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My son Benny is back from a four week trip halfway around the world with a non-diabetes camp program. He says it was amazing! To be honest, I had a really hard time with it. This week, we share how we prepared, what went wrong, how Benny deals with feeling different on these types of trips and a lot more. Previous episodes with Benny: 14 years of T1D Benny & Stacey talk untethered and more on their way to the endo Talking about Control IQ & addressing kids' questions about diabetes Our 12 year diaversary Ten years of T1D - our whole family speaks up This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Check out Stacey's book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode Transcript below: Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario Health manage your blood glucose levels increase your possibilities by Gvoke Hypopen the first pre mixed auto injector for very low blood sugar, and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom. This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. This week, I sent my teenager with type one halfway around the world for a month with a non diabetes regular camp program all the way to Israel. He's home safe, and I thought it would be fun and interesting to talk to him about how it all went. Are you glad you went with all the work you had to do?   Benny  0:43 I am so happy I went I'm so happy you guys let me go. It was amazing.   Stacey Simms  0:49 Benny is 16. And we share how we prepared what went wrong, how he deals with feeling different on these types of trips, and a lot more. 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. Always so glad to have you here. You know, we aim to educate and inspire about diabetes with a focus on people who use insulin. My son Benny, who you're going to hear a lot of this week was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two. He is now 16. 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. And I've talked about this for a while on the show. We've been planning for quite some time. But if you are brand new, earlier this summer, we sent our son Benny to Israel for four weeks. I still can't believe we did it. bit of background. He has attended this irregular summer camp about four hours away for us in Georgia since he was eight years old that first year for two weeks. And for a month every year since except 2020. Of course due to COVID. He also goes to diabetes camp. He started going to the sleepaway diabetes camp for a week, when he was seven, he went to a little day camp in our area, he mentioned that he gets called kudos, he went to that when he I want to say he was three or four years old, he was very, very little. And that's a wonderful program as well. But for this year of the regular camp, when you are a junior, when you're going to be a junior in high school, there is an option to go to Israel. So while we don't know all the staff who went we know the program, they know us the kids know Benny, and they know the type one situation as much as friends can. Even so this was really hard. It was mostly hard just for me. But I'm going to come back after the interview and tell you a little bit about the lowest moment I had for real when he was away. And how it was it was honestly perfectly timed. I was so lucky to have the support that I did. I'll do that after the interview. A couple of notes before this interview. If you are new to the show, and you haven't heard any of my interviews with Benny before, he is a bit silly. He's a bit sarcastic. And you know, I think our whole parenting or family style leans a bit toward that toward darker humor. So please No, and I'm sure I don't have to say this. We take diabetes very seriously. He is in great hands in terms of health care, and our endo who we've had, we've been seeing him since he was two things were doing great. I also want to say that I am a bit troubled by the comments you're going to hear Benny make about diabetes camp, but I'm choosing to leave them in like it's how he feels right now. Just remember when you listen, this is a 16 year old, who may not have the best memory of when he was younger. But I know how much he loved diabetes camp and how important it was for I think for the confidence that you're coming from him now. And we'll revisit this issue when he gets older. But we have done other episodes about how much he liked camp. So I'm gonna link those up as well if you want to listen. But look, how you feel is how you feel. And that can change at different ages doesn't make it any less valid. So I'm leaving those comments in. And after you listen to the interview, if you have any questions or stuff you'd like us to follow up on, please reach out, you can always go to Diabetes, Connections comm and contact me through the website. We have a Facebook group Diabetes Connections, the group, and of course, I'm all over social media. But I'd love to know what you think especially those of you who have teenagers or young adults who were not teenagers so long ago, you know, I'm curious to know because I wonder and I worry sometimes about being so open about this, you know, we are so far from perfect. I do worry a little bit about you know some backlash, frankly, and some people thinking we're really doing it wrong. So let me know what you think. But be nice about it. All right. Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dario, we first noticed Dario a couple of years ago at a conference and Benny thought being able to turn your smartphone into a meter was pretty amazing. I'm excited to tell you that Dario offers even more now. The Daario diabetes success plan gives you all the supplies and support you need to succeed. You'll get a glucometer that fits in your pocket unlimited test strips and lancets delivered to your door at a mobile app with a complete view of your day. The plan is tailored for you with coaching when and how you need it. And personalized reports based on your activity, find out more go to my dario.com forward slash Diabetes Connections.   Benny  5:13 Hi, Benny, how are ya? I'm great. How are you?   Benny  5:14 I'm great. How are you?   Stacey Simms  5:16 I'm doing very well. You've been home for three weeks as how are you settling in?   Benny  5:20 Great. I want to go back. I miss my friends.   Stacey Simms  5:23 Yeah, I'm sure. I'm glad you had a good time. So I have a lot of questions for you.   Benny  5:28 From Listen, stop. Hi, listeners,   Stacey Simms  5:33 parents and adults with type one. But first, let me just ask you How was the trip? I mean, I tell everybody how the trip was   Benny  5:40 very, very fine.   Stacey Simms  5:43 And we'll talk more in detail about diabetes stuff. But did it meet your expectations? Like Was it a good time?   Benny  5:49 Honestly, the most fun was when they just kind of let us do whatever in the hotels,   Stacey Simms  5:54 history, religion, majestie, no big shakes, just hanging out your friends.   Benny  5:59 Two days before we went to some banana boating thing. All the counselors were talking about how much fun it is like they all did it. And it's super cool. And it was really boring. Oh, you're the worst.   Stacey Simms  6:11 Alright, so let's talk diabetes stuff.   Benny  6:13 Oh, okay.   Stacey Simms  6:14 Um, we planned a lot of this. We talked to the staff and they knew you because you've been there for a long time. But not all this stuff know me.   Benny  6:21 I had one of the counselors as a counselor at Camp Coleman. Two years back, no, three years back. And then one of the other counselors was in our unit early early.   Stacey Simms  6:35 I guess my point is, you have been to this camp since you were eight years old. So while perhaps the people that were on your bus, you know, the the staff Yeah. familiar, the system, the people that I needed to talk to you understood that this was just you didn't just show up that day, and say, I'd like to hang out with these campers, so they knew who you were. So we did a lot of planning in advance that I can talk about at a different time, because I don't want to get too bogged down in all of that. But let's start with what involved you, which was the packing anything to share. I mean, we just went through and figured out what you needed, and then added half more, we gave you like, 150% of what we thought you needed. had that go for you.   Benny  7:11 I didn't touch 80% of what was medical wise. I mean, there wasn't much need for it all. Like it was nice to have it in case I didn't need it. Most of it was like die hard situation. Like if you're going through the desert for 18 weeks, and then swimming through the negative. What.   Stacey Simms  7:32 I don't know if you can swim through it. But I mean, like knock wood we sent you with, I think two vaccines and one GMO pipe open. So you didn't use any of that. Right? So that kind of stuff. Thank God. Now of course, of course, we sent you with more insulin than you needed normally. And you use a ton less insulin. Yeah. Which we'll talk about. Well, I   Benny  7:51 used most of the vials, right You certainly with   Stacey Simms  7:54 right? But I sent you with pens. Also, you know, I sent even lots of extra stuff. I'm curious and I mean, not to put you on the spot. But why don't you use a nice medical bag? Why won't you let me send you with something that is organized easily? much work the blob of a bag that you use too much work. It's so gross. It's one big compartment.   Benny  8:15 It works. It does its job.   Stacey Simms  8:18 We do break it up with little bags inside. But I gotta tell you, I know it's not me, but I would I would get like a nice medical bag   Benny  8:25 with little find a medical bag, and we can talk about it.   Stacey Simms  8:29 I have like 10 that I would get Oh, you're the biggest pain. Okay, so we'll look for that. Like this thing. No, that's a that's a packing cube.   Benny  8:37 Hmm. That Well, mine is packing you.   Stacey Simms  8:40 Well. Yours is part of a packing cube system. Yes, you have. For those of you who know packing cubes, I enjoy them. I have them all different sizes. Then he uses just one big rectangular bag for your medical supplies that he carries out at home in his backpack. And it's great because it has everything in it. But it's horrible because it has everything in it. I like you should compartmentalize. I   Benny  9:02 already do that. Give me a face in different way.   Stacey Simms  9:04 Yeah. Alright, so then you had everything packed. And you had your medical bag of all your diabetes stuff inside a backpack that I assume you took every year. Okay. Is it a Camelback? Did it have water? I don't remember Oh,   Benny  9:14 so I had a hiking bag right that I threw a Camelback bladder in   Stacey Simms  9:20 Was it easy to get water all the time?   Benny  9:22 Oh yeah. They made sure you had a you weren't allowed off the bus if you didn't have three liters minimum of water would you   Stacey Simms  9:29 perfect What about the the plane ride there that I know it's so long but you know for me not fun for me you got on a plane in Charlotte and you flew by yourself from Charlotte to Newark then you met the group went Newark to Israel and for me once the Dexcom signal disappeared in Charlotte like that was pretty much it cuz you got on the plane oh yeah appeared you had it but I didn't have it that was pretty much it for the day for me cuz I'm not gonna do watch you How so? How was it? You know? Did you do okay? Especially on the plane.   Benny  9:58 I didn't do anything. Special, like at all. When I got to new work, my blood sugar did go low a little bit, but I had food. And then I was fine.   Stacey Simms  10:07 He told you look out for this baggage claim Lowe's, when you get off the plane after you've been on the plane for a while and start walking, it was terribly described with it we're going to be this is going to be one big complaint episode I can tell grievances will be aired.   Benny  10:19 I just like to make it known. I may complain a lot about it. But I loved it.   Stacey Simms  10:23 Thank you for that disclaimer. Because I know you loved it. You read you just like to complain when you get a chance. Yeah. So you get there. I'm not going to I promise I'm not going to go blow by blow the whole trip. But I am curious. That's a very long plane ride. As you said you didn't do anything really special? Did you consider changing basil rates walk around or anything?   Benny  10:43 So the first trip the flight there, I didn't even think about it. And it worked out pretty fine. So on the way back, I didn't touch it.   Stacey Simms  10:51 Alright, well, that's control IQ helping. That really helps a lot. Because in the past, we've, if you've been in the car for three or four hours or a plane ride, you've gone so high, so that's really good. Okay, so we had set up different basal rates in your pump. Yeah, because we assume there would be a lot of activity. So as I recall, we had the regular one, then we had a 15% less insulin and the 30% lessons, and we labeled them. Yeah, 10% less, you switch to that when you got there.   Benny  11:15 The first full day we were there, I switched immediately to the 30%. Less one. And I was Hi, pretty much the entire day. And I did that for about a week. And then I texted you. And I thought the 15% less would be too much. So we made a 20 like 3% one. But eventually, I ended up just switching back to my normal basal rate. And I mean, that was fine.   Stacey Simms  11:40 One of the questions that we got and that I was going to ask you about here is talking about how difficult it was to carb count. Forget the activity for a minute or two. But like with all the foods that you do, yeah, no,   Benny  11:50 it was next to impossible to know exactly how much I just kind of guessed. And sometimes, or at least most of the time, breakfast and lunch, it was next to impossible to know how much I should give myself because I didn't know what kind of activities we were doing. And I didn't know how like extraneous they would be.   Stacey Simms  12:10 Well, they would tell you in the morning, though, wouldn't they what you were doing? I mean, I knew   Benny  12:14 what you were doing. Well, they they tell us the night before, but like it was vague. It was like okay, we're going to go on a hike tomorrow. And that could mean we're going to walk 10 feet up in elevation, up some stairs and then look at a valley or canoeing. We're going to walk through the negative for four days.   Stacey Simms  12:32 I feel like I should have asked you more about like when you were going high when you first got there because you gave yourself 30% less insulin. How did you feel like were you uncomfortable was fine. Yeah, you never feel bad when you're high?   Benny  12:42 Well, I mean, sometimes. Yeah, I know. I know. But yeah, no, I was fine.   Stacey Simms  12:46 But mentally were you? I mean, I I don't even have to ask because you you didn't get stressed out. You never get stressed out because of diabetes. Like Were you worried like no, no, I mean,   Benny  12:59 the only time I was where I was worried about going low during the desert. Yeah, but that was about it.   Stacey Simms  13:05 So tell us about that. What was the desert when you say that? What was that?   Right back to Benny answering that question. But first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Gvoke Hypopen and when you have diabetes and use insulin, low blood sugar can happen when you don't expect it. That's why most of us carry fast acting sugar and in the case of very low blood sugar, why we carry emergency glucagon there's a new option called Gvoke Hypopen the first auto injector to treat very low blood sugar to Gvoke Hypopen is pre mixed and ready to go with no visible needle in usability studies. 99% of people were able to give the book correctly find out more go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Gvoke logo. Gvoke shouldn't be used in patients with pheochromocytoma or insulinoma visit Gvokeglucagon.com slash risk. Now back to Benny talking about the only time he was really nervous about diabetes on the trip   Benny  14:05 is like the third or fourth day we were there. And they made us pack our bags. We left the hotel. We put our big bag with money with the majority of our clothes under the bus and we didn't see that for three days. We had a medium sized like duffel bag, which had clothes for the next few days. And then we had our you know our backpack. So the bus would drive our medium bag to the next camping spot. We'd unload that and we'd carry our our normal bags with us. About 20 minutes into the first hike. I immediately went low. So the medic that was with us, like prepared. You know I talked to her. She was great. She had like four like hand sized bottles of like squeeze honey, and I downed like half a one like 20 minutes into the trip. That was pretty much the hardest, battling Those lows was the hardest, like the most difficult thing I had with that diabetes pretty much the entire trip.   Stacey Simms  15:05 What was the medics reaction? Was she just met? Oh,   Benny  15:07 no, she cool. She was, um, she was a medic in the IDF. She had worked with kids with diabetes before she'd been on the trip. And she was fine about it. So   Stacey Simms  15:15 she didn't make you feel weird now. Okay. How was the honey? It's pretty good.   Benny  15:20 You know, eventually, I just got to the point because I mean, it was a constant battle for the entire trip. Make sure it Angola eventually just got to the point where I just like, tapped her on the shoulder and she'd be like, okay,   Stacey Simms  15:31 and that was three days. Yeah. Okay. So that was probably the hardest part. Yeah, I miss those three days.   Benny  15:36 It didn't help that we were grotesquely underfed.   Stacey Simms  15:40 Okay, complain away. Hit me with the breakfast so late   Benny  15:43 for lunch and dinner. We're fine everyday. I still don't understand why. But breakfast, you know, we'd like in the early hours of the morning 530 to 11. breakfast every day was a cup of tea and a single cookie. And I will never understand it. We'd hike, you know, and then at 11 we'd sit down and have lunch. And then we wouldn't do anything until dinner. And I don't understand why lunch and dinner were so big. If we're not doing anything. Did you ever put anything in your bag?   Stacey Simms  16:11 Like for the next morning was? Yeah,   Benny  16:12 well, so my friend Nathan had these like, you know, those like gels that bikers use on there. Yeah, he had a bunch of those. So I stole a couple. They had like 100 milligrams of caffeine in them to be perfect. But you   Stacey Simms  16:23 never put like a pita in your bag for the next day. No,   Benny  16:26 gingers weren't like, stuff we could take with us. I'm just kidding. And then they were like, I mean, it wasn't like we were literally in the middle of the desert with no way. Yeah, we had to walk or we wouldn't be able to get out. There was always you know, bus was always a 20 minute drive away.   Stacey Simms  16:40 What food Did you like the best shwarma   Benny  16:44 shwarma in a pizza with hummus. There was some spice, we can never figure out what it was. It looked like a red chili sauce. But they always just pointed at it and said you want spicy. You know that when you know lettuce, pickle, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Every time, every lunch.   Stacey Simms  17:02 That was yummy. So good. I would assume that after a month of eating pretty much the same thing. You figured out how to dose for food if not for the activity. Yeah,   Benny  17:09 after a while, we stopped doing, you know, like intense, hard activity. So I kind of had to readjust again, because it was like in the middle. It was you know, it was hot. And we'd walk a lot, but it wasn't like, hard. You know, like, I'm gonna die. It's 106 out.   Stacey Simms  17:28 So everybody wanted to know what surprised you about the trip or about the trip about diabetes, whatever that means to you.   Benny  17:33 Um, how bad the plane food was,   Stacey Simms  17:36 oh, plane food has a reputation of being delicious. I can't I mean, why would that surprise you?   Benny  17:41 I've never had like, a long in a flight. But yeah, but you ate it? I didn't on the way back. Oh,   Stacey Simms  17:48 that's what surprised you. Yeah. I'll tell you what, surprise me. Oh, okay.   Benny  17:55 So closer to the end of the trip, they took us around to a bunch of different kinds of people. We met Orthodox Jews, a Palestinian, a druid drude, we met someone who just lives in Israel, you know, doesn't believe in anything. And we got other perspectives on everything. And just the way, you know, as a complete outsider, in the way they all see everything is just so different in the way that they saw things compared to each other. I mean, I had never taken into, like thought how different people could see the same thing.   Stacey Simms  18:31 That's really interesting. That's great. What surprised me the most was that you didn't have one instance while you were there. And this is all about diabetes, for me of the kind of thing where every once in a while, you'll forget to put your pump back on, or you will have a site crash out and you won't change it or just something happens where every once in a while you are 400 you know, for three hours, and I'm like, what's going on? You're like I fixed it, I rage bullets and all that stuff. And I was sure that that was going to happen a lot. It didn't happen once. It didn't have only one high, you went low, but it didn't happen once. And I gotta tell you, I'm so proud of you. And maybe that sounds like a low You're welcome. Maybe it sounds like a low bar as you listen. But you send a 16 year old off by himself, right? Nobody was. And to be clear, no one was checking you every night. Nobody was right, nudging you. So   Benny  19:17 Yoni, I love him. He's my favorite person of all time. I love you. And I know you're not listening. He was the counselor that we decided would check in on me make sure I'm not dying. Because he was in my cabin. A couple years ago, the counselors would come around and do room checks, make sure everyone's in their room. And he'd always you know, he's like many of you dead. That's what he'd say, you know, I'm good. And but you know, we both met you know, we both knew he meant like, is your blood sugar? Good. You know, you're dying. Yeah. And every once in a while, maybe once a month, once a week. I get a false low in the middle of the night because I'd be sleeping on my Dexcom my Dexcom was super sensitive to compression lows. Ya know, cuz   Stacey Simms  20:01 I got those low alerts to   Benny  20:02 every low in the middle of the night, besides one or two of them were compression lows. And it was crazy. But he was following you. Yeah. So so that's where I was going with that he'd text me in the middle of the night, you know, like 1am 2am. And he'd be like, Do you need help? because he'd wake up to it. Sure.   Stacey Simms  20:20 I shouldn't laugh. That's   Benny  20:21 fantastic. And don't get me wrong. I was funny. Yeah, I was fine. And then in the morning, every day, I'd have to go up and like, hug him and say, I'm sorry for waking him up.   Stacey Simms  20:29 But that was really cool. And I probably should have mentioned that already that we did. That was part of our protocol. And then on the other side of things, we decided I would follow, I turned off all my alarms except urgent, low. And the idea was, well, what am I going to do? If he's 50? Right. And I'm in Charlotte, and you're in Tel Aviv. So what we decided was, I would not text you right away, I would wait like 20 minutes or something. And then I would text you if I couldn't get you over text only. And I would text a D, a D. And I think in my head, then I was like, then I'll text the people in New York. And then I'll text the embassy. Like, I had this plan in my software. Forgive me, I was so nervous. But it never got to that point, because let me just give you some credit. The two times there was urgent lows that came in, but they resolved or I could tell that they were fake. They resolved very quickly. There were two times when I texted you and you texted me right back. And that was I don't know if you know how great that was. That helped me so much that you just said it's wrong. I'm fine. It was great. So thank you.   Benny  21:29 We had three Israelis on our bus as counselors. And when then we had two Americans from Camp Coleman. One Israeli was like the main guy, he was our tour guide. I mean, he was also a counselor, but he was he was like the unit head of the bus. But the other Israeli shy. Me Yoni and Shai would went outside on like the third day and your neighbors like just in case I'm not there, I want you to show her how to awake you. So I showed her the hypo pen and the vaccine me showed her how to use it. And I told her on my pump, if the numbers red, use those if it is yellow, do not use those. I don't use them both. Oh, yeah. You know, I talked to one of the others. But like if the number is yellow, do not use those color hospital. Use the thing den call hospital. Every time we moved hotels, we'd get a new room with new people. So every night on the first night, I'd tell them you know where the type of pen in the back seam er, I tell them how to use it. And I'd tell them not to use it. Unless you couldn't get hold of Yoni. Yeah, or shy. If anything happens. Look at the number call Yoni. If you can't get ahold of Yoni calls, you know, keep going up the food chain until you can.   Stacey Simms  22:41 How did they react? Did anybody you seem nervous?   Benny  22:43 Everyone was like, Don't die. You know? Like, if I have to use this, I'm gonna kill you. Everyone's super chill.   Stacey Simms  22:49 Alright, I'm confused though. Red and yellow numbers because I don't want   Benny  22:52 so on the pump. If your blood sugar's low, the number like we're, like tells you the actual number. It's red. And if you're high, it's yellow. Oh, so   Stacey Simms  23:01 you were saying don't give you the vaccine and the hypopyon if you're hot. Yeah, I thought you were saying like, give it faster. You're telling the story.   Benny  23:07 Okay, that was it. Yeah, if if you look on the T slim, it's yelling at me right here. My blood sugar is totally 120 right now. Perfect. I thought you ate before the interview, please. But yeah, I told them on the right side of the screen. There's a number typically with an arrow. If that number is yellow, and you give the hypo pan or the vaccine between me that is very bad.   Stacey Simms  23:32 gone, it's gone. It's gone. Okay, that's why you needed to go to the hospital. Now I get it. I just you can tell I'm very involved parents that I look at all the time. And I know the numbers. You know, you got the T slim right when I stopped looking at stuff. And as a started to stop looking started to stop. But I mean, you were 12 because we're up for renewal. Now you're 12. And that's like, exactly the time when I'm not going to start looking in your pants. Right?   Benny  23:59 Sorry, that was a weird way to word that.   Stacey Simms  24:01 But you know what I mean? Like, I'm not gonna go in your pocket in your pocket. And you do it yourself when you were a little like kind of like give me your pump? Or let me see, you know, or with the animals that we had the remote so it was a lot easier. But yeah, so I don't I'm familiar with the T slim but it's not like you had animals for 10 years and I could like fly through that pump. The TCM I have to put my glasses so   Benny  24:19 funny, because I can fly through this. But it's so funny watching her dad tried to do it once. bless his heart. Oh my god, it was painful.   Stacey Simms  24:32 One of the other things that I was worried about was when you were going in the Dead Sea or doing some of the swimming because not only is the Dead Sea super salty, some of the other places are salty too. But it's so salty. We've been told you have to protect your Dexcom transmitter. I know everything worked out. Did you cover it?   Benny  24:47 I did. And then it fell off in the Dead Sea. The transmitter. No the cover. Oh, so we went in the middle of summer. The water was almost boiling. You're come we're complaining It Like It wasn't unbearable. We all went in for like 10 seconds to see if we could flow and then we ran out when we went Yeah, it was great. I know what it was warm say nice things. Did I not put a disclaimer? I loved the trip, but there was a lot to complain about. So   Stacey Simms  25:17 the band aid thingy cover fell off.   Benny  25:19 Yeah, we had one of the clear, you know, the clear one,   Unknown Speaker  25:21 we got a waterproof check agenda. Yeah.   Benny  25:23 So we got in and it started to peel off. And then I got out and got back in for a second. And it came off. And you know, my Dexcom was fine. Okay, good. That's good.   Stacey Simms  25:33 I guess you could have floated by you would have seen it. Haha. Okay, come off. I did see it. But I'm glad so it did hit the salt a little bit kept working. Alright, that's good to know. Did you wear anything on your feet? Remember, I told you you should bring shoes.   Benny  25:45 So remember those like $20 rubber shoes? I got? Yeah. Those broke on the trip to Israel, like in my backpack. So well. So one of them broke. So I had one on my left foot. And then the one on my right. I was like holding on to with my toes. Yeah. And eventually it just kind of let it go.   Stacey Simms  26:05 But at the Dead Sea, they were able to wear anything on your feet. Yeah, that those good because that stuff hurts.   Benny  26:11 Well, I took them off eventually. Because Yeah, whatever.   Stacey Simms  26:14 Oh, to be on. Alright, so let's talk about diabetes tech and gear and everything. You didn't seem to me like you had any issues we gave you. I said 150% of supplies. I think I gave you 300% of Dexcom and inset so I probably lied. Yeah, so you didn't run out? You didn't have any troubles. It didn't look like you lost anything. Really. I remember texting you at one point. I remember why we were texting. But you said something like, I think I was pretending to joke but really telling you like, hey, make sure you change your insert because I was trying to stay away and not do it. Then I was trying to do like that mom thing where you joke what you're really you know? And you said I just changed because it fell off in the ocean. So did you have an issue with stuff coming off in the water? Or Okay,   Benny  26:57 well, we were only in the water twice.   Stacey Simms  26:59 Oh, there you go. Did you change your inset every three days? Like I didn't.   Benny  27:04 It was either until it stopped working or it fell. I   Stacey Simms  27:06 hate that you do that? Come on, man. Well, my skin heals fast enough for it. So Alright, this is the point in the podcast where I give the disclaimer again that Vinnie has had diabetes for a very long time. He knows what he's doing. We wish certain things   Benny  27:22 worse diabetes mom, but at   Stacey Simms  27:23 some point, I have to kind of let him make some mistakes. And I can only yell at him when he's home. So I'm glad you changed it when you needed to. I can tell by your numbers that you know everything was okay. I will tell you that my biggest fear was not an emergency, although obviously that's very fearful to think about because I knew you had a medic, I knew Israel has good health care, you know, wasn't worried about that kind of stuff. I mean, I was worried that diabetes would slow you down and make you feel different give you problems that your friends wouldn't have. He's smiling. You feel different? Yes, I   Benny  27:54 did. You really Of course. That's what I worry about the most. I thought we got over that face.   Stacey Simms  27:58 You got over it a long time ago. But I worry still that like what I mean by that is by slow you down is you'd be on a hike and you would go low and they'd have to stop and everybody else would go ahead. And then you'd be like with the staff catching up and feeling bad, you know? Or you'd be on a camel, you got to write it down. It's   Benny  28:16 so much fun and so disappointing at the same time.   Stacey Simms  28:19 Are you tell the story then I'll tell you my fear.   Benny  28:21 They hyped us up for this camera ride for a full week. We got on the camels walked two minutes in the direction we were supposed to be heading and then walked back. They made it sound like we were gonna like full day through the desert on the camel. You say   Stacey Simms  28:35 you're gonna adopt a camel and bring it home? Yes, I have never been on a camel. So that's two minutes more than me.   Benny  28:41 Did you know that camel milk is actually designated as a superfood because it has all the vital nutrients.   Stacey Simms  28:47 I just read somewhere. And I'm not putting it in my newscast because it looks like garbage to me that camel milk cures type two diabetes?   Benny  28:54 Because that's real. Yeah, since but I just read that this.   Stacey Simms  28:59 Yeah, this is super food though, right? It's supposed to be really nutritious.   