't because I actually ended up getting an optometry lab, um, to produce mine cause I got so disappointed with the quality of, of glasses and I said there's no way I'm going to wear these myself and if I shouldn't wear them, why the hell would I ask other people to wear them? We Speaker 2: (32:18) had as a lay person, you read the advertising material and you, you know that the science is correct. Like the, the, you know what we've been saying about and it makes sense to you and then you go and buy some and then you're disappointed because it's not doing well. You don't notice. You just think I'm doing it right. And I, and I've got it right and I haven't. So now you've got these available. So, um, I will be putting, uh, the links of course to, to your glasses and uh, in the show notes. Um, but just let us know where we came. Can we grab your glasses from? Speaker 3: (32:49) Yep. So holistic movement coaches though my company, so it's H M with a-coach.com and they are available in the store there and I'm sure if we ask Lisa nicely, she might put a coupon code in for you. Speaker 2: (33:04) We're going to do that and I'll put that in the show notes or I'd actually like to list them up on our site and drop, you know like yeah. So that people have them available. So yeah, either go to Dave's website or my website and you'll be able to grab those ones. We'll, we'll sort that out afterwards. Um, so Speaker 3: (33:21) Lisa, you were talking about melatonin before then. That's one of the things that got me really excited when I started looking at the glasses and there was one study there that kind of, I looked at it and went, wow, that's amazing. And they had two groups of people. One had a clear lens and the other one had a blue light blocking glasses lens and that it was good quality lens. It was pretty much the same as mine. Yup. And they showed the melatonin levels creeping up during the night and that's what should happen. So melatonin is, is it's basically a hormonal signal for dark. It's your body's way of saying it's dark and those levels creep up as soon as it starts getting dark and they were going the same, um, until what happened is the blue light blocking glasses guys had a much higher level of melatonin than the ones that were wearing the clear lenses. Speaker 3: (34:10) So since I were in a, they were in a, a room, which was about 150, lax, which is a, uh, and average lounge. Yep. Um, the blue light blocking glass folks had a much higher melatonin level so that we're getting the appropriate signal. But what was interesting though was after they went to sleep in the morning, the folks at block blue light had less melatonin first thing in the morning. Absolutely. Because the last thing, when you're awake, you don't want melatonin running around your body. So they wake up drowsy. So typically people who don't block blue light will struggle to get to sleep because they're not getting their chemical message from melatonin that it's dark. But then in the morning they get stuck with that excess melatonin and find it hard to get going. There are a few, one of those folks that struggle to get to sleep and also struggle to get going in the morning. That exposure to light could be a really big factor Speaker 2: (35:03) and this and the melatonin and the cortisol are related and I'm not an expert on this, but I, I started taking, cause I was having trouble sleeping melatonin tablets, you know, um, supplements and I was, you know, it was good. I was sleeping much better. Um, then I did a blood test and I'm not quite sure, you know, but my, my doctor rang me up in a bit of a panic going, you know, your melatonin levels are 10,000 times too high. Um, uh, and um, your, your blood, I think you've serum levels or whatever. It's not, you know, actually 10,000, but it was, it was a lot higher and I had no cortisol like when they, cause they did the cortisol tests and I don't know whether it was related to the melatonin or not, but since stopping the melatonin and implementing some other things to be fair, um, my cortisol levels are now back at the top end of normal range. So they're toppings. But um, so it's a bit of a uh, uh, so you're just taking a supplement of melatonin, um, can be a good thing, but you have to be a little bit careful with that as well. Speaker 3: (36:09) Melatonin's is a strange one and I used to recommend people to take melatonin once upon a time, but you know, melatonin is the only hormone that you can buy across the counter or even online and get it shipped to you. I mean, imagine doing that with testosterone or, or any other hormones you've got in your body. It's, it's, it's a strange one and it's very unregulated. So when you get a melatonin, if you're taking a pill or a capsule or drop, the dose you get is often very different from the dose that you experienced in your body too. So it's very unregulated. So you pay a little bit tricky with the brains you're using. Now what you found nearly so in your perfect example of that is your levels went sky high because often what happens is melatonin builds up and production peaks around the middle of your sleep cycle. If you were went to bed at 10 and woke up at six, halfway through that would be about 2:00 AM. So that's when your melatonin levels are really cranking. But when you take a melatonin before you go to sleep, you're going to get that peak very, very early as well. So now you're going to get a hormonal message, which is in the wrong time of that cycle too. So they can still sit up some, some little issues there. And if you're getting crazy high levels of that, that can cause you some issues. Speaker 2: (37:22) And this was only one tablet, a little wee tiny tablet. So it wasn't, you know, like overdosing or anything. And then the cortisol, which is your stress hormone, but it's one we want in the morning, absolutely was in that gutter. So I was like waking up like, Oh my God, do I have to get out of bed because I don't want, you know, there's just no get up and go. And it was just sheer grit to get up Speaker 3: (37:41) flooded with melatonin. That time there and you know, you did right cortisol as you'd get up and go in the morning. So melatonin should plumb it in the morning because it's no longer dark. It's time to get up cortisol levels. It should be the highest there to get you out of bed. So you start playing around with that system. Um, bye. Introducing foreign substances in. Yeah. You Speaker 2: (38:02) know, you can get some varied results, which you may not be wanting to do it under controlled if you're going to do it, you know, Drake that you're measuring it too though, you know, at least you know what's working for you and what's not working for you. Yeah. And, I mean, unfortunately we can't go and get a cortisol test every week or a blood test every week. So it's always a time and point. Um, but you know, and when you, because I've, you know, struggled for a long time with adrenal insufficiency, surprise, surprise, and, you know, a lot of people have high cortisol, whereas I was like, no cortisol, like not producing any hormones of any sort for everything in the gathering, wondering why, why, when I'm training my ass off, things aren't working, you know. Um, and, and starting to, you know, over the last couple of years, starting to unravel that mess and get it back. Speaker 2: (38:54) And it's not a, it's not easy and it's, it's, it's hard in course when you're going through the change changes in life anyway, and you've got all that going on. But we, um, you know, we can optimize this if we, if we, if we learn enough, if we get the right doctors, if we get the right support and this and getting our hormones right so that we stay in the best optimal ranges I think is, um, but you do need to do that under the auspices of a good, hopefully a functional doctor if you don't want to be playing around with these things Willy nilly, you know, even melatonin, even though you can buy it over the counter, can have adverse effects. Um, as a culture we're always looking for that quick fix or that pill always. I think melatonin is like step 42 and ways of getting better sleep. Speaker 2: (39:44) A good way of putting it is it is one of the tools and the cats, it needs to be done in a regulated fashion and it needs to be done a little bit carefully. And the other things are lower hanging fruit. The natural way is a better way. If we can go what it looks like looking glasses and angel. Certainly, you know, if you can sleep in a dark room, I love that temperature. The idea of temperature you had before. Get the temperature right in your room. If you can dim your lights as well and try and keep away from bright lights at night, that's got to help. And look, something's better than nothing. But you know, certainly if you are really struggling with your sleep and you want to get that back on track, working with light and dark is number the number one thing I work with with sleep disturbances. Speaker 2: (40:25) That's the first thing I'll look at. Yeah, absolutely. And then, I mean we had that lovely interview last week with James Morris on the show. Um, it might be a couple of weeks back by the time people hear this. And that's a really important one to to go and, and understand. Cause you know, like someone like you, you said you have positional sleep apnea. Um, you know, you are extremely fit and extremely, you know, uh, into health. And most people are quite amnio with people who are overweight. To people who drink too much, people who you know have diabetes perhaps or, or those sorts of co-morbidities. Um, how did you discover it? If you don't mind sharing and what, do you have to be on a C pap machine? Or are you just doing the mild sleep apnea, which a lot of us will have by the way? Absolutely. So I've always been a snorer. My father's a snore and my brother's a snorer. Yeah. So, and it comes down to airway. So when you sleep, part of sleeping is, is relaxation. And that's where the repair happens. That's why we spend a third of a bedroom, a third of our life there. But, um, when you're, when you're relaxing, part of the issue too is that your, the muscles around Speaker 3: (41:34) your, um, your jaw relax as well. So if you're lying on your back, and particularly what that means is the tongue can come back and it can block the airway. The railway is only about as thick as a straw. It's a, it's a very small thing. So, particularly if you have a jaw that doesn't sit very far, if you don't have a big, unfortunately like my jaw comes back and shuts off my airway and I'm the victim. It's like someone's smothering me in the night so that that causes snoring, but also, um, it can totally block my away and wake me up. So, um, yeah. So I ended up measuring a lot of sleep and I looked into measuring sleep. I did that for looking at every device under the sun. And um, I tend to use this one here called a night shift. Okay. Speaker 3: (42:19) See on the picture there, you can actually put it around your neck. That's the idea. And that's a medical grade. Um, sleep, sleep measuring device without people going into a sleep lab, it's the best, um, the best device you use. And so here we go. You just pop it off you go. And basically what I ended up doing is measuring my own sleep, then hundreds of people after that. Then teaching lots of people how to do that and how to analyze that and figure out what's going on with people's sleep. We can we get those, you know, it's a medical one, so not easy to get by because not everybody wants a full blown stuff. Speaker 3: (43:01) So what we actually do with my guys and holistic movement coaches that I train, they're actually trained to actually, we actually hire them out. We get people to actually click the data, they send them back to us, and then we actually take them through what the data means. So, wow. Yeah. You've got your watches that you can wear, which you know, which can give you some sleep sleep. That's called actigraphy. And the idea is you put your watch on your wrist. When you move your wrist, it means you're awake. When you're, you're not moving, you're asleep. That's probably a little bit too simplistic. That's kind of looking at, you know, looking at the Speedo and your car saying, okay, that's how my car is running. There's a lot more going on on the surface. Just that one reading. So, yeah. What a, what a, what a sleep study does. Speaker 3: (43:45) And what they do in a sleep lab is I'll put, um, that leads onto your head looking at your brain activity. They'll look at your breathing, they'll look at your heart rate, they'll look at movement. So the movement, the actigraphy, Pat's only one small part of it. So what a, what a night shift does is it actually attaches around your neck because if you're moving your, your neck device on the back of your neck, you're awake. So it's much more accurate for a staff, but it also measures snoring as well. So snoring, volume and also any position you're in. So what I found is when I'm lying on my back, well that's the time we, my airway is mostly when I'm laying on my side, it's not so bad. So, um, and there's also a sitting on there where you can actually get it to buzz you when you're on your back so you can use it to retrain sleep on your side, which is what I did. Speaker 2: (44:33) Wow. Okay. So, uh, I'll be really interested. Maybe we can talk afterwards where we are, uh, get work. Cause like, um, I've got Jesus as a friend and so on. Um, but convincing your father or your husband to go and have a full on sleep study is one thing and they won't. Speaker 3: (44:52) That's what we found as well. So if I'm going to measure something, if I'm going to do something, I want to do it the best I can and certainly, and look, the aura ring is also pretty good at getting orders on your hands. So you move your hand around, kind of give you some misleading data there. The night shift is the most accurate way I've found of measuring sleep in the home. That's great because if you want to change sleep, I mean measure it so you can measure it to manage it. There's also some questionnaires which I'd really recommend and we get our guys to fill those in as well because we want to kind of find out how they're feeling as well and also getting an idea of their sleep habits, but there's no lying. The amount of data that comes out of that is incredible. I've had some people really change their sleep habits around once they see what's going on. Speaker 2: (45:38) Oh gosh. Yeah. When you put them under the data, cause everyone's like, ah, I'm okay. But I was like, you know, and I probably shouldn't say as well as, you know, listen to my husband sleep the other day and he like, he stopped breathing for like three minutes. I got the, I actually got the thing out and I timed and I was like, Holy crap, he's not, you know, and then he would go back onto his side and then he would, you know, do that. And I'm like, yeah. Speaker 3: (46:01) Oh, Speaker 2: (46:02) and he's not overweight and he's fit and the next, you know, like he's, he's like, okay, how can I have a problem, you know? Um, so I'll talk to you after this thing, but can people virtually contact you in, in, in, um, do that or is it has to be an in person thing? Speaker 3: (46:17) No, we do that remotely. So the idea is, you know, you don't have to come and sit in the lab and get hooked up with a hundred leads around your hand. We send it out, you wear it. We get a couple of nights data to make sure we've got a reasonable, we want a reasonable, um, if there's such thing as an average night's sleep, you have some questionnaires as well. You send that back to us, we get all the data off it and then we remotely, we take you through and go, okay, here's what's happening with your sleep here and here's some of the patterns you've got. And just like you'd have a training program for your running. We have one for sleep as well, so you can get your sleep more on track. I'm doing that, I'm getting that for the family, Speaker 2: (46:54) you know, like, um, the reason I had sleep apnea and GS on last week was because it saved my mom's life. It's that important. You know, when you have a stroke, especially, you need to get a proper full Braun, you know, sleep tests done. If you've had a brain injury. It's, this is something that's really, really under no, and it's just not knowing that this is a problem, uh, in the general medical world. Um, and I'm like, that's why like I do not believe my mum would be alive if I had not gotten a sleep apnea machine and got a C pet machine. That was the first step. Speaker 3: (47:27) I think there's a lot of really good that goes on in sleep and particularly around the brain. So you know, there's a lot of prices where they, where you're there, the little cells are going around cleaning up all the debris, they're cleaning out the brain also cleaning out the psyche as well. So if you can optimize sleep there, boy, it make such a big impact on, on people's health and particularly if they've had, um, central nervous system damage. Yes. In fact, that was one of the, when I first put these glasses out, I actually gave a talk, um, to a group of physiotherapists and um, some of them were working civically with concussion and they looked at the stuff and they went, Holy cow, can we try all these? And, and with our patients, I said, yeah, of course you can. And data's got back to me, said, wow, the different sets making is incredible because you know, think about when you get central nervous system damage, it's hard to filter in with all that information that's coming at you. And if you're getting abnormal light signals all the time, particularly at night, um, that's another stress your body has to play with. So often they were getting some great results with people sleeping better, feeling a lot better. Is that key with concussion types, um, and heat injuries, uh, by using blue light blocking glasses. Speaker 2: (48:40) Yeah. And this is why we're having this conversation because this is going to go in my new course on brain optimization and longevity because this is a big piece of the puzzle for people who have suffered, whether it's strokes or concussions or, uh, you know, even for people who have vascular problems like dementia or Alzheimer's I think is all foundational health things that we need to be addressing. And those people especially, Speaker 3: (49:02) and sleep is the, you know, there's, there's, there's is the foundation of our healing, our self healing. So you get that right. You know that that's, that's money for jam and I'm looking for these fancy things and he's got an inbuilt system. We've got all these inbuilt systems, we just need to use them and tap into them. So what you've got, you've got those sleep cycles, which I'm sure has been covered elsewhere, but you've got your non-REM and your rim sleep. So your REM sleep is when you notice that your eyes were moving a lot. But that's the one where you get your dreams a lot more. So what happens, you get cycles of non-REM and REM sleep throughout your night when when you first go to bed, your non-REM cycles are longer than your rim cycles. But as those no cycles repeat over and over again, as you keep into your sleep, by the time you're getting closer to the morning, you will rim, sleep, other bigger parts of the cycle. Now the non-REM sleep is really important for physical repair. So if you've got, if you've got some, if you've got clients who are ill or have physical illness that's really important, they get to bed early and make the most of those, those in REM cycles. So they need those bigger long cycles at the start because if you go to bed really late, you're going to miss some of those longer, uh, in rim sleep cycles. Speaker 2: (50:19) I knew that, but I didn't know why. Like I knew that that was when the physical healing, psychological healing sort of stuff as later on, but I didn't. Speaker 3: (50:28) Yeah, that's, that's it. Right? So you've also, if you, if few have got a lot of emotional stress going on and you may have both as well, that's where it's really important to make sure you're not getting up at 4:00 AM in the morning cause you're missing that. You're missing that, that, that, that REM sleep, which helps clean out all those emotions there, the stress you've got going on. Um, and also consolidate a lot of learning processes as well. So both of those cycles are really important. And respecting where you are and which ones you need is a big determinant on probably how you should be kind of using your sleep as well. Speaker 2: (51:00) And that's like, um, so short term memory processing would be done in that phase two so that you're actually putting the stuff that you learned yesterday into the filing cabinet, so to speak. Yeah, Speaker 3: (51:10) that's right. Tidying it up in the library in a box away Speaker 2: (51:14) and the MIS, which is what happens and when we, when we go to sleep, we have this, um, what, what scientists have only recently discovered, from what I understand is that our brain actually shrinks in size and the cerebral spinal fluid comes in and does a brainwash, so to speak, and gets rid of the amyloid plaques. And so we have these beta amyloid plaques, which you may have heard from people who've have Alzheimer's. And one of the, the risk factors for people getting developing Alzheimer's over time, over a long period of time is a poor sleep because they're not washing out these, these speeder amyloid plaques Speaker 3: (51:51) disease and inflammatory process. Sleep will have an effect on every single one. Speaker 2: (51:57) [inaudible] I, I'm just doing the section in the brain optimization longevity course on uh, information and people do not get the concept. And I didn't for a long time either. And what the hiccup, I may have had this conversation with my mom yesterday cause I teach her all this stuff as I'm learning stuff and she's going, but I'm not inflamed and Speaker 3: (52:20) chronic disease. You have inflammation and I see Speaker 2: (52:22) you don't feel this type of information, man. This is on the inside. This is the endothelial linings of your vessels. This is from the brain injury, the mixing of the blood in the brain and causing inflammation. You don't feel that. It's not like, cause we all often think that our information, Oh that's when I've cut my hand and I've got that red thing around the cat. That's information. Now that is information too. But that's not the type of information we're talking about. And we're talking about systemic inflammation and there are so many aspects to lowering inflammation in their body. And sleep is a big piece of that puzzle. As with just heard and the right nutrition for your body, the right amount of exercise for your body at the right times. And all these things can help lower the inflammation levels and our systems and information is the cause of so many degenerative diseases, which are our biggest killers. Speaker 2: (53:17) You know, heart attacks or heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's cancers, even all of these have their root, one of their main things is in the inflammation process is going on the body. So if we can allow our inflammation, if we can look after our mitochondria, which has a little battery packs in the hour, each one of ourselves and help them produce more energy efficiently and not, you know, doing new, taking the DNA and things like that because of the inflammation, because of the free radicals and so on. Um, and you know, this is a topic for another 10 sessions, but that then we have foundational health and then we can do and be a lot more for a longer period of time. You know, and, and this is, it's all, it's also interconnected. So having the right sleep and wearing your blue blocking glasses and doing all these little bits and pieces will add up to longterm health. Speaker 2: (54:14) Do you agree? Brilliant. What a great summary of health. You went right from cellular health, right through to inflammation. That's a really great summary. If you've been doing your homework for this stuff, you know, and I just wish I had more brain power and I'm, you know, I'm well to optimize my brainpower to put more in, you know, so that you can understand more so that you can help more and the more you get into this world. And I mean, you know, that was just a very, um, you know, simplistic overview of, of things. Uh, and we have so complex and there's so many other things to learn, you know, immune systems and you know, God knows what, um, but it's all pieces of the puzzle. And I think when we have the attitude, I'm going to learn about my, and my health and what happens in my body because we spend ages, I don't get this, but we will spend ages planning our next holiday. Speaker 2: (55:07) What car are we going to buy and all the details of it. And we won't spend the time to actually look at what's going on in our, in our health and our body because we've outsourced that to the doctor. And I just think that that is the biggest disaster that we can do for ourselves. We can't outsource our health to any one person. We have to take ownership of our health and we have to be vigilant i

Zach has the honor of sitting down to chat with Mary-Frances Winters, the founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., about black equity and power. Mary-Frances shares some of the top things she believes that majority leadership groups are doing today that undermine their own workplace equity efforts and explains her perspective on why chief inclusion/people/culture officers are typically white folks. Check the links in the show notes to find out more about The Winters Group!Connect with Mary-Frances on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Links in order:https://bit.ly/2Bs8pZBhttps://bit.ly/2ZXoMYlhttps://bit.ly/3csD9qbLearn more about The Winters Group on their website. http://bit.ly/33pqotqCheck out the Inclusion Solution blog.https://bit.ly/2yX2quXYou can connect with The Winters Group on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Links in order:http://bit.ly/2WrDjtghttp://bit.ly/3d69LYhhttps://bit.ly/2XUy6t7Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.https://bit.ly/2Ug4l5KHelp food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.https://bit.ly/2WD73UkCheck out our website.https://bit.ly/living-corporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and look, it's Tuesday. The day of this recording is May 4th, so May the 4th be with you. We have incredible guests every single time we come on, and today is no different, because what we're trying to do is what we always do, right? Which is center and amplify marginalized voices in the workplace. Now, I would like to think Living Corporate is a little bit unique in that we're having these conversations, but not only are we having these conversations that are centering marginalized voices, but we're having these conversations with marginalized identity groups, right? So a lot of times when you think about this diversity, equity and inclusion space, it's folks who don't look like me using fairly esoteric, like, heady language to describe things that they really don't experience, right? Like, not to put too fine a point on it. Just look... I'm just gonna be honest, right? Just gonna be a straight shooter, okay? And I'm proud of the fact that we've been able to have incredible guests that have not only the lived experience but have the practical knowledge and expertise to talk about real subjects, and so that's why our tagline for Living Corporate is real talk for a corporate world. Now, look, some of y'all have been listening to us and been rocking with us for a while, but every episode is somebody's first episode, so I just want to make sure I kind of level set a little bit. So with all that being said, I'm really excited to have our guest today, Mary-Frances Winters. Mary-Frances Winters is the founder and CEO of The Winters Group, Inc., a global organization development and diversity and inclusion consulting firm with over 35 years--count 'em, y'all, 35... more than I've been alive--more than 35 years of experience. She truly believes that diversity and inclusion work is her “passion and calling.” She's been dubbed a thought leader in the field for the past three decades and has impacted over hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals with her thought-provoking messages, and her approach to diversity and inclusion. Ms. Winters is a master strategist with experience in strategic planning, change management, diversity, organization development, training and facilitation, systems thinking--yo, shout-out to systems thinking--and qualitative and quantitative research methods, and she has extensive experience in working with senior leadership teams to drive organizational change. My goodness, gracious. With all that being said, Mary-Frances, welcome to the show.Mary-Frances: Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. You're definitely dating me, but that's all right. I'll take it. [laughing]Zach: I apologize. I wasn't trying to date you. I was trying to speak to the depth and breadth of the work that you've been doing, 'cause I think a lot of times it's easy, you know--like, pausing on, just, like, this conversation, but kind of, like, thinking about generational tensions, right? So I think there's, like, a lot of frustrations sometimes with folks who--like, millennials, you know, folks, like, in their early 30s or even, like, mid-20s to late-20s crowd who just think that, like, all of these frustrations that we're seeing now are new, right, but there have been folks who have built foundations before us that allow us to actually move forward, so it's just incredible that you've been in this space and doing this for a significant amount of time. I don't believe that should be taken lightly at all.Mary-Frances: Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I accept it with honor and respect, so thank you so much.Zach: Thank you so much. So how are you doing during this time? Like I said, we're recording this on May 4th. How are you and your loved ones?Mary-Frances: We're well, we're well. We're doing well. You know, it is unprecedented times. It's very, very difficult times for the world, but, you know, we're doing well, and thank you for asking.Zach: So let's get right into it. Diversity, equity and inclusion work is about marginalized identities, yet the loudest voices in this space tend to be those of the majority, right? So, like, when you think about these big, big organizations and you look at, like, the chief inclusion officer or the chief people officer or the chief culture officer, they're typically white folks. Why do you think that is?Mary-Frances: Well, I don't think that the dominant group sees diversity and inclusion as being about marginalized folks. They see it as being about everybody. "We have to include everybody," and so some of what my frustration has been, as you mentioned, 35 years, and so when we used to talk about it, you know, in the days of affirmative action, they were protected groups, right? So the initiatives were targeted towards those protected groups. When we started to talk about it as being diversity, then it broadened and everybody got included in diversity, and the group that gets least talked about now are black folks, because they don't want to talk about black people. So I don't think that the dominant group that controls the narrative, I don't think that they see it about being about marginalized identities only, right? And so the focus may or may not be there, you know, depending, and so we did a session for a client not too long ago to talk about the relevancy of white men in the organization. So, you know, you've got to be inclusive of white men. [both laughing] Yeah, so that's why I think--you asked me why I think that is? That's why I think that is, yeah. Because in the corporate world, we don't even use the word "marginalized identities." So it's not a new term in sociology, but let me tell you, 35 years in this business, it's a new term in the corporate world. It's starting to be used, and I think it is because of the influence of the millennials. We've been doing some work in some organizations that, you know, normally--some of these older, traditional organizations have been around 150 years and still got baby boomers at the helm, right? Some of these other organizations have been around 15, 20 years, they've got a lot of millennials at the helm. Those organizations are using this language, the social justice language. The traditional organizations? Not so much.Zach: [laughs] So one, thank you. I'm really curious--that really is a good segue into the next question I have for you about just you showing up doing this work as a black woman, and not to, like--again, not to age you, we're talking about the fact that--[Mary-Frances laughs] It's not like you're a black woman who just graduated from college and, you know, you're in this space, or you just finished B school, like, you're someone who has seen this space grow and evolve and change and shift and permutate, you know, various times over over the past three and a half decades, and so I'm curious, like, what does it look like for you to operate in this space, and then specifically going into the example that you just provided, how do you respond to narratives like that? That, you know, white men need to feel just as included as black men or other marginalized groups?Mary-Frances: Yeah. So as a black woman in this work, a cisgender heterosexual black woman, baby boomer, there are different ways it impacts me. So one way that it impacts me is "Oh, yeah, let's get Mary-Frances because she can bring the voice of black folks." Um, no. Mary-Frances brings her voice, not all black folks, right? That's one way. This other way is, "Gee, we really can't hire The Winters Group to do this--" This is a black person talking now. "Because you're black and I'm black, and, you know, the optics of it, it looks like we might be giving you, you know, preferential treatment." The third way is when I stand in front of a group, to the question about, you know, white men, I do--if my question is gonna get across, I do in some ways have to disarm white men, because they're gonna--they see me coming in with my sister locks and, you know, "This black woman is gonna come in and she's gonna tell us, you know, how racist we are. She's gonna make us feel bad," and so what I've learned over the years is that you've gotta get them to like you first. No matter what they've gotta like you, right? And they have to think that the message resonates. So I learned the language. I learned the language of the organization. I connect my message to whatever their business plan is, whatever their business strategy is. You know, I connect it to that, because, you know, you're already coming in being black, being a woman. So those are two, you know, marginalized groups, historically marginalized groups. And so yeah, so there are different ways. And, you know, we talk about code switching, right? So we have to code switch a lot of times in order to get the work done, particularly in corporate spaces. Now, I don't know if you've noticed--well, I'm sure you've noticed because you know my colleague, Brittany J. Harris, who is the vice president of The Winters Group, and we're doing a series right now in our inclusion solution blog on decolonizing DEI work, and, you know, part of that--and I wrote a couple of weeks ago about decolonizing particularly the corporate world with, you know, corporate speak. So you come in and they have to have a business case, and the business case has to be "How does this help my business, you know, perform better?" That's, like, the classic corporate business case, and that's kind of centering this capitalist narrative, right? We're about the profits, and you can [show?] me by hiring black folks and hiring women, whoever else you want me to hire. If you can show me that that can help me to sell more whatever I'm trying to sell, then it's okay. So I think that, you know, to some extent--you know, I was just talking to a very large client just before this--I will not name that client. Very old client, 150, 160 years old, you know, very old. [laughing] You know, middle of the country, and they're just trying to get this stuff off the ground and you come in talking about marginalized groups and whatnot to a bunch of these white men, they're just not gonna--it's just not gonna happen. So it's this delicate balance, Zach, of on one hand, you know, you have to be able to engage the groups that they listen, and on the other hand you're trying to dismantle, you know, this dominant sort of narrative that doesn't necessarily work, and it hasn't worked. 35 years, 36 years, all of the same issues that I was teaching and talking about 36 years ago are the same. As a matter of fact, my book Black Fatigue will be coming out in February. Black Fatigue: How Racism Erodes the Mind, Body, and Spirit comes out in February, and I have a chapter in that book, Chapter 3, called Then is Now, and so I go back and I look at data from whatever point you want to take. You can take it from 1965, 1975, it doesn't really matter what you want to take it. When you look at our data and our statistics, we have not made progress. We're stuck, and we're at this standstill. Brown vs. the Board of Education was 1954, which was desegregate schools. Our schools are more segregated today than then. You know, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. You know, all of this legislation, housing. In 1975, 43% of black people owned their own homes. In 2019, 43% of black people own their own homes. The net worth--and, you know, net worth is, like, what you're worth, right? Net worth. A single black woman's net worth is $500, versus the net worth of a white woman, single white woman, which is [$5000?], still low. The net worth of white people, at 150 something thousand dollars, is 10 times that of a black person, and it follows even if you look at college-educated. So somebody who has a PhD who is a black woman college professor with a PhD makes 20% less than a white man who has a PhD and 7 to 8% less than a woman who has a PhD, and so all of these inequities--and I'm using those just as an example--is about Then is Now, that we haven't really turned the corner. So we're fatigued. [?] And it's particularly tiring for me because, like you said, I've been doing it for over 35 years. [both laughing] I'm tired.Zach: You're absolutely right, and we've had conversations about that on Living Corporate, and we cite the study Umbrellas Don't Make It Rain that really goes into dispelling the myth that higher education will, you know, somehow close the wealth gap, and it hasn't and it doesn't. So let's talk about this. There's a variety of folks that we've had on Living Corporate who have said, you know, diversity and inclusion, corporate diversity and inclusion, is inherently [anti]-black, not just in its external doings but at the internal politics. Do you have any thoughts on the voracity of that position?Mary-Frances: Well, society is inherently anti-black, so by extension the corporate world is inherently anti-black. We live in a society that has historically and continues to be anti-black. I don't know--yeah, so I agree. [both laugh] I mean, right? So yeah, you know, D&I is inherently anti-black. It is because that's the society--you know, when I wrote this book Black Fatigue and I was telling people about this, "Oh, please write about black and brown fatigue and, you know, all deference to indigenous people and native people and Latinos and everybody, right?" But the black experience in the United States has been different than any of those other experiences, and because of that the stereotypes and the marginalization plays out differently, and so I really felt a need--even though [?]--I show statistics for Latinos and Asians, you know, as well in the book, but I really wanted to focus on how this is playing out for black folks, because let me tell you. I say--you know, [?]--race is diversity's four-letter word, and particularly when you talk about black folks, people don't want to talk about it. They don't want to talk about the black and whiteness of it. "Let's talk about Asians. Let's talk about Latinos," right? So this anti-black--so that's one way anti-black plays out. You know, we have to include the other groups that we have [?]. I had a call with a client just on Friday, and they talked about how the psychologist or sociologist, whoever we were quoting--I forgot who it was--was black, and so we were like, "Uh, yeah," and they said, "Well, you know, perhaps we need to get some other experts included in this data set." What's that about? "Are there some Asian people who have spoke on this too?" [laughs] So yeah, I mean, we live in an anti-black world, and by extension our corporations are anti-black. I mean, look at things like the recent legislation around the CROWN Act. Why does anybody freaking care how I wear my hair? Why do we have to have legislation for people to be able to wear their hair--for black people to be able to wear their hair the way they want to wear their hair. You know, the young man wrestler, right, and they made him--Zach: Yes, made him cut his hair. His dreads.Mary-Frances: His dreads, right. Exactly. Right there. You know? I mean, why do you care? You don't have to like--what I say to folks is, "I don't care if you like it. You don't have to like my hair. I'm not asking you to like my hair." [laughing] But, I mean, are we still in a slavery, there's no freedom, that we can't even wear our hair the way we want to wear our hair? You know what, I heard about hair 36 years ago when I was in the corporate world and I had a very short afro, and one day a colleague--wasn't even my boss, a colleague--comes in my office and says, "Will your hair grow?" And I just looked at him and I said, "Yeah," and he said, "Well, you oughta let it," and he walked out of my office.Zach: Wow.Mary-Frances: That's why I left corporate. One of the reasons anyway. But anyway, so yes, is it an anti-black world? Yes, indeed. Indeed, it is. Unfortunately, you know, it is. And when you say that--and the problem is when you say that to white people they think that you're calling them a racist, and I'm not. I'm not. What I'm saying is the very foundation and structure upon which our various societies and the way we think and the policies and all those things are based on anti-black sentiments, anti-black beliefs if you will. Zach: You know, I'm really curious about, like--because you're right, we had Brittany Harris on the show some time ago, and we were talking about decolonization and dismantling and deconstructing systems, right? So it was more so about, like, kind of, like, trying to make some shifts and some headway in this work, because like you said, there's a lot of conversations that have just been happening, they've been recycling for years, and I'm curious to know, what are you seeing some other, like, DEI groups or, like, kind of names, things that they're saying that you're like, "Man, we've been doing that." Like, "We've been working on that," or "That's not new. Like, y'all think it's new, but it's not new." Like, does anything like that stick out to you?Mary-Frances: Yeah, I think that, you know, the whole idea of, you know, oppression, marginalization, privilege, all of those kinds of things I think have been out there for--you know, for a long time. You know, we can all remember--those of us in this work--Peggy McIntosh's White Privilege. Judith Katz, my colleague, did something on heterosexual privilege back in the '90s, and the Peggy McIntosh book was back in the '70s. You know, Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes, which shows, you know, bias. We now call it unconscious bias, but Jane Elliott, you know, put that out in, I don't know, the '70s, '60s or '70s. I was using that video--now that you've already dated me I'll just keep going with it--but I was using that video [laughing]--Zach: I'm so sorry. [laughing]Mary-Frances: No, no, no. You're fine, I'm just teasing you. [laughing] You know, I was using that video in the '80s, right? And now I hear people like, "Oh, do you know about Jane Elliott's video Brown Eyes, Blue Eyes?" And that's the other thing, [?] why I wrote Black Fatigue is because--and I'm not saying this is about millennials. This is not about generations at all thinking this stuff is new. This is about folks who are, like, in my age group to who this is all, like, a revelation, right? "We didn't know." So here, case in point. We know that COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting particularly black people, and when it came out, this proportionality, it was like, "Oh, wow, we have health disparities?" This is not new. I mean, these health disparities have been--they have been well-researched, well-written about, and they continue. They have not improved. Even middle-class black women are twice as likely to die in childbirth. You know, these are not new, and so that's what's part of, you know, the frustrating thing. You know, I really respect some of the newer folks who are coming into this space, and I think that they're doing remarkable work, and I'm hoping that perhaps they can put a different spin--I know Brittany, as a millennial, has brought definitely a different spin to our work. When Brittany came on board, which was, like, four years ago now I guess, we had started to talk about the intersection of social justice and corporate speak, because, you know, the language was all different, right? Everything was different. So we talk about mapping the intersection. What is the intersection of social justice and corporations? So corporations worried about the bottom line. Why should they be worried about, you know, social justice as well, and how do we get that languge? So I think at The Winters Group we're a little bit further ahead of mapping that intersection of saying that it's not one or the other. It really is a both and, because if you help to alleviate the social ills of this world or even of this country or even of the place that you operate your business, your business is going to be better.Zach: No, I'm right there with you, and I really think that segues well into this next question, which is just, you know, what trends do you see in this work from a thought leadership perspective, and if you were to kind of look across the landscape of this work and when you think about workplace equity as a whole, you know, where are the biggest places you think we have to grow?Mary-Frances: So where I see that we have places to grow in this work is fixing organizational cultures so that they truly are inclusive and we're not just using the word, that we're not just saying that we're inclusive, because the surveys that we do inside corporations would suggest that the cultures are not inclusive, particularly--PARTICULARLY--for black folks. Particularly. Now, when we do surveys with Latinos and Asians, culturally they may not be having a good experience, but they're not gonna tell us that because culturally they don't talk ill of--and I'm stereotyping, I know I'm stereotyping big time right now, but for the most part Latinos and Asians don't speak ill of their employers. That's a cultural thing, right? And so they're gonna say, you know, everything is good. We, you know, coming from a history of descension, a history of sort of laying it out there. You know, "No justice, no peace." Zach: Give us us free, yes.Mary-Frances: Yeah, right. We're willing to say, "No, this is not a good experience," if we answer the survey. We did a big survey for a corporation recently, and not many black people answered the survey. So then I did a focus group with them and they said, "Oh, no, we're not answering that survey. They can figure out who we are because there's only about 100 of us in the whole company." So the point is that organizational cultures, the traditional organizational cultures, are designed for dominant groups. They always have been. In the '70s when I was in the corporate world, they decided to bring in a whole bunch of black people, a whole bunch of black professionals, because they didn't have enough, and they just said, "Let's bring 'em all in here." Within a year, every single one of them were gone except one. There was probably about 30 people. Every single one of them left because the culture was not friendly, was not conducive. There were micro-aggressions all day long. [?] I told you about the micro-aggression about my hair. Here's another one. So the company sent me to some banquet or something, and I was sitting there--and I got to represent the company, so I was sitting at the head table, and we had a little fruit cup, you know, as our appetizer or something, and so the person sitting next to me said, "Oh, look at that, you have more watermelon in your fruit cup than anybody at the table." Now, why would you even say that? What would even make you part your lips to speak like that? Yeah. So you know what I did? I said, "Oh, you like watermelon? Would you like mine? I'll trade with you." [both laughing] So my point is that hasn't changed in 30 however many ever years that is. That hasn't changed. And so, you know, where we still need to grow is to really get at the culture, and the only way we're gonna get at the culture is to hold people accountable, and because the experience that people have in their organizations are 1:1 with their direct manager, right, and so if the direct manager is not talking the talk, walking the walk, it's not happening for that person. We often times focus on the top leadership, top of the house--"Let's start at the top of the house." I say that we need to focus on first-line leadership, those individuals who are most likely to have the greatest span of control. First-line leaders have more reports than the CEO. The CEO probably has six or seven direct reports, right? All the senior vice presidents, and then it goes down from there. So the biggest span of control and the biggest opportunity for change is at that first level, and we often times don't work with that first level of leadership because they don't have the budget for it or, you know, all of these other excuses. So I really think--and I've been saying this for years, so I don't know if this is a trend or not, but I've been saying this for years, that we have to get to that level. The other places that we still need to grow is pay inequity. You know, pay inequity for women and, you know, women of color in that equation too. That's an easy fix. You look at your data and you see who--if you have a disparity with women not being paid the same amount, then you fix it. You see, this is why if organizations wanted to do it, they could. Any aspect of diversity. If they wanted to do it, they would absolutely do it. So those are areas, I mean, in just terms of very tactical places, in terms of--cultures are really, really hard to change. So I had a call with a client this morning, and they had a question on the survey--they wanted me to review their survey. We have our own survey, but they got somebody else to do their survey, but they wanted me to review the questions. Here's one of the questions. "I fit in well at this organization."Zach: Hm, that's a good question.Mary-Frances: Huh? No, that's a bad question.Zach: Talk to me. Educate me why it's a bad question.Mary-Frances: Okay. Because it's about fitting in. Fitting in is about assimilation. Fitting in is about "I fit in," meaning that--Zach: I'm adjusting myself.Mary-Frances: I'm adjusting myself. I fit in, right? I mean, you still may get at it, but the whole idea of--even putting the language out there. So that's, you know, colonizing language, "fit," you know? Because what do we say when we hire somebody? We say, "Oh, yeah, they'd be a really good fit," and what "a really good fit" means is what? "They're like us."Zach: It's interesting, because the reason I was saying it's a good question is because I know a lot of--I know for me I would be like, "No."Mary-Frances: Right, exactly, and that's what they're hoping to get, but you see how the message could be from the other side, that you need to fit in.Zach: It absolves the organization of responsibility and onus in creating an inclusive work environment for that person.Mary-Frances: Exactly. So I said, "Why don't you have the question "I feel included at this organization?"" Right? I mean, you're gonna get the same answer, right, but you're now using language that is language that's about inclusion rather than fitting in, because fitting in is basically saying, you know, "Yeah, we need you to fit in. We need you to be like us." Zach: Okay, okay. Let's talk about black male presenting identities in this space, right? I could be speaking selfishly, but it seems as if they're still not highlighted with the same level of attention or nuance of some other people groups. Am I being fair? And, you know, if you agree with that, then could you kind of talk to me about why you think that may be?Mary-Frances: Yeah. So, you know, this is so interesting, because the chapter in Black Fatigue, it's called I Can't Breathe: Black Men's Fatigue, and I also have a chapter in the book called Say My Name: Black Women's Fatigue. So for the black women's chapter it's almost, like, twice as long as the black man's chapter, right? And I'm like, "Wait a minute." I said, "Is it because I'm a black woman and, you know, I relate to the experiences more?" So yes, and I'll tell you--this is the absolute truth. I am not kidding. I have been wrestling with this all weekend because I want to modify the chapter on black men to bring more of that voice. So with black women I could talk about, you know, #BlackGirlMagic, right? You know, what's the analogous movement for black men?Zach: There's nothing that big. I would say, you know, you have Black Boy Joy, but it's not as big, and there's some tension in that because a lot of black men are like, "Well, I'm not a boy. Don't call me a child. I'm a man." You know? So I'm not sure. That's a good question.Mary-Frances: So I write in the book about two experiences, two stories I tell. One story is about somebody who actually now--he has a degree in human resources, but he prefers to work with his hands, and he comes over and he tunes up our air conditioning in the spring and changes the filters and all that kind of stuff. So he was over the other day, and he worked for a large heating and air conditioning organization and was doing really well. They had him in their commercials on TV and everything and, you know, he said he just couldn't take it anymore. We would talk about entrepreneurship while he was still working there, 'cause he knew I was an entrepreneur and everything. So he finally left, and he's been on his own for 18 months, and he works 14, 16 hours a day. Nicest guy in the world. Got a young family, you know? Just really very customer service-oriented. He said, "Yeah, you know, when I go knocking on the doors, I've got to know how I'm coming," he said, "Because when they see that I'm black, you know, they get a little afraid." Ryan is all of 5'6" and, you know, maybe 150 pounds. He's a slightly built man. Zach: Slight guy, yeah.Mary-Frances: So he said, you know, "Why is this? Why do I have to exist like this, where, you know, I'm just trying to live and I'm just trying to, you know, run a business?" And he ran into--while he was in the corporate world, they told him one time that he couldn't get promoted because he was so good at his job that they needed him to stay in that job. That's why he couldn't be promoted, 'cause he was so good. [both laugh] Another time he was told that--he was promoting a particular service that they had, the air conditioning or whatever, and they said, "You're selling too much of this service." That's why he couldn't be promoted. So that's one. Another black guy, who had been with this organization for over 30 years, very well respected externally because he was in manufacturing and he has this particular knack for--he was called the turn-around man. He has a particular knack for going into a manufacturing operation and being able to, you know, whip it into shape, you know? The key performance indicators, the KPIs and all those kinds of things. I mean, he's a guru at that, right? [Lead?] manufacturing and all of that kind of stuff. And they would always send him to the place that was performing the worst, and he would go. So then they decided they were gonna put him in D&I, and this was after 30 years [?], so he's out of his element in D&I. He's gonna do his KPIs, he's gonna do his, you know, manufacturing operations. I think he turned just a few people off, right? So he ended up retiring early. No retirement party after all this. He's doing so well on the outside because he's got articles, he's got--he's well-known in this space, but he was kind of forced out of the organization because somebody didn't like, you know, what he said. So I think, you know, black men, one of the [?] chapters in my book, I have Tall, Dark, and Handsome, right? So when a white man is tall, he's paid more. When a black man is tall, he's actually paid less. The darker-skinned the black male man is, the less that he gets paid, right? Lighter-skinned black men get paid more than dark-skinned black men. So you take a black man who is tall and dark-skinned, you know, that feeds a whole lot of stereotypes, right? You know, and the handsome, you know, like I said in my book, black women [think they're handsome?, laughing] but the majority group probably doesn't. Not so much, right? But you're penalized. You know, black men are penalized, you know, for being tall. Black men are penalized for being darker-skinned. So my son, who is--he went to Harvard, Duke and Princeton, he studied under Cornell West. He is now a tenured associate professor of religion at Duke University. So when he was a kid he was always big. Joe's about, like, 6'5", so he was always big, and they always told him, you know, "You're gonna hurt the other kids. You gotta, you know--" So he's this gentle giant now because he was told, you know, "Don't be too aggressive." Up until the fourth grade there was something wrong with Joe all the time. We had to see a psychologist. You know, he just wasn't adjusting right, and he just da-da-da-da. All of these things. You know, he was in a white school district and usually the only black kid, one of two in his class. So in the fourth grade he had a teacher, he was a white male teacher, who said, "You know what? I think the only thing wrong with Joe is that he's brilliant." He said, "That's the only thing I think is wrong with him." And as soon as Joe started to see himself as brilliant and everybody else started to see himself as brilliant, guess what? Joe become brilliant, and voila, Harvard, Duke, Princeton grad, but if somebody hadn't told him that he was--[?], right? And so Joe writes about hip-hop and religion. He writes about the African-American experience. His book is--you might want to interview my son. His book is called "Hope: Draped in Black," and--Zach: I'd love to interview him, yeah. Let's talk about it offline for sure.Mary-Frances: Yeah, but what he talks about is how you hold hope in the wake of, you know, all of the oppression and whatnot. But, you know, we talked this weekend about black men and about, you know, the hip-hop culture and the gangster and, you know, the rape culture, and we talked about all of that and how that plays out and, you know, why that is, and yeah, it's--black men are very complex, very complex, and they have been, you know, obviously treated the worst. So it's tied up in self-concept. It's tied up in a whole lot of--and what one study found is that black men who have a good self-concept and are also able to figure out how to navigate, you know, the system, they do well in a corporation, but you've got to come first with a good self-concept, and I think, as quiet as its kept, all that bravado sometimes with black men, you know, "Show me some respect" and all that kind of stuff, you know, and "I'm all of that," I think underneath is really a lot of trauma.Zach: Oh, I agree with that. I think you're 100%, I mean, just spot on, and I also think, you know, when you think about black men in this space--it's interesting because black men and white women have something in common, where black men are black, yet they benefit to a much lesser degree, but they still benefit to a degree, from patriarchy, and white women are women of course, but then they benefit from white supremacy. So there's some dynamics there that are nuanced, and yet in a way that black women don't. So black women are women and they're black, right? So it's like, okay, there's no pool that you can pull from or there's nothing that you can really pull from a position of privilege. Of course you have able-bodied privilege, and if you're cisgender and all those things, but I'm talking about, like, just at a high level. So then--but I was gonna say that, you know, it's hard to talk about that because black men benefit from patriarchy, but it's like, "But it shouldn't be hard to at least try to engage in the subject a bit more intentionally," because, I mean, it hasn't stopped white women from being the center of attention for diversity and inclusion efforts for decades.Mary-Frances: Right, exactly. Yeah, no. I think you're right, and so in the book Black Fatigue I question whether, you know--so to a certain extent yes, I guess I would agree that black men benefit from patriarchy, but it's more intra-culture than it is inter-culture.Zach: Right, 'cause black men ain't out here about to just be out here disrespecting white women at work.Mary-Frances: Right. Yes, there you go. Yeah, not unless [?]--nobody better know about it anyway, right? [laughs]Zach: Well, shoot. [laughs] Well, and that's the thing that blows my mind. Like, I had a conversation. I'll never forget. This was some years ago. I had a conversation with somebody who tried to, like, insinuate that the reason why I spoke so much at work was because, you know, I was the only man, and perhaps because as a man I'm used to dominating conversations. And I said, "Look, I might be the only man in this space, but I'm also the only black person in this space, and certainly the only black man," and I said, "So if you think that the reason why I'm quote-unquote dominating this conversation is because I'm a man and y'all are a bunch of white women, that's false." I said, "I would actually be more akin to being quiet," as it took me time to find my voice as a black man in white spaces. I said, "I would challenge you to ask why you would use the language that I'm dominating anything by simply raising my voice in a meeting," right? But there's, like, this--I agree with you. I think that there's a, like, lack of nuance when we talk about even how patriarchy is mobilized for black men. I think black men are benefiting from patriarchy with other black people. They don't benefit from patriarchy, like, from--like, if it's me or Karen, Karen is gonna win out.Mary-Frances: Right, exactly. And for reasons like I was saying earlier. These studies show, you know, a tall--you know, you've got your stature if you will, that's a negative. You've got the color that's a negative, right? And so yeah, in white spaces, I think that it is an intersectionality in white spaces. You're black and you're a man. It's a marginalized identity.Zach: So, you know, your colleague Brittany Harris, VP of learning and innovation at The Winters Group, who we've had on in the past, has said that power is the silent P in this work. I'd love to hear more from you on the concept of power and how it fits into this engagement of workplace equity.Mary-Frances: Yeah. I mean, it is very much at the center, and it's complex, and when folks have power, why would they want to give it up? So I am not a proponent of power and privilege discussions with novices in this work. So folks who have not--I'm talking about people who are trying to teach, people who are trying to teach who have not had years of kind of understanding how all this plays out, I'm not in favor of going in and telling them that they have power and privilege. Yeah, I have it and I want to keep it. [laughs] Right? I mean, why would someone want to give that up? [?] Black people standing in front of a bunch of white men talking about, "You have power and privilege." Yeah. And so [they're?] like, "Yeah, what's wrong with that?" [laughs] I mean, they don't say that, but. And the other thing is how do they relinquish that power? I mean, that's really difficult to do. And the other problem that I have with that--so yeah, there's this inequitable power dynamic, but the other problem that I have with that is that we are accepting that we don't have power. We're rendering ourselves powerless, right? And so in the corporate world what is the key term? Empower. We want to empower our people. E-M, right? Empower, right? That is somebody giving you their power. So this is part of the corporate speak, you know, that I don't like, right? It's part of the dominant culture of corporate speak. I should have written about that one in my book. I might still. Anyway, I want to turn that around, that E-M to M-E. Me power. I have power. And so we have agency, but we don't take it. We don't use it because we have internalized that we don't have the power, we don't have power, and we cannot continue to--this is one of the trends I'd like to see, not to continue to talk to folks about power and just use our power, not to magnify the inequities. So everybody knows that if you're a white man in a corporation and whatnot and you're the manager or the leader or the director or the whatever, everybody knows you got power, right? [laughs] You know? You gotta tell me you have power? Why you gotta tell me that? Right? And so I think that there are other ways to claim power. I think that part of that is just the confidence that we come with, the self-concept that we come with. I think that we have to be ready to leave spaces, because there are consequences for us exercising power, and we have to have some safety nets, more safety nets than we have. So I left, you know, some 30 something years ago. I just stepped out on faith, I mean, 'cause I have a strong faith, and I didn't know what was gonna happen, but I just knew I couldn't stay there. We do know that black women, they're 40% more likely to start their own businesses than any other group, right? Because we recognize that it's traumatizing, and so this whole idea of--so who came up with the idea of power and power and privilege? White folks. To tell us that there's a power inequity... Surprise, surprise. And you know what? We're not gonna change that by telling white people that they have power. That is not gonna change that. The only thing that's gonna change it is for us to claim our power and to recognize that we have it. Zach: I love it. No, I'm right there with you.Mary-Frances: Right? [laughing] Stop telling white folks what they already know, that they got power. They already know that.Zach: No, that's true. Like, them not, like, screaming it from the rooftops doesn't mean that they don't know that.Mary-Frances: Well, exactly. Why would I scream it from the rooftops? Again, the dominant group, it's not something that they probably even--even when we call their attention to it, there are many who will want to say, "Uh-huh. And let me figure out how I'm gonna maintain it." There might be others who are curious. "Hm, there is this dynamic. Maybe I should, you know, do something to work on that," but the forces are so strong and entrenched, right, over 400 years of entrenchment, that it's not gonna change. You know, two or three or the small groups that you might get who are all for shifting that power dynamic, they're not strong enough to overcome that larger group who wants to maintain the status quo. So we just have to take it. We have to grab the power. We have to first of all understand we have it already. It's not grabbing anything. We already have it. We just have to use it and accept that there will be consequences sometimes for using that power, and if we don't have the strong safety nets in our community to, you know, accept and to protect those folks who, you know, get fired, you know, are out there, you know, being called out on social media because they're telling the truth or, you know, whatever it might be. We as a people don't support and protect our own as much as we should.Zach: Man, that's, like, a whole separate [?], and what we need to do is make sure we bring you back on when your book is closer to being published and talk about that, because I do think that, you know, how we--so, you know, we had Robin DiAngelo on some time ago, and she talked about white solidarity and the concept of essentially the formal or informal closing of ranks that white folks do to protect one another, often times at the detriment or harm of black and brown folks, and yet I don't--you know, because of colonization and because of just internalized oppression, you know, we don't have that I don't think in the same--Mary-Frances: We don't, yeah.Zach: And that's created so many challenges for us. I mean, since antebellum to today, right? Like, we've had so many issues because we don't necessarily practice to the same degree, protection of one another. So let's do this. You know, as you look across these leadership groups, especially during this pandemic, what are some of the top things you believe that majority leadership groups are doing today that undermine their own workplace equity efforts?Mary-Frances: They have not educated themselves, so they are not--they think that they know, they think that their good intentions are good enough. So I've heard leaders say, "I don't care if it's the right thing to do for business," you know, the business case that we talked about earlier, "I just think it's the right thing to do, so now go forth and do it." However, because they don't have an understanding of the history or they know the history that was told wrong, they really don't know what to do. So they're making wrong decisions based on ignorance or, you know, a lack of information. I think the second thing that majority leadership does, particularly in the corporate world, is that they still have to speak to and answer to shareholders, and so they're not going to do anything that is going to, you know, jeopardize that. And so even when you're looking at board members, and what I hear often times is, you know, "Oh, the board won't go for that," or "We've gotta satisfy the board." Well, you need to change the board then. The board may not be--you know, you may not have the right people, because boards are tokenized [when] they have one token black person and one, you know, token woman on the board, right? So those are two things, and I think during the pandemic, I think because of this ignorance they are just not aware, big companies are just not aware of the world that some of the folks on the lowest rung face, and so when you say, you know, "shelter in place, stay home," that home may not be safe. That home may be filled with violence, right? You know, you make decisions about "Who are essential workers and who are not essential workers?" and you don't--you know, are you thinking about the health--again, talking with a client today, you know, talking about some of their contingent, you know, workforce, and they were saying, you know, "Well, are we gonna pay the sick pay or aren't we gonna pay the sick pay?" You know, [?], and so all of these kinds of questions, and they realized that "Yeah, we absolutely need to do that," and so I don't think that there's enough understanding of what marginalized groups face regardless of their socio-economic. So they're making decisions from their own lens, from their own--I'll use the word privileged--from their own privileged lens, and they're missing things. It's coming to light, right? A lot of this stuff is now coming to light, but some of the earlier decisions missed just the horrific impact that this is having on everybody, but particularly those who are in the lowest low end of the economic chain.Zach: Mary-Frances, this has been an incredible conversation. You know, I'd love to make sure that I give you space to talk a little bit more about The Winters Group, what you're most excited about, what you're looking forward to, even during times as uncertain and extraordinary as these. I'd love to just give you space to talk a little bit more about your company. Mary-Frances: Yeah, so we're looking forward to, you know, transforming ourselves as we always do, but this pandemic has made it absolutely imperative, and we've already been doing virtual learning, but we are looking at innovative ways to do virtual, ways that other people are not doing virtual. You know, we have whiteboards, and we have ways that we can break people out into groups. Like, the technology allows that, but I think the ways that we're doing it--we're doing simulations, and so I think this is an opportunity for us to be really, really innovative in terms of how we deliver our message. I did a virtual keynote, you know, a few weeks ago. I think it's also an opportunity for us to continue our [?] of the corporate message and the social justice message, because they have certainly come together with COVID-19 in terms of just what I was just talking about, how we see how marginalized people are even more marginalized. You know, as the saying goes, "When the world gets a cold, black people get pneumonia. When the world gets pneumonia, black people die," and so we're seeing that now, and I think it's the opportunity for us to even more strongly advocate for the intersection of social justice and corporate.Zach: Man, thank you so much, Mary-Frances. This has been phenomenal. And y'all, that does it for us on the Living Corporate podcast. You know we do this every week. Coming to y'all with real talk in a corporate world. Make sure you check us out everywhere, okay? So you pull up your Google or your, I don't know, Bing, or your Yahoo or whatever search engine machine you're using, and you just type in Living Corporate. We're gonna pop up there, okay? Make sure you check out the show notes. Make sure you check out The Winters Group. Check out all the work that they're doing. Shout-out to The Winters Group and all of their incredible work. Shout-out to black women out here holding everybody down per usual. Thank you for all of your work. And shoot, 'til next time, we'll catch y'all. This has been Zach. You've been listening to Mary-Frances Winters, CEO and founder of The Winters Group, leadership, diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm. Been out here laying the groundwork for y'all, setting legacies, and [they're] probably your favorite consultant's favorite consulting agency, okay? They've been out here. They've been doing the work. 'Til next time. Peace.

The Tinned Fish Cookbook: Easy-to-Make Meals from Ocean to Plate - Sustainably Canned, 100% DeliciousBy Bart van Olphen Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.Bart van Olphen: My name is Bart van Olphen and my latest cookbook is the Tinned Fish Cookbook.Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book. Now on with the quarantine question round. Where are you living?Bart van Olphen: I live in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands.Suzy Chase: What restaurant are you dreaming of going to after the quarantine?Bart van Olphen: Well, I have one very favorite restaurant here in Amsterdam, which is called Caron, Café Caron. It's French cuisine, bistro. Traditional but really, really good.Suzy Chase: When do you think they'll be opening up?Bart van Olphen: Well, they're speaking of opening terraces from the 1st of June. So yeah, in a couple of weeks from now. Opening the whole restaurant, this is another thing. Not sure yet.Suzy Chase: Oh, June's not far off though. You're so lucky.Bart van Olphen: No, no, it's true. It's like three weeks now. Yeah, three... It's now the 6th of May. Yeah, it's something what they think they will announce tonight on the evening news. So yeah, exciting. Not just for me to eat food, but I mean, all those entrepreneurs, all these small restaurants and bars they need to right? They will be bankrupt, if not. So we need to support them. Yes.Suzy Chase: What dish is getting you through this time?Bart van Olphen: Well, the positive part of this era, of these weeks is that you certainly have a lot of time to cook and to do groceries. So yeah, I cook a lot with my kids and one of the things, and it sounds a bit like maybe posh or luxurious, but they just opened up lobster season here in the Netherlands. So we had classic lobster hollandaise yesterday with fresh asparagus, which are in season right now, too. So yeah, it's not the thing I eat every day, but it was fun and it was really good.Suzy Chase: So let's talk about your cookbook. After years in the restaurant business in France and the Netherlands, you learned that every fish had a story, and traveled the world to live, to cook, and to fish together with the most amazing sustainable fishing communities. In 2008, you were named the world's most sustainable seafood entrepreneur. Can we first talk about taking care of the oceans?Bart van Olphen: Actually, how I became aware I was in, I think it was 2002, maybe a year later when I opened my fishmongers in Amsterdam. And actually I opened a fishmongers because I worked in Paris and I saw so many different species and they're all lovely, and they has amazing stories when the fish supply came in. So I thought, okay, I bring these stories, I bring these fish into Amsterdam, open my fish counter, my fishmongers, and then someone of the WWF came in and told me, "Are you aware of the fact that like 80% of our oceans are over-fished?" And that sounded really un-logical to me. My impression always was like all these small, beautiful fishing boats entering the ports in Spain, and you ate like next to it on a terrace, a fresh piece of fish, but that's not the case. And from that moment also what I realized is that seafood is the only food we still massively consume out of wild. It's the nature what gives us this delicious fish. So we need to listen to our oceans. And that was actually the moment that I started to travel and to search for these sustainable fishing people, these communities. Yeah, so we need to be aware. Over 80% of our oceans are over-fished or fished to the limit. We only can consume out of 20% of them currently. So yeah, that's a sad story.Suzy Chase: What was your favorite fishing community that you visited?Bart van Olphen: What I found the most fascinating ones are often the ones in developing countries. They need to fish to live, right? It's not that commercially driven in the way we do it here, for example, in the US or here in Europe, where we trade fish. There people need to fish for living. So I've got two amazing ones. One's I can mention. One is the Maldives. It's the only country in the world where they only fish for tuna by pole and line. Small atolls, which are islands in the middle of the Indian ocean. And they go out fishing on a dhoni, which is the typical traditional local name for a tuna boat. And they catch the tuna one by one. It's amazing. Another one is in your country in Alaska, at the Yukon river. It's a really remote fishing community Unalakleet the Yupik community. And they catch the most delicious salmon of the world. But if you're there, you end up in a community of like 900, 1000 people, and it's all about fishing and they live by subsistence for the rest of the year. So it brings you back with two feet on the ground. This is how we would say it in Dutch. Fishing for living, for eating, but we should not over-fish because if we over-fish, we won't have any fish left by tomorrow.Suzy Chase: Where these recipes and the cookbook inspired by dishes you ate in fishing communities?Bart van Olphen: Absolutely, some of them. Well, the great thing about cooking tinned seafood is it's... we're not suddenly cooking different species, right? So we're cooking tuna, we're cooking salmon, we cooked sardines and anchovies. It's the similar fish then when I cooked it in my three star Michelin restaurant in Paris. The difference is that the fish is already cooked for you. So cooking tinned fish is more a mindset change, then suddenly cook a totally different thing. So what I wanted to say is that what I cook in the Michelin starred restaurants, you can translate it into a dish made of tinned seafood. When you travel, often people ask me, "What is your favorite fish dish?" I cannot tell you the right answer because every time when you travel somewhere else, it's the surroundings, it's the way how they cook. How we interact gives the dish so much more value, so much more flavor, maybe more from a romantic point of view, then the ingredients. One example, mas huni. So I just explained you about the Maldives. Maldivians are the most heavy seafood consumers in the world. They eat like 150 kilograms per year, which is a lot. If you go there and you're on the local Island, you'll have lunch... breakfast, dinner it's all fish, fish, fish, but it's also all tuna, tuna, tuna. And then the national dish is called mas huni, which means fish and coconut. And actually what they do, they squeeze a red onion and chili and curry leaves together with some lime juice and salt, they really massage it and squeeze it. And then they add fresh coconut, grated coconut, and tuna, grated tuna. It's like tuna in a tin. And it's fantastic. It's fantastic. So this is typically a local dish, but you also will find other dishes like the classic tuna melts or stuffed paprika. So when I travel, I take the recipes back home. It's amazing what you can learn from local communities.Suzy Chase: Okay. You just mentioned your Michelin star restaurant. And I read something, tell me if this is true, when you were a young child it was your dream to work at a Michelin three starred restaurant.Bart van Olphen: I was collecting Michelin guides already when I was six. So I've got 60 different guides. The first one I've got is 1908. And there was a chef called Roger Vergé and Moulin de Mougins, which is in the South of France. And he had this fence in front of his kitchen, and I asked my mom when I was eight years old, "Could you please drive to that fence?" And I was just standing there looking into the kitchen at a 20, 30 meter distance just to observe how these chefs we're working. So ever since it was my dream to work in gastronomy. And I loved it. I mean, but those were the years, Bocuse and Michel Guérard, and all of these big... Saint Laurent where I worked in Paris. So more the classic ones. It has changed. But it was a dream since I was six, seven years old. Yes, definitely.Suzy Chase: You know what my favorite thing is about tinned fish? You don't have to descale or get rid of the guts or clean them.Bart van Olphen: Cooking tinned seafood is a really easy, fun thing to do. Affordable. But one of the things is that you start at the point that the fish is already cooked for you. So when you open this tin, you see maybe a bit of pale non-colored piece of fish, texture is soft. But having these two things in mind, you can create this amazing fish dish without gutting or filleting. You would just add like a bit of structure, like a bit of lettuce, some colors, some acidity, and some sourness. And with a few steps, you can create something really, really well without actually cooking the fish itself. But also you can use the fish cooking, but always add it at the end of the recipe. That's something often when we cook fish, fresh fish, you would start with the fish to get it maybe with the veggies, and then end up with the whole dish. With tinned fish, don't think about cooking the fish. It's just adding the fish at the latest point. So when making a pasta puttanesca, for example, of course you give this flavor of the anchovies to the sauce, but at the very end, you only add the tuna. There's nothing more easy than cooking tinned fish.Suzy Chase: You wrote in the cookbook, "Walk into a random supermarket in Southern Europe, and you'll be amazed by the extensive selection of tinned fish products." Now, with the advent of COVID-19 and food shortages, do you think Americans will see more jarred or canned fish on the grocery store shelves?Bart van Olphen: I hope so. I hope so. I really compare the US to what the Netherlands was like four or five years ago when I started this challenge, actually. I often visited Southern European countries like Portugal and Spain and France. And it was amazing to see what kind of seafood in a tin they sold. It was the highest quality. Like if you buy a ventresca de atun, which is that the belly part, you need to ask a key at the cash desk to open this little box, to get this tin of 20, 30 euros, dollars, out of that box to take home with you. So it has a much more higher quality perception in these countries. Why? Because they know how to treat fish in a tin. So what happened in the Netherlands, but also in the US, is that the cheaper, the better. We always seen this product as a secondary product. You Americans, the number one seafood product sold in the country is a tin of tuna. Well, in most of the cases, to be honest, it's not a good product. So we need to appreciate better quality. We need to be ready to pay maybe a little bit more for it. Maybe a tin of $1.50 will be $1.60. First because we need to make a choice for a sustainable product, but secondly, also for the quality. And if you have a right quality product, you can make amazing fish dishes. But there is a way to go. And I think it can go quite quickly, but you need to be aware of the fact there is good quantity and bad quality. If you cook with a bad quality tin of sardines, you would never do it again. If you would cook with a fantastic tin of sardines, you would eat it every day.Suzy Chase: In the cookbook you cover tuna, salmon, anchovies, sardines, mackerel, herring, and then you have an interesting sort of extras chapter that includes cod liver. Can you tell us about cod liver?Bart van Olphen: If you would have asked me, what is your favorite fish out of a tin? I would say cod liver.Suzy Chase: Really?Bart van Olphen: It's fantastic. It's so oily. It's how you would, in the past, I'm not eating that anymore for animal welfare, but if you would eat foie gras, goose liver, you would treat it the same way. So you would add a bit of sweetness to balance that very oily flavor. It's fantastic. It's so flavorful and it's really nutritious. It's so healthy. I mean, forget your fish oil capsules. Just eat a tin of cod liver every week and you're done. It's fantastic. The structure is amazing. The flavor is amazing. It's different. Yeah, I don't know how to say, just give it a try. It's not in my cookbook, but one of the dishes I cook already for years is to serve it in a bit of reduced orange juice. And you serve it with some sesame oil, maybe some pink peppercorns, and that's it, on toast. It's fantastic. You really should give it a try. And the recipe I made in the book was with a miso and herring. I learned how to make a miso and cod liver paste from a fantastic Japanese chef and Shiogama, which is around two hours from Tokyo. And this gentlemen was 86 years old and he taught me how to do it. And that's the recipe in the book. It's fantastic.Suzy Chase: I'd love to go over a day's worth of tinned fish with you. So what would you suggest for breakfast and then lunch and dinner.Bart van Olphen: Okay. For breakfast, it's an omelet. So I made scrambled eggs and salmon on toast. And you have lovely salmon in the US. That's one other thing, Suzy, I need to make you aware of. Okay, 52% of the world's fish consumption is farmed, from farm sources. If you go to the shelf in a supermarket of tinned fish, 100% is wild. And you won't find it in the frozen category, or you won't find it in the fresh, but you will find it in the tin division. It's all wild and wild, in my opinion, tastes always better. And you have fantastic wild salmon. So that's the reason I serve you a breakfast of scrambled eggs and salmon on toast. And then I'll take you from there for lunch to the Maldives. I've explained it already to you, mas huni. Everyone should try mas huni. It's the new generation of tuna spreads, but no oil. So it's healthy and full of flavor. You taste the tuna. You taste this coconut. It's fantastic. And then when we go to dinner, how often do we make curries? A good thing about making curry is you slowly cook the fish in the curry. So the reason why it won't dry out... tin fish is a great substitute for fresh fish in a curry, for example, or I'll make you a pasta puttanesca. It's one of my favorites. It's obvious one, but to make a good pasta puttanesca is one of my very, very favorites too. Because every ingredient almost in this dish, is out of your pantry. So you have your canned tomatoes, you have your canned tuna, you have your canned anchovies, you have your capers in a jar, you have your dried pasta. So one can survive with a pasta puttanesca.Suzy Chase: Yesterday I made your recipe for sardine hummus on page 92. Can you describe this recipe?Bart van Olphen: Well, easy. It's creating like a hummus. Of course with chickpeas, and you add the tahini, and the clove, and the lemon, parsley, a bit of spiciness, maybe some chili flakes, Tabasco if you like, and then you add the fish because in this case, these oiled sardines, they already give so much taste. So you just have these on top and you eat it together. So it's like a classic, maybe a bit my way of hummus with sardines on top.Suzy Chase: So now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all time favorite cookbook and why?Bart van Olphen: Well, my very favorite, but it's more from a designer's perspective, is the book of Salvador Dali, Les diners de Gala. And he always wants to be a chef, but he didn't succeed to enter the cookery school. So then he became an artist, or maybe he was already at that time, of course you're born as an artist in my opinion. But then his dream was still to make a cookbook. So in 1972, he made a cookbook for his wife, for Gala, and it's called Les diners de Gala. And it's amazing. It's over the top. It's over the top. If you see the images, it's '70s, but in the '70s already over the top. So that's from a designer's perspective. Well, how it looks like, it's a coffee table, I can dream with that book. But I won't choose a recipe out of it. Julia Child, especially also in your country, made people happy to cook and let people realize that cooking is not difficult at all. And it's fun to do. So I think from a mental point of view, she made people really happy and it opened many doors I think, to how we would eat today. She was a revolution, I think. Yeah, and if I look at YouTube and I see her on television in black and white, even in black and white, the dishes are amazing. Yeah, it's fantastic.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on web and social media?Bart van Olphen: Well, you can find me... I've got a YouTube channel, which is called Bart's Fish Tales. Here I travel, you see a lot of my travels, cooking together with the local communities. Obviously these months, it's not happening. And I cook in my studio in Amsterdam. And the objective is to show people that cooking fish is not difficult at all. In only a few steps, you can create an amazing fish dish. And a similar thing I do in Instagram for anything is five years ago, I started on Instagram with the shortest cooking show on earth, was a 15 seconds cooking show, when Instagram still had the limit of 15 seconds in video. Now it has one minute. And on my Instagram also on Bart's Fish Tales, I share my stories and my recipes, and all you need to know about seafood, sustainable seafood.Suzy Chase: Well, thanks Bart for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.Bart van Olphen: A pleasure. Thank you for having me.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com. And thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

Whether or not you've had a branding session done, you may not know that it's not a one-and-done photography deal. It's always important to update and refresh your images to make sure they reflect who you and your business are today.You might be thinking, "I don't need to work with a photographer or I had my pictures done and my website updated a couple years ago." So I've got a few questions you should consider if you don't know whether or not it's time to schedule a new one.1. You Are Using Old ImagesHow old are the images that you're using? Are you using old images. Have you changed your style since you had your last pictures? Is your hair cut or a different color. Are you serving a different market? Have you lost or gained 10 lbs? It's important that you have updated, relevant images that reflect you right now. 2. You Are Only Using Stock ImagesYou should consider booking a branding session if you're only using stock images. Now there is nothing wrong with using stock images. I use them in my own business, website, and courses. The issue comes when you are only using stock images. Because your images will never truly connect to your brand and speak to your customers.3. Nothing MatchesDoes everything you post look a little jumbled because you have old pictures here and there, mixed with newer pictures and updated branding? Are your colors confusing and you're using different styles or fonts everywhere? We talked so much about consistency in building your brand that this is really where it comes down to. You want everything to look consistent. Take a minute and look at your brand. From FB to your website and everything in-between. If it just doesn't look like it's matching then you know that it's time for you schedule a session.4. You’re Out Of SeasonYou should definitely try to have a brand session every season, so that your images are current and relevant to the times. Otherwise you will come across as disconnected to your clients and current issues. I always talk about being really intentional when it comes to writing your captions when it comes to talking to your audience so make sure that your pictures are intentional and it matches that. Links Mentioned in this EpisodeBook NowDiscovery Call on Calendly

