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Kim is back to traveling and this week she fills us in on her recent Seattle staycation and her mother-daughters trip to Vail, Colorado. About Our Sponsor - Atlas Ocean Voyages Today's podcast is brought to you by Atlas Ocean Voyages.  If you have ever dreamed of cruising to Greece or Egypt, now is the time to book! Atlas Ocean Voyages just introduced its expedition ship World Navigator. This small ship, luxury vessel is built for adventure in a sustainable, energy-efficient manner.  Perfect for adventurous families or multi-generational groups, its compact size and small guest count of fewer than 200 passengers, means a higher space to guest ratio and more intimacy and personalized service. From August through September 2021, World Navigator will sail 7 separate 12 night itineraries to Greece and Egypt. And its small size and agility means she can dock in smaller ports, avoiding large crowds and getting a more authentic experience. And this summer, arrivals in Greece do not coincide with any other cruise ships in port! Bookings are all inclusive, including both airfare and excursions. The ship's facilities and protocols reflect state of the art public health guidance. With stringent public health protocols followed by staff and crew with pre-boarding and pre-embarkation PCR testing provided for all passengers. Social distancing will be maintained with small group shore excursions. Atlas welcomes travelers to ‘come back to something brand new'      To learn more, please visit www.AtlasOceanVoyages.com and we thank them for their support. Seattle Staycation There are two many tourist districts in Seattle, one is downtown not far from Pike Place Market, the Seattle Aquarium, and the waterfront, and the other is at Seattle Center, where the Space Needle, MoPop, the Science Center, and the Chihuly Garden and Glass is located. You can use the monorail to get between these two main areas. Kim and her girls stayed at the newly remodeled Fairmont Olympic Hotel downtown. You can have afternoon tea in the newly redecorated lobby and lobby bar -- and they are very good about food allergies. A great way to explore the city is with CityPASS. For the Seattle CityPASS you can go to three of the following five attractions: Space Needle, Seattle Aquarium, Argosy Harbor Cruise, MoPop, and Woodland Park Zoo. The Pacific Science Center is usually included as an option but it is currently closed and scheduled to reopen in late 2021. Many attractions currently require reservations but the CityPASS system makes this easy to do online -- although it pays to do it a week or more in advance. If you can, try to plan your days to visit the Aquarium and Pike Place on the same day (and do a harbor cruise if that is your choice). Then visit the Space Needle, Chihuly, and MoPop on the same day since they are all very close to each other. You can then visit the zoo on the third day of your trip. However, you should consider the weather forecast and try to pick a clear day to visit the Space Needle. Right now MoPop has a special Disney Villians and Heroes Exhibit (not included in the CityPASS) Pike Place Chowder in the waterfront area is a great place for lunch. Woodland Park Zoo currently has a very cute baby gorilla. Summer Trip to Vail Note: Kim and her family were hosted by Vail Resorts. All opinions are her own. If you fly into Denver, you can take the Epic Mountain Express shuttle to Vail, which is about a 2.5 hour trip depending on traffic (Denver is known for bad traffic) Kim stayed in the Manor Vail condos, about a 10 minute walk from Vail Village (there are also shuttles). Manor Vail is next to the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens In Vail Village there are many restaurants and shops, an indoor bowling alley, and outdoor cornhole, which is a lot of fun Give yourself time to adjust to altitude but rest, drinking a lot of water, and an oxygen shot can help. You can go horseback riding in Vail with a two hour trail ride through a magical forest. Alpen Rose is a great spot in town for dinner. From Lion's Head you can take the Eagle Bahn Gondola At the top of the mountain there is an Epic Discovery park with ziplines, a mountain coaster, trampolines, a rock wall, and a lawn slide. Eating at the top of the mountain is expensive so be prepared or eat before you go. The ziplines and ropes course is currently closed for the summer. Picnic Vail will arrange a picnic for you at the Betty Ford Alpine Gardens, including set up and clean up, complete with food and interactive games to play together. If you can visit during the week it will be less crowded in Vail Village and at the activities If you decide to rent a car, rent in advance and be prepared for long lines and high rates this summer. There are also more flight cancellations this summer as travel gets back into gear and airlines struggle to bring employees back on board. Full Episode Transcript [00:00:00.060] - Kim Tate Staycation and vacations. Find out what Kim's been up to this summer.   [00:00:16.530] - Announcer Welcome to Vacation Mavens, a family travel podcast with ideas for your next vacation and tips to get you out the door. Here are your hosts, Kim from Stuffed Suitcase and Tamara from We3Travel.   [00:00:31.620] - Tamara Gruber Today's podcast is brought to you by Atlas Ocean Voyages. If you've ever dreamed of cruising to Greece or Egypt, now is the time to book Atlas. Ocean Voyages just introduced its new expedition ship, The World Navigator. This small ship luxury vessel is built for adventure in a sustainable but energy efficient manner. It's perfect for adventurous families or multigenerational groups. It's compact size and small guest count of fewer than 200 passengers means a higher space to guest ratio and more intimacy and personalized service.   [00:01:01.500] - Tamara Gruber From August through September 2021, World Navigator will sail seven separate 12 night itineraries to Greece and Egypt, and its small size and agility means she can dock in smaller ports, avoiding large crowds and getting a more authentic experience. And this summer, arrivals in Greece do not coincide with any other cruise ships in port bookings are all inclusive, including both airfare and excursions. The ship's facilities and protocols reflect state of the art public health guidance, with stringent public health protocols followed by staff and crew.   [00:01:30.390] - Tamara Gruber With preboarding and pre embarkation PCR testing provided for all passengers, social distancing will be maintained with small groups shore excursions. Atlas welcomes travelers to come back to something brand new. To learn more, please visit www.AtlasOcean Voyages.com, and we thank them for their support. So Kim, I'm sure you're like melting over there in Seattle in this heat wave. Are you ready to hop on a cruise ship to Greece?   [00:01:56.760] - Kim Tate Yes. That sounded pleasant when you were saying it. I was thinking it'd be so nice to stand out on a cruise deck with the ocean. And, you know, that cool ocean breeze sounds so amazing right now.   [00:02:08.310] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. And, you know, I love the small ship concept. Sounds like really good to me. And the fact that it can go into the smaller ports and the more authentic kind of places and not have any other cruise ships and ports. You're not fighting with all those other gazillion passengers.   [00:02:22.710] - Kim Tate You know, that's huge, I think, because we all I mean, those of us who have cruised on mega ships, which is everything I've done, you definitely get that sense of kind of being the herd at the end of the dock as you all come off and everybody's trying to sell you stuff and it's just chaos.   [00:02:40.800] - Kim Tate So I like the idea that it's just a small ship and kind of sounds like it's more of an intimate feel and you probably get more, you know, like you think when you step off and there's not a bunch of people you can kind of enjoy taking in the scenery a little more. You're not worried about all the hustle and bustle and hurrying somewhere, right?   [00:02:57.630] - Tamara Gruber Exactly. Yeah. Well, I'm by the time this comes out, I'm actually going to be back from my trip from Greece, assuming all goes well. But you've had a few little trips of your own recently and I would love to hear more about them. So do you want to tell us a little bit about your staycation first?   [00:03:15.690] - Kim Tate Of course, yeah. I'm so excited to get a chat a little because you've been so busy traveling. So finally, I got to dip my toes back in the summer travels and our first trip was more of just a staycation and it was with Seattle. And what happened is basically it was that CityPASS had reached out and said, hey, are you still in Seattle? Do you want to, you know, use some CityPASSes and enjoy some of the sights now that they're opening back up?   [00:03:39.060] - Kim Tate And I said, absolutely, let's do it. And so I actually arranged with the Fairmont in Seattle, the Fairmont Olympic Hotel, which I've never stayed at before. And it's kind of considered one of those classic original hotels in Seattle that people will actually come in to kind of tour and get a look around. And they have a brand new lobby design and a brand new lobby bar that they just opened. So I reached out to them and they hosted us for two nights.   [00:04:07.260] - Kim Tate And one thing I'll say is for people who are planning a trip to Seattle, I don't know much about Seattle. I consider, of course, Seattle's spread out and has tons of neighborhoods and each neighborhood has some benefits and nice parts to it. But if you're going to do like the traditional touristy things, there's kind of a downtown district that's more of the business district and it's just up from kind of Pike Place Market and the wharf and the aquarium and all the all the cruise sports kind of are nearby there. And then a little further up is Seattle Center. And that's where I mean, I know, you know this that's where they have MoPop and the Space Needle and Chiluly is there as well as the science center. So there's two main kind of tourist sectors. And I personally love staying in the more the downtown corridor that's near Pike Place, that's just I like that area better.   [00:05:01.530] - Kim Tate It just has kind of a vibe that I like. So that's where Fairmont is. It's kind of in that area. And we really liked our stay there. I stayed in a King executive suite and then they gave us a connecting room for the girls, which was a double and. Again, it's just so nice I mean, the rooms are nice, very clean, you know, fresh linens and all of that, the lobby is just amazing there.   [00:05:25.170] - Kim Tate And we actually had afternoon tea at the Fairmont, which is something they're well known for. All Fairmont's are known for.   [00:05:30.990] - Tamara Gruber I was going to say, yes, I always think I mean, I love Fairmont Hotels. They're just wonderful. I've stayed in that area a couple of times, but it's always been the Westin. But the Fairmont's definitely are known for the tea, so you got to do that.   [00:05:44.370] - Kim Tate So we did do that one day and it was so nice. The girls and I both liked it and I thought, they were so helpful with Mia's allergies. So we had said, you know, nuts and eggs are an issue. And they actually brought her out her own little tray of food and then and our own tray that Lizzy and I could eat off of. And so it's just things like, you know, we had chicken salad.   [00:06:08.220] - Kim Tate Some of our sandwiches were like chicken salad on little piece of lettuce, whereas they just gave her little bits of chicken without the mayo for the salad part. And then the all the sweet treats they provided were vegan. So no eggs and then didn't have nuts. So she was very happy. And it was nice that they recognize that. And then, of course, the tea aspect, it's so fun for them. They really enjoy that because we each you know, each of us got to choose our own type of tea.   [00:06:34.950] - Kim Tate And then they bring the pot and you have your glass and your little strainer and you can pour it. And they just it was just nice. And the other thing is the seating areas they have they're in the lobby for it are all cozy seating, you know, which has become so popular, I think, with hotels now. But, you know, we had like a couch and two armchairs and that was to kind of whatever you call poufs, which, of course, we didn't use because there was just three of us.   [00:06:59.760] - Kim Tate But it's just a really it's kind of a fun seating area where you can relax a little bit. And so we talked and we spent, I would say, about an hour and 15 minutes just kind of enjoying our experience there. So that was a lot of fun. And I was glad that we got to experience one of the Fairmont Classic things to do.   [00:07:16.410] - Tamara Gruber Did you guys get dressed up for it too?   [00:07:18.510] - Kim Tate We did. Yeah, we did. I had each of the girls and I was kind of nice. So then we went back up to our room, changed into more, you know, normal everyday clothes. And we we used, which is something I did with you. We use the monorail a lot and it is under construction. Now, the Westlake Center is under construction right now, but they're still operating the monorail, which is such a convenient way, like I said, to get between those two areas.   [00:07:44.070] - Kim Tate And that was the funny thing about the monorail is built with the 62 World's Fair when the Space Needle was built. And so it's got this futuristic feel, but it is just like a monorail, kind of like it Disney or, you know, anything like that. The thing that throws most people off, because I heard tourists on the train, they didn't get that. There's literally one stop. It's just a back and forth shuttle of sorts. So that's one thing to keep in mind.   [00:08:08.310] - Kim Tate It's not like this really long. You're not going throughout the city in it.   [00:08:12.270] - Kim Tate Yeah. You're not getting a tour. Exactly. Yeah, that's a great way of saying it. So but we use that a lot just to get up there, because like I said, with the CityPASS, which is one of the reasons we're there, your admission if you buy a CityPASS ticket, you automatically get admission to the Space Needle and the aquarium, which, like I said, are in the two different sectors. And then you also get to choose three attractions from a list of five.   [00:08:35.850] - Kim Tate So it's you can either take a little harbor tour with Argosy Cruises. You can go to the Museum of Pop Culture, also known as Mo Pop, used to be called Experience Music Project. And then you can go to the Woodland Park Zoo, you can go to Chihuly garden of glass or you can go to the Pacific Science Center. The Pacific Science Center is still closed right now and isn't set to reopen until the end of this year. Late this year or so, that one wasn't an issue for us.   [00:09:02.310] - Kim Tate So we chose to do the Space Needle. The aquarium, MoPop, the zoo, and Chilhuly. And the thing to think, the thing that we did on that, that is something you have to keep in mind right now. A CityPASS is the fact that you have to make reservations in advance for a lot of these places because they're still just doing limited capacity. And so I was a little worried about how that would work. However, the CityPASS system is really just works great.   [00:09:28.140] - Kim Tate They have everything streamlined and it's all done electronically. You know, through a website, you just click on, say, make a reservation. The hardest reservation to make was the aquarium. They had the most limitations. And like I said, because of the location of things, I tried to pair the aquarium up on a different day, whereas I compared, like the Space Needle and Chihuly and MoPop, I wanted to pair them together since they're all in one area and then the zoo is a little further north.   [00:09:55.470] - Kim Tate So when we checked out of the hotel, we just drove up to the zoo and did that before we drove home. So, yeah, it was a fun day. You know, they're just such classic things to do in Seattle, the Space Needle, it was a beautiful, clear day. It was very busy. So we once we turned it, you know, scanned our tickets for entrance. It was probably about a half an hour. Till we got to the elevator, so they have kind of a queue line that wraps around the gift shop of all places, but you stand in that line and then you you don't actually get to shop.   [00:10:27.370] - Kim Tate It's kind of an overlook over the gift shop. But you then get to the elevators and they have a couple of different elevators that they start taking people up. There's actually four elevators on different sides. And I didn't even realize that. It's so funny. I've been up the Space Needle a few times and I've never really considered that it does make a difference which elevator you get your view. I mean, obviously. So the four elevators that face different directions give you a very different view.   [00:10:53.020] - Kim Tate So we are lucky enough to get the which I consider one of the best elevators, which is more of the south facing elevator. So you can see Rainier as you're going up and you also see the Puget Sound a bit. And whereas if you're on the north side, you see like the Lake Union, Lake Washington, University of Washington, kind of that angle. So it's an interesting thing to keep in mind is just that depending on what elevator you get, your view up is a little different.   [00:11:16.900] - Kim Tate But once you get in, you know, I walk around when you're like, yes, yes, that's I was going to say, of course, once I get to top, it doesn't matter what the view is, it's strictly just when you're in the elevator, they have to it's got kind of the window view. But, yeah, once you're at the top, they've got the interesting thing is they've got it open. However, they've started doing something.   [00:11:35.410] - Kim Tate I think this might have just been I'm curious if this will stick around. I saw that they did close it for the summer. And so I'm wondering if this is going to be an off season thing or how this works. But they did close sections of the viewpoints and they had put private tables there and they sold packages to people where you could go do like wine tasting and appetizers up on the needle. And it was a table for two. And I think they had maybe some for four as well.   [00:12:02.270] - Kim Tate So if you did it with another couple, but it is something to keep in mind so you don't get quite the wide open look as you used to. However, when I was doing the research, I noticed they closed. There was no more tickets for that. So I'm wondering if during peak summer they're getting rid of that. And that's more of an off season thing to help fill dollar bills that say, you know what, I'm trying to.   [00:12:23.890] - Tamara Gruber So, I mean, the Space Needle, they just redid that, like not that many years ago. So I remember when you and I met up there. Yes. It after we did the cruise. Right like that. It was recently done and it looked, you know, looked things looked really nice. Yeah, it is really nice. They have a few they have kind of that the you know, they've got the glass walls now and then they have these glass benches or maybe it's not glass, plastic or whatever it is, but basically it's clear.   [00:12:51.130] - Kim Tate So you can get the sensation, like you can sit on the bench and lean back, you know, so slightly angled out on the glass if you feel brave enough. And so there's a couple of things where they try make it interactive like that and then you can go down. So that's the upper level. And then you go down one level and that's where they have the rotating floor. That's the glass. And so you can stand on the floor and kind of see yourself rotate over the Seattle center area.   [00:13:15.370] - Kim Tate And then, of course, you still have the windows to look out, but it's not the open air like on the upper level. And so there are two levels that you can explore. And then they have a little, you know, bar up there. So some people choose to you know, I don't know how the reservations work for that. But, you know, it's just something to keep in mind. But they are it's a fun thing to do, especially if it's a clear day, which since you have to make reservations, it's a little more, you know, to make sure you time that right.   [00:13:42.850] - Kim Tate So I did definitely look on for a weekend. I looked on the weather forecast and I chose the day there was seemed, you know, it was like partly cloudy and sort of cloudy. We had a beautiful, beautiful view of Mt. Rainier in the city skyline. So it was gorgeous.   [00:14:00.790] - Tamara Gruber And so it's nice and it works out, especially with your Seattle weather, right?   [00:14:04.840] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. Our Seattle weather man, it's like you already said, we're dying now. So it's crazy, our weather. So that's the one thing we did. And then we actually had worked it. We actually did that on the first day. And like I said, how I tried to pair everything up. But the aquarium we did that evening. So we finished up the needle, went and got lunch and then came back and then walked down and did the aquarium, which is, you know, it's it's renowned and people love it.   [00:14:32.530] - Kim Tate It's my girls really wanted to go there. That was the number one thing they wanted to do. I think it's a fine aquarium. It's not like Monterey Bay Aquarium or it's not, you know, like some of these massive aquariums that you hear about the Seattle aquariums. Not like that. The cool thing about the Seattle Aquarium is that it's really focused around, like the fact that it sits over Puget Sound and they actually funnel water from the sound through some of their exhibits.   [00:14:55.660] - Kim Tate You get a real sense that these are the animals, this is the climate, this is the habitat that you're looking at right out here. And I think that's the neat the neat part of it is that it is so tangibly linked to the Puget Sound. So that's one cool thing. They they're little. They my girls love their little otters and they were not out and visible. So we were kind of bummed on that. But it's neat to be down there.   [00:15:20.860] - Kim Tate And like I said, it's on the waterfront, which is always a fun, fun place to walk around and see.   [00:15:28.000] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I remember when I was there just to hanging out at the otters for quite a while because they are so cute is a bummer that they're not that they weren't swimming. They are there are a lot of fun to watch. And I do have to say something really quickly about if you're the type that likes to buy souvenirs, all these Seattle attractions do an amazing job with their gift shops. I don't know who curates them or whatever, but we end up always browsing and walking through the gift shops and they they just somehow find the cutest little things that they procure. And so allow time for that and money for that.   [00:16:03.340] - Kim Tate If you like buying souvenirs, because the gift shops at the Space Needle, especially, we bought actually a puzzle for my mom. That was from the sixty two World's Fair. That was really cool. And the girls got Lizzy got two sweatshirts. But anyways, the Seattle Aquarium was great. We went back then we went we went and got dinner and then kind of called it a night. And then the next day we did Chihuly and Mo Pop.   [00:16:30.370] - Kim Tate I'm sure a lot of people have heard of Dave Chihuly. He's a major glass artist that he actually studied in the Seattle area for a while. And that's why there's such a tie to him there. I can't remember where he's originally from. I'm blanking right now. But he helped found some of the glass school stuff in Seattle. So he's a big name for the Seattle Glass art community. But that usually garden and glass exhibit is just beautiful. It's not if you've been there once, it doesn't really change.   [00:16:57.700] - Kim Tate It's but it's got the most amazing artistry when you can really look at the artistry of the pieces instead of just like, oh, cool. It's a big piece of art sculpture that's cool. And you kind of get past it. But then when you actually start diving in and looking at the unique striations or little bumps here and you think of how that was done with hot molten glass, it really is quite, quite amazing artistry.   [00:17:23.080] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, his work is is amazing. I've I mean, I think everyone's seen it even if they don't know that they've seen it. You know, there's so many pieces and so many places from like know casinos to airports and all that, that that museum is really spectacular.   [00:17:37.780] - Kim Tate Yeah, it's quite beautiful. And they have a nice little, you know, cafe near there that we actually ate at on this trip. And I love that cafe because it's kind of fun. They have these it's a really eclectic it's like collectors. They have they have like a whole bunch of old accordions hanging from the ceiling. And then they have these old radios on the wall. And I don't know, it's kind of fun on our our table.   [00:18:01.570] - Kim Tate There was a hollowed out section. So under the glass top table, there were, I think, old radios. It's just cute.   [00:18:08.140] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I remember the food is good. It wasn't just like, you know, some places would have a like a restaurant cafe and it would be like, you know, burgers and fries and stuff like.   [00:18:17.210] - Kim Tate Yes, this one. Nice. Yeah, this was flatbread. Pizzas is what they had going on right now and definitely pricey. But the the pizzas were delicious. We each got one and yeah, it was well done. And you can see them cook in the pizzas, you know, nearby. So it was great. So that was a nice little stop. And again, it's right next to the Space Needle, but we had done that the previous day and then we went over to Mo Pop, which I actually upgraded from our CityPASS.   [00:18:44.500] - Kim Tate Right now they have a Disney Heroes and Villains costume exhibit, which was six dollars more per person. So I actually paid that and upgraded our CityPASS. The CityPASS covers the the museum itself and then the extra exhibit cost more. But we've been. To MoPop before, and it's it's just kind of a fun, fun thing. It was funny because I was just there in March with Mia when it was still kind of, you know, things were still kind of locked down and they had just recently reopened and there was nobody in there.   [00:19:13.870] - Kim Tate And they had a Minecraft exhibit that she was really wanting to go see. And so we had gone and done that and there was nobody in there. And, you know, you get there and they gave us these little styluses to use. And now when we when we went there and it was, you know, June, everything's open again. And they still have the timed entry. But there was so many people. And, you know, Lizzy was kind of sad because she didn't get to see the Minecraft exhibit because they got rid of that, of course, to bring in the Disney exhibit.   [00:19:40.030] - Kim Tate And there was just it was there was a lot of people visiting. And so tourism is definitely back in Seattle. We had one of our favorite places that Mia loves is called Pike Place Chowder, and they are down this kind of back alley is what it's called near Pike Place Market. And we thought, oh, yeah, we'll just hop over there and get you some food. And that was our first experience, like our first day down there.   [00:20:02.860] - Kim Tate We went down there to go get lunch there. And I was like, wow, OK, tourism's definitely back because the line was all the way to the street. And, you know, it's just it was just kind of funny. It was it was great. It's great to see that people are back and visiting the city and spending money. And so we were you're like, oh, I have to wait in line.   [00:20:20.690] - Kim Tate Exactly. Especially when it's a staycation. Right? You're like, oh, this this is my town. I want to just be able to do whatever I want. And why didn't I take advantage of this before everyone came back? So, yeah, it's but it was good. So we didn't get the chowder there. But I don't remember where I was going with this when I went off on that.   [00:20:41.950] - Tamara Gruber I've been to MoPop twice and I do love that they always change those exhibits because, you know, it makes it very fresh. But I do I think the first time I visited, I didn't realize that I was in a temporary exhibit. So I came back and I told Glenn all about this whole Star Trek exhibit. So when we were there for the cruise, we're like, we got to go, we got to go.   [00:20:57.610] - Tamara Gruber And we went there and he's like, there's no Star Trek exhibit. But then I think it was like Marvel, which, you know, he loved, you know, having that thing, all the Marvel costumes. Right.   [00:21:06.380] - Kim Tate But yeah, that was good. That's always that up upper level is the one that they use. And they do I think I think sometimes the visiting exhibits are just amazing. We there's another one that we always like. That's the fairy tale which is down. There's the floor of horrors, which is kind of freaky. And then there's the, you know, fairy tale exhibit, which is kind of fun. But we it's funny because things must be getting busy again, like I said, because there is a few things when me and I were there in March that she wanted to show Lizzy, like one of it was I'm trying to think is a crown from some I can't think of which show now.   [00:21:44.530] - Kim Tate And it was on loan somewhere. And then another piece that was in the Harry Potter memorabilia was on loan and they had put something else instead. And we're like, oh, man. You know, I was just kind of funny how sometimes the rotate to you, so but they have a few like inset places and of course, Nirvanas huge there. And that's a big part that people a lot of people do pilgrimages to Seattle to do the whole nirvana and grunge movement thing.   [00:22:13.690] - Kim Tate So that's a big part of it there. Sound lab, which they normally have, which our kids love, and it's very hands on thing that is still closed. So they don't have the sound lab open. But the Heroes and Villains exhibit with Disney was amazing. It was so neat, especially because I like Disney and just the costuming. It makes you realize how much costumes make characters really stand out. And I think it's just it's really cool to see that.   [00:22:42.260] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, those are really neat, especially for like fantasy kind of shows like that, like where you said it's it is so much about the costume. Like I'm thinking of you and I were in Belfast and we went to the Game of Thrones exhibit all the you know, the different costumes for them.   [00:22:58.000] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And the Belfast one was cute or cool with the Game of Thrones because they had a lot of the accessories and props as well. This one didn't have as much like the props. It was definitely the costumes. So but anyway, so that was kind of cool. And then, like I said, our last day we went to Woodland Park Zoo, which is kind of just normal zoo. They do have a baby gorilla, which was born in January and it still looks so small.   [00:23:25.540] - Kim Tate And we were seen and the mom was just holding it. And it was funny just the way seeing her hold it and just the way she would like pat his head, like just, you know, and this kind of maternal way. It was so sweet. And yeah.   [00:23:39.670] - Tamara Gruber So I remember seeing your story about that and just how cute and sweet it is.   [00:23:43.990] - Kim Tate It's so adorable. Yeah. Yeah. So that was kind of our little Seattle staycation. It was great. There was just you know, it was I really do think that when you're going to do the traditional tourist things and even being locals, we still like to do some of these tourist things. The CityPASS really is a great way to do it, and especially if I think I did the math and basically you have to do three things.   [00:24:07.350] - Kim Tate You can do four and already save money. And then, of course, you get an extra bonus item as well. So if you're if you're planning to visit for it depends on how the math works. But most of it is if you're planning to do four of the things, then yes, makes a lot of sense.   [00:24:22.020] - Tamara Gruber And I like the way, you know, in Seattle, they're so clustered able to do like if you could get the timed entry tickets. And, you know, when this science center opens, like, you know, the way then the Space Needle and the Chihuly and the Science Center, it's like you can just so easily walk to all the three.   [00:24:38.040] - Kim Tate All those. Yeah. Same at the Science Center. It's right there as well. So. Yeah. Yeah. And then the crew. Yeah, yeah. It's all together. And then the Argosy Cruises is down by the aquarium, so that's very easy to get in the right place anyway.   [00:24:50.790] - Tamara Gruber So it's exciting to be there. So it's like you can really fit it into a weekend or definitely a three day weekend, but even a two day weekend because sometimes you feel like I'm never going to be able to fit all this in if I'm just visiting for a weekend. But I think. Yeah, yeah, CityPASS is great. And like, not only I mean, it may not be the case now, but there are some times when you can skip the line to you.   [00:25:12.570] - Tamara Gruber And I did that in New York when I went to the Empire State Building. And that saves you I mean, I could save you a couple of hours sometimes.   [00:25:19.590] - Kim Tate I agree. Yeah. It can be really useful to be able to do that. I didn't have that at the Space Needle. They used to a long time ago. So I don't know if they'll ever bring that back. But it's not a not a thing they're right now. But yeah, when you can skip the line, they normally promote or publish that. And that's very helpful. Yeah. So, yeah, that's right. I agree. Yeah, it was good.   [00:25:40.590] - Kim Tate And I think a weekend, it works for a weekend. It depends how busy you want to be because if you want to it's definitely that. But we're going to be doing attractions all weekend long and not having a lot of downtime when you get you eat and just kind of wander between the two things. So we'll see how long the advance reservations last. And that just requires a little bit of advance planning. But like I said, we were able to get reservations.   [00:26:02.670] - Kim Tate No problem. I booked, I believe, the day before. So like I said, the aquarium was the hardest one. That one was one where it would have made more sense to book it a week out and book that one first. So just a heads up on that. But yeah.   [00:26:15.450] So from that, we just got home from Vail, which was very different. But I'm excited to share all about that trip. And we so from Seattle, we flew into Denver and then we took the epic Mountain Express shuttle from Denver to Vail.   [00:26:33.030] - Kim Tate And we've taken a shuttle system like that to Keystone as well before. And so all those from Denver to all of those kind of mountain resorts, it's about a two to two and a half hour trip. But traffic is definitely the the asterisk on that.   [00:26:50.340] - Tamara Gruber Yes.   [00:26:50.880] - Kim Tate Yeah, yeah. I mean, you've been in the area, too, but Denver traffic can really throw a kink into things. There's construction a lot of times, especially with the summer and then just a lot of people coming in and out of Denver in all directions to go to the suburbs. And so that's just something to keep in mind, is that traffic can be an issue. Hopefully it's not, especially in the summer. It's less of an issue in the winter.   [00:27:14.400] - Kim Tate Sometimes there's avalanches or, you know, roads are closed down for a few hours. And so that can be an issue. But it is standard. I've done like I said, we've done it twice and both times it's been about two to two and a half hours. And they do allow they have us a middle midway spot that they will actually say, does anybody need to use the restroom or get something to drink? And they have like it's kind of funny because it's a privately owned store and Starbucks that's actually owned by the by Epic Ski, you know, Vail Resorts that does the epic.   [00:27:46.800] - Kim Tate So it's kind of funny. So they they stop there and they have, you know, front curb parking for the shuttles and you can go in and go to the restroom. And then of course, seems like all all of us bought Starbucks as well. So it's a smart little a very contained system. You get all the.   [00:28:05.600] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, they've got it figured out. So anyways, that's but that's good. So we headed to Vail and we actually stayed at this condo resort type community called Manor Vail. And it is just I want to say east, but I don't know my map perfectly for Vail. So it could be us, but it's just about ten minutes walking distance like outside of Vail Village, but really connected availability, if that makes sense to you just kind of wandering in to get to the main center.   [00:28:34.620] - Kim Tate It might not even be ten minutes, but about ten minutes would be the safe thing to say. So we walked. So you have so many different accommodations, things. So, you know, always going to be like directly in the village.   [00:28:47.730] - Tamara Gruber But I mean, I remember when we a couple of summers ago stayed in Copper Mountain and we were right in the village. There's downsides to that, too, because like the music playing and stuff like that. So it's sometimes it's not too bad to have, like, a little bit of a walk.   [00:29:00.450] - Kim Tate Yeah, we actually really liked it and there is a free metro shuttle system and we chose to walk because it was not bad. We did get rained on once and we just dealt with it. The girls were give me a hard time. They're like, we're from Seattle, Mom, like, chill out, it's fine. And I was like, don't you want to take the bus? But yeah. So it was it was great.   [00:29:22.080] - Kim Tate And so they do have a bus that, you know, operates regularly, like every I think they say like five, eight minutes, you know, a bus is coming around and takes you and then so on. The other end is Lionhead, which is where another one of the big gondolas is and between where we stayed in Manor Vail and Lion's Head is about one mile, but it's about a 30 minute walk just because of curves and in and out of streets.   [00:29:42.750] - Kim Tate And we did that walk, we know one day and it is a little longer, but it's totally doable. And so I you know, we really liked it. We fell in love with Vale Village. It was it was so nice. And just what you expect of those kind of, you know, European folsky villages, it was just nice. And I think that's a hidden those are hidden destinations in the summer, although it's certainly definitely it certainly seemed busy.   [00:30:06.680] - Kim Tate I'll say that, you know, which is great to see.   [00:30:09.480] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I mean, I've only experienced it a little bit, but I really love mountain resorts in the summer and I have not been Vail. But when I whenever I see anyone's pictures, it just looks like a little Swiss town. And I'm like, oh yeah. It just it looks so cute. And I just I would love to do this today. It's just so it's just nice to be, you know, in the mountains because they have so many activities like those those resorts are so good about, you know, like you don't have to leave that resort.   [00:30:35.040] - Tamara Gruber There's so much to do. Right.   [00:30:36.840] - Kim Tate Right. Well, it's so nice to be able I mean, there's so much to eat. I just there's so much. And so we're we're out Manor Vail. It's actually right next to this Betty Ford Alpine Gardens area and park. And so we had this beautiful view of the water and people were, you know, go over there and they sometimes have little festivals and there's an amphitheater over there. And it's just really neat. And like you said, there's just there's stuff to do.   [00:31:00.930] - Kim Tate And even if, you know, like in the center of town, there's this big Solaris, which is a kind of luxury condo, I think, resort. And they have a big space. They have like the lower level are all restaurants and shops. And then upper levels are the rooms. And on the lower level, they have this place called Bowl, which is an indoor bowling alley. And then outside they have cornhole in kind of an open green space that kids were playing soccer while we were playing cornhole.   [00:31:26.580] - Kim Tate And there's just they can sell you drinks and there is seating and you can just hang out and chat. And so it's a really it's kind of one of those villages where you could easily just go find a place to people watch and sit and drink and eat and chat. And so I think it's a really good social town, if that makes sense, like it's a good place to go, be social as a family or with friends for sure. Yeah.   [00:31:48.840] - Kim Tate So yeah, our first so we flew in and the first day we arrived we just took it easy and we had dinner at our, you know, after a long travel day, we just had dinner at our hotel which they have like a little restaurant there. And then the next day we got up to go horseback riding. And one thing is, Lizzy, she got up and she was going to go. She was like, oh, I'm not feeling good.   [00:32:08.910] - Kim Tate And it took her a while to get out of the room. We were a little late because we were just buying her. We bought her some oxygen shot and she got there and there was a booking issue. They only had two of us and they were going to add a third. But she's like, you know, honestly, I don't feel good anyways. And we didn't want her to, like, pass out on top of her horse or be uncomfortable.   [00:32:27.810] - Kim Tate Yeah. So the we had gotten, you know, driven there by the hotel. And so they we called and they were going to come back and get her and take her back to the room. And we told her just to drink lots of water, eat food, rest, take some of the more of the oxygen shot. And then so me and I went on the horseback ride and I was we made the right choice because we actually went up quite a bit like took a bit of an elevation because we wanted to out to our to her, to our to her anyways, changing ours there, but headed up the mountain.   [00:32:56.790] - Kim Tate And it was just beautiful. It's nice to go horseback riding. We did it through Vail Stables, which was right across from where we were staying at at Manor Vail. So it was an easy, really easy get to thankfully they drove us. It's oh, it's across the main interstate. So you can't, like, walk there and it's quite up the hill a little. So but it was it was fun. We had our little horseback ride and it was the nice thing.   [00:33:20.550] - Kim Tate Like one of the one of the parts was they called it magical forest and it was where it was a really narrow path. And of course, it was a trail ride. So single single-file line, but it was just through these aspen trees and just the green and the white bark of the aspen trees and just like little birds chirping. And we actually heard they were like, that's a moment that was talking, you know, like to make these funny noises.   [00:33:44.280] - Kim Tate And so it was just it was really nice. It's a great way to kind of get that mountain, you know, Aspen feel. And then, of course, we got on a couple little meadow outlooks where you could look down and see Vail Village in the distance. So that was pretty cool. But yeah. So we did that. Yeah, and then once we came back and got to the room, Lizzy was feeling much better and was ready to go out to lunch.   [00:34:05.810] - Kim Tate And so thankfully, she had adjusted with the rest and water and oxygen. We had gone into the village and did a little bit of shopping, like souvenir shopping for some sweatshirts and just getting a feel for the village a little. And then we went back to our room and we were thinking about going swimming, but it looked like there was rain moving in. So we decided to just that we wouldn't do that. And then we ended up going to dinner that night at a really famous place in the village called Alpen Rose, which when you're talking about like Suess, this is total Bavarian, I think, a little restaurant in the heart of the village.   [00:34:42.410] - Kim Tate And it was so perfect. It's kind of one of those things where, you know, we had a busy day and then there was some rain and we just were looking for a good evening meal. And this place was just amazing. It's a very it's I wouldn't call it very limited menu, but it's a small menu because what they do, they do really well. If that makes sense and they put us in this front little it's kind of a house is what it feels like, maybe like a chalet, because it's kind of open, like not tons of little rooms, but the lower floor definitely felt kind of like a house.   [00:35:15.020] - Kim Tate And they put us at the front, a front window bench seating table, which was just so cute. And you could totally they have an outdoor patio as well. And it was just amazing. We loved it. And it was kind of one of those things we had. We all three of us got hot chocolates which were served in these kind of enamel mugs that just looked really cute with the whipped cream. It was just it felt like we were like you said, it felt like we were at a European ski village and just enjoying some great pasta, Mia got salmon, and it was it was awesome.   [00:35:49.670] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. I was going to ask if you had, like, schnitzel or something like that because it seemed like it would the kind of place.   [00:35:54.390] - Kim Tate That's exactly. They had it on the menu. There is schnitzel on the menu. But yeah, we were we realized we got a few because there was a big pretzel. I don't know if you saw the picture that, you know, they had a massive pretzel. And then we also got this. I can't even think of the name of it, but there is kind of like fried potato bites of sorts. And we got so full we realized that Lizzy and I should have just shared because we both ordered the pasta carbonara, which featured grandma's pasta, which was like fresh made pasta.   [00:36:23.930] - Kim Tate And we realized we should just shared it because after the appetizers and, you know, the hot chocolate and everything, we we both didn't finish our our plates of pasta.   [00:36:32.240] - Tamara Gruber I feel like there's always so many times when Hannah and I are traveling and we're like, when are we going to learn that we need to just share?   [00:36:37.730] - Kim Tate Yeah, I think you should we should know that, like when you order appetizers, but you order the appetizer and then you're like, OK, well, what are you going to order for your main dish? Then you just kind of forget that there's going to be this other food that's about ready to arrive, right?   [00:36:49.160] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. And, you know, sometimes menus are exciting and you're like, well, that sounds good. And that sounds good.   [00:36:54.920] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we that was our we ended our day on that one and the next day we like I said, we walked over to Lion's Head, which is such a fun walk. I mean it really is like I said, and I don't know how to say this enough, but part of the appeal was just wandering and kind of going into shops. And there's so many little patio seating areas where you could just go, OK, let's go get a drink here.   [00:37:17.060] - Kim Tate We'll have an appetizer here. I think it would be really fun to do that is where you just kind of visit one place and get something here and then go to another place, get another drink and eat something there and just kind of wander around, I think would be a real fun way to enjoy that village. So we wandered and walked over to Lion's Head and we ended up going up the Eagle Bahn Gondola because we were headed up to the top of the mountain to be able to go on there.   [00:37:41.840] - Kim Tate They have it's called Epic Discovery, and it's basically kind of like an adventure park at the top, OK? And they've got, you know, zip lines and ropes courses and a big giant lawn slide. And they've got this little roller coaster, mountain coaster thing. And then they also had little kids. They've got like kids bouncy like trampolines, and they got a kid zip line. And then they have like a rock climbing wall and a kid's lawn slide as well.   [00:38:06.170] - Kim Tate So it works well, like there's some little kid things as well. And we were there and then lightning moved in in the area. And so they had to shut everything down. So they shut the gondola down. So we did a couple of passes on the slide. And then unfortunately, we weren't able to do any more of the activities. And we actually kind of just waited up there. They had a food place, so we grabbed some food.   [00:38:26.090] - Kim Tate I'll be honest that the food was extremely pricey at the top of the mountain. So once they it's kind of like once they have you there, they know you don't have an option.   [00:38:36.800] - Kim Tate So we did get some we got some fries and some drinks because we weren't sure how long we'd be waiting. And then we they opened back the gondola and we thought, well, instead of waiting on the line, we'll go wait and hope that they open the coaster back. They opened both gondolas, but they didn't open the epic discovery things and the zip lines and the ropes courses were both already closed for the summer, I don't know if they're going to do a renovation, but to me it looked like it was probably just staffing because those things, I think, require a lot of staff for getting in and out at a higher level of training, probably also just for insurance and security. So those were not open. And so we went back down the gondola and just kind of again explored the village a little bit and hung out. We got lunch and then we headed back to our room to get ready because we were doing something really cool, which was called Picnic Vail, which like I said, remember how I said Manor Vail is right next to the Betty Ford Gardens.   [00:39:36.060] - Kim Tate Actually it's this company. I think it's a lady like she started up this business called Picnic Vail. And she basically comes and sets up a little one of those outdoor picnic, the charming outdoor picnics for you outdoors. And she found for us because she was like, well, we don't know if it's going to sprinkle again because it had rain. Like we said, that we got stranded up on the mountain because rain and we got back down.   [00:39:58.020] - Kim Tate It wasn't raining anymore. So we went over to the gardens and it was sunny and gorgeous. And she had set us up in this little picnic underneath the bow of an evergreen tree, like it was kind of open and it was so cute. She had a table set up and it was just like this gorgeous charcuterie board. And then we had water. And then she also had a table of games, which was really fun.   [00:40:19.530] - Kim Tate I didn't realize that would be part of it. So when we were thinking, I was like, oh, it's probably going to be about an hour, you know, just eat and chat and then we'll go. But we got there and she had, like, ladder ball set up, you know, the little ladder ball we have. Those are fun. Yeah. And so we had ladder ball and then there was also like this conversation starters.   [00:40:37.590] - Kim Tate It's the, you know, that Scandinavian word for like cozy home. h y y g y e.   [00:40:46.990] - Tamara Gruber Yeah.   [00:40:47.460] - Kim Tate Anyways that was like a conversation starter game and we had a lot of fun doing that. We kept just passing around the cards and we draw and ask questions for the other people and it was just fun. It was a great conversation thing and and then yeah. Ladder ball and there was something else. I'm blanking out what it was, but we had just a great time. We really enjoyed it. So and again, she was able to make sure that there was no nuts or eggs on the board.   [00:41:11.490] - Kim Tate So that worked out well as well and really good with that.   [00:41:15.810] - Tamara Gruber So that was a nice change from being just always restaurants to have something like that. And when I saw pictures of you doing like a lot of guys assume that that was like where the cornhole was and like other games, like in the village.   [00:41:27.840] - Kim Tate So that's, you know, yeah, it was our own private little experience, you know. So it was great. It was I mean, it was fun. The funny thing was they were also doing a festival of sorts.   [00:41:39.900] - Kim Tate It looked really small. It wasn't massive, but they had live music. So we had heard the live music the night before. And then when that happened on that was Friday night, they had live music again. So she was like, I didn't realize you'd get live music with your, you know, with your picnic. So we sat there. Is this kind of funny because the festival is like right there and we get to hear the live music while we enjoy things.   [00:42:00.870] - Kim Tate So it was great. It was a fun little experience. And and the nice thing is she you know, she leaves like her name and her phone number. So you get two hours and then she's like, if you want to leave early or just give her, you know, 20 to 30 minute heads up because she cleans everything up for you. And the food, of course, since it's in a park, she doesn't want there to be attract animals.   [00:42:20.850] - Tamara Gruber So, yeah, that's really neat, because when I saw it again, I just assumed that, like, you picked up a picnic from a place that does picnics, but you picked up a picnic and there they are and they included games. But I didn't realize, like, they set it up for you. They set it up for you. Is you like. That's exactly it was it was a nice service. Yeah.   [00:42:37.590] - Kim Tate Yeah, it was great. Yeah. You do nothing. So and there was even take home containers. She's like, oh there's containers if you want to take home any leftovers. And we're like, well we've been eating well and we leave tomorrow so there's no time for us to eat it. So thank you though. But yeah, you, you don't have to do any of the cleanup. She acts like there's a bag there for garbage if you do open stuff, wrap garbage and things.   [00:42:57.210] - Kim Tate But yeah, it's all done for you. And that was what was so nice. And I think for families it's it would be so nice for moms. I mean, it was so nice for me to just show up and the kids fix their own food and all of that. And then we had games that they played and we're having fun with. And then I just called her and I'm like, OK, we're ready to wrap up. And then she showed back up and it was I mean, and you don't have to do that.   [00:43:19.200] - Kim Tate If you go the two hours, which we could have, it was just the girls were getting a little tired. So I was like, go ahead. You know, we just did fifteen minutes earlier. So we said, you know, meet us at some fifteen and yeah, it was just awesome. So I think it was it was cool. Like I tried to start folding the blanket because we as she left to really cozy blankets as well in case it got chilly and I had pulled one out and she's like, don't, don't do that.   [00:43:41.340] - Kim Tate Stop being a mom. I get it. I clean up everything.   [00:43:43.800] - Kim Tate You know, it was awesome. So I think for for being on vacation, it was a really fun way to, you know, just relax. And it was unique for the girls as well. So they were engaged more on playing and, you know, just kind of the game, you know, varied the games. She had like four different games. There, so you definitely have enough where kids get bored with one thing, you can move to something else.   [00:44:04.780] - Kim Tate So it was great.   [00:44:05.550] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, and you're not like waiting for the server to come over to order and then waiting for your food. And then we had another check and all that kind of stuff. So.   [00:44:13.650] - Kim Tate Yeah, exactly.   [00:44:14.760] - Tamara Gruber Yes. Sounds like a great getaway. Now I'm like, OK, Colorado next year.   [00:44:19.500] - Kim Tate Yes, I loved it. I you know, the girls were saying, like, because I asked them, I say, what is this some place you would want to come back to? You know, what did you think? And they were like, yes, they absolutely loved it. And like I said, the Vail Village was really cool. I definitely I would give I mean, I think it depends on what you're looking for. But I did notice, you know, we arrived Wednesday and even like coming in and seeing what we saw Wednesday and then Thursday, the difference between Friday and then when we left on Saturday is quite remarkable.   [00:44:47.880] - Kim Tate So it definitely, I think, attracts weekend visitors. And so if you can visit during the weekday, you might have more of a a little more laid back. But then again, if you're looking for like the live music and a lot of the if you like that vibe of the socialization and stuff, the weekends are great for that. So that's just something to keep in mind.   [00:45:08.610] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, no surprise, I guess. But I think the other thing is, like you mentioned, just kind of planning for that traffic and stuff, right?   [00:45:16.740] - Kim Tate Yeah. Yeah, that's true. And I asked them, I said, is it tied to like rush hour, like you should get into the airport during a certain time and not during, you know? And they said, well, that's some of it. But a lot of it, they said, is just the construction. You can't always be sure. But like our return trip, he said, like, he brought us some wide way instead of going, like closer to the city.   [00:45:38.130] - Kim Tate He took a different route because he said, you know, he was looking at traffic and he's like, oh, you know, 70s really bad. So we're going to do 70. What? I don't remember it. It was so just something to keep in mind that you can probably ask if you are getting a shuttle. And they do know kind of the if you're not renting a car, the shuttle people kind of know the tricks to try and avoid some of it.   [00:45:59.310] - Kim Tate So but definitely I would think you just try and avoid that standard rush hour ideas of, you know, into the city and out of the city, I'm guessing.   [00:46:07.200] - Tamara Gruber And was your shuttle like one of the big charter busses or more of like a sprinter and yet more sprinter than the first one? When we arrived, we were the only ones. So I don't know how this. Yeah. So I don't know how they time the I don't know how they manage the pickups. Like, I don't know if we just got lucky randomly. I don't think they booked it as a private, you know, private experience. So but on the way home there were two other, we were the third and we're the last pick up.   [00:46:36.690] - Kim Tate And but thankfully there was a nice couple on because Mia and I both have motion sickness issues and they were sitting in the front and I was like, oh, I didn't even realize because we were the only ones on the way there. I hadn't realized it wasn't going to be a private thing. And so I asked the driver and he's like, well, you should have made a request for, you know, that you needed to sit in the front.   [00:46:53.970] - Kim Tate And he's like, we have this one front seat. And the next would be right next to the two people for two hour trip because it was like a three seat, like the front seat, three seats. Does that make sense? And so I just spoke up and asked the couple. I was like, you know, do you guys need to sit in the front by any chance? I was like, my daughter has bad motions. And they were like, oh, no problem.   [00:47:12.840] - Kim Tate And they move back one. So thank goodness it wasn't an issue.   [00:47:15.870] - Tamara Gruber That's good, because the one time that I took one of those shuttles, I thought we were all set because they picked us up and like the village where where we were and we were like the first ones on. So we sat right in the front. And then it's like and now we're going over here where you're getting on like the real shuttle, you know? And so they brought us to another meeting place and then we were the last ones. And so we were literally like against the back wall.   [00:47:40.140] - Tamara Gruber And and we were jammed in, like the whole thing was full. And we're Hannah and I were just we felt terrible the whole time.   [00:47:46.170] - Kim Tate Yeah. I have a feeling that it you know, you could get the bad luck of the draw and be could get sixteen passengers, I'm thinking. But we didn't have that experience. So that wasn't one of the big, big ones. It definitely was a sprinter van, but still it's for sprinter. So you know, and didn't think about the option of is always renting a car but yeah. You don't really need it when you're there say probably especially these days when you're paying so much for cars.   [00:48:13.230] - Kim Tate And can I just mention, like, the whole car rental thing, because I know we've talked about it off and on like one hand and I just flew to California, we waited in line to pick up our rental car because there was remember how we've talked about how, like, you know, if you're Emerald Club or whatever, like you, you don't have to you can, like, bypass the line. There was no there was no bypass.   [00:48:31.290] - Tamara Gruber It was like the desks were closed and it was like go to the garage. And then there's just like one line in front of, like a little not even a kiosk, but like a podium in the garage. And there was shows they were so short staffed. So it's again, it's another thing we're like a lot of people got laid off and it's taken a while to like hire people back and train them up and everything. And so we waited in that line for definitely over an hour.   [00:48:53.850] - Tamara Gruber And I talked to a friend of mine that rented a car in Savannah. She flew down, I think it was either Savannah or Charleston. And she waited in line for over two hours. Oh, my goodness, to pick up the car.   [00:49:05.160] - Kim Tate That's horrible. Yeah, that's what I'm hearing. So just something to build in your stomach. Exactly. Yeah. Is be prepared for that.   [00:49:13.170] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, I, I'm really glad I decided to drive from like San Francisco to L.A., L.A. to California to Arizona, renting a car each time.   [00:49:22.140] - Tamara Gruber Yeah. Originally I was thinking, oh I'll just fly, fly. But I'm like, oh it's going to be such a pain. And what if they don't have car, you know, like just I want to deal with all the hassles. And then I was so relieved.   [00:49:31.320] - Kim Tate Yeah, that's good. Yeah, that sounds dreadful. I'm you know, I'm wondering what we'll have because that was one of the reasons I was looking forward to our our rental was oh it's you know, I don't know if we're alema inside or whichever one it is. And you can get the skip the line if you do the advance check. And so be interesting to see at LAX if they have it staffed that way better, I don't know.   [00:49:53.860] - Tamara Gruber Yeah, yeah. I mean it's hopefully better, but everything you know kind of has this.   [00:49:59.520] - Kim Tate Yeah. Well we've seen what's happening also with flights and everything. I know one of our mutual friends, Leslie, she's stuck in Connecticut for an extra two days because Southwest just canceled a bunch of flights, including the one they were supposed to be on south of the flight on me like I was before the flight. And I spent my entire tour of University of Arizona walking around in like 110 degree heat, trying to figure out how I was going to get from Arizona to Houston in that afternoon.   [00:50:27.750] - Kim Tate So, yeah, super stressful, like it's in Southwest has been doing this a lot.   [00:50:32.580] - Kim Tate I think this is definitely a summer where everyone the demand is just higher than what the capacity the work capacity is right now. So if you do not already have vacation plans, I would definitely recommend a road trip, you know, near you in your own car.   [00:50:49.860] - Tamara Gruber Well, it's funny. I read an article recently that American was having people volunteer to work in the in the airport. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, who wants to do that? You know, like to be the one that's maybe like getting yelled at or something. But I think they're more like directing people to different places. But yeah, they're like asking office workers to come volunteer to work for jobs and like, that's that's a that's a huge ask.   [00:51:16.140] - Tamara Gruber Like, why are you not paying that? They're not. I don't know. I understand. Like, I know. And they got bailed out. So it's like they don't have the funds. Yeah. And then I've also seen and hear I've heard a lot of people complaining about cleanliness in hotel rooms. I don't know what your experience has been, but they're saying that, you know, everyone's saying they're up to the standar