Benny  29:02 It has all the essential nutrients.   Stacey Simms  29:04 Oh, fabulous. But my fear would be that you'd be on the camel, you'd be low. You'd feel lousy, you'd have to get off, right? you'd miss out things. And your friends would be like, Oh, well, you're slowing us down. You know, he's laughing at me. But that's the kind of stuff I worry about that more. Because you're smart enough. The one thing that I really think we've we've really taught you well is that when you need help you ask for it. You don't let things go, right. You're not going to be in pain or feel uncomfortable and not tell somebody and with diabetes. I think that's really, really important. So I know you laugh at me, but I worry about the feeling different, even though you're pretty cool about   Benny  29:42 Well, I mean, I don't worry about that. But it's also the fact that I don't hang around people that would dislike me for something I can't control. I don't interact with those kind of people. You know, if we all had to stop which, you know, we we almost never had to stop for me. I mean, I could I could keep going and drink coffee at the same time. But we stopped a lot anyway, just because everyone got tired. You know, if we stopped because of me, everyone would be like, Oh, thank god we're stopping. With the I don't know, can I? No, no. What the heck, Benny? Thank you.   Stacey Simms  30:14 Alright, so here's a question from my friend Steven, who says at this camp, how often did you think about diabetes, versus how often you thought about diabetes at diabetes camp. It's been a while since you've been to diabetes camp. But   Benny  30:26 diabetes camp, in my opinion, made diabetes feel like a disability, more than anything I've experienced,   Stacey Simms  30:33 will actually tell me more about that.   Benny  30:35 Every time we were doing something, they were like, I don't know how to explain it. It's just everything was centered around it, you know, and someone did their inset for the first time by themselves. But you know, good for you pat on the back, the entire cafeteria would clap for them. Like, while you just conquered cancer. Like, I mean, I don't mean to compare it to that. But like, it's, from my opinion, it's like, they were like, the mindset of the staff was like, you know, even if they did have diabetes, his mindset was like, these kids have the worst life in the world. And I need to try and make it better for a week.   Stacey Simms  31:12 Interesting. Because when you were little when you were seven, or eight, and you did your inset for yourself for the first time, didn't they applaud you didn't that feel good at the time at the time, but like, I look back on it, and it's like, okay, you clap for me, that didn't change my life. If you clap for me, and my pancreas started working again. I think that that's, I'm going to kind of keep this as a time capsule thing, because I think that your perspective may change as you get older, but I think very valid. Right. And you're 16. But I think diabetes camp. I will, we'll agree to disagree. I think it prepared you for camp.   Benny  31:47 It might have but   Stacey Simms  31:49 so back to the question, if you think you can answer it. Did you think about diabetes more or less, less, significantly   Benny  31:55 less, just because everything at diabetes camp was centered around diabetes, and everything was like, Alright, check your blood sugar. Now, I can check my blood sugar when I need to. I don't need someone five years older than me to tell me that I need to check my blood sugar. And that something I've been doing for 10 years is wrong. Because they think it's wrong. You know, they wouldn't let me use my Dexcom as my number until one of the last years I was there. Yeah. And we had been doing that for four years by that.   Stacey Simms  32:21 Yeah. So when you're on a trip like this, maybe because you're the only one, somebody like you who's confident, doesn't really feel like they need tons of I don't know supports the right word. But you don't need a lot of attention to diabetes. And other than yourself, you felt like you thought about it less just enough to take care of what you just take care of. Yeah. How do you do that? Do you? I'm curious, just for a little insight into your psychology. Do you wait until you get an alarm? Are you thinking about it when you're eating? Like how does that work?   Benny  32:47 I wait until I get an alarm. It is not on my mind. until something is wrong. Well, you   Stacey Simms  32:52 pull us for food. Please tell me you bolus for food when   Benny  32:54 you eat. Well, yeah. But like, other than that, other than that diabetes 90% of the time. Unless something's wrong with it. It's you know, there's not on my mind, just in the background. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  33:04 I think this interview was good. I'm not sure people will stop listening to me, because you're so great.   Benny  33:08 I don't know. I think every time I'm on the I'm on the show your views go up about Oh, yeah. I can eat the mic again. If No, please   Stacey Simms  33:16 don't. So Stephen went on to say, is there a lesson in the different kinds of attention? Is there a lesson in there for you as you get older? Or do you view diabetes camp at Camp like this as being completely non related?   Benny  33:28 Hmm. Because my chair gonna say   Stacey Simms  33:30 my answer is that diabetes camp, even though you enjoyed it less as you got older diabetes camp, when you were younger, prepares you to be more independent whether you remember it or not, because I remember Benny before diabetes, can't think any after diabetes camp.   Benny  33:42 That's all I'll say. Yeah. You know, looking at it right now. I think I would have done just fine at Coleman without not without kudos. Definitely. Could I think everyone should go to kudos. It is the best thing in the world. That's for little kids. Yeah, it is amazing. I must have changed, if it hasn't changed, and your kids are right now. But CCT and Morris, they're good for kids that aren't, you know, 100% confident in themselves. But I mean, by the time I was like, 910, I had already gotten comfortable with the fact that I had diabetes, and I couldn't change it. So like, be sad about it.   Stacey Simms  34:16 Well, and that leads us to another question that someone had, Sally asked, Do you ever feel it's unfair that you have diabetes? And if so, how do you work through those thoughts?   Benny  34:25 I absolutely think it's unfair. I mean, it sucks. But the way I look at it, it's just, you know, I can't change it. What am I going to do about it? Why be sad about it, and then I move on.   Stacey Simms  34:35 You've always kind of been that way in terms of accepting diabetes. And since I mean, when we're very young, you didn't really understand what's going on. And then once or twice in middle school, you had some real like, I'm really upset about this, but we just talked it through. Do you remember ever kind of feeling differently or have you always you're just such an easygoing?   Benny  34:53 Every once in a while when like two or three insects wouldn't work, and like I had to change my Dexcom my inset and my car. At the same time, I lose my transmitter, you know, every once. Every once in a while, it's like, this sucks. But I mean, that comes around so rarely. There's so very little times when I genuinely can't do something because of diabetes. There are times I can't do things, but not because of diabetes. But I've learned to just what are you gonna do?   Stacey Simms  35:22 I think to the fact that we, I mean, I'll pat myself on the back, I guess a little in that we've never really told you. You couldn't do it. Let you do all these crazy things, even though I'm at home, frankly, wanting to puke. What was I thinking? But we'll let you do it. And hopefully that helps with your attitude. I'm hoping it helps you you know as you get older. It's the worst. All right, we got to start wrapping it up. Now. When you Okay, so you hurt your foot while you were there. You can tell that story if you want to in whatever detail you want to but I'm curious when you got to the doctors in Israel, he kicked your kicked a coral there. So   Benny  35:57 over, you know, a couple events happened I ended up getting a pretty nasty infection on my foot.   Stacey Simms  36:01 When you saw the doctors in Israel. What did they talk to you about diabetes in anybody's feet? Sometimes people get the wrong idea and freak out.   Benny  36:09 So I don't really know what the healthcare system is. Because everyone spoke Hebrew. I just kind of went along with it. I was shy. Um, so she was translating. Yeah. Well, she just told me Okay, we're gonna do this now. I mean, I felt perfectly safe,   Stacey Simms  36:22 I'm sure. But she speaks Hebrew and English. Yeah.   Benny  36:25 So we get into the clinic. We go to the front desk, we tell them what's wrong. They said, Okay, wait here. She told me this process normally takes about four or five hours. We were done in like, 45. That's great. We go in to the room. We sit there for maybe a minute waiting for the doctor. He comes in. He takes like two looks at my foot. He like touches it for a second. He's like, does it hurt? And I'm like, sometimes he's like, yeah, it's just really bad infection. So he gave me a prescription for antibiotics and antibacterial cream. And then we went to the pharmacy and got him.   Stacey Simms  36:55 So there wasn't a lot of discussion about him diabetes, nobody   Benny  36:57 asked No. I mean, it wasn't even a thought.   Stacey Simms  37:00 All right. Well, I like that. I don't like that. I mean, obviously, you can take antibiotics. It's not a big deal. But you know, it makes me a little nervous.   Benny  37:07 If I was concerned.   Stacey Simms  37:09 I know. I know. And then the opposite spectrum is they go they fuss over feet too much because they might go Have   Benny  37:15 you ever told the river told the story about Yes, Simon will tell it again real quick.   Stacey Simms  37:19 Can I tell ya, basically, about two or three years ago, at the end of camp, Vinny had a large blister on his foot and went to the infirmary to get a band aid for it. And they sat him down, they soaked the foot they called me they made me promise to bring them to the endocrinologist. They were very concerned with his footwear. They wanted special diabetes socks. Now listen, as you listen, if you're newer to diabetes, neuropathy and feed can be a big issue. If you've had elevated blood sugars for years. It's not going to happen at a 14 year old type one with Goodyear one sees what happened was I finally and I yelled at them, Benny. And if you heard, but I got on the phone. I said, Give me Benny and he got on the phone and I said, are they scaring you? Like did they make you think there's something wrong with your feet like? And he was like, Mom, it's fine. It's fine. I was just terrified. They were gonna put thoughts in your head that didn't belong there. And then I wasn't gonna bring you to the endo, because we didn't need to. But finally, when I saw him, we told him the story. And he was like, should I examine your feet? And he was like, No, it's fine. All right, it was great. He was like, Okay, are you good? You're good.   Benny  38:18 I think the funniest part of it all was, so there's one nurse there every year that's only there for the first few weeks, which is a shame. She is the best. She knows that I know what I'm doing. And trust me, right? So at the nurse's office at the camp, there's the front desk, and then there's a closet in the back with all the meds. I just kind of go to bed and get ready. But you know, most of the other nurses are like, Oh my god, what's wrong? You okay?   Stacey Simms  38:41 That's Karen, by the way, who you love.   Benny  38:42 I love Karen. So Karen, who had like, was either in the process of leaving or was leaving the next day. And she walked in after everything had happened. You know, she wasn't there yet. And she was like, Benny, what are you doing? That's like, they made me do this.   Stacey Simms  38:59 It was fine. It was all fine. Yeah, no,   Benny  39:01 I'm not mad. I just think it's funny. You   Stacey Simms  39:04 roll with those things very well.   Benny  39:06 Okay, so the camp director of Coleman is leaving, which is very sad. I love Bobby so much. I mean, him I have a pretty good relationship. But here's a video of him going on the zip line over the lake, and he flips upside down. And it is so funny. I will show you later.   Stacey Simms  39:19 Okay. He loves you. I think he appreciated that you took on the challenge of going to regular camp with diabetes, and they've always been very good to us. Um, but start wrapping this up. Are you glad you went with all the   Benny  39:30 work that you had to show? I am so happy I went I'm so happy you guys. Let me go. It was amazing.   Stacey Simms  39:36 What would your advice be to other kids that are looking at programs that are that are difficult like this?   Benny  39:43 Take a job Oh, it is gonna be fine. If you know what you're doing at home. You know what you're doing anywhere. If you trust yourself enough to go out to dinner one night, I think you trust yourself enough to go somewhere without your parents for a couple days. It might not be a month long trip. in a foreign country, it might be to your friend's house for a couple days. But if you think or know, you trust yourself enough to be able to take care of yourself for a couple of days, I think you should go for it. You're always going to have someone with you, or at least you should, that cares about you, and will do things that you need for you.   Stacey Simms  40:19 Right as a minor. Yeah, on these programs is what you mean, right?   Benny  40:22 Yeah. Especially on these programs, there's always going to be at least two or three people that can and will help you with whatever you need. I will be your question for you.   Stacey Simms  40:33 You don't have to answer this. We stress experience confidence, responsibility over perfect numbers. Do you sometimes worry about your health or your numbers? or Why? What Why do you feel good about it? I mean, I think you're doing great. I don't want you to think you're not. But you're a one C is not going to be 5.8.   Benny  40:50 I mean, my thing is, you got to enjoy life. You can't worry about every little thing all the time. If your blood sugar goes high, your blood sugar goes high, darling, give yourself some insulin and go to have some damn ice cream. Sorry,   Stacey Simms  41:05 well, when you're high,   Benny  41:08 but like, if you're 200, and your friends want to go get ice cream, go give yourself some insulin and go get ice cream. Don't say no, because you don't want your number to be perfect. Can I tell them the celery and kid crying in the corner joke you can try. So we have a joke. There are some parents that are really strict with their kids. And those kids eat celery and cry in a corner all day.   Stacey Simms  41:29 And I worry sometimes that the kids eating celery and crying in the corner are going to be healthier long term.   Benny  41:34 So the thing is, you know, they have perfect most kids that are eating celery and crying in the corner have perfect numbers. I don't have perfect numbers. And I'm doing not crying in a corner. I don't think there's or you don't like to watch it. But I mean, it gets the point across you know, unhappy perfect numbers. You know, you might live a full life and have perfect numbers. If you do good for you. You're top 0.1% of diabetics. But there's no point in worrying about being perfect all the time. Because it's unrealistic. And it's not fun.   Stacey Simms  42:06 So the last question here is when you came home, I said it's going to be really hard for me to feel good about nagging you all the time since you just did a month successfully away from me. You're going to be a junior in high school. We're looking ahead to college. So I was joking. And I said I want to try to be here just for customer support. Like you tell me when you need me and I'm here for you. I don't want to be in your face anymore reminding you. It's been three weeks. This has been so hard because you're in my house and now I see everything and I know what's going on. How are we doing on that? Or is this a good situation? This is perfect. Oh God, I was hoping you wouldn't say that. I want to make you more   Benny  42:42 you good. You have done great. You have done wonderful. And if you want to get a bit more naggy you can get a bit more naggy it's not gonna change anything. But   Stacey Simms  42:50 all I want is for you to change that instead every three days. Put it on your calendar. I don't   Benny  42:54 use my calendar, only old people use. It's the worst. But I'll try harder.   Stacey Simms  43:00 Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you very much for joining me, I appreciate you coming on. I as always, I don't know how much of this I can actually use. We see Dr. vanderwaal. Next week, we go back to the end or next week so you can tell him all about your adventures. In fact, I need to take all the forms with us for Dr. V next week. Because we need your DMP. And you're I'm looking for the forums he's making fun of me looking around because we have a we have a DMP we have your 504 I gotta get all that stuff. My 401k   Benny  43:26 I have one it has $7   Stacey Simms  43:30 you really do from the grocery store. Alright, we'll leave it there. Benny, thank you so much for joining me, I appreciate it. I'm so glad you're home safe. Love you.   Benny  43:39 If your listener count doesn't go up for this episode, I'm suing Stacey Simms  45:24 you're listening to Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms. Oh, boy, so you tell me good idea to put them on the show? Let me know what you think. And I will link to our other episodes with Benny. And you know, when he was younger, and maybe had some different opinions about things, you can listen to those at Diabetes connections.com, click on the episode homepage. I also want to mention, I realized that we left out a question that you may have, which is how did we keep the insulin cool? How did we keep the supplies cool, as you heard Benny talking about, you know, hiking through the desert and swimming in the Dead Sea and all that. And it was very, very hot in Israel at the time that he was there. And so the backpack that he carried with him that had about three to five days of supplies in it, we had the vial the Insulet vial that he carried with him in a frio you know, the pack that you can wet, we've talked about this many times before it keeps insulin at room temperature does not keep it cold. But it was a little free to pack that he could keep his vial in. And we also use a vivi cap. And that was new for us. And that's something that you can only use on pens right now they're working on vials, but that worked out really well. And you take the cap actual cap off your insulin pen, you slide the Vivi cap on it, it's it just looks like a bigger, fatter insulin pen cap. If I'm describing it correctly, I'll put a link in the show notes too. And it's got a little battery in it that you don't have to replace it lasts for a year. And it keeps it room temperature just like a frio. And that was phenomenal as well, because the that pen was really there as a backup and he uses vials, but he'll use an insulin pen as a backup. If he needs to take a shot if he needs to pull the insulin out and stick it in his pump, that kind of thing. And that lasted the entire time. He actually never used the pen which surprised me. He says he actually forgot it was in his bag. So when he came home, we decided to see how well the Vivi cap worked. And we pulled the insulin out of that pen it had been at that point five weeks. So longer than you're supposed to use insulin, FDA people don't listen, we put in his pump. And that backpack had been right through the desert 100 degrees or more with him the entire trip, the Insulet in the pen worked fine. So big thumbs up on 50 cap, I'm not an affiliate, I may they may become advertisers in the future. They are not advertisers. Now there is a promo code, I think flying out there from the episode we did with them, I'll have to check and see if that promo code is still valid, but I don't get a kickback from it. But that product worked really well. But that's how we did it. And the rest of the supplies were kept on the bus or you know, in the hotel, those were kept cool while he was traveling. So he had a separate backpack that he would pull from. So the main supplies for the entire month were kept in one place. The backpack supplies were for three to five days were kept with Benny the entire time. So it was an interesting way to do it if you have longer term travel stories. We've talked to a lot of people who've traveled the world with diabetes, I'd love to hear more. I'm always interested in packing kind of stories, or don't want to tell you about my really low point when he was gone because I had some some very nerve racking moments. But I had one that I want to tell you about for sure. And I was so lucky it happened while I was at the friends for life conference. So I'll tell you about that first Diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And one of the most common questions I get is about helping children become more independent. Be careful what you wish for. Those transitional times are tricky. elementary to middle middle to high school. I mean, you know what I'm talking about right? Using the Dexcom makes a big difference for us. And it's not all about sharing follow up. That is helpful. Think about how much easier it is for a middle schooler to just look at their Dexcom rather than do four to five finger sticks at school or for a second grader to just show their care team the number before Jim at one point Benny was up to 10 finger sticks a day and not having to do that makes his management a lot easier for him. It's also a lot easier to spot the trends and use the technology to give your kids more independence. Find out more at Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo. So every summer when I send Benny away for four weeks, when I send my daughter away for four weeks, both of my kids went to the same camp they both went away for you know, a month every summer since they were eight or nine I would get the same kind of questions from all of my friends. Don't you miss them? How can you send them away? You know, don't they miss you? Aren't you worried about them? And that are my diabetes friends, I would get lots of different questions right? Like how are you doing that? If the camp is not a diabetes camp, you don't you freak out when you can't follow him because we never use share and follow at camp, all sorts of questions and worries and things like that. So I honestly didn't talk a lot about this Israel trip other than to a few close friends because I knew that being around other moms with type one would be supportive. Like most of Would be great. But I also knew that some of the questions would make me even more nervous than I was. And I was really nervous about this. Letting Benny get on that plane. I didn't even go to the airport. When we dropped him off in Charlotte, my husband had to take him to the airport, because I knew I would just be so so nervous. And I didn't want to make Benny embarrassed or freak out. I mean, he's so calm and cool. But I didn't want to pass that nervousness off to him because I knew he was ready. And I knew he'd be safe. I knew this was a good group of people. But I was freaking out. So I didn't even go to the airport to drop him off. I made it I did. Okay, the first couple days were very, very, very hard. But when I got to friends for life, which was what about two weeks in, I felt great. And people were, you know, we were talking about it, and they were very supportive. But I also felt, I felt really, almost more nervous in a way. And I still don't know exactly what that was all about. But I think part of it was, I had worked out a plan. And I'll be very frank, I had worked this out with my therapist, I've been seeing a therapist for a couple of years, not just for diabetes, but because life is just so freakin stressful anyway, but we had worked out a plan that I thought was really good, I would only check Benny's numbers. And I shared this on an episode a couple weeks ago, I would only check his numbers at times of day that I decided I would check them twice a day, we had turned off all the alarms, except for the urgent low. And I did that I did that October of 2020. That had nothing to do with Israel. That's just in our developmental teenage plan that has worked really well for us. So I only had the urgent low. And I said, I'm only going to check it at these times of day. Well, when I got to friends for life. We were all having like a mom meetup. And everybody threw their phones on the table. And I really should share this picture. It was fabulous. Whatever your kid is, you know, who cares high low out of range in range, whatever. Let's all show at this moment of time where our kids number is. And I didn't do it because it wasn't the time of day to check his number. And I just didn't want to do it. And they were like Liz, that's a great group of moms super supportive. They were laughing everybody was doing it. And finally I was like, Okay, I'm gonna peek. I'm just gonna peek. And wouldn't you know it, he was 78 double arrows down. I didn't get alarmed. Because as I said, All my alarms were off except urgent, low, and I burst into tears. I just all came out at that moment. It was so stressful. It was so much. I'm not sure be dramatic. I mean, you know what I'm talking about. But 78 double arrows down. And I'm 1000s of miles away. And I don't know why it hit me so hard at that moment. Did I feel left out? Because I couldn't just look at my kids number. Did I feel left out because I had taken you know what many would consider a big risk? Did I regret it? I mean, I'm still having processed all those feelings. I'm still working it out. But oh my gosh, did I get hugs? Did I get support? Did I get people who understand? Thank you, Heather. And thank you, Heather, my to Heather. Thank you to everybody who really made me feel okay, and not judged. And of course, a few minutes later, that number turned around, you know, I didn't call him it wasn't part of our agreement. It turned around and he was fine. Now, later that night, you heard Benny and I talked about that one urgent load that I called him because it was like 20 minutes, and I kept going off and it was a compression low. It was fine. And he texted me back right away. That was actually that same night, but much later, it was about 11 or 1130 our time. So you know, he did what he was supposed to do. He communicated with me, but boy was I excited to have my community around me when I needed them the most. Nobody understands like we do. Nobody understands that pit of your stomach feeling. I knew he was safe. I knew he was okay. But still. Oh, diabetes. I'm sure I'll be sharing more about this experience. If not the months, the years to come probably we're still learning a lot from it. I hope to be able to you know, give some wisdom. Maybe some advice about just you're down the block sleep over because of it. interesting note. I can't say we paved the way for anybody. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but he was not the first kid with type one to go on this trip. Kudos to those other parents. I obviously don't know who they are. But knowing that other kids had done it certainly made us feel better. And it made it easier because the program knew that it could be done right. The leadership of the program knew it could be done.   Thanks so much for listening to all of that. I really appreciate it. All right. Thank you as always to my editor John Bukenas from audio editing solutions. Thank you for listening. Our Wednesday, newscasts are growing strong. I'm so happy I decided to do this. It is so much fun. And it's really taken off especially over on YouTube. If you don't catch it on Facebook Live and you want to watch it with captions, the YouTube channel, just Diabetes Connections. And I'll put a link in the show notes to YouTube. Check us out over there. But the newscast is every Wednesday live on Facebook at 430. And then I loaded to YouTube and it comes out as a podcast episode on Fridays as well. And if you're not familiar with that is all the latest headlines for diabetes, all types of diabetes for the past week and I love doing it. That's been a lot of fun. Alright, I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here in just a couple of days until then, be kind to yourself. Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs avenged