Te Whatarangi Dixon is a man with much "Mana' (The Maori word that means to have great authority, presence to command respect). Despite his relative youth at age just 30 he has twice already stared his own mortality in the face.  He was the victim of Guellain Barre Syndrome or GBS for short. Guillain-Barre ) syndrome is a rare disorder in which your body's immune system attacks your nerves. Weakness and tingling in your extremities are usually the first symptoms. These sensations can quickly spread, eventually paralysing your whole body. In its most severe form Guillain-Barre syndrome is a medical emergency and in this case is what severe and meant Te Whatarangi was months in hospital. The exact cause of Guillain-Barre syndrome is unknown. But two-thirds of patients report symptoms of an infection in the six weeks preceding. These include respiratory or a gastrointestinal infection or Zika virus. Te Whatarangi lost all control over his body and literally watched his body fail and start to die while his brain remained fully conscious. The fear, the uncertainty, not knowing if he would live or die or if he lived if he would ever have any quality of life again or be trapped in a body that no longer worked sent Te Whatarangi through a long night of the soul. But he eventually emerged. Stronger, more resilient, more empathetic and more driven that ever before. This is a comeback story of survival and of love. The importance of family and how they helped him through. Te Whatarangi is now a qualified neuro-physio and knows exactly what his patients and clients are going through. He knows the battles they face and he guides them back on the path to their goals. Heartwarming and raw this interview will inspire you and make you grateful for the blessings you have.    Te Whatarangi's greeting to you all in Maori   Ko Putauaki te māunga Ko Rangitaiki te awa Ko Mataatua te waka Ko Ngāti Awa tōku iwi Ko Te Pahipoto tōku hapū Ko Wayne Haeata tōku matua Ko Kay Mereana tōku whaea Ko Blair Te Whatarangi Dixon ahau   I have come from very humble beginnings. I am a product of my whānau (family) and I would not be the man I am today without them supporting me every step of the way. Everything that I am and everything that I strive to be is a reflection of not only myself but my whānau. I represent them and I hope to make them just as proud as I am of them. I was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) in 2014 and again in 2019 where only 1 in 100'000 people are diagnosed globally with a 1% chance of contracting it twice. Always an optimist and through my journey of self-discovery having faced the possibility of my own mortality, I am now proud to call myself a Neurophysiotherapist. My journey has been challenging yet unique and I wish to share my story with the world in the hope others feel inspired and to allow their light to shine.   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body. Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics/ measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/mindsetu-mindset-university/ Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option. Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) You're listening to pushing the limits with Lisa Tamati. Today I have a guest to Te Whatarangi Dixon from Rotorua who is an amazing young man. He's a neurophysio something I'm very interested in. But he is also a victim of the Guellain Barre Syndrome. Very hard to say. We'll call it GBS. Now this is a syndrome that's a rare disorder in which the body's immune system, attacks your nerves, weakness and tingling in the extremities are usually the first sort of symptoms and the spread right throughout his body and it can be fatal. And he was certainly in deep die trouble for many weeks in the hospital and he shares his story today and his comeback journey. It's a really interesting, I'm very interested in people who have overcome the odds in comeback. Journeys for obvious reasons. And I think this journey just really that fax has been on is incredible and why he's tackled it in the way he's coped with it. Speaker 2: (01:09) He was then gone on because of this to become a neurophysio. So he's used what was a terrible thing in his life to do something good. So it was a real honor to have him on the show. I just want to remind you before we go over and talk to te there, my book is now available on audio. It's available on ebook, on Amazon on my website every which way you can get it now. Relentless. It's also in the bookshops. I had the greatest pleasure the other day when I walked finally into a shop and there was my book. So that was a pretty exciting moment. After seven weeks on lockdown, it's finally out there. So if you're interested in getting that, the book is called relentless and you can grab it on my book, my website at lisatamati.com Right now over the to the show with Te Whatarangi Dixon. Speaker 1: (01:54) Them. Speaker 3: (01:57) Well, hi everyone. Welcome back to the sharp pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you back again. I am sitting with Te Whatarangi Dixon all the way over in the Rotorua. How are you doing mate? Good, thank you. Good. Thank you. Super excited to have you on the show. It's really cool. We've connected through your father in law who is a lovely man, Steven who I spoke for. He is a great man. He is a lovely man. And he just said, you've got to talk to my son in law. He's so interesting and I thought, yes, he is very interesting and I want him on my show. So today I was going to hear a little bit about Whatarangi and we're going to call them facts from here on. And and now Whatarangi is a equally a neurophysio. You're just just qualifying right now, sort of in the midst of finishing things up and getting him into a new career and job. Speaker 3: (02:49) But the reason, one of the reasons I want, I want to talk to you about that, but I also want to talk to you about you've got an inspiring comeback story. Can you tell us a little bit about GBS we, we you've had GBS twice and we're trying to pronounce it before Guellain Barre Syndrome, something like that. So yeah, it's a very big word. So we'll call it GBS and can you explain what that is and your, your journey with us a little bit and a little bit who you are for status. Speaker 4: (03:22) Yep. Okay. So my story basically starts from a little town called tickle. So that's where I'm actually from and my family is, and I grew up pretty much in the Bay. TNT. I think probably people will always think that my story is interesting is because Guellain Barre Syndrome or GBS as we call it is as 100, a hundred thousand people, I think contracted, well that's the neurological condition. And then basically a textual, your peripheral nervous system. So it's quite similar. That's how I kind of describe it to people. I'm totally on the stand that getting into the technical kind of tends of things is similar to that. You miss you miss the textural central nervous system either and GBS a textual peripheral nervous system. Wow. Cause people get what that is so they can proceed. It's kind of similar but there are differences. Speaker 4: (04:20) So I had a strength called ampersand, which is what's a text basically or your motor neurons. Annual sensory neurons. You can have different trends with the tech, just primarily your motor neurons or your sensory or I think he got five different Sharon's, I'm not, can't remember specifically about each one, but yeah, those two. Yeah. I had em send, so I took an attack my motor neurons in my, in my sensory neurons. But the potential for it to recover as higher because you have a special cell called Schwann cells in your peripheral nervous system and they can regenerate over time. So that's why if you have, if I wouldn't wish it upon anybody, but basically if you had GBS your what your and you and you were able to stop it from progressing, quite possibly, even people have, it can't be fatal. Speaker 4: (05:11) But if you at the interventions from the hospital placed on you I think within three to four weeks until you sat on told JPA starts to kind of overtake your body, you'll be lucky to recovering this quite high but post four weeks and you haven't had an intervention with they call it immunoglobulin therapy or plasma faceless where they basically take our, your white blood cells and replace it with others. Wow. so basically you'll be your pasta, your, your ability to recover. That's a lot higher with your peripheral nervous system because your central nervous system are made out of oligodendrocytes and that's what they make up are once they damage, they don't rip you. Wow. So if you about a motorway system, once you've got an issue major, such a major highway, so one roads basically destroyed, it'll never be recovered. Speaker 4: (06:05) You'll be able to actually try and tap into other areas and go off road and then come back on, wow, I want to kind of destroy their part of the road and we'll never recover. Whereas Guellain Barren Syndrom, once that Schwann cell is basically damaged, if they're forced to before the damage, its ability to, to re regenerate as higher Scwh is in. This isn't the bird Swan. Swan. So S C W H. Okay. So that's a german. SCWH. Okay. So how does it manifest itself in your body? So you've got the, luckily not the central nervous system one, but more of the peripheral. How did that sort of manifest and what were the symptoms? Okay, so for me in 2014 mindset of half the thing is they don't actually fully understand why it HIPAA or like what actually causes causes a bacteria virus. Speaker 4: (07:09) We don't yet, but they understand what happens to once it starts. What's a, what's a begins to happen. So for me how they described the words, I, I basically called a guarantee Stein bug basically a month before GBS kind of started to could have been related. I go to my body, yes. So what they, what they perceive as what happens, it's an auto immune disease. So I had discussion or anti Stein nonfiction and I recovered from that. But however, what happened is you obviously when you get sick, you build up your immune cell or your immune system starts to kick in and you build get your killer T cells and then eventually you'll have resistant T-cells to action to buy down the killer T cells. Cause they've already destroyed the bug. Yep. What's happened is in my immune system, my resistant T cells to to actually hinder and stop the killer T cells from producing and actually start to generate around the body, they don't actually start to kick in. Speaker 4: (08:12) So your immune system had all these killer T cells floating around. And then I think obviously then I just got another random cold bug about a month later. And because you had these killer cells, so floating around in my body, I'm talking kind of later and I used to help you find fully understand it's important. Yeah. And so basically what's happened is my immune cell, my immune system has decided to, they've got this new bug, these qualities are the floating around. I have no idea what to do with this new bug and all of a sudden have started to just manipulate itself and then attach in a tech my, my peripheral nervous system. So phone cells instead of that classic auto immune shoot all the goodies and the baddies at the same time. Yeah. So it spawns my, my immune system starts to attack my own body. Speaker 4: (09:03) Yep. Essentially. Yeah. And so you don't, you don't know whether it's coming from there you know, that that gastrointestinal thing or not, but quite likely that that's caused that caused this reaction in the body. Obviously when you, when you're sick, obviously you get increased inflammation, which means that increases your immune system. And so it just, just helps you like a, like a, like as if you're standing in front of her train. And so basically how mine started was I just started getting pins and needles and my peripheral, like basically in my hands and my feet. Yeah. And it slowly kind of, I started basically just getting pins and needles and it started gradually kind of coming out of my arm of my legs. And then I started losing sets on my sensory kind of went, went away first. So SABIC losing sensation. Speaker 4: (09:54) And then basically as it came up through my, through my feet and into my ankles, we have a thing called proprioception. And they basically tell us it helps you understand its joints on the stand we are in relation to space. And that's that it's to dissipate and actually kind of disappear for me. So I started losing balance. It wasn't anything wrong with my brain, it's just that I couldn't get the right signals from my feet and from the white bearings, my weight bearing joints to my brain to understand and tell my body where I was. I had that with mum, but from a brain injury. Yeah. And so she didn't know who she was away. She stopped the way the world started. Special awareness because it's very hard to explain. Yeah. So this all just started happening. I don't know why, what's happening? Speaker 4: (10:43) You just kind of just randomly came on. So I started losing sensation and eventually started losing weakness in my hands. My jaw. I just knew something was wrong. I went to the doctors. The first time when I started getting pins and needles actually seeping into a physio, like some form of nerve issue of my lower back or, or something. Cause at the time I had, I had an injury, I'm a little bit. Yep. So say me, the basically nothing happened. A week later it started getting worse. Went back to my GP. He doesn't know, he didn't know what was happening. Obviously we could have the GP and had, you know, had I had signs of symptoms, they kind of live on possibly being meningitis as well. Yeah. He's sent me into, he see me in hospital, showed away basically after their next visit. Speaker 4: (11:31) So this was two weeks after that sort of started happening. A huge and obviously because he sent me diagnosed me possibly with a hypothesis of possible, possibly meningitis. I was treated for meningitis when I got there. By winter it wasn't, it wasn't I went and had my spinal taps. Yeah, spinal tap generally for meningitis in GBS cause they do present quite similar if they, if they think so. They're trying to cross the cross all the T's. We then, and then as they actually, when I went into hospital, I started getting huge migraines. I was getting migraines and I was skinning photophobia. So I've kind of actually optimized the life would just penetrate and just give me huge headaches. So I, when I was presenting what's, you know, and that's even another sign of possibly being in Jarvis and migraines. I, however, I didn't have a rash. That was, I need public one real, something they usually would get from in a data cell. We then had my spinal tap done, went for a CT scan. And then I was isolated basically because if I'm in a ditis spread it out at this point they still didn't know what I actually had. They were just going on. You know, the signs and symptoms on me, possibly heavy meningitis skins fascination and hits the spinal tap, then CT scan. Speaker 3: (12:55) Yep. Carry on. Mum's bringing in the middle of the webcast. She always does. Everybody who listens to the podcast knows this is a key ring from Mark to carry on mate. Speaker 4: (13:08) Yeah. And then and then I'll, then they for a week nothing basically improved. So all the all the drugs that they go to me throughout the time to help me try and beat meningitis were working. I was getting worse and I started losing what I'd done in relevance to that. I was actually getting really weak, but I couldn't actually convey that to them because I started getting, you know, I started losing my, my, I couldn't breathe and I started, I get to be on a ventilation also just so much pain. So I started getting hyper sensitivity. So basically cold felt like hot hot, felt like cold, a polo felt like a waste of time. I felt like I was driving into into the beat. So when I was just lying on the bed, I felt like I was getting pulled down by gravity. So [inaudible] rotation or anything kind of going out of whack, you everything just becomes imbalanced and it might, your brain can not understand or what, and it's trying to rebalance itself. And in that process that's kind of having, it's actually being detrimental to your, to your ability to kind of actually understanding the world just cause everything. Like basically if you'll need to bombard your nurse to actually understand, you know touch smells like every foot of sensation that you can basically think of. Speaker 3: (14:27) We had for granted so much and we know that this is, yeah, something's touching my right hand or I'm feeling my left hand or, Speaker 4: (14:35) And then basically third weekend I had an MRI and then the neurologist was actually away at the time. So the neurologist said that was actually from the house and told him the hospital for us. He was a white, you ever sees on a, on a spent sabbatical at another hospital. And so the neurologist from Palm smelt was coming up two or three times a week. Yep. So he came up and he basically once they won't say best, so he thought busters, a meningitis B bike. And I started and I had an Ida, my sister in law, she found a possible link to being something more neurological because I had this window of opportunity. We actually felt, you know, everything kind of normal, a little bit full for a time. And I asked Glen to kind of do some, do some assistance on me, who's my sister in law. Speaker 4: (15:25) She's now registered, now open a hospital. Wow. and she just chose a fifth year medical student at the time and she just done some systems on me and she felt my reflex is going through. I couldn't, my sensation was, was basically gone and she just went straight to straight to my consultant. My consultant got the neurologist to come in and they're all just basically look there, make straight away any new show way that ITVS basically Australian. I went straight into HDU. I was throwing spirometry, so I actually checked around my lung capacity was gone of the migraines. They organized for me to go for an MRI just to see what type of thing my body information was. And all of my, you know, all of my CRP scans, we were just through the roof. White blood cell counts were through the roof. So they knew that your, your menu system, but they couldn't, they didn't know what was happening on it. And obviously people, it's so rare you know, you, you come across that every, I don't know, once or twice in your lifetime. Speaker 4: (16:33) Okay. So now you're, you're in the, the finally worked out does it, is this thing. Yep. What sort of a battle did you have on your hands then? I was in the battle. Basically, they're trying to save my life. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So my, my, basically my, my lungs started to shut down. I immediately went down to about 50% capacity. As soon as I went into HDU I was intubated with mechanical ventilation to the full Monte, so conscious, so my brain's still, they're not just getting migraines. Stuff's like, it's still kind of occupational life. Nothing's happening mentally. It's all just the, my physical body shutting down. I can't move. I started all like, basically I lost all control of my bowels and whatnot as well. So there was things we didn't see wise. It was just, it just, everything went away. Speaker 4: (17:29) So like a massive brain damage. Yeah, something's happened to the brain, but it's just a little bit, it's just my, my peripheral nervous system is shutting down. So I was 23. Wow. I was 20. It started 2014 and yeah, so that, that all happened aren't you baited? And they basically, they started me on what they call immunoglobulin therapy, which is basically other people's antibodies. So, and that's about $1,500 a bottle. And I had about, I don't know, I think it was a call center of over five days, three bottles a day. Sorry, I'm trying to overpower it with, with normal white blood cells. Yeah. So basically trying to combat my immune system so they're pumping and you know what white blood cells from other, basically it's basically a blood transfusion into my body to basically, it can't stop DBS, it can only spoke. Speaker 4: (18:41) So the progress of it. So like I said before, you know, these, they're four week kind of if their month window that month window to try and stop it to get possibly from being a fatal condition. So I was in the third week, halfway through the three weeks, so they just water them. And you know, I already got to the stage where basically I was a vegetable and basically I was just trying to save my life. So I was intubated, heading immunoglobulin, stuck to a wall hours days. And I was in the hospital for about three months in ICU for about a month and a half. And then I went up to just the general ward. So it was amazing. So once they open up here, but it's just a waiting game, you can't really, you can't do much, they can do something else. Speaker 4: (19:30) You can do. You just watch you just hoping that, you know, me being a young kind of 24 year old at the time, it was going to kind of, that was going to be in a box, which to me, thankfully it was. It was. Yeah. And that's very grateful. Someone under the age of basically 50, 40, 50 to get genius. Wow. cause you, have, you got, you know, I, I love diving into the body. Do you think you have a predisposition to immune and overreactive immune system? Have you even thought about functional genomics and doing some testing along that lines to see? Well, you know, I've always thought that I'd always thought about looking at basically my DNA cause but you know, when I look at my, look at my look at my family, but I look at my family history, I've got none of that in my family. No kind of history of a neurological emission. We've got you know, quite a, the only thing we probably have in my family is the Alzheimer's cancer in our family. We don't have you know, you know, really what do you call it? Systemic kind of conditions, you know, mommy and my family have died of heart attacks. I think one. Yeah. [inaudible] Speaker 3: (20:50) We've got type two diabetes, but that's not genetic. That's just, you know, your modifiable risk factors that you can change. Well there is genetic fathers did it as well. Yeah. But it would be interesting. I mean I'm just fascinated by functional genomics and looking at understanding of why your immune system would kick into overdrive and actually cause an S is this likely to happen again? Not GBS. Well, we'll get to that in a minute, but you know, for other immune responses now here on land. Yeah, I'll definitely be interested in looking at research that we can. When I'm working with the DNA company and I've had dr mincer on the say they've just opened their labs up again and it'll be a few months before I'm qualified. But I can definitely connect you this if you want to have a look at that just to, I mean it's, I think it's something that everybody should do once in their life anyway. Speaker 3: (21:49) Yeah, it's fantastic, Dan. The stain, it can definitely help you plan and prepare for your future. Not stupidly, but just preparation was, you know, you'll tell him to stay on what's happened. Like what could possibly happen for you and what, you know, change it while you can change in regards to modifying your lifestyle to be able to enjoy, enjoy your, you know, your quality of life to the full extent. And even like things like, and this is getting a bit off topic, but you know what medications you might interact with in a, in a bad way or you know what your detox pathways are like. So do you need to be super vigilant when it comes to outside toxins, that type of thing or your hormone pathways or everything like that is involved at, so it's pretty, pretty, pretty good information to have. It's like, I reckon it should be like passport. Speaker 3: (22:43) So you have it, you know, and then you take the interventions to stop problems. But back, back to give a story. So you, you, you're fighting for your life now in your, you've, you've gotten through that really bad, horrific stage. How were you mentally coping with us as a 23 year old when you started to come back to life, if you like what you've been through, this traumatic, horrific experience. Have you dealt with that? You know, I've probably, I'm a very optimistic person, just like as a put my personality. I have a very optimistic look and I'm just in life in general. It was really tough. So at the challenge me a lot I wish I knew my wife, that's, it would've been easier, definitely been easier. You know, just being, you're being 23 and I'm very much a mum mama's boy. Yeah, absolutely. Nothing wrong with that. And my mum at the time Speaker 4: (23:47) You know, after raising my brother, my sister and I her entire life as a single mother. Wow. yeah, it's off to half. Yeah. I have a lot of, a lot of things in life. She was in Spain, so she decided, you know, how all of us, we're all growing up, we're living our lives. We started our new careers and, you know, looking, you know, what's going on in our own adult lives. If you took this opportunity, you know, to actually just enjoy this and go off on another Valium sabbatical for six, seven months over in Spain, lift my lift, my stepdad, he just say, I'm going to Spain. I'm going to go off and have all that. And she was basically two months in over there, and then they'll say, great. Trip as well. You know, I tried to, we rang basically nearly ever tried to ring every night through Oh, he used to be called Viber, you know, the original kind of. Yep. I guess. And you know, I basically said to every single time, as hard as it was to me, just to say on the phone was, you know, I said, I kept on saying to mum, don't come back. I'm going to beat this. And I'm not gonna pray, I'm not going to buy as much as I probably cried a lot of the time thinking that I was going to die. Speaker 4: (25:17) Yeah. To face your own mortality though, I mean ridiculously young age you know, like how do you see that now? What's your relationship with it now? I mean it's a pretty hard thing to buddy. Others that's I think I look at it more is I don't ever look at it as a, it's a fear concept. I probably look at it as a, as an opportunity to kind of, like I said, like before we even started a podcast, that's just an opportunity to actually still learn. Even though, even though I was going through this, I was like knocking it, if I get through this, what am I going to learn from this? So that's how I actually probably got me through. A lot of it was, you know, I'm not going to let this beat me, so what can I do with my life if I, you know, not if I was going to, it's like I was spicy. Speaker 4: (26:06) I was trying to tell myself that I wasn't going to, but you know, facing, facing that possible. Yeah, it was either I have my down moments. You know, you sometimes you're probably just thinking about wanting just to give up because it was just so that was quite hard and you know, seeing my family and my family and my family just probably, which has definitely been, you know, my Maori being from a Maori family, my and my mum overseas, I'd always had someone next to me. So yeah, my aunties, my uncles, my brothers, my sisters, my Dad, they all kind of took their time out of their days to kind of one at a time, go on a roster and just be there 24, seven basically, isn't it? It's so important to have that support. Yeah. And you know, like I'm a big, I'm a very holistic kind of person. Then before MALDI back home we have a thing called all, you know, like mother that can be, and so basically in anything, so a person, an object or you know, any inanimate kind of thing. But by them being there, they actually predicting them announcing me, if that makes sense. Absolutely makes sense. You know, if I didn't have them, I don't know if I'd even be here. Being beside your loved ones and having walking with them and their dark times is just so, so, so crucial. Like very family orientated person. So yeah. Speaker 4: (27:36) And you got a good one. I didn't have them beside me. I don't think I definitely would not have probably made it on my own. Because they were actually my thyroid, my motivation to actually fight and fight cause you need to fight, you need to fight when you're in deep, deep trouble and to find that fight when you're in pain and in, in terror and fear and all the rest of it. And the reason probably why I say I would show my wife at the time was because she's actually given me that strength and power to actually on the same or separate afflictions. Yes. I never actually fully understood it and she comprehended it. So I was obviously me being a 20 young, 23, all these just think of the physical aspects of life. And I never really considered, you know, how impactful the mental side of things, the emotional side of things and the spiritual side of things. Speaker 4: (28:25) But it's actually, she really helped me also is actually trying to understand who I am, what my identity is. Wow. I shocked. Cause if I had that back then as well, you know, I definitely would. Mmm. Fully understand and actually I would have been a hell of a lot better position to actually get full without ever even thinking or considering those kinds of things I would consider and think about them, but I wouldn't have, I wouldn't, you know, consume me. Yup. Yup. If they make sense. So I'm a big believer in if you have a strong, I didn't say even cultural identity, if you understand who you are, yeah. It gets you through. So, and that's, you know, being honest to yourself, being yeah, even on the others. And just taking them one step at a time, you know, it's not going to, you need to fully appreciate it. Speaker 4: (29:17) I understand that sometimes you do need that time to just kind of look at yourself and understand who you are. Cause if we don't, then you struggle. So this has brought you wisdom beyond your years really, isn't it? Yeah. So, okay, so, so you, you were in the rehab now for over a year trying to come from this thing and what was that better like? Like was it like coming back from a stroke or a brain injury? Was it like that now? Yeah, so basically it was really weird. So for me, I actually quite enjoyed it, but obviously obviously food through. I, I enjoyed the rehab, but the time that I was in the hospital, that was the tough part. So yeah, it wasn't until I probably got past it every elevation there point where I knew I wasn't going to buy. Yeah. Basically once they, once their fear of my own mortality here to pass, I was, you know, basically they basically told me, I was like, I've been in it and now all I have to do is put the work in. Yep. So be able to give myself from where I am right now, being dependent and now becoming, you know, my independent self again. Wow. I'm still alive so I'm stoked. Speaker 4: (30:39) I'm going to fight like crazy to get better. So I'd never looked at it as being, you know, I never looked at myself as being disabled ever. Maybe sometimes I maybe shouldn't because I know I probably pushed a lot of stress and, and you know I'm on my family when I was going through it there first time cause I, you know, obviously I think we forgot to mention them. I got this last year as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is what we've got to get to yet. So, yeah. So that, you know, I wish I probably was able to be honest. If I say, you know, on, on basically my family going through a lifetime because I know how stressful it was for them to kind of see me in that position and all they wanted to do was just help me and all in all I would do was just kind of internalize it and just keep it to myself and say, no, I almost went homeless and do it myself. Speaker 4: (31:36) Right. But, you know, that was a very selfish thing. Like when I look back on it, it's a very selfish approach that I had on it, even though I know they called me it. But that's because I was only ever thinking about the physical side of things still because you were young and I was young and you know, for me, being a 23 year old, you know, the physical side of life, very, very important. And being a man, you know, you messed the and he gets challenged and it was very, very hard to kind of get through that without ever feeling like I was burdening my family. So, you know, and that way when I look at it now, I, that was the wrong approach. But yeah, so basically once I got past, they pointed at this past the point that I wasn't going to be, that wasn't going to die. I was in hospital until basically I was my, I wasn't head. I took out the mechanical ventilation and I started doing some form of physiotherapy in the hospital and then they had organized me to go to a festival or a Ferguson. I know I Speaker 3: (32:40) Tried to get mum in there, couldn't get her and sorry. Speaker 4: (32:43) I got, I don't know where I got my funding from yeah since I was three months in hospital. And my rehab basically consisted of a lot of it was orientated around my goals and what I wanted to reach back to. However, when I read what I really enjoyed about lower foods, and it's basically like a campus that's a rehabilitation campus and it's for people that are under the age of 60. So it's not a, it's not a retirement village. It's actually for people that are, wants a big goal, be there long term. They had some of them who have long term conditions and took some of them terminal to a certain extent, but they're all there for the purpose of what's in there. Try and get better. Speaker 3: (33:29) Love that. I love that. Yeah. I did try to get my mum in there. She was too old to get there and we couldn't get funding and so on. But it did feel like a place where you were going to actually do something because I must say you're a neurophysio now, so we'll get to that shortly. But I must say the physio care that we had in the hospital was nothing short of atrocious. Yeah. I could have done it in my sleep. I think they went, they'd eat the lunch. That's pretty harsh. But that's, that's how I felt. Speaker 4: (34:02) And it's, it's really hard when I think about that because they are quite restricted in a lot of what they can provide. You know, me being like going through placements in one note as well in the hospitals, they all want to change how they approach things on the hospitals. That's why they're trying to implement, you know, code rehabilitation, gems and whatnot there as well to get more involved. But at the same time it's really tough because systems at the system is built around, you know, you've got so many patients that you have to see on a ward and you've got what, 10, 2030, 30 minutes at the met with them. Speaker 3: (34:41) I must say I must, I must re repair what I just said. The ones that were came round to us on the ward during the acute phase were lovely. Awesome. Yeah. When we were later put into the rehab with mum I fought to get her back into the system to get, you know, cause they said at the beginning she's never going to do anything again. We're not going to bother basically. And I fought and after a year I got her back in for two times a week and there was atrocious. And I felt like a box ticking exercise. The ones on the ward were different. They were very passionate and really, really wanting to help. So in, and this is no indictment on any one person or thing, but there was a systemic problem and there is a systemic problem with the way that the, the things are run at least an hour, the, our hospital and the way that you are judged, I remember and don't want to take her out for the interview, but six weeks she had as a block of two times a week. Speaker 3: (35:43) And honestly what she would do in that six weeks I would have done in a day with her. The tests that they tried to put her through, she was intimidated. She felt like a school girl, so she was not interacting with them. Because they were very judging her all the time, whether she should continue in the program. And at the very end of the program, they had a big panel where they all came in to decide your fate, whether you'd be considered to continue in the program. And they, they talked to me not to hear who's sitting next to them and says she's below the level of the worst dementia patient we've ever seen. You know, she's never going to do anything and this is a waste of time. And I turned to my mom and I said, well how does that make you feel mum? Speaker 3: (36:28) And she said, you know, well I was feeling quite empowered until I came in here. Now I feel totally, you know, down before. And they just looked at me and then jaws drop cause I had never heard her speak because they had never spoken to her as a intelligent person. So she had responded because she was intimidated by that medical setting and I knew that she was a nurse. I knew she had a, you know, stuff going on and she was intelligent and she was coming back. I believed in her and I just said to them, you can stick your program up there somewhere. I'm going to bring my mum back. And I did. From that point on I was like, right there is no help. I will go and do this all myself. And that's, you know, that's, that's just that particular bunch of people in one particular place. And that's not an indictment on them all. But that was, that was quite sad. And then I had a wonderful neurophysio. So let's get onto your neurophysio cause you've gone down this path now after going through this. Was that the reason that you went and studied neurophysiology? Speaker 4: (37:35) Yeah, definitely swung my Martha sessions that go that way. Yeah. I wasn't actually through PSI. I had an amazing neurophysio and when I went, when I was at Laura, focus on the reason why I decided to go down this path though you know, it was just, she just knew how to push me in the right ways and I wanted to do that for other people. And even when I was at Laura Ferguson, I met so many amazing people that had never asked the, you know, to have a stroke, to have no image, to have Huntington's disease, to have pockets. And so, you know, they never, never, they never asked for that. And just to be able to have it's just you know, the, the, the thing I think about the most is people, there's dependent, you know, if you're, if you lose your independence, I feel that's the huge, like the biggest thing as a human, you don't read it like it, it's that old cliche of, you know, you don't know what you have until it's gone. Speaker 4: (38:36) And so basically it's a pout. Somebody that does the pendant become independent again. That's the most rewarding thing that I can even think of from from, from absolutely. When I, when people ask me why I wanted to become a pussy, I say there's three things. So one of those I knew I always wanted to help people work from a health perspective. And originally I actually wanted to become a doctor and do medicine. So they laid onto their leads onto my second reason. That was the reason why I toasted the physio and it's purely because I probably had hit the, you know, Gordon, she was amazing. I'm going to start her name out there because she is amazing. They she made me understand that being a physiotherapist you just were able to have. And there's just this natural and therapeutic relationship that you just can't have as a doctor is, you know, as a relationship proficient. Speaker 4: (39:34) Yeah. Your ability to be able to have those real deep connection with, with your patients was like, there was, that's the reason why I really got back to where I am today because of that. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm a very people person. So having that intense of kind of relationship with each other collectively, you know, having that shared goal of kind of getting to that, to that same, to that shared place where they want to, that they want to achieve. As you know, second to none. It's a bond for life really, isn't it? I can see how much you love and respect what she did for you and how much it means. And this is why it's on me to becoming a physiotherapist rather than a doctor. The complete opposite of like, I had a neurophysio too who came to our house afterwards and he was wonderful. Speaker 4: (40:31) He gave me the belief that we could do this. He gave me the basic tools so that I could work every day with here cause I couldn't afford obviously everything. But he gave me the information that I could then put that into practice on a day by day by day basis. It's really common sense. It's just being able to apply it in the right way and try to break movements down. Now how do you teach someone to, I specifically look at it in three ways, you know, narrow cause as I think of it as he got function, strategy and impairment, that's basically, that's, that's my, that's like my go to for anything basically. So you know what you wanna achieve as function, you have strategies to achieve that function and then by you have an impairment which affects the strategy to be able to perform the function. Speaker 4: (41:18) Yes. Yep. So obviously the goal is function by why you have to do a specifically time work on the impairment and then effectively your strategies should try and improve and then you start, that's how you progress to the next kind of thing. And then, then what happens is you'll be able to perform their function again. It's like a soap tech. I'm like, I'm trying to simplify it, but that's how I try and approach things. Yeah, no, that makes absolute sense to me. Yeah. That's like free three steps and there's a variety of ways of how you can integrate your treatment methods. So there's a variety of treatment methods that you can use, but that's the ultimate call it, that's the, that's the basis of it that I run by. Wow, I'm going to bring them up to see you one day, what's the next thing I can do with it? Speaker 4: (42:06) So they basically, when I funded, when I recovered, I decided to become a therapist. So I enrolled into A A T and started in 2016. Obviously because I got a dog, cause 2015 had already started because I had a bit of paper and I just kinda wanted to give them my stuff that either actual year where I just worked and just got back on it to actually get back to normality. And then I decide to go on on the intake in 2016. And AAT is now I'm gonna fly should be an, it should be an advertisement for them or something. Yeah. Yeah. They're amazing. So I love that. I love being a part of that. They invest like the way our lectures were, they all came from a clinical experience. They weren't, they were heavily based on the theory. Speaker 4: (43:02) So, you know, they, they basically, they, they pushed down a farts to be able to have a clinical reasoning. And maybe I want to think on a fetus practitioners as clinicians, I want us to be clinicians. They want, they don't want us to be bookworms and lab and just writing, research things out all the time. Cause at the end of the day, you know, our, we're providing a service and we want it to be based around real good quality service. Not just, you know, anyone go on Google and find out and do this, you know, you know, I can do that. We want it to be able to, so they've really and forced their kind of encourage and encourage that type of learning. So it was very practical. And I'm a very practical kind of person. And it's really weird, you know, obviously when I was going through my rehab with his 2014 and they're learning and become in basically going through my physiotherapy degree, I look back on when I was through my rehab and I could see all the little tricks that you said. They will create these signs and your physio you create like the games and really it's actually, it's an objective measure for being. So I didn't really realize that it was actually like a, she's, she's testing me but I didn't know that. Wow. We've got them on or big take tests in all photos just to help me with like picking up things and putting them in. But secretly she had been timing me. Speaker 4: (44:37) She had made it basically. She made a lot of things cause I'm very sport all of my sports. So she made a lot of things in the games like paying the, we you know, you just, you can be as creative as you like as a neurophysio just to get that function back. Yeah. and you know, you learn, you learn basically all the main three, which is cardio, musculoskeletal and neuro. You always remember the principles of all three. Highly effective when you come out of uni, you kind of the side, we really want to kind of stop that all like basically to down and down. And so I obviously obviously matches. Obviously neuro, I do have a miscarriage. I do like that as well. And most people do do musculoskeletal. That's like your normal, full possessive, your body. Everybody knows about. Speaker 4: (45:28) But yeah, my interest is always possibly always going to be neurons just purely from an empathetic point of view. Having that rewarding feeling of being able to help someone get from a to B and just being a part of their journey with them. Yeah. They've ever wanted to be a credited with any of the, you know, them getting there. It's because it's all in. It's just being able to share their journey with them. But it's amazing to be able to, to provide that framework for people to, to learn from and to grow from. And so I just wanna like wrap up in a few minutes, but I want you, you got this again. Yes. You went through this whole thing again in January this year. Speaker 4: (46:12) August last August, 2019 so I was the special 1% of the entire world to get GPS twice. Wow. That's insane. It's super, super unlucky. But this time I have my wife, yes. Father-In-Law. I can never be grateful and thankful enough for them because this time, at least they, we knew what we were dealing with and we see Australia and stuff. It was just a lot and was still very tough and I still kind of, you know, internalized a lot of things. And you know, that, that same thing that the last time when I kind of found my cell phone with regards to my, you know, challenging my masculinity and keeping things internalized, trying to get through myself instead of feeling like I'm burdening everyone else with what's going on with me. But you know, Claire and Steven definitely helped me get through that. And I should apologize to my wife because I know it's probably very, very, very tough on it. Anyone you love and when you're going through hard times, you're always going to have moments where you didn't do what you wanted to do. When you look back afterwards. I mean, I've had times like with where I've been, like Speaker 3: (47:30) Afterwards gone, shit that wasn't good behavior, you know, on my behalf and, or you think, you know, but you're just in a desperate state of exhaustion and fatigue and the grind of it all and you did things that you're not surprised of. Now, you know, in my case where you think, you know, we have yelled at her for something or you know, just gotten frustrated and gone, Oh for goodness sake, you know, and then you're like, that's Speaker 4: (48:03) Time is as much as I was plus time round. It was amazing. Effectively Steven was my head of Gordon the farm. That's, you know, we went, we went to the polls basically three times a week and we went into the hospital twice a week. And he was the one basically taking me through all of my exerciser and whatnot and you know, clearly had to obviously go to work every day. But at the end of the day, she's like my biggest inspiration, the person that I aspire to be like, cause she knows who she is. She sounds awesome. Gotta meet. He's he always makes me want to be a better person or just a better man. Yeah. She, she sees me like she, she can, she sees through me if they make sense, she feeds me. She knows me better than I did myself. Yeah, Speaker 3: (48:52) You can be, you can be real with her too. You, you are who you are and she loves you for all the, all the good, the bad and the ugly. And isn't that what it's a wonderful thing. Yeah. Speaker 4: (49:05) Well the whole my kids look, I mean to me I couldn't make it bad side loss basically up to my elbows, into my knees as time. So I still had function and my, you know, basically my, it wasn't as bad, but it was still GBS even still take like six to seven months before I can actually, he's coming out the other end of this couldn't have been on myself. Yeah. Speaker 3: (49:31) Right. We're gonna wrap up now. What's the message? You know, there's a couple of good messages that have come out of today saying like, as a, as a young Mari, you know, men, you've faced us with amazing strengths and the wisdom that you are beyond your years. I mean, what are you now, 29, 2030 29 30 turning 30 wisdom beyond your years because of what you've been through and that is going to help so many people and your career and what you, what you do. And I'm very excited as it is. I know Steven is to see where you go in life because you know the power and the money that you already have now because of what you've experienced and your openness and your thing. I just think it's fantastic. And you're going to really be empowering lots of other people going through and this is probably, you know, your life's call and you know, is to help people and to do this and to share your story. You know, I think it's important. So this is hopefully the first time you were sharing it and won't be the last, I guess Speaker 4: (50:37) My take home is search after everything that I've been through with everything and all the people that I met. And then I have my wife and Steve and everyone inclusive my family. I think the biggest thing for me will be I think I'll probably look at it at this time of the kind of leader that I want to be like. So it's really, as I said before, it's being able to understand and having their perception of others, you know, never worrying, never caring about the perception of myself. You'll never, if you, if you can understand the perception of others you want to have, you always have an empathetic point of view on my fear. You'll be able to actually stand on the feet, stand in their shoes, sorry. And then understand, tied on the stand, what they're going through and instead of a sympathetic point in life, because at a point when you can become too sympathetic in not feeling sorry for them and then that's not going to help them at all. Empathetic, sympathetic. So that's the kind of leader that I want to be like. And that's what I want to, Speaker 3: (51:41) You're well on your way to doing that and you have a lot of money. You can see it. It just comes out through the screen. So thank you very much for sharing so openly and honestly today, your journey because it is empowering to other people who are going through difficult times. And this is, you know, part of the job of the show is to educate people around, you know, health and fitness and the latest science and the latest stuff. But also to make us understand like we're all human and we all have these feelings and we can get through tough times strategies and tools to do that. And you obviously found a few along the way. So I wish you well and you know, I'm excited to see where you go mate. And any last words, any last words before? Speaker 4: (52:29) Speaker 3: (52:35) Love it. Thanks. Thanks. Bye. Speaker 1: (52:37) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team lisatamati.com.

What role should LinkedIn play in your overall paid advertising strategy, and how can use it to drive highly qualified leads for your business? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Modern Media Advertising Director Anthony Blatner shares his LinkedIn advertising strategies. From how LinkedIn should be used in combination with other channels as part of a holistic paid advertising strategy, to what ad formats perform best and how to work with your sales team to ensure any leads you get are being followed up with, Anthony covers everything he does to help Modern Media's clients get killer results from LinkedIn. Highlights from my conversation with Anthony include: LinkedIn is great for targeting niche audiences at scale. The cost per click on LinkedIn is higher than it is on other platforms, so it's important that you have a strategy for following up on any leads you get from LinkedIn. In Anthony's experience, LinkedIn ads work well for company's with a customer lifetime value of $10,000 or more. Whereas the cost per click on Facebook is generally around $2, on LinkedIn, it starts at $4.50 and goes up from there. LinkedIn is best for top of the funnel advertising, where you can attract a new audience and then retarget and nurture that audience on other, less expensive platforms. Anthony has found that LinkedIn lead forms work well for his clients. They tend to have a higher conversion rate because prospects don't have to leave LinkedIn to convert, but when you use a lead form, you sacrifice the ability to cookie a contact.  If you are concerned about GDPR compliance, there are a number of ways to use lead forms to secure explicit consent and stay GDPR compliant. Another LinkedIn ad format that works well are newsfeed ads. Whereas on Facebook, video works well for this format, Anthony recommends using images on LinkedIn because you are being charged by the click and not the impression (which is how Facebook works). There is a new LinkedIn ad format that uses chatbot-like functionality called conversation ads that is also worth checking out. Anthony says sponsored InMail can be an effective way to get more conversions for ads that are already tested and proving successful in the newsfeed. With many marketers cutting their ad spend due to budget restrictions relating to COVID, Anthony says the cost per click on LinkedIn is down 30 to 40 percent. He recommends setting a maximum cost per click when advertising on LinkedIn, and then playing around with lowering that number to see how little you can spend and still see results. If you are doing LinkedIn ads and not seeing great results, it is most likely due to your targeting. Anthony recommends that you go back and revisit your targeting strategy to see if that helps.  The minimum number of emails you can target on LinkedIn is 300. Resources from this episode: Visit the Modern Media website Connect with Anthony on LinkedIn Contact Anthony by email at anthony@modernmedia.io  Listen to the podcast to learn how the top LinkedIn ads experts are using the platform to drive leads, and how can, too. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and today my guest is Anthony Blatner who is the advertising director at Modern Media. Welcome Anthony. Anthony Blatner (Guest): Hey Kathleen. Thanks for having me on the show. Anthony and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm looking forward to getting into it with you today, talking about some LinkedIn ads. But before we start, can you please tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and about modern media and about really just how you wound up doing what you're doing today? About Anthony Blatner and Modern Media Anthony: Yeah, absolutely. So modern media, we are a LinkedIn ads focused agency. We do a lot of B2B lead generation and all of our focuses on LinkedIn ads. The way that I got to being here is I actually come at it from the tech and software development world. I originally started my career working at IBM, working on their consulting teams, working on big eCommerce stores. Really enjoyed that, got to travel around a lot. I live in Austin, Texas and I also got involved with the startup community while I was here and ended up falling in love with that. So after a few years at IBM, I spun off to start my own mobile app development consulting company who would build mobile apps for for a variety of other companies, a lot of startups, some other like larger tech companies that we would partner with. And when I was doing that, I saw that we were building all these apps and like some of these companies would actually have startups with build an app and launch and like do very well. And we had a number of clients that went on to get acquired or like Stallard technology. And then we also work with some bigger partners who may have already had a customer network and they launched their app and it goes up to that customer network and does very well out of the gates. Then you would have other companies who would spend all this time and money developing app their software and then they would launch it and without a good marketing plan in place, it would just sit on the app store. No one would download it. And you'd see how much time and effort these teams are putting into this. And without, you know, without that marketing plan afterwards, then it was just, you know, it was dead in the water. So I saw it, I saw the need for it and then we naturally got pulled into doing it, helping out with a lot of those. So from doing marketing for my own agency and for a lot of clients I ended up just really loving the marketing that I was doing, so a few years ago, transitioned to focusing solely on marketing. So now Modern Media focuses on marketing. B2B lead-generation solely using LinkedIn ads. Kathleen: I love how focused you guys are because I mean, I come from an agency background. I owned an agency for 11 years and you know, I think that's the big conversation in the agency community, right? Like it's easy to try to be all things to all people, especially when you're chasing dollars. But there's really something to be said for niching down and becoming, you know, the best expert in the world on the thing that you want to do, you know, and focus on. So I think that's great. Anthony: No, it wasn't easy to get here. You know, it's a lot of trial and error along the way to where getting into the marketing. A lot of the apps that we started by marketing, no, sometimes we did start with like Facebook ads and Google ads. So like I've, I've done a lot of all of that kind of advertising over the years. And just with my background and with the type of clientele we had, LinkedIn was just repeatedly becoming the best platform to market them on. So we had done a lot of Facebook, done a lot of Google. I'll tell you a story of probably the first one that really stuck out for me. They were, they were, this was a company that we were taking on to do marketing. They were at big data, but they are the big data platform. They sell their tools made for enterprise companies. It's like thousands of dollars a year. They were doing the traditional Facebook and Google marketing. But as we audited their account and looked at their lead list, a lot of the leads that were coming in from Google were like people looking for jobs, searching for jobs or students looking for research. And they were, you know, they were following best practices for keywords and negatives and all that stuff, but you still get a lot of leads coming in. And then on Facebook it'd be a lot of people who are maybe clicking on the ad cause it had like a pretty picture in it or something that was attention grabbing. But a lot of those leads that were signing up were just not good fits. Their sales team was complaining that they were wasting a lot of time calling out these people and they just weren't qualified to buy. They didn't have the budgets to buy the software. So we took him over to LinkedIn and you know, targeted like CTOs, data scientists at specific types of companies who would be had the, their platform was made for a few different industries. So chose those industries, chose companies I think like a hundred people and above and just right out the gates. Those leads that were signing up were like the perfect fit for them and they're just like, this is night and day. Like the clear differentiator there. And since then it's just been like, I'm just an advocate of LinkedIn now for, for B2B for these industries that that's our focus now. Who is LinkedIn advertising right for? Kathleen: That's great. Now I feel like when people think about online advertising, they have a lot of choices these days. You mentioned a number of platforms just, and you know, in the last few minutes I guess my first question for you is really who is LinkedIn advertising right for and where does it fit within that big mix of different options? Anthony: That is a good question. That is a very important question to ask. So it's not, it isn't a good fit for everybody. I'll tell you a few things about it is LinkedIn is great for targeting niche decision makers at scale. It is a more expensive ads platform to use than a lot of the other ones out there. So it's good for companies that have the resources to go work those leads that they acquire. It's going to be more expensive to acquire those leads than like most other channels. So, you know, they're higher value leads need to work them when people are signing up. It is more expensive to acquire them. So you, your offer, your LTV for your customers should be high enough to make sense. What we'd like to see is an LTV of about 10k for that ROI to make sense. You know, if your sales and marketing engine is very honed in, you can be less than that and still make an ROI. But that's a good rule of thumb. If you're on Facebook ads, you can get CPCs under a buck, you know, they might be a dollar to $2 on average. On LinkedIn the minimum is about $4.50 in the US so right out of the gate, that's their floor and you're just going up from there. And if you're targeting CEO's only, you know, that's gonna be even higher than that. So just be prepared for higher acquisition costs. And that leads to how it fits in with the ecosystem. LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation and for acquiring very high quality traffic. Once you acquire it, you know, you want to then nurture it on other cheaper channels or more cost efficient channels. So once somebody signs up to be a lead, you know, follow up over email, outbound calling oftentimes we retarget with Facebook and Google ads. So we acquired traffic on LinkedIn and then well, retarget on Facebook and Google because it's a lot cheaper. And you know, retarget those ads, retarget those leads to, we're doing lead generation on LinkedIn, and then retargeting them to maybe book a call on Facebook or Google. Kathleen: Got it. So it sounds like from what you're saying, focused lists you know, not kind of throwing a bunch of darts at the wall and hoping one sticks. It's like if you know exactly who you want to target and you have some good targeting parameters around whether that's job title, what have you, and then the budget to be able to support a larger, potentially larger per lead ad spend the team in place to follow up on those leads. And then really from an expectation standpoint, using it at the top of the funnel. Understanding LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: So then knowing that if somebody is listening and they're thinking, okay, check, check, check, you know, all of these things I have, can you talk a little bit about LinkedIn ad formats and what you find performs really well? So like, what do you need to have in order to advertise effectively on LinkedIn? Anthony: Yeah, so a few things. So approaching the LinkedIn campaign is a few things and I'll kind of tell you about our most common campaign we'll do for people is a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn using lead magnets. So a lead magnet is some asset of value that your target market would be interested in. So a guide, a PDF, a checklist or something like that. Linkedin, like I said, this is starting a conversation with somebody, your target market. So offering people guides and easy downloadables is the best way to start the conversation to get them interested. Most, you know, unless you're a major brand, most people have not heard about your company. So leading with like buy now or contact us isn't gonna do as well. We're gonna have a much higher cost per lead. So on LinkedIn use lead magnets to start. As far as ad formats, we do often use the LinkedIn lead forms. They will auto-populate with the person's information. So the lead form is a little form when you click on the ad that'll open up right inside of LinkedIn, just like a Facebook lead form. They work very similarly. But on LinkedIn you can auto fill that with information from the user's profile and it comes with information from your profile. While you know on Facebook it's usually personal email addresses. In LinkedIn you do get number of personal email addresses, but you also get like work email addresses as well. I find that data quality is very high coming off of LinkedIn. And we also often use like job title and company name so we know who are these leads that are signing up. Or using the LinkedIn profile. You are also going to look up those leads afterwards and you know that that gives you a lot, a lot more richer information about your lead. So you can see, okay, who is this person, where do they work? And understand, you know, understand where your leads are coming from. Usually, you're setting those targeting criteria up front. So you know, people coming into your campaign are going to be part of that audience. But our average campaign or our most helpful one is, is using the LinkedIn lead forms, your lead generation offering a lead magnets to, to your audience. Kathleen: So this is an interesting topic to me because I've heard this, that lead forms are more effective than trying to get somebody to like go to your website and convert. But I guess my question is really if you're using a lead form, What are you sacrificing? I use HubSpot and so I can't, if I use a lead form, I can't cookie somebody. If I can't cookie them, then I am giving up the ability to see all that rich data about their behavior on my site, et cetera and things like that. But then you had mentioned also using LinkedIn leads or ads rather to then retarget those people on other platforms. Can you do that if you're using a lead form? Because at that point, you're not having a tracking pixel firing on your website. Anthony: Right. At that point we retarget based on the email. Kathleen: Okay. So if, but if there... Anthony: You lose some data you know, that is, it is different than going to the landing page and opting in. So we do often use both, but most common is using the lead forms. The conversion rate is just much higher. Typically using the lead forms the quantity you're going to get is going to make sense. You will see a lower conversion rate for pushing people to your landing page. But I do say, you know, there are times where maybe you don't have the sales team available to call all those leads. So it is more important for you to get fewer, more higher intent leads. And then at that point maybe a landing page is a better one for you to use. Because we do have accounts where like, you know, if they have a large budget they can be driving a lot of leads through there. And if you don't have the sales team to contact all those leads, like, Hey, I'd rather have higher intent leads. So landing page opt ins would then be better with them. LinkedIn ads and GDPR compliance Kathleen: Yeah. Now the other question I have about lead forms is, it relates to GDPR. So if you're driving somebody to your site, you have a lot of control. If you're trying to be GDPR compliant, you have a lot of control over how you structure, you know, your opt-ins and your GDPR language, et cetera. I don't have a lot of experience with LinkedIn lead forms. So can you talk a little bit about, if somebody is trying to adhere to GDPR, can they use LinkedIn lead forms and if so, what kind of control do you have over being able to document that opt-in? Anthony: Yeah good question. So we haven't seen too many issues with that on LinkedIn. Two things with lead form that you can include is number one, you were actually required to include a link to the company's privacy policy. So usually you use the privacy policy which will cover, you know, all those terms. You can also include a little blurb at the bottom of the lead form. Anything else that you want to make clear to the user as they're signing up. So those two inputs as far as that we usually get involved, you know, we're, we'll use the privacy policy from the company. And any other information on the lead form that needs to be, Kathleen: So am I correct that there's no explicit checkbox built in that would say, for example, I agree to receive other communications from company X, Anthony: You can add a custom checkbox to do that. Kathleen: You can, okay. Okay. So that would presumably then solve that issue if somebody was really being strict about how they complied with GDPR? Yeah. Great. When should you use a LinkedIn lead form? Kathleen: So yes, there's this trade off then with lead ads and it sounds like it's important to understand your goals. What I'm hearing, or at least what I'm taking away from what you said, is that if your intent is to really have a laser focus on your certain market or your leads that you want to attract and, and your goal if they do convert is to really follow up with a phone call from your sales team, then it doesn't really matter if you're driving them to your website and having them fill out a form because the goal is to get the sales team call them and or, and, or reach out by email. And so, you know, having a lead form would make sense there. But then it sounds like if your goal is to either put them into, you know, a full funnel nurturing sequence where you're retargeting on Facebook or something or where you're going to do mass emails then maybe it might make sense to not use a lead form and instead to direct them to a form on your site. Is that accurate, would you say? Anthony: Yeah, we've got the best results that we see are when we, when we use lead forms to drive the higher volume of leads and then the client usually has a sales team who's on top of those leads right away calling them, you know, it's like they say like the five minute after submission rules, like the best practice, you know, contact them soon afterwards. But five minutes is very fast. But if it, Hey, if you're on top of your leads, call them right away. Like, that's where we should have the best results. The sales team do work those leads. If someone signed up, they've indicated interest and if you position your lead magnet the right way, then they should be very open to like a sales conversation or at least that introductory like discovery. Hey, how can we help you in conversation Kathleen: Do you give your clients any coaching as far as how to follow up on those leads? Because I think the one thing I've noticed is that there can, there's the potential for a big mismatch. Like somebody fills out a form on LinkedIn to get a white paper there. They might not be expecting to get a phone call. So how do you advise your clients to follow up? Anthony: Yes, good question. So LinkedIn is great for starting the conversation. It is top of funnel. Be aware that these leads, this is probably the first time that they're seeing your company, they probably opted in to get your lead magnet. So yeah, I kind of joke about the five minute rule thing. I would say that it's very fast to contact them at the point where they have just for the first time seeing your logo and heard about your company. They probably haven't even come to it, had time to read that lead magnet yet. So I, you know, I don't say within five minutes, contact them soon. But you know, some of it is like you want that lead magnet to help do some of the education and warming up with them. It might take a little bit of time for somebody to receive that email, to click through to read it or to receive that email and then go read it. And then yeah, follow up with them, have them on an email sequence, follow up with them shortly after that and then have the retargeting funnel in place. So that's you know, if they sign up via email, if they click through and pixel them, then you can retarget them with ads afterwards. So we do recommend like a multi-channel approach afterwards as many touch points as you can, you know, shortly afterwards, while while it is still top of mind for them. And then there's a lot that goes into the lead magnet strategy as far as, you know, how do I pick the best asset? How do I create the best asset that's going to work here? For companies and brands and topics, services, that's they are, that are, it's like the levels of awareness thing pyramid. If they are not very aware of what your solution is and you work that you want to focus on their pain points and make the topic about them. If they are more aware, maybe if you are a well known brand and maybe you can make the topic about yourself if there's something that they're interested in. So for lower levels of awareness, keep in mind that this is the part of the first time the senior company. So that call, the way I coach people about that call is that needs to be very introductory, very discovery. How can we help you get focused? Other LinkedIn ad formats Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. Now we talked a lot about lead ads. Can you talk through what are some of the other ad format options on LinkedIn and for each of them, you know, when would you use it and, and how does it generally perform? Anthony: Sure. so the next, so as far as specific ad units in the newsfeed, so that's a sponsored content and you have image ads and you have a video ad there, you also carousel ads. And they work just like Facebook carousel ads essentially. We actually start with image ads most of the time. So I know, you know, on Facebook everyone's about video and like video performance better on LinkedIn to start, we often, we always start with, we almost always start with image ads in the beginning because we find on LinkedIn you're usually paying per click. Whereas on Facebook, usually paying costs, CPM by impression. So on LinkedIn you want to reduce the chance of any irrelevant clicks to your ads. So that in one way that is don't be misleading. You know, on Facebook people tend to be very curiosity invoking of like drawing the click in. That could be flashy videos, that could be vague copy that's just curiosity invoking. On LinkedIn you want to be very direct about what's what it is you're offering, who you are, who you're targeting because you don't want people to just curiosity click, okay, Kathleen: You're paying for that. Yeah, that's an expensive click. Especially when five bucks is your minimum. You could have bought yourself a latte at Starbucks. Anthony: So, we're usually starting with image ads because you can instantly, somebody can consume images rather than watching a video. We usually find, to start, videos tend to be flashy and like eye catching and they draw the click more often. So in the beginning we see images perform better. And then once you prove your audience, which audience you should be split testing a number of audiences, once you prove which audience is the best, which ad angle, which imagery is the best, then we can then go turn that into a video or create a video similar to that. And then, at that point we do see often video can outperform images. So in in the newsfeed you have images, video next format that we most commonly use is probably sponsored InMail. Sponsored InMail can be great. It can be expensive as well. So it's mostly InMail charges you per send. I think the minimum 5 cents per send. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is a lot when you add it up over the size of an audience. Sponsored InMail is great because we do see very high open rates of those messages. Keep in mind a lot of people that are opening those are probably just clearing out the notification. So the offers that work best in sponsored InMail are the ones that are like the, if you have a very appealing offer. So usually we'll start by testing in the newsfeed and if an ad does very well there, then we will take that and go turn into a sponsored InMail ad. Because if it's performing really well in the newsfeed then that means the offer's proven and that we can go take and put in as much with InMail. Sponsored InMail, you know, it's a one, it seems like a one on one conversation and if it's like, if it feels like a personal offer that you're making to somebody usually, you know, sometimes offer a free consultation there or like free gifts there are, do, do better. But it's, it's a good ad format to try out. Next, Linkedin just released conversation ads, which are kind of the next evolution of sponsored email ads. This gets more to be more chat bot like so we do see LinkedIn does follow. It's tends to follow Facebook and a lot of different ways. And you know, we've seen how Facebook has evolved with the last few years. We've seen Facebook Lives, we've seen chat bots and stuff like that. Linkedin is kind of following along the same steps. Kathleen: So can you actually explain how that would work? Cause I haven't seen that at all. I'm super curious about it. The chatbots. Anthony: So it's not, it's not a chatbot, but I think LinkedIn's on their way to getting more towards this. But conversation ads, you will create a chat flow. So instead of just a sponsored InMail message that you send to somebody, it is similar to that. You send the message, but then they have a few options that they can choose from and you can create a, a tree from there. So that if somebody clicks on option a, you know, essentially you can offer them multiple different things in the app. So the reason why we've seen performance improve from it, because you can offer people, you can make multiple offers, Kathleen: Right? It's like a choose your own adventure kind of a thing. Now, does that appear as a direct message in their inbox or how does that appear? Anthony: Yes. Kathleen: Interesting. I haven't seen that. I'm going to have to now search for it, find it in the wild. So, so many different options. Who is finding success with LinkedIn ads? Kathleen: I know you work with a lot of clients. Can you share any examples of, you know, campaigns or companies that you've worked with who are using LinkedIn ads really successfully? Anthony: Sure. so right now, well, just in general the HR space always does very well on LinkedIn. So I'd say for any space, any campaigns that I would highlight, like it's probably gonna be an HR campaign. The biggest categories on LinkedIn are like, I think IT is number one. And I think HR is number two, and then it's like the rest of the tech software world and then like financial services. So if you're in one of those categories, those are the biggest audiences. So those are probably gonna be great campaigns for LinkedIn. I'm always surprised when somebody gives me a very niche audience to target how many people I'm able to find on LinkedIn. So, and pretty much any niche decision maker, any niche B2B targeting, go scope out what the audience sizes. And I'm always surprised how many people I can find in the different niches. But to highlight any campaigns, HR, I'd say just in the last, especially in the last couple months since we've all been quarantined and at home, the HR category has been very active on LinkedIn. So not only have ad prices gone way down the last few weeks, they're down about like 30 to 40% in a lot of cases. Kathleen: Now, I've heard that. I've heard that also for Facebook. And is that on LinkedIn? Is that because basically so many companies have cut their marketing spend and so the demand side if you will, has gone down Anthony: Exactly. LinkedIn is an auction, just like Facebook. Kathleen: Yup. Okay. Anthony: So less, well, it's a combination of less advertisers and then also more eyeballs. Supply and demand there where we're all stuck at home. So everyone's spending a lot more time online. Kathleen: Yeah, I've heard, I've heard a ton of people say they're spending way more time on LinkedIn these days. How to structure your bidding strategy for LinkedIn ads Anthony: A random tip is I always recommend bidding max CPC. Do not use auto-bid on LinkedIn because you just, you say go spend wherever you want it and LinkedIn will go whatever it wants. Set max CPCs for most of your campaigns. We've noticed that we can drop that max CPC all the way down, nearly all the way down to the floor. Each audience in each geography has its own floor so go test in the tool and see what yours is, but we dropped it nearly down to the floor for a lot of campaigns and I'm seeing cost per lead improve a lot. Kathleen: Wow. That's awesome. Okay, so sorry, I interrupted you. You were talking about examples and you talked about HR. Any particular campaigns that you can think of that have done really well lately? Examples of successful LinkedIn ad campaigns Anthony: Yeah, so there's two very specific HR ones I'm thinking about right now that, especially in the last few weeks, that they've done very well. I mentioned how like lead magnet strategy is very important. They both release lead magnets that speak to kind of what's going on right now, how to hire in tough times and how to support your people during tough times. And, you know, COVID messaging might be getting stale now, but especially over the last couple of months, it's been performing super well. So where they were traditionally between a 40 to $60 cost per lead, they're down below $30 per lead. And then the other campaign, they were a little bit more cause they were targeting a higher level of HR people. And they're down below 50 bucks per lead. So yeah, we've seen lead costs like almost cut in half in a lot of cases. And just like HR activities, you know, through the roof. So those ones have done really well. Attracting high quality leads on LinkedIn Kathleen: And then would you say the quality of the leads - I know you mentioned doing almost the opposite approach from Facebook where you're trying not to be click baity cause you're paying by the click. And I'm interested specifically, because you talked about one example that was targeting very senior level people. That's an audience that's usually really hard to get in front of. So can you talk a little bit about what your experience has been if somebody is going after like a C level audience, what are some good tips for being successful with that on LinkedIn? Anthony: Absolutely. That's why you use LinkedIn. Cause a lot of these upper level people, there's just no other place or way to target them without, without buying an email list. Yeah, there's no other place. Linkedin is the best place with that kind of data at scale. And LinkedIn's always the first place that people update their profile when they get a new job or get a promotion. So it's very high quality data and that's the only place, a lot of times, you'll see these people. As far as targeting goes, the LinkedIn audience approach is the opposite of Facebook, I guess. Again, with Facebook you give it, you know, you tend to give it a big audience and you let the AI algorithm go find the best people for you and that audience. On LinkedIn you want to do the opposite because, because you are paying cost per click, you want to exclude any irrelevant ones. So you want to be very niche, very laser focused on who you want to target. As far as lead quality goes, you know, you're setting up your targeting in the beginning. What are the job titles I want, what are the functions with the seniorities? So if you're not getting those leads, the right leads coming through your funnel, go back to your targeting and tweak that up. You don't usually have a problem with lead quality. The quality is always clients. It's always funny, like a client that has run Facebook ads in the past and like, we'll have like our lead tracker set up and they'll see the job titles and company names coming in and they're just like, perfect, perfect, perfect. And sometimes we'll get feedback of like, Oh, this title was a little bit off maybe because you said this, so let's go add this exclusion and then we'll go work that back in. But, well, yeah you know, if your leads that come through on LinkedIn aren't a great fit, then just tweak your targeting a little bit. But you can set the specific job titles in specific industries and company size you want. So lead quality is usually awesome. What is the minimum audience size for a LinkedIn ad? Kathleen: Yeah. now one of the things I've always been interested in and I feel like it's changed, what is the minimum audience size that you can target on LinkedIn because there are some crazy opportunities with LinkedIn ads. I love the idea of you're submitting a proposal to do something for a company and how few people can you target in that company with your ad? Anthony: 300 is the minimum. It Is a little bit bigger of a minimum than Facebook. I want to say Facebook is a hundred for a minimum. So in two cases is yes, it is hard to be that laser targeted in some cases. It's also a challenge when you want to retarget cause if you are building a lead list, you're gonna have to wait until you have at least 300 leads to go retarget them using the email method. So maybe a simple alternative that is go connect with those people on LinkedIn and send them a message via your chat. Anthony's tips for anyone getting started with LinkedIn ads Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, what tips do you have if somebody is listening and they're thinking they want to get started with LinkedIn ads? Is there anything you wish you knew that would have helped you avoid some mistakes? Anthony: Hmm. Anything that I wish I knew. So I have a number of tips that I usually talk about, so I'll give some of those. Well I'd say the biggest thing I wish, like even if I would have told myself this a year ago I probably wouldn't have listened, is don't ask for too much information from your lead in the beginning. You know, you're starting the conversation. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Keep it as minimal as possible. And that's going to maximize your conversion rate. You know, I go check out a lot of their ads just because I'm always interested to see, what are they advertising? What are they asking for? What does the lead form look like? I opened some of these companies' lead forms. I'm just like, you have seven imports.Is anybody submitting this form? Questions and stuff like that. I'm like, I should reach out to you and be like, Hey, I know your cost per lead is terrible. Do you want some help? That's the biggest thing is these people don't know you. They don't have any reason to trust you yet. Only ask for the information you need, which is usually like email address to send them the guide and then continue the conversation from there. Various other tips. I'd say the image thing is a big one. We get a lot of people who wanted to just have a folder of videos and like let's use these. Let's start with images first and then get those converting and then move to video afterwards. Some other tips are I mentioned the don't auto-bid. Start with max CPC and bid low and then crank it up slowly until you find the sweet spot. Short and direct copy usually works the best. So now on Facebook, a lot of people write these long copy and a lot of emojis and stuff like that. Short copy tends to do best. Keep it shorter than about 150 characters and won't trigger the "see more" button. Most people don't click the "see more" button. I'm kind of, I advocate in both cases where you want your CTA, you want it to be standalone above the "see more". If somebody doesn't click the "see more" it should still be just as appealing. But for the people that do click the "see more", here's a tip that clicking the "see more" button does not charge you. So there's no harm in having more copy than the rest of your ad for the people that do click that "see more" button. So split test both short and long. I do say, I will say we do see shorter, usually performs better. But there is usually no downside to having more copy there. Kathleen: And then with images, I know Facebook has a limitation of how much copy can you have on your image? Are there any limitations like that in LinkedIn? Anthony: Nope. Actually we use a lot more copy and images. Kathleen: Okay. And then the other thing I've heard with Facebook is that you should have a very active page where you're posting often to sort of like warm up your audience, which I think is interesting cause I feel like nobody ever sees any Facebook page posts, but that's a different conversation for another time. So do you ever, what kind of advice do you give people regarding their LinkedIn company page? Not their ads, but the page itself as far as how that should be used to support a good LinkedIn ad strategy? Anthony: Yeah, good question. So you want to have the basics covered. LinkedIn company pages people tend to have more, more connections and more followers on their personal page. So I'd say put most of your focus there, but you know, if you are running a company page, you should have that company page fully filled out. It should look nice and professional and polished and it should have some activity on there. If you were gonna go hire a social media person to manage your profile, I'd say have them manage your personal profile because you'll have more activity there. Because you have more connections in your personal than typically a company page. But have all the information filled out, have good imagery there, have all your links filled out. And then, to bring back the lead magnets again, a lot of times in the headline or in the about section of the body copy, I recommend putting that called to action there. Download our guide. And while that link won't be explicitly clickable, we do see a lot of people will copy and paste it. Make it a simple URL. Mydomain.com/guide and then they'll go there and get it. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: That makes sense. Great. Well, shifting gears I have two questions. I always ask my guests and I'd love to hear what you have to say. First one is, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it right now with inbound marketing? Anthony: So the company that has been advertising to me the most is outreach.io. So they're a pretty well known company out there, but they just, they must spend a lot on their ads because every time I log into LinkedIn I see them there and I'm always like, that's a good ad. I like that ad. So I'd say that they do a very good job. I think I've probably signed up for a few of their lead magnets because I always scope out what other people are doing. Their content's good and their ads are good quality. And if I was to give people any tip, it's you can go see the ads run by any LinkedIn page out there just like you can on Facebook by going to that company page. On the left hand side, on desktop, there's a little navigation bar on the bottom it says ads and it'll show you those, the ads being run by that company page. So for whatever your industry is, go scope out what your competitors are doing and maybe similar offerings are new. Kathleen: That's a great suggestion. Second question, marketers tend to have a common pain point, which is that so much is changing so quickly. LinkedIn is a great example. I feel like just when you feel like, you know how it works, something big changes and it's, you know, you almost have to start over. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated about Anthony: In the world of digital marketing? For LinkedIn specifically? I'd say I see there's not much content out there about LinkedIn ads. So the surprising thing, like as I've learned this over the years there's so much out there about, about Facebook and Google ads, like the huge communities and stuff like that, of courses, everything. There's not much about LinkedIn ads. So I've gotten the most by joining a number of different groups and like asking questions to people there and like, and like, just like working one on one with other people who are active advertisers. Kathleen: Any particular groups that come to mind? Anthony: LinkedIn Official Advertisers, a group on LinkedIn. That's a group on LinkedIn. Yeah. I have a small one that I started recently. It's called, this is on Facebook, LinkedIn advertising strategies. Kathleen: And you said that is or is not on Facebook? Anthony: That is on Facebook. Yeah. Okay. Got it. LinkedIn groups overall are still, Kathleen: Yeah, they've kind of like died on the vine a little bit. Anthony: I hope that they put more effort or like, you know, improve them because I think there's a lot of potential. Like we've seen how Facebook has put so much focus on groups and how they've been, like a number of groups that I'm in are super active and super valuable. I hope that it does the same there. Kathleen: So yeah, I was going to ask you about that. It's funny, I'm glad you brought it up cause it is, it used to be so great and then it just, was it just, Ugh. I mean I don't spend any time in LinkedIn groups these days, but I used to spend a ton. How to connect with Anthony Kathleen: So okay, well we're coming to the top of our time. So if somebody is interested in learning more or they want to reach out to you and ask a question, what is the best way for them to connect with you? Anthony: So the best way to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Anthony Blatner on there. So go look me up. Connect with me and send me a little message in the add now and the add connection requests because we all get tons of them. You can find me at my email is anthony@modernmedia.io and then our website's modernmedia.io. If you're looking to learn more about LinkedIn ads or understand strategy, I have tried to put out a lot of content as I've learned over the past few years, knowing that there's not much out there. I've tried to put out more content to share with others. So we have a number of blog posts about funnel strategy, lead generation strategy and then specifically LinkedIn ads, tips and best practices. We got one about lead magnets and then we have one about all the tips around copy and creative. What works the best. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Awesome. Well, I'll put those links in the show notes so that people can go check that out. And if you're listening and you have learned something new today, which I certainly have, head to Apple Podcasts and please consider leaving the podcast a five star review. That's how other folks find us. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to make them my next guest. Thank you so much, Anthony. This was great. Anthony: Thanks for having me.

On the thirteenth installment of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with Traci Adedeji, the AIO program lead at AIPSO and president elect of the Rhode Island Chapter of the CPCU Society, in a wide-ranging interview about her unique role, her unconventional journey into the insurance industry, and so much more. Traci espouses the importance of establishing mentoring relationships at work and shares some advice on how to foster a very strong professional network on LinkedIn. Check the links in the show notes to connect with her and find out more about the CPCU Society!Connect with Traci on LinkedIn.http://bit.ly/2T9giYRFind out more about the CPCU Society on their website. They're also on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. Links in order, beginning with their website:https://bit.ly/3cWpbh7https://bit.ly/3giUQeGhttps://bit.ly/2WUwfFuhttps://bit.ly/3e6nON4Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here or below.https://bit.ly/2Ug4l5KHelp food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org:https://bit.ly/2WD73UkCheck out our website.https://bit.ly/living-corporateTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach Nunn. Now, listen here. Y'all know what we're trying to do. We're trying to build, inspire, encourage, empower, all on a platform that affirms black and brown experiences in corporate America. And it's interesting because as I came up just kind of coming into myself as a professional, I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me in consulting. I didn't see a lot of people that looked like me in human resources either. But when I would come across someone who looked like me doing something I wanted to do, it gave me encouragement. It gave me a stronger sense of hope that I could do it too, and so it's with that that we're really excited to talk to y'all about and bring you another entry, actually, into our See It to Be It series. So the next thing you're gonna hear is an interview between Amy C. Waninger, a guest on the show, a member of the team, and the author of Network Beyond Bias, and a leader who just happens to be an ethnic minority. In fact, yo, Sound Man, give me some air horns right HERE for my leaders. [he complies] Yo, and give me some more air horns right HERE [he complies again] for the See It to Be It series. So catch y'all next time. I know you're gonna enjoy this. Peace.Amy: Hi, Traci. Thank you so much for joining me today.Traci: Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm honored that you asked me to join you.Amy: Well, I am excited, because you and I have worked together before on committees and projects, but never in the same company, although we are at least in part in the same industry, in the insurance industry. And so I was wondering if you could tell me just a little bit--because your job title is program manager, but a lot of people who are not in a project management space or in a corporate space with a lot of projects may not understand what a program manager does, so can we just start there with kind of what is that job?Traci: Okay. So technically it's "program lead." I work for AIPSO, which is not an insurance company, but we provide services to the insurance industry. So the easiest example that I can offer for what we do would be let's say that in the state of Rhode Island, most--every state actually has a mechanism to handle what's called residual market business for automobile insurance, because in just about every state you have to have automobile insurance to be able to drive. So what happens is that, you know, if Allstate writes 40% of all of the standard automobile business in a state, the state will say, "Well, you also have to write 40% of the residual market business in that state," and--Amy: And the residual market is typically, like, really high-risk drivers that couldn't get insurance other ways, right?Traci: Essentially--exactly, people who are unable to get insurance through the standard market for a variety of reasons. So what Allstate might say is, "We know we have to write this business, but we really don't want to program our systems to handle this business. We don't want to hire people to handle this business that's underwritten and processed a little bit differently than our standard business, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna hire AIPSO or a company like AIPSO to handle it on our behalf." So that's probably the cleanest example I can give of what we do. There's some variations on the ways those different mechanisms work, but that's probably the clearest example. As the program lead, my responsibility is a little bit of underwriting, a little bit of program or project work. If we have to implement changes in the system, I'd be involved in the business requirements and working with the technical folks to make sure that our systems can accomodate what it is that we need to do from an underwriting and processing perspective.Amy: Thank you for that. I appreciate that. So how did you get involved in the insurance industry? Because I'm guessing, based on all of the people I've talked to in the insurance industry, that when you were 5 years old and, you know, you went to a family event and Grandma said, "And Traci, what do you want to be when you grow up?" You probably didn't say, "I want to be an insurance program lead." [both laugh]Traci: You are absolutely correct, although I do love insurance so much that I think we have to get to a point where, especially little brown boys and girls say, "We want to work in insurance." I was--I'm 54 years old. I'll be 55 in April. And when I was 16 years old, I was a teen mom, and when I was 17 years old I had another baby. So here I am, two children, college dropout, and my parents said, "You gotta get a job. You gotta do something to take care of your babies." So I got a job working at an insurance agency as a file clerk, and one day everybody was busy, the phone rang, I answered the phone, and it was a very simple call that I was able to answer because I had been listening to the people who were customer service representatives, so I just handled the call. I got promoted to customer service [?], and this was in 1984, and just worked my way up. I went from working on the agency side of the business to the company side of the business, as an assistant underwriter to an underwriter to an underwriting manager in different companies around the New York City area. In 2007, I thought I was in love, [laughs] and actually left the industry and moved from the New York City area to Rochester, New York. That relationship and the business that we were trying to build together in a different industry didn't work out, and I had to get a job, and insurance was all I knew at that point, 'cause at that point I had worked in the industry for over 20 years. So I came to Amica in Rochester, moved to Rhode Island, and, you know, Amica is an amazing place to work. I was very happy working there, but I got a call one day from a recruiter--that's what happens when, you know, people have your information out there when you're networking, and the gentleman said, "I've got this position I'm trying to fill. Do you know anyone who would be interested?" And when I looked at it, it looked like it was the perfect storm of everything that I'd learned to do in all of the different positions that I'd had in insurance. So I went on to interview and I said to myself, "Okay, I really don't want to leave Amica [?], but, you know, this is a really cool opportunity." So I had a number in my mind. I said, "Okay, if they come back at that number, that's gonna be the universe telling me that this job is for me." I interviewed on a Wednesday, and on Friday I got an offer at the exact number that I had in my mind.Amy: That's amazing. So I always tell people, "When a recruiter calls, answer, because you never know what's waiting on the other side of the phone for you," and if not for you, then someone that you know, right? You may think, "Oh, I have no interest in that whatsoever, but I know someone," and if you can connect those two people, you've just created something amazing for someone else.Traci: Exactly, which was also the relationship with that recruiter, because if you then get to the point where you legitimately are looking for a position, they're gonna remember how you helped them out when they were trying to place folks and they're gonna do their best for you.Amy: Absolutely. And sometimes you even get a little referral bonus out of it if you--[both laugh] if you, you know, send them to somebody that they can place. So I've had that work out for me too. I was never expecting it, but when it happened it was always nice. So you've already told me about the different types of positions that you've held in the industry, but, you know, you came into this industry kind of by chance, right? You just happened to get a job at an agency. What has been the biggest surprise to you about working in insurance that you didn't realize as someone from outside?Traci: This is something that I've known for a while, but I think the thing that solidfied my interest in insurance and was my "a-ha" moment was when I started studying insurance, when I started studying--I actually started studying for my CPCU, which is, as you know, a professional designation in the industry. I started studying for my designation in 1992, and in studying insurance I came to have an appreciation for first of all how important insurance is, but also how diverse the industry is. Pretty much any discipline that you would be interested in studying, there is a job for you in the insurance industry, and that is I think the coolest thing about insurance.Amy: Yeah, I had a similar experience. So I came into the insurance industry as an IT professional. That was my background. No insurance background whatsoever, but I just happened to be a consultant that got placed at an insurance company, and when I then later got hired by the insurance company, somebody told me about the CPCU designation, which--it stands for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter. It's a professional designation that requires 8 courses to complete. You have to pass some tests, which thank goodness they're multiple choice now. They used to be blue book.Traci: [laughs] Yeah, I remember the books.Amy: No, thank you. I wouldn't have done it. I would've been too scared. But anyway, I started studying because, you know, I wanted to prove myself in this industry, and I wanted to frankly get the bonus that came with getting the designation that my employer offered at that time, and I was amazed by the scope of the insurance industry and the mission of the insurance industry, and when people ask me "Why do you love insurance?" And, you know, my focus of my company is not insurance-specific, although maybe it will be someday, but I think insurance is so fascinating because it does two things. It makes all economic investment possible. There's no part of the economy that insurance is not affected by or that it affects, right? I mean, every single transaction that happens is backed somewhere by an insurer. And the other thing we do in the insurance industry is we're there when people need us most. I mean, on somebody's worst day, we're there to help in, you know, ways that we can to make them whole and get them back on their feet, and I can't even imagine a more meaningful industry than that. So if somebody who has maybe never considered the insurance industry before and wants to learn more about the kinds of jobs available and how to get in--you know, how to kind of break into this industry, where would you recommend that they go?Traci: I would recommend that they get in touch with the local chapter of CPCU. I would also recommend that they get in touch with professional insurance agents and brokers, because they have professional organizations. Depending on where they are in their career, I would, you know, for example, if they're a high school or college student who's interested in the industry, I would look at internships with companies, with insurance companies. So those would be my suggestions. I do also know that through professional organizations, those of us who are invested enough in the industry and in our careers to be a part of these organizations have a tendency to be pretty generous people, so it would be pretty easy to even get a one-on-one informal, or even formal, mentoring relationship with someone who is in the industry that could offer some guidance.Amy: That's a great idea, and I know that there are a number of formal programs, but like you said, LinkedIn is a great way to just connect with someone if you have a target company in mind and you want to learn more about it. Most people are open to a phone call or at least exchanging emails and, you know, seeing what they can do to help. That is true. So, you know, the insurance industry has a reputation--and I won't say whether I feel that this is deserved or not, and you know exactly where I'm going--but the insurance industry has this reputation for being stale, pale, and male, and it's all a bunch of old white men, and that's it, right? And I know a lot of different industries suffer from this stigma, but for people who are maybe not older or white or men, what resources have you found that can help them kind of find their place in the industry, feel connected to others, feel a sense of community so that we can retain that talent in this industry and not lose it to somebody else?Traci: For me, I think back to a company that I worked for in 1990, and that was where I really got my start as an insurance professional and learned the most about the industry, but it's also where I recognized that at that particular company, in 1990, the early '90s, if I wasn't a white man with a degree from the right school, there was a very distinct feeling on how far I was going to progress in my career, and that was why I ended up leaving the company. I think that we--you know, it's great to join organizations, but I'm a grassroots kind of chick. I think that it is important to give back to each other, whether it's women, whether it's people of color. It's, like, whatever commonality you have with someone, if you see someone that's struggling or you see someone who's where you were previously in your career, you have a responsibility to reach out to that person and to offer them guidance if they're receptive to it. I'm the type of person that I have no qualms about reaching out to other women, to women of color, to just form those informal mentoring relationships, even if it's just "Let's have lunch once a month." There's people I don't even work with anymore. It just might be, like, an email or a LinkedIn message every now and then. So I think there's great value in forming those types of relationships. Yes, it's professional, but I think that if it's sort of a little more casual where you bond with that person and feel comfortable speaking with them, they're gonna be able to really guide you in a meaningful way.Amy: So that leads me right into my next question, which is I've noticed about you that you have a very strong professional network. I mean, you know everybody it seems like. [both laugh] And not all the same kind of people. Like, you really know people up and down the hierarchy. You know people across the industry, and when we were together at a conference last year I was just so impressed by the span of the network that you have, and so I was wondering what's your approach or what are your tips to networking and how do you stay connected with so many people with such limited time?Traci: LinkedIn makes it easy, because I can be on my computer at, I don't know, 2:00 in the morning when I wake up and can't sleep, and I can pop in and see what people have posted. I don't even have to tell you I absolutely adore your content, and every single thing you post I read and I share, you know, because I just find a lot of value in what you post, and I do the same for other people who are a part of my network. As far as I guess connecting with people, my advice would be ask. It's simply to ask. There's a woman who worked at a previous company, and she was pretty high up, you know, in the food chain if you will, and we didn't really--I mean, we had casually and in passing at work spoke, but it's not like we had a relationship. She ended up leaving the company, and I had no qualms about sending her a connection request on LinkedIn. I said, "Well, the worst that could happen is that she won't accept it, and if she says no I'm no worse off than I was before." I think that everyone has something to offer, regardless of their discipline, regardless of their position or title. I think that a lot of times we don't make those connections because we pre-judge and make assumptions. So I think that you just ask. Amy: That's good advice: So I have a friend in the speaking industry who says, "Every time you ask you risk getting a yes," and I really like that, and so I tried to kind of shore up my nerve to ask more, because I would not mind risking getting a yes.Traci: Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I tell people this. I am by nature a pretty shy and reserved person. I grew up as the kid who got teased a lot in school and, you know, that whole thing, so not a lot of self-confidence in my younger years, but when you get to a point where you've got kids to feed and you recognize that the higher you achieve in your career the more money you're gonna make, you kind of put that to the side, you put your game face on, and you make what magic happen you need to make happen, and what happens is that as you practice that, even if you say to yourself "I'm gonna try to connect with one new person this week at work," "I'm gonna try to make a connection with one person who I've not had a connection with previously." The more you do it the more comfortable it becomes and the more confident you are in doing it.Amy: That is absolutely true, and I think a lot of people see networking as something very fake and forced and inauthentic, and they don't feel good about it, right? It kind of leaves, like, an icky, like, feeling about it, and when you approach it from, you know, almost gamifying it--I've done that in the past, right? "I'm gonna meet three people today. I'm gonna help three people with something," whether it's, you know, I'm gonna carry somebody's bag or I'm gonna hold open a door and say hello. Like, something, and so I think sometimes just kind of reframing how we think about networking can make a huge difference in our behaviors and our attitudes and ultimately in our results.Traci: Right. You actually said something that I think is very important, that networking and connecting with people if you treat it as "What can you do for that person?" versus "What can I get from that person?" Because people know when you're being fake. People know when you, you know, just have your hand out or you're looking for something, but we need to first of all not undervalue ourselves and recognize that we each bring something unique, but there's only one me. Nobody else brings exactly what I bring in this combination, and we have to recognize that that has value and that other people will see that value, and if we focus on "What can we offer others, even if it's a small kindness?" You know, those things, the universe will bring those things back to you.Amy: Absolutely. So I know that in addition to your day job you also volunteer with the CPCU Society's diversity and inclusion committee, and I know what a time commitment that is because I'm on the committee as well, but can you tell me how and why you got involved?Traci: I got involved because I was asked. [?]. I was new to Rhode Island, and I actually got--I'm on the board of the local chapter [?], and I was moving to Rhode Island. I said, "I don't know anyone. I want to, you know, meet folks, so joining this organization would be a great way to make friends and immerse myself even more deeply in my industry." So my request to volunteer resulted in me being asked to be on the board, and my relationship with David resulted in him asking if I was interested in being on the diversity committee. And it's a lot of work, but I think that it is important. I think the idea of diversity and inclusion has evolved so much over the years. When a lot of people hear diversity, you know, they think racial diversity, they think gender diversity, but there are so many other types of diversity, and it really I think is about making sure that there are opportunities for everyone, but I think it's also toward being a catalyst for the mindset that needs to happen so that opportunities are there for everyone automatically. We don't have to say, you know, "Oh, we have to go out and make sure that we have a person of color," there's a person of color because we just organically created a culture and a society with people of color in our community, so of course they're gonna have a role in our company, in our organization.Amy: Absolutely. And I tell people, "If you look around and you don't see someone's group represented, it's because you've got work to do to make people feel welcome and make people feel comfortable there." The responsibility is not on others to seek you out, right? And so, you know, I'm thrilled to be a part of the diversity and inclusion committee because I see that what's coming for us in terms of our talent, right, we have so many people on the verge of retirement in the insurance industry, and we just don't have the groundswell of interest among people, you know, that we need to replace all of that knowledge and all of that talent, and so I think, you know, we're gonna have to get beyond the "certain people from certain schools" and, you know, really reach out broadly and show people what we've got and why we're such a good place to have a career.Traci: Right. I think it's about building the excitement about the industry. You know, insurance isn't sexy to most people, and I think that, you know, the work that we do, particularly with the CPCU Society and the diversity and inclusion committee, is to educate the public about the excitement. Like, it's kind of our job to get them excited about insurance and to show them what next level opportunities there are. It's not just sitting behind a desk in a blue suit and white shirt and red tie. [both laugh]Amy: Absolutely true. So I wanted to ask you too about role models. Do you have any professional role models, and if so, what about them inspires you? Traci: So there's a woman--the woman that I mentioned that used to work with me, and I consider her a role model. So a few things about her that resonated with me... first of all, she's very tall like I am. [laughs] And that's something that it took a lot of years for me to overcome, because there's a tendency when you're quite tall to not want to intimidate people, so you tend to kind of--you slump a little, you try to make yourself small. So it takes a courage to just be, to stand up and just be who you are and recognize that you're putting that in your mind about, you know, your stature intimidates people, but she had such a grace about her and just a way of connecting with people. I don't know. She just had influence. She had such presence and influence, and that is something that I admire greatly and something that I work toward emulating.Amy: That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. So I hear men a lot of times will talk about "tall privilege," right? So if you're a tall man, and the statistics bear this out, tall men make more money than short men. They get promoted to higher positions. Like, we revere tall men in our society. Tall women have a different set of characteristics ascribed to them, and I am--I am not blessed with height. I'm only 5'3", but I can--you know, I can imagine how that might play out and how that might affect the way you show up. And, you know, if you're trying to make yourself smaller physically, you're probably also trying to minimize your presence in a room and minimize your contribution and not call attention to yourself and not let the best of you thrive in an environment. Traci: Actually it's interesting, 'cause I had a conversation with someone probably about six weeks ago about the idea that as a very tall not petite woman of color, if I am annoyed at work or if I feel very passionately about something, I feel that I don't have the luxury of being as vocal as someone who is not of my stature and my pigmentation, because it's perceived differently. Amy: If you're vocal about a frustration, I would imagine that the word that comes back to you is "angry" or "aggressive." If I get upset about something, if I'm frustrated and I express my frustration, I'm [BLEEP], right? I'm not angry 'cause I'm white and I'm not aggressive 'cause I'm short, but I'm [BLEEP] or I'm overreacting or I'm sensitive, right? And so I think that we all kind of operate in these constraints of words that are going to be used to describe us to kind of keep us in check, 'cause I don't like it when people say that I'm being sensitive. It's like, "No, I'm not being sensitive. You're being a jerk." But--[both laugh] that's not on me. So I can understand how that would be a struggle. So what advice do you have for young people of color in navigating those kinds of interactions? Because you want people to be, I'm guessing--I mean, we want people to show up authentically, right, but we don't want to lay a trap for people who the moment they speak up and advocate for themselves they get labeled in a way that's damaging to their careers.Traci: I can tell you what's worked for me. I think--to your point, it is important that you be who you are. So I'm 5'10". I'm gonna wear my four-inch heels because that's what I want to wear. If I think that something is not right, I am going to speak up about it. What I try to do is--and I'm just gonna say it, because I don't want to suggest that anyone be manipulative, but in a business setting, okay, what I do is I say to myself, "What is it that I want to get out of this exchange?" And, you know, know who my audience is and know what I need to say and how I need to say it to get what I need out of this interaction. You know, and I'm not talking about things where, like, I don't know, I'm being discriminated against or harassed or something like that, 'cause that's a whole different--and that's, thank God, never happened to me to my knowledge, but that's a whole other kind of conversation, but just an every day--you know, your boss has said something that you didn't like, or you've been assigned something that you don't think you should have to do or something to that affect. I think that it's important to always conduct yourself professionally. I think it's also important to separate your feelings from what the situation is, because just like the other person has their biases and this whole set of ideas and backgrounds that's influencing their behavior, so do we, and we have to recognize, like, the things that we're sensitive about. We have to recognize how we might have contributed to that situation, and we need to present our case in a constructive way. And it's interesting, because I have a 25-year-old daughter who's going through this at work right now, and what I've encouraged her to do is, you know, write down what you want to say. Ask your boss for a meeting, and even if you need to have that piece of paper in front of you, make your point. You know, if you feel a certain way, rather than saying, "You, you, you, you, you make me feel, you did, you, you, you," I would turn that around and say, "When you say or do, I perceive it as," because what you're then doing is you're taking ownership of your feelings and you're very clearly drawing that path from "This is what happened, this is how I felt, and this is how I responded to it. What are we gonna do now to fix it?"Amy: Mm-hmm. And so really what you're describing is emotional intelligence, and, you know, in my experience I've found that I am the most emotionally intelligent when I am the least represented in the room, and I am probably the least emotionally intelligent when I am most represented in the room, and so I try--once I recognized that about myself, I try very hard to think about the dynamics of a meeting or the dynamics of a conversation and "Do I need to kind of practice some of those skills because I'm dominating and maybe running over someone who doesn't feel safe to speak up with me?" Right? And so I think that if we can all do our part, right, to recognize when maybe we've got a little bit more influence or a little bit more social power and kind of back off a little bit and make some space.Traci: Yeah, and there's actually power in being able to do that I think, right? I think that when your peers see you navigate let's say a contentious situation, you know, if everybody's on 15 on a scale of 1 to 10 and you're on maybe 7 and bring everybody down to where it can be resolved, then people are gonna look at you as a change agent, if you will. So I just think that that's powerful.Amy: Yeah, absolutely. And that's leadership, right? Leadership is getting everybody to a better place together. So no, I think that's great. In the time that we have left, I'd like to ask you to finish my sentence. First is "I feel included when ______."Traci: I feel included when I am able to express myself.Amy: Oh, I like that. And then the second part is "When I feel included, I ______."Traci: When I feel included, I'm able to include others.Amy: I love that. I love having people answer this, because everybody answers differently, and it's always powerful. So Traci feels included when she's allowed to express herself, and when she feels included, she is able to include others, and I don't know that there's anything more powerful than that, to be able to widen that circle and bring others in. So that's fantastic. Traci, thank you so much for your time today.Traci: Oh, it was my pleasure. I appreciate you so much.Amy: Oh, thank you very much.