This Wicked Spiritual Wednesday the ladies dwell on how awful this Mercury Retrograde has been! These energies from this retrograde have certainly thrown all of us for a loop whether we have noticed it or not. So Kim, Sylvia, and Kathleen took this episode to check in, to vent, and most importantly, to laugh! No matter what difficulties and struggles this retrograde has thrown the collective, its just so important to keep your chin up and learn the lessons when necessary and practice self-care and remember to smile! Or, like Sylvia suggested this episode, "Stay home!" :DGather 'round and join us for a healthy dose of laughter and spiritual fun!Wicked Spiritual Website:https://wickedspiritual.wixsite.com/wickedspiritualFacebook:https://www.facebook.com/wickedspiritualInstagram:https://www.instagram.com/wicked_spiritual/Email us!wickedspiritual@gmail.comCheck out the ladies' personal websites!Kim Pearson - https://www.kimberlypearson.net/Kathleen Farris - https://www.kathleenfarris.com/Sylvia Ferreira - https://www.truyouhealing.com/

When people think about today’s guest, tenacity is probably the first word that comes to mind. Everything she accomplished today stems from her unwavering self-belief and deep understanding that you must also take care of yourself. Through this perspective, she has taught herself and countless others how to overcome challenges. And like her, we’ve encountered countless adversities. We’ve all been in a place of anger, frustration, guilt or sadness. How do we begin to accept and love ourselves and learn to grow from it? In this week’s episode, Kim Morrison joins us to teach us all about self-love. She shares how she questioned human existence and purpose after a life-changing event and what we should be asking ourselves whenever we go through intense emotions. Kim also tells us how to overcome challenges and trauma, and discusses different helpful processes like hypnosis. If you want to find out how to overcome challenges, achieve self-love and accomplish your goals, then tune in to this episode!   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, your goals and your lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or are wanting to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within 3 years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, a NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that is capable of boosting the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements that are of highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combat the effects of aging, while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection ‘Fierce’, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Find out how to overcome challenges. Discover the things you need to work on and achieve self-love. Learn about goal setting and the importance of aligning it with your values. Episode Highlights [05:57] A Little Bit About Kim Kim grew up in New Zealand. She’s married to Danny Morrison, a former cricketer and fast-paced bowler. Their world turned upside down when they lost a sister to suicide. They then lost their house and a lot of money that they had invested. Seeing her husband go through a world of emotions made Kim question what makes humans tick and why we struggle and go through such tough times. This led her to write several books around essential oils and started her passion for plants, aromatherapy, and connection to nature.  Lately, she has been interested in mind work like neuro-linguistic programming and hypnosis. [10:09] What She’s Learned in the Past Years You are the result of the five people with whom you spend the most time. We can have a significant event happen in our lives that causes us emotional trauma. Depending on our filter system and body physiology, it then affects our behaviour. A fascinating thing Kim found out is that the meaning we put into our early childhood can then affect what our lives become.  When you have awareness around it, you can undo this. What happens to you does not matter. What matters is your reaction and perception of it. [18:44] How Trauma Affects Us  Humans are made up of 50 trillion cells, and every one of those cells is communicating. Unconsciously, so much is happening in our body because of homeostasis. It takes time, effort, energy and real work on how to overcome challenges presented by trauma. You must seek professional help. There’s also a lot of free services out there.  You need to take the time to take care of yourself. [24:02] How to Overcome Challenges  Most people’s excuses for why they do not work on themselves are time and money, but those are not true. In truth, it is about whether or not you make yourself a priority. Own up to your emotions with power instead of having a victim mentality. To have a friend who is a good listener, or to be that friend, is one of the best fast-track pathways to self-care. Lastly, to learn how to overcome challenges, you need discipline.  Life has its highs and lows, and if we can come to accept that, then that is self-love. To heal, we have to truly feel our emotions. [33:35] The Reticular Activating System and Goal Setting The reticular activating system is a part of our brain that stores memories. It has filters and a whole belief system. We receive 2 million bits of information every day, but we only have access to 136 bits. Sometimes, your goal does not match your value.  You have to have your goal aligned with your top three values. To do this, you need to do some work. What we believe, perceive and focus on is where our energy goes. If our goals aren’t aligned, we look for excuses to not accomplish them.  [43:23] The Hypnosis Process Hypnosis is about tapping directly into the unconscious mind. When someone uses hypnotic language, it puts us into a subconscious trance. Your mind can then go on a journey, and we can tap into the heart space. It allows us to bypass the critical factor and create change. When you come out to the other side, you see possibility and opportunity instead of negativity. Breath is the essence of life. When we go into a state of hypnosis, we are letting go of the breath and accessing our energy. [50:37] Our Perception of the World Everything we have ever experienced is just a belief or a perception; it is never the truth. If we imagine the world from someone else’s perspective, we gain more understanding. Every time you feel yourself going into a place of anger, frustration, guilt, or sadness, ask yourself, ‘For what purpose am I feeling this?’ or simply ask, ‘Why?’ [56:47] On Negative Thoughts As negative thoughts enter your mind, ask seven whys.  We often have two characters in our head, one who is positive and another who is negative.  If you ask the seven why’s to those characters, you will find out that both have the same purpose – to protect you.   Resources Gain exclusive access to premium podcast content and bonuses! Become a Pushing the Limits Patron now! The Art of Self Love by Kim Morrison Self Love Podcast with Kim Morrison Learn with Kim on Kim Morrison Training Join Kim’s Self-Love & Wellness Mentorship program with this special offer! Twenty8 Essentials: Website | Facebook Connect with Kim: Website | Instagram | LinkedIn | Twitter The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton The Wim Hof Method Breath by James Nestor The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Dr Daniel G. Amen  The Secret by Rhonda Byrne Pushing the Limits Episode 180 - Breathing as the Key to Better Health with James Nestor Pushing the Limits Episode 182 - Science Behind Nasal Breathing and How to Breathe Better with Patrick McKeown Pushing the Limits Episode 190 - How to Build Resilience and Get Control of Your Biology with Paul Taylor   7 Powerful Quotes from this Episode ‘And the thing I love about it is that when you realise it and have an awareness around who you are and what you've been doing, the world becomes your oyster, and we stop blaming; we stop becoming the victim, we stop being in denial, we stop making excuses for our life. And we actually take accountability, responsibility and ownership for every single thing.’ ‘And I say that with a disclaimer, that it's really important that in these times of worry and fear and stress and overwhelm, that you seek help. If you're feeling like your world is closing in, you're not your own coach; you’re not your own best coach; your partner's not necessarily the best coach or mentor for you through these times, neither are your parents. So sometimes we need professional help.’  ‘Often, as we talk it to someone that's listening, truly listening without trying to fix us. When you're listening, we often talk through the process out loud because I believe all humans have all traits. And all humans have all resources within them to help heal themselves. But sometimes we just need to hear it.’ ‘And if we could just understand that it's at our darkest times, we actually are revealed. Your strength comes through your courage, your determination, your tenacity, your resilience is what shows up.’ ‘So we know that life is ebb and flow, high and low, in and out, dark and light. If we can come to accept that, then that is self-love.’ ‘So the important thing to realise is that you have to have your goal aligned with your top three values. And if it's not aligned with any of your top three values, you're going to need some integration work to bring it up there if it's something you really want. Because otherwise, that's where the excuses come in.’ ‘Just keep your mind stimulated with possibility. Because it's through the possibility we have grown, and through the growth we become way more powerful individuals. And with that, we start to then look at our higher purpose, and what legacy are we going to leave in this life.’    About Kim Kim Morrison is a speaker, author, facilitator, health and lifestyle educator, self-love expert and entrepreneur. She set the world record as the youngest female to run 100 miles in less than 24 hours in 1983. Kim has been an Aromatherapist for 27 years. She has diplomas in Holistic Aromatherapy, Sport and Remedial Therapies, Fitness Leadership and Homeobotanical Therapies in Melbourne and New Zealand. She is also a qualified Personality Trainer and completed studies in nutrition, reflexology and counselling. In 2009, Kim launched her company, Twenty8 Essentials. To learn more about Kim, visit her website. Check out her podcast and connect with her on Instagram as well!   Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn more about how to overcome challenges through self-love. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts.   To pushing the limits, Lisa   Full Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing The Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Welcome back to Pushing The Limits with your host Lisa Tamati. Today I have the lovely, dear friend, Kim Morrison, to guest. Kim is an absolute sweetheart. She's a speaker. She's a six-times author, a facilitator, health and lifestyle educator, podcaster herself. She is a self-love expert. And there's so much more to come than meets the eye. She's an absolute gorgeous woman inside and out. Tenacity is probably the first word that comes to mind. In her journey and all she’s accomplished today have all stemmed from her unwavering self-belief and her deep understanding that you must also take care of yourself first and foremost. She recently wrote a book called The Art of Self-Love, which I encourage you to check out after you've listened to this podcast. Kim is also, she’s an entrepreneur, she owns the company Twenty8 Essentials with essential oils. She does a lot of mentoring, especially with women's empowerment. She has her own podcast. She's also a world record holder as the youngest female to run 100 miles in less than, in 24 hours. So she's a very amazing athlete and mother. She's also the wife of Danny Morrison, the famous cricketer, and she's just an absolute legend. She's been through a lot in her life, and she shares in this episode a lot of her learnings along the way so I do hope you enjoy the episode with Kim.  Before I head over to the show, just want to let you guys know we've just launched our premium membership for the podcast. If you love Pushing the Limits, if you love what we stand for, if you'd like to support the show and get a whole lot of extra benefits as premium members, and the list is long on the extra benefits, then I would love you to hop on over to patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com and become one of our VIP members. One of our premium members that supports the podcast and the work that we do, and helps us keep getting this great content out there and get a whole lot of benefits, as you know to be a part of this exclusive club. So we're really, really stoked to get that up off the ground and we really appreciate your support. Of course, if you give us a rating and review for the shows too, that would be absolutely fabulous, and share it with your family and friends. We put a lot of effort into this. Sometimes some of the guests we have, top scientists, top doctors and researchers. It takes often many weeks to prepare for an interview and a lot of study, a lot of reading, a lot of books and also chasing celebrity guests and people that are of note that are hard to get hold of. So if you want me to be able to keep doing this work, I’d really appreciate your support over at patron.lisatamati.com. And while we're on that note, if you're into interesting reads, please check out my three books I have Running Hot, Running To Extremes which both chronicle my adventures running around the world doing lots of crazy stuff, succeeding, failing, having lots of fun and experiences and disasters along the way. So if you like a good novel, well, not a novel, they're actually autobiographies. But if you'd like good running stories and adventures then please check those out. And my latest book, Relentless: How a Mother and Daughter Defied the Odds is available on my website as well as on Amazon and IngramSpark and all the audiobooks and all of those sorts of places as well as Book Depository. You name it, it's out there. That one’s called Relentless and it's the story of bringing my mum back after a massive aneurysm left her with hardly any higher brain function, in a diagnosis where the medical professionals were telling me there was no way back for her at the age of 74, the brain damage was just too massive. They were wrong. This book is about empowering people. This is what this whole podcast is about. And what my whole life is about is taking control of your health, being preventative, educating yourself, and looking outside the square and connecting with the right people and, doing all that sort of stuff. So I'd love you to go and grab that book. And please share it too with your friends. If you like the book, get them to buy a copy too and help support the book. Getting it out there, and reviews and ratings for the book are really helpful too on either goodreads.com or you can just email me. I'd also love to hear from you if you are enjoying the podcast. Reach out to us if you've got any questions around any of the topics that we've brought up. We'd love to engage with you on support@lisatamati.com. Right well, now we'll go over to the lovely Kim who I absolutely treasure. She's a wonderful woman. I do hope You enjoy this podcast with Kim Morrison. Lisa: Well, hi everyone and welcome back to pushing the limits. Today I have one of my very dear friends Kim Morrison back on the show. Kim, welcome to Pushing the Limits again. Kim Morrison: Such a treat to be with you, my friend.  Lisa: We're just being ravishing. We couldn't stop talking to actually get the recording done, because we just got so much to like, (blah blah noise). Kim: We almost should have recorded what we just created. Lisa: All the cool people we've got to meet. I've got to introduce you to this person and this person. So yeah, we love swapping and collaborating and doing lots of crazy things.  So Kim, for those of you who don't know, you and most people should because you're world-famous and you're the author of six books. You're a mum, you're—you have your own amazing company. But tell us a little bit about Kim Morrison. Who’s Kim Morrison? Where are you sitting at the moment? Kim: On the Sunshine Coast. World-famous and world tellers is what I’d say. I'm here on the Sunshine Coast. Obviously a kiwi, grew up in New Zealand, married Danny Morrison, a former New Zealand cricketer, fast-paced bowler and we had an incredible life. Then our world got turned upside down when sadly we lost a sister to suicide. And then Danny went through his own world of emotions. And as you can imagine being a top international athlete, to now a father of two, a mortgage, losing a sister, and then we lost our house. Then we lost a whole lot of money that we'd invested. All of a sudden, I think Danny started to question who the frick he was.  To watch that as a wife, a partner and someone that you love kept pushing me further down the rabbit hole and understanding what makes us tick. Why do people struggle? Why do people go through tough times? What is the meaning of it? So that took me on a journey after writing a number of books around essential oils.  My passion was plants and aromatherapy and our connection to nature. And I've really, I've dabbled in a whole lot of things like nutrition and home-botanical therapy. And then lately, in the last few years, probably since writing my book, The Art of Self-Love, it's really been a quest, the last, six to ten years on, again, why do we have to go through tough times? And what does it actually mean? So lately, I've been doing a whole lot of mind work around things like neuro-linguistic programming, hypnosis, and really getting to understand how we tick and what makes us put meaning into life situations which then can calibrate into our physiology, which then calibrates into our immunology, which then calibrates into our health and wellness.  It's been a really cool journey. Lots of ups, lots of downs. I'm not sitting here saying my life's been easy. I've been through a lot of downs myself. And knowing that often hitting the rock bottom parts of life, whilst you're in it, the worst thing is to think that there's a lesson in this. ‘Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be coming out so amazing’ when you're in the throes of it. If someone even suggests that you're going to have come out of– Lisa: Both! Kim: Yeah, exactly. But we all know when we look back on our lives, dear Lisa,  there is always a learning, there is always an opportunity for growth. But you can take it one of two ways you can turn it into a power part of your life or a petty part of your life. You can become the victor or the victim. And that's where I love working with people who choose the victor strategy. How do I learn from this? Lisa: Wow, the victor strategy. You either become a victim or a victor. I love it. It's just so beautifully put. We've both been through rocky roads and most people have, if you get to our age. You've had some shit thrown at you. Some of your own doing some not your own doing. And okay, what can we learn out of this? And how can we grow from this so that we just are able to carry on and we were talking before about the journey I've been on with losing my dad six months ago or seven months ago and how, trying to stand back up from that. Trying to make something positive out of the horrific situation which is still too fresh to fully have that formed. But it will be his legacy. He will have a legacy because of this. And I believe that he's helping me on the other side. I'm pretty damn sure of that.  That he's making things happen and the good time. But we all go through these things and we all go through times where we think ‘I can't get up again'.  So you've written a book called The Art of Self-Love. You do a heck of a lot. You have a podcast all around the space of loving yourself. And this isn't just whoo-whoo stuff. This is real stuff. This is like, how do I accept myself? Love myself? Learn from this? Grow from this? You've had some amazing people on your show, some amazing guests. What are some of the things that you've learned just in the last year working on your podcasts and so on? Kim: It's been phenomenal. I think the biggest thing that I love is you are the result of the five people you spend your most time with. So that includes family, and sometimes that can be tough. Therefore, the most important thing of all is—look, we can have a significant event happen in our lives that can bring us to our knees, which causes a whole lot of emotional trauma. Then we perceive that event. Then depending on our upbringing, our circumstances, our values, our beliefs, our meta-programs. How we generalize, distort and delete things. How we actually filter for what we're thinking of that meaning. Then creates a physiology within the body, which then creates a state, and then our emotions come out, which then drives our behaviour.  So it's fascinating, and the way I can explain this is if you grew up with siblings, and you had the privilege of having, say, the same mom and dad the whole way through. If you asked each of the siblings what they thought of their childhood, you may find a very different perception or meaning of what they've put onto that. And that's based on the filter system.  We all know that between the ages of naught and seven is pretty much the imprinting stage. So whatever happens usually in those naught to seven years, we create meaning. We're an absorber of information. So if you grew up with a mom that was frantic and full-on and was doing the best she could. Let's face it, everybody's done the best they could with the resources they have or don't have. But let's say that you heard, as a little four-year-old girl, your mom and dad fighting one night. They were having an argument, and let's say it was about money. Maybe your dad just lost his job. But as a four-year-old, you don't understand all of this. But you come to the door because you're worried you can hear and it doesn't feel real. And then your dad says to you, ‘Go away. This is not to do with you’. Or says something that you've heard it in a way that now means you'd now go into your room, you calibrate that into your physiology, that the next time a male or a man shouts, you've taken it to mean, perhaps you're not good enough, or it's your fault. Now you can imagine throughout your life now, you start building scenarios. Your reticular activation system is now on alert. That now every time you hear a man or a male, argue, or fight, or scream, or yell or have anger, you’re now drawn to it. So you're now filtering for it. Because on the other side of that, because to have a problem, you also have to not have a problem. Or to have heat, you also have to have cold to understand the polarities of that. You now also know that to look for love in your life, you're now going to look for the polarity opposite of that, which is mean yelling. Or maybe it could be in the form of your boss. It could be in the form of a teacher. It could be in the form of a friend.  Lisa: You're going to be a travel expert.  Kim: So it fascinates me, Lisa, that the meaning we put into our early childhood can then become what our life becomes or doesn't become. Now the cool thing about that is when you have awareness around it, you can also undo this. If you've had the physiology or a life of not having great relationships, and you've never. If we could take you back through hypnosis or through different timeline strategies, and we can get you back to the place where you first put meaning and had a limiting belief around that, then we can easily take the lessons from it, learn it, and undo everything. And it's not about unwinding or stopping those memories. It's not about that. It's just realizing why you've created a certain behaviour to have that result. And the thing I love about it is that when you realize it and have an awareness around who you are and what you've been doing, the world becomes your oyster. And we stop blaming, we stop becoming the victim, we stop being in denial, we stop making excuses for our life. And we actually take accountability, responsibility and ownership for every single thing.  Now that means we're things that happened to us like you just said. So again, it doesn't matter what happens to you. It's your reaction to it that matters. It's how you perceive it that matters. Because we can't control their outside world as much as we've tried to change partners and kids and parents and families and friends. As much as we've tried to change people, do any of us want to be changed or told we're doing it wrong? Probably not. So it actually teaches you a way on how to perceive it in a way that you do it with love. And as far as I'm concerned, I can speak to the biggest scientists on the planet. I can speak to the most intelligent humans on this planet. And ultimately it all comes back to us desiring the ability to love and be loved. Lisa: There is a whole purpose of us being here, I'm pretty damn sure of it. But if, without getting into the whole spiritual silence, what I've been looking at—wWhen you lose a loved one, you start looking at what's on the other side, and what is the reason of life. And I do think it is all connected to love. That is so fascinating.  I just met a Dr Don Ward, who I'm going to introduce you to, who works with trauma, and people who have been through trauma. And he said we have this like—talks about the reticular activating system and how we filter for things. I can so relate to that analogy that you gave there. And he gave a story in his life with his wife who'd had a difficult childhood and a dad who would do a lot of yelling. So then he said his wife was hyper-vigilant to that in his voice, even if he just said, ‘Oh, I don't like that’, and she would immediately be filtering for that. ‘What have I doing wrong’? because of that fear response that was already programmed into her.  He talks about taking these memories. It could be a minor trauma, but it ends up being a big thing that you frame yourself for and limit your beliefs. And I think, like, when you're a child, you don't have that understanding of, mum might have been just a bit stressed and told you ‘you're just a naughty little girl', And then you've just taken that away, and I'm a bad person. Forever and a day, now it's in my life. It can be that simple. And yet it was just mum having a bad day and was a bit stressed and yelled at you, which really shouldn't have had that impact. And as an adult, you wouldn't have taken that. But as a child, you've not been able to filter that.  So what he does, and also with big trauma, he's worked with lots of vets and people that have been blown up and bombs and lost legs and horrible things. He says, you have this memory that is in High Definition movie. And it's trauma, right? And it’s so real and vivid in your memory banks. And anything can trigger it. So it might be a song or smell, a person, an event, and it will just, you're immediately back there in that trauma, and you're reliving it. That creates an emotional response in the body. And what he does through his program is similar to what the hypnosis, I imagine, is take that high definition movie and turn it into a black-and-white picture that's still in your brain, but no longer causes a physiological response because we get stuck in this loop. We're looping around those thoughts and that experience and experiencing it in real-time because your brain doesn't differentiate if this was 20 years ago or it's now. If you think back to a horrible event in your life, that was really traumatic feeling for you, you will have all of those physiological responses in real-time right now because the brain doesn't know. You're actually bringing it out into your body. And this is where the whole thing about psycho-neuro-immunology comes into it. Where everything that's going on in our brain is fixed and is stuck in our biology and expresses through our biology. And you've obviously been deeper into this world than I have of late. I'm really just scratching the surface. But how do you think that affects us from a health perspective? Kim: If you think we are made up of 50 trillion cells, and every one of those cells is communicating and it's got a whole incredible unconscious way of sustaining life. And when we think about it consciously, I mean, you're not thinking about your left finger now growing right now, although you might be now because I brought attention to it. But unconsciously so much is happening because of the programming, because of the ability of the body to do what it does and create what we call homeostasis.  So if you have a traumatic experience, and you get triggered by that, let's say, well, I've got a girlfriend who was in—sadly, her story's amazing, I'll get you to get her on your podcast. But basically, she lost her fiance to suicide. She was so traumatized, but within a year, she just couldn't get over it so she decided, on his one year anniversary, she'd go to Bali to take her life.  She had two girl friends who knew that she wasn't right so they went with her. That night, they went out to the Sari Club, and we all may be aware of the Bali bombings that went off. Now, one minute Karen's thinking of going to Bali to take her life. The next minute she is pushed through a burning wall and running for her life. So her physiology—and by the way, she lost her two friends out of that experience so now she feels responsible for three people stiff.  So you can imagine for her what that meant, and her story is phenomenal as she goes into a world of six years of depression. Now what brings her out of it is obviously a lot of self-work. But her dad talking about, his nickname for her as Buffy. And he says to her, he had her on his knee, she's a woman in her late 30s at this point, and he has her sitting on her knee and says ‘Buffy, we've all got to—some time, the caterpillar has got to go through a transformational process to come out the other side and become the butterfly’. And, for some reason, maybe he’s been saying it for those six years, but for some reason, on that day, she heard it. And she has gone on this exploratory path of what is it that has us physiologically turned into this thing called depression. And these are her words, not mine. She believes depression is a choice. So she says you go to sleep every night, you fall asleep, you might be depressed as you fall asleep but as you go to sleep into the unconscious part of sleep, you are no longer depressed. But the minute, not the minute, the moment you wake up, you're not depressed, until the memory kicks in, of who you are, your story in your life, and now all of a sudden, you're living depression.  I'm not undermining depression for anyone listening. And I'm certainly not an expert in that field. But I found it interesting that she feels depression is a choice. So when you think about that, your biology, and what's happening at a physiological level like you say, at a cell level, if you are believing—and by the way, the reason why I said that is if a balloon popped, or champagne cork went off, the explosion of that triggered her exactly into that time and place. So it takes time, effort and energy and real work on self to overcome these traumas. Now we're not born with a rulebook or a guide book. And our parents aren’t born with a book on how to help us psychologically. We're all traversing this pathway with the best that we possibly can. And so I share that in the hope and realisation that for many of us, suicide is not the answer. And I say that with a disclaimer, that it's really important that in these times of worry and fear and stress and overwhelm, that you seek help if you're feeling like your world is closing in. You're not your own coach. You're not your own best coach. Your partner's not necessarily the best coach or mentor for you through these times. Neither are your parents. So sometimes we need professional help.  And what I love about these days is, if you're seeing a psychologist, in my mom's day, you're seen as a little bit weak. Whereas today, I think you're seen as profoundly intelligent, emotionally intelligent to get that support. So whether it's hypnosis, aroma-therapy, psychology, NLP, getting a coach, getting a mentor, it doesn't matter what it is. And there's a lot of free help out there. If you search it in podcasts like this, that really dive into one realm if you go down the science link, but my real passion sits in the heart space. And if you love who you are, then I believe you have awareness when you're not in love with yourself. And if you take care of yourself, then we know that that helps you one step, one moment, one breath at a time. You're better off, doing something nice for yourself making a green smoothie than you are drinking a bottle of wine. I'm not saying that a bottle of wine with a girl friend and pouring your heart out and having a good cry isn't healthy. But it’s not your crutch. Anything can become a crutch too. Lisa: It’s not to become your crutch, right?  Anything can become an addiction. Kim: An addiction is not a great place to be either. So we know that if you can find a way one step, one breath at a time. Whether it's free, or if you have the money to invest. And let's face it, most people's biggest excuses for why they don't work on themselves is time and money. And I'm here to tell you that I think it's absolute bullshit, that it's not time and money. It's about whether or not you make yourself a priority because we all know if you, let me say this to your listeners. If someone that you loved was hanging off a cliff, and that means that in order to save them you had to have a weekly message until the end of this year. To save them you would find the time and the money to do it. Now that might seem a bit extreme. But I promise you when you are faced like you have been with your mum and your dad, everything goes aside until you put that at the forefront. So it's about prioritization and the moment you–. Lisa: And I’m not even feeling guilty for it.  Kim: Except when we look at guilt, sometimes that, even that emotion of guilt is an interesting one. So we feel guilt because we're doing something for ourselves, which is taking away from something else perhaps. And even that's interesting.  So when I look at the emotion of guilt, it's because we're doing something maybe selfishly. Well, what if we could reframe that into investing in ourselves. As a mum, putting a child into daycare, or having a babysitter every now and again so that you can go out or going for a weekly massage? If we look at that as guilt, if you really look at this—this is something interesting and I just want you to think about this. That lot of guilt is it that we're using that as a frame to hide the fact that some days being a mother is fricking hard work. And some days, we actually may hate it. And some days, maybe we are so exhausted, so mentally, physically, emotionally exhausted that we hate it so much. That we then feel bad because we've yelled, we've screamed, we've not been the best version of ourselves. And then we put it into mother guilt. We frame it in that where some days, we just fricking—we don't like it.  I think if we could own those emotions more and own the fact that it doesn't feel great some days, own up but with power, not victim mentality, then I think we would actually be more honest. And we would actually say, that's when I always say, have a bestie that you can call who's not going to go into the gossip-victim mentality, but the ‘I'm hearing you girlfriend’. And then at the end of that, you say, ‘What do you want to do about it? And what's your purpose for this belief, or this feeling right now? And what can you learn from it’? To have a girlfriend or a mate or partner or a friend who says ‘What can we learn from this’? is one of the best friends you could have in your corner. That is psychotherapy and psychology at its best.  What can you learn from this? And sometimes it's very hard to look at the lessons when you're in the throes of it and when emotions are high, intelligence is very low. So that might not be the question that we ask when someone's highly volatile and emotional. But to be a good listener, to hear someone pour their heart out. Often as we talk it to someone that's listening, truly listening without trying to fix us. When you're listening, we often talk through the process out loud, because I believe all humans have all traits and all humans have all resources within them to help heal themselves. But sometimes we just need to hear it. And I don't know about you, Lisa, but sometimes as I'm talking through my problem, I realize how stupid it is, or how benign it sounds. Or how relatively benign it is compared to what someone else is going through. So to have a good listening friend, or to be that listening friend, is sometimes one of the best fast track pathways into self-care which motorizes you right into the heart of self-love. Here's my third thing. I'm gonna put a caveat on that. That takes discipline. Without discipline, you can care for yourself and go on to the airy fairy land of woe and spirituality, and, oh, my gosh, this is all teaching me lots without responsibility, then that is not serving you. The discipline of waking up every day and physically doing something with that beautiful vehicle of yours with 50 trillion cells. Whether it's five minutes of tricep dips and push-ups just in your bedroom before you get dressed. Whether it's going for a 30-minute walk. Whether it's push and pushing yourself. We know the physiology of pushing the body actually puts you out of your comfort zone, which changes your cell structure. And when you change that, you get more clarity. And when you have more clarity, you make better decisions.  As you get to know yourself more and understand the triggers in your life, your responses, the victim mentality, you start to realize that you don't stop having problems, you just have bigger problems, Lisa. So you might be having a problem that's, ‘I'm not sure whether I should run in the Gold Coast hinterland this weekend because I've got the weekend off’ or whether your problem is trying to emotionally deal with the fact that your father never told you he loved you. Well, they're both problems. But I can tell you which problem I'd rather be traversing and working out. Because I've worked out the fact that maybe, and this isn't me personally, but my dad didn't tell me he loved me or maybe I experienced a very significant abuse. Or maybe I had a traumatic experience that now I'm working on to understand what it means to me. I think you'd agree with me. Every person you've had on your podcast or every person you've ever met, the ones we admire and love the most are the ones that have actually gone to hell and back. But they've found a way out. It's the comeback story. Google and The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. It's a six minute video to watch. We all go through The Hero's Journey where we want adventure, we want to go out on a limb, we want to do things. But then we find dragons and people putting us down or pulling us out. And then we traverse through that hardship, and we come out battered and beaten and torn and spat out.  But as we come through that we realize the adventure becomes amazing treasure. And through the treasures we find, we expand and evolve. And as we expand and evolve, we become a better human. And we then go on a new adventure. There’s more dragons. There's more people spitting on us and things. But that is the circle of life, right. If we could just understand that it's at our darkest times, we actually are revealed. Your strength comes through, your courage, your determination, your tenacity, your resilience is what shows up. Or you have the potential to discover when we go through it. Because when life's great, it's great. We don't tend to push ourselves so much when it's great. And that's the cool thing, we get to have a rest when life's great. Lisa: I always say this to people when I'm speaking.  Kim: I say this with hand on heart, to those of you going through a tough time I have something for you—this too shall pass. Lisa: One of my favourite sayings of the world. Kim: Absolutely. And then I also say to those of you in a really good place in your life, I've got some advice for you—this too shall pass. So we know that life is ebb and flow, high and low, in and out, dark and light. If we could come to accept that, then that is self-love. That is realising that actually when life's good, I'm going to learn more. I'm going to listen to different podcasts. I'm going to maybe study something. I'm going to read something. And I say read, not on a technology thing, I mean read a book. I’m going to immerse myself. I'm going to go to a retreat or a breakthrough. I'm going to take on coaching and mentoring. Because we don't want to just be great versions of ourselves, we want to be exceptional versions of ourselves.  And to do that, it's great to work on ourselves when life's great. Because then when the life hits us or the storm, or I'll say you either get a tap, a whack or a Mack. You'll get a tap when someone taps you or something upsets you. You'll get a whack when maybe you're thrown off guard or you've lost your job or your relationships over. We get a Mack Truck, major illness, losing someone, and it sideswipes you to the point where you're on your knees and you can't breathe. But if you've got those tools of resilience inside of you, or you know where to go as you breathe through each moment.  And let's face it, in order to heal it, you truly have to feel it. So that means we can't hide the emotions from any of these. Or that we say ‘Oh, everything's great’ when it's fricking not. Owning it with power and not telling your story as a victim is painful. But owning it and then saying but you know what I'm seeing someone or I'm doing this or I'm using my oils or listening to this podcast with Lisa Tamati. And I've literally met this amazing supplement that I think is actually going to work for me right now. Whatever you hear, don't take it for granted. And always trust that what you're hearing in the moment is a beautiful sign. There's always signs and opportunity of growth, passion, love and development. It just means that what your reticular activation system is filtering for. And whether you're looking for the good or more of the shit that you've just been through. Lisa: Explain that RAS, Kim. What is it? Kim: Well, we know there's a part of the brain that has memories. It has filters. It has this whole belief system. But let's look at it this way. What's your favourite car? Or what's a car you dream to own if you don't have it right now? Lisa: Probably… Kim: You’re not really probably not that materialistic. Lisa: I drive around in a 20-year-old car. Let's just say a Ferrari just for the sake of… A red Ferrari. Kim: A red Ferrari. Sometimes we could call that a penis extinction or a mid-life crisis awakening. But anyway, what's a nice car you like? Lisa: Oh, I like Jaguars.  Kim: Jaguars. Let’s go with that. And what colour? Lisa: A wine-coloured one. Kim: Ah, wine-coloured. So that beautiful burgundy wine-coloured Jaguar? Lisa: Yeah, not very common, probably. So probably not a good example. But you know what I mean? Kim: However, it's now in your mindset. It's now in your memory. It's now in your reticular activation system. It's now a part—it’s become out of the 2 million bits of information we receive each day, we actually only have access to 136 bits. So I want you to think about that 2 million bits of information that is coming at you. But we are actually only able to process 136 in our consciousness. Because if you think about it, to access and process 2 million bits we'd be in constant burnout and overwhelm. So those 136 bits now we've just been spoken about a burgundy coloured Jaguar. That's come really close into the forefront of your reticular activation system. So you may find over the next 24 - 48 hours, you might just happen to see one. That's because you're now filtering for it.  You've got 136 bits of that seed. And particularly if we put it to the front of our values, and it became a value. Let's say, car’s not necessarily a high value. But being able to transport yourself or take people to and from places or you love adventure, and travelling. You have a real high value for adventure, a car is part of that. And so now, adventure is one of the highest values on your list of life values. Within that, if we dig deeper is the burgundy-coloured Jaguar. Now you're actually going to see it every time you're thinking of adventure. You might think now, actually ‘Bloody dammit, I've worked really hard, I deserve this’. And now all of a sudden, you start seeing ads for Jaguars or you start thinking. That's what we mean about pulling in the 136 bits of information into the reticular activation system. And now you're seeing it, now you're proving it. Lisa: And this is why goal setting works, isn't it. Because you've set a goal. You've made that as a priority. So it's a scary one. And then everything that will help you get towards your goal, your subconscious is picking up those things and then saying, ‘hey, be aware of this’. So if you decide you want to run a marathon, it's probably a good example with us two crazy runners. Or ex-crazy runners. You start seeing articles about running and videos on running. You'll be aware of runners running around your neighbourhood that you might have ignored before because suddenly this has become a goal.  So your brain is going, ‘Oh, you wanted this? Well, I'm just making you aware. Here's some tools to get there’. So that's a really good example of the RAS selection really. Kim: You got to remember too, and I want to make this really clear, it's something that I've learned just lately. If you have a goal to run a marathon, and it's really high in your priorities. You start off in the first week, and you're doing the pro there's maybe a 12-week program. Maybe they're doing one of your the Neal's program. Maybe they've got one of these things. And they’re in week one. They're highly enthusiastic and excited. Week two, they’re a bit sore. It’s hurting a bit, and they have DOMS setting in and now it's like it's not getting easier. In fact, the more you train, the more you realize that even though you don't realize you're getting better and stronger, you're pushing yourself more. And, so you're feeling worse. So by week three, usually within those 21 days, we're starting to go maybe a marathon isn't the goal at all. Or you still keep saying it's a marathon but now you're not going out for the longer run. Now what's happened is your goal is not matching your value.  Now, this is the real essence of the work. How do we make running a marathon one of your highest values? If I listed all your values, you may find health or adventure or pushing the limits or expanding yourself is number 10 on the list. Lisa: And therefore won't get– Kim: It's not gonna get done. Which is why so many of us, we set New Year's goals.  We join a gym, we go along. And then we basically make a donation to that gym for the rest of the year. So the important thing to realize is that you have to have your goal aligned with your top three values. And if it's not aligned with any of your top three values, you're going to need some integration work to bring it up there if it's something you really want. Because otherwise, that's where the excuses come in or you get an injury. Was it an injury? Or was your subconscious mind delivering you the possibilities that you didn't have to do it? I find health and injuries and disease, and all of those things.  I think if you've read Bruce Lipton's book, The Biology of Belief, you'll know that what we believe we perceive. Where focus goes, energy flows. So if you have all of these things in your mind, if your focus is now on all sore and injury and it's too hard, I don't want to do it. Bang! You're going to find your energy goes that way. It flows that way. And hello, now you've got a reason, an excuse to physically pull out of the marathon. So you know, people would say ‘oh, no, I didn't mean to trip over the washing basket'. Well, how come for the last 365 days, the washing basket could have been there but you never– The unconscious mind is one of the most powerful places to work, which is why I love hypnosis. Which is why I love timeline therapy. Which is why I love getting into. If you look at a mountain, the snow part on the top is your conscious mind. But in fact, everything underneath which is driving your behaviour, is driving your feelings, your beliefs and your values is actually the tip of the iceberg.  That's right 95% of it is definitely coming from the unconscious mind. Lisa: Yeah, and this is why we need to do the deep work. You just reminded me of a couple of things. Everytime that I do a big mess of a race in the past, I would get sick, or I'd have an injury or something would happen. And usually in the week or two weeks before the actual event. It was like my body's going, ‘I'm gonna stop you because I want you’... A part of me doesn't want to do it’. So you’re going to chuck a few obstacles.   You have to understand that when you override that, and you keep going, often that injure or that niggle, whatever that was, disappears. I saw that, firsthand, time and time again. And even when I was running through New Zealand, and I was doing 70Ks a day, and I was getting weaker and sicker and really, just absolutely blown apart after two weeks. And I didn't stop though, because I had an amazing team and I had a big why. Why I was doing this: charities and big responsibilities, so I keep going despite horrific pain and all the rest of it. Then my body went, ‘Oh, it's just not stopping, we better get on board with this’. And it got stronger and stronger. From the two-week point up until the six-week point, I actually got stronger and stronger. And I thought that it's all over. I could have a walking stick. I was walking, I wasn't running. I was having to go down sideways downhills, because my shins were so bad. And when I still kept going, then the brain went, ‘Well, we better get on with it because she's not going to stop, obviously’. And that's a really good example.  One of the other things I wanted to bring up because motivation follows action, not the other way around. So like when you don't feel like going training today, which is pretty much me every day. I don't feel like it, but I take action, I do something I might be just putting on my gym gear. And I've said this before, put on your gear, walk out the door, go to the letterbox and then see. Often, when you've just taken that couple of steps of action, then you're in the movement and you're like, ‘Oh, well, I'm out here, now muscle go’. Then it gets easier and easier and then you're in the flow of it. It's the anticipation, sometimes, that stops you. And when you just get up, doing the press-ups in the morning, before I do anything else. I go and have a cold shower or do my heart rate monitoring my HRV. All the breath-hold techniques, and then I come out of the shower. Then I often do like my press-ups and stuff before I sit down at the computer. Because I've done it and if you have little tiny habits that you build in. It might be just teeny press-ups or teeny sit-ups. Every time you go to the loo. Whatever the case maybe you set these little wee micro-goals that you can't fail it. And that action creates motivation. Because you've actually done a little bit and you're pleased with yourself and that creates its own reward loop type of thing. A lot of what you were saying was just lots. That's exactly what Paul Taylor, I've just had on my show. I'm gonna do Dr Don, would you know. All of this is very, very similar.  So, Kim, I want to go now into hypnosis because this is something that fascinates me. I haven't studied it. I want to, it's on my to-do list at some point in time. Tell me how the heck does that work and what's involved with the hypnosis process?  Kim: It's pretty cool. It's tapping directly into the unconscious mind. And I could use language with us right here and now where I could get us all into a very relaxed state. And every breath that you're taking, we're getting more and more relaxed. And as we relax more, we learn more. And the more we learn, the more we hear. And as we’re hearing new thoughts and opportunities, the more we realize we're capable of everything and anything. That's because we're extraordinary. So as I talk like that, and as I speak to you like that, it's almost putting you into a subconscious trance, which is kind of has your mind scrambling and not having to consciously think. Your mind kind of goes on this beautiful journey. It's in that space, where you, I believe, we tap into the heart space. And when we tap into the heart or the unconscious space, we can put new meanings past the critical factor, past that critical person who knocks you or puts you down all the time. Here’s another question. If you hear yourself knocking yourself, who's talking? If you're listening, who's talking? And if it's you're saying it, who's listening? So I love the rabbit hole of the unconscious mind because it gets you realizing that everything is about programming. Everything is programmed. And so we want to program excellent computers.  Which is why when we watch people who do amazing things, we want to model ourselves off them or we want to learn how they did it. Which is why I love NLP and hypnosis together. But hypnosis really is the ability to tap into the unconscious mind, bypassing the critical factor so that we can get to the heart, the juice, the unconscious mind to create change. So that when you come out the other side, you see possibility and opportunity. Not all the negative shite that you were saying before, we may have had the session.  And I think it's just accessing it. We spend most of our time consciously thinking. Yet as I said at the beginning when was the last time you gave thanks to your fingernail for growing or your digestive juices for doing what they're doing or your hair growing or those bald maybe not growing, but it's a really beautiful thing. And I think things like flotation tank massage. Times when you get to deeply truly relax, when we let go of the physiology of tension around us actually allows the cells to almost breathe. If we breathe, if you followed Wim Hof or any of the amazing work with breath or James Nestor whose book I just—I love James Nestor’s book. Lisa: I’ll introduce you. Kim: Who, James or Wim? Lisa: James. And Patrick McKeown as well. Kim: I love that book Breathe, changed the way I looked at my breathing. I’ve been taping my mouth at night because we can go without food for a month. I've heard of people go a year without food. We can go weeks without water. But we can't go many seconds or many minutes without breath. Breath is the essence of life. And when we go into a state of hypnosis, we are really letting go of the breath. And as we let go of the breath, we actually are able to access the intelligence of the cells. Intelligence of the higher vibration. Without going too wacky, I guess the other way to look at it is that we operate, we're aware that we can measure the speed of light. And I can't remember the exact measurement of it right now but it's bloody fast. But everything below that is all measurable. And from a conscious level, we understand it, you know, we've got vibrational frequency of plants, of oils, of food. We understand that there's a vibrational frequency to all things. But above the speed of light, where we go into the zero point field of quantum physics and true possibility and infinity. That's where the mind just– . It's so big and so bizarre, that you actually can't do anything but surrender to it and feel all possibility.  I guess the way to look at that, to try and bring it into some realm, is if we put one of our blood cells, if we put blood under a microscope, we would go down, and we'd see there's a whole lot of cells. Then we'd go further into the cell and then we'd see a whole cell and within the cell is a whole lot of stuff and life. Proteins and cytoplasm, DNA and RNA. But then if we go right into the DNA and RNA, we go further into that you'll see there's even more microcosms of cells and systems and structure. And if you keep going, the more you go, the more you see. There is nothing but space. Lisa: There is only vibration. Kim: And space. And then there's just the vibration. Lisa: And this is science. There is nothing there. They’re just energy. Kim: And we could do it to the chair you're sitting on. We could slice through a piece of that. And when the more we go into each of the wooden chairs, or this chair that you're sitting on structure, you'll see that that becomes nothing. And we can go the other way where we go up into us, here right now. From our cells into our blood systems, to our body, to our human system, to our environment, to our community, the place we live, into the planet, then we go beyond the planet into the galaxy, and then we realize the galaxies beyond the galaxies, all of a sudden, we're back to nothing. So we can go macro or micro. but the joy of this ride into quantum physics is that it means that everything means nothing, and nothing is no thing and no thing is everything and everything is something.  When I start doing that with my mind, it makes you realize that actually, if I bring it right back into that significant emotional event that occurred when I was a five-year-old girl. I just, through my own filter systems, through my own values, beliefs and upbringing, my personality, all of those meta-programs going on, I made it mean something. And I love this idea. What if life had no meaning? And it had no meaning that it had no meaning. What if we could actually realize that everything we think is true is actually just a limiting belief of perception of our idea of reality. That in fact, the only reality, the only truth I could actually give you right here right now, is that you and I both know, there's two truths, probably. One truth is that the sun will come up tomorrow. Whether we see it or not is another thing but we do know it’s the truth, the sun will come up tomorrow. And the other truth is we will all die at some point. But even that's up for debate because do we die? Or do we go to another realm in which we didn’t have past and future lives and soul journey? So I don't know. Lisa: We could go like a huge, and I’ll be– no, I'm fascinated by quantum physics. And most of it, to be honest, is beyond my grasp, it’s a little brainy. But I know that there’s these bigger things out there and I'd love to riff with you for a couple hours on this subject. But we'd probably, people will be getting ‘what the hell are they talking about’? Kim: What I'd love to say though, is just to finish off there, is just to realize that everything you've ever experienced is just a belief. It's not truth, it's just your perception. So it's never the truth. It's always up for bid, based on how you believe and see and perceive the world. Which is why there's conflict, which is why we have arguments. But wouldn't it be beautiful, if I could just for a minute, put my shoe, try because I never could. But if I put my shoes and feet into your shoes just for a moment, and imagine it from your perception, your beliefs and your reality, I actually have more understanding. Lisa: And more empathy. Kim: I may not agree with it, I may not like it. But, my gosh, it's interesting that it's from your perspective. So every time we feel ourselves triggered, or every time we feel ourselves going into a place of anger or frustration or guilt or sadness or whatever that driving emotion is. Rather than sitting in the whirlpool of mud pit of it, ask yourself this question: For what purpose am I feeling this? Why? Or even just the question why? Why am I sad? Well, I'm sad, because he said that. Why does what he says make you sad? Well, because it's not fear? Why is not fear, not fear? Well, because I don't feel like I'm listened to. Why is it important that you're listened to? Because I feel so alone. Why are you feeling alone? Because I don't love myself.  If you really go to the core of all of it, I promise you, it almost gets back to the fear of not being loved or the fear of not being accepted. That's what everything that drives these emotions in our behaviours comes from. Lisa: Wow, that is just absolutely amazing. And it's all automatic. Like we had these, Dr Daniel Amen talks about these automatic negative thoughts that just pop up all the time. And if we can separate ourselves out from our own brain, our own subconscious, our own programming, and just observe how these automatic thoughts just keep coming at you all the time. And then if you let them go, they'll go again. Kim: Or know that those negative thoughts are part of the human experience. They are actually from an evolutionary, anthropological development point of view. We had to be on alert for the sabre-toothed tiger, we had to be watching our tribe or our kids, we had to be there. But we actually spiked ourselves into sympathetic dominants very quickly with that. Years gone by we also pushed ourselves very quickly back down into parasympathetic place. We had peace just to digest. Years today, we're living in the sympathetic dominant’s world.  So I just say with you, as the negative thought comes in, even ask that question, why am I thinking that and keep doing that? I always say our seven why's, and b

This week we continue our Senior Salutes with the women's soccer team. A trio of Bobcats join the show and head coach Joe Vari salutes the senior class for their leadership in a difficult time. The Bates women's soccer class of 2021 went through a coaching change prior to their junior year and then had their senior year wiped out by the coronavirus. Nevertheless, seniors So Kim, Elizabeth Bennett and Nellie Breen stuck with the program all four years. As you will hear from all three, they've enjoyed their times at Bates and look forward to seeing what the future holds for their current teammates.