In this episode, Co-Founder and CCO of WebPT, Heidi Jannenga, talks about the trends that were revealed in the State of Rehab Therapy Report done by WebPT. Today, Heidi gives an overview of the Rehab Therapy Report, and she talks about how technology has benefitted the industry, business continuity and growth, and the reality of burnout. How has the pandemic impacted business revenue, budget, and employment. Hear about the lack of diversity in the industry, the disparities in advocacy and associations, and the tech adoption boom of 2020, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast.   Key Takeaways Survey results show that 77.4% of rehab professionals identify as white, 6% as Asian, 5.5% as Hispanic/Latino, 2.8% as Black/African American, and smaller percentages as American Indian, Alaskan Native, Native Hawaiian, and other Pacific Islander. “There are huge gaps in terms of not reflecting who our patients really are in every area of the nation.” “40% of the [women] respondents said that they now hold C-Level executive positions. That's a 10% improvement.” “Almost every clinic leader I talk to today are at pre-Covid numbers, and most of them are above pre-Covid numbers.” 50% of therapists, and 42% of therapy assistants reported feeling more burntout now than they did prior to the pandemic. “60% of rehab professionals said that they didn't participate in any of the numerous advocacy efforts from last year.” “Even if you disagree with some of the decisions or directions of APTA, that's all the more reason to be involved.” “It takes a lot of vulnerability and confidence to say ‘I don't know.'” “As a leader, you shouldn't have all the answers. You become a crutch to those that work with you if you're the only one who has all the answers.”   More about Heidi Jannenga Dr. Heidi Jannenga is a physical therapist and the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of WebPT, an eight-time Inc. 5000 honoree, and the leading software solution for physical, occupational, and speech therapists. As a member of the board and senior management team, Heidi advises on WebPT's product vision, company culture, branding efforts and internal operations, while advocating for rehab therapists, women leaders, and entrepreneurs on a national and international scale. Heidi has guided WebPT through several milestones, including three funding rounds: an angel round with Canal Partners, a venture capital round with Battery Ventures, and a private equity round with Warburg Pincus; five acquisitions; and numerous national corporate and industry awards. In 2017, Heidi was honored by Health Data Management as one of the most powerful women in IT, and she was a finalist for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2018, she was named the Ed Denison Business Leader of the Year at the Arizona Technology Council's Governor's Celebration of Innovation. She also is a proud member of the YPO Scottsdale Chapter and Charter 100 as well as an investor with Golden Seeds, which focuses on women-founded or led organizations. Her latest venture is called Rizing Tide, which is a foundation dedicated to fostering diversity and inclusiveness in the physical therapy workforce. Heidi is a mother to her 9-year-old daughter Ava, and she enjoys traveling, hiking, mountain biking, and practicing yoga in her spare time.   Suggested Keywords Covid, Survey, APTA, Rehab Therapy, Report, Data, WebPT, Diversity, Physiotherapy, Advocacy, Technology, Burnout, Business, Healthy, Wealthy, Smart,   Recommended Resources The State of Rehab Therapy 2021: https://www.webpt.com/downloads/state-of-rehab-therapy-2021 The State of Rehab Therapy Webinar: https://www.webpt.com/webinars/the-state-of-rehab-therapy-in-2021   To learn more, follow Heidi at: Website:          https://www.webpt.com Instagram:       @heidi_jannenga Twitter:            @HeidiJannenga LinkedIn:         Heidi Jannenga   Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website:                      https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts:          https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify:                        https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud:               https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher:                       https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio:               https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927   Read the Full Transcript Here:  Speaker 1 (00:03): Hey, Heidi, welcome to the show podcast. I'm so excited to have you on today. Speaker 2 (00:08): Thanks Karen. So excited myself to be here. So thanks for the invite. I really appreciate it. Of course. Speaker 1 (00:14): And today we're going to talk all about the key trends that were revealed in the state of rehab therapy report powered by web PT. But before we get to those trends, can you tell the listeners how all of this information was compiled? Speaker 2 (00:32): Sure. So we actually started conducting this industry-wide survey of the rehab therapy industry and what we consider rehab therapy is PT, OT, and speech back in 2017 that was the first time we released the state of rehab therapy report. And essentially we were trying, we had a lot of questions about the industry that we just honestly couldn't find the answers. And so we decided, well, we're just going to put out a survey to ask the questions we want answered topics ranged from business financials, operational structure, patient volumes, job satisfaction, technology trends, demographics, like we just really wanted to dive into sort of slice and dice the industry a little bit more as far as data goes. And we took a little bit of a pause in 2020, obviously due to COVID. But we did actually launch the survey at the end of the year. And so that's what we're talking about now. As far as the results go and we collected, I think over 6,700 responses, the majority of, of whom treat patients directly. So either as therapist or assistance, and 60% of them were from outpatient private practice. So the other 40% were from other therapists who work in other areas of the industry. So we feel like the findings really you know, give a good sort of breakdown of what's going on in the profession as a whole. Speaker 1 (02:10): Let's just dive in, then let's talk about some of those trends. So I will just kind of throw it over to you and we'll go through the major trends that you found. So let's, let's start. Speaker 2 (02:22): Yeah, let's just kick it off with something that's top of mind. I know for a lot of businesses and not just in the PT world, based on some of the occurrences within 2020, and that's really focusing on diversity. I think we've talked about it a lot that we, we all sort of know that there's this issue of lack of diversity within our profession as a whole. We're pretty much racially, very homogeneous. Our survey results showed that 77.4% of rehab professionals identify as white. Our results showed 6% identify as Asian five and a half to identify as Hispanic or Latino 2.8% identify as black or African-American. And then smaller percentages of the American Indian or Alaska native and native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander. And so if you sort of then contrast that right with the overall society of, of the U S I mean, there's just huge gaps in terms of not reflecting who our patients really are and in every area of the nation. Speaker 2 (03:42): So, you know, we, we asked a little bit of why some of the factors that are leading to that, and, and I, I think that, you know, we can sort of hypothesize a lot on, you know, the flood student recruitment. Like we're just not getting them in. We're not, for whatever reason. They don't know how cool it is to be a physical therapist. They're not attracted to it. So the recruitment is kind of broken. And so from there you just have a limited hiring pool. And so of course, you know, I think what a lot of people are sort of now attacking also is just, do we have some unconscious bias, like, do we need more training of our, our teams and recruiting processes within our own organizations to sort of eliminate and hopefully put a little more attention on trying to, to become more diverse in our employee base. Speaker 1 (04:33): Yeah. And you know, like you said, that this is not unexpected to continue to show this lack of diversity and, and yeah. Where, where does this start? Does this start with recruiting teenagers out of high school, into undergrad and then recruiting from undergrad into grad school? Is it exposing more you know, people of color just to the profession in general? You know, there are some people doing great job with that, like Jasmine tools in Southern New Jersey. I don't know if you know Jasmine, but she created a girl scout badge, a physical therapy girl scout badge. And she works mainly with girl scout troops in inner cities in Philadelphia. So you've got all these young girls who now know what physical therapy is because they're getting their physical therapy badge. Speaker 2 (05:25): That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. And we need more of that obviously happening at an earlier age to just, I mean, we've talked a lot about it. I knew you've talked about it on this podcast about sort of the brand problem of actually attracting patients in, but that also is reflected in attracting amazing people of all, you know races, color, everything like, you know, into our profession as a whole. Now I will say Karen, that we did see something positive you know, we, you and I have talked a lot about sort of the misrepresentation of women in leadership within our profession. And we did see a pretty good uptick. We we've also always talked about it in terms of you know, 70% of therapists are women and yet only 30% of them hold any kind of leadership position whether it's clinic, director or above manager. But we did see that number go up from where it was. And so 40% of the respondents said that they now hold a C level executive positions, which I thought was mean that's a 10% improvement. So huge. That was awesome to see. Speaker 1 (06:45): Yeah. I love hearing that. That's a huge, that's a huge jump. 10%. Excellent. Well, that's a, that's definitely a positive. Okay. So let's go to another trend that came out of this report and it has to do with technology. So can you expand on that? Speaker 2 (07:04): Yeah. So I'm sure that a lot of your listeners can relate. Telehealth was an explosion that had to happen during COVID. We were all stuck at home and people were in the midst of rehab, some hurt themselves doing, you know, working out at home using their, their Peloton or whatever it was, and they still needed therapy. It wasn't like people stopped needing PT, right. Or rehab therapy. And so tele-health exploded. So the use of, of platform tele-health technology platforms spiked significantly over the last year, although we saw about 75% of clinics that actually implemented tele-health during this time, we've now seen that number completely plummet down to two pretty low numbers. So people are going back to status quo. Now that most cities and states are, have opened back up. So it's going to be interesting to see how this trend continues. Speaker 2 (08:14): I do a whole tangent, we could do a whole nother podcast, I'm sure on how do you, how can we put, how can tell a health be you lies a, from a patient experience perspective, but also from a reimbursement payment perspective, like how do we make sure that is there, is there a hybrid potential in the future to, in, in my assessment, reach more people like we, you know, we always talk about the 90% problem, right? If 90% of patients who have a diagnosis that could be beneficial in rehab therapy, aren't getting to us. So how do we expand that opportunity? Tele-Health has it, has it, has the potential to be a of that? Yeah. I experienced Speaker 1 (08:57): That over. COVID that exact thing now I still am. I am still using tele-health because I'm in New York city as a lot of people know, and there are still people who are like, not, not just not comfortable, you know? Right. So I'm still using it. But what I found was that, so I have a cash based practice. And so some people were like, Ooh, it's a little pricey. Do you have a way around this? And I said, well, why don't we do one session in person? And then we can move to tele-health and maybe do half hour sessions on tele-health, which will be less expensive. Right. And it was a great mix. I do that. I did that a lot with kids. I mean, you can't keep a kid's attention for more than a half an hour in person or on telehealth and teenager, forget it. Right. So I found, oh, this is a perfect use of tele-health. So it's, it's still allows me to create the revenue I need for my business. And it's certainly a less expensive option. And I would argue a very very convenient and, and maybe just the perfect option for that subset of people. Speaker 2 (10:04): Yeah. I agree. I'm, I'm very much in favor of understanding the patient experience and the flexibility that telehealth can allow patients. Right. I think that there's just a lot of discussion right now on how do we get paid for that? Right. And whether or not does it tele-health is, should we be paid the same amount as an in-person in-person visit versus a tele-health visit? And I think it's still up in the air. Like, I, I, I fully can see it from both sides. Right. but to your point, the expense side of what your, your cost as a individual business owner on tele-health is significantly less. Right. And you could, the volume of people that you can kind of stack up to be able to see is significantly more. Right. And so, I guess also the, there's still a lot to be known about the outcome, right. Speaker 2 (11:03): Is it truly beneficial for the patient experience? Because, you know, there's, there's data now coming out that telehealth is actually expanding the utilization of care of in-person. So people aren't getting Nessus it's, it's increasing the number of visits in a episode of care because it's not taking the place of in-person it's adding to in person. Right. So we still need to understand and pull the data 2020 to understand how it fully impacted. Cause you know, insurances are always leery about adding more visits and paying out a little bit more for treatment, but if the outcomes are better, that to me always speaks volumes as Speaker 1 (11:48): Well. Yeah, absolutely. Now, was there any other technology aside from tele-health that reported being used more like, were there any apps or any, you know, other types of, of tech or was tele-health really the, the main thing? Speaker 2 (12:04): Well, telehealth was the big one. But I think there were a lot more folks that decided to ramp up their direct access marketing efforts. So I thought that was really interesting, like in order to, to keep in contact with your patients, right. And also keep some volume coming in. Again, we, it, it sort of pushed people in areas that they knew they should be doing, but now had the opportunity to do during this sort of time. You know, we, we were talking a lot about it at web PT. This is the time to work on your business when maybe you can't work in your business. Right. And so we saw, you know, marketing significantly ramp up for a lot of clinics, whether it was, you know, working on their website to their digital marketing strategy things like that. Speaker 2 (12:59): And then figuring out some different ways to offer more non-traditional services, whether that's, you know, like you cash-based services, ride share you know, nutritional counseling, like additives sort of things to their repertoire of services that they could add add on additionally to the clinic, which, you know, all great things. So I think it's just expanding the opportunity for more revenue streams through the use of technology mainly via their site or zoom or, you know, other things where they can have a larger audience all at one time versus having to only have a few that you had to physically come into the practice. So that's really cool to see. Speaker 1 (13:49): Yeah. I think it COVID sort of forced people to think outside the box. So instead of just sticking with, well, it's been working and then all of a sudden, wait a second, this literally can't work at the moment. So what do we have to do? So it may be, it, it sparks some more creative thinking from people. Absolutely. Yeah. That's a good thing. Speaker 2 (14:10): That's a good thing right. Out of your, out of your proverbial Speaker 1 (14:14): Box. Yeah. Yeah. And, and oftentimes you'll have business growth from that, which leads us to our next point. Let's talk about what a great segue let's talk about. Business continuity and growth, which when I read this, I was like a little boy. So go ahead. Let's talk about that. Speaker 2 (14:35): Okay. Well, as you can imagine, it was a bit of a mixed bag, right? I mean, there were quite a few unfortunate closed doors that happened at practices. It was also a huge opportunity for some of our larger organizations, enterprise organizations in the profession to continue with their consolidation and bringing more clinics into the fold. But we did find, you know, we, we've been doing a lot of education over the years on the business side and really have talks about how important it is to have that rainy day fund of, you know, at least three months of expenses. Now we all know that COVID happened longer than that. We've been under this COVID umbrella for longer than that, but truly having to close your doors probably did not have to happen for more than 90 days, depending on what state you were in, but essential, we were essential workers. Speaker 2 (15:32): Right. So, you know, the bright side of that was that I think 38% of leaders that took the survey said they did have that. So 40% of respondents said, yep, we had what we needed to do. We hunker down, we did some of that. There's other things that we could outside of the box during that time. Right. and we survived. Right. And so that, to me, it was just really heartwarming to see, like you hear horror stories and other industries, restaurant, and other things where man, they just suffered big time. Right. And so it was good to see that from the private practice sector there were still significant amount of businesses that were remained viable during this time found ways to continue on with some other revenue streams. And as a matter of fact, 34% of our clinic leaders said they were already starting to open more practices and locations within the next five years. Speaker 2 (16:37): So they're not, you know, struggling right now. And as you know even though our visits completely plummeted for a few months, like they quickly ramped back up and almost every clinic leader that I talked to today are at cope pre COVID numbers. And most of them are above COVID numbers. They can't keep up with the volume right now for the most part, so good problems to have. I'm just excited that, you know, again, we we were at the forefront of, of essential workers helping people in need, whether it was specifically in orthopedic you know, rehab, but also there's so many great stories of how clinics, you know, were out there helping folks. And now we have the post COVID long haulers that we're now getting into our practices. So the value of PT did not dwindle during this time, which is, which is great to see. Yeah, Speaker 1 (17:38): Absolutely. And now, as we talk about these clinics ramping up and more patients coming in and more work for the PTs, well, oftentimes you can kind of see where I'm going here that can lead to burnout. So talk about the, the topic of burnout that you found within this report. Speaker 2 (17:59): Well, this was a problem pre COVID, so it's not even anything super new. We we've continued to report on this. It can, you know, the, the slope is on the RA is going in the wrong direction. Based on our, our, our survey 50% of therapist and 42% of therapy assistants reported feeling more burned out now than they did prior to the pandemic. Most of them cited reasons for that burnout or fear of contracting COVID and just reminder, you know, this survey was taken at early this year, end of last year. So we were still sort of in the thick of things changes in their work hours and sort of change in the whole overall clinic morale. Speaker 2 (18:51): We're all experiencing some, you know, mental health sort of pieces fall out great word fallout from all of this. Right. And so, as you can imagine, that was reflected in the survey. So, you know, at the, at the same time, even though they reported this, this burnout most of them have said that they obviously still love our industry. They don't have any necessarily thoughts of, of potentially leaving. Although we do, we are seeing some, a little bit of that. I think just like every other industry, when you couldn't work, people picked up their heads and said, Hmm, what else is out there? And we are seeing, you know, a few, a few more percentages of people looking outside of clinical care, which I I'm, I don't think is necessarily a bad thing to, to continue, you know, projecting a, an awesome brand for PT professionals. But outside or doing things now in nonclinical care nonclinical work. Speaker 1 (20:00): Yeah. And I've definitely seen a lot. I've seen that sort of trend as well as moving away from patient care and going into nonclinical roles, which, like you said, there's nothing wrong with that. You have to do what feels good for you. What, what advice would you give to a PT who is maybe they are one of those 50% who are feeling burnout or feeling like we hope it's not feeling apathetic towards the profession and their patients, but that is part of, of the burnout feeling burned out. Is that real, like apathy for just doing the job? So what advice would you have? Speaker 2 (20:48): Yeah. You know, most of the time and I'll speak to myself and when I feel burned out, I have to get back to the root of passionate around why I'm doing it. Why, why do I love, why, why did I get into this in the first place? What is my purpose sort of in being a PT and you know, and figure out, you know, what's causing, what are the root causes of, of, of these feelings of burnout? Is it the current position I'm in? Do I just not like who I'm working for? Do my values, not line up with my employer. Like some of these things like people, you just, you still feel so lucky to have a job sometimes during time. And then, and then now that, you know, things are kind of opening back up. I think a lot of people are coming out of COVID experiencing like, holy crap. Speaker 2 (21:38): Like, what am I doing with my life? They they've lost their family members. They've lost friends. Like it's, it's kind of this wake up call for a lot of people to say, holy crap, what am I doing with my life? Like, is this really what I want to do and love to do? And so you see a lot of people struggling with that and maybe not perhaps loving what, where they are and what they're doing. And so they're kind of in this burnout phase and I, again, this was taken in like December, January, right? You've been hunkered down for a whole year with not a positive end in sight, even at that point. Right. I mean, it's starting to come out of it. So things were kind of doom and gloom in the country. We're just transitioning out of, you know, a present presidential race. Speaker 2 (22:27): There was a lot of change and a lot of turmoil going on in the, in the country at that point in time. So I think that's also reflected here, Karen. I would say this is probably similar to what you might ask any average American during this time. Right. So I would just take that into consideration as we look at these numbers, but you know, one of the things we didn't talk about here with regard to demographics is also just the, the student debt that is still a, such a huge problem in our profession. And it's just, it's not getting any better necessarily. And so again, compounding your student debt on top of, oh my gosh, do I really love my job? Like, there's an COVID and everything else, like, there's just you just, you feel kind of in despair. Right. And so I think that's, what's really reflected here again. What would I tell people I'm like, again, go back to the roots. Like what, what do you, why do you love what you do? Or why, why do, what did you get into this profession to do and find a path to be able to make that happen? Speaker 1 (23:40): Yeah. It's like you said, it's sort of stress upon stress upon stress with uncertainty. Yes. And that's really difficult for people, especially when you have a boatload of student loans and wait, no, one's hiring now. Right. When this was taken, when the survey was taken, we weren't at those pre COVID levels yet because the vaccine hadn't been widespread yet. And so yeah, I can understand why a lot of people felt burnout and, and quite honestly, I agree with you, I would say 50% plus of Americans felt burned out at that time as well. Speaker 2 (24:20): Yeah. And, and going back to some of the COVID impacts, like when the survey was taken, you know, our survey results showed that a lot of clinics were in that uncertainty phase of not exactly knowing when they were going to actually meet or exceed or even get close to their budget that they had projected for 20, 21. Right. And so there were cutbacks being made perhaps, you know raises were on hold. Right. There's just a lot of factors as an employee or as a therapist that you're kind of like that uncertainty really does not make you feel good. Right. So I think all of that is reflected. I mean, there's so many facets that that can be reflected in that burnout number, especially after the year we just had. Speaker 1 (25:07): Yeah. Yeah. It's not just one thing. It's a lot. Yeah. It's a lot. Okay. Is there, what were, are there any other sort of major trends from the report that we didn't hit on yet that you want to make sure the listeners get? Speaker 2 (25:22): Well, you know, I'm a huge advocate on advocacy as you are. And you know, we always kind of want to know, like where, and how are people doing advocacy? How do they get involved with the profession? How did they get involved to, to stand up for where the profession and no, no difference in, in years past, you know, the, unfortunately the PTA and the OTA and even ashes to some point, Ashleigh actually has done a fabulous job as far as galvanizing their SLP base. But AP TA and, and almost 50% of those responded to our, our survey said that they were either not members or had no intention of being members. Cause they didn't feel like it added value for the cost of, of being a member. And so, you know, from an advocacy perspective I, it was also a dismal number to sit to show that 60% of rehab professionals said that they didn't participate in any of the numerous advocacy efforts from last year, Speaker 3 (26:43): Which was Speaker 2 (26:45): Again to my heart. I will say though, that that is a significantly yeah. Lower number, which is still sad because we did rally a lot of people last year around the 9% cuts and all of that. I think more people than ever, I guess, if you look at the, you know, the positive side of this, more people than ever did get involved whether it was, you know, to provide tele-health to have an avenue for more for revenue, the 9% cuts, you know, all of those things definitely rallied folks to become more involved, but we still have, you know, to your words earlier, some apathetic PTs that just don't understand, maybe it's just don't even understand how advocacy works. They don't feel like they have time. It doesn't make a difference, like all the excuses that people want to give. So it's always a point of contention for me, whether it's, you know, if you want to be a member, I believe everybody should be a member of the PTA. Speaker 2 (27:45): It's your association. They represent all everyone in, in the profession as a whole. I know they struggle because it's just, there's so many opportunities for PT and, and specializations within our profession that everybody wants to raise their hand and say, you need to represent me. But at the end of the day, we're all physical therapists and that's what we need to, I feel like we must come back to and so, and also with the PT pack, you know, and, and having been a previous trustee, I know how hard it is to in the small, small percentages of people that do contribute to this hugely important effort of how advocacy has to be done in meetings and people knowing who you are as an association and as a group, and why it's so important to, to not have cuts to our profession. Right. I mean, they are just ignorant to, to essentially what we do on a regular basis and how much we get paid for it, or lack thereof. Speaker 1 (28:56): Yeah. And, and what I would say to people listening, even if you disagree with some of the decisions or directions of a PTA, that's all the more reason to be involved so that your vote, your voice can be heard. And, and maybe you can change some of those things that you don't like. I mean, I understand it's a slow ship to steer. It's a big organization. Like, you know, it's not like a nimble small private practice owner who can change things on a dime, you know, but it is a big ship to steer, but the more and more people, especially younger therapists that can get involved and have their voices heard. I think that there's a good to make a difference Speaker 2 (29:43): For sure. And I, I think just understanding how you can get involved, whether it's, there's lots of ways to be involved, even if it's financial for now, or maybe a kind of, maybe it's just time, like there's lots of different ways to, to add your voice and your voice does matter. And I think that more than ever is important to, for people to understand. I think we had the most it's not just even therapist's voices, but patient voices. We had the most number of patients that was something we, we rallied so well with this year is to get the patient voice heard with regards to the 9% cut, especially on the Medicare side. And so I think that was pretty impressive and made a huge, huge impact with the legislators, with regard to the effect and why we've had some significant progress in, in mitigating those cuts. Speaker 1 (30:40): Yeah. And oftentimes, like you can be involved in like the easiest way possible by just like going onto a website and putting in your zip code, finding the people and pressing a button and it sends it up. Like to me, it sends it off to like Chuck Schumer and, and Kiersten Gillibrand. And I don't know. Yeah. Speaker 2 (31:01): It's so easy. Even if you don't know who your legislators are, the apt [inaudible] like, there's so many sites now that are help making this so much easier to become involved to, to, to lend your voice right. In a way that is super impactful and only takes a couple minutes. Yeah. Speaker 1 (31:24): If that, and you don't have to be a member to do that yes. Nor do your parents or your friends tune in seconds and it's free. And if you have a smartphone, it literally takes two seconds and a LA it's all pre-written. So, yeah, I agree. I think positive advocacy efforts are so needed and like you said, they, they make a difference, you know? So, okay. I think we talked about a lot. We talked about diversity technology, COVID advocacy business growth. Anything else that really jumps out at you from this report? Speaker 2 (32:09): No. I think those are the big highlights. You know, we look forward to, to now be able to compare this is a a great sort of slice in time, immediately post kind of post COVID bef just immediately prior to the, you know, getting back to quote unquote normal as far as visit numbers and things like that. So we definitely look forward to doing this again next year. So I, your listeners to participate in the future again, to get your voice heard and to, to really be able to reflect more of what's going on in the industry. Speaker 1 (32:53): Yeah. I think it's great. And where can people find this report if they wanted to read the whole thing? Speaker 2 (33:00): Yeah. If you go to web pt.com/state of rehab therapy or if you just go to our blog page you'll find it and it's a free to download. It's actually a 60 page report full of graphics. And like, if you're a data nerd, like dive in, because they're there, we have sliced and diced it and made this beautiful. Our team is just awesome. And did a lot of work to, to make this digestible from anyone, even if you're not a data nerd to bring out the highlights. And then also Karen, we're going to be doing a webinar coming up in just a couple of weeks. So you'll find that on our website as well. You can sign up for the webinar. We'll, we'll go in much deeper depth as far as the details of, of more of these topics that you and I have talked about today. Speaker 1 (33:57): Excellent. Excellent. And they can, all that can be found on the web PT website. Yep. Perfect. And where can people find you on social media, things like that if they want to follow you or get in touch or ask you questions? Yeah, Speaker 2 (34:12): I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on Instagram at hydrogen Nanga. So it's J a N N E N GA. And yeah, happy to engage on social, do it quite a bit, especially on via LinkedIn. So love to connect with any of your listeners. Speaker 1 (34:31): Excellent. And then finally, last question. What advice knowing where you are now in your life and career, what advice would you give to your younger self? Maybe you're that PT right out of PT school. Speaker 2 (34:47): Yeah. it's a great question, man. I have to reflect back quite a few years when I was a young TT now. But I think that the biggest piece of advice I would give is really around not thinking that you have to have all the answers. So I had a hard time when I first came out of the, I felt like, okay, I'm a, I'm a physical therapist. Now I'm in front of my patient. That credibility of any question they have are going to ask me, I have to know the answer. And that's not always, that's not true, actually the, the ability to say, I'm not sure that gets, let me get back to you and truly providing research, great response versus an off the cuff, maybe not perfect response. I think sometimes it can be so much more valuable in your overall long-term credibility with that, that particular patient or other therapist or leader. Speaker 2 (35:59): It takes a lot of vulnerability to say, I don't know. And a lot of confidence to say, I don't know, but I wish I would have been able to do that maybe a little bit more on the beginning and not felt the pressure of having to feel like I needed to know all the answers because Lord knows, I didn't know all the answers back in the day. I still don't know them today. Right. And you know, one of the other interesting things, just from a, as my growth, as a leader in this same sort of vein is what I've learned over time is that as a leader, you shouldn't have all the answers, right? It's my people come to me now and they've learned over time, like you become a crutch to those that work with you or for you. If you're the only one who has all the answers, right. Versus putting it back on to them to say, well, what do you think? Like, what do you think the answer is? Coming to me with solutions, not just a problem. And so to me, that's training and bringing in new leaders. I learned that from, from a leader who was a mentor to me quite a few years ago. And so that's another sort of way that now I've shifted that same response from a leadership perspective. Speaker 1 (37:24): Oh my gosh. I could talk all day on this from a leadership perspective who may have to do another podcast on it. So I think people would love it. Well this was Heidi, this was great. Thank you so much such good, good information for anyone in any of the rehab therapies, PT, OT speech to download this report, dive in and, and use this report for your own business or your own practice, you know, that's what these reports are for, right. To kind of not just look at it and say, oh, that was cool report, but to actually use the report and use it to be a guide maybe to your business or to your practice. Yes. Speaker 2 (38:04): Yeah. That's exactly right. Like how, how in your business decision trends that you're seeing in industry that you can validate some of your decision-making on is exactly why we've, we've put this out there to the public with no cost to you. Like it's, it's really just to, to benefit and give back to this industry that we love so much and want to see flourish. So Karen, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. Congratulations on all your, can't say enough, how awesome you are with your advocacy and as an influencer and, and true thought leader in our industry. So thanks for everything you're doing with this podcast and, and, and all of your other ventures. It's, it's awesome to watch you and see how much of an impact you've been able to have in our profession. Speaker 1 (38:57): Thank you. That's so nice making me blush aside from the large scratch for my cat on my cheek, where it's already red. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. And everyone, thank you so much for listening to this episode, go download the report today. We'll have all the links to it at the podcast at podcast on healthy, wealthy, smart.com under this episode. Thanks for tuning in, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart.  