  Weigh In I weighed in at 226.6 on May 11th. Today I'm weighing in a 228.6 which is somewhat frustrating. Typically I have some really good days and other days where I go over 2000 calories. So I've been inching my way back up, and that's why I decided to try something new.  How Did Adelle Lose Weight According to her trainer, "She has been doing three things: Eating a balanced and inclusive diet. Going outside your comfort zone with a regular exercise routine. Getting restful sleep to allow your body and mind to recover. Ultimately, he said, you need to be patient. Dynamic Resistance and Yoga So I've heard about Yoga, and if you take the mediation part out I just wanted the exercise. I found that in an online program from an ex-professional wrestler call DDP Yoga. The guy's name is Diamond Dallas Paige and he suffered an injury in his back and used Yoga to get back in shape. While he is very much a "dude" this can be used by anyone.  In simple terms, it's like flexing all of your muscles as you move from one position to another. Dynamic resistance increases your heart rate and gets you into your Fat Burning zone. It converts slow-moving, easy activity into fat-blasting muscle toning that quickly builds a sexy, slender, strong body. Without Lifting a Weight My Heart Rate Was Over 100 I was amazed at doing what appeared to be stretching my heart was going up and up and up. Here is an example if you're sitting in a chair try to push your knees out as you try to pull them in. Another option is to use your arms. Try to move your knees outward as you push on the outside of your knee and push inward. It's your legs vs your arms.  What I liked about this Program after Three Days You can start at any level. They even had some workouts where you are in your bed. Then you migrate to a chair, then eventually standing.  DDP Yoga also offers many modifications to the poses. This is especially helpful for me. According to Men's Journal, men are more likely to get injured doing Yoga as we don't listen to our bodies.  They summarized it is " For a relatively small investment of time and money, DDP Yoga offers a safe and sensible way to tone up and get the flexibility training you likely need. But don’t rely on it as a stand-alone cardio – or weight training – routine." Why Am I Trying Yoga? I have some nice gym equipment, and as Oprah said, "We can always find an excuse," but in some cases have to wear special pants (for my bike to save my butt), or what can seem like a harsh reality to get on a treadmill right out of bed, right now it's me in a pair of shorts in my living room. My Yoga Matt shows up this week (so I didn't wait for it to show up).  I've always thought Yoga was too "woo woo" for me, but as I get older, being able to stretch and maintain flexibility is going to become more important. I don't want to end up like to many older people who are hunched over. I realize sometimes there is a condition that causes that, but for now after three workouts over a week, I like it.  Become a Logical Loser A safe place to support each other as we focus on weight loss. Check it out at www.logicallosers.com Mentioned In This Episode The Video That Sucked Me In https://youtu.be/iz9nsEjSS1o  Adele's Weight Loss  Heart Rate Monitor

Back in December 2019, we set #WriterGoals for 2020.We had no idea. This week, we go back in and revisit—which goals still stand? Which do we have to let go, and which just don’t feel right any more? Was there any point in setting these goals in the first place?In the end, we decide (not very cheerfully, it has to be admitted) that while our goals are necessarily changing, they’re always worth setting and revisiting. We’ll all be settling down to think differently about what we hope for in what’s left of 2020. Are you revising your 2020 goals, or sticking to plan A? Head over to the #AmWriting Facebook group and tell us about it.#AmReadingKJ: Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay AdamsThe Body in the Garden by Katharine SchellmanSarina: The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady HendrixJess: Audible Original: David Sedaris, Themes and VariationsRat by Stephen King (found in the If It Bleeds novella collection)Hey—now is a great time to check out our sponsor, Author Accelerator, where you can launch a career as a book coach or get paired with the right coach to get your project moving. And if you’d like to support the creation of #AmWriting, we’d appreciate your help! Supporters get weekly Minisodes or Writer Top Fives—and our undying gratitude. Want in? Click the button. KJ (00:01):Hey everyone. KJ. Here we are talking writer goals again this week. It's our midyear review - pandemic style. If you're setting your own goals for the rest of 2020 our sponsor Author Accelerator can help you start a new side gig as a book coach or match you with a coach who can help you work through challenges both on the page and in the calendar for getting your current project done. Find out more at authoraccelerator.com/amwriting. Is It recording?Jess (00:33):Now it's recording. Go ahead.KJ (00:35):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (00:39):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:40):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Okay. Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is the podcast about writing all the things, short things, long things, fiction, nonfiction, essays, pitches, proposals, and as we say every week, this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your work done.Jess (01:11):I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of The Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids called The Addiction Inoculation. And you can find my writing at places like the Atlantic and the New York Times and the Washington Post.Sarina (01:25):And I'm Sarina Bowen, the author of some romance novels. My most recent USA Today bestseller was Heartland, which came out in early 2020.KJ (01:35):And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, the author of the novel, The Chicken Sisters, which is coming out in June of this year as well as How To Be a Happier Parent already long out in hardback, but coming out in paperback this summer. And actually that's still happening, which I'm pretty pleased about. And the former editor of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a reasonably regular contributor. And that's who we are. And where we are is in our houses, which is actually where we all are. But you know, it bears mentioning on this the 9th of May, 2020. Yeah.Jess (02:15):Which contributes to our topic today. You want to tell everybody what we want to talk about today?KJ (02:22):Oh sure. So we're gonna revisit our goals. Every year around this time we like to take a little mid-year review. We usually do it in June, so I guess we're doing it a touch early, but it has occurred to us that perhaps some of our goals are not going to be the same for the rest of the year. So it seemed like it was a good time to sit down and take a look at what we thought we were going to achieve, what we have achieved and what we're still hoping to achieve. So we've all got them lined up right here in front of us and away we go.Jess (02:56):Who wants to go first?Sarina (02:57):I would love to open.Jess (03:00):Oh, please do.Sarina (03:02):Well, you know, we all are fans of Dan Blank who has been a guest on this podcast and also has his own terrific podcast as well. And Dan Blank's podcast is called The Creative Shift. So he sends out a weekly newsletter that is pure gold and you should subscribe.KJ (03:26):It really is, it's one of the best ones I know of.Sarina (03:29):So, two Fridays ago, he sent one out that began with sharing a New Yorker cartoon that really speaks to what it's like to be a writer right now. And it's a picture of a guy in a rowboat in the middle of a choppy body of water. And you can see there's a shark, and there's a ship sinking behind him, and there's lightning, and it's raining. And the caption says, 'This is it - the time to finish your novel.' And I love it desperately because, you know, remember back in March when we were all like, Hey, what are we going to accomplish while we're stuck at home? Or how about when the three of us (and I'm so happy we did this, I wouldn't change a thing), but we sat and recorded an episode in December right before our office party where we go out together for lunch and we very cheerfully made a list of goals for 2020. Not having any clue that 2020 would shape up to be quite unlike most of the other years that we've sat around planning things together. So I think we should revisit those goals and see what is capable on here. And what have we learned about goal making from our lists.Jess (04:54):I was going to say the first thing I've learned is to be flexible, and to shift, and to adjust to your surroundings. Cause clearly that's the theme of the day. Alright. So what'd you have on there, Ms. Sarina?Sarina (05:10):Well, you know, many of my goals could really stand up in terms of getting the same things done. Especially where I had goals about helping other people, and helping other authors, and helping other women. And those things are all still true and I've been trying to do more of that. But of course I had some goals about like how much I was going to accomplish in terms of writing. And, you know, I'm not teaching anybody to read right now because my kids are old enough to handle this stuff by themselves. But, I didn't count account for my own potential anxiety and the difficulties of making career decisions when the whole world seems to be shifting. So goal I'm having the most trouble with is the one where I was writing an entire book to give to my agent to sell in a new genre for me and that suddenly feels insurmountable even though my work day could look the same because I don't know if that part of publishing is going to be there for me when I'm done. And that's like a mental obstacle to doing that.Jess (06:19):You mean the YA genre?Sarina (06:21):Yeah. Well, you know, unfortunately I have a lot of knowledge of economics and I'm watching businesses fail around me. And I have like a mental block about writing into a publishing world that might not exist when I'm done.Jess (06:42):Yeah, I hear that. Absolutely.KJ (06:47):I am still plowing through, my top number one goal was to finish a book that has now got a different title than it had in my list of goals, but that is fine. Who knows what the title is going to be, but that was my top number one goal was to finish it, and then hopefully get it out, and pitch it to editors. And that is still my top goal despite the obvious changes in the publishing market. I'm not struggling with that as much, but it's probably because I don't have the alternative that you have. Like you could put your time into stuff that you can independently publish and you know you will be there, and readers will be there, and digital book sales will be there. So, it's different, you've got a different choice there.Sarina (07:42):I was just going to say that the fact that most of my publishing is digital is such a blessing and I just don't discount it at all. And also my fear about that other project is not entirely rational, but part of me is in that rowboat with the guy in the thunder storm. And I'm not sure what to do about that. Like how to disembark.Jess (08:09):Well, it was interesting, someone asked a question in the #AmWriting Facebook group this week about this question and said, 'You know, what's everyone doing? Like are we pitching? Are we querying? Are agents picking up new clients? And are people buying books?' And so I went ahead and asked our agent and I said, 'I don't have to quote you or anything.' And she said, 'Hell yes, people are buying.' She said, she's had a couple of auctions. She said, you can totally quote me that people are buying, people are looking, that things are still chugging along in book sale world. I think a lot of people are scared about releasing right now, which is a really scary, new world sort of situation. But people are still buying books. People are still picking up new writers. So there was that sort of gut check of, Oh, there is some normalcy happening out there and our agent is not the kind of person to be you know, to be blindly optimistic. She's the kind of person to give it to you like it is.KJ (09:18):Yeah. Or even worse than it is. My fiction agent says the same thing and my editor says she's acquiring. So people are acquiring of course, whether they're like whistling Dixie and a thunderstorm is another question. But, they're trying, everybody wants to keep going. And I would like to have a book to sell them. I would very much like to have a book to sell them. What I am finding is that the speed at which I can complete this is totally different than it used to be. Even when I'm sitting down to work, I can't work as fast. Both because I think my focus is off and because my house is full of people. People everywhere, everywhere I look, there's another person and they eat. They just won't stop eating.Jess (10:25):Yeah. I'm the place of, Oh my gosh, dinner really does happen every single day. Like everyone's on their own for breakfast and lunch. But that dinner thing, that's our sort of reconnect with each other. We're still doing dinner. Dinner is important to us. And because I have big eaters, they tend to start asking at like 4:45. I'll get these texts. So what's the thought for dinner? So dinner happens every day, shockingly. And that's actually been, if anything, a positive for our family. So having something, you know, to eat evening and sit down and even if it's just like last night I threw together a soup. It's been a good thing, but it is shocking to me how much they can eat. But on the other hand, like our grocery bills are freaking me out. But on the other hand we are not eating out at all. So we don't even do takeout. But KJ, did you finish? Can I start talking about mine? Because mine go in a weird direction.KJ (11:26):Well I didn't. I mean, the goal of finishing that book is the only one that stays the same. I have essay goals on here and I am just not feeling the essays right now cause it feels like the only essays I can write would be about this. And I don't want to write about this. I really don't. I know a lot of people do, but I really, really, really, really, really don't. So you know, I had humor on here. I wanted to do some of that. Does it have to be covid humor? I don't know. So there's that. My promotion goals around The Chicken Sisters, the ones that are on here are still the same because... Podcast goals. Yeah. Well the shift is in how, but I didn't really write how into my goals.Jess (12:20):No, I mean the real fact for you is that some of the things that you were counting on, some of them in there are not happening.KJ (12:28):So, no, but it's not like everybody else is out there hawking their books face to face and I'm not, so I am not as bothered by that as as I might be. You know, the advantage to it (as an introvert who's not super into travel) I really wanted to do these things, but not doing them is okay too. In some ways.Jess (12:57):Can I just offer another silver lining to this though, is that it's unbelievable to me how generous other writers are being with each other right now. I know you and I have both bought a bunch of books that we may or may not ever read just because we're supporting our fellow authors out there. And I think it's a fantastic thing. And I mentioned in another podcast that I'm a new devotee of this long form podcast and on that they're talking to a lot of writers right now who are trying to release books during this and they're talking about the generosity of other authors. So that's been really lovely to see. So hopefully some of that will kick in for you too, KJ.KJ (13:37):I think it will. I feel pretty good and I'm having a really good time. One thing I'm having a good time with is that when this all started someone mentioned to me that the warehouse might not be able to send out advanced copies anymore. And I went, 'Oh, so wait, they're just sitting there? So would they just put them in a box and send them to me?' So they did. I basically have all the remaining advanced reader copies. And so I'm sending the Good Reads giveaway winner copies and I'm sending all the bookstagrammers and I ultimately spent a lot of time sort of going, which would be the very best bookstagrammers. And last week I was just like, you know, I'm just going to send these to the bookstagrammers that I follow and that follow me and that are sort of in my universe and that'll be happy and excited to get it. And I've been doing that and it feels really fun. So that's entertaining.Jess (14:40):That's a very cool thing. Plus, you know, there's the whole decorating of them. But Sarina, you had something you wanted to mention to KJ.Sarina (14:46):I did because when she was talking about essays, it made me realize that how much of the news I'm reading is all focused on the same thing. So that means that relevancy is suddenly like a little bit of a wrench in our goals because you could still write essays, you still have the time, and you still have the voice, but the relevancy of the things that you were probably going to work on is just gone. And I'm struggling with some relevancy, too. It takes a whole lot of optimism to write romance and you know, I'm a little bit stuck on that. And even just literally, I looked at the epilogue of one of my hockey books and I had my team winning the cup in June of 2020 and guess what? There isn't even going to be a cup in June of 2020 and it never occurred to me. Like I try not to paint myself into a corner. I do it all the time anyway, but it never in my wildest dreams occurred to me that there would not be a champion.Jess (15:53):It takes an extra layer of imagination, too. I mean, you're already constructing new worlds for your books and now suddenly you're having to like construct a whole world for your own world so that you can construct those. I mean, you have to have a certain level of optimism. You have to have a certain level of ability to envision a world in which your characters are not going through this, not touching each other thing. And I mean, look at that. You are trying to write about people who are so much touching each other in a world where no one's allowed to touch each other. I mean, it's a really weird thing.Sarina (16:25):It is. And I saw a really funny tweet from a narrator who was doing a book and he, without naming the book said, 'You know, this book really confused me. I was telling my friend because it not a lot happens. There's not a lot of conflict. They go to Ikea and buy some furniture and I was just waiting for the conflict.' And the friend said to this narrator, 'Dude, what you just described is like science fiction at this point.'Jess (16:56):That's true. That's absolutely true. Yeah. Alright, well I wanted to talk about the fact that so I actually did finish the edits on my manuscript. That was my number one goal, finish the edits on the manuscript and you know, it wasn't anything like Gift of Failure but there was still some heavy lifting to do. And I got them done. I'm looking at the date actually I got them done well before the date that I was hoping to get them done by. And the reason I wanted to get them done by that date was that I wanted to have a new proposal or at least the shortened version to show my agent cause she has no idea still what I'm thinking about. And I wanted to have that to her by April 15th and of course that was smack in the middle of just trying to wrap my head around all of this stuff. And you know, for me also personally, it's been anxiety provoking. Like I can sit here in my house, in the woods. I was telling my husband, this is a really weird paradoxical thing. I don't go out very often, obviously, but when I do go out, I get pretty depressed because here in my home I can ignore it and I can kind of forget about it for short periods of time. But going out in the world has been just scary and weird and anyway, so the worst of this stuff has come right at a time when I was hoping to get a new proposal done. And so what I've decided to do is give myself a break and I'm doing a lot of my research through audio. And while I'm listening, I keep a notebook near me, but I am outside. Because for the first time since I started a speaking career that runs on an academic schedule, I've never been home in time to get really good gardens ready for the growing season. And I definitely never got gardens in my new house. And I've always felt a little adrift without my gardens. So I've been giving myself a big fat break. And I leave the house as soon as I'm done with my stuff in the morning and I go outside and I don't come in until I have to get that infernal daily dinner thing going again. I walk in at the end of the day and I look at my husband and I say, 'I am just so happy outside.' And the other thing was because of all this anxiety, I wasn't sleeping very well and just exhausting myself during the day outside, and just being sore, and tired, and drained has been much better for my sleep. So I'm giving myself a big fat break right now, in terms of the writing part. Definitely still researching, loving listening to all the audio, but giving myself a big fat break, thinking of it as a little vacation has been really important to me. And I have gardens now. I have the bare bones gardens down and it makes me so happy and I finally feel like this house is mine again. You know, it finally is a place where I live. And and that's been fantastic. So yeah. And then the rest of my goals were things like, so finish the edits, got those done on time, finish the new proposal, totally didn't happen on time. But that was my own internal schedule and that's okay. And then back with you on the essay thing, cause I had complete five essays for collection by the end of the year. I've definitely thought about them. And for me that's a big thing cause I do a lot of the thinking, the writing internally first, and then I just of get it down. But yeah, I'm not writing about covid and these essays are about things that are so unrelated to that. And so it's just been close to impossible to get that essay writing done. But I'm feeling better now and I feel like that's going to come back online really soon. Our friend Mary Laura Philpott has sold a new essay collection and I happen to know that she's trying to get down to work on that. And so, I'm sort of mentally trying to partner with Mary Laura and be thinking about those essays. Spanish was a big one and I haven't done that. I just absolutely 100% failed at that. We had some goals around Spanish that were going to culminate with some big Spanish speaking for a trip that got canceled. Well and now my thoughts have shifted also to things like I'm starting to freak out about some of the spring speaking events. You know, a big source of my anxiety around an inability to stay focused for a few minutes at a time has to do with money stuff because my non-writing income went poof. And that's the majority of my income. So that's been challenging. And my husband works for a hospital that just announced that all of the top level people will all take pay cuts. And so my husband's taking a pay cut in the midst of this as well. And then if anyone's been following my social media, they know we just spent the equivalent of a small used car on our dog who almost died. So that's a stressful thing, too. And yet we're so fortunate, I'm not scared about paying our rent, but I am just anxious. If I had to rewrite my goals now, it would be do more of what's making me feel really good right now. And that's making me feel really good right now.KJ (22:42):Well that's a good question. Are we going to rewrite our goals? I think it might be worth sitting down and doing. Because one of the other reason that some of this stuff happened - I've got some goals here around the podcast, and the email list, and marketing with other podcasts. There's no reason I can't do those things other than that I've got about three hours of brain power in me every day and I use it up on writing the book and then I just have so much less steam than I used to have. I don't know. I guess it's the anxiety, I guess it's that. But you know, I used to be able to sort of write in the morning and then go back to do all the other stuff in the afternoon. And it's also all the household stuff. It's all this stuff, all this stuff. And some of these are just like we were saying, I just don't necessarily want to focus on that as much anymore.Jess (23:37):Okay, well then put a line through it. I'm putting a line through the Spanish one. I'm letting myself off the hook for that. You know what, I was just looking at number five, which was one email a month for my email list. And my email list has gone up a lot this year because of some high visibility podcasting I've done. But I'm really glad we're doing this today because that is a good kick in the pants for me. But you know what I've done that's been also really wonderful. I think I'm just missing teaching so much that I've been doing this thing on Twitter where I teach about rhetorical devices and I do a long thread and you could see the smile on my face while I'm doing them. It makes me so happy. I'm like pulling all these books off the shelves and it's teaching and I'm having so much fun. So I'm going to keep doing that. And you know, doing more of that I think would be really super fun for me. So I may even stick that in instead.KJ (24:37):That is so funny because I said one of the things we could talk about today is changing our approach to social media. And you said, 'Oh, I didn't change anything.' I was like, 'Yes, you did.' That's what I was thinking of. You know, we're filling in some gaps of things that we used to do in real life with social media. And I feel like that is one for you. And if you could or wanted a new teaching job, you certainly couldn't get it now. So you have found that. I've been connecting a lot more on Instagram. I've been going back into Twitter, which I had been out of for literally years. Trying to find ways to use Facebook that don't involve getting sucked in. And actually I'm on Instagram way too much. I need to stop. But also feeling like it really is providing a connection and a place to talk about books and things that are important to me. Like these are the conversations I might normally be having, like at a hockey game or in line at the grocery store or at the bookstore over coffee or whatever. And now they're taking place online in different ways. So that was what I was thinking of, but I was also thinking about you. How about you, Sarina, have you changed your social media at all?Sarina (25:54):Well yeah, but it's not all sunny around here. I've had to take some breaks, some like multi-day breaks from social media just because it feeds my anxiety when I can see people sort of emoting about the same things that I'm worried about. I have to walk away because sometimes it just amplifies all the things I'm worried about. So I think taking some steps back has really helped me. And plus I don't want to amplify my own...I feel very brittle right now and I don't really want to be brittle on social media, so I've just had to sort of back away.Jess (26:37):It's funny you say that because now thinking back, just about every time you text that you're freaking out about something, it's because you saw something on social media that just triggered you. So I think that's fantastic.Sarina (26:47):I mean, I'm more caught up on news right now than I've ever been in my entire life, but it's not such a great thing because the reason I can't walk away from Washington Post and the New York Times is that I'm looking for someone to tell me what's going to happen. And of course they can't really do that, but that's why I keep going back. So I've had to kind of step away from that, too. Not because news is bad, but because it can't serve what I'm really searching for.Jess (27:22):Didn't you say that you were on Google for something and you realize that there was a commonly searched for question on Google, which was what's going to happen? I don't think Google can even do that.Sarina (27:42):I love to see what other people are searching on Google. And I will stop and screenshot them if they're particularly wonderful.Jess (27:52):Oh, can I tell you something really cool? At Google headquarters in California I got to speak there after Gift of Failure came out and they took me through and I got a really cool tour and one of the things they have as a staircase and on the riser for each step of the staircase are the most Googled things so you can watch in real time on the staircase as all the things that people are Googling changes. And it was really cool while I was there looking at other stuff. They also have this room you can stand in and it screens all around you like floor to ceiling screens all around you and you can enter any search term you want. It could be you, for example. So I entered Jessica Lahey to see sort of what the world sees when they look at me across all platforms. And it allows you to see like does your website match up? You know, do you have a brand that has unifying themes, blah blah blah. And it was just really interesting to see how does my website match up with what's going on on Twitter and what's going on on all these different platforms. It was really kind of cool. That was kind of fun. But I'm sorry I totally took things off the rails because you were talking about what's going to happen and no one being able to tell you that.Sarina (29:07):Yep. And they still can't so it doesn't really matter.Jess (29:09):Well what has been interesting is from, and I know you're looking a lot at a lot of this through an economic lens, cause that's who you are. But my son is studying economics and can you imagine - this is when my kid is getting his introduction to the world of economics, like this is such a weird and bizarre time and he has a summer job that is (and I don't think I'm allowed to say where it is yet because I don't think anything's been signed) but it's at the epicenter of what's going on economically. And so we've been talking about it a lot, but from a very academic perspective, which has been interesting. I guess it allows me to sort of set it over there and have a bit of a reserve around it. But I mean it's not like it's good news. It's just academic instead of about like our personal economic situation. Can I interject one tiny thing? Can you all look at your word? I have them all in front of me right now. How are you feeling about your words?Sarina (30:18):I still like my word.KJ (30:18):I hate my words.Jess (30:23):Okay. Well my word was practice and I'm actually still feeling good about that because it's a good reminder to me that it's not about having these huge breakthroughs. It's about the daily practice of either thinking about structuring, blah, blah, blah. So I'm still happy with that. Sarina, your word was, do you remember?Sarina (30:39):Abundance.Jess (30:40):How are you feeling about that?Sarina (30:41):Well, honestly, I should still tape it up into every room I walk through because the truth is it's pretty abundant around here. Ebooks are still performing. My life is fine. It's just a little more anxious than it used to be.KJ (30:59):And my word was magic and I'm not feeling very magical right now. Although honestly, I am up and down every day. I don't want to be Pollyanna about this. Nobody is happy about what is happening, but I suppose it is a little magical that my family has not killed each other in the 67 days that we have been largely cooped up together. That is kind of magical. And I was thinking that I might put some magic in a next book draft, after this one. I don't know, maybe that will happen. Yeah, magic did not turn out to be a super helpful for this time.Jess (32:11):Speaking of magical thinking and inhabiting fantasy lands that don't exist. Should we talk a little bit about what we've been reading? Alright. Sarina you want to lead off again since you went first last time?Sarina (32:24):Well, I'm reading something that KJ gave me. The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix. This was a book that spotted before KJ bought it and I thought, I'm just happy that book exists. The writing is terrific. His writing game is super strong from the first paragraph of the prologue and I am intrigued.Jess (32:58):Oh, good. Cool. What about you KJ?KJ (33:01):Well, I'm reading a book, Sarina gave me. I am reading Undercover Bromance by Alyssa Kay Adams. We need to book club on this one, Sarina. We need to have a discussion, but like her previous book in this series, The Bromance Book Club. It is fun, satisfying, fast paced, and distracting. And that's about everything I ask of a book right now. And I also am reading The Body in the Garden by Catherine Schellman. This is a historical mystery and I have not read very much in the mystery genre for many, many years. And it's kind of fun to see that in a same way that historical romances have taken a real turn for having a modern way of thinking within the historical romance as opposed to trying to keep people thinking as they might have in the time. This mystery also sort of falls into that category. It has a modern attitude within a historical time and space and that makes it fun. And that's by Catherine Schellman. So again, fun, distracting, light. Just what we need.Jess (34:16):Yeah, I I have a book I want to talk about today cause there's something really interesting in it and it's not something that you guys normally read is two things. Number one for the audio listeners out there David Sedaris released an Audible original. It's not a huge deal. Don't get too excited. It's only 30 minutes long. It's called Themes and Variations, but it's essentially him just riffing about the people he talks to on book tour and the things they talk about. I think it was like $1.89 or something like that. But I got so excited when I saw it and I've already listened to it three times just because I needed a little David Sedaris back in my life. But the thing I went and listened to is I saw that there was a new Stephen King coming out and a former guest on our podcast, Ruth Franklin, wrote the review of Stephen King's new book in the New York Times and it's a wonderful review. She's such a great writer. I was like, 'Okay, well if she has a nice things to say, I'll get it.' And it's a collection of novellas and short stories and I'm not going to talk about all of them. I want to talk about just one and there's one called The Rat and I'm not going to do any spoilers here, but if you are a writer who has ever felt blocked in your writing, this story is a truly delightful, dark, dastardly view into the writer's head when they're trying to wrestle with their demons and why they can't get the words on the page.Speaker 3 (36:26):And I was working out in the woods while I was listening to it and there was a giant smile on my face. I was cackling. I'm like, this is so mean. And it's similar to when he channels the writer in Misery, when anytime he's ever talked about sort of what it's like for him to write and to go through that trap door into his basement. And all of that good stuff is in there. All of that stuff from On Writing that we love so much about his reading, about his process that's all in there, channeled through this writer in this story called The Rat. And it's delightful. It really truly is. It would be worth getting the book if you can afford to do it. It would be worth getting the book just to listen to this story really quick. I mean, I've also been comfort listening and I was scrolling through my Audible books that I've been listening to and they've all been books about sort of overcoming hardship. I realized I relistened to Jenny Finney Boylan's She's Not There. And I relistened to Diana Niad's Find a Way, which is about swimming from Florida to Cuba.KJ (37:40):I think you're the only person who's still listening. Audio has just dropped cause nobody's in their cars, nobody is commuting.Jess (39:02):I'm glad we did this cause I actually feel refocused in a couple of different ways and I'm feel good about drawing a line through one of my goals and just saying nope. By the way, go check out the #AmWriting Facebook group if you want some interesting reading about how other writers are handling this time, because that's what really most of the conversation is about right now. Like, how do you handle stuff? Are people still pitching here? What do you think about this? It's a really reassuring and supportive place to be, but until next time, everyone keep your button, the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

Zach has the honor of speaking to Debra Gore-Mann, president and CEO of The Greenlining Institute, about tackling systemic equity. She graciously shares her unique career journey with us and talks a bit about what it looks like to manage the wide array of philosophies, motivations and personalities she engages with in an effort to shift and create systemic change. Check out the show notes to connect with Debra and for more information on The Greenlining Institute!Connect with Debra on LinkedIn and Instagram.Interested in learning more about The Greenlining Institute? Check out their website.They're also on social media - follow them on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.Read Debra's piece mentioned in the episode by clicking here.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Man, really exciting times. I mean, exciting is a word for it, right? Like, got some concerns with the coronavirus, people working from home, new ways of working impacting marginalized folks in different ways, so definitely expect for our content to shift a little bit. So we're talking about and sharing tips on working from home and how to work from home, dealing with managers, leading teams if you're working from home and also dealing with managers who maybe have never had to manage you as you work from home. But all of that to say we continue to roll with the punches, y'all, and look, it's Tuesday. We're having another conversation, real talk in a corporate world. We do this, right? Like, we sit down with black and brown entrepreneurs, executives, CEOs--who are also executives, but you know what I mean--advocates, allies, public servants, elected officials, and look, today is no different. Like, we have a great guest, Debra Gore-Mann. Debra is the president and CEO of The Greenlining Institute, a policy, research, organizing and leadership institute working for racial and economic justice. Whoo, justice. That's a heavy word in these diversity & inclusion streets, and here they are, and here we go. Debra, welcome to the show, ma'am. How are you doing?Debra: Hi, Zach. Thanks so much for inviting me. I too am sitting in, you know, troubling times in that I am a decision maker on whether to work from home or whether to continue to bring folks into work, so I hear you on your opening.Zach: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, to your point about being a decision maker, I'd love to talk about your journey, right? Like, you've held a variety of different roles, from investment banking to being in athletics to being a chief development officer. Like, I'd love to hear more about your path. Like, as Living Corporate, and I think as we all continue to have these conversations, we've been blessed to talk to people with really unique journeys, right, and it seems as if honestly the people that are making the most impact have some of the most, initially on the outset, just curious paths to getting there. I'd love to hear more about just your story.Debra: Absolutely, and I think my journey is--you know, I used to think that is that it was unique, but the more that I've shared it the more I've realized that there were just some pivotal moments that happened, that happened to me. So in my journey, you know, I'm biracial. My mother is Japanese and my father is black, and he was in the military. And I know for some folks when you say "the military" it means--you know, it's a significant sort of life experience to have a parent who was in the military. So he meets my mother in Japan, and so, you know, she comes to the United States. So she was an immigrant, so I kind of speak that space. And our house was very much a bicultural home. We ate as much Japanese food as we ate soul food. So it was nothing for us to have sushi and collard greens.Zach: Y'all mixed it--y'all mixed it together?Debra: Yeah, totally. My mom just, like, just did both, just did both. Zach: Word? Hm.Debra: But the one thing that was sort of emphasized in our house was education, and equally from my father's side, you know, black household, as the Asian side. I did have a bit of a tiger mom, so people might know what that means, [laughs] you know? And education was important, and so, you know, really kind of overachieved in that space, and here was one of these critical, pivotal moments, right? So finishing high school I'm literally the number two in my class--I think they call it the salutorian--my best friend was the number three person in the class, and I'm going to apply for colleges, and the story she gets--and she's German but white, and the story I get when we compare notes are completely different. I'm told to go to a community college. My family can't afford to send me to college, but this would be a good stepping stone. I mean, it was a very positive conversation, and then I compared with my friend Lilly and she's like, "She told me that I should apply to some of the best schools on the West Coast," but in particular, 'cause I'm originally from Seattle-Tacoma, the University of Washington or the University of Oregon. Totally different story. And so, you know, we're sort of going, "Yeah, this is because you're black." [laughs] And I'm like, "Yeah, it is," but, you know, I didn't know. I hadn't gone to college. My sister--I had an older sister, and she went because, through the PSATs, somebody offered her a full scholarship, so I thought that's how it happened. Well, lo and behold, her brother had gone to MIT. He comes home during that winter break and he says, "Oh, no, you guys--you're #2? You're #3 in the class? You guys are applying to ivy leagues." And we're like, "What's an ivy league school?" 'Cause our counselor didn't tell us anything like that. And so I end up applying to Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Cal Tech, the University of Michigan, right? Sort of high technical schools, high academic schools. She applies to Yale, Harvard. We still apply to our local school, the University of Washington. I also applied basketball, so that's gonna come in here. So I had some athletic scholarships as well, and ended up we got into I want to say 9 out of 10 of the schools we applied to. She ends up going to Yale and I end up going to Stanford, and that in and of itself--so if you're in an Asian household, you know, for the daughters to leave the home is sort of "bad daughter, disobedient," so my mother was like, "You're not--" She doesn't know Stanford from anything else. She's like, "You're not going to California? You're a bad daughter." So my first courageous step was to say, "I'm gonna go to this school. It's in California," because of my good friend's brother who was like, "This is one of the top schools in the country. You need to go." So that's my first sort of, you know, accidental but intentional advice that I got, and then, you know, going to Stanford really kind of changed my life from there, opened up a whole new dialogue, really started to understand my biracialness. Now we have a term, intersectionality. At the time intersectionality was not necessarily as bright and clear, but I really started to understand that and, you know, had an engineering degree. I worked at a tech company, a material science tech company, when I graduated, then I went back to graduate school--back to Stanford--and got my MBA, and at that time I gotta be honest, you know, I was really motivated by money. We were a lower middle-class. You know, my dad was in the military. My mother worked as a domestic housekeeper, so I was cleaning houses, helping her clean houses from a very early age, so I can clean a mean bathroom now to this day. [laughs] Zach: To this day. [laughs]Debra: To this day, you know? You don't want me to come visit your house.Zach: [laughs] I might. [laughs]Debra: "I need to clean this bathroom!" [laughs] And so it was really kind of important for me to sort of maximize my value, so I went to Wall Street, you know? I went to work at an investment bank, and even realized--well, let me take a step back. Another circumstance that happened, when I went to graduate school, I ended up being the only black female in that class. And this is, you know, 1987. But what happened--and I went to admissions and I was like, "How can I be the only black woman in my class?" There was about 25 to 28 of us who had applied, but we all applied at very competitive--so Wharton, Harvard, you know, Princeton. You know, top business schools. Wharton, Northwestern, and the rest, the other 24, went to all the other schools. I was the only one that year that picked Stanford. [laughs] So here I'm in a class, you know, where I'm the only sort of black female voice, and so in, like, every class it's like, "Well, what does Debbie think?" Zach: You become the representative.Debra: I'm the representative, I'm, like, the sole representative, but I'm still identifying as biracial. I'm like, "Why don't y'all care about my Japanese lineage?" But in any case, right, so I land squarely in that, and what really helped me navigate that was that I played basketball, and we would have these pickup games, and I would, you know, be ballin' with the rest of the white guys who are now, you know, running companies, running venture capital, but sports was my translator and my equalizer, and so I've always very much leaned into sports vernacular and ability, and I think that has served me well, frankly, in my corporate leadership and everything, to be able to talk sports--and I mean, like, really talk sports--has really helped.Zach: And what position did you play? Not to cut you off.Debra: I was a point guard. I was a point guard.Zach: Okay, so now how would you characterize your game? Were you, like, a combo? Or were you, like, a facilitator?Debra: Yeah. So I was definitely a floor general. I didn't shoot as much, but, you know, a lot of assists, played all 40 minutes, you know? Started as a freshman, all four years, last two years team captain, so I think the leadership stuff kind of developed there. Played a lot with men. I think that's a common thread with women who really sort of want to elevate their game, you know, playing against people who are bigger, quicker, and stronger really gets your game up there. But, you know, so I'll make analogies--I was actually talking to a coalition person, and, you know, they have a very strong coalition, and I said, "Well, you know, here's my analogy. I'm like Kevin Durant coming to the Warriors after you guys won a couple." [both laugh] And that frames it, right? Like, "Oh, yeah. We're balling," but look, I've got some skills, and I can come and, please, let's just try to win some more championships. So sometimes those sports analogies, like, you know, people are like, "Oh, I get what you're talking about."Zach: They put it together, yeah.Debra: Yeah, and then you also don't sound--you know, it's pretty arrogant to say, like, "I'm Kevin Durant." Like, I'm not Kevin Durant, but people understand that there's a skill set coming into the game. And so I tend to do that. So anyways, I go to Wall Street, and that was yet another environment where I'm, you know, very few--let's see, in that cohort I was the only African-American in that cohort, and then Wall Street is, you know, definitely--I always tell people "Until you make some money, you can walk away from money," so I was able to, you know, buy a home, help my family. You know, my father had passed, so I was able to help my mom with her house. I had a portfolio of investments and could, you know, really speak money and capital and understanding that, but, you know, after I made some money I was like, "Wow, this is not very fulfilling. This is "What have you done for me lately? What's your last transaction?"" And, you know, you're constantly just pushing the rock up the hill. So at that point then I stayed in the private sector and I used my engineering degree with my finance, and in the Bay Area there's a company called Bechtel, who is a large engineering infrastructure company, family-owned, and they have an in-house boutique financial arm, and because I had engineering and I had finance I went to work for that in-house boutique bank, and the beauty of that is it's a global company, so I had a passport and for, you know, five years I worked out of the country. China was opening up in some of their enterprise zones a lot in Latin America, South America, and did these large, large structured finance in foreign currency. So good multi-tasking, you know? The language, the currency. It was sort of complicated transactions, and I loved that work. Like, loved, loved, loved that work, and then the big pivot was I got married and I had a child.Zach: Congratulations, congratulations.Debra: And for women that's a big deal. Even for me at the time, you know, I had worked on a big, multi-billion dollar deal in Mexico, and they weren't gonna let me have maternity leave. They didn't have maternity leave actually. So we crafted--you know, I had accelerated some deals that I had done, so I killed myself working 100 hours so that I could take three to four months off. There wasn't--so when people talk about maternity leave and FMLA, I was like, "Yes! Where do I sign up?" This is some of the policy work, right, that now I'm all in because I lived through a time when women didn't have that. No matter how big my deal was, you know? I could be straight ballin' and it's like, "There's no maternity leave." And the big fear was that I wasn't gonna come back to work, that I was gonna love motherhood, and I was like, "Maybe." Like, I didn't know. I hadn't had a child. So sure enough I get my four months off and really missed working, so to the women who listen to your podcast, you know, I think that will resonate. It's like either, you know, the maternal part is like, "Oh, I love being at home," and I loved that too, but I really had this desire to keep working, and for me at that time then I couldn't just get on an airplane, be gone two or three weeks, 'cause I'd come back and my daughter was, you know, talking or rolling over. I was like, "No, no, no." So I always--I don't know how much space or people have talked to you about, you know, "Your network is your net worth," so I leaned into my network and I said, "Look, y'all. I need a job in the United States. Let's keep it simple, but if it could be in California all the better," and different kinds of, you know, opportunities came in, and it was, you know, someone in my network that said, "Hey, you went to Stanford twice, and the athletic department's looking for a CFO," and I had done enough structured deals, right, that we had some development companies and I had served as the financial officers in some devcos, so, you know, I said, "Okay, let me interview." Okay, so you'll love this, Zach. So I go into this interview. The athletic director was Ted Leland, who was probably one of the top five athletic directors in the country. The faculty athletic rep was Jerry Porras, and he had co-written the book "Built to Last," which was a best seller, with Jim Collins, who then wrote "Good to Great." He's the faculty athletic rep, and then the provost is this--you know, this black professor who's up and coming named Condy Rice.Zach: What?Debra: So I'm interviewing--at the time though... come on, now, we're in the '90s. At the time I'm like, "Okay, athletic director, sports, small field," right? I had been doing global deals. My deals were in the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. I'm like, "[?] He's an athletic director." Now, Jerry Porras, Jerry Porras I'm like, "Okay, you're kinda ballin'. You're writing best sellers. You're Latin. First of all, you're a Latino male who's a tenured professor at Stanford." So I got a white male who went to community college and now is the athletic director at Stanford. I have a Latino male and then this African-American professor, Russian studies. I was like, "Oh." So, you know, think about the diversity of that right there. Think of the diversity. Black woman, Latino male, white man, and they are gonna be the nucleus. So they say--you know, I talk the talk about "Okay, this is how I would do the athletic department as the CFO and how I'd run it," and they were like, "This is great. We'd like to offer you the job." And I was like, "Great. What's the pay?" It was, like, a 50% pay cut, and I was like, "Oh, yeah, no." Remember, even when I was an undergrad I was like, "Yeah, I gotta make some money, and I'm taking care of my family," and then at this point I'm now sandwiched. I'm taking care of both, right, my own family and then my mother's. So we're kind of that sandwiched generation. So I'm like, "Thank you so much. Here's my dilemma: I can't take the pay cut. It's too much of a pay cut," and I thought it was done, right? So I'm, like, moving on. I'm interviewing other places. I almost went into consulting. I get a call back from Ted that says, "We want you to interview one more person," and I was like, "But I--" And he said, "No, just go to one more interview," and I end up interviewing with the vice president of finance, and they're thinking that--the athletic department reported to the position in the finance office, and so he interviews me and he says, "Look, I'm gonna give you this job and this job," so when I joined Stanford I held the position in the athletic department and then I held a position in the University, which allowed them to basically double my salary and keep me whole. So I was just like, "Wow," you know? So another pivotal kind of--and that's the transition. Like, the transition--I think a lot of people might have to take a pay cut or whatever, but I kind of feel like, "Well, my tool box was pretty robust. I could speak the sports language. I had been speaking the sports language through my whole financial--" So when it came to interviewing in this completely different industry, I was able to translate and transfer those skills, and then, you know, got into--so that's my pivot into college sports and my real first exposure into sort of diversity of thought, you know, equity, what does that look like for women of color. There was a real commitment to Title IX. Stanford was one of the first schools--and I was that first generation that got the title. Literally those scholarships came out in '81, so I'm dating myself now, and I was the first generation to get Title IX scholarship, a full scholarship. So I've been in this space, right? I've been in this equity, justice, racial, just living it, and so, you know, just fast forward. I did, you know, sort of run the gamut in athletics, and when this opportunity at The Greenlining Institute opened up, it is the single place where I have been able to unapologetically, openly talk about racial equity in all forms, and my work is to remove those barriers and to provide economic opportunity. So I'm still true to my message of "Okay, we gotta develop personal wealth, community wealth, and then remove the racial barriers," and it's full-stop, you know, redlining, community development, all of the things that are--you know, affordable housing, health care, all of the intersections now, and I just do it full-throated. So there I go. There it is, Zach. There's the journey. [both laugh]Zach: That's incredible, and you know what's interesting? 'Cause, you know, you talked about dating yourself, but what I hear in that though is the fact that you've really lived this life and you're doing this work, like, beyond the buzzwords of today, right? So, you know, today when we talk about diversity and inclusion or we talk about equity in a corporate context, you know, we don't really mean making people whole, driving for just--like, creating paths to justice or, like, systemic change, right? Like, we're not really talking about that. Like, not really, not in the average diversity, equity and inclusion conversations. We're typically talking about some type of training and some communications, and so what I'm really excited about as we kind of get into this interview is, like, more about the work and where you see The Greenlining Institute going. And to that end, in a piece that you wrote for The Greenlining Institute announcing your arrival to the organization you said--a portion of what you wrote, I'm gonna read it here, quote "People would argue that a focus on the building of a nation through a specific lens of color and race only hinders progress. They are the people who often claim to not see race and who replaced the slogan "Black Lives Matter" with "All Lives Matter." I'm not one of those people." So let me keep it 100 with you. When I read this, right--and I recognize you work for The Greenlining Institute, and I recognize that, you know, you've been in places where you've practically drove and you've strived for creating equity for your constituents or stakeholders or whoever the people that you're serving are. I'm gonna still say I still don't see a lot of black executives who boldly engage topics of race, like, be it from a position of self-preservation or a lack of personal range, but, you know, I think about Howard Bryant of ESPN and NPR. He was on the show a while back, and he said "To advocate for black people is to put your whole career in jeopardy," and so I'm just really curious, like, when did you make a decision to not only discuss black equity in these, like, theoretical frames, but leverage your own capital and labor to help solve for it and have, you know, in your career, have you had colleagues discourage you from pursuing this type of work?Debra: So I totally understand what Howard Bryant is saying when he says "Black people have to put their career in jeopardy." No doubt, right? It's the judgment against Michael Jordan that he didn't know political advocacy, but now, you know, a generation later, like, it's fine for LeBron James to do it actually, and, you know, even Steph Curry or Steve Kerr. I mean, they're openly in this space now. So I think it is the times that you live in that affect it. I constantly had people who discouraged me if I wanted to have my career ascend or be eligible for large bonuses. There was a bit of impostor syndrome that, you know, you had to perpetrate. So the people usually who were discouraging of speaking boldly into race and gender and the intersectionality that I survive in were mostly white people, right? And so they were making it clear to me of the risks. Like, "You could do it, Debbie. You can talk about this, you can talk about that, but I'm just gonna tell you what may be the consequences of it." So I think there is some truth for sure to what Howard Bryant is saying. The flip side is so when do you have the courage then to go ahead and put my career on the line? Like, you know, "I don't give an F. Here we go." [both laugh] And this is what's gonna just trip you out, Zach. So the moments that I've been able to do that most boldly was when I was encouraged and had the support of mentors who, you know, the Condy Rices or the Ted Lelands or, you know, I could name two or three people who were mentors who said, "Look, go ahead, speak your truth, and I got your back on this one." So for example, when I was at Stanford--I had been there maybe four or five years, you know, and I had done the first big Nike deal--they had never done a big Nike deal--and got one of the largest campus deals ever. Pepsi, at that time the soda wars were happening in your facility, so we negotiated that. I had negotiated two very high profile coaches contracts. So my credibility on campus was pretty legit, and this new dean of the medical school really wanted to have the orthopedics department sort of be a partner with the athletic department, because think about it. The athletes, you know, at that time, Tiger Woods, John Elway. Like, we had some--and they still have some very high profile athletes there. So I had met with the chief of orthopedics and I was like, "Oh, it was a great meeting." Very white male, very, very white. So I'm code-switching and I'm doing all the things that I do to make sure that he's comfortable, and after that meeting he goes back to the dean and says, you know, "I think she's gonna be a problem," or something to that affect. So then two of our medical doctors who had been doing all of our surgeries--knees, shoulder, elbows--came back, and one who I trusted--we had a very... obviously if you're dealing with young people's bodies and those families, so I tended to be the person who talked to the family and said, "Hey, this is our expert." He came to me and he told me. He said, "So this dean, they have some concerns about the relationship," and I said, "This isn't about the relationship. This is about me. This is this white guy who's not comfortable," and I sat there and I was fuming, and I went to the athletic director and I went to the faculty athletic rep and they were like, "Oh, no. We're going all in," right? But they had to--I probably would not have had I not had their voices behind me, and so we did. We met with the dean, and I asked some very, you know, pointed questions. You know, "Where was this concern coming from?" You know, I had the faith of the coaches, the head coaches, and the faculty athletic rep and, you know, X, Y, and Z, and where was this voice coming from? And he was just sort of, "Well, I kind of heard you--" "Did I say that?" "No, but, you know, it was--" And so I was just like, "I think this is racial. I think it's both racial and gender." Men with influence, this is important to your career that you sign this athletic department and, you know, it was immediately--you know, he was apologetic, and "That's not what I meant," and I was like, "You know, that's fine. I'm just telling you how you're presenting yourself and what that means to me and my career." But, you know, I don't know that I would have stepped out on that branch on my own, you know? I think if I had just walked that my career might have been at risk, but knowing that I had, you know, two very senior people say, "We got you on this," was important, was important. And so the advice that I do tend to give now is that, you know, everybody, a young professional, a mid-year professional, I think everybody should have an advisory council where you have somewhere between three and five people that you have literally asked to be a mentor or who has some sort of credibility and clout who can advise you on when to make these very hard decisions. I've had an advisory council ever since, you know, and it's changed depending on the industry that I'm in--and I tend to have three. I used to have five. And you want an odd number in case there's a tie, you know? [laughs] If you have one say yes and the other say no, you need that third one to say yes or no to break the tie. But then that'll help you temper, you know, your career advice with the steps you need to take when you have to fight the good fight. And I know now that--you know, I don't know where he is in his career, but I guarantee you he will never--he'll think twice, you know, about "Oh, am I doing this because I have some gender bias? Because I have some racial bias?" Like, he had been comfortable in that space and he had done his thing, and he probably had run over a bunch of black people, and he finally ran into somebody who said, "This ain't right," and then had other people sit in the room with me and say, "You're not right," you know? So those moments are, you know, sort of life-changing, but they're done with courage for sure. My voice was quivering. My knees were shaking. But I was like, "I'm going all in. I'm going all in on this one."Zach: And I bet you felt all the better for it after the conversation too.Debra: Oh, absolutely, yeah, and it made the next conversation easier, you know? Once you do it you realize that the house didn't fall in, [laughs] or that your career didn't implode. Now, you know, had it imploded maybe I'd have a different [?], but then, you know, now I'm able to sit in a room and say, "Well, you know, are you sure that's what you mean? You know, I kind of hear--" and "I feel like you have some bias here," and, you know, now I'm that voice for the whole community. I'm like, "Look, you are racial washing. You are equity washing right now, people of color and affordable housing. This is about segregation. Let's call it what it is. They don't want to put affordable housing on [?] in Lafayette a lot of white people live there and they want us living in segregated communities. Come on." So I can just speak it now and say, you know, to policy makers or banks or corporations or city hall, say, "Look, I disaggregated this. We have disaggregated this. Here is the bias that still lives. What are you gonna do?" And "Here's how we're gonna help you do it." So we have a whole framework that we say, "Okay, this is how you dismantle it, and this is how we're gonna build it back up."Zach: I think that work--it's just the work itself is so incredible, because, you know, even if you just look, like, from a historical perspective, right? So like, what, black folks have had the same rights on paper for, like, 54, 56 years, and so I think about the fact that 1. that's not even a whole lifetime, right, but then on top of that, like, because of that fact, Gen X is, like, the first generation of people who were born into this country with all of their rights, and really even millennials are--still today, like, a lot of these people, myself included, are first-generation corporate professionals, and I've thought about that side a lot. Like, the fact that a lot of black and brown folks, this is their first time really even being in these spaces, but what I haven't thought about until recently, Debra, is that for white people, this is their first time dealing with black people in these spaces, and when they go home and they talk to their colleagues or their older mentors, they don't really--I mean, they're not going to get a perspective that isn't within a context that is formalized anti-blackness, right? So you think about, like, let's just say if I wasn't a first-generation professional. I talked to my uncle. He can give me context on just working in majority-white spaces, he could do that, but if I was white and I'm dealing with you in this space and I go and talk to my uncle, he's not gonna--he very well likely is not gonna have anything to teach me or tell me about, like "Oh, well, this is how you need to be self-aware, and this is how these cultures work," you know? So I find that really curious, and you kind of--you answered one of my questions, but I want to ask this one though, 'cause you kind of touched on it a little bit. What does it look like, right, to build relationships across the various types of circles that you have to engage in? I think about the fact that when you're talking about policy and you're talking about shifting and creating systemic change, like, you have--I would imagine there's some grassroots folks that you have to engage and endear, but then there's also corporate entities who influence the actual policies, right? Like, I would imagine you're talking to some billionaires, but then you're also having conversations with activists, and you're also talking to folks in the government. Like, what does it look like to manage that wide array of philosophies, motivations and personalities? Like, how does that practically show up?Debra: Hm. I do think there has to be this consistency in philosophy. Like, you have to really be grounded in your values, because once people start challenging you, right--so if you truly believe that there's systemic racism, and not just in the policy but in the cultural diatribe of "Pull yourself up from the bootstraps. Poor people are poor because they're lazy." Like, that's a whole capitalistic trope, and if you want to really dismantle the conversation, then you have to have clarity that that is what's happening, because it is so easy to get on the "You can make money if you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps." You know, the Christian, Protestant work ethic. Look, that is a construct to keep the segregation as status quo. So when you're, you know, either the corporate office or even the Capitol, you start to have this conversation about "Where are your values?" So if a person is leading with "I believe you can pull yourself up from the bootstraps," I know that they have completely--they have such a long way to go before they can even have a conversation about racial equity. Like, that foundational conversation, so I start there. I start there. So, you know, let's say--even now. So if you're a digital [?] and you've been sort of, you know, raised that you probably, you know, think "Okay, I have all these online tools, and [?] are non-biased." Okay, let's just disaggregate that. Right now there's more loans that are--let's just say your car loan, right, or your home loan, it used to be about 4-5% done online. It's darn near 35% online now. And that information shows that there is so much racial bias. Black and brown people pay 100 to 200 [?] points more. Their loan interests are higher. So the algorithm, which has been written by white men who are in that space, that algorithm has bias. "No, it's neutral." "No, it's based on zip code. It's based on spending habits. It's based on--" You know, 'cause now they have all this big data tracking you. All of that is racially biased because it's founded in this language of "If you work hard and you get educated, then you deserve it."Zach: Yeah, this idea of meritocracy.Debra: And that is the racial construct. So we are now having this conversation about "Okay, what does wealth mean?" Okay, wealth. You know, mostly we think, "What's in my bank account? I have a house." Wealth is "I have the freedom to take a vacation. I have the ability to take a week off if my family is sick. I have the ability to cover a bill if it's, you know, a health bill, an automobile breakdown or a home thing." Like, that is wealth. So if you say--and people say, "Oh, yeah. Everybody should have the right to do that." "You should have the right to be able to visit family," or "You should have the right to be able--" Okay, so then you say "What does that policy look like to allow us to do that?" So I don't really actually have to talk race. I don't. I need to talk about a culture, a narrative. Like, we have to take command of a narrative, which is coming. This whole political race, presidential race, pivoted on South Carolina and black folk voting. Like, change the landscape. And for the first time, you know, Ta-Nehisi Coates testified with Danny Glover around reparations. Like, people are willing to say, "Wait, what is this?" And we have video now of police abuse, you know, and we're unpacking the criminal justice system. Like, there's an opportunity for us to walk into this space, which at the end of the day will affect your corporate life and will allow you to show up authentically, and all the data shows that a business decision made with diverse voices in the room, diverse ethnicities in the room, are going to get you better business decisions. So I can even talk to you on--if you just want to talk pure capitalism, like, "Hey, this system that, you know, your white boys built is breaking down, so you at least gotta admit you gotta consider another system." [laughs] Like, you gotta figure out, just even from an economic basis, that what we have now is not going to persist. It's just--it's not. It's collapsing on itself, and now, you know, we have--and it might happen in a generation, that we're going to create a new landscape of what wealth and economic opportunity looks like.Zach: I mean... you know, typically we do sound effects during the show. Like, right here I just want to drop, like, a Flex bomb. Boooooom. Sound Man, he's gonna put it in this. Put it in right here. Boom. I mean, it's just incredible. You're absolutely right, and I'm really curious, like, kind of continuing along the last part that you said, you know, in January you wrote something called "The Many Reasons to Impeach Trump," right?Debra: The many. [laughs] Not the three they landed on.Zach: Yeah. Not the couple. Not the few. The many. [laughs] And you wrote, "For communities of color, Trump has long since violated our public trust, and we know that a multitude of possible articles were excluded." So, you know, we're in an election year, right? Like, if Trump is elected for a second term, how do you anticipate Trump's policies practically impacting the efforts of The Greenlining Institute's goals? Debra: Actually, the Trump administration has emboldened the political conversation. We are in more demand now because of the contrast. Before there wasn't as much contrast. It was everybody was kind of in the grey. We were kind of all getting along.Zach: We got a black president. There's no more racism.Debra: Right. You know, we had arrived, and now the contrast is so stark that, you know, everybody kind of knows "This doesn't feel right." And so it's like, "So what does right feel like?" And we feel like we need to occupy that space of "Okay, here is what, you know, racial equality looks like. Here is what right feels like, and let's redefine--" He's offering you a model. This is what the model looks like. "I talk crazy. I put down whoever I feel like putting down. It always is racialized. I'm a model. Look at me. I'm an economic model." And understand, it is an economic model. He does not stand on any values. He does not stand on any religious--it's, like, transactional. "Here's how much." "I just got a couple billion dollars from Israel. I just got a billion here, a billion there." That's the model. So what do you offer in contrast to that economic model, right? And so I get that, okay, there's this hardcore 38, 40% that's like, "Yes, I believe that economic model," and then there's the "Okay, we want to be a kinder, gentler kind of space," that I feel like Biden's kind of walking into, but at some point you're gonna have to have a conversation about what is that? What is wealth? What is community wealth? What does economic wealth look like? 'Cause he's offering you a model, you know, and it just happens to be this very racialized model, but man, we're comfortable with that. Let me just say we're comfortable with that racialized model, and it's just--Zach: And we have been, right?Debra: Yeah, and in the absence of it I'm scared. It's like, "Wait, but I understand that one. I can be a poor white--"Zach: "I get this though."Debra: Yeah. "I'm a poor white person and I'm voting against my own interests because I believe if I pull myself up by the bootstraps," and I'm like, "No. You've been disenfranchised."Zach: For multiple generations.Debra: And you're still voting for your guy. So I think that, you know, the contrast is what's allowing our work to actually, like, accelerate. We have so much work that we cannot even get to. Like, right before this meeting we were triaging which--and I was working with my health equity person--which health equity bills could we support with our limited amount of energy and resources that we have? Because we are prioritizing how much work there is to do. There is just so much work to do, yeah. So in terms of framing what happens to our goals, I think, you know, we stay very--we're okay, we're solid in our goals. The work has just been multiplied and amplified.Zach: That's a blessing. And, you know, what I'm hearing also--and something that we don't discuss enough, again, when we talk about, like, really creating and driving for equity, we're talking about, like, really shifting and engaging systems. Like, a lot of times, like, these conversations, they start and stop at individuals, and, like, then we get lost in, like, the distraction of intentions. It's like, "Okay," and, you know, if bias are conscious or unconscious. We don't talk about impact. We don't talk about, again, like, the models by which these things are really, like, placed in, and how they drive inequity and disenfranchisement, so that's incredible. We're coming up close to the end of the interview. I want to give you a little bit of space to talk a little bit more about The Greenlining Institute, what you're excited about over the next, like, you know, let's say over the next year, and then I'd like to give you some space to just, like, any shout-outs or parting words you got for us.Debra: Oh, okay. [laughs] So the next year there is a deep conversation happening nationally about readdressing segregation, that if we continue to live in segregated communities in that, you know, what do they say, on any given Sunday we're the most segregated country in the world. There's a deep conversation about that and about community wealth, and I'm seeing both in the academy, where, you know, a lot of research is being done, to the policy makers, to bankers. There's a conversation about now how do we really address supportability, homelessness, because they're all intertwined. Like, you can't have a conversation about affordable housing without talking about health equities and social determinants of health, and you can't talk about that without talking about access to broadband, technology, that's moving so quickly, but almost everything--I don't know about you, but I don't know the last time I went to a bank. I do it all online.Zach: My bank is on my phone, yeah, and just to that point, like, I think about--so I have the privilege of having a decent-paying job, right, so I don't have issues with, like, using my data. I have unlimited data. I don't have issues with my Wi-Fi most of the time, and if I do have issues, then I have the privilege of picking up a phone, demanding someone come and fix this so I can get back to going and doing it. [laughs] But when you talk about this next generation of work, and, like, we talk about the workforce of the future and we talk about this digital age, there continues to be studies showing that black and brown communities, economically-distressed communities, are gonna be left out of this age because we don't have the access to enter, right?Debra: Yeah. So we have technology equity in our shop, and one of our biggest campaigns right now is Broadband for All, and then another big pillar for us is algorithm bias, and that cuts across not just financial institutions but medical bias in the algorithms that are, you know, based on research on cancer. Well, guess what that research was done around. You know, middle-class white families. So, you know, the next 12 months, I think this conversation is going to start to coalesce. There are going to be some common themes on how we can change the narrative on an economic sort of wealth, redefinition of wealth. I think that's really coming in the short term. I think the presidential outcome in November will also lay the ground for sort of that next level of work that's happening. So, you know, 12 months, we're running hard for sure, grinding, and then we'll see if, Heaven forbid, Trump gets reelected or not, because that will require some activism. I think we are all--we're gonna have to be that generation that really, you know, takes to the streets, you know, walks on the Capitol, boycotts, because if nothing else, you know, you can imagine if we all decided one day to pull our money out of the banks... Zach: Whoo...Debra: That's trillions of dollars. That's trillions of dollars.Zach: Yeah.Debra: Yeah, and so we might have--the activism may have to become real in the next 12 to 18 months if Trump is reelected. If not, I do think that the conversation, there's gonna be some--there will still be a conversation about "Okay, what does affordability look like?" 'Cause the homelessness is not going away. You know, we're one of the wealthiest states and we are so troubled by it. So I think that that conversation will continue, and we might as well grab hold of what we think wealth looks like. And like I said, it's the freedom to do a lot of things that you otherwise couldn't do. Call up your cable man or your repair man. [laughs] Yeah, and I actually think that's gonna then build community, right, in that if I know my mom is taken care of or my dad can retire comfortably, or my daughter, who does not have the American dream of buying a house--like, that's not... she's like, "What?"Zach: Definitely not in California. No way.Debra: Well, it's not even a part of the dream, right? She's more aspirational. "Maybe starting my own company or, you know, traveling globally." And I was like, "Wow," because that reality is not there for her. So to buy a home, it's not aspirational because it's not achievable.Zach: Well, and when you think about, like--I 100% hear you. The reason why I reacted when you said pull out the money from the banks was like, you know, this is not, like, "It's a Wonderful Life," right? Like, you know, nobody's gonna be like, "Well, your money's at Ted's house, at Bill's house." Like, no. The money--if that was the type of protest, if that happened, like, oh, my gosh. I mean, we gotta have you back on and just talk about, like, even the concept of protest, because--anyway, this has been a profound conversation, Debra. Thank you so much. Y'all, this has been Living Corporate. You know what we do. We're having intentional, authentic, transparent conversations every day. Again, I really want to emphasize, what I really enjoyed about this conversation and what I really hope our listeners are grasping and understanding is that shifting and creating equity and really having authentic conversations about diversity, equity and inclusion has to involve engaging and tackling systems, y'all. If we're not talking about engaging systems, we're not doing the work. Right? So I know a lot of us, there are people who listen to this show who are, like, diversity, equity and inclusion consultants, and there are people who listen in who are trying to figure out and trying to get the secret sauce on, like, this next generation, the workforce of the future. Like, y'all, if we're not willing to tackle and dismantle, or rebuild and, like, really think about these systems that are in play, we're not making change, y'all. Look, you can check us out on social media. @LivingCorp_Pod, on Instagram @LivingCorporate, and then look, we're all over Al Gore's internet, right? For those of us who are blessed to have digital access, you just type in Living Corporate on Google and we'll pop up, but we have all of the different domains, okay? So let me just rattle them off real fast, okay? You've got livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, livingcorporate.net, livingcorporate.us. We have all the livingcorporates except livingcorporate.com, okay, but we have living-corporate--please say the dash--dot com, all right? Now, we're all over the place, and again, we're coming at y'all every week with this stuff. Today was a super dope conversation with the new CEO, Debra Gore-Mann, of The Greenlining Institute, a policy, research, organizing and leadership institute working for racial and economic justice. Make sure y'all check out the information in the show notes. 'Til next time, y'all. Peace.

In this episode I'm speaking with Brendon Kumarasamy. He is a business transformation consultant at IBM. But more than that, what really drew me into his vibe is the way he holds himself up and the way he is teaching others. I connected to Brandon through the Unconventional Leaders Group. And we've got to share each other's stories in the green room and few times ago in the back in the past, and he's been generating some really cool content on YouTube, where he's teaching you how to actually speak. So I've learned a lot through these videos. He's also a speaker and weekly speaking in front of many organizations, helping many people and learning the art and Mastering the Art of public speaking. Our Guest Brenden Kumarasamy Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/brendenkumarasamy Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBYFP4mZLQovr7W6Si6sueA Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/masteryourtalk/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mastertalkyt/ Hacks to take away The way he holds himself up and the way he is teaching others. The business of mastering to speaking ability to public speaking mastery. Things called business competitions. Starting a YouTube channel. Where master talk started. Creating content for somebody, you really need to focus on what specifically are they looking for. The more you exercise a specific habit a specific thing, the better you get at it. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hacksandhobbies/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hacksandhobbies/support

Amanda and Jenn discuss poetry, East Asian fiction and fantasy, books in translation, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by the Book Marks Journal, Tailored Book Recommendations, and Book Riot Insiders. Subscribe to the podcast via RSS, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Stitcher. Feedback Two Old Women by Velma Wallis (rec'd by Terry) The Blind Contessa's New Machine by Carey Wallace (rec'd by Terry) Questions 1. I have recently been fascinated by both historical fiction and fantasy novels inspired by various East Asian cultures. I have always loved these genres, but growing up my reading centered around more European inspired fantasy and usually regency or WWII historical fiction reads, all from very Western perspectives. I read Memoirs of a Geisha in high school and loved it, but my fifteen year old self did not realize how problematic it was! In the fantasy genre, I've picked up a few more books recently, but I would love to find more, even if they are backlist. I would also love to be able to support #ownvoices authors, as I know there has been harassment particularly in the US towards some members of these communities. Some historical fiction I've recently read or picked up already: Pachinko (LOVED), The Library of Legends (TBR), The Night Tiger (wanted to love, but incest vibes are a hard ICK factor for me that I can't get past), The Lotus Palace (TBR) Fantasy I've read or already picked up: The Poppy War (love), Girls of Paper and Fire (love), Forest of a Thousand Lanterns (love), Flame In the Mist (love), Spin the Dawn (TBR) -Hillary 2. Looking for a good, funny, relaxing book that is 400+ pages and will give me wanderlust! -Abby 3. Hi! I'm always trying to read more books in translation because I love learning about new cultures. I also started tracking the country of origin of my reads lately and didn't feel great about the fact that about 80% of the books I read come from either the US or Canada (I'm Canadian). So I've been making more of an effort, but I find most books in translation are super literary and dense, and that's not always what I'm looking for. I'm hoping for books in translation that are a bit easier to read. I'm not picky about country of origin, and my favourite genres are fantasy and contemporary fiction. I'm looking for something more Fredrik Bachman or Cornelia Funke, and less Haruki Murakami. -Magdalene 4. My 16 year old son is looking for books where magic exists in the everyday world and everyone knows about it. So you might find a herbs and amulets shop next to a shoe shop, and the library openly has a magic books section. He would prefer little or no overt sex or romance as he is aro/ace and finds both uncomfortable. Thank you. -Kerry 5. In the last couple of years I've stumbled on a peculiar plot setup in tv and movies that I really enjoy and would love to explore in book form. It's the "kids face strife as children and escape, then grow up and reunite to destroy it once and for all." I'm thinking of tv shows like The Haunting of Hill House, movies like It, and books like Meddling Kids. I really enjoyed all of these, especially Hill House since it really explored the characters and their relationships. I read Hill House and enjoyed it but it wasn't anything like the show, and It gave me horrible nightmares and I couldn't finish (though no other Stephen King books have). I'm hoping you'll know of more books that might scratch this particular itch. I'm open to books with a similar set-up outside the horror genre, it's really more the reuniting friends/siblings and facing trauma together that is the big draw for me.  Thanks, y'all! -Eileen 6. I was recently diagnosed with cancer and had to have surgery to remove the tumors. I would love some recommendations on characters dealing with the diagnosis of cancer? It can be fiction or nonfiction. Thanks -Brittney 7. Hi! I am a big fiction reader, but I have been wanting to get into poetry recently. I will read basically anything, and lately I have been reading romance, fantasy and memoirs. I am a Hispanic 19-year old female, if that helps. I would love something a bit modern, contemporary and non-traditional. A book of poems would be ideal.  Thanks! -Maria Books Discussed How We Disappeared by Jing-Jing Lee (tw rape) Dandelion Dynasty by Ken Liu (Grace of Kings #1) Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan (rec'd by Tika) The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer (Cinder #1)  Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, transl by Ginny Tapley Takemori A Hero Born by Jin Yong (Louis Cha), translated by Anna Holmwood Recommended with Sherry Thomas  Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor Jade City by Fonda Lee (tw: discussion of child abuse and child pornography) The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth (tw: self harm, fatal overdose, torture, gore) The Bus on Thursday by Shirley Barrett All the Wild Hungers by Karen Babine Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón

Longtime podcaster, full-cast audio pioneer and independent filmmaker, and author of 30 books, J. Daniel Sawyer hosts the daily writers podcast The Every Day Novelist dedicated to creativity, process, writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life.TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLESHOW LINKS:Subscribe to my YouTube Channel: youtube.com/c/KevinTumlinsonWordslinger Podcast on YouTube: youtube.com/c/wordslingerpodcastAuthor.Email: author.emailIndie Author Blueprint: indieauthorblueprint.comGUEST LINKS:Website:: http://www.jdsawyer.netAmazon Author Page:: https://www.amazon.com/J-Daniel-Sawyer/e/B003L9JM92Twitter:: @dsawyerFacebook:: https://www.facebook.com/jdaniel.sawyerHow can people join your mailing list?: http://jdsawyer.net/about/mailing-list-signup/SPONSORS:DRAFT2DIGITAL: Convert, publish, and distribute your book worldwide, with support the whole way. https://draft2digital.com/wordslingerACORNS: Start an Acorns account today and get FREE MONEY! kevintumlinson.com/acornsAUDIBLE.COM: Get a FREE 30-day trial of Audible and listen to any audiobook in their vast library, when you go to http://audibletrial.com/wordslingerTRANSCRIPT:SUMMARY KEYWORDSbook, people, podcast, nanowrimo, pandemic, years, worldview, everyday, talking, novelist, life, interesting, grew, read, thought, recorded, held, listen, writing, questionsSPEAKERSKevin Tumlinson, J Daniel SawyerKevin Tumlinson 00:01Hey everybody, thank you for tuning in for sticking through the intro. I'm not even sure what I said in the intro, but I promise I will, I can guarantee at least I was interested in it. So thanks for tuning in and playing along. So today we're talking to Jay Daniel Sawyer. Now I'm going to read his bio here because it's it's got some great details for you but longtime podcaster full cast, audio pioneer, and independent filmmaker and author of 30 books. Jay saw your hosts the daily writers podcast, the everyday novelist, dedicated credit to creativity, process, and writerly discipline, and cultivating a fertile mental life. That's the part I wanted to get to in your bio. I like the idea of a fertile mental life. How's that? How's that shake out? And welcome to the show.J Daniel Sawyer 00:52Hi, Doug diggin Kevin. Yeah, you were on everyday novelist. What about it? But two years ago, I thinkKevin Tumlinson 00:58Yeah, a little bit. Doesn't seem like that long.J Daniel Sawyer 01:01I guys been crazy packed two years and like, every sense. Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 01:06yeah. I feel like I've done a billion podcasts and webinars and live stream since then. And that's just this week. Oh, no. Yes. And I, you know, and I told you this before we started and I'm, I'm going to apologize to the rest of the world. Because if I sounded all frazzled, or off my game, it's because we've had so there's that on top of a pandemic, and I don't know when you're listening to this, it's probably a little bit in the future for sure. Maybe things turned out all right. And if so, thank you world for playing along. But uh, you know, things have been a little crazy. In terms of stuff we're doing with DDD, we got these spotlights, we're doing like every day, and then my buddy here pops in and I for some reason, I thought it was one of my author consults. So So I'm off base. I'm off kilter man. We're gonna get back on trackJ Daniel Sawyer 02:04so I think we'll do fine.Kevin Tumlinson 02:06How is everything in the James J Daniel Sawyer world man Tell me a little bit about what you're doing right now.J Daniel Sawyer 02:12Oh well right now I'm stuck up in the backwoods I moved up to the backwoods of New England for a week in order to help my parents relocate a year ago It turned out that their their retirement house needed some renovations. So Oh, got stuck here. And just as we were getting ready to leave the quarantine comes down. So I might be stuck here another year. So there's a lot of interesting refactoring going on.Kevin Tumlinson 02:36But that seems to be the way that works out. I mean, we we were we moved out of our apartment and moved into our in laws place for a few days, quote, unquote, and then 14 hit and we're like, well, they're gonna hunker down anyway. Go ahead.J Daniel Sawyer 02:54Yeah. But yeah, it's it's good. It's, you know, we're on we've got 50 acres to play with. So there's a Lots of good time for outside notice and using the opportunity to resurrect my fiction podcast and get some work ahead done on the homestead we're building on the other side of the country. Right? So it's, it's gonna work outKevin Tumlinson 03:15what kind of work ahead can you do if it's on the other side of the country?J Daniel Sawyer 03:18There's a lot of design stuff. Yeah design, designing and costing sourcing stuff for the first buildings figuring out order of operations for at what stage we do the well when we do the catchment, what's the priority of how much electrical build out because where we are, it's a quarter mile beyond the last electrical pole. So it's 20 odd thousand just to bring power in. It's actually a lot cheaper. Even though we're in an iffy climate zone. It's actually a lot cheaper to go solar. So, right. Yes, that's a whole new set of things I've been learning about andKevin Tumlinson 03:53Oh, man. Yeah, you're talking to the right guy. Cool. This is I have to so you know, You know that we're getting into an RV full time again? Yeah. So the the two biggest problems, the three big problems. One, the two are bigger than the third. But internet is the biggest challenge. You know, power isn't such a big challenge unless it's going to be hot. And then we have Eric. Right. So, yeah, so solar power and generators and alternative energy are all in my mind. I'm thinking about installing something on the wheels of the camper that as we rolling in generates power.J Daniel Sawyer 04:36I've been studying doing that kind of stuff. It should be pretty, pretty simple.Kevin Tumlinson 04:40Yeah, man. Yeah. by simple, you know, that's a relative term.J Daniel Sawyer 04:44Well, it's a relative term. But the question is, would it be more efficient than just putting a bigger alternator in the truck? Yeah. And then, and then routing it to the chargeback.Kevin Tumlinson 04:55That's something else I I've considered. Well, yeah, whatever. This has been alternate energy talk everyone.J Daniel Sawyer 05:03So, well, you know, we were talking about a fertile mental life. Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the one of the things about creativity is it's nonlinear, you can't reason your way into what you have to do is you have to create a broad, a broad base of knowledge and experience and interests to pull from. And so, you know, one of the ways that I keep myself Spry is by picking interesting stuff that's not related to anything else I'm doing and finding a way to get interested in it because I always get story ideas out of it.Kevin Tumlinson 05:35Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's interesting. And that and so that's what you mean by by fertile mental life?J Daniel Sawyer 05:42Well, partly, I've just finished a book called The autodidact Bible, which should be coming out. I think we've set the publication date for early July. Yeah. Which is a basically a comprehensive toolkit for teaching yourself how to self educate, eat, whether you're self educated. With philosophy or with carpentry, and everything in between,Kevin Tumlinson 06:04man, I gotta tell you, though, hmm, you should call it a fertile mental life. The other didactics Bible. Thank you.J Daniel Sawyer 06:11I've been looking for a good title for it because the working title is a bit wonky. Yeah, so I'll write that down.Kevin Tumlinson 06:20I think that's gonna work. I would buy that book. All right, I wouldn't buy the first one.J Daniel Sawyer 06:25right because it sounds really technical. ItKevin Tumlinson 06:27sounds like it's gonna Yeah, like, I'm gonna have to read this with like one of those clear rulers. Oh,06:35I lost I lost your lightingKevin Tumlinson 06:36just went away. Yeah, well, good thing nobody everyone listening is doesn't know that.J Daniel Sawyer 06:41Yeah, speaking of off grid power,Kevin Tumlinson 06:44no joke. Now, I'm not really sure why that happened. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna let that charge up while I'm on with you. Okay,J Daniel Sawyer 06:52both backlit, so it's sort of fair. Exactly.Kevin Tumlinson 06:57Things things like this are always happening to me lately. I don't What's going on? Um, so yeah, we'll get off that see this one talking about some I get off track justJ Daniel Sawyer 07:09because I'll just chase whatever and that's okay. you stumble ontoKevin Tumlinson 07:12you know, I studied improv and you know, you roll with whatever is gonna come at you. Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 07:17yes, yeah, yes and or no but but never Yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 07:20So, uh, I, let's talk a little bit about your well wouldn't talk about your book. Do you want to talk a little about your book? I was gonna get off on your podcastsJ Daniel Sawyer 07:32there. Let's get off on the podcast. They're related. They'reKevin Tumlinson 07:35related, okay, who partly out of the other. So tell me. How did the show get started? Like what made you decide to do itJ Daniel Sawyer 07:41back in? I think it was 2006 Yeah, 2005 or 2006. I went to a write in for NaNoWriMo at Central Park in Berkeley. And Chris, whatever his name is the guy that started NaNoWriMo was there and so I got to talk to you too. Like, why'd you know why did he do this? I'd never done it before. It always seemed kind of silly to me. And he said, Well, I wanted to be a writer and I couldn't motivate myself. So I decided to pick the most difficult month in the year and intentionally write a book there to prove to myself I could do it. Yeah, I thought that was kind of a cool idea. So I wanted to trying to do NaNoWriMo that year and I completely failed. But the the lit the minor features of the conversation like going in the direction of greatest difficulty in order to build up your writing chops, really sunk in made a big difference to me as a writer to my productivity and to my general approach to all things writerly. So, I had in mind always want especially once I started podcasting, I always thought it would be fun to do sort of a walkthrough of NaNoWriMo for the newbie who'd never written a book before. Okay, and about 2016 I had the free time. So I sat and did it. And I got to the end of this 30 day walkthrough, which has since evolved into my book becoming an everyday novelist. And I started getting emails from people saying, Please don't end it here. We've become dependent on it. And so I, I went on pod and I read a couple of these. And I said, Okay, so look, here's the problem. It took me, God, you know, God knows how many untold hours to work out the program for this 30 day walkthrough to put things in the right place to write the copy that whole bit. So if you want me to keep this going, you've got to make it easy for me send me questions or something. Yeah. And I thought that was gonna be the end of it. But they sent questions. And they kept sending questions, and they kept sending questions, and it's now four plus years on and we're just creeping up on 1000 episodes now, and they're still sending questions. Occasionally, a question will spin off and I'll do a special series or or I'll have a guest on every once in a while. Then about about two and a half years ago, I wrote a I cracked the formula for hemlines juvenile books. And so I wrote a Heinlein juvenile and did a walkthrough of how to write a headline juvenile interesting and you know, some other stuff like that. But as the years have gone on, the questions have gotten more and more interesting. We get into history in psychology and philosophy in general auto didacticism and mental health management and physical health management. And the reading list that I refer people to keeps growing and growing and growing.Kevin Tumlinson 10:41Yeah, was what puts you though, on that specific course like you are? Well, I guess more the more important question is like how are you answering those questions like where are the answers come from?J Daniel Sawyer 10:55Well, I read the questions when they come in and then about one second Good enough to do a block I record 15 to 30 episodes in a day. Yeah. And do it all off the top of my head. Okay, I'm, I'm Constance I grew up in I literally grew up in academia, both grandfathers are cattle ranchers and then my father is a theology professor. So I grew up idolizing my blue collar grandparents and hanging out in the college where my father taught. So I was like, auditing classes when I was six, seven years old. Just Yeah, I thought it was cool. Not realizing I was picking up useful stuff. Right. And I've just always loved learning and hated school. So I've become the I quit. I dropped out of school at 15. I started working full time and going to college on the sly. And just read, read, read, experiment, learn, do a bunch of different stuff. I've, I've run a courier company. I've run a couple of publishing companies. I've been in the tech world. I've run a music company. or not, that was music services company like MC live sound mixing and doing videos, that sort of thing. And over the years, I've built up this toolkit for how to navigate any situation and come out of it. Come out of it, learning a lot about it. That's crazy and how to cross apply those things to other areas so that you can bootstrap on multiple fronts at once. Yeah. So when someone comes in and asks a question, and I'm really I'm always really careful to separate my opinion from the state of the art in a given field and what the state of my knowledge is, and then, if it's something that's, you know, socially controversial, or that's fraught in the field, I refer to sources that contra counterbalance each other and when it's when it's something more historical, I just didn't refer to a couple of good books that are they give more depth on this. subject that I'm able to give. We've done deep dives on the history and background of the writing of certain influential books, you know, that kind of stuff.Kevin Tumlinson 13:09Yeah. And you're cataloging all this somewhere so that people can can access Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 13:14yeah, there's a there's a on the website at everyday novelist calm there's a reading list of basically every book we've ever recommended on the cast. Do you album,Kevin Tumlinson 13:25are you monetizing that somehow? Are you you know, people got paid?J Daniel Sawyer 13:30Yes. No, no, well, it's, it's free. Listen, I've got Patreon subscribe star and the gumroad subscription feed all currently doesn't bring in very much but yes, for me, it's kind of a pay it forward thing I need to figure out how to monetize it a little better, because that's taken ungodly amount of time.Kevin Tumlinson 13:46That's always a challenge too. Because, you know, you like me. I mean, I I've lost track of how much I've put out there. that's meant to help the community but you know, at some point you do have to make a living. Luckily, my books make money. Living. So that's great. But he put in all this time and energy, you feel like there should be some sort of monetary reward.J Daniel Sawyer 14:09Well, people who listen to this, if you come over and listen to the cast kick $1 in here and there or buy the books through the Yeah, the site that really helps out a lot. One of the lovely things and you'll know, that's one of the lovely things about being sort of off the beaten track, whether you're in an RV or going or we were in an RV for a couple years or going off to the middle of the woods, is you have the freedom to live on quite a lot less than everybody else does. Right? So it doesn't take a whole lot to meet your monthly bills. So you know, we don't make a lot it really does help with the budget, but genuinely, every dollar helps us both nice and a little bit of a downer.Kevin Tumlinson 14:49Yeah, well, but I guess if you really think about it, that's just gonna be true no matter what I mean, you. Yeah, I mean for most people, for like, we'll say 90% of people. That's probably going to be the truth.J Daniel Sawyer 15:01It's got interesting. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting watching what kind of long term effects this whole. This whole endemic pandemic adventure has on people's determination to work from home and other things over the long term that could seriously change the shape of the way things work.Kevin Tumlinson 15:18I predict that I honestly think we're, we've just we just witnessed, like a leap forward in the evolution of a civilization. As you know, everything we understood has come to an end. And we're now going to reinvent ourselves.J Daniel Sawyer 15:35That's a lot more true than you might realize. Because it's not just the social changes that this is forcing. But there is another set of social changes that was waiting in the wings for coming to three years from now when the boomers hit mass retirement that this has accelerated. Yeah. And that is that because of the global demography, the demand driven economic expansion that started With the Black Death just ended, right just ended. Right? That's 500 years of political, social, and economic and ethical systems all premised on the notion that things would continue to grow at a moderate rate forever. They don't work anymore. Right? I'm planning on editing an anthology later this year dealing with potential new ways to do things where growth is not an embedded obligation of the system. Figure science fiction needs to get back to hardcore speculation. SoKevin Tumlinson 16:32I think we also just witnessed the opening of a whole new door when it comes to intellectual property and the way culture reacts with it.J Daniel Sawyer 16:42Yeah. Very interesting.Kevin Tumlinson 16:44Yeah. I'm real curious to see what happens. Because you know, you think about everything we've seen of late like all the little sessions where people do like, you know, oh, sorry about that. No problem. You got to clean anything up. You Good.J Daniel Sawyer 17:00No, no, I just wasn't my reflector wasn't backed by a strong enough, strong enough Wait,Kevin Tumlinson 17:05all right. You know those all those videos and everything that have popped up like nurses and doctors singing or high school kids singing something and performing something, you know, all that stuff is out there, it's getting a lot of attention. And some of it is easily even sort of inadvertently monetized. And but nobody is having to secure the rights to that stuff right now. SoJ Daniel Sawyer 17:30I'm curious to see what happened has to be some there's gonna have to be a new new compulsory licensing scheme, like happened in the 20th is when radio came in?Kevin Tumlinson 17:39Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know that there's a whole thing going on with this has been in discussion for years really, because this is why the Creative Commons first kind of came on the scene, but, you know, can you really truly own an idea and is it beneficial to society for you to own the idea Yeah, and we need to make a living as content creators. But do we, you know, how far does that extend in terms of ownership? So, you know, I'm, I kind of am on in that boat of, you know, ideas want to be free, like the guy who created Yep. Was it Oracle? No, it was a Linux, creator of Linux. Yes. But at the same time I make my living from my ideas. So.J Daniel Sawyer 18:30Oh, no, it was, it was it was it was a bill, what's his name from Sun Microsystems said that.Kevin Tumlinson 18:34Okay. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah. No, no, probably. Yeah. No, IJ Daniel Sawyer 18:39yeah. No, I'm the same way. I've quite a lot of my stuff is creative commons license. And I you know, I've interviewed Cory Doctorow years ago and yeah, and, and the greatest The greatest enemy of any new artist is obscurity and not piracy, all that sort of stuff. Yep. totally on board with that. And on the other hand, the yeah The rationale for copyright law is that the for the civilization to benefit from the culture, people have to be incentivized to make it. And when everything was expensive to publish, that was very easy to that was a very easy line to draw, but it's not anymore and we've delayed rethinking that seriously. years and nobody has put Yeah, I think you're right, that dam just broke.Kevin Tumlinson 19:27Yeah, I absolutely think it has. And, you know, of course, one of the things that's that's been happening since since the pandemic started almost hesitate to talk about the pandemic at all honestly, because by the time this episode airs we should hopefully be out ofJ Daniel Sawyer 19:45don't bet on it. I'm expecting that I'm expecting that there'll be a sawtooth quarantine forKevin Tumlinson 19:50we'll see we'll see if you're right if this good when this goes live, we'll see if that things change. I don't know what but whateverJ Daniel Sawyer 19:57I'll on record. So if my prediction everyone laughKevin Tumlinson 20:00at me gonna be a transcript and everything, man. Absolutely. So I think, you know, right now I know from, from my experience with drafter digital and in my own personal experience that ebooks, ebook sales have been just going through the roof. You know? And I mean, we've we've seen, like a 45% increase across retailers, but like 175% increase with libraries. So people are out there. IJ Daniel Sawyer 20:27got my book library sales have also gone way up. Yeah. Yeah. It's, so I seem to have the greatest penetration in libraries with my audiobooks. SoKevin Tumlinson 20:37that's interesting, though. That's interesting. Because most of the time when I think about audio books, I'm thinking like people are getting them to listen to while they drive into work or something. I would think so too, butJ Daniel Sawyer 20:49that maybe, you know, while there would be out everybody taking walks or Yeah, or cleaning the house, and if you're living in the house, you have to clean a lot more often.Kevin Tumlinson 20:59So how are you Balancing the podcasting and everything else you're doing with the writing, like how you keep on track.J Daniel Sawyer 21:08I tend to batch a lot, current. So like right now, it is called the everyday novelist because I usually write everyday but the last few months, because things have been so weird, it's been a little bit different. So I've currently got four books that I'm redlining. And the podcast is actually as much time as it takes sexual easy because I can batch it. So I'll just say okay, at the end of the recorded buffer is coming up, like when we're recording this, I've got another recording session tonight, because my buffer just ran out. I say at the end of the recorded buffers coming up, take one night to record them all. Then take a day to edit them all and post them and then that's that and but I do a lot of stuff with batch work. So I let you know enough of a pile pile up that I can do it as a project because With the exception of getting in a groove and writing every day, almost everything else I either get bored of or get. It starts to grind on me if it's a chronic thing, but if I have projects I can get through, then that Jazz's me up. SoKevin Tumlinson 22:16yeah, so that's it, you know, are you how much production goes into each of your podcast episodes?J Daniel Sawyer 22:25For the everyday novelist it's about a it's about a two and a half to one timewise. As you can tell, as we're talking here, I have a bit of a scatter shot. I tend to circle a topic before before angling in on it and sometimes there's a lot of stumbling associated with that right right. I like what I'm doing the everyday novelist because it's all improv I like to to narrow the stumbling down as much as possible. So right, it takes about twice as long to cut every episode as the final Listening length winds up being. Okay. So overall, I met including the recording time at about two or three to one production ratio.Kevin Tumlinson 23:10Alright, well alright, that's that makes sense. That's about what it what it takes for me so that I feel a little more comfortable. I am actually because I've been doing some other stuff recently live I'm actually considering shifting the model of this show to being a live format, essentially producing it on the fly. Yeah, it can be fun. It's a little tougher to get certain guests on. But you get the benefit of you know, the production is is done that day.J Daniel Sawyer 23:42Yeah, absolutely dead set out. And I really, I dig doing interview shows that way. When I'm, when I'm doing monologues. I like to massage the timing a lot because that that really helps with the delivery. Yeah, when you've got a conversation going on. The timing emerges from the interaction so you can avoid the editing if you want to.Kevin Tumlinson 24:03Yeah, that's exactly yeah, I like that part where everything is done for me automatically.J Daniel Sawyer 24:10Oh yeah.Kevin Tumlinson 24:12I started my I started this thing called the Kevin show. I don't know if you've seen any of those and they're ridiculous I haven't seen that yet. They're not right.J Daniel Sawyer 24:20They were your YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah. So I started I've got a tab open, but I haven't watched any of them yet.Kevin Tumlinson 24:26Yeah, well, I'm just gonna warn you in advance don't go there hoping for writing wisdom.J Daniel Sawyer 24:34But I figured it's us so it's probably gonna be like RV weird DIY stuff. And strange. There's gonna be all kinds of stuff.Kevin Tumlinson 24:41Yeah. So it started literally that show. So yeah, okay, I'm gonna bring us back around to what we're discussing here. But that show started as me and Nick factor. I said to Nick, you know, when I was so stressed out from the moving from the pandemic from, you know, just being inundated with things So you know, what I would love to do is just do something stupid fun, no agenda, no plan and call it I could call it the Kevin show, because that's ridiculous. And just put it out there live and have fun for 30 minutes, distract people. And he, he said I'd go on that. And so within an hour, I had designed that entire show, from the graphics to music to a video intro to booking my first guest. And the next day it went live. And I've done one every week since so that's dad said, to bring it back to the important thing of this interview, which is you that shows I think that process of the fertile mind, you know, the the fertile mental life that you are, that you are focused on, or would you would you disagree with that? kind of put you on the spot?J Daniel Sawyer 25:56No, no, I think that's a great example to the brain. branching out. It's Oh, I'm trying to think of something pithy to come back to that. But yeah, I think you've got it exactly.Kevin Tumlinson 26:07That's something.J Daniel Sawyer 26:09Life is chaotic, interesting and complicated. And it doesn't easily fit into any of the categories that anybody likes to impose on it. Yeah. And I can't remember who I ran into from it might have been, it might have been something out of one of two labs books. But I came across this idea of it's better to have strong opinions loosely held. Yeah, then then weak, then weak opinions strongly held. Most people have weak opinions strongly held. They have ideas that they like, they can't really support them in in the face of a monumental challenge, but they'll hold on to them for dear life because they're identified with them.Kevin Tumlinson 26:50Exactly. Sort of. Yeah,J Daniel Sawyer 26:52I like that core way. I prefer to be able to articulate what I'm thinking in a very useful strong way, right and be comfortable enough with my own level of ignorance that I can change my opinion when something challenges it and it doesn't, in my opinion doesn't stand up in the teeth of whatever I'm engaging with. As a result of course, I've had multiple interesting worldview shifts over my life. I've been all over the political spectrum. I've had three different religions. And but, but it's but the reason is that, that I'm more interested in figuring out what's actually going on and engaging with life in a in a deep way. And if that's my priority, then what's expendable has to be my determination to cling on to the things that might otherwise make me feel secure.Kevin Tumlinson 27:54Yeah, okay. That is I Exactly. I love the way you have Put that if that is an actual quote, I need to go find it about strong or strong opinions. Loosely held. Yeah, yeah, that's I feel like that's me. And I think I think the danger is people hear strong opinions and then decide. That's where you stand. And so the idea that you might change your mind from a strong opinion, and pivot to a new worldview is is completely foreign to some folks. But I think that's that's the right way to be personally, I like that.J Daniel Sawyer 28:30Yeah. And I do and I mean, one of the things you're, you're like me, you're, you're a little bit north of 30, at least. And one of the things by the time you hit your mid 30s, you realize that whether you want it to or not your worldviews gonna change. Yeah. Because the cumulative experience you build up, gradually goes out of sync with your ideology, whatever ideology that is, because ideologies are models that we build to deal with the world. They're not the world itself and any model is going to have holes in it. Yeah, and the. So when you're in your 20s, it's really easy to righteously hold on to everything because you are fighting for the good. But the older you get, the more that instead of that makes you look, instead of making you impassioned, and a person of great conviction, makes you look kind of stupid. Yeah, because you're not you look vapid and hollow? Well, yeah, because what's happening is while your practical worldview is changing, and you can always tell by the evidence of someone's behavior, rather than what they say, what you believe is reflected in what you do not in what you say. And as you get older, if you're holding on to those, to those early convictions that tightly, the gap between your behavior and your speech will grow. And if you look in the mirror, and all of us eventually do or at least most of us eventually do. You notice that disconnect and that's when you have the existential crisis, who,Kevin Tumlinson 30:02yeah, if you've ever read Carol Dwight's book about my called mindset, it talks about exactly you should tell you, that will probably end up on your list of recommended books, because it talks about that very idea. And it's the closed mindset versus the open mindset, you know, and we tend to look for things that become part of our identity when, especially when we're young, especially when we're vulnerable. Like we're, you know, the bullied high school kid, you know, can say, Well, people pick on me, but at least I'm really good at math. And so if you identify with that, and then you fail a math test,30:40you're crushed, suddenly, yep.Kevin Tumlinson 30:42Your whole identity was just taken for you were murdered, you know, in your, in your own mind. And so you start to think if I don't have that, what am I? Who am I? So anyway, um, so, unfortunately, we are we're closing in on our timeJ Daniel Sawyer 30:58on the end,Kevin Tumlinson 30:59which was is really unfortunate man I always I dig talking to you we know when am I coming back on your show man? I knowJ Daniel Sawyer 31:13whenever it's good for you let me know I would love to have you back on especially now you're working with Jeff to digital. I'd like to Yeah,Kevin Tumlinson 31:19cuz i don't think i was last time wasJ Daniel Sawyer 31:21last time you were last time you wereKevin Tumlinson 31:25completely independent.J Daniel Sawyer 31:26You You were just leaving your first stint at draft to digital I think it wasKevin Tumlinson 31:31no it would have been because I was still Oh yeah, so I was working for DDD, but IJ Daniel Sawyer 31:36stayed with a different position. Oh yeah, I was.Kevin Tumlinson 31:39I was getting on the road though. That's the only guy that would have been. So okay, yeah, so I still fresh it D to D Really? Because that happened like right after. Okay, there we go. That's the you haveJ Daniel Sawyer 31:50this. this. Yeah, the stuff you guys are doing over there, especially now that marks on the team and whatnot has gotten a lot more interesting. I keep signing up for the meetings and then not making them because Everything else in the world that's there recorded I really want.Kevin Tumlinson 32:04I'm gonna have to look back through from my recorded pop into your YouTube channel. Okay, which is officially youtube.com slash c slash draft to digital everyone. And while you're there, look for Kevin Tumlinson and you can tune into the Kevin show xo into plugs but tell everybody the more important URL is where can people find you online?J Daniel Sawyer 32:30You can find me at everyday novelist calm that's for the daily podcast. You can find a whole bunch of my other stuff audio books, full cast audio fiction podcasts, my rather scattered and sometimes very dark musings on the universe on my blog, and a complete list of the books that are available for purchase at the moment as well as my autodidacts reading list at WWW dot JDC. All your.net and I just want a very, very dark take on some of the stuff we were talking about earlier about the changeover and ages. Check out my blog post. The Abyss stares back.Kevin Tumlinson 33:12Yes. Excellent. All right. Well, you heard him everybody. Make sure you check that stuff out, buy his books, go see his stuff. Listen to his podcast. There's a lot you can do to keep him going throw a buck or two his way on Patreon. Let's let's make sure we're taking care of our own here, man. So Jay Daniel Sawyer, sir, thank you so much for being a part of the word slinger podcast.J Daniel Sawyer 33:34Thanks for having me on. It is a delight.Kevin Tumlinson 33:37Everybody else right now. Right now you're probably hearing the groovy bridge music. You may dance in place it will and if you stick around, I am sure to say something profound on the other side, and if I don't make fun of me, see you next time.

What happens when you're diagnosed with COVID-19 and you live with type 1 diabetes? It happened to Patric Ciervo in early March. Patric shares his story, including how his diabetes reacted, hospital issues with people who don’t really understand insulin pumps and how he’s doing now. In Tell Me Something Good, a familiar name in the diabetes community, recovering from COVID 19 and now donating plasma, we salute more health care heroes. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcription Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by one drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by real good foods, real food you feel good about eating and by dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with dexcom.   Announcer  0:21 This is diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:27 This week recovering from COVID-19 while living with Type One Diabetes, Patrick servo was diagnosed with the virus. In early March,   Patric Ciervo  0:36 my temperature started going down like a 101 to five times 5am it was about a 93 I woke up in a puddle of sweat, we call 911. Fearing that I was going into some type of shock   Stacey Simms  0:50 Patrick wound up in the emergency room with a committed he shares how diabetes was managed issues with people in the hospital who don't really get insulin pump And how he's doing now and tell me something good a familiar name in the diabetes community also recovering from COVID-19 and now donating plasma and we salute more healthcare heroes. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of diabetes connections so glad to have you along. I'm your host Stacey Simms, we aim to educate and inspire about type one diabetes by sharing stories of connection. My son was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two back in 2006. He is 15 now and a freshman in high school. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I don't have diabetes. I have a background in broadcasting and that is how you get the podcast I used to work in local radio and television news. Before I jump in with Patrick a little bit of housekeeping, we are fast approaching Episode 300 This is Episode 298. I have never made a big deal about numbering episodes because I don't know, it doesn't really matter what order you listen to the show in. I do number them internally just for organization, you know, keep track that way. And depending on what app you use, I know Apple podcasts will number them, you can see it right there in the app. Depending on what you use, it shows up or it doesn't. But we do have a very robust search engine on the website. And that does not rely on numbers. You just search by topic. And for me as I listen to podcasts, that's how I want to find previous shows, right? If I want to look something up, I'm gonna put the word into the search. I'm not gonna remember Oh, that was Episode 212, or whatever. I bring the numbers up though, because at 300 episodes, a lot of podcast apps start limiting what you see, when we get to 301 or you know, 350 or who knows 400 You're still only going to be able to see 300 episodes in the app. I'm not quite sure how many people are scrolling through to see everything. I am putting something new at the website you should be able to with one click to see all 300 episodes something unfortunately we don't have right now, because frankly, it just takes forever to load. But watch for that at diabetes, connections calm, they'll be a way to click and see all 300 episodes, if you're interested in kind of going back and scrolling through back to 2015. I should also mention if you subscribe on a podcast app like Apple podcasts, which is a really easy, easy way to listen to the show, if you listen through social media, that's fantastic. Listen, whatever, you know, whatever is easiest for you. But if you use a podcast app, and you subscribe, that 300 episode limit doesn't apply. you subscribe for free, I wish it was called something else. But when you subscribe to a podcast, it has nothing to do with buying a subscription or signing up for a subscription. You're literally saying to the app, give me all the episodes for free. So there you go. Gotta say a quick thank you for getting me to Episode 300. I'm so thrilled when we started I wasn't sure how long it would last. I certainly wasn't looking five years into the future. So thank you So much for listening for sharing these episodes and for frankly, becoming part of a community. We have an unbelievable Facebook group and I've connected so much with people over zoom and the chat over this time. I really appreciate it. So thank you for letting me continue to serve you. Diabetes Connections is brought to you by one drop. And I spoke to the people at one drop and you know, I was really impressed at how much they get diabetes. It makes sense because their CEO Jeff was diagnosed with type one as an adult. One drop is for people with diabetes by people with diabetes. The people at one drop work relentlessly to remove all barriers between you and the care you need. Get 24 seven coaching support in your app and unlimited supplies delivered no prescriptions or insurance required. Their beautiful sleek meter fits in perfectly with the rest of your life. They'll also send you test strips with a strip plan that actually makes sense for how much you actually check. Imagine that one drop diabetes care delivered, learn more, go to diabetes connections calm and click on the one Drop logo.   My guest this week was one of the first people in his community officially diagnosed with COVID-19. And Patrick servo was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes more than seven years ago. So like you I had a lot of questions about what it is like to live through Coronavirus, while also living with type one. Now, of course, keep in mind as we're speaking here, every case is different. Every case of Coronavirus of COVID-19 to be specific, presents a little differently, some very mild, some much more severe, a lot of asymptomatic cases we hear about and type one diabetes kind of goes without saying on this show. Everybody handles that differently as well. So please remember that this is about Patrick. We can extrapolate some information from here. Frankly, I find it very reassuring. But at the same time, please talk to your healthcare provider. Don't jump to conclusions and I will link up much more information at diabetes dash connections. Calm the episode homepage in the podcast show notes. So here's my interview with Patrick servo. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing? How are you feeling   Patric Ciervo  6:09 these days? I'm feeling well, thankfully, my symptoms have been gone for a while. And yeah, I've been feeling good.   Stacey Simms  6:19 Wow. All right. So from where I sit, not knowing anything really sad. It just seems so scary. So I appreciate you sharing your experience. Let's back up. How did this all start? You've been living with type one we should say for for seven, seven and a half years now. So you're not exactly new to type one. But what happened in terms of feeling ill a couple of weeks ago.   Patric Ciervo  6:40 So basically, early in March, I had a busy weekend and everything. There was a work event on Friday, about where we went out because there was someone's last day, but I was running around Friday and Saturday, Sunday night. I was at my girlfriend's apartment and we were just beat from the weekend she works with me. So we were just beat from the whole thing. And she noticed that my body temperature had started feeling hot. But because we were both rundown, we didn't really think too much of it. So, the next day I woke up, I felt good. I didn't really feel bad at all, like maybe a minor thing, but nothing to worry about. So I went to work Monday, but that night, my body temperature was hot again, and her roommates a nurse, so we had a thermometer, and my temperature was 103. So we went to the primary doctors on Tuesday, I was tested for the flu, which came back negative Faker really diagnosed me with anything. I didn't mention Coronavirus, but he didn't think it was that he tested me for the flu again with a more accurate test but the test will come back the next day. So in the meantime, he gave me an A biotic and Tamiflu and told me to take Motrin Tuesday night, my temperature started going down like a 1012. By the time was 5am. It was about a 93. I woke up in a, like puddle of sweat, we call 911 fairing vows going into some type of shock. And I was in the car since then.   Unknown Speaker  8:19 So when you guys called for an ambulance, were you thinking this is diabetes related? or What did you   Patric Ciervo  8:25 think? Well, she had looked up and everything that diabetics have more like more of a chance to go into a shock from fever or something like that. So she was kind of the one pushing the 911 call. So we did that. I didn't think too much of it until a little bit later on. When I was like in the ambulance, I still wasn't feeling well. By the time I got the ER, I was feeling good, and my temperature was normal.   Stacey Simms  8:53 It's so hard to be the person in that circumstance, right? You're not thinking exactly clearly the person that called you know, is trying to figure out What's going on? When do you remember? Do you remember when they said okay, this is gonna be COVID-19   Patric Ciervo  9:06 they didn't they test me again for the flu in the ER, they tested again twice, and that both of them came back negative. We got the call from our primary the second flu test that he did came back negative, but I was already like things were back to normal, my temperature was fine. So they tested me for COVID as a precautionary, and because they tested me, they put me in the ICU and my own room and they want me to be there until the test results came back, which they were told would be the next day. I didn't get it back till that Saturday. I was in there on a Wednesday. Wow. But the doctors that would come in saw me like I was immediately getting better and everything. My only symptoms before the diagnosis were the fever and a cough. I didn't have trouble breathing, but they thought I looked good enough that they didn't think It was COVID   Stacey Simms  10:01 That's amazing. So you start feeling better and that's when you find out that's what you had.   Patric Ciervo  10:05 Yeah, I know. So I'm thankful I can't like I was already on the mend when I found out and it was a little bit before like all the craziness started in the world and so I didn't go in in too much of a panic state. When I found out I was diagnosed with it. There was still like a shock like, oh God, like diabetic and I've been hearing these things aren't good, but I was getting better each day. So after like a deep breath and everything able to get back to a good mental state.   Stacey Simms  10:35 I know everybody wants to know about diabetes and you know what you now looking back what you think of that part of it, but I want to ask before we move on, How bad was that test for COVID-19 you hear like it's really far up the nose is that How bad was   Patric Ciervo  10:49 it? Yeah, it was. It was exactly that out the nose and everything as they did in both nostrils, two different ones at once. It was not fun at all. You know, it was something I could live with and everything.   Stacey Simms  11:04 I'm sorry to ask. I just you know, I think about what how they test you for strep. Yeah, right. It's always like you gotta gotta gotta get it far enough to gag a little bit. Uh huh. Your   Patric Ciervo  11:12 nose. Oh my god. Yeah, it was pretty much yeah, exactly like that only your nose and I was like, flinching and everything. But it was totally doable.   Stacey Simms  11:23 And I know it's worth it. Please don't send me nasty emails like, yeah, it's just one of those things that I don't want to ask about. But looking back, what about your diabetes during that time? I think people do get very concerned about you know, treatment and blood sugar's you didn't know you had it. So it was kind of difficult or different to think about managing that way. But looking back, anything stand out?   Patric Ciervo  11:45 Well, in the hospital, my blood sugar was higher than normal. For the most part. I'm not sure how much of that was the illness related. I was very stressed in the hospital and could not move at all. So I think that also had part to do with it. Because I didn't have a problem coming down from the highs, there was nothing with my diabetes to think like something's off. I need to get checked out the days leading up to it. I've been fairly decent you know for the most part   Unknown Speaker  12:14 so you didn't notice any like really wacky high blood sugars before the diagnosis. No, no treatment, right like that.   Patric Ciervo  12:21 No, no. Yeah, thankfully.   Stacey Simms  12:23 So when you got the test back at the hospital You said you were already kind of on the mend. How much longer did you stay there?   Patric Ciervo  12:28 They released me Friday, and I got the test back Saturday. So I was self isolating just to wait for the test result. And then that's when I got the call.   Stacey Simms  12:40 What do they tell you after you test positive what happens next even at home?   Patric Ciervo  12:44 Yeah, they had given me in the hospital what to do if it does come back positive. They gave me a worksheet like to do less than everything. Just basically everything we've been hearing, you know, self isolate for two weeks. I think it was something like 72 hours, but two ways you can be like out of the quarantine is for 72 hours, you can't have a fever and other symptoms have to be gone. And the other one was or you have to get tested again, it has to come back negative. And I didn't get tested again. When I was at home quarantine. I only had a fever one other time.   Stacey Simms  13:21 So you feel pretty confident your past.   Patric Ciervo  13:23 Yeah, I did develop a headache and the quarantine.   Stacey Simms  13:27 So again, back to diabetes. Did you ever sound like the mom now? But did you call your endocrinologist and loop them in? Right back to Patrick as he answers that question. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by real good foods. high protein, low carb, grain free, gluten free and terrific. If you're trying to eat keto, their line of foods just keeps getting bigger. We've been talking about them for so long. Now. I think when I started they only had pizza. Right, but now they have stuffed chicken breakfast sandwiches, you can get the pizza, just the crust, so you can kind of make it whoever you want. They have entrees. They are of course available in the grocery store freezers, but they're also so easy to get to your door, their whole line can be delivered. And they have a lot of specials right now. There's free shipping specials, but also on their website. If you sign up, you can get all the coupons and promos delivered directly to your phone, make it very, very easy. Find out more go to diabetes, connections comm and click on the real good foods logo. Now back to Patrick and I was asking him if he caught his endo when he was admitted.   Patric Ciervo  14:44 You know what, I had an incident in the hospital where when I got there, they asked me if I had an insulin pump. And I told them I did and they asked me if I wanted to like you know, administrate my own insulin. I said yeah, and there was a bit of a next up with The nurse who was under the impression she was giving me insulin shots, but they weren't not taking the fact that I already had insulin on board. And that, like they would not be calculating that. And so the insulin they gave me and they seem to not want to give me any type of basal insulin, they just wanted to do like check every two or three hours. If I was Hi, give me a correction. I didn't call my personal endo, because they're kind of hard to get ahold of. But I have a, I go to this camp for athletes with Type One Diabetes called diabetes training camp and the endo that has that, that ended that runs it. I texted him about that initially. And every day since then, he had texted me or called checking in how I'm doing. I told him my blood sugar's were high. He told me don't try to get to like 100 to 120. Don't aim for perfect, just as long as you're able to get to 140 to 180. You should be fine. I have any problems.   Stacey Simms  16:01 And yeah, I mean, that's one of the worries that I always have in the hospital. I mean, I'm there with my son being crazy mom. So you know, they're not going to give him extra insulin, but it's so frightening for you if you're there by yourself, which you had to be clear that up. I mean, I'm envisioning this nurse trying to give you a shot and you holding up your pump, you know, you're trying to ward her off. Did you argue with them?   Patric Ciervo  16:24 Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm not like, I like I don't like conflict at all and everything. But this was like, there was no way I wasn't standing my ground this and everything because I had like, four or five units on board, because I was trying to come down from like a 260 or something. And I'm explaining it to them, and explained that the doctor said that eventually they understood what I was saying after a few minutes. They said, All right, they'll talk to the doctor. And about 15 minutes later, they called me saying that the doctor says fine.   Stacey Simms  16:56 No, thank goodness. Do you use a CGM as well? Yeah. And did they let you kind of use that in the hospital? Did they insist on doing finger sticks?   Patric Ciervo  17:04 They did do finger sticks for their own record, they said, but that's all my phone. I was just going off that the whole time.   Stacey Simms  17:11 All right, so have you followed up with your endo? I mean, it sounds like you're on the mend. Doesn't sound like you needed to check in with him. I'm not trying to mom you   Patric Ciervo  17:17 right? Yeah, chicken. I mean, he was texting. We were texting and calling back and forth when I was doing the two week quarantine as well as my primary. My primary had called and everything I told him I had a low grade fever the one night he said, You know, sometimes that happens, I won't be too worried about it unless it's kind of a stays. And it the was one night and I woke up the next morning fine.   Stacey Simms  17:44 Alright, so I'm gonna ask you some personal stuff you do not have to answer. All right. Here we go. One of the things that I that we see so often when people in the diabetes community are talking about the fears of Coronavirus is you know, you have to have quote good Control to come out of this in good health, you know, and that we've seen that people, especially with type two diabetes, and all those comorbidities don't do well, but COVID-19 and I hit I always hate asking people I actually I don't I don't ever ask anybody in the show with their agency. And I'm not going to ask you, but are you a perfect diabetic?   Patric Ciervo  18:18 I'd say a B plus student. I'm definitely not perfect, but I overall I pretty well control.   Stacey Simms  18:27 I just think it's important to ask because, you know, I think there's a lot of fear that if you're a one c isn't 5.9 or 6.1, you know, consistently that that illnesses are just going to knock you down. And it's just not the case. Obviously, you want to be in good health, in quote, good control. So you know, share as much as you'd like. I think that's important to hear. I have seen a video or two of your Oh, yeah. You should say your comedian. Yeah. And you know, I've seen some of your blood sugars. They're not all the time.   Unknown Speaker  18:56 Right, right. Yeah. Which videos are you talking about?   Stacey Simms  19:00 Seek specifically there. I was thinking of the drinking game. Okay. Yeah.   Patric Ciervo  19:05 So yeah, just along with this episode. Oh, cool. Yeah, I that was a few years ago. So I kind of forget what was going on that I did that about three years after I was diagnosed three or four years. And my whole thing was FM pi, it's fine. But as long as I like, come down, I'm not gonna stress about it. Because in the beginning, my educator introduced me to one of her, like interns one day or, and she goes, like after I've been a diabetic for a year. And she says, This is Patrick. He used to call us every time he was about 200. And well, because I was told I wasn't supposed to be 200. So like the first like, year and a half, I was kind of like, going like crazy, making sure I could blood sugars. But once I realized I could be a little higher, and I'll be fine. Just as long as I came down. I was happy.   Stacey Simms  19:56 Yeah, definitely. I think we all handle this in a different way. You I have long decided that perfection is not an option.   Unknown Speaker  20:03 Yeah,   Stacey Simms  20:04 exactly. So I think it's just important to, to just kind of spotlight that a little bit and I appreciate you sharing that. I'm not gonna make you the spokesperson, I promise for people with diabetes who have been through something like this, but having gone through it, you know, what is your advice for other people with type one? You know, is there anything that you would tell people to to concern themselves with more or less?   Patric Ciervo  20:27 I mean, I kind of feel like basically, I didn't have that too hard at that experience, which is, in some ways I kind of feel bad because you know, I would like to say that like I fought all genders everything, like in spite but and I know everyone's experiences not gonna be like that. So I feel very fortunate, but like, I think a lot of the things like me recover quickly, was that the second I got to the hospital, I got there like when symptoms were early, and I've shot up with like fluids early. I think that's the number During my quarantine, I was drinking water, like non stop and take and taking vitamins. I was just doing everything I could to make sure even though I was feeling better that I wasn't going to let this slit, if you had to be in the hospital, I'd say definitely advocate like the hell of your diabetes management and how you go about it. I think for nurses who like work great, otherwise, they kind of have misinformation about what to do. Yeah,   Stacey Simms  21:29 I'm curious too. Did you bring a bunch of supplies with you? I've seen some people recommend, you know, take up to two weeks, you know, if supplies if diabetes supplies to the hospital if you have to go?   Patric Ciervo  21:40 Yeah, I mean, I'm on the on the pod so I grabbed all that I grabbed strips, and my my Omni pod and I grabbed pumps. I had my girlfriend put like juices and gummies in her purse, and then my parents did come up and everything from South Korea. They would go to my apartment and they bought more stuff when I need it.   Stacey Simms  22:04 It's so interesting because you were in the hospital before much of the lockdown or I shouldn't call you know, the the states that decided to self quarantine whatever we're calling it stay at home shelter in place. This would be for most of that went into place, wasn't it?   Patric Ciervo  22:20 Yeah, I mean, my first day in the hospital was the day Tom Hanks was diagnosed. So that's then. So that's basically my buck marker for how early it was you in Telmex? Yeah, same day.   Unknown Speaker  22:34 Uh huh.   Stacey Simms  22:35 You were diagnosed as a young adult. were you diagnosed correctly right away because I keep hearing more misdiagnoses at that age.   Patric Ciervo  22:41 I was diagnosed correctly. I really like my primary from South Jersey. I was in Ireland for a week, the week before. And I was drinking water non stop. I was in Ireland with my family. And my mom noticed two days later, we had a surprise birthday for At the surprise party all our friends are saying I look super skinny. So about two or three days later actually one day after her birthday, her actual birthday, she made me go to the doctor she talked to me and I told him my symptoms and he looked at me and he told us nurse to get the stuff to test me with instead tell my patients I'm going to be a while And so yeah, so my blood sugar was like 500 something and he made arrangements for me to go to the hospital and all that and gave me his personal cell phone if I need him at all during the night or something like that. And thankfully I didn't but yeah,   Stacey Simms  23:38 and you mentioned the the camp and then in the athletes that you've been involved with and you know, you believe I've done a lot of bike rides. Haha, did you find all of that because that makes such a big difference once you find that community?   Patric Ciervo  23:49 Yeah, that's definitely been like my lifesaver and everything prior to the diagnosis, went against into cycling, and I wasn't spiking like that much but Now my friends went to bike. So I was looking for a group to bike with. So in the hospital, I googled cycling and diabetes. And I found that jdrf ride to cure. And I contacted one of the coaches, who is also a type one. And the endo that runs this camp is his personal endo. So he gave me his information. And I think going there since   Stacey Simms  24:23 Oh, that's great. Yeah, going forward. Now, have you been instructed to do anything different? Are you just kind of back to full health? Do they monitor you? Do you diabetes wise or otherwise have to think about anything else?   Patric Ciervo  24:34 No, I did get a call from the health department and and Hoboken where I'm living now and in South Jersey, where I'm from, but other than just kind of initially checking in on me. I haven't heard anything. We get a call from my primary doctors nurse. I got a call from her a few times, just checking in, but since I recovered, no one seems to be concerned about me. I guess I Have a lot on their plate. But I've been self isolating. I've been doing everything. Basically everything everyone else has been doing washing hands. What? If I go out to walk the dog? I'll wear a mask and everything. You know, I don't know what's what. So just kind of be precautious in any area I can.   Stacey Simms  25:18 And I meant to ask when you were isolated for those 14 days. Did you live with your girlfriend? Did you live with anybody else or was that difficult for you guys?   Patric Ciervo  25:26 When my test result came back Saturday, she had already thought she had it. But she got tested then after my test result, and she came back positive. So we don't live together. But I have a roommate up in North Jersey, and my sister has a house to herself. She said she would go to Mar parents beach house for those two weeks and that I could use her house. So I was there for like a few days by myself. But once my girlfriend was diagnosed and everything, she has two roommates as well and she didn't want to be around them. They would still be isolated. together   Stacey Simms  26:00 in the hospital or otherwise they didn't treat you with anything did they? It doesn't sound like you were you know ascribed anything special?   Patric Ciervo  26:06 No they basically they did give me an A biotic when I left. And I think I don't even remember they were giving me lots of fluids and everything. Maybe they did give me some type of tail or something. I don't even remember what that was.   Stacey Simms  26:18 Yeah, yeah. But nothing on an ongoing basis.   Unknown Speaker  26:21 No, no. Well, Patrick,   Stacey Simms  26:23 I'm so glad you're okay. And thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Yes. Posted if you get the call to I don't know, donate plasma, or whatever the heck they're doing. Haha. You know, let us know what where you go from here, but I really appreciate you sharing your story.   Patric Ciervo  26:37 Yeah, thank you for having me in everything.   Unknown Speaker  26:45 You're listening to diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  26:51 More information at diabetes connections.com. I will link up more information about generally speaking, you know COVID-19 type one diabetes and other interviews with people with type one who have been admitted, diagnosed officially with COVID-19 and have recovered and are speaking about it. So I will I'll post all that information. I will also put the guest Patrick's blood glucose drinking game video that we mentioned, that's in the Facebook group. And I will post it in the show notes as well just go to diabetes, connections comm and click on the episode homepage. Patrick and I talked off the air briefly about the new policy or the provisional approval from the FDA to have CGM used in hospitals. And that would be hospitals would actually give the people admitted a continuous glucose monitoring system. dexcom is involved. Abbott is giving the Libra array. So it's very, very new. In fact, it was after Patrick was released from the hospital. I believe that the FDA approved that provisionally but what I'm trying to figure out still and maybe by the time this airs, we'll have the answer to this. I'm trying to figure out if that is Only for people who come in without their own system, right? mostly people with type two diabetes, as we had talked about in the conversation with dexcom CEO Kevin Sayer, or if you come in with type one diabetes, and they're more willing to use your own system, or if they give you one if you don't have one, so there's still a lot to figure out there. But as you heard, he still had to do a lot of educating. And that, to me is so difficult when you're the person who has type one and who is in need of medical care. I mean, not everybody is going to be as able, as Patrick was to describe the situation and say, you know, I've got this. So man, um, you know, we've got to keep advocating, we've got to keep educating, time for Tell me something good, which is usually a good segment for that. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by dexcom. We started with dexcom back in the olden days before share, and I always meet people who have no idea that there was a thing before share, right that there was a time when you couldn't look at your kids blood sugar on your phone. So trust me when I say using share and follow up really made a big difference. Benny and I have always set parameters about when I'm going to text him, you know how long I'm going to wait, that kind of stuff. And it really does help us talk and worry about diabetes less. If he's asleep over if he's away on a trip. It gives me so much peace of mind. It really helps me if I need to troubleshoot with him, because you can see what's been happening over the last 24 hours and not make a decision based in just one moment in time. The alerts and alarms that we set also help us from keeping the highs from getting too high, and help us jump on lows before there were a big issue. Internet connectivity is required to access separate dexcom follow up to learn more, go to diabetes, connections comm and click on the dexcom logo.   Tell me something good. Recently, we have shifted to talking about healthcare heroes and stories of people with type one diabetes who are in healthcare fields. And I'm going to talk about one in just a moment. But first, I want to share a great story about a gentleman who doesn't Have Type One Diabetes doesn't have diabetes at all. But he is very much a part of a diabetes community. You may know Mike mangus, because I've talked about him here on the show. And I've certainly talked about his products. Stay put medical is not a sponsor, but I love them. After all these years of trying different products. I think about two, maybe three years ago, we finally started using stay put, and this is gonna sound like a commercial, but it's unbelievable for Benny, everybody's skin is so different. So it can take a while to figure out what's right for you. Here's the example I give last summer stay put kept his decks calm on the entire week of diabetes camp. And then for three and a half days at the beach. Yeah, we restarted the sensor. So they were in the water every day at diabetes camp. They were sweaty, they were gross. And then we went to the beach and did ocean swimming and all the gross stuff in the sand. So that thing is unbelievable. But I'm supposed to be doing a commercial for state but sorry, just kind of setting it up. But Mike who heads up state but he was diagnosed with COVID-19 In early March, and he spent four days in the hospital, he is also fully recovered. And he's able to donate plasma in the hopes of helping others. Plasma donation for COVID-19. I mentioned at the very end of the interview with Patrick, it's newly regulated, it's experimental. So it isn't widely available or used yet. But Mike was right in the front saying I want to do this. He was knocking on doors as soon as he recovered. I will link up more of his story. He's got some coverage in the media, especially in Florida, where he lives. So I just think that's a great news story. And we'll follow Mike and kind of see how that goes and see what happens with plasma donations that could be really interesting, and hopefully helpful. I also want to tell you about Amy She is an RN. She's a mom to Marcus Marcus is 16. He was diagnosed in June of 2016. And he was 12 at that time, so Amy is a nurse at a rural health clinic in Oregon. And she says finding the balance between the demands of work she does have reduced it hours now, but even so, managing medical costs and keeping her and her loved one safe these days is a big challenge. She says I'm a quilter. So I've been making fabric masks for my co workers, high risk patients and acquaintances to keep myself busy. These are crazy difficult times. But I firmly believe this world would be a better place having made it through until then she says I'm taking T one D mom life by the horns, and one day at a time. Amy, thank you so much for sending that in all the best to you tell Marcus we said hi. And if you have a Tell me something good story, please go ahead and share it. You can shoot me an email Stacey at diabetes, connections calm. You can post it in the Facebook group. However you want to get it to me, you can message me on social media. I would love to tell your good news stories. And of course we post them on social media every week as well. Hey, can you hear that? Benny is playing video games. And the kids you can call them video games anymore, but you know what I mean, he's on his Xbox or whatever. He's screaming soul. Right now that if I didn't know better, I would think he was being, you know, physically attacked. And I've talked to my friends, this is very typical of teenage boys. Oh my god, they're so loud. So I'm gonna go yell at him when I'm done taping, I think it's gonna be all good. And maybe I'll go secretly record him some time. Just you can hear it. Oh my god. But hey, that's one of his big social outlets right now. You know, he gets in the headphones and plays with his friends and they're all together. So I'm not gonna complain too much. I'm gonna go in there and tell them to knock it off. The big threaten my house these days is you better behavior. I'm changing the Wi Fi code, you know, fate worse than death right now. And we're all on the systems all day long. I don't want to look at my time on my screen time, right or the time on your phone. They all have those features. Now you can tell how much you've been on the phone. Oh, my goodness.   Well, this is the part of the show where I generally talk about where I'm going. And I have been going a lot of places online recently. Yeah, I mean, it's all virtual. But I only bring that up because I want to tell tell you about a discount that I'm doing for the world's first diabetes mom right now. Yes, of course, if you're new, this is my book. It's available on Amazon. There's an audio book, you can get the Kindle version, of course ebook. So I'll put the link. It's always in the show notes. But I bring it up because I was talking to groups this week online, and I did a special discount code for them. And I want to pass it along to you. As I am taping this, I am scheduled to talk to jdrf in Michigan, and I'll be doing a world worth D parent meetup, which will probably already have happened by the time this episode comes out. But I've got a promo code not for Amazon, you have to go to diabetes connections.com and order the book through my website to get the discount. And it's very simple. The discount code is worst, just the word worst w o r s t. And that promo code will be good. Until next week, April 28. Again, that promo code is worst. I believe it saves you five bucks off the cover price. Unfortunately, you still have to pay for shipping. I know a lot of people go to Amazon because of that, but this will actually still be less than it costs on Amazon. promo code again is worst. And I can't wait to get back on the road, not just to sell books, although that's a lot of fun too, but you know, to meet people and do these presentations in person. There's so much fun to still do, but it's a little weird to talk to my computer and not talk to a crowd of people. I like the people a lot better. Well, thank you as always to my editor john McKenna's from editing solutions. Thank you for listening. I so appreciate you being here every week. What a time we're living through. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Unknown Speaker  35:48 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai  

On the eleventh installment of our See It to Be It podcast series, Amy C. Waninger speaks with Bobbie Shrivastav, co-founder and CPO of Benekiva, about her personal journey that led to the insurtech industry, and Bobbie graciously shares where she goes for support among other women and people of color in the insurtech space. Connect with Bobbie on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram.Find out more about Benekiva. They're also on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, for those of y'all who are new here, the purpose of Living Corporate is to create a space that affirms black and brown experiences in the workplace, right? There are certain things that only we can really understand, and when I say we I mean the collective non-white professional [laughs] in corporate America. And when we look around--if you, like, Google being black and brown in corporate America, you may see, like, a post in Huffington Post or something that kind of communicates from a position of lack, but I don't know if we necessarily see a lot of content that empowers and affirms our identity and our experience, and that's really the whole purpose of Living Corporate. It's with that that I'm really excited to talk to y'all about the See It to Be It series. Amy C. Waninger, who has been a guest on the show, who's a writer for Living Corporate, and who's also the author of Network Beyond Bias, she's actually partnered with Living Corporate to actually have an interviewing series where she actually sits down with black and brown professionals so that we can learn about what they actually do and see ourselves in these roles, right? So it's a variety of industries that she's--she's talking to a lot of different types of folks. You're gonna be able to see what they do, and at the same time you're gonna hopefully be able to envision yourself in that role, hence the title See It to Be It, okay? So check this out. The next thing you're gonna hear is this interview with Amy C. Waninger. Y'all hang tight. Catch y'all next time. Peace.Amy: Bobbie, thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?Bobbie: I'm doing good, Amy. How are you?Amy: I'm doing great. I was hoping you could tell me just a little bit about your company so that we can sort of level set on what the heck is insurtech anyway.Bobbie: So a little bit about my company. I'm co-founder and chief product officer of Benekiva, and our entire mission for our company is to bridge the gap between the carrier, the policy holder and the beneficiary, and we do that by offering carriers--right now we're focused on life and annuity--organizations with claims automation, asset retention and data management.Amy: And so for the people who aren't in the insurance industry or don't know a whole lot about life insurance, let's break that into plain English. So you're trying to solve the problem--I'm gonna put words in your mouth and you correct me if I'm wrong--you're trying to solve the problem where someone dies and they have a policy and their beneficiaries maybe don't know that that policy exists or how to get to it, and you're trying to help people get the money that they deserve based on those policies being in effect, right?Bobbie: So yes, so--it's actually six-fold, 'cause our--we have six different modules that we've created, but before I go into the six different modules, success for our company is when a beneficiary has just received a check that they had no idea was coming. For us, that is what we are striving towards. Our foot in the door is through claims, and what we've learned by just interviewing and just statistics alone is that the claims process is simply outdated, so we have a 100% digital claims solution that also includes moving the money if the carrier wants to. So that's our first module, then we have modules that allow carriers to track their unclaimed property in the shipment [logs?], Bene Retention is taking the claims process and giving the ability for the carriers to serve the beneficiaries by using their sales [force?]. The module that you talked about, which is Bene Update and Bene Notify. So what we want to do is Bene Notify is when a triggering event happens--and unfortunately in life it is a death, death is a triggering event, that's when we want to notify the beneficiary. But on the update side, what we want to encourage carriers is how do you create that engagement with the policy holder so that we're getting that Bene information ahead of time? So you're not--right now if you look at carriers and how they're trying to find beneficiaries, Google is their best friend. How do we make Google not their best friend? 'Cause they can't find these benes, so they're looking online, they're look at obituaries. It's just a manual process to just find a beneficiary. Amy: Yeah, you would think they would've had that under control years and years ago, but good for you for putting all those pieces together.Bobbie: Oh yeah, and we've heard horror stories, even on the carrier side, where their bene information is still in file folders. So it's not--they've not even done the transformation to get some of the information online. So yeah, it's a huge problem, and we are very excited to solve it. So that's what, you know, drives us every day.Amy: That's fantastic. So can you tell me--how did you get into this space? Because obviously you're solving a problem that's never been solved before, and something led you here, so what was it?Bobbie: So it's an interesting story. So in 2016 I was working on a startup with Soven, who's one of the co-founders of my original startup and Benekiva, and he's also my husband. So both of us had this startup around digital--it was a digital documentation and e-signature platform, and he has roots in Iowa, so we--his parents were coming from Nepal, so we decided to go visit them, and my key was, "Hey, we're beta testing this product." And the product is Docsmore. I'm not sitting there and hanging out with family. That's great, but I also want to do some business development and just see what the Des Moines area looks like--'cause we live in North Carolina. So that's what led us to meet Brent, 'cause we had reached out to several people, and there was one person in particular we met, and she was Brent's client, and Brent Williams was a financial advisor, a very successful financial advisor--250 million assets under management--so he met with us, and he initially thought--when his client heard about what we were trying to do she's like, "This is interesting. You should talk to Brent, and let me do the introduction," so it was once again that networking. It was so cool. So we met up with Brent, and Brent thought he was telling us about financial advisory 'cause of our corporate backgrounds. He was like, "Okay, they look like good couples. I can help serve them," and the entire conversation--this is when Soven's like, "We're more interested in learning about your startup. What is it?" You should have see Brent's eyes. He just, like, "Oh, my gosh. I gotta share about this insurtech startup" that he was starting, and it was--as a financial adviser, he has gone through the claims process with this policy holder's loved ones, and he's seen the breakdown from the insurance--like, from an advisory angle, and that's when we fell in love with the problem. He was looking for innovation and tech folks to jion the team, and Soven and I had just bought life insurance policy because we--my child right now is 4, but at the time she was 1 and we just bought a life insurance policy. I'm like, "Are you telling me there's, like, a two-thirds chance that policies don't get claimed?" And she may be one of them. So we're gonna go--we're gonna go solve this problem. So that's how we connected back in 2016. That's when Benekiva was born.Amy: That's awesome. So you actually have a tech background, not an insurance background?Bobbie: I have a tech and financial services background.Amy: Okay. Also--Bobbie: Insurance is brand new, and I kind of immersed myself when I met Brent.Amy: That's neat. Yeah, a lot of people in insurance don't get there on purpose, right? They kind fall into it, and that's okay. We'll keep you. Bobbie: I love it so far. It's been amazing to find people like you and Tony and others that--it's been a great community of people, so I feel so welcomed.Amy: Good, I'm so glad. So what's been the biggest surprise to you about starting this venture in the insurtech space?Bobbie: So initially the town that I live in and our startup community, I'm the first insurtech startup in our area, in Winston-Salem. There's not many, and if there are they're hiding 'cause I've not seen anybody. Amy: Startups that hide are usually not very successful, by the way.Bobbie: So when I talk to folks about Benekiva in our local community, they were like "Yeah, that's not a problem. That's not a problem that needed to be solved," and I was like, "How can you say that?" And it's because they don't work in insurance. They've never been in the insurance--they don't understand the value chain. So I came in with the bias that yes, we are solving this problem, how will the market react when we launch? And we literally thought it was going to be this short, steady ride, we'll have this, like, really, really [?]. It's just gonna be just new. It's gonna be a long several years before we can get some good traction, and we have been blown away, and that's been the biggest surprise. So we know now, like, that kind of is confirmation. Like, we did so much research so we knew that there was a problem, but the fact that the market and the carriers and the supporters that we had gives us such good confidence that yes. So all of those other folks in my community who said "You don't have a problem," I do. I'm solving a problem. So that's been--but what's funny though is the same people that, when Brent talks to them, they're just enamored by the problem we're solving, but when I pitch it's kind of like, "Yeah, you don't have a problem." So I get some type of a bias sometimes, and I'm wondering what it could be, but... oh, I know what it is. Never mind. Amy: Imagine that. So yeah, I know people who will hire--I have talked to a couple women entrepreneurs who have hired men to go in and say that they're the boss to get money, to get clients, to close deals, and because for some reason when it comes from a man it's a great idea, so they just make that work for them. So I guess it's good that you have a partnership with someone who--Bobbie: Yeah, and we work so well as a team, and honestly from a Benekiva perspective, our entire team, we're just one big family. But he even recognizes, you know, that we do a lot of partnering when it comes to--'cause he's done sales all of his career, right, and I've been in tech, so I've learned a lot, and we've just been jointly doing selling, and what we've found is super powerful is when you have a male dynamic and when you have a female dynamic in the room trying to work with problems, right? I come at it from a different angle. He comes it at from a different angle. And we have just made that work so good, and it's actually what makes our company unique, because we do, we have that--we embrace diversity, and we do things together.Amy: That's awesome.Bobbie: Yeah, and he's a big supporter. He's like--he's the first one to say, "Okay, Bobbie, there's a woman in tech event and you're gonna go and present that." So I have a very supportive founding team. They push me to do stuff, so it's great.Amy: That's awesome. I'm so happy for you, because there are so many women, especially in tech, who would just, you know, yearn for an opportunity like that, to have an opportunity to contribute at their fullest, and I just think it's wonderful that you've found that and that you're doing it in a way that's just gonna help so many people. I just think it's awesome. I'm so excited for you.Bobbie: Thank you, thank you. And I encourage other women too. Like, that's--get out of that mental state of "We can't do it," you know? We have enough supporters that we'll make it happen, and a lot of our supporters come from men. So it's awesome.Amy: They need too because they're the ones with the seat at the table, right?Bobbie: Yeah. I mean, just recently a Twitter post where they had published, like, a top 10 or top 20 or top 30 insurtech list, and Nigel was like, "Where are the women founders?" And he, like, blasted [a few?] women founders, and it's people like that that make you feel so supported in our industry. 'Cause our industry is tough.Amy: It is, absolutely, and, you know, I've seen so many, like, future leaders, right, and almost without exception future leaders are young, white men, and it's like, "No, future leaders are everybody, and if you can't see that, then you're perpetuating the problem." So I'm so glad that you have those allies in place. So speaking of that, where do you go for support? And I know that you identify as a woman of color, being Indian-American. Where do you go for support among other women or other people of color in your industry?Bobbie: So honestly, in our industry, it's social media. I have a great group of core women that we support each other. Like, you're one of them. We support each other by tweeting, sharing. If I have an issue--like, I was just texting with my friend Marie, and just, you know, [?] is another one. We just have a good support system, but there's a group in LinkedIn for women in insurtech, and if you're a woman in insurtech you need to join that LinkedIn group. Add me on LinkedIn and I can add you to that group, because it's a good way to get that community growing and just encourage women entrepreneurs, especially in our industry. So I've done mainly--100% actually. It's all social media.Amy: I think social media is so under-recognized as a networking tool, and I did that myself early on. I was like, "I don't want anything to do with Twitter. I don't understand it. I want no part of it," and someone told me "No, you really need to be on Twitter," and the really needing to be on Twitter thing was like, "Okay, fine, whatever," right? And I started a little bit and I started a little bit more, and then I started to figure out how to grow my following there, and my network has exploded because of Twitter. And it's not superficial, ridiculous, like, trolling kinds of relationships, right? It's real, honest to God human people who, you know, called me when my book launched to congratulate me. Called me on the phone to congratulate me. Not tweeted at me, right, but, like, actually made a human connection. It's people who have invited me to speak at their companies. It's people who have, you know, referred me for opportunities. There's such a sense of community on social media, and I think a lot of people who don't use it that way don't recognize that that exists. When people say, "Well, how do I connect with people who are different from me?" My first thing is start on social media, because it's a great way to listen to a conversation without inserting yourself into it, and that's the first step in building trust.Bobbie: I'm reading a book right now about how to create--I'm on the chapter about how to create, like, CHAMP networks. It's--yeah, I mean, doing things on social media, I think people, there's--you know, you often get so much spam, and I think that's why people don't engage it in much, but once you can filter those people out there are some--especially in insurance, in insurtech--there's great conversations that are happening in pockets and bigger pockets, and it's a great support network.Amy: Absolutely, and, you know, as people connect with you and see you as one of their own, whatever that means, right, whether it's in your discipline or in your industry or in your demographic group, right, when people connect with you and really feel that they start to open doors for you. And these are people you wouldn't have access to you because they don't live where you live or they don't work at your same company or whatever. So I think it's just so powerful to put yourself out there and kind of let the universe take over in a way.Bobbie: Yeah, it's been the best--I was always on LinkedIn, but I think I really truly started understanding the value of LinkedIn in the last two years, because I have not--I've not been one of those people who truly engaged. I had a good following, you know, but now if you look at the conversations I'm having they're super meaningful and I'm building those relationships. Previously I was just at'ing co-workers and, you know, having the relationship and bonding at the workplace. Now, as an entrepreneur, you know, you don't have that luxury, especially with me being in Winston-Salem, being the only insurtech company, it's just it forces you to reach out.Amy: Definitely. So if somebody's not already in insurtech, where do you recommend they go to learn about this industry and what skills they might have that would transfer in or how they might get started, you know, in a career of their own here.Bobbie: So the way I entered insurtech was through startups, right? Like, I had an initial--I was an entrepreneur and just landed myself here. So I saw a complementary need that what I was trying to do with Benekiva was doing. What I would recommend folks that want to get into insurtech is find those problems that you want to solve. I wouldn't have gone into insurtech if I didn't fall in love with the problem. That's just not my personality. I don't build companies just to say, "Oh, it's gonna be profitable." I'm very mission-focused, so it's gotta touch my heart in order for me to even get involved. So I think if there's a passion or an interest or, like, if you're even curious about "Why does this happen in the insurance space?" Oh, my gosh, find a startup, and I would always encourage people to find a startup. Go to those startup weekends, right? Create something, like, an idea. You get resources for free. So much resources are available. Just maximize on that. And then if you've got enough momentum, build it. If not, then partner with somebody. You know, like, as a start, you know? So I always encourage entrepreneurs, like, if you're passionate about something, just do a side hustle, do a whatever, but just figure out, and then once--you will feel it when you've got the momentum to say, you know, you can leave, you know? You can leave your full-time job and do your own entrepreneur journey.Amy: It's scary, isn't it? 'Cause you went through that when you were an employee--Bobbie: Yes, that side hustling. Amy: Yeah, so tell me about that thought process. How did you prepare for that departure?Bobbie: I think I shared that story with you when we first met. So--it was so funny. So 2015 is when I was, like, you know, I jumped into entrepreneurship. And I had a full-time job. I had a very nice career. And when I dipped my toes in, the first thing I did was I told my boss, which there were--my employers, they were super supportive, and they were like, "We all have side hustles. You should have one too," so they totally encouraged me [?].Amy: That is so rare, by the way.Bobbie: Very rare, but I worked for a fantastic organization. And then I literally had--there's so many phases, and you've probably experienced it--imposter syndrome. "Am I gonna make it?" Oh, it's so tough. I mean, there's so much, like--it's a hard road. So one of my friends--we became very good friends, and she does coaching. She's a transformation coach. And she's just like, "You know what, Bobbie? You're so smart and you can do this," and I'm like, "Yeah, she's just saying that because she's my friend," but she's like, "Let me do a coaching session with you," and that went onto I wasn't part of a group coaching on things that initially, before I did that, I thought it was all, like, voodoo stuff [?], but it really worked because it helped me declutter all of the biases that I had and gave me the confidence. So what I did was March of 2017, I won't forget, I wrote a card and I said--I kind of planned my end-of-day--like, this is the date I'm gonna leave my work. I'm gonna have this grand party. I'm gonna say bye to everyone. And I wrote the date of September 29, 2017, and I looked at it every single day. Every single day I looked at it. So it gave me this kind of, like--I'm a project manager by trade--gave me, like, a timeline to get things done, get things planned out, and September 29th is when I left my full-time job.Amy: That's incredible. I love that story for so many reasons. Okay, so just one more question and then I'll let you go today, but when do you feel included, Bobbie? Tell me about a time when you felt genuinely included.Bobbie: You know, honestly--so the entrepreneurship journey has been difficult, and everybody has those stories, and I think I've literally felt included when--I've been on this journey in my local community since 2015. 2017 is when I really pushed, really organized an event where I really wanted local companies to meet startups, local startups. We talk about buying local, and I'm like, "It's time that you buy local products from startups, tech products. Don't go to Company ABC when another company is doing something similar. You should give them an opportunity. Give them a seat at the table." So I worked with our co-working space to do an event, and I was told that "Bobbie's legit," and I think that's--it kind of, like, pissed me off, but then it also gave me, like, this confirmation. Like, "Okay, now I think people are taking me serious," you know? But it took two years, and that's what my mission is, is it took me two years as a woman, right? And I know what the biases are. It's because I'm a woman. That's the issue, and I don't want any other woman to ever feel like they're not included earlier on in their journey. I felt included, and now I'm never gonna let anybody else not feel included until they've proven themselves. There's no need. There's no need.Amy: That's so beautiful, and I love that, that it took somebody else saying "You're legit." And how many of us struggle with that feeling of "I won't be accepted. They won't think I'm really supposed to be here," right? You know, Amy Cuddy, who did the TED talk famously on, you know, power poses and, you know, she talks about, "Oh, well, I'm not supposed to be here" because she had been in an accident and lost some of her IQ, you know, even though she had been on this meteoric rise. Then that was kind of taken away from her, at least in her own mind, and I think so many of us feel like we're just not supposed to be here, and when somebody else says, "No, no, no, you're legit," or, you know, someone that we really admire, you know, talks to us as an equal or, you know, or treats us that way. I just think that has such a profound impact. And you know what? It costs nothing.Bobbie: Yeah, it costs nothing. It's just you have to have an open mind and an open heart.Amy: Exactly. Bobbie, thank you so much for being my guest today. I greatly appreciate your time and your talents and I look forward to so much more from you.Bobbie: Thank you. Thank you so much.

I'm asked on a weekly basis if sleep training twins is different than sleep training singletons. It's really not that different, but then again...I don't have twins myself!! So I've invited Julie Smith on the Podcast to tell us about her journey with twins Jack & Charlie. Julie shares her story of trying to conceive for 14 of 17 years of marriage, IVF and the arrival of her twins! She takes us through the early newborn days and into the sleep training time when she and her husband started the 4-5 Month Baby Sleep E-Coaching Program.  >>Listen to episode 75 on twins with Katie Keradman  >>Read the Kelly Family twin sleep training story >>Find the right sleep training program for your family FOLLOW BECCA ON INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK  PINTEREST | YOUTUBE

Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes from my African American KitchenBy Alexander Smallswith Veronica Chambers Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table, talking to cookbook authors.Alexander Smalls: Greetings. My name is Alexander Smalls and I have just penned a new book called Meals, Music, and Muses: Recipes from My African American Kitchen. I'm very excited to talk about it.Suzy Chase: I am at a point in this quarantine where I don't even know what day we're on, but what I do know is breakfast continues to be the most important meal of the day. I saw on your Instagram a couple days ago, you made a gorgeous breakfast of eggs, sage sausage, and steel cut oats. Melissa Clark from The New York Times got me so intrigued by savory steel cut oats. Tell me about this breakfast.Alexander Smalls: Well, I'm not one of these people who likes to have my oats sweet. I discovered that oatmeal has really a brilliant flavor when you treat it like you would, say, grits or couscous or grains. I like cooking my oatmeal with stock, vegetable stock, chicken stock, and I like to mix the thick cut oats and the steel, because it creates more texture. When I make my breakfast, I usually cook one half part of steel, one half of thick flake in chicken stock, which takes a while. I like to put a little coconut oil to give it that flavor and I love to serve it with savory protein, like sage sausage and, of course, a nice egg or two to top it off. I also put red pepper flakes and black pepper. So, there's a twist for you.Suzy Chase: Where do you get sage sausage?Alexander Smalls: It's an organic sausage that I buy at Whole Foods. Now, I have made my own, and when I do have the time, essentially taking some ground chicken and putting in my seasonings, everything from Herbes de Provence to lots of fresh sage. That works as well. It just depends on your time.Suzy Chase: Well, we all have time right now, you know?Alexander Smalls: It depends on what's in your refrigerator.Suzy Chase: Yes. This cookbook marries your love of food and music. How is music getting you through the isolation?Alexander Smalls: I rise every morning around 5:00 AM. On my way to the kitchen to make my first cup of Earl Grey tea, I pass by the Sonos and get it going on my Bach radio station or my Spotify and classical music just immediately starts to pipe in. There is something so healing for me. There's nothing like passing through and there's a wonderful Chopin etude going crazy or a wonderful cello piece that sort of invades the air. And now and then a vocalist will come on to singing a song that maybe I sang when I first started studying music, one of the art songs. And I stop and I sing through that and then I just keep going. But this, it's such an incredible companion, music. And so towards the middle of the day, I may switch over to some light jazz by sort of late afternoon. I'm really listening to some bebop and things like that. And then at night, I move into Afropop and it just makes me smile. It makes me feel good.Suzy Chase: Have you checked out D-Nice on Instagram, the DJ?Alexander Smalls: Yes.Suzy Chase: Oh, my gosh.Alexander Smalls: Just unbelievable. Talk about the perfect panacea for these times and then you see your friends names flashing up in the background and you start to go, "Oh, I see you, all right, blah, blah, blah."Suzy Chase: And there's Chaka Khan. Oh, I love him.Alexander Smalls: I love him.Suzy Chase: Yes.Alexander Smalls: It's a wonderful time to really contemplate and feel the love that just comes from strangers and people who want to engage you wherever they find you in their own way. It's a beautiful thing.Suzy Chase: So could you read the most recent passage you wrote on Instagram, which is asmalls777 for anyone who wants to go check it out.Alexander Smalls: Why, yes, yes. It is what it is. We are who we are. Human beings, ill-equipped to manage life without the heartbeat, laughter and joy, the absence of another's embrace, grace and understanding. But be strong, courageous and steadfast. Joy will ultimately find us resilient in the coming mornings, believe.Suzy Chase: Amen. Well, stay strong. Keep posting your dishes on Instagram and take good care.Alexander Smalls: Thanks, Suzy.Part 2:Suzy Chase: You are a self-described social minister, James Beard Award winning chef, restaurateur, author, singer, and tastemaker. What I found so intriguing is you spent decades in Europe as a classically trained opera singer. You have a Grammy and a Tony. Now, how did you pivot over to becoming a chef and restaurateur?Alexander Smalls: You know, that's a really good question and what I would say about that question is I've always been all these things. It was just really about when they were going to take my life over at what particular time. And what I mean by that, is that I grew up essentially with my, and I called them almost my imaginary friends, but my two best friends was food and music. They really described best who I was and how I saw the world. I think that for me, they were the two languages, creative, artistic expressions that suited my personality and kind of mapped my journey in life. The music was essentially the driving force that launched my career and took me to reasonable heights and I received a tremendous amount of satisfaction.Alexander Smalls: But I hit a glass ceiling as a black male opera singer trying to break through to the elite level of classical music. Black women, for the most part, were exotic, and there were quite a few of them, but black men had a very difficult time and often we had to go to Europe, and usually to Germany, to really sing at these sort of vocal factories where they would just abuse your voice. You would sing three, four times a day and probably come back home with a wobble and a vibrato completely out of whack and basically a tired voice.Alexander Smalls: And I had my third audition at the Metropolitan Opera. After my audition, singing two operas, the voice from the audience there, one of the directors said, "Oh, great job. We see the maturity in your voice." I had auditioned for them before and I'd been living in Europe and studying at a Paris opera house. And they said, "Well, we'd love for you to come and work with us and we're doing Porgy and Bess and we'd love you to do chorus and some small roles."Alexander Smalls: Now, what you have to understand is that I already had a Grammy and Tony for the recording of Porgy and Bess. So it was a frightful slap and disappointment. And I went home and decided I was no longer going to pursue opera as a career. And I turned to my second best friend and love, which was food and hospitality. And I decided that I needed to take my living room public and open my own restaurant.Suzy Chase: So, in the book, you dedicate it to your parents, their parents, and your ancestors. I'd love to hear a little bit about your family.Alexander Smalls: Well, I had a wonderful family, loving, supportive, generous. I was very fortunate when I was born, my aunt and uncle, who were living in Harlem, my aunt, a classical pianist, and my uncle, a chef, and had worked in many New York restaurants and had traveled around the world as a Navy man and a Merchant Marine. And he had taught himself Spanish and French.Alexander Smalls: So what they did to enrich my life is probably why life really turned out the way it did. My aunt was my piano teacher. My uncle essentially taught me the art of dreaming and creativity through food. And the two of them, I spent probably more time there, in some cases, than my parents or my sisters, for that matter. But they had me as a young boy reciting Shakespeare, reciting John Donne, Langston Hughes. I was listening to opera, Renata Tebaldi, Birgit Nilsson at such an early age, Leontyne Price, Marian Anderson.Alexander Smalls: This was really the language for me at an early age of seven that carried through and it was very early that I decided that I wanted to be an opera star. And my parents, who were horrified, they knew nobody that looked like me or them, they were frightened beyond measure. I mean they wanted me to become a professional, a doctor, a lawyer, something that was in the realm of understanding. But this idea of a classical musician, an opera singer, and they had nothing to compare that with, but they didn't say no. So this is how I evolved and basically won lots of classical music competitions, got scholarships to go to some of the best schools in the country. And that's how I started my career and my family was right there supporting all of it.Suzy Chase: So, when you think of your Uncle Joe, who was a chef and could also play piano by ear, but he couldn't read a note, do you think about him in your daily life? I feel like you've fulfilled a lot of his dreams.Alexander Smalls: Oh my, yes. You are absolutely right. I mean, I think about them all the time. They are so much a part of my life and they are part of my inspiration. I sit with the ancestors. I'm comfortable with the gifts, the knowledge, the sacrifices that they all made so that I have the platform that I have today and the knowledge and the passion and the belief that I can do anything if I put my mind to it.Suzy Chase: So, speaking of ancestors, Julie Dash's incredible documentary called Daughters of the Dust-Alexander Smalls: Oh, yes.Suzy Chase: ... shows us the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia. Tell us a little bit about that almost forgotten culture.Alexander Smalls: What you'll have to understand is that while my father was born in Charleston, at Johns Island, and my grandfather, my grandmother from Buford, South Carolina, and this is all on my father's side. My mother's family was from what we call Upcountry and that would be Spartanburg, that area north of Columbia, north, northwest. I grew up eating very different things than my friends were eating. Their food was more like the foothills of Appalachia, the Piedmont. While our food was very Afrocentric, the influences of the Gullah Geechee people, the outer islands there, was the foundation of farm and culinary that influenced my life.Alexander Smalls: So, my father would, literally while I was still sleeping, put me in the back seat of the car along with my sisters and the caravan would leave Spartanburg for that journey to Charleston and Buford, South Carolina, Green Pond. It was like going, we used to say, to the old country. It was so different. A lot of farm land, but the life in Charleston was very interesting for me. It was very ritualistic. People told stories and they spoke with thick Gullah Charleston Geechee accents, made it very difficult for us as a child to really understand what they was saying.Alexander Smalls: But the food was just something unimaginable. You know, lots of seafood, we were on the coast, lots of stews. One of my favorite dishes is shrimp and okra stew, which in West Africa, it's shrimp and okra soup, stews are soups in Africa versus here they are stews. And this is how I grew up and this is how I understood life and the connection of the old country, which was the Lowcountry to Spartanburg where I lived with my family, my normal life. It was fascinating for me.Suzy Chase: By the end of the 19th century, South Carolina was the largest rice producer in America. The Gullah Geechee people were experts in growing rice, knowing the tides, how they flooded the fields, et cetera. One of the main dishes of the Gullah cuisine is red rice. Tell us about your Charleston Spicy Red Rice.Alexander Smalls: Well, the red rice is really a takeoff of Jollof Rice, which is the famous Jollof Rice that the Nigerians and the Ghanaians fight over all the time, who has the best. Well, interestingly enough, there's really no contest because it was kind of created by the Senegalese.Suzy Chase: Yeah.Alexander Smalls: We're not even in the conversation. But yes, the red rice is something that we grew up on, less spicy, I think, in America than it was in Africa and a main staple. You know, rice built South Carolina. When the slave traders were collecting enslaved people from West Africa, they understood exactly the type of workers that they need and they purposely looked for these rice growers, these people that had the expertise.Suzy Chase: Okay. So I want to love okra, but I just, I don't get it. What do you recommend for us folks that think we don't like okra?Alexander Smalls: Why don't you like okra? Do you know?Suzy Chase: Yeah. It's just slippery.Alexander Smalls: Fibrous?Suzy Chase: Yeah.Alexander Smalls: Slippery? Okay. So, what I recommend always for my friends who say they don't like okra is my okra fries and I fry them in rice flour, crisp, delicate, scrumptious. Now, if you don't like fried okra, something's wrong with you or you're not having it fried right. So I've given you a recipe in Meals, Music & Muses. Hopefully that will help you get over the hump. But fried okra probably is the best approach. The second best approach is charred okra, because that gets out all of the slicky part and it's charred crisp with a broiler on a grill. And again, it's a wonderful accompaniment. I, as a kid would eat okra sandwiches, okay?Suzy Chase: So, what was on it?Alexander Smalls: Well, a fresh sliced tomato, fried okra and something we call in the South, Duke's Mayonnaise, like your Hellman's Mayonnaise here, only better. And sometimes a slice of cheddar cheese. So I want you to try that recipe and tell me about it.Suzy Chase: Okay. So, last night for dinner, I made your recipe for Citrus Whipped Sweet Potatoes on page 86 and your Southern Fried Chicken on page 132. Can you describe-Alexander Smalls: And you did a great job.Suzy Chase: Thank you.Alexander Small...: I saw it on IG and I was so proud of you.Suzy Chase: Oh, thank you. Can you describe these recipes and talk a little bit about shoebox lunches?Alexander Smalls: Well, let me start with shoebox lunches. I had a restaurant in Grand Central Station for 15 minutes. Unfortunately, 9/11 happened and everything went to, I had just opened it. But the name of the restaurant was called The Shoebox. And The Shoebox was in celebration of the shoebox lunch, which was the way in which people of color during segregation made sure that wherever they traveled, they had something to eat.Alexander Smalls: It was very difficult finding black owned restaurants that they could go to. And this was also during the time when a very clever man from the South decided that black travelers needed something called a green book. And that book sort of identified black owned businesses or businesses that were accepting of black business when they traveled. So the shoebox lunch essentially was a discarded shoebox that was filled with food that traveled well, wrapped in waxed paper most of the time, and then tied with twine.Alexander Smalls: That is, this great story, my uncle often would go back and forth from South Carolina to New York, Harlem, on the train. Aunt Laura looked like a white woman. She was very pale and Uncle Joe was very dark, but he spoke French and Spanish and passed himself off as a diplomat. And so they would get to ride in the white car. Once Uncle Joe forgot the shoebox lunch that my grandmother had prepared him. Because I think what he normally did was take the shoebox and then kind of discarded it or put the food in a pocket book or something, a bag. It was too tale-telling for him to walk on there with a shoebox lunch. So my grandmother, realizing that he had forgotten this, runs to the train going, "Son, son, you've forgot your-"Suzy Chase: Oh, no.Alexander Smalls: And the conductor, horrified, threw my uncle out of, he was traveling without his wife, out of the white car and made him go back to [crosstalk 00:19:12].Suzy Chase: Oh, man.Alexander Smalls: My mother used to love to tell that story and so when I opened my restaurant at Grand Central Station, I thought how fitting to do something like that. And often times you would find that fried chicken that you enjoyed the other night, right in that shoebox. It was a perfect thing to travel because it's fried, the oil is like preservatives and you'd find say some corn bread, you'd find some cake, like a pound cake was a great traveler and, of course, there was always cheese sandwiches. And there would be carrots and celery, sort of crudités things. And if you were going to eat them quickly, you might find a few deviled eggs in there and that was kind of like the appetizer to have once you got on the train because they don't keep.Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all time favorite cookbook and why?Alexander Smalls: Well, my all time favorite cookbook is Charleston Receipts. It is a cookbook that is a collection of Charleston Lowcountry recipes that was a constant companion in my home growing up. It really speaks to the food of the Lowcountry and the contributions of African American enslaved people who essentially were the hospitality and culinary practitioners. Because they were not allowed to read and write, recipes were are often collected by the various families and the family name went on them. But you knew in the details who was really making that food.Suzy Chase: Yeah.Alexander Smalls: But you know it really mirrors the roots of where I come from and so it has always been a constant companion in my home and I take great inspiration from it.Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?Alexander Smalls: Well, I'm very active on Instagram. I have also page on Facebook that I don't attend to as well as I do Instagram. And then there is alexandersmalls.com which is my website.Suzy Chase: I am so thankful that you wrote this cookbook. Thanks so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Alexander Smalls: Thanks for having me. I've enjoyed my chat with you and I appreciate all of the support and generosity that you've given me. Thanks a lot.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com and thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast Cookery by the Book.