Budget is often cited as a top reason why families don't travel. Given how many of us are having our budgets squeezed right now, how can we start to save for a future trip? This week we talk to Danielle Desir from The Thought Card podcast and get some insights on turning your dream vacation into a reality. About Danielle Desir Danielle Desir, and she is an author, blogger, podcaster and Founder of The Thought Card, which is an award winning affordable travel and personal finance blog and podcast, empowering financially savvy travelers to make informed financial decisions, travel more, pay off debt and build wealth. She's also the co-producer of Millennial Wealth Builders, a three time grant funded audio docu series highlighting women of color building wealth. Follow Danielle on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. You can also subscribe to her podcast, The Thought Card or purchase either of her books:  Affording Travel: Saving Strategies For Financially Savvy Travelers Planning Local Trips During A Pandemic  Tips for How to Save for Travel Start with creating a monthly household budget so you are tracking how much you spend (and how much you can spend) in different categories Sit down at least quarterly and review your budget to see where you might need to adjust Create a wants versus needs list and see what you can take off of your wants list and do without Streaming services, gym memberships, ordering in using delivery services...these are common expenses that can be reduced Create a separate bank account that will be your travel fund, so you it isn't intermingled with money that you use to pay bills or daily spending Look for a bank account that you can open with little or no money to start, that doesn't charge a lot of fees or have a lot of restrictions, such as with Charles Schwab or Ally online banking See Danielle's tips on why you need multiple bank accounts Take a look at your top three expenses. Usually you can't reduce your housing expenses but can you reduce your transportation expenses (especially now when more of us are working from home) or food expenses (avoiding expensive delivery services, cooking more, etc.) Automate as much as possible using direct deposit, including contributions to your travel fund Danielle recommends the Digit app. It will automatically take a set amount out of your account everyday and put it into different funds that you set up for different expenses (such as travel) Have your family buy into your savings plan and name your bank accounts for that specific trip you are saving for to give everyone an incentive to save for that purpose Make sure you educate your kids about how to manage a budget and talk about spending decisions Think about what you value when you travel to determine where to spend your money. For example, do you prefer to have a better hotel experience or more money to spend on activities but you don't need a luxury air experience To find affordable airfare, Danielle recommends SecretFlying.com for finding cheap deals online Signing up for airfare deals emails lets you establish a baseline of flight costs to particular destinations, so you know whether or not you are getting a deal when you are ready to book, as well as helps you find those special deals that you can jump on when available TheFlightDeal.com and The Points Guy also offer daily flight deal emails. For hotels or package combination deals with flights, hotels and activities, Danielle recommends TravelZoo. TravelZoo is especially good when looking for deals to China. They have a Wednesday top 20 list Gate 1 Travel also has a weekly deal list every Monday and they do both independent travel and packaged group trips You can often find good deals even in expensive locations if you travel off season Lisbon and Mexico are very affordable international destinations Traveling locally is also a great way to travel now and you can save money on transportation If you are using an Airbnb or vrbo now, be sure to start looking about 4-5 months earlier. Fees and rates have increased recently because of demand and cleaning costs Local hotels, especially in towns/cities that don't usually cater to leisure travelers are very affordable right now For those traveling locally, be sure to check each state's travel and quarantine restrictions Full Episode Transcript [00:00:00.120] - Kim Here's some tips for filling up your piggy bank for your next trip.   [00:00:15.730] - Announcer Welcome to Vacation Mavens, a family travel podcast with ideas for your next vacation and tips to get you out the door. Here are your hosts, Kim from Stuffed Suitcase and Tamara from We3Travel.   [00:00:30.550] - Kim Tamara, we are fast forwarding through 2021. Some of us knew it wouldn't be a big reawakening. But I can't even believe that we're in February. So have you been thinking about travel? Do you see hope on the horizon? Are you making any plans yourself?   [00:00:48.580] - Tamara Well, I'm definitely thinking about it. It's kind of all I can think about because otherwise I'm just so bored. You know, the other day was Groundhog Day and it feels like that. Like every day one of my friends had texted me and saying, like, how are you doing? And I'm like, you know, same old, same old.   [00:01:05.290] - Tamara She's like, pretty much like work, work out, cook, eat, TV, sleep, repeat. But I'm starting to think about it. I've started to look into a couple of things I think I have mentioned before that like our Greece trip, but I doubt it's going to happen.   [00:01:19.900] - Tamara So I'm trying to come up with other kind of backup plans and we're still kind of hoping that we can go look at some colleges this spring. So we're looking into that and booking things tentatively. Everything is like, if things are going well, so I guess it's written in pencil, not in pen.   [00:01:39.940] - Kim Yeah. I felt all excited. We, you know, attended a conference recently, virtually, of course. So our listeners don't get shocked. But it was just nice to talk about travel again. But it really it made me excited and I would love to plan a trip for spring break and do something. But I'm kind of torn on, you know, will California like, we've done the road trip to California, a few spring breaks and it's always such a nice trip and I'm tempted to do that again. However, California right now doesn't want people from out of state and even people in state are not supposed to go without like 100 some miles from their house.   [00:02:21.400] - Kim And so I'm kind of torn on do I make plans or because I'm kind of tired of canceling stuff, it's it's almost discouraging. So I'm almost in a holding pattern.   [00:02:31.000] - Kim I thought about booking a Lake Front Cabin or something on Airbnb, where for spring break we could just go and relax and bring Sophie and just kind of get out of our space. But we you know, we have this nice backyard now and some of our space, we live on a lake. And so, I mean, we're not on the lake, but we're, you know, very close.   [00:02:52.510] - Kim So it seems kind of stupid to spend money to go have kind of a lifestyle that we already sort of have. And yeah. So I'm just torn. I guess I don't really want to cancel anything. I don't know what to book. I don't I still don't know. I probably need to just make a tentative plan of doing something in state, even if it's a weekend getaway, just kind of having a hotel stay again. It was so nice when we did that for Christmas. We went to one of our local hotels and did a shopping trip and just kind of stayed in the hotel. And it was it was nice. It was nice just to get out of our house for a little while. But yeah, I guess the cancellation is holding me back.   [00:03:27.910] - Tamara I brought that up to Hannah recently. Like, what about doing like a staycation at a hotel? And she's like, well, it's like dumb to spend the money. And part of me feels like, yeah, you know, I would like to save it for like real travel. But on the other side of the coin, like, I do know that it's just been so long that you forget. But I do know that every time we have gotten away, you know, even for a weekend, we always look at each other and we're like, we feel like we're so far away. Like we feel like everything changed so much. Like, you know, it's just so nice to have that change of scenery. So I do think we're all craving it right now. But it is definitely a cost consideration, right.   [00:04:06.580] - Tamara Because like you said, do you want to still do those fun things when they come up? And I know the episode we're talking about today with Danielle is all about how to save for a trip. And so spending on things you don't need is probably not the advice, but sometimes mentally you do need it. But I mean, as we're looking into different things, I'm definitely seeing like a trend in terms of pricing. Like we're looking at doing this road trip to visit some colleges. And there we would be staying close to the college and, you know, more like in a city or small town kind of thing.   [00:04:41.230] - Tamara And those hotels are actually really affordable because there's just not a lot of that kind of tourism happening right now, you know?   [00:04:49.750] - Tamara So I've even been like, well, if we do this, I want to book a suite because I want to have space. Like, I don't want to feel like we're on top of each other, but I also want to have a place where we can bring food in and eat because, you know, it's still going to be cold.   [00:05:02.920] - Tamara And so we're not really doing outdoor dining, but we're not going to want to do much indoor dining unless something has a very low capacity, you know?   [00:05:10.810] - Kim And a place where the microwave is helpful because we are in a hotel that had a. And it was nice to get the food and take out and bring it back, but, you know, every once in a while you'd want to heat it up and we didn't have it.   [00:05:22.040] - Tamara So, yes, I found that actually for what I thought would be the cost of a regular room, I can get a suite, so that's good. But then when it comes to summer, I'm looking at doing something that feels more resort, like more, if we can't go to Greece, I would like something. I know it's not going to be Greece, but can it be something like nice? And I think you know me. You know that I don't really love the big high rise hotels and that type of thing because I want something a little bit more intimate, more personal, has more character or whatever.   [00:05:56.410] - Tamara and also like now in times of covid, like, I don't want to have to always be in an elevator, in a hallway or a crowded pool area or like any of that kind of stuff, like I want more like open air. So I found a couple of places that I absolutely fell in love with in the Florida Keys. But oh my God, the price like it is insane. So it was one of those moments where I've always told Glenn, don't show me things that I can't afford. I don't want to look at houses that I can't afford, and I want to look at cars that I can't afford. I don't want to look at clothes that I can't afford.   [00:06:27.220] - Tamara And there's also some things where it's like even if you could afford it, like there are times where I've gone to, like, shopping for a store and I'm like, I'm sorry, but I am not spending 100 dollars on jeans.   [00:06:37.840] - Tamara It's just not like I grew up so frugal that it's like really hard for me to, like, spend on certain things. And I am more willing to do it on like travel. And I look at it, I said, look, I want something special. Like we gave up, you know, our special trip last year. We're probably giving up this year. I still want to do it in the future.   [00:06:55.240] - Tamara But can we have something special like not just we went away for like four days, but like, can it be to a special place, you know, to try to find that in an environment that feels safe, knowing that this summer is still, you know, all the protocols are still going to be in place. Like whether or not we will be vaccinated is still a big if. And so they're still going to be a lot of travel and safety concerns. And, you know, I wanted to feel special, but I can't spend two thousand dollars a night. I mean, it's just insane.   [00:07:24.850] - Tamara Every time I look at things, I'm like, are there really that many rich people in the world like? And then I realized, there are.   [00:07:32.320] - Kim yeah, obviously. So I mean, I'll never forget the time that I spent five hundred dollars for one night at a Disneyland hotel and I thought that was just stupid. I felt like an idiot then. But it was important for me to have the extra hour and make the most of our time and stuff.   [00:07:46.960] - Tamara I feel like sometimes I'm willing to do it like it gives you enough pleasure. It it provides something that you're really looking for, you know, and I would I would even spend, you know, a good amount more than that, but not two thousand dollars a night.   [00:07:59.810] - Tamara And then have to buy food, you know, food and drink and everything else on top of that. And so all I can say is if anybody just won the lottery, look up little Palm Island in Florida and you'll be very happy. And I found another place that looked really good, too. It's called Bungalows Key Largo. They look pretty good.   [00:08:15.970] - Tamara It's like an adult, only all inclusive in Florida because we're just trying to stay where can we get that tropical feel without necessarily leaving the country and having to deal with, like, all the bubbles and testing and, you know, just all the kind of hassles for a fairly short trip.   [00:08:31.280] - Tamara So anyway, I'm still searching and maybe using some of Danielle's tips will help me, you know, continue to save, although I don't think I'm saving quite that much.   [00:08:42.160] - Kim Yeah, well, maybe she'll inspire you to realize that you don't need the 2000 night hotel that you know. I know. But now I've seen it. I definitely think that Florida is probably attracting a lot of those kind of, you know, snow escapers right now. So I'm not surprised to hear that there.   [00:09:01.240] - Tamara This is because I'm looking for July, everybody's making plans. Everybody wants to make it now. Well, and I think the other tip is like, you really do need to plan in advance. The reason I want to book something now is because for those things that if you want what you want, like, so does everyone else.   [00:09:18.670] - Kim I think that's a good tip. Well, let's talk to Danielle and hopefully she can inspire us all to put away a little bit of savings so maybe we can splurge on something that's safe and fun for this summer.   [00:09:28.780] - Tamara Sounds good.   [00:09:38.030] - Tamara So this week, we're here with Danielle Desir, and she is an author, blogger, podcaster and Founder of the Thought Card, which is an award winning affordable travel and personal finance blog and podcast, empowering financially savvy travelers to make informed financial decisions, travel more, pay off debt and build wealth. She's also the coproducer of Millennial Wealth Builders, a three time grant funded audio docu series highlighting women of color building wealth. Welcome, Danielle.   [00:10:03.950] - Danielle Thank you so much for having me.   [00:10:06.230] - Tamara We're always excited to talk to another podcaster here. And we focus so much on family travel that sometimes we forget we need to get out of our little family travel bubble and talk to some new people, too. So I know you have a very interesting, back story when it comes to paying off debt, building wealth and traveling while you're doing it.   [00:10:26.220] - Tamara And I think this is a time, especially so many families are struggling right now, given everything we've all been dealing with for the past year and trying to afford a vacation when the time is right is definitely a challenge. I think now is the time maybe to start thinking about strategies and ways for that. So that's why we want to talk to you today. But before we jump into that, can you tell us a little bit more about your own personal journey?   [00:10:51.200] - Danielle Sure. So I would say that I have a love for travel at a really young age. And I also grew up in a family where money was talked about all the time. So it wasn't a secret. My mom was very transparent about how to save, how to spend. I even remember seeing her student loan with so many zeros at the end, like a really young age, so that that love of travel and that love of, I guess, the love of money or appreciating money and understanding, using it as a tool came early on. Now, my family, every summer we would go to Haiti.   [00:11:28.010] - Danielle That's where my family's from. And that's where I would spend all summer there with my grandparents running around with the chickens and the farm and learning the culture, the food, speaking the language. So, I mean, since I was like five years old, so I was about 15 when it kind of became uncool to, like, leave your boyfriend back home for the summer. So that's really like my back story of like how travel has been a really big, integral part of my life since I was really young.   [00:11:53.990] - Danielle And money, again, was talked about all the time. Now, I would say when I got to high school, I started to see travel as being uncool. It was taking me away from my friends.And like I mentioned, my boyfriend at the time. And I was I was really hanging out with my friends and I was really friend focused. So I gave up travel. It really just the left it alone until I got to college and travel emerged again.   [00:12:21.530] - Danielle But now it was like, it's the cool thing to do. Everyone was going on spring break trips and, you know, study abroad programs. And unfortunately, at the time my study abroad, I couldn't study abroad on a financial aid package. I had a ton of scholarships that helped to put my costs down for school, but they weren't going to cover studying abroad. So I had asked my mom, I said, Mom, listen, I would love to go to spend a semester in Paris. Is that possible? And she was like, of course I would do anything that I can. And that was great. But the back stories that we were losing our home to foreclosure. So a part of me felt so guilty that my mom couldn't even keep the lights on. Right. We're about to lose our house. And here I would be gallivanting off in Paris.   [00:13:08.480] - Danielle So I made the decision that I wasn't going to study abroad, but I made also the vow to myself and a promise to myself, which ultimately has helped me become the traveler I am today, that once I graduated from college, graduate from grad school, I would work really hard to be able to save and prioritize travel in my life. So that vow now, like almost ten years later, has been something that kept me grounded. I went on my first trip in 2014. My had graduated in 2011, so it took me three years to, like, get out to save enough funds.   [00:13:46.280] - Danielle But it started off with saving twenty five dollars every two weeks when I actually did get a job so that twenty five dollars every two week transformed into a week long trip to Paris in 2014. And then every single year I just try to learn more about being a savvy traveler, saving more money, you know, going on more trips. And here we are in twenty, twenty one.   [00:14:09.470] - Tamara That's nice. It makes me think of like growing up, we really didn't do any travel and we were just visiting family and I had such a passion for travel and stuff like travel posters on my walls. And my first real trip was to Mexico with like a school class in high school. And I think my mom, like, actually cashed in an insurance policy so that I could go on that. So, yeah, I've had my own little journey to being able to travel, but it means so much and you can make it happen.   [00:14:38.240] - Kim I agree. I was kind of in the same situation. My family did not have a lot of money growing up and there was travel wasn't really anything a part of it. The most I traveled was for like a softball tournament to a nearby city. And I think I went from Kansas, Oklahoma once for a tournament. And then I remember taking one epic trip to visit family in Southern California in like fifth grade. And that was kind of a big you know, that was a big deal for me.   [00:15:02.270] - Kim But once I got married, I was like, OK, travel is going to be a part of our life. And so I kind of started planning and getting into it more. But it's interesting how it can, you know, like you have this passion even if you didn't experience it as a kid.   [00:15:15.770] - Danielle So, yes, I totally agree. One of my dreams when I was a little kid was to go to Disney World, I'm sure, as a lot of kids have that goal. And it wasn't until I was, you know, 22, 23 that I actually ended up going to Disney. And I make fun of my mom now. I was like, mom, like, you never took me to Disney. We could laugh about it now. But I'm at the point now where it means so much more to me that I can take my mom and Disney when I have the finances to do that.   [00:15:45.200] - Danielle So I think sometimes when you are growing up and you may not have the ability or maybe maybe like for me, I was going to Haiti every single summer, which was a part of travel, but I also did dance lessons. I also did like so many extracurricular activities. So I think when it comes to like family saving and prioritizing and travel, there are a lot of other things that may come before travel. So as an adult, I feel so much like more equipped to to make it work.   [00:16:15.680] - Kim Yeah, exactly. Well, I know that there's probably a lot of people right now and then in in the grand scheme of things that feel like they can't afford to travel. I know I've had people say to me, like, how do you afford to take so many trips? And of course, being a travel writer now, they don't ask that as much. But when we first started traveling all the time, they would ask that all the time.   [00:16:35.390] - Kim So what do you think are some top budgeting tips that you would give for people who, you know, want to travel but don't see how they could financially do it?   [00:16:45.650] - Danielle So I know that budgeting is a bad word for a lot of people. It's the B word that everyone tries to avoid. But I definitely see budgeting as empowering because who set your budget? You do, right? Like, of course, we all have limitations based off of our income, but we have the ability to dictate how our money is moved around and where it gets allocated to. So no one seeing your budget as a tool that's going to be that you're going to use to really determine what your future is going to look like.   [00:17:16.160] - Danielle Another thing I want to say is that when it comes to budgeting, I really like to sit down, I would say on a quarterly basis, especially after and during the pandemic, like right now, it's a good time to reassess and to do of wants versus needs list. So out of all of your expenses for the month, what are the things you absolutely need to survive versus the things that are nice to have?   [00:17:38.450] - Danielle And the easiest place, if you're looking to save more for travel is to reduce from the wants list. So things that maybe maybe nice, maybe not. Maybe you have Hulu, Netflix and HBO. Maybe you don't need all three. Right? Maybe you just need one of them. So that that needs versus wants list is really, really powerful and it can help you to remove some unnecessary expenses. Like for me, I've been doing a lot of jumping rope at home, which has significantly reduced my gym costs. But I was paying for my gym for like the last six months because I just kept it on autopilot.   [00:18:15.260] - Danielle So this is the time to go through. What are you spending your money on and what are things that, OK, I no longer need. Maybe that was my old life and now I can move on and and make sure you capture that and put it towards your travel savings.   [00:18:28.940] - Danielle So my third tip is to create a travel fund. So a travel fund is simply a separate account that's devoted solely to your travel savings.   [00:18:37.430] - Danielle There's a number of reasons why you want to do this, because no one at a glance you can see undistracted how much money you have available to go on a trip. That is very empowering. And also you're not commingling with other funds. So just being able to see it separately is really helpful.   [00:18:54.950] There are a lot of online banks right now, for example, like if you're in the U.S., Ali or Charles Schwab, actually have a blog post on my Web site that recommends about three different big accounts that where you could open up a bank account for no money, you know, little to no money compared to brick and mortars, a lot of them have like maintenance fees and minimums and and it has all these and restrictions.   [00:19:20.360] - Kim So, yeah, I was just chiming in again, one of those tips of those online, don't they? Also, a lot of times the ATM cards work well, like overseas and things. There's not fees on those as well. So that's another like travel perk. If you have your travel fund in a in one of those, then it also works for helping you get cash if you're overseas. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just wanted to add that is another little thing.   [00:19:46.550] - Danielle And also, realistically speaking, like you're not necessarily going to be needing to run over to your brick and mortar to take out money on a consistent basis when it comes to your travel fund. It's usually going to be maybe a couple of times a year. So an online bank is just a great way to have some buffers and a little bit of a boundary and a space from just being able to go to your brick and mortar and take money out like willy nilly whenever you need to.   [00:20:09.800] - Danielle So I definitely think a travel fund is just a just a great budgeting tip.   [00:20:14.450] - Danielle And last but not least is to really take a look at your top three expenses. So for a lot of people, that's shelter like your housing costs, which is primarily fixed, like if you can't house hack or anything like that, like your housing is fixed. Transportation is another category that I've seen that I have significantly reduced since the pandemic. I'm not commuting as much. I'm not really driving that much. So that has been a place where I can funnel money into my travel fund and other goals and food.   [00:20:45.200] - Danielle Food is a huge category, especially if you're like using insta cart, which I've become addicted to recently. So those are my my budgeting tips that's to get you started, really prioritizing, figuring out the things that you need versus the things that you want and try to funnel as much money as you can toward your travel savings.   [00:21:09.860] - Tamara I mean, I love that you have these concrete tips because just the idea of putting it in a separate fund and watching that grow, it's such an incentive. You know, like when you see something, whether it's like in your business or whatever it is, when you see it growing, it's just I don't know. It's almost right now Kim knows this. I'm like lacking for positive, like a feedback loop in my life right now.   [00:21:32.480] - Tamara And so even like a little thing like watching my bank account grow would be like, yeah, I'm doing it and feeling good. So I love that. I was also just thinking that my credit card expires or will renew, you know, next month. So I need to sit down with my bill and go through and see what's automatically billed every month, because you know how I will then stop being automatically billed, because your expiration date came up and I thought this is going to be a good time for me to look at it and figure out what things do we really not need.   [00:22:01.760] - Tamara You know, because sometimes just looking at that bill, you skim it. But, you know, if you're not looking at every line item and realizing how much that that adds up, it's a good exercise to kind of go through every now and then just to say, hey, do I really need this? Do I really need that? But, you know, those are some great budgeting tips.   [00:22:18.710] - Tamara But I'm wondering when it comes to actually saving for travel, do you have any other ideas? You know, how do you take the budget and make it a reality?   [00:22:29.030] - Danielle So once you've identified areas where you can start funnelling into your travel fund, I would highly recommend to automate as much as possible. And I think you referred to this year, like, I just want to set it, forget it and just watch it grow.   [00:22:42.470] - Danielle And that's so powerful, being able to dictate where money is going to go and not having to actually think about it. So I try to best as possible. I have a direct deposit automation since I have a 9:00 to 5:00 employer. Even if you're a freelancer, you can still do like a bank transfer every so often except the frequency. But that's been really helpful. So throughout the entire pandemic, I've been fortunate enough where I did not even touch that automation at all. So now I have a stash of cash to pull from to go on that bigger, bigger trip one day when we can travel because it's been automated. So automation really allows you to just kind of let things happen in the background.   [00:23:27.260] - Danielle Now, one of my favorite apps to help me save a little bit extra cash for travel is digit. So digit is a auto saving app. There is a small monthly fee, but for me, it's been able to pay like it's paid for itself, just one little automation it's been able to pay itself. But what it does is that every single day it takes maybe a little bit like a couple of cents out of your account to a couple of dollars out of your account every single day.   [00:23:56.720] - Danielle Or you could also say whenever you're swiping your card, you could really determine how frequent you want it. And it just stashes it for you and you could determine what type of goals you want to have. So I have a mini travel fund goal. I have a mini shopping spree goal. So all of these automation's happening in the background is actually in twenty nineteen. When I went to Disney for a week, I didn't even look at my travel fund because I just pulled from digit. I was like, oh there's just all this cash sitting there like I did even I literally did not even feel it. And if you're worried like oh my gosh, are they going to overdraft my account? They do have stops in place, which prevents that from happening. So and you could even say, listen, pause this until X, Y, Z, which is helpful.   [00:24:41.780] - Danielle So in addition to my travel fund, I also have like this digit stash I pull from, which has been been awesome. And then the last tip I have when it comes to money saving tips for travel is having family buy in. So getting your family involved in the process of planning a trip, saving for travel from start to finish, getting them involved as early as possible. One of the things that I like to do is I like to name my bank accounts with my with my husband. And that allows us to both say, OK, what is it that we're both really excited about for our next trip?   [00:25:20.870] - Danielle And we named that account and we we both collectively try to work on that goal together. And then when we're going to plan the trip, all that hard work we can celebrate. I just think it's really great to not only the practical tips, but also just getting your family involved as much as possible with the planning process.   [00:25:39.000] - Kim We've always kind of said that with family travel, especially like with getting kids involved in it and, you know, excited about the destination, giving them a little control over it. And I think when people you know, when you when you combine the enthusiasm and the focus, it can make a difference. And I think that's a good tip. And that digit sounds really cool. Like I remember in the old days I don't remember which bank account would let you round up. So every time you would swipe your card, it would round up and that money would go into a savings account for you. And so it's really it's a really clever way of just kind of I think automating it, like we've mentioned, is a huge factor so that you're not feeling like it's costing you something to put the money away.   [00:26:20.850] - Tamara It makes me feel like going and looking at how much is in there would be like when you find the 20 dollar bill in your pocket, they forgot you had there, you know.   [00:26:29.310] - Danielle Or like when you're doing laundry and then you find that money in your pocket, like, oh, my gosh.   [00:26:35.970] - Kim And I think my girls have experienced that recently, you know, that we have savings accounts for them. And I started giving them the savings account like their statements and then being able to see that, like, interest does add up, even though it's so minimal now. But that's, I think, seen how interest accruing and all that works is very motivating for a lot of people.   [00:26:56.730] - Tamara And I feel like even when you make a decision, like I know I always try to talk to Hannah about things like when I'm making a decision, I'm like, well, you know, I just feel like that's too much money to spend. And I'll explain why, you know, kind of explain the rationale behind it.   [00:27:10.260] - Tamara And you know why making the choice that I am and maybe what that then allows us to do, you know, versus if we did, you know, X, Y, Z all the time, you know. So I think having those conversations, like you said, Danielle, like your mom was very open with you, I feel like it's really important to kind of it's an education, too. And it's really important to educate our kids about how to manage their money.   [00:27:31.560] - Kim Yeah, I totally agree. So, Danielle, do you have any, you know, top you mentioned digit is one of your favorite apps, but do you have any other tips or apps for finding travel deals? So once you've saved money, maybe, how can you get a good deal on your vacation?   [00:27:47.010] - Danielle Yes, this is my favorite part about both parts of my favorite parts, because that's what I think makes up a financially savvy traveler, is not only being able to accrue enough money to go on a trip, but also to be able to spend it as wisely as possible. But value based spending.So it's really like, what are you valuing and making sure that your spending aligns with that versus just spending frivolously.   [00:28:12.960] - Danielle So just to just to really think back in terms of what is a financially savvy traveler for me, prior to the pandemic, I was I was cornering the cheap flights market like that was that was me that I was finding the cheapest deals ever.   [00:28:31.980] - Danielle And it was just so exciting. And this goes back to the Value-Based Spending Idea, because for me, I just want to arrive safely at a destination. I don't really care that much for luxurious comforts in the air, but everyone is different, right? If you prioritize your your flight experience and you may not necessarily prioritizing your hotel or accommodation. So everyone has something that they're prioritizing. For me, it was not airfare. So that's where I focus my energy on trying to maximize like just spend as little as possible.   [00:29:04.830] - Danielle So some of the sites that I I look at when I'm thinking about cheap flights and I'm going to also offer some sites as well, that's more general travel planning because a lot of people are not flying right now. One of my favorite is secret flying. So secretflying.com is a free website which offers daily flight deals every single day, which is really helpful from all over the world. So I would sign up for their free newsletter and everyday they will send you a couple each day.   [00:29:35.160] - Danielle And this is important because it's helping you to establish a baseline for your flight costs, which is important because you want to be able to know when you're maximizing and when you're finding a really good deal. Not everything that comes across your desk is a good deal. But how are you going to know that if you're not using data, making a data driven decision?   [00:29:54.120] - Danielle So I would use websites like Secret flying to just really understand, like, OK, to Europe baseline, how much do I expect to spend? And then I'm always looking for like that below average costs. So secret flying is a good one.   [00:30:07.620] - Danielle The flight deal is fantastic they are another free web site that again offers you daily deals, which is helpful. I really like to keep an eye on. The PointsGuy also has been really helpful. They have a daily deal section. Those are more for like the flights now.   [00:30:25.440] - Danielle I really love Travelzoo. So Travelzoo dot com. They have a weekly Wednesday top twenty list now prepandemic make those deals were amazing.   [00:30:36.510] - Danielle Those deals were amazing. And I'll give you like a quick example of the deal that I found there. The deal, one of the deals that I will never forget is I found a 299 dollar deal, a ten, ten day all expenses like flights, hotels, some food to China, China.   [00:30:53.980] - Kim Yes, I saw that my my husband and father in law did that deal.   [00:30:58.980] - Danielle Yes. I mean, there there are some pros and I believe that's its own episode. There's a lot of with that.   [00:31:03.600] - Danielle There you go. Yes, you're right. It is. It's own episode. It's its own episode. We'll put an asterisk on that for everyone who also wants to go book that there's an Asterix.   [00:31:12.090] - Danielle Yes, there's a lot of Asterisk on that. But it was a deal that I spotted through Travelzoo, which is incredible. So Travelzoo not only offers flights, but sometimes they offer hotels or combined packages. So that's a free newsletter that I highly recommend to.   [00:31:28.620] - Kim Some other hotel deals are amazing, unlike luxury, you know, nice four and sometimes five star resorts. They they offer some great deals.   [00:31:36.660] - Danielle Exactly. Exactly. And then the last website that I really like is gate one travel. So gate one travel. They have not only independent trips where they pretty much like book your flight and they book your hotel, but they also run tours, too. So you could have like the full fledged experience where you have a tour guide and all of that and they have a weekly deal list every Monday, which they've actually reinstated since the pandemic. And it's just good to see like they have frequently like a thousand dollar deals to Dubai or other other really cool destinations. So I'm really all about signing up for all the free newsletters and keeping an eye out to see what's happening.   [00:32:17.370] - Danielle And then, you know, being able to not only couple that with the finances and then book it and go and love that, especially it does.   [00:32:26.010] - Tamara When you see a lot of those deals, you kind of get a sense for not just like what that base price, you know, is what is a good deal, but also just. What are some of the destinations that come up a lot for deals, because there are certain places that you'll see pop up like kind of over and over and you're like, OK, so I know if I want to go there, I'm going to be able to find a deal. I just need to hold out and wait for it. You know what I mean? And I really like your point about prioritizing. It's one of the things that Kim knows that we really like to enjoy local food. We're kind of foodies. And so we will spend a lot more on food when we're in a destination than some other people.   [00:32:59.600] - Tamara So it's one of those things when I'm looking at, you know, like my overall budget, I'm like, well, we spent this, but you may not need to, you know, like, there are other options. So like you said, it all depends on what is important to you. So it sounds like you probably have found a lot of your kind of budget trips through some of these deals and such.   [00:33:21.250] - Tamara But through your travels, have you found some destinations that you feel are more, you know, kind of favorite budget destinations, like places where people kind of should keep an eye out? Because if you're looking for a budget deal, you're apt to find one?   [00:33:35.920] - Danielle Yeah, I think it depends on the time of year. So I would frequently go to Ireland. I've been to Ireland twice in January because I found years apart the same or similar price deals to go to Ireland, to go to Dublin. So I it's funny because Dublin in Ireland is not necessarily the cheapest, the cheapest places to go do. And it's interesting because I the places I love to visit are actually some of the most expensive in the world. So Iceland. I love Iceland, I love Bermuda, I love Ireland.   [00:34:08.500] - Danielle These places are not necessarily cheap, but again, it's all about like the expenses and how you spend there. But in terms of my own personal experiences, I found Lisbon, Portugal to be affordable, especially as a European destination. I found that pretty affordable. I also found Mexico to be affordable as well, which has been really helpful. And let's see if there's any other. China was also very affordable as well.   [00:34:39.690] - Kim Tamara and I were in Lisbon and, you know, so that's great. And we were actually been in Ireland together, too.   [00:34:46.060] - Kim So I can remember in Lisbon, we had that like five euro lunch. That was a lot of food.   [00:34:51.340] - Tamara Yeah, I was thinking of that. I think Tamara and I both realized that in some ways Lisbon is extremely affordable as a European destination. Like even there are tourist attractions that you go to are still like priced fairly well.   [00:35:06.550] - Danielle Yes, there's a couple, actually, a family, a family that they're on YouTube. They're called Our Rich Journey. And they recently moved to Portugal after retiring early and being financially independent. And it's just really interesting to hear why. Like, why did they pick Portugal out of all the places in the world? So, yes, definitely. I definitely agree. Lisbon has really great food beaches. So many great things to do at a at a really good price.   [00:35:35.320] - Kim So we've covered, you know, kind of some big destinations and definitely places for a lot of our listeners that they would be putting off right now. But, you know, one of the hot topics I think right now for a lot of us is kind of local travel, you know, sticking around your own backyard or maybe, you know, around your own region. Do you have any tips for families that might be thinking of exploring around them that you think could, you know, be beneficial from a savings standpoint?   [00:36:03.040] - Danielle Yeah, last summer was, for me, the Great Awakening, because I realized, like, OK, travel's changed completely for me. I'm no longer flying. So I did a lot of more road trips and I live in the Northeast. So I visited towns or cities like between four and five hours away from home. One of the things I personally think that's important is to really think about if you prefer to stay at a hotel right now or if you prefer to stay at an Airbnb, each of them have their own pros and cons.   [00:36:37.780] - Danielle If you want to be necessarily like, let's say, secluded or you prefer to be like in a more remote location, then you have a lot of more options with Airbnb. Now, the problem with Airbnb is that there's so much more expensive now. A lot of hosts actually have higher fees, the cleaning fees. That has been astronomical. So if you are thinking about going on a, you know, more local trip or road trip, definitely start looking at Airbnb early. I would say anything from like four to five months early just to start to see, OK, what are price trends? Is it even affordable to stay at an Airbnb or do I prefer to stay at hotels? Now, in the countryside, a lot of hotels are offering really deep discounts. So a lot of financially savvy travelers are telling me that staying at a luxury hotel is like the most affordable it's ever been, right, because the capacities are down. The demand is down, which means prices are down, which is really helpful. So that I think is is number one is really great.   [00:37:45.970] - Danielle I think for the majority of all the money saving tips and ideas I was sharing before are all relevant, like using digit and making priorities in your budget and and getting your family involved. These are all things that regardless of the destination or the type of travel they could, still going to be beneficial.   [00:38:05.050] - Danielle Some other tips I would just share for those who are thinking about local travel. The thing about it right now, especially what I've discovered from last summer, is that each state has its own restrictions. Each state has its own quarantine. Or I mean, there's 50 states and each state is different. So really making sure that before you set out and go looking at what the state requirements, not only the state that you want to visit, but also your state as well, because some states are actually fining folks if you're not like being compliant. So that that's really helpful. And I would also say look at the tourism board website.   [00:38:42.560] - Danielle So tourism boards are going to keep you up to date with what's going on. And that's one of the places I actually look for for the most important information.   [00:38:51.520] - Tamara And sometimes they have deals to like sometimes they might have like a pass or, you know, sometimes some of their attractions. If you book online, you get a little discount. So Kim and I always talk about like looking at the tourism board website. And it's amazing. Kind of the I don't know, it's very helpful just to figure out what's there, but it's just helpful, you know, also finding some of those little deals and things that you may not have known about, like which restaurants offer kids eat free or which, you know, might have a Monday half price wine night or something like that, you know?   [00:39:23.500] - Tamara Well, you've given us a lot to think about. And I love that a lot of your tips have given us some apps and things, too, that we haven't necessarily talked about with some of our other guests. But we do have a question that we ask all of our guests, and that is, what do you wear when you travel? Do you have a favorite brand? You know, any particular go to travel outfit?   [00:39:43.750] - Danielle I would say I'm more of obsessive over footwear, so I really, really want to make sure that I have something comfortable with my feet. So I usually go to with vans. I like that their slip on that they're super comfortable and that I can just be more relaxed in them. No high heels for me, no high heels.   [00:40:04.210] - Tamara I'm with you there.   [00:40:05.470] - Kim Yes. So Danielle, why don't you tell our listeners where they can find you online?   [00:40:11.500] - Danielle Well, thank you again so much for having me. It was really fun chatting all about traveling money. You could head over to thought car dotcom. That's my affordable travel website. I also have the thought card podcast, which is my Affordable Travel and personal finance podcast. And I actually have two books that I think would be relevant to today's conversation. So the first book I have is called Affording Travel Saving Strategies Financially Savvy Travelers. And another book I published recently is planning local trips during a pandemic. So I think those two books would be really great to take the next step.   [00:40:52.810] - Tamara So thank you again for being on and chatting with us and looking forward to following your future travels. And I need you to tell me which luxury resorts in the Northeast are offering discounts, because I'm telling you, all the ones I've been looking at are way beyond my price range.   [00:41:07.360] - Danielle You know, it's so funny. I've been sticking to Airbnb, so I've been hearing rumors that they're cheaper. But I just prefer Airbnb out. They have been out in the cabin. So the countryside   [00:41:18.280] - Tamara We've done some of that. So I'm looking at something for the summer. I'm like, oh, man, I know the hotels are hurting, but these prices are outrageous. So I'm going to keep dreaming on that one for a bit. Keep dreaming and keep saving.   [00:41:31.000] - Kim Now, if you keep saving, maybe something, then sign up for some emails. You never know what I'll fall.   [00:41:34.690] - Danielle You never know. You never know.   [00:41:37.390] - Kim Thanks so much, Danielle. It was great chatting with you.   [00:41:39.490] - Kim Thanks so much as always. Thanks for joining us. For another week of vacation mavens next time, which is two weeks away, we're going to be celebrating something big. It's our fifth year anniversary of Vacation MAVEN's. We are five years old, so we are celebrating in a manner that, you know, truly is fitting for Tamara and I, for those of you that know us, we are going to be talking all about wine tasting and wine tasting tips.   [00:42:05.410] - Kim So I hope you will join us in two weeks and we will talk to you again soon   [00:42:10.510] - Tamara Come raise a virtual glass with us to celebrate and look forward to it and send us a picture. Yeah, definitely. Say cheers to us.  

From Duty to Delight 1 Chronicles 29 January10, 2021 I. Introduction: A. Did you know there are many Christians who when they put in their offering either at church or online it is more like a duty they are supposed to do rather than a delight. But 2 Corinthians 9 makes it very clear that God loves joyful, willing, generous givers! B. So the question I have been asking myself is how does someone move from the duty of stewardship to the delight of generosity where giving is done willful, joyfully and freely? 1. As I was praying 1 Chronicles 29 came to mind and it deeply connected with where I am in life and the conversation that was going on in my heart about generosity. 2. Please turn to 1 Chronicles 29 C. Context 1. David knew that he was in the fourth quarter of his service as king and could see an end to it. He had a heart to prepare things for his son Solomon as the next king so things could flow freely for him. a) I connect with this story because I know I am in the fourth quarter and have desire to make things as good as possible for God’s next senior pastor, the next generation for MVC and the Lord’s church here. 2. So he called together all his leaders, many of his workers and his mighty men of valor. a) Sounds like the people I speak to on Sunday morning, the people who regularly either attend here or follow us on line. You make up the key people of MVC 3. Now listen to 1Chronicles 29:1 D. The big picture overview of what follows is this: 1. King David, then some of the key leaders, then everyone else there gave joyfully and generously to the Lord’s work. 2. Then David prays acknowledging that the ability to give so generously is because everything they have comes from God. E. What we learn here is the answer to my question, “How does someone move from the duty of stewardship to the delight of generosity?” It was because they gave to a great work! • Let’s start by looking at the fact that they II. Gave to a great work! A. Look back at verse 1. Read 1a-c (“work is great”) 1. Now let’s see the reason why this work is great “for,” Read v1d It is great because it is not a work for man but a work for God B. We all love to give to great works and know our giving is making a difference rather than just give because I am supposed to give. They knew this great work was for God so they saw their giving as giving to God and not just the project! 1. There are a lot of great causes out there but there is none greater than giving to the Lord’s work because it is a great work 2. Note as we go through this passage the emphasis on giving to the Lord and not just to the work. Read v2a, 3a, 9a-b,14 C. You know MVC’s work is a great work because for the Lord’s sake we are seeking to carry out the mission He gave to His church to make disciples. 1. Our mission at MVC is simply: following Jesus, impacting others 2. Following – helping people become whole hearted followers of Jesus who love Him with all their heart, soul and mind 3. Impacting others by bringing the gospel of Jesus to the lost and helping believers grow on their journey with Jesus! D. What most people see at MVC is the tip of the iceberg, the 10% of God’s great work at MVC. That is Sunday morning as we seek to feed people with God’s Word and lead them in worshipping Him. 1. But all during the week we are caring for people’s unique needs and discipling people all in the name of Jesus Christ. That is the great work we do here for the Lord 2. Bottom line we are not running events , programs and meetings but we are seeking to see people transformed by the word and Spirit of God through these events, programs and meetings E. I could tell you about many ways people are cared for and the many up close and personal discipleship relationships and groups that are going on here but today I just to tell you about one story of transformation that has happened at MVC. 1. A few years back a couple, whose marriage was in great difficulty, came in to visit with one of our pastors. 2. As the pastor visited with them it became clear that there was not only addiction issues on the husband’s part that was troubling the marriage but the husband who thought he was saved, was only a church goer at best and not a believer in Jesus! 3. That compounded the wife’s troubled heart, but in that meeting the husband understood the gospel for the first time and trusted Jesus. 4. Ministries and people in this church began to invest in this couple and by God’s grace the addictions gradually came under control and the marriage improved. 5. They started telling others, both believers and lost people, about the miracle Jesus had worked in their lives and marriage! 6. Now wife serves in a very significant ministry here and the husband is growing in his relationship with Jesus, as he is being discipled by one of our pastors! 7. The transformation has been so big and deep that this couple who first came here as a marriage ready to fall apart, now this Christmas they came to me and gave me a large gift and asked me if I would find some families in need at MVC this Christmas and get it to them. F. That is just a taste of the kind of great work that God does at MVC! • And that is the reason why I and so many others … III. Give with joyful generosity to the work of MVC. A. Note in 1 Chronicles 29 that they gave joyfully and willingly! 1. Read v3a v6, 9, 14, 17 B. Their gifts were generous gifts. 1. Read v2a (all my ability – resources he had available) v3b (out of his wealth – savings and treasury – personal accumulations of wealth), v14 2. This reminds me a bit of Proverbs 3:9 a) Wealth are your personal accumulations like savings, investment and retirement b) First of your produce comes out of your ability/weekly income C. My journey of generosity was one that went like this 1. When I first became a believer I was told I was supposed to give 10% of my income to the Lord – that was my duty and it was called stewardship/tithing! 2. So I gave 10% of my net income (after taxes are taken out) to the Lord because I was supposed to, it was my duty as a Christian 3. Then over time God challenged me to move from 10% of my net income to 10% of my gross income (before taxes are taken out). So again I did it because I was supposed to as my duty as a believer and I did it for years like that. 4. Then about 13 years ago when MVC did their stewardship campaign for the building we are now in, God led Kim and I to give 10% of everything we have – our accumulated wealth – all savings, all retirement and the value of our home. a) The surprising outcome of that gift was that it produced in me a new joy and freedom in my giving that was not tied to our budget b) You could imagine with someone with an accounting degree like me, that blew all my financial plans out of the water and forced me to transfer my trust for financial things in my life to the Lord in a deep way! c) I moved from duty to delight in our giving 5. Before I use to measure out what we gave to the Lord with a 10% measure, down to the dollar now we give freely to the Lord and Kim and I give over 10% of our gross income to MVC and on top of that we support missionaries and give to individuals and organizations we know who are in need. 6. If it was left up to just Kim we would be giving away even more! IV. Conclusion A. Listen to what David did after giving according to all of his ability and then going beyond that by giving out of his wealth, his treasures and savings. Read v5c. 1. So to be fair to the text and to the great work god is doing at MVC I must ask?” Who is willing to joyfully give generously to God’s work at MVC?” B. In light of the world wide crisis of 2020 MVC last year experienced giving that was 15% below our budgeted dreams for MVC. So 1. This year the church actually cut the budget by 7 ó % and is hoping that the church’s giving would increase by 7 ó % this year. 2. This would put us right where we need to be this year with hopes that in the future as more and more people grow in their generosity MVC will be able to grow in its ability to be a greater blessing for the glory of God! C. So Kim and I are going to do two things this year: 1. We are going to increase our giving to the weekly budget which we call our general budget – maybe we should change the name of it to our transformational budget! 2. We are going to give an equal amount of an increase, above and beyond that to our transformational budget to the heart for the house fund as we watch that mortgage decrease month by month. a) The final number for the Christmas offering towards this was ________- _______ b) We are going to keep this fund open with hopes that more and more people will give to it above and beyond their giving to our transformational fund –first priority! D. As one elder said to me in a meeting when we were talking about that fund – “Pastor, you never asked us to give to this fund, if you would have asked, I would have given to it.” 1. So today I am asking like King David “who is willing to consecrate himself this day to the Lord and begin or increase your giving to our transformational fund. And begin or increase your giving to our heart for the house fund, a fund we ask people to give to as a gift above and beyond your giving to the transformational fund. E. Finally, we know that many people took a serious hit to their financial life last year so we want to serve you regarding your personal finances! 1. Next Sunday at 1pm will be the first of a series of seminars that will be offered to help our people here at MVC and those online with their personal finances. 2. This first one will totally be online because so many people are struggling with sickness right now or feeling free to go out. We do not want that to hold you back. 3. A number of people at MVC that work in or traffic in the area of finances have gotten together to produce the material and teach it! 4. This first one will be a spending plan workshop to get us started in the right direction. 5. I am planning to attend along with Kim as I have been in the process of training Kim to take over our finances as I have handled it for years. Couples this will be a very valuable resource for training you and getting you on the same page about finances! 6. To sign up just a) Click the link to the workshop in this week’s MVC bulletin which was emailed to you b) Or you can register on the MVC webpage c) Text spw to 708-350-6610 (returns a message with link to the workshop registration process)

This week we're taking a look at the start of fall sports practices at Bates. With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, our student-athletes and coaches are adjusting like never before. Interviews this episode: 0:43 -- So Kim '21, Women's soccer. 1:32 -- Hannah Sweeney '21, Women's tennis. 3:47 -- Thomas Formus '22 and Erik Stephens '22, Football. 6:49 -- Melissa DeRan (Head Coach) and Angel Echipue '21, Volleyball.

Nancie and I adopted a few years ago and we’re not alone. 6-10 million Americans have had personal experience with adoption and 100 million people in the U.S. have adoption in their immediate family. On any given day there are 428,000 children in foster care. Unfortunately, more than 60% of those kids spend 2-5 years in the system before being adopted. We want to say thank you for caring for the ‘least of these’ and for using your home to provide stability for children who don’t have it. We also know that adoption can put a lot of strain on a marriage and we’re going to dive into that today.    Interview:   Today my interview is with Ben and Kim Nunes (1:25) I’d love for you to share a little bit about your story (3:00) So you guys were struggling in your marriage, what are some of the things that shifted? (4:33) At what point were you in this process before adoption becomes a consideration? (7:33) You guys are filling out the applications, talking to agencies, then what happens? (9:53) How was this impacting you as a couple? Was it drawing you together? Pushing you apart? (13:42) So you get the call. How long from then until he was home at your house? (19:17) So what does this do to you guys as a couple and in your marriage?  (21:22) Ben, was it hard for you to see your wife going through the roughest time of her life? (23:39) So Kim, you’re going through all these things. I watched with Nancie that her struggles were all paired with guilt. Did you feel those things? (27:54) You’re sitting across from a couple and they’re considering fostering or adoption. What is one thing you’d tell them to do? (32:13) Now talk to someone who has just brought a foster child home (32:41) What is one simple thing couples can do when life is chaotic? (35:23) Kim, talk a little about the work you’re doing in the foster and adoption space (38:01) How can people find out more about what you’re doing and how they can learn some of these things? (39:38)     RESOURCES: TBRI The Connected Child     We’d love to connect with you on Instagram or Facebook!   This episode was brought to you by the Married People Membership—an affordable, monthly subscription that provides married couples like you a ton of great resources every month to help you do marriage better. That means new date nights, videos, eBooks, messages, and more available to you when you need it - all in one place at one low price. Go to our website to find out more about the Married People Membership.   We hope you’ll join us for next week’s episode!

So Kim and Tricia are back in the trailer together sharing their weekly recounts of day to day COVID life. Does it seem like Groundhog Day to everyone else? The girls realize once again that meeting in person is always best for them and the podcast.  Kim continues on her RV life journey and figuring out the new way of life. She has just returned from a quick girls' trip with her daughter. In case you were wondering she didn’t take her new house with her on the trip. Kim talks seaplanes. Do you think she can convince Tricia to ride? Tricia continues life with a newborn and arthritis. Her house is coming along. She is always trying to get ideas so she watches HGTV a lot now. Her newest obsession is Renovation Island. Too bad Kim and Tricia didn’t have the 2 million to by the resort for a family vaca spot.  Thanks as always for listening.Want to connect with us?Drop us an email at whathappenedthisweekpodcast@gmail.comWebsite:www.whathappenedthisweek.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/whathappenedthisweek/Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/what_happened_this_week/Twitter:https://twitter.com/HappenedWeekTikTok:@whathappenedthisweek 

After a vote from our listeners, the Twilight Sage was selected to be reviewed in it's entirety, one movie at a time. So Kim and Michael hunkered down and watched 2008's "Twilight" to start the weekly bonus reviews.