Welcome! Craig continues his discussion on collaboration tools for business and Microsoft Teams For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: Iranian Spies Accidentally Leaked Videos of Themselves Hacking Twitter breach exposes one of tech's biggest threats: Its own employees Cybercriminals Turning Bullies; Ransomware the Latest Weapon of Torture FBI Issues Cybersecurity Warning to Air Travelers New wave of attacks aiming to rope home routers into IoT botnets The Streaming Wars: A Cybercriminal’s Perspective Emotet spam trojan surges back to life after 5 months of silence Apple's Next MacBook Could Solve the Worst Thing About Working Remotely --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: [00:00:00] We're going to finish up our discussion about Microsoft teams. What are some of the things you might want to use it for? What is this? How was it different from zoom and everything else on the market? So let's get going. hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for being with us today. I really appreciate all your comments to me  M E @craigpeterson.com. A lot of people just respond to my weekly show notes and. You get those by signing up for my email list to find out what's going on, what you should be doing, what free trainings we have, what paid courses there are. And we are coming out with a free again, free. I'm trying to help out here. It really is for you. Okay. A free, special report about all of these apps we're talking about today. So Karen's been working really hard on that with me, and we hope to have it out either this week or maybe the week after. [00:01:00] And it's going to be. Pretty detailed about some of the pros and cons, when you should be using it, what policies should you have in place for your employees? It comes to these collaboration apps. So I think it's a very. important topic, so many of us just knee jerk our way into this with the COVID-19 thing, and we needed something now, please, anything. And we need jerked into zoom. Most of us, some of us started using Slack. All of these things are up in usage. In fact, WebEx had so many people applying for it because it's really the only one. If you're a business that you should be using, That they had to cut back. They were giving it away for free for two or three months. [00:02:00] And even though they have a huge worldwide infrastructure. Sure. They still, I had some problems with the onboarding, getting everybody set up and ready. So there may or may not be free WebEx stuff going on right now. They're supposed to go. Maybe it was through the end of June until the end of July. I'm not sure what it is right now, but anyway, We're talking about Microsoft teams right now. Okay. so as I mentioned at the very end with Microsoft teams, you need to integrate your Skype. Went in, we already know Skype is not. Considered to be overly secure. It was actually a little more security before Microsoft bought it. And then Microsoft changed its entire architecture to one where it goes through Microsoft servers. And that way, if you're in China, Microsoft can sensor you. Or if the law enforcement agencies in the US want to hear what you're saying, Microsoft can provide it to them and they couldn't do it before. So yeah. A little bit of resentment there. You probably noticed in my voice, Danielle, back to Microsoft here, the second big thing is it has this integration that a lot of people. [00:03:00] Yeah. looking forward to your business apps so you can use word Excel, PowerPoint, one-note planners, share 0.1 drive. All integrated with Microsoft teams. And that is a huge win because all of that stuff is right there. Now the integration isn't as clean or as neat or as easy as maybe it should be. But it is there and it will get better over time. You can still use all of those tools, word, Excel, PowerPoint, et cetera, with pretty much anything. Any of these apps, they're all designed to be integrated to varying degrees, but yeah, Microsoft ultimately will win this battle. Because they own the source code, They own the programs. They're going to take care of themselves first. And they've been sued about that before. So no news there. Next point, customized workspace, and every team is different. So Microsoft teams is customizable so that you can integrate it with third-party apps, as well as Microsoft apps. [00:04:00] That's really the trend right now. I see that across all of the industries, Cisco has done an interesting thing, and that is a couple of years ago, they decided to do a policy called API first. Now Microsoft is not doing this, but the whole idea behind API first is. That I'm like Microsoft that tries to play everything close to the chest and give itself advantages over all of its competitors. And we've seen suits on that forever, like integrating internet Explorer, right into the kernels, supposedly. And so that you could not use other browsers. You always had to have a ye initially, and then they allowed other browsers, but you still had to have IE, and then the courts ruled against them yet again. [00:05:00] And so unlike Microsoft's approach to try and lock you in, Cisco has decided that they want to make. All of the Cisco software uses the same interfaces that third-party vendors have to use. And that is phenomenal when it comes to integration. So if you want to use WebEx or WebEx teams or any component of any of the Cisco stuff, including their firewalls and the routers, et cetera, you can. They've got APIs for everything. Cause that's the only way they can access their own software. It says absolutely phenomenal. So Microsoft teams do have some third party integration available on it, which can be handy. You also get real-time communications, which as I mentioned can be a problem. [00:06:00] This isn't just true with Microsoft. This is true for WebEx teams and Slack and everything else out there. But it's real-time. So a smart person's going to do something different with email excuse me. something caught in my throat, email, you typically try and delay, right? I try and read my email once a day and that's it. And if someone really needs to get ahold of me, they probably know how to really get ahold of me. So I'm not getting interrupted. I can work on the stuff I need to get to work on. No, I'm putting his stuff. Together for my lives, for my webinars, for my radio show for everything else. And if I get interrupted, particularly if I'm doing some programming work, it can cost me hours of time. [00:07:00] So I put off email and only go through it maybe once a day. Sometimes I'll go two or three days without really paying attention to my email. So I apologize to you if you sent me an email and you're hoping for a quick answer, I don't always get back to you very quickly. I have other people in my team that's what it's four. So when we're talking about communicating in real-time with some of these collaboration apps, It's a double edge sword. So instead of having emails, bouncing back and forth, which might take hours and hours, right? Because someone says something and half an hour later, another person reads it and responds now than that first-person an hour later, read to them response. You can just have it go over very quickly. It's phenomenal for productivity. When you need quick productivity, the high priority initiatives that you have can really move a lot faster because it's not an email. It's not getting a push back while you're waiting. This is really instant messaging. Think of it like texting, So everybody can be on the same page with these teams apps you can see who has seen your messages. People can respond to them, they can start a thread. normally how does it work you on? You might send an email to everybody. Giving them an update, right? they reply to you, but maybe not to everybody that happens all of the time. [00:08:00] I know people that I, I expect them to copy all because I, I've got two or three people on it that are need to know, and they don't, they just reply directly to me. with these types of teams, apps, everybody's on the same page. Everybody can see everything. This conversation with email can split into a bunch of different conversations with ideas, being directed at one person when it really should be a group discussion. So keep that in mind as well. When you're considering some of these team's applications, everybody knows what's going on, what the status is, and productivity. Just keeps flowing. You're listening to Craig Peterson. Appreciate you being with me today. And of course, you can get me online as well. Craig peterson.com. [00:09:00] Make sure you sign up to my email. Craig peterson.com/subscribe. And that gets you an email every week. Oftentimes it's Saturday mornings lately. It's been more like Mondays, summertime COVID-19 every excuse in the book, As to why it's been a little bit more delayed, expected by Monday. And it's got my summary for the week. It's got links to my podcast and also info about classes and courses and lives when they happen. And then of course, here on the air, take care, everybody we'll be right back, stick around. --- 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

Welcome! In this segment, Craig continues his discussion of Microsoft Teams and other collaboration platforms. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Read More: 7 reasons to pay for antivirus software and skip the free versions YouTube TV jumps 30% in price effective immediately Police roll up crime networks in Europe after infiltrating popular encrypted chat app New Mac ransomware is even more sinister than it appears Ransomware is now your biggest online security nightmare. And it's about to get worse Apple's Silicon Macs promise screaming performance TikTok and 32 other iOS apps still snoop your sensitive clipboard data An embattled group of leakers picks up the WikiLeaks mantle --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: [00:00:00] We're going to finish up our discussion about Microsoft teams. What are some of the things you might want to use it for? What is this? How was it different from Zoom and everything else on the market? So let's get going. hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for being with us today. I really appreciate all your comments to me ME@craigpeterson.com. A lot of people just respond to my weekly show notes. You get those by signing up for my email list to find out what's going on, what you should be doing, what free trainings we have, what paid courses there are. We are coming out with a free again, free, free, free. I'm trying to help out here. It really is for you. Okay. A free, special report about all of these apps we're talking about [00:01:00] today. So Karen's been working really hard on that with me, and we hope to have it out either this week or maybe the week after. And it's going to be pretty detailed about some of the pros and cons when you should be using it, what policies should you have in place for your employees when it comes to these collaboration apps? So I think it's a very important topic. You know, so many of us just knee jerk our way into this with the COVID-19 thing, and we needed something now, please, anything. And we knee-jerked into zoom. Most of us, some of us started using Slack. All of these things are up in usage. In fact, WebEx had so many people applying for it because it's really the only one, if you're a business, that you should be using. That they had to cut back. They were giving it away for free for like two or three months. Even though they have a huge worldwide [00:02:00] infrastructure, they still had some problems with the onboarding, getting everybody set up and ready. So there may or may not be free WebEx stuff going on right now. They're supposed to go through the end of June until the end of July. I'm not sure what it is right now, but anyway, We're talking about Microsoft teams right now. Okay. so as I mentioned at the very end with Microsoft teams, you need to integrate your Skype went and we already know Skype is not considered to be overly secure. It was actually a little more secure before Microsoft bought it. Then Microsoft changed its entire architecture to one where it goes through Microsoft servers. That way, if you're in China, Microsoft can censor you. Or if the law enforcement agencies in the US want to hear what you're saying, Microsoft can provide it to them. They couldn't do it before. So yeah. A little bit of resentment there. You [00:03:00] probably noticed in my voice, right, Anyhow, back to Microsoft here. The second big thing is it has this integration that a lot of people are looking for with your business apps. So you can use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, One Note. Planners, Sharepoint, one-drive. All integrated with Microsoft teams. And that is a huge win because all of that stuff is right there. Now the integration isn't as clean or as neat or as easy as maybe it should be. But it is there and it will get better over time. You can still use all of those tools, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, et cetera, et cetera, with pretty much any of these apps. They're all designed to be integrated to varying degrees. Microsoft ultimately will win this battle because they own the source code, right. They own the programs. They're going to take care of themselves first and they've been [00:04:00] sued about that before. So no news there. The next point, customized workspace, and every team is different. So Microsoft teams is customizable so that you can integrate it with third-party apps, as well as Microsoft apps. You know, that's really the trend right now. I see that across all of the industries, Cisco has done an interesting thing, and that is a couple of years ago. They decided to do a policy called API first. Now Microsoft is not doing this, but the whole idea behind API first is. That unlike Microsoft that tries to play everything close to the chest and give itself advantages over all of its competitors. We've seen suits on that forever, like integrating Internet Explorer, right into the kernels, supposedly. And so that you could not use other browsers. You always had to have IE initially, and then they allowed other [00:05:00] browsers, but you still had to have IE and then the courts ruled against them yet again. So unlike Microsoft's approach to try and lock you in, Cisco has decided that they want to make all of the Cisco software use the same interfaces that third-party vendors have to use. That is phenomenal when it comes to integration. So if you want to use WebEx or WebEx teams or any component of any of the Cisco stuff, including their firewalls and the routers, et cetera, et cetera, you can. They've got APIs for everything. Cause that's the only way they can access their own software. It's just absolutely phenomenal. So Microsoft teams do have some third party integration available on it, which can be handy. You also get real-time communications, which as I mentioned can be a problem. This isn't just true with [00:06:00] Microsoft. This is true for WebEx teams and Slack and everything else out there. But it's real-time. So a smart person's going to do something different with the email you typically try and delay, right? I try and read my email once a day and that's it.  If someone really needs to get ahold of me, but they probably know how to really get ahold of me. Right. So I'm not getting interrupted. I can work on the stuff I need to get to work on.  I'm putting stuff together for my lives, for my webinars, for my radio show for everything else. If I get interrupted, particularly if I'm doing some programming work, it can cost me hours of time. So I put off email and only go through it maybe once a day. Sometimes I'll go two or three days without really paying attention to my email. So I apologize to you. If you send me an email and you're hoping [00:07:00] for a quick answer, I don't always get back to you very quickly. Right. I have other people in my team that that's what it's for. So when we're talking about communicating in real-time with some of these collaboration apps, it's a double-edge sword. So instead of having emails, bouncing back and forth, which might take hours and hours, right? Because someone says something and half an hour later, another person reads it and responds. Now, then that first person an hour later read to them response, you can just have it go over very quickly. It's phenomenal for productivity. When you need quick productivity, the high priority initiatives that you have can really move a lot faster because it's not an email. It's not getting a push back while you were waiting. This is really instant messaging. Think of it like texting, right? So everybody can be on the same page with these teams apps you can see who has seen your [00:08:00] messages and people can respond to them. They can start a thread. normally how does it work? You're well, you might send an email to everybody. Giving them an update, right? They reply to you, but maybe not to everybody that happens all of the time. I know people that I, you know, I expect them to copy all because I, you know, I've got two or three people on it that are need to know, and they don't, they just reply directly to me. with these types of teams, apps, everybody's on the same page. Everybody can see everything. This conversation with email can split into a bunch of different conversations with ideas, being directed at one person when it really should be a group discussion. So keep that in mind as well. When you're considering some of these team's applications, everybody knows what's going on, what the status is, and productivity. Just keeps flowing. You're listening to Craig Peterson. [00:09:00] Appreciate you being with me today. And of course, you can get me online as well. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you sign up to my email list. Craigpeterson.com/subscribe. And that gets you an email every week. Oftentimes it's Saturday mornings. Lately, it's been more like Mondays, you know, summertime, COVID-19, every excuse in the book, right. As to why it's been a little bit more delayed, but you know, expected by Monday. And it's got my summary for the week. It's got links to my podcast and also info about classes and courses and lives when they happen. And then of course, here on the air. Take care, everybody. We'll be right back, stick around. --- 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

 Engineering Influence sat down with Karen Erger, the Director of Practice Risk Management at Lockton Companies, the world's largest privately held insurance brokerage firm to discuss managing risk when returning to the jobsite during COVID-19. Host:Welcome to ACEC's Engineering Influence podcast brought to you by the ACEC Life Health Trust - www.aceclifehealthtrust.com. I'm pleased today to be joined by Karen Erger. She is the Director of Practice Risk Management at Lockton Companies, the world's largest privately held insurance brokerage firm. And today we're going to be talking about all things risk management, especially in the age of COVID-19 and what engineering firm leaders need to think about when returning to the office, not just the office, but the job site and dealing with clients, with paused work, and contracts and all these things that six months ago, we didn't have to think about. And now we are living in a time of complete and utter economic shutdown that starting to restart, and that's posing a lot of, a lot of questions. So Karen, thank you for coming on the show, number one, and number two, tell us a little bit about what you do at Lockton and how you would approach this massive issue.Karen Erger:Thanks, Jeff. It's a pleasure to be with you today. Appreciate being on the program. So my job at Lockton is providing education risk management, education, resources, to Lockton's clients, and specifically our group of clients are architects and engineers. I have the privilege of working with about 40 professionals at Lockton whose sole focus is architects and engineers all sit on the eighth floor of a building in Kansas city. And so my job is to prepare risk management, education, resources, and programs and advice for our clients, but also for my internal clients, for the people who serve our architecture and engineering clients. My background is being an attorney representing architects and engineers in malpractice suits. So I'm a good, witch not, not a bad witch. And so I did that and for all the rest of my career, I've been a broker pretty much exclusively working with architects, engineers, and contractors.Host:So you know, the industry, you know the ins and outs and the challenges that firms have to deal with on a regular basis. But of course the COVID-19 is anything but regular. Have you ever really approached something... I mean, have you ever dealt with something of this magnitude because it's just been so widespread and also just from your position both as a broker and as an attorney, how do you get your arms around this whole issue? And, and, and the fact that there has been such a disruption and that firms are not only dealing with questions about keeping their businesses afloat at any given time, but then also dealing with reopening the offices, how you doing with employees, but then also with their clients. And then a lot of what we're going to be talking about today is on the client side, which is getting back to that worksite, getting back to that paused work in a changed environment and world after this pandemic or, you know, as it still happens, like, how do you get your arms around this whole subject?Karen Erger:Well, Jeff tough and unprecedented times, for sure. And you're right, that firms have really, they have to fight this battle if you want to call it that on so many fronts dealing with what's going to happen internally with employees and how they will work and externally with clients on projects and how we handle those, how we get those started, how we manage them at cetera. My specific focus is on practice risk management. So the thing that I'm usually looking at is how can engineers and architects run their practice so that they no other way to say it, get in less trouble and are able to have better relationships with clients, which is kind of the foundation of having fewer problems and also do better projects. So one of the things I've noticed is though this is a very unprecedented time as you point out, I'm always amazed in the 30 years I've been doing this, how we're usually going back to the toolbox of risk management and deploying some of the same tools, despite the fact that this is a very difficult and unique situation.Karen Erger:So communication and documentation. I mean, I I can just, I can feel your audience groaning. Like here comes the lawyer talking about communication and documentation again, but it's really one of the things that I think is going to be critical in restarting projects and dealing with clients and probably on the home front too, although that's not my specific focus in what I do. So I think whenever there's a situation like this, whenever there's some big moving event, we're, we're, we're all pulling together to try and make things better. I think it's very tempting to skip and skimp on communication and documentation because we just want to get the project moving. We're all in this together. And we all, we're all people who are of good intent and we all understand each other, which can be absolutely true. Even people of good intent though, can misunderstand each others actions after the fact.Karen Erger:And that's why it's so important to communicate with clients about, okay, so COVID-19 presents certain problems to us, whether that be in actually accomplishing the project or doing site visits. Now that now that our ability to do that can be compromised by the need to follow safety procedures by the fact that people are at home by the fact that people can take mass travel communication with clients about those issues is key. It's always tempting to assume that we know what's in the other, other fellow or gal's head, but we need to have those conversations and we need to document those conversations. We need to give our clients the information that they need to make good decisions. So the pros and cons of for example, here's how we're going to do site visits. And here's, here are the ways we can do it. And here are the pros and cons of those agree on that. And then commemorate that in writing, whether it's, you know, just, just a piece of paper, but ideally an amendment to the contract, if that is what is needed here. So that later we all understand what's going on, but also forget about the covering your butt aspect of this for a minute also, so that we're sure that we're on the same page. There's something about writing things down that can be very helpful and no, no, no, that's not what I meant or I didn't hear you when you said that. That's not what I wanted here.Host:Yeah. So that's a really good point. I mean, for firms that a lot of this is kind of hindsight because it's hard to really, you can't go back in time and start that communication process now because we're so late into the process, but looking ahead, God willing for the next shoe to drop the next big challenge. It's a good point that starting that communication early are there any recommended processes or, or best practices in that communication that firms should really adopt in, let's say future contracts with clients. Is there any addendum, is there any language or instruments that affirm a general counsel should say, okay, we're going to add this now into our, you know, our contracts moving forward because the situation that we find ourselves in?Karen Erger:Yeah. Well, that's, that's a great question. And I love that you've struck on contracts. That's a good way to get a lawyer wound up and talking. So thank you for that, Jeff. Yeah, let's, let's talk about contracts going forward. And actually this is also a contracts looking backwards because one of the things that I recommend to our clients is that this is the time to pull out the contracts for your existing project and see where you stand with respect to your rights and duties to the client. So some of the things that I would expect people to be more thoughtful about now that we've, we've had this very momentous experience of COVID-19 are things like understanding what your rights are when the project is suspended by the client, which of course, lots of them are. Do you have the right to additional compensation and additional time?Karen Erger:Does the contract spell that out? So we know that the AIA and the EJDC documents do that. They're very clear about this, but we also know that not all documents are AIA and EJCDC, and lots of times our engineer and architect clients are not in a position where they can dictate what the contract form will be. So what I would expect, or what I would hope for is that firms will start to think about what are our non-negotiables here, what is very important and what have we learned from COVID-19 that needs to be incorporated in our contracts going forward. You mentioned kind of what, what can we do now that we've, we've had this experience. Another thing that there's going to be a lot of focus on, I think is what are what are, what is the damages delay situation? If there's, if there's a delay that is beyond our reasonable control, do we have responsibility for that?Karen Erger:Or does the contract expressly say that we do not? So I've heard a lot of talk about, perhaps we need a, force majeure or clause, which is just law, French for superior force, and contractors typically have them in their contracts, but often design professionals do not. I've seen some insurance carriers proposed different, different different provisions that actually talk about a pandemic virus that might be wise. There's also language in the AIA and EJDC, excusing delays, if they are, I think AIA is due to reasonable cause and EJDC is delays through through no fault of the engineer. So we'll want to look at things like that. And finally, one last thing. So that's two, the third would be additional services. So what does the contract say about your ability to claim additional services? Because as I'm sure we're going to discuss today, some of what's happening here is going to, I think really mandate looking back at the project and perhaps making some changes in it.Karen Erger:Can we be compensated for those changes? And that's something that additional services will be valuable for. And I guess this is a sub point. I said, there were only going to be three. So this is a sub point to that one. Being very aware of what the notice requirements of your contract are. If the contract says you've got to get five days, notice to the client or confer with the client before providing additional services, know that and do it contracts, aren't just something to be sitting in a dusty drawer someplace. They can really help you, but only if you know what they say and you're aware of where you stand contractually.Host:And that's a really good point. And the thing that popped in my mind was I guess, two questions. The first is that that nature of force majeure not really being part of design contracts, is that, why is that, is that more of a, the perspective from the design side of things saying that, well, you know, our work is kind of controlled. We don't we don't need that force majeure in there because when are we going to actually have to exercise it? Has it been just a kind of a generational thing where, you know as contracts with developed over time and as the legal cannon developed over time that it's just been left out because it's not like, wow, you know, it's design work. We're not, we're not on the site. We don't have to worry about that. And, and, and is that a perception that needs to change now that everybody's kind of been tossed into the whole situation together? No matter what you're doing, if you're at home working on, on a computer or, you know, in an office, you know, doing the work?Karen Erger:Oh, that's a, that's a good question on a really timely one. I just want to make it clear just because something isn't labeled force meajeure doesn't that it doesn't accomplish that intent, that language that I mentioned in AIA and EJDC which is that delay beyond your reasonable control is something that you won't be penalized for that really is force majeure it. So just kind of practice pointer pro tip. When you're looking at your contract, don't just look for force majeure, look at something like time for performance, because that's where I would expect to see those, those provisions you asked about how did we get here? Why is that the contractors typically have force majeure clauses, and we don't have such expansive and explicit provisions in our contract as design professionals. I think part of the reason that something that you touched on, which is we don't go to the site, we're not affected by kind of the physical forces of it's raining, and we can't make concrete in the rain. We work at our desks. And soKaren Erger:Maybe there's less emphasis on what will we do if it's raining or what will we do if there's wildfires nearby and we can't go to the site. And to a certain extent, it's still true that we can work from our desks, that we are a little less impacted by it than we think we are. But, you know, this is a bigger question than this podcast probably admits of, but I think one of the things that's going to be terribly interesting is it seems like people are able to be productive from afar. It seems like remote work and work from home is, is working. That people are being productive and, and whatever like that. So two things, one, can we do this forever? Is there going to be a point where we're kind of grant kind of grind our gears? Cause we can't all sit around a table looking at things and shoving stuff around and, and I guess too, are we really being productive at home? I think so. I hope so. But kind of the proof of the pudding, isn't going to be evident for a little while.Host:A little while. Yeah. and the only followup to that is kind of the position between prime and sub. So if you are, you know, if you're a prime, if you're a prime on the contract you know, I can imagine that you're, you're maybe more inclined to have that language in there or, or to consider what do we, what maneuverability do we have should something happened like this disruption, if you're, if you're a subcontractor you're, I would imagine your hands are a little bit more tied or, or is it something where if you're a subcontractor coming into, to a project and you're going to be, you know signing on the line to start that work, is it, should that perspective change, should you be more aggressive in creating room to maneuver in that contract?Karen Erger:Right. So the sub-consultant is usually stuck with whatever the prime negotiates be that for good or ill, or at least I guess from a risk manager standpoint, I kind of hope so we're, we're always preaching to the prime to flow down what you've taken on and not, not give better than, than you got. So if you've taken on some higher than normal standard of care that isn't perhaps entirely insurable, unfortunately you've kind of got to share that with the sub consultant and that is kind of the sub consultants burden, but I think it's important that sub-consultants be aware of what is being flowed down to them so that they're aware of their contractual obligations, I guess, ideally I do know of primes and subs who work together time and again, and who have a course of dealing with each other, joining forces and negotiating or talking in advance about what we're going to negotiate would be a wise move here. And, and let me let me just speak from the about the sub-consultant issue for a second, because one of the things that, and this is not just pandemic related, one of the things that always concerns us about our clients big and small is sub-consultant risk. So when a prime takes on when a prime seed's part of the scope to a sub,Karen Erger:The prime is still stuck with the liability for that. And they know that I know they know that, but the sub really holds some of their liability wellbeing in their hands. So two things that are always important that are never going to go away and maybe are more important now are choosing subs who are well qualified and that's not just the firm is well qualified, but the team is well qualified and also making sure that the subs have good and sufficient insurance. I'm not saying that insurance is the solution to everything, and that should not be the risk management plan, but making sure that the subs are adequately insured is, is terribly important because as the prime, you don't want to be holding the bag for the, for the whole thing, if there is a problem.Host:Yeah. That's probably more important now than ever to really look at who you're doing business with.Karen Erger:Absolutely. And if I can just expand on that, I've seen it happen where, you know, let's say our firm is in Kansas city and there's a sub locally that they really like, and they work together all the time. Well, now they have a job in Portland and fortunately the sub has an office in Portland, but a]is the office in Portland, the A team, like the Kansas city sub, or is it the Z team that we don't really want to be working with and qualifying your team is important too.Host:Let's, let's talk about that additive design work that we kind of talked about a little bit earlier, because one of the things that is a hallmark of, of our industry is that, you know, engineers should be trusted advisors to their clients, which means they should be able to provide solutions. They should not just do the work, but identify challenges, potential solutions to improve the project, to be that expert, to get the best result from the design through the construction, really from start to finish. And in this world that we're living in now know, we, you know, we had a recent round table with our Research Institute, which is kind of an adjunct to ACEC. And one of the things that was brought up during a panel discussion on the buildings that we live in work in, and what they're going to look like after COVID are really the challenges of designing buildings that have now different humidification systems, different air flow systems, air exchanges, what's the code now?Host:Well, should we do more than code? You know, all these challenges, you know, that are now there, if you have a project that you're working on either, you know, and as a design stage right now, and you're looking at it and saying, you know what, this isn't going to work the way that the offices have are set up in this design, the way that the mechanical, the, all that stuff is, is, is, is placed right now that, that, that works six months ago. But now not, you know, not now so much, you know, how, how should engineering firms approach these issues and, and, you know, how could, how should they broach that with the clients to say that, you know, the project was great when we started, but we have to look at what we now need to do to make this a workable solution.Karen Erger:Yeah, Jeff, this is this is in a way this isn't a new problem. This kind of goes back to what I was saying before, because even pre COVID-19 that we had periods where the economy was slow and clients mothballed a project, maybe mid design, and then when they want to get going on it again, the design firm really needs to take a hard look at everything that's been designed in light of what the circumstances are now. And those are things like scope, schedule, and budget, but also have laws and code change. What about the owner's objectives? And the design criteria are those different? Do we still have the people necessary to, to do this project? What about our sub-consultants, et cetera, et cetera, going to a client and saying, we need to spend time doing that may not be met with, you know, clapping of hands.Karen Erger:They feel like they've paid for this design and they should be, they should be done. We should just be able to re animate this thing, but that's not, that's not the way that design works. And I guess my hope is that in the face of covert, it's going to be really plain that no, we cannot just pick up. And especially with the, with the built environment, sort of things that you're talking about, things like, like an office structure, I'm thinking that to a sophisticated owner, it's going to be pretty clear that no, we need, we need to rethink a lot of things here. And maybe fortunately there is, there's no way somebody could have anticipated that this would happen. Right. I think that's the one thing that we all I hope agree on is that there's no design professional out there who, who last July could have been, like there could be a pandemic.Karen Erger:So we're going to have to put the workstation six feet apart. And in fact, no owner would wear that, right? Because they, they want to have those people closer together. Cause real estate is expensive. So when projects restart a lot of these factors that I was talking about before are going to have special relevance. And you touched on this one, the initiatives to try and control viral, spread through HVAC design in a, in a way it's a pretty exciting time to be mechanical engineer, because that does seem like it's going to be an important part of the solution set to a lot of these problems. I was just re a design firm, just released a very interesting paper about indoor relative humidity. And it turns out that having indoor relative humidity of 40% does a lot to control viral spread. It can substantially suppressed, all means of COVID-19 spread.Karen Erger:But most most buildings in cold climates or mixed climates have a relative humidity that's 20% or lower, but you can't just stuff humidifiers in there. I mean, I'm a lawyer. That's what I would do like, Oh, Hey, let's get a humidifier and stuff it right in the room. And then that will fix everything up, except that's going to impair other systems, walls, ceilings, floors those will buckle. Those will have problems and it will create other health problems too, like mold. So that's where that's where design professionals and their special knowledge come in. This is a problem that they can solve. I mean, nobody would wish this problem on anyone, but it's, it's a great time to be a mechanical engineer. This really is an opportunity to do something significantly important.Host:Yeah. That's where it comes to like the challenge and opportunity. It's it's, you know, the one thing that was the takeaway from a lot of the the engineers and experts on the panel was it's actually a great time because we have the ability to improve on designs, offer new solutions, create new areas of focus and business that we didn't have before. And now, you know, we can start talking about these other issues and, and expand our, you know, it's an opportunity for expansion and, and, and really not just expansion of existing businesses, but, you know, new disciplines to come out. So it, it, you know, it's, it's the double edged sword it's having to go back and saying, okay, well, you know, and you're right. The client on the client side should have that interest of saying, well, at the end of the day, does your end consumer I E the person who's going to be signing the lease for an office building, or for, for, for a couple of floors, do they want to sign a lease for an office that isn't going to be the best for their employees?Host:And, you know, so hopefully it is that give and take and understanding that the end result has to be beneficial for everyone. But it's going to be interesting to see how this does impact, especially the private vertical market because, you know, a road is a road you're not really going to be changing anything related to, to do the pandemic when it comes to, you know, surface infrastructure or a bridge or a rail line, but yeah. And the development of a train car and the development of of the office building that will change. Well, let's talk about the job site itself and getting employees back onto that job site. Cause you can do as much as you can to make sure that the office environment is a security bubble and that you're doing everything you should to minimize the spread of COVID within the office environment. But the minute an employee leaves the office and goes to a job site they're out of that security bubble. And how does affirm do the most it can to protect their employees? Because then they're interacting with contractors, with the builders, with a number of other people in other companies that probably all have different levels of response, right? Risk nightmare.Karen Erger:Yeah. Well, you know, when, whenever, whenever we're interacting with other people who are partially responsible for the outcome, that can be tricky not to fall back on my good friends communication and documentation, but I think that's where this begins is thinking about, okay, so now that we are facing this pandemic, what, what are our challenges going to be as far as doing what we need to do on site and having that discussion with the owner, having that discussion with the contractor, again, going through here, here's our plan, given what we know from the CDC and other credible sources about how we might be able to do this, talk about the pros and cons and document what that go forward plan is including contract amendments. If that's, if, if our, our scope is changing, which it may be, and then, you know, you, you touched on the contractor's control and that's, this is tricky because the contractor does, should have plenary control over job site safety and the design professional doesn't want to be in a situation where they're starting to call the shots on job site safety. On the other hand, we need to keep our employees safe when they go to the job site and you, ACEC, have put together a lovely new resource guide to returning to the office and the job site that is incredibly detailed and even includes a checklist, which when I site checklist, I see my clients smile. Cause they like those. I think that will be very useful.Host:Yeah. That's new ACEC, New York Jay Simson. I'll give him a shout out for putting that together, but it's nice. But yeah, that, that, and Charles, our GC was very, very engaged in getting this thing together. And as you know him, you know, his work, he's very detail oriented I tuned in. But yeah, that's, that's a really good point because one of the things that we always talk about is duty of care and, and that, you know, engineering, shouldn't broach that line into, you know, extending beyond it's core responsibility for the design, because at the end of the day, the, the construction firm should have that responsibility of, of actually producing the design to specification.Karen Erger:So, so you I won't read the entire guide to cause cause people listening to this podcast can go find it, but just touch on a couple high level things just to think about obviously things I would think about are don't don't force employees to go to the job site, obviously sick people shouldn't go, but no one should be forced to go. If they're, if they're not comfortable doing this, do the education that you need to do so that they understand social distancing and other COVID-19 safety guidelines, give them the PPE that they need to be safe on the job site. And I think this is terribly important to empower them to suspend site visits. If when they get there, the situation is not per the COVID-19 plan, or if other concerns exist, they should stay that they're leaving the site state. The reason document that in the email to the project manager and perhaps the client.Karen Erger:Yeah. Nobody should feel forced to do that. And I think it's important to impress that on staff who go to the site because some of them tend to be less experienced staff. They might feel like they have to do it no matter what, it's their job, take one for the team. No, this is about their safety what's best for the firm is that all of their employees, their most precious resources stay safe. And that really needs to be impressed upon them because they want to do their job. They want to do the right thing, but it's important that they know that that's an important part of it. If it's not safe, it's okay to leave.Host:Yeah. And of course, I think I should be imparted at the top down. Right. So the project manager, even, even, you know, leadership at the firm, you know, has to be, yeah, that has to be a kind of a charge given from the top so that the people at the bottom know that they have air cover to make that decision when they have it. And they're empowered to make that choice.Karen Erger:Yeah. You mentioned something earlier. If I can, if I can tell them to this kind of, you didn't, you didn't say stay in your lane, but, but that was kind of what you were saying about, about the contractor is don't, don't mess around in job site safety, do what your, what you're skilled at doing, stay within your skillset. And just going back to what we were talking about about design. I think it's important that design professionals do that too, because there may be aspects of this that are not within a particular design professionals, competence, maybe they will need to retain or recommend that the owner rate retain, for example, an industrial hygienist or whatever like that. It's important to know where your competence stops and were additional help is needed. And I say that mostly because after working with A/E's for 30 years, they want to help the client. And it's important not to let that, that really wonderful desire lead you into taking responsibility for things that you don't have within your professional competence.Host:That's a really good point because you don't want to overextend yourself and again, expose yourself to risk.Karen Erger:Exactly.Host:And the positive on that, it provides the opportunity for firms to enter into strategic partnerships with other disciplines that they otherwise wouldn't do work with. So instead of coming up with an answer on the fly, find somebody who's good at what that, you know, industrial hygiene or something else and, and bring them into the fold.Karen Erger:I definitely see evidence of that happening and would also remind folks that insurance is still important. If a contract is going to flow through us, it's that's time to talk to your broker about, will we be covered for this? If we are sued on a primary basis, is something better to be assigned to the owner and also what insurance does their sub-consultant have. In fact, it might even be important to ask what insurance could our sub-consultant ask. Since we're not talking about the kinds of disciplines that we're used to engaging with this, isn't a matter of a structural engineer, engaging someone else to do a report that they would normally do. This is something a little different and a great time to call on your broker for help.Host:Yeah. I really appreciate you bringing up the the guide. That's you can find that up on the ACEC website -the Coronavirus Resource Page right there in the home, on the home site, you'll see a link to it and a guide version one, because things are changing. So we're going to be updating that a lot. And you brought up a good point, I think is a good way to round everything out is, is really kind of figuring out what you may or may not need. And talking to an expert experts such as yourself, where can people find you? If you are in the A/E industry and you're have these questions and you need some, some counsel on some risk management you know, we're, what's the best way of getting in touch with you or, or your colleagues at Lockton?Karen Erger:Yup. I will answer, anybody's email that at Kerger@lockton.com. That is definitely the best way to get in touch with me these days now that we all duck unfamiliar calls on our phone because they're afraid someone's trying to sell us a used car warranty, but I'd be happy to hear from anyone. One of the best ways that I learn is through our clients and other architects and engineers questions.Host:Well, Karen, I really appreciate you coming on the show. This is where there's a lot to talk about here. And I don't think this is going to be the only conversation we'll have. And you know, as things develop and, and as new information comes out or, or, you know, if there's something that peaks your interest, let us know and we'll have you back on. But for now, we've, we've kind of covered the top line of, of, of kind of risk management in the age of COVID-19. Hopefully it's food for thought for a lot of our member firms and check out the guide that we have, the ACEC Guide to Returning to the Office and the Jobsite. And Karen, you have a great rest of the week happy belated, 4th of July.Karen Erger:And it's been a pleasure. I hope I can come back and talk to you again.Host:Wonderful. We'll have loved to have you back on. And again, this has been ACEC's Engineering Influence podcast brought to you by the ACEC Life Health Trust. We'll see you next time.