So Ive been hearing that you folks have been enjoying this enough that I should continue? Im happy to do so, but its certainly odd. I'll just keep plugging through them and I hope they dont veer into crazy levels of pretentiousness, especially as I let my gaurd down. Maybe thats part of this whole process in the long run though so...have at er. Heres another one: 'Physicist' released in 2000

Sheneisha sits down to chat with wellness lifestyle enthusiast and author Tonya Kinlow in this special Sunday episode themed around managing COVID-19 induced stress. They talk a good bit about the practice of meditation, Tonya offers three tips about what we could be doing to help manage our wellness during the pandemic, and she also talks some about the impact this outbreak will have on our minds following its eventual end. Connect with Tonya on LinkedIn, and check out her website, remarkablewellness.us.Interested in finding out more about the TKI Remarkable Wellness Journey? Learn on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.You can click here to browse Tonya's books on Amazon.Find out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTSheneisha: What's up? Sheneisha here with Living Corporate, and today we'll be discussing managing COVID-19-induced stress. We have a very special guest. Our guest is a Wellness Lifestyle Entrepreneur, A Woman in Technology, a Certified Health & Wellness Coach, a Blogger, and an Author. Her three books, A Year of (ME) Mindful Eating to Improve Wellbeing, The 10 Days- A Wellness Retreat for Personal Transformation and A Wellness Journey are all dedicated to health and wellness through mindful living. She writes a weekly blog, Mindfulness Matters, raising awareness for living a holistically healthy life. An avid foodie and mindfulness enthusiast, she left Corporate America in 2016 to launch the UGottaEat app, creating a virtual marketplace providing much needed fresh and healthy meals into local communities, and a platform for food sharing. UGottaEat is dedicated to improving the overall health and wellness of society. She also launched TK Inspirations offering Remarkable Wellness Transformation Coaching, group Wellness Journeys and inspirational meditations talks based on discovering wellness through purpose, and how we together can improve the overall health and wellness of our world. Before becoming an entrepreneur, our guest was a Finance Executive with a corporate career spanning over 26 years. A crippling car accident involving her children led to the awakening of her spiritual journey. She takes great pride in being from Washington, DC and a graduate of THE Florida A&M University. Her greatest joys are her children, Evan and Taylor, and her husband, Chef Craig Stevens. Let’s welcome our special guest Tonya Kinlow! Tonya, welcome to the show.Tonya: Thank you. Thank you for my introduction.Sheneisha: It is fabulous, as it only should be being a Rattler.Tonya: Yes! Oh, that's so exciting. I love my FAMUly. Absolutely.Sheneisha: Yes, and it's so good to have you. So how are you?Tonya: I'm good. You know, I'm like everybody else, surviving this virus, a new way of life, but, you know, I really try to keep it positive and be a light for other people. So in that way I'm doing well, healthy and happy.Sheneisha: Yes, I love that. See that? A whole 'nother logo. There go another business, Tonya. [both laugh] Tonya: Let me write that down... [laughs]Sheneisha: So Tonya, I've given the intro. Can you tell us - who is Tonya Kinlow?Tonya: So, you know, many years ago I probably would have said just what you said. I would have said what I do, things like that, but now--it's funny because one of the first questions I ask when I do my morning meditations is "Who am I?" You know? "What do I want? What is my purpose?" These essential questions. "What am I grateful for?" So it's not what I do but who I am. So I can say I am a spiritual being living a human experience, and I am a seeker, you know, seeking truth and wisdom and ultimately happiness and inner peace, and in that way we're all alike, you know? We all want the same things. I think I just sort of transitioned and transformed over time to sort of when I got out of corporate and started thinking about life in a bigger way that it just became my goal. Like, who doesn't want to be happy? Like, I think everyone's goal should be one of happiness. So I've started to focus more on the spiritual part of me versus just the human part, which is where there's a lot of power. So I would say, aside from what you just presented about me and my background and where I went to school and where I'm from, who I am is a spiritual seeker. I'm looking, and my job, my role, my purpose is to use my gifts to make the world a better place. So I'm uniquely me. I'm a woman, a mother, mentor, entrepreneur, spiritualist. I practice compassion. I'm funny. I got a loud laugh. I am really smart, people tell me, and I'm just a little bit of a diva, and that's me. [laughs]Sheneisha: And you know what? I love all of it, all of it, and I love how you made the point, or emphasis, on the difference between who you are and what you do. That's important. That's so, so important. I think a lot of times we get that mixed up. Could you share more insight about TK Inspirations? Like, how did you enter this space of wellness transformation? But let's start first with tell me about TK Inspirations.Tonya: So TK Inspirations is only a year old and we've done a lot. About a little over a year, maybe a year and a half ago, I was finishing my second--my second and third book, because they sort of accompanied one another, and it's called The 10 Days. So I was talking about these seven intentions, a way of living life, that I have discovered over my lifetime that really can help you overcome any circumstance that comes before you. Like, it just takes your mindset, your way of living, and it's a practice, and so I developed these seven intentions and I wrote a book about it, and at the same time I decided to get a certification for being a health coach, because I felt like I wanted that, you know, certification behind my name and the technical aspect, and that was more, like, about, you know, your insulin levels and carbohydrates and proteins, the really more practical, so I was able to combine, as I do now with everything, right, the practical human side with the spiritual side, and they both--and then align them. I did that. So they were coming out. We self-published and then got it on Amazon, and we were okay, and I went on--last March, a year ago--on a cruise with my sorority sisters. I had a big anniversary celebration and I led the morning meditations and they--we started having a conversation and they loved the idea. They said, "Everybody needs to know this now." So from there I started doing wellness journeys and coaching and just talking to people about these principles and teaching these things, and I did two wellness journeys last year. They're, like, each 60 days long. I do a talk every week. So it just grew, it just blossomed, and meditation is one of the intentions, and it's just been very liberating. I actually have now--I feel like I have, through these intentions and through this journey, created the life that I want. Because I've gone through divorce, as you mentioned my kids had a really bad car accident. I've had some very tough things, as we all have had. The beauty is though when you learn how to overcome these things. I've learned. I've survived, like we're gonna survive this virus. I've survived. I know how to overcome things, and I was able to say, "Ah, here's the things that got me through," and now I just love to help other people make that same connection. So it's all inspirational, all transformational, and so it's about remarkable wellness. So that's how we got that going. And so that's TK Inspirations. Really, actually I didn't even think about it, like, we're celebrating an anniversary right now. A year old.Sheneisha: Well, happy anniversary. If I could sang, I would definitely you hit that with that "It's my anniversary." [both laugh] I would, but congratulations on TK Inspirations's anniversary, and thank you so much for entering this space and giving us something to help us even go beyond surviving, and with that being said, Tonya, I'd like to dive into this COVID-19-induced stress. That's what I'm calling it, y'all, COVID-19-induced stress. So what are the symptoms of stress, and how can we manage it during a time like this?Tonya: So stress manifests itself in a million ways, but some of the really obvious or major ones are--so the physical ones are headaches. A lot of people are tired now, even though they're not even really doing anything, you know? Fatigue, lethargy. Just something not being right. That's sort of the physical thing. Sometimes people break out in hives. The emotional piece is more you can recognize it when you're overthinking, your mind is racing, you have fear and guilt, you know? There's, like, this anxiety, this edge, and just a lack of motivation and a lot of uncertainty. When you're feeling this way, that is stress. And then there's also some really unique things I wanted to point out that people may not be aware of. Anything that's sort of off-kilter or that's different, it's stress, which is an indicator where, if you're paying attention to it, then you can manage it or you can learn how to live with it. So for instance, for me I've been having time shifts, and I've talked to two other people this week who are having the same issue. Like, the time... time doesn't make sense anymore. I think only 15 minutes has gone by and it's been an hour and a half, or I think it's been 3 hours and it's only been 20 minutes. Well, that's an exaggeration. An hour and a half, you know? Or I'd wake up in the middle of the night and I'd close my eyes and wake back up, I think it's 15 minutes, and it's time to get up, right? So these feelings of, like, nothing is the same, that is also an indicator of stress. Not as harsh or harmful as, you know, migraines and things like that. That's just sort of a wake-up to remind us that everything is changing right now. So I think that's interesting. I don't know if people think about time shifting or if you can't recognize--like, people don't look the same to you. Like, if you've ever looked in the mirror and said, "I don't recognize myself anymore," you know? Times of high stress, things just don't seem--it's like a vertigo or an imbalance. Those are all indicators of stress, so those are things to look out for. Anything off, anything that's not working out. And then the question is, as you said, what do you do about it? And the first thing is to be aware of it. So I have to be aware that I'm being stressed out. "I'm thinking too much. I'm getting these headaches," and then you can do something about it. So the first step is, like, just checking out your own body, checking out your own behavior. Oh, I forgot to mention short tempers, you know? Attitudes. Some people just don't handle stress well, and those things, you have to find it in yourself, see it, and then you can react to it. That's the first thing. If people just walk around blind, it is awareness. So I would say the big one thing is to think about what you think about. That is the first thing. What are you stressed out about? What is it doing to your body?Sheneisha: That is a really good tip. I didn't even think about what to think about.Tonya: Mm-hmm. It's awareness, right? Because stressors are--we just let our bodies run wild, you know, with thoughts and worries and fears, but if you start to think about what you're thinking about, there's an infinite amount of things you could be thinking about. Why just choose the negative ones? Once you start recognizing that, it just makes a world of difference.Sheneisha: A big, big difference, especially if there's so many things already being projected on you from family and friends and just this whole ordeal right now from what you see in the media. It's easier to revert to the panic like everyone else when you can honestly just take a moment for yourself and have that carved out time where you meditate and reflect on things that are impacting you. I know a lot of people right now are probably going crazy sitting in the house with their families and their loved ones. You can look at this side of it and just say, "Hey, this is that vacation. It may not be exactly the vacation that we wanted, but this is that time when we can really embrace one another and learn some things about your family that you never knew before," you know?Tonya: Yes, exactly. And that's another thing, when people are getting a little of, you know, that cabin fever, and so within--it builds, the stress builds, because then what? People start to overeat or eat whatever they can get their hands on because they don't want to go out, you know? Or drink too much or binge watch TV, you know? So there's some things that we might do without awareness that are just negative, it just sets us back. It stresses us out more. Now we may have gained weight. Sheneisha: Ooh. I have to manage this. I done went on Amazon and got all this stuff for a home gym. Like, Lord, keep these pounds down. And it goes even into my next question. Like, what are three tips you would like to share to those during this quarantine? Like, what should we be doing?Tonya: Yeah, okay. First is to give yourself a break. Now, this is overarching. This is overarching. We're all in the same boat. None of this is anyone's fault. So the ability to pay bills, the inability to go outside, all of those, this is--we've never felt the oneness of the world and the universe before. We should feel it now. So one is to just give yourself a break. Let the guilt go. Let the fear go. It's all going to be okay in the long term. So that's just, like, a big mindset, but for practical things also to do at home that, you know, we can't use--I always say we can't just use the same things that got us here, so we, as humans, we focus on our five senses, but we are spiritual beings. There is a bigger power that this is the time to tap into. This power is changing the entire world right now. Like, there's a virus spreading. People are working together, you know? People are being kind to one another. There's a whole shift that's happening. You know, tragedy breeds kindness sometimes. It's a shame that it has to be a tragedy. So there's a lot. So creativity is the first thing. We don't have to be competitive now. We're not at work, you know, competing for that next promotion or racing home 'cause we gotta beat the traffic, you know, to get home and make dinner for our kids. This is the time where you can let that competitive side go and bring out the creative side. So do some home projects, do some do it yourself. I've been making shea butter. I just sent my best friend a package with some whipped shea butter with lavender. It's beautiful, you know? And it's something nice to do in the afternoon and I could send it to someone. Journaling, you know? Do things internal or find, you know, something creative. Then the second thing is positive thinking. I just said there's a million things you can think about, so instead of focusing on "Oh, there's no toilet tissue," well, there's facial tissue? You know? Sheneisha: See, I told y'all about this toilet paper. Nobody is listening to me. People are going crazy about this toilet paper. But yes, please proceed.Tonya: Yeah, it's crazy. I literally went to six stores one morning. I really needed it, like, last week. Like, six stores, and then finally I found--I waited for a truck to deliver. It's crazy, but I wasn't mad. Like, I don't understand. I don't understand. I guess I do understand the psychology a little bit, but I tend to say, "Well, I was just picking up some more packs of facial tissue. I just need some tissue." [laughs] You know? Or anti-bacterial stuff. I looked up how to make it. I made some at home. Like, instead of angry and upset about the negative, it's about shifting your mindset to a positive space, to a creative space. You can find solutions, and if you don't it's still gonna be okay. And then the third thing is the biggest thing, and this is one of the seven intentions - meditation, and I mentioned it before. It's one of the biggest things you can do to calm your mind. So what produces stress is this chemical, cortisol. Meditation calms--it blocks the production of cortisol. So the things that we do, the spiritual things align with our bio-chemistry, with our body, and when we are aware, when we start to recognize and manage those things... if you meditate in the morning, it will make your whole day go better. I mean, that stillness and time with spirit, God, the universe, however you call it, will cover your whole day, and it brings that awareness to you. So those three things, those three tips. It's a shift for people because we're so busy and crowded throughout our days that we don't take the time to be creative, to pick back up that hobby, to read a book, you know? To think about creative solutions instead of complaining about problems. So these three things--and the meditation thing, if you can just do one thing, start a meditation practice. That's a stress reliever. It's physical and spiritual. It's, like, a magic elixir.Sheneisha: Yes, meditation, and this meditation goes into - how do we stay focused, right? So we're meditating, right? How do we stay focused while experiencing a pandemic like COVID-19? And even things outside of just this, 'cause there's so many things that can impact your day and induce stress. How do we stay focused during this time? Would meditation be the key?Tonya: Medititation would be one of the keys, one of the main keys, to healthy--because when you start to... and I talked about those seven intentions, when you start to be able to overcome any situation, that means any situation. We all have deaths and relationships and sicknesses and illnesses. That is how life goes. People come into our lives, people leave. So we always have these. The question is how do we overcome them? What are the tools? How can we be equipped? Meditation is one of--it's the biggest--and to me that's the alignment of the physical and spiritual, but there's other things. You know, exercise, self-care, journaling, getting enough rest, but the one thing that you can do to stay focused, I'd say on the practical side, is you set your mindset. It's all about a mindset shift. Again, now, the mind works--there's this executive function, so whenever you put yourself in the context of a situation, you make better decisions and that situation is easier. What do I mean by that? When you're at school, you know you're at school. It's about the teachers, your friends, your homework, what are your assignments. That's what you're thinking about. You're not thinking about your family reunion when you're at school. When you're at your family reunion, hopefully you're not thinking about work. You're meeting your cousins, you're cooking out, you know? "What are we gonna eat?" You're all in that context. Right now we need to be in the context of health and wellness. So everything that--if you can just focus everything that you're doing, bring it back to "Is this good for me?" Is it "Am I washing my hands? Am I keeping a good distance? Am I being mentally healthy?" Everything will naturally come back to the context of health and wellness instead of putting everything in context of the virus. That's gonna make you fearful. It's gonna make you stressed out and depressed. So yes, the virus is part of it, but the main context, the main focus is health and wellness. "How do I stay healthy?" Not "How do I avoid sickness?" "How do I stay healthy?" It's the same thing, but that positive outlook and energetic transference is in your mindset. So everything--we're not at school. We're not at work. We're living our lives. We're in our home. But we are in the mindset of health and wellness. That will go so far, awareness to health and wellness.Sheneisha: So with this health and wellness and it taking us so far, what impact do you think the coronavirus will have on our minds following this, like, months beyond, hopefully when all of this is over and it's resolved. What impact do you think it wil leave upon the minds?Tonya: I think we have a great opportunity to find ourselves, find the world, in a better place. I think we would be missing an opportunity. Once we get through this, it's gonna be like spring. Like, we're going through a winter. We're going through a setback. It's like the world has the flu or the world is going through a divorce. The globe is going through a tough time, but like every time, once you get over it there's an emergence, and I think that we're gonna find that we're gonna work together, we're gonna have a lot of compassion for one another, because a lot of us are suffering losses financially, physically, people, and we all feel bad for one another, so what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a lot more compassion for one another, and that in and of itself is gonna make the world a better place. We're gonna be cleaner. We're gonna be more caring about our fellow man, all of those things, after we get through it, but we can get through it positively. I always say, "You create the future in the present." What we do now determines the world that we're gonna be in. If we start wars now, fighting over beds and, you know, things, if we begin a war, it's gonna take a lot longer. If we go negative and close our doors to helping other people it's gonna take a lot longer, but what I see right now is a lot of compassion showing up, and if we can learn how to get over this hump positively, the world will be a better place on the other side.Sheneisha: Yes, it definitely will. It definitely will be a better place, and that can start with y'all stop withholding all that toilet paper, how about that? Let's start there. #1. [both laugh]Tonya: I went to the store today. I told you I made shea butter. I also made hand sanitizer, and when I was at this little store, the guy, he said "I'm almost out of hand sanitizer, oh, my goodness," so I took him a bottle today and I just gave it to him. He's like, "What do I owe you?" I said, "Nothing." I felt so good.Sheneisha: See? Look at that, y'all. It's things like this, you know, to show that oneness that you spoke of earlier. There was a need, and you went and used the resources you had to help meet that need, and hopefully that can just be paid forward to so many others. And you know what? That plays into your wellness lifestyle. So what are some misconceptions that people of color about wellness lifestyle?Tonya: Oh, my goodness. So many from different places. I can say, you know, on the spiritual aside, because I'm talking about--and I call it remarkable wellness. It is your body, your soul, your spirit, your emotions. It's everything, because it's all interwoven. So, you know, if someone says, "Oh," you know, "I'm not into that wellness of the spiritual side," they think you're trying to take them away from church, you know, or something. That's why I say, you know, "If you don't believe in God, or if you do, or if it's the universe, however your words are," but we get real protective and scared around that, so that keeps us limited sometimes. When it's working out, it is--sometimes people just don't want to get their hair sweat out. [laughs] We gotta get away from that. Like, a healthy body is meaningful, but people have a conception--they feel like it's not fun, and being healthy and strong and energetic is fun, you know? It's like, if you gotta go upstairs to get to your bedroom, that's just what you gotta do. It's not good or bad. So we have these sort of notions around just not wanting to change what we have, and I think this is a good time for us to start getting past that, you know? People say, "I don't have time to work out. I don't have this, th--" We've got time now. There's plenty of time, and this would be a great--what if we all came out on the other side of this in--I'ma just say four months. Who knows how long it's gonna take? Three or four months--healther than when we went in because we actually had time to sleep, to walk, to whatever? So I think that we just need to change, we just need to sort of break some falsehoods, and my main thing is it's all about awareness. I mean, once we start focusing on the negative side of everything and start focusing on the positive, it sort of takes care of itself. If you have a wellness mindset like we were talking about, then you're gonna want to work out. It's only 30 minutes, you know, 45 minutes. It's because of your mindset. You know it's gonna reduce your stress. It's gonna make you feel good. You're gonna be in that wellness space. So those are a few things that I think we gotta sort of turn the switch on.Sheneisha: Yes, turn the switch on to this awareness, this health, being in this space, and talking about being in this space, can you speak to the live meditations? Like, you've done recently a few live limitations, and they've held impact that has helped change the community.Tonya: Yeah. So I mentioned meditation a few times, and I'm not, you know, a master or anything, but I'm very connected, and so I know how good it makes me feel. What I tend to do is bring people together. So the last meditation was on protection and healing, because that's what we need now. And, you know, wherever two or more gather there's a lot of power. so the live meditations, bringing people together. I did a Facebook Live, and I'll try to do them weekly. When you bring people together in that oneness, in that energetic space, it's powerful. It's really powerful when you do it by yourself anyway, but when you bring people doing these things together [?] it makes all of the difference. And what meditation does for me is it makes me more connected. So everything is energy. Everything is vibrational, you know? Whether you can hear it or not, like a dog hearing a whistle or radio vibrations, you know, everything is actually that energy that we transfer. It's what sort of connects us. So examples of how this invisible or spiritual or whatever we want to talk about energy works. You know when someone's staring at you from across the room. You know when someone's standing too close to you behind you, when someone walks on you. You know when you call someone or when you think of someone and then they call you. Those things aren't coincidences. That is how the energy works. And so with meditations and those practices, you learn how to control some things. You learn how to control your thinking. Because you only want positive energy to come to you, so therefore you only put positive energy out, and that's what I do in my meditations. I am putting out positive energy, and sort of we're all lifting the world. We're building a sacred space, almost like protection. Like, you can almost just envision, like, a bubble around you, and it's just the light of God. It's all things good. No conflict. Peace. Inner peace. Happiness. Wisdom. Fulfillment. That's all we need. That's all we want. And so when you can continue to practice energetically, how does that feel? How does that feel when you give that out to other people? How does it feel when you receive it back? These are the live meditations. So we create a sacred space of health and protection and, again, if I'm happy and I can make you happy and then you make someone else happy, we've just made the world a better place just like that. So that's what I try to do in my meditations, and we'll keep up pretty much topically. Right now it's clearly all about protection and health, but I think it's also about transformation. We're going through a transformation, and I think we can do it positively.Sheneisha: Yes, we can. How can we join y'all on Facebook? What's the Facebook page where people can tune in?Tonya: TK Inspirations, and I have [?] on Instagram, but we definitely did the Facebook Live, and I think we're gonna just definitely do it weekly. So definitely join my page, follow me, and it's TKIRemarkableWellness on Facebook, and it's @Remarkable_Wellness on Instagram. And I just started a YouTube channel too, and I will be doing some meditations on there, and we talk about these seven intentions more and daily affirmations, everything positive. So whichever gets your, you know, mode of social media, I try to show up in different ways.Sheneisha: And speaking of showing up, what's the YouTube channel?Tonya: TKInspirations. Yep. Tonya Kinlow TK Inspirations. That'll bring me up. And we just launched it right before this started, this virus started, so it's very new, so I would love to have more conversations on there. Sheneisha: Yes, guys. Make sure you check out TK Inspirations YouTube, TKIRemarkableWellness on Facebook. Tune in. And Tonya, are there any key takeaways you'd like to share with our listeners?Tonya: Yes, that I think the biggest thing that we're gonna take from this is what I would call whether it's the law of attraction or, you know, giving and receiving. Stay mindful of that, because what you put out you definitely always get back, and so that's why it's important to put the stress away. Let it go, because what you're wanting is a clean, healthy experience, and we're all connected, so just that connection, positivity, positive energy. With that and practicing that every day, you can overcome anything. And again, I talk about seven intentions, and when you put them together in a certain way they are so powerful. Each of them by themselves is powerful, like meditation or exercising, but when you put them together in a certain way it is extremely powerful. All positive things, no negatives. Always positive.Sheneisha: Yes, all positive. All positive vibes all 2020, please.Tonya: All day long.Sheneisha: Yes, I love it. I love it. Tonya, do you have any shout-outs? Family, friends, YouTube, Facebook? Any shout-outs?Tonya: Yeah, I want to shout-out to all of my wellness journeyers. I want to shout-out though to all of the people on the front lines right now. The health care workers, pharmacists, doctors, PAs, RNs, everybody. The policemen, everything. Just the oneness, and then all of our families. Certainly I shout-out FAMU. We on the phone, right? [both laugh] And to my family, my kids and my husband for sure. And I just want to say that we are about to launch a new wellness journey, so I want to shout-out the TKI Wellness Journey. Like I said, we did two last year. It's 8 weeks. Every week we talk about one of the intentions. I do a one-on-one coaching with everybody, and it's interactive. We do it on Zoom so people can ask questions. So when people are thinking about what to do at home, this would be great. Like, take the wellness journey with me, and we're gonna launch it... it's gonna start April 13th. And the other thing we didn't say is my website. All the information is on remarkablewellness.us. So that's coming. I would love to see more people be a part of it. And during that we do this 10 days--it's like a retreat. We're working together. I'm doing guided meditations. Like, we're just doing a wellness retreat at home. So I think it would be a great time for more people to participate in a wellness journey. That's my big shout-out.Sheneisha: Yes, y'all. Make sure y'all participate. Be active, especially in a time like this. Oneness, positive vibes, being united, helping each other out, just putting forth all things positive going forward.Tonya: All things positive, and there's no need to be bored. Like, this will be a great, positive addition, and again, we all come out on the other side better than we went in.Sheneisha: Yes, so much better. So much better. And thank you again for highlighting all of those on the front line, our nurses, physicians, pharmacists--all my fellow pharmacists, physical therapists, respiratory therapists. All of those on the front line, thank you guys so much for what you all are doing. Police officers. Even those at Auto Zone. Shout-out to Auto Zone, you know? Helping those out when they need things. So just thank you guys in this, everyone. Thank you all so much.Tonya: Oh, my goodness. The people at the grocery store. The cashiers. Oh, my goodness.Sheneisha: Yes, cashiers. All grocery stores. Thank you, Wal-Mart. Thank you.Tonya: Stockers, yes.Sheneisha: Yes, everyone. Truck drivers, thank y'all, because I need my food and my tissue. Everybody, thank y'all. UPS, FedEx.Tonya: We're a thankful people. This energy, and this--it's just gonna make it better, and I'm so thankful for you for having me on here. I'm very happy about this. Thank you for having me. It was a great conversation. I feel good hearing you.Sheneisha: You know, and vice versa. Thank you so much, Tonya. We greatly appreciate it. And that is our show. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Be sure to follow Tonya Kinlow on LinkedIn and her website, Remarkable Wellness. You guys heard her YouTube channel. Make sure to follow in. And her Facebook page, TKIRemarkableWellness. Make sure you guys follow her. All things positive energy. And make sure to follow us on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have questions you'd like for us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email them to us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. This has been Sheneisha, and you've been listening to Tonya Kinlow, founder of Remarkable Wellness, TKI. Y'all, check her out. This is great, great energy, and just thank you again, Tonya, for being here with us today. Thank you.Tonya: Thank you. Thank you so much.

Dining On A Dime Cookbook By Tawra Kellam and Jill Cooper Intro: Welcome to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book, with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City, sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.Tawra Kellam: Hello. I am Tawra from LivingOnADime.com, the author of the Dining on a Dime Cookbook where you can eat better, spend less. I wrote it with my mom, Jill. We have sold over 500,000 copies, so we are considered a bestselling cookbook now, which is pretty cool.Suzy Chase: You are a friend in my head. I've been such a fan of your Facebook and YouTube videos for over a year now. I even went out and bought your cookbook, Dining on a Dime. So, supermarket shortages and job losses because of the Coronavirus pandemic mean lots of us are changing things up to make the best of scarce supplies and tighter budgets. You know a thing or two about leaving the grocery store with only necessities and we need your wisdom now more than ever. So let's kick things off with a little background about you and your mother. You are frugal before frugal was cool. Talk a little bit about that.Tawra Kellam: Well, we were frugal out of necessity. My mom was a single mom. My dad left my mom with $35,000 of debt that her name was on, so she had to pay it. She worked three jobs, got it paid off, and then we became sick with chronic fatigue syndrome and I also got fibromyalgia. My mom, my brother and I all got what we thought was the flu and we never got better over 30 years ago. So we did it out of necessity because my mom only had $500 a month to raise two teenagers. Even back in the late 80s, early 90s, $500 a month was not anything. I mean, that was most people's grocery bill, and that was our entire budget. We didn't have food stamps, we didn't get any assistance like that. That was just the $500 a month that we had. And right before we got sick, my mom had sold a business that her and my dad had started and that's what we were living on. Actually, for three of those years, we lived off of $8,000 total, not each year, but $8,000 got us by for three years.Tawra Kellam: So that's kind of where this came out of. I was on frugal living groups when I was pregnant and on bedrest with my first child and everybody kept asking me questions, "Well, how do I save money on this?" And I always had an answer for them. So that's kind of how it got started.Suzy Chase: How did the Dining on a Dime cookbook come about?Tawra Kellam: So while I was still in that same bed rest, I was reading The Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn, really kind of the first book of its kind. Miserly Moms was out too, but Amy's was the first big so to speak book on how to save money. I was reading her book, I was like, "Man, we do all this stuff and more." And at the very end of her book, she said everybody keeps asking her to write a cookbook but she didn't like to cook, and she knew that in order to write a good frugal cookbook, it needed to be really comprehensive and she didn't want to do that. And just right then and there, I thought, well I can do that. Well, did I know what it would turn into? When I told my husband, he was like, "Oh, she's going to make a nice little collection of recipes that we'll give to the family or whatever" He had no idea.Suzy Chase: So on page eight of the cookbook, you have some useful basics of frugal living. One suggestion is don't get discouraged. I feel like we're all discouraged right now.Tawra Kellam: Well, don't be. Here's the thing, I know it's bad right now, but I'm a suck it up kind of a person. A lot of people say I'm too harsh, but the reality is, Americans are extremely fortunate. I mean, we are extremely fortunate. I went to the grocery store just yesterday... as of yesterday, it'll have been two weeks since this whole thing kind of started, and there is a lot, still a lot of food on the shelves. There may not be toilet paper, there may not be flour, there may not be sugar, but there's still a lot of food on the shelves and we really need to be thankful for what we do have.Suzy Chase: So for the folks that have lost their jobs, what is one thing they can do immediately to cut their grocery bill?Tawra Kellam: Stop spending it on junk. So immediately, the majority of alcohol consumption needs to stop. That's a huge expense. If you want to have a glass of wine or something, that's fine, but really need to cut those alcoholic beverages out, they're super expensive. The next thing, sodas. All of those beverages that are like soda and kids' juice boxes, all those kinds of things, that's another huge expense. The convenience food items that don't have any nutritional value, all the fruits, snacks, jello type things, all of those don't have any nutritional value. So go for things that are like granola bars. Even Pop-Tarts are better than some things. I know there's people out there saying uhhhhhh, but if that's all you have on your grocery store shelf, a Pop-Tart is like eating a doughnut for breakfast. That's really better than nothing. So go for things that will fill you up and not just things that are empty calories.Suzy Chase: Another suggestion is to drink water with your meals. Talk a little bit about that.Tawra Kellam: So I was really shocked when I went to the grocery store that all the bottled water was completely sold out. I was like, "What is-Suzy Chase: Why is that?Tawra Kellam: I don't know, because here in Colorado, we have really good water here in Colorado. So I'm like, "What is the reason for that?" There's literally no reason in Colorado unless someone has an allergy to chlorine or something. I get that. But here's the thing, 98% of the country and 98% of people can drink tap water. I get it. I have lived in Texas and Kansas where I literally had bad water that I could not drink. I get it, but that is not the majority of the country and those are not the people that I'm talking about. Now, if you just don't like the taste of tap water, one of the best tips that my mom has used for years is she will fill up a jug and let it sit overnight in a refrigerator with the lid off and the chlorine evaporates. The number one reason people don't like tap water is because of the chlorine taste. Then you don't have the chlorine taste in the water anymore.Tawra Kellam: So that's the number one tip for making water taste good without adding anything, is just to leave it sit overnight in the refrigerator with a top off and the chlorine will evaporate.Suzy Chase: You make it a habit of cooking what you have on hand. I read that you make 10 meals on a regular basis. Can you describe this?Tawra Kellam: Okay. So people make meal planning way too complicated. As a matter of fact, we've kind of had problems with our website because people ask for meal plans all the time and I'm like, "I don't do meal planning." My mom wrote a whole bunch of meal plans that we have on the website, and they're great, but really mom and I don't meal plan. What we do is we cook from what we have on the pantry. So I keep a consistent supply of things in my pantry, my refrigerator, my freezer. So I always buy chicken, I always buy roasts, I always buy green chilies, I always buy applesauce, peaches, pears, those kinds of things. Then instead of planning a meal for the week, I plan by the day on what I have on hand and what I need to use up. So let's say I have cucumbers that are getting ready to go bad. Well, I would make my side dish around those cucumbers instead of what I had planned because I need to use up those cucumbers.Tawra Kellam: So what I do is I have 10 meals that I consistently make all the time, or variations of those meals, and I always keep those ingredients on hand. Eating the same food three times a month really is not that often. And I throw in a new recipe once or twice a month. So it's really two to three times a month, you're eating the same thing. Kids love tacos. It's okay to eat tacos twice a month. We love green chili. It's okay for us to eat green chili two or three times a month. People think that you're going to get tired, but what I do is I rotate a fall winter menu and a spring summer menu. So I basically have 20 separate meals divided up between the four seasons, so spring and summer, and then fall and winter, and then I just rotate around those. My family doesn't complain, they love it, and it keeps my dinner planning easy. I don't spend an hour a week planning meals and I really don't spend more than 20 minutes cooking dinner every night.Tawra Kellam: And usually, more nights than not, it's like literally five minutes cooking dinner, because what I'll do is I'll make a roast on Monday, which takes me three minutes to prepare, and then I'll save that roast and use it Monday as roast and potatoes and carrots. Then on Tuesday I'll make beef and noodles. So it takes as long as five minutes to boil the noodles. Then the next day I'll make beef stew out of it, which takes me five minutes to cut up the carrots and potatoes and throw it all in the pot. So really, I have chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia, I do not have the energy to be spending half an hour or an hour in the kitchen. I just can't do that.Suzy Chase: What's green chili?Tawra Kellam: It's a Colorado thing, but it's really good. It's probably my favorite. I would say it's probably my favorite main dish. So it's chicken broth, onions, green chilies and garlic, and then salt and pepper of course. And then you just simmer it and you thicken it with corn starch and scoop out the meat and put it in the middle of a tortilla, wrap up the tortilla, like a burrito, and then you put the sauce over the top and you serve it with sour cream and lettuce and cheese. It's really yummy.Suzy Chase: That sounds amazing.Tawra Kellam: It's really good, yeah. It's in our Dining on a Dime cookbook. I won't give you the page number because we have several versions out there, but it's in our Dining on a Dime cookbook and on our website livingonadime.com.Suzy Chase: What are some good ideas for sweet treats that we can make from pantry items?Tawra Kellam: So you can make pretty much anything. Right now, everybody's going crazy on our Facebook page over our fudge brownies. That recipe is at Living on a Dime too. So many people have been saying over and over, "I always thought I had to have a brownie mix to make good brownies." They were like, "Your brownies are delicious." So, in Dining on a Dime, what we did was we went through and we tested every single recipe to make sure that it had ingredients that were on hand. Most people have all the time, easy to get cheap ingredients. So we have, how to make a white cake. We have, how to make fudge brownies. We have, how to make donuts. Any of those basic recipes, homemade tortillas, all of those, even taco seasoning, homemade taco seasoning, homemade ranch dressing, all of those are in there. We have people, they said, "My family will not eat any ranch dressing but yours. Yours is the best."Tawra Kellam: I'm not trying to sound prideful, but it really is the best ranch dressing I've ever had. But that's what I do. We go through and we find recipes and we use them as a place to start. But then we go through and we tweak them and change them until they really are the best recipe, because there's nothing more frustrating than going into a cookbook and making a recipe and having it flop and you've wasted all that time and all those ingredients. So we really make sure that the recipes do taste good and people can make them. Even if you're not an experienced cook, they're really simple.Suzy Chase: So your latest YouTube episode is so informative. It's called, What to Eat When They Buy Out All the Food! - Surviving Panic. You talked about what to do when bread is all sold out. Is there a hope if the bread is sold out?Tawra Kellam: Yeah. So here's the thing with bread. People panic about bread, but there are so many more things that you can use instead of bread. So first of all, when you're at the store, the bread aisle may be sold out, but go check your bakery. Here I've been to four different stores, and every single one, the bakery was completely filled, but the bread aisle wasn't. Now, those breads aren't going to last quite as long as the regular loaf breads, but you can freeze bread pretty easily. So if you bring home a loaf of French bread... like yesterday, they didn't have anything but French bread at my store. So I got a couple of loaves of French bread. And then just slice it up, take out a few pieces, put the rest in your freezer. It's freezes really, really well. But now I know I'm going counter to pretty much every single YouTuber on the planet, but now is not the time to be learning how to make bread.Suzy Chase: Really?Tawra Kellam: Everyone keeps saying, "Oh, I'm showing you how to make bread." And I do have a super simple foreign ingredient, no need bread recipe that I'm getting ready to do a video on. But here's the thing, if you don't already know how to make homemade bread, now is not the time when you can't find flour to be experimenting with a little bit more difficult recipe of making bread. If you've never kneaded bread or anything like that, it can be intimidating. So what can you use instead? Use some rice. You can use potatoes, you could make muffins, which are super easy. You could make biscuits, which are fairly easy. You could use pretty much anything that's a starch, like corn tortillas, flour tortillas, if you can find those. So don't get just stuck thinking you have to have bread, you don't have to have bread. I know bread is what sustains life, but there are so many other options out there that right now really if you've never made bread before, I would not suggest wasting valuable flour on bread.Tawra Kellam: Another thing on that is, homemade bread tastes really good. I mean, it tastes really good. So what happens in my family, they will just eat the whole entire loaf right away. Where my muffins and biscuits, they're tasty, they're really tasty, but they don't eat them quite as fast. So make foods that your family will be able to eat, but they don't just eat it all in one sitting and it's gone.Suzy Chase: I remember growing up with a single mom making many a sandwich out of a hot dog bun.Tawra Kellam: Yeah, hot dog, hamburger buns are really great. We use those all the time. If you have them leftover, you can put some butter and sprinkle some cinnamon and sugar or garlic powder on there and broil them and they're super tasty. Yeah, you can toast them and use them instead of hoagie buns tooSuzy Chase: In your grocery store, it was crazy that the lunch meat was all sold out, but the deli was all stocked full of meats and cheese.Tawra Kellam: 10 feet away. I know. I was just like, "What is wrong with you people?" Right now, we're in the middle of a crisis, but any time. That's one reason why my family isn't panicking, because I have never just done one thing. When prices went up several years ago from... What's it? I think it was 9/11 maybe. Grocery prices went up. Everybody was totally freaking out. I wasn't freaking out. I just didn't buy boneless skinless chicken breasts. I used other things. I used chicken quarters. We didn't eat chicken. We ate beef because beef was cheaper then. We ate ham because ham was cheaper then. So I've always been one of those people that, when you don't have one thing, what can I use to replace this instead? That's where people need to start turning their thinking, is, "Okay, what can I make instead?Tawra Kellam: I don't have bread, but there's something else that I can make instead." It's actually very easy. You just need to get into the habit of thinking that is more what it is.Suzy Chase: There's one particular supermarket tip in the cookbook that caught my eye. It's buy the smallest packages. What exactly does that mean?Tawra Kellam: Well, so everybody says, "Buy in bulk." Mom and I think that's probably some of the worst advice you could have, because here's the thing, you go to these big warehouse stores, that mom and I are not fans of, let's say you get this huge package, five pounds of cheese. Okay, that's all well and good, but can you really use five pounds of cheese before it spoils if you're an average three to four person family? If you can, that's totally fine. But the majority of people don't. So what we have found is that people actually save more money when they don't buy in bulk because they're not wasting food that spoils. They're not dealing with packages that are big and bulky and heavy and they're dropping them and wasting food from dropping them because they're hard to handle. I mean, those two, three pound, I don't know how many pounds they are, containers of peanut butter at the big places. It's like, "Seriously, who has room in their cabinet to store that?"Tawra Kellam: And the price, actually now a lot of times the big bulk ones are actually more expensive than the cheaper ones, especially if you want for sales. So we don't recommend buying in bulk. We recommend actually buying smaller packages. And if you want to stock up for times like now, that's fine, but I'll tell you, all my peanut butter is in little one pound containers because I don't buy great big packages of food because I don't want it to spoil.Suzy Chase: With boxes of pasta overflowing in so many cans of beans, I'm thinking about flavor more than ever. How can we save money on herbs and spices?Tawra Kellam: Well, first of all, if you're thinking of prepping for situations like right now in this pandemic that we're in, stock up on salt and garlic powder and onion powder. If you get just those three spices, that will take care of 90% of your seasoning meat. Get garlic powder and onion powder instead of garlic salt and onion salt, because you can always add salt and the garlic powder and onion powder go further. Don't think that you have to buy these great big, once again, massive things of spices. I see people who have two people in their family and they have a one pound jug of taco seasoning, and there'll be dead before everything else is. It's just like, okay, this is crazy. People buy these humongous things but it's actually not cheaper. And I'll the honest, I get all my spices at Walmart or Dollar Tree, they're a lot cheaper.Tawra Kellam: I get them once again in the small little containers, but they're a quarter of the price. That's the way I save on spices. I don't have a lot of spices. There's no reason to have 50, 60 spices in your spice cabinet? I have more than I normally would use because I'm recipe testing, but I normally have about eight, maybe 10, maybe not even that many, closer to eight I think, spices that I use on a regular basis and that's it. Then the three, salt, garlic, and onion powder, those three I use 90% of the time. When we were at the store yesterday, I was shocked that really people aren't buying salt. Guys, if you are going to be going through something, you need to have seasoning, and salt is the best seasoning that you can buy to make your food taste good.Suzy Chase: You have recipes for everything in this cookbook. It's more than a cookbook, lip balm, window cleaner, laundry soap disinfectant, and even skunk smell remover. I love it.Tawra Kellam: I wanted to make sure it was comprehensive. And it's over 600 pages, but it's still not comprehensive enough to the point where we have volume two coming out in a couple of months. But I wanted to be sure that if you could get basic items, you could make whatever you needed to help you get by. So that's kind of why we put lip balm and laundry detergent and all yogurt, all those things in there. That's to help you make it at home when you need to.Suzy Chase: How are you testing recipes for your new cookbook and can you tell us a little bit about it?Tawra Kellam: Well, so thankfully, I got 90% of my recipe testing done before this pandemic hit. But I will tell you, I am having a little bit difficult time because I don't want to waste ingredients right now. So I'm being very careful. Instead of testing five to 10 recipes a day, I'm only testing one or two that we are actually using to eat with our dinner. If the recipe doesn't quite turn out like we had thought, we're still eating it, I'm going to doctor it up. I made a pizza crust the other day for my gluten free dairy free cookbook that's coming up and didn't really taste that great honestly. But I was like, "Boys, we are not wasting food."Suzy Chase: Dig in.Tawra Kellam: Yeah. It wasn't horrible by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't the wonderful fluffy pizza that everybody's used to. So right now, I'm just testing with things that I already have. As I go to the store, if I happen to see it, I have something, I will pick it up. But it is a little bit harder right now, but I'm still getting one or two recipes tested today, which is pretty good.Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called, My Favorite Cookbook, aside from this cookbook, what is your all time favorite cookbook and why?Tawra Kellam: I'll be perfectly honest, it's my cookbook. I'm not just saying that, I truly do not use any other cookbook at all. I don't even have them in my kitchen. This is the only cookbook I have. And I wrote it because it had all the recipes that I wanted to make on a regular basis. So I truly don't use any other cookbook. When I'm recipe testing, I have a question about something, I will go to Betty Crocker. If I need to look up and cross-reference and see, okay, wait, these directions don't sound right, how did Betty Crocker do it? If I didn't have Dining on a Dime, I'd probably do Betty Crocker. But I truly I don't use any other cookbooks. I don't want to have any others that I use. I don't.Suzy Chase: I love it. That's a good testament to your cookbook. So where can we find you on the web and social media and YouTube?Tawra Kellam: We're all over. We're livingonadime.com. You can go get our Dining on a Dime cookbook there. We are on YouTube, Living on a Dime To Grow Rich. We are on Facebook, Living on a Dime. We just recently changed our name because we want people to be encouraged that you're not living on a dime to wallow in your misery, you're living on a dime to move yourself forward to financial freedom. My husband and I are completely debt free. Our YouTube videos or Facebook page or Pinterest page, we have a huge Pinterest page, and our website are all geared to help people get out of debt and become financially free so that they are not stressed out about money.Suzy Chase: Oh my gosh! Thanks, Tawra. We needed you. Thank you so much for coming on Cookery by the Book podcast.Tawra Kellam: You're welcome. I appreciate you having me. Thanks so much.Outro: Subscribe over on CookerybytheBook.com. And thanks for listening to the number one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.

Stories in this episode: In the early days of his firefighting career, Steve enters a burning home to save a life and is forced to choose between protocol and following the Spirit; Heidi anguishes over her efforts to help create a documentary about Joseph Smith’s life until she receives a special witness from God; Alone in the rainforests of Madagascar, Elizabeth finds herself in dire need of heavenly power to call down a miracle. SHOW NOTES To see pictures and links for this episode, go to LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel TRANSCRIPT   KaRyn  0:01  I have mixed feelings about what I'm about to tell you. I know that we need stories more now than ever, but the time has come for us to take a break here at This Is the Gospel so we can gather and prepare new episodes. We'll be back as soon as we can with season three, filled with totally new themes and new stories on those themes. And in the meantime, we'll still be over on Instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast and on Facebook at This is the Gospel, sharing all of our upcoming themes and pitch line requests, and maybe even a bonus episode or two. And so, while we won't have weekly episodes, we're not going to stop thinking of ways to help us all tell the stories that matter and lift up our week. Now on with the show. Welcome to This is the Gospel. An LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. I'm feeling pretty inadequate today. I'm sitting in my home office, the day after my very first earthquake, which also happens to be for me the seventh day of an unprecedented self-quarantine due to a global pandemic. And as I've attempted to write something to introduce today's theme, the only thought that keeps coming to me is, "I'm not sure I'm strong enough for these latter days, Heavenly Father. I'm just not sure I can do it." Well, maybe you've wondered the same thing about yourself, or maybe you've been through stranger moments than these and have a sure knowledge of your capacity to make good during hard times. Well, either way, I think it's still difficult to watch as things shut down all around us, left and right. Doors, literally closing, the doors of restaurants, libraries, businesses, and our homes as we step inside to protect our families, our neighbors, and our communities. And that's probably why today's episode took so long to come together. When we first launched Season Two in September, "The Heavens are Open" was one of the first episode themes we had slated to produce and air. And week after week, it got pushed back. First, we didn't quite have the right stories, and then we didn't quite have the time to make it what we wanted it to be, and so it kept moving further and further away from the beginning of the season and landed here instead, the very tail end of Season Two, in the middle of a time when I think maybe there's nothing that I need to know more than the fact that God really is present, that He's still here, and He's pouring His power and His glory and His goodness down on us in the midst of these latter days. He's coming to us in a still small voice, and He's coming to us in the thunder of a general conference broadcast, where despite the fact that we can't attend, we will hear Him in the prophetic council. He's here in the midst of us right now. He is here with us in the trenches of our humanity. The heavens are open if we choose to hear Him, as President Nelson has invited us to do. So today, finally, we have three stories from people who engaged with heaven here on Earth, in their own unique way. Our first storyteller is, a This is the Gospel favorite, my neighbor Steve, who shares a story from early in his days as a firefighter when a choice to follow the spirit over protocol just may have saved his life. Here's Steve. Steve  3:31  So we respond to an early morning fire, probably 5:30/6 o'clock in the morning, and we arrive and it's a call of just smoke. So we pull up on the fire apparatus and we get off and you can see that there's some smoke kind of coming out of the air conditioning unit on the top of the roof, but not nothing really crazy at this point. So we kind of look around, I'm with my captain because I'm a new guy, so I'm following him around, you know, and we kind of look up to the window and the inside of the window is pitch black, full of smoke, and there's always kind of streaks of water that runs down because all that water vaporizes and then kind of condenses on the window, and so you can tell -- so we know there's a fire inside, a pretty significant fire. Pop the door, breached the door, and huge smoke comes out, right? It's on fire. It's burning and it's hot. So I get the hose line and with my partner and we kind of start making our advance into this very dark structure. One of the first things I learned that becoming a new firefighter is not like TV. The real fires, structure fires, when the fire is contained inside of a box, a house, are black, heavy, oppressive smoke, you cannot see, and it's terribly hot. Some of those things that we can't simulate in training is the oppressive heat and just the the density of the smoke. I mean, you literally cannot see your hand in front your face. So I'm kind of bumping around in you know, inside dragging the hose on, and we're trying to find a fire. We can't find it. We can hear it cracking. The heat is oppressive. So we know we're getting close, and there's dense, heavy smoke. You know, we're yelling, "Is anyone in here? Is anyone here?" You know, "We're looking for people," and then somehow I kind of get a little bit separated from my partner and it's getting really hot now and I'm just pushing a little bit farther, a little bit farther, a little bit farther, right, the statement is, "We will risk our lives a lot in a calculated manner to save a savable life. We will not risk our lives at all, to save that which they're already lost or has no value." So I'm in that calculated manner "Save a saveable life." We think someone's inside here. I can notice very distinctly, I can feel through my gloves, the change in kind of carpet to linoleum, so I know I'm in a kitchen, and now it's really hot in the kitchen, so the fire is probably around here somewhere, and I'm only about half a meter inside. And it's one of those rare times in my life and that I hear in my mind, "Stephen, get off the floor." To my shame, I kind of ignore it the first time because I'm looking for someone, right? So I push a little bit, a little bit farther into the room. "Steven, get off the floor and move out of the kitchen." "Okay," so I started backing up. I'm kind of pulling the hose line back, and literally the second I move off that linoleum floor and back into the carpet, the entire floor caves in. Suddenly, you can see everything. There's fire to to the ceiling, fire to the wall. My partner, I hear him call a mayday and he bails out of the window. And now I am, I'm in here and I've lost the hose line. So I don't know where I am. So I'm trying to back up, it's hot. I see a bunch of orange in front of me. And I'm starting to back out and you can hear the radio traffic is escalating on the outside. And I don't know how long I was in there, but I'm trying to bump my way back to the front room through the smoke, and I think I'm just about to the door and this big hand comes in, grabs me by the scruff of the neck, my turnout gear, pulls me out of the front door and kind of stands me up and it's this big, classic, if you were to make a character of any firefighter, it would be this guy. Big mustache, like 6 foot 2,300 pounds, big dude stands me right up on my feet and says, "Hey, are you okay?" and my turnout gear is all smokey and burned and I "Yes, thank you," you know, that kind of thing. And I get out, and then we fight the fire from the exterior, we can't find anyone inside at the time. But it was one of those rare, rare occurrences in my life where somebody cared about me and told me to do something and move, and I moved. Given my experience, I'm pretty sure I would not have survived that, frankly. But I'm so grateful, right, for that experience, and for that loving Heavenly Father and that still small voice. It wasn't loud in the chaos or the fire, wearing my turnout gear, I'm all encapsulated, and it was that still small voice that called me by name and told me to move. Since that time, I have resolved to do the best I can to listen. Now clearly there have been times when I can't tell what it is, if it's just an impression, if it's... who knows? Who cares, right? Doesn't matter. And I've done what I felt like I should have done or what I felt like I was told to do and there was no miraculous, no seminal moment in my life, but there have been other times when I have listened and things have changed. I hope I'm always worthy enough to have that connection. KaRyn  8:48  That was Steve. If you haven't heard Steve's season one story from our "To the Rescue" episode, it's definitely worth revisiting. What I appreciate about the story and about Steve is that acknowledgement, that moments like these, moments of pure and clear revelation, are rare in his life. But when they do happen, if he chooses to listen, things change. And there's something really interesting about the practice of listening that Steve mentioned at the end of his story. You know, sometimes we may have an impression, a thought, or a feeling, and maybe we're unsure of its origin. "Was that the still small voice? Or was it last night's very bad decision to go to Taco Bell?" It's not always easy to discern. But if we practice moving forward with confidence, as long as the impression is moving us towards discipleship and Christ, we will make ourselves ready to receive and obey when the pure heavenly messages reveal themselves through revelation. Our next story comes from writer and historian Heidi who received a special witness from God through a story from the Prophet Joseph's life.   Here's Heidi. Heidi  9:56  I was walking in the Salt Lake City Cemetery. I like to walk, and I love walking into the cemetery because there are all of these grave sites and you look at the names and the dates and you recognize that in each one of those graves is someone who has a host of stories you wish you knew. Now -- I'm a writer and a historian, and so that's very intriguing to me. So as I walk along, I'm often looking at that. Well this particular day, I was walking along in the cemetery, and I had just finished a very major project that had taken me almost two and a half, three years, and it was about the Prophet Joseph Smith. I was writing a documentary for PBS. It wasn't for the church. It was for people that didn't know Joseph. It was for people, it had to be what we called "bilingual." It had to speak to them and to members of the Church, but mostly to people who could be a little bit angry. Well, I'm walking along, and I realized that my hands no longer have an opportunity to do anything to that documentary. It's gone off to PBS to be signed off, and to be put up. And I was so sad. I was so sad that as I'm walking along, there are tears running down my face. And I could just imagine that the people who are mowing the grass were looking over at this lady who's walking and she's weeping, and that just doesn't seem to be right. But I was crying because I felt like I had failed. I wrote 47 versions of that documentary trying to get it right. What I wanted to have happen in people's lives because of the film, because of the book that would be out there as well, because of my understanding of Joseph Smith, I didn't want them to just place him in history. I didn't want them to just say, you know, "He did a lot of interesting things." I wanted them to have the experience of having the spirit say to them, "This is a prophet of God." I wanted them to be able to reach beyond everyday life, that linear plane we live on, that date, time, and place, I wanted them to reach beyond that, and have a spiritual experience that can only be administered from the heavens. I love Brigham Young's statement. I felt like shouting "hallelujah" to think I ever knew the Prophet Joseph Smith. I wanted people to feel that because I felt that. I felt like I knew him and I knew him before I came here. I felt like I had the responsibility to tell the story of the Prophet Joseph Smith in such a way that people would be drawn to him who otherwise had no interest or were even negative about his life in his teachings. That I had the opportunity to tell how great he was and how significant he was, not just in the history of the United States or religion as it was growing, but in the history of the world. And I had this grand view, and I didn't feel like I had gotten the documentary to that place. I didn't feel like I had just nailed it. You know how it is sometimes when you feel like, "Ah I got it!" and in this case, there were pieces that as hard as I had tried, I hadn't pulled it together. And so now here I am 47 versions later. I just felt this, "wait," that this is Joseph Smith we're talking about, and so I'm walking along, and I started talking right out loud to my Father in Heaven. I can remember saying to him, "I tried so hard. I can't remember anything being as difficult as this was." I'm telling the Lord about how I feel, and He knows because I was so prayerful while I did this. I was always talking to Him about, "I just don't know how to handle this, and I don't know how to handle that." And I would like to say that, you know, all of a sudden it would just appear on my screen, the Lord would say, "Oh, well, here's what you do with that," never happened. I just had to slog my way through it, and that's the way it is for almost everybody. These things don't just drop down from the sky, and so I'm telling him about how Heidi feels now. I'm putting Heidi back in the picture because Heidi's given two and a half years of her life, lost 28 pounds, worked herself to the bone, and but it didn't matter. None of that mattered. What mattered was that I did my part for Joseph Smith. So I'm walking along and the tears are running down my face and I'm just saying, you know, "I wanted this and I wanted that," kind of some of the things I've talked about. And then all of a sudden this sense of peace came over me, and I remember stopping. I didn't keep walking. I remember stopping and I know right where I was, I was on the hill right below where John Taylor is buried. And I stopped there, and the thought came into my mind, and I'm one of those people the Lord communicates to in words, I don't get those burnings and the tingling’s and I don't get those. I'm a word person, so I think He knows that and He says, "Oh I'll just talk to her and she'll listen." But words came into my mind, and the words were, "Heidi, Joseph had to give the endowment in the red brick store. It wasn't the way he wanted it, but it worked." Now, let me flashback for a minute to the second story of the red brick store. Joseph Smith, in 1840, had stood up before all of the saints who had gathered from many of them from the British Isles and eastern United States, and he said to them, "We need the temple more than anything else." And then he said, "if I can just live to see the temple completed, I'll say, 'Lord, it is enough. Let thy servant depart in peace.'" He gets down the road a couple of years, and it's 1842. This is an important date for Joseph Smith because the temple is starting to rise up on the hillside. It's only to ground level if that, but they are beginning to see that though they're living in tents and in caves on the mountain side, they're beginning to see the significance of this temple that is going to tower over the Mississippi River on this bend, and the people are excited about that. They're giving everything they have. And Joseph is giving everything he has, contemplating that when this temple is completed, he gets to essentially complete his mission, that he has done the Book of Mormon and he's received priesthood power, and he's brought the saints gathered to here they are, they've started doing baptisms for the dead, and the temple is going to be the culmination of their religious experience. Okay, so Joseph knows all of this. It's in his head, and he's just wanting the Lord to let him just see it through to the end. And then 1842, he knows that he's not going to be there when the temple is completed. He sees how slowly it's going, and he recognizes, "I'm not going to be here." And so then he has to make the decision. "What do I do? Well, I've got to give the endowment," and he knows what it is, "I got to give the endowment in such a way and to enough people that it can be carried on when I'm gone and when the temple is completed." He takes them into the second story of the red brick store, nine men to the red brick store, it takes all day, and he gives them their endowment. I just sometimes think about how Joseph Smith must have felt. Here's Joseph watching this last piece, this culminating piece of the restoration slipway, he doesn't get to be there for it, after everything that he's given and everything that he's done. That experience in the red brick store came back to my mind in the cemetery. It was like the heavens had opened and the light came down, and I looked around, wondering if anyone else had heard what I'd heard because it was so pronounced, and it made so much sense to me because it kind of put some closure to Joseph's life for me, but more than that, I felt connected to him in a personal way. I understand now, that you put everything forward and the Lord knew that, and He said, "It wasn't the way he wanted it, and this isn't the way you wanted it, but it worked for Joseph." And then I thought to myself, "It will work." And it was one of those times where the heavens opened, and where the Lord kind of brought the whole thing together for me, not for anyone else. Now, it was just for me. And I have reflected back on that so many times of when things haven't come together just the way I wanted for this or for that, I just say to myself, "Heidi, Joseph had to give the endowment in the red brick store. It wasn't the way he wanted it, but it worked. It worked." And I will say to myself over and over again, "This will work." I don't, I don't think we allow Him to be that much a part of our lives sometimes. I think we want reinforcement from a lot of other places, and that was the only reinforcement that really mattered because it was so tied to what I've been doing, and it moved me legions forward. I think sometimes we expect the heavens to open when we ask for it, and we expect the heavens to open with the answer that we're asking for. And what I found so engaging in my connection to the heavens, is that the Lord came to me with something I didn't expect, but it was far more, it was far broader and far more enveloping for me because He knew what I needed. I think I came to the end of this project with a perspective because I had come to know Joseph Smith in a way that I prize not just my testimony of him and his work, but my witness of his goodness, all the way to his heart and his soul. I learned from him that it was not easy, not ever, to move the work forward, the restoration, it was not something that just the heavens opened and all the answers were there, he had to do a lot of legwork in order for things to get done. It isn't about the work per se. I learned from him that it's about the effort and the willingness to submit to the Lord. KaRyn  22:15  That was Heidi Swinton. Heidi is the award-winning writer of the PBS documentary "American Prophet: The Story of Joseph Smith," which was recently reissued as part of the bicentennial celebration of the first vision. And aside from her delightful storytelling abilities, Heidi holds a special place in my heart because it was during a deep and meaningful airplane conversation with her four years ago that I first jotted down the phrase "This is the Gospel" in my journal. Her unique knowledge of the Prophet Joseph Smith and her love and respect for him is absolutely inspiring to me. Sometimes he feels really far away and when I talked to Heidi, somehow he becomes real. And isn't it so cool that our God is an efficient God, He parts the heaven for Joseph in 1842, and then uses that experience to pour down his love and grace to Heidi in the 20th century. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, and I'll just keep saying it, our stories may just be the instrument that God chooses to use when he opens the heavens to our posterity generations from now. So write it down, write it down now so that it can do some good in the future. Our final story today comes from Elizabeth, who needed a miracle and got it when she discovered just how to ask for it.   Here's Elizabeth. Elizabeth  23:46  I was in this room with just a bed with a mosquito net and a little nightstand. I took off my boots and my sock and my foot was horribly infected. It was red, it was swollen, and I was really scared about how I was going to get out of there because I was three days into a seven-day hike in Madagascar and there were no hospitals. The whole reason I was there was because when I was a kid, I saw the show on the Discovery Channel about Madagascar, and how the forests were all being cut down and that lemurs only live there, and they were all endangered because of all this deforestation. And so my plan when I was a kid was to win the lottery, which I've played the lottery, but I was going to win a million dollars and buy Madagascar, and then everybody had to leave unless they agreed to not cut down the forests. So I've always loved wildlife, and I became a park ranger when I grew up. And I was working at Denali National Park in Alaska, and I had two months off every winter, so I would go someplace warm and sunny. I've been to Africa a bunch of times, to South Africa, Botswana, Namibia. In 2011, I was in Uganda, worked at a clinic for five weeks and then climbed Kilimanjaro. And then in 2013, I finally got to go to Madagascar. And I had three things that I wanted to do when I was there. I wanted to see a fossa. The fossa is the largest predator of lemurs in Madagascar, and I read that the best place to see him was Kirindy National Forest Park, so I went there. And then I wanted to do some volunteer work, so I found a place to volunteer for two weeks with nutrition for kids under age four. And then I wanted to hike in Masoala national park on the Masoala peninsula. So when you hike in the national parks in Madagascar, it's required that you hire a guide. So I flew into Maroantsetra and I went to the park office to arrange the hike, and the only guide they had that spoke English was Claudio, so I hired him. Because it was really hot and humid there, I didn't want to carry my own backpack. So I hired a porter. So the porters, they carry your backpack, they set up the tents, they cook the food, they even cooked lunch, they cooked all three meals. They didn't let me do anything actually, they were really good. And my backpack was kind of heavy, it had everything for six weeks in there, and we still needed food, so I hired another porter. So I had Gerard, who was an older guy, and Jovan and Claudio. Gerard and Jovan didn't speak any English, there's just Claudio. And then the trail was seven days long. We started on a pirogue, which is a little canoe that you can either paddle or push with a pole. After we got off the pirogue, we started hiking, and that was the one place where like the trail was kind of wide, and there were villagers, people living there and there was fruit trees, mango trees, and lychee trees and people were fishing and they had their fish laying out in the sun to dry, and there was a lot of shade on the trail because of all the big trees. So on the first night, we stayed in a hotel which had one one room and there was a shed out back with a barrel of water and a little cup for a shower. And on my way to the shower, after I had taken off my boots, I noticed that I had this big blister in between my big toe and the bottom of my foot. Really strange place for blister, I've never gotten one there before. And I wasn't worried about it, I've gotten so many blisters. It seems like every hike that I go on, I get blisters all over my feet, and it's just kind of an inconvenience, but I'm used to it. And I've never had a, you know, a serious problem, it's just been painful. During the night, my blister kind of filled up with fluid, and so when I started that second day, it almost immediately popped and Claudio told me there'd be river crossings, so I was wearing my sandals that second day. And there were river crossings, but they're also like the trail was flooded because we were walking between rice paddies, and it was really dirty water because there were cows everywhere and the rivers weren't particularly clean either. And so the trail was sometimes up to my shin in water and the river crossings were, you know, mid-thigh, so it was a lot of splashing through water that second day. And at the end of the second day, I thought, "well, I gotta clean this blister as best as I can." So I had some hand sanitizer and I kind of, you know, washed it off with that, but I did find a leech in the broken blister and I pulled that thing out. So I washed it as best as I could and didn't think much of it because it's just a blister. So on the third day, I wore my boots again and I was just hiking along like normal and around the afternoon, my foot started to get pretty sore, and I loosened the laces because I just thought, "Well, maybe I just tied my boot too tight today." But by the end of the day, as we were getting into the village where we're going to spend the night, I was trying really hard not to limp because my foot was so tender just to walk on and I just assumed that I had a lot more blisters. But then when I got to my room and took my boot off and my sock off, I saw that my foot was red, and it was swollen. I couldn't even see my ankle bone. My little toes were like little red sausages, and my foot was hot to the touch, and it was infected. And I didn't know how I was gonna walk the next day because it hurt so bad. So I didn't know how I was gonna get out of there, I didn't think that I was going to be able to walk the next day. And I was so freaked out that I didn't, I was afraid to tell Claudio, and there was nobody else that spoke English, and there were no clinics, there were no hospitals. There wasn't even electricity, there was no running water. I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, and I was really stressed out. I didn't know if the infection was gonna get worse in the next day. I'm 5 foot 10 and I was taller than most of the people I met there and I thought, “they can't carry me out. We're three days in, four days the next way," you know, like, "What am I gonna do?" And I was just in this little room with there's little stick walls, the sticks close together, and you could see people moving around outside, like through the gaps in the sticks. And there's this lonely dark room with just my little kerosene lamp, and I felt so alone because I was feeling really far from anything I knew, and just all by myself out there in Madagascar, in the middle of nowhere, and I really, I really just wanted a priesthood blessing, and I wanted to find a member of the Church to give me a blessing, but there were no churches out there, there were no members of the Church. I had my little iPod touch with me and I hadn't used it because there's no way to charge it, but I knew I had conference talks on there. So I turned it on, and I had October 2012 conference talks on there. I had one by Elder Holland, about the first commandment, and he talks about the apostles and how they must have felt after Jesus was crucified and was resurrected and then he left, and they say, "Well, what do we do now?" And Peter says, "Well, I guess we just go back to fishing." And then he talks about, you know, he paraphrases Jesus saying to them, "Shouldn't this have, you know, being with me for three years, shouldn't it have changed you?" And I thought about how I've been changed by going to the temple and making my covenants there. I just, you know, sitting there in that dark room with just Elder Holland, in that conference talk, it made me realize that I wasn't alone and that I could ask for the power to be healed, I could pray. So I did, I knelt down on the floor outside the mosquito netting, and I said a prayer and I said, "Heavenly Father, I know you can heal my foot. Even if you choose not to, I know you won't leave me here. You haven't abandoned me, something will work out." And I knew that because I try to keep my covenants, I had this power I could ask for; to help me. And the best part was that I got done with that prayer and I felt peaceful. I wasn't worried about it. I knew something would work out. And I didn't feel so alone anymore. After that prayer, I went to sleep. I was able to get to sleep, and I woke up in the morning and my foot was back to normal size, and it wasn't hot anymore, it wasn't red. It was still a little sore, but it was healed. And my foot was better. It was miraculous. The other blisters I had didn't bother me for the rest of the hike. I was able to finish the hike. I had a wonderful time. I didn't even get any more leeches. It was just a fantastic experience, and I am so thankful that I could have that reassurance that I knew that I had that power to draw on and that I wasn't alone, that Heavenly Father wouldn't leave me and that I could ask for his help. KaRyn  33:36  That was Elizabeth. I adore the simple story of healing for so many reasons. but I think my favorite part is this. Yes, waking up to a healed foot overnight is miraculous, but I think the real miracle in a rain forest in Madagascar thousands and thousands of miles from home, was actually her revelation about the Priesthood of God. That it's here, on the Earth right now because of the restoration of the gospel in this dispensation, and as a faithful covenant keeping Daughter of God, she is never without access to its power, whether she's home or abroad. She said she feels grateful to be able to draw on that power. You know, this is a really interesting phrase that we sometimes use when we talk about the priesthood. To draw on something or to draw down something, means that we access a thing that is useful or precious that we've held in reserve. It's used in reference to money or oil or gas or water. There's a sense that when we draw on reserves, they diminish and I know that that's true about my canned peaches, and that's why I hold on to them with a fist of iron, but you know, the Priesthood Power of God is never diminished when we call it down. And the Prophet Joseph Smith promised us that it will, quote, "Never be taken from the Earth while mortality endures, for there will always be need for temporal direction, and the performance of ordinances," end quote. And you know what that means to me? That while everything else seems like it is closing around us, the heavens will never be closed to us as long as we're here trudging through dank waters on African islands with our broken bodies. That we can be sure of. You know, we chose the theme for this episode after reading Sister Wendy Nelson's book with the same title, and as the wife of our Prophet, President Nelson, she has a courtside seat to the continuing revelation and heavenly guidance that defines his role of Prophet, Seer, and Revelator for the Church. One of my favorite moments in the book was when Sister Nelson shared this, she said, quote, "Recently my husband said to me, 'Wendy, the Lord is just as eager to give revelation to you as He is to give it to me,'" end quote. I think it's easy to forget that we're entitled. By virtue of our divine nature as Daughters and Sons of God, that we're entitled to call down the heavens and all that that entails. Prophets or people with weighty jobs in the Church do not get a more direct line to the heavens just because of the work they do. They may receive different kinds of information or have a different scope to that connection, but our God is no respecter of persons. And while the Prophet has a special calling and specific authority to receive revelation for the Church as a whole, he is no more entitled to the gifts of such connection than you or me. And so how do we do it? In these absolutely wild and crazy times when we might need to draw upon the endless reserves of heavenly power more than ever? How do we move with confidence when the voice calls us by name to get off the floor in our smoke filled spaces, or open the door to the piece of heaven when we're not sure we've done enough? How do we call down healing and hope in the jungles of loneliness? Well, we start with the Savior. We always start with the Savior. Sister Nelson wrote this quote, "As we truly focus on the Savior, as we truly remember Him and His infinite Atonement, as day after day we think of Him more and more, the heavens will open. Our fears and doubts will decrease. Some will even flee! We will be led along. We will know what to do, step by step. We will learn how to draw upon the power available to us because the Savior atoned for us. We will learn how to access His cleansing, healing, redemptive, strengthening power. And we will experience the freedom to be our true selves as we unyoke ourselves from the world and instead yoke ourselves to the Savior," end quote. So for those of you, who like me, struggle with feeling just a little bit inadequately matched to the times ahead, what we have to remember is that we're already here. We're here, and we're already made adequate through Christ, through our best efforts and his grace and mercy. Maybe we're showing up imperfectly and in pieces right now, and maybe we could choose to be a little bit more intentional in those efforts. I know I could. But if we're trying, then we're exactly where we should be, doing exactly what we should be doing, the heavens do see us and they do know us, and they are blessing us as we call upon them and draw down their powers. That's it for this episode of This is the Gospel. Thank you to our storytellers, firefighter Steve, historian Heidi S. Swinton and adventurer Elizabeth. We'll have links to Heidi's documentary as well as Sister Nelson's beautiful book "The Heavens Are Open," and other good stuff including a transcript of this episode in the show notes at LDSLiving.com/ThisistheGospel. All of the stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. We love to hear all the ways that this type of storytelling strengthens your faith in God and love for his children. If you have a minute to leave us a review, and a rating, wherever you listen to your podcast, please do. We've got plenty of time, I know you're sitting in your house wondering what to do. Especially during this hiatus, all the good words help us to keep working hard and know more of the kinds of stories and themes that are most meaningful to you. And, added bonus if you didn't already know, every single review helps us to show up in the search for more people when they're looking for something good to listen to. If you have a story to share about Living the Gospel, please call our pitch line, leave us a pitch. We often find many of our stories including Elizabeth's story today from the pitch line, and we love to hear how the Gospel has blessed your life. And the pitch line is very much open during this social distancing, so call 515-519-6179 and pitch your story in three minutes or less. This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story editing and producing by Jasmine Mullen, Katie Lambert, Erika Free, and Danielle Wagner. It was scored, mixed, and mastered by Mix at Six Studios. That is such a tongue twister. Our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDSLiving.com/podcasts. Stay healthy, catch up on old episodes, and we'll see you soon.    