In this episode Lisa speaks with NZ's top Ozone Therapy Machine providers and expert on all things Ozone, Kim Saxton of Natural Ozone (www.naturalozone.co.nz)   What is Ozone Therapy? Ozone Therapy refers to a collection of procedures and protocols which have been developed by medical experts using medical ozone to treat a condition or reduce symptoms. They include: Injection - Auto hemotherapy; or direct injection into a vein or joint. Insufflation - in the ear; vaginal; rectal. Inhalation   - breathing ozonoids given off from ozonated oil. Ingestion - Ozonated water, ozonated olive oil in capsule form. Transdermal  - Cupping with a funnel. Sauna. All of the above therapies except for injection can be administered safely in the comfort of your own home using the equipment available through Natural Ozone. From improved immune system function to stimulating the uptake of life-giving oxygen, delivering anti-microbial benefits and enhancing the function of the mitochondria (our cells energy powerhouses), your decision to begin ozone therapy is a health-enhancing one! Ozone therapy refers to the process of administering ozone gas into your body to treat a disease or wound. Ozone is a colorless gas made up of three atoms of oxygen (O3). It can be used to treat medical conditions by stimulating the immune system. It can also be used to disinfect and treat disease.   How it works Ozone therapy works by disrupting unhealthy processes in the body. It can help stop the growth of bacteria that are harmful. Medical ozone has been usedTrusted Source to disinfect medical supplies and treat different conditions for more than 150 years. For example, if you have an infection in your body, ozone therapy can stop it from spreading.   Ozone therapy can be effective at treating infections caused by: bacteria viruses fungi yeast protozoa Ozone therapy also helps flush out infected cells. Once the body rids itself of these infected cells, it produces new, healthy ones.   What it helps treat Ozone therapy is used for a variety of conditions.   Breathing disorders People with any type of breathing disorder may be good candidates for ozone therapy. By providing more oxygen to your blood, ozone therapy can help reduce the stress on your lungs. Your lungs are responsible for supplying oxygen to your blood. Clinical trials for people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are currently in progress.    Diabetes Ozone therapy also shows promise in reducing the risk of complications from diabetes. Complications are usually caused by oxidative stress in the body. If ozone therapy can bring new, fresh oxygen to the blood and tissues, people with diabetes could have much better outcomes. People with diabetes also experience poor wound healing. According to a 2015 study, ozone therapy could be helpful for repairing skin and tissue.   Immune disorders Ozone therapy may have benefits for people with immune disorders because it can help stimulate the immune system.   Some links of interest mentioned during the podcast:   Natural Ozone https://naturalozone.co.nz/collections/ozone-therapy-1 Natural Ozone Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NaturalOzoneNZ/ Frank Shallenberger The Ozone Miracle: http://www.theozonemiracle.com/ Library of medical studies, journal publications and references on Ozone Therapy https://www.zotero.org/groups/46074/isco3_ozone/items/JWHQISE3/library Dr Robert Rowen https://drrowendrsu.com/   Ozone therapy clinics in NZ:  Dr Wayne McCarthy https://waipunaturalhealth.co.nz/meet-the-team/dr-wayne-mccarthy-naturopathic-physician/ Michelle Roberts : https://www.michellesoxygen.co.nz/    About Kim Saxton It was back in 2007 when Kim first encountered the extraordinary power of O3 gas while working with a small local company. Her background in business development and MSc in International Management brought that enterprise onto a good business footing while she gained formidable knowledge of this fascinating branch of science. Armed with these years of research and experience, Kim independently founded Natural Ozone in 2016. Natural Ozone supplies all the products and associated equipment required to harness the full range of applications for ozone including air and water purification, room and car sanitisation, as well as health treatment. With well-established partner companies who have manufactured to their exacting standards for over a decade, Natural Ozone is uniquely placed within Australasia to supply high quality, reliable equipment.   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige... measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds...   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) Today everybody to pushing the limits today. I have another exciting guest for you, Kim Saxton of naturalozone.co.nz, the leading ozone machine providers in New Zealand is to guest on the show today and Kim has going to be explaining what exactly ozone therapy is, how you can use it, the various ways of getting it into the body, why you should do that and all the conditions that can be helped with ozone therapy. Now this is something that's been on my radar for a while, so I was really, really excited to finally catch up with Kim and I'm going to be trialing out the ozone therapy over the coming weeks. So I will let you know how I go. And thanks very much to come for doing this interview. Before we go over to kim, just want to remind you two things. Speaker 2: (01:00) We have our next epigenetics public webinar that we're holding online via zoom on the 27th of May at 6:30 PM. If you want to find out about it, if a genetics program, which is all about personalized health and understanding your genes and how they're expressing themselves, then go over to epigenetics.lisatamati.com to register for that webinar 27th of May at 6:30 PM New Zealand time. You can come in and find out all about the epigenetics program that we offer and how it can help you. And finally, before we go into the show, just another plug for my book, relentless, which I bought out a couple of weeks ago, a few weeks ago now. Really, really great read in this time of Coburn and all that uncertainty and taking on big challenges cause that's what that book is all about. You can grab that on my website, lisatamati.com. It's available on all the audio books, the eBooks, the Amazon, the Kindles, the, you name it, it's available everywhere. So check that out. It's called relentless. How a mother and daughter defied the odds right now over to Kim Saxton from natural ozone. Speaker 1: (02:16) Sorry. Speaker 3: (02:16) Good. All right. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the show. This is Lisa Tamati at pushing the limits and I have the lovely Kim saxton with me. Kim, how you doing? Speaker 4: (02:24) Very good. Hi Lisa. Speaker 3: (02:26) It's really cool to have you there. Kevin is setting an initial 10. What was the name of the place? The villains. Speaker 4: (02:32) Cool. Cool. See at Bay actually, which is yeah, one Bay around from Luton. Speaker 3: (02:38) Yes. Actually that's been in the news lately, hasn't it? And of course, thereby Bay, I think when the cruise ship was off there was, Speaker 4: (02:45) That's right. Speaker 3: (02:47) I just remember that somewhere popped into my head. So Kim is with us today to talk ozone and ozone therapy and Kim owns a company called naturalozone.co.nz. Then I'll put them on links and things after to comes website and the products that they do and she's going to share her knowledge today. Everything around ozone. And I'm really fascinated by this and it's something that's been on my radar for the last couple of years and I just haven't got there to do it. But I'm hearing amazing things both in relation to the coronavirus you know, if we want to be current and also many, many other areas. So can, can you tell us a little bit, so you've been in the ozone world now for quite a few years. Speaker 4: (03:33) Yes. So basically about 15 years I first came into contact to ozone and, and well, the amazing things that it can do via my former partner. And he had been already had been involved with ozone therapy and ozone products for about 10 years. Before I met him. He had actually contracted hepatitis B while traveling through India and after, yes, lots and lots of conversations like you do with people. Lisa I had come across ozone therapy and actually cured himself of hepatitis B which, you know you, you say that to a GP and they'll go, yeah. But yeah, I was on therapy alone. He took himself hepatitis B and, and got into building machines. I came along and made a business around it. So Speaker 3: (04:40) So you have a background as the masters in international management, isn't it? Speaker 4: (04:45) Yes, that's right. Yeah. So I studied that in London, university of London at Southwest university, which is a school of African and Asian studies and that's a, yeah. Yeah. Basically you got a big international management college with focus on Asia. Yeah, it's run through the university of London. Speaker 3: (05:08) So you're able to use a lot of that skills to build a business around something that you knew was powerful and good, but Speaker 4: (05:15) It's coming from a family that's, yeah, pretty, pretty business oriented. So like, yeah, I was telling you earlier that you know, when my family gets together at Christmas, everybody's talking about the latest startup and latest technology and yeah, you know, we're also debating about what the government's doing and all that. You know, but everybody's like jumping right in there with their ideas and innovation and I've got three older brothers and very supportive growing up. They're, they're all awesome. And we were all good friends, so and support of each other. So yeah. And, and actually now what we're saying is a lot of international connections and things like that. And, and particularly, particularly from Asia, like I'm already quite well established in Asia Australian and New Zealand markets, but wow, they were getting from India and Singapore and, and things like this and this part of the book. Speaker 3: (06:29) So share this year, this powerful therapy with people. So, okay, let's go into ozone. People would have heard, probably let you know, I think most people's knowledges, I've heard about it. Some people have said it's great dunno where I can get it done. Really one of those, or this seems to be, and even for me, I've read a couple of books and things. I'm still a little bit confused about all of the variety. It seems like it affects everything and the different applications and the different ways you can use it. Can we just start at the beginning and say what is ozone you know, from molecule point of view and what did the ozone machines do? Speaker 4: (07:09) Sure. So ozone is a gas and it has three atoms. So oxygen has two atoms and ozone has three. So where is oxygen is stable. It wants to the two oxygen atoms. They want to stay together and main stable and bond. But ozone is relatively unstable, so it's highly active. I like to think of it as enhanced oxygen. With the oxygen atom. It's it's very powerful when you can harness it and use it which there's tons of ways that we're going to get into and I'm really excited about that. But yeah, if you can harness that power, that extra oxygen atom, then it's very powerful. So the way that ozone is created naturally in the atmosphere, so it's in the higher, I'm answering the lower atmosphere, but with your, they liked and lightning storms and any kind of energy that will come along and will spoon your oxygen atoms. And what, what then happens is a lot of other oxygen the Adam's will bond and form oxygen and that's majority of what's happening. But also what's happening is it will give off ozone. So this a strong base get off and all form with another two oxygen atoms and form for my zone. And, Speaker 3: (08:56) And we have an ozone layer, don't we? We all know that the ozone layer having holes in it. Speaker 4: (09:00) Yeah, yeah. And, and you can, you can actually smell ozone. So after, after the lightning storm, when it's at really fresh smell, after we've had this big storm at night and you wake up in the morning and there's sun shining and you can really S it smells so good, smells really, really fresh. And that's, that's ozone. And also a few go and stand under a waterfall or go to the beach and there's big crashing surf. That's all giving off ozone. Wow. Basically breaking up those oxygen atoms and it's all given off ozone. So and, and in low levels it's it's very good and very healthy for us, but in high concentrations which he can produce conditionally to ozone generators then it is an irritant to the lungs. So and that's very non, so about the, when we get into ozone therapy about the only thing you can't do with those own therapy is breathe directly the ozone guests in high concentrations and low concentrations. It's absolutely fine. Yep. Speaker 3: (10:10) Cause it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't pick the lungs in the negative way and can actually lead to death if you have a really, really high dose of advisers. Is that right? Speaker 4: (10:20) Or just damages just really damages the lungs in particular people with asthma. Yeah, for a strong irritant to actually know you've, you've done too much ozone cause you'll, you'll have a horrible coughing attack which can, which can go on and be you know you know, quite severe. But actually if you, if you stop puffing I'm, I'm Mike, you know, like you were saying before that you want to have a laboratory and doing all sorts of experiments and things like that. So one of the things I do is make ozonated oil, which can take about a month. And sometimes when it's kind of on its last legs, then the ozone, after it's fully infused into the oil, we'll start off guessing and I've walked into the room and there's too much ozone in there and I'll breathe too much and my stop coughing. But if I reached for the vitamin C and take the vitamin C straight away, then immediately you're, you're fine. It's also not the end of the world. Speaker 3: (11:26) Yeah. Yeah. And it would have to be pretty, pretty hard to assess, to do some serious damage, but you don't sit at the end of a ozone generator. And sucker. Okay. So what are some of the ways we can harness, before we get into what it helps, what are some of the methodologies or the delivery mechanisms that we can get that the ozone to the right part of the body and get it inside? Speaker 4: (11:52) Yeah, so that's a great question. And, and often the first one that people, people ask me then I'd say, Oh dude, do you breathe it? And I'm like, well, no, it was never said, we can't, we can't do that. But yeah, basically there is, yeah. Every, every other common way that you can, you, you can get into the body. So I was just mentioned the ozonated oil, what you can do is breathe the ozonated oil. So when I was zone is infused into olive oil, which is a traditional medium that's usually used and it's actually changing its state very, very quickly because, yeah, this ozone is, is reactive, it's unstable, and the olive oil will actually hold, hold the ozone. But it, it changes it Satan to something called Oh, it's annoyed. And when you breathe that that I was annoyed from the olive oil as it's been infused, then that's really good for lung conditions. Speaker 4: (13:01) So that's how you can help breathing conditions and the lungs, which is very relevant at the moment. So that would be like in a sort of essential oil diffuser type situation. It's, yeah, it's, it's not, it's not really in the realm of essential oil. Ozone does have a very restaurant smell. And a lot of people will be put off actually by this strong smell. But it's, it's actually, you know, and fish tanks, you diffuse the stones to just bubble oxygen and to the water clear and plain in the fish tanks. So these diffusers stones, what were you as as it was on, it's very corrosive. So we always use ozone resistant materials. So I have, I import diffuse the stones from America, we can't make it here. And my dad of ceramic and stone. And you basically diffused that the pure form of the guests into a, the olive oil and that will form owes in words and you complete that. Speaker 4: (14:14) And so that's, so that's one of the modems and then everything under the sun. So the most powerful way to get ozone into the body is actually to go to a clinic and do what's called also hammy off the or I the ozone. And this is systematic. So it's, it's working on the, on the, on the total body because basically the medical grade ozone is getting into the body and getting into your blood system and then your blood declining. It's really doing a lot of amazing, amazing, powerful things that we can get into also. But w we all say medical grade ozone, that's, this is a really important point because of, we've talked about how unstable the ozone is and basically reacts with whatever is around it. So if we just have like a normal ozone generator then that bull jaw and ear, and we know that the air in which we brave is only about 21% oxygen and year and the rest of the ear is whole lot of other guesses. Speaker 4: (15:29) Yeah. So if you, if you bring that normal ear into the ozone generator, then what? Then the guys are more react to that normal air and produce a whole load of yeah. Different, different kinds of guesses. And some of these will be nitrate kind of guessing. And that we definitely do not want to get into the body. So what we want to do for medical grade ozone therapy is to get harness at ozone and it's very pure form. And we do that by inputting a very pure form of Austin's, which you can get from an oxygen tank, which is, yeah. Not over 98% purity. It was a medical grade oxygen, Speaker 3: (16:14) Which has its own regulations and problems having it on oxygen clarity clinic. We have, we have ways around that. I a woman here mafia, the boom and oxygen situation. Speaker 4: (16:31) Yeah. So that so when you get up Purifill mobile oxygen and and that's drawn into the ozone then with a very specifically built or its own generator, and we call it a medical grade ozone generator because all of the parts within the ozone generator are all the parts and because, yeah, yeah. Offsides everything. So things like glass, titanium, Silicon, stainless steel yeah, ceramic these things are, have got really good zoned resistancy and, and so these are the kind of materials that you are looking for when you're, when you're going out to buy a medical ozone generator. And that's really important question to ask whoever's in back. And so it's and it also has a built in a specific way that it has a session amount of output. So with ozone therapy, basically the measurement that we use is mg per milliliter or America. Speaker 4: (17:46) They, they use gamma. And anything on the 20 mg per ML is not going to do anything. And anything over 95 is shown to be detrimental to the, to your body cells. So you don't want to go above that. So it's a very non and very specific window of effectiveness when you're using ozone therapy and and ozone therapy units are, are built that way. And because I built that way, then it's knowing that if you follow the protocols, it is known to be the most safest therapy. There are no side effects. There's only the only thing that can happen is a little bit of detox. Fine. Yep. And they also prevented Speaker 3: (18:39) Yeah. When you guys finally, okay, so, so just going back to the Ivy so you go, you have to go to an ozone clinic. Is it doctor only situation, you know, you have to be a medical doctor to do ozone therapy or how is it regulated? Speaker 4: (18:56) So yeah, different, different countries have different regulations. We're so pretty fortunate to New Zealand with, with our regulations. Yeah, as long as we're transparent and, and we're backing everything up with good science then, then we're good. And in America as ozone therapy is got, comes with messages of things surrounding the FDA. And Australia and Australia also, it's a stricter legislation, but they're academics and they're nice and bright people to refer to. And but actually in New Zealand, nobody is offering the IV ozone. So nobody. Wow. Yeah. And now the, and the reason being is the space where I was on therapy has had a bad reputation and the past is because of the IV ozone and somebody that doesn't know anything about how, you know, hasn't been trained, how to handle needles and things like that, then I mean, of course a blood ambulance is a real danger. And so if you don't know what you're doing then, then that, that's absolutely shocking. We shouldn't even go there. So it needs to be a case to me. It takes me to try and post them ministering it. So there has been a couple cases of ambulances in the past and that send your sin and not good, but it's got nothing to it. Speaker 3: (20:50) Putting needles in your body in the wrong way. Speaker 4: (20:53) So Speaker 3: (20:55) Okay, so, so Ivy's off the, off the menu and New Zealand at the moment in team past ozone, which I've read about don't do it when you're really powerful and really unfortunate if we don't do that. So what types of therapies are offered in New Zealand, for example? That, you know, like rectal some inflation. Yes. Vaginal supplication. What other ways can you get it into your body? Speaker 4: (21:25) Yeah, so so what, what we do at natural ozone is set people up for home ozone therapy and there's a few other clinics that also offer these kinds of treatments within New Zealand and the clinic environment because it's, yeah, a homos went to therapy is it's very well known to be extremely safe. I can yeah, feel very assured to offer equipment and help people set it up in their own home and, and, and getting started with it. So the best thing that you can do outside of clinic is to do the rectal insufflation. And that's because it's systematic. It's getting into your yeah, it's true. You call on and into your blood system. And that's this way for this total body exposure to the beneficial effects of ozone therapy. Speaker 3: (22:23) Sounds glamorous. Yeah. Speaker 4: (22:28) Considerably less expensive than going to a clinic. And you've basically got this equipment for life and don't even need to get colds and flus anymore, let alone chronic disease, biohacking, all of it. Yeah. Speaker 3: (22:46) rectal insufflation Is probably the most powerful that we can do in the, in home setting. So, sorry, carry on. Speaker 4: (22:54) Yeah, so it's quite straightforward. You just have a bag and, and a catheter and you'll fill the bag with with certain concentration and start off with small amount and and that connects to a a very thin and long catheter. And you can insert that on you takes about a minute. And, and that's the best to do after an enema or at the very least bowel moves Speaker 3: (23:21) After a movement. Yeah. So do, so it only takes one minute. So you don't have to lie there for an hour with this thing attached to you. Speaker 4: (23:29) No, no. It's quite comfortable. You do try to hold it, hold it. And and, and there's there, there has been otherwise of, of doing that in the past. But this is become the kind of gold of, of the men's name, Richmond's flashing. Speaker 3: (23:48) And this is the liver isn't it? Cause it goes directly to the liver when it's erectile. Speaker 4: (23:53) Yup. Yeah, yup. Yeah. Directly, directly tied in liver and helps everything flush out that way. So then there's other yeah, ways that you can administer ozone therapy. So there's the vaginal that you mentioned and you got 10 minutes and you can build up to about half, half an hour. And yeah, and, and you can minister that directly from those on generator and, and the, and that's really good cause it's actually primarily targeting the immune system and giving that a good boost. And, and any, yeah, so the, the ozone is working both systematically and locally. So basically wherever you can get it in that you, you go for the, the protocols depending on, on what issues you're trying to do. A few but just generally everybody can prevent disease by doing direct ones, deflation, system wide. Also doing saunas are excellent because we know that our skin is a biggest poorest mess it up body. So a lot through our skin and, but we also know that we can't breathe those zones. Speaker 3: (25:17) Yes. I had an idea hit out, so I wonder what is box? Speaker 4: (25:24) I get a sauna with your end. You just have you hit up, tie a towel around it. So none of the ozone is getting braids and and you can get stained soreness, tents and just sit in one of one of those in your bathroom, sit up in your bathroom and portable and yeah. And then you put the certain concentration of oxygen, pure oxygen ozone mix into the sauna, steam stoner and, and sit there. Speaker 3: (25:55) And so it comes on trains too late, so it's transdermal cool. Okay. So that's another way you can get it. And, and, and do you offer at your company the tents and the, the whole, the whole shebang for that or, Speaker 4: (26:10) Yeah. So yeah, I, yeah, basically offer all the homophone therapy accessories and gear and everything you need to get cited before that. There's also like you can administer through the ears. And we have modified stiff scopes. That's all made out of ozone resistant material, like Silicon and things. And you just put that into his and that's targeting the brain area. So that'd be good. And things like that then yeah, it's, Speaker 3: (26:44) It's directly targeting that area. So I was, I was really effective. Yeah. Was that local, that local graphs of, of just wherever there is a problem area, if you can target it, then, then it can be very effective. Okay. So, all right, let's, let's transition now into what, what ailments that can help with and we are, so let's start at the head, because you just mentioned there, what is the mechanism or you know, like, I don't wanna get too scientific, but what is the mechanism of action? Is it going through into the ear? And you mentioned also tonight us, cause my husband's got that. So I'm selfishly asking about that. How is that the place for, for tinnitus as well? And how does that work? Speaker 4: (27:30) Yeah, so I, I would actually let's take a step back and you can actually look at what is the cause of disease itself. Yeah, I'll stop there. And yeah, this is, this is where I was on therapy as kind of the biohack is goat ticket to longevity, don't get disease, but you don't really hear of people dying of nothing, you know. There's, there's usually a associated disease. So I would really, really highly recommend, I don't know if you've come across him, but Dr. Frank Shallenberger Speaker 3: (28:27) A little might be a bit, yeah, I'm working on that one. Speaker 4: (28:33) So he, he was, he was one of the forefathers of ozone therapy and in America so 40 years on he had smoked it all. He administered therapy and trained from the first guys that invented the James Bond style, ozone medical ozone generators out of America. And have messes of research university and papers backing them. He trained from them. And, and basically one of the guys that have just been administering ozone therapy in a clinic environment and seeing thousands of patients throughout the years. Yeah. W what he talks about is, is really important. He's basically going into what is the root of cools of disease itself when now when we go out and about and and we'll go to the cheapy cheapy and we'll, yeah, they'll do some bicep tastes and yeah, they might say, okay, we've got healthy lungs and we're breathing healthy ear and they'll send us home and say, we're fine. What Dr. Frank Shallenberger is saying is saying, well no, I can, I can actually run my tests and I can show that you are not actually utilizing that oxygen. You might be breathing plenty. We might be like tricking up on these beautiful mountains that we have in New Zealand and breathing really fresh air and even doing yoga and having really great lung capacity for me and whatever. But we might not have the capacity within our body to utilize that oxygen. And so he's coined this term oxygen utilization. Speaker 4: (30:35) Now it's how can be described as similarly, you know, any vitamin that we that we're told that we, we have two that were depleted, all of them. W we should take. So, so we go to the doctor and they run some tests and they say, okay, your deficient vitamin basics. And so we'll go home and we'll take sort of one of these, but you six now, just because we're taking that everyday, it doesn't actually mean that our body is, that's a really well known within like we need other kinds of vitamins also. So we can actually utilize vitamin. Don't we need the genes to be able to do the right things? Speaker 4: (31:20) So same with oxygen. Just because we're breathing, that doesn't mean that necessarily mean that our body has capacity to utilize it. I mean, certain amount we're obviously using as it would be dead and the best way. And, and that's where yeah, he, he will then run, run some kind of test where he'll is his Scott Paul Murray a certified gadget that he can actually test how well you are utilizing oxygen. So and, and it will actually run the test and it will show, okay, you're using a certain amount. And he also test amount of carbon dioxide that we're expiring. And so what does his show is if you're utilizing oxygen, if you're taking it, if your body has ability to take most of it, and then you're actually, you don't, you don't expire much of the CO2. Speaker 4: (32:24) So that's also great. New cure pump change, but you're really healthy ourselves and no, he's good. He'll link that. For example, we can go onto pub med and we'll run a search for yeah. Basically you mitochondria and aging and we'll come up with heaps and heaps of like thousands of papers and we'll also want to search for mitochondria and disease and it will come up with tens of thousands of papers. So, and it's well established that mitochondria are extremely important. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So if, if our levels of mitochondria are really good, then then actually that is a sign that we are utilizing oxygen. So for utilizing oxygen our mitochondrial functioning is, is excellent. Now what he, what Dr. Frank Shallenberger saw from all these thousands of patients over, you know, 30 years of them coming to the clinic is that Mmm, anybody that had any kind of disease, whether it be cancer or order, immune disease and any kind of disease, then he would run this test and it will show that their oxygen utilization is poor. Speaker 3: (34:06) Wow. Man. He'll be fantastic for us all to do to, so no, we were a mitochondria because they're at the basis of all but an agent. Speaker 4: (34:14) That's right. Yeah. And he will also get healthy people coming into the clinic. So that was, you know, and that also Ronald, the other tests showing that they don't have any disease and the, what his tests will show is that the oxygen utilization is excellent. You know, their body's ability to take that oxygen and at the cellular level is really, really amazing. You'll also get like some seemingly people some people that come in that that are functioning quite well and same like they're pretty healthy, but they might have a tumor in the breast for example. And interestingly that tests that he'll do will show that actually the oxygen utilization is not that great. Wow. So he's, he's what is basically showing is he can actually see if the road, to me that's the dog by looking at your oxygen utilization and and so, Speaker 3: (35:32) So what does dr Shallenberger's, he's got his book, the title of his book. Have you got that in your mind? Because it's on my list, but I haven't got there yet. The ozone, the miracle is one of the miracle of ozone miracle. That was a miracle. There we go. I was AmeriCorps. So if you want to dive deeper into dr Shallenberger's work gone. Great bit. Okay. So, okay. So he's looking at the mitochondria cause we're running at a time. You can, we're going to have to speed it up. The, so your, your ability to use oxygen. So how can a ozone Theraphy help it? Speaker 4: (36:13) Sorry, I was on therapy. It's basically directly helping with, with that uptake of oxygen. So when you get this medical grade ozone into the body, it's, it's doing two things. It will have because it cha so it changes it sites very, very quickly because it's reactive. So it will have a little bit of oxidating power and we'll go directly after you know, disease cells themselves. And we all know that disease cells do not thrive in an oxygenated [inaudible]. Same thing. The other thing I was able to do when you get into the body, it will change its state and well form peroxides these yeah, these peroxides clicked flea and honors opioids. And this has a systematic function on the body where you're, yeah, just as something similar to create an upstate of stress. When, when you exercise for example, then you're creating a certain amount of free radicals and your system has to regulate, keep those free radicals in check. That's what it says. Therefore, so, and that's really important. So when, so when you when you get done and similar to when you exercise and your antioxidant system is enhanced and your body is basically stronger so systematically as helping your body fight, whatever's wrong with it, Speaker 3: (37:58) Whatever's wrong with it. So this is, this is why it's good. So what sort of diseases or problems can it be beneficial for? If we, if we did a, a list from a to Z or you know, some of the major players Speaker 4: (38:13) And we did a list from a to Z, then you can pretty much go through absolutely everything because it's going at the Coles of diseases. Speaker 3: (38:23) Sorry, sorry guys. Carry on. My mum has a tip habit of doing that and every one of my podcasts. Speaker 4: (38:36) So mostly when, when people come to ozone therapy though, they'll call me and they've gone to the doctor and they'll be diagnosed with a chronic disease, chronic condition. And that's stuff searched out there for everything known to man. They'll come across the ozone therapy. And honestly, it's such a broad spectrum humor. I've had people come to me and I've had every kind of thing under the sun and they'll say, can this help? And they'll tell me a little bit about it and I'll and I'll, yeah. Also, you know, trick the because it's, it's, there's over 1500 articles. For example, in the American society of ozone therapy on peer reviewed studies of ozone therapy. So, you know, I always like to point people directly to the research that's been done. What's the, is there a website that C A I R R T.com. Speaker 4: (39:38) Dot com if anyone wants to go and do some research. Okay. So it helps a broad range of diseases because it's getting to the actual base cause of the down, down low and what's happening. And you can also treat so you can treat systematically by, for example, going to the clinic during the auto homeopathy or direct IB or during your the Tampax Asia. Or you can do the home ozone therapy and it's easy at Texas. It doesn't cost very much and you can do it more often and it's, and it's just as powerful if you do the rectal insufflation systematically and then you can do the local administration the, the other kinds of routes depending on what your issues are. If you've got brain issues and you can do the air insufflation, anything to do yeah, anything going on up there and the ladies. So it will not thrush out after a single, really, at the very least, you can breathe those and edit oil for any kind of blind condition. Allergies, asthma, Candido. Yeah, yeah. So, and candida like often through the ear, that's where your husband and son, your son often widespread can do that. Yeah, it's often a sign of that. And so you can actually director directly through the ear and transdermally so you can do those notes on and that's really great for heart prevent heart disease prevention, prevention and treatment. And then you can actually bag any of your limbs. Speaker 3: (41:38) The plastic bag, top thing on sale, on the internet. Yeah, Speaker 4: (41:41) Yeah. Problems with veins or just, just aches and pains nerve issues or skin, particular kinds of skin conditions to trying to get it. Then we can either bag or you can use this as an oil. So basically the ozone is howled and the, and the oil and yeah, so I've been liking that for, for 15 years now and it's amazing. Like all the time. People come along and now they'll use it and I'll go, you know, cam, I've tried everything for my ex mouth. All my psoriasis. I've tried, I've honestly tried everything under the sun, but this is the only thing that's actually worked. Likewise for any kind of skin condition and also for gum disease and tastes and things. Speaker 3: (42:40) Dentists have actually used us, you know, that was one of the first, they were the first adopters of the suite. They, because for, for training their equipment. Yeah, Speaker 4: (42:48) That's right. Yeah. So you can so it's really, really powerful at disinfecting it as it will oxides any microbes. So bacteria yeses and every nook and cranny and used in dentistry. And they can also get directly into a root canal itself. And Speaker 3: (43:16) But it's before they put a tooth on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 4: (43:20) And, and dentistry, so, so used you can inject directly into joints just straight into your, your back and you've got a bulging disc or, or osteoarthritis in the knee. You can inject directly into the joints with those own instead of use and cortisone. Speaker 3: (43:38) Oh, Rocky. But again, you can't get that New Zealand probably Speaker 4: (43:43) You can and opened up to wine McCarthy. He offers it and fully trained and, and he does a range of ozone therapy. Speaker 3: (43:56) I have to get all those links off you show notes. Okay, so, so you've got these three molecules inside and it's, what's it actually doing? What some, so you've got either up, you know, the rectally vaginally in the ear through the oil transdermally Ivy, however you've managed to do it. What's it actually, so it's knocking out pathogens, it's taking out viruses. What's it doing in there? Speaker 4: (44:30) Yeah. So yeah, when, when it gets into the body there's two things that does there's limited effects from the ozone itself because ozone is very reactive so it changes it Cypress Cyprus quickly. So, but when it is set ozone, it will go after viruses, bacteria and oxidize them. It's very powerful oxidizer. The second thing it does is as, yeah as, as I mentioned before, it will change the state very quickly and to the proc sides. And yeah, basically getting yeah, your body into check systematically by creating that oxidate of stress, anti antioxidant, it's activated to balance out any theoretical sort of form from, from that. So keeping them in check and that has this wide systematic effect of yeah, really going at the root of cause of disease itself. And it's amazing. I tell you, well, I've had people that have been sent home, you know, various illness and told that, you know, it's so much more than I can do. Speaker 4: (45:44) And they get onto ozone therapy and the most powerful ways, and actually they do, they do really well. And if they get enough training, this is why we wanted to share all this information. Tell you something amazing that's going on with coronavirus at the moment and ozone therapy. I'm like the yeah, so the therapy has it has always been very, we're very well known treatment for infectious diseases. So and it was proven successful with SOLs. Oh, he had success with AIDS and we've got sort of studies on that and you can there's, there's one doctor, dr Robert Rowan. I highly recommend that you follow him on Facebook cause you have a time and now he actually went to West Africa and he had, you know, mess. He had real kind of your bureaucratic and get through and push him, push his way through the medical establishment there. But he was allowed to oversee the administration of direct. I was on auto hand me ups, the two, five Ebola cases and, and had really great success. And where as you know, there's this very made a coma if you come in and shut them down. Right? Yeah. It's an incredible story. Basically who actually contracted Speaker 3: (47:30) It weren't allowed to get their, and some of them died. And the ones who managed to the health workers who managed to get the ozone therapy survived. And this highlights a lot of the problems. Speaker 4: (47:43) Yeah. He's actually in New York city at the moment and he is administering ozone therapy to everybody that wants to yeah. Once he, he's right in the heart of New York city. So, you know, that's, that's what he's doing is offering ozone treatment for anyone that wants it if they can't afford it. Because we all know how the healthcare system is as an American. So he's, he's offering it for free if you can't afford it. And and, and people that are in the early stages, if they've been told that they should be in the hospital and on an NG beta, then legally he's putting everything at risk by trading them and the kind of suppressing that. But if, if you're in the early stages and then he'll treat people, but what's happening and places like Spain and Italy, also China there are, there they are treating we kind of have 19 patients and hospitals and coming out of Italy now is they've actually on their third report and they're just following the, the progress of COVID19 patients in a hospital environment. Speaker 4: (49:01) So two hospitals are in the study and now the retina, the stirred report of 75 covid 19 patients and what it's showing so the, so when, yeah, just understanding that if you go to hospital yeah, then you're already not in a very good way. So and actually for example, they're treating these people the, and they're and you can see all the statistics and the bladed it all out, but there's basically 14, nine non-integrated patients that that they've seen and of of those yeah, that stuff saying really messages of improvement. Yeah. For the ones that have been. Speaker 4: (50:04) And eventually, yeah, the Pope has really recorded it at all. I can give you the study that's saying a hundred percent efficiency for the, for the patients that were non intubated and in the early stages of COVID19. So they're calling it stage one and stage two. If you get in that early stages, then and you treated with the ozone therapy and getting them Derek direct divey then that getting bittering getting sent home basically there if you're intubated there, there are some that got extra debated so they got you know this is really super invasive. By the time you've got something stuck down your throat, then you're, you're already in extremely deep trouble. But I've managed to get some of them off there if they've managed to finish this round of I was in therapy treatment. They were, they showing that there were overall nine people that did die, that were in this hospital environment of the 73 patients that were treated. But those nine people, they were also showing that they didn't actually, they were in such bad state that they can actually finish. Speaker 3: (51:25) They were already intubated and they were already, they couldn't have enough of the ozone. It was too little, too late. Speaker 4: (51:31) But also what the shine as said only takes five sessions of this ozone. Oxygen therapy are painful to get. Right. So it's really quick. And that's also what I find with people that come to me, the various problems, chronic diseases being going through everything so long, they'll get onto ozone therapy and then quickly start getting better very, very quickly. Speaker 3: (51:53) This is super exciting. So we're going to have to wrap up again cause we've, we've, we've done a little, I know this is a big subject day and this, I was trying to push it along a little bit, but I wanted to get to the good stuff. Okay. So I want to get some of those links off you and, and you know, Dr. Wayne McCarthy and dr Robert Rowan. Perhaps you can give me the links. I can put them in the show notes. And your, so we can people reach out to you to find out more about what you are offering your machines. Where's the best place? Speaker 4: (52:28) So I'm a naturalozone.co.nz and all my details are, yeah. On the website. Just quickly, I'll just want to mention what's also extremely relevant in this, this time is actually our air resonators here, air ozone when you're not in the room. Because it's, we're basically, yeah. Going after really powerful, strong concentration of ozone and blasting a room. Then it will remove all viruses, bacteria, pathogens. It's week. Speaker 3: (53:08) No, you could, if someone's being like, you know, in a, in a office environment or factory environment or wherever someone's had the coronavirus or whatever, and you want to make sure you're home, you want to kill the virus, you get a, you'd get one of these, the room, get out of Speaker 4: (53:26) The room while you're doing it. Right? Yeah. And you know, every, like, honestly, every single public area, if it's used safely and you've, you know, after half an hour you can enter back into the room. Those zones dissipated. It's done. It's saying it's oxidized, it's environmentally friendly. It doesn't leave any chemical byproducts. I'm worried about that. That's right. You know, they're like, they're spraying everything with bleach. Speaker 3: (53:55) I want to go back to the gym, but I'm not going back to the gym. Not because of the Corona, but because of the chemicals that they're all spraying around everywhere. Speaker 4: (54:02) We've had this in daycare centers, I'll run it at night when everybody's gone, gone home. And this was before this all hit. But just to stop this spread of flus and colds and we've actually shown 30% reduction and yeah, colds and flus within the kids and stuff. And yeah, so cars, houses, what we're doing is becoming home with our groceries and sticking everything in a box. And I've just got these really small ozone generators and you just put the end of the tube in there and run it for a half an hour and all get into going to try and get touch all the surfaces. If you can get the high concentration, then it is proven that there is no microbe, that it's resistant to ozone Speaker 3: (54:53) Shoot. That is powerful come so that we can really, really protect yourself from whatever else. Speaker 4: (55:00) Yeah. So when, so when all this crisis set my phones yeah, it's just, it's still a, there's still a lot, not a lot of people that really know about it. And also this is kind of you out there are ozone, it's dangerous as bad if you breathe it, you're going to die and things like that. And all we're saying is if you cutting safety labels and everything, and if you, if you operate this machine safely, Speaker 3: (55:30) Every, everything is dangerous. If you use it the wrong way, car is dangerous. If you don't follow the rules on the road, you know that that should not be prohibited from us, from, from using it in, in the, in that when it's going to actually benefit their health. Speaker 4: (55:47) Correct. Yeah. And not, and not ruin the environment, you know, so, so it'd be the penetration than anything else in the market that we can see actually, because it's because it's a guest that we'll get to just to see the hidden areas and things. So Speaker 3: (56:11) What about ozone water? Just last thing. So putting ozone into the water Speaker 4: (56:17) Water is amazing for us. Yeah. And yeah, so we actually have just small resonate ozone generators. If all you want to do is drink ozonated water, it's getting enhanced active oxygen into the body. We should be drinking water anyway. Why not super charge oxygenated water. You can drink up to eight classes a day and you start off slowly and you and you build up drinking on an empty stomach and it's really great energy boost. Boost your immune system also on a water. The students, you know, the hand sanitizer is outside of all the supermarkets at the moment on a hand and these pop paper was skin conditions and things like that. We've got studies that show that ozonated water is significantly more effective than hand sanitizer and it's, and it's good for you. Yeah. Yeah. It's not going to dry. Our skin is actually really good for us. Yeah. Speaker 3: (57:30) Wow. That's powerful. Okay, so everybody go to naturalozone.co.nz. Check out all the machines that come here and what the different applications and you can, you can educate people to people. Buy something, a machine of you, you can educate them in the use of it and do that virtually or how do you do, do that? Speaker 4: (57:52) Yeah. Yeah. So give me a call if you're unsure where to start. And join our newsletter and we will have, we'll be coming out with more videos soon. And we also have oxygen concentrators when, when, what happened, when all this, when we started to go into lockdown because I have oxygen concentrators and stop cause I used in conjunction with industrialized zone and I was doing therapy then. Everybody started panic buying, well my oxygen concentrators. And we, we stopped up for on public and, and, and generally people are getting these as if you've got a lung condition and breathing oxygen or see if you've got SIO PD or if you're an S medic or something like that. Having a oxygen concentrator is a really good idea. Speaker 3: (58:54) Yeah. We've got one extra tour, hyperbaric just to top up, you know, mum's levels, you know, if she doesn't want to get into the chamber cause it's a big mission. Just to, just to have a top off, you know, it's a really good thing to have I think, and especially if you're going to get sick or anything, so. Speaker 4: (59:12) Sure. Speaker 3: (59:14) Okay. So you've got those as well. So you've got a whole re array of, of different devices and you know, the rectal staff and all that. You can explain it cause people would be like, how do I do that? Speaker 4: (59:26) Yeah, right. That's right. Yeah. But yeah, like usually, yeah, if you want to prevent disease and live a long and healthy life, I would really say, you know, at home I was on therapy is biohacking dream. And, and will save you lots of money in the, in the long term, cause you won't need to go to the doctor anymore and you won't need to get some fluids. Speaker 3: (59:51) But prevention isn't it? That's what we're all about, not being there, Speaker 4: (59:56) But usually what's happening. People get disease and they find out about ozone therapy that come to me. Right. But if you're not comfortable with our zone, at the very least drink that water, it's really good for us. Yeah. And, and drink that daily. Speaker 3: (01:00:11) Put it in your ear like that. That can't be too painful. Speaker 4: (01:00:15) Yeah. Speaker 3: (01:00:16) That's fantastic. Kim, thank you so much for your time and your information. I'll grab all those links off you. So naturalozone.co.nz. You've got any questions for Kim? Michelle, she'll answer those heavily for you. Get this word out there. We need to be sharing. This is why we have the show so we can share great information with each other and get, get that to the people that need it. So thanks very much for your time today. Come any last words before we go, Speaker 4: (01:00:41) But just, just thanks so much, Lisa, for having me on the show. Really enjoyed talking to you and yeah, look forward to your upcoming podcast and reading your book. Speaker 3: (01:00:51) Great. And now that we're connected, we'll be dangerous. Speaker 4: (01:00:54) Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 1: (01:00:57) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.