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: We're going to finish up our discussion about Microsoft teams. What are some of the things you might want to use it for? What is this? How was it different from Zoom and everything else on the market? So let's get going. [00:00:21] Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here. Thanks for being with us today. I really appreciate all your comments to me M E at Craig Peterson dot com. A lot of people just respond to my weekly show notes. You get those by signing up for my email list to find out what's going on, what you should be doing, what free trainings we have, what paid courses there are. [00:00:46]We are coming out with a free again, free, free, free. I'm trying to help out here. It really is for you. Okay. A free, special report about all of these apps we're talking about today. So Karen's been working really hard on that with me, and we hope to have it out either this week or maybe the week after. [00:01:09] And it's going to be. Pretty detailed about some of the pros and cons when you should be using it, what policies should you have in place for your employees when it comes to these collaboration apps? So I think it's very important topic, you know, so many of us just knee jerk our way into this with the COVID-19 thing, and we needed something now, please, anything. [00:01:36] And we jerked into Zoom. Most of us, some of us started using Slack. All of these things are, are up in usage. In fact, WebEx had so many people applying for it because it's really the only one. If you're a business that you should be using. That they had to cut back. They were giving it away for free for like two or three months. [00:01:58]Even though they have a huge worldwide infrastructure, they still had some problems with the onboarding, getting everybody set up and ready. So there may or may not be free WebEx stuff going on right now. They're supposed to go. Maybe it was through the end of June until the end of July. I'm not sure what it is right now, but anyway, We're talking about Microsoft teams right now. [00:02:21] Okay. so as I mentioned at the very end with Microsoft teams, you need to integrate your Skype went and we already know Skype is not. Considered to be overly secure. It was actually a little more security before Microsoft bought it. And then Microsoft changed its entire architecture to one where it goes through Microsoft servers. [00:02:45] And that way, if you're in China, Microsoft can sensor you. Or if the law enforcement agencies in the US want to hear what you're saying, Microsoft can provide it to them and they couldn't do it before. So yeah. A little bit of resentment there. You probably noticed in my voice, right, Danielle, back to Microsoft here. [00:03:07] The second big thing is it has this integration that a lot of people are looking for with your business apps. So you can use word Excel, PowerPoint, one-note planners, share 0.1 drive. All integrated with Microsoft teams. And that is a huge win because all of that stuff is right there. Now the integration isn't as clean or as neat or as easy as maybe it should be. [00:03:36] But it is there and it will get better over time. You can still use all of those tools, word, Excel, PowerPoint, et cetera, et cetera, with pretty much any of these apps. They're all designed to be integrated to varying degrees, but Microsoft ultimately will win this battle. Because they own the source code, right. [00:03:58] They own the programs. They're going to take care of themselves first. And they've been sued about that before. So no, no news there. Next point, customized workspace, and every team is different. So Microsoft teams is customizable so that you can integrate it with third-party apps, as well as Microsoft apps. [00:04:21] You know, that's really the trend right now. I see that across all of the industries, Cisco has done an interesting thing, and that is a couple of years ago. They decided to do a policy called API first. Now Microsoft is not doing this, but the whole idea behind API first is. That I'm like Microsoft that tries to play everything close to the chest and give itself advantages over all of its competitors. [00:04:49] Right. And we've seen suits on that forever, like integrating internet Explorer, right into the kernels, supposedly. And so that you could not use other browsers. You always had to have a ye initially, and then they allowed other browsers, but you still had to have I E, and then the courts ruled against them yet again. [00:05:09] And so unlike Microsoft's approach to try and lock you in, Cisco has decided that they want to make. All of the Cisco software uses the same interfaces that third-party vendors have to use. And that is phenomenal when it comes to integration. So if you want to use WebEx or WebEx teams or any component of any of the Cisco stuff, including their firewalls and the routers, et cetera, et cetera, you can. [00:05:41] They've got API APIs for everything. Cause that's the only way they can access their own software. It says absolutely phenomenal. So Microsoft teams do have some third party integration available on it, which can be handy. You also get real-time communications, which as I mentioned can be a problem. [00:06:02] This isn't just true with Microsoft. This is true for WebEx teams and Slack and everything else out there. But it's real-time. So a smart person's going to do something different with email excuse me. something caught in my throat, but, email, you typically try and delay, right? I try and read my email once a day and that's it. [00:06:29] And if someone really needs to get ahold of me, but they probably know how to really get ahold of me. Right. So I'm not getting interrupted. I can work on the stuff I need to get to work on. No, I'm putting his stuff. Together for my lives for my webinars, for my radio show for everything else. And if I get interrupted, particularly if I'm doing some programming work, it can cost me hours of time. [00:06:56] So I put off email and only go through it maybe once a day. Sometimes I'll go two or three days without really paying attention to my email. So I apologize to you. If you send me an email and you're hoping for a quick answer, I don't always get back to you very quickly. Right. I have other people in my team that that's what it's for. [00:07:15] So when we're talking about communicating in real-time with some of these collaboration apps, It's a double edge sword. So instead of having emails, bouncing back and forth, which might take hours and hours, right? Because someone says something and half an hour later, another person reads it and responds. [00:07:36] Now, then that first person an hour later read to them a response, you can just have it go over very quickly. It's phenomenal for productivity. When you need quick productivity, the high priority initiatives that you have can really move a lot faster because it's not an email. It's not getting a push back while you were waiting. [00:07:57] This is really instant messaging. Think of it like texting, right? So everybody can be on the same page with these team's apps you can see who has seen your messages and people can respond to them. They can start a thread. normally how does it work? You're well, you might send an email to everybody. Giving them an update, right? [00:08:18]they reply to you, but maybe not to everybody that happens all of the time. I know people that I, you know, I expect them to copy all because I, you know, I've got two or three people on it that are need to know, and they don't, they just reply directly to me. with these types of teams, apps, everybody's on the same page. [00:08:39] Everybody can see everything. This conversation with email can split into a bunch of different conversations with ideas, being directed at one person when it really should be a group discussion. So keep that in mind as well. When you're considering some of these team's applications, everybody knows what's going on, what the status is, and productivity. [00:09:04] Just keeps flowing. You're listening to Craig Peter's son. I appreciate your being with me today. And of course, you can get me online as well. Craig peterson.com. Make sure you sign up to my email list. Kirk peterson.com/subscribe. And that gets you an email every week. Oftentimes it's Saturday mornings lately. [00:09:27] It's been more like Mondays, you know, summertime COVID-19 every excuse in the book, right. As to why it's been a little bit more delayed, but you know, expected by Monday. And it's got my summary for the week. It's got links to my podcast and also info about classes and courses and lives when they happen. [00:09:46] And then of course, here on the air, take care of everybody. We'll be right back, stick around. --- 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

Top para-cyclist Karen Darke MBE won silver in London and gold in Rio now she's trying to make it to a third consecutive Paralympic games in Tokyo but its a tough challenge. So Karen's enlisted the help of Williams Advanced Engineering to see if they can bring a Formula 1 approach to maximising her performance this summer. In this Brainwaves Pennie Latin joins Karen behind the scenes to see just what science and technology can offer our elite athletes.

Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha , the pediatrician whose press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis and the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb, associate professor of geography at BGSU, whose research includes racial disparities in health, discuss environmental racism and the Flint water crisis.     Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Musical Intro: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the Big Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Dr Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today we're joined by Dr Mona-Hanna Attisha and Dr. Karen Johnson-Webb. Dr Hanna-Attisha is a pediatrician who's press conference and testimony before Congress alerted the public about the Flint, Michigan water crisis. She's the author of BGSU's 2019-2020 Common Read, What the Eyes Don't See A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Johnson-Webb is an associate professor of geography at BGSU. Her research includes racial disparities in health. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Thanks for joining me today. Mona Hanna-Attisha: It's great to be with you. Karen Johnson-Webb: Thanks for having me. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Mona you played an important role in alerting the public about the Flint water crisis and advocating for the city's residents. Can you begin to just tell our audience how you began practicing medicine in Flint and how that led into your involvement in the water crisis? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah, so I first got a flavor of medicine in Flint as a medical student. So I went to Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine and it's actually the first community based medical school. So the medical school is founded to really kind of serve the rest of the state, and Flint was one of its original campuses. So as a medical student over 20 plus years ago I was in Flint for my clinical training and that's where I really fell in love with the city and I fell in love with the discipline of pediatrics. I then went to Detroit for about 10 plus years to do my residency at the Children's Hospital in Michigan. And then in 2011 I had this amazing opportunity to come back to Flint to give back to the city that really gave me so much and to serve as their pediatric residency director, which means I got to oversee the training of future pediatricians. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Okay. How did you first learn about the possibility of elevated lead levels in Flint's water supply? Mona Hanna-Attisha: So I learned about the issue of lead kind of late in the story. So in April of 2014 Flint changed their water source from the great lakes, which we had been getting for over half a century to the Flint River. And this was done while we were under kind of state appointed emergency management and it was all about saving money. So that happened in April of 2014 and there was kind of concerns from the very beginning about things like color and odor and taste and bacteria. And throughout this time all the people in power said everything was okay. So I was telling my patients for about a year and a half when they came in with concerns about the water, that everything was okay because all these really important scientists were saying everything was okay. But that all changed when I heard about the possibility of lead in the water. And that happened in the summer of 2015 and not in clinic and not in kind of my office, not the hospital, but actually in my kitchen at home at a barbecue with a high school girlfriend who of all things happened to be a drinking water expert. And at that time she alerted me to the possibility that hey the water is not being treated properly and because of that there would be lead in the water. Dr Jolie Sheffer: I think this is one of the important parts of your story is that you were uniquely qualified to do something, but you learned about this through a matter of just your social network, right? Just your human connections to neighbors and friends. And I think that's something that we'll talk more about, but the ways in which being an actor or making change is not necessarily because you planned to, but because you're the right person at the right time in a particular place. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Absolutely right person, right time, right place, right team, right training, right background or experiences that prepare you for these moments, which you can never plan for. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Okay. Karen, your background is in geography. Can you tell us about how you came to focus specifically on black infant mortality and maternal health and how these fit into geography? Karen Johnson-Webb: Well, I'm probably one of the few people you'll meet with three degrees in geography. Most people sort of trip into geography. And I did as an undergrad. I'm also an alumni of Michigan State University- Dr Jolie Sheffer: Go Green! Karen Johnson-Webb: -Department of Geography. And when I decided to do my Masters, Dr John Hunter, an imminent, very famous medical geographer, made his presentation to the grad students. All the faculty were sort of cycling through and I said that's what I want to do. And I've always been interested in issues of race, racism and how it impacts people's everyday lives. And when I moved, my family's from Michigan, but I grew up in Washington, DC, but came back to Michigan State to go to college. And when I came back after getting my PhD and everything and started just trying to tool around for an idea of what to research locally, I found that, I looked at a map of the United States mapped by state with infant mortality and you expect to see high rates in the South, but I didn't expect to see Michigan and Ohio pop out like Mississippi and Alabama. And that was very curious to me. Karen Johnson-Webb: And then another coincidence, during winter vacation one year, I read a little blurb in the Toledo Blade that said that the Public Health Department had gotten a grant to study lead. Not lead, to study black infant mortality. And so I called the guy, I just called him and I said, "Well, I'm a health geographer. I'd really like to add my expertise to this committee." And that's how it started. I started working with Lucas County Public Health, the Ohio Equity Institute, OEI, was part of the grant. And there the disparity, the gap between black and white infant mortality is, it's phenomenal. And especially in Lucas County for a couple of years it was really wide. It was 14 infant deaths per 1000 births, live births for blacks, dead infants, 14 dead infants compared to 0.1 per 1000 for whites. And there's no way to explain that by just controlling for education, income, mom's visits, is mom smoking, et cetera, et cetera. Karen Johnson-Webb: And so now scholars are starting to look at toxic stress on the mom's body and not just stress experienced in her lifetime. We're talking about stress that's passed down generation to generation. So, that's sort of the long version. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Can you say a little more about that, Karen, and how kind of toxic stress is related to environmental racism and structural racism more generally? How do we understand the role of racism in the physical health of families and communities over generations? Karen Johnson-Webb: Structural racism as opposed to individual racism, which most people, most everyday people would think racism is about I don't like you because you're black. I don't like you because you're Asian, et cetera. That's individual where feelings are involved, perhaps. Structural racism has to do with structures and systems that were put in place intentionally over hundreds of years in this country that were designed to subjugate black people, to rob them of their wealth or their ability to gain wealth through many things, education, jobs, what have you, and these systems continue. Not only do you have a situation where you have families who have not been able to provide wealth to their future generations, but these systems continue to persist. And it may be intentional, but it may be unintentional, like the school system, the public school systems. I don't think there are teachers or administrators who are there to subjugate black children. However, we're all placed in a situation where, because of the way the housing market was structured by policies of the US government, you have poor black people pooled together in cities. You had massive white flight, which was subsidized by the US government. And you've got children that are attending substandard schools because of the way that the taxation system is set up, none of which is their fault. Karen Johnson-Webb: And so those are the types of things that you have policies that have the effect, perhaps not the intent, but the effect of poor education outcomes, poor health outcomes, poor political outcomes, poor environmental outcomes, et cetera. Dr Jolie Sheffer: So those policies that you're talking about in terms of land ownership, private property have to do with who was eligible for mortgages, right? Karen Johnson-Webb: Yes. Dr Jolie Sheffer: As a result of changes in mid century, about redlining and blockbusting- Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: -that kept those mortgages and that wealth contained in certain neighborhoods that only certain people were eligible to buy in. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: So that's what you're talking about there. But this also has very material effects on health in terms of the quality of the land that is available. Historically we think about valuable land versus bottom land and how the landscapes that we live in are highly racialized as well. Karen Johnson-Webb: Exactly. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Which property was kind of already toxic in some ways that oh, that is available to be sold cheaply to people of color. Whereas the more valuable property is redlined only for white owners. How does that work in Flint in particular, Mona? Mona Hanna-Attisha: That's absolutely part of Flint's history and it's part of the history of so many of our urban communities. This is not unique to Flint. This happened throughout our nation. There's a whole chapter in my book really dedicated to that history and how really recognizing and digging down into that history helps us understand why the crisis happened and where we are today. There's a lot of history in the Flint story because if we fail to look back and recognize a history it's impossible for us to move forward. So that's what Flint's history was all about. Mona Hanna-Attisha: So Flint had this huge period of prosperity. Lots of folks came for automotive jobs. The birth of General Motors was in Flint. People came for living wages and great jobs and great infrastructure and great schools. And there was quite a bit of prosperity. African Americans and the great migration North, they came to Flint because it was better than the conditions in the Jim Crow South, but it was still not equal conditions. And then after that, through policy decisions and manmade decisions, there was disinvestment. Plants closed, jobs were lost, people who had the power and the privilege to leave the city left the city. And what was left was poverty and things like violence became epidemic. And all these significant disparities that directly impact the health of the people in the city. So these were all men made policy decisions that can be traced back to these examples of structural racism. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Talk to us a little bit about the kind of backlash and criticism you got for whistle blowing. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah, so you know, one of the reasons I went into pediatrics and went into public health is because part of that profession is being an advocate. That's why I was drawn to that profession to be able to use my voice to help elevate the children's voices and to elevate what they need to be healthy and successful. So throughout this whole process I have been and continue to be very much doing my job as a pediatrician. So when the opportunity came to share our research findings that were, was not unexpected, there was more blood, more lead in the blood of Flint kids. I never should have had to do that research. We should have known just by what was in the water that this should have been a hard stop. Mona Hanna-Attisha: So when that research was clear, that science was clear, there was no other option than sharing that data and as quickly as possible. So in for us academics, we usually go through something called the peer review process where we publish our data and present at conferences. That takes a really long time and our kids really didn't have another day. So I literally walked out of my clinic with my white coat on and I stood up at a press conference to share these findings and I felt great. I'm like, this is awesome! I'm protecting kids, I'm being an advocate because that's what being a pediatrician is all about. So I felt good for like a half an hour and then the state and really every arm of the state said I was wrong. They said that I was splicing and dicing numbers, that I was an unfortunate researcher, that I was causing near hysteria, which is also quite sexist. Mona Hanna-Attisha: And I was preparing myself for a backlash because everybody who had raised their voices in the story had been denied and dismissed. The moms, the activists, the pastors, the journalists, the water experts, everybody had been silenced and attacked. So I was prepared for trying to prepare myself, but nothing can really prepare you for that personal backlash. And I felt sick. My heart rate went up, I wanted to throw up, my hands were shaking. A part of me said to myself maybe I made a mistake. I began to second guess myself. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten involved. Maybe I should have just gone about my busy job as a mom, pediatrician, professor. Why did I get involved in this? And that lasted a short period and it was the quick recognition that they could go after me all they want because this had nothing to do with me, but everything to do with the children, the children of Flint who I'm privileged to serve. So it was as if those kids just kind of lifted me up and helped me fight back. And at that time a growing team was kind of around me and the media started paying attention. Dr Jolie Sheffer: There were a couple of things they're worth spending some more time on. One is the role of journalism, right? We're in a time where we tend to think of, there's a lot of criticism of the media and yet both of you are talking about the ways in which journalism has been absolutely essential in keeping democratic processes working. So Karen, can you talk a little bit about, back to how you first learned about infant and maternal mortality rates in Toledo. What have you seen as the role in the media in kind of keeping the spotlight on some of the inequalities happening locally and around the country? Karen Johnson-Webb: Well I've seen some fair reporting in terms of quoting the, it's called the Toledo Lucas County Public Health Department. And a lot of the efforts to fight black infant mortality have been centered on a safe baby sleeping, which about 12% of infant deaths are due to safe, unsafe baby sleeping. So there's this huge gap or this huge proportion of deaths that are more related to low birth weight births and prematurity. And that's where the, in terms of my own research, where looking at stress that is basically day to day stress that people are living under because of where they live, because of where they were born, because of what family they were born into. And in Toledo people are talking about social determinants of health. But it's very hard to get at, especially if you're under public funding and you want to study that's going to be crisp and clear with numbers. That's, it's very difficult to get a report out that might be easy for people to consume. Karen Johnson-Webb: And so consequently most of the focus has been on the safe baby sleeping and what the mothers can do better, which, could also be mom blaming. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Blame the victim. Karen Johnson-Webb: Yeah, blame the victim for whatever she's doing, smoking, being obese or- Dr Jolie Sheffer: A kid getting lead poisoning. You didn't wash his hands enough. Karen Johnson-Webb: Exactly, exactly. But there are so many good people that are working hard to drive these rates down and are trying new things. And my own research where I did qualitative interviews, long conversations with black women who are residents of Lucas County about their life. It was basically a conversation. And I heard Dr Mona talk yesterday about ACEs, adverse childhood experiences. And this is also another buzz word along with social determinants of health, but it's a very serious consequence of structural racism for black children. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And explain for our listeners what kinds of events are ACEs? Karen Johnson-Webb: Well that's very interesting because I was sitting in a dissertation proposal defense and the student listed some, had a slide, a PowerPoint slide and divorce was there. And my parents were divorced, but I never, I wouldn't have called it an adverse childhood experience, but it was. But there were also things like malnutrition, seeing someone murdered- Dr Jolie Sheffer: Abuse, neglect. Karen Johnson-Webb: -knowing someone who's been murdered, treatment by the police, poor schools, things that go on in school because you don't know or you haven't been treated for whatever it is that's keeping you from performing and also they could be trauma. What it is, is trauma, traumatic experiences. And you could be experiencing traumatic experiences in your own family. And we can look at some of those things of how are people coping with their stress? Maybe not in the best way. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And what we find, right, is that children exposed to multiple stressors like this, it ultimately has an effect on brain development- Karen Johnson-Webb: Yes. Dr Jolie Sheffer: -and biochemistry that can lead to these longer term health effects like perhaps high blood pressure or other things. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Heart diseases and infant mortality has been shown to be very graded and predictable. The more and more of these early adversities you have really in this critical window of early childhood in a very graded and predictable way you'll have more kind of risk taking behaviors, more chronic diseases, and actually decreased life expectancy. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And one of the things that what both of your work really shows is that the way we think about race, racism and social policy is completely backwards in this country, that we focus on the consequences of these systemic issues, right? We focus on the single child who's a behavioral problem. We focus on the individual house that has lead paint, right? Rather than recognizing that the reason there's a higher rate of incarceration or a higher rate of untreated mental illness is actually goes way back to these systemic- Karen Johnson-Webb: It very well could. Dr Jolie Sheffer: -childhood stressors that may have affected brain development and health. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. Mona Hanna-Attisha: It's looking upstream. So as a pediatrician, I can, I can bandaid kids that come in with gunshot injuries and we do, but it's asking those questions like, why is this happening? Why do we have this inaction on policies that are preventing children from getting hurt? So it's taking, it's being more curious. It's asking those bigger questions of why and looking at what's happening at the systemic policy level. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And once we sort of know the why, one of the things that I think both of you are really interested in is what is, how do you then tell the story that explains for people the connections and convinces them of what the policy solutions should be. So for me, that's very much related to the relationship between data, the kind of quantitative and narrative stories. So Dr Mona your book is very much about combining these. Can you talk about how you think about the relationship between the quantitative data and the qualitative stories of individual patients? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah, that is a great question. And it's so critical to influence these policies. We have to be equipped with all these different tools of communication and persuasion to share what we want to share. So in my press conference that I had, I had graphs and I had data and I had P values and I had statistics, everything that you're supposed to have as a researcher. But I also had a story and I had a picture of a child and I held up a baby bottle filled with Flint water because I knew that if I was going to move some people, some folks aren't going to be moved by the data and the science, but some folks will be moved by me telling you the story of a little girl who was using Flint water to mix her powdered formula who was waking up at night and her mom was getting warm water from a tap that hadn't been flushed and she was filling her bottle and that's all she was consuming for the first six months of her life. So we have to be able to navigate both worlds, to share a narrative and to influence decision makers. Karen Johnson-Webb: Dr Mona did such a fantastic job of telling a story. And stories resonate with people. And that's what I hope to do with my research because many people are very resistant to hearing about racism, thinking about racism, especially if they can't see it or they've never experienced it, or they don't know how it's manifesting. Things that people go through, things that people are experiencing, children are experiencing in their everyday lives, will resonate. We've seen it over and over again with things. The events at the US/Mexico border when children, when we started talking about children, people got outraged. Dr Jolie Sheffer: There's something quite different from the abstract to the concrete, right? Karen Johnson-Webb: The stories matter. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Right. It's easy when you're focusing on numbers to forget that each number is attached to a real person with people who love them, with hopes, with dreams, ambitions. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And what we, and part of what you're both talking about is good research uses all the tools available. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Not only to do the research, but to communicate it, right? Karen Johnson-Webb: That's exactly right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: That we need to collect good, rigorous data, right? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: We need to use proper protocols and ethical standards and all of that, but we also need to be able to share that information in a way that connects with people because otherwise we can't make the policy. Mona Hanna-Attisha: You got are exactly right. And I had the privilege of being involved in the March for Science and one of the reasons I got involved was really to push my fellow academics, my fellow scientists, my fellow researchers, my fellow doctors that hey, you're doing great work, but you're publishing in journals that nobody reads. That's okay, you need that for promotion and tenure and all these other things we have to do. But if we want to, for example, influence what people think about vaccines or about the climate crisis, we need to get out of our cozy ivory towers and step into the often uncomfortable spaces of, for example, capitol buildings or media places and share that science. We need to do a better job communicating the value of our work. Dr Jolie Sheffer: We're going to take a quick break. Thanks for listening to the Big Ideas podcast. Introduction: If you are passionate about Big Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Welcome back to the Big Ideas podcast. We're talking to Dr Mona Hanna-Attisha and Dr Karen Johnson-Webb about environmental racism and the Flint water crisis. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Dr Mona, what role do economic decisions make in these cases of environmental catastrophe? Can you talk us through some of the financial decisions that were made that led to this crisis in Flint? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Yeah. You know, people often ask me who are the villains in this story? And they want me to name people and I share the real villains are these concepts of, for example, austerity and that we should minimize taxes and tax on big government and all these different things. And what happened in Flint was driven by this ideology of austerity, which means to save money. It was all about saving money, saving money, saving money. Because of Flint's history, because of that loss, that tax base, because of these kind of structural racist decisions, the city was unable to support its infrastructure. Not only its water infrastructure, but it's policing and public health and all these other really critical things because bizarrely we base those things on tax bases. And that led Flint to be in this near bankruptcy state. So because of that economic state the government took over. The state came in, appointed a financial emergency manager to balance the books and to cut costs. And that's how the decision was made because they thought we would save money if we stopped getting water from the great lakes. And it now evidently had become too expensive for this predominantly poor minority near bankrupt city. And to save a few bucks we transitioned to the Flint River without proper treatment. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And remind us what the consequences of that are in financial terms now. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Probably in the billions. So there's probably been at least a billion dollars in aid that has come into Flint from the pipe replacements to the national guard to the water delivery to the filters to expanded Medicaid to early intervention services, school health, nutrition programming, literacy support. I mean the list goes on and on of the resources that are not even enough yet because this is a longterm issue that has happened as a result of this kind of cost-saving move. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Do you see similar things at work in terms of our local region in terms of short term thinking that has much longer term costs? Karen Johnson-Webb: Absolutely. In Toledo it's widely known, published in the local paper, that we have a lead problem in old housing stock. Old housing stock that's situated in the inner city is mostly rental property and children who are on Medicaid get tested for lead. However, children that are not, don't. And there hasn't been a real push to get them tested. And the Toledo city council did pass an ordinance to clean it up and the landlords went crazy and said, "We can't afford this." And so it's just sort of been sitting. It was rescinded by a judge or something like that. I did read recently that the city council received a grant to start mitigation. It's not going to be totally taken out of the houses, but it's going to be covered up. And it's been left to the churches to try to organize teams of people to go in and clean those houses out. And so yeah, and it wasn't even a burden on the city. It was a burden on people who chose to be landlords. In my mind, if you choose to be a landlord and something's wrong with your property, oh well you're supposed to fix that. Mona Hanna-Attisha: So there's a long history of not taking action, of being very kind of shortsighted when it comes to lead. There's one of my favorite quotes from a scientist in 1969 he, when he was referring to lead poisoning he said, "The causes and cures are so well known that if we fail to take action we deserve all the social crimes that will come with it." This is 1969. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Post Flint there was a great report from Pew and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that looked at just the economics of lead. There's actually folks called lead economists and they in this great report said that we would save our nation $80 billion a year if we eliminate lead exposure in terms of increased economic productivity, decreased special education costs, decreased healthcare, behavioral healthcare costs, decreased criminal justice costs. So we actually even have the economic arguments, which you'd figure would move policy makers, but unfortunately those savings are not seen usually past the life expectancy and the term limits of those policymakers. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Well and that leads to this question, right? That we do know the economic costs. We do know the benefits that would occur if we actually invested in some of these remediations now. And what you're talking about is so much then what do individual citizens do? So what can individual citizens, like our students, like our neighbors, what can be done to actually influence some of these policy decisions? What can be done in Toledo, Karen? Karen Johnson-Webb: Well, I'm kind of a gadfly. I tweet, I write, I call my senators, I call my representatives. I don't know how much good that does. Mona Hanna-Attisha: It does a lot of guns. Karen Johnson-Webb: It does? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Karen is civically engaged. Karen read a newspaper article and she called the person in the article and she got involved in her community. So do what Karen is doing. Walking into this interview, we passed a voter registration table. That's awesome. So vote, vote, vote, vote, take five friends with you. Commit to doing that. So that's all part of being part of the political process and influencing policymakers. Hold them accountable. You voted them in. Set up meetings with them. Ask them if they're going to fund these kinds of really critical preventative public health interventions. So there is a lot that people can do, especially young people. The movements that are happening right now are being led by young people. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's right. And they're on Facebook and they're on social media and there's a way on Facebook, you can, you go through a process where you're just not somebody posting on your senators page. You are a constituent because you've given your zip code or something like that. And they're notorious for, I mean, they have to pay attention to their constituents, especially if there are enough of them. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And I think that's one of the things that's so important here that like Mona you are a national figure now, but you were involved in local politics, right? This was a local issue. And Karen, you're talking about the local city council, right? These are things that you don't have to go to Washington DC. It may be down the street. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Literally down the street. Dr Jolie Sheffer: It may be in your neighborhood. Mona Hanna-Attisha: And that's the lesson of this book and my story is that there are injustices everywhere. You just have to open your eyes to them. But it's not enough to be awake. You have to take action, even if it's hard or scary, even if your heart rate goes up and your stomach hurts, you have to do it. You can't stay silent and close your eyes to these issues. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And I think it's also important to know that you don't have to feel like you're an expert in all of it to be able to do something about it, right? Karen Johnson-Webb: Right. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Absolutely. And then the really awesome thing, which is also part of my story is find friends, make friends with people who are different then you like drinking water friends from high school and environmental engineers and geographers and people from all these different disciplines. So you don't have to be that expert but find all kinds of different friends and then your work is so much more powerful. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Mona and Karen, we have some students in the studio who'd like to ask you some questions. Musical Intro: I'm Haley Kurtz, a first year student at Bowling Green State University. And my question for Dr Mona is what can this generation of future doctors, leaders and educators do with the lessons and values in your book to help make our lives and the lives after us better? Mona Hanna-Attisha: Hailey, that is an awesome question. Thank you. There is so much that you can do and I think one of the biggest lessons of this story in this book is the recognition that you have power. You are a powerful person and you can make a huge difference. So I think what I would like you to take home is having that kind of self esteem and that self efficacy that I can make a difference. Mona Hanna-Attisha: When I was in high school, when I was in college, when I was in medical school, people kept telling me you can change the world. And I believed them. Like I really believed that I could change the world. But throughout that training I also garnered a lot of critical skills and tools and communication and research and science and advocacy to enable me to change the world. So always believe in yourself and always believe that you have the power to change the world because you can and we're going to be watching you. Ezra Wilder: I'm Ezra Wilder, another first year. And my question for Dr Mona is how do we as educators and social workers better advocate for the kids that and the communities that we hope to work with? Mona Hanna-Attisha: That is an awesome question. So how do we be better advocates? And I think I would share kind of what I shared earlier is do it with friends. Find your village. So often when we are advocating for something or we're fighting for something, we feel like the weight of the world is only on our shoulders, that nobody else cares about what we care about. And what I learned through this whole process like, oh my God, other people also care about kids and people that I didn't even think cared about kids like water engineers cared about kids. Who knew? That's awesome! Geographers cared about kids. So find those folks because when you are feeling down they will help lift you up. You want to have people who have your back and you want to be part of a larger team. A movement. This story is so much of a story of the power of individuals coming together and making a difference. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Do you want to add anything about working with advice, for working with marginalized populations? Karen Johnson-Webb: Well that, I have found that to be very important. I went and I joined that group, it's changed names. It's now called Getting to One and I haven't been back to it since school started, but yes, and hearing stories and hearing what it was from the ground level of what really needed to be addressed. There's nothing that substitutes for that. The numbers represent people and their experiences and what they are experiencing. And in order to help them you have to find out what exactly they need help with and how you can intervene on that. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Yeah, I think what you're pointing out and you're working with qualitative data, right? You're talking to people, right? It's not standing for people. It's listening to them, learning from them rather than thinking you're the expert coming in. Karen Johnson-Webb: That's exactly right. Dr Jolie Sheffer: And solving it. I think that's important. Mona Hanna-Attisha: Jolie, I completely agree with both of you. This is all about partnerships. This is all about working together. This is about us as academics and doctors and professionals stepping off our pedestals and working humbly shoulder to shoulder with impacted communities. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Mona and Karen, on behalf of ICS and BGSU thanks so much for talking with me today. We really enjoyed hearing more about your research and your work. For those in the audience, if you're interested in learning more about Dr Hanna-Attisha and the Flint water crisis please read What the Eyes Don't See or listen to the audio book read by Dr Mona herself. Dr Jolie Sheffer: Our producers for this podcast are Chris Cavera and Markham Mendoza. Audio engineering is by Jacob Sidell. Research assistance for this podcast was provided by ICS intern Emma Valandingham. This conversation was recorded in the Stanton audio recording studio in the Michael and Sarah Colleen Center at Bowling Green State University.      