On this episode, we discuss two topics that are top of mind. First, is the Coronavirus and how it's impacting the bourbon industry. Then we take a look at the hype and hysteria that surrounds Blanton's. We dive into the recent news of Blanton's Gold making its way to the US and if we think $120 SRP is a deal you should jump on. You will hear a new voice for a few minutes and that is Aaron Goldfarb. You may have seen his work on various publications around the web. He wasn’t able to stay on due to some technical difficulties, but we hope to have him on again soon. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. Barrell Craft Spirits has a national single barrel program. Ask your local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: Barrel Shortage: https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-there-a-bourbon-barrel-shortage-on-the-horizon This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about taxes. What are distilleries doing for coronavirus? History of Blanton's. How did Blanton's become so popular? Will limiting the purchases of allocated items work? Why don't distilleries use technology to manage this problem? Blanton's Gold coming to the US. Is it because of tariffs? Are they taking away from the European allocation? How can you make more product with only one warehouse? Will quality suffer with increased production? What other companies have a similar strategy to Blanton's? What do you think of the price point? Will Straight from the Barrel ever come to the U.S.? Thanks to Blake from bourbonr.com, Jordan from BreakingBourbon.com , Brian from sippncorn.com, and Aaron Goldfarb for joining. 0:00 Have you ever thought about a career in the whiskey industry? I'm not talking about being the next master distiller. But if you want a leg up on the competition, you need to take a look at the distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. This six course program will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is 100% online, meaning that you can access the classes at anytime, anywhere. So what are you waiting for? all that's required is a bachelor's degree, go to U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:35 So if you think back in the 1980s it was a bleak period for bourbon. 0:39 Thanks, thanks, Ryan. 0:43 Is poppin bottles they don't their shit what's going on around here? I'm listening really. I thought it was a good timing. 1:01 This is Episode 245 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your hosts Kenny. We've got a lot of news to cover. So let's hit it. Cova 19 are the corona virus is hitting everyone extremely hard. Now, I'm not sure why people are stocking up on toilet paper like they don't plan on leaving the bathroom anytime soon. But I'm sure most of us have enough bourbon to get us through this time. At this point, every major distillery has shut down tours. So if you had plans to visit the bourbon trail, please make sure you do your research before coming to see what is and what is not open. likely it's going to be nothing because even at this time, all bars and restaurants in the city of Louisville are admitted to shut down in person patrons. And in more coronavirus news. We've talked about this before about one of the benefits of having a state run liquor is that the product is always sold at SRP. Well, who could have predicted this but Pennsylvania one of those states where all spirits are government sanctioned and controlled have closed 2:00 All liquor stores in the state in definitely on Tuesday this past week. This also includes all online orders. So that means the entire state of Pennsylvania has literally zero access to bourbon. I guess after all this time we call them bourbon bunkers for a reason. 2:17 In a shocking vote, a bill is passed by the House licensing and occupations committee that allows Kentucky residents to get alcohol shipped to their door, but get this directly from the producer and wait for it without going through a distributor or retailer. This is a huge modernization and reform that could lead to a larger domino effect across the nation. Now this bill would require alcohol shipments meet very clearly labeled and an ID check and signature upon delivery. The producer would still have to pay the excise tax on all inbound shipments coming to Kentucky. However, retailers testified in front of the committee to express concerns about how the bill would negatively impact their businesses because people would be able to 3:00 for alcohol from their homes, and have it shipped to their door instead of going to the local retailer. In my head, I'm thinking, Well, yeah, that's kind of the whole point, right? However, that didn't matter. And now this amended House Bill 415 is going to the full house. We're going to keep you updated as this progresses. Is there a barrel shortage on the horizon? Well, Lou Bryson over the Daily Beast wrote an article where he interviews everyone from Cooper's to loggers and Miller's themselves. The loggers fear a shortage of white oak while the Cooper's really don't. Wood scientists see wetter conditions now than they have in previous years. And the increased deer populations actually eating acorns, which means less trees, and at this time, there's no plan to actually manage oak populations so it could lead to more maple and pure white oaks. However, independent Steve company says that they are coming off to rainy years where prices for logs were high, but now they see plenty of oak across 20 different states. Brown Forman cooperage says that they see more white oak now. 4:00 They have in the past 40 years, and the industry is doing better sustainability by harvesting oak at the right time to allow newer growth to form loosens up the pose talking about the coop urges only using about 2% of the hardwood industry. But he reflected upon his time spent with the logger. And he said that there is a lot of oak out there, but it's actually impossible to mill it because there's no Mills around and it's hard to get it out of the forest as well. So bourbon is gonna continue to be produced, but we'll have to see what the future entails. For the barrels themselves. You can read this story over the daily beast with the link in our show notes. Can bourbon be made in US territories like Puerto Rico and Guam? Well, Josh Peters over at the whiskey jug took this question to the TTB regulations division to see if it actually still would be legally called bourbon. Sure enough, they confirmed it that bourbon whiskey can be produced in Puerto Rico and Guam with reference to 27 CFR five dot 11 where the USA is defined 5:00 As the United States, the several states and territories and the District of Columbia, and the term state includes a territory and the District of Columbia, and the term territory means the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. So there you have it. 5:15 Booker's bourbon batch 2020 dash one also known as Granny's batch will be released at 63.2% ABV or 126.4 proof. It is named after the sixth generation master distiller Booker knows mom, Margaret beam note. Although she never worked in the bourbon business herself, she certainly played an important role in keeping the bourbon family tradition alive, carrying the legacy on from the fifth to the sixth generation. She was very close with her oldest son Booker, who was instrumental in getting him his first job at the distillery where he would eventually go to become the master distiller. This bourbon is be released at six years, four months and 21 days in age. It would be available sometime around this month for around $90 for real 6:00 is setting aside six barrels to be chosen for and exclusively sold to the four roses mellow moments members. mellow moments is a special club organized by four roses that allows members of the general public to be a part of special gatherings, tastings. And you can stay up to date on for roses news. Plus get some cool trinkets sent in the mail every once in a while. new members can apply at select times during the year when the window opens, and the window to join when that membership does open is only for a handful of minutes so you better at quick. You can see their website for more details at mellow moments club.com. Now some pursuit series news episodes 22 and 23 are now available on sale box comm so if you're looking to get some killer bourbon shipped to your door during this time, head on over there and get stocked up. Episode 23 I'm super excited about because it's our oldest release ever at 15 years old. 6:57 Now today's show, we talk about two things 7:00 Things that are top of mind. First, it's that Corona virus, we had to talk about it. But we decided to change topics up a little bit because you've been hearing all about it on the news. So we got to kind of break away from it. And what are the bourbon is out there that can be just as argumentative. It's got to be bland. So we take the whole entire episode and talk about it. We take a look at the hype and the hysteria that surrounds it. we dive into the recent news of Blanton's gold making its way to the US and it do we think of $120 SRP, there's a deal that you should be jumping on. You're also going to hear a new voice for a few minutes when we start this. And that's Aaron Goldfarb. Now, you may have seen his work on various publications around the web, but due to some technical difficulties, he wasn't able to stay on for the entire podcast, but we hope to have him on again once in the future. All right, it's show time. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich, with above the char, and remember, Go wash your hands. 7:58 Hey everyone, Joe here again. 8:00 I know I talk a lot about blending here. But we also have a national single barrel program, ask you a local retailer or bourbon club about selecting your own private barrel. Find out more at barrel bourbon calm. 8:12 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char, death and taxes. So those are the two things that we are guaranteed in life to have to do taxes. April 15 comes around and every year I'm like son of beep, beep beep, had a night not remember to put all this together. And every year from a business perspective, I tell myself, I'm going to do a better job of keeping my books. And I never do. I never do I just focus on what I do. And then toward the end of the year, I rush and do all my books and well, I'm a procrastinator, if you will when it comes to the accounting side of my world. I need to get better at it. I will. But you know what, at least I don't have to pay 60 to 80% 9:00 Have taxes on everything that I do. And that, my friends is what Kentucky distillers have to pay about 60% of every bottle of bourbon that you buy, if you tally up all of the 60% of that goes to taxes. What's interesting about this is that Kentucky bourbon gets taxed six to six different times off the still in the barrel in the case in the bottom, and then the consumers pay a sales tax and in Kentucky, they have to pay a wholesale tax as well. So you have all these different taxes that they have to pay, that leads to leads to basically more more and more money that has to go to the government just for them to produce whiskey. Now, here's what's messed really, really messed up is that the distillers don't mind paying the taxes necessarily. They actually look at it as like hey, you know what? 10:00 This is not necessarily a bad thing. All that money a lot of that money gets earmarked to go to roads and schools of Kentucky. So like in Anderson County, you drive through there, and you see the nice roads and schools. Those were basically built by wild turkey and for roses, which puts a lot of money into that government infrastructure. Also Kentucky bourbon, the taxes are specifically earmarked for education. I think a couple years ago, when when things started, you know riling up with the teachers here, it became public that bourbon pumped $30 million into the education system. So I've always said like, if you want to, if you want to improve the Kentucky education system, buy more Kentucky bourbon. In fact, when you buy Kentucky bourbon no matter where you are, you are actually helping the roads, the schools, the children, the teachers, you're helping our entire state. So thank you 11:00 Because we have pretty nice roads out in the rural areas because people buy a lot of bourbon. But here's another fun fact, it wasn't until 2011 that the distillers were even allowed to write off their, the fact that they were paying these taxes, they would have to wait too until they bottled it and put it in the market before they could write off the expense of the the out of alarm tax that they were facing. So American whiskey has all these weird, awkward tax laws, that every time I start complaining about having to do taxes or do my books, I kind of look at myself in the mirror and say, Well, at least I'm not a distiller. So remember that this year, as you're going to put your taxes together, however you do it. At least you're not having to do 60 to 80% on the taxes and you get to write everything off when it's time to write it off. And that's this week's above 12:00 The char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, until next week, cheers 12:11 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon Kinney and Fred here tonight people's champ isn't able to make it because of Corona virus things that are happening. So we'll go ahead and, you know, we'll send our best wishes to Ryan, he doesn't have a Corona virus. I don't want to make that make that clear. The way I said that probably sounded like really dire. No, he's actually trying to do some things for his for his job and set up daycare because we've got a lot of things happening where schools can be shut down for the next few weeks here in Kentucky. So he's got to make sure that he's taking care of his employees tonight. So we're gonna miss Ryan tonight, but we will go on without him. So before we kind of introduce everybody here, I kind of want to talk to Fred Are you are you Doomsday prepared? You guys got enough bourbon and toilet paper to get you through for the next month? Well, you know, 13:00 Like today was you know, I wasn't supposed to be on today because I'm supposed to be in San Francisco for the competition but last minute 13:08 you know we had a scare ourselves and my wife she's the on the committee for like getting the Louisville VA hospital prepared for the coronavirus. So we've been getting prepared I think for the last three months in fact, we we thought there's a tornado coming. Yeah, there might be a tornado coming. So we had a little tornado drill with a family. We all went down to the basement and I was really proud. We brought chips and toilet paper and you know, the baby had something to play with. So we got this. You Baby could play with toilet paper too. Well, he went he went down there and he went straight for the bourbon. I'm like, this is my kid. 13:48 It's in the DNA. Yeah. Alright, so let's go ahead. Let's go around the horn real quick. And but first before we hit some of our regulars, I want to introduce somebody that's new to the podcast and we have a special 14:00 And tonight so Aaron Goldfarb, who you will have probably seen from a lot of articles out there online. So Aaron, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me even though I don't know how to use a computer apparently so 14:14 it's okay. Well let it slide this time. We'll we'll do some tech support next time when you do calling a pinch hitter here. Absolutely. So just kind of give everybody a quick recap or kind of summary of like, who you are, where you write and everything like that. Yeah, I'm a, you know, accidentally fell into becoming a blues writer. I write a lot of whiskey articles, but I write cocktail articles, beer articles and food articles for places like Esquire punch, fine pair whiskey advocate, bourbon, plus my favorite place to write. 14:48 I've written a few books to hacking whiskey, most notably for your audience. Gather around cocktails was my most recent book and 14:57 just learned that my kid has been 15:00 next two weeks off school. So I think this is the end of my writing career for a while, at least. 15:05 We're all trying to set up some sort of daycares at home or, I don't know, maybe we should just like go out and like, buy the like 5000 piece puzzles off of Amazon and be like, here you go. This is your next two weeks. Exactly. 15:18 Alright, so, Blake, how you doing tonight? Doing well? Yeah, always good to be back. Just straight into my intro. I feel like we're kind of changing things up. So, you know, do I give the regular Hey, I'm Blake from bourbon or do I just talk about coronavirus or, I mean, you can talk about what's happened in your area. I mean, it's ya know, our craziness happening. No, it's well, I had the flu last week. So I feel like I was out and wasn't the corona virus was just the flu. So we're not we're not born. Yeah, yeah, I got tested. I got tested. I tested positive for the flu. So I decided, I guess I didn't test negative for Corona. But there's been no cases in Florida that I'm aware of. But no, it's just it's crazy. I mean, 16:00 The TPC, that's a huge thing in this area. And so they actually announced today that they're suspending all all fans from the tournament. And you know, this golf tournament will bring in over 100,000 people to come and watch it. So it was pretty disappointing. You know, I was supposed to be 16:21 I was supposed to be going out to a tournament with my son tomorrow. So that's a little disappointing. And it's spring break for us. And as you can see, my daughter's like in the background. So they're talking about extending spring break here as well. 16:39 But yeah, yeah, this should be interesting. I don't know. I'm, I'm one who, I just think you've got like a 1% chance of actually hitting and being devastated. So I'm like, I'll just be unprepared and 99% of the time, I'd be correct. So it's just that 1% gets me But no, so 17:00 lost interest for the longest episode we're about to get into. 17:04 You're right on point there. So So Jordan, what's happening? You're part of the world. Well, the Quran hasn't been declared so Western Eastern pa right. There's a bunch of cases nothing in Pittsburgh. So Pittsburgh's I wouldn't say naive, but like right around today was the first time a little bit of unease and unsettledness kind of kicked in. Right? And now that the NHL canceled the penguins, right, people are super upset. But I'm sure we'll be seeing cases pop up super soon. I don't really even know if they're testing or if they have test kits here in Pittsburgh yet so I'm sure there's cases that we don't know about. So I don't know. Thankfully, it's a state run liquor system. So there's tons of tons of bottles still on the shelves. I think people want to buy that one. But it's there slowly. And Brian in our part of the world Yeah, you're part of the world. Thanks for having me again, Brian with sipping corn Find me a bourbon justice calm. And I my only effect so far is tonight. Instead of doing this, I was going to be 18:00 Drinking an Evan Williams 23 year old old fish Gen 15 in the in the 101 12 year Evan Williams with a client and client had travel restrictions and wasn't supposed to go anywhere and so got my thing cancelled so now it's personal because it kept me from ever. But other than that, it's it's hasn't really affected me. I've got my daughter home from Dayton. They kick them out early. They won't be going back 18:28 to just I've got my bourbon Splott I'll be alright. And at one point for Aaron Aaron, I have to tell you this before I forget I tried to do from hacking whiskey the the bacon infused bourbon. It was probably the biggest flop that I have ever created in my life. I will need to talk offline. I need to know the secret because theoretically, everything about that I should just love and I ruined both urban and bacon doing. That's funny. I always tell people it sounds harder to do. 19:00 Fat washing that it is and it's almost impossible to screw up. But I guess 19:06 I've actually had a very similar experience, Brian, so I have a few minutes. You don't you want to slowly render the bacon made the mistake of like, crispy and I think just the brightness came through so that's what I yeah, yeah. Can't get black. Yeah, absolutely no Okay, good bacon pursuit come and say, 19:29 Hey, I'd go for I'd listen to that it sounds delicious peppercorn all over. So Fred, you've been kind of close to this, because I know at least with the corona stuff, you've been actually reaching out for distilleries kind of give us the latest on what's been happening with what the Steelers are doing for preparing for this? Well, I mean, you ask them personally, a lot of them will say it's all bullshit. And then when it comes to like a corporate message, they'll come out and say, 19:56 well, we're closing visitations starting 20:00 Monday so beam has closed visitations for you know Maker's Mark and the other properties. Starting on Monday, 20:11 brown Forman announced the closures of their Kentucky facilities for visitations on Sunday. And jack daniels on Monday. New rep has made similar announcements I have not heard yet back from heaven Hill. I've reached out to them a couple times. I've not heard back from them yet. Interestingly, places like the smaller distillers seem to be the ones that are kind of like, you know what, we're still doing tours like NB Rolen 20:40 in Western Kentucky was very proud to say that, you know what, we're still doing this. And, you know, so a lot of them have these kinds of plans in place, or for the visitor side, and they're all continuing production. I think production is like I think that's one of the 21:00 The hardest questions answers like what if one of the workers gets test test positive? what's what's the protocol? They're like? I mean, I really don't know what the manufacturing protocol is for when you have a pandemic and someone tests positive for something that gets out into the market. You know, do you have a recall? I mean, 21:19 I mean, those are the kinds of questions that they have to be taking. But at the same time, the Kentucky distillers association is meeting with the governor's office who has been meeting with the vice president. So I mean, we're like three degrees away from, you know, the highest office in the land here, when it comes to what can affect the Kentucky distilleries. So I'm not a I'm not an expert. And I'm not going to claim to be but from what I understand is that this is all basically through respiratory and oral is kind of how it gets transferred really easily. So unless people were like spitting in the mash tubs, I'm not too sure exactly. Even that it's probably because he's in a hallway. Yeah, and so I'm not too sure. Honestly, if even if 22:00 worker does, you know, come in and it actually is affected. I think the only thing that it might actually affect is just the production. Probably just send everybody home do shut down production for X amount of days, come back, do a deep clean, you know, go back, go back to work. Yeah, but there is this whole thing where you have to 22:19 the government's issue, like, where people had it, what would what they touched where they went, you know, I was, you know, I was somewhere and got it in and someone was there the day after me and I got an email about it. And, you know, that was kind of one of the personal scare for me, but, you know, I don't know, like, if somebody works in a factory, you know, does the government then require the that factory to issue a statement to its consumers, and I just don't know it. There's not really a precedent for any of this. 22:54 It's very, very scary. And I think it's more so right as much as they might want to keep many 23:00 fracturing right there just one part of the manufacturing puzzle. So if a farmer who distills the grains and drops them off, right not to sales, I'm sorry for the farmer harvests the grains and drops them off for the trucking company, he drops them off, or they can't drop them off because they have the colonel virus. Got any random ash, you're not doing much, right? Same with barrel, stuff like that. So I think it goes the whole or friends point, maybe you don't have to notify consumers, but then you got to notify your whole manufacturing chain, right. And maybe folks then don't want to drop off supplies because they're afraid that they're going to catch it for their employees. So I think it's just not as simple as you know, the virus doesn't survive much longer. You know, once it's out of somebody's system in the air wasn't just something for more than a few hours. So consumers should be safe, but it's more How does it impact everyone they interact with up and down the whole supply chain? Yeah, I think probably the biggest issue that's really is facing right now is the tourism aspect, which has been really it's been what the industry has been hanging his hat on, you know, with the with the rise of these like, the trade wars, you know, 24:00 This was the one thing that everyone said, Well, we still got like, domestic growth and we got tourism. And so you know, this is you take out the more than 2 million people coming here to visit Kentucky distilleries. I mean, my god there, there are talks in town about impacting the derby. I mean, I can't even imagine not having the derby. Brian, can you? I mean, I just can't I can't, I can't envision it. Now. I heard that today, too. They're talking about maybe postponing and it's, you know, they're still looking at it. No decisions made yet but that's, it's just crazy talk. I mean, let's face it, Churchill. I mean, there'll be like, I just bet from home. Oh, 24:44 yeah. Where's that from all right, no, fancy sign up for twin spires club and they'll give you you know, $50 free or whatever, and they'll be laughing all the way to the bank. 24:56 The other the other component of this, that 25:00 should be getting Blake excited, actually because a sale box is that this is going to be one of the moments where we see an enormous increase of shipments and people don't want to get out of their house. So they're not going to go to a liquor store. What are they gonna do? They're gonna buy, like, going to visit seal box calm or wherever. And 25:25 go Fred. Yeah. 25:29 It's 40 like 40 25:33 but uh, you know, that's that's what's going to happen. Is there going to get deliveries? I mean, we're all right. We're getting deliveries from, from Whole Foods and Kroger right now. So it's crazy. Yeah, I think there was somebody had actually talked about on our discord chat a little bit earlier through Patreon. And they were saying, Well, what happens if Corona gets spread into Amazon into these delivery services? And it was like, yeah, it's 26:00 It's a true concern. The other part of this is thank god they're heavily automated, right? There's robots that basically pack those boxes for everybody. But when someone sneezes on a robot, 26:11 what 26:14 are they ended to? Whatever this was all just a way for the robots to take control, actually run a virus. I'm with you on that. Now. I mean, everyone's talking about walking dead. But what if this is really Terminator about to happen? 26:29 They planted the seed. 26:32 conspiracies, Fred. What? 26:35 Surprise now pushing back in conspiracies speaking of vodka conspiracy, Jordan was today's email like a backhanded compliment to 26:44 Tito's yesterday What are we taught Hey, hold on. Let's let's set the stage here because I have no idea what 26:51 newsletter right for whiskey Wednesday, I went out and it was a PSA on how to make your own hand sanitizer. So he did give Tito's the nod and the fact that they are 27:00 aggressively letting consumers know whenever they tweet or interact with them on social media that no you cannot use Tito's for hand sanitizer because it's not 60% alcohol right so we did harm we do give them credit on that one right but I mean, let's be real if you're going to use hand sanitizer and you must use bourbon we prefer you drink it, but at least use 120 proof bourbon to do something right. But there's a comment in there too. Tito's about like, well, at least they're clearing some of the facts up and 27:27 crafted you know, made in Texas kinda 27:31 just made sure wasn't reading into it. But once again vodka fails. I mean, you look at it it's like everyone's like starting to champion it for something that it can make me be valuable for and again even do handsome. 27:46 That's that's a perfect way to end this. I don't really talk about coronavirus anymore, do you? Oh, yeah. No, no, no, that was much hysteria. Yeah, that was a nine. All right, good. So let's move on to the kind of the meat of the show here. Let's Shall we 28:00 Wait for Blake to open his bottle here because we can all hear it all that loud. 28:06 He had the mute control to hear it immediately. It's like gay. There we go. I'll mute him. Alright, perfect. 28:15 before the show started, you know, Aaron, you would think 42 times into this he would have figured it out. 28:23 But this is this is just like it's everything about get sanctioned. Yeah, it's it's either that his Wi Fi dies. I mean, it's, it keeps going. So, Alright, so let's kind of get into the meat of the show. Because the one thing that we've all kind of seen is just the hysteria that is surrounded Blanton's. And to kind of just give a little bit of background and context there is a great article that was posted by Chuck Cowdery back in 2013. And he gave a history of bland so I'm just gonna go ahead and just take like a minute or two just to read this just so everybody kind of gets up to speed on it because I know we've had people requests 29:00 Like, Hey, why don't you do an episode on the history of blends? Come to find out. There's probably not a whole lot that we could do a whole episode about. So this is gonna be it right here. So if you think back in the 1980s it was a bleak period for bourbon. thankthank Ryan 29:18 is poppin bottles they don't. They're shit what's going on around here? I'm listening Really? I thought it was a good timing. See, Aaron? This is what I'm talking about. Nobody, nobody's learned the proper or how to pour their PR, or I've got my mute button. I'll use camera but I pre poured everything and sure your next go. I've already popped a bottle or two on the show. So I think we're good. All right. I think everybody's got their bottle pops out of the way. Alright, so in the 90 or sorry, in the 80s. sales were down. inventories were high profits were under intense pressure and whiskey assets were changing hands. Most large producers were no longer independent. Instead they were part of conglomerates and with a portfolio of a household names back then. 30:00 Back then F Ross Johnson was the powerful CEO of Nabisco. Nabisco had a subsidiary called standard brands that included fleshman distilling. 30 Falk was the CEO of Fleischmanns and Bob Brandt and this guest Moran discuss my I'm gonna screw that up was the president. In 1983, Johnson decided to sell standard brands to Grand Metropolitan. A few years later, green Metro Metropolitan merged with Guinness to form biagio. Green Metropolitan already had a thriving drinks business that included JMP scotch and Smirnoff vodka, assuming they would be replaced after the sale folk and burnt Miranda's kiss. I know that's bad, resigned and started to start their own company. fulke was previously an executive with schenley. So he approached Muslim reckless, whose conglomerate own schenley about selling some assets Falk and Baranski has originally tried to acquire old charter, but reckless always needed money, so he agreed to sell ancient age bourbon brand and the distillery that produced 31:00 It then it was called the Albert B Blanton distillery. Today's Buffalo Trace folk and Baranski is called the new company h International. As the name suggests, they believe Bourbons future was outside of the US. One of the first moves was to enlist the master distiller at the time Elmer T. Lee with the creation of Blanton's single barrel bourbon to appeal to the Japanese market, but with multiple extensions in Japan and the US in 1991, fulke and Burns has sold 22 and a half percent interest in Asia international to Japan's to current shoes a with the right of first refusal to purchase the remaining shares in 1992, Fulk and Burns has sold their shares to Tucker for $20 million to car immediately sold the distillery to Sazerac but retain the corporate entity and brand trademark. Today Sazerac still owns Buffalo Trace and Buffalo Trace still produces all the whiskey for agent age, Blanton's and other age international products and brands using Nashville number two, which is also being used for Bourbons like Rock Hill farms as well. 32:00 Well, Chris Phalke commented on the article, and he said that that was his father ferdie had passed away from cancer in 2000. But Blanton's was the original super premium brand. And he said he can remember watching him draw the packaging idea on a napkin back in 1983. So follow all of that. Very. So. Yeah, I'd like to add, I'd like to add to that, because this is something that gets really lost in the history of that brand. And I would argue we could have a whole show on the history of it. 32:31 But in the 90s, basically, when the Albert Blanton was was head of the distillery he used to, 32:42 he used to take people out, and he used to pick barrels for him. And then he would actually put that into the Kentucky retail market, effectively making it like a single barrel asset, but they weren't really calling him single barrels back then. And so people you know, Sazerac were always you to use 33:00 It in their marketing that it was the first commercially available single barrel that often got pushback by people. But indeed, it was, but that brand had a huge impact on the world. You know, in my book bourbon I wrote about like how important it was for Japan and how it kind of opened that market up. Another thing that Blanton's did that was really important is it pissed off Maker's Mark and it started making fun of Maker's Mark and advertisements for the saying like, Oh, you have to talk about your wax because your whiskey isn't any good. So they kind of like you know, played with Maker's Mark in their own game and they went back and fourth. And so they had like this state, but blends created this statewide tasting competition, in which they selected tasers and Lexington and Louisville to to have a taste up between makers and blends. Blanton's one Lexington and makers one Louisville so plans is a really really important brand. 34:00 The return of bourbon and this Return of the the introduction of the gold. Blanton's is like For God's sake, it's about time. You know, it's about I want to want to get to that, because that's a that's a big part of today's show. But what I want to do is I kind of want to just trace this back about two years. And I want anybody that has a theory on why the hell did Blanton's just skyrocket in popularity? I know that we've seen it on some TV shows and everything like that, but was there was there something that happened that I missed that all of a sudden this round bottle the horse on top just just went crazy? I have a theory. So I want to jump in, but I guess I will. So I think it's and I wish I had notes because I talked to Chris Comstock about this the other day about 35:00 There's supply the supplies, not 35:04 the supplies, basically, I think it's like five x of what it was a few years ago, is what they're producing now. So it's not nearly as bad as people think. But in my opinion, what started to happen was a lot of these distributors in the store started seeing what was happening with Pappy and you know, the antique collection. And so they started allocating on the distribution side. So then instead of stores just like yeah, or whenever you want, they'd say, Oh, we can only give you two bottles. Well, then the stores start telling the customers Hey, look, I'm only getting two bottles of this. It's at that price point that makes it you know, the high end the bottles cool, it's it's, it tastes good. And so then as you know, that started building, you go into a store and see two bottles, you grab them and then there's an empty shelf. So then the I think the hype just started building and scarcity sells. So now every time people see it on the 36:00 shelf, it's like, oh, I've got to grab as many bottles as I can find or as I can get, because who knows when I'll see it again. 36:07 And that all seems to be happening happening over the last two to three years. I tell the story of that blanes was actually the first barrel pick I ever did for bourbon er, and that was back in 2015. And I remember the the retailer marked it up to I think it was $64. And I lost, you know, so many people saying that they're not going to work with a retailer that was trying to gouge like, I bought five cases, I had a few friends buy a bunch of cases. And now if I got a Blaine's barrel, you know, it'll be gone in a day and you could probably sell for 100 bucks a bottle or something crazy like that. But I still think it's all kind of like a an artificial demand or artificial shortage created by that middle tier. But that's just my opinion. I think it also has to do with the fact that right, so around that time, and don't get me wrong. We've been fans of Blanton's I think back in 2014 we caught 37:00 Call it out on the site that we weren't sure why people were overlooking up. But then is Buffalo Trace in general, right? So all their Bourbons started becoming more known to folks people started realizing Oh, pet Van Winkle comes from Buffalo Trace. Oh BTC What's that? Okay. And then Elmer got really big, right? And then others started getting big. So especially if they wanted a single barrel, right, they go in Hey, can I get an armor? Oh, you can't get an armor. But look at this cool bottle. You get this little horse top or his little wax on little bags, and I'm just finding the box. Why don't you go for that instead? Right? And it was just one of the it's just one of those things where people just want the next thing right so all right, so I can't get any other Buffalo Trace product. What else you got? You got plans, you can get that pretty easy. I'll take one of those. Right and then people start doing a little research, especially if people are really into bourbon. They realize that there's Blanton's gold, there's plans straight from the barrel, which used to be again, easy to find. So two years ago, it was what around two years ago I think master mouth stop shipping right and a lot of store shop stopped shipping from over in Europe. And it was just that snowball effect, right? There's no rhyme or reason to a lot of stuff. It's just people like to hoard people like to know what's cool. 38:00 Blanton's cannon right? Everyone, I'm sure has friends who asks, What should I buy in the store used to be really simple to say, Oh, just pick up a bottle of blends. It's great bourbon, reasonably priced. Just go for it. Right. I still say that. And then I catch myself going, except you're not gonna be able to find anymore, which stinks. But I think a lot of it is just that snowball effect that took place with consumers, especially around Buffalo Trace products. You brought up something very important. Jordan, as you brought up, Elmer T. Lee, and I've been thinking about this a lot since Kenny posed the question to us before the show about why did planes take off and I remember specifically after Elmer died, you could not find a martini you could not find it. And the one bottle that everybody recommended after that, because it was accessible was Blanton's, you know, it was a Rock Hill farms. It was always Blanton's was the was the bourbon that people recommended after Elmer T. Lee passed away. There couldn't be a more fitting bourbon to recommend since that was the 39:00 One that he brought, you know, he brought to life. And, you know, Elmer kinda gets forgotten. You know, Elmer doesn't get talked about as much as you know, some of the other deceased distillers like Booker know and Parker beam. And it's a real shame because he was a Titan of a distiller and I think that he would be, you know, smiling quite happily to know that his stuff was being It was very difficult to get he wouldn't be very happy with the price gouging. But I do believe that that is when it all started was in the in the quest to find Elmer. They got Blanton's and liked it. Fred, I kind of remember a little there was a at least a couple year time period where to me it was the opposite of that. People wanted Blanton's and and Elmer was aged couple of years more than Blanton's and I couldn't figure out why people wanted Blanton's instead of Elmer. I mean they're 40:00 is a time period where it over took Elmer. And I don't know anything about the production. I don't know anything about what's being withheld. But it it to Blake's point, it sure looks that way. So there's another thing that's sort of happening right now. And that is Buffalo Trace and heaven Hill are implementing new systems where you can only purchase allocated items that haven't healed sometimes it's once a month. And in the case of Blanton's at Buffalo Trace, they're now doing this once every three months of actually scanning your driver's license and turning people away. And this is because if anybody is unaware, the line that has been growing for Blanton's at the distillery has just gotten chaotic. I'm talking like two to 300 people that are waiting at six o'clock in the morning to get a bottle of regular Blanton's at the distillery. And so, you know, Aaron, kinda want to pose this question to you and get you get you involved here. Do you think this new system has a chance to actually succeed and work 41:00 Well, I was gonna 41:03 Aaron, you're cutting out, buddy. I think we lost him. Yeah, he and Blake or Sharon schleifer. 41:10 Want to bring them on camera? Yeah. 41:15 Yeah. Try to try to drop and come back on and come back if you can like maybe plug in or something. I'm not too sure. We'll, we'll get you. We'll get you in here. 41:26 All right, so so we'll take that in a different direction. So, Blake, do you think that has an actual chance to succeed with this particular kind of system? So what's the actual system again, sorry, I was typing whatever you know. 41:43 Loud they're only allowed how many bottles like one a month or something? It's this is what happens when like the teacher calls in you and you weren't paying attention. 41:53 Helen has placed they've had an in place for like two years they haven't held where they scan your license when you buy. Like buffalo grease implemented the same 42:00 Yeah, I mean you know you think about will it did that for a while and then they had their their do not sell to lists and everything, it'll, it'll definitely slow things down but I don't know. I mean, I think that's good because 42:15 ultimately you want some bottles at the distillery whenever people come and visit you. I had this experience a few weeks ago and we're up there and a friend of mines like, man, none of these, you know, these distilleries have any bottles like I thought it'd be able to get something cool. You know, heaven Hill, at least had. I remember what we got. I think that William heaven hill there. So at least there was something but that's the hard part is you don't want just the locals to come grab everything that is available. Turn around and throw it up on Craigslist or wherever people are selling these days. We don't do that in Kentucky man. Yeah, it's never happened. Right? Yeah. But you know, so you kind of want to spread it out a little bit. So I think that'll help. Um, but you know, it's 43:00 Like anything else, people are going to do what they want to do, they're going to send their sister they're going to send their cousin they're going to send, if they really want it that bad, but overall, hopefully it kind of spreads the allocation a little bit further. And I'll say, since I'm not located in Kentucky, right, I, at least from heaven Hill standpoint, I actually appreciate that they do that now, because it seems more often than not, whenever I go down to Heaven, Hell, and I always stop by when I'm in town, these tend to have a few bottles, right? That's, I think, based on the fact that they're helping to limit people from buying them. So from that standpoint, I think it's fantastic, right, especially being somebody who's visiting Kentucky and wanting to go I make sure to stop by the distilleries and buy stuff, but now they have stuff to buy, which I'm super appreciative. Yeah, and that's actually part of the reason this was actually implemented was Freddy Johnson was on the stage with Fred at legend series recently, and he talked exactly about this that this is all because of just trying to counteract the flipping game. And if you can limit of what people can get, then you can do that. And plus, they want to 44:00 Word people that are traveling from all around the country to go and visit the distillery and they want to get something unique while they're there. And this is an opportunity to actually make that happen. It's you know, they could release a lot more bottles to 44:15 we'll get to that option. Yeah. It's a difficult it's difficult, you know, I look at it, I look at it from the perspective of like, every time, you know, they, they, the distillers, like, wish for something and then they get it. And then like, five years later, they're like, Oh, shit. Yeah, like net. Like, I remember when they were lobbying for this. They were like, begging to have special bottles. They were begging to have this attention and this FaceTime with the consumers. And now you hear them and they're like, crap, what are we going to do? You know, like now they're facing some of the same problems at their retailer partners have so a lot more headaches for them for sure. 45:00 him personally, you know, three months is, I think a little bit generous. I would have rather seen a year. Because if there's two to 300 people lining up to do this, and they're bringing their brothers, their sisters, their cousins or aunts and their uncles to get a bottle of Blanton's. Like, let's just nip this, like it's Blanton's after all right, like it is it's good whiskey. But let's let's try to let's try to curb this because I don't see a reason why people should be going this nuts over and if they have a bottle of bourbon. And I think I remember seeing a lot of comments when people announced that this system is getting put in place. They're like, Oh, like why are you gonna hurt your you know, your biggest consumers and your cheerleaders and I'm like, they make a lot of different whiskey. There's a lot of different bourbon out there on the market. Like don't pin yourself into just like that one bottle. You know like that Nashville makes a lot of different stuff, right? So like you don't you don't need to be pigeon holing yourself and it just one particular kind of whiskey for everything. 46:00 You drink? Yeah, I was at a store one time and a guy was asking the clerk for it he's like you guys got any Blanton's as a total wine and and so everyone having plantains and I was like hey man like actually they've got a Hancock single barrel pick that they've done and it was like I think seven years old or something 46:20 the exact same mash bill you know, maybe it wasn't in warehouse H or whatever it is, but pretty much the exact same thing is like I don't want that crap. I'm like, Okay, nevermind. No, I mean why bother? No, you bring up a really good point though Brian right? The whole point the whole reason they had the horse in the first place right and way back when wanted spelled lens which is cool, but to entice people to keep buying it. So then you do find people who actually you know, for multitude of reasons right and I'm not judging whatsoever who once they find something and they do want to collect it just for that purpose. I realized you can buy the stopper from Buffalo Trace itself right? But they actually didn't want to start collecting the bottles just to get the topper so not only do they like up and other like corn 47:00 I need to get all the rest of them. Right. So now their demand is well, I just don't need one or two. Now I got to find all I got to the letters, I got to fill it out. Exactly. Right. So it's it's, they've kind of created a little bit of a headache in that sense for themselves. If there was no letters on the bottle, that would definitely eliminate a little bit of that from some well, and a lot of people in the comments have said that the dump date being on every bottle, you know, how many posts have you seen, you know, oh, my kid was born or you know, oh, I'm looking for this dump date. Yeah, work on whatever they want. Yeah, whatever it is, they they want that data on there. I mean, it's it's marketing genius is what it is. It's a product of success. You know, I think Fred alluded to this a little bit of they worked really hard to make these things popular and, you know, get special releases out of the distillery. And then I don't want to say it backfire, but I think it caused them more headaches, and they probably they were thinking it would but it's a product of success. So at the end of the day, I don't think they mind it. 48:00 No no no one thing that none of these companies are doing is they're not utilizing technology you know and Kenny I'd like to get your your thoughts on this because you're the tech guy but How hard would it be for them to like create like an order and hold or some some kind of system for online to connect with a point of sale where someone could plan their trip and then come pick up a bottle I just I just feel like there's so many opportunities to alleviate these problems that they never seem to explore they they're stuck in these inundated antiquated stand in line look at an ID kind of crap. I think it's just simple ecommerce is that a lot of and I think we've touched on a lot of times, even just retailers and everybody else in general, like this type of market is is behind the curve of what we see in every other type of industry. And so if they don't take the initiative to try to figure out like, how do we get our hands in the how do we get our product into the hands of consumers faster, easier, and less friction and make them 49:00 A happy consumer. If you don't take that into account, then they're not gonna do anything about it. You know, the other thing is, is that if you look at what the SAS rack is building with blends and Buffalo Trace and everything, like, they don't really, I mean, they're gonna sell out no matter what. So do they need to go through all that extra effort to invest in an e commerce platform to invest in something where like, I don't know whether they have their own online, put your email in a database and come and pick your bottle up on this date kind of thing? I don't know if they really need to. So it kind of like I said, there's there's, it's a double edged sword from there. And you do actually so Fred, I mean, that's a great point that you make both Kenny and Fred but you do see some distilleries doing that, right. So look at new ref. Look at angels MD with their main club, right? They both do that when they have special releases come out, you can pre buy and they give you a 30 days to pick them up or X number of days to pick up. I think that's it's great. And it's also great for again, if somebody is out in town to be like, Alright, I got a month to go pick this up. I'll plant quickly. 50:00 trip around this or something like that, right? And it drives people there. And then I'm sure once they're there, they're like, Well, shit, I'm here by some other stuff, whether it's from that distillery or local store around there, whatever. But it's just great for the local economy in general. And I wish more distilleries did that. He was envies absolutely crushing their special bottles. People make events out of that. And I have never talked to one unhappy person out of there. I mean, I hear I hear so many unhappy people coming out of heaven Hill, there's so many people, unhappy people coming out of out of SAS, right. Really no one from being but I don't think anyone's necessarily going there for special releases. But the key distilleries that have special releases of all them angels envy is crushing it by far that program that they have people love it. Yep. And plus, it's an easy way for you to kind of like allocate these things online. And not only that is you basically sell it before anybody actually picks it up. So it's, it's, it's instead of like putting it out there and hoping people come like, it's all online if you make it easy and frictionless 51:00 Then you're gonna have a much better way to you don't have that kind of like cash flow in that pipeline coming into man. What if they did like bourbon futures where you could like, you know, buy like a case of Blanton's five years from now. So technically that's kind of what Bardstown bourbon company is doing. So they their barrel pick now is you pay $1,000 deposit to get it, and then which I guess not technically futures, but then you let it age as long as you want. And essentially you just pay the same price for whatever the standard bottling is whether you let it go to 10 years or you let it go six months. 51:39 Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with that. It's just not it's not proven, but like Blanton not nearly as exciting to Yeah, I mean, that it is it is a concept for sure. But like, I mean, imagine like if you could, if you could buy a futures, Pappy 23 right now when your child is born, 52:00 or something like that. You do it in a heartbeat. Yeah. Now, right now I would nobody would want to track that accountant. Somebody put in the or Aaron put in the chats about basically that's how Bordeaux works and yeah, you know the it's not like a Pappy 23 where you're waiting 23 years but there is some time there and it is interesting to see how that whole market works and I mean, it's pretty crazy. We may get there one day, the ghosts Yes, that's the one thing that we don't that we don't have that the wine world has is like these really high level business people call negotiators who basically broker every single thing. And I think that's why angels envy so successful with that program as West Henderson is kind of like a hybrid, you know, in this world. He's such a business forward leaning mind and you know, it has his dad's DNA. Anyway. All right, I want to shift topic a little bit because this is still gonna be Blanton's, but the biggest news 53:00 That happened last week or was it two weeks ago whatever it was was the idea and the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US 53:11 What do you get if you mix Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how that's to bar spirits to bar spirits traces its roots to a ranch in rural Texas run by the founder, Nathan kaisers family for six generations. Nathan grew up on the ranch with stories of relatives bootlegging moonshine, and after moving into Seattle, he wanted to keep the family tradition alive any open to bar spirits in 2012. They're very traditional distillery making everything from scratch and each day starts by milling 1000 pounds of grain. Their entire product lineup consists of only two whiskies, their moonshine, and the only bourbon made in Seattle. Both bottles are being featured in rack house whiskey clubs. Next box, rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club. And they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US. 54:00 Have to offer rack house ships out to have the feature distilleries finest bottles, along with some cool merchandise in a box delivered to your door every two months. Go to a rack house whiskey club comm to check it out and try some to bar for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 54:21 The biggest news that happened last week or was it two weeks ago, whatever it was, was the idea and the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US. And for anybody that has been a bottle chaser or you've been into bourbon for a little bit. We've all known that. Blanton's gold and Blanton straight from the barrel are something that we gravitate towards because you like oh, it's higher proof and, and now we're all like oh, and it's got a shiny gold horse. So of course I want all these. As Ryan said earlier, I want the I want the ski with all the gold letters on it now. So the there's a few questions that arise with this and the first one. I'm going to 55:00 Come to his tariffs, because one thing that we've seen is that tariffs are being it's being catastrophic to the whiskey industry in regards of just it's both sides of the coin here. Now, there is the idea that people are saying, Okay, well, if we are going to have to pay tariffs, then let's go ahead and hold more whiskey back that we know that we can sell to our existing consumer base here in the US. Do you all think that this is a reaction to that? Or do you think this was planned out a little bit further in advance? And they said, You know what, we're going to just do this because we're, let's go ahead and make some more headlines. I'll go first, right. I think 100% has to do with tariffs, right? I think they are looking in real time and how to react. I think they saw a business opportunity. And they're going for it right. They don't want to have products sitting there, or they don't want to overcharge consumers, 55:55 to needlessly sell to no one in Europe, if no one's gonna be paying that price. 56:00 They saw Hey, Blanton's is hot, let's make it happen. And 100% that played into it, whether there's a little pre work behind the scenes going into it potentially. But don't get me wrong, that current tariff situation 100% played into this. I also want to mention that in the press release, they also said that this is going to be an SRP of $120 for this particular bottle too. So don't forget that. 56:21 I like to say that at the top of Buffalo Trace is probably the single smartest person in the entire spirits industry, Mark Brown. That man had this plan probably five years ago and had a rollout leading up to it. And this year is probably going to be like, like some additional Weller products, maybe a single barrel or something like that. I mean, you're going to start seeing like Buffalo Trace, kind of like, take their super premiums and dice them up into more limited edition releases. And it's it's all about getting another skew getting another press release at another company. 57:01 They they own a lot of the conversation market, they own a lot of the store they own almost all the skews that all the retailers want. And if they every time they add one, they've got another one. So they have another reason to have a meeting with a retailer they have another meeting to have a meeting. Another reason to have a meeting with a an on premise person plans goal, in my opinion, is probably just one of the actually well they're foolproof last year was the beginning of the rollout of seeing the kind of evolution of what Buffalo Trace is planning to do with their premium product. They're dicing them up gradually raising those price raising the prices up a little bit more and making them even more valuable. Yeah, and I don't know that's a it's looking at it from a marketing standpoint. Genius. Yeah. 57:57 I don't know there's there's a lot better 58:00 Values out there in my book and I just I I try to resist so much of the hype and I I like the ancient age products probably better than than their other mash bill and and other than some Weller 12 or the the B tech, William LaRue Weller the ancient age math is my favorite Mossville. 58:25 But the marketing just it rubs me the wrong way. I get it. And I wish Aaron was able to stay on because he could speak very highly to this with his experience at Esquire and some of the other more industry facing publications. I'm just telling you, man, you could just throw you could you could dangle any Weller Blanton's, even Buffalo Trace, you know outside of a Manhattan window and you'll have like 50 bro dudes chasing it down. It's the stuff is crazy. And it's genius. And congratulations to them for doing it. It's absolute genius. 59:00 But there's so much for roses and wild turkey out there that that in other brands that are so much better and so much more of a value, I just don't get it personally. So so then that then that then that that's not really a knock on them. That's basically that's our job to say, hey guys can't get this, you know, try this and i and i think Jordan does a great job of that. I think Blake does a great job of that. Kenny, you really just drink it all. So 59:30 Equal Opportunity drinker. That's right. 59:33 And so Fred, I kind of want to like take a counter argument to kind of what you said a little bit, because there was something that came up in the chat by Dave Preston. And he had mentioned that, you know, he thinks that this has to do with like, increased stock that's resulting from ramped up production. However, I kind of look at it and think like, well, maybe they're just taking and to take Jordan's side of this. Maybe they're taking away from the European allocation now and just shifting to the United States, because we've all been 1:00:00 on tours here, right. And we all know we've been in the Blanton's bottling Hall, every day you're in there. They were bottling plants, and they're doing it around the clock every single day. And it doesn't seem that they can keep up with the demand. So where is all this extra inventory coming from? If you don't think it's just like taking away from European allocation and from tariffs, if, like how to keep pumping out more product. So again, this is my opinion, this is all been planned. These are not knee jerk business people. These are very smart strategic, especially when it comes to marketing, and they happen to have great whiskey. And I just think this was a part of it. Did they change their European allocation? Hey, maybe they did, but I think this product was always planned. Maybe Maybe it got bumped up a little bit for for anticipation of more terrorists or continued tariffs. But I think this has always been in, in creation. And I think we're going to see a lot more 1:01:00 from, from that distillery with new products coming out of their heavyweight prop brands like Weller and Blanton's, and, you know, I don't think we'll see anything added to the Buffalo Trace antique collection. But I think you'll start seeing more limited releases. I got to push back just a little bit on that too, though, Fred. So I think, don't get me wrong. I think it's super smart if they were planning this for a few years, right. But I think I would categorize them just as smart for being a very smart businessman. If they read the current situation. They read the current landscape, the current tariffs and said, Alright, how can we capitalize this? Right? How can we turn this around and make it so that it works in our favor? Right, I'd say that'd be a just a smart individual and just a smart move. So while it may be planned, right, I got to give them I hope I'd give them credit for reading the current landscape and saying, what can we do to make this work in our favor? And hey, maybe both are Right, exactly. You know, so like, what I know is I'm not running a billion dollars. 1:01:56 I'm sitting here. So I am, this isn't 1:02:00 Confirm, but it was basically like kind of backdoor confirmed of Buffalo Trace production. So they were producing about 12,000 barrels a year in 95 by 2010, that was around 100,000 barrels. And by 2018, it was 250,000 barrels. 1:02:17 So may not be exact, but gives you an idea of the ramp up. They've been doing over the last, you know, two decades. So when you talk about they may not have had to steal from the European allocation. That's where I think there is more barrels that are going around now whether or not it's just a you know if it's really because of tariffs or is just because, you know, take advantage of the US market a little more. I think it could be a little bit of both, maybe it turned out to be good timing. But at the end of the day, I think they love the new press releases, they love the new brand extensions. You know, what was it 1:02:54 is it benchmark that's getting the next redo You know, we've seen them do it with well are now the 17 1:03:00 to benchmark and I think well, you know, they've kind of evolved the H Taylor brand to have a new release every year. I think we'll just like Fred said, we'll just keep seeing new bit several new releases each year because they want to be able to go back to t