Well for those of you that are joining us, we are here in the warrior divas real talk for real women Facebook group and we are doing our show we're adapting to our ever changing society. We are being emotionally connected in a social distancing world so Today, I am excited about the show we have for you We but before we get started, I wanted to let you know that if you're watching this in the group, you can invite other people to join us in the group to watch it. comment in the comment section, give a little like a little love. Leave one of the emoticons if we make it happy, sad or mad, any of that in the in the group. And I want to welcome our guests today and just a few moments, they're gonna let us know a little bit about themselves. And then as we go through the show, you'll get to learn a little bit more about them. As I said, I'm Angie Monroe, I am the host of the show. This show airs every Tuesday from 11am to 1pm Central Standard Time on fishbowl radio network and then you can find it starting at 3pm on all the podcast social networking sites. So if you hear something you like today or or you really want somebody else listen to that's the great way to share it. Plus, it'll be here in the group as well. So We're going to start off we've got Stacey up in the top we've got Janet Stacey wave. Janet under Stacey. We've got misty right next to Stacey to Janet and then we got cam. I don't know how it's showing up on everybody. thing. I guess mine's a little bit different. So getting yelled away. So I want y'all to we're gonna start with Stacey and kind of go in that order. So Stacy if you will, kind of give us a who you are, what your occupation is, where you're located and what you're passionate about. My name is Stacey Penny when I am the owner of Alexander medical Spa in Hurst, Texas. I'm also very involved in the Chamber of Commerce. I'm on the board of directors. I'm also on the board of directors for central arts of Bedford and Hearst. I like being involved in the community. That's one of my passions. I love helping other people. I like to be involved in charities. I also am passionate about learning. And I like to learn from other people. I like to learn from books. And I like to learn from doing. And this is my first podcast so I'm learning right now. Awesome. All right, we have Janet Janet, tell us a little bit Hey, Shay break out and dance or when I was live that and you did that sway app yesterday, didn't you? Yes, I had 500 views as people actually think I can dance that good which is really awesome. Yeah, I can't really dance that good y'all. Okay, my name is Janet Manor and I live in the middle of nowhere Kansas. I used to live in Texas and I miss you guys miss all the Texas hair and all the beauty of Texas women. And not that I don't love my Kansas ladies, but I do miss Texas and and I am retired but I still passionate about helping People, I I take a lot of phone calls and do a lot of praying for people still people call me for that a lot. And I teach a Bible study class of about 25 women every Monday night. So that's I'm really passionate about studying the Bible. I have the time, most of the time now to do it. And so a very busy life up until this point. So it's been, it's a blessing to be able to sit and sit in word and he's, we just did James Bible study. And so he's prepared us for a time as this to consider it all joy to be in this trial. That's where we are. And as women and all the people that we love and care for are going to follow our lead. You're just really that's the truth and our families. So trying to keep it all joyful here, and it's not being unrealistic, but now's the time to shine. Ladies, now's the time to shine. So absolutely, absolutely. Misty, how about you? Hi, I missed you. I'm the owner of picture perfect brows and beauty and co founder of expanded woman. And you know, I, I'm located but for Texas By the way, and I'm super passionate about people, connecting others and also just empowering other women building confidence. Those are the things and I'm very woman centric as well. So I definitely think we aligned in that way, Angie. Absolutely. So Kim, Kim get started. Marcel reviver talk about her so much, but many of y'all have not ever really officially met her. So this is Kim. Hi, Kim. I'm Kim. And I'm in Grapevine, Texas. And um, I, for a long time have been a small business owner had a graphic design business out of my house. Really Long time since 2015, I've been doing ministry and biblical counseling with women and I graduated last November with my certification to be a biblical counselor. And so, out of that, hopefully a ministry is being birthed. But, you know, God had different plans for how 2020 is gonna go so I'm just my word for the year was restart. Um, I know that I'm still very passionate about women seeing women healed, broken hearts restored, just walking in freedom and and the path that God has for them. So that's my true passion and how that shows up and what that looks like kind of ebbs and flows. As I think I'm growing and maturing in the Lord, so we'll see what he has for next. Yeah, it's interesting because without planning it tonight, we ended up with two of the ladies on the show that have helped me with my external beauty. We got misty and Stacy that have helped me with the external beauty. And then Janet and Kim have helped me with my spiritual beauty over the last several years of my life, and I tell the story about mending the soul all the time and how much I hated that class but loved that class. And Janet's the one that kind of I brought it up to her one day and she goes you're in my class period, you know it's done now I was like, Okay, what did I get myself into? So and then all that you've seen growing with divas impact the magazine The the beautiful flyers and all the thing, the logo for warrior divas all of that has been done by Kim. So pm is the previous creative genius behind all of that. So Mary, and I just get to come up with great, crazy ideas and go, Hey, friends, let's have some fun. But so, you know, Kim has been on isolation a little bit longer than the rest of us. And I'll let her share a little bit about that as we go on. But we were just talking about what is the purpose of the show? What are we wanting to do with the show? And yes, I'm not touching my face. I'm touching my hair. So don't anybody freak out about Corona on me because I'm putting my hair in my house. But, you know, our biggest thing is we want to be somebody that shines a light. So we realized that when you are socially isolated, you don't need to be emotionally isolated. And so we're going to start doing more and more things like this inside the group. Just to have a fun way Friday night, we're going to have a pajama party inside the group everybody show up, we're going to open up the zoom live thing. Let everybody jump on, we'll have a little dance party on there, we'll do a whole bunch of fun stuff inside the group. With that, just because moms and women married single with kids without kids, we all just need to blow off steam at some point, right? Ah. So part of what we're wanting to be is shine that light, we're going to do that and a lot of spiritual ways. We're going to do that in a lot of emotional ways. We're going to do that in a lot of fun ways. So Friday night will be instead of a divas night out it will be a divas night in so you will start seeing us talking about that later on this week. And we'll do one of those each week until we're set free and then we'll start having divas nights out because we'll be building relationships behind the scenes. So somebody somebody had a post up the other day, one of the single people I know was talking said, Wait a minute, you mean I actually got to talk to somebody and get to know them first before I go on a real date. So we're going to take the opportunity to get to know you and we want to talk with, you know, the girls here, I want you to realize that it's not just me in this group. There's other amazing women in this group that can leave things up and talk with you and encourage you and inspire you. And that's what we're all here to do. So this morning, I shared in the group, the john Maxwell video about leadership, and I was live streaming watch parties in this group and another group and trying to leave the notes in there and I do have the notes I'll put them in the notes in a file here inside the group from that section once I get them cleaned up to where other people can kind of interpret my notes as I typed them up, but they're still a little wonky and You know, it was great because he was speaking to leaders. Now tomorrow, he's going to be talking and tomorrow and to say he's going to be talking, turning adversity into advantage. And we're going to kind of kick that off tonight talking about what we as women are thinking and doing and feeling, and, and all of that. So what I want you to know is, we're women here, we may be sitting in a somewhat good situation. I don't know everybody's situation here. But I do know all these women, I don't know all their stories. But I do know all these women. And I do know that they are women that lead with love, they leave with graciousness, they don't lead with fear, they lead with joy. And that's why I was so excited that they joined us on the show today. So as we get going, we're going to start off with emotional health. So first off, we're going to do a temperature check of everybody on the call. So how are you Feeling what's going on? For some of us, it's day one for some of us. What, 90 Kim? Boy? So, um, you know, let's start. Let's start with Kim. Since she's been the longest Kim, how are you feeling? I you know, I'm actually feeling really good. I think that, you know, my journey started on January 2 with my quadruple bypass. So, I think I went through some emotional shock that kind of first month, like, I came home from the hospital on the fifth. And physically, I did great. But emotionally there were some really tough days. The it's not fair. This shouldn't have happened to me, like, you know, this was just completely out of nowhere and I didn't fit the profile and you Still, so, for me, it was sort of having to deal with a lot of the I'm having to come to acceptance with what is my new normal, I had to come to the fact that, you know, I don't know what my future is gonna look like and I gotta be okay with that now, you know, I don't know how this is, is gonna go it's a progressive disease. So new normal looks totally different. And then just even changing everyday habits I have to work out I have to eat completely different. And so there was a lot of that morning I can't eat a cheeseburger and my pepperoni pizza with extra cheese anymore. Took me a month and you know, but then I started discovering new foods, and I learned that I kind of did like working out and You know, you start to accept some stuff and roll your eyes when you said that can you rolled your eyes? here's the here's the funny truth is, it is like ripping teeth out to get me to start working out like getting on the treadmill. But I can tell about eight minutes in. Like, I don't know if it's the dopa mean or what happens chemically but then I start liking it and my 20 minute workout I'm noticing is going 3035 40 minutes like I'm, I actually feel good I feel better. I it's, it really is starting to shift and that was something I didn't expect at all. And then I even started lifting weights this week. And that was completely something I never thought I would be here year was restart and so in every way I've had to restart So it is kind of neat that here God sort of prepared me because I haven't been leaving the house that much I was social isolating already cuz you know you're immunocompromised and healing and and really restricted on what you can do for a while so, you know, I think the Lord was like No Let's prepare her for the corona virus apocalypse just a few months so you know that's where where I'm at I think my husband thinks I'm insane cuz I have bought enough food for the apocalypse and then even like ordering online the dog snacks and dog food so he called it the dog Apocalypse Now as they are delivering that but we're good over here in grapevine. Good Yeah, yeah. So So misty. What about you what's going on in your world I know there's you. You've been doing a lot inside our community as well to take care of the emotional health of some of our community. Yes, there's there's an organization that our chamber has called leadership hgb. And you're a part of the class this year and y'all had a big event planned. The next one, I had to get scrapped because of everything that's going on. But your group in your class just pivoted so beautifully to really attend to what's going on in our community. So I want you to talk a little bit about how it affects you, but what you've been doing to help those around us. Sure, sure. So um, yesterday, you know, worse I'm a salon and permanent makeup company. So yesterday we find out that we had to close the shut down, so Okay, no more livelihood. Don't have the option of unemployment. So, you know, there's a little bit of that fear factor, but I've really been through this whole thing kind of tapped into books and motivational podcasts and things to just kind of get my mindset, right, because you know how that goes. But I refuse to let the devil get me and let him fill me the women are so I honestly feel way more calm than I thought I would, knowing, knowing what's going on. And it helps me to help other people during this time too. So our group has put together another group that basically, we currently call it Corona virus. Press help us here AGV. So for this whole ATV area, and let me tell you a little bit about the project that we started off with. There was a mirror a wall that was painted on next to a company where some Hispanic people owned it and somebody graffiti I hate Mexicans on the wall. So our proud our program was to create a mural, which we did. And it looks amazing. The mural is the map of the HTV area. And we painted over the I hate Mexican. And it just turned out to be so beautiful. Unfortunately, we don't get to show it off yet, but we will eventually. But it is a great reminder of all the community resources that are available in the area. So our secondary thing was to have community resource fair at the same time for the mural unveiling. So instead of doing that, and on this coronavirus, hgb we took it virtual since we cannot really be together. Um, and basically we set out you know, different resources for people what's available, we set up you know, grocery updates and activity websites and all the different things that our community could come together and we made it a needs profile, so we can help those and there's another side project to where we set up little news people Paper stands and put products in there like toilet paper and toothpaste and and just some resources for people to just grab if they need it and also where people can donate goods as well. So it's been really good to help kind of take my mind off that of what's going on around me and helping others. Well, let me see what what's the HTV stand for? GPS you list Bedford? Okay. I thought much better the three cities. Yeah. So it's kind of like our little suburb area. Yeah. Yep. I just want to make sure I knew that was Sam. Yeah. And one of the one of the beautiful parts of it is if you're talking and somebody asked a question about the corona virus or different things like that, they don't want a lot of speculation in the group. One of the rules is the group is to cite your cite your source. So we just we want to make sure that we're citing our sources at all times. So that right there is huge for turning that to for what they're doing, because, you know, everybody can go out there and speculate and do random what is a conspiracy theorist? A lot of that there there is a lot of that so and I think john even said it today he goes first off if the media is your source you need to get a different source World Health Organization to you know, CDC go to places and get get it straight, quote unquote, from the horse's mouth so yeah, so Janet, what about your world? How is things going in your world? I know you've got a little space between the all the normal most of the time Yeah, well, there's still lines that are Sam's and there's still lines in our stores and people are still hoarding the toilet paper. And so I our little group, we we set up in the basement and we social distance to each other enough, but we're making masks You know, the ladies can so I can't so but we're cutting. We're doing okay. I mean, I'm so grateful for the you know, we have our phones and we can still talk and have this group and zoom and Facebook each other and FaceTime each other. I mean, what, what would we you know, I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful for that because emotionally and you know, if it all goes down, we're all gonna, it's gonna be a little more difficult, but this way we can stay connected and so I'm grateful that we have that, you know, that's really good. As far as I can see, we're a bunch of can i say i'm not going to use curse words but really a bunch of really tough American women. And that's starting to come out we have this Christian toughness I don't even know the warrior divas perfect because I just see a bunch of Lady she's got it together. You know, they, you know, people are sick people are isolated, you know, but they're still just kind of keeping it together and I'm just really proud of the people that I know in my life. I know there's other people who are struggling financially lost jobs, and they're still, you know, just carrying on helping their neighbor. It's just incredible, really incredible to watch. So I'm blessed in that regard because all I see is good stuff. That's all I see. I don't see any nonsense yet. So I'm grateful I got tickled watching the Facebook means or something the other day one of the guys goes I don't even know why we still have farmers and all that stuff. Why don't they just go to the store and buy this stuff that they want from the store? And then somebody else's if we have to, if we have to hunt for our food, I don't even know where Doritos lives. And you know, I love the tongue and cheek of it, but it's because of that tongue in cheek. I've had people reach out to me and going Hey, could you tell me how do I make mac and cheese with ah crap. You know, they need to know how to make their Is what mac and cheese they know they've got the ingredients for it they just don't know how to put it all together so you know trying to be some of those women that has some of these answers together not just mean not just you yeah but you know how to be creative and like my guests on my leading moment show on Thursday said he goes Guess what? He goes the store still have plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables on the shelves, because everybody's buying all the junk food all the company. Now don't eat junk food. You can. Yeah, and then another thing he brought up that misty I was going to tell you might be I'll send you a picture for it. That might be a good thing to post in your group was if it's got the wick symbol on it, that the women and children that are eating off of that wick that's only the only cheese and milk and eggs and things that they can buy cereal that they can buy. So if you have a choice, choose something other than that, but don't wipe Yeah, the witnesses are limited. That sounds like that is just huge. So I've been repeating that and shouting that as often as I can. So I just I took a picture of one of the wick signs the other day and said we need to post about this and I have it That's good. So I'll send you the picture lets you post about it and then I'll share it in post about it too. So all right, Stacy. So you're kind of in the same boat that misty is in yesterday, six o'clock and a face to face interaction. And then you know, what, what are you going to be doing? How are you emotionally handling this pivot? Well, I had already made the decision on Thursday or Friday that I was going to close before before we were closed. Because I have employees that have children. I'm all of them. But most of my people because I'm an anti aging are older. They shouldn't be coming to see me. Some of them are secret still mentioned He's messaging me, Hey, I'm working from home, can you can you get that treatment done to my eyes and we won't tell anybody, you know, just show up at the office. I still have that going on, because people want still want to get their stuff done. But I mean, I'm a mom and I have four children, I really don't need to get sick, what are they gonna do without me. And in the grand scheme of things, I have a roof over my head, I have food, even if my my business falls apart, which it won't. And I need to be here for my kids and my family. They're the most important thing. So I had already chosen, but I have gone through many different emotions throughout the last couple of weeks. I was kind of in the know about certain things beforehand because my brother works for a city and he's in a director position. So he was telling me about closed downs before they were starting to be announced. And so I was wearing before everybody else and I feel good right now I feel the things that I feel are like, I'm excited that I'm going to get to see my kids. I'm a working mom. I'm a mom that has owned a business for almost 20 years. So I have been busy. This whole time. My kids don't see me as much as some other moms get to get to see their kids. My kids are very what they were asking yesterday, where are you home so early? You know, why did you What's going on? Why is mom here? And so I'm anxious to see what it's going to be like when I'm here the entire week with him because, you know, they, they don't they only have that when I'm on vacation. I'm anxious to see I'm anxious to cook food. You know, I because I own a spa. I come home later. So sometimes a lot of times our food is you know what Costco made that my husband gets put in the oven before I got here. So I'm excited about getting to make some things and getting to do some art projects. That's what I'm Putting my focus in. Now I know, I have a list of things that I can get done remotely, to move my business forward. But every time I think about my list, I also think about, I know that I'm going to be okay. What can I do to help people that are probably not going to be okay? Yeah, that's good. There's so many people that work in a restaurant that are paycheck to paycheck. You know, I have a business savings account. I can cover my bills for a while. at my office. My husband works from home. He we're not going to lose any income from him at all. So what can I do to help other people? That's what I've been thinking about. Yeah. But I, I mean, I'm my, my biggest fear is, I don't know how to not be busy. I know I was thinking the same thing. I think how do I think that problem So maybe I can figure out how to be busy doing more things that are fun. The other thing that I think all of us are going to figure out how to be busy at home organizing and whatever else we can think of. We should people like me and Missy who take care of people all day long. We don't take care of ourselves as much. Right? So we should probably think about doing some self care. Mm hmm. Already on that? Yeah. Are you? Mm hmm. No, I watched your list. I can say I can tell you that. I used to be super busy. And I'm not super busy. Now. As much as I was when I lived in Texas. Also, I've had six months of my husband being retired at home. How's that? Because I'm worried about two weeks in with my husband. And there is an adjustment and he's a I'm married to a really nice man. It's still an adjustment. So you will have those moments, right, honestly. And I just say, I'm gonna go in my room and be by myself, you know, I just take that time, but you learn to do other things when you're not busy working or taking care of kids, like, I still help with my grandkids too. So, you know, I'm trying to do art projects and find things. I mean, I've already raised my kids and I'm having to rethink how do I do all this care at home for these kids. And so, but the business that you have when you're outside working versus coming home, I will say it's an adjustment but you're you guys are creative women, and you're hard working and so you're going to find things to fill your time you think, Oh, I'm gonna retired and I'm not gonna be as busy. That's not true. You just find different things to do because you're productive and because you like helping and because you like doing, you will find other things to do. I mean, that's just, it's God's good that way. He does give us other things and God help us all might instead of hit water, you might have to have some wine and let's be honest Vodka, I'm just kidding. Really. wine, take yourself, take your bath. But you know, God's gonna give you what you need when you need it. I mean, it's amazing. So you think I'm gonna have all this free time no other people are gonna come and look to you for things they're gonna call you. They call you and come to you because they know they can't. And they know you're going to answer they know you're going to cry with them when they cry, and you're gonna laugh when they laugh. And they know that if they call you you'll answer Now, I'm not saying being emotionally available for everybody all the time, but you find new things to do is I guess the point, you know, and and what you said God will find what you need when you need it. So the past probably three or four months, I've been training a new employee and then my employee of nine or 10 years is moving on and it's been really difficult. I've been working six, seven days a week, so maybe this is what I needed. Trying to stay home a little. I think the Lord, the Lord's just sending an adjustment, you know, we've been prepared for this time, as a time we're all prepared for this time we've been placed here. It's not a coincidence that we're all women and Esther's at this time. And you know, you'll find your inner Esther, and you'll, you know, God's gonna put people in front of us, and he's going to give us what we need when we need it. And even if you're a single mom, and you ask for help, just ask for help, because this older ladies are willing to, you know, even if, you know, we, we can watch them on a park bench. We don't have to, we don't have to be in the same room with them. But we can actually watch a kid for an hour or whatever. I mean, you can do that outside. We don't you can, you know, you can do that. So that'll work. Well. And I think another thing that a lot of people don't think about is because we have had this happen in the middle of all the social technology we have you're really not as alone as you could have been. So we have a lot of resources to reach out to talk to ask questions. And you can do it in private message, you can do it over email, you can do it on a Facebook post, whatever it is. And we met I went to a event last fall, where they talked about it was last fall last summer sometime where they were talking about abusive relationships. And I'm going to bring it up during this part because we're about shifting to family dynamics. And, you know, I'm married to a great guy. We've been in business together for seven years. I had my own business before that, but he's had his plumbing business for seven years. So we've worked together. So being home alone together hasn't really sunk into us. And he's part of the essential forces so it he probably won't be home as much as some of the other ones. But on the other side of it, there are women that are trapped at home. home with their monster, there are children that are trapped at home with their monster. So my my point to all this is, is if you're a woman, and you're listening to this, and you're trapped in a situation like that, we are the women that are saying, you can reach out to us, we are the Oregon, saying you can reach out to us. We want you to get stronger. We want to help you get a plan together, we want to get you out of that situation. We will pull all of our resources together to help with that. But we have to know that's what you're involved in and what's what's going on. And we don't want to put you in a date a more dangerous situation while you're trying to get out of that situation. So we will help find ways to do that safely for you and everyone involved. So, again, that's a little side note, but I feel it's important because when we start talking a lot down, you know, that's, I mean holidays is when domestic violence calls go up. It's just Police statistics statistics see YouTube can be a professional speaker. It is a real life statistic that that's when they go up. So it's it's something that I'm not hearing any of the media talk about or any of the police departments talk about. I'm hearing about the police departments being exposed to things and police forces dwindling because of all this. So therefore, it behooves us as warrior divas to do what we can and do our part and be that resource for women. So Alright, so we're going to talk about families you know, we're kind of almost empty nesters. Now, every time we think we're empty nester, one bounce back. I don't know what it is for Allie and cannon and the twins live a little bit down the road but they were here yesterday and they and today doing laundry because their washer and dryers best. It's so kicked them all out of the house before we got on the call tonight and then set myself to a shop to do some what we call arts and crafts time. So mainly I just need a girl time. We all need Girl. Girl time we all get it. How are you? How are you planning to balance the family time with your work time or with your own? Your own sanity? Like Janet hiding in a closet. No, no. So who wants to go first on that one? Don't everybody speak it? Well, I will. And I don't really have I decided since today was my first like real day off in the quarantine and that I was gonna relax today and just enjoy the day with my family. And you know, we ran real quick to the salon. I grabbed all the essentials that I could do self care on myself. So when it's not podcasting I'm gonna do some micro needling and you know things to make myself feel better and look better to, why not? before you make before you make decisions, make sure we talk about the other procedures that we need to do because we need to put them in. Okay? Put them in the calendar. That's where I was going with this is I'm going to kind of create, you know, a plan each day, I'm like, we're gonna work out we're gonna, all those things I'm not doing right now. That's what we're getting. And I would really like to take the time, like even a family workout and you know, spend some more time doing yoga, which I haven't done in a really long time, but I enjoy. So and I get to do more cooking because I'd actually like cooking for my family and things like that. So all of those are, I'm kind of excited. I told my my kids yesterday, I was like, Hey, guys, I'm gonna be home for like, at least three weeks, you know, probably. And my younger son was like, yeah, you know, he really misses me but my older one is He's like, he could care less to be honest. He's like, I'm in my room playing video games with everyone else. So it's pretty much the same dynamic. I have a feeling that my, my spouse will be probably quarantined as of Monday I'm thinking because he works in Dallas County. And they've, you know, done the whole, what is it, um, shelter you have to stay in your, in your house, basically. So, um, I have a feeling they'll be closed on Monday. So then he'll be home and we're not used to seeing each other all the time, even though I love him and adore him. And we're probably gonna have to keep our space social distancing to know. Like you do your thing and go play watch your car shows and I'll go do my thing and work for a little bit. Because I plan on not stop working. I do have things in place for that. So maybe spend a few times a few hours a day working and a few few hours a day spending extra time with my family. The new normal right the new normal Yeah. Yeah. Well Scott actually started working from home last week. So with me being immunocompromised he had got special permission to already work from home once this kind of started blowing up the week before so um, we've had a week now to adjust and so I have you know, my office downstairs, we set him up, his office is upstairs and with the door he can shut and it's gone real well except, you know, the 10 year old who doesn't understand that you know, she's used to when Daddy's home he's played ad so he's fun dad. So he getting her to understand that daddy's actually working eight to five, Monday through Friday and and what those boundaries are kinda look at I think it's been a harder adjustment on Avery than it actually has. Me and Scott to be honest with you, um, one thing I thought was funny in our world is trying to leave God outside if it's sunny we we've gone for walks, we walked three days last week, we went outside and walked, walked to the park, trying to let her play and be a kid. You know, everyone's gone home school crazy. And we just decided, you know, she's gonna learn if she's not missing anything. You know, we did a couple of things, but we just sort of let her be at home and learn how to FaceTime friends like this, this whole environments different for her and I think it's harder on a nine year old, who's used to that consistent schedule. If I get up I go to school. I'm at school till this time and then I have my activities and then boom, it's like spring break, and then everything she does got canceled. So for us, I think it was just letting her have a week to just downshift and deal with that emotional impact without dumping. Now learn. Honor, you know, so I think this week will be an interesting week and how do we now sort of bring in to all this mix the homeschool thing and make sure she doesn't fall too behind? And I just don't intend on being too overbearing about it. And maybe I'm maybe I'm weird that way, but I figured she's ahead. She's smart. Let her just kind of enjoy what she can and do. I mean, do the things they're going to ask you to do but i'm not i'm just not I always said I was arts and crafts. Mom, not school mom. So, you know, like who which one of us can even teach Common Core math. Let's just be honest about that. Like, I can't. So there's only gonna be so much as a mom, I can do anyway because I know. I'm not trained as an educator. So I feel like you guys need to quit coughing I'm getting nervous now. Far away. We're social distance. We're good. All right. Yeah. Well, well, Stacy, what about your kids? You've got school aged kids as well. How are they have they hasn't even hit them yet that they don't have school. And yes, let me talk. You know, I have two sets of kids. So I have a kid that's 29 and 19. And then I have kids that are nine and eight. So and I'm still a mom to both sets. It's a kind of separate though, because the two the 29 and the 19 year old just moved in together in a tent. To an apartment in Bedford, they really like it. And so like I've been helping them I was there yesterday still unboxing stuff. They've been there a month but they have some boxes that they still haven't unlocked. And one of them I will not say which one was waiting for mommy to come by and not the younger one to help him get his stuff on. I mean I'm still momming them I'm still I'm telling them to stay home I brought some masks and some gloves and some Lysol to their apartment yesterday. It's two boys. So having to be mom still mom them even though they're older without being overbearing, and they have been staying home though I'm so excited for them. Because usually they don't listen. And I I kind of taught them the things that they need to do for cleaning. And if they do have to go somewhere like you're not supposed, like even touching the thing when you're done. Getting gas, you really shouldn't be touching that you need to put so that's why I bought brought them some gloves, throw the gloves away after you get your gas before you get in your car. So I have that situation. And then here at my house I have my two girls that are nine, about to be nine and eight and set I'm sorry, eight and seven right now. They have for the entire week. They have been doing homeschool. But kind of haphazardly, you know. They've been doing prodigy and Adventure Time and ABC mouse. But starting tomorrow, they go to a charter school international leadership of Texas. They're actually going to be doing the zoom meetings and they're with their teachers. And we had to do all the technology today. They both they both their school was giving out Chromebooks to the students that don't already have them. We have Chromebooks. They we got them for cursive missed last year. My husband's in it. He thought they needed to learn how to use a mouse. So he bought them Chromebooks. And so they're going to start their zoom meetings. I'm worried about my eight year old because she's dyslexic. And she really needs some extra care. But her dyslexic teacher is going to be on zoom meetings with her too. So I'm excited to see how it's gonna happen because I know it's a new normal for them, too. They have this charter school has 20 schools throughout Texas. So they're doing the zoom meetings with all the schools at the same time. I'm wondering how smooth it's going to do the first day we'll see. And I'm still going to be doing some work also. I'm still going to be on my computer. I have an internship program that I'm working on for the Chamber of Commerce. And then recently, we still have right you can we have time to work on that missing. And then Angie and I are also we are on the leadership Alumni Association, the same leadership class that misty is currently in. Angie and I have already been through the leadership program. And we are on this leadership, steering leadership alumni steering committee. So we're going to try to help put social media together helps steer our alumni helps steer our alumni, we can make sure that our alumni stay still engaged in the chamber after they've gone through leadership. We want our alumni to be leaders in the community. We want our alumni to be part of boards, board of directors in hcb area, and we want them to be the leader. So Angie and I are trying to figure out how to still work on that. A little foreign to them and and challenge them both a little bit. And so I'm going to be working on that and then I like I said, I don't know what I'm going to be doing here. busy. I don't I'm going to keep myself busy doing things I'm not sure how it's gonna go. It's It's my mind is like, do I set up a whole plan of all of these art projects that we're going to get done? Do I cook like so many meals? I haven't decided which things I want to be busy doing. I know. I'm going to figure out how to be busy though. Oh, yeah, yeah, I think we all figure that out really easily, don't we? Yeah, yes. What about you, Misty? Oh, how to how to figure out how to not be busy. Well, what about the kids? What are they doing and shifting through right now? How are they? How are they still on spring break. So they really are, and Burnsville has not figured out what they're doing yet. They're trying Monday, we're supposed to pick up Chromebooks for those who don't have access to social media or like tablets or internet and that type of thing. So we're we're just waiting for them to give us more direction. Right now they're just having a free for all to be honest with you. They're playing video games are eating all the snacks you know that a house in the home that have a 12 year old and a 17 year old boy and then a seven year old stepdaughter so she's here this weekend hanging out with us and that's really cool because normally we don't get to have her all weekend we only get to have our own Sundays and one one night during the week so this will be some extra time we can all spend with her too. Also, I just signed up enough to do the snap ology Lego daily challenge. You seen those but so he made the pirate ship today with his Lego so those are things trying to keep him busy, but they're bored already. I think. Yeah. Well Janet, you're kind of like me, you you've kind of moved on from the little kids at home but you also have grandkids that are around and I know I know Alyssa was doing homeschooling so but Alyssa is also expecting to So that's how I'm a baby in about eight weeks. Yeah, so you're gonna be probably doing some pitch hitting won't Yeah. So yeah, it's it's that new that grandma role which I have adult children, that's still the mean, which I can totally relate to. which is way, way more than I thought it would ever be. It's kind of interesting, but I will say it's just a blessing to have grandkids and we're expecting a new baby boy and I've been able to hear somebody come in here now that I'm talking about these grandkids. And I'm surprised they haven't come in yet. Honestly, I am too hot. And so I don't know. We're finding new things to do. I'm, I'm stealing all the ideas on Facebook and people are putting so many amazing ideas out there. We're doing all that we're just praying for some warm weather. So we can kind of get outside here in Kansas. It's still really cold. We have one nice day and then we have three or four bad days. So I'm waiting for that. But I think getting outside helps you guys. We're not we can get outside, we're allowed to go outside. It's like you can't get outside. I think sort of everybody doing the electronics, take a walk, do something get outside, it's healthy and mentally. And I know one of the small towns here, they were putting the bear the stuffed bears in the windows so that people could go around and find the bears the little kids, find the bears. But find something to do, you know, go on a scavenger hunt, and give them a list of things to go outside. outside. Is that your best bet for a while even if it's cold go outside. I mean, that's, we've missed having our kids outside, they're in school all day. You know, they go do things all day. Now you have an opportunity to kind of reset, like kimsey word, you know, reset, it was a reset, that we use that restart. We said, yeah. Yeah, we had to reset after 911 and we survived all that economically. And we you know, we lost a A lot of stuff after 911 My husband was a pilot that got, you know, furloughed and, you know, this too will all pass but go outside. I mean, family wise, mentally wise, you know, do something outside and you know, the sunshine is good for you the virus dies at 180 degrees I don't know. Right? It's vitamin D and vitamin C are anti viral and so mentally get out some put it on your list to go outside every day and take a walk, do what you have to do, but get them outside. I think it's important. Well, part of the arts and crafts Mike's doing is I bought a boat last summer that's my boat. It's not his boat. It's my boat. It's it can be ours but it's my boat. And so he was just doing some of the last minute touches to make sure it was boat ready because that's one thing we can do. We can go out on the lake we can go in that's socially distances you from quite a few people just being out on the lake. One of the other things that I'm glad you brought up the 911 thing because I've been thinking a lot about that this week. You know, there's a our kids Janet's and my kids and they see you've got one up there too. They were born. And they were in school when 911 happened, you know, so they, Janet and I have children that serve in our country and And me too. I'm a part of a military moms group that has paratroopers that are coming back to the states that are going straight into quarantine. They're not getting the big welcome home. They're not getting all of the pomp and circumstance that goes on with that they're going here's a tent and they're like, I just came from a tent. So the ones that go through the tent, they they're, they're putting them into isolation, barracks and things like that. But you know, Cody, my son is supposed To be leaving the country at some point this week, I was supposed to be in Orlando from Friday until this following this coming Friday, from last Friday till this coming Friday. And then I was going over to spend time with Cody at his duty station before he left the country for six months. And so I had to change tickets. And as I'm changing the tickets, I'm already having the emotions well up about 911. I came out of nowhere. And when the when the planes stopped flying, I didn't sleep for those three days. Because I was I've grown up in ulis. I'm so used to hearing the planes fly, that when the planes weren't flying, it was eerily deafening to me. Yeah, so when the first pilot took off from DFW Airport, I was one of them out there with the guy that had the big American flag and we were listening to the air traffic controllers, talk to the pilots and send them off. And, and so we knew when that happened that our world was forever changed. And we're already we've we immediately saw changes in how security was done and how things were handled security on the cockpit doors, TSA, all of that immediately changed. And one of my friends that's a writer and manages a lot of freelance writers for Thomas Nelson publishing, put out a suggestion the other day to start making notes of the things that you see that may be changing. And I thought that was a really good thing. So in the industry, you're in, in the in your child's life, what was something that was so normal, a week, a month last year, that is either not going to be around or something abnormal. Moving forward, we've been talking about putting Chromebooks and students hands in every student having a laptop or a tablet for years. And it takes a crisis like this to realize that we should have stopped talking about it and just done it. You know, so what does that look like? What are some of the things? I'm going to throw out? One of the things that I thought that I've already thought of with universal pushing movies straight to DVD, I mean, not DVD but DVR, straight to the streaming services, there may not be a major need for theaters anymore. Big Box theaters, wow. At least a drastically reduced number of them. So what's something that you can look at that you're looking at now and you can start thinking maybe it's going to shift medical supplies. Right now China makes most of our medical supplies and I was told by someone who their company, she's a salesperson for the company that that supplies hospitals. And before like, she was telling me Probably, I don't know, a month and a half two months ago. Make sure you buy all the needles that you're going to need for the next year by all the gloves you're going to need for the next year. She said, we're not even telling our hospitals this yet. But there's one ship coming from China right now full of medical supplies, and that's the last one for a while. She said it, it's going to be changed for an entire year. And because they're not working, they're not able to work. They're not making medical supplies. And so now we see here, we are incredibly dependent on China. medical supplies also they they do a lot of our medication too. They do a lot of our What is it called? The one that is not the brand name. Generic Jay did a lot of our generics. And we might run out of certain medications because they do a lot of our generics. They make most of our Tylenol Not the time, like the generic Tylenol, they make most of our generic generic Tylenol. So what I see 85% of her antibiotics, right? So like, we change that, hopefully we change it, we learned the hard lesson and we change it now, well, then I was thinking ramp up, you know, we just ramp up and we do what we do. You know, hopefully that's gonna happen. Well, and we the, the other issue is, are we willing to pay more for it, because the labor in China is much cheaper. And if we make it here, we're going to have to pay our workers enough. So that we can, it will have to pay a little bit more for it because we have to pay our workers so that they can live in the United States. So that's an issue. But I think that we were as a country, we're going to have to look at all the things that were dependent on other countries, and we're going to have to see what we can do to not have this happen to us again. Yeah, Misty Kim. What do y'all have to say? Something that Scott and I were talking about is how, like we had never done online grocery shopping. Like you know, I buy stuff from Amazon but I'm talking about like, ordering your food from like imperfect foods calm or like ordering all your meat from Purdue farms.com like changing the way you grocery shop like we have had, cuz I'm immunocompromised and it's not good for us to get out at all. I'm in that super, super crazy high risk group. So we've been having delivery, delivering all our groceries and like today, we got an email from one service saying that they've had to suspend new members because they're so overloaded right now with new people and I'm thinking wow, this this could come pletely change the grocery store industry because we're so used to going out to the grocery store to get stuff and how many of us will come to realize that we like having stuff delivered on Friday because I go so far, I think it's great. It's not much more money than you know, going to the grocery store. And it's super convenient to order your groceries over three days, and then wham, it shows up at your door. So that was one thing we really thought about how this could really just be a societal change of just like people ordering groceries online, and then maybe there won't be a storefront on every corner the way you see now. Yeah, I think Walmart pickup is the best thing ever invented. Yeah, I love it. Well, like even before, if you haven't done that you need to start. No way. Don't Well in our neighborhood, we live in a older established neighborhood. And it was built when the in the 60s when people were coming in building the airport here, so a lot of pilots and air traffic controllers and things live in our neighborhood. And on our street. There's like three of us that are new newly to the neighborhood. The rest are all original homeowners. So it's it's an older generation and older demographic. And they've kind of gotten into the Facebook group and mastered that Facebook group but some of them are starting to get out there and master that online ordering. It's challenging them to be technology savvy right now. But the beautiful part is is those that are younger in the neighborhood that are going to the stores will say, I'm going to go to the store on Friday. If you have a pickup, put my name down, I'll pick it up for you still keeping some of our older neighborhood neighbors from going out into getting getting out and Not being where they don't need to be so it's really interesting then you talked about the bear thing the other day while ago we did the Shamrock challenge in our neighborhood for a scavenger hunt. And then we we started seeing the kids doing the chalk art out on the on the driveways sending positive messages to people. So you know, it's it's finding different things. Missy What do you think about you anything you can think of that shifting or changing that? Well, I see to like two sides of it, you know, you see the people that are kind of going crazy and taking advantage of the situation but then I also see more people being kind and you know, thinking of others before themselves and like the you know, compromised or the older people that they can they can help them you know, and even yesterday I had made a video on Facebook just letting everybody know I had to close down and you know that we'll be back and and you know Kind of reassuring them, but I got more reassurance for myself is like yes, you will be back and you're going to be stronger than ever. So just that support of people is just pretty amazing. I really have found that and I think it was always there but people are so busy. Yeah, that we don't take the time to share that stuff. So good, positive, that's a good positive thing. You know, if we just come back together, we were divided in a nation, maybe we'll come back together a little bit more. Seems like in times of crisis, that's what we do. Right? And I'm just do you remember after 911? After how, one day, the next day everyone had a flag out? Right? Everyone had a flag out, come together. Everyone was coming together. And maybe that's what is gonna happen right now. Because I'm seeing a lot of people want to do things for others more than ever. Well, and we're seeing we're seeing bipartisanship. up like we've never seen since 99. I mean, we're seeing a lot of things. They may not agree on a lot of the other things still, but they're putting that to the side, they're pushing all that to the side to be able to take care of a nation right now. And the the beautiful part is what I'm seeing on social media is, like you said, people are sharing positive encouraging messages to people. Especially when they see that they've got the resiliency to come back. You know, there's, there's, there's a few people that I know of that have gotten on Facebook and light of messages of what's happening in their area and stuff. And they're blasting you know, and you can tell they're angry and they're bitter and they're in there getting all it'll be okay or it's happening to everybody. You know, you're not in this alone and they're they're getting better back. It's, I guess the beauty thing I want to remind people is in times of crisis is when your squeeze I can't remember if john said or one of the other people said that the virtual thing that I shared with you all today, those sessions with john, he allowed us to share publicly. But behind that we've got all the other trainers that are part of the organization doing live videos with us all day long for the next three days. So I've been watching a bunch of videos live this week. But one of the things I said is when you're squeezed in a time of crisis, what's inside of you is going to come out and so you're getting on and good or bad. Yeah, good or bad. It's coming out. And the What are you made of? Are you made of a I'm defeated? This happened to me mentality Are you made of a you know, pull your bootstraps up Rosie the Riveter we can do it type mentality. And, you know, I'm a Rosie the Riveter lover. So yeah. You know, I'm one of those that I don't think this happens to us. I think we find ways to reinvent ourselves in and reestablish ourselves and we find times during this time to, to be leaders in that dark world we shine that light, we say, you know, you may not feel like you've got a safe place to go. I've got a wing right here. You can take shelter here and bit here a little bit. I'm going to push you out of this nest because you are going to fly even if you have to grow your wings on the way down. You are going to fly you know. And that's, that's what I get from the strong women. I surround myself and all four of you are the strong women I've surrounded myself. Janet has said it to me before there was tell somebody, what was it a while back. The when the twins were born, they just turned what six, so six years ago, I was kinda in the middle of it. I was Sleepless in Seattle or Bedford or her Wherever I was, I was, you know, brain numb. And I think Kim might be able to relate to this a little bit to it. I didn't know enough to reach out and ask for help at that time, because I was just doing what was in front of me. Yeah. And Janet said, you know, I've told she told me flat, because I've told you before, and I'll tell you again, all you have to do is ask for help, and help will be there. But I was still in my own mind of will these people relying on me, so I have to be the stopping point. I'm not the stopping point. I'm a flow through point. Yeah, that's good. We have to be reminded that we are a flow through point of the Holy Spirit of our love of what we fill ourselves with so that we can flow out to those that we are feeding and and loving and nurturing. And we can't nurture something if we are not in a nurturing mindset. It's so I used to imagine that A bunch of people that walk around those little squeezy stress balls, eyes and the ears pop. Like everybody is this Yeah. Yeah, you know, even me, I know I I've touched him with cam quite a bit right when she first got home I went and spent days there and stuff like that. But then even this week I went, Oh my god, it's been a week since we've texted What is going on? Why has she not reached out to me? Is everything okay? And her well, why haven't we gone to? Lee? I'm like, Okay, first off, am I being a bad friend? Am I this? Yeah. But I have to put all those negative things are behind and not say Well, I didn't talk to her this past week. She's probably mad at me because then those mental games will play and then you won't reach out and then you're emotionally distancing and isolating. And they're over there. Just going. No, thanks. It's been good. I was wondering where you're at. I just knew you'd circle around when you weren't busy again. And I was here like, Oh, well. How many I know I'm not the only one that has ever done this? Because I have heard other women tell me this. So, um, you know, as we're talking through some of the some of these, you know, I want to start looking at what are some of the best you have seen in people through this. This scenario, we talked a little bit about how our jobs are changing through all of this already. But you know, what, what are some of the best the most positive things that you've seen in people? Through this? We were What was it? Stacy, we were on a call the other day for the leadership alumni. And, you know, we've got some people on our steering committee who were on the front lines of this and they're just exhausted, right? When they're being told and I'm not saying who they are, where they're from, but when they're being told to pack a bag to bring to work because they don't know if they'll be able to go home. Right. You know, And this is just the beginning of what we're expecting to be a bigger surge and you know, so you know, what are some ways that you could you see positive coming out of it? I know there's other people that are what is it one groups donating every you can go on and put your beer order in. But if you put throw in an extra beer, a four pack or a six pack to your order and donate it to the Fort Bragg soldiers that are coming. That's hilarious. I'm like, okay, that's funny. But you know, what, what are some? What are some of the other things that you you're seeing and hearing? One of the one of the things that I thought was awesome, is we talked about it earlier is when our leadership htb, pivoted, and decided that they wanted to start a group to help the HIV community by posting the things that are most needed. And nobody told them they had to do that. Nobody told them that since their event was called closed down that they had to pivot, they just made a choice. And that's what happens whenever you start building leaders is they lead and that's what they did. So the first thing that I did when I was probably the seventh person invited in the group, and if you guys don't know, I am the, the sponsor of that group. So yes, I am the sponsor of leadership. So she's, she's a black, so I'm like, no, no. So I'm like, when I when I look at it, when I see them doing such great things, I get very excited because I'm invested into it right now. I get so excited about creating leaders and when whenever I get to help, and this is what they decide to do, I'm excited. So I was like, almost in tears, like, Oh, my God, look what, look what they're doing. And I immediately started texting. Rochelle Ross, who is the steering committee leader and said, Oh my god, do you see what they're doing? Like, this is great. Do you see What your Do you see what your what your teaching is making happen in our community? So that that's one of the biggest things that I've seen. And, you know, the last time I looked, I don't know how many people you have in the group now, but there was almost 1000 people in the group when I was blessed. Let me check Where's like under there was like, yeah, there was one I was looking it up 1.4. Okay, so what I mean, that's awesome. All of these people that all live in the HDB area, are able to look and they haven't categorized it into sections. So you can see restaurants you can see this you can see where you can get food, if you don't have food. You can see what food pantries are still are still giving you food. I mean, I just thought that that was so awesome. So that was one of the great things and if you look at the feeds inside the group, people that know nothing of what hcb leadership is are talking discussing. I invited one of my clients to the group who's been living in hers for like 30 years and she was very She posted something and she she got into message. Did you see how great my posts and to see all the people that were? So I mean, it's bringing people together. I thought that that was really awesome. And then and then I also see, like everyone is really trying to go to these mom and pop restaurants and buy food to go local. So I really love that I'm doing it also. But I think that that's great. Those are the things that I've noticed. Yeah. Here's another thing. You know, there's a lot of us who have diabetes, there's a lot of us who have high blood pressure. There's a lot of us who have asthma, those underlying health conditions that make getting the corona virus, you know, more dangerous for, you know, it's going to be more than a cold it could go wonky real quick. So what I've seen is just even after two months of friends and church ladies and just people rallying around my family through the heart stuff you know we didn't want for a meal for about eight weeks. Um we had more food and we knew what to do with we had friends cleaning our house take down our Christmas decorations. I mean you name it it was we had handyman come over and help Scott with cocking a tub. I mean, just you name it, it was done. And those same people now who know that I'm immunocompromised are texting me. Hey, I'm going to Costco. Hey, I have a friend run into Sam's Can I drop food off at your front door. So I just think seeing how humans are so generous. And kind and sweet and people are sending me, you know, we're still sending you extra prayers during this time. Just even that is just so touching and and you know, it just got me thinking, How can I reach out no knowing I'm stuck at home so now I'm with food delivery service. I've texted my neighbors and I'm like, Hey, we're having food delivered on Friday. I'm placing an order this day. Do you guys need me to order you guys anything so trying to help in the way I can. But just if you're able and be mindful of your friends who might be having to isolate more that just even going to a grocery store puts them at risk, right? Because I can't really leave the house at this point then, you know, my husband is stuck and because if he goes out and gets it and brings it in. So being mindful of the immuno compromised and how just if you're going to the store check in, or if a neighbor has run out of toilet paper or needs eggs, be willing to go put it at their front door, just be mindful of that stuff. And I've just seen it in spades more than I can even say, we have felt so blessed and just seeing God's goodness through human beings in such ways I never expected over these last couple of months. Well, and that goes back to those boxes that you're putting out to missing because you know, there's some people that may never ask for help or want to go to a place and get help but that they can go open that box nonchalantly get out what they need are, you know, I had somebody what say, Well, I only had some beans. So I went and put the beans in the box and I grabbed the the whatever Else it was that they needed, you know, and I was like, well, that's awesome that that what you needed was in that box, you know, and maybe somebody else needed those beans, you know. So finding a way to love on people where they're at, you know, with whatever skills or talents you have. Janet, I'm gonna come to you next, but I'm going to preface it with this because on Monday, we were hearing a lot of people, Mike's one of Mike's friends from high school took one of those blue rolls of paper towels, and he is he makes knives, homemade knives. And so he cut one of those rolls in half and he goes, look, I'm making toilet paper, you know? And Mike's like, Yeah, go ahead and do that. Because, you know, once they start flushing that down the drains it's