How do you stay happy, despite the daily challenges of life? This quick and practical 3-step method can help. Are you doing these 3 simple things? So Karen has packed it all in, sold her house, car and other possessions to start a new adventure on the road. Check out our Instagram channel to see […] The post 15 Minute Happiness Hack Episode 95 appeared first on Coffee and A Chitchat Podcast.

So Karen had her odyssey and now Aaron's begins.  It has been a great week. We hope yours was better.

Writing through chronic illness and other challenges, with Karen Lock KolpThis writing thing often feels hard. A common text among the three of us (Jess, Sarina and KJ) goes like this: OW OW OW OWOWOWOW. Our brains hurt. But for this week’s guest, Karen Lock Kolp, it’s more than that. Because of a rare tendon condition, Karen does all her writing and online work—and we do mean all—using her voice. That means that when it comes to both dictation and writing through big challenges, she’s a pro, and her advice in this episode was solid gold on both counts.Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 2, 2019: Top 5 Things to Remember When Writing is REALLY Hard. Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. 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 with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCASTThe Solopreneur Hour with Michael O'Neal Joanna Penn's The Creative PennKaren's Dictation Software Choices: Dragon Dictation, Chrome Browser, Dragon's Transcription Button.MouseGrid video on YouTube: How to Use the Dragon MouseGrid (as it turns out, it’s focused on navigating in Facebook with Dragon, but still a great video)It's a Long Way to the Top, AC/DC#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Karen: Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado PerezThe Purloined Paperweight, P.G. Wodehouse Grown-Up Anger: The Connected Mysteries of Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and the Calumet Massacre of 1913, Daniel WolffKJ: The Bookish Life of Nina Hill, Abbi WaxmanJess: God Land: A Story of Faith, Loss, and Renewal in Middle America, Lyz Lenz (Hear Lyz on the podcast here.) #FaveIndieBookstoreJeff Kinney's An UnLikely Story in Plainville, MAKaren Lock Kolp is the author of Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics: Key Tools to Handle Every Temper Tantrum, Keep Your Cool, and Enjoy Life with Your Young Child and 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know: How to Stop the Chaos, Bring Out Your Child’s Good Behavior, and Truly Enjoy Family Time (Your Child Explained). Find out more at Karen's website: We Turned Out Okay. Listen to her podcast here. Her popular episode Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is here. This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ:                                00:01                Howdy writers and listeners. August is basically over. September is here and this is the very last time I can invite you to join us in Bar Harbor, Maine for the Find Your Book, Find Your Mojo retreat from September 12th through 15th of 2019. It's a fantastic chance to get some one on one time for your project with me or Author Accelerator founder Jenny Nash, and then dig in with all your might in a gorgeous setting surrounded by your fellow #AmWriting word nerds, including Serena Bowen, who's going to talk about indie versus traditional publishing. There will be bonding, there will be writing, and knitting and artistic renderings of words of the year and all kinds of festivities and I for one can't wait. Find all the details@authoraccelerator.com/am writing.KJ:                                00:55                Go ahead. This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone and try to remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess:                             00:59                All right, let's start over.KJ:                                01:01                Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess:                             01:04                Okay.KJ:                                01:04                Now one, two, three. Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia.Jess:                             01:13                And I'm Jess Lahey.KJ:                                01:15                And this is #AmWriting with Jess and KJ. #AmWriting is our weekly podcast about all things writing, be they fiction, nonfiction, some bizarre intertwined creation, short stories, proposals, essays, long pieces, short pieces. And most of all, the one thing we always are is the podcast about getting the work done.Jess:                             01:46                And I'm Jess Lahey. I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and a forthcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And you can find my work at the New York Times and the Washington Post and recently at Air Mail, which is a new venture by Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair. And that was kind of fun to write for someone new.KJ:                                02:06                I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I'm the author of How To Be a Happier Parent and the former lead editor and writer of the Motherlode blog at the New York Times where I am still a contributor. I'm having a freelancing break while I work on what will be my second novel and my first novel, The Chicken Sisters will be out next year.Jess:                             02:24                So exciting.KJ:                                02:26                That's who we are. That's why you should listen to us. Today, we have a guest that I think you are also going to want to listen to. I want to welcome Karen Lock Kolp. She is a child development expert and a parenting coach with a podcast, a thriving online community, and she is the independently published author of 10 Secrets Happy Parents Know. But we are not going to talk about anything parenty because what we are gonna talk about is getting all that work done because Karen is also a woman who lives with chronic illness. She has a tendon disorder that she'll describe to you later, but it has made her an expert in the use of her voice, both as a podcaster and in dictating her writing, which I know you're all going to want to hear about. And it's also made her an expert at keeping her butt in the chair sometimes whether she wants to or not, and getting her work done anyway, even when it's really, really hard. And that's why you're here. So thank you so much for joining us.Karen:                          03:28                Oh, thank you. It's really wonderful to be here. This is very exciting for me. Your podcast is one of my favorites. It is one of the few that survived my recent digital reset. Yours was one of the few that I brought back in because it's incredibly valuable.Jess:                             03:51                Oh, that's so nice. We survived a purge. That's so exciting.KJ:                                03:56                I purged lately too, although I partly purged just because I get so frustrated with the iTunes podcast app and switched and then once I switched I realized I hadn't brought everything with me and some of it I didn't miss.Jess:                             04:08                I had that moment where iTunes said, you seem to have not downloaded this in awhile. Do you still want to listen? And I thought about it and I said, well, no, actually I'm done.Karen:                          04:20                That's really cool. I did that.KJ:                                04:22                So Karen, so what I really want to talk about today is the specifics of writing with chronic illness, but also more on a general note, just the challenges of writing when it's hard. I think that we all have times when we feel like this is impossible and you have written through moments that I think most of us would define as actually impossible. So, start by telling us where you stand and how this started for you.Karen:                          04:56                Wow. It's, it's quite a story. So, actually first of all, I think I just want to say that I was well into writing my second book before I would dare to call myself a writer. So there's that as well. I was like, I'm a podcaster, I'm not a writer. You know what I mean?KJ:                                05:14                Yeah, no, we all have that. Yeah. I mean it's always, well, I wrote for the New York Times, but only online, you know Nobody, none of us thinks we're a real writer yet. Yeah, except maybe Salmon Rushdie, he thinks he's a real writer.Karen:                          05:34                Thinks he's a writer. Yeah, exactly. A real writer. I was midway through the second book and I was like, I said to somebody, Oh, I'm a writer. And I was like, wait a minute, I actually am a writer. I'm like, that's pretty cool. For me, it all started eight years ago, more than eight years ago now, I contracted a tendon disorder. And the way that I did it was I got a gastric disease called diverticulitis, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. And I took some (this is the nearest that my doctors and I can figure out) I took a really strong course of antibiotics to get rid of it. And they had a thing in them called fluoroquinolones. And since that started, since I went down this rabbit hole, it's been discovered that fluoroquinolones cause tendon problems largely in kids, but caused these problems anyway. And the rheumatologist told me, probably four or five years in that like I'm one of the lucky few who it stuck around for it. There's like a third of people who get this that they get it and get better right away. And then there's a third who sort of get it and it sticks around for a couple of years. And then I'm one of the ones who's, you know, it's gone on for a really long time.KJ:                                06:42                That's just annoying.Karen:                          06:45                I mean, isn't it?KJ:                                06:48                The truth is that in a single hand card game, odds don't matter and it’s either going to stay or it's not and if it stays those odds just make you mad.Karen:                          06:57                Yeah. And I, I, it took me a long time to get here, but I, I would say that what I've done is I've kind of gone through a real metamorphosis, you know, before I was a caterpillar and then this was my chrysalis and now I'm a butterfly. Like I truly understand the meaning of differently abled in a way I never, ever did before. For the first couple of years, the focus was really on my legs. I lost almost complete use of one leg in particular (my right leg) because of some of the tendons in it. And then there was a sort of very long rehab. But while I was going through that, I needed a wheelchair. Whenever I left the house it was a mess. And when that got better, then my thumb tendon started to go. And I'm still basically really still recovering from that. The legs are much better than the upper body. So all my writing is done online, and I do it with a speech recognition software. But, I want to even go further back than that, if it's okay.KJ:                                08:04                Yeah.Karen:                          08:05                Because I, the whole reason that I started to do anything is because I wanted, it sounds, it may sound silly, but I wanted to give a TED talk. I was, I remember watching TED talks and loving them and laughing at them. Like I couldn't move, I was stranded in a chair. And I remember thinking, you know what I could do, I could do a TED talk in a wheelchair. I want to do a TED talk. And so what, I, I haven't done one yet, I'm still hoping to, but this whole thing started because I was like, well, I want to do that. So my husband especially helped me try to figure out like, how could you do that, because at the same time as I wanted that I was also feeling incredibly useless and a total burden at home. We had two young kids and I couldn't be the house wife, and I couldn't be the cook. And I couldn't be the laundry and I couldn't be the chauffeur. So I really was feeling very down, like not quite suicidal, but if you got hit by a bus it wouldn't be a problem kind of thing. I had to learn first that there is value in me even if I can't use my hands or my legs. Once I learned that, my family was like, we need you, we need you to be the brains, which is how we define it around here. Then I could sort of look outwards from that. And that was when I really decided, I think I want to do a TED talk. And that has led to so much cool stuff. And even if it's not ever a TED talk, I'm so happy.KJ:                                09:33                Well, I mean, you know, it's kind of cool that it started from that, right? And, and it remains as a goal, but now you have, you know, you have so many other goals that you have achieved in the meantime.Karen:                          09:54                That's a very good thing to know. I mean, I, it's nice to have that validation, you know.KJ:                                10:01                Yeah.Karen:                          10:02                Thank you.KJ:                                10:02                I almost don't even know where to go from that, but so you've picked a topic and you took it from there. It's sort of hard to list all the things that you have, but you have this thriving online community, you have a coaching business, you have a lot going on now. What came first?Karen:                          10:28                So first came the podcast and that came about in a really interesting way too, because my husband wanted me to have an iPhone. So part of my problem, part of the hands per happened because I was doing too much texting on a phone that had those nine buttons, you know what I mean, where you'd have to like cycle through the number one to get to a and all those sorts of things. And that really blew up with the thumb tendons and my husband's like, okay, we're gonna get you an iPhone because it's playschool. You won't ever have to worry about like anything. You know, there's no, you don't have to choose between apps. Like it's just, it's there for you, there's no worries with an iPhone, which my family has since they've gotten Androids and there are times where they want to throw them out the window, you know what I mean? But I still have an iPhone because I need it. And that was when I really first discovered podcasts and one of my favorite podcasts was done by an entrepreneur who teaches other people how to start an online business. And I really wanted to start an online business.KJ:                                11:34                You need to name the podcast, by the way.Karen:                          11:37                Oh, that podcast is called The Solopreneur Hour podcast with Michael O'Neal. So I got into his podcast and I started trying to do something. I made a horrible, horrible website with my husband's help that I'm so glad it's gone, basically. Because I just needed to start and I knew I wanted to do something for parents of young children. I have a master's degree in early childhood education, I've got a bachelor's in human development and family relations, I've got nine years as a preschool teacher in an industry standard, state of the art, absolutely wonderful town-run preschool program. The town I grew up in actually. And I wanted to help parents cause I couldn't be in the classroom anymore, so maybe I could, you know, I could at least help them that way. So, I'm developing this pretty awful website and I'm doing it listening to Michael O'Neal's show. And I wrote to him at one point to basically say thank you because what he was doing was making me feel like I could do this, like this was attainable by me. And I explained my tendon condition and he read my letter on the air and he gifted me three months in his coaching program. I just want to take a moment to send up a silent thank you to him because I don't know what I would've done if I hadn't had him. But I mean, what, he's just a wonderful guy.KJ:                                13:08                Say a thank you to you because if you didn't reach out, do you know exactly when he would've come and knocked on your door if you hadn't written that letter? Never.Karen:                          13:17                Exactly.KJ:                                13:19                Yeah. You know, we often are like, yeah, I was really lucky because, but you made your luck.Karen:                          13:24                Yeah, that's very true. And I remember the feeling of like, this is really happening. Like, Oh my gosh. And his real jam, the thing he's really good at helping people figure out is what's your brand. And so we went through, as I said, he took one look at my goofy website that I had been working on and he was like, Oh, you know, this isn't going to fly. Yes, not this. Exactly. And then we spent, I would say probably a good part of those first three months coming up with the concept and the brand. And I, I will never forget the day after trying three or four, you know, names, when I said to him, you know, what I've been really thinking about and pushing around is the idea of a podcast called we turned out okay. And he was like, that's it. He goes, that's it. And then he goes, you know what your tagline is? It's the modern parent's guide to old school parenting. I was like, yes. And it was just so much fun. So the whole process was fun and like he made it fun and he made me feel like I could do this, you know? Whereas at home I was sort of getting a little bit of like, are you sure? Do you really want to take this on? This is a lot for somebody with, you know, with the conditions and the problems that you've got. And it was so motivating and such fun to be in that program, so I'm grateful to him. Very grateful.KJ:                                14:43                Well, and it's cool that it came about that he offered that to you, but this is also sort of a moment to recognize that getting some coaching can be super helpful. I think a lot of us are really reluctant to spend money on our dreams and, and also we have this feeling that if we were really capable, if we could really do it, we could do it on our own.Karen:                          15:08                Exactly.KJ:                                15:10                If I were a real writer, I wouldn't need an editor's help. If I were a real entrepreneur, I wouldn't need a coach to guide me through finding my brand. And that is, that's just, that's just not true. We all need to learn where we're going and getting in with an expert can can cut your time in half, it can inspire you, it can help you see exactly what you saw, which was that it might not look to people on the outside like you were ready to do this, but you wanted to prioritize it. I think that's cool, too.Karen:                          15:45                Yeah. So that's how I got started. That's a really long story for how I got started.KJ:                                15:51                Okay. We accept long stories. So at this point, you're podcasting and then you must at some point have sort of decided, well, I need some blog, I need some writing to go with this podcast. Let us know how you figured out how to do that, especially given that you were gonna need to dictate.Karen:                          16:15                So I think one of the, one of the things that a lot of people overlook I guess or don't want to hear maybe, is that you've got to start it before you know what it is. You have to start it before it's fully formed. And I started the podcast in 2014 or 2015, it's just over four years old. So 290 episodes in, in four years and counting. I got to maybe like 56 or 57 and I did an episode called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics and people went nuts for it. Like I started to get emails from people and that got downloaded more than any other episode I'd ever done. People really responded to the idea that, wait a minute, there are these little Ninja tactics I can do to make my home life better? It's super easy, but things that I know as an early childhood professional that maybe, a parent who's not, wouldn't know, you know what I mean? So things like, how to make no sound like yes was one of those first Ninja Tactics. What I did from that was I decided to write a book called Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics. And I wanted to be able to talk about it in written form as well. You know, there's this idea you should have an email list. I've been taking a lot of time to try and figure out what my email list is going to be and I've gotten to 2019 and I figured it out and I love it. And people again are really responding to it. It's a weekly newsletter now, where I always get to vary it. But, I started it as, Hey, if you want to get notified when Positive Discipline Ninja Tactics is available, then I'll put you on this email list and you can find out and that really grew from there. For me it's been a lot of experimentation and exploring my burnout rate. So I used to do a six episodes in a month. And I realized that after the second year that that was not working for me. It was too much. I couldn't concentrate on my coaching clients if I was spending that much time on the podcast. Instead, I started doing these biweekly live members only calls for the people in my community. And, and if I did that twice a month instead of this extra podcast, I suddenly, I wasn't burned out anymore. I was focusing my energies in the right place because the people in the community could then say to me, here's my question about this. And I could go, Oh my God, people who listen to the podcast need to hear about that too. So I'm serving my clients first and then being able to bring these cool things to the listeners.KJ:                                19:08                Right.Karen:                          19:09                So, then I started listening to Joanna Penn, the Creative Penn podcast. And I started to sort of reframe myself as not just as a podcaster, but as an author as well. And what she does is so cool because she's all about like write books that are really professional and well written and fantastic at giving good advice and keep writing them. And I was like, you know what, that's something I could do. And so I've been working on that.KJ:                                19:43                So wait, wait. You're saying that's something I could do, but you don't type.Karen:                          19:50                No, I don't type, exactly.KJ:                                19:53                First of all, we want to know how you actually do it, but how did you get over that mental block of, you know, I'm going to write, but not with a pen, not with a keyboard, and not with a pencil.Jess:                             20:07                I'm especially waiting to hear about that because I have tried.KJ:                                20:11                We want the mental block first, then we want the tools.Jess:                             20:15                I just can't. I've tried so hard, so I'm dying to hear how you do all the dictation.Karen:                          20:20                Can I just say that it was not without many temper tantrums? I mean, I think this is necessity as the mother of invention. There was no way for me to do this without the speech recognition software. So I had to form a truce with the speech recognition software. So for me over these years now I've spent, I don't know if I've gotten my 10,000 hours in or not yet, but I would say probably. But the way that I got there was by doing it. So, I work much better if I can read something that is printed. So, my husband printed out the entire user manual for speech recognition software. So I was learning the commands - because there are these interesting commands that you can use. So you can tell it to click here, you can tell it to click save, you can bring up a mouse grid. I think if you guys are looking for the tool that has been a lifesaver for me. It's this idea of a mouse grid. So I want you to envision your computer screen and you say the words mouse grid. And what happens is a grid of nine blocks comes up on your screen. Say I want to click something in the lower left corner, that that happens to be the number seven. So I would say seven. And then the mouse grid would reappear, but the whole mouse grid is now where the number seven used to be. And so it's a little more focused now in that corner.KJ:                                21:57                And where do you get something like that?Karen:                          22:00                Where do you get the mouse grid?KJ:                                22:02                Yeah.Karen:                          22:02                Well, I use Dragon Speech Recognition software, so it's a component of that. But I'll tell you, I learned how to use that properly by watching the most beautiful and just heartbreaking video on YouTube. I mean you think you've got problems, right? And then you Google how to use the Dragon mouse grid and the person describing it to you is a person who not only has lost the use of his arms and legs, but also has speech difficulties and they are describing to you how to use this mouse grid and then they are using the mouse grid. By the time he gets to the small enough place in the grid in this video, I am crying. I mean my thought was if somebody like that can not only do that, but teach me how to do it, there is nothing that will stop me. Like what a good, incredibly good example of someone who's making it work no matter what, you know?KJ:                                22:56                Wow. All right, we're going to find that. We're going to link it.Karen:                          22:58                So, the mouse grid is a huge tool. I've discovered that Dragon plays very well with Chrome and not very well with Firefox, for example. So there have been times where I have felt like I was drowning and that I just couldn't get a breath. I wish I had a better description. Like, I will sit down and I'll be like, alright, I'm going to write a blog post and I use the speech recognition software to open Google Chrome and then I use it to navigate. to the inside of my website, not the outside pages everybody sees, but the sort of private admin pages and I get to the correct post.KJ:                                23:56                And you're doing all that using the Dragon Dictate?Karen:                          23:59                I am, yeah.KJ:                                24:00                So we think of Dragon Dictate as something that lets you dictate a story, but you can sort of basically set it up to run your whole...Karen:                          24:09                You can, yeah. You can use their voice commands for all of this. But what I've learned to be more patient with what used to kill me so bad was I would get three quarters of the way through that process and then I would open the dictation box, but sometimes Dragon can't see and doesn't know what you're trying to do. I don't know how else to describe it - it won't write anything. You'll say something and it will say, we can't recognize that speech or something and you're just like ugh. So I would get all the way to that point and then the app would crash or something like that. Talk about temper tantrums! But I just kept playing the song It's a Long Way to the Top by AC DC. I kept thinking to myself, there's no other way. Like it's either this or you go throw yourself in front of a train, like what's it gonna be here honey? And, I knew I wasn't going to do that, so I was gonna have to keep doing this basically. Does that make sense?KJ:                                25:15                Oh yeah, no, it totally, it totally makes sense. So now you're writing a book via Dragon Dictation and all of the challenges that that entails and then you're editing it the same way.Karen:                          25:33                I am. And, and I have learned - this was such a breakthrough for me. So, say if I'm going to write the title of a chapter and have Dragon sort of recognize it, I can now make a recording for my podcast, get my microphone out and my headphones and stuff like that. And I can say the following. So, here's the title of my book that dragon will recognize. OK. are you ready?KJ:                                26:04                Yeah.Karen:                          26:05                Cap educating cap. Happy cap kids, colon numeral nine cap ways to cap help cap your cap, child cap, learn cap to cap and joy cap learning, something like that. I can't remember it exactly, but I'm, that's the book I'm working on right now.KJ:                                26:19                So, you're fluent in, you're fluent in punctuation.Jess:                             26:24                There really is a whole other language.Karen:                          26:26                It's a whole other language. But what's neat is you can get into the flow of it in a recording sense. So like I can record 15 minutes of language that sounds like that. And, and I can, there's a transcribe button in Dragon and it will take that and put it on paper but legibly so that it can be read. It just says educating happy kids. Nine ways to help your child learn what they need to know. And it's like such a mirror every time this, every time I see this appearing, I'm just like, yay!KJ:                                26:59                I need to quickly hop in and apologize for only naming your most recent book cause I knew that you had more. But in the intro I, for whatever reason just threw out the first one. We will be listing them all.Karen:                          27:10                Oh, thank you. No worries. I mean, I appreciated that you listed any of them. I mean this is the one that I'm currently working on, so this is the one that my brain is like really thinking about. So I just today, today I sent it off to my editor for final revisions, so yay.Jess:                             27:31                It was funny when you said the thing about how if you want to do this thing badly enough, you can figure it out. But when we were interviewing Shane recently about the fact that he uses his two thumbs to type entire books on his iPhone and Oh my gosh, you know, KJ and I used to have a segment in the show called Ow It Hurts, but it was always like it hurts. Like, Oh, I don't really want to write this, but not like I have to write an entire book with my two thumbs. If Shane Burcaw can write three books with his thumbs, I think I can figure out the intricacies of how to use dictation software.Karen:                          28:17                If you want to, if it's a real goal of yours. I think a lot of times that I would not be a podcaster or an author without the tendon disorder. Like I was, I was too invested in my own life. I guess. I remember sort of having this yearning, like I remember being 38 about a decade ago and just saying to my husband, like, you know what, isn't there anything else? I mean, I love you and I love the kids, but isn't there anything else? I think had I not gotten the tendon disorder and, and had all of that other stuff kind of stripped away from me, I'm not sure that I would've had the guts even to try something different. Even now I will walk into a Christmas tree shops and I get tired, so I often need to find a seat so you'll find me sitting on the bird seed. This happened just recently. I was in line of Joann Fabrics and the line was so long that I literally sat down on the floor and crossed my legs and apologized to everybody around me and said, this is just what I have to do. I mean, once you've been through things like that, those are really socially embarrassing situations and it's like, well, I can do anything if I can do this.Jess:                             29:36                I just am fascinated. I've never, I'm fascinated. My brain is stuck on the line that I wouldn't be a writer without my tendon disorder. I think, you know, the thing, the very thing that makes that more difficult for you is the thing that made it happen. And I find that really wonderful and fascinating and complicated.Karen:                          29:54                Yeah. Thank you for recognizing it. When I think metamorphosis, that's really what I think of. And I came to our conversation today with a couple of points that I wanted to make sure to cover. If anyone is trying to work in difficult circumstances that, that I thought they might want to know, this is what's worked for me and the first one is to just own it, to say to yourself, this is what I want to do. Like it can be so easy for us to get caught up in I've got to get dinner on the table and I've got all these duties that we have in our day and there can be some guilt around backing away from work or family and saying, I'm taking this time to do this thing that I really want to do. And for me that had to come first.KJ:                                30:44                Yeah. I mean, if, if you are in a situation where you have limited resources, be there physical or mental to put them into this thing that at that moment is only for you is really hard. You know, it's very easy to say to yourself, well, you know, if I'm going to have like an hour of, of like sort of on time today because I'm suffering from exhaustion or because I get physically tired, I should put that into my kids' school meeting or dinner or you know, something. So I think that's really important.Karen:                          31:21                Yeah. That's what's worked for me. I remember lying in bed one morning just before I wrote to Michael O'Neal, just before I started to like come up with this website. And I remember lying in bed one day and every day I had been thinking, you got to get busy living or get busy dying, which is from a movie, it might be from the Shawshank Redemption. I literally would lie in bed going, are you going to get up now cause you got to get busy living or get busy dying. And on this particular day I sat up in bed and I said out loud, I am doing this and I'm not even sure that I knew what this was yet. But like it was this idea of I am breaking free of the sort of constraints. Whether they are because I feel guilty that I can't do very much or because like my time really ought to be spent on this other thing. And I was basically like, I got no hands. So like I'm going to do this, whatever it is.KJ:                                32:21                I was just going to say, okay fine. If you can get your mental head around it. And it also sounded like you had had partner support, which is great, but sometimes we have to go on without it.Karen:                          32:34                Yup. Yup. Yup. It was huge. So Ben used to say to me, he's actually the producer of my show. And what's funny is he has a day job, he goes off to work every day and that doesn't have anything to do with audio. But he went to school for sound engineering and his friends from college are people who work on the Today Show or who have won Grammy's and stuff like that. And he basically decided that his life was going to take a different path, but we used to joke, we'd pass a radio station in the car and I'd be like, Hey, let's move here and I'll be the talent and you can be the producer. And like that's kind of what's happened, which is so interesting. So he gets to feed his audio soul a little bit. He gets to geek out over, you know, making the show sound great and like all the cool, you know, little audio things that he couldn't do before. So support is really important. But I will say this, too. Ben is the one who, he was like, he used to say like, we need to get you with your friends because you're so much happier when you're like with people. He would say, I've seen you come alive today. We went to a party or something and cause it's just so hard to be sitting alone and you know, only feeling like you can't do stuff. So, when I said to him, I think I'd like to try starting a a business, he was like, yes, please. I'm glad because you need something to do with your mind. So he was always very, very supportive from the beginning. I didn't think to put that on the list, but I think that's probably pretty important.KJ:                                