This week, the perspective of a diabetes dad. Tom Karlya has become much more than that since his daughter was diagnosed in 1992 and one of his sons in 2009, with many efforts extending through all parts of the diabetes community. But he says it all comes back to family. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! We’ll talk to Tom about his story, his efforts with the Diabetes Research Institute – the DRI – his acting career – and much more. Tom is a tireless advocate and if you’ve never heard him speak, we promise you’ll be inspired. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! In Tell Me Something Good – college sports, school scholarships and a young JDRF advocate answers Stacey's questions. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcript:  Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes by Real Good Foods real food you feel good about eating and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:21 This is diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:26 This week, the perspective of a diabetes dad Tom Karlya has become much more than that since his daughter was diagnosed in 1992. And one of his sons in 2009. With his efforts extending through the community, but he says it all comes back to family.   Tom Karlya  0:45 Communication is the most important thing. And for the for dads to realize, to look for places where you can pick up the ball and run with it, where you can be part of your child's life. Don't let your wife do it. Make yourself part The solution   Stacey Simms  1:01 will talk to Tom about his story, his work with the Diabetes Research Institute, his acting career, and much more. Tom is a tireless advocate and if you've never heard him speak, I promise you'll be inspired in Tell me something good college sports school scholarships, and a young JDRF advocate answers my questions. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I'm so glad to have you along. I am your host, Stacey Simms. We aim to educate and inspire by sharing stories of connection when it comes to type one diabetes. My son was diagnosed just before he turned to 13 years ago. And I know there's an awful lot of stress in all our lives right now. This is a difficult time to say the very least. I'm not going to fill you up with a whole bunch of cliches here, but I do hope That as you're listening, you do know that even if it's online, the diabetes community is there for you. We're here to help. We're here to share stories. Hopefully your local community is banding together. I'll talk about that a little bit later on in the show. But this week's show is not going to be about COVID 19. It is going to be about some inspiration. You know, with everything that's going on, I thought it would be really nice to have something like this. Tom Karlya and I actually spoke a while ago. And while I was listening back to this interview, like I do all the interviews, it struck me that it sounds a bit like a keynote speech that you would hear at a JDRF summit or another diabetes gathering like friends for life, because all of those conferences have been canceled. I really thought maybe this would make you feel like you're hearing a speaker at a summit. Right? So let's listen to it. Maybe in that vein, and if you're bummed out like I am that those conferences have been canceled. I mean, let's face it, they are for education. They're for learning. They're for resources, but they're also just to get together and see friends, right? You know, maybe this podcast or the Facebook group can be some support for you a place to hang out. So you can always email me Stacey at diabetes, connections calm, or jump into the Facebook group, which is diabetes connections with the group. I know that diabetes makes us tougher to begin with, right? This is such a great community. And we do know how to help each other out because we do it all the time. Right? I think we're seeing some neighbors come together in the greater community, at least if where I lived, you know, do you need this? And can I go to the grocery store? People with diabetes, have been doing that for a long time. So let's just not stop doing it. Now. As you'll hear Tom say, as he has said for many years, you just don't do nothing. You can do a little something and really help. And we'll hear from Tom in just a moment. But first diabetes Connections is brought to buy One Drop. And you know, I spoke to the people at One Drop and I was really impressed about how much they get done. Diabetes. It just makes sense. Their CEO Jeff was diagnosed with type one as an adult. One Drop is for people with diabetes by people with diabetes. The people at One Drop work relentlessly to remove all barriers between you and the care you need get 24 seven coaching support in your app and unlimited supplies delivered, no prescriptions or insurance required. Their beautiful sleek meter fits in perfectly with the rest of your life. They'll also send you test strips with a strip plan that actually makes sense for how much you actually check. One Drop diabetes care delivered, learn more, go to diabetes, connections comm and click on the One Drop logo. My guest this week was brought into the diabetes community back in 1992. When his then two year old daughter Kaitlyn was diagnosed one of his other children he has two other sons would be diagnosed 17 years later, but Tom Karlya jumped Writing to see where he and his family could help taking part in early JDRF campaigns, the Diabetes Research Institute and children with diabetes. I think Tom vo would tell you the best thing about him right now is that he's going to be a grandfather. The news came after we had spoken for this interview already, but his daughter Kaitlin, and her husband Andre, are expecting later this summer. And yeah, that's the Kaitlyn diagnosed as a baby herself basically back in 1992. Here's my talk with diabetes dad, Tom, Carl. Yeah, Tom, thanks so much for joining me. I cannot believe that I'm just now finally talking to you for the podcast. I appreciate it. I know how busy your schedule is.   Tom Karlya  5:42 Wow. They Thank you, to you. I mean, it's it's you know, I guess they say when people are busy, they're busy. And those are the type of people we like to hang out with. So I know how busy you've been, how busy I've been, and now the twain has met. So that's terrific.   Stacey Simms  5:55 So much to talk about here and I want to talk about your you know, your experience. ances over these many years, but let's start by, you know, your work with the Diabetes Research Institute foundation. Do you mind telling us, you know, for people who may not be familiar, what is that?   Tom Karlya  6:13 The Diabetes Research Institute in the foundation is is has support for the Institute. It is all the money that the foundation raises goes to the Diabetes Research Institute, which is an 87,000 square foot building that sits on the campus of the University of Miami about 35 years or so ago, when the Diabetes Research Institute foundation first began by a group of parents like many of the diabetes organizations that are out there, somebody there had a connection to the building and construction trade union. And that gentleman said, Why don't we try to raise more money for you. And during June on Father's Day weekend, they created debt, dollars against diabetes and they stood on street corners around the country with buckets and they collected change from anybody at the stop. The lights, etc, etc, etc. And they continue to do that. So they had enough money, and they raised like $14 million. And they took and they built the Diabetes Research Institute, which when it came time when the building was done, the foundation said, Let us name the building after you and all the terrific people of the building trades unions, and they sit down and they say, let's just put a plaque on the wall that said this building built by the hands and hearts of Americans construction unions, and that plaque is still there. It represents a beacon of hope nobody expected it to become the research center that so many organizations, the wonderful organizations out there, the JDRF the ADA is the National Institutes of Health. They fund us We are the scientists doing the work at that center,   Stacey Simms  7:52 and d-ri to be clear if people are not familiar. The work that Dr. II does is cure, cure focus research. Right,   Tom Karlya  8:00 secure focused all the stages of research, basic preclinical and clinical happen within one building. A lot of time in academia, you come up with a finding, then you have to go someplace else to find somebody to collaborate with, we go from one floor to the other floor to the other floor. And our saying is, if we can't move it up, we move it out. Because funds are so limited, we have to make sure that we stay focused on that supply, sustainability insight, which is the three main pillars that we look for, to cure this disease once and for all. And there's also a d-ri Federation, we share all of our information, we hold on to none of it, and we have federations around the world for that matter that we share information with because in Italy and in China, they can do the research a lot cheaper than we can do here. So a lot of times we'll test things out there, then bring it here and follow through the steps of the FDA that are set, etc. to try to get it from the bench to the bedside.   Stacey Simms  9:00 It's so interesting when you kind of dial down and look at how these things work. And I know that as some people are listening, they may be thinking, well, if it's so cure focused, and it's been around that it's funded, you know, how can we don't have more progress? How can we don't have a cure?   Unknown Speaker  9:14 I hate to put it in such simple terms. But   Unknown Speaker  9:16 can you talk a little bit about some of the progress that has been made?   Tom Karlya  9:21 Yeah, that's, you know, I said this before, that's your mouth to God's ears. That's been our hope since the beginning. And it is such a complex disease, and all the wonderful organizations out there as well as the research centers out there. This is just not an easy disease to figure out. I mean, years and years ago, when we first it would there was nobody funding research years ago for type one diabetes, and then to go out there and say, well, we're going to try to cure it. Well, as we went along, and as many other organizations that have, in their wonderful ways have funded our work and work around the world for that matter, have found out just how calm Flex this disease is years and years ago, we were actually told we were one of the first centers. And actually Dr. Kamila, recording our scientific director. He invented the machinery with a board member, Ramon Poe, who donated all of this time, they created the machinery to separate the islet cells from the pancreas when they get donated, and we give that to anybody around the world just to help them try to move it forward. But nobody knew that taking islet cells. So this is interesting, because I've been at this for 26 some odd years since my daughter was diagnosed at age two. And there was a time when people thought you will not be able to take islet cells, insulin producing islet cells and down years later became trying to re engineer stem cells and things to create insulin. There was no proof out there, that you could take islet cells and put them in another body and they would work well. They Did and I have and what's happened since that time is that as we move science forward, you know, I think we should do everything we can to try to figure out how do we make islet cells produce insulin in another person's body without being attacked? And why so many of these are immunosuppression drugs. You know, when we first started, people would say, Oh, yeah, but there are immunosuppression drugs. What people need to understand is that when it came time for the scientific studies, the quality of life of people who entered these research projects, they became patients for the clinical trials, they had no quality of life, because they could not feel going hypoglycemic. They could not feel their blood sugar going low. They couldn't drive, they couldn't hold jobs. They be talking to people they just kill over. So for a lot of these people, this first islet cell transplant became lifesavers because their quality of life was just not existed. something interesting happened when we did that. And around the world, this was done to a lot of different centers and not just at the d-ri, but we were at the forefront of it. And the interesting thing about it, even patients that went back on insulin, for the most part, not in every case, but in the majority of the cases, probably even excess of 80%. But that's just my layman's guess. They're hypoglycemic reactions went away. Even if the islet cell transplant did work, and they had to go back on insulin again, they did not suffer from the hypoglycemic episodes that they had. It has always been this great moving science forward. But the truth of the matter is, is that we will continue to work and I and I was active, I was doing other things when Caitlyn was first diagnosed. And for those who don't know the story, I was an actor for years. I was in a show in New York for for 1314 years talk about that. And we'll get to that and I've done a lot of great things, but I was on my way to a matinee performance when my beeper went off you tell people about beepers like What's that? And it just was said 911. And I went over to the phone, I can tell you right where it was, I remember to this day, I went to hold off of the of the bridge and the Lancey street in New York City. I went to a phone booth, for those who don't remember phone booths or things that had a phone in it. Right. So I called home and my wife said, Tom, I have to rush Caitlyn to the hospital. They think it's type one diabetes, and she had been sick and she had the flu. And, you know, again, it was everybody thought it was something else. And when I got to the hospital, which took me two hours, that was a whole episode in itself. I saw I looked down the hallway and I remember my wife Jill had Kaitlin's jacket was hanging from her hands. And we just looked at each other and I went in and Kaitlin had all these wires and everything attached to her. And I pushed the hair out of her face and I said, Hi honey, and she said Daddy, and she looked at everything she was attached to and she looked me square in the eye and She said,   and it stuck with me. I remember it every day when I start my day. That was a promise I gave my daughter. And I became, you know, whatever. I became an advocate and constantly working at it. And then I got really, really angry because I thought my reward was 2009, my 13 year old son was also diagnosed. So I was pretty angry. And that was also four days after my dad died. So when someone tells me they had a flat tire at a supermarket that week suck, they said, Oh, no, no, I can beat that.   Well, so an X and here we are, you just   Stacey Simms  14:35 have your two year old daughter looked you in the eye and say daddy fix to something that there is no fix. I don't want to make you relive that moment. But when your son was diagnosed, and that was Rob is diagnosed 17 years later, the change in the diagnosis. I know it's not a fix. There's no fix yet, but what was your perspective at that time because the diagnosis had to be different and the care had to be different.   Right back to Tom answering that question in just a moment. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Real Good Foods and there is something new from Real Good Foods. They have ice cream. Oh my gosh, real good ice cream. My whole family tried it. We have our favorites. I'll share a little bit more specifically down the road. But oh my gosh, the vanilla is delicious. That's the first one we tried right because you can't hide anything with just a vanilla. So we went right to that. I mean they have other great flavors. They have mint chocolate chip, they have chocolate, they have peanut butter chocolate chip, and we started with the vanilla and it was really good. It tastes like real ice cream because that is what it is. You can find out more at the website and preorder. It's available in select stores. As always, there's the store locator on their website, find out more just go to diabetes, connections calm and click on the Real Good Foods logo. Now, back to Tom Carl. Yeah. And he is answering my question about how different it was when his son was diagnosed with Type 117 years after his daughter.   Tom Karlya  16:13 Wow, you're absolutely right. And again, the tools, I always use that phrase, the tools that our diabetes toolbox for our kids has become so amazed, we used to have to wait 90 seconds. After we put Kaitlyn at that time, we couldn't even do our fingers. We had to do her toes. So we get a blood drop on a glucometer. And then we would wait 90 seconds. See if I could help everybody understand one main point that get diagnosed today than when not only 2009. But 1992 when Kaitlin was diagnosed, that the tools we have now are so far advanced. We always say when we try to get our children to live normal lives, you literally can live as close to a normal life as you can accept and there's a huge death there is your child. Type One Diabetes. But for those who have it understand what I mean that with the technology we now have, there was no, Caitlyn was the second child on Long Island to go on an insulin pump. Wow, could you imagine people don't realize that these things were the size of backpacks when they started these. I mean, it's not, you know, like an astronauts backpack, they were huge, but they got smaller, they got better, they got quicker. And that's why research to me, that's why I will never give up hope. Somebody looked at somebody checking their blood sugar, and they said, We can do better with that. And we have, and it's the same thing with research as long as there's a research center. And for me, this is just and everybody else can find their own place where to give their time and energy, but the Diabetes Research Institute, the fact that they are focused now that's a very interesting greement to have with academia, that we are focused on curing type one diabetes, and when we do that many of the patients type two patients for an insulin We'll probably benefit from that as well. But our focus is to cure this disease. As long as there's a place like the d-ri that focused on curing this disease, then I will never give up hope.   Stacey Simms  18:11 My question on that you said something very interesting. You said it's a very interesting agreement to make with academia. Do you get pushback from people who want to do research, but it's not cure focused,   Tom Karlya  18:22 we get not pushback, but we get increased from any university has the right to do and the University of Miami and we have to be honest, as you know, it's such a wide range University. It's got so many different aspects to it. But when they come to us and they say, look, can we look at looking into the type two type of research? Well, we tell them to go to another part of the campus and look for it. And they do. There are places probably on us campus that will focus on complications, you know, transplants they have, you know, they have a lot of different aspects of us, because it is such a great medical campus on a lot of different ways and areas that they can go someplace But when it comes to the Diabetes Research Institute, we have an agreement with them that that's where that focus will say. And a part of that is, in essence, the Diabetes Research Institute foundation is the largest donor to the University of Miami for all the money that we give only to the institute because that's all we'll fund. It won't go anywhere else. And that's because the foundation years ago, the parents had the, the, the wherewithal to say down the line, we want to make sure that this institute stays razor focused on a cure. And that's why that agreement is so important to be in place and we love being part of the University of Miami. They've been very supportive of us. It's a great relationship. And it's been incredible because it also being part of the University of Miami. It gives it the credibility that the world needs to see that this institute is part of academia, but also has raised focus on curing a disease that is only for type one diabetes.   Stacey Simms  19:58 Tom, you're handled your blog. Dave has always been diabetes dad, and I want to talk to you about being a dad for a moment if I could, you know, you've spoken many, many times in your blog. And when you speak in person about your wife, Jill, and how she took care of the kids diabetes, you said it, you know, really the responsibility mostly fell on her that sort of thing. You've given her a lot of credit. But I'm curious as you look back and your kids are grown up, and they're married, and you know, you have a different perspective. Now, what's your advice to other diabetes dads, you know, I think more men want to do more. I don't know exactly how much you did. But can we talk about being a diabetes dad for a minute and what that means?   Tom Karlya  20:36 Sure. And then, and just to be clear, and this is very important part of this discussion, the responsibility did not fall on jail. And actually, when Caitlyn was first diagnosed, we sat down and talked, because I didn't want to make the decision for myself. I didn't say, Well, this is what we're going to do. So she and I sat down and I said, Look, one of us has to stay home. And it was Okay, I didn't say, Well, I'm going to work, and you're going to stay home, we discussed that. And to me, that's one of the biggest keys to parenting with diabetes is keeping that open line of communication and dialogue open. I look at now, I mean, I mean, there was a time, we almost lost everything. Because she couldn't work. I had to work. I was working three, four jobs, whatever it took to keep us moving forward. I knew two things. Income had to keep coming in. And we had to have insurance from that day forward. So everything I did was working toward that. But it came about that I would work the jobs, and she would stay home with the kids and she would work when she could if she could, and then it became we had to find times that I had to realize that this is a partnership and dealing with this disease. So I would say on the days that I could get out of here go someplace, go see a movie go out with friends, we had to try to find time for ourselves as a couple. This is a very strenuous disease and a lot of different areas. And I tell couples and parents all the time, communicate, make sure you're talking with each other, not at each other. You know, I have to tell you one of my favorite stories. I was at the children with diabetes conference in Orlando, Florida. And I usually run the dad's group when I'm there. And there was a man talking and he said, I'm divorced, and this that the other thing, and he said, and I'm here, and the man next to him said, I'm in a second family. I married my wife, and they have a child with diabetes. And it was the father of the child and the new husband of the wife at the same meeting, finding it that important to learn about diabetes. And that was one of the most touching things I ever saw. I said, I wrote to the gentleman who was newly married, I said, You're like my new hero.   Unknown Speaker  22:55 Wait, wait, wait, I'm confused. So the family gets divorced. The EX is there and The new husband.   Tom Karlya  23:01 That's exactly right. Wow. And, And to me, that's as powerful a statement as that could ever be made that the child has to come first. And look, divorces Can I hope never to cut through it and I hope never to have to deal with it. But sometimes it can be very bitter. But you have to remember where your child is with diabetes is the same thing when both parents go to work. And the grandparents want to be involved. I say this all the time, grandparents are the most forgotten people when it comes to the family structure and dealing with diabetes because they want to help. But a lot of times it's like mommy telling the son or daughter what to do. And that kind of, they don't get accepted in as they should. But the grandparents hurt as much as the parents do, if that could be possible, because they want to help and we have to let them and find the mechanisms for them to do so. So the answer to your question is, communication is the most important thing and for the for dads to realize To look for places where you can pick up the ball and run with it, where you can be part of your child's life, don't let your wife do it. Make yourself part of the solution. And you will be. And that's exactly what we did. And because of what I ended up doing for my life, I ended up being the go to person for what was new in technology and what was coming down the line, and you was dealing the day to day management. But that's the balance. You will get to the late Richard Rubin, who is just an incredible, incredible man in the world of psyche of diabetes. He's the one who coined the phrase, diabetes, self willfulness. And it happens to all of us. And it's all about balance. It's all about choices. Such great advice there.   Stacey Simms  24:41 All right, Tom, I got to ask you, you mentioned this earlier that you were acting and you you were on these TV shows, but you were in Tony and Tina's wedding. For people who might not be from the New York area. You're from Long Island. I'm from Westchester County, which is really close by. This was not only a show This was like a party. Can you try to describe Tony and Tina's wedding?   Tom Karlya  25:04 Yeah, it's what's called Point to Point improvisation. The same things would happen every night. But basically, you went to a church in New York City, and then the service would end and you would walk three blocks to the catering Hall. And that was in snow, rain, whatever it was, and it was anything that could go wrong in the wedding would go wrong. An old boyfriend shows up. The father is divorced and is going out with this very interesting woman who, but he used to go out with Tina's mother. It took the whole thing just becomes a mess. But it at the time when it first opened. It was probably the first show that was all about improvisation. Now there's many of them, but they had they been in every city just about in the country and what some of them with long runs like Chicago ran for a really long time, as well. But it was a role that was very interesting for me. I played tennis. Over the years, I ended up doing four different roles. I ended up playing Tony's Father, I was a teenager. Father in the host of the catering Hall and he was like this kind of emcee which saying, tell jokes, whatever. But it was all about the engagement of the audience. So we, the audience, were the guests of Tony and Tina, every night, and we would have to interact with them. And the key to that was to listen, because you could pick up something and then come back to that person later and bring it up. And they're like, how did they know that? And it made it all like they were part of the family. And I mean, there was a time when all these celebrities came and it was it was one of the one time it was probably one of the hottest tickets in New York. You couldn't get tickets yet to wait two months. Kim can't imagine it was the Hamilton of the day but it certainly was a great show and the audience had a wonderful, wonderful time.   Unknown Speaker  26:45 Did you have fun doing that? I mean, I imagine it was it was very hard work, but it had to also be very kind of exhilarating in a way.   Tom Karlya  26:52 Well, it was an active job and it's probably one of the most Yes, exhilarating and and challenging to stay in character mind. came to see the show. And I didn't talk to anything else, but my character. And so it was always fun to make sure that at any given time that we had to stay in character no matter what power failure happened once and we all had to get out of the theater. Well, we all I mean, we met this is like leaving a catering all these people all sitting around tables all around you. And we all had to stay in character when we did that. So it was a challenge. It was fun. But yes, it was a job that you had to be able to stay in every night. You had to pace yourself. I mean, there was a time we were doing eight shows a week. And that's a lot of shows. So it's like any training that you do in the acting world. you train yourself to do the role, because you tell yourself every night that people seeing the show are seeing it for the first time.   Unknown Speaker  27:44 So before we let you go here, give us an update on the kids. The grown up kids now How's everybody doing?   Tom Karlya  27:51 My oldest doesn't have it. TJ he's with the New York state mental health police department. Kaitlin now interesting thing about Caitlyn as I remember you Years and years ago, someone told me you really should just hope for college for your kid. And I said, What are you talking about? You mean she's not gonna make college? He said, I'm not saying that he said, it's just you have to understand how devastating this diseases but make college a goal. Well, that person didn't stay a friend clearly. So,   Stacey Simms  28:17 but but that was a belief at the time people I've heard Well, it was thought that   Tom Karlya  28:21 Yep, yep, yep. And I think that's one of the keys for all of us is to keep our kids so positive that they can do anything with this disease. So not only did she graduate college, not only did she graduate nursing school, but in December, she graduated with her nurse family practitioner ship, and she's now a family nurse practitioner, and she's in practice and she'll be hopefully her goal is to deal with people with type one diabetes. My youngest son is a computer guru, and he was working for a company called Best Buy. And he got tagged by their Geek Squad when he was 18. And I said, Do you like it? He said, Yeah, dad, but that's not where I'm going to stay. And I said, What do you mean? He said, My goal is to be tapped from the Magic Castle. I What's the Magic Castle? He said, it's the corporate headquarters in Minnesota. I said, Well, that's a lofty goal. He said, Well, that's my goal. Well, earlier this year, my wife and I went, saw my son's new office, at the executive row in Best Buy in that building, that they are all in and looked at his new office, because they did just that when he was 21. They tapped him on the shoulder and they bought him out there. And he now works for the corporate headquarters for Best Buy Geek Squad. Now I share that not just because of who they are. But if you have a dream, if your child has a dream, our job as parents is to do everything we can to help them fulfill their dream. That was my son's dream. She's been there now for two years in Minnesota, doing just what he always wanted to do.   Stacey Simms  29:46 That's just wonderful. I mean, I'm getting kind of emotional. Actually, as you're talking about it. I think it's incredible, because you have to let them pursue what they want to let them dream. And when Type One Diabetes comes along. It's kind of easy to think to yourself, Well, maybe We should damp down the expectations. And you didn't do that for any of your kids. And your mantra has always been at least since I've known you is just don't do nothing. So for people who are listening, you don't have to, you know, be a senior vice president of the Diabetes Research Institute. You don't have to you speak all over the country like you do. But as we leave here, is that really your advice? Just do try to do something.   Tom Karlya  30:26 It started with a step. If you told me back then that I'd end up where I was today. I would have told you you're crazy. Start with a step. If you're looking for something to do hang posters around your community about the warning signs for diabetes. There's a mom in texas a mom in Texas, she and I connected years ago and created get diabetes, right. org and all that is is posters that you can download and put around your community for people to know about the warning signs of type one diabetes, and we're not alone. Beyond type one does it all bunch of other people JDRF does it all People have these warning signs. It starts with you looking in the mirror saying the status quo of diabetes in my life just will not do. What can I just start asking the question, What can I do JDRF started by parents. The Diabetes Research Institute foundation started by parents, people out there doing things, podcasts out there, Stacey Simms says, gotta do something. This is my background. This is what I can do. This is what I'm going to do. It's something there's nothing so small, that cannot change a life a life around, just by starting with the first step. This disease will not do in this world, my world, or any world, and look for something you can do to change it. Tom,   Unknown Speaker  31:48 thank you so much for joining me. It's been such   Stacey Simms  31:50 a thrill to hear your story and to talk to you today. I really appreciate   Tom Karlya  31:54 it now. Thank you and thank you for everything you continue to do. And these are the stories that people need to hear because there's a A lot of people out there who don't know that what they can do and how they can do it and, and that's what people need to just keep hearing these stories so they get, you know, there's so many people out there that is so inspired now, and professional sports and dance and drama and theater in studies in school, excelling, diabetes just won't do and just don't do nothing when it comes into your life.   Unknown Speaker  32:26 You're listening to diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  32:32 You can find out more about Tom at diabetes. Connections calm is the episode homepage. Of course, I will link up information to his blog to the d-ri to everything else we talked about and there is a transcription just like there is for every episode this year. And I am working to fill in the blanks on transcriptions in the past as well, because I'm getting such a great response. I wasn't sure right? Do people want transcriptions? Is it worth the time? Let me tell you, it is totally worth it. I've been hearing So many people who maybe just don't have time to listen or prefer to read. And it's a service, I am more than happy to provide as frankly, the technology is getting better. It's still not perfect. I mean, you know, most of these transcription services do not speak diabetes. So I've had to go through and fix a few things. But I'm happy to do it. Because I think it really is enhancing everybody's experience. So thank you very much for the feedback on that. Up next, tell me something good. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. You know, when you have a toddler diagnosed with type one, like I did, like Tom did, you do hear rumblings for a very long time about the teen years, but when it hit us at full force a little early, frankly, I'm so glad we had Dexcom it just helped us see and really take stock of the changes we made because Benny's insulin needs started going way up around age 11. And he's 15 now and it's almost settling down. I don't wanna get too personal, but you know, along with the hormone swings, I can't imagine managing diabetes during that time. Because we made so many changes without the Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring system, we react more quickly to highs and lows, see those trends and adjust insulin doses with advice from our endocrinologist and I know using the Dexcom g six has helped improve Benny's a one C and overall health. If your glucose alerts and readings for the G six do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more, go to diabetes connections comm and click on the Dexcom logo.   Our Tell me something good stories this week come from a Facebook group called poked parents of kids experiencing diabetes. I'm part of that group and I posted that I was looking for good news stories and oh my goodness, did they deliver so let me bring you a couple. Sarah wrote my daughter just signed to play college soccer. She is so excited to keep breaking down misconceptions about type one and sports Susan says my daughter with Type One Diabetes earned a scholarship and direct admission into a competitive nursing program. She's in her freshman year living on campus and successfully handling it all. Her goal is to be a diabetes educator. And then Beth wrote in this kiddo, Frankie, who has lived more of her life post type one is rocking control IQ the new software from tandem best says slightly off label since she's barely six and definitely under 55 pounds and just got invited to present on a panel at JDRF type one nation in Denver. That was a couple of weeks ago before everything was canceled. But I asked Beth to ask Frankie Yes. And she was on a panel. I had some questions for her. And Beth was happy to oblige. And Frankie answered my questions. So my first question was, what is one thing she would tell a kid her age was just diagnosed with type one, and Frankie said, I would tell them it's okay. Don't be afraid and you can still do everything you want. And then I said What's something she does to feel better when she has a hard day, and Frankie responded, I tell my mom and dad when I've had a bad day, then we usually do something special together to make me feel better. Again, Frankie is six years old, and she was diagnosed at two. But thank you so much for sending that. And thanks to all the parents for responding to my prompt in the group, I really appreciate it. If you have a Tell me something good story you just want to share about your kid or yourself. It can be everything that you heard, it could be a diversity, just you know, with everything that's going on. Let's have some good news in our community. I love it. It's my favorite part of the show each week. I really would love to hear from you. Before I let you go, just a quick note on everything that's going on. I mentioned at the beginning of the show that I was going to talk a little bit about local groups. And all I really want to say about that is if you have a local Facebook group, as many of us do, you know, just check in on each If you have a local text chain or WhatsApp or things like that, maybe your kids have a diabetes camp, I don't even know what kids are using. I was gonna say whatsapp group, but you know, you know what the kids are on tik tok or whatever. Check in with their camp community or other people you may know through your local JDRF chapter. If you're an adult with an adult group, please check in on each other. If you have nobody. If you're concerned, you're by yourself, you're worried we're here, right? I don't know what we can do other than say, we can help. I don't want to make empty promises. But I do think it's really important that we get social connection during this scary time, which really can lead to in real life help. I know that in my community, when somebody needs insulin, we get it to them. When somebody needs a Dexcom sensor. We get it to them if we can. The diabetes community for a very long time has already taken care of the people within it. And I hope that that spirit extends to the whole community during the scare both At the very least, if there are people in your diabetes community that you can help, let's find a way to do so, you know, if you're halfway across the country, there are so many ways to connect, that it's really not that hard to find somebody nearby. So hey, diabetes connections, listeners, that's my challenge for you over these next couple of weeks. I know most of you are already doing it. But if you've listened this far, if you're hearing my voice at this point, check in on your diabetes friends, check in on your community, and let's see what we can do to help each other. We may never need the help, but it is nice to know it's there. I think that goes an awfully long way. All right. Again, I don't know what I'm doing in terms of scheduling for the next couple of weeks. I'm not going to do lots and lots of coronavirus episodes. I don't know that they're needed. I think I will check in if I can with some endocrinologists over the next couple of weeks. Maybe we'll do some Facebook Live. You tell me what you want to hear. But in the meantime, right now I am planning to go back to the regularly scheduled diabetes connections episodes. I have a Few that I've recorded already a few interviews, and I think we'll just put those out as planned. And we will go from there. Thanks as always to by editor john Deakins from audio editing solutions. Thank you so much for listening and for letting me into your lives right now. I really appreciate it. I'm Stacey Simms, and I'll see you back here soon. Until then, be kind to yourself.   Unknown Speaker  39:28 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Many of us have heard of A. Smith Bowman, which is owned by Sazerac, but we really don’t know much about them. We sit down with their Master Distiller, Brian Prewitt, to learn about the inner-workings of their operation and how the relationship with Sazerac works, as it pertains to the bourbon. With more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise, he tells us how he dialed in their stills to create a unique product and what the future entails for growth. We may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes as well. If you're a fan of A. Smith Bowman, let us know your favorite bottling in the comments. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they explore whiskey in an entirely new way. The team selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of its parts. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Texas. How did you get into bourbon? What has been your favorite spirit to work with? Did your parents influence you to get into the alcohol industry? Tell us the history of A. Smith Bowman. Does it ever make you mad that Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon? What year did the operation start? Tell us the history of Master Distillers there. Is it hard to dial in flavor profiles? Are you able to make your own imprint on the product? What did you tweak during the process? When did it become part of the Sazerac portfolio? What resources did you gain from Sazerac? Do you distill or does Buffalo Trace contract distill? Is it aged in VA? Are higher age releases sourced or made in house? What is your capacity? How many states are you available in? Is there a flavor profile difference from Kentucky bourbon? Tell us about your products. What makes your gin unique? Tell us about your single barrel program. Where do you see the market in the future? How has Virginia embraced you? Do you have a lot of competition visit? Has bourbon tourism grown in VA? What are your plans for growth? 0:00 I love bourbon. But I'm not ready to restart my career and be distiller. I have a bachelor's degree, and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville has an online distilled spirits business certificate. And this focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for a more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA, there certificate credits transfer into u of s online MBA program as elective hours. Learn more about this online six course certificate at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:37 You know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskies and we have a good time on on the on the holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off, like it's mine's way better than what you're making. 1:05 Hey everyone, it is Episode 244 of bourbon pursuit. I'm getting one of the hosts. And last week somebody asked me, Why didn't I talk about the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US on the podcast opening there, right? I totally Shut up. It was a huge missed because it was massive news. So yes, that is happening. And this will also be one of the major talking points for next week's bourbon Community Roundtable. So make sure you tune in for that, because it's likely going to be 100%. All About blends. All right onto the news. The audio is raising a glass to the women behind some of the most famous labels with the introduction of their crafts women project. The two new whiskies are going to be one as bullet Blender select crafted by bullet Blender Ebony major and Jane Walker created by johnnie Walker's master blender, Emma Walker. Both will be hitting the shelves this spring bullet blenders select number 001 will be a blend of 2:00 Three of the distilleries 10 high rye bourbon recipes bottled at 100 proof. Dr. Joe also announced a release of Jane Walker scotch, a 10 year blend featuring whiskey from Speyside. Jane Walker is crafted by Emma Walker who has the lion's share in most run of inventory. With over 10 million casks of aging and maturing whiskey and distilleries across Scotland. Bullet Blender select and Jane Walker will be hitting shelves in the coming months for a suggested retail price around $50 and $38 respectively. Pin hook bourbon has announced the arrival of their 2020 bohemian bourbon, the first bourbon release in almost 40 years. That was the stilt at historic castle and key pin contract is still the new bourbon at Castle and key, which is also what's known as old Taylor to craft their own custom mash bill of 75% corn, 10% rye and 15% malted barley, they blended just 100 barrels of this 34 month bourbon to create their high proof release, which clocks in at 114.5. It will share some of the 3:00 Same magenta wax color as last year's cash drink bourbon expression. The high proof bohemian bourbon will be arriving on shelves at April of 2020 per suggested retail price of around $50. In bourbon pursuit news since the beginning of 2020. We have already selected seven barrels from places like Buffalo Trace 79, and four roses. While they have eight more barrel selections to go in just the first half of this calendar year alone. We've got places like New riff, jack daniels bullet heaven Hill, and more. So if you want to be a part of this, head on over to patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit, and not only can you help support the show, but you get some damn good bourbon in the process. And in more bourbon pursuit news, you know that you can find us on every podcast platform out there such as Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Google, and even places like YouTube, but now we're hitting the airwaves. Yes, airing on Wednesdays from nine to 10am. We will be in Bardstown, Kentucky, his radio station w 4:00 Artie with frequencies of 1320 am 97.1 Fm 94.9 fm and online at wb rt country.com. The first show is set to launch next week on March 18, of 2020. Now today on the podcast, we dig into a brand that we know about but don't really know about, and that's a Smith Bowman, which is owned by SAS rock and based out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, we sit down with their master distiller Brian Pruitt to learn more about the inner workings of their operations, and how the relationship with SAS rock and Buffalo Trace works as it pertains to the bourbon with more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise. He tells us how they dialed in their stills and is pushing out a unique product. We also talk about their capacity and what the future entails for growth as well. Plus, we may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes. All right. Also as a small apology, this podcast audio for this week was recorded over zoom and is the 5:00 Final podcasts at AIR using this platform all shows going forward or using new platforms that will enhance your listener experience. So thanks for sticking with us. It's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 5:17 I'm Joe Beatrice, founder of barrel craft spirits, we explore whiskey in an entirely new way. My team at barrel craft spirits, selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of their parts. Use the store locator a barrel bourbon calm. 5:33 I'm Fred MiniK, and this is above the char. As I put the whiskey to my lips, I felt a tingle just throughout my palate. It started on the front and moved its way toward the back just dripping down the jaw line tickling the top and it's gonna surprise you where this whiskey came from. It was not from Kentucky, Tennessee or Indiana. This barrel proof bourbon was distilled 6:00 aged and bottled in Texas. That's right, Texas. Texas is on the move and they have been for some time. And I do believe that Texas bourbon will soon begin to rival Kentucky and competitions and with consumers from California to New York and from Alaska to Hawaii. Now this bourbon that I tasted that kind of wowed me was t x, Texas straight bourbon whiskey. It was 127.4 proof four years old barrel proof is on the label, obviously. And it's from Firestone and Robertson. I tasted this on my YouTube channel if you haven't go check that out. It's for my what's in the box segment where I open a box and taste whatever is in the box. But this this bourbon really was one that kind of made me think rethink my position on where Texas is. Now I've always thought Texas is a growing state and very powerful. 7:00 When it comes to whiskey, and I think the rise of Texas has been has been happening for some time, but in the last couple of years we have seen Texas distillers like iron root win major awards, we've seen balconies kind of like, you know, get on shelves all over all over the country and when pallets, especially those in the American single malt category, while garrison brothers has kind of dominated like this, like this landscape and built a cult following for itself. I think right now, Texas is primed to do things in American whiskey that we've not seen any other state be able to do. And there's a good chance as I go off to San Francisco to judge the world spirits awards, that we could see a Texas whiskey win a lot of gold. I'll say this. Texas has the formula. They have the formula to be able to compete with all the great distillers around the world. They have a consumer base that really is passionate 8:00 about anything from Texas I mean how you could you could slap Made in Texas on anything and I would sell out in Texas those people love their state and they have a lot of talent and they have the education there like people from that state who are in the distilling business have taken the time to go get the education that it requires to be good distillers they're also humble you don't see them slapping master distiller on there, or for the most part, you don't see them calling themselves master distillers without in their opinion earning it and I also don't think that you see a lot of like terribly bad products coming out of Texas. The one thing that's going to hold Texas back is its water, water. It has a it's it's it's not a resource in abundance in Texas. And this is something that I think that every whiskey state needs to be able to rely on. You need to rely on a lot of water, obviously, but keep your eye on Texas. Something's going on there. And if you if you haven't tasted this 9:00 yet make sure you go pick up a bottle that TX barrel proof bourbon. And if you followed me for a while you know how hard it is for me to give a compliment from Tech to Texas. After all, I was born and raised in Oklahoma, where we kind of rival Texas and a lot of ways. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, just search for a name Fred medic. Again, that's Fred MiniK Am I in an IC k? We're going to my website Fred medic calm until next week. Cheers 9:36 Welcome back to a another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon Kinney and Ryan here today talking to one another master distiller we have never had on the show today but it is coming from a distillery. I've got one or two bottles downstairs. Love what they're doing really good things over there. But it is it's not Kentucky's backyard which is a little bit different for us from time to time. 10:00 Yeah typically well I'm surprised this is like one of the master stories we haven't had one so I'm excited like we haven't had him on yet I don't know what's taking so long it's probably my fault we just got it but you have to knock on the right door sometime but they do have a great product I don't know a ton about it so I'm really excited to kind of get their story and info by had some great single barrel picks from them from liquor barn around here so I know they're doing some good stuff and excited to see what the future and past present all the above for this distiller Yeah, absolutely, it's kind of gonna be a culmination of all those things because what we've seen at least around here in Kentucky is being able to finally get your hands on some of these bottles and now that it's got a unique bottle shape to it's kind of like this, this oval looking heart shaped kind of thing and it's it's really cool. It really stands out on the shelf and I think it's going to be good for our listeners to kind of learn more about the brand more about the people that are behind the brand as well because I think that's a good 11:00 What our audience really cares about, they want to know more about the stories of the people behind it. So yep, so let's stop talking and let's start asking. 11:07 So today on the show, we have Brian Pruitt. Brian is the master distiller at a Smith Bowman out of Virginia. So Brian, welcome to the show. Kenny Ryan, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Guys, so before we kind of dive into the history of Bowman and more about you know, you we always like to kick off the show and kind of think of like, what is it that got you into bourbon whiskey was there? Was there an early like, I mean, it's okay, because we talked to a lot of people and they're like, well, it started back when I was 12. And Grandpa said, you know, taking it but this so kind of talk about your first run and experience. Absolutely. So for me, it was a little bit different. I I started actually in school, I had no intentions of going into the alcohol beverage industry. I was in actually pre pre med and I had no 12:00 You know, I was in a class, literally looking for nerves or whatever it was on a cadaver. And I thought, this sucks. I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore. On a cadaver. Yeah, it was not fun. And I decided, Hey, you know what I really liked. I really like beer. Why don't I try and make beer. So I actually called up the local brewery which happened to be a large Anheuser Busch. And I was able to talk to the the master Brewer. You know, here I am this college kid. And he said, Yeah, come on down. I'll talk to you. I'll tell you how I got to where I was. And I went in and talked to him and, and he said, yeah, this is what I did. And this is the path I took. And so I next day went in and changed my major to food science, and did the whole food science thing Colorado State and then eventually went on to do the master brewers at UC Davis. 12:56 Started in the brewing industry. So I was working a lot of small craft breweries. 13:00 across Colorado and California. And you know after several years in the brewing industry, I decided I wanted to learn what beer became when it grew up. Now when it comes to see that's that's the fun part though you always get to start with beer before you make to the get to the spirits anyway Absolutely. A lot of people don't realize you know, basically what we do here is you know, for whiskies as you as you as you make a beer and then you're going to distill it after ferment, so I kind of really wanted to learn about that. So I I found that at the time I found a weaseled my way into the the wine industry, which had a very large distillery with it and was able to learn about, you know, under a master distiller and a master blender. They had probably a combined about 80 years worth of knowledge and I worked for them for well over a decade. And, you know, got to make all sorts of things got to make brandies and vodkas and gins and spend time in Mexico making tequila and Caribbean rooms. 14:00 And then of course whiskies and, but eventually I really wanted to get back to kind of my roots, which was small craft, you know, high quality spirits and that's what brought me to a Smith bone. So it's kind of a maybe a different route than some have taken versus, you know, just like am I, my father worked in the industry and I got in the industry and, you know, it's, I will say that all of my family is involved with the alcoholic beverage industry. I brother worked for breweries, my dad owns a winery, and I'm in booze. My sister is the only one that hasn't made it. She's a doctor. So you got it. She liked the nerves on the cadaver. It's a trail. Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like you've worked with a lot of spirits. 14:44 I know you're gonna say you want to work or whiskey is your favorite thing to work with the what's been one of your favorite spirits to work with. I absolutely love whiskey and I mean it came from, you know, the the brewing side and just seeing what you can do with 15:00 The grain the grain bill different yeasts and then taking that on and the maturation side 15:07 I think that's I think that's great now I don't discriminate against the spirits though I love them all. I love all sorts of spirits you know in the summer, sometimes it's nice to have a nice gin and tonic. Sometimes, you know, you need a nice brandy or rum drink when you know you're out. You have to have a boat drink, you know, out on the boat. You gotta have that rum drink. But of course, you know, nothing, nothing beats a nice nice single barrel bourbon. So absolutely see when I go in the boat, it's like it's the only time I let it slide is like you get the Bud Light limes. Or you have one of those kind of like the very fruity kind of forward kind of beers it's the only time it works is when you're on a boat. Well, it takes plenty of beer to make to make good bourbon so 15:49 absolutely well let slot 15:51 well cool. So that's good to see like it was there it kinda want to talk about your family life here a little bit. So you talked about your family all kind of being in the Alcohol Beverage 16:00 industry. Was there a, 16:03 you know, at least from your your parents side of it? Was there an influence that said like, hey, like this is this is a good route for you to go was that a an opportunity that you said you already kind of have experience in this? Yeah. Because my family was a part of it. Like was that an influential factor into it? No, I think it was more, you know, actually my father he kind of started the winery that he runs. He started in that in retirement. So that's kind of like he was retirement type thing. So it was all of us were kind of getting into the industry at all at the same time and we all just kind of I think we love the science aspect of it. We love the art aspect of it. You know, we just kind of all went different ways. And it was just one of those things that Yeah, we get we get together and we have some pretty crazy Christmases and things like that where you can, you know, you really get to bring out the full spread different I'll call it Tipples, you know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskeys in 17:00 We have a good time on on the on holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off. Like, it's man's way there and what you're making. 17:11 So, it was kind of interesting. But yeah, we I mean, we definitely help each other out. And, you know, I'll get calls from guys all the time they'll say, Hey, I talked to your brother the other day and don't don't believe a word he said. Or hey, I was at your dad's place. I don't believe a word. He said. He doesn't know what he's talking about. So you give each other a hard time. And that's okay. I mean, it's family you have to give each other a hard time. Especially in the holidays. It's kind of kinda like the booze off we should probably we should make a bourbon pursuit booze off for our Christmas holiday party. It wouldn't last long my family that like every time I bring straight bourbon or Nate they're like, I can't believe you drink this. This is awful. 17:50 So let's you know before we start talking more about your job and everything like that, that you've gone with let's let's give a our listeners kind of a an understanding and background of really 18:00 What's the history at a Smith Bowman? Because I just realized before we were coming on here that is it is not Abraham It is actually a from Smith. 18:09 Yep, we're the experts. 18:11 School is so so a Smith Bowman is actually one of the oldest distilleries on the east coast. It was the oldest distiller in Virginia, started by Abraham Smith Bowman, and a lot of his family actually kind of has roots to the, you know, the pioneers of basically, during the Revolutionary War, discovering what is now current day Kentucky. So if you're in Louisville, and you go out to Bowman field, 18:38 that is actually part of the bone was discovered and named after one of the Bowman family, really, tours of Cedar Creek is as they were known and all of our current day products are all named after the bone like historical Bowman figures. But kind of getting to modern history of how Abraham started it. He was actually the great grandson. 19:00 of 19:02 Abraham Bowman or sorry, George Bowman. And he was actually in the distilling industry prior to prohibition. He ran a distillery in in New Orleans prior to prohibition and one of the largest ramen bourbon distilleries, Algiers point. And and then after, you know, prohibition, he happened to buy about 7400 acres. And he opened up a granary and, and, and cattle. And then he no of course, prohibition ends and 3334 is when an ended here in Virginia, and he decided, hey, you know, I already know this business quite well. I have all my own corn. I have all my own rye. Let's start making bourbon. And, you know, that's what he started doing. So, right in 3435, he started making bourbon. And His goal was basically straight, you know, granted glass we did everything from, like I said, growing the grain. we harvested our own trees and made our own barrels. 20:00 I mean, we did it all. And the whole point was to make, you know, high quality spirits. And, you know, we kind of continue on with that. That kind of mantra today. We're known for making Bourbons, of course, but we do other spirits as well. So that's this kind of a little bit of the history of it. We give it we give the complete history. If you ever make it down to Virginia, we'll give you the complete history. There we go. We'll do the 30 minute tutorial one of these days. That sounds good. Does it ever make you all mad that like Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon when Virginia was like, the state before Kentucky? You're like, yeah, we have a lot. There's I will say a lot of people come in and they're very proud of their their Kentucky bourbon heritage and and, and we're proud of it as well, but we always like to remind them that Kentucky used to be part of Virginia, we say Well, we've been making bourbon here for a long time too. So it's kind of just curious about like the current operation like kind of like the year that really it started or is it still like been all running since 18, whatever. Well, so we started 21:00 Like I said, and 33 in Fairfax County, which is about just outside of Washington, DC area, and we moved it to their current location here in 1988. So we've been running here in this location since 88. And the reason we moved is because basically we sold off the family sold off the farm. And the the city of Reston, or that Fairfax County, which is well over a million people now just kind of grew around the distillery and they're, you know, having this distillery where literally, they were walking the cows in from the farm to feed off the slop down the middle of the road. They just didn't, they kind of didn't like that so much. So move to the distillery where we're at now, which is about 45 miles south of Washington DC. We're in this small town in Fredericksburg. 21:49 And it's you know, it's been it's been a great location for us. So we're right along the Rappahannock river and, and, you know, it's a great area for aging Bourbons, and when 22:00 Enjoy it here so far. Talk a little bit about like the the history of the master distiller title there as well. Are you the fourth the first of the new one? And do they don't have master distillers back now and to talk about that? Yeah, actually so there's been six master distillers here in the history of the company since the 30s. The first one was for about five years and then we had kind of one or two that only lasted about, you know, five to 10 years. And the previous master distiller was actually earth to master distillers ago was actually here for about 30 years he kind of took it from basically took over as master distiller in the 80s until almost 2011. And then the previous master distiller to me was Truman Cox, who came from Buffalo Trace actually, and he was here. I think he worked here for probably about three years, but he's only master distiller for a little over a year and a half. He sat down 23:00 Passed away very you know, very unexpectedly and I took over from him he had been hidden and gone for probably about six months when I took over so I came into you know into a building with you know, there hadn't been a master distiller for six months. So it was one of those things where you you hope that the previous master distillers and taking notes and you go in and you learn the skill and you find out what's going on and taste through the stock I know that's that's rough to do. Got a taste you're all the stock to find everything out somebody in Thank you for taking that sacrifice for us. We proud. I'll stop. That's okay. I'll do it again. I get it. I have to so but it was you know, it was just trying to come in and find out what the house flavors were, how the stills ran and and just taking it from there. So I've been in this role for six years now. So how long do how long do you think it takes to become comfortable with the existing setup and accounting? 24:00 Get those, you know, like basic flavor profiles you're looking for dialed in, it takes a little while it takes a you know, I think you have a good couple of months that you know, just tasting through all the stock, you know, just going through and seeing where everything is. So, you know, you're literally going out into the warehouse and you're saying, okay, you know, what's this one? We're okay, this is a year old, what's it tastes like? Okay, this is two years old, what's it tastes like? And then all the way up, you know, 1516 years, and you're trying to find out, hey, what are the flavor profiles that are out there in the different parts of the warehouse because you know, you, you don't have anybody to tell you that, you know, that historic. This is where I did this. And this is where I did this. And if I want this flavor I pulled out of this area of the warehouse, you just don't have that. So you know that that took a little while but you know, once once you get there, I think then it's tweaking it to make a little little changes right off the bat just to just to kind of make it your own style and and then kind of improve the product and 25:00 That's one of the things that we always want to do is, you know, that's, that's our logo or our motto here is pioneering spirit. So we're embracing our history, and just pushing the future. We're just wanting to improve our products every day. So we don't want to just sit back and go, yeah, that's okay. It could be better. 25:17 So, that's amazing, free rein to make your own imprint on it. So it's not just like, plug and play, like, this is the way we do it. Don't screw it up. No, absolutely. I mean, there there is, obviously you have an established brand and you don't want to if you have historic, you know, customers of that brand, you don't want to just change it willy nilly. You know, yeah, if you're gonna make changes, you want to make sure that for the better and, you know, you want to keep improving them, but, you know, if it's a change that does make it better, makes it taste better. You know, improves its, its overall appeal, then yeah, absolutely free rein. No one's good because, you know, one thing that we always talk about is how the 26:00 Entry just loves to hear about change, right? Yeah. Not really like it's always like, you know, let's, let's keep Let's stay the course Let's not really not shake things up too much or anything like that. So I guess the question that I kind of want to pose about, you know, when you started coming in, you're figuring out like, how do we dial or how do we tweak things? Can you recall like one of those things that you kind of had to tweak to kind of figure out what it is to kind of make Pruitt's own signature bourbon? Right. Well, I mean, one of the things that I, you know, I'm looking for, as the heads were coming off the still and I walked in, and I'm like, Alright, well, wait, what are you doing? Oh, we're making the cut. Like, not yet. Not yet. You got it. Wait, wait, wait, wait just a minute. And then you know, we do our heads cuts a little bit different and then eventually, you know, we're saying, okay, where's our ideal proof? Because, you know, we had some periods of time that I will say that, you know, the proof really kind of varied 26:56 quite a bit off the still and we tried to dial that in 27:00 And tried to really get consistency off the off the distillation process versus, you know, you know, just, hey, this is the way that we run it every single time. 27:09 We wanted to go in and say, Hey, each, each tank each fermenter each batch is different. So we're going to adjust our still to make sure that our flavor profile is consistent from distillation to distillation, so that you don't have this huge variation from batch to batch. You know, we wanted it, you know, there was there was just processes that you have to go in and say, Okay, this is how we want to run it. And just a little tweak here, a little tweak there. And, you know, a lot of these guys have been working in the industry for 30 years. And they kind of go Oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. You know, these are these are good things to do. So 27:46 I think we've been successful in that. So absolutely. And so I guess one of the things that maybe most people will know about is that it is all part of the the SAS rack portfolio. So, Buffalo Trace, all that sort 28:00 stuff as part you know, Smith Bowman as part of that kind of when did when that started happening when it became part of that portfolio. So it actually it's kind of interesting story because in the move for a Smith Bowman from Fairfax to the current location, 28:19 they had to take down all of the basically the entire distilleries shut it down for it, it took about two years to move the entire distillery. So they started partnering with what was at that time before it was called Buffalo Trace was ancient age. So they started partnering with them and doing the initial mash, even the the yeast and the mash bill and things like that, so that we can continue on producing and, and then basically, when you know, we kind of kept going in that direction, and in 2003 was actually one of the first distilleries that Sam's rack purchased from the Bowman family they purchased the distillery 29:00 2003 and it's now it's even, it's an even better situation. Because Yeah, we're able to, you know, we're all part of one, one company, and we can do all sorts of things work together. It's a great network. And we're all about, you know, making the absolute best products that we can, which is wonderful. What are some of the resources that I guess he gained from being with SAS direct versus just trying to do stuff on your own? Or is it like a big collaboration? I guess he's got Harland cellphone on the dial. He's got that. Well, yeah, we do have that, obviously. But, you know, things. Some of the benefits are, as you know, for example, barrels were really hard to come by a couple years ago, right? Well, luckily, we buy enough barrels, that we're able to say, Hey, you know, we're part of this bigger network, you know, can we can we get barrels whereas if you're a small guy, and you're only buying, you know, a couple thousand barrels a year, you may not necessarily make the list for some of the biggest 30:00 barrel producers, they say, Well, you know, our big barrel producer or big customers already have it, we don't have barrels for you. So Tough luck, which has been a benefit, you know, getting getting the distribution and sales and marketing side of a larger company. I mean, those just really work well. And it's a benefit, or for us, obviously, you know, because we, we do run ourselves as a kind of a separate entity, a small a small distillery. But we do have that, that lifeline. So to say, you know, that to help us out, we have a problem. You know, hey, we don't have analysis for this kind of stuff. And can we send it to your lab? And can you run it for us and, and they'll say, Yeah, absolutely, we can do that. You know, or, hey, I have trouble getting this kind of grain or this kind of wood. You know, Can Can somebody find it or and, you know, and the good the guys will help you out. So which is which is a great, great thing to have. It so I think you 31:00 You kind of sparked an idea in my head too, because one thing that I think the bourbon community really thought of for the longest time is like, Oh, well, Smith home and like all it is is just sourcing from Buffalo Trace. And it's not that at all. You just said like, Oh, we gave them the mash bill so they can start contract basically contract distilling for us at the time. So kind of talk about really is, is that still part of the current operation? Are they still distilling for you? Or is everything shifted back over to your place? We do, we do a combination of a couple of things. So we do use a 31:36 Nashville that is made for us. And actually, it's not it's not one two or a week, right. 31:44 Come on, you guys. You guys know that. We were a little bit we wouldn't be prodding for information. We're a little tight lipped about some of our recipes sometimes. No, it's all good. So it is a what we do is we actually have them 32:00 Do the fermentation for us do a primary distillation for us and we'll get the high wines here. And then we'll finish up the distillation on a lot of our bourbon products. So distillation, aging processing bottling but we also I mean we have full mash and cook capabilities here. So we'll do you know, just yesterday we were using a local bloody butcher corn, 32:25 you know, local rye and doing stuff on our our pilot still or our 500 gallon experimental still. So we have full capabilities here. We do a combination of both 32:39 is everything Ah, they're in Virginia or some aged in Frankfort. Okay, we have all this stuff that we're putting out has been aged in our facilities. 32:50 And so I mean, it's a I think there was it had to been a few years ago now there had been there have been some pretty high h2 releases that had come there limited edition sort of stuff that came 33:00 From the distillery I think like, in the rounds like 14 or 17 years old and stuff like that, was that still your all's product as well or kind of kind of get a little bit? Well, sometimes sometimes we'll go out there and depends on the product. Most of the really old stuff has been aging in our, in our, our sellers for quite some time or our warehouses for quite some time. Sometimes we'll find, I'll call them unique barrels that we use for certain products, and we'll bring them in an agent and blend them we're big on on blending a lot of product here. So we like a little small batch. And sometimes when we do Abraham's, we'll do some, we'll find some very neat stuff that doesn't work. But the majority of them have been almost primarily 100%. aged and produced here. Great. I mean, I'm already learning something right? Because like I said, from from a real whiskey geek background, most people kind of assume that oh, you know, part of the 34:00 Right portfolio, it's some of the stuff that's just could be the Buffalo Trace, basically mash bill coming in. But no, it's good to understand that there is there is this unique factor that is driving into it. And we had kind of touched about, you know, talked a little about the operation kind of talk about more along the lines of the size of what you're all able to do there on your own. And maybe even with combination of what's happening inside of Frankfort with in regards of how many barrels you filling per day, and so on and so forth. 34:33 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. So how do you find the best stories and the best flavors? Well, rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rack houses box shipped out every two months to 39 states across the US and rack houses April box. They're featuring a distillery that mixes Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish 35:00 Know how rack house whiskey club is shipping out to whiskies from two bar spirits located near downtown Seattle, including their straight bourbon, go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some for yourself, use code pursuit for $25 off your first box 35:20 how many barrels you filling per day and so on and so forth? Well, and that's, that's unfortunately one of the few things that the they they asked me not to speak about too much. Okay. Production or production size, but I will say what we do in a day is or even a year is what some of our sister distilleries can do in a day. Right? You know, we, we were find ourselves very, very efficient, you know, are still able to distill it almost 10 barrels an hour on our 2000 gallon pot still. So we're moving pretty quick on that. But 36:00 We can we can barrel really quickly, you know, we can we can empty a cistern tank in a matter of you know, two to three hours. So we feel we're up there and in terms of all of our infrastructure is made for a large large distillery. But in terms of our production, we're what we would consider a micro distillery were very small. No promise no more, no more poking and prodding. 36:24 You talked about sastra helping you all get distribution in the States. How many states are you currently available in? Well, currently, we're I think we're around 40 states. 36:34 And we have distributed in the past to the UK, we do send some products to Japan as well. So it's I mean, we're out and about most of what we concentrate on though is of course, Virginia, the East Coast. Kentucky is a big market for us. Indiana is also a good market for us. So I mean, it's kind of if you think if you look at the map and you look at the you know, kind of the south or southeast states and 37:00 Mid Central States, it's really where we focus. But we do. I mean, of course, we have distribution in California, and we have some in Oregon and things like that. But for the most part, it's, it's mostly in the east. So I kind of want to like shift a little bit and kind of talk about back to kind of like the distillation really like the flavor profile that you all are really trying to dial in on, you know, most people. I think Ryan brought it up at the very beginning. You know, Kentucky's very proud, very, very proud of their bourbon. Absolutely. And they should. And so kind of talk about really, what is is I mean, is there a an overall flavor profile difference that is, you know, coming from you all because, you know, there's, there's, we always try to talk about limestone, filtered water. It's so great here in Kentucky, but most people if you listen to the show enough, we're like, okay, it's reverse osmosis everywhere. We can kind of sit there and like put a checkbox like that's really nothing important nowadays. So kind of talk about a different kind of flavor aspect that really, you're trying to get 38:00 With inside of your your bourbon versus what you can get off the shelf of any other Joe Schmo Kentucky bourbon out there. Well what we look for is we look for a lot of like baked apple and cherry notes in the distillate are easterly kind of produces that that kind of note. So we and we want that to be emphasized in the raw spirit. The white dog coming off is still 38:22 and we want it really clean. We want that nice corn, you know, we want that sweet corn a little bit of a hint of that rye coming through. But we don't want it to be spicy, we want it to be really super smooth. And then when we aged out, of course for the Bowman brothers, I want a little more of the spirits come through a little less of the barrel. So a little bit of the vanilla, a little bit of the kind of the, the oak tannins to come through with the emphasis on on the fruitiness and then we would go the like, say the john J. Because it's the single barrel we wanted to we want the barrel to stand out a little bit more. So we want a little more of that coconut and 39:00 Heavy Carnival notes we want you know that really toasty Oh, and then in the background, we want that nice smooth, you know, kind of baked Apple note. 39:12 I think I sound like a john j person because you said you said coconut he said like oh, like that's oh man you just pulled on my heartstrings right there whereas I like the fruity and softer notes though and you know people ask me which one is the best and I say well I you know I don't decide between the two and then we kind of do one in the middle which is you know, our our port finish so if you like a little bit sweeter notes we got a little bit more open to that one in terms of it gets kind of a 39:43 basically we're doing a finish on on port barrels, Ruby port barrels that we import from Portugal and we also use Virginia port barrels. And then we agent we finish it in a solera process. So we always blend all the barrels together at the end. French oak American oak 40:00 And it's all in one big huge oak tank at the end that we bought a lot of to get that kind of extra character. It gets some really nice fruit notes and some really nice oak notes. So kind of a combination of the two. So if I'm taking my notes correctly, we got we got a Smith Bowman we got john J. Bowman, we've got the port finish. Is there any other products that that I'm not that we haven't talked about yet? Yeah. So so we have we have as far as our Bourbons. We have our Bowman brothers bourbon, which is a small batch bourbon, we have the Isaac Bowman, which is a port finish. We have our john j, which is a single barrel. And then we have our Abraham, which is our experiments. So those can vary in Nashville or finish or anything like that. Then we of course do rum, gin, and vodka, and you have to do a cream record, of course a bourbon bourbon caramel Perea Hmm. Now, do those have the Bowman named to him as well with the gin and the vodkas? Yeah, the gin is actually called sunset Hey, 41:00 So it's named after our original farm. And the vodka is called Deep run, which is the name of the lake, which is right in front of the distillery. And George Bowman is our rum. And it's a Caribbean rum. And then Mary Hite who is the matriarch of the Bowman family. That's our that's our bourbon caramel cream. You didn't pull Harlan Wheatley and name it. Brian Pruitt. We I don't have that kind of pull, I guess. You know, I don't think they would look at it and they'd probably pronounce it wrong or they go I don't I don't want that stuff. 41:35 You're just humble. 41:37 I try to be that we have we have a you know, we really appreciate that people enjoy our brands and and we hope that they enjoy what we're putting out that's I mean, that's the whole goal is that I go in day in and day out and but you know, I I put my passion into what I'm doing and and i hope they enjoy it. So I want to talk about Kenny omega man. I want to talk about Jim 42:00 For a second just cuz a budget gym gym pursuit just because we've been going to a couple distilleries and they happen to be producing gin that day and so kind of you know putting in their different blends and their own botanical botanicals in it and stuff so talk about your gin and what kind of makes it unique and what do you like about it? Well we in and I kind of I didn't even mention the fact that we actually have five gyms out there right now so we do a lot of gyms Yeah, we didn't curious now. Yeah, we have our Sunset Hills which is kind of a call it a straight London dry style fairly, fairly simple in flavor profile, only about four different botanicals. But then we we actually do a line called the Tinker men's line 42:46 on the Tinker band, I guess. And we're tinkering with different styles, different display methods. We have a citrus Supreme, we have a spice which we're doing more of the brown spice characters and we have a balanced was called brighten 43:00 And then we actually made with local rye. 43:04 You know, we just not more than a half an hour from the distillery we did 100% rye base, rye gin. We called it rye expectations, we used rise of botanical too. So, you know, we we like to use that and you know, that's one of the ways when, when we we don't have we have some extra time on the still, it's really fun to get in there and you know, you can unlike bourbon where it takes you 710 1215 years to really see your product, turn around and and come up with a recipe and the next day and taste it you're like oh, yeah, okay, that was fun. So how do you incorporate these botanicals? Do you like throw them in like a tea bag and throw them in there? Or like how to how to or do you just throw them straight in there? How do you extract these different flavors? It kind of depends on the recipe, but we'll do a lot of times we'll do kind of the maturation in the pot. So we'll throw all the botanicals in the pot, but certain botanicals like for example if we're putting elderflower in there or you know 44:00 You know, some of the more floral aspects that we put into, into some of our gins, we'll actually put it in a gin basket, which is actually in the scheme, the vapor line of our still, and so it's vapor extracted. So we'll put certain things in like vanilla bean, or elderflower, or things like that, you know that we don't want to just sit there and boil and cook them. We want just the really nice top notes to come out. And so, and depending on the on the method we'll use, we'll use you know, sometimes a combination of the two. And we can even sometimes do extractions and then distill it. So it's just kind of depends on the gin. Could you do that with bourbon or whiskey and any type like, I guess not well 51% corn and then say you want to get certain fruity flavors or certain vanilla mandolins could you technically extract them from? 44:54 Well, technically, yes. Whether or not it could be legally called whiskey is a different different 45:00 story but 45:02 yeah, you could probably do that. I wouldn't put it past that. Maybe something like that has happened. So there's the prett 45:10 that's the Brit product. Then he's then he's fighting a battle with the TTB of like, what do we even classify this thing? Yes, everything gets killed then now becomes a DSS. Mm hmm. All right off the Jin tan. Let's say you got any more Jin Jin things going on? I just find it interesting because like you said, you can just go there and get the flavors right then and there versus having to wait. So I was always curious about it. Got it. You gotta have your vitamin D and vitamin t in the summer. So that's 45:36 exactly. So, uh, you know, one thing that we kind of talked about at the very top of the show, you know, Ryan said that, you know, the products that he tried were all single barrels. So kind of talk a little bit about the single barrel program that you do have there. You know, I've, I've made been made aware of it. At some point. We probably need to do our own single barrel there, too. And we'll get invited. Yeah, well, if we get invited, let's come out there. We'll we'll choose. Well, and we have we we 46:00 We kind of for a while because the john j is really what we do is single barrels and it's and it's a it's a well aged product. 46:08 It's anywhere from nine to 14 years typically is what will age that product in a single barrel. What we like to do there is you know, I've anything that really kind of goes out in our normal production runs, I want a specific flavor profile, I want that like I mentioned earlier, you know, that vanilla coconut and, and the high toasty notes. But sometimes you get some barrels that are really, really good. But don't meet the flavor profile of what you would expect on the shelf. So if you were to buy a j&j today, and then a couple weeks later go out and buy another one, and they didn't taste the same or similar. You might be a little bit upset and you may have loved it before and you didn't love the next one. So what we do is, you know, barrels that are slightly different barrels that maybe have a little more spice or maybe a little more fruit 47:00 Or maybe a little more vanilla. They're wonderful in their own right. We put those into, into a lot of our private URL selections is when we do those. So that's why, you know, some people have specific tastes that they're looking for, they're looking for more of an earthy, spicy, some have more of a, you know, like I said, a sweeter profile. And those are the ones that we we've done in the past and we've we've been pretty, pretty tight on barrels just because of the mean, just purely on the amount of we I don't think any of us expected the growth of single barrel Bourbons to take off like it has. And so we've been playing catch up, but hopefully we'll we'll have more and more of those barrels available in the future but there's there has been some absolutely spectacular ones that have come out recently. You know, some ones that you know, I put in my I call my spice rack, you know, if I if I have something that is really amazing doesn't fit the profile, john Jay, but maybe potentially, you know, 48:00 If I can use it for blending, like I mentioned blending into a neighbor Abraham down the road, you know, hey, I need a little more spice or I need a little more fruit and then I'll take these out of the spice rack. And occasionally they just sit up in the spice rack and I can't find a home for them. I'll let people taste them and if they like them they can take them home. See there's the sticker idea for the Bowman take despise Dr. Spice, right. So are you familiar with single barrel stickers out people are putting these gaudy you know, stickers on the back? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We do those for people. Absolutely. Well, what would you do for single barrel pick it up your choice? Oh, well, I have a couple of barrels up there that are really amazing. been sitting for a while. And 48:47 yeah, they're getting up there and proof I should probably pull them pretty soon. But you know, that kind of depends on the day, some days I like a little more, a little more spice in my my bourbon and other times. I like a really soft, open 49:00 Almost a weeded profile, so it just kind of depends on the day. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and put in a request now. Because if you go through and you find one that is like super coconut, it tastes like an Almond Joy. Just go ahead and earmark that one and be like, hold on, let me mark this down right now. Yes. As you're going through your sampling, yeah, sampling, put it on a post it note and be like, Alright, this is for the bourbon pursuit, guys. We'll send you some stickers you can throw on there. Absolutely. 49:28 Sure, they're really big and round and cover the whole back. What jerk edge cover we have. We'll do it. That sounds great. Well, we'll even we'll send you our handwriting too. So you can just like trace it on the on the barrelhead. So we just claim it. So the, you know, one of the things that we always like to kind of talk about is you know, you kind of talked about extra still time and kind of like what can we do create some experimentations do some crazy gins and stuff like that but we look at really what's happening into the the bourbon market and the bourbon world and one thing that you as a master distiller have to do get to 50:00 kind of look at the spreadsheet and start calculating like, what is what is this bourbon market? What is this boom going to look like in the next few years? What's is there going to be a bust? What's it going to look like? Where do you kind of see the market trending here? In the next three years, five years, decade, decade, two years, five years, I think it's gonna start slowing down a little bit. You know, it's just been growing. It's such fast pace. I think it will slow down just a little bit. But by that, I mean, instead of double digit growth, we're gonna have high single digit growth and type things and, and I don't see it stopping. You know, I don't I don't see a fall of whiskey and bourbon in particular, in the near future. I think it'll just kind of flatten out for a while, you know, it's we've had this huge spike. I think you're going to see you know, people, you know, ride for a long time. No one wanted to drink a rye and now all of a sudden rise popular again. So I think I'll see we'll see a little bit of that come up. I think 51:00 Gonna be healthy for the next few years? And probably the next 510 years, I think it'll be pretty healthy. At least we're counting on it. We're putting down the stock for that. So I hope I hope it continues that way. And I hope I'm right. So otherwise, you got a lot of stock. I'm gonna have to figure out what? 51:17 Well, we're in the market. Yeah. Well, as we'd like to drink whiskey, too, we'll be more than happy to help you just, you know, go through and sample every barrel that's out there. Yeah, talk about a Virginia and how they've kind of embraced you guys, you know, and hung their hat on you as like this is our distillery to kind of have that with the state or? Well, we do there's, you know, it's interesting in the last, you know, up until the 50s, were they really the only distillery in Virginia. And now, you know, over the past five years, just the distilling industry in Virginia has really taken off. We've gone from, you know, being 20 small distilleries in the state. Now, I think there's 70 in the state 52:00 But I think a lot of people still embrace the fact that you know, bourbon is one of the products and whiskey is one of the products that is made and has been made in Virginia for a long time. And there's a lot of people that really, really are putting out some great products and you know, and I think it's it's great that a lot of people look to a Smith Bowman and they go oh, yeah, okay, that's, you know, that's that's the model that we should follow for making a great bourbon or great whiskey in the state of Virginia. And I think a lot of people you know, a lot of people who have lived in this area for a long time they know us, and they know our products and you know of course they go to their football games and they they have their bottle a Smith Bowman and and you know that's that's our tradition. You know, we have guys a little semi, you know, I am 80 something years old and I've been drinking a Smith Bowman bourbon since you know, I was 20. So which is great to hear, you know, that 53:00 It's one of those legacy products that, 53:03 you know, you just don't find the history and a lot of the smaller distilleries, and I think that's a wonderful thing to be a part of that history. Absolutely. And I think, you know, you kind of you kind of struck something in my head when you started talking about olders. It went from, you know, 20 now to 70. Do you see a lot of like competition coming through your doors and saying, oh, let's go see what let's go see what Brian's up to over here. Let's see if we can take down a few few notes in our, in our Yeah, absolutely. I we had a lot of people that do that will have, you know, the local distiller will say, Hey, can I come up and walk through the distillery and spend some time with you? And I say, absolutely. Come walk through the distillery. We do tours every hour on the hour. 53:46 And we don't hide anything. And you can you can see exactly what we're doing. Now. We may not tell you exactly what we're doing. We may not tell you, you know, hey, this is the mash bill. This is that we're doing this. You can see what we're doing. And, you know, we're we're very 54:00 You know, we're supportive, we want to we really think that the industry has room to grow, and we want to support them. But we also, you know, I don't want the industry to go in such a way that people look out and they see the smaller distillers and go, Oh, they don't make anything good. You know, so that's why we really want to support and say, yeah, you know, you got to put out a good product. And if you can see, you want to come in and see how we're doing things. That's fine. I may not tell you a whole lot, but you're welcome to come in and walk around. So how's a bourbon tourism been in Virginia? Because like here, it's exploded. Have you guys seen that as well in Virginia? Well, for us, tourism is a little bit harder than it is, you know, a lot of people go to Kentucky and they go to Kentucky to go visit distilleries. For us. It's a little bit different. And we have you know, we're right in the middle of I'll call it historic, you know, where people are coming to see you know, civil war you know, we're the distillery site is actually is a site of a civil war about 55:00 battle. You know, there's a lot of historic sites as far as the Civil War love Revolutionary War. You know, George Washington was actually lived, you know, his boyhood home is literally across the river from the distillery. So a lot of people come for the history. And it's our our challenge is to get them to come in and visit the distillery. Now, I think the Virginia wine industry has done a great job of getting people to realize that there's wine in the state. And then of course, breweries have been doing pretty well as well. 55:32 So it's been a struggle for us as far as getting the visitors here. But we still you know, this last year was almost 30,000 people come through the distillery you know, obviously not hundreds of thousands of people that people will go to larger distilleries, but we're hoping that we can grow that and let people know that Yeah, we're a distillery that's been here for a long time. And we plan to be here for another 8590 years at least. So you got to figure out a way to get yourself on the hip. 56:00 trail over there. Yeah. Taking a break from the capitals and all the Yeah, Norton come down and yeah you go to the Capitol you go across the river you go see George Washington's house he grew up in then oh, there's this old distiller over here. Oh, and we get to drink. Absolutely and count me. Absolutely, absolutely that's that's our whole goal is how to get them getting you know, you're like, hey, yeah, that's that's a really nice monument there but come see a distillery Have a drink. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's an easy sell point for me to come in. Just say yeah, let's let's go, let's go do that. You can you can go see a mime and every single day if you wanted to, but so I guess, you know, we're coming to come down here to the end of this and I kind of want to get a little bit more information about really, where do you kind of see is is there expansion? is there is there ideas of like how, how much more bigger can is going to get in regards of like what you all are trying to do in regards to growth or anything like that? Yeah, well, right now we're actually in the in the midst of an expansion. You know, we're 57:00 We're adding tanks. We've added just in the past probably going to say about a month, we've added about 11 tanks to our production. We're hoping to add to our bottling line here pretty soon to be able to pick up production. Because we really want to you know, we're we're coming up some of the moves that we made a couple of years ago when I came in five, six years ago was to increase some of our small batch production and increase some of our j&j and things like that. And those those are kind of coming into fruition now and we're hoping to expand and make more that bourbon available. And but I don't think we ever really have any ideas. We don't want to become this huge, multi million case distillery. We want to be focused on making the absolute best products that we can you know, the best bourbon that we can find our best bourbon that we can produce. And, you know, the best, the best Jan's best vodkas, best rums, we want to absolutely make great products. And if we grow to be, you know, a large 58:00 Larger regional size. Great. But that's not really our focus. Our focus is to make a great product. And Sazerac supports that vision. They're not like, they're not like, yeah, that sounds great. We want to crank out as much juice as possible, I'm sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. They absolutely under present sport, making the best product that we can make. Very cool. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and shout out to Matthew, who is here on the chat. He just said thanks for joining in Brian. It was so so great to actually learn about a brand that's flying under the radar for a lot of the bourbon geeks out there because like I said, For myself, you know, learning more about the mash bill and really how the operation kind of functions and you know, knowing that you're single girls are nine to 14 years old, like that's, that's got some age on it for evil. I mean, for even most of the NASDAQ portfolio when you're looking at the the Weller antiques, you're looking at six years old, maybe seven, something like that. So seeing of of what's coming out. 59:00 Virginia I can't wait to get my hands on some more of those bottles that's for sure. Yeah, yeah we'll be sending them your way 59:08 you got it you're marking those barrels yeah go your mouth go your mark that barrel I got my credit card we're ready to start swiping. Okay. But Brian thank you again for coming on the show today you know giving us some more information about a Smith Bowman the history sort of your history and how you kind of cut your teeth in the industry and kind of your family life to think it'd be fun to get your get your whole family on here one day and kind of see you all kind of like go back and forth if there's any of that 59:35 would definitely be interesting. 59:39 So, last way to kind of give a shout out so if people want to know more about you or they want to visit the distillery, where do they go and do that 59:48 know more about us or visit the distillery go ahead and go to a Smith Bowman calm that's the best way to find us and any information about us. We're on Twitter and Instagram as well but you can get all that from the 1:00:00 From the website there you go and ride the coattails on their Virginia history trail and stop over there and yeah and then go and get yourself a nice bottle of basement Bowman to take over john j Bowman i think i think the john Jay Lee's fit my flavor profile Absolutely. You never know you can come in and try them all next time you're in the area. Okay, so so yeah 1:00:24 so make sure everybody that you are you know you check out their website make sure you go to bourbon pursuit calm. We've got links on there for all the episodes that we've had. If you want to know more about any of the the the sass rack portfolio, you can kind of check out some of our past episodes we've done there too. If you want to follow us, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, we're all over the place there. 1:00:45 Yeah, and then also thank you to everybody that is a Patreon supporter that was joining us watching this show live as it happened on YouTube. Just again, one of those Perks of Being able to watch this live before it actually goes out on air. So frankly, close it out. Yep. 1:01:00 Sure, Brian, thanks, man, that was a very interesting, great, you know, like you said the bourbon has been crazy growth. And we're kind of have blinders on, you know, we have these Kentucky brands, you know, things that we're used to and like, we focus on those, but then you forget that there's these guys like you all doing such great things. And like it's flying under the radar and 1:01:22 with the flavors you were talking about, like, I think, Kenny and I might run out and go get some bottles after this. I just want to find some more coconut. Yeah, the coconut and oak and all that. Yeah, but uh, no. Appreciate your time, man is a cool story. And I want to come to your holiday party. 1:01:37 booze wars. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'll put the invitation out next time. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So yeah, if anyone has any show suggestions, comments, feedback, let us know. We're always here to serve you guys. You know, bring the audio to you. So we'll see y'all next time. Cheers. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Do you find yourself talking to the same people about bourbon every day and realize you talk to them more than your best friends? In fact, maybe they are your new best friends. We're all in that situation now and that's what today's episode is all about. Bourbon has a magical element that seems to bring people together across every demographic to share a common bond. Perhaps you're getting started and want to figure out, how do you find your bourbon people? We sit down with Jeremy Mandel, he's an admin and founder of a few online communities and one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done online with people around the world or perhaps in your own backyard with meet-up groups, bourbon societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you probably followed some of these same steps without realizing it. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. Joe and Tripp meticulously sample every barrel to make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about money. How did you get into bourbon? What was your introduction to the online bourbon communities? Do you ever have events with your bourbon friends? Do certain groups create more bonds than others? What about your local society? Do you think raffle groups encourage camaraderie? What did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? Would you rather go to someone's house to drink bourbon or a bar? Can these bourbon networks get bigger? How can people find a bourbon community? What relationships have gotten you a really good bottle of bourbon?   0:00 Are you interested in pairing your expertise on the distilling process with key business knowledge such as finance, marketing and operations, then you need to check out the distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville. It's an online program that can be completed in as little as six courses. The program is taught by both UVL business faculty and corporate fellows. So you are getting real experience from experts at the most renowned distilleries, companies and startups in the distilling industry. We're talking leaders from Brown Forman beam Suntory, jack daniels and more. get enrolled to this online program at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:39 My dad's famous line is nothing I said is on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon, you are the party 1:01 This is Episode 243 of bourbon pursuit. I'm Kenny, one of your hosts. And how about some pursuit series news. Now, we don't want to use this as a self serving platform. But lots of people want updates on what's happening. So here's the latest. Last week, Ryan and I visit our barrel broker where we get to do what's sort of unusual in the bulk source market, where we get to actually hand select every barrel. Now, we've talked about this before, and you're going to hear about it more, but this time we tasted through 22 barrels and wound up choosing three barrels of 10 year Tennessee bourbon, and then we also selected two barrels of a special ride. We've got a few months until the Ryobi bottled, but this stuff blew our minds at only four years old, because it had such fruity and bubblegum flavors that I think it's gonna take everybody by surprise. We've also purchased four more barrels from Finger Lakes distilling, and we'll be releasing more of those relatively soon. We've got other things in the works as well. And you can get all those updates for upcoming barrels in our Patreon community. 2:00 Lastly, we have finally touched down in Georgia and more specifically in Atlanta, where there are select retailers with limited amounts of Episode 21 and it tastes just like candied pecans. Next week we have two more barrels going up for sale to our Patreon community first before they are released to the general public. And one of these barrels is our first ever 15 year old bourbon release. It might just be one of my favorites because you know, I love that oak. Alright, let's get on with the industry news. Right now Corona virus is on everyone's radar and we all know the travel industry is hurting because events held worldwide are being canceled. But what does that mean for the spirits industry? Chinese consumers are really tailored more to scotch and cognac and buys you where it's going to be hit hardest. biagio has already cut its full year 2020 profit forecast by up to 260 million as bars and restaurants and Greater China remain empty. beams and Tory said that the coronavirus situation is 3:00 Creating challenges in key Asian markets and its 2019 full year results. For no record anticipates the outbreak will have a severe impact on its China and travel retail business and cut its guidance for organic growth in profit from reoccurring operations for fiscal 2022, two to 4% from its previous expectations of five to 7%. In response to the industry demand for greater clarity during global threats, I Ws our drinks market analysis, which is the leading authority on data and intelligence on the global beverage alcohol market has revealed plans to launch the AWS our Corona virus risk assessment model, also known as cram. The tool will quantify and forecast the impact of key global events, giving industry leaders data driven insights and situational forecasts to navigate the situation and manage risks. To commemorate the celebration of its hundred and 50th anniversary pulled forcers opening the first ever whiskey row retreat. It's going to be a huge 4:00 immersive bourbon apartment experience. one lucky winner and a guests will be invited to stay at whiskey row retreat during National bourbon day on June 14, and the entire guest experience at the whiskey row retreat will center around unprecedented access to the production of the bourbon, the brand and the people behind old forester. The contest winner and a guest will be invited to partake in special activities at the old forcer distilling company, including experiencing the process of creating a barrel. Joining Jackie's I can in a single barrel selection and custom cocktail classes, such as learning how to make the brain signature perfect old fashioned to enter the whiskey row retreat contest fans 21 and older can enter by sharing an essay on why they think they should be chosen to win and stay at the whiskey row retreat. And you can do this by visiting old forester.com slash whiskey row retreat. The entry for deadline is April 20 of 2024 roses small batch select is expanding beyond 5:00 2019 initial launch of only being in five states. new markets were small batch select will be available in the coming months include Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Washington and Wisconsin. 5:18 independent state company and the Boswell family who you might remember Brad Boswell the CEO back on episode 185 are giving $1 million to the university Kentucky to further spirits research at the James been Institute for Kentucky spirits. The gift will fund a new maturation facility that will allow the dean Institute to experiment with barrel aging spirits produced in its research distillery, the only one of its kind in the United States. This new warehouse will have a 600 barrel capacity and become an interactive classroom and laboratory where students and scientists can tackle real life industry issues. Do you find yourself talking to the same people every day about bourbon and real life? 6:00 You talked to them more than maybe some of your best friends from school. think we're all in that same situation now. And that's what today's episode is all about. bourbon has a magical element to it that seems to bring people together across every demographic and share a common bond. But perhaps you're getting started and you want to figure out how do you find your bourbon people. We sit down with Jeremy Mendell, he's an admin and founder of a few Facebook communities. And he's also one of our Patreon supporters. We go through what it takes to find connections with other like minded individuals that can be done either online with people around the world, or perhaps it's in your own backyard with meetup groups, urban societies, and much more. You'll come away at the end of this realizing you've probably followed some of these same steps already without even realizing it. And hey, if you want to be a part of another community, join us on Patreon where you're 700 plus members strong and growing every single week. As a final reminder, we are doing our 2020 bourbon pursuit audience survey and we want to know more 7:00 More about you, our listeners. So if you've got 30 seconds to spare and I promise it's only 30 seconds, please visit bourbon pursuit calm slash 2020 survey. Alright, it's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 7:18 It's Joe from barrel bourbon, myself and our master distiller a triple stimpson spend weeks choosing barrels to create a new batch. We meticulously sample every barrel and make sure the blend is absolutely perfect. Next time ask your bartender for barrel bourbon. 7:33 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char money. Oh, we talked about it. It's the root of all evil. And we wish we had more of it and people tell themselves that money can't buy you happiness. Well, you know, money is very, very, very important. And right now you have distillers from Washington to Florida and from Texas to South Dakota. 8:00 All scrambling going to banks, venture capitalists, private investors, Angel share people, friends, family. Hell, you might even just randomly run into someone on the airport, you're hitting them up for money. There are so many people looking for money in this space. And people just don't understand whiskey. I sometimes wonder what the world would look like in the distilling business. If mainstream businesses understood what this world encompassed, that in fact that bourbon is its own audience. bourbon is as big as a sports team or NFL franchise or even a sports league. It's bigger than a lot of TV shows. And if people would actually just kind of wake up and look past the alcohol aspect. We may be hearing about brands that you never even knew about, but because somebody can't get the money 9:00 That they need to start the distillery of their dreams. We're not going to hear about them. 9:06 And there are people like Cedar Ridge and Iowa where the farmer, the winemaker, he leverages his house, everything that he owns his land. I mean, I think he might even leveraged a kid near to just to start the brand Cedar Ridge. He kept believing in it, he kept believing in it, and he kept believing it and then finally he got a big big break. And that is just it. Everybody needs a break in this business. But it all starts with the money. And I'll be damned if there's just not enough of it to go around. 9:43 And that's this week's above the char. Hey, did you know that I have got a new podcast. It's in the music interview section. So help me become the number one music interview podcast on Apple. Go over there and search for my name the Fred MiniK show. 10:00 Then we'll have the number one bourbon podcast and the number one music interview podcast. Go check it out. Until next week, cheers. 10:11 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit, the official podcast of bourbon. Kinney, Ryan and Fred here talking about a fun cultural topic. You know, this is, this is something that even this podcast wouldn't have started if it wasn't for the type of pot or the topic that we are actually talking about tonight. And it's kind of really, I guess, you could say it's a way that you you branch out a little bit you end up growing, we've all had friends that we get through school and college or work or anything like that, and then you end up finding Oh, I can find brend friends and other things such as hobbies, and, and really, bourbon is one of those things that we talked about all the time. It's what brings people together. And that's kind of what brought this podcast together. I mean, Ryan was 11:00 Really on the idea of Hey, let's start a bourbon podcasts. And I think I know this guy named Kenny. Yeah, we weren't really friends. And so we were we were we were acquaintances at that point Really? Well, we, ironically enough, we both liked etn. Before, before bourbon, so that was the introduction. And then the bourbon kind of brought us together. But yes, bourbon has definitely like, I'm amazed at how many people and how vast my network has become just because of bourbon. And like, it's crazy. Like, it's just nuts. It's it's a cool, very cool thing, and very humbling thing. So yeah, I'm excited to talk about it. Because it's, I've been so blessed to meet so many fortunate people, Fred included. 11:42 Not just doing your yard. We're now friends. 11:46 I feel we were actually friends before that, too. Yep, exactly. So yeah. I feel good because we're rep Fred and I were you know, we're Facebook official friends. So I feel like I made it. Yeah. Good. Good to see everything that's happened in our person. 12:00 So wives and kind of grown since they're now and now we're going to the point where I think is there a day that goes by we all don't text each other. 12:09 I don't think there is actually. Yeah, so it's like it's like texts like part of our dinner as long frightened as text chain started like 6am Kenny challenges in about 10am 12:22 Yeah, you already get started way too early. I don't know how you do it. It's not my choice. Yeah, I got a five year old elbowing me in the back. Daddy Get up, gotta get out. 12:32 So our guests just chimed in there. So let's go ahead and introduce them and kind of really start talking about the meat of this subject. So tonight we're joined by Jeremy Mendell, Jeremy is a member of our Patreon community and came to us with this topic. So Jeremy, welcome to the show. Thank you guys. been listening to you forever. Really happy to be here. Hopefully we're making a dream come true. Tonight. We're on bourbon pursuit. Thanks for putting up with us all these years. For I can't even tell you how long 12:59 Yeah, 13:00 dum dum meet your idols 13:02 Yeah, it's terrible and you were laying 13:05 So Jeremy let's hear your kind of coming to age tale of bourbon. How did how did you really get into it was their first sipar some sort of introduction rolling up 13:17 I had a you know like I would imagine a lot of people do just in high school. I guess I shouldn't say that but I'm pretty sure it's common we've amassed even master distillers say they started yet but we had a little poker room with some friends and there was we would always try and get a bottle of something for our games and 13:38 we found because then it truly was finding we were fine. We found a bottle with a nice little horse on the top and it was around little ball and 13:48 my goodness it was delicious. 13:51 So that was back when you let go into a store and buy some blends. 13:56 But that kind of kicked it off went through college. 14:00 Then, 14:01 probably two, three years after graduating college and went to the University of Arizona 14:08 was talking to a buddy of mine, Tori Levy, who was in my fantasy football league. He beat beat all of us. And when I sent him the money, he sent me a picture of him cracking a Pappy 15 and I had read about that, but I'd never had it or even knew anyone that could get it. So I said, How the heck did you get that thing? 14:33 And then he showed me oh my goodness, there is bourbon on the internet. 14:39 So it was just kind of a spiral from there. 14:43 But you know, from there, you meet a whole bunch of people, which I'm sure we're going to talk about, kind of create a little bourbon community and that's kind of how this whole series of cardboard boxes behind me came to be. Yeah, we're about to say that that kind of justifies your your level of music 15:00 But to this I think I think all of us have a room in the house or a closet of something that just has boxes of herbaceous ages cardboard boxes stacked with inside each other commitment so much as it's a level of cheapness. 15:17 I certainly don't want to pay $4 for a box. So my goodness. Yeah, yeah. Every time I get an Amazon package, I'm like, is this gonna be good for future use to ship something? Well, it gets it gets the point now where you can train your significant other when they understand what the right size boxes and they'll be like, honey, I save this for you. Yeah, my wife said, you know, this is the perfect box to get some of those little stupid bottles that you do with the stupid bottles. The two ounce the two ounce stamp. Gotcha. Yeah, little bit. It's perfect for your little stupid bottles. 15:54 She's supportive of the hobby. That's great. I'm supportive in that this is existing, but she 16:00 Certainly gives me crap all the time. Oh, yeah. Well, is it isn't that her job though? To give you a little shit? I think so. Yeah. Just join the club at that point. So you're fine. 16:11 So I guess let's go ahead and kind of talk about, you know, we can each share some of these stories of how we got introduced to it. And Fred, I don't know if we've ever heard your story, like kind of how were, you know, did did somebody introduce you to bourbon and sort of how did that that process? Yeah, I've man I was drinking bourbon. And 16:36 you know, I didn't actually drink in high school like that. So I was not, you know, the only times that I had drank in high school definitely was wasn't bourbon. He was smoking when I 16:48 was doing hard drugs. He's doing those Double Dragon drinks. 16:52 So when I went to college, I became a big, you know, beam drinker. And you 17:00 My first legal drink was you know, Jim being white and I remember going into the liquor store at that time and there there was like old Fitzgerald and well I mean think I've all I've thought about this a lot I wish I could travel back in time to Stillwater Oklahoma when I was you know just turning 21 which would have been 2000 and and just like clean those shelves out because they were loaded loaded with stuff that now I would you know, have spent four or 500 to 1200 dollars on so it's 17:34 I definitely was not drinking well, but when I when I was drinking 17:38 bourbon it was always Jim Beam white label if I was like, you know, wanting to you know, live high on the hog and getting Maker's Mark, but, but who's who's the person introduced you like you did? Did you actually just go into the store and say like, I think I feel like drinking or you ever been to a fraternity party? I have. Yeah. So who gave me the bottle 18:00 I don't know. 18:02 You know, I will say probably the moment that I fell in love with it, it was it was probably on a fraternity bus on our way to New Orleans from Baton Rouge. We were there for like some kind of convention. Man, it just it just felt it was very tasty. I love the taste of it. And then I found myself like ordering jack or Jim 18:30 instead of beer, or sometimes both. And you know at that at that young age, and then when I was when I was in Iraq, I you know, we couldn't 18:42 you know, was against the our general orders to, to have, 18:47 you know, to have liquor or have anything, so I would have friends, you know, pour out Listerine bottles and fill it with Jim Beam or jack daniels at the time and 19:00 Those are your stupid bottles. Yeah. 19:03 If you were if you were, if you compare like a traditional bottle of Listerine next to like beam or jack, they had the same color. So the MPs couldn't, couldn't crack it open, you know, because they couldn't, you know, they wouldn't necessarily, you know, think to look at that but so that's how I used to do it. And I actually did have there was a unit 19:27 that would go into like northern Iraq in our bill and they would buy cases of liquor and occasionally like the South African contingent that was there, they would break it out. So like bourbon is, in my adult life. bourbon has always played a role in terms of like, where I really fell in love with it. Be honest with you is with my wife, you know, because she's, she's a big bourbon drinker, like you know, and I started, you know, I was just drinking it was I appreciating it prior to her 20:00 Probably not. But I don't think I appreciated many things until my wife. No. I want to make sure she gets that sound bite. What about you, Ryan? We're I think we talked I think this is actually episode one right episode. One of verbiage suit is where we talked about ours, but let's go ahead and rehash yours. Yeah, so thinking back down memory lane. It was in Bardstown As you may or may not know where I'm from, but no. Yeah, definitely for that, man. That's all I know. You get like bourbon. royalty DNA in your blood. Yes, analog connections. Yes. Throughout. But now the first time it was like at a field party and my buddy, his name's Pikey. I know weird name. But uh, he had Evan Williams and coke. 20:50 And I was like, let me try that it was first time I kind of return I was like, all this tastes like sweet nectar. Like this is this is amazing. And then from there, yeah, just 21:00 drank so much Jim Beam white label in college. Oh my god, I can't even drink it now. Like, I can't even look at it, because it brings back so many bad memories, but good memories, but uh, I didn't really like start getting serious till I don't know, after college. I mean, my dad does a lot of work for the bourbon industry. He's a machinist. So he does tool and our pair and I would deliver parts to him or for him to the different distilleries. And I remember you know, just seeing the bottles they would always give them stuff and then I would take it to 21:35 and so I vividly remember taking like some alijah correct 20 ones and Noah Mills 15th and taking them to college parties and like, totally mixing them with coke or ginger ale and like, just had no clue what you know what I had, and so, yeah, just kind of progressed from there and then like, really start appreciating when I went I went to school at Rutgers and New Jersey. Kind of 22:00 Nobody there really knew it. So I kind of preached the gospel of there and kind of started really diving into it. 22:09 And then I met Kenny and then found out there's this whole world of collecting and trading and flipping and collecting, you know, all this stuff and then so you go down that rabbit hole and then I'm like, why don't we? I can't just like have the hobby I gotta start a business about it. You 22:25 can't just leisurely enjoy bourbon with friends. So like, let's start a podcast but yeah, it's, it's and now you know, I I'm no one's a stranger to me. And so like, I've just reached out to anybody that has the same interested in me. I'm not afraid to talk to them and reach out to them. So 22:45 I've met so many people that enjoy bourbon and it's been like, crazy and it's cool because I'm from there. And when I grew up, no one gave a shit about it. And now everybody gives a shit about it. And you know, just seeing the towel. 23:00 flourish and stuff it's pretty cool. Yeah, absolutely we'll touch more on like meeting new people and stuff with instead of bourbon all kind of recap mine I know I've probably said it before. I have the same sort of coming of age tale is Fred over there. So I joined a fraternity and university Kentucky's campus. And I mean, I remember back it was $10 for a 24 pack of Natty light and being an undergrad. Yeah, you always just get you have 10 bucks you give it to one of the juniors or seniors within the fraternity they'd run out you come back and like that's your that's your that's your drinking for the evening. However, I remember hanging out with some of the older upperclassmen in there, they were all sitting around drinking bourbon and coke and back then, our drink of choice was Kentucky tavern. That was that was our go to. And that was kind of like my first introduction that they were actually known as an attorney was actually known as one of the biggest bourbon drinking fraternities on campus. I don't know if that was a good thing or bad thing at the time. 24:00 Time, but because everybody knows what happens if you get a little too bourbon drunk when you're a little young and stupid, but back then it was, it was a it was a way to kind of get an introduction to it. So of course mixing the bourbon and coke. However, at the time, you know, this was also a time when you're drinking, not to sit there and enjoy your drinking to consume and have a good time. And, you know, all that aside, you don't feel as bloated when you have a few bourbon and cokes after you do try to have like eight to 10 eight to 1012 beers so it actually made you feel a little bit better going throughout the night. And now you're interrupting my dad's famous line is and I think I said this on Episode One is if you're if you're drinking beer, you're watching the party. If you're drinking bourbon You are the party. 24:50 So I've always loved that line. But anyways, so let's go on to the next t shirt. Yeah. 24:56 But yeah, I mean that's that's sort of how it started for me And ever since I did that. 25:00 Like I was always one person that was kind of like preaching like always do bourbon and cokes. During college, it just seemed like the easiest way to do it. And not only that is me and my roommate at the time we became social chairs. Social chair is a nice word to say party planner for back in college in the fraternity days. And so our biggest Actually, this is what I truly miss about college is that your biggest worry is where we're going to party on Thursday and Friday night. And that's that's what you had to set up. And so back then UK was a very dry campus and you couldn't have any alcohol with inside the fraternity houses at all. So our goal was to say how do we have house parties and still serve liquor? And so what we did is we get we got those massive Gatorade jugs that you see on the sidelines of football stadiums, and we filled those and it was one handle a Kentucky Tavern two to two liters of diet coke and so 26:00 Everybody drink bourbon and coke at the parties. And that's how we we continued that to flourish for a while, but after after college then is kind of when the appreciation started. I didn't stop drinking bourbon, it was still bourbon and cokes and that's where the progression starts where you start getting rid of the coke, you start getting rid of the ice and you start learning to drink it neat. Old forester became a staple for me. Every once in a while splurging on small batch. You know, Fred, you talked about going back to the store and, and thinking of all those bottles that you could have had my God even I went to the liquor store and when I was there buying for parties, I would buy, probably, gosh 10 cases of six or 1.75 liters of Kentucky Tavern every single week. I don't think I even looked at any other bottles on the shelves. I always looked at figure out where could I get the cheapest premiere like it's overpriced. 26:57 I mean, that was didn't really know any better at the time. 27:00 And be honest even when I even after college, I didn't really know any better either. I was drinking for as a small batch I didn't know limited limited editions even existed until I was working at a company and I there's a guy that worked there and we talked about bourbon all the time. You know, we we'd sit there and talk about bottles we come together and and he's the one introduced me to limited editions. And this was 2012, late, early 2013 timeframe, something like that. And he's like, Hey, I got a few extra things. I'll just sell them to you at cost because I'm just overflowing and and so he sold me a four roses hundred and 25th anniversary, an old rip squat bottle. 27:42 Jefferson's I think it was 21 maybe it was and they were all at retail at the time. I was just like, Oh gosh, like 27:54 80 bucks a bottle like you sure about this. And, and so that's that's kind of what got me on to that. 28:00 Train. And then of course, as as Jeremy said, you find out about online forums and then the whole world of different things start opening up to you if things that you never even knew existed. Yeah, and that's, I think that's really where the rabbit hole starts for most of us. And I think that's kind of where the conversation keeps going for a lot of us here because the online community is really where a lot of the relationships are built. It's also where a lot of relationships go to die and 28:30 let's be honest, there's a lot of butthurt that happens out there. 28:34 So feelings journals for the bourbon world, what are you talking about? Yeah, right. You mentioned one thing and then all of a sudden you get people either hating on your loving Yes. So Jeremy kind of talk about your introduction into like the the bourbon online communities. So my buddy Tory said, hey, yeah, I got this happy 15 years I finally found a good use for Facebook. So I 29:00 got invited to one of those deals. saw that, you know, my first love bourbon was was Blanton's. And I got on there and within five minutes 29:10 I saw somebody was selling a blends. It was dated in like 1988. And I didn't realize that whiskey existed before I drank it. 29:22 So bought that 1988 Blanton's and still have about a quarter of it. 29:28 And really from there, it's sort of just went into a networking you can almost fall into this accidentally and I'm sure that you all his experiences are very similar. 29:38 But you know, you find some people that you've got good relationships with. And now I'm a part of a few groups that I really proud to be a part of, and it's been really cool. And you know, I've got a network, really across the country coast to coast and actually even out of the country, just from those stupid Facebook groups. Can you enlighten me 30:00 Major towns if you needed to sleep on someone's couch, he would do bourbon. I'm going to Florida for business on Friday and I am crashing in the spare bedroom of a bourbon friend that night. No way. It's awesome. We're going to be drinking. Well, have you met him before in person? Yes, a couple times. Actually, he and I have not picked a barrel together. But we got to take part and what to me is my favorite part about a lot of this stuff is the charity component. 