Live from my personal Facebook page, I welcome Dr. Mark Milligan, PT, DPT from Anytime.Healthcare as he discussing how we can implement telehealth services into our physical therapy practice.  In this episode we discuss:  * How to set up a telehealth platform * How to perform an initial eval and follow sessions * How to bill (at least what we know right now) * The paperwork you need to start seeing patients today * And so much more!  Resources:  Anytime.healthcare Doxy.me Connected Health Policy/Telehealth Coverage Policies State Survey of telehealth Commercial Payers Telehealth Paperwork   For more information on Mark:  Dr. Mark Milligan, PT, DPT, is a board certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic physical therapist. He specializes in the intelligent prevention and treatment of all human movement conditions. He is a full-time clinician with multiple patient populations and is the Founder of Revolution Human Health, a non-profit physical therapy network. Helping others create the best patient experience and outcomes through his continuing education company specializing in micro-education is also a passion. His latest venture is creating the easiest pathway to access healthcare for providers and patients with Anywhere Healthcare, a tele-health platform. He is an active member of the TPTA, APTA, and AAOMPT and has a great interest in the pain epidemic, public health, population health, and governmental affairs. Read the full transcript below:  Karen: (00:07): Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast. Each week we interview the best and brightest in physical therapy, wellness, and entrepreneurship. We give you cutting edge information you need to live your best life, healthy, wealthy, and smart. The information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as personalized medical advice. And now here's your host, dr Karen. Let's see. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Karen Litzy and in Karen  (00:40): Day's episode. I am sort of re airing a Facebook and Instagram live that I did last Wednesday with dr Mark Milligan all about telehealth. So a little bit more about Mark. He is a board certified fellowship trained orthopedic physical therapist. He specializes in the intelligent prevention and treatment of all human movement conditions. He's fulltime clinician with multiple patient populations and is the founder of revolution human health, a nonprofit physical therapy network, helping others create the best patient experience and outcomes through his continuing education company specializes specializing in micro education is also a passion. His latest venture is creating an easy pathway to access healthcare for providers and patients with anywhere. Dot. Healthcare. This is a telehealth platform. He is an active member of the Texas PTA, P T a and a amped and has great interest in pain epidemic, public health, population health and government, governmental affairs. Karen  (01:41): I should also mention that he is also on the PPS coven task force. So if you want to get the most up to date information on how the coven pandemic is affecting physical therapists in private practice, you can find that at the private practice sections website. It's all free even for non-members. All right, now onto today's podcast. Like I said, this is a recording from the Facebook live that we did last week. And in it we talk about what is telehealth. We talk about how to set up telehealth, how to implement telehealth, how to conduct a telehealth session for an initial eval or for a followup. We talk about how to get paid for telehealth and this is the information that we knew at the time. That was last Wednesday. Like I said, things are moving really, really quickly here. So the best thing to do in Mark says this is to check with your individual insurance providers, check with your state things are moving really, really fast. Karen  (02:45): And of course finally we talk about answer a lot of viewer questions. So a big thanks to Mark and I think this is really timely and I hope that all physical therapists that if you're listening to this, that you can set up an implement your telehealth practice ASAP. Thanks for listening. So today we're talking about how to implement telehealth into your physical therapy practice. As we all know, the COBIT 19 virus is causing a lot of disruption in healthcare and we're hoping that telehealth can help at least mitigate some of that interruption for the sake of our patients, for the sake of our own practices and for our businesses and for our profession. So Mark, what I would love for you to do is can you just talk a little bit more about yourself, where you're coming from and why we're doing this interview. Mark  (03:34): So Mark Milligan, Austin, Texas physical therapists board certified fellowship trained, but also for the last few years have stepped into a telehealth space and have anywhere healthcare, which is a digital platform for delivering healthcare. It's agnostic to provide her, so PTs, mental health providers, anybody that needs a HIPAA compliant platform to connect with patients. So the current situation is it's pretty mind blowing, right? We're seeing a, a world changing epidemic that will change the landscape of healthcare as we know it today. For several reasons. One is that people will be now exposed to a delivery of care method that they weren't otherwise are supposed to before. So telehealth and tele PT and tele medicine had been out there for a long time. Teladoc started in, in 1987, somewhere in there. So it's been around for a long time, but a rapid adoption of telehealth has really occurring right now for physical therapists. Mark  (04:30): What we need to know and what are the most important things right now are how it applies to us in this landscape. How can we be the best providers to meet our patients? Demand to help quell fear, doubt and an anxiety for our patients as well as, as providers and our businesses. And so stepping into this space is, it's been a little bit overwhelming. It's been a nonstop 70, 96 hours really. And so everything that I say today may or may not be true and four hours or smart [inaudible] because of how fast things are changing. So yeah, I think that tees it up. You want to kick it off? Yeah, Karen  (05:10): No, I think that's, that's great. That's perfect. So let's start out with, we got a number of questions from people from different therapists from around the country. And I think let's start with the number one question is how do you actually set it up? Totally basic one Oh one. So let's start with that, Mark  (05:33): Right? So the first thing you have to make sure is that you have patients that want this. And right now everybody wants that, right? So patient adoption of technology can be challenging, especially especially generational. So the issue with in, yeah. Pre COBIT has been adoption by, by therapists and by patients just because of ease of use. Now it's a, it's a forced adoption. So now we're in a set up where we, where are going to want this regardless of whether or not they want it. So first thing is patient population. Second thing is you need to look at your business, right? You need to look at your patient workflow and your business flow. So you need to have the appropriate from a business standpoint, you need to have a liability to make sure that you're covered in the telehealth space. So in my experience over the past few years, almost every liability insurance cover, it doesn't see telehealth as a, is a different delivery mode for physical therapy. Mark  (06:26): But with everything changing rapidly, it would be real. It would be highly advised that you contact your liability insurance provider and make sure that tele-health is approved as, as in your cupboard. All right? So that's logistics. Secondly, you need paperwork, you need onboarding paperwork for digital visits. You'll need a telehealth consent form and you'll need the digital release form. And if you're recording visits, you need to have a very specific form that that allows you to record patient visits. Some States don't allow recording some. And so you have to be very mindful of that. So onboarding paperwork, it's, it's good to have in fillable PDFs so that a patient can fill it out and then send it back to you digitally. Making sure that that transmission is is secure. You can also have E faxes, right? So they can electronically fax to you over a secure portal as well. So just basic things that we haven't really thought about as providers we need to adopt as mobile providers. Right. So, Oh, go ahead. Karen  (07:24): I know, I was going to say, so when we're talking about who is the best, what is the easiest way for us as a clinician to get that paperwork Mark  (07:32): Right? So they can email me. I've gotten a tele-health consent. I've got I've got that. So they can just email me at market anywhere. Dot. Healthcare. And I can send 'em I'm been sending that out over Facebook. I'm happy to share that with people. And of course you need to make sure and adapt it for your state in your practice. It's a word doc so you can switch out the logos and everything, but I'm happy to provide that for people. They can pass that that step. Karen  (07:57): And then one more question on paperwork and things like that. So when we are calling our insurance, our liability insurance carriers, aren't there specific questions we need to ask them or like what is the best way to have that conversation with our liability insurance providers? Mark (08:16): Right. Just say in this facing time that we're starting to provide care digitally. Am I covered for providing telehealth as a physical therapist? Simple. Straightforward. Karen (08:25): Okay. And so you may already be covered in your current policy, it might be part of your current policy, you just don't know it and then you're not, is that then added as a rider to your yes. Mark (08:38): Typically it's a very inexpensive writer. Okay.  Karen (08:41): All right. So before we set everything up, we get our liability coverage covered and we get consent forms, which can email to you or you can share them on under this post. It's whatever you feel more, most comfortable with or what might be easiest. And then we do what we got the paperwork covered. Now what? Mark (09:06): So you're sending that out to the patient. So they need to agree to be treated digitally. Right now it's really an interesting space. The CMS has waived temporarily a HIPAA privacy with when it comes to digital communication. I'm can't stress this enough that this is a temporary wave in, in the absence of mass abilities to communicate or HIPAA compliant platforms that patient that people are able to communicate via other means of non HIPPA compliant video software. So right now Skype and FaceTime are considered and what's the other one? Zoom and zoom and those well-known platforms are, are open, enable all those zooms just increased their prices yesterday. Yeah, so I would argue that you could use the, what's free and what's available right now in preparation as you prepare after this is over, you'll need to go back to HIPAA compliance. So in the immediacy video platforms are readily available across all. You cannot use public facing video platforms like tick talk or other things that mass put out your video. Okay. Karen (10:22): Instagram live or Facebook live. You can have your patient video, you can have your patient treatment sessions over live video, Mark (10:30): Right. That it means sounds, it sounds obvious, but you never know where people will do right by a group session. You can just do a giant group session. I'm going to train everybody on the East coast of America on a Facebook live. Karen (10:42): Yeah. Okay. All right, so good to know. So no one social media lives like we're doing right now, but for the time being during this outbreak, we can use face time, we can use zoom, we can use Facebook, zoom, Skype, Mark (10:59): Right. Totally. And you need to make sure that in your notes and documentation for your intake software or your intake paperwork, that you are waiting, that the patient is waiving their HIPAA rights during this time due to the COBIT outbreak and you are using this unsecured software and you will return to it as soon as possible. Right. Okay. This is a window. This isn't something that will last. And you need to note for your own CYA that you are, you acknowledged the existing coven scenario and that you will prepare for post that with, with my platform. Yeah. Yep. So technology on the technology side, it's really easy because you can plug and play as long as you get someone's if they have an iPhone or if they have Skype, easy set up, you can connect technology there. So once you get the form signed, you have the informed consent, the HIPAA, the HIPAA included waiver as well to sure that they understand that they are on an, they have to understand and agree to an unsecured network. Mark (11:58): Even though you can provide it, some people may not want it because FaceTime, that's all easily hackable. Right? So so they may not, or may, they may, they may not want to agree to that. So just have to be transparent with them in the, in your services. Right. So once you get that, I mean, it's really a matter of getting the patients, depending on your system, everybody's so different. So if you're, if you are a concierge PT and you're practicing out there for a fee for service cash base, you handle all your own scheduling when it comes for their time, you just flip them and you just call them on FaceTime, right? You collect their face, their number and you connect that way and you do your treatment, which we'll talk about in a bit, some other scheduling systems. You may have to, you know, type in a telehealth visit and your scheduling system or have some type of a demarkation for a telehealth visit versus an in person visit. Mark (12:47): And so work with your scheduling software, work with who you work with in order to make sure that that's appropriate so you can have the right amount of, or the right type of scheduling so you know where to go and what to do and how to bounce it. A billing, again, for the concierge practices out there, this is fee for service. Tele-Health doesn't take as long as normal to as normal PT. So I have my hourly rate broken down into 15 minute increments because it's roughly about 15 to 30 minutes. Is it an average tele-health followup evaluations in the last 40 to 50 minutes? But it just completely depends. So fee for service, it's really straight forward. You just charge per time, per minute, dollar, dollar, dollar, $52 a minute to 15 minute depending on your price point. Karen (13:29): Okay. All right. So now let's get into, so knowing how to actually set it up. So we've got a lot of these different things. What are some other platforms? I know anywhere. Dot. Health care. Doxy.Me. Mark  (13:46): Yup. Doxy.Me co view. So anywhere. Dot. Healthcare is the platform that I created. It's straight forward. Right now I'm offering you a $10 a month, unlimited use for anybody for three months while onboarding everybody. So to, to help people get to see patients doxy dot. Me actually has a free version where that's a, a room where people meet. So you can actually sign up. The patient is sent a link, they click on a link and it drops them right in a meeting room. Super convenient, super easy. There's no bells and whistles and it's free right now. So you can do that. I think a couple of other platforms I've seen throughout the Facebook live of Facebook groups that I'm in a few platforms are pushing out a free entry level software right now. So it's everywhere. So I think Karen  (14:31): We'll use G suite Mark  (14:32): D suite, right? So G suite, if you have a BA with, with Google, you can use Google meet. Right now actually with the, with the HIPAA waiver that's happening right now, you can actually use Google hangout. That would be another appropriate thing to use as long as the other person has the G suite or Google doc, a Google suite downloaded on their computer. So there are lots of, there's literally lots of options now there, there are other companies that offer other features, right? As you get into anywhere that healthcare, not only as a platform, but also as a billing feature and a scheduling feature. Doxy dot. Me if you upgrade to the higher levels, has a scheduling feature, a messaging feature, all types of stuff. So it really looking for different platforms. You need to be, do your due diligence and test them out to see what fits your practice best. I mean, some, some have exercises that are completely a part of the package that you can just have an HTP that sends right out from the program. Some have an actual, a range of motion measuring system so people can move their arm or their body in front of them. The then they can actually measure range of motion live on camera, which is pretty cool. So it just really depends on the need for your, your practice and also the practice size. Karen  (15:44): Got it. Yeah. Okay. So that's a lot of options for people going from free to low priced too. Mark  (15:52): $200 a month for co for HIPAA compliance zoom. Karen  (15:55): Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So lots of options there for people. So we know we need some onboarding paperwork and we need to call our liability insurance carriers to see if they cover telehealth. Presently. And if they don't, then we need to ask them to put an addendum on and you can, they can do that immediately. It doesn't take like 30 days for that to happen. Right. Should be immediate. Okay. And so once we have all of the right paperwork and everything we decide what platform we're going to use and you just gave a whole bunch of different platforms that people can use. So all of those platforms are pretty easy to set up. And like you said, you send a link to the patient, they'd drop in and boom, there you go. And at this time we can use Facebook and Skype and, and not Facebook, sorry, Facebook. We can use Skype, regular zoom face time, all that. Okay. All right. Now Mark  (16:58): You may need other equipment though. You may, depending on the situation you may need. So some people, a desktop versus a computer are versus a tablet versus a phone all matter, right? So a desktop computer tends to be really well for you to have good communication and see the patient really well. But it's also very challenging for me to move my desktop to show somebody how to get on the floor and exercise, right? So the part of being a a digital physical therapist is that you have to be able to move and your equipment has to move with you. So some people use, I, you know, some people use a selfie stick to demonstrate exercises, right? Some people have one of those little iPhone holders that can be multiple or wrap around something so they can have different angles or show people at different places. Mark  (17:41): So understand that desktop can be good for this face to face interaction and the, and the immediate subjective interview. But maybe moving towards the objective exam or, or showing the exercise parts you may want to find or have a different device that's more mobile. So just thoughts for that. And you also need to think about your area or your headphones, your microphone and your lighting that can all add or take away from the experience of the digital experience. So making sure that you have those things. I use, I'm old school. I just use the old wired ear buds. They, when you're on the computer a long time, the wireless can die, right? And then all of a sudden you don't have new headphones. So I'm always a fan of just good old fashioned things that won't die on you after a long day of work. Mark  (18:26): So something to think about. You also may want to get a tripod to hold up your computer or you can get a standing desk. So there's lots of options in that space. But also you have to be considered for your backdrop. I love your backdrop that you have there in New York here and with the, with the cherry tree, that's all. It's very Boston's. That's awesome. I just have a plain white wall. Just be mindful of the environment that you're delivering this care in, right? You don't want you to be distracted. You don't want the patient to be distracted. You need to connect with the patient. Some of the key things that you need to think about are the connection that you're going to have with a patient. Something you can do easier face to face. It's challenging to get the connection and to have the emotional connection with the patient by a digital care. So setting up the environment for not only you to feel safe and, and that you feel comfortable that you're, no one's going to bust in, but also your patient needs to feel safe in that space too, so they can communicate to you in a free way that their patient information isn't being broadcasted to other people as well. So backdrops, microphones, computers, tablets, all have to be taken into consideration while you're doing this, while you're doing this intervention. Karen  (19:32): Okay, thank you. Those are great tips. How about cats that could, that could help or hurt you. Right? People love a cat. Great. If not, it can be a problem Mark  (19:44): Or at least they're not allergic to it. They're alerted to it. It doesn't matter. Right? So Karen  (19:47): Right. So pets can help or hinder, just kind of depends. Okay. So we've got, let's say now everyone has a better idea of how to set it up. And then the next question I got was how, Oh, they said this is great. Sound isn't great. I don't know why this sounds not great on, on Instagram, but, well, I mean it's going to be out on it as a podcast as well. So we'll, you'll be able to hear full sound tomorrow. At any rate, I dunno what to do. I could get my earbuds, but as we just said, what if they time out on me? Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about let's talk about how do you, what was it? How did, Oh, how do you actually execute a session? Mark  (20:40): Yeah. So once you've got somebody on the line, once you've got a patient in front of you, right? We know from our PT and our PT exam that about 80 to 90% of your differential diagnosis occurs in the subjective. So you go back to your old way of being, you shut up and you listen to the patient. Right? So, you know, so this is also assuming that you're doing an evaluation via telehealth, right? So most people at this space have patients that they'll flip from brick and mortar or in person into telehealth. So that's a different beast, right? So that's followup. That's exercise progression. Those are obvious things, right? That you're going to show them. You're going to talk them through their progression and talk to them about what they need to do next. Maybe show them a few new exercises when you're, we're, we're going to get, what we're talking about right now is the new patient that you'd never met before and what, how do you gain information to get them treated? Mark  (21:33): So subjective is key, right? You need to have your differential diagnosis hat on. You need to ask the next best questions, their intake form. You should have looked over, created your hypothesis list and make sure that you have a good idea of what you're trying to discover. It's your responsibility as a provider. I know it's written in the Texas legislation that if you, if the patient is not appropriate for digital care, you have to get them to an in-person provider, right? So doing your, you still have to do your red flag screens, you still have to do your due diligence and your differential diagnosis and make sure the patient's appropriate. Right? This is, you have to consider a digital visit to be no different than an in person visit. You have to take every precaution that you would take. I'm minus taking vitals unless the patient has their own, you know, portable, vital kit. You're gonna have them do that. But you have to take every precaution you would from an initial evaluation perspective as you would in a digital space. So going back to forms, you also have to have your intake form and consent to treat in there as well. That needs to be signed off as well. Karen  (22:31): So the, the same sort of forms that someone would have if they were coming to you or if you're like a mobile practice like me, you have them sign that initial paperwork regardless of whether you're seeing them in their home, in your clinic or, or via telehealth completely. Mark  (22:48): This is, you cannot be this any differently. Right? So take it, having all the consent to treat forms, signed all your intake paperwork done, differential diagnosis, red flags, you know, your three tiers. Are they appropriate for physical therapy or are they a treat and refer or they refer. You have to have that, you have to have that hat on. And so if they're presenting with sub with symptoms that aren't musculoskeletal and presentation, you need to be mindful of that and get them to the approved provider, right? So you have to be a triage at this point. So once you get through and determine their appropriate for intervention, you have to get your thinking hat on, right? This is where, this is where things change. And as a mobile PTM, I know that you have walked into somebody's house and been like, huh, how are we going to do PT in here today? Mark  (23:32): Or you have to completely be a problem solver. Think about being a problem solver on steroids when it comes to digital health. Right? Because you didn't have, at least in someone's physical environment, you can see what they have available. Right? If you treating me right now, all you would know is I'd have a white wall behind me. You don't know what chairs I have. You don't know what equipment I have. You don't know anything that I have. So asking them about what equipment's available is important. I take all my patients, depending on what they have, if they have, my most common thing I treat is, is back pain. So most commonly about 20 to 40% of patients, that's 20 to 30% of patients will fit into some type of directional preference when it comes to low back pain. So I take them through an active range of motion our digital active range of motion to see what exacerbates or relieves their symptoms. And if, and if repeated extensions and standing it relieves their symptoms, I go why? Clear out other things, but I go right into treatment. Right. So you can use progressive movements, repeated motions right in your treatment from the get go the same way you would do in the clinic. Mark  (24:35): Some of them prior, Karen  (24:36): It's New York. I don't even literally grown even here at anymore. It's just did with something there. Is there the engine going up, I don't even hear it. Anyway. Mark  (24:46): White noise. White noise. Yeah. So you have to go through your objective range of motion in your objective measurements just like you would in home or in the clinic at home. So knowing your physical exam and having a musculoskeletal screen is super important. So if I have somebody with radiating arm pain that I'm treating, where's my arm on my camera? If I have somebody with radiating right arm pain, I'm going to take them through cervical active range of motion. I've actually even had people do over pressure to themselves. Right. To see, I've had somebody to do their own spurlings to see if it's ridic. So you have to get really creative teaching someone how to do a UNL TT a on camera is because you have to back up. Right? That's another thing. You have to have visibility and you have to have the ability to see what the patient's doing and also correct them while they're doing their motion. So I take my patients, do as many physical exams that they can do on their own without, without me being present to do it. Karen  (25:45): Yeah. So I think it's important to note cause my good friend Amy Samala said, can you do this for brand new patients in your practice or is this just to be used for existing patients? So I think Amy, I think we're covering that right now, that yes, Mark is sort of taking us through how he might do an initial evaluation with someone via telehealth. Mark  (26:05): Totally. Totally. Now I think we should probably circle back to billing again and payment. I think we, we've, Karen  (26:12): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's definitely talk about that. And one other thing that I, I want to make people aware of, Mark, is how using you want to have space. So not only you want to make sure that not only your patient has space or depth, but that you do as well as a therapist because you may need to step back to show them something and then come closer. Mark  (26:33): Right. And I've I often, so I have a flat couch in the back, so I have this couch that's right behind me so I actually use that. I pushed my chair of the way and I show repeated extensions and prone. It's a six or seven foot long couch and I show double needs to test and I sh if I mirror exercises for patients. So you cannot do everything verbally, you can't. Could you imagine telling somebody, okay, I'm going to walk you through a double a single knee to chest with words only. It becomes extremely challenging. So you get up and you move. I just hop on the couch. I'm like, all right, so you're going to lay on your back. You'll grab both knees. You see my hands on the outside of my knees. Knees are slightly apart. We're going to pull that all the way up until you feel a big stretch in your back and I show them. Mark  (27:13): I walked through the exercises with them. Same thing with, same thing with nerve glides, right? If I'm doing a U L T T a I'm going to say, I'll bring your a shoulder all the way up. Like you're going to put those little, or you CC that you're going to put the little ion right and then you're gonna lift your elbow up and see if that changes it. Right. And so you have to walk them through. It's easier for them to mirror you than it is to say, okay, you need maximum shoulder flection with external rotation. NOLA deviate. Like you can't do that. Karen  (27:39): Yeah, we know jargon doesn't work. Yes. You can never say that in an NPR. If you are face to face them, you would never just sit there with your arms folded and be like, okay, flex your arm to hear externally. Like if you just want to do that, you wouldn't do it. I think it's important to know that we can still certainly in well versed in strong verbal communication in this space. Oh, that's nice. From work. Yes. Or there was a delay. Oh, okay. So I think we're good. So Amy said, yes, sorry, there's a delay. She's all the way in New Jersey, so forgive the Jersey part. Yeah, New Jersey. Okay. all right. So I think people get an idea that yes, this is how you can set this up. You just want to make sure that each of you have enough physical space to do everything that you want to do. That yes, you can do your initial evaluation. It's all about the subjective, in my opinion, in that initial evaluation anyway. Definitely. and then once you see them for the initial evaluation, as you start progressing them, like you said, it would be like any other exercise progression you're just not putting hands on, but it can be done. Mark  (28:51): Definitely. Definitely. If you think about the interventions that we do in the clinic that you can apply to home. So I work with people that you know, that don't, they may not have good balance. So safety is a, is a concern in that space. Right? So I talk people in a corner, I show them what it looks like to get into a corner with a chair in front of me or in front of my couch or the chair in front of me and teach them how to do single leg stance while having my fingertips on the chair. Right eye. You have to physically show people what to do so they understand that better. And so like you said, it's about being able to show and speak at the same time, right? Because a lot of the field like nerve tension testing, a lot of times it's, you can feel the tension before the symptoms ever get there. Mark (29:34): So you have to educate somebody that has a really angry nerve that's a, it's a hot nerve and say, look, we're just going to take this up until you barely feel it. Right. We're just going to touch it. And then if you feel it there, just bring it back down. Right. You, you can't rely on your hands to feel that tension anymore. Not that we can reliably feel it anyway, but we want to make sure that we prime the patient for success. Right? Communicate expectations. Like we're going to do some discovery today. We're going to walk through a lot of different movements to see what's happening with your body. See if we can figure out ways that we can help you feel better through movement. Cause that's what ideally what we're going to do, right? We need to make sure that we enable patients and make them feel safe and comfortable that we're going to help them. We're going to take them through this. We just need to, we need to communicate to that. This is going to be something that I should be completely comfortable with. Yeah. Karen  (30:24): Perfect. All right. Now let's get to the part that everybody really wants to know about billing. Someone. let's see. Oh, Mark Rubenstein also New Jersey. He had kinda some of the same questions. No, I have nothing against New Jersey, New Jersey. So he kind of had the same question I had before we went live. He said but Medicare will only pay now for existing patients as per info yesterday. So this is the info, I guess on that evisit versus tele-health. So can you kind of give us, cause I know just for background, Mark is a part of a PPS task force and he is really being updated a lot. And I'll let you kind of talk a little bit more about that and, and how you are helping to work the billing aspect of things and the difference between an evisit and tele-health. Mark  (31:20): Right. I'd like to first shout out to the PPS members, Allie shoes and the I and alpha are our lobbyist for the APA. We are meeting for hours daily and we are, so everyday we have scheduled calls on this task who have a task force. We're pushing out content on the APA plus the PPS site. So there are 18 to 20 people that are hard at work to get, to gather information, to interpret it and then to question it and then make sure that it's legal. Right. Because there's information that comes out that it's great information, but it may not be legal for us to do based on practice act. So there's, there's a federal level, then there's the, then there's the PTA level, then there's the state level, then there's your individual insurance levels. So there's a, there's so many different paradigms. It's not just a cut and dry situation. Mark  (32:06): So right now, some of the biggest things that we're working on behind the scenes with this PPS task force are really are defining out what it means from Medicare as it relates to the visit ruling. So E visits technically are not telehealth. Medicare is not calling these eVisits tele-health. They're calling them eVisits because they derive them from the medical, from the MD coding as, as a bra, a brief and abrupt follow up to a situation where the patient is in an engaged patient. So imagine somebody who may not be feeling well after seeing, having a doctor's appointment just to follow up to touch. So the visit codes right now can only be billed based on time, so their cumulative time and there are three levels. The max level is 21 minutes to be billed one time over a week. And so you add all the time for one week and over 21 minutes is the third code. Mark  (32:59): And that can only be a build a once every, well in seven one time in seven days. There is a question right now about whether or not that code can be repeated the next seven days. That information has not been gotten yet. We have not had a clear answer on that. So please be patient while we investigate whether or not that code can be repeated the next week. So right now, currently we are still working on whether or not now that these eVisits have come out, the question is now whether or not CMS sees us as telehealth providers, which upfront does it look like they do. But we still haven't gotten for Bay. We still haven't gotten the, the appropriate word from CMS whether or not we are. We are providing tele-health, which they said we're not. So we can assume we can assume anything. Mark  (33:49): But so they said we're not providing tele-health, but we think they will. They won't include us in the, as a telehealth provider, which is extremely important because if they don't consider us Medicare providers, then we can, well, I'll wait about Medicare billing Medicare patients, we'll, we'll wait to hear what happens. I'll have to have an update on that. And so right now we are not approved providers for telehealth, for Medicare. And we can build he visits with an established patient that has to make contact through a patient portal to the provider to request their evisit. Now it's been clarified that you can notify a patient that they have the option of that type of care. You can tell the patient, Hey, you know, we're not treating people in person, but you do have the option for an evisit. Here's how you do it. If you choose, if you were to choose to have an E visit, you would go to this part of our website to our port, your patient portal and request a visit so you can prime patients to go utilize that service. Whether or not you can only do that for one week or multiple weeks, that's in question. Karen  (34:52): Okay. And a patient portal is not Skype zoom face time or any of the telehealth platforms that is not a patient yet. Mark  (35:04): Well, some platforms have a portal, some, so it has to be a patient portal. So it has to be a place where a patient can log in and request a visit. And so we're still also waiting for a clear definition of a patient portal. But for our understanding the patient, it's a place where the patient goes to get their information or connect or message their provider. Right. So right now that's still being clarified through CMS on the other private payer front and medicate well, so Medicaid is being rapidly adopted by payers all across the country. Right. So we've seen, I know Louisiana is about to release a wording today at some point. I know that I think Minnesota, I think that a few others have already, Medicaid has already blasted that inflammation and that are, that are, that there are approving and paying for telehealth or physical therapists, payers on a national level are all over the place. Mark  (36:00): So if you are a, in the work provider, you need to call your payers and ask very specific questions and we have people working on this across the country. You have to ask them if your patient has tele-health benefits, you need to ask them if those benefits are payable to a physical therapist. So if a therapist is a PT, a paid as a payable provider of telehealth services, if they need any modification codes, right? So like an Oh two location code modifier, right? That needs to be asked and then what CPT codes they reimburse for. Okay. Right. So manual therapy is not going to be one, but neuro, our neuro they're ex their acts home care, self care, all of those codes should be available. And it just depends on the, on the payer and the carrier. Okay. I have a Google doc that we can link that I'm trying to collect that data from across the country. Mark  (36:58): So people can have open access to it that I can send you that link here and it's on a couple of Facebook pages. But we're trying to collect that data so people can see because, and you don't put any reimbursable fees, don't breach your contracts, don't talk about a fee per schedule, but where you're scheduling fees or your fee schedule. But I'm just put whether or not they pay if it's parody, right? Some States out parody. So here's the kicker. Parody States doesn't miss it necessarily mean payment, right? And this is a, this is a very confusing, a very confusing thing. So somebody says, Oh, we have parody in the state so that, and then we are going to get paid equal in person as we do digitally. Just because you have parody doesn't mean to pay your pace for telehealth, right? They may pay for physical therapy, but they may not pay for tele rehab, right? Yes. Check. Karen  (37:47): Why can they just not make this easy? Mark  (37:50): Right? So you can have parody in a state and you could have a parody law and then the payer not even pay for telehealth. Right? So there's nuances upon nuance, on nuance. And in some States, some carriers have contracts with larger telemedicine providers and their members can only have telehealth through that tele provider and they may not have tele, they might not have tele PT. So then they had no tele-health, physical therapy option for that payer. Does that make sense? Karen  (38:28): Okay, so I'm going to just do this. So for example, I'm just going to take a for example, and tell me if I heard you correctly. Oh one more thing. So Rina said, we're talking about the visits, that's all specifically for Medicare patients only the egoist. Yes, yes. Mark  (38:46): As of now we have, we are unaware. I am unaware. I'll say that of any payer that's adopted the evisit policy and that's as of our Medicare Copa. Our coven call ended at noon today. So I don't know. That may change. Karen  (39:02): Okay. So let's talk about your individual. Let's talk. Oh, somebody said, Oh Mark, can you bring your microphone closer to your mouth? But you've got the ear buds in, Mark  (39:13): Right? So I have my phone a lot. Loose ear buds are going to the computer, but now you see if you can bring the microphone closer to your mouth, then they see my giant fivehead here and I'm like, I mean, how about if I go, that's fine. We'll do that. Karen  (39:32): We'll do that. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. Oh, so here, let me just ask some, get some of the questions. So Kim wants to know, she's in New Jersey also. He lives in New Jersey, but her practice is in Brooklyn. How do we find out if our state has parody? Mark  (39:51): So again, I, the, I will link you guys to the center for connected health policy and I also have a link to the parody in the different States. So I have links to both of those that I can give you, that we can add to this. Karen  (40:07): Yeah, we can put that in the comments under this Facebook under the live here. Mark  (40:12): So where, and so the, the commercial parody book is only 150 pages of nice, easy light reading. Where should I go for Facebook live? Karen  (40:23): Just go, if you go to my page, just go to me and then you can put it in. You'll see, you'll see us. You can put it in the comment section or we could put it in the comments section. When we're done with the live, we can add it in as well. Mark  (40:35): Oh, there we are. All right. So I'm dropping it in the, yeah, Karen  (40:37): You can drop it in right now too. Mark  (40:38): There's the parody laws. Here is the fact sheet on the UpToDate. This is a live document on what's happening in the world right now. As far as tele-health policies and procedures across the country. So those two documents should have a lot of information. But here's the kicker. Just because the state has a parody law doesn't mean that, that, that the payers have a policy that reimburses tele PT, Karen  (41:08): Right? So parody and, and just to be very clear parody means because you, you can do tele-health because you see them in person. So it's like Mark  (41:20): No. So parody only means parody only means payment. So parody means if they have a parody law and they both reimburse for inpatient physical therapy and for telehealth benefits, they paid equal. Karen  (41:32): Say again Mark (41:33): If the, if the, if a payer say let's let's say blue cross blue shield, if that, if that patient has a blue cross blue shield policy and they have a physical therapy benefits and they have tele-health benefits that a physical therapist can provide, they pay equal. Right. Okay. So it's the same face to face as the say. So because a lot of insurances will the 75% or 50% of impersonal versus digital. So it's literally a payment equality clause. Karen (42:02): I see. Okay. Okay. But you have to call blue cross blue shield because they may not actually, that patient's policy might not include tele-health. Mark (42:13): Right. And then even if they have a parity law, you're not getting paid for it. Karen (42:17): Got it. Right. I got it right. It's okay. Kim. I hope that my inability to understand help you. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Can hear Mark fine. I'm physic. Oh, Deborah joy Sheldon. She said, is there a particular language that needs to be included in the documentation? So when we document the visit, how, so? Let's say we know how to set it up. We have the visit, how do we document it? Mark (42:47): Right? So you typically documented as a telehealth visit. So there's no you, your billing will coat it with an OTU location modifier, but you need to denote specifically that it was a digital visit. Okay. Yeah, that's the, Karen  (43:02): Because we just got a question on what's the location coding for telehealth and you just answered it. So Abby, I hope that that helps you. And [inaudible] can we skip insurance and just bill cash or has this new E health stuff messed that up? Mark  (43:26): So that's unsure right now. So the visit has, it's not considered telehealth by early information. That's not considered to be telehealth. We are still not telehealth providers by Medicare. So that should not impact that. That's my, that's my personal uninformed or relatively informed opinion. Please don't take that to anybody else. We're still discovering that. And private payers still do not, are not adopting that yet. That we've heard of. And so you should, Mark  (44:01): If you are currently billing or having people pay cash in there and they do not have coverage, then you should be able to continue doing that. Does that make sense? Okay. Right. I mean, you need to check your contract language. Where we get sticky is, is this considered a non-covered service by a policy? Right. So this is where the sticky sticky comes in. Okay. Is tele-health considered physical therapy just delivered in a different manner, not a non-covered service, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well that V that opinion varies. And so if it's a non-covered service for Medicare, you can, they can, you can charge cash for that service. Right? And so, and that also applies to other payers. Correct. So if, if your payer has a policy that considers telehealth to be reimbursable by PTs, you wouldn't be able to pay, have them pay cash. But if Karen  (45:03): Your individual patient's insurance does not cover telehealth right, then can you charge the patient cash? Mark (45:12): I'm not a healthcare attorney. But we're doing that. Karen  (45:16): Where the heck, I know she's on here somewhere here in Jackson. I know she's watching, I saw her log on, Karen  (45:23): Come on or Jackson answer that question for me Karen  (45:25): Or an answer that question please in the comment section if you're still watching if not, maybe we can ask her or care Gaynor through the APA might be able to answer that question. So again, that question is if Aaron's still watching is if your patient's specific policy does not cover telehealth, again we'll use blue cross blue shield. So they have blue cross blue shield, they do not cover telehealth. Can you charge cash to that patient if they don't have it covered on their policy? Mark (46:02): That is a good question. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, I mean I, I think I know what my answer would be but I cannot speak as Karen (46:12): Brought any information to anyone or misleading information. So maybe that's something we can ask Cara Gaynor on Twitter. Maybe she can answer that or if Aaron is still listening, maybe she can pop that into the comment section at some point. So Mark (46:28): And having amazing people that are listening that can help. Yeah, exactly. Taking, cause this is a, this is a mad house right now when it comes to legislation and information. So it's all over the place and apparently so yeah, it's just all over the place. We can't information that was [inaudible] I did hear that. Some of the bigger things for Rhode Island and for Pennsylvania this morning, that the governor, the governor assigned legislation that would massively require all payers to pay all providers for telehealth. All right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. One other big question that comes up is location for these for, for billing. Right. And so the word from CMS is the, the, the POS code is the location of the billing practitioner. So in the case where remote services are rendered it does not matter where the corporate address of the billing provider is either, nor does it matter what the beneficiary's address, it matters where the services was rendered. That is where the biller is located. Okay. All right. So when that happened, Karen (47:43): Put that into like example. Mark  (47:45): So when that happens, let's say yes. So if you are, New York has parody, right? Or you got to know you guys have compact revolution, right? Correct. I thought you did. So let's say you're a large provider and you have multiple States that you are in charge over that or multiple States. You treat patients and you're billing Medicare that the, the, the service in the, in the billing, in the service location code is the place where the provider is located. Karen  (48:18): I see. So like for example, if we use something like Athletico like a big gigantic company or maybe someone like, I think Michelle Kali has some places in Rhode Island. I think she just went to Massachusetts, but the headquarters is in Rhode Island. So if you're a therapist in their Massachusetts office, you're using Massachusetts. Mark  (48:40): No, you're using wherever you are and delivering the code. Deliver. Karen (48:43): Where do you get where you are? Okay. Mark  (48:45): Okay. Yup. Karen  (48:46): Okay. and then Michelle Townshend said, how does this work with EHR? Ours? Mark (48:55): Yeah. So eeh Karen  (48:57): So she is looking at a separate telehealth provider from our EHR who also does our billing. Mark  (49:04): Right. So EHR is, there's only a handful of the HRS in the physical therapy space that offer tele-health as a part of the platform. I think PT everywhere is a platform that has that has it built in. And self doc is another ER EHR that'll be live and in the next couple of weeks they'll have a platform within six weeks. But most of them are stand alone freestanding. So you just have to find the best system that are set up that can work simultaneously with your other systems. There's really no way to unless the company has an integration with your EHR, which the HRS don't like to integrate with people because that's patient data and it's a, it's a whole hot mess. So most of these are just freestanding side by side. So you'll have your EHR on one side and you're in your camera on the other. So you just do, and that's what I did with anywhere healthcare, it's just basic connection so you can document everything ever somewhere else. Okay. Karen  (50:03): All right. And then Debra says, Mark, my state has parody related to my hospital being F, Q, H C I do not know what that means. Any insight on that? So what does FQHC mean? Any thoughts if not, maybe Mark  (50:25): It's a federally qualified health center federally. Okay. So they have parody. I don't think I understand the question. Karen  (50:33): Yeah. In my S my state has parody related to my hospital being FQHC. Any insight on that? Mark  (50:40): Oh good. So she Oh, she said they have parody. Karen  (50:43): Yeah, they have PR has parody. Yeah. Mark  (50:46): I'm unsure on that. That has to parody is I've, I linked that doc into the live on Facebook. I can look up parody by state and by organization. Okay. Yeah. Karen  (50:59): Okay. Let's see. Let me we already touched, so I'm just kind of, what paperwork do we need? We talked about that. Oh, what if you're not a Medicare provider? Gosh, all right. Dah, dah, dah. Oh, we are usingG suite and doxy.me. This is from,uKelly Dougan, I think. Yeah. But haven't started officially yet. We have an ABN and I wanted to have liability form as well. So those liability forms, that's something that we can, that you can maybe share also on this link here and people can make it their own. Is that by liability? Like the patient has to sign off on saying yes, I'm okay with having telehealth. Mark  (51:51): Is that of course for me. Yeah, I would assume that what she's saying. Yeah. So I'll, I'll create a, I'll create a Google drive folder and drop a link in to the chat Karen  (52:05): And then one other, we've got two other questions. So to clarify for service location code, so that you said that, is that like the OTU code? Right. Okay. If I or any of my PTs are in their own home while tele-health with patient, is she using her home address? Mark  (52:28): Oh, that I can't answer that I haven't gotten, yeah, that would be a billing question. That hasn't been brought up, but I, we have a meeting tomorrow morning and I'll ask that question. Karen  (52:39): All right, Kimmy, we will get to that. Mark  (52:43): We're saying the PTs can just stay home and bill from there. But Medicare has specific guidelines on origination sites. And I know if origination sites apply to eVisits versus telehealth. That very question. Do origination, do originations, I'm writing it down so we can ask this to origination sites. Apply to eVisits. Yeah, cause that's, that's a game changer too. Karen  (53:11): Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. She said, sorry, I meant to say service location. Did you clarify for service location address? If I or any of my PTs are in their home while doing telehealth, do they use their home address or does she use her address? So Kim, like lives in New Jersey, her practice in Brooklyn. So that's a really good question. So, Kim, maybe we can get back to you with that answer. Mark  (53:33): And is she a Medicare provider? Karen  (53:35): Kim, are you a Medicare provider? I think so. We'll see. We're on like a 22nd delay. Mark  (53:43): Yeah. So I'll ask, I'll ask service location for employees versus brick and mortar versus mobile provider. Karen  (53:52): Perfect. And then Sarah Catman says, if you are licensed in more than one state, but only practice, may single state, can you only do telehealth in the state you practice in or can you do, hello, hello, hello. Telehealth and States you are licensed in. Mark  (54:12): Yeah. So that's where it comes to state rules and regs and yeah. So everywhere that you have a practice reciprocity or you have a licensed in other States, as long as they, you are allowed legally to practice tele-health in that state. Yes, you can practice telehealth in that state. I mean it's, but you have to sit, you have to make sure to abide by the rules and regs when it comes to our the licensure compact of the rules and regs of the state that the patient abides in or they live in. Right. Cause that's just compact language. So like I can do tele-health and Missouri, but they don't have direct access. So I would still have to have direct access or I'd have to have a referral for that patient if I want to open Missouri. Right. So like example. Yeah. so I think, yeah, so we have to make sure that you abide by the laws of the state that the patient resides in. But yes, you can do tele-health across the country. That's the beautiful thing about the compact, right. Compact allows for us to practice across this country with with little, with, without a lot of that a lot of restraint or not restraint, but a lot of challenge. Karen  (55:20): Okay, perfect. All right, so we're at about an hour, which is as long as I think people's attention spans are, and I think we have an apparently as long as Instagram will go live. So if anyone has any other questions, please you can keep adding them into this feed here and we'll try and get to them as, as best we can. Thank you Mark for dropping that stuff into dropping those links in here. And again, we'll get some of the, the onboarding paperwork from you and maybe can drop it in here as well, or you can point us to maybe where it's been put in other Facebook Facebook links. But yeah, everybody, you're welcome. You're welcome. And Mark, thank you so much. This was above and beyond. I think what you had to do but I think we all appreciate you so much because we're in a time where there's a lot of uncertainty and tele-health is at least a way to one, keep our patients healthy and moving and to kind of keep our practices going as best we can in these times because we don't know. Mark (56:38): Yeah. We don't know. Karen  (56:41): Okay. Mark  (56:43): Yeah, I think, I think, I think as a profession we need to remain calm and PT on, right? Like there's a lot of things happening right now. There's to be the, the future is unknown for us as a healthcare profession. All I do know is that it's going to be changed on the other end. This will no longer be an exception to the rule. This will be an expected method of care. People will, will now grow to understand that digital health is a real opportunity in every aspect, not just in, in telemedicine. So I think if I can say one final thing is just be prepared to adopt this and, and, and set up your systems for the long game. Not for this short, immediate, even though the immediate needs to happen. We have things in place like the waiver for using different platforms just to make it happen while it is, but set your practice up, set your systems up for a long game to provide digital care to your patients. Because that's where we're going to go. Part of it is so yeah, but be patient with each other, love each other be kind and wash your hands, Karen  (57:49): Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Yeah. And be mindful of the people if you are still, if your offices are still open, be mindful of the people coming into your office. If you are a home health therapist, be mindful of the people that you're that you're going to be treating because they may be in that vulnerable population. And because we, there's so much that we don't know, just be very mindful of how you're doing that and utilizing telehealth is a great way to have that extension of care for our patients, so. Mark  (58:27): Right. And feel free to reach out to me market anywhere. Dot. Health care. I'm here as a resource. I'm trying to be as available as I can. I have to go to the bathroom occasionally or drink some water, eat some food, but I'm trying to be as available as I can in order to help help us transition and get through this, navigate this time. Karen  (58:45): All right, well Mark, thank you so much. Got it. You've got everything there. Check out. Also, check out Mark's platform anywhere. Dot healthcare. I'll be happy to give a plug for that of course. And thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This is everyone else on this, on this call, so thank you. Mark  (59:01): Beautiful. Thank you. Karen  (59:04): Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

Since 1988 the Holy Spirit has been taking Kim to Heaven. Jesus would show her various fun places and allowed her to do fun things. She asked, “Why was He showing me these places? Daddy / God said, “Because people think all they do here is float around wearing diapers, eating grapes, or doing nothing but bowing before Me. I have planned for each person, in detail, what makes them happy to be here with Me. So Kim, you are to tell them HEAVEN IS real and FUN, and Jesus is coming soon!” You can connect with Kim on her website at: https://www.heavenisfun.com/ You can find her books on Amazon Get the book Heaven is Real and Fun: https://amzn.to/39p94XC How to access Jesus in the Heavenly Realm workbook: https://amzn.to/2wsAopg

Kim has always had a close relationship to earth. She started gardening with her father when she was old enough to drop corn seeds into the trough as he hoed. She and her husband have vegetable gardens, flower gardens and 8 chickens. Aware of climate change since before she can remember, she thought the government would need to take care of the problem. Immediately after the 2016 national election, she realized that the US government wouldn’t be taking any action at all. She decided that she personally must do everything she could to limit the climate crisis. So Kim retired her business as an independent jewelry appraiser last year. She is a homemaker, turned jewelry appraiser, turned climate activist. She trained with Al Gore twice, the first time in October, 2017. Then recently in August in Minneapolis. Her mission is to work with others to limit the climate crisis. Kim is honored to serve on the Orange County Commission for the Environment and the Orange County Planning Board. She feels that her most important work is Chair of Climate Reality, Orange County Chapter, and speaking to others about the climate crisis. People can call Kim at 919-260-3686 if they would like me to give a talk to their group. She can speak about the Green New Deal or just about climate change and solutions. She can speak to groups of 2 to 2000. Or email me at piraccik@gmail.com www.climaterealityocc.org fB at: The Climate Reality Project: Orange County, NC Chapter Instagram: @climate_reality_occ To be added to an email list for the Raleigh, Climate Reality Trainings: https://www.climaterealityproject.org/training Happenings! Next monthly Climate Reality Meeting, March 7, 10:30, Chapel Hill Library, 100 Library Dr. "Tackling Climate Change in the Southeast. Immediately before our monthly meeting, please join us to write postcards to Governor Cooper, 9:30 am at the library lobby Beginning this month, we will have a climate book swap table at our monthly meeting. Please bring a book that someone else might want to read. Take a book you want to read. Next months mtg, April 4, 10:30, Chapel Hill Library, 100 Library Dr. "Inspire Societal change: It's time to take a Stand against Climate Crisis." Protest Every Friday Morning, 8 to 10 am in front of the UNC-CH co-generation plant, at the corner of W. Cameron Ave. and S. Graham St. There are petitions and posters and a growing number of activists each week. For more information, contact Gary Richards. richards.gary057@gmail.com. CROCC Climate Solutions Book Club Everyone is welcome. We meet on the third Monday of every month, 3:00, at the Chapel Hill Public Library, 100 Library Dr. Attendees have stimulating conversations. Email Geri Nelson for more information. gerinelson4@gmail.com. April 22, Earthrise 2020, A global mobilization for climate action on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day!!! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/rachel6014/message