34:05                Well, it's, it's hard to be the partner because you can think to yourself, you know, if I were in that position, I would do such and such. Well, and first of all, you don't know what you would do, but secondly, you can't actually do it. So, you know, you can look at your partner and see, well I, she really needs to get out there and, and do stuff with her friends. But it's not like he can pack you into the car.Karen:                          34:25                Yeah, exactly.KJ:                                34:28                To be them too. All right, well what comes next?Karen:                          34:29                Alright. So next for me was the idea of just starting small, like small habits have won the day for me. When I first started, and even sometimes now, I have a version of your open the document, you know what I mean? And I always felt like, so if you've got 5% use of your hands, what can you dedicate that 5% to? And sometimes it was twirling spaghetti and that was all I had, you know. But if I've got 15 minutes, if I can take the next 15 minutes and dedicated to writing something like, and then I don't do anything else for the rest of the day, that's fine. I put one foot in front of the other today. I took one step. So really small habits that you do repeatedly. The next thing I think, cause you can say to yourself like, it's too big. I can't, I just can't. But, but if you try to break it down to like the smallest step, the step, the step that you feel like, okay, I can do that, I will do that. And then you're done for the day and you come back to it the next day. So small habits are fun and good. The next one that comes up for me is celebrate the wins. Even the tiny ones like - so actually, I've been writing a fictional book one minute at a time, which I know sounds crazy, but it worked for Neil Gaiman so I feel like it's gonna work for me.KJ:                                35:57                It's really the only way to do it. It's just a question of whether they're consecutive minutes or not.Karen:                          36:02                Yes, exactly. I just don't have the time to commit to even 15 minutes a day of fiction writing, but I can open a notebook and it's actually, it's hand strengthening practice too is how I look at it. I can open a notebook and I can write a sentence. And what I've been taken to is I'll write a full sentence and then I'll make the next sentence be like the beginning of the next sentence. So the next day when I come back, I've got a writing prompt basically. And I have found that it's enough to keep this story alive for me. Like, so I had the idea for the novel and I did a lot of work around who's who, what's the main character dealing with? I have a dear friend who lives in Maine and the property next to her dream property has been taken over by a jerky landlord who insists on bringing like people from away who shoot off guns and bring bands in and they're raising a family. And so I'm writing this to give her some hope, basically. I've been having a ball with it, one minute at a time. So that's one of my one minute, like that's one of my tiny habits. I can't do more than that. So that's what I do. And when I do it, I celebrate that win, like I did this today. Yes.KJ:                                37:20                Yes. All right. Keep going. Do you have time to?Karen:                          37:25                I got two more, two more. I think my most important resource is energy. When my energy level is gone, it is gone and I have to go to sleep for eight hours to get it back. So, I tend to work in projects and the way I think of it is like I'll do so quarterly, I'll look at this each quarter anew and my project for the first month of the quarter is recording the podcast episodes and getting those show notes done so that for the whole quarter. So now I've got two other months that I can keep writing or I can do other cool stuff. This August we're gonna have a staycation. So I get to do that because I planned in July for August. So I'll get that project completed and then work on the next project. So, for this quarter it's been educating happy kids has been really my next project. That and rest.KJ:                                38:24                That's your next book, right?Karen:                          38:25                Yup. That's my next book. I have found that is a really great way to manage my energy level because I can see progress as I'm working through a bigger project. For me that really, really works. It may not work for everyone. Some people might like to sort of get a little bit of something done every day repeatedly, but I like to be able to say, okay, that project is finished and now I can move on to the next one. So I've been doing that. And then the last one, and this is probably the most important one, is the idea of trying again tomorrow. So like if today is a blowout, if you cannot do it, if, if everything has gone wrong today, you still have the choice to get up and try again tomorrow.KJ:                                39:11                Cool. Yeah, no, that's, that's great. I love it.Jess:                             39:14                We've also observed in the past, this happens to me with writing and it happens to me with teaching that some of my very worst teaching and writing days have been followed by some of my best. So that's a good reminder for me that no matter how crappy things go on one day it can turn around completely the next.Karen:                          39:33                Yup. Yup. And as I think as a part of all of this, there's this idea of support.Speaker 3:                    39:39                Like we talked about that a little bit with my husband, right? But you guys are such a support for me. The #AmWriting Facebook group is one of the only places I go on Facebook. I go there and I go into the group of We Turned Out Okay listeners that I have developed over there,KJ:                                39:55                It is the only place I go.Jess:                             39:57                It's literally true. KJ and I, what we did was we made it so that the group is our bookmark for Facebook. So if you're going to go on Facebook, you have to go there.Karen:                          40:07                No way.Jess:                             40:08                Yeah.KJ:                                40:09                You can, that you could have two bookmarks, one for our group and one for your group and then you never have to risk being caught up in something

My guest today is Caren Glasser, host of "The Super Boomer Lifestyle" show and founder of TheSuperBoomerLifestyle.com. Caren is also the author of 4 hit books, founder of the Spark It Network, and creator of the global movement called "The Little White Lie." Caren has invested the past 40+ years being of service to the community by sharing her gift of song and media.  Learn more about Caren Glasser: Visit her website: https://thesuperboomerlifestyle.com/ Follow Caren Glasser on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caren.glasser Twitter: https://twitter.com/carenglasser Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carenglasser/ Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the "Expand the Business" podcast. The show is available on all major podcast platforms! Follow Casey Eberhart on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaseyFan/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-eberhart-6642ba19/ Join the Resource Club Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheResourceClub/ Learn More and Get Your Free Referral Generating Gift at: http://expandthebusiness.com/   Episode Transcription: Casey: (00:05) Yeah. Well good afternoon. Good morning, good evening, good day everybody. I want to welcome you to this episode of expand the business where we help entrepreneurs take a deeper dive into all things in expanding the business. So today I am so beyond thrilled and excited for today's episode and I think you're going to get to see why I'm so excited as throughout the entire episode on this show, we really aim to bring to you guys valuable tips, techniques, tools, and a deeper dive into marketing processes, products, people, all things that are really going to help you expand whatever business you're in, whether you're in a traditional brick and mortar business and network marketing business or a digital business. And so I am so thrilled and excited for today. I can hardly stand it. So let's jump right into it. Today. I am so beyond, I'm honored to have Caren Glasser as our guests. Casey: (01:08) Now Karen is and you're going to see what's going to be funny about this is so often Karen and I talk a lot and we'll probably actually forget that this is a podcast that as we take a deeper dive, so I will try to keep us, I'll try to keep this on track and in a in scope. So Caren Glasser is one of my very best friends slash confidence slash therapist slash mentors slash people that I look up to learn from, collaborate with, partner with fight with, scream at, get screamed at by a, she's very much a sort of like my sister and your mother. I was very clear, very clear. If you guys, Karen has an amazing background and I can't wait to kind of share her with you, um, in how her mind works. So Karen was a child singing sensation. She traveled around the world singing when she was a kid with some very famous musicians all around the world and became a performer. Casey: (02:09) She's a cantor at a synagogue was, I should say. She is no longer there, but she still sings and has a career. And I know that's one of the things she loves to do. And here we are today and she is literally known around the planet as the digital diva. And so I can't wait to get in and really kind of dive in and really ask her and uh, dig deeper and why we even have the digital diva brand name. Um, but, uh, I feel very fortunate in that I get to nickname her or I had the pleasure of kind of coining her mama minutia, which we kind of known, uh, no as m squared. And so we'll, we'll kind of touch on that. So Karen, welcome to the show. Well, after an intro like that, I think we're all done. I don't know. Casey: (02:57) Well, awesome. So Karen, you and I have obviously been friends for many, many years. We've been through some ups and downs together. We've worked together on projects, we, we've helped each other out. We've kind of consulted on each other's projects. And so I, I kind of want to just go to the wayback machine and really kind of just talked to you about where you got your start. Because I think as entrepreneurs we all have a journey. We all have a story that we start on. What kind of brought you into the entrepreneurial experience in the very beginning? Caren Glasser: (03:29) Well, I like to say that I was an accidental entrepreneur in the very beginning because when I left my position as the candor of a synagogue in Los Angeles and moved up north, I found myself without a job, without knowing anybody and really struggled as to how I was going to get to know people. And so I did what any normal person would do not. I started going to networking events actually with no business. I had no business at that point. I just went to networking events so that I can meet people and from that point on, and I would introduce myself as I'm an accidental entrepreneur because I don't have a job right now and that's how I would introduce myself. And I think that because I was so vulnerable that way by actually saying I don't have a job, a lot of people are embarrassed to say that. And I just said I don't have a job and I'm looking for my next, next. And I got involved with digital technology and I like to say the rest is kind of a history because from that point on I was able to use this technology for everything that I do moving forward, which is why I got my name digital diva. Casey: (04:32) Well, so let's talk about that. So if we go back in the, in the way back machine, when you were going to those networking events, um, well I have two, two distinct pals. I want to go down with this. So I think a lot of people would, like you said, be a little bit scared to just roll into a networking event and go, I got nothing. I'm just going to here like looking for my next path or looking for my next opportunity. Would you say that back then you were going, I'm looking to help build out a network maybe that didn't exist at the time? Caren Glasser: (05:06) Yeah, I think that because I didn't have something going on, I actually was in a good place because I could listen. And I know that's what you teach is that we should go to a networking event more as the, um, the buyer, not the seller. And so when I went to these events, I literally was looking to enhance and enlarge my network, which there was nobody there at that point. I had people in friends down in Los Angeles, but certainly nobody up there. So I went to these events with the intention to expand my network and therefore maybe hear what was going on out there, see what the needs were, what were the problems. So when I came back to the table, however, months later I could have some solutions. And by that time I had a relationship with these people. And we know relationships are what so Casey: (05:52) absolutely. I mean relationships and, and the network and the influence that we build, obviously usually important. So back in that at that time, um, I know that you had a huge success in a network marketing opportunity that no longer no longer is there. Yeah. Was that what you kind of found when you went on that quest or it had that already wrapped up by the time you were looking for something? Caren Glasser: (06:18) I actually had just started. I, so I, I kinda told a fair, I said I didn't have anything going on. I had this, I had just jumped into a company at that point. It was called comment by, and it was a digital technology company, which of course that was my thing. I loved it. And I was an, as I moved into that, I saw that I was able to help people because of that. So I did have a little something, but I wasn't even sure that, that my, that little something was going to actually solve a problem because if you're not going to solve a problem, why are you even doing right? Casey: (06:50) Yeah. So one of the big takeaways from Karen already is, um, understanding the problem that you solve. If, if what you are doing and bringing to the marketplace doesn't solve a problem, it becomes much more difficult. Caren Glasser: (07:06) Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. And because I was dealing in technology at that point, um, I actually was an, it's not smart to be the smartest person in the room, but I was actually the smartest person in the room because it was so new too to all of us out there. Although in the early nineties, Casey, I was live streaming my temple services to the shut-ins. So I, I had already dipped my toe into the whole technology thing. So I was, but I was in a great position because I could, uh, introduce people to something they had never heard about before. Casey: (07:39) Okay. So let's, let me take a deeper dive. Let me take a deeper dive in that. So when you were a cantor and you were at the synagogue, you said that you were live streaming way back. Yes. So, so obviously that was really when kind of live streaming and being able to broadcast over the Internet was literally, I mean, I remember back in those days, it was, it was, it was, it was amniotic fluid. It wasn't even an embryo yet. Exactly. Um, how, how did that and that experience and that, um, rush up and handholding with technology help you kind of make that transition into the next, into the next stage of technology? Caren Glasser: (08:24) Well, back in the 90s, it wasn't like right now, right now, you can literally pick up your, your Facebook, right and you can on your phone, put click a button and you're live, or you can go to youtube and you can go to periscope. There's so many different platforms. Back in those days, none of that existed. So I wish I had taken some pictures. We literally had these humongous, uh, hard drive computers. We had, um, wiring that went all around the sanctuary so that it would hook up into the cameras and then it would bounce off somebody else's computer and somebody else's place. All of this just so that we could reach, um, uh, an audience that couldn't get to the temple when I move forward and actually moved up north. And then I got into comment five, I realized, oh my gosh, if we had only had this technology, um, almost 20 years prior, it would have been a whole lot easier. And so for me it literally was the entry for me. So when I saw how easy it was now that was easier. What we do now is like a breath of fresh air. Literally we push a button and we go live. So I have seen, and we all have seen those of us in the, in the technology where we have seen the growth. It has been and it's growing faster and faster now. So you don't have to wait as long for the next thing to come. Casey: (09:40) Well, so let, let me still stick in the synagogue a for just a minute. When you were livestreaming and you were figuring that out, it sounds like it was kind of a, a patchwork of solutions. Like it feels like it was very much staple of chaps and glue stick and Caren Glasser: (09:57) yes, it very much was and it was actually really funny because even there was actually a time that they live stream. I was sick, didn't go to services that night, so they were live streaming and I got on my computer and watch the services and you could text and comment just like we can do on Facebook now, but it was a little, obviously a whole lot more clunkier and I could talk to the person that was sitting there in the booth live streaming and it was, it was pretty cool to be able to see the other end of it, but certainly it was clunky. It was, it was, you're right. Bandaids, we band aided it together Casey: (10:29) and so I know that you were a cantor in that role, but I know that there was an entrepreneurial spirit already burning inside. You say that that technology and your fighting through the problems and fighting through the headaches and fighting through all of that was more accident or on purpose? Caren Glasser: (10:51) I think it's actually on purpose. I think that I was very focused on and I've always been very focused on learning as much as I can about the technology and where we are in that moment. I pride myself on always being at least 10 steps ahead of where everything else is. And as I get older, I'm not ashamed to say it is harder to stay 10 steps ascent 10 steps ahead. But I think it was really very much on purpose that I, that I did this. Um, Casey: (11:18) well let me ask a, let me, let me go down and kind of maybe just a different question. Okay. It would seem to me that folks in that space that may even have been entrepreneurial may not have embraced technology in a way that you guys did. I mean, it seems like it's, you know, it seems like some people either are scared of technology that makes a little nervous. They don't really know, you know, can you teach a dog old dog new tricks type thing? What was it inside you that was like, look, we're a, we're trying to Caren Glasser: (11:54) get the message out. We're trying to, we're, we're getting, we're going to fight through this and we're going to play in the digital space rather than fold back to, you know what, we're just going to fold paper envelopes and we're just going to kind of go the traditional route that I think a lot of businesses kind of get stuck in. I think we, I think a lot of people get scared. They get scared and they're afraid to take the risk and I like to say, and I do everything this way. I asked myself the question before I take that risk and I step into something new. I say, what's the worst thing that can happen? Let's just get down to brass tacks. What is the worst thing could happen if I do this? If I take that next step, if I jump into the technology, if I do whatever it is, and then the next question I ask is, can I live with it? Casey: (12:35) Can you live with, can you live with the worst case scenario? Caren Glasser: (12:38) Exactly. And if I can, I'm full board ahead. I will just jump in with both feet and I will do whatever it takes with knowing that if it doesn't work, I'm okay because I've already decided I can live with it. If though, on the other hand I say, this is just too uncomfortable, I don't think that this makes sense, I will walk away and never take another step forward in that direction. It doesn't happen very often because I tended to say yes and then figure it out later. I know you do the same thing, but I found this, I found first of all, exciting to be first to the party, exciting that we were going to be able to provide something to people that really, really needed something like this. They couldn't get out of their hospital rooms, they weren't assisted living. So for me, I really felt from a clergy position, I was providing something that nobody else could. Now, if you go out now and look at all the synagogues out there, every single one of them to a person is live streaming their services. So I feel like I was kind of like ahead of the curve. We kind of started it and now people stepped in and did it. Casey: (13:42) And so the first time that you kind of use scotch tape and duct tape and glue sticks and kind of got the thing by, I'm assuming that, well, I was going to go the opposite. I was gonna say, I assumed that it was perfectly lit. Everybody sounded looked amazing. The camera took 30 pounds off and everything just worked absolutely smoothly. And you guys were dynamic and amazing and there were no flaws or mess up. Caren Glasser: (14:08) No. Yeah, right. Not so much. We, we, we fumbled the constantly. We fumbled constantly, but it didn't matter because the people on the other end, the, the end user was so appreciative that we were even attempting to reach out to them. So it was a win win any way you did it. And as we move forward, we tightened it up and I wish I was, sometimes I wish I was back there because it would be so easy right now just to say, okay guys, let's go live right now. Yeah. Casey: (14:38) Yeah. I mean it really being able to broadcast one's message over the Internet in any way, whether it was through social media or just on a platform that's really sort of leveled the playing field and make everybody have the same opportunity internally, publishing content and finding a tribe and engaging the tribe, marketing to the tribe. So, so we left, we left the synagogue, we kind of just brought it out on our own. We, you had built a network marketing team and an organization and lots of customers and lots of folks. How important was that in the journey moving forward for you looking back? Caren Glasser: (15:17) So important because in doing that, I also wanted to find a, a unique way to educate and to ultimately sell. When that happened, this technology and the only way that I felt that we could do that was to show people the value. And so I did a couple of things. I volunteered to go to other people's events and I would live stream for them. I would take the technology, I'd sit in the back of the room, I would live stream. We actually would sell packages online for the people. So just to show people what could happen. But then as you know, my next step was, okay, how do I use this technology to build the business and also give more people visibility and promote. Your passion was born from that. Casey: (16:05) Absolutely. And I want to move to promote your passion and Biz bantering in a second. One of the things that was a light bulb for me in knowing you was when our good friend and colleague Bruce Waterman, uh, used the technology of live streaming to live stream of all things a pampered chef party. And I remember this clear as it was like I, even though it was more than a decade ago, uh, I, I remember watching the live stream and watching the little number of how many people were watching it live versus how many people were in the room. And if you don't know what pampered chef is, it is a direct sales party plan organization where they sell amazing kitchen, your texts. I'm a huge fan of pamper chef kitchen. I feel like it's a pampered chef kitchen owned by Warren buffet of all things. So, um, I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, here was a way for a party that had the hostess, um, the presenter and there were probably five to 10 people in the room as I remember. Right. And over time, the last time I had asked Bruce, and this was probably, you know, a decade ago, there had been over 400 views of that same, of that same party. And that's when I think for me, kind of hitching my, my wagon to you and just saying, okay, here is a, here's a really smart entrepreneur that understands how to break that message into a larger audience. Casey: (17:38) This is where we're going. Caren Glasser: (17:39) Well absolutely. And I remember back in the day you would say, I'm low tech. Big Check, right? That was your thing. And I, I remember we would have, not arguments but serious discussions about, yeah, that's all good. However you can reach more people and you can do more good and you can create more relationships when you are reaching more people at the same time. And that was the live stream. And I know you don't say that anymore. You actually say high-tech, even bigger checks. Right. I think that's what you say now. And it's, but it's true. It is true because you are reaching the masses. And I know you and I went and did a Tupperware party, didn't we? I think we streamed a Tupperware event. You were the, I think you were the speaker. You did the event and I ly stigma for a bunch of Tupperware ladies and men. I think it wasn't just ladies what an experience that was, but it goes to the point. That's the whole thing with pampered chef and Tupperware. And I did, I mean this is what we did. Bruce did it a lot. We did it for the promote your passion events. That became the mainstay of what we did. People could buy tickets and I know you do this now. People could buy tickets and attend in person or they could watch it live. How amazing is that? Casey: (18:53) I mean, everything that we do now, um, is live streams. So our groups, we sell tickets, so people, we can have people kind of watch over our shoulder as we do a live meetup group and we usually charge 10 bucks or whatever. But that essentially allows us to broaden the audience and at the same time get the message to people that don't have access to it, number one. And number two frankly, it also helps, um, cover a cost and cover cover some of the stuff we do. So before we talk about before, well let's talk about promote your passion. So promote your passion was um, a multipronged approach. I think you took to kind of your next evolution. I know we had, you had a book called conversations with experts that that was, um, inside the promote your passion brand. We, you did live events or I should say we all have you explain why in a second. I know you did a cruise with that. Talk to me a little bit about, um, the evolution as an entreprenuer kind of always being two or three steps ahead almost ahead of your time. Really. Caren Glasser: (20:03) Yeah. And I don't think I knew that back then. I just thought that I was struggling along with everybody else. Right. And I, and, and I do think I was ahead of my time and I actually think I still am ahead of my time at this point. I don't really know what's coming next. I'm not a mind reader, but I can see some stuff that's happening there. So I'm already kind of trying to jump on that. So, you know, I like to repurpose everything and I think that as I was doing this, I didn't want to work harder. I wanted to work smarter even though we all worked very, very hard to do this. And so as I looked at this, I looked at the events, how could I repurpose the events? Um, how Casey: (20:39) before before that, I'm sorry to interrupt, go back and tell us the premise of what promote your passion was, what did included so that we have some context in terms of what we're actually repurposing. Caren Glasser: (20:49) Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I am not, is shy. I'm not shy and I'm fearless. And so I was introduced to a company, an organization called Club Corp. And Club Corp is a business institution. They're amazing. It's for a very high, uh, financial demographic. All these very, you know, high level, um, business owners, entrepreneurs, and they have these places all across the country. Uh, either high rises or resorts. And I connected with them and I just asked, I, you know, I, my feeling is if you don't ask, you don't know. So I said to them, and I didn't have this at the time, but I kind of made it up. I said, I had this great group of people, they're business leaders, they're entrepreneurs. They talk on different subjects, marketing, sales and mean we networking. We have to the whole thing. How would you feel if I brought this program that didn't exist yet, by the way, to your, your, um, facility. Caren Glasser: (21:43) You can invite your people that are already members. So it's a win win for them. They're now providing something for the members and we're going to sell tickets and can we do this? And they jumped on it because, because I, I think they saw some benefit for their members and I was first in the party. Nobody had ever done that. And so we did these events all across the country back and forth. We Ping pongs how many events we did, and I will talk about that, but we did these events and we had anywhere between 40 to 50 people that showed up at each one of these events, which at that time people were always saying, how do I get butts in the seat? We dialed it in, we nailed it. We knew what we were supposed to do. And part of it was the live stream. Caren Glasser: (22:24) Part of it was the ability to fill those seats by getting amazing speakers who again were looking for exposure and we were able to give that exposure to them. Uh, David Asarnow is one of those people and we'll talk about that. And we would bring these people in. I also, how's the panel? I would go into the community and say, which one are, you guys know some people that might want to come see you in an event. We'll put you on a panel and now we got the entire city engaged. It was a, it was a really, really exciting time and exhausting all at the same time. And I like to say that I'll never do that again. Casey: (22:59) So let's, let's, let's, let's unpack that a bit because we, there was a lot in that that I was really, really fortunate and honored to have been a part of that 20 cities, uh, in what felt like 22 weeks. I mean we really did go out on the road. Yeah. And for those of you that are, are looking to do events and looking to kind of do some of this, you know, a couple of the issues that most producers or promoters run into the number one, how do we get people in the room? Number two, where do we do these events and your relationship with Club Corp at the time, I mean I remember they were thirsty to have content provided to their members. It was a value add for them. And because it was live stream and promoted club court inside a pinch bed, it also allowed them to get extra exposure for potential new members. Casey: (23:52) So take away partner with your venues and don't just be a tenant when that, when that occurs. Number two, I loved what we did with the panels where you went into a local marketplace, found influencers in that marketplace. Said, hey, come on down and sit on a panel, but I need you to bring five friends. And it really allowed us to get access or gain access to the local influencer market that was right inside of that community. And we live stream to end, you know, just a huge shout out. You know, I'm just thinking back to the event we did in Boston, of all things, Caren Glasser: (24:33) that was wild. Oh my gosh. I, that was one of my favorite ones actually. Casey: (24:37) That was one of my, well it was clearly one of my favorite ones because that particular event was one where we had an influencer in the room. I done the research and well, I in my, by me saying I did the research, you told me what I needed to know. We had a high influencer or a high influence network, a high influence marketer essentially in the room. Her name was Sheila. We did the event. I sat next to her because I basically begged Karen, just sit me next to Sheila. I pretended I was basically auditioning for Sheila the whole time. Ended up going on. Sheila ended up bringing me into an organization to both speak at MC. And from there it really opened up a lot of doors in terms of my own career in terms of meeting all of the gang at digital marketer like Roland Frasier and Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss and having the opportunity to work with them over the several years. Caren Glasser: (25:31) And that's because you said yes and that's because you said yes. You didn't think, oh, she's not going to pay me. How am I going to do this? I don't know what I'm doing that this doesn't, you said yes. And I think that is a huge point that our listeners need to understand. Sometimes you just need to say yes and figure it out. Casey: (25:50) Yeah, it was, I mean it was, look, it felt very awkward and Gawky and we didn't really know what we were doing and you know, I, we could re, I mean it was, it was as close to being on a rock and roll tour as, as anything and it was so much fun and it was an incredible amount of work. Um, both for the partners you had on the ground in the market place that the market that we were in, but also on your end, what would you say is your biggest lesson or a couple of lesson takeaways that you could take away from that whole experience? Caren Glasser: (26:27) Well, there's so many. Um, probably the first most important lesson that I took away, and we talked about it afterwards, but we were already down the road, was not to have another event already scheduled in that city that you could with those people that were sitting in the room, you're never going to have a better chance when they're already hyped up, already excited, already have known how much they've learned. Nobody has sold to them. That's another thing. We never did a hard sell. In fact, it was basically a no sell a, we just wanted to help people. And so I think the first, you know, lesson on that was um, I totally lost my train of thought. Casey: (27:08) Um, you were, you were talking about not having another event set up and I think we did 20 different cities and we've maybe done you may, Caren Glasser: (27:18) was it? Yeah. And it was more to the point we were bouncing across the country. We would do an event in Boston and whoever thought this was this great idea, me apparently we would then go back to California and then we would go to Texas and then we would go to Atlanta and that, so a couple of lessons always have another event plan so you can sell into it and maybe make your itinerary a little closer to each other. There's, you know, you can still accomplish the same thing. You don't have to bounce back and forth. We all burned out. I think by the end of the year we were like, oh my gosh, if we have to do another one of these, just shoot me now. Casey: (27:52) Yup. And as I, as I remember that there were you, it was sort of like you had almost, you had a template set up for each city and the template, as I remember it was you had a couple of speakers that you brought with you sort of all the time. Then you plugged in different speakers depending on either what the marketplace wanted or as I would say now looking back, it was leveraged to see who you could bring into influential network of folks that you could leverage later when you're writing. Caren Glasser: (28:27) No question about that. No question about that. In fact, I think that's how we ended up all meeting David Asarnow, um, because we knew were his background was form and where he came from. And when he joined us at that Boston event, which by the way, you know, we also met Susan Roman at that event. She's one of the Instagram queen. Oh my gosh. So that was an amazing event. Casey: (28:49) Yeah, I remember Sue's Zimmerman. She and I are having an intern. It's funny, she and I have since talked about this. We, I, she spoke at traffic and conversion a couple of times and I remember very clearly at that Boston event going at the time she had a little beach shop. She wasn't selling out of the beach shop. He had just started using Instagram. And so she and I had an entire conversation about how she should take Instagram and leverage that to sell her stuff in an in an off season tourist market. And she will, she has much nicer things about me then that I'm going to give myself credit for. But um, that Boston event was a special event. There were lots of, lots of people that I look back going, oh my gosh, if that were today, we're all grown up fairly. Lots of people at that event were, were huge, including David Asarnow, who is a double double comma click funnels funnel. Massive builder, right. I mean, he's one of the most astute, amazing marketers kind of our, at our time. And that was he and i's first meeting was at that, was it in Boston or Atlanta? Caren Glasser: (29:58) I think it was Atlanta because that's another event that ended up being so unbelievably good and that was just an accident. I actually had no idea who I had put on a panel. People were recommending them and I was like, okay, great. And we put them on and I remember you walking your and saying, do you have any idea who those people are that are sitting on this panel? And I was like, no, I had no idea. They were all the movers and shakers and I felt proud about that at that moment because I realized the fact that they wanted to be at this event gave us some validity that we just couldn't do ourselves. You Know Mohammad Siddique and we had breads felon on that thing on the panel. It was crazy leak off. I mean we had these people that were like, you know, they were just at our level. I like to say that we were there too. And that's the other thing we talk about all the time. We don't realize back then how much we really knew and what we really were doing back then. And it was a game changer I think for them, for us back then. Casey: (30:59) Well, so let's, so let's kind of, so, so we did those events. Um, you came out with a book that you utilize folks that were at the event, if I wrote to do, to kind of put together a compilation book again before it became all the rage, talk about that project. Caren Glasser: (31:15) So in that particular case, and that was an Atlanta event, that was actually the second Atlanta event that we did at the carb. Um, at the cub. What is it called? The, uh, no, it's down to oh, with each, every cob to get Cobb gallery up. So that's what we did. The event and what we did, we added an extra thing to it cause I had been introduced to the world of, of publishing. And so I went to all of my speakers and the panel members and I said, I would like to gift you this, would you please? Would you be willing to write a para, a chapter for this compilation book? And we will then hand them out as a gift to all of the people that are at the next event. Everyone said yes, of course, because it, it wasn't, you know, it was easy to do and that was my foray into the publishing world and that began a whole whole nother avenue. Casey: (32:10) And that book is available today still on Amazon, I believe. Conversations with experts. Correct. I'll drop, I'll drop a link in the show notes. You guys. Um, it was, uh, it, it was, what's really funny about that book cause I just cracked it open, uh, literally a couple of weeks ago and I was flipping through and I was looking at all of the people that contributed to that book and I was like, oh my gosh. It was like, it was like we were all childs actors. Stars. Exactly. Now we're all like grown up and there are some amazing people at, if you're listening to the show, you would know if you're in the marketing space at all, these names will all ring a bell. It's actually kind of so and so we, you even decided to do a cruise. What was the, what was the, the launching point for the cruise? What were your thoughts behind the cruise? Caren Glasser: (33:00) Well, about a halfway through the year, um, I've done several crews before, before I had done promote your passion, um, I had done several cruises and I love to cruise. So let's start it at with, I'd love to go on a cruise. Wouldn't it be fun to do a promote your passion event on a cruise? We connected with Helen Brahms who is like an amazing, uh, cruise coordinator. She, she's the one who coordinated this for us. We had over 50, 55 people were on this cruise. We had some of the same speakers that had gone with us. That was kind of thing. We invited those people to come on as a special thank you for actually participating and being involved in the ground and the ground swell. And we brought these people on. We did a lecture and one of the use of the word lecture, but we did the discussions and the teaching on the c days. And it was so amazing. I have such fond memories about that. We have pictures of us all wearing tee shirts that said, uh, I am passionate. I remember that the way the, the, the logo or the, and the insignia was on the shirt. It just looked like we were all asses. Caren Glasser: (34:08) We were ashing it. So it was kind of, it looks kind of funny but wonderful memories, Wonderful Memories. And I think everyone went away from that. Again, we were kind of at the head of the curve there. There were a couple of cruises out there, the marketers cruise, and there were some other things that were out there. But as far as an entrepreneurial crews of people that were business owners, it was pretty much the first of its kind. And again, I didn't know what I was doing other than I was really good at putting on events. So I figured, well it was good there. I'll figure it out here on the cruise. And it was phenomenal. Casey: (34:40) And, and so moving forward, you know, those, it always seems like you're a half step ahead, you know, and always try new things. And, and ready to ready to risk it all. One of the, one of my more proud endeavors as an entrepreneur was saying yes to business banter. Yeah, that was fun. And you know, that came out of promote your passion and it was essentially, as I remember it, a podcast that you had produced and you were kind of the, the Mama Hen of the, of the show and you were the of the show and you actually asked, um, David Asarnow and I to kind of Co host a show that had sort of the three of us bantering and once in awhile or maybe half the time we would bring in other guests and you would produce all that. What was, what was the thought behind that and why? Why would you know? I'd never even asked you this as my friend or whatever. Why, why me? Why David? Why the format? What was the purpose? Caren Glasser: (35:43) Well, first of all, we use youtube live. So I always believe that if you're going to do anything digital it, if it, if possible, do it video first. You could always strip the audio and create something else. So this was actually right. Casey: (35:56) Well, it's like we're doing this podcast, this podcast is being done on zoom and it will end up being, the video version will be on youtube, but audio is just going to be pulled out of this. And that's what we'll go up on. iTunes, Spotify and all those. Caren Glasser: (36:08) Exactly. And back when we were doing this is back 2012 I think 2008 this is where we're going back a time youtube live was, was the thing they had just launched. And so we started doing this on youtube live and it was, it was fun. The reason why I, well first of all, you had been all over the country with me. Okay. And I could think of no, close your ears. Cause I'm now going to tell you how wonderful you are, but truly I could think of no better host than you because when you show up, first of all, you're very, very engaging. You're very, very funny. Um, and you have the ability, I know, I know. Um, just, you know, it's just loading up the head. You have the ability to talk to people in a way that they don't go running away scared because you're not using big words. Caren Glasser: (36:55) Right. And I don't mean that you don't know the big words, but you know how to get down and talk to people where they are, meet them where they are. David Asarnow had worked with Tony Robbins and and was was actually one of his coaches. So he came from the more what we would say at least I would say more that traditional coaching, what we all thought of as coaching. So I felt there was a good game to Yang, um, that he was going to bring to the table. He also was very involved in sales and, and the whole idea of how to do sales. You were very much involved at that time and still are in the networking aspect. So it was a really, really good mix and I'm really proud of it because from that show we had an amazing guest and I know that from that show I launched into another show. You ended up using live streaming and all of your stuff moving forward from that because I think that at that point we all saw the value. Casey: (37:47) Yeah, it was, it was, it was a, it was a really fun time. And you know, it's interesting because I know you've done several podcasts since then. You know, I went on to do a solo podcast called the double your check club that we ran for literally seven years, right? Every single weekend. Here we are. It's kind of funny that we both are now running, running new podcasts. Yours is that you, you know, I want to talk about yours, um, here in a second, but we're kind of coming into our own again about podcasting because it really allows you to help an audience find their voice, help an audience move the needle forward. In this case, you know, we're, we're showing or hoping that we can help business owners move the needle forward on expanding business, whatever business that is. Yeah. So your, your, your kind of Solo podcast or the show that you kind of started, I know that you had started a, a digital network, almost like a digital TV show conglomerate, if you will, a digital network called spark it network. And in that also launched the little white lie. Caren Glasser: (38:54) Well actually actually before that at launched the passion point and that was, that was the precursor and actually from those shows, I don't, I think, you know, cause I think you're a chapter we, I actually created two books based upon the passion point. It was the passion point, you know, volume one, the passion point volume two. And so again, repurposed in materials. So that was at an interview show where I interviewed what I called Passion East as small around the world who were following their passion, making a living, doing what they love. Those shows ended up on the spark network. Now the spark network was sort of, I used to call it the, um, think of Huffington Post, a collaborative blogging site. But for all of us regular people that would never get asked to post in Huffington Post. And the reason why that's so valuable as a collaborative blog as you know, you can leverage everybody else. Caren Glasser: (39:45) And so my shows were there. I, we, I literally, uh, people, um, hired me or, or paid me to get on the network. And to this day, even though we're not actually doing live shows on that network anymore, we, I'm very, we have a less than 4% bounce rate on that site because it's a collaborative blog and people go down the rabbit hole, they go in because of one article and they end up going all over the place and we still get thousands and thousands of views a week. So that was kind of a cool thing that we did on the site. Casey: (40:19) I remember, I remember the passion point now, so little white lie. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's talk about what, uh, what little white lie was and how it became kind of the story launch point. Yeah. What I would say sort of where you are now with over lifestyle. Can you take me back to when I went white, my little white lie where it came from and kind of walk me through the evolution and as entrepreneurs, you guys, what I hope you're taking away from this conversation is that entrepreneurs manage the relationship between risk and reward. And if you're stilled, if Karen was still a cantor at that synagogue just doing live stream, she wouldn't have the global footprint that she has today. So really look about this call, this, this, this show is really about expanding the base, expanding the database, expanding the influence, expanding the network, expanding the reach, your technology and expanding the business. So you've got little white lie. Caren Glasser: (41:27) So, um, when I turned 60 Aye, how a come to Jesus moment with myself, I realized that I had been sitting on a live stream for weeks and weeks and years at a time talking about and with authenticity and showing up as your real self. And yet here I was at that point with my dark black hair that I had been coloring since I was 30. So fast forward 30 years. Um, I realized that I had to change and so I said, I'm going to let my hair grow out, and it became a little white lie. It's that the lies we tell ourselves, but then I realized, oh my gosh, I'm like camera now. Every week, what am I going to do? My hair is going to grow out on camera. I think I'll wear a hat. I did that once and I realized how ridiculous is this? Caren Glasser: (42:11) I'm inside my office and I'm wearing a hat to cover my little white lie. From that point on, week after week, I started doing the show. I interviewed, it was still an interview show, but I brought on people in the I'm pro aging world, I'll say for lack of a better word, that we're my guests and every week I would do my reveal. I put my head down like this and I'd say, here it is, and literally I have a video now of my hair growing out and that became the little white lie and a new website was created. It's the site where all the lives live. I believe in re-purposing, I take the shows off of Facebook and I then put them over on my website. I create blog posts out of them. You, you're in my funnel, you know what I do with all of this and it has been pretty amazing. But that morphed as well. Casey: (42:58) Yeah. And that side is the little white lie.com. Correct? Correct. Correct. And um, if you're listening to the show, you really want to check out the little white light.com because the evolution of Karen's career and the influencers that she has surrounded herself with and who have surrounded her in their network, uh, all kind of live inside the little white lie.com and it's a, it's a fantastic sort of resource of pages and shows and different things. So you did that as a podcast, as a show and that sort of evolved a little bit, um, and got maybe a little bit more sophisticated as you found an audience and you found kind of that tribe. Caren Glasser: (43:42) Absolutely. And also realize that if I'm going to put the time and energy into doing this, I had to figure out how to monetize it, right. Because other than that, it's just a passion project and it took way too many hours to be a passion project without anything coming back. And I don't mean monetization necessarily in dollars and cents. I mean monetization and growing my list. I mean, you know, creating the relationships. So for me that was a huge, huge thing for me. And when that show morphed into the super boomer lifestyle show, um, it, I now have viewers around the world. I mean we get anywhere between 10 to 15,000 views in the first week. I have a huge following in Italy. I don't know why, but I do, I'm considering, I think we move as all to Italy. Casey: (44:30) Maybe that's because you were a below deck Mediterranean addition. For those of you that don't, ah, below deck. Karen was on Mediterranean, uh, below the deck, the Mediterranean edition. Um, and I, if you want to go back and watch it, I believe if I'm not mistaken, it was season two, episode two, season one, season one, episode two, Caren Glasser: (44:53) episode six and seven. We were actually on two different episodes. We were known as [inaudible] Casey: (44:57) most. And by the way, as a show host, you just make it up and they'll correct you. So Caren Glasser: (45:01) correct. Yeah. But we, they call this the golden girls because we were the oldest charter that went on. We were a bunch of old ladies, so it was kind of fun. Casey: (45:09) So, so all of that, I know that one of the women that were was on the show with you, it was a group of digital entrepreneurs, um, all women. It was a fantastic group of people. I'm very fortunate that I know several of you as friends and I was like, oh my gosh, to be a fly on the wall of that yacht going around the Mediterranean. I'm one of those people ended up becoming one of your partners in the super boomer lifestyle. So talk to me a little bit about kind of how that show started, the partnerships that you have and then I wanna I wanna kind of wrap up and kind of the process that you go through and getting that show up in live and running, running what you do. Caren Glasser: (45:47) Absolutely. So the super bloomer lifestyle was born and, and season one started last October. We're now in season four. I do about eight shows a season. And then I, and then I continue on, um, Kathy Stober who you're talking about, she is one of our partners, um, who, she's a an amazing, we'll first of all talk about digital divas. This woman just puts us all to shame. She is an internet marketer from the word go. She's an affiliate marketer. And so she came on to create the store that we now have called the super boomer lifestyle.com. And between her and my, my partner partner, which is Joey Garrity, she's a marketing genius. She comes from Hollywood. So we put her resources, her brilliance together with my, uh, I'm known, I'm the talent. That's what they got. You're the talent. Just go do your show. Joey markets it, and then Cathy makes sure that um, our marketing or advertising is happening. She makes sure that the store is loaded up with some great stuff. And we are three. What I like to say, how we're full super boomers. We are, we're in it to win it. Casey: (46:53) And what is, what is a super boomer? Caren Glasser: (46:56) So my death, Mike. Yeah, that audience. Well, we've all heard of the boomer generation, right? And I think it's 1943 to, I don't know, 19 something. We're, I'm a boomer. You're a boomer. We're a boomers. But there's something about being a super boomer, meaning that you just go be a above and beyond. You are not, you don't just rest on while I'm a boomer, because I was born during this period of time. I'm a super boomer because I'm fearless. I don't talk about when I'm going to retire because I'm just going to sit around and eat bon bons all. If that's what you want to do, that's fine, that's great. But I talk about my next, next super boomers talk about what they're going to do next in their next time they move out to something new. They're fearless. They show up as they who they are. Caren Glasser: (47:42) They're not going to be told what to wear, how to wear it, what color hair they're supposed to have. You're too old to do technology. You can tell I'm passionate about this because I, I my, I say, just watch me. You tell me. Not that I can't do this now, just watch me. So the whole premise is, is that those of us who are ignoring the whole age thing, it's not about the age. I don't believe that the 50 is the new 30 that that doesn't even mean what is 30 what does that mean exactly? We are pro age. We are celebrating our age. We are celebrating who we are. Casey: (48:16) And so the super boomer lifestyle show and store sits inside of the little white lie.com correct. Caren Glasser: (48:23) Well, if there is a link to it, it's actually a separate site. You can go straight there to the super boomer lifestyle.com. You can actually go straight there. But it is, it is, it is integrated into it. Meaning if you're a super boomer, you like the shows and you want to be a super boomer and see what that really means, you can go check out the store. Casey: (48:42) Awesome. So this brings up a question that I think a lot of solo maneuvers and micropreneurs and even entrepreneurs have. And that is, you know, I'm fortunate enough to know the three of you, uh, that, that are kind of makeup that show core. And I know you have other people at this point as a shows you've had to add on some marketing people and kind of outsource some of the tasks that it takes to bring a show like that to bear. You're obviously not scared of partnerships and collaboration. No. Um, talk to me about that because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are really afraid of scared. They may be been burned in the past. How important are partnerships and collaborators for you as you grow and expand the brand, the show? So on and so forth. And ultimately the store, Caren Glasser: (49:33) well, first off, let me, let's just be real. I've been burned. You've been burned. So the fact that you might get burned is not unusual because it does happen. And that's because when you do show up in service and all you wanna do is just support somebody, there are people out there that will take advantage of it. And that's, so, let's just put that aside, but you know, I, I just think that, okay, collaboration is, you say king, I say Queen Collaboration is queen. I would much rather be working with somebody rather than sitting at my desk all by myself looking at a screen all day long. I live in the blue ocean of abundancy, not the Red Sea of scarcity. I get excited when somebody says, Ooh, I like what you're doing. And I see what they're doing and go, you know what? We compliment each other. You bring your skill set in. I, yeah, make sure you have things in writing guys. When you do things like this, make sure that you have put your intentions in writing, that everybody understands what you all agree to. But from that point on go forward. I just think collaborations are the only way to do business boring. Would it be to sit here and just, you know, look at ourselves. Casey: (50:50) Yeah. And of course, you know right towards the end of the show you have to have technology in the hall of fame and it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be technology without some, um, extra extra layers. And it's actually hilarious because I think I'm the last person in the world that has a landline in my office and you can't make it stop. Well not only should I not make it stop, it's connected to my fax machine. Oh, it's actually ringing. So it's is you want to go, why on earth would you have a fax machine? Well, you know, because I live in the relative age. So Karen, as that show, I want to sort of wrap up over the next couple of minutes just talking about some of the tools that you use to bring a show like super boomer lifestyle to bear. I know that you have a project management software that you liked, like give me some, give me a couple of tools that you use to repurpose and that, you know, you would highly recommend for people that want to do a podcast or a show or at least expand their reach. Caren Glasser: (51:45) So I use Trello, um, for this particular show. I use other project management software for other things, but Trello works really well for me because I'm able to move the show from when I first booked somebody across the way until the show actually airs and then what we do afterwards. So Trello is awesome. It's free. Um, so it's a great platform and you don't lose anything because it's free. It's just a great platform. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I happened to use a platform called [inaudible] live, which is my streaming platform. Um, it allows me to have, um, a scrolling, you know, lower third. I can put comments up from the people that are watching. It's very engaging. So that's a great tool. By the way, guys, if you're interested in getting, um, some, a free trial of it, let me know. We can get you hooked up. Casey: (52:38) And then that's B as in B, e l I v E. Dot. T v B live.tv and understand when Karen is talking about a streaming, that show starts off as a video production and then take the audio and Caren Glasser: (52:54) exactly. So everything I do is video first. There's no reason not to do it that way. Um, you know, look, and for those of you are saying, I look terrible on camera and snap out of that, you look exactly how you look. Everyone sees you as Zackly how you just get used to it. So we do that. Um, so it's Trello and then we do B life. From that point on, I use another resource called repurpose dot. Io. I know that you rep that. So you might want to put up, Casey: (53:18) I will tell you that it is, it is one of the coolest things. Um, here's my affiliate link to it. It's lives to tube.com l, I v, e s t o, t, u B e.com. And what it really does is it allows you to take a Facebook live and put it directly up on Youtube. You can take the podcast and strip the audio out and the audio can go right on wordpress. It can be, it's an a mic go. Caren Glasser: (53:42) It's so cool. It is, and it's on it's autopilot. So some of the things that I have going had been set up. It takes some time. You set them up and then your hands off, your hands off. So I use that. There's a couple other things that I do after the show. I transcribe the show and because you can do lots of things with the transcription, um, I send it to a rev.com. They have a, a a 10 cents a minute. So you know, if you're shows 30 minutes, you're paying three bucks to get the transcription. It's dirt cheap and then you take that, I create a blog post out of it. I take all the links that I had used in the show, I put them into the blog post. But more importantly, I take the live show and embedded into the blog posts. Why is that important? Caren Glasser: (54:27) Every time somebody opens that blog and starts to watch that show, the count goes up on Facebook. The other platform, the other software that I use is called simple social, I believe. And that takes my show and sends the entire show over to wordpress with the comments. How cool was that? Now you don't, you can have a blog that goes live and there's always, there's already conversation going. I could go on forever. You can stop me. We can give in the pub, some other stuff later on. But you know, I use, I use a program from Instagram. I use a great program from my, from my Twitter posting. Um, and then I do a lot of stuff that's manual. Casey: (55:04) Yeah. And so gang, look, here's, here's the deal. As you're listening to this, you have, you've been listening for a, for a quite a quite a while. And the two things that I can kind of take away from this chat, Karen, is number one, there were always moving. And as an entrepreneur you're always kind of swimming through the waters and looking for opportunities to make your job and your life easier, expanding your reach, what can you do to really collaborate and move and spread out that sort of digital diva footprint, right? I'll kind of finish the con kind of finish with this. I know where you are today. Where do you see yourself next? What's the next, what's on the forefront of where you go, where you amazing women are taking super boomer lifestyle? What's, what's that? Caren Glasser: (55:56) Well, first of all, we are going to do a Superbowl, my lifestyle cruise next year. That's first. Um, secondly, uh, my intention is to take this show because uh, and take it to a different kind of media, uh, like a, like, um, a Hulu or a, uh, Netflix because traditional media as we know right now is going away. How many of us go and watch, um, CBS all day long. We don't, we, we have our Netflix and we have our, our Amazon prime are watching outside of what would be considered traditional media. And so my intention is to get enough visibility in enough eyeballs on what we're doing that we can take the show and become one of those lie, I call them real reality because we're not just a reality show. It's not scripted. Whatever comes out of our mouth is what comes out of our mouth. And to put it on a Netflix or, or a, um, uh, a Hulu or something of that nature. So that's my next, next, that's where I hope to take this and I don't just hope to, I fully intend that will be on one of those platforms in the near future. Casey: (56:57) Absolutely. And so Karen, I just want to wrap up and say, you know, it has been an absolute blast having this conversation and I know that you are in involved in, you know, working on, on some unique and some cool things bringing to the marketplace both on the corporate side as an a consultant side as obviously as talented your show. And for those of you that are listening, don't, um, don't wait another minute. You have to get connected to Karen and watch what she's doing. She is one of the world's best at expanding her reach, expanding the, the base that she has. You can check her out@thelittlewhitelie.com. You can go to super boomer lifestyle.com as well and you can kind of see what she's up to. She's all over every social media platform. Caren Glasser, Karen with a c and um, Karen, I just really appreciate and am grateful to have the time sharing with you and I look forward to the next 20, 30, 40 years, uh, collaborating, partnering, um, having a therapist, having, I knock me upside the head. It's, it's really been awesome. Caren Glasser: (58:10) Well, thank you and I want to congratulate you on, on this new show that you're launching. I think that it's going to, it already has a lot of value just because you're in it, and I'm not saying that again to explode your head, but it's true. Anyone that knows you knows that when you come to the table, you come to the table with this much to the point that it's almost being firehose, right? And so I know that this is going to be very, very successful. Some regulations on this. Casey: (58:33) Awesome. Thank you Karen. So you guys, if you want to check us out, we're all over iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. This show is, I'm in need of your reviews where one of the very first episodes of this show, each and every week, we're going to bring things to help you expand the business. If your business needs referrals or you're looking to expand the business, you want to get updates on the show. What we're doing, who we're having as guests, head over to expand the business.com drop your name and email address in there. We've got some goodies for you over there if you want. But we're really excited about the launch of this new show, and I just could not think of anybody better than a first first guest up, uh, Caren Glasser. So if you're listening, I want to thank you very much for being on the show, listening, participating. Hopefully your hand hurts from writing notes, or if you're on a treadmill, we're almost done to start your warm down. If you're in your car, you know, pull over, take some notes, we'll get ya. We'll get you the links in the show notes here. So with that, you guys have an amazing day. Now go give somebody else an absolutely awesome day. Chomp telling that sign.

Build a website in just 5 days (even if you're not techie) at www.free5daywebsitechallenge.com Already have a website? Take the Free "Jumpstart Your Website Traffic" marketing mini-course at www.jumpstartyourwebsitetraffic.com Leave a Review! Today we’re talking about 10 Toxic Thoughts You Secretly Believe About Yourself (And Why You’re Wrong) Have any of these thoughts ever entered your mind? Why would anyone hire me if I’ve never worked with anyone before? How am I going to get clients when I don’t have a portfolio or testimonials? I can’t charge someone for that – they could figure out how to do it themselves for free online. Will people really pay for this? Someone else is already doing what I want to do, I can’t compete. I can’t afford [photographer, a graphic designer, that subscription, that program, that conference registration, that coach]. I don’t know enough yet. I need to learn more, take more classes, get certified, get a degree. What if my client asks me to do something I don’t know how to do? I’m too old. I’m too introverted. I was having dinner with my older sister last weekend (hi, Karen!) and while our husbands were chatting away about sports or whatever it is they talk about, Karen and I were talking about my business and her job. Now, Karen and I are very different. She has kids. She’s left-handed. Math and logic and spatial awareness come easily to her. She likes pineapple IPA (ew). She loves her day job. Both of my sisters and I are very similar in other ways, like how smart and driven and creative we are. And how oblivious we are to how valuable our strengths and talents are to other people. And while I can’t always see it in myself, I can always see it in my sisters – and I can also see all the things they believe about themselves that aren’t true that hold them back from what they truly desire. So Karen and I were talking about her job, and how she finally feels like she’s found her niche, but she still just doesn’t know enough yet to be able to move up in the company. Okay, sure, fair enough. Except for if you know Karen, you’d know that this is something that she says all the time. When she got me my first job at the law firm where she worked – she never felt qualified to have the position she had. “I didn’t go to school for this, I was just a legal secretary. I was just the one who never called the helpdesk so they figured I must know what I’m doing and asked me to join the IT team.” Or when she was hired to be a developer for a legal software company. “I’m self-taught from building all those systems at the firm. I didn’t go to school for this. I’m not sure why they hired me.” And now at her position at a global legal services company. “I’m finally working for a company where I see the opportunity for advancement, with strong female leaders as role models and mentors. I’m in the right place. I just don’t know enough about the company yet to move up.” So I took a sip of my non-hoppy wheat beer and replied, “Stop saying that about yourself!!! It’s not true! They didn’t hire you because they expect you to know everything. They hired you because you know how to figure out what you need to know, you’re self-motivated to learn it, and then you go out and do it, all without being told what to do every waking moment. You’re never going to know enough. It’s not possible. You just need to know that you can find the answers.” And then I told her she needed to hire a mindset coach and watch my webinars about overcoming imposter syndrome because I’m the middle sister and I know everything and I’m always right.

On this week's episode of This Week's Episode, Evan returns from his trip only to find himself without electricity. So Karen and Kris carried on without him and talk about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Plus, A Series of Unfortunate Events gets renewed, Doctor Who has a new trailer, Walking Dead sees more tough times, and more!Show NotesUseful LinksAgents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - BOOM (S04E13)Sean Astin Set as Theodore Roosevelt in TNT's 'The Alienist'Ed Sheeran Joins 'Game of Thrones' Season 7 as Guest Star‘Game Of Thrones’ Spin-Off Looks LikelyA Series of Unfortunate Events: A Miserable MessageLegion: Dan Stevens has asked Patrick Stewart to appearAfter A Brief Bump, The Walking Dead's Ratings Have Crashed To A New Four Year LowSeries 10 Trailer - Doctor Who'Big Bang Theory' Prequel 'Young Sheldon' Picked Up Straight to Series at CBS‘The Good Doctor’: Richard Schiff Cast In ABC Medical Drama PilotOur theme song "Pressure" by Argyle JohansenSocial StuffTWEP FacebookTWEP TwitterFacebookTwitterInstagramYouTubeTumblrTwitchWebsiteContact Us

Healthcare reform.  Gun control.  Gay Marriage.  Global Warming. Week in and week out across the country, legislation addressing some of the most contentious issues of our time is produced, debated, revised, and implemented in all 50 states. Serial database entrepreneur Karen Suhaka recognized that small businesses and average citizens had no easy way to stay informed on the thousands of bills generated across the country each year.  So Karen launched BillTrack50.com, a comprehensive, online portal that lassos millions of pages of legislative gobbledygook, organizes them, and presents the documents in a logical and easy-to-access manner. On this week's Monday Morning Radio, Karen discusses her proven formula for turning vast quantities of free government data into small business gold. Karen is interviewed by Wizard Academy faculty member Dean Rotbart and wealth management expert David Biondo.  Dean and David are co-hosts of the weekly Business Unconventional radio news magazine broadcast on 710 KNUS AM in Denver. Be sure to follow B. Unconventional on Twitter: @BUnRadio and subscribe to Roy H. Williams's Monday Morning Memo.  The best things in life really are free! Monday Morning Radio Run Time: 27 mins 11 secsPhoto: Karen Suhaka, BillTrack50