30:30 And there was a guy in Florida who 30:34 had a really terrible cancer diagnosis and young guy about 21 years old 22 maybe. And without getting super deep in the details of it. I went down there last year because we raised him about 17 18,000 bucks. And I went down there to 30:54 to go with him to present the money to him and his family. And that was the first time that I cracked 31:00 His little No I didn't crash his place but we met that time. 31:03 Like here's a here's a check by the way Can I stay in your spare bedroom 31:11 This is actually the first time crashing his house but we have met before but that's that's always a lot of fun and of course you know my wife thinks it's ridiculous but you know we're in this city I gotta go see this guy. 31:25 So, but yeah, you get you get this network and I'm sure you guys are all the same in that regard you got kind of people all over the country that you know from random, you know, this guy helped me find this thing I was looking for. And of course, my my wife would say well, why are you looking for that in the first place? You have 200 something 300 31:47 but this sounds all too familiar. 31:50 Never heard that before, right? Yeah, but But yeah, it's you know, you form these communities. We've we've been able to do a lot of good. 31:59 We've been 32:00 able to do a lot of bad too but but it's a lot of fun and it's this whole kind of separate world that you get to be a part of all around this brown water stuff that we all like to bring 32:13 up good. I was gonna ask you know like you talked about like meeting up like with it with individuals but do you ever like, like throw get togethers where your your buddies that you've met online or whatever you guys go to a house or you go to a bar Do you all have like special events or anything like that? So nothing that's terribly scheduled but 32:36 one of the bourbon groups I'm in is called karma. And we did the first one was, it's kind of always centered around barrel pics. So about a summer of 2017 we all got together did a four roses pick and not Creek pick a couple other things that I'm not remembering right now. But you know, there was a good 3035 of us they got together. Remember, we all 33:00 Went to Haymarket one night and that was a blast. And it's all these people who I recognize from one single picture. 33:08 But it was really cool. So we we've done that a couple of buddies. We Ribeiro, the whole bunch of Nashville number one, I think it was from Buffalo Trace and we threw it up in a barrel at a buddy's farm in Tennessee. And we all got together about two months ago, to see if it sucked. 33:31 And fortunately, it didn't suck. 33:35 So we had a weekend at an Airbnb on a on a river or lake or somebody of water. And it's a it's a great time and so and those people end up becoming some of your best friends. It was really, really bizarre but actually ends up happening that way. Every time I go meet my bourbon or internet friends, my wife's like, what are you doing going to meet your internet friends, you're going to be on dateline one of these times. 34:00 The barrel pick that I went to my wife was convinced I was going to be raped and murdered. She was. 34:07 Yeah. 34:09 Oh, gosh, I think we all get that, that every once in a while I think my wife is getting a little bit more tuned to it. Because of course, you know, through our community through Patreon, we get emails all the time, and we try to make it when we can have people saying, you know, we'd love to just come and meet up for a drink and, and sometimes we can make it happen and, and, and she's always kind of like, Alright, well just make sure you text me at the table in case you need. 34:33 Yeah, I remember one time I was going to meet with Kenny and doubled Patreon guys and I got the Uber and to me, it's like, text me as soon as you get there and like make sure as soon as you leave text me and I'm like, Okay, I'm promise I'm gonna make it home. They're not going to kill me. Or a tag team. We can we can take anybody. Yeah. But back to cut it. Go. Go ahead, Jeremy. I'll see you say you guys looked up so you could take them now. Yeah, Kenny's not. 34:59 Well, 35:01 I haven't worked out in a while you gotta he doesn't wire your wire sorry. Yeah, I am. So let's kind of back to the you know the community aspect of this. You know, you had mentioned karma. I mean, are you are you in in with other groups and stuff like that where you kind of find those ends? And I guess are there are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? 35:29 What do you get if you mix Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish know how that's to bar spirits to our spirits traces its roots to a ranch in rural Texas run by the founder, Nathan Kaiser his family for six generations. Nathan grew up on the ranch was stories of relatives bootlegging moonshine, and after moving into Seattle, he wanted to keep the family tradition alive and he opened to bar spirits in 2012. They're very traditional distillery making everything from scratch and each day starts by milling 1000 pounds of grain their entire plant 36:00 product lineup consists of only two whiskeys, their moonshine and the only bourbon made in Seattle. Both bottles are being featured in rack house whiskey clubs next box. rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rock house ships out to have the feature distilleries finest bottles, along with some cool merchandise in a box delivered to your door every two months. Go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some to bar for yourself. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 36:37 What's up everyone? i'm john Henderson, your admin over at the bourbon pursuit Discord server. As a coordinator for the Christmas fundraisers held by the bourbon pursuit. I'd like to thank everyone who contributed. I couldn't be more proud of this community. One perk of joining the bourbon pursuit on Patreon is that you get access to real time chat with other members along with Kenny Ryan and Fred through discord from photo sharing and sample swaps to 37:00 events where ultra limited releases like willet bottles are exchange. There's always something going on. Right now over 300 members of the Patreon community have joined and are connecting over our passion for bourbon. If you're not on Patreon, now's a great time to join us and get involved with the community in a whole new way. Come check it out for yourself and be part of the behind the scenes chat photos and video calls. We'd like to have you join us on a live virtual board where we all discuss a pursuit series release just 37:28 are there certain types of groups that create more bonds than others? So community wise, I'm a part of two groups that really are my bourbon community, I would say. One is karma. That was a cost plus shit group which I'm sure we'll talk about what that is. 37:47 But essentially, it's, you know, I because of that I feel comfortable that if there's ever anything I want to try from some what's a good example? I'm up 38:00 Four roses, that four roses my top of the line, particularly the Oh, so recipe, and liquor barn had a Oh yeah, so barrel a month ago or so 38:13 I got two bottles over there. But I'm down in Texas and that's because of the connections I've made my cost call ship group karma. 38:21 That's been a great deal you meet all kinds of great people. 38:27 Then I'm also a part of a barrel picking group called 21 kings. And I've made a bunch of great connections there. I'm going actually I'm going to be up in Kentucky a couple weeks to pick a four roses barrel and willet ride barrel. And that's really it started more as a we want to be able to pick barrels and not share it among 200 people kind of thing. But you know, you make these connections with you. There's, it's really interesting. There's not a lot that I've experienced in the world that Bond's people together like picking a barrel of bourbon. Just 39:00 I don't know what the secret sauce in there I know what the sauces but 39:05 the common denominator. Yeah. 39:09 You pick a barrel of somebody, your pals, 39:14 you know, talk talk the whole thing through it's a painstakingly excellent process if you do it right. And I've been really lucky to get to do it a few times and I'm really excited to get to do it again here in a couple weeks. But it's been a really cool experience, you know, you get to get really, really good bourbon or rye or whatever it is you're picking, and you get to, you know, make connections with people that you wouldn't do, at least for me, certainly I never would have made those connections otherwise. Now I'm totally with you. And I guess that that also kind of thinks about you know, really where does the relationship start and how does it build and it I have the same things with with two other buddies that really 40:00 We we knew each or we didn't really know each other and then we've kind of found each other through bourbon and then their their personal lives. You start knowing about their children you know about their vacations, you know about you know, where they're buying a how their IRAs. Yeah, everything getting 40:19 better. I mean that's that's kind of like how it kind of blips like that where you it's just a really kind of snowballs where you kind of have this common foundation. And then from there, you start talking to them more than you did. The people that you went to school with years ago. And and they become something because it seems like bourbon is like an everyday thing. It's constantly changing and the people that care about it are always in tune with it. Yeah, absolutely. The you know, 40:47 it's really nice. You know, aside from just the personal connections, it's just great to have a network of fellow dorks that we can talk about that stuff with. 40:55 You know, there's I live in San Antonio, which is 41:00 You know, it's got a good bourbon community here, but it's sort of 41:04 from a maturity level. It really only became a big thing down here in the past three to six months. 41:12 So, you know, I always thought the Esquire bar had a really nice bourbon. So I guess choir is fantastic. And you know, they do the San Antonio cocktail conference down here. Yeah, I come every year was in the back of the room last time you did one. You can stay on this couch next time. Yeah, that's right. Do you mind? I mean, St. Anthony's expensive. Yeah, if you don't mind golden retriever sniffing around Yeah, you can always got a couch here. 41:40 But 41:42 there there's a few people here in there but like as compared to say like Houston with Houston's I mean, you guys know you guys had 41:51 the Houston bourbon society on a while back. That's been a big deal for a few years now. 41:57 So like, just as a 42:00 An example and I mean, no disrespect in saying this, but in the San Antonio group, the old Ezra seven year is a big damn deal right now. 42:09 And it's a good, it's an excellent drink. I really like it for what it is. But if you've been into the hobby really deeply for five plus years, then you know, you're you're drinking other stuff too. 42:24 So it's locally it's not as far down the line as say like a Houston or obviously anywhere in Kentucky, 42:33 which made the online community is a really great thing for us. And I guess another question with that is, are you seeing a lot of I mean, so you have your local society, and that's another place where a lot of people can go in and find some of those those bourbon connection those bourbon friends that live they live in your local area. Most of the time, you might find it on, you know, the the local page or the San Antonio page and then you see each other and me 43:00 And then all of a sudden things can happen through there. Yeah, the it's funny I'm hosting. And you know, Ryan, you joked about IRAs but that's 43:10 that's what I do for a living and I can't tell you how many times one of my bourbon friends would send me a text message or an emails like hey, do you mind if I ask you about this thing? So actually do know about a lot about the IRAs of some of my bourbon friends 43:23 have ESP gift but yeah, you end up I just right before we got on here, my buddy Josh Hayes gave me a call I talked to him for about a half hour and bourbon didn't come up. 43:40 So yeah, it's it's really cool to have connections like that. 43:44 You know, another thing that we kind of talked about earlier, too is and we'll kind of keep this train going with the kind of online community theme is we talked about raffles and and how these these kind of groups that are based off raffles, it also kind of creates a little bit of camaraderie. 44:00 Because you've got people that either they all try to play the same number and they fight each other for they get to know each other through there, or there's somebody that consistently win somebody else's raffle all the time. And so you have you have this also built into even though it's an expensive hobby, but it's something Yeah, we like in, in karma, my cost ship group the stupidest thing in the world, but when when mega ball went from 15 numbers to 17 or 19, or whatever the number is not 15 anymore. We were all very upset because that diluted our chances of winning stuff. 44:39 So we had to create our own weekly drawing, which is I got a bingo machine back there some somewhere did our own damn drawing because we didn't want to split a bottle 17 ways I want to split it 15 ways. 44:54 But yeah, you end up particularly in some of those secondary raffle sites you can lose just 45:00 an absurd amount of money if you don't really check yourself. Yeah, hey, Kenny for introducing me to raffles and risky whiskey in particular. Yeah, well, after a while, you figure, you know, that's the reason I'm doing it. I had to delete social media during the week. Thanks a lot. 45:17 But after a while, you end up as we were talking earlier, you kind of put planned but, you know, back to the, the community aspect of this, you know, we look at it as as an opportunity as as well to branch out, you know, my myself gotten to know people through these communities. And, and, you know, Jeremy, as you mentioned, you'll travel you go somewhere, you know, I've got connections now and a lot of states and so you can you can travel somewhere and know that you can confide in somebody and you can hang out and have a good time. You don't have to go and meet up at a bar somewhere to go and, and hang out. And ultimately, I don't know about you all, I'd actually rather go to somebody's house and dig into their collection. 46:00 Try something unique and I would just rather meet up at a bar. Well, it's funny we, my buddy Craig Lyman was here probably six months ago and there's three guys here locally they're a part of the karma group that we're that we're all a part of. And 46:18 we went out to a bar at all meet up and about halfway through my trying that Bob Dylan whiskey. 46:26 We all that stuff. I hate to break off on that, but what did you think of the Bob Dylan whiskey? I wasn't a tremendous fan of Oh, it's gross in it. 46:37 Like it like it all. It was bros about it. So there is a Okay, so it's, it's it's decal, and they got like the bottom of the barrel of the decal barrels. Because it's just it's like metallic. You know, there's like there's like this crazy like weird metallic note in there. Yeah, there was something to it that I had not tasted in bourbon. 47:00 before and I don't mean that in a good way. 47:03 And it inspired us we were 47:07 you Fred, you mentioned the Esquire we were down the road from the Esquire so maybe that was our problem. 47:13 But we all 47:15 that that drink inspired me to tell her because the best bar in San Antonio for whiskey is at each of our individual houses. Can we please just go there? 47:24 So that's what we did a lot better than the Bob Dylan whiskey. Yeah, I'm sorry, I interrupted you, but I had to ask your opinion on it. No, I don't totally remember where I was going with that. But you're absolutely right. That's up stuck by you, Fred. I mean, Fred, if you if you had enough connections now when you go somewhere that you'd rather not go to a bar and you'd rather go to somebody's house and dive into a you know, well, or gold vein or William Lou Weller, some old dusty Kentucky Tavern or Evan Williams or something like that. I've had you know, I've had some weird expense. 48:00 SS 48:03 please do share it out. Yeah, I've had some weird ones. But I'm you know it, I'll say that I still like to see what's going on in the town five years ago, I was like, I don't want to go to a whiskey bar because I have everything and I don't want to spend that kind of money. And I'd rather just kind of go hang out and see something else. 48:26 Now, I'm kind of going back to the, I feel like these, these bars are working hard to, you know, promote my culture, what I love, and you know, I gotta throw them a bone, I gotta, I gotta go in there and pay my respect to what they're doing. So that's kind of how I think of it now is like, I don't think of it as like, you know, look at them and their prices is just what they are if they're price gouging, you know, be very vocal about that, but 49:00 Often to like I end up correcting spelling errors and menus. I mean, for God's sake, why can't people spell will it correctly? It's true. 49:10 But I feel like I have, I have a purpose. And I'm supposed I need to be visiting these great temples that are bastions to whiskey. And you know, if they invite me and I'm going to go on a show, you know, check it out, but indeed do I like going to someone's house and going down in the basement and seeing seeing the collection? I mean, that's like to me that just doesn't get better than that. Now, what's weird is when like, you know, I come in the house. 49:45 And then the guys wife's down there, and I'm like, oh, oh. 49:53 And did you like she's like, who's this guy in the ass guy? 49:57 Oh, man, just ignore 50:00 Weird. So I didn't sleep on their couch. 50:04 Like I'm gonna go till now. 50:07 Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's fun to look at this and look at the relationships that you do build over time. Because it does seem like a lot of these hopefully will stand the test of time you never really know. Because it I don't know, maybe this is another kind of question is, 50:27 you know, as bourbon becomes more prolific and becomes more scarce and it's even harder to find these things and, and really, I don't know how much bigger these networks that people are creating right now can actually get, 50:42 you know, can they get bigger or you feel like, you know what, I don't have any more room in my life for new friends. We're just going to kind of keep it where it's at. For me and we I don't know if we actually call the episode this but you said the term finding your bourbon people 51:00 For me, selfishly, I found my bourbon people. 51:04 My biggest group of people that I care about is about 150 people and that's about as big as it needs to be and we're all having 51:13 like, 51:15 I don't know when this is going to air but right now there's this whole bsm bourbon secondary market thing going on Facebook, we couldn't care less. And it's been incredibly entertaining for us because I know because I've established my community. There's not really anything that's going to come out that if I really want to try it, I can't try it. from a store pick that comes out to got a buddy with a bottle of Red Hook ride that I'm going to see if I can't finagle announce it Oh yeah, battle. If you can find your your community then these groups of 50 some thousand people really don't matter all that much. So I guess another question is is so you found your people we've already decided three's enough. We're not bringing on a fourth co host 52:00 So we've got our people but how do you what would you say is is a good way for people to start getting introduced and sort of like find their you know, find their because you say they're missing connections they're getting to the gangs of the bourbon community. To me every every good bourbon connection I've come into is because somebody was doing something nice for somebody else. 52:25 You know, whether it's you know, there's last year almost city liquor here had a fantastic Elijah Craig pick, bought a bunch of it and help some friends that otherwise wouldn't have been able to get it. 52:38 Get it and they became good friends and that favor is I've been on the receiving end of that favor, you know, from different places all over the country. 52:50 And great bourbon connections for me rarely come from trying to price gouge somebody on a whatever store pic of 53:00 The month it is. 53:02 But if you, you know, just be cool with people and treat everyone this is you know, I guess cliche but 53:11 treat people the way you'd want to be treated. 53:15 You'll end up knowing some really cool folks and that's what's in that's what's happened to me. And that's the advice that I typically give people on between karma and 21 Kings I really don't need to know anybody else. Be able to know you guys 53:28 can be your friend. 53:31 Give me your card. Jeremy. One of my favorite things is like I get you know, when when I travel I do often like just kind of connect with someone who's a listener or reader just like or, you know, follows me on Instagram. I really do try to make an effort when I'm out to like, go hang out with people. And my favorite thing to do is like learn about their jobs. You know, because I find that we have 54:01 in people's pleat people's beliefs, because what I have found is is that bourbon is not. It doesn't attract as one race or one occupation or one political or religious belief. I mean, it attracts everybody. And to me that is what's so beautiful about this category is that I could be in a room with a staunch democrat and a staunch republican and they absolutely hate each other politically. But they'll just sit there and talk about how beautiful a new riff barrel pick is. And I'll talk about that now. They have three they might get into some, some fighting but once they cross the threshold, but it's kind of like, you know, Henry Clay, you know, the great Kentucky statesman, he said he wants said that bourbon was used to lubricate the wheels of justice. 54:59 It's like this 55:00 Great like, door opener for conversation? Well, I think even if you have the three drinks if you have committed commit each other from a place of respect, I mean, one of my, one of my good friends that I've met Andrew Goodman is a very far left person I am not. 55:17 And he lives in New York City. I was there for a business meeting. We went to one of the bars there. He bought me some vintage 17 rye, or no finish 21 rye. 55:30 And we talked politics for a good hour. And we walked out of there not hating each other and it's magic how that happens nowadays, you practically can't do it. Yeah. What problems you solve? I want to know down can 55:46 we solve the problem of how to get more Oh, yeah, so four roses, but we really solve any, any national issues, although that's become a national issue. 55:56 For sure. But you know, it's it's a conduit for 56:00 A really good conversation to like that, that I never would have had otherwise. And we continue to have it frequently. And then when it gets to be too, 56:08 too much we both saying I, you know, we don't want to fight with each other. Let's agree. 56:13 So I had kind of talked about it earlier, you know, with with my connection, pretty much my my mentor taught me that these are what limited edition releases are and he was able to, like I said, he gave me it at cost. So just to make sure that I'm not dealing with a story like this. I want you all to kind of talk about what are what are those relationships that you formed, that you've gotten, like a really, really good bottle of bourbon out of it just because of fostering relationship like that. I've had a lot. I've had a lot of guests. 56:48 And 56:51 the gentleman, you know, the gentleman passed away unfortunately he was his name is Dale Hamilton. And he 57:00 He was like the last. He was the guy who like got cola approvals for states of Weller. And he was like the last, you know, last guy from United Stiller's, the you know, for, you know, before they close, that's a Weller. And so he has this, you know, he had an incredible collection. And I helped him figure out what some things were, what some bottles meant. And, you know, we just and he came to my legend series at the Kentucky Derby Museum and we just we just became friends. I would visit him at Christmas. You know, he would come and we'd have lunch, he'd play with my kid. And he gave me a 1935 bottle of Weller. 57:46 And that was like a green Green Label blend. And it was fantastic. And the first time I opened it, I cracked it open with Tom Colicchio. From 58:00 Top Chef has just that right after my Top Chef appearance. And I wanted to celebrate with them and so I cracked it open with them. So I had like two, two really cool friends. You know that that that bottle kind of connected me to, you know, coming out of the gate strong here. Yes. Right Ryan, I think you should follow that. Well, I've had some great connections and relationships with people like Bill Thomas was kind enough to invite me to his house and stayed the night crashes. We didn't crash his couch. We had a room but but just his collection like we were at his bar and he's like, Guys, let's just go to my house. It's so much better here. And he had a green, you know, Green Label or not green or green bottle Van Winkle raw one early ditions it's one of the best bottles I've ever had. Drew Cole's been grew up with him from Willits. I mean, he's, he's one of the kindest, generous people he shares a ton of stuff for me, but the one the person I remember the most is probably my 59:00 Brother in law 59:02 I won't name any names but he works at heaven Hill and 59:06 he likes bourbon but he knows how like obsessed I am with him and he always goes out of his way to give me like a Parkers or an old fits release that just came out like he always is just finding ways to give me something and I'll always cherish that so it's all it means a lot to me. That's that's a relationship by blood that's hardly fostered over birth. 59:31 But we grew up friends before you know, brother in law's we were friends before so but yeah, those those are the bottles that are that need the most to me. Absolutely. In my case, it was really about people knowing what my tastes are. And as I kind of grew up in the hobby and grew up in the community, I would have people that would know the things that I enjoy and would suggest that I try something and oftentimes the suggestion would come with a 1:00:00 two ounce bottle of it showing up at my doorstep. And that's how I figured out that I love national distillers products. 1:00:08 Some I was telling somebody kind of the things that I liked about certain things that were my favorites and then before I knew it, there was a bottle of 1960s old granddad bonded 1:00:18 that showed up at my doorstep and 1:00:21 I guess I should be upset with them because it's caused me to lose a whole lot of money after that. 1:00:27 It sounds like that sounds like Ryan Ryan went on a huge old granddad kick for a while. Oh, gosh, you know it for me any of that old nationalist killer stuff is really just killer. It kind of hits me right in whatever my sweet spot is, for whatever reason, I'm telling we're Barban friends now. Hey, 1:00:44 I got some stuff to send you. 1:00:47 But 1:00:48 that, for me is the big is one of the cooler parts of the community is, you know, people who know you and I know other people's tastes and if I see something for 1:01:00 example I got a buddy who was a big q lover at four roses, and I'm not. And anytime I see a really good q i know exactly who it's going to a CPA office in Indiana. 1:01:15 Because I just, I know that somebody that will appreciate it for more than I. That's where we go. Yeah, it really is. I mean, and I think that's a good way to kind of start wrapping this up because we, you know, we really hit on a lot of things of, really, how do we how do we find your bourbon people? Right? I mean, it all starts by a friend or somebody introduces you to bourbon. It's very rare that any of us just stumble it on our own or, or maybe maybe you do get turned on to it by social media or for the general Media TV or purposes and stuff like that. But for the majority of us, there's somebody that gives us that introduction, and I think that we have all been in 1:02:00 situation to, and I know anybody that's probably listening to this podcast, you know, you're, you're one of the you're one of the geeks out there, you're one of the people that truly hone in on this craft, and you really appreciate it. So odds are is that you're sharing the love of bourbon with somebody else. And so that's just how everything continues to flourish and grow. And then from there yet, then it becomes like, oh, add me on Facebook, we add you to a few groups. And then at that point, you you've just you're all in and as, as Jeremy had mentioned earlier, the boxes just start showing up on your front door and, and your PayPal account gets a little lower, but that's just how it works. 1:02:39 That's just how it works. So, gentlemen, and Jeremy, thank you so much for joining tonight. This is again, a fun topic. And you know, I'll go ahead and kind of let you kind of say what you're gonna say there. I don't think I was gonna say anything. 1:02:55 To Are you 1:02:58 looking at me 1:03:00 You 1:03:01 know, it's it's the rule of thumb is just, I mean, I guess it's the rule of thumb for more than just the bourbon community, but don't be an asshole. 1:03:10 Yep. So you know, if you if you just be a nice guy, it's amazing what kind of connections you're come up with. And 21 Kings is picking up a barrel of will it right here in a couple weeks, and I'm fortunate enough to be one of the people doing it. And I never would have gotten the chance to do anything like that. Had I not been able to be a part of these communities. And it's really cool. It's some of the coolest experiences I've gotten to have and really thankful for that. You know, I guess the other bad thing about being in these communities too, is I didn't realize for years, I could just drive down to willet and just go pick up bottles in the gift shop and 1:03:47 I could have been doing it. I could have been doing it all along. And I just I just didn't know. So 1:03:53 that's the that's the bad part of it. But it's, it's also a good thing because you add a lot more appreciation for what you do have so 1:04:00 Again, everybody, thank you so much for joining tonight. Jeremy, do you have any kind of social handles or anything like that where people can find out more about you? Anybody who wants to I guess I'm around on Facebook Jeremy Mendell Twitter at Jeremy Mendell, Instagram at Jeremy Mendell, if you want to talk to me for some strange reason I'm available. Never know, I know where to send. If I see I know he so I know who to call and all of your VSOs to me, and I'll figure out some way to repay you that you'll be happy about. Very interesting. Very interesting. I know you kind of want to just go pick a whole barrel of Oh, yes. Oh, now just get out of them. I actually did I like I'd have one. It was from my pics from the icons of whiskey when I picked those fucking which was at the 17 or 18. 1:04:53 Yeah, we had all the recipes. It was I think that was a 1:04:59 I think it was like a 1:05:01 11 year old Yeah, that was I think the 2017 one that was really good and it's incredibly dorky that I can just pull out of my head 1:05:13 so that was when I was with whisky magazine and yeah that we did that. And that was like the one of the only times you saw all the all the recipes and that was back when four roses. I think they brought out 40 barrels from for us to taste and guide you lucky forget for now. So it's the way the world now. Alright, let's go. Let's go ahead and we'll sign off. So again, Jeremy, thank you so much for coming on tonight. It was a pleasure talking to you. And seriously, thank you so much for bringing this topic up. Because it's it's fun to kind of, you know, really take a retrospective look into really kind of how we all got here and why many people are still actually listening to this podcast because they all have some sort of coming of age tale that's probably very very similar. So 1:06:00 Make sure you check out Jeremy and all those social handles, make sure you check out bourbon pursuit as well as spread MiniK on the Twitter, the Facebook and the Instagrams. And if you're like Jeremy, and you want to help support the show, he's part of our community, you can be part of our community as well. patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. So thank you, everybody. That is a part of it. And thank you, everybody that joined into the chat and watch us live. Another perk of just being a part of the community is you can be a part of these things as they're happening and be able to just chat along with us. So with that, thank you, everybody, and talk to you all next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Today, on the podcast we talk with Paul McLaughlin. He might not be known to you yet, or his cooperage, but the story he shares and how they hone their craft is like no other. We had the opportunity to check out Kelvin Cooperage and get a behind the scenes tour of their barrel building process. It’s amazing how everything is still very labor intensive and they use machines and tooling that have been part of their process since the beginning. We dive into toasting on a natural fire and what makes their barrels different from other cooperages around the country. We also discuss the economics of a cooperage and how they are trying to satisfy the growth of a world-wide demand for used barrels. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. Barrell Craft Spirits has won a few medals at some of the most prestigious spirits competitions out there, but don’t take their word for it and find out for yourself. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about faulty pipe systems at distilleries. Where are you from? How did you get into the barrel making business? How did you get into bourbon? How does Kentucky compare to Scotland? When did you join the family business? Was it hard to have your brother as your boss? How is your process unique? What is the reasoning behind toasting? Tell us about the natural fire. How long does it take a new cooper to get the hang of the process? Do you rotate positions? Do you have a high employee turnover? How many used barrels are you buying per day? What other barrels do you get besides bourbon? What's the craziest barrel you've made? Tell us about selling barrels in Asia and Japan. Let's discuss the economics of barrel making. What is your quality control process? What makes your cooperage appealing to customers? Is it harder to make a 25 gallon barrel? How do you see this business growing? How do you source oak? How do you determine pricing? What about secondary finishing? Where do you see the business in 10 years? 0:00 If you have a bachelor's degree and live anywhere in the United States, there's now a way for you to take your bourbon education to the next level. The distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville is a six course online program that will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry offered by the AACSB accredited college of business. This certificate is taught by business professors and industry leaders from Brown Forman beam Suntory jack daniels and more. join this one of a kind experience and prepare for your next adventure. get enrolled into this online program at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. Literally guys yelling the barrels over hand putting them over top of the fire. Yeah, and they kind of like stepping back a few seconds letting it do it, but 0:46 it's a tough job in the summer like jumping. They're gonna smell like 10 huge fire, scared chiller. 0:53 I feel like I'd be like, keep my arm here. 1:08 This is Episode 240 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny and I've got this week's bourbon news roundup for you. Woodford Reserve is releasing its annual limited edition Hyperloop expression. Woodford Reserve batch proof. This year it's bottled at 123.6 proof and this expression is part of the annual masters collection series. Woodford Reserve is proprietary batching process for this release is done by blending barrels into a batch and bottling the whiskey at its actual proof straight from the barrel. The batch proof is crafted using the same grain built in process as Woodford Reserve. And this limited edition collection is available in select us and global markets with a suggested retail price of 129 99. There's a bill working its way through a Olympia that would address what seems like a monopoly on selling liquor in Washington State and it's House Bill 22 04 in 2011, the state liquor stores in Washington State let private businesses sell alcohol, it came out of initiative 1183. But some big corporations like Costco in some grocery chain stores seem to get the bigger benefit out of the initiative because in order to sell spirits, you needed to have a location with over 10,000 square feet. A new bill would actually let smaller businesses sell spirits. And last week that bill passed out of the house commerce and gaming committee on a 10 to one vote. So soon you can get your bread, milk, beer and bourbon at a convenience store across Washington State. And Australian couple stuck on a quarantine cruise ship with cases of Corona virus on board have managed to get their wine delivered by drone posted on Facebook by Jan and Dave been skin on February 7. The couple provided an insight into the life on a quarantine diamond princess cruise ship off the coast of Japan and more specifically Getting wine onto the ship. The Naked Wine Club received the request from the couple who wanted to know if they could get their wine delivery while stuck on a ship. And to everyone's surprise, they accepted. The couple posts stated that two cases of wind were delivered by drone to the ship and said that the Japanese Coast Guard had no idea what was going on. I don't know about you, but having bourbon delivered by drone is something that I can start getting behind. A Tokyo restaurant chain has opened up a small pub in one of the city's busiest train stations. But it has a robot bartender serving drinks to commuters on their way home from work called xerocon. Robo tavern. The bar is located in Tokyo is I keep a train station and is owned by your own gataki a company that operates a chain of casual restaurants for after work drinking around the country. This pilot program will run for about two months. But here's the kicker consumers will first pay for the drinks at an auto I made a payment kiosk and receive a QR code of the receipt. you scan that receipt at the robot, and it takes about 40 seconds to pour a glass of draft beer, or a little under a minute to deliver a cocktail. But also, the robot has a set of cameras built into it screen to monitor the emotional state of customers tracking whether they're happy, or if they're growing impatient. So look out bartenders, the robots are coming. vending machines that dispense spirits are becoming more common around the country, but mostly the establishments such as restaurants or bars that already sell alcohol. Anheuser Busch InBev recently introduced beer box for use at concerts, sports arenas and music festivals. And back on January 31, the first District Court of Appeal in Florida overturned the state's 2017 denial of a residential condominium to sell beer and wine in vending machines. This was originally met with criticism from several traders including the beer industry of Florida, Florida beer wholesalers, so Association in the Florida independent spirits Association, but the court struck down the divisions order and that nothing in plain language. afforda law prohibits the sale of alcoholic beverages through automated dispensing machines. So who knows, that can get your bourbon soon through vending machines. Now today on the podcast, we talked to Paul mcglothlin. He might not be known to you yet or his cooperage. But the story he shares and how they hone their craft is like no other. We had the opportunity to tour Kelvin cooperage and get a behind the scenes tour of their barrel building process. It's amazing how everything is still very labor intensive. And he's using machines and tooling that have been a part of their process since the early 1900s. We discussed how he got into the family business of running cooperage from Scotland to Kentucky, and how he dives into their process of toasting unnatural fires are really what makes their product different than any other to purchase around the country. Then we dive into some of the fun part about the economics of the cooperage. And what they're doing to satisfy the growth of worldwide demand for used barrels. Now, make sure you also follow us on social media. And you can see some of the pictures and videos from our visit to Kelvin cooperage. And if you aren't a supporter of the podcast on Patreon, I encourage you, please go and check it out. In the past two weeks, we've released two Elijah Craig barrels, a 1792. foolproof and a willet seven year ride that we all selected with our Patreon community. These are now all sold out. But you don't want to miss your chance to get your hands on the next one. So view all that we have to offer a being a part of this community@patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts right now, make sure you hit that subscribe button because you're probably missing out on all of our bonus content. Every Tuesday we released a two minute podcast called whiskey quickie. And if you aren't subscribed, you won't see the bonus content that we post But hey, if you're listening on Spotify or I Heart Radio, you're all good. And thanks for being a listener. All right, let's get on with the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 7:13 It's Joe from barrell bourbon. Our Bourbons have won a few medals at some of the most prestigious spirits competitions out there. But don't take their word for it. Find out for yourself. Use the store locator at barrel bourbon calm. 7:26 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char. Listen, it happens sometimes we buy a bottle of bourbon we get home we taste it, and it tastes like musty corn or stale potato chips or drywall or some type of plastic or chemical. And we just completely dismiss that brand. Whether it's new or something we've been tasting for a long time we taste it in that moment. We're like yuck, I don't want it. Now, I've been doing this long enough to know that there's a lot of pieces that go into making American whiskey from the time That the whiskey goes into the barrel, the time it gets into your bottle, there's probably hundreds of factors that could influence the flavor. Things that you don't even think about. Like for example, there was a distillery that recently found hunks of corn in their pipe system. So as it was, they were pumping it into the steel, they found little hunks of corn that were getting stuck a kind of like a collar part. And what would happen is, is that corn got moly, and it started spewing out all kinds of unwanted bacterial flavors and notes and it took them a while, a few bad batches before they figured out the cause of it. In fact, when you go to a distillery and they're on shut down, you can't take a tour. Chances are they found something like that. They find it quite frequently. Very recently, I was at a distillery I'm not going to name who was because it's a new distillery. And right before their bottling line, I learned that they had this PVC pipe before the the whiskey got to the bottle. When I was tasting it out of the barrel, I was like my goodness, this is fantastic whiskey, especially for young distillery. And then when I tasted it out of the bottle in their in their tasting room, it was absolutely different whiskey I tasted this really rough edges plastic note. And I told the distiller this and he said, Well, you know, it could be this PVC pipe that we have here. And I was like, I'm not telling you that it's that or it's not that all I can tell you is that I taste plastic, and he changed it. Now, look, I hope that changes the flavor there. And it was indeed the plastic that was causing that and that distillers no longer going to have to worry about it. But the reason why I point this out to you is we tend to be very critical and very judgmental about the whiskeys we drink and we tend to stay focused on things like warehouses, mash bills East but the fact is, there's a whole A lot that goes into making whiskey and those mechanics, those repairmen, all the people who touch every single inch of that distillery, they all make an impact on the flavor that you taste. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or my website, Fred MiniK calm until next week. Cheers. 10:28 Welcome back to the episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon, Kenny and Ryan here on the Shively side of town the lively Shively but our local owner, but I mean this is a this is a part of town and in not only that, just as it's just on that level, but you know, really the topic today is talking about one of the biggest factors that goes into contributing to the flavor of the whiskey flavor of bourbon. And that is the barrel in itself. Yep, 10:55 distillers like take all the credit but it's the it's the wood it's magic that happens we outside of that and, and, you know, we were just walking around the plant and you know, it's it's always humbling and awesome experience to see just you kind of forget how much labor is involved in like, from barrel to bottle and like you just get an appreciation and like so now every time I want to say a bottle sucks, I'm not going to say it because I just saw a bunch of guys sweating working their asses off and like it's really cool to see that, you know, what really is one of those things that there's just so many hands involved in it. 11:29 Yeah, and we're going to talk more about some of the process and what we just saw. We just took a tour of the facility to kind of get some context of, of the situation. And yeah, I mean it was it's a doing wrong, there's a lot of machinery involved, but there's it's not as heavy as automation is like a bottling line now, there's still it's a very hard labor as process there's a lot of quality control and quality checking that goes into it. And And not only that, as we'll talk about the fire and it's very unique compared to a lot of people with inside of the industry here. Of how How they toasts and how they chart barrels and how it is going to derive a distinct profile at the end of day for two. 12:06 Yeah, and I know why our guest wears black shoes. Walking around. Kenny had some Chuck Taylor white Chuck Taylors ons like those are yet 12:17 so we just had our guest dr in there. So let's go ahead and introduce them. So we have today we have on the show we have Paul McLaughlin. Paul is the CO owner of Kelvin cooperage So Paul, welcome to the show. Thank you. 12:27 Thank you for having me. 12:28 I love having you here. Absolutely. So before we kind of get in talking about the business and talking about barrels and stuff like that, let's talk about you. Did you ever growing up I mean so by the way if if people didn't catch catch on you have an accent right so slightly Yeah, so you're not really like the sap like really deep South Alabama, from Shively? No. 12:51 No, so we I grew up in Scotland and my family there had a small cooperage mainly repairing barrels for scotch whiskey industry so it was a pretty small operation. So I've been around barrels all my life and swore I would never work for the family business. So was the name Calvin. It was Calvin Coolidge up yet. So my dad started Calvin cooperage when he was young service apprenticeship when he was 15, and then started the cooperage when he was about 2122. So, you know, had a good run with with that. And then in the early 90s, we realized that it made sense to repair the barrels in the US before we shouldn't have discovered it was a very simple idea, but it was quite revolutionary at the time. So we was this because a lot of stuff just ended up being too damaged by the time while you're shipping bad would, you know, freights expensive so why not maximize your freight costs by shipping on the barrels that are ready to fill without needing to be worked on. So that was kind of the genesis of our move to Kentucky. So we came here or my brother came here. Kevin is cooler with me, came here in the early 90s and started out during repairing us bourbon barrels and send them back over to our customers and Scotland. That was right around the time that American oak was being just kind of rediscovered for wine barrels. So we started making wine barrels and that was where we learned how to toast and treat wood the right way, you know, slow toasting and everything. And then of course, craft bourbon came along and we jumped in 14:35 with two feet into that 14:37 is a lot Why did you say you would never jump back into it? And then why did you jump? 14:42 Why would you do anything with with the Merrill's you know, working with my family, you know, I know that that's a tough dynamic A lot of times when it's proven to be at times, so I wanted to avoid that. Unfortunately, the way I avoided it, but by becoming a lawyer A few years as a lawyer, I would have done anything including working with the family. So 20 or so years later here, I am still very cool. Yeah. 15:09 Okay, so let's, let's also talk about it. So your family was was already doing this for the scotch whiskey industry. Correct. I'm assuming that, you know, in growing up over in Scotland, and people probably say the same thing about us being in Kentucky. I mean, I guess whiskey was was probably pretty common in the household and Oh, yeah, 15:26 yeah. All was a blended scotch. That was just the standard, like bourbon is here. Yeah. You know, that was all people drank. Although growing up, it was more of an old man's drink. You know, that's certainly not where I started out. 15:41 Yeah, we're just start out with it. Well, 15:43 you know, playing a lager. Yeah. 15:46 Yeah. And I still like a pint of lager. 15:49 Was there a turning point for you when you said like, I can, I could probably get on this whole whiskey train to when I moved here. 15:55 Yeah, I found bourbon much more approachable than then. scotch whiskey. You know, to start learning about whiskey much more drinkable. And what was what was the thought process in your head did that because, I mean, we've we've had scotch before and you've got such variations of single malts. Yeah, we've got Pete's and non Petit and then but then like you got the corn side of it that brings this sweet flavor. So what was your kind of? It was just trying bourbon when I moved here, I'd never really drank it before. And everyone was drinking it. So I thought well give it a shot. Yeah, everybody join them. Yes, I might as well and I got local and it was good. You know that that was the light bulb was like, wow, this this stuff is good. It's got some complexity. It's a bit more interesting than just a beer or wine. You know, it's a nice change of pace. What did you What were your first thoughts when you came to Kentucky and like, how did it compare to Scotland? Well, yeah, like, I moved here from Southern California. So that was a culture shock. You know, I was living on the beach in Southern California working as a lawyer. So coming into This environment here it was in San Diego. Yeah. No, it was a big change. Yeah. But you know, I'd been in visited so I knew I liked Louisville and I like the the kind of the countryside you know, the rolling hills around here remind a lot of people of Scotland and I felt the same. So you know, and there's you know, friendly friendly people terrible climate but but you know it we it is getting raging whiskey though because that's the only thing and for seasoning words so it works. It works out well. But no, we've loved it since we've been here. You know, my my kids have been born and raised here. So we're, we're all in what's awesome. 17:41 So So kind of talk about the genesis of of the of this cooperage as well because your brother came here kind of started it and then when did you say like okay, what was that was the turning point when you said I'm ready to start 17:53 joining the family business. What year was that? thought came in 2001. Okay, so I've been practicing law For four and a half years at that point for a big, big international law firm doing kind of soul crushing business litigation, mainly petty discovery disputes. So, look, young partners, which was what we were all aspiring to as beginning lawyers. And they were all pretty miserable. So I thought, why am I Why? Why am I aiming for that? So my wife was, was working at the same law firm as me. And we both just said we need to get out. So family business here, we're 18:33 ready or not? Yeah, 18:34 yeah. So 18:36 yeah, let's say So you started here. Now, was it hard with your brother your boss at first, or did you kind of like how 18:42 did that so that's all part of that. family dynamic? Yeah, I was a bit hesitant. older, younger, he's seven years older. Okay, 18:51 gotcha. Yeah. Younger, 18:54 would be really and he also served as apprenticeship and Scotland. So he's a he's a fully qualified Cooper, which I'm not and which he reminds me of. 19:07 Yeah, there's some fun dynamics going on. 19:09 Yeah. So talk about that different dynamics, what it like you said your brother's the cooperage. What do you bring kind of to this business that maybe you're trying to figure them? Yeah. 19:22 You know, we have a great time running it together. It's a very relationship driven business. You know, you'll have seen that with the people you've talked to, you know, we're all kind of collegial. We've got very long term customers. So we have a great time. And it's an interesting bunch, especially this new kind of craft whiskey. It's brought in a bunch of very interesting, entrepreneurial, different people. All of them have a really great story and you know, they're great fun to work with. 19:51 Were those relationships that before you came on board or were you having to go out and like, knock down doors be like, 19:57 yeah, I want your barrels are You know, you know, and that's what we tell some of the younger people here. So it hasn't always been this way. You know, whiskey wasn't always booming. So yeah, we did have we had times where, you know, we couldn't sell barrels and we had to find new homes for them. You know, we were knocking barrels down and shipping them to China for flooring. You know, they were selling them for less than $10 a barrel, a US battle, you know, which people can't imagine now. You know, they're in such high demand. So yeah, I mean, we definitely go through cycles. Yeah, yeah. This one's just been a really good one for a really long time. Yeah, yeah. Nobody, nobody has podcasts on bridges when you're in a downturn. I went the first probably 18 years here without doing any interviews at all. No one knew we were here knew no one cared. And we've had you know, podcast Video Productions radio shows, you know, you like 20:54 just leave me alone. 20:56 Let me do my work. We are known as a novelty for a while. numberless done. Yeah, 21:02 very cool. And so kind of talk a little bit about, you know, the process here and how it's a little bit different from some of the other ones we've we've had brown Forman, we've had independence Dave on the show, and kind of talk about like, where the process what you do how it's a little bit different hats you need to get anybody else. And not only that is you're doing both ends of the spectrum. You also are getting barrels, you're also brokering and doing a lot of sales, too. 21:26 Yeah. So on our new barrel production that the big difference between us and some of the ones you mentioned is scale. We're tiny compared to independence Dave and brown Forman. So we're not nearly as mechanized, so is a lot more physically labor intensive, intensive. A lot more hands touch the barrels. So we are you know, on a really good day, we might be able to do 500 barrels, new barrels, which sounds like a lot but you know, if you think of other cooperage is doing two and a half to 3000 Today dejenne idea of the scale that I mean, heaven Hill fills 1300 barrels a day. Exactly. Yeah. So we can't keep up with something like that. So, so the barrels we're making, we're doing them a lot more physically intensive, our toasting and charring is all done over natural fires. Using that wine lesson, we learned about how to treat the world with with long, slow toast. Only once that has a toast layer in there. Do we lie the barrel Tatchell ignite and char. And we really believe strongly in that. That toasting process adds maybe 20 minutes to the time the barrels on the fire. So that is a huge constraint on our production, but we're not willing to give that up. We could double our production tomorrow by cutting that out and the two minute gas fire barn but we're not going to do that there's no guy anywhere near these battles 22:56 yet kind of talked about your reasoning behind the toasting as well because I know that you know brown Foreman's typically always known for toasting their burials to independent stage not as much. So how to talk about your, your idea of, of white toast. 23:09 So the idea for me and again comes from wine barrels is your toast layer is an additive layer. char is an extractive layer, it's like a carbon filter. So it's going to extract some of the undesirable young flavors that you get from the new mix spirit. Whereas the toast layer is going to be additive, it's going to add those nice sweet American oak notes that we've all kind of grown to love that kind of, I always describe it as marzipan there's kind of enough He ormandy my listeners are very familiar with Mars a friend, Fred mineva, lovey Mars band, but that's what we're going for. And it gives it that kind of gives it kind of that middle palate that you're looking for fills out in the mouth. And you know it when you smell it, and we smell that toasted barrel back there, and I think you all going to immediately A lot of people describe it as campfire, toasted marshmallows, I definitely get more of the marzipan note, but that's what we're looking for. Once we have that, then we do the char jars important, they're going to interplay, the char in addition to doing all the extractive work, obviously, it gives the color as well. So we want that interplay. And as the spirit expands in the hot months and goes into the wood, and then contracts in the winter, it's going in and out of all those nooks and crannies we create with the alligator char, and it goes all the way into that toast layer, and then back again. So that that's it's the interplay, toasts and char is exactly what we're looking for. 24:42 Yeah, that always been the process and your family's, I guess making a barrels or is it 24:46 something when we were doing wine barrels, it was all about a slow toast, okay. And that's what we learned and we we play around with that on ways to slow it down and you know, do different things. Extend the toaster, get deeper penetration We're applying that to whiskey barrels. 25:03 The natural fire is an interesting aspect of this and I've never seen a natural fire. That's cool. Yeah, exactly. I mean it's it's something that it is it's something that I it almost that the equipment was something that is very reminiscent of a campfire. I mean, like these little metal kind of like tube things that you put in kind of harness everything in there and you kind of you kind of control it. When you bring a Boston button here. 25:26 Like, do you like the perfect 25:28 hovered over? Yeah, yeah. And so kind of talk about what the the differences in in going with a natural fire versus somebody. And that's mostly what the big the big guys do is they have a an automated system, the barrel setup, you count down, it's like three to one and then the run you see this massive like flame come up, and then it's there for eight seconds, 15 seconds, whatever it is, and it's done. So kind of talk about flavor characteristics or imparting of that, like During the HR process, because we sat there as the toasting was happened, and then you also said, watch this guy, he's going to speed it up, right? So kind of talk about, like, what that is like when the charring happens. 26:11 Yeah, so the natural fire, we think are important for a few reasons. Not not the least of which is, its sustainability. We're using our own offcuts, so we're not wasting that would when we shape ahead, we generate the little offcuts of white oak, that's what we burn. So we like that standpoint to it's a bit more sustainable. But we do think it adds some really desirable flavors, like we discussed kinda like drilling a steak on a gas grill or a exotic or the charcoal. Yeah, everyone. Everyone has their own preference. In terms of what we do though. You'll notice there was no timing and no temperature controls back there. There's nothing Yeah, a lot of other people are trying to remove the human element from this kind of make it idiot proof or something. We want a human element. We want our guys to be looking and smelling especially, we want them to know when they've hit that sweet monster panda. And then they let it Ignite. So we've kind of made a conscious decision to not have any timing or temperature controls there. We want the human element because these guys have been doing it for years. 27:17 Yeah, as they say, it's a very unique process and actually watching it happen because yeah, typically, this is all something that is on some sort of automated belt system, but no, I mean, it's literally guys yelling the barrels over and hand putting them over top of the fire. Yeah, and they kind of like stepping back a few seconds letting it do it, but it's a tough job in the 27:35 summer I jump in there. Yes. 27:38 Can huge fire scare chiller? I feel 27:41 like I'd be like keep my arm here today. Yeah, 27:44 yeah. Yeah. That's a tough one. Yeah, yeah, it's um it's good in the winter tough in the summer. So how long like you said these guys know what they're doing? Like how long do you think it takes a new guy to kind of get the feel for it or the one of the guys on the phone or yours today as well? relatively new, it's maybe his second week on the fires. You can tell he's jumping around with it and compared to the other guys, yeah, no longer so a couple of months, ya know, if you can last the summer it'll be all right. 28:12 And so I guess that kind of goes into like an employee rotation is it is where is somebody coming in? It's like, I don't want to say it's like a Ford factory line, but it actually is a factory, right? And do they have one responsibility? And like, that's all they do for their time here, or is it kind of like, okay, like, we're gonna rotate you around. So we everybody kind of has, yeah, we just and we 28:31 don't rotate a ton, but everyone can do everything. So if there are backups, everyone can filter by and clear the backup. So we have a couple of floaters, but most everyone has an assigned position. 28:43 Yeah. And I guess because it's so labor intensive and like you want to keep that human element. 28:49 I do Paul's yard. And we, you know, labor is hard to come by these days and I cut my own loan for example, I can find anyone to do 28:58 it. So So how talk about The labor you know, because manual labor is not like the most appealing thing these days is, you know, most of our guys are 15 plus years with us. Okay, so we have very, very little turnover. And that's key for what we do. You know, the some of them are 20 plus years. So that's been really a great boon for having that stable workforce. 29:20 Yeah, absolutely. So So kind of when talking about back to the business a little bit in regards to scale, we've been talking about like the newly built barrels. I want to talk about a little bit of the sourcing aspect, kind of like, what is what is the magnitude of barrels that you have coming in per day that you're buying on the market from distilleries that you have relationships with, right, and then sort of where does the journey go from there? 29:46 Yeah, so use barrels are coming in from everyone, all the major distilleries and a lot of craft distilleries to would do about 400,000 a year. So they're coming in constantly. It's a constant flow that we need. Most of those are going to Scotland and Ireland, the US barrels but a lot of them are going different places to anywhere. They're making spirits. So are going to Asia a lot to Australia, especially down to Tasmania, which has got kind of a burgeoning craft whiskey market. I didn't know that. Yeah, it's your next trip. Maybe. 30:22 That's my idea. What is their whiskey called? whiskey 30:27 scotch bourbon. Yeah, there's a 30:31 fulfil, put it on the bourbon pursuit credit card. Yeah, funny down airline miles. Exactly. 30:35 So they're going on 40 foot shipping containers 210 barrels to a container. They fit perfectly as if it was made to hold barrels. And they're going all over the place ready to fill so they open container doors, roll the barrels off, fill them right away. That's the idea. And you know people love they use bourbon barrel they know it's only been used once they know it's American oak. They It's got that nice sweet bourbon flavor in it. So it's it's a key taste component of scotch whiskey Irish Whiskey not because they've been doing it for years. And so when somebody is or when you're buying these barrels from somebody I think we had talked about earlier. Is there is there a sweet spot of what you want to be able to purchase? We just need them fresh. You know, the there'll be a mix of different age barrels in different locations, but we just need fresh, not where you're out barrel or 20 now, okay, now, not really the only people that really question that are beer guys. They're looking for something special. Yeah, a lot of times we can't tell what spin in the barrel if it comes from a big distillery. You know, we don't know what run that was or what label it was. 31:47 And I would imagine that you're not putting that much attention to sitting there trying to decipher stamps on the top of them either. 31:54 Yeah, no, we're cranking the they're not sitting for long. You know, they're flying. Georgia. 32:01 And so you also not only just get bourbon barrels talk about the other kinds of barrels with the careers of master distiller spanning almost 50 years, as well as the Kentucky bourbon Hall of Famer and having over 100 million people taste his products. Steve nalli is a legend of bourbon who for years made Maker's Mark with expertise and precision. His latest project is with Bardstown bourbon company, a state of the art distillery in the heart of the bourbon capital of the world. They're known for the popular fusion series, however, they're adding something new in 2020 with a release named the prisoner. It starts as a nine year old Tennessee bourbon that isn't finished in the prisoner wine companies French oak barrels for 18 months. The good news is, you don't have to wait till next year to try it. Steve and the team at Bardstown bourbon company have teamed up with rack house whiskey club rack house whiskey club is a whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer. Their December box features a full size bottle of bars. TV series and a 200 milliliter bottle of the prisoner. There's also some cool merchant side. And as always with this membership shipping is free. Get your hands on some early release Bardstown bourbon by signing up at rack house whiskey club.com use code pursuit for $25 off your first box 33:21 and so you also not only just get bourbon barrels talk about the other kinds of barrels that you have coming in because you know we've we were good friends with with Bill and other folks from for gate whiskey which I know that you've had a hand in helping them launch their products and they got some unique barrels from you as well so kind of talk about that process of so you know, we're we're always tapped in to people who have different interesting barrels you know, Sherry or port that they've done some some finishing with. So we'll bring those in when we find them and find new homes for them. So like before day, I think we find some x Sherry I think they were For that first release they did 34:01 it's like x Sherry x rum like 34:05 and you know and we smell that barrel it tasted it sounds great. And then we have people like, you know copper and kings are always looking to do not strictly bourbon I know but you know they they will try anything with a barrel, any type of barrel they've got really interesting collaborations going on. And then people like barrel bourbon that do a lot of blending, always looking for interesting and unique barrels. And a lot of the beer guys like to do that too. So, really we've had all sorts of barrels come in from a whole different places 34:36 talk about some of the craziest ones you've seen. 34:38 We made we did we we called it a zebra battle for kobrin Kings where we took new staves and use staves and alternated them out the barrel, Justin, we've taken a red, Melissa, you know, you know what, like the outcome of that was or is it still still still awaiting DVD? Yeah, you have to be patient. As you know, and then we've taken a US red wine barrel and I use white wine barrel and alternated those days. We've done we did with hoppings Kings again and we did a phoenix barrel we called it where we took one of their old Sherry barrels, we took two old cherry barrels, we knocked one down and cut the wood up, use that as fuel for the fire, and then shaved the other one and recharge it over that. cherry wood. That's where the Phoenix name came 35:31 from. He's I've seen the Phoenix barrels from from from that I had no idea like what the connotation was, or 35:40 was it? Yeah, so you know, we say to customers, anything you can think of, we'll try it, you know, because we're always learning and interesting for us. 35:49 Has there ever been one that somebody came with an idea and you're like, man, we're not going to do that. 35:54 A lot of the ideas you can tell are marketing driven where they were looking for something different. So St. barrels the age of underwater don't think they'll be much oxygen exchange through those staves. One didn't get too much fun. Yeah, so you know, you can usually tell when it's marketing driven as opposed to, you know, distiller tasting driven 36:18 the pirate ship going across, you know, in a shipping container on a on a ocean liner or whatever boat they get, you know, like that would Jefferson's ocean sounds like it's salty. Did barrels pick up any song? Yeah, unfortunately 36:29 the they're empty but yeah, I mean and the Jeffersons was a cool one too. Yeah, we did those barrels. And that was a, you know, make sense that, you know, the rocking and the heat is going to do something different. 36:43 Yeah. But these are also going and container ships. So hopefully they're isolated and sealed to a degree where it's not Yes, it's not being right. You're not getting too much sort of manipulation to it. As its as it's making. Joking 37:00 went right 37:02 on point. 37:04 So you we've talked about scotch. We've talked about Irish whiskey. What about like, Asia and Japan? Like, are there? Is there a huge market that you're selling there too? 37:14 Yeah, we send a lot barrels into Japan, 37:18 into Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, they're making tons of whiskey all over Asia. And we've done a lot of oil. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And if they all start drinking whiskey, it'd be really good. 37:32 Yeah. I mean, I guess the, it's always it's always funny to talk about, like, it's in me, it kind of goes back to just global and economic trade to how it's actually cheaper to buy barrels used here and then have them shipped all the way across the world than it is to actually have your own local local cooperage that are in like some of these countries. So kind of talk about like, the economics they're like, because you you've had to in your brother had to help build grow this business to really what it is today and start you on cooperage and you know that the man hours you know the real all the ones bobbing for new charred oak barrels, no 38:13 place. Yeah, that's a great rule. You know, a lot of these places don't have oak, you know, so that's a huge obstacle, right? You know, they just don't have a supply voke American oak is great because it's growing everywhere right now. You know, so there is a good supply. So that's your first hurdle. And then obviously, the labor is a is a big deal and trained labor and equipment, you need specialized equipment. So we use the ship a lot of us barrels knocked down, we've knocked them down, lay them flat on pallets and they'd be reassembled in Scotland. I've heard about that happening to that space delay disappeared because there's so few Cooper's and Cooper just left in Scotland, so there's no one left who can do that anymore. So that's a big obstacle, as well. They just aren't skilled. Cooper's to the same degree. Sir. Once once 39:03 you don't think people you're knocking them down you're like, Okay, one to the name numbering the stays like this out. It's got an order but now it actually takes like, 39:11 Yeah, but either like an Ikea box. Yeah. 39:12 And there's no direction and some places. The we did number the stage but it's still hard right and never get them tight again with specialized equipment and knowledge. 39:24 Yeah, I mean, even going through there and watching the process of you know, first actually having somebody Oh, you mean you have everything that comes from using the planning to knowing exactly the grade and exactly the angle of all these different stages need to be. So that's actually that's probably step five of the process yet everything between there, but then yes, it actually comes to the person where he is pushing or looking at eight to 10 staves at one time and knowing exactly like it's a it's a game of Jenga or a puzzle and I'm playing you watch new battles being done which the slaves are straight on to you. Berlin you're doing it when I heard it. It's that much harder. 40:03 Yeah and then David probably likes as well or do you think 40:06 it's harder harder to actually physically manage on the straight stage you can make stand up with curved one it's it's trickier. 40:15 Yeah. It's It's It's like putting together like a pile of bricks. It felt 40:19 like when you return something out of a box, you're like, how did this damn thing? 40:23 You know exactly. Then you're like, no way. You'll never get it. And exactly, 40:28 yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the economies in itself, but I always it did make sense to say let's just break come on down. We'll ship the ship, the hoops will ship staves and then reassemble over there. But now you say it. It's like yeah, once once you do have basically because we saw the process of what it actually takes to bend the wood where you steam it and then once in steamed and it's and it's kind of like an imperfect form that it goes into a machine where it actually does it, it bends it and then somebody sits there and puts the first coupon. You put the Second, third hoops on and then from there, it starts going through more of the, the toasting and in quality control process after that, too. Yeah. So also kind of talk about the quality control because that's it's always a huge factor of making sure that your customers are happy, right? Knowing that you're not going to be shipping out a barrel that's going to be leaking. Yeah, because we've we've had barrels, you go to the workout the Rick house and you're like, nope, shut this one's empty. Yes. 41:25 A nightmare. Yes, we do an air, air and water pressure tests, we pump about 20 psi of air into the barrel and we have a few inches of water in the bottom. So if there are any leaks will see them bubbling out. If they're small green leaks or not or something we might be able to do a quick repair with a wooden smile. Otherwise, if it's something more major, like a poor estate or something, we'll take that Steve out, open the battle back up and do a repair. You know, we're pretty conscientious about that because we have to be you know, everyone's making a good battle. Nice. So you can't have a winner there. 42:01 Yeah, I scared the shit out, man. They're like, those things and like the bug just pops off is like 42:09 what happened? Somebody give me 42:10 alert next time. Keep on your toes. But yeah, for sure. Yeah. 42:14 So talk about some of the your customers and, you know, we got a lot of local brands looking at Yeah. And why they chose you over somebody else or, you know, 42:25 we are I think there is a an attraction to having a local cooperation. We have a lot of local customers that like the fact that we're nearby, you know, it's efficient. And also, if there are any issues were right here enough, they need a barrel. Quickly. We can we can do it. We can help them out. A lot of them opened up during the barrel shortage and they couldn't get barrels anywhere. So they chose us. Yeah. Right Place right time. Right, exactly. But, you know, I think that local aspect is kind of an old fashioned where you would have a local Cooper local cooperage that you work So we do very, very well with Louisville distilleries you know the you know, rabbit hole peerless angels and directors all those guys are very good customers coppering kittens I mentioned as well. So you know, those are all great and that for us getting feedback regularly is really good having access to the spirit as it ages, you know being able to taste it is great for us to make sure we're doing things right. 43:28 What you mentioned age right there talk about because I'm not too sure how many other products that are out there that have high age statements of them were Calvin Coolidge barely kind of talk about some of those because you name some of them that you did, and some of those are kind of like less than four years old. So yeah, is there anything that is is beyond that at this point, 43:46 um, what peerless is bourbon will be for. 43:50 And then we do have other customers we have customers overseas that are doing longer, extended aging, and some finishing as well with are new barrels and are used barrels. So people are to all sorts of different things. We, when craft first started taking off, we were doing a lot of 25 gallon barrels, you know, kind of half size and people wanted quick aging. They wanted to get product on the shelves, start some cash flow running. So we were doing a lot of 25 people seem to have graduated up to 50 threes now, which is kind of everyone's preferred size. There's something magical discounts on it has to be like 44:32 maybe 30. That's sort of Yeah, 44:35 we're getting there. It was proposed and there was a big backlash. Yeah. So I think there's still comment period on that. But so we were doing less and less 25 more and more 50 threes. There's something magical about that. And I think people now are kind of seeing less young whiskey on the market. I think people are have the wherewithal to be patient and wait Three, four years. 45:01 From a from a process point of view. Is it more difficult to say okay, we're going to do a 25 gallon barrel run versus saying we're just gonna standardize on 53 and call it a day. So 45:11 it's 25 so tough, you know, they're smaller, they're physically more demanding, you're bending over a lot more. So 20 fives are actually more expensive than 50 stories just because we can make fewer in a day Yeah. 45:25 And that commits and now it makes sense why peerless is so damn good at three years old. Your barrel? 45:30 Yeah. You know, and then some of them did release early earlier than they thought they would. Because of the battle because I don't think it's that toasting. Plus john. Yeah, on natural fires, I think it does speed things up a bit for if you want that, that option. So it gives you a distill it a bit more flexibility. 45:51 So now I just kind of like the wheels are kind of turned to my right here. So I'm gonna I'm gonna go back to like your your your brother and your father. And starting this. I know that they had had apprenticeships in and doing Cooper jiying and stuff like that. Now it was a lot of their stuff in just repair. 46:11 Yeah. And then Scotland is typically repairing us barrels. 46:14 And then So at what point who was who was the mentor taught anybody to say, this is how we build barrels. This is how we're going to do things 46:21 would be my brother kind of figured on his on his own. Yeah. 46:26 What kind of like YouTube videos 46:30 for YouTube, unfortunately. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure how he how he went about that. That, you know, I think part of his training would have led him to that, you know, they do a lot of training on different sizes of barrels and different techniques. I think he would have just figured it out. I'm sure there was a lot of trial and error in the beginning that happily out. I wasn't here for 46:55 I'll swoop in. Yeah, let me know when you got everything. 46:58 Yeah. Sit Back in and run a business at that point right now. Absolutely. And not only that is you know, I kind of want to talk about the growth of like, where do you Where do you kind of see this going because today you know, you talked about that you know, it is a smaller cooperage and some of them are out there. However, you know, we took a we took a tour there's, there's barrels just entering and leaving like constantly it's it's a it's a constant flow. And I'm sure there's gonna be a point where you think you'd be busting at the seams Do you feel that that 47:30 that point coming and and what could possibly be the Yeah, we've been feeling that for about eight years now. And we just keep rolling with it you know, it's been an incredible boom whiskies been on not only bourbon, but scotch and Irish whiskey, which is a big driver of our US barrel market. You know, we were grew up in Scotland's so you learn to be pessimistic, so we expected that and every day No, but it just keeps going. So knock on wood Yeah. It keeps going. 48:01 So I mean, is it so you're just kind of keeping the regular turn going? 48:05 Yeah, you know, we're always looking to grow. If you're not growing, you're losing ground. So, you know, we're upgrading equipment all the time looking at new markets all the time. Making sure we're securing enough oak all the time, you know, it's a constant, constant battle. Yeah, talk about securing a little bit because I would imagine that you know, it's not like the new construction of a house market where that's probably a lot more demanding than what it is to get, you know, Oak for for barrels, but kind of talk about how sourcing would plays into a lot of it. You know, it's tricky just because the production capacities increased so much over the last few years, these new mega Cooper does keep being built that, you know, China's got a lot of barrels and need a lot of states. So, competition for the stave logs is fierce. We work with four or five stage Mills that we've worked with for years. And they're pretty loyal to us. They're typically second generation businesses like us. So there's a lot of commonalities. We work well together. So we've we've enjoyed the first shortage, we were able to keep going and grow our production. So we're hoping that we're well positioned to keep doing that. But you know, competition for those logs. It's It's tough. prices are going up. So and then if you have a wet winter, and you can't get into the forest, that complicates matters as well. 49:28 I didn't know that was a thing. Yeah. We just went there too. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 49:32 yeah. And it has an effect on getting logs at the forest. So you know, you have a bit of seasonality and shortages, which you have to try and plan for. Do prices reflect that as well. When you when you're trying to find an open market like as in as insane like, oh, sorry, we couldn't get there. So our logs are our staves are now x versus y. Yeah, the state die. Pants price increases on to us, we have a hard time. montoro 50:02 typical now business and so when you when you talk about just prices in general so Ryan and I we want to go and we want to want to buy barrels for for whiskey brand and this could be anybody that wants to start a new brand and they want to come to you kind of what's what's where do you start off like how how do you figure out? Is it 10 barrels? Is it 100 barrels? Yeah Where do we catch you at breakers or baseline? It's just no 50:26 glams Well, we we have customers that buy one or two barrels at a time and we've customer to buy 10s of thousands at a time so you know we run the gamut. No order to smaller to large. 50:38 It sound like a hater man. 50:43 But what's what's an average cost of a barrel. It's just a run of the mill. We are on a new barrel. We are not the cheapest producer out there. Because vol volumes are smaller and our barrels different so we're you're over $200 a barrel with us. Yeah, and you know, you can do under 200 other places. And we know that we don't try and compete on that lower price. And because we're not making barrels for the big legacy distillers we're making for craft guys. 51:17 And you feel like that's a good niche to kind of carve out in regards to that because you can, you can kind of create something that's a more of a unique spin on on the typical 51:26 Yeah, and it's more interesting for us rather than just one trip down to Boston, so and all our products in one fell swoop, you know, that's not very interesting. 51:37 It's like a good thing, and it's a bad way I'm sure. I'm sure it keeps it interesting. The other thing it's kind of like, Man, it's a lot of phone calls. Yeah, 51:43 exactly. Yeah. And a lot of freight and shipping logistics, but you know, that's fine. Kim's been busy. Now. It definitely keeps you busy. I'm sure sure we get a good CRM database. People everyone was not a customer. 52:01 Mine's all an Excel spreadsheet. That's how I work. That's a Google Sheets. It's our we're the same way. I have to deal with 2000 peoples. Okay, 52:08 I gotta get a hybrid system to keep track of them all. I'm sure Calvin's not far behind that, too. I mean, it's, it's true. It's a, it's a growing industry. And, I mean, even if we're looking at a lot of the bottles and tables around here, you've got a lot of customers. And it's not it's not just the big brands, it's it's people that are trying to carve out a new place in the market. And so you do have a lot of people that are trying new things, and I know that you're, you're helping them do that. So kind of give us your take on the market in regards of secondary finishing, because I know that is, you know, you source a lot of these girls, and some people look at it as a as a way to kind of make that differentiation into the marketplace to 52:50 Yeah, I think it's a great move for bourbon. Some, you know, they've been doing it in Scotland and Ireland for a long time, kind of that blood Tradition. And I think this finishing is a part of that and extension of that. And I think it's a good thing for, you know, people over here to be experimenting with, you taste some of the stuff that's coming out, you know, that forget we mentioned before that taste great barrel Bourbons, different expressions. They're all something different. You know, I think it's a great day, Jeff Taylor. 53:26 Yeah, 53:27 yeah. So you know, I think it's great. And it gives us something interesting for us to be involved in something different. So we like that. 53:36 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's, you've got, you've got two sides of the market here. You've got you've got the people that look at it and saying, Oh, it's a non distilling producer. They want to they want to cover up they want to mask you know, whatever it is that they're buying. I kind of looked at as the other side to say, as a non distilling producer. You can't just come out with something that is just like everything else. 53:56 Yeah, you can't. You can't get away with untransparent you know, people expect to know what's in the bottle. And so you have to tell them, You can't i can't hide it anymore. The way people were doing, you know, six, seven years ago. Yeah, 54:12 as loving, it's a much more savvy market out there. You know, there's even people now that they go to distilleries, and they go and look at where cast is, and, and they'll see the Kelvin Cooper's logo on there. Yeah, and they're gonna know it, they're gonna understand exactly where it comes from, like, so. So the name is getting out there a lot more. All these podcasts are 54:32 like, every week, you 54:35 know, and it's definitely cool to see that and see the growth of what's been happening, you know, not only just to the growth of, of your cooperage, but just to the bourbon industry as well. If we start looking at 10 years down the line, when you kind of see Calvin at that point. 54:53 That's a tough one. 54:54 I've been here for what 18 is that 54:56 I don't know where the market will be that that's the tricky bit Yeah, you know, will we still be booming? Will Scotland and Ireland still be booming if people keep drinking will be fine? But it's a tough one. Yeah, I mean, I don't even know what the market will look like next year. But you know, we're, we're gonna know. But 10 years is a tough one. Yeah. 55:19 I don't know. 55:21 So the nice thing is about, you know, you get to win. There's the distillers they have to forecast like even farther down the line. So the nice part is you get the money, like right now. Somewhat some way because they're like, here's the build it today. So tomorrow, yeah, 55:37 yeah. And then wait for payment. Yeah. 55:40 I know that part. Yeah. That 30s they kill you sometime? Yeah, it's 55:44 longer not exist in this industry. 55:48 I'm sure. But you know, I wanted to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was 55:53 my pleasure. Thank you. 55:54 I mean, it was really for us and giving us a tour of the operation the facility because I I don't think that you're open to the public for a lot of people just to come in and look at it. 56:03 Oh no, we're not for obviously. Yeah. 56:05 Bring your black sheep. 56:07 Yeah. Yeah makes your flip flop. Yeah make sure you send the emails way beforehand. Yeah, you come with some steel toed boots. Yes nothing because it is. It is an actual factory. It is a it is a 56:17 working for profit. cooperage 56:20 Yes. Exactly. Yeah, there's, there's no Hey, everybody, grab your heart. Let's go ahead. station number one over here. No, none of that. No, but like I said, it was fantastic able to do that. In again, give us the idea of not only the scale but the craftsmanship that goes on here. It's it's not a it's not an automated line where you're just pumping stuff out just to pump it out. But instead there's there's a lot of detail that's paid attention by the people that are better actually taking care of it day by day. So thank you again for doing that. If people want to know more about Kelvin cooperage online social media Anything like that How did they find out more about battle bridge calm? There you go. Yeah, 57:04 easy enough and there's some videos on there to get an idea of what we're doing 57:08 and if you need if you need barrels he already told you the price so yeah, just take that 57:12 multiplied by whatever you need on the ground and do the math man. How many we need? 57:17 We've got them will load your car up. 57:19 Yes. I got my truck good. 57:21 I don't come with a Honda Civic. That I can tell you. We put them in there before 57:26 yeah. Oh, yeah. How that workout type 57:30 ratchet strap. Yeah. 57:33 Yeah, very cool. Yeah, it's, it's like I said in the beginning, I mean, we've been other cooperages. It's so automated. This is like truly like an art like you can see like the individual craftsmanship and each barrel and it's like pretty cool. Like 57:46 to kind of see that all stepping back in time. 57:49 It is it is it's like amazing and it like and now when I drink a glass walls all I will vividly remember all those, you know, all the work and everything that's kind of gone. In into that glass so no it's a very much appreciate giving us the time and thank you opportunity to see everything and glad business as well and hope it keeps going well for all of us. Yeah, otherwise we won't show up again. 58:14 For sure. So make sure you check out Kevin Cooper's calm and you can find out more about them if you want to follow us of course bourbon pursuit on all the socials. And as well as if you like the show, you can help support it be a part of our community patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit. Again, thank you so much for joining us and we'll talk to everybody next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Summary: Summary: On this episode, you will learn about the Secure Act and how it affects your retirement plan and your future. You will also this get this month's real estate market updates. simplepassivecashflow.com/investorletter simplepassivecashflow.com/green10 simplepassivecashflow.com/alf simplepassivecashflow.com/lendmistakes simplepassivecashflow.com/dentist simplepassivecashflow.com/2020-launchYoutube link: https://youtu.be/pDTkhgS6S9c?sub_confirmation=1Website link: http://www.simplepassivecashflow.com/green10Start learning about real estate investing - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/startSubscribe to the Top-50 Investing Free Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simple-passive-cashflow/id1118795347_________________________Top SimplePassiveCashflow Posts:This website has been going through daily improvements everyday since 2016. I admit things are a bit all over the place as I learn about these investments and wealth tactics. Events – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/eventsPast Projects - crowdfundaloha.com/past-projects/Simple Passive Cashflow’s Investor Friend Finder!!! –SimplePassiveCashflow.com/friendsMenu of Investing Options – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/menuLaneHack – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/lanehackPassive Investor Accelerator eCourse - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ecoursePassive Investor Accelerator eCourse & Mastermind - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/journeyCoaching – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/coachingJoin our Private Investor Club – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/clubJoin our Team – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/jointeamOur Mission – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/missionPartner Opportunity – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/partnerProducts I support – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/productsAbout Lane Kawaoka – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/about-meQuarterly Investor Updates – http://simplepassivecashflow.com/investorletterSPC YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3cIIsGKx3osVU5rt2P0HfQReal Estate Book Recommendations – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/booksBackwards Engineering Happiness – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/happyRental Property Analyser – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/analyserVisit Lane in Hawaii – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/retreatStart Here – http://simplepassivecashflow.com/startUltimate Simple Passive Cashflow Guide to…1031 Exchanges – Simplepassivecashflow.com/1031guideNewbies – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/noobInfinite Banking – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/bankingYour Opportunity fund – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ofundTaxes – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/taxTradelines – Simplepassivecashflow.com/tradelinesTurnkey Rental Guide: simplepassivecashflow.com/turnkeySyndication Guide – simplepassivecashflow.com/syndicationCrowdfunding – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/crowdfundingNetworking – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/peoplePrivate Money Lending – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/lendInvesting in Coffee/Cocoa – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/coffeeInvesting in Non-Preforming Notes – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ahpRent don’t buy – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/homeInvestor Fallacy: Return of Equity – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/roeHow to Calculate Investment Returns – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/returnsWhy you should break up with your Financial Planner – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/fpQuitting your job – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/quitTranscript:0:04When I got smart and so my primary residence to start investing investments that actually made sense who I needed a place to diversify quickly as opposed some money market or some high reward checking account Let's face it, turnkey rentals are cool and syndications are great but they don't come around often I stumbled upon the American homeowner preservation fund the owner George new marry once apartments indicator to is now sponsoring the podcast is fun cuts the middleman out to crowd fund the solution to the mortgage crisis in America they empower you to fund the purchase of distressed mortgages and earn returns at smoke any other passive fun if you find something else better out there, let me know oh yeah, they work with families to keep them in their home after buying an underwater note at a huge discount. It's an opportunity to make an impact on families and communities while earning returns. start investing with a zoals hundred bucks in invest in hp. com if you want the free burn zone book please send me an email at Lane at simple passive cash flow calm1:03This week we are going to be doing the 2020 February edition of the green sheet investor letter you guys can check out all these letters and past videos at simple passive cash flow calm slash investor letter. And make sure you check this out on the YouTube channel to make a bunch of slides. And if you're listening to this on the podcast version, probably going to want to check out a lot of the graphs that are put in there to kind of brings another dimension to this. But however you guys want to consume this podcasts YouTube channel, it's all fine with me. And those of you who are high net worth passive investors1:36still using a 401k or self1:39directed IRA, you're doing it all wrong, man. I don't have any retirement accounts because I would rather pay taxes on it today when my income is less than in the future. Just very counterintuitive. People will say that you're going to make a lot less in the future, which as you know, we do things a little bit differently at simple passive cash flow, why I'd like to not use a timing plan or what we call requalified money is that I want to avoid the unify and you bit tax now the one way you can do this VA retirement con is called a QR p or qualified retirement plan you guys can check this out at simple passive cash flow calm slash qR P and also fill out the form there and you can get a free book sent your way to learn more about it and here is the show is2:20a story about a dude named Lane he moved to the mainland and bought one place to stay and then one day he went try to rent them out2:28and then he became one real investor.2:33It is February 2020. This is the monthly market update or I collect a bunch of news articles that I've sifted through. You guys can find the show notes on the sun at simple passive cash flow calm slash green 10 that's with a one zero green one zero. And I do this every month recapping what I've been up to at the end and some of the biggest news headlines that I've been seeing that I think in pack macro and some Micro markets out there. Again, all these will be posted on the YouTube channels if you guys are missing out on the audio or the video version, guys just checking on this on the audio version, you guys can check out more there too. So if you guys don't know who I am Lane Kawaoka, I still have my PE and you guys probably found me through the simple passive cash flow podcast. But if you guys haven't already joined our Facebook community online, probably find it by going through simple passive cash flow. We is what we call ourselves. So biggest news that happened this month case you didn't know it, but they signed the secure act which basically Rob millions of millions of dollars and millions of Americans without you guys even knowing. So let's break this down. What is the secure act here? So you remember when the government was kind of going bankrupt and they needed to come up with some new laws to not have that happen while this is the byproduct of it. And what it is, is a way of generating income for the government, which is typically not very good for us. Americans is In a better way, kind of the deal for us got worse. So here's a few bullet points it expanded the ability to run multiple employer plans for plan years beginning after December 31 2020. Had safe harbor rules apply for plan years beginning after December 31 2019. Long term part time workers permitted to participate in 401k plans which applies generally to plan years beginning after December 31 2023 consecutive 12 period the employer has at least 500 hours of service a repeal the maximum age from making IRA contributions which appeals to contributions made for taxable years beginning after December 31 2019. Increase the age for a minimum required minimum distributions which we call it rmds to 72 and applies to distributions required to be made after December 31 2019. With respect to individuals who attained age 70 and a half after such You guys are probably sleeping, you guys are probably just like any other Americans probably didn't pick up anything, nothing really popped up there. But here is there were some good things in there. Frankly, I don't really care because I don't have any retirement plans myself, I rather invest my money and take all the depreciation today and live off that today. So they changed the rule with rmds after death. So before they got rid of stretch IRAs, you guys can go all that you want. But basically what you were able to do is say your parents died and they had an IRA, they could give it to you and they would keep going stretch, but now they have this little nasty rule a year that basically requires all IRAs and qualified plans to be distributed within 10 years of death. So you got a limit. So if your parents die and you have this money, you got to spend it in 10 years, so the red flag should be going up. Everybody got screwed out there. The Senate version had a five year limit by the way, but it turned out to be a 10 year time horizon. There is a next Up to the 10 year rule for surviving spouse. So if your wife or your husband dies, they have the IRA that 10 year rule doesn't apply. Also exemptions children under the age of minority. So basically, if you're a kid and once you become an adult, I believe that 10 year old clients at that point, it doesn't apply if you're disabled chronically ill, and another individual who is not more than 10 years younger. So look at it from this direction the government wants to wants to harvest returns from us, the citizen, they want us to pay taxes they want. They want to get the money out of these silly retirement accounts that they promised everybody that they would have tax free, but at some point, they're going to tax these things. And the government's just sliding all this revenue up quicker. That's essentially what's happening here. So it's a big, big deal. This is just a good example of how these tax laws can change. Back in the clinton days they inherited tax with way less, it was like 600,000 today their inheritance taxes. Super, super high. You know, that's why you have kind of read government at this point. But if somebody else gets in there, these rules might change. And one of the biggest things in here is under the RM DS. The biggest exemption is a surviving spouse, they may just choose to get rid of that whole surviving spouse exemption, which means if your spouse passes away other than all that the heartache and the sorrow you're gonna have to pay taxes on their estate, which I think is unfair, but hey, that's like a one of the coolest byproducts of this is if you guys are doing the QR PS you guys can contribute up to when you file your taxes. So if you're like me and all the cool kids filing your taxes in September and October, you can contribute to your to your P for the previous year, all the way up to that point, just like how you're able to do for your Roth IRAs or IRAs, same kind of rules apply. So the secure act kind of open that up and then now you can have annuities and your retirement plans. So that kind of opens up a whole new door for those of you You guys, you know playing around with life insurance, Internet Banking concepts there. If anybody has any questions on this, feel free to type it into the chat, but I'm going to move on to kind of more rapid fire headline title is top multifamily markets in 2020, or the small metals and the suburbs. And they're seeing as a result of the slower economic growth apartment demand is projected at 240,000 units in 2020, which is approximately 20% less than that of 2019 estimated 300,000 units CBRE are he comments. rent control is sort of making a comeback. There was real laws passed in late 2019. Limiting and rent increases. If you read into it. It doesn't seem as bad I guess depending which side of the table you're standing on right politically, but sometimes they'll put in restriction where it needs to be based on some higher number that they're really never get, I think is sort of fair. But regardless, I mean, if you're investing in California, I don't know why you arguing that or even any other blue state for that matter probably not getting the rental value of the 1% rental value ratios for anything that's not a war zone property or C class property or worse. So I don't know why you would be doing that the U haul release their top 20 growth cities for 2019. And this is something I tracked closely This is the U haul is which used to move around with when you are broke and you didn't have any money. So it's it's a good indicator for what the blue collar workforce housing folks are doing when they have to move. A lot of the influx of people are in the Florida State Raleigh Durham, North Carolina is number one, Ron Rock, Texas is number for a lot of Florida ones in here, Cortland, Idaho Manhattan, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Actually, I don't know if this chart is incredibly useful. I mean, its top growth cities I'd rather see in the more regions and states that'd be how I would use the U haul Report.9:58I'm super excited about new program. I'm rolling That's going to reinvent scammy Real Estate education programs. So excited like Marie Kondo cleaning stuff up excited. Announcing my new mastermind program which consists of a closed members site with 27 packed weeks of content, plus bi weekly group video conference calls to us whatever half of the calls will be centered around granular investing tactics, and the other half will be holistic wealth building strategies that I have learned from the wealthy.10:25That's 25 plus hours of group coaching and masterminding and a secret Facebook group too. I know what you're thinking none another flippin Facebook group. Well, this one's going to be different, more intimate, exclusive, and no cheapskates or shady vendors in it. I've been coaching individual clients over the past couple years and I figured out what you guys need in a way to provide it in a cost effective way. learn more, go to simple passive cash flow.com backslash journey and join for the first cohort fills up, an introductory pricing goes away.10:59Update online conservation easements This is more for the accredited folks who make over two to $300,000 adjusted gross income per year but for everybody's entertainment what our land conservation easements so land conservation easements are a tricky way of getting a tax write off by designating a piece of land a land conservation easement, it no development can go there in the future by doing this, it becomes sort of a taxable donation. So just like how you take a bag of old clothes out to the Salvation Army, and you arbitrarily call that $500 but what you're doing here is you're taking a piece of land that has some nice environmental value to it like they usually put it around like chump will do this around his golf courses, and they'll designated a land conservation easement. But the tricky thing is that they'll like they have the value of land but then they'll mark up some kind of like fictitious development plan to be basically get an appraised value of when you are five to 10 times higher than what the land is actually worth. So what guys will do is though and invest or basically donate 50 grand and it goes on a taxable donation, but they get like a five to one pop on this stuff. So for every 50 grand they donate, they get 20 $50,000 of deductions, not credits, deductions, but for a guy and, you know, making more than $350,000 a year, that's a lot of money at 50 cents of every dollar of tax savings. The news is recently a lot of this has been getting a lot of unpopular attention, and it is kind of fishy. So investors are kind of in a holding pattern, how they're doing this. If they really need to get the tax deduction. What they're probably doing is just chancing it and doing it but they're not being overly aggressive and they're sticking to a boost ratio of five to one or less. So it's kind of one of those things where you don't want to be greedy, was it pigs get slaughtered hogs get fat so he basically buying charitable donations at 16 cents on $1 couple of charts markets with the largest rent growth year over year from November to November 2008 22,019 and the with the markets with the largest rent decrease I have these charts flip flop but the list you don't want to be on these are the losers number one Midland Odessa number two Honolulu number three bathroom rage before Scranton and number five, Lafayette Louisiana and the winners a top five markets are number one Pensacola which went up 8.3% Phoenix Arizona went up 7.9% number three Huntsville Alabama went up 7.1% for is Las Vegas 6.4% and number five, Portland, Maine which we went up 6.3% I'm aware of all these markets of Pensacola was kind of a weird one. I got surprised by that one someone told me it had to do with I guess there was like a hurricane there a while back ago and now this is part of the bounce back. Most markets will just kind of get keep pace with inflation, maybe two to 3% a year more of the hot markets will be five to 8%. So these are hot markets here. Amazon's 1.4 million square foot Florida project near Orlando is taken off. But don't be misled by another Amazon fulfillment center. This one's only going to have 500 new full time positions. And when you're looking at a tertiary market, for example, Huntsville, 500 jobs, it's nice right but not that much. Usually a bigger announcement from a major employer might be more like on the 1000 magnitude or higher one the few thousand jobs that's a big news but I think you see a lot of these new sources for real estate they'll say a search an employer, but at the end of the day, you really have to see what kind of what's the numbers how many people are going there. And also what is the multiplier effect for like a Boeing or like a car manufacturing on you have a lot of the ancillary other providers like bait build other pieces of the car the airplane. I don't know how it is with these Amazon fulfillment centers maybe if somebody sells snacks at the 711 or something like that but I don't think you have a big multiplier on on that but I could be wrong realtor.com came out with their 2020 housing forecast and they are take it for what it's worth right a bunch of realtors then again they do like to spend money on a lot of things like probably a lot of number crunchers and data peoples but they're saying mortgage rates by the end of the year will be going up a little bit to 3.8% average median home price will go up almost 1% existing home sales will go down 1.8% and I believe that talking more about volume than pricing and then homeownership rate 64.6% and single family home starts which are new builds will be going up to 6%. And another site but I found from our friends@realtor.com are is that millennials make up over 46% of the mortgage rates. donations up from 43% last year according to realtor.com. So maybe the millennials are finally moving out of mom and dad's basement and getting into the game. It's about time we have some more news on that later. Another news headline says us monthly volume and pricing trends by sector. This is post setup at simple passive cash flow calm slash investor letter, and then you can drill into the February report. From there Howard Hughes spends bottom half a billion dollars in Houston and his portfolio includes the former headquarters of a narco petroleum and chemical Philips plus a warehouse and developable land. A Seattle office report says that in Seattle, there's strong market dynamics continue to support the metros rapid expansion with a saturated tech sector extending and shaping the current real estate landscape. So yeah, Seattle has a lot of tech jobs, the big white collar workforce apparently they Working in offices, right? Go figure that there's a little chart there showing the growth of that more of that office space employment. So here was that us monthly volume and pricing trends by sector. So you have the office, industrial retail and apartment space shown. A lot of you guys are into technical analysis. I don't know if you guys are any good at it. I was never but you have the price growth, which is the line but then you have the volume bars underneath it. And usually when you have a lot of volume and you have movement, then that's a positive signal that you can really look at as a trend. And when you have movement on low volume, that's typically a maybe a false positive trend, a little map here of the largest employer in every state. Some of the more popular ones where our community is mostly based out of Washington is bowling. Oregon is Providence health. California is the University of California. That's a little weird, Nevada. MGM resorts, we don't care too much about those other states. Hawaii is altered industrial and never heard of them. But pretty much everywhere south east of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina. I think that's Virginia. Everything south of there is Walmart or the biggest employer in the state. So a little bit of trivia there. So I was reading some articles on newer trends in apartments and some of this was more on the E Class side. Coffee calls the A plus side I mean, these these are like the 1500 dollar to 20 $500 one bedroom apartments. So they're saying like, what are the new amenities that are going in and all of this has nothing to do with stuff I buy, which is the more workforce housing It is interesting to see what is going in there. So they're saying like the peloton bikes, the ones that had the little computer screen that apparently people are going crazy over recently, they have gyms in the apartments they want the tenants to feel special. I don't know what that means but more like white glove service. I know a lot of people have kind of been taking my advice and selling your primary residence because it doesn't make you any money invest the money instead and a lot of people are really liking the apartment life. You got the pool, you got kids, you don't have to worry about cleaning anything. They like the pool, you got a gym, there's a pool, and it's a lot cheaper to don't believe that nonsense of renting is just throwing money down the drain. I mean, whoever said that's probably stuck at the day job. You don't want to listen to that guy. impact of the next recession on the multifamily market is the next on topic. This came from the US Census Bureau data. So in the green line, it's showing that the vacancy rate, which typically is between six and 11%, obviously after the recession kind of spiked a little bit but over 10% but slowly but surely the past 10 years it's been coming down to almost all time lows for About 7% or so. And homeowner vacancy is usually about 1% to 3%. I pulled a chart of the stock market here. I honestly don't really follow the stock market stresses me out. But from time to time I like to know what's happened just so I can kind of poke fun at people who like trade stocks and options and think they know what they're doing. Yeah, I mean, pretty much at all time highs where we were in year 2000. Here market US market cap divided by GDP is what I'm looking at. So I don't know if you guys have bosses that shop at Macy's but they might be really sad because nearly 30 of the retailers 641 locations wash clothes following a decline in comparable sales through the holiday season. And we've been following this trend the last few months ago and listen to pass investor letters to get was forever 21. I can't think of the other ones but a lot of these storefronts We're kind of going out of business. It's the whole click vs brick battle get it click on your Amazon versus anyway another article that I put up is the retail property taxes is likely to rise and Sapir one announced that it will close up to 450 stores the electronic store Bose A lot of you guys like to wear and be anti social as you go out in public will close the remaining 119 retail stores but it's not all doom and gloom because if you shop at the discount retailer Five Below they will be opening 180 stores actually bought that place was like a frozen yogurt place at one time and then I went in there and I found that otherwise so Ponzi scheme alert $700 million from the income store. Now we did a podcast maybe about a couple months ago about buying websites sort of like how you buy a distressed house you buy distressed website that is suitable for me you make it a little bit better. So the income store I understand that This this model, right is is sort of like a trading you could you could buy and sell websites on there. I don't know exactly what they were doing. But apparently they took everybody's money and this kind of story came out, which is kind of a shame. You know, I'm all for getting these marketplaces open so entrepreneurs can get involved, but it's times like this where like, it makes everybody gun shy where you get one back after that kind of spoil it for everyone. We were talking a little bit about the millennials possibly moving on and finally buying homes. So there was a study that came out by the Deutsche Bank research that the median age of homebuyers is now 47 years old. And that went up from 31 to 47. And there's a little graph there. That shows, you know, way back when in 1980, the median home buyer age was 30 years old, and it's just been going up year after year after year. A lot more since the financial crisis. I mean, I guess people are having kids lot later. Another graph millennial share of the US housing market small and shrinking. So this graph is showing the millennial home ownership, slum share of American real estate home by each generation by medium cohort age. So showing how the baby boomers are they love that homeownership stuff. And then the Generation X folks, they're kind of hitting their Apex it looks like right now and then the millennials are kind of behind some new trends in apartments or in housing in general are bigger showers so you can cold shower, I don't know maybe have two people in there. I don't know what that's all about. But it was interesting. Like we have a more of a nicer apartment more of a B plus asset. And what we're having to do there is removed a lot of the bathtubs because people just don't use it. They'd rather have a more fancy or tiled shower than have a bathtub. They'll pay more for that. So I don't know if they're gonna fit two or more people in there but the showers a little bit more popular more modern these days maybe that has to do with people just being too busy. They just got to go in and out. They can't put rose petals around their bathtub and drink wine around that time. I was just joking there. Some of you guys need to laugh a little bit later in the day here. And then multi generational housing is becoming more popular and Hilton's launching this new brand called temple. So it's supposed to cater towards ambitious modern traveler, whatever that means you'll have iPhones or something like that for strategies for 2020 success in class, the multifamily space I've kind of moved on from classy properties, they're really difficult they never pay I think it's just better to be more in a B class type of asset unless you have a really really severely under market and you're going to do heavy value add like more than five six grand per unit rehab per unit. But this article that there's four strategies that they cited, first one was new markets. So looking markets that people aren't looking in number two was employing tech. And I really understand this whole tech angle. They're saying like, Oh, you have to use Alexa and all you know the little things, all that Amazon stuff, you don't put that in class B and C properties that'll grow legs and you'll you won't find it anymore. But maybe they're talking more about the smart thermostats. It didn't say 10 employees because in these type of areas, your employees are very important the leasing agent you pay them on salary in apartments and then regulations because like all the new rental control laws has been upon all that stuff. Very important recently went to a mastermind and a family office gentleman came in talk to us about a few trends that are happening said that in the year 2025, there'll be more people turning 65 then babies born so that means there's going to be a lot more older people soon but don't go to simple passive cash flow calm slash elf and start to learn how to make your own assisted living facility like A lot of you guys will do that is a huge, huge undertaking and something I tried to do and I just backpedaled and plus the silver wave isn't there yet, like a lot of the baby boomers are finally retiring, it's going to be another decade or two until they really start to use that assisted living facilities. Another big trend that they cited was the race for 5g and I don't know how to pronounce right, like who way but there's this big, big thing versus them, the United States where they don't want to use their technology because they think they're going to steal from us. I don't know if that's true if they really gonna steal from us. But you know, being from America probably isn't good if they win that race. And it's sort of the modern day race to the moon. It's riddled with backdoors. Lane two, don't trust it. Don't trust it. All right. Good thing. We're still getting the G here in Hawaii. So it'll be a while. Another thing that I found interesting from the presentation was, I think in the year 2026, there's going to be more electric cars than gas cars. That's sort of the inflection point. You know, a lot of these guys are family office money. And if you've never heard of these terms private equity family office and venture capital private equity is kind of the syndications people who are a million dollar to $5 million network. We're family offices are more on the scale of 50 to 100 plus million dollars, big money housing market falling short by nearly 4 million homes as demand grows. So this is just more of a general article. That's just reiterating. Look, guys, the country needs housing, and especially housing for folks who don't make $100,000 or more. And we're continuing to build new product, but the pace of population growth is increasing, and it's not keeping up with the pace with demand. And that's why I think why a lot of us fall back to real estate because it's sort of a commodity and you'll always need it. New podcasts and articles that I put together in the month of January 1 was the financial freedom for dentist so I have a lot of dentists in the mastermind program like almost seven or nine of them I realized so I got a bunch of their thoughts together and I remove the identities and zip codes and social security numbers and I put some of the the thoughts there and might be more of a dentist thing but it might also apply if you're a doctor or any other high paid professional to another article I wrote was the private money lending top mistakes I put it at simple passive cash flow calm slash lend mistakes you can also check out the dentist article at simple passive cash flow calm slash dentists we had an accredited investor Come on the podcast and do a coaching call with me appreciate when you guys do that i a lot of you guys really like to watch vicariously you know for high paid professionals is really many different scenarios that I have a lot of these coaching calls in the YouTube channel. I have them in index and a section if you guys want to check out some of the past ones. Yeah, check those out. And see if they help you but just know that not all situations are like and the biggest part of this at the end of the day is deal flow What are you going to do right like you read that Rich Dad Poor Dad book and you're like All right, we're going to take over the world but what are you going to do? You don't know right? He doesn't say anything because that kind of changes all the time. Who do you work with December 2019 they changed some borrowing standards. Some of you guys are still buying those rental properties or turnkey rentals there was some changes and how they calculate think that to income you guys can check out there all these links are again on simple passive cash flow calm slash investor letter number five here habits you guys miss the goals webinar. I believe the webinar was simple passive cash flow, calm 2020 dash launch. Do you guys want to go and watch that webinar again, but I made a little sub article on habits and I had Richard Wilson on podcast 184. He is a family office guy who manages and millionaire families. You guys can check that Went out at simple passive cash flow calm slash family office catching up on that chat box here one person mentioned or they're asking my opinion on the previous retail malls at least metropolitan areas possibly converting to food halls areas for experience halls I'm looking into like commercial commercial centers, these are the more ones with your haircut, place your food place grocery store, because I think you're always going to have to go to those and that's why Amazon had the insight to buy whole foods of brick and mortar at the end of the day. I mean, still the minority of transactions are done online. I think the problem is the more mulish you know, your cube malls not the big boxes like the Best Buy and those type of areas but going to the mall, that experiences going away. And yeah, I think you point out a good thing here like food halls, eateries and experience observe definitely coming online, right? We're like the old 90s retail mall that's obviously kept dying. But now people want more experiences or something family friendly or just a variety of food options. It's kind of like a one stop place. I guess it just kind of reinvents the idea of what going to the mall is. I mean, I saw I was just wasting all the time couple weeks ago during the holidays watching this like these guys went into an abandoned mall and YouTube probably find them on Dandan mall videos but yeah, I mean people want more funding hop golf will have that stuff the whole Have you ever been to Vegas guys like to do that? Well, I know you guys are thinking something else at this point. But like the construction equipment, like you have construction equipment, you just, you know move dirt around that kind of stuff or like escape rooms I like escape31:38from things like drive a tank or31:40you know, various experiences coming unique. The can't get a lot of places, right? I know that they call them D boxing to where they take a big space and they'll chop it up into these little food halls too. That's another term. I'm more of a spectator with this stuff. I kind of see it. I kind of watch it but I think as an investor, I try and stick to Certain things that I know, but eventually I think at some point multifamily apartments will just get so saturated by people who think that they can do it. Because I guess it's kind of true, you can kind of just pick a property manager and you can get lucky. And it's easy. And that's why a lot of people do it. And that's why a lot of the dumb money goes there. So eventually things will correct. And apartments won't be as good cap rates as other things. But I'm going to move into more of what I've been doing other than spelling things wrong, like I normally do. But these are the six needs that Tony Robbins always talks about. So this is how I always break it up. We're meeting growth, trying to get to know my investors better. I probably had about three four calls with investors every day for the past month. I think everybody wants to get on their 2020 goals and book a call, but we haven't had a chance to connect trying to connect with everybody at least once. So go ahead and do that. And then I'm also planning the tour's been high gain and do a luau in Hawaii and you guys can check that out symbol passes. Cash Flow calm slash week three, that's February 714. To 17 way I'm trying to contribute back to others, you know, and those calls, I always try and make it a point to give some kind of referral or critical feedback to anybody because I didn't really have that when I was building my portfolio. And I think a lot of people don't realize like, I'm gonna bought my first rental in 2009. And I bought my next one in 2011, I think or 12. But for like about five years, it was like watching grass grow. And I wish somebody would have told me don't buy 11 rental properties. They're a pain in the butt. I wish somebody would have told me that number three significance. So I've kind of been turned on to this whole family office concept where you kind of work with a smaller number of clients. So I've been kind of focusing on maybe turning into a family office where I work with people who are one to $10 million net worth folks where I'm sort of the consultant I'm in the middle of the wheel, doing the wealth planning, estate planning, wealth management, tax planning, trust and Corporate Services, family, governments. And then you know, what is the meaning behind your existence like a charity philanthropy, you can't just get a tax guy right on your team because the tax guy doesn't talk to the deal guy who doesn't talk to the wealth management guy, right? It's good that you get specialists on your team and you should, but there's a reason why there are specialists, they don't have the big picture away. I'm getting uncertainty. And the reason why I put this there and I read all I'm really like certainty, and I know all we all do, we all like to stay in our comfort zone. But I'm going to try do the first multi day event in Hawaii. I've been trying to plan it this past week, which is getting to be pretty close up to the wire. That's just how I do things, but it's gonna be cool. It's gonna be awesome. It's gonna a lot of fun. I think we got probably about over 30 people coming. So it should be good. How am I getting certainty in my life? So we had a gentleman Microsoft come to our mastermind group to kind of talk about how do you grade different investments and he kind of says great idea of budget 1234 of investment grade versus speculative grade investments, and assuming that the performers are using good assumptions and not just bogus yeah you can kind of break it down what kind of investment philosophy do you have? Are you just want to go balls to the wall and just do a high growth or you just want to do cash flow stuff and should you do that if your net worth is under half a million dollars so you got to take on some risk right if your goals are bigger number six love and connection so I been consciously trying to book four trips a year now they don't have a day job it's hard because I go traveling all the time to check out deals and but I encourage everybody to plan vacations. I know that sounds really silly but most people don't do it because if not you can just be Kobe Bryant and just disappear off the face of the ER was all for nothing. And what some of the resistance or distractions that I've been facing that I'm sure everybody else's the heck it's February right guys, you're one fourth way through the year and you had all these goals, you probably forgot the damn things, you know. Just remember you're gonna be like Janet is March going to be like January other than that no exceptions living a good life things are good some junk is buying your bought this like doorstop it's kind of heavy it's a Boolean to you guys can get the links on the website and I've been like trying to buy a lot of things that are automated. So I have these crazy automation with Alexa and trying to automate everything but I found these super simple you just press the button based on how long you want it to turn on. So the coffee pot I'll just turn it on for an hour so doesn't go on. And I've been reading this book willpower doesn't work by Benjamin Hardy, so heavier ears if you like to read books, but here it is in one minute. As human beings we are terrible at executing we need to give ourselves every single chance that we can get to hit success and a lot of that is building systems around making us successful. So what time you're waking up What do you how do you set the table for your day The next day, I just like reading the book and I would listen to subconsciously and they would mention certain examples and it would like trigger different things for me to change or new systems and put in place I can't really think of any right now. I would recommend it it's a pretty quick read no easter egg for you guys they know happy things. Here's the legal disclaimer And that brings us to the end of the February report. That's it. We'll talk to you guys next time.37:26This website offers very general information concerning real estate for investment purposes every investor situation is unique always seek the services of licensed third party appraisers inspectors to verify the value and condition of any property you intend to purchase. Use the services of professional title and escrow companies and licensed tax investment and or legal advisor before relying on any information contained herein information is not guarantee as in every investment there is risk. The content found here is just my opinion and things change and I reserve the right to change my mind. Above all else, do your own analysis and think for yourself because in the end You're the only person who is going to look out for your best interests. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.