Kim is an author who works with designers on creating better business strategies on an emotional and strategic level.   Buy her book:  https://www.mebydesign.com/shop-2/branding-interior-design-visibility-and-business-strategy-for-interior-designers  QUESTIONS: 1.) What are some of the biggest problems you see designers facing? 2.) What is the best piece of advice you can provide designers when it comes to networking and getting their designs in front of the right people? 3.) How much does mindset play a role in designers feeling ‘stuck’?   4.) Do you believe that designers are lacking the right marketing or PR strategies?  Is there something deeper going on or is it a little of both? 5.) How would you advise designers to become more ‘available’ for the life they truly want?  What are some action steps they can take to become more available? 6.) How does gender play a role? 7.) So, explain to us your Visibility Strategy.  What are some step-by-step things designers can do to be more visible online and in the real world? 8.) A lot of artists and designers are introverted, myself included.  We’re not necessarily shy, but we don’t enjoy being ‘on’ and being in front of people all of the time.  Do you have any tips for introverts?  Would it be better for them to hire a PR manager or to outsource some of the extroverted tasks involved in becoming more visible? 9.) Do you have any suggestions for ways designers can earn more money in 2020? 10.) What are some of the biggest emotional hurdles designers face surrounding money and what are your tips to help them overcome these hurdles? TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1 (00:04):What's up design tribe, but welcome back for a another episode. Now if you want to tune in to the live streams, then be sure to join in my design tribe Facebook group will where I go live with guests and do new episodes of the design tribe. To watch past episodes. Be sure to check out my playlist on YouTube for the video version and of course check out the design tribe on iTunes and Spotify for the podcast of version if you are wanting to listen while doing something else or getting crap done. All right, let's jump in. Speaker 1 (00:40):Hello. Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode with Kim Kuhteubl where we're going to discuss the her visibility strategy and also go through all kinds of questions. So Kim is an author who works with designers on better business strategies and some kind of like emotional blocks that designers sometimes have. So Kim, if you want to introduce yourself and kind of give a little bit of your backstory to everyone in the design tribe, I'm sure. Thank you so much first of all morning for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I work with interior designers on their branding and visibility. As you said. I actually am a producer by trade and I spent a lot of time in television and contributing articles to different publications and then when I was sort of looking to transition out, I started working with a success coach and put together a package of services for interior designers and then realized, Oh wait a second, they like what I'm offering here. Speaker 1 (01:39):And it was initially video and it was blog production and blog content sort of things that I had done inside of my job as a producer is a content creator. But then I started to put together trends that were happening in terms of visibility and leadership and things that were getting in the way of designers actually getting the press or putting out the book in the world or getting the next level of client. And what it's, what I started to understand was that I was learning about women in leadership because 80% of interior designers are women. And so as I was working with them, I was learning about how women lead and also what gets in the way of them leading at their full capacity when they're creative. Right. So then what are some of the biggest problems you see designers facing? Like you said, 80% of interior designers are women I've kind of noticed as well. Speaker 1 (02:39):It's the same as true in textile design, which is my background. So yeah, I worked as a graphic designer for a little while and then I was a textile designer for seven years and I love, love, love textile design. But I did, I have noticed some kind of different design industries that women gravitate towards as opposed to men. Like a lot of industrial designers have more men tend to be more men. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that from the perspective of blocks you could, we can look at it a couple of ways. There are the business blocks and then there are the emotional blocks as a creative because fundamentally what you are as a creative, that's my dog, Ramona. Speaker 1 (03:25):We are as a creative is we're selling our creative work. And I don't know about you, but for me, when I'm being creative, I learned through my creativity. I'm a writer. I learned through my writing, I learned through the things that I create. And so when you have to offer those for sale, a lot of times there are going to be personal blocks that are involved there. So you might think, can I charge that much for my work? Is it worth it? Is it good enough? Or this work is not good enough? Because a lot of designers and creatives in general are perfectionistic. We're trying to get to our next level in terms of our creativity. So I like to look at things as done better than perfect. Otherwise nothing would get out in the world that that took a little bit of time to get there because at first I was just trying to be a perfect creative, you know? Speaker 1 (04:19):And I was like, no, well not show you that it's ugly. Or you judge it harshly. You say, that's really terrible. And meanwhile somebody else who's on the receiving end of that is finding beauty in that is finding wonder in that end. You've done your job. I think we all come here with gifts. I look at it spiritually too, that my creativity is a spiritual expression. And so there is somebody who needs to connect with that creativity and who's going to be moved by it. First it was just for me, but then eventually I'm here to serve with it. And so when you're here to serve with it, you have to get out of your own way with all of the, like the inner brouhaha that you might be telling yourself, whether you're, you have an inner mean girl or an inner insecure girl, designers. Speaker 1 (05:04):You mentioned to me that you were an introvert. And I'm an introvert as well. Most creatives are introverted. They love spending time alone. And what you have to do is choose the time that you're going to be in communication with as resists and how you're going to be in communication with others. And that's more important in that moment because you're here to be of service. Right? So I think what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, a lot of designers have these emotional blocks with, you know, kind of on one hand and I worked this price that I, that I need to charge really in order to make a decent living and support myself and also, Mmm, okay. Trying, dealing with perfectionism, you know, being afraid to really put yourself out there as, I guess what that boils down to is another block and then, Mmm. Speaker 1 (05:56):Also like when you're thinking about some of the blocks on them as an aside, at least like when it comes to something like pricing, how would an artist maybe know the market just isn't receiving what they're putting out there? Because I see that happen a lot too, where it's like, you know, you might love what you're, you know, you might love your work, you might believe in it and you're putting it out there. But if you're not seeing results, like when is a good time for an artist and maybe say, okay, like this isn't really viable for the market because you really have to have both, right? Like you have to have the emotional strength to really like put yourself out there like what you're talking about. But also there has to be a market for the product that you're putting out there and there. Speaker 1 (06:37):I don't know, there has to be someone who's willing to buy it. I I do. I love this question and I've never been asked it before in this way cause it's sparking a whole lot of things for me. Normally how I would answer it is that there's always a market for what it is you're doing. There's always a somebody who wants what it is you put out in the world. You just have to find them. And what happens is we get in our own way by thinking, Oh nobody wants to buy this. Then we start to focus on all of the reasons why nobody wants this or maybe it's not the right timing or all of those things. And so we focus on that instead of well where are the clients who want to buy this? And they might not be in your normal sphere of things, especially when it comes to design services. Speaker 1 (07:23):And this is a very common common, the problem with designers is that they have an idea in their head or they want to express their creativity in a certain way and the client wants the creativity expressed in another way and those things don't match. So they think, well I can do what they want but I'm not going to be creatively fulfilled so I can either be creatively fulfilled or I can be paid. But it can't be both. And that's not true. However, what sparking for me, when you were asking me that question was that there are many artists, the majority of artists are ahead of the curve. They're ahead of the cultural curve in terms of emotion, in terms of visuality, in terms of all of those things aesthetic. So you might be a visionary with a product that is not currently of the marketplace and you really have to figure out, I think a way to have a conversation. Speaker 1 (08:20):Cause some people are like, well they just didn't hit, the timing didn't hit. And we do see that that some people are so far ahead that they can't permeate the Geist. They can't get into the conversation, but I think a lot of times designers give up too early and we get caught up in this, again, the emotional trauma, nobody wants it. Oh maybe I suck. Well maybe this is too expensive. We go down that rabbit hole much quicker. Then we would spend the time trying to figure out who needs this now. Yes. I'm also of the belief that if you get the idea now for the moment, now you, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in her book, big magic. And you see this out in the world that a lot of people will get the same idea at the same time in different parts. And I think there's a, there is a reason for that, that that idea is trying to get out. Speaker 1 (09:19):So some people are more confident about that expression and if the idea doesn't get expressed, if it's not meant to be with you, it will go looking for another home. I do really agree with that. Have you read that book? I have read that book and I had kind of forgotten about that part. But yeah, I love that part. Where it was like an idea for a book and like she had, was it an idea for a book that she had and then one of her friends yep. Manifesting with one of her friends and she said it was on a kiss. Like she kissed her friends, like congratulations or something. And then she felt the idea, leave her and go to her. Her friend and her friend brings up the book. And I, I, I of, I do believe that I believe that ideas have a home. Speaker 1 (10:01):And sometimes I'm like, I, I, you know, I know for me, my creativity, I'm not always taking care of it. And so if I don't take care of my creativity, I don't feel happy as a human because it's so much a part of me. So I think as creative people, the real art for us in business is learning how to express ourselves at the highest level and then have the conversation with people in such a way that they understand the value of this work and we'll purchase it from you. Right, right. I love that. Mmm. It does kind of also bring me back to my days as a textile designer when, you know, sometimes the market just wasn't quite ready for something. Like a lot of times we would talk about something looking and I designed rugs, right? So it's not like it's not like a cool book idea or something. Speaker 1 (10:54):It's totally cool that you're doing it as a creative. It's just because, you know, me can, not everybody can, I can't design a rug. Not everybody can design a rug. So that's another thing is that we really diminish the gifts that we have because society doesn't necessarily understand it in the same way we do. But the fact that you could visualize something that goes in a room that grounds a room, that's pretty powerful in my mind. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I love designing rugs. I think what I was trying to say is just that, Mmm. I think it was pretty clear when the market was either not ready for an idea. For example, when we would do like our color research, we were seeing like a lot of [inaudible] like tans and Browns and like more warm neutrals come up. But everyone in the market in the last like five to 10 years just perfect, purchased a gray sofa. Speaker 1 (11:48):So we were like, all right, we might feel like a little too early with some of these like warm neutrals and Brown's that coming back into rugs, like people are probably still going to be going with the grays. But also at the same time, like sometimes the design might look too dated that's been in the market for a while. Like we don't need to keep designing something that looks a little bit tired or dated, so. Mmm. Yeah. So I think that, I think it's an interesting conversation. I do. I, I hadn't thought of it that way. It is an interesting conversation. Yeah. Because you, you might be ahead of the curve too far ahead of the curve in terms of, but I do believe there's always an a, a way in, otherwise you wouldn't have had the idea. And sometimes I think ideas come early to people so that we have preparedness too because they take longer to execute than we think. Speaker 1 (12:37):So that they hit the site guys like, you know, there's the book by Malcolm Gladwell that talks about the tipping point and the early the early adopters and all of the, you know, the different categories of people. And I always feel like I was always a little bit of occur ahead of the curve, but I wasn't the head a head person. Hm. But for that person, they have an audience. And I do think for creatives, we don't spend enough time cultivating our audience. We might get into judgment about who they are. We might be afraid we're not reaching them. I think a lot of creative spend a lot of time in their head, quite frankly, worried about their work and does it suck? Does my work suck? Is this worth it? Is it, should it be out there? And part of that, I have to say too, is also part of the culture. Speaker 1 (13:26):Because the culture, traditionally we'll value somebody who's coming out of finance school more highly than somebody who's coming out of sculpture school. Absolutely. Yeah. But they also value industrial designers more than, there you go. Yep. It's interesting. I dated a guy a while back that was an industrial designer and he also hired, he was a manager and hired industrial designers and they're starting salaries were like way more than a textile designer. That's a different rabbit hole. But yeah, I was like, why? Yeah. And you know, and I I T to that point, I, part of the issue is that we don't speak up whatever sort of marginalized body we are as women. A lot of the time we don't say, Hey, this is not okay. This is the value of this work. We're like, Oh, this is what we have to accept. No, we don't. Speaker 1 (14:23):So there are always people who break the paradigm who break the rules. And so if we start to say, this is actually what this work is valued, that this is how many hours it takes, this is the level, the number of years of experience I bring to this work, this is who I am as a human being. This is my original creation and this is what it's worth. And then we hold that, which is not always easy when you have bills to pay, but we hold that. Then that's kind of the work that we're doing with designers too is having designers, you know, able to ask their value and when hundreds of designers are asking for their value, then everybody starts to understand, Oh wait, Hey, I can't get this service for free. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I do think it's definitely systemic as well, like at least with talking about starting salaries and all of that because Mmm. Speaker 1 (15:22):I think about it from the business owner's perspective too. And if I was a business owner and I had a rug company for example, and I said, Oh well this is like the going rate for textile designers. That's what I would offer someone as well. Right? So yeah, but no, and it's true cause you're starting you, we want to be fair and you want to know what is fair, but then there's all you're always willing to pay. I use the personality, right? If you want the Chloe purse, you're going to pay for the Chloe purse [inaudible] so you have to and how do you position yourself as that person? And then we get into a whole rabbit hole of money and our perceptions of money and what does it mean to have money and a lot of creative people and I was definitely like this before as well, like money. It's like I didn't want to have that conversation. I was having a a higher conversation than just dollars and cents. Right? It wasn't just about I was having a much higher, more important conversation but being broke. You can't have the conversation in the way that you want to because you end up struggling so much. Speaker 1 (16:31):Yep. Okay. Well, what is the best piece of advice that you can provide designers when it comes to kind of like networking and getting their designs in front of the right people and kind of like becoming that Chloe purse that you just talked about? Like how do you, how do you have leverage, especially if you're just starting out or, yeah, I like trying to get your designs in front of the right people. I think we're in a time of unprecedented access for creative people to reach their audience. So so many of you, you are Jane this as well. So many of us are actually reaching our audiences on our own with our Instagram feeds or with our Facebook feeds or our YouTube channels. So building your audience, you don't need to have [inaudible] pending on what you're selling. If you're in a product based business, it's a little bit different. Speaker 1 (17:20):When I work with interior designers, their jobs can be a lot bigger. But when you're selling [inaudible] services, you don't necessarily need a ton of clients to actually earn a decent wage and earn a really good wage. You have to have the right people who are the super fans who are focused on what it is you're doing. So I would say first of all, call two eight your audience, figure out who your super fan is, who that person is, who likes to buy from you and learn all the things about them. Where do they hang out? How do they purchase, why did they purchase, when did they purchase? All of those kinds of things. And then in terms of networking, it depends on what your ultimate goal is and putting yourself, understanding how you do fit into the market. Good place. So back to that conversation, are you more cutting edge? Speaker 1 (18:12):Are you doing what other people are doing so that you can create some press for yourself? And again, myriad outlets available to us. Now, loggers, Instagram feeds, podcasters, all kinds of people looking to tell other people's stories. So find the people who are excited about your story and share with them. Because even one fan, one super fan making a purchase, it can be that purchase that tips you over the edge. So that that's something I would do. And in terms of networking, you know, for a lot of designers will I'll say do a speaking engagement for an audience that you love. For us, like getting in front of people where you can interact or if you were, if you were a textile designer, you were saying maybe it's a workshop. If you're hosting at workshop four other artists to learn how to paint, there's all kinds of creative out of the way out of the box ways you can do [inaudible]. Speaker 1 (19:12):What I would say is this, but what it relies on, more importantly, and this is the part about visibility strategy, is that it's internal. So you really have to look at what is my mission here? What is my why? Why am I here to do, what am I here to do with my work? And then the strategy will present itself and associate itself with that. So as an example, you know I, my book branding, interior design and when I was writing it I was writing at one way and then I sort of started getting as you do when you create like different ideas and different research and I started taking it in a totally other direction so that when it to be published there were certain publishers for whom that was a fit. There were certain publishers from, I could have that conversation. The same with you, with your creative work, whatever it is that you're making. Speaker 1 (20:04):There are certain things that are going to be more people who are going to be a more natural fit for that. I had a client come to me once, it sounds like an odd thing and she had an idea for caskets. I know it sounds bananas, but she had an idea for caskets and then earns really modern earns. And I loved that idea because it was so specific and narrow that I, I mean everybody dies, right? So, but she could have, there's a handful of manufacturers who were doing that so she could have a conversation with the ones who didn't have, who had that gap in the market where she could potentially put her product. Now she, it, she didn't have the, the energy to go forward with that. And I think she thought the idea was crazy and I thought it was brilliant. I almost say that more crazier your idea, the more likely you will find an audience for it because it's crazy. Yeah. Speaker 1 (21:08):Sorry. I think of a, like the Snuggie like how popular it was and I'm like, what is silly idea? I dunno. I mean, I mean or, or you're too young for this, but when I was growing up there was like the cabbage patch doll, right? Or like all these doll, like all of the toys that come out and become like hits. I, you know, and now I have a one year old and he, he's singing like we're listening to the frozen soundtrack on Pandora radio the other day. I'm thinking to know how huge this movie was. They didn't know. I bet you that though it's going to, what, what was it about that film? And they couldn't do it in the second one, but what, what is it about that film that takes off? I think there are some things we don't know and that we can't contain. Speaker 1 (21:53):But if you ask testing this out by self, but if you ask to do the creative work that it's for the highest and best good of you and the highest and best good of others, you'll be given that. And if you stay committed to that focus and you don't drop it or let go or give up, you find an audience for it. So how much does mindset play a role in designers feeling stuck? Cause it sounds like that's something that you kind of deal with when you are working with designers. A lot. It is. I think it's, it is definitely a important for all human beings. We're, we're, we put so much emphasis in the culture on the money and the financial aspect of it, but business is human beings doing business. So we're emotionality where relationships where all of these things. So I think there's a point at which you can shut down your emotionality. Speaker 1 (22:48):But design is so personal. Creatives are so personal. This is where we get into trouble with boundaries a lot of times. So boundary setting is a huge problem for creatives because you want to help somewhat sometimes with your creative work and you're willing to help them more than you're willing to be paid well for what it is that you're doing. So mindset too, in terms of getting to your next level, how you feel about what you're doing in the world, how you feel about the people you're working with. I'll see a lot of designers get stuck after a month, bad experience with a client. So they've had a horrible experience with someone that they keep replaying over. I don't want that to happen again. I don't want it to happen again. And then what happens is they're attracting more and more and more of those experiences because they're focused on them. Speaker 1 (23:41):Hmm. I've been having a conversation about mindset for the last nine that I've been doing this with clients, but I'm also now having a deeper conversation about your soul as well because you're not your thoughts and your thoughts or things that you practice there. They can be good habits, they can be bad habits. You can be telling yourself good things all the time, but somebody is telling yourself that and whatever that entity and our energy is, that's who you are. And that's what she came to do. So I'm really more in touch with that. Like how are you here to serve? What lights you up, what makes you excited? And then we work on releasing whatever feelings or habits or practices that you've kind of gotten your way. And this ties very, this is what the visibility strategy really is. It's about being available. It's know visibility is about not only being seen in the traditional sense of the word, it's also about are you available? That's one of it's underused definitions. And for me, available is an internal game. We do things from the inside out. So once we have clarity on the inside, Oh, okay. Or vision is and who we want to serve, then the strategic portion like what is, do I use Instagram, do I use YouTube, how much do I charge? All of that is a lot easier once you have clarity on the first two pieces. [inaudible] Speaker 1 (25:09):Okay. So I'm going to skip ahead to a question that I think kind of relates to this conversation a little bit more and it is something that we kind of touched on earlier, but it's the fact that, you know, a lot of artists and designers are introverted and myself included some of the you know, things you were talking about, about, you know, reaching out or doing a speaking engagement. I can just like feel designer's like cringing, you know, like it's not that we're necessarily shy, but we just don't enjoy always being on all the time. And you said you're introverted as well, so I'm sure you can relate to that. And just being in Toronto people is, it just takes a lot of energy out of us. Yeah. Do you have any tips for introverts and would it be better maybe for them to hire like a PR manager or to outsource outsource, excuse me, some of the extroverted tasks that we don't necessarily want to do all the time that are involved in maybe becoming more visible. Speaker 1 (26:05):So that way became sort of reserve our energy for those times that we do need to be available and on. Yeah. Yeah. I think it has to be on a case by case basis and it depends on what your business and what it involves. So I would say I'm better at one on one connection. I actually really, I'm introverted, I like my alone time, but I like one on one connection quite a bit. So I will say seek to have those kinds of meetings and that's the way that you can accelerate your business is having, if you're a D a textile designer or designer or a maker, having the meeting with one decision maker or having a meeting with, you know, reaching out to the sales person or the vendor who you know, or that super fan is just like the one on one connection. Speaker 1 (26:54):So what I try to do is build relationships with people who don't mind being in front of many and then, and then I can have the one on one relationship and they can be the foot soldiers. Then there's also that you need downtime so that when you are going to be out in the world, you are militant about scheduling your receiving time or your downtime so that you can recover. Right? Because you have to recover. I, because I come from a production background and because I started, I started in theater, so I started getting my own press for theater and productions that I did. I'm a big fan of you doing your own press because you formed the relationship with the journalists. So it's again, that one on one and then they go to publication. You go with them. It's not rocket science. Most creatives I find have a natural instinct for where their stuff fits. Speaker 1 (27:48):No. Well, if you're a good creative, you, chances are you don't know. It's not a fit for that, or I don't want it to go there. You just, you have that innate discernment and I think you should naturally do your own press until it gets, until the requests are so great. Or if you can't say no, then you hire someone to do it for you. But I'm a big fan of starting on your own and doing it by yourself because you know your work best. You're going to have the best kind of conversations and people like you, they'll form the relationship with you as opposed to with others. And I'm sure you're good a one on one. You're happy one-on-one. Yeah. I like doing one on one. I love doing the podcast. Yeah. Interviewing people like you. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, I do enjoy that. Although if, I think if I had, if I was doing this all day, like back to back, you know, like I don't know, five hours a day, I think it would be too much. It's too much. Yeah. So we, I always have space between interviews. I actually did some coaching today. I'm like, Oh, I'm actually, I'm okay. It's okay because I was a happy group. I love my clients. So that's really important. That's really important for introverts too. All aspects of not only your supply chain, but your client chain. [inaudible] Speaker 1 (29:04):Have a, no, I don't know if we can, can we say swear words? Are you okay? I don't care. Have a no asshole policy. Right. Or don't work with pittas pain in the ass. Don't work with them. Right? Like no. And, and that's going to be different for everybody because my Pitta is going to be somebody else's dream client. So really honoring how you feel. You know, when I'm in the company and this person, I feel like crap or they don't really understand what I'm saying in terms of the collaboration. I don't want to work with them and just being okay with that and releasing them to go find somebody who's going to be great for them. But really being fierce about fit and fierce about what your fit is so that when you, or in a situation or you have bigger demands on your energy that you feel comfortable giving [inaudible]. Speaker 1 (29:58):So do you believe that designers are maybe lacking their right marketing or PR strategies or something deeper going on? Or is it a little of both? And I know we kind of touched on this, but yeah, I think I have a lot of clients who are like, and again, it really depends on what it is you're selling. For interior designers perspective, some will say, Oh well Instagram. And it just depends on, again, their age demographic and also who they're serving. And I'm like, the first question I usually ask is, is your ideal client on Instagram? Well, have you ever really gotten a job from Instagram? No. Now some clients do. And then I'm like, perfect. That's where you should put your efforts. If you don't get a client from the place where you're putting your marketing efforts, don't do it. Even though everybody's saying this is what you have to do. Visibility strategies are individual, so you need to choose and figure out where your people are and then have a cover. I've noticed that I'll have a different conversation with someone. I'm sure you noticed this too. I've had a different conversation with somebody on Facebook that I do on Instagram. I get a different kind of client from Instagram than I do from Facebook, and so.Speaker 1 (00:00):We really pay attention to that. So what I'm posting here is different from what I posting over here and sometimes it's the same, but I'll tweak the way I come into the story. And I think again, that's something that creatives do very naturally because you're trying to fit and to please. But I think also from a visibility standpoint, what we talked about earlier, which is not thinking that your work is good enough to get press or to be seen. So not even trying to pitch or not even trying for, for years and years work goes by. That's a problem. Your work is if, if at least people who are not your mom, at least three people who are not your mom tell you I love this work or this is really beautiful [inaudible] then figure out what those people read and pitch that Daisy because you're onto something or where do they hang out online or what would they be willing to buy it? Speaker 1 (00:58):I have a friend who's a Facebook friend who I was somebody who I went to school with. I didn't know her actually very well then and on Facebook. Now she's been posting all of these paintings and I said, Oh, I love that painting. I would love to buy it. And she's like, okay. So she sells me the painting and the now she's been developing this website and she's kind of coming out as an artist because she didn't think that her work was that great. She's judgment on her work. Okay. Just because you're learning doesn't mean that I will enjoy the output of the stage you're learning at. When I looked back at my earlier films or when I look back at the earlier thing I've written, sometimes I'm like, like, or I that doesn't resonate or I like it, but I'm like, I don't even know how I got to that. I would've never gotten to that place now. That's okay. Be grateful that you did that work and then now you're onto your next set of work. Speaker 1 (01:57):From my own personal standpoint, I feel like I've gotten on these little PR cakes where I've tried to like reach out to some press, but I haven't really heard back that much. And so I think maybe designers feel like, at least for me, I felt like I needed to have maybe a little bit more of a success story before I started. You know, really putting myself out there a lot more including like being on other people's podcasts and things like that. Well I think it's more you need a story in the moment. So if you had like a new release, that's a story. If you see, you know, if you're exploring something in a way that nobody has, like you're setting a trend in the market, that's a story. So there are ways in, well what I will say about press, it's, it's a Sisyphean task. Speaker 1 (02:42):So you really have to just keep doing it. Just have to keep doing it. And you will get a lot of nos for every yes, we get silence, radio, silence or nos and you can't take it personally. So we have a three rule follow up. We kind of, we pitch, then we wait seven to 10 days, then we follow up with an email, then we follow up with a phone call, then we drop it. If we don't hear anything and then six months later if they haven't told us to like bugger off orF off, then we will follow up again and again. You just keep doing it because chances are the, in this climate, the journalist has left and gone to another publication that also, and this is a good point which I'll make quickly, but is this the idea that if your energy is too loaded, when you're pitching, you're unlikely to get the response that you want. Speaker 1 (03:40):So if you've made it by loaded pen, this is couple things. So if you've made it mean too much. Okay. Or if you are in any way hesitant. I find it such a delicate thing. I had a client, her work was stunning. Two clients we were working on, we were working on that for them and she was pitching, we were trying to picture it. I'm like, this work is beautiful. We had three yeses from publications that all of a sudden disappeared and I was like, that is weird. This is you. So we had been journey. We had this conversation where turns out she'd had all of this like, well, I'm not really sure about that publication. And then she had all this like internal stuff going on that and I do believe in energy and the flow of energy and how that impacts things. And so she left it up with that like whole, you know, brouhaha going on and just today we were talking, she's like, Oh, this publication came to me and this one came out of the blue. Speaker 1 (04:38):And I said, yeah, because she's in a great space, she's ready to be seen. She's ready to be seen authentically for who she is. She's not afraid to be seen. She's like, it would be nice to be published, but it's not going to make her break her career if she doesn't. And it comes in really easily. So I never had anything on press in my early days. And so when I was producing theater and being and shows and things, so I would get a lot of press, which could piss people off, but I just didn't have anything on it. I was like, Oh well this is what you do. Okay. So I did it and then I would get the press. And so if you have that fun, make it a game with yourself and you're like, well this is going to be fun. Let's see if I can get two or three interviews, podcast interviews or let's see if I can get like an article in this publication. Speaker 1 (05:26):Like wouldn't that be fun? And you just make it really light. Right? You're more likely to have success with it. Cool. So how would you advise designers to become more available for the life that they truly want and what are some kind of action steps that they can take to become more available? And I know you kinda just mentioned that with just kind of knocking on the door and not putting too much pressure on it. Yeah, they do some research, create a list. Maybe people that they want to reach out to podcasts that they want to be on. Blogs are, yes. So that's from a traditional visibility standpoint. From an availability standpoint, I'll, I'll address that two ways from the availability. The internal game is first getting clear on your vision and your vision of what you want your life to be like. And you might not see that. Speaker 1 (06:16):I think visions, we talk a lot about manifestation. I do believe that visions are received and they're received. When you're in an open space and you're ready to receive them, a lot of people say, I don't see what I'm supposed to do. I can't, you know, I don't understand it. I'm like, because you're probably not giving yourself permission a lot of the time or you can't believe that it could be possible. You could have the life you see in your head. So once you've, yeah, get clarity on that and you start to do any kind of release. We have visibility. I talk about visibility blocks. I'm going to be adults on it in March and talking a little bit about the visibility block and the removal process, but a lot of it is this kind of internal energetic work. Then you can create the strategy from there. Speaker 1 (07:03):So yes, in terms of the the practice physical visibility standpoint, it's understanding what you're selling, what your product is, how it, how it is, the story of [inaudible] the product and then who needs to hear that story the most and then which publications are speaking to the people that you need to speak to. I will say though that cultivating your own following, it's really one of the best things that you can do. So building your own audience, friends upon friends, doing a newsletter. I'm a huge fan of the newsletter once a week talking to the people who want to hear from you about things that are of interest to you. [inaudible] One of the best things you can do about creating business for yourself. And I guess the question I would ask with this is, you know, what is the goal of the visibility? And this goes back to that lightness piece because sometimes people think, well if I get the press then I will have made it, but the press is just one more step in either audience generation or in sales generation. Speaker 1 (08:13):So deciding what you think the press will do for you before you get it. And then saying is pressed the best way to achieve that goal. And then saying being prepared for the unexpected. So clients who have had projects published, I had one client in a show house this year and the, the room she did got picked up in multiple publications just all over the place. It created this snowball effect. It was the best case scenario. We would have never, you didn't see that happen [inaudible] and she was getting offers and meetings and all these things were happening and she was like, and we had to just breathe through that and allow her to receive at that level. Yeah. So I hope that answers the question. Yeah. I think I'm with my audience and for myself included. Like I, yeah, I'm trying to actually license my patterns now. Speaker 1 (09:13):So one of the best ways to get in front of people is to actually exhibit at trade shows. Yes. I was going to say you need to go to the licensing show. Yeah. Yeah. But it is really expensive. So Sirtex just happened in February and I did not go to that show because I now have, I'm working with an agency. So they were there representing me and my work and I love my agent, but I'm not sure, like I'm still kind of like, Oh, do I want to work with an agent, you know, longterm because I kind of miss being at the show, but I didn't really have. And that's, you know, funding to be able to, did you have you considered partnering with like five or six other designers and having a booth? Yeah, I've, I've discussed this with other designers and they, I feel like you kind of get lost in, you know, in six designers, you know, maybe with one other designer. It's, I've seen that work really well. And I did go to blueprint show last may. Yes. But with licensing, part of the problem is that you're earning royalties, which can be great, but it just takes a very long time to like really get the ball rolling with that, you know, finance. So, so this, so this is what I would say is why is the goal licensing? Speaker 1 (10:25):Mmm aye. [inaudible] First of all, you, you can maintain your own copyright on your work. Yes. You can use the same design over and over again for different industries. And it really, your name is on the work as well. So you know, you're kind of like partnering with a manufacturer who maybe sells dishes or it could be, again, rugs or pillows or any kind of home decor. It could be Carol, it could be really any product, but you're kind of partnering with that company and you get to do the artwork side of things, but they kind of handle the rest. So you're not a lockdown with the logistics and operations and trying to sell your own product. Mmm. You are also, you have more creative license because it is your brand. It is your so, and I would dig deeper with you. So then you want to maintain creative license. Do you want to have your brand? What do you want your brand to do? Speaker 1 (11:26):Mmm, but okay, I get that. I guess that's the very basic answer, but I know you have a deeper answer. But why I began, this is the work. Yeah, the word. I think it's more about leaving a legacy and kind of being known. Like when I look at other designers that you know, that we still celebrate today and their work is still being licensed you know, like Sonya Delaney or William Morris, you know, is one of the most famous examples. But I would love to leave a legacy, whereas, you know, of course we're all going to die at some point. Like we times on earlier. You think of William Morris with the agency though, right? So what do you want to be known for? Aye? To whom to whom do you want to have this impact? Speaker 1 (12:20):I mean, I don't really mind. I mean, I guess it's more women. My designs tend to be more feminine, more modern. Okay. but you see how that gives you, you have to know that. And the reason I'll say that, it's maybe not from a licensing perspective. When somebody got you in a booth. I'm just gonna just challenge the thinking a little bit. When six designers say, well I would be lost in a booth with six other designers, how is that any different than having an agent who has 30 different designers to represent inside of a booth? Yeah, I actually would argue, yeah, I would argue that six of you and I used to, because I used to do t-shirts and underwear, so this was in another life. I had a tee shirt and underwear line and we got up to 44 stores. This was like pre-internet and before I kind of knew about an inventory was like, it was like never again. Speaker 1 (13:11):And I was like all excited about licensing too, right? Like at that point. But, and it wasn't doing pattern design, it was doing words. So it was words on the tee shirts. And they were embroidered. But the thing is is that I would say this is that knowing who you are going to serve and what you wanted, like the emotional experience you would like them to have. Like, I made this and it makes me feel happy and I want them to feel happy and then fine meeting those women and then thinking to myself, well, what products could I make? Because there's ways for designers to make products in a way that actually is not fulfilled by you. Thank God that other people are fulfilling it. So it's not a licensing revenue. There's still some work involved, but maybe you're making cell phone cases or you're making key chains or you're making however you see your applications. Speaker 1 (14:01):So really going deep on how, how do I see this pattern in application and then who and then who is going to have it and then building that audience so that you have somebody cause yes, an agent. I've had multiple agents over my career fundamentally and it's been helpful definitely at times for sure. It's like a partner and it's a collaboration. It really depends on the agents. But I do think in this time you owning your art as you said, but also reaching your people in the way that you want to is actually going to be a greater service to you. So I would figure out what is it that I want my patterns to do? What applications do they have? Will these women be winning, willing to buy it from? And then creating your own strategy from that. Speaker 1 (14:56):Is that a helpful? Mmm, there might be resistance for that. Yeah. I've definitely sold products before and it's just not something I want to do again. [inaudible] Yeah, I don't know. Okay. It was, I ended up spending a lot of time selling and that's what I don't want to do. And that's the reason why I went with [inaudible] an agent. It's because they already have those relationships with a lot of the buyers and, right. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, if it doesn't end up working out longterm, that's okay. And it's, no, nothing bad about them. But it's early days. It's early days. So what you can do from their perspective and from a buyer's perspective is to have an audience. Because when people want your things, they want your things and that incentivizes whoever is on the selling or the buying end to buy it. But like, Oh, this person, we know her because of that. Speaker 1 (15:58):So coming to the press and that visibility from a very practical standpoint, but I do think you have some deeper work to do just with those questions about who is my audience really like seeing her so clearly on the other or him on it, but it's her seeing her so clearly on the other end and then figuring out what would she like me to do with this? Because you might get some brilliant idea. It might be going two women's goods or babies goods or something you've never thought of before that your agent might not have thought of either that you can give that idea to the agent to help sell or that you can create an agreement around. Because the only thing I'll say with the licensing model is that you have to have a lot of licenses. You're going to have to have a lot of licenses or a huge volume to make it, but even then it won't. Speaker 1 (16:48):It won't happen. So you have to have a lot of licenses to make viable and it's possible. But that means you're going to have to like dig down into your emotional reserve and say, okay, we're in it for the long haul and you know, show me the fastest route and just start really you can still continue to do some of that work on your own. Like identifying people for your agent. [inaudible] Doing like little letters, not sales letters. It's hard to be a creative and just be creative. So if we can reframe the conversation two, how are we connecting with people, with people who we love, then it becomes less tedious when we have to. And if you only have to have two or three of those conversations with people you like, it doesn't feel so much like sales. Yeah, that's definitely true. And I think that's definitely what I'm trying to do is kind of build up that audience. Speaker 1 (17:49):Youtube and Instagram and I'm on the Facebook group as well, so hopefully that will, well, it will help. It will help. And designers, you know, designers should be seeing depending on are you doing on on fabric as well? Yeah. Yeah. I'm having, I have some licensing deals with a fabric company. Another with a girl who's has a bad company. Right. And then my agent has been doing a lot of work and reaching out to a lot of people, but nothing has really landed yet. So she is going to land. So all I'll just say for you is put your focus on this is where it helps doing the vision. Put your focus on what it is you want, what are the outcomes you want. Put your focus there as opposed to why isn't it landing, why isn't it landing? Why isn't it landing? Speaker 1 (18:39):Cause then you just get more of that. So put your focus on, huh, I bet when I get X it's going to, we're going to do this and this will be, and then you'll get ideas based on it being done because at some, at some level it is done. Just like the design you've seen, your head is done. Right, right, right. That makes sense. That's cool. I like that. Okay. Okay. So do you have any suggestions for ways that designers can earn more money in 2020 if they are kind of struggling to get that full time income? Ask you have to ask for more money. So set a goal for yourself about what would be a stretch for you, what did you earn last year? You might may or may not have tracked that, track it, figure it out, and then say, well, what would be more and what would be a stretch? Speaker 1 (19:28):And then ask for that. So clarity of the vision, I cannot stress this enough. So much of the plan comes from that. And the way that you'll bring more money in comes from that. And then also not making any one client or way of being your source. It might be your source, but I'm thinking like what if you got a private commission from a designer to design their fabric line? You would probably be okay with that. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. So, so there are other ways then the way that you think that you're going to make money and be open to receiving those ideas and diverting from that track if the goal is more money and then back to what is the money for because the money comes in a lot faster when you know what it's for. [inaudible] So what are some of the biggest emotional hurdles that designers face surrounding money and what are some of your tips to help them overcome that? Speaker 1 (20:39):Again, it's that worthiness piece, right then I'm not worth it that I can't ask for this, that I shouldn't ask for this. And then the other thing is being in an other client's money stories so they don't have enough money for this, which is why I should charge less. That's probably the biggest one. Or they can't afford it or they're going through a rough time for now or whatever it is that you've told yourself. So staying out of that story and staying in, what is the value of what I'm doing and asking for that. The asking is important. You'd be amazed how many people just don't ask. So you can't get, you can't negotiate if you don't ask. Speaker 1 (21:23):Yeah, that is so true. And I have this one freelance client that I haven't raised my prices and okay. A year. So it's probably time to do that. There you go. Yeah. And yeah, and you know, if there's somebody who has worked with you constantly, then they like your work and you can say, look, it's time that I'm raising my prices, I'm going to raise them by this much, by this goal. And that's, that's, that's, there you go. Right. Okay. So we'll end on how does gender play a role in like everything that we just talked about? I really do think it does play a role in the way that women are socialized. And as I said, being able to look at mostly women in terms of interior design. There are recurring themes that pursuing our creativity is selfish, that we're being selfish, that we're supposed to take care of everybody else, that we don't really need to have this creative expression. Speaker 1 (22:21):And that's just not true. Also in terms of the value piece, we're schooled to be less, less weight, right? Less in age, lesson size, less. All of these things were schooled to be less, but we are in fact [inaudible] and we're, we're taking on that programming. I think if you, you know, there's that boo ha happening with the Superbowl right now and women saying, Oh, you know, I gender looking at Jennifer Lopez, his body made me feel bad. And I think to myself, well why didn't it make you feel bad? What does she have to do with you? That is for expression or expression. But it's because we've been trained [inaudible] for feedback. We've been trained to look for other look to others for our value, which is why we have such a hard time setting it. And if we go inside and really get the full view or when we do state it, other women sometimes end men especially too, depending on who we're dealing with, we'll police this and say, well that's not where, or what do you, why do you think you can ask for that? Speaker 1 (23:36):Well, why wouldn't I be able to ask for that? So it's us really standing in our value and speaking our, so you use it and have you visibility will demand that you use your voice and it will demand that you ask for your value. Because, and again, back to the spiritual perspective, you're an expression of unlimited source. So why wouldn't you be able to ask for X amount or Y amount and why would you be here to live with this creative gift that can allow you to be in service on a very high level and live in, in poverty? That doesn't make sense. So we have to start changing the conversation about what we're asking for [inaudible] and creatives. Because what I noticed with creatives when they get going and when they understand their value, when they're receiving more income, they're in service to everybody as a whole. Speaker 1 (24:37):They're really looking at solving problems. Creatives look at solving problems, answering questions that, that a lot of other disciplines don't even ask. Yeah, that's a really good point. So I'm, I want to pop over to the design tribe Facebook group and anybody has any questions? Who's watching live? We do have a comment from Jen, Hey Jen, if you're still watching. She says yes, it's so important for women to be empowered in their work in creativity. So I think that you've definitely helped inspire a lot of people today. If anyone else is watching, feel free to drop us a question live and I'll wait for just a couple of minutes to see if we get any questions. But other than that, I'm Kim, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. It's been so much fun. I'm like, Oh, I'm live today. It's been fun to be live there you go live very often. Speaker 1 (25:36):I go live in our Facebook group once a week and it's sometimes I'm happy if there happens to be one eyeball and I can just order no eyeballs and they can turn it off really quick if I mess up. It's just but it's nice to be interviewed and ask the questions cause when you're, when you're having to think of things and I'll script pain sometimes, but I'm not always as eloquent as I'd like to be. Oh, you are. Thank you. Or Juliet. I was, I was by today, or my baby gets crying, or the dogs get barking and then I'm like, I don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about that right now. It's all good. Right? Well, any other questions from our Facebook group right now, but I'm sure a lot of people will be watching the replay, so if you are watching the replay, drop us a comment below and we'll get back. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Love it. Okay, bye guys. I hope that you enjoy today's and make sure to hit that subscribe button and click the little bell to get notified every time a come out with a new video and of course, make sure to subscribe to the actual podcast so that if you are busy and trying to do other things, that you're still not missing an episode. I love you guys and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye guys. 

Today’s Topic: Eating for health from the inside out Kim and I have been guinea pigs for a lot of different diets. Right now I eat keto style and fast for 16 hours a day whereas Kim fasts for 24 hours once every week or two. In this episode we talk about the benefits of fasting (it’s great for gut health and losing body fat) plus Kim tells us her views on bacon - particularly the non-organic kind. We also cover Chalene Johnson’s cloud bread (so good!) and talk about the new products from Kim’s company that she’s absolutely obsessed with. One of them is a collagen bone broth with extra vitamin C. Kim’s been making bone broth once a week for years, and it’s such a pain in the ass to make. First you have source organic, non-GMO bones and then it’s two days of cooking and you have to strain it, which gets kind of messy. So Kim’s super happy about being able to buy quality bone broth. And, special offer! Whatever kind of diet you follow, Kim would love to create a personalized supplement protocol for you. You can email or DM her on Instagram. Resources: Mastermind: workhardplayhardpodcast.com/mastermind (https://workhardplayhardpodcast.com/mastermind/) Connect with us on Instagram: @robmurgatroyd (https://www.instagram.com/robmurgatroyd/) Email Kim: heyjetset@gmail.com (mailto:heyjetset@gmail.com) (https://www.amazon.com/Keto-Guido-Cookbook-Delicious-Recipes/dp/1641524820) drhyman.com (https://drhyman.com) marksdailyapple.com (https://www.marksdailyapple.com) Instagram: @131method (https://www.instagram.com/131method/)

Christmas is early in this special edition of Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram podcast. In this episode, host John Haggard welcomes back Kim Baker, the CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce. Get to know her more as she and John discuss the Gallatin Christmas Events as well as the following topics: Kim’s Bowling CareerIs Kim Running for Mayor 30 Years from Now?Changes in Gallatin Over the Past 5 YearsMayor Paige Brown’s State of the City Address (Click on the Link to Watch)Holiday Events in Gallatin“Tinsel and Treasures” EventHow the “Tinsel and Treasures” Event WorksWhat Are the Prizes for the Participants?Perkins, the Oldest Standing Business in GallatinWhy Gallatin Christmas Tree Lighting Is Different From OthersGallatin’s Annual Christmas ParadeHow to Participate at the Christmas ParadeMisconceptions of the Chamber of CommerceHow Is the Chamber of Commerce Funded?Are There Any Job Openings at the Chamber of Commerce Right Now?How to Get in Touch with the Chamber of CommerceWhere’s the Chamber of Commerce Office Located Balloon Garland mentioned in interview: Baloon Garland is from (and sponsored by) Black Tie Floral Design and Events. Transcript John Haggard 0:02 Welcome to the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram Special Edition podcast where we also interview community leaders, Gallatin area events that are happening. And today we’re excited to have back to the podcast. Kim Baker, she’s the chief executive officer of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce. Hey Kim, welcome back! Kim Baker 0:20 Hey, good to be here again. Thanks for having me. John Haggard 0:22 You know the last time we spoke one of the things we found out about you is that you are pretty close to a professional bowler. So my question is, have you bowled a 300 Kim, since we last spoke? Kim Baker 0:33 Now I’d be careful using the term professional but I’m not gonna make that claim. And no, I haven’t bowled a 300. So I guess that tells you a lot about my professionalism in bowling. John Haggard 0:43 All right. Well, you have had a chance to at least bowl have you since we last talked? Kim Baker 0:48 You know what? I haven’t bowled but I do like to bowl a lot in the winter. You know, there’s not much else you can do. You can’t do a lot of other activities outdoors. So we reserve that kind of sore the colder months at our house. John Haggard 0:59 Gotcha. Well, the cold weather is on the way, so there you go. Hey, for folks who missed our last podcast with Kim, by the way, you can go to www.miraclefordtn.com and look under the podcast tab and you can find Kim Baker right there as episode number nine. Kim, we learned a lot of things about you like again, you’re good bowler, your bargain hunter when it comes to shopping and you like tent camping and you actually told us one time that you were dead for a short while and brought back to life. So folks go to podcast number nine if you have not already done so to listen to our previous podcast with Kim Baker. So Kim, since we last spoke, we learned that you joined the chamber in 2013 became the CEO in 2015. Even said maybe one day 30 years or so from now you might run for mayor did I get all that right? Kim Baker 1:49 Might. Not so, you know. You got most of it right. John Haggard 1:53 Okay. So if we were going to or you were going to recap what has happened in the past five years in Gallatin, just overall in terms of new industry that’s come to town, new shopping centers, new arts and entertainment, that sort of thing. What has been going on? Kim Baker 2:08 In the last three to five years, there’s been a lot. You know, Gallatin looks a lot different than it did three to five years ago. It certainly looks a lot different than it did about 20 years ago when I landed here. And since I’ve been here at the chamber, I’ve seen a lot of changes. You know, I think the best thing I’ve seen is through all of the changes, just the way the community is stuck together, and that hasn’t changed. So I like that because a lot of times when we see change, we see everything change. But there’s some things that have just been completely stable. And I think that’s the heart and the community in Gallatin. You know, I love seeing the growth and revitalization and some of the steadiness of the ebb and flow in our downtown. Businesses and just the changes in the downtown Gallatin of ebb and flow historically. Kim Baker 2:55 But in the more recent years, they’ve kind of just maintained and the businesses become more sustainable. We’ve seen a lot of the same faces. And I like to say we really have aces and their places on our square right now. We’ve got a great group of folks that work together. Of course, we’re seeing a lot more variety. Our dining scene has gotten a lot more dynamic. I like to call it Gallatin’s dynamic dining scene. And there’s just so many different options. And we’re seeing more of those. I mean, we’ve got several new restaurants popping up and several more to come in the next few months. I noticed the other day, I think it’s a new burrito place over in the Greenlee area, they’ve put their sign up. So that’s a good sign when you see a new sign. And so I’ve seen a lot of that over the past few years. You know, a few weeks ago, the mayor delivered her State of the City address, which is an annual address she delivers. Kim Baker 3:45 We’ve had the honor of her presenting that at a chamber luncheon for about a decade now. And she delivered that again and then she did an evening presentation. They actually filmed that this year. And so I would highly recommend listeners who did not see or hear that presentation, go check it out and find it. And you can find it on Facebook. And I can even send you a link. So you can link it into this podcast. It’s on YouTube. (Follow Link to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y79nK2e2Hzw) And it is a state of the city. And the mayor does a really phenomenal job when she delivers that presentation every year, I’ve never seen her deliver it poorly. But this year, I really liked how she opened with addressing some of our biggest challenges that we’ve seen in the past 12 to 18 months. And then some of the biggest challenges will face them in the days ahead. And she addressed those right, right off the rip, she said, “Look, the state of Gallatin and is great. We know we have these issues. However…” And then she celebrated all of our successes and how we’re going to integrate those along with these challenges over time. And I think that’s really positive for Gallatin to be able to stand up and say those things. So I’ll give you that link. So we can put that in here because folks should just really see that and I think it’ll allow them some time to reflect over things that they may not have even noticed that happened over the past year. Things that they may not even know are happening, you know, in their neighborhood in the days ahead. So… John Haggard 5:05 Yeah, that would be great. We will definitely put that link there. And was there any one thing that struck you as like, hey, what a surprise or glad to know, it turned out this way when we were working on it. Kim Baker 5:17 Let’s see, I don’t know that surprise for me because I, you know, I stay pretty in touch with a lot of the things that are going on in the community. I think that there was definitely some of the projects that were surprising to folks. And just, you know, one thing that the city’s working on right now, they implemented a strategic plan last year, and so they’re working on a comprehensive plan that is community involvement, and it’s focused on the feedback from community members, those insider community of people over the past year have had a chance to weigh in to develop this plan. And so they revealed a little bit of that and they revealed some clips of videos they had captured at some of the different planning sessions and so it is interesting to see people say different things, especially sometimes when you think you know, people really well. And then they have different viewpoints, which there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s what makes our city unique. And that gives us a different or unique culture. And if there was something that surprised me some of the clips they incorporate into that it’s like, oh, oh, they think like that. That’s interesting, you know, and it’s, it’s interesting to see how different people think. John Haggard 6:21 Yeah, well, let’s get to where the fun part is – the upcoming holiday events that are going on in the Gallatin area. We find that people now seem to travel a little bit more. Some if they live in Nashville they go to Franklin or they will go, you know, north or go east or go west. And I’m just wondering what is going on? What are the fun things that folks could look forward to in November, December, early January? Kim Baker 6:44 You know, there are so many. I like to say that this is the most magical time of year and I know that’s kind of cheesy because when we think of Christmas or even when we think of Disney World, we think of that term. But it really is a magical time of year in Gallatin and I think there’s a lot to do with it. I think the historic downtown it just has that very movie-ish feel to it when it’s all lit up and decorated for the holidays. Again, I think that hometown feel you experience in certain areas live in amongst all of the people that have been here for generations. But then I think a lot of it has to do with these special happenings that reoccur each holiday season. Kim Baker 7:21 So one of my favorites is actually coming up in November, and it’s coming up on Saturday, November 9th, and Sunday, November 10th. And it’s called Tinsel and Treasures. And it has been going on, we think, for about 50 years. Actually, it’s a chamber-organized event. It includes many local retailers in the area. So I think this year we’ve got right under 30 participating. And basically the gist of it is these folks, local retailers that have a brick and mortar in Gallatin, so they have to be in Gallatin proper 37066 zip code, they can participate. And we promote them. We market them. We Push out a passport that includes all of their names and their locations and their hours on them. And shoppers that weekend can start at any of the participating retailers. Pick up one of these passports, and then it serves as a guide and a passport to help them navigate the weekend. And so it is the holiday retail open house. It really kicks off the holiday shopping season in downtown Gallatin, and all over Gallatin. John Haggard 8:27 So passports that’s interesting. Tell me a little bit more about the passport itself. Kim Baker 8:32 Yeah, so it’s a piece of paper this year because we have so many participants. In the past, it had been a half sheet of paper. And so this year, it’s actually a full sheet, 8.5×11, because we have so many folks participating and so it kind of looks like a kind of like a Monopoly board on this like around the perimeter. There’s little boxes. Each of them has a logo or the business name and it may take it around. And so they start at they can start anywhere they want. And as they traveled each different spot, the idea is that they would go in hopefully shop and spend money. But if not just kind of browse and see what they have to offer and if it’s not something they need at the time, we hope that they go back. While they’re there they can get a punch. Each retailer has a unique hole punch that they will use to punch their passport and then they travel around and they can go to the next one. Kim Baker 9:20 A lot of these retailers will have their halls completely decked. That’s one thing we asked them – that they are decorated for Christmas. Every now and then we get a little pushback because they say Kim it’s the second weekend of November because this event always is the second week in November. But we say I know but it really kicks off the holiday season is sets the tone if you go ahead and put your trees up and your garland out and so they do. And they’ll have Christmas music playing, some of them will have live Christmas music like a chorus or a band. A lot of them will have Christmas cookies or Christmas spreads finger foods out special giveaways door prizes to shoppers throughout the weekend. And most of them already have their Christmas merchandise out. So if you’re looking to buy decorations, or you’re looking for new items that are hot and trending for Christmas gifts, that’s a great time to get them. Kim Baker 10:09 So the idea is that you would travel around and get as many punches as you can. This event stretches over two days. So on Saturday, it’s always from 10 to 5. And on Sunday, it’s from 12 to 5. So you have two almost full days to participate and get all the punches. If you visit at least 10 spots, you’re entered into a drawing. One thing we ask from these folks, this is not a revenue stream for the chamber by any means. We ask these folks when they participate, they give us $50 participate, and they give us $50 and gift cards. And so the $50 to participate goes to marketing and producing all the materials, we market and use our local media partners to help promote this event. And then the gift cards we divide up into two shopping spree prize packages. So two lucky winners will win a shopping spree to go back and shop at all these spots again. John Haggard 11:03 How much, if you are one of the two winners, would you receive? Kim Baker 11:07 Oh, let’s see, let’s do a little bit of math. Like this year, I mean, each place has given us $50. And then you got 30. So you divide that by two. Are you good at math? John Haggard 11:19 Yeah. $750 each, I think? Kim Baker 11:21 Yeah. About $750. Sometimes we throw in different prizes. Like we’ll put in some Christmas ornaments or some merchandise, and we’ll just have fun with it. Sometimes we’ll have retailers that give us things in addition to the gift card. So I mean, it could very well be a prize package up to about $1,000. John Haggard 11:41 Wow! Sounds fun! It sounds fun because people are going to want to shop anyway. So why not go, you know? Kim Baker 11:46 Oh, yeah, I mean, it really is and, and what we see now because this tradition has been going on it was it was started by Perkins many, many moons ago, decades ago, literally. And when it kind of started growing. I was told they reached out to the Chamber. This predates me, of course, but they reached out to the chamber and said, “Hey, this is growing to want to help?” And then that’s kind of how it fell into the Chamber’s hands. We just carried on with it, because we think it’s really good for our retailers and so we know that it brings folks into the area to shop. I mean, you go out this weekend and you see mostly, it’s mostly women. Now, there are some men a lot of times you see the men that are like waiting outside of a coffee shop, or they’ve been dropped off at a restaurant to catch a football game. John Haggard 12:29 Yeah! Kim Baker 12:29 But I mean, they’re out there. And it’s primarily women. And now you see generations of women. So you’ve got grandmothers or great grandmothers, who have been shopping for this event. Then it began like 50 years ago, and now they’re bringing back daughters and granddaughters and even great-granddaughters. And so you see multi-generational like families here shopping this event together. And that to me is so magical. John Haggard 12:55 Now, you said started by Perkins. Now for folks who don’t know about Perkins, tell us about that. Kim Baker 13:00 Perkins is a local pharmacy and gift shop. They now have two locations here in Gallatin. One’s in down Hartsville Pike by the hospital by summer regional. And then the other one is off Greenlea Boulevard near the Fairvue plantation neighborhood. And they are the oldest standing business that is still operational in Gallatin and, let me remember how old they are… I think we’re at over 130 now? John Haggard 13:27 Wow. Wow! Kim Baker 13:29 I think that’s right. They have… over 100 years old. They have got they have a beautiful little gift shop and both of their… yeah established 1895 so John Haggard 13:41 Wow. Kim Baker 13:42 Yeah, it’s awesome, right? John Haggard 13:43 Yeah. Kim Baker 13:43 And I think they’re on their, I think just maybe, the third or fourth owner. I could be wrong on that, but it’s owned by a local family and both stores and they have a beautiful gift shop in those stores. It’s one of my go-to places for baby gifts, wedding gifts I mean, when my husband and I got married, we registered it. You know all of the normal spots people register for dishes and things like that. But we also registered a Perkins and so my favorite little household items and gifts came from Perkins. Same thing with when my daughter was born. And so they’ve been a staple in our community for many years. So we were happy as a chamber to carry on this tradition. And we love love love this event. It’s one of my favorites and it’s one of my favorites actually participate in to get out and for us like most of the work we do for the event, producing it and organizing it happens the week ahead. Kim Baker 14:14 So we’ll actually spend the whole week getting ready and dropping stuff off and visiting all of our retailers. We’ll go in and will take pictures to make sure we’re pushing them out on social media. So if you’re not following the Chamber on Facebook, make sure you’re doing that. And follow Tinsel and Treasures if you’re interested to see a sneak peek at some of what the retailers will be having. But at the weekend I really like to get out and just be out. It’s not even about for me that weekend about shopping. I just like to see other people having so much fun in our retailers having so much business. John Haggard 15:04 Hey, and you know, speaking of all that, is there something special that goes on in Gallatin during the Holidays that someone would not find elsewhere? Or at least not in this area? Kim Baker 15:15 Um, you know, I think, I think Tinsel and Treasures is definitely one of those and that’s early on. You know, then I think if we look ahead, and we think about the tree lighting and some of the festivities that happen in the downtown area during the holidays, those are really fun, too. Now, I think every city, I say every city, I think most cities do some type of tree lighting. But I don’t think they do it like us. And I think that Gallatin does a lot of things different and I think that’s really what sets us apart. If you haven’t ever been to the Gallatin Christmas tree lighting, let me just kind of paint the picture for you. So this year, it actually happens on a Monday night. Historically, it’s been on a different night, but this year for scheduling purposes it’s on Monday, December 2nd. And the tree lighting event happens at 5 pm. The folks will gather in the square, the elven are all over little downtown and the tree will be up. Kim Baker 16:07 They actually have a permanent hole. This is kind of fun. If you ever come into the downtown and you go over by the courthouse in the area of the square, one of the parking spots, you’ll see this big hole that’s covered. That’s actually where they set the Christmas tree. And I think that’s so fun. My daughter who’s a little over two, we were out there and she said, “Mommy, what’s that? What’s that for?” She stepped on it. And I said, that’s where that, I was so happy to know, I said, that is where the Christmas tree goes honey. And she said ha and she was so confused. I said I’ll show you in a few months. Yeah. But our tree lighting, so you know, they, everybody piles and people come to this, like people with kids, people without kids. I mean, you see like senior citizens, you see very young people. I mean, it is incredible. It really is like something from a movie and like I get a little emotional every year when it happens. Kim Baker 16:55 And so they bring in local school groups to sing, you know, Christmas songs. And I think last year they had the Benny Bills Barkers, that’s from Benny Bills Elementary and, I mean, cute kids you can’t go wrong with kids singing Christmas carols. Anyway but they’re out there and they’re in their little Santa hats and so they sing. And then the mayor is out there because we have a wonderful mayor. She’s out there and she usually wears like a festive pea coat or something that’s very in season like with the Christmas time. And she’s out there you know, just wandering around handing out candy canes and taking pictures like just out there doing that. Yeah. And then she makes a few announcements and then she hands it over to Santa Claus. And Santa Claus who comes into town early for this event. He flies in and then I guess he gets back to the North Pole pretty quick. He comes in and he plugs in the tree. And everybody counts down. And it really is. It’s just magical. And so while I think other people definitely and other areas have tree lighting, I don’t think they do it quite like Gallatin. John Haggard 17:56 So Kim, you know a lot of towns and a lot of counties, areas have Christmas parades. What about Gallatin? Kim Baker 18:03 Gallatin has a Christmas parade. Again a big big holiday tradition here in Gallatin, Tennessee. And I like to say that our Christmas parade, I really do think and I’ve seen a lot of other Christmas parades across the state, ours is one of the largest in length and one of the most organized parades in the Middle Tennessee region. Our parade always happens on the second Saturday in December. That’s off at noon. And what I like most about our parade is the route. Our route if you’re familiar with Gallatin, begins off of Steam Plant. So that’s where we stage our parade. Everybody’s numbered, so it’s very organized, you get a number we make our people come to parade meetings just to make sure they know what’s going on, know where to go, where to be, how to behave, all of those things. Because it is, you say, you know, they’re herding cats thing? It’s kind of like that. And we haven’t had cats but we do have horses, we had a bull. We had dogs. And so we do herd all kinds of creatures for this parade. John Haggard 19:05 That sounds, that sounds fun! And how does someone if they say, “Hey, I like marching in parades!” And how would someone, let’s say they’re new to the area, maybe they’ve been in parades in other cities, but how do you get involved with that? Kim Baker 19:18 We do we have an application, you can actually access it through our website, gallatinTN.org. And through there, you’d go to our event calendar and you’d find the event, which this year it’s December 14th, which is it’s always the second Saturday. You click on that event and you find the application. You could print it off and mail it back via snail mail, email, or you could walk it in here to the office. There is a small fee but that’s just to cover some of our costs. Believe it or not, parade requires quite a bit of insurance. And so our parade is insured and we just make sure that it’s really safe. On top of being well organized. our highest priority is a safe parade. We want to make sure that no one either in the parade or watching the parade gets hurt in any way. So… John Haggard 20:02 You know, when you think of a Chamber of Commerce, that, you know, conjures up in the mind, I think, well, it’s all business and real serious type of stuff. It sounds like you guys have a lot of fun there. I mean, it sounds like your major involvement in communities, it’s not just about the money and business licenses and all that type of thing. Kim Baker 20:20 Yeah. No, I think there is a big misconception. And I do think there are some chambers, especially like regional chambers, there are a lot more focused on just business, business, business and money and things like that. And that is very, very important. I mean, it is important and vital to the community’s success that we have a strong and thriving economy. Absolutely. But on the other side of that, it’s equally important for us in our businesses to be successful for us to have a strong community. I mean, when you have a strong community, you indirectly have strong businesses. You just do, you see it. And so people support each other and they support businesses. So I’ll tell you, you know, in my time here at the Chamber, I haven’t had a day where I’ve woken up and said, “I don’t want to go to work today.” Now, you know, have I had days that I didn’t like, you know, as much as others? Absolutely. I think we all have those. But I really have enjoyed coming to work every day. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fun we get to have. We get to do really fun stuff. You know, actually, while we’re sitting here doing this podcast, I am looking in front of me, I have a piece of garland that’s made out of balloons. There’s gotta be at least 100 balloons on this. And they are… I wish I could like… maybe I’ll take a picture (see below) and give it to you. But, I will. And so we can reference this, but it is this beautiful garland and it’s to decorate for an event we’re having in our office. And what other, I mean like there’s a bunch of balloons. I had a lady here putting together a balloon garland like that doesn’t happen in every office. And stuff like that happens all the time here. And so we really do have a fun workplace and then we get to do fun stuff like Christmas tree lightings. We get to go to events where we’re shopping In the community and just loving on businesses. And so absolutely, I think it is fun here. And I think that chamber work is just naturally somewhat fun. But I also think that the culture we’ve developed here within our own chamber is very fun. And I think my staff would say that too. Balloon Garland John Haggard 22:18 And Kim, remind folks who may not know how, again, is the Chamber funded? Kim Baker 22:24 Yeah, so the Commerce of Chamber is, we are classified as a non-profit organization. We’re a 501C6, which means that we are, it’s just the tax designation we have, it’s for chambers and associations, the C6 designation. We’re not a charitable non-profit, like a C3, like the United Way or Safe Place for Animals or Habitat for Humanity. But we are… that’s just how we’re classified. So how are we funded? Folks pay annual investments to be a part of the Chamber. And so different businesses like Miracle Ford, Miracle Chrysler, they pay an annual investment each year that we are able to provide different opportunities for them to support them, educate them, and engage them, connect them with the community. We help them market we help expose different services and products they have. We just help get them in front of the community and really serve as that liaison and connector. So those funds help us some of our events fund us throughout the year. You know, we have about eight signature events that happen throughout the year. Some of those are strictly for community, like Tinsel and Treasures. That’s not a revenue stream for the Chamber. But then there are some that service fundraisers where we do we are able to put a little bit of money back into our programming. nd then we do receive a grant from the city of Gallatin. And basically we serve as the Welcome Center for the city of Gallatin. A lot of folks find us first. We produce an annual map, we produce a city guide and business directory each year and so we distribute those. We mail out 30 to 50 newcomer packets a month to folks that are relocating to the area or think they might be interested in doing so. And so we really serve as that Welcome Center and that first stop entity for the city. So we’d like to think that we’re a great community partner with the city of Gallatinas they are to us. John Haggard 24:20 You all have a lot going on there. So I just gotta ask, are there any employment openings at this very moment at the Chamber? Kim Baker 24:28 At this moment, there are not any employment opportunities and openings, but we always are looking for volunteers. We need great volunteers all the time. And, you know, like everything else I’ve said, volunteering with the chamber is super fun. We usually feed you. We never give you a bad job. The worst thing you might have to do is stuff and envelopes. I mean, that’s the worst thing, but we bet we’ll probably let you eat pizza while you do it. I mean, it’s not awful. It’s a great way when you volunteer with the Chamber you get to get in front of the community, gets to know the community, you get some insider information and get to learn and see behind the scenes things that normal people don’t get to see. You know, I’ve got a great staff here. We’re a bigger staff than we’ve ever been. Right now. There are, I guess there are five of us, four of us that are in the office every day. There’s another one that does not have an office in our office, but she has, she’s definitely a part of our team. And she’s here in and out. She works mostly remote and kind of she’s my feet on the ground. And then I have two other very part-time folks that kind of pick up as needed, and they basically serve as events support for special events, special programs. John Haggard 25:42 All right. Well, so if somebody did want to volunteer or just get in touch with you, Kim, what’s the best way? Kim Baker 25:47 Oh, man, the best way to get in touch with me would probably be by calling here at the office you can reach us (615) 452-4000. Sending me an email always works too, kim@gallatinTN.org. And then you can always find us on social media. I know that’s the main route of communication for a lot of different people and things. So, Gallatin Chamber, you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, we’re on LinkedIn, Twitter can find us on all of the places. John Haggard 26:19 And for someone that’s not that familiar with Gallatin, where exactly are you from a landmark? Like across the street from or next to? Kim Baker 26:28 Yeah. My office is next to City Hall. If you’re familiar with the Downtown area of Gallatin and the courthouse, it’s in the courthouse, this center of the downtown. Our office is right before that. I like to say we look like the little house that sits next to the city hall, we share a parking lot. We have teal awnings where 118 West Main Street. John Haggard 26:50 Thanks, Kim. That’s Kim Baker, everybody! CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce, our special edition guest today here on the Miracle Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram podcast. So join us again right here for another special edition of the podcast. In addition to our regular topics that we discuss each month on the best ways to purchase, lease, service and maintain, accessorize, and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible when you’re ready to do it. And don’t forget, there’s a transcript, right here, of the podcast and everyone on the website so that you can easily refer to it for information at your fingertips. We will also post those links that Kim talked about and that picture as well when it comes in. So I’m your host, John Haggard, we’ll see you next time.

Strong Language. So Kim and Juice are back. They start first with condolences for an Icon and The Mother of one of their friends. Then then discuss their indifference to Ye, the Amber Guyger trial, the murder of Joshua Brown and the conspiracy around that, and Juice is going to Disney World. All Music Provided by DJ CBATTLE

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! My guest today is Kim Wensel from the Pattern of Purpose Podcast. Kim is a brand strategist who helps entrepreneurs and small businesses learn to speak their clients’ language so that they can connect with their ideal audience. So funny story - Kim and I had an interview scheduled a week before this one - and I was having one of those weeks… You know, where everything that can go wrong does? It was just that kind of a week.  So Kim and I get on our call and I can see her but I can’t hear her so after a bunch of troubleshooting, I restart Zoom, and we get it working, and we dive into one of the most compelling and inspiring interviews I’ve done… and then…. I realize that I didn’t hit record. Ugh. My heart sank and at that point, we decided to just reschedule instead of starting over.  So what you’re hearing today is interview #2 with Kim Wensel, which lucky for me, we got to spend even more time getting to know each other and I’m super excited to introduce to Kim. Her journey to self-employment is super inspiring! Today we’re talking about: Kim’s side hustle journey and her quest to find work that lights her up (instead of burning her out). Why your first side hustle doesn’t have to be your last, and how to pivot when things don’t feel right. Why it’s important not to try to avoid the messy middle. How to set yourself and your business apart in a saturated market Three key things to practice to set yourself up for side hustle success. Why money is the least important factor in how you design your business (and what to focus on instead). How to effectively speak to your ideal client. Why having a solid vision in your business is critical to your success (and how to start crafting one). The one belief Kim had to change about herself to get where she is today. My favorite quotes from Kim: “You really can’t compare where you are in your business to others.” “You can have some patience while still having drive.” “Set yourself apart by providing an absolutely mind blowing experience for your clients.” “It’s better to have a no than to have a yes and feel like you are being taken advantage of at every turn.” On not charging enough: “I thought that if people paid me more, they would have exponentially higher expectations of me.” “Nobody is going to see your genius if you can’t talk about it.” Resources mentioned in this episode: Kim’s website - https://www.patternofpurpose.com/ The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss Pattern of Purpose Podcast Bio: Kim Wensel is a brand strategist for entrepreneurs who want to position their business as the go-to in their industry. She helps them move from guessing what their audience is looking for to having a deep understanding of their needs, resulting in polished, powerful brand messaging. In a world with a template for everything, Kim focuses on immersive engagements with her clients, drawing out their voice and highlighting what makes their brand truly unique. When she’s not wordsmithing, she can be found playing the 3-marker challenge with her two kids or planning her next adults-only getaway with her husband. Connect with Kim: Website: https://www.patternofpurpose.com/ Instagram: @pattern_ofpurpose and @kimwensel Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/patternofpurpose/

This week we have a special guest on our podcast, Kim Baker, CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce! Kim, who is from Florida, has lived in Sumner County since high school. In this episode, Kim shares: Details about how she ended up in GallatinInteresting facts about her life story (including the fact that she was dead once!)How she came to be the CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of CommerceWhat the Chamber of Commerce does in and around GallatinUpcoming events in GallatinAnd much more! This is an episode that you DO NOT want to miss! Enjoy, and be sure to share this episode wherever you can! Transcription John Haggard: [00:02] Welcome to the Miracle Ford Special Edition podcast where we also interview community leaders on topics that are of interest to the Gallatin area as a whole. And today we’re excited to have Kim Baker on the podcast. Kim is the Chief Executive Officer of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce. Hey Kim, welcome to the podcast. Kim Baker: [00:20] Hey, good morning. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me. John Haggard: [00:23] Well thanks for taking the time out. I know you’ve got a lot of things to do there. As CEO we thought it would be fun before we dive in onto what’s going on in Gallatin these days, from the Chamber’s perspective, for people who are new to the area or maybe people just don’t know you, tell us a little bit about your background. Did you grow up in Gallatin? Kim Baker: [00:42] I did not grow up here. I’ve been here all of my adult life. I finished high school here. I’m a graduate of Gallatin High School. I also spent some time at JP2, and College Heights. But I’m a Green Wave at heart for sure. I moved here in 2000 from south Florida. My Dad’s job brought us here. He was a civil engineer always followed the projects and the dollars. So we landed in Gallatin, Tennessee. John Haggard: [01:06] Wow. In south Florida. You know, most people, if they’re going to go somewhere, they may go from here to there, but rarely from Florida to here. People say I love Florida. So anyway, the job that your dad had got you here. Kim Baker: [01:17] Yes. And you know, it was a culture shock coming from south Florida to Gallatin, Tennessee 15 years ago. I say 15. It’s actually been 19 now. But it was quite a shock, especially being a teenager moving here. But you know, we love it here. John Haggard: [01:33] Yeah. So when you were in high school, Gallatin High School, was there anything you did there that was especially fun? Some people are cheerleaders, other people are, you know, all these various projects, Future Farmers of America, all kinds of things. Did you do anything like that in high school? Kim Baker: [01:48] Well, I did do different things in high school. I think some of my favorite things I did, I was on the bowling team, not at Gallatin, but at JP2. I was on the bowling team. I went to States twice. So actually lettered in bowling. John Haggard: [02:00] Wow. Kim Baker: [02:00] That tells you a lot about my athletic abilities, I think. But hey, I did, I did. I got the, I got the letter, I got the pins and that was quite an accomplishment to do that two years in a row. I also participated in model UN model, United Nations and one of my advisors for that. He actually had roots in Arkansas. So most folks that participate in the model UN they stay within their state or within their region. We actually traveled outside the state, so I got to go compete in Arkansas. So that was neat. So I built a network there outside of Tennessee. So that was a lot of fun. I was really involved in arts, visual arts. Took a lot of AP art classes, painting, drawing, things like that. John Haggard: [02:40] Yeah. Yeah. And so when you were bowling, you were one of those three hundreds, I guess right. The perfect, perfect… what do you call it, not the spare, but the strike. Kim Baker: [02:47] The strike. I hit a lot of strikes. I still can, I actually still have my ball. I still keep shoes. And it’s funny when I met my husband about 10 years ago, one night we were talking about going bowling, said, yeah, we’ll meet at the bowling alley. We were dating. And I said yeah, we’ll meet there. And we got there and I had my own ball and my own shoes and he showed up with his own shoes and I was like, we’re meant to be. John Haggard: [03:10] Yeah. Ha! Was he a pretty serious bowler as well? Kim Baker: [03:14] He didn’t bowl on any teams in high school, but in college, him and a few buddies, they thought it was a fun sport to get involved in. And so they actually joined a league while they were in college and just would go bowl a couple of nights a week. And so he wound up buying his own shoes and he’s actually really good. He’s left handed and he has a mean curve so he can throw a really awesome curve ball. John Haggard: [03:39] So Kim who can beat who on the lanes? Kim Baker: [03:43] Oh, that’s tough. It depends. It depends on a lot of different factors and just what’s going on. And you know, if there’s a lot of people around and, but he typically beats me. I’m not gonna lie. John Haggard: [03:57] It’s good to have a fun partner to be able to do that. Kim Baker: [04:00] It is fun. It’s all fun too. John Haggard: [04:02] Yeah. So any other favorite hobbies that you have? Kim Baker: [04:05] Currently? You know, this sounds cheesy… I like to shop, I think most women like to shop. I like to shop. I really like bargain hunting. Like I like to go find good deals. So I don’t just like to go shop and spend a ton of money. I like to go shop and find a good deal. So that really exciting for me. I like to get outdoors. I love camping. I like to tent camp. I really do. I like to sleep in a tent. As I get older. I like to sleep in an RV a little more. So I like to sleep in tents less, but I do like to be outside and camping and things like that. And I spend a lot of my time just serving in the community. I like to get out. And people say, Kim, you’re always working. I said, no, I’m not. I mean, you could look at it like that, but I actually enjoy doing these things. So on the weekends it’s not uncommon to find me at a nonprofit event or just visiting things that are going on in Gallatin. Cause I like being out in the community and just seeing what’s happening. John Haggard: [05:08] What’s the one thing about you, Kim, that most people would not know and if someone would really be surprised to know about you? Kim Baker: [05:18] Oh, that’s a good one. Well I’ve been dead before. John Haggard: [05:22] You have?! Kim Baker: [05:22] I have. John Haggard: [05:23] Really?! Kim Baker: [05:23] Seriously. so when I was 13, I’ll give you a short version of the story. When I was 13, my heart rate accelerated to 268 beats per minute. I was just walking out of school. And they took me to the hospital. Got there and they said, oh, we need to stop your heart. And so they stopped my heart. They dropped it down to zero and they had to manually restart my heart from zero. So I have been dead. Turns out that I had an accessory pathway in my heart that I was most likely born with. And what it did was it would cause blood to take a shortcut. And when it did that and flow through my heart, on that short path, it would cause my heart to accelerate. So later that year, a couple months later, I had a surgery. I did not have open heart surgery, but I did have a heart surgery that was a catheterization ablation, and they removed accessory pathways from my heart. And so my heart is as good as new. So actually, I’ve been dead and I was born with a heart that was actually too big. Different than the Grinch. John Haggard: [06:28] Wow. Wow. Wow. Aren’t you blessed to be here? Kim Baker: [06:31] I really am. I really, I really reflect on that. I mean, that was such an interesting age to experience something like that because when you’re going through those middle school and teenage years, there’s just a lot going on already. And then I was very self aware of what was going on with myself and my body at that time. And so, you know, I fully remember everything through that summer. It was in the summer when that happened. And so I have been able to reflect back on that and just, it really kind of changed my perspective on life for a long time. John Haggard: [07:04] Sure, sure. Well, let’s transition over to where you are now. So how did you get into the Chamber of Commerce business and as a CEO, cause you’re running the place. Kim Baker: [07:15] That’s what they say anyway. Well it’s kind of an interesting story. So when I stumbled upon my job here at the Chamber, it was in 2013. I graduated from college about a year ahead of time. I took a long time to graduate college. I really took some time to figure out what I wanted to do. And by the time I got here, when I graduated in 2012, that was not the best time for you, remember what the economy looked like then. Not the best time to come out as a new degreed person into the workforce. And so I looked and looked and applied and applied and I just couldn’t find anything. And so at the time I was working as a nanny. I was working for a private nanny for a family here in Sumner County. And I loved doing that, but I knew it wasn’t something I wanted to do forever. Kim Baker: [08:01] I had a good friend. He’s pretty popular in the community. His name’s Brad Singleton. He runs Briarscratch Brewing, Sumner County’s first brewery. He’s opened several other restaurants in the area and he was working closely with Paige Brown who is now the mayor of the City of Gallatin at the time she was a county commissioner and he was working with her to change some local legislation to allow breweries in Sumner County. Him and I were together for a group outing with a bunch of our buds from high school and college and he said, Kim, are you going to be a nanny forever? And I said, well, I’m trying really hard not to be, but I don’t know. He said, well I don’t know exactly what a Chamber does, but I know that the Chamber here in Gallatin is hiring and I think you’d be a good fit for it. And I said, okay, well what do I do? He said, well here’s Paige’s number, give her a call. So I gave her a call, I called her on a Sunday cause I was with Brad on a Saturday. I said, I’m going to call her on a Sunday. And so she said, can you come in for an interview? So I went in and on that Monday for an interview and I got hired. John Haggard: [08:58] On the spot. Kim Baker: [09:00] On the spot. I applied for just a part time admin position answering the phones. I thought that’s what I was just going to be doing. But if you’ve ever spent any time with the Chamber, you know that we do far more than just take calls, and we do so many things. I can’t even, it would take me hours and days to tell you all the things we do here. But I I took that job and when I asked in the interview, one of the questions I asked in the interview was, do you think there’s room for growth? Because she told me at the time, she said, I just want you to know that in the next couple of years, I am gonna run for mayor. And she said, and when I do that, I don’t know what would happen here at the Chamber if I won, if I lost. I don’t know. Kim Baker: [09:41] You know, the board might want to completely restaff. She said the board might want to hire somebody in. So I don’t know what will happen. An existing employee might move up. I have no idea. And I said, well, would I be eligible for your job? She said, well, by then you would have at least a year of experience and you have a college degree. So I’d say you might be eligible. And I said, great, I’ll take the job. So I took the job and I didn’t take it with the intention of becoming CEO, by no means. I took it because I was really intrigued by what the Chamber did. It was here in my hometown. I could walk to work if I wanted to. Less than five minutes away from my house. And, I knew this is where we were putting down roots. Kim Baker: [10:23] So I thought, well, I’ll take the job. And so I took the job. If you’re around Gallatin, you know how this story ends. The mayor did, Paige did get elected. She became our mayor. And at that time, the board chose to conduct a nationwide search and about 70 people applied from all over. John Haggard: [10:43] Seventy, wow. Kim Baker: [10:43] 70 applied. I was the only internal candidate. Zena Parks that’s been here for, I think she’s nearing 15 years. She didn’t want to apply. She said, I like doing what I do. I said, okay, well I’m going to apply and let’s see what happens. And so I applied, I made it to the last round. And you know, part of me thought, well, they might just be dragging me through all of these rounds just because I’m the internal candidate and they have to. Well, I got the job and, the rest is kind of history. Kim Baker: [11:11] So I’ve been here at the Chamber since 2013. I’ve been in my role since 2015 and I always keep up with that because the mayor’s in her fifth year as mayor. And that means I’m in my fifth year as CEO at the Chamber. And, it has been a wild adventure, but a very, very fun and rewarding one every piece of the way. John Haggard: [11:30] We’re talking with Kim Baker, the CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce. And one of the things I noticed when I went on the website, Kim, is I saw this designation not only CEO but I see, IOM, TCEcD, all of these… Are these certifications? I mean this sounds like a big deal to me. Kim Baker: [11:51] It’s something like that. No, it is a certification. And so one of the things, my degree is in organizational communication, which really set me up well for managing organizations, nonprofit management, event management. Kim Baker: [12:03] But the Chamber industry is so different than a lot of other nonprofit industries, and just a lot of industries all together. And we do a lot of community development. We do economic development. And so I wanted to put more tools in my box. I knew I didn’t want to go back to school and get a Master’s, because there’s not a Master’s in Chamber Management or anything like that. So I went for a four year program, it’s called Institute for Organizational Management. It is geared for Association and Chamber professionals. And so over the course of four years I went away for about a week in the summer. I went to Tucson, Arizona for one year and then I spent three years in Athens, Georgia and I obtained my IOM. So that is what that is. It’s one of the higher rankings in the Chamber industry. There’s a few more after that that I’m kind of working on. And then the other one is the Tennessee Certified Economic Developer Designation. And so both of these are about 96 hours of coursework. And so I’ve spent the past four years. I wrapped both of those up last year in 2018 John Haggard: [13:06] Sounds like in other professions like legal and accounting, Continuing Education. I mean it’s, it’s a… Kim Baker: [13:13] Yeah, it’s so important. I mean in any field, continuing education is very important and I’m a firm believer that education is one of the best things you can do for yourself personally and professionally. And it’s one of the only things that people can never take away from you. John Haggard: [13:27] You know, that’s true. When you think about that, they may call you names, but they can’t take that away. Kim Baker: [13:31] They cannot take that away from you. John Haggard: [13:33] Well, you know, now is, we look Middle Tennessee is a really hot market for industry, for people moving here. People who feel like, gosh, there’s a lot of potential. And some people can remember back to the boom of Rutherford county, Murfreesboro and Smyrna when the Nissan plant came in and came online years back. And some are saying, you know, there’s a lot going on if you drive into Gallatin and you just kind of get off at any exit or you know, up the main drag, whatever. You see a lot of apartments going up, you see a lot of building going up. So in Sumner County at this point in time, what are the most exciting building and employment prospects that you see? Things that are underway now? Kim Baker: [14:14] You know, I think what’s popular to most, and it’s unpopular to many, but popular to a lot, are the things that we all notice. You know, we see the retail and restaurants developing and that is exciting. If you’ve lived in Gallatin for a long time around the outlying areas of Gallatin, then you’re excited to see some of those folks come to our area because you no longer have to drive 20 to 30 minutes to have access to major retailers and major restaurants. You know, the flip side of that is when we try to attract those, and some of those aren’t really here yet. We know that some of them are coming and you see some of the empty buildings that have been developed and built and it’s kind of the mindset if you build it, they will come in. That is true. You have to have some of those properties available. Kim Baker: [14:57] But then you also have to have sites ready and kind of wired for those folks to move into them. With that, you know, you mentioned the apartments and those are, you know, people have mixed feelings about those. I even have mixed feelings about those because they do change the look of our area and the feel of our area. But when we have those rooftops, whether they be apartments or they be physical houses, condos, whatever it looks like, those are the things that help us recruit the restaurants and retail to the area. We have to have those rooftops, we have to have the population growth, we have to have a certain makeup of income and culture and things here for those folks to even look at us. Some of the recent announcements that you’ve seen, one that was made just a few months ago back in April of 2019 was Archer Data Centers and they are planned for Gallatin. It’s a New York based technology startup and they’re building a multimillion dollar data center powered by renewable energy right here in Gallatin. And you know, we’re seeing a lot of growth in the tech area all over Middle Tennessee, all over the nation really. And so I think we could plan and hope to see more of that in our area in the future. John Haggard: [16:08] All right. And so if you were approached by a CEO who’s saying, you know, Middle Tennessee is pretty good for us. We want to locate somewhere here in the Nashville Metro, one of these eight counties. And if you were going to say, because you’re the CEO there and you’d want to give a pitch for Gallatin, if you look at Gallatin as a location or relocation spot for a new business versus other areas of the Nashville Metro and you were to say, here like the two or three reasons why you really ought to consider Gallatin, why we feel like here we are a better fit than where you’re looking elsewhere. What would you say? Kim Baker: [16:44] Well, we can all say proximity. That’s an easy one that people want to say, and access. But I really do think when we say that here in Gallatin, we mean it. Gallatin has spent a lot of time, the city leadership and then the different community leaders in the area, have spent a lot of time developing Gallatin in a very strategic manner. We have strategic growth and we have planned growth, which is not the same in other areas. You can have growth and it can be just very unorganized and almost chaotic, or you can have growth the way Gallatin is doing it. Strategic and planned. So that’s one of the things and that allows us to capitalize on that proximity to Nashville, because we do have that proximity to Nashville. About 23 minutes north of Nashville, but we also have access and it’s planned and strategic. Kim Baker: [17:27] And so it is how you see it. The other part is for your workforce. When you’re bringing a company or you’re bringing folks to our area, you have to be equally as concerned about the folks that you’re hiring and employing. We have a great workforce. We have a great talent pipeline here in our community and we have amenities for them here. You know, in Gallatin we’re not catering to those high level folks, which we definitely have space for them here. But we also have things for, in terms of education opportunities, we have nightlife opportunities. We have quality of life and living accommodations here in Gallatin for everybody that a company would want to hire. John Haggard: [18:10] So let’s talk about some of the fun things to do at night or weekends, places to go in the Gallatin area. What’s hot now? Kim Baker: [18:18] You know, my favorite place, and this is the third thing I would mention to somebody that’s interested in relocating to the area is our historic downtown. We have a charm like none other. We are the county seat, which is awesome. But we also have a historic downtown that is fully revitalized. I think it is the most beautiful historic downtown in Sumner County. It has a lot of different things going on. We have a dynamic dining scene. We have shopping, we have retail, we have places to catch live music, to grab a drink. We have events that happen on the streets of our downtown. So that’s one of my favorite things. Also, the lake, I mean, we can’t forget about that. You can get on the lake or you can view the lake, you can live on the lake, you can just drive by the lake. Kim Baker: [19:00] However you want to experience the lake. You can do it in here in Gallatin. John Haggard: [19:04] Yeah. So what are some of the biggest annual events that go on every year in Gallatin? Kim Baker: [19:09] Well, there’s several different ones. The Chamber’s in charge of about eight of them that happen annually. One that happens in the Spring and the Fall that the Chamber is not in charge of, it’s actually a greater Gallatin, our Downtown Gallatin Main Street Program host is the Main Street Festivals that happen in the Spring and the Fall. But there’s one that happens every April, that last weekend in April. And then every October in the first weekend in October. And they say about 10,000 people come to these events. And so we have vendors up and down all of the streets of our historic downtown. We have live music, things for kids to do, food trucks from in the area, outside of the area. Kim Baker: [19:47] And then of course, all of our retailers along the square are open. Those are some of my favorites. We also have a Christmas parade that is one of the largest in the region. We have over a hundred entries. It’s really a magical day in Gallatin, Tennessee. Some other special holiday events that happen throughout the year. Tinsel and Treasures. It’s a holiday retail open house. It’s been going on for about 50 years. Ws, we have about 20 retailers that participate, and it’s really the kickoff to the holiday season. So local retailers open up their doors, they deck their halls. It’s a Saturday and Sunday, the second weekend in November every year. And they have live music, Christmas music playing, they have Christmas treats, some of them are in specials and deals and so it kicks off the shopping season in Gallatin, TN. John Haggard: [20:34] Alright. And you know, for folks who don’t really understand how a Chamber of Commerce is funded, say like there in Gallatin. Tell folks a little bit about how it’s funded, how it’s put together, who’s there, how many people you have working with you. Kim Baker: [20:47] So the Chamber is unique. A lot of folks think that we were a part of the city or, or a part of the government and we are not. We are a partner to the city. The City of Gallatin is one of our great, great partners, but we are a stand alone entity. We are actually a nonprofit. We’re a 501c6 which is just a tax designation. We are not a charitable nonprofit like the United Way or Habitat for Humanity, but we are a nonprofit and so basically we serve the business community. We have about 500 members that are all in the Gallatin area. We do have members that are outside of Gallatin and even outside the county, and we do have a couple members that are even outside of the state, but they do business in Gallatin, so they’re a part of our organization. Those folks, depending on what level they want, they pay membership dues to us and so they pay an annual investment fee. And with that money we’re able to produce some of the events we host annually. We’re able to market and support their businesses and some of their activities and really just pour back into the community. I like to say that while we are a business organization, we’re very much in just as equally a community development organization because we know that when you have a strong community then your businesses thrive. John Haggard: [22:02] All right. Now let me ask you this Kim, I don’t know if you’ve been asked this before, but I have a feeling maybe you have been asked this before. Would you consider one day running for mayor? Kim Baker: [22:14] Would I consider one day running for mayor? You know, it’s funny. That’s a funny question. The first few months here at the Chamber when I was in my new role, that was one of the most common questions I got. They said, are you going to do that next, because I think people thought maybe that’s a stepping stone. Would I consider it?absolutely. Would I consider it right now? Absolutely not. I’m young. I have a lot to learn still. Not saying that a young person can’t be mayor. And I’m not saying that our current mayor is not young, but I still have a lot to learn. I think I have a lot of wisdom to pick up along the way still. And I have young children, I have a 13 year old stepson and I have a two year old daughter and I really, I know the demand that my job has for me already and my time at home and with my family is already limited. So I’d like to wait until they get a little older and out from under our wings a little more before I do something that consumes more of my time. But when the time is right and, should there be a need for me to put my name in the hat, I would consider it. John Haggard: [23:16] All right folks, you may have heard it first, right here, Kim Baker for mayor of Gallatin, the Gallatin area. So we’ll see about that… Kim Baker: [23:22] In like 30, 30 years. John Haggard: [23:23] 30 years. John Haggard: [23:25] All right. Kim, what’s the best way for people to get in touch with you? Kim Baker: [23:30] Hey, the best way to get in touch with me is calling our office. Our office is open 9 to 4, Monday through Friday. The number is easy, (615) 452-4000. You can always shoot me an email. I’m happy to take your email and I do my best to respond to emails in a timely manner. My email is also easy… kim@gallatintn.org, or you can always drop by and see us. We love when visitors come in our office. We have a ton of information about the Gallatin area and the businesses within it. We’re located at 118 West Main Street, right next to City Hall. We share a parking lot with them. John Haggard: [24:04] Kim Baker everybody, right there. She is the CEO of the Gallatin Chamber of Commerce, our special edition guest today on the Miracle Ford podcast. Join us again right here for another special edition of the podcast in addition to our regular topics that we discuss each month, the best ways to purchase lease service and maintain, also accessorize and sell your vehicle for the highest resale value possible, when you’re ready to do it. And don’t forget the transcript of each podcast right here on the website. You can easily refer to it for information right there at your fingertips. I’m your host John Haggard, and we’ll see you next time.

This week we're celebrating both the men's and women's rowing teams once again winning the NESCAC title. Plus, the Bates track and field teams impressed at the Open New England Championships and we chat with Bates alum Mohdis Baker '14, one of the coaches for "Cold Front", our women's Ultimate team, which is headed back to Division III nationals for the fourth straight year. Interviews this episode: 1:31 -- Sophia Rintell '19, Women's rowing captain. 10:00 -- Eric Jordan '19, Men's rowing captain. 25:22 -- Brendan Donahue '20, Men's track and field captain (Male Bobcat of the Week). 35:26 -- Mary Corcoran '22, So Kim '21, Sarah Rothmann '19 and Ayden Eickhoff '19, Women's track and field 4x800 relay team (Female Bobcats of the Week). 45:37 -- Mohdis Baker '14, "Cold Front" coach (Bates women's Ultimate).

The Bobcat football team kicked off the Malik Hall era with a strong performance against Amherst. The cross country teams went toe-to-toe with Tufts at Pineland Farms and the women's soccer team finished the week on a high note. All that and more, on the latest Bates Bobcast! Interviews and Highlights: 0:41 -- Football highlights, Malik Hall interview. 16:31 -- So Kim '21 and Olivia Amdur '19, women's soccer. 22:14 -- Henry Colt '19, men's cross country captain. 30:07 -- Katie Barker '19, women's cross country. 33:49 -- Paul Gastonguay '89, tennis head coach. 40:12 -- Nick Glover '20 and Pieter Alex Wernink '22, men's tennis. 46:00 -- Julien Lewin '20, Andrew Garcia-Bou '20 and Liam McLoughlin '19, men's golf.

  Emil Guillermo: The Slants' Simon Tam speaks candidly on PODCAST: "The cure for hate speech isn't censorship...let communities decide, not government." July 10, 2017 6:58 PM It's been a big summer for Simon Tam, musician and founder of the Slants, now trademarked, reappropriated, and unanimously affirmed by the Supreme Court. He also got married recently in his native state of California, so there's been much to celebrate. And yet it seems there still some who aren't cheering his nearly eight-year-long battle to trademark his band's name and use the disparaging term "slant." People of color remain divided since the Slants' victory is certain to allow for the Washington NFL team to continue using its disparaging name.  Tam told Emil Amok's Takeout, he's aware of that and it bothers him.  "It makes my skin crawl, it's terrible," Tam said. But he ultimately feels the decision was a win for all, protecting vulnerable communities who have had no say in the trademark process until this case. "Our identities were used against us," said Tam, who feels it will now be up to the marketplace and our own communities to say what's inappropriate, rather than the government.  "The cure of hate speech is not censorship," said Tam, who believes that the First Amendment allows for a deeper and more nuanced approach than simply to say some words are good, and others are bad.  In recent reports, some Asian American legal groups like NAPABA and AAAJ have criticized the Supreme Court decision. (AALDEF and other Asian American groups joined the ACLU amicus brief and supported the Slants.) But Tam has held steady and rejects the "slippery slope" notion of critics who believe that an avalanche of hate speech will result from the decision. In an open letter to his critics, Tam sees the decision as advancing legit reappropriation. "In fact, now communities can be equipped to protect their own rights and prevent villainous characters from profiting and misleading people with these same terms," Tam wrote. In his open letter, Tam cited the case of Heeb, a Jewish publication on pop culture, granted the registration for their magazine, but when they applied for the exact same mark in the categories of t-shirts and events, were denied for "disparagement."  As Tam points out, it meant when a group of Holocaust deniers sent harassing communications to subscribers, inviting them to Heeb Events, the organization was unable to stop them. "Had Heeb not been wrongly denied a registration, they would have been able to get a cease and desist order. This case now allows a just procedure against other people wrongly profiting from racial slurs or countering the work done by reappropriation." Tam concludes: "Laws, like words, are not always inherently harmful. It depends on how they are used. It is like a sharp blade: in the hands of an enemy, it can inflict pain and suffering. However, in the hands of a surgeon, it can provide healing. The law I fought against was a large sword used by the government to haphazardly target "disparaging" language, but the collateral damage was on the free speech rights of those who need protected expression the most. Like other broad policies around access and rights (be it stop and frisk or voter ID laws), there was a disparate impact on the marginalized."   That logic may still not satisfy those conflicted by the decision, especially when it leads to a result like affirming the use of the Washington NFL team's slur. But the bottom line is still the First Amendment, which Tam is busy expressing in the studio on the follow up to the group's last EP, "The Band Who Must Not Be Named." The new disc will definitely be named, eponymously, the group's first ever under its proud SCOTUS affirmed banner. For Tam, in the name of the broader Asian American community, it was worth it.   Hear the Slants here.   Hear Simon on Emil Amok's Takeout here. *     *     * Emil Guillermo is an independent journalist/commentator. Updates at www.amok.com. Follow Emil on Twitter, and like his Facebook page. The views expressed in his blog do not necessarily represent AALDEF's views or policies.         Emil Guillermo: Oh no, "Hawaii Five-0" and what it means to all of us July 6, 2017 4:18 PM When I first heard about Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park leaving "Hawaii Five-0," I couldn't believe it. The stars of the long-running TV crime procedural based in the 50th state simply asked for pay equity. They got the cold shoulder instead. Their exit leaves CBS with what it deserves. Hawaii Five-nothing.                                                                                                                                          (photo by Loren Javier) I'm not watching a show with zero Asian American stars going into the eighth season. Really, how do you just let your top Asian American cast members on a TV show set in the nation's most Asian American state just pick up and leave?  It's easy if you don't value diversity. Or to be more specific, equality. Here's the deal the white co-stars get that the Asian American stars don't. More pay. And a cut of the series profits. As if the white stars are the draw that carried the whole show.  They're not. I don't even know who the co-stars Alex O'Loughlin and Scott Caan are. Frankly, I couldn't pick them out in a line at a Panda Express. But, of course, CBS Television Studios, the show's producers, wouldn't budge.  And this is in a show that I would say was equally Kim's and Park's. All this proves is Asian American leverage in showbiz remains zero. Unless you're married to the boss like Julie Chen, who has climbed to the top on the shoulders of "Big Brother." But for the majority of Asian Americans who appear on the glassy side of the camera, the message is pretty clear. Just be happy to get SAG/AFTRA scale. Know your place. Don't overreach. You're the hired help.  As my old friend Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans told Hollywood Reporter, "the racial hierarchy established in the original 1968-1980 series remained intact in the 2010 reboot: Two white stars on top, two Asian/Pacific Islander stars on the bottom." It's sad that at this time in history, in what should be a vehicle for Asian Americans. this is how Asian American stars are treated. If you can just let a guy like Kim, arguably one of the top male Asian American stars in Hollywood, just leave, that's a major message to someone like me who wants to be the next Victor Wong. Or Amy Hill.  Despite all the window dressing and Asian American stars you can point to, showbiz remains as racist now as it ever was. I'm particularly depressed by this after coming off a short run at the San Diego Fringe Festival with my one-man show, "Amok Monologues."   My one good review made it worthwhile.  Still, I'm a journalist and storyteller by trade. I combined the theater at this juncture in my life because I studied acting and drama a long time ago when I was in college and in grad school. Back then, I even thought about going into acting. But when the only Filipinos I saw played beach boys and drivers, I thought better of my stereotype.   In fact, the best role I ever got was playing the white guy in black theater. But then maybe that's because my college roommate was the director and he owed it to me.   I realized early on that it wouldn't happen for me in showbiz unless I write my own stories. But for me, the urgency of journalism outweighed the lure of show business. I felt the facts needed to be established before I felt comfortable telling stories on stage.     That meant turning to journalism to tell our stories, even with hairspray and makeup, as I did when starting in TV.    I thought TV would provide the right balance between showbiz and journalism. At KXAS in Dallas, I worked with Scott Pelley. (Would he have ended up like me had his name been Pellicito?) At KRON-TV in San Francisco, I worked with some of the most talented folks in the business.    Oddly, my career climbed to its furthest point the more people couldn't see me--- in radio, where I could sound as white as anyone.     But my life in the media shows, you still can't escape what Aoki calls that "racial hierarchy." Whites still control. And if being Asian American is important, or being deracinated sounds hideous to you, you're out of luck.   Some make the compromise anyway, and hang on. Temporarily. But it catches up to you. You are who you are. And that can be a factor in how far you go in media.   Maybe there are enough Asian American anchors around (predominantly women), so you can debate me and insist that things are changing. But that may be all show. If salaries were revealed, like in the "Hawaii Five-0" situation, I bet we're still being lowballed.    So what does it mean to everyone else not in showbiz or journalism? Plenty. If you don't play in the ensemble, or play the lead in fake TV life, don't think you'll get a fair shot in real life quite as easily.  TV helps create the stereotypical reality. When we don't show up in the image-making machinery of our culture, it's much harder to show up anywhere. Did CBS care that Hawaii was the most Asian state in the nation? When a show can get away with dumping its key Asian stars just like that, it will surely embolden those in other industries.  Gains don't come without a challenge. For as long as necessary. Look at American history. And look at the current backslide on major issues from affirmative action to voting rights. "Hawaii Five-0" is TV giving us a reality check, just when we thought we had made some progress. I mean, more than 50 years after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, you'd figure we would get a break on things that are pretend. But somewhere on top of the heap, someone has made a decision. Paying two Asian American actors what they're worth isn't good business. So Kim and Park are gone. The white fantasy of "Hawaii Five-0" lives on. In the meantime, I'm not watching a Kim-less, Park-less 5-0.  I encourage you to do the same, and to support Asian American actors, producers, and writers in their projects. And I'm doing what others are doing these days. Writing my own stuff. Telling my own stories. It seems to be the only way to beat the racial hierarchy of Hollywood.

So Kim takes Rob home to meet the family and ends up sleeping on the bathroom floor. Woogs heads to Tassie while Kim, in a puce coloured top hates on Mrs Woog's aztec kaftan. So you know, the normal drill. 

What happens when you combine an engineering degree with a talent for sewing? A beautiful business full of well-made products and streamlined processes is created! Kim VanSlambrook is the solopreneur behind Lucy Jane Totes. What started out as a creative solution to a problem she faced quickly morphed into a beautiful business. Kim has moved her business across states and made some risky choices in the face of parenting two twin boys. Sarah and I especially love the way Kim's engineering brain has developed a streamlined system for taking gorgeous, cohesive photos. Stay tuned to the end so you won't miss all of her photography tips! On the Podcast 01:13 - Engineer meets Maker06:05 - Ruthlessly Eliminate!08:49 - Deciding on a "Look"14:38 - Why Kim is the CEO and COO10:20 - Kim's Risky Move16:27 - Etsy versus Shopify18:17 - How to Get Found20:43 - Working on the Business25:03 - Instagram vs Pinterest vs Facebook - It's War!28:10 - Blogging for Business31:10 - My name is Who, my name is What?32:48 - The Creative Process34:07 - Kim Takes all her Own Photos...of herself?41:14 - Kim's Adorable Mom Moment Press Play on the Podcast Player Below to Hear from Kim! Engineer meets Maker Kim has a civil engineering degree from Purdue University with an emphasis in structural design. But once she became a mom to twin boys, she put that engineering background to use in other ways. She had a problem that desperately needed a solution: her boys were too thin for their pants, and the only belt she could find was $18 at Janie and Jack. That didn't fly with Kim. She knew she could create something better for less. She got to work, and soon her friends were asking her to make belts for them too. Kim then used her structural design background to reverse engineer a bag in larger proportions for moms on the go. Kim found that the current tote bags on the market just didn't have enough space or durability to work for her. As she solved her own problem, once again, she had customers waiting to buy totes from her too. Lucy Jane Totes was born, and Kim absolutely loves her business because she can work from anywhere. Her husband is also a civil engineer who works on bridge design. His job moves often because he has to go where the big bridge projects are, so in just five years' time, their boys had already lived in 5 cities and 3 states. Lucy Jane Totes also gives Kim a sense of identity. No matter where she lives or how new and out of place she may feel, she has her business as a constant to fall back on. Ruthlessly Eliminate! Kim's business started with local sales. This was a great confidence booster for her, and made her realize she could make a go of selling products online. She started her Etsy shop several years ago, and initially, it was a hodge podge of items - pillowcase dresses, nursing covers, and tote bags, among other things.After learning more about business and how to create a solid brand identity, Kim realized that she needed to focus more and ruthlessly eliminate (my words - not hers!) the items that didn't fit with her brand. Kim chose to focus on her tote bags and make that her business. In the process, she eliminated all the other random items in her shop. This was an especially risky and difficult decision, because at the time, Kim's nursing covers were being featured in Pregnancy and Newborn Magazine! However, Kim had to streamline for a few reasons: A strong brand identity makes it clear to customers what you're about. Focusing on just a few things allows you to master your craft and produce the highest-quality items. At the time, Kim's boys were in preschool just a few days a week, and she didn't have any other child care available to her. She had to focus because she simply didn't have time to pursue every product idea. Kim says when she ruthlessly eliminated other products, her sales took off! Deciding on a "Look" Kim's advice on choosing your brand identity is to determine what you want your overall "look" to be for your products and business. As creatives and makers, it's easy to find new fabrics or product ideas that we just LOVE, but if it doesn't work together with the other items in your shop, you just shouldn't include it. Every new product you add needs to fit with your brand. Kim's husband always reminds her that the most successful restaurants tend to have focused, small menus. It should be the same way with a handmade business. Kim's Risky Move Kim made another risky move in her business not long after deciding on her brand identity. She closed her shop for an entire year! The business was rolling along. She was getting a lot of sales and good publicity, but because she didn't have good child care for her boys, her work time was falling from 8-midnight each night. Kim admitted that she started turning into "mean mommy. " She wasn't getting enough sleep and she felt pulled in every direction. Kim asked herself, "what will I regret the most?" She knew that she would regret pushing hard on her business at the expense of her kids and family. Her relationship with her kids and husband matters most - so she took a break from the biz and just focused on them. A year later, the boys were starting school and Kim's schedule was better. She got back to work on Lucy Jane Totes and says it was a great decision! She returned to her business with a new energy and focus on where she wanted things to go.Perspective... it's just so important! Why Kim is the CEO and COO Kim hasn't outsourced very much in her business, and part of this is because she didn't have the best experience when she tried. Last year, Kim set up her own website using the Shopify platform. Initially, she hired someone to create an e-commerce site for her, but it turned into a bit of a disaster because Kim had a very clear vision for how she wanted her site to look. (After all, she had refined her branding and knew what her business was all about!) The project was so far along that Kim ended up paying for a site that she never used. That was her lesson. She loves learning , and she's not intimated by googling until she can figure out how to add a new piece of code. So Kim uses a template from Shopify and changes aspects of the template to suit her brand. By being her own COO, she can ensure that her vision comes to life. Etsy versus Shopify Etsy has changed a lot since it first began. It's now much easier to sell items that are far from handmade on the site, and for this reason, it's a bit discouraging for a true handmade seller like Kim. There are plenty of tote bags on the site that were purchased wholesale from China and a monogram was added. Kim creates her bags from start to finish. Potential customers even write to Kim to tell her that they can get a bag like hers for less money! On the other hand, Etsy is great for getting traffic into your shop, and great for getting found via search engines and via Etsy search. It's hard to get the same level of traffic on a brand new site of your own.With Shopify, Kim can design a shop that matches her brand perfectly, and with her customization and monogram options, it's much easier to make this choices clear and streamlined on her own site. But, it will take time for Kim to build up the same level of traffic and customers that she gets from Etsy. It's a balancing act, and at this point, she wants to keep both shops open. How to Get Found Kim gets more consistent sales from Etsy because of the sheer volume of shoppers searching there and being able to optimize her listings for SEO. But if an influencer is talking about her items on social media, they'll link right to her own site and she'll see a spike in sales. Kim also uses her business social media accounts to point people to her own site versus Etsy. Kim also gets found quite often via Google image searches. Both her Etsy listings and her blog photos get found this way. Kim actually got an order from the Estee Lauder companies to use her tote bags for a sales meeting, and they found her Etsy shop via Google image search! Working on the Business One of Kim's biggest goals is to increase traffic and sales on her Shopify site, but it's difficult to do when she's still the person sewing all of her bags. She knows that in order to grow, she'll need to hire someone to help with the sewing so she can work on the business more and in the business less. It's a difficult task to find someone who will do the job well, because Kim is very particular. She creates quality products that will last for years so she has to find an employee with the same high standards and skill level. She knows that outsourcing will be worth it in the end, but the first step is the hardest!(Isn't that the truth... any big decision in business seems so scary and it can be difficult to take action on it.) Instagram vs Pinterest vs Facebook - It's War! Ok, so the headline was just for fun. It's really not war between these social networks. Kim finds them all useful for different things, and we have to agree! Instagram:  Kim is most active here. She's a visual person and she loves turning her Instagram feed into a board of inspiration.  Instagram also lets Kim have more interaction with her customers and followers versus Pinterest, where people don't chat very often. Pinterest:  Kim loves Pinterest for its ability to take photos of her work and make them spread. She once had a photo from her blog on a kitchen storage project that got featured on Apartment Therapy! That pin has been re-pinned thousands of times and still brings her steady Pinterest traffic.Facebook:  Facebook is a great place to have a conversation that lasts. Genuine relationships with your audience can be made here. (We agree, and we just love our private facebook group!) Blogging for Business Keeping up with a blog while running a handmade business is hard, but Kim has a clear goal with her blog: Keep content fresh enough that when someone new stops by her site, they know she's a real and active business. From there, Kim makes it really easy for a blog visitor to head to her shop or follow her on social media where she has time to post more often. Kim posts about shop updates, a bit about family life, and crafty tutorials or photography tips.Kim won't give up her blog even if her posts are infrequent, because those meta-tags on your photos are so great for Google image searches. If she had unlimited time, Kim says her focus would be on more DIY tutorials, sewing projects, and home projects. Blog Ideas for Handmade Business Owners: Post DIY and Crafty Tutorials Your ideal customer is probably pretty crafty but will splurge for just the right handmade item when it's too tricky for her to make herself! Share behind the scenes. Talk about your day-to-day life. Share beautiful photos. Talk about your family and personal life too. All of these posts let your audience get to know you better, and in turn, like and trust you. Share tips on how to run a handmade business. While this approach is a little less direct (the blog audience you attract may not be your ideal customer exactly) it's not a bad idea. Other handmade business owners are much more likely to support small, handmade businesses themselves! You could be next on their gift list. My name is Who, my name is What? Sorry for the Slim Shady reference, I couldn't resist! Just like Sarah and I couldn't resist asking how Lucy Jane Totes got its name. It's such a cute name... but its owner's name is.... Kim? The story behind Lucy Jane is really sweet. Kim and her husband originally planned to have a whole slew of kids, but with twin boys and a tough pregnancy, they decided they were quite content with two healthy kids. They knew if they ever had a girl they would name her Lucy Jane. Jane is Kim's mom's name, and she's been a big source of inspiration in Kim's life. When they realized they likely wouldn't ever have a girl, they named the business Lucy Jane instead. The Creative Process After talking about Kim's business name, this launched us into a conversation on the doubts that creep into all of our minds when we pursue something creative. When an idea first strikes you think, "Oh my gosh this is the best thing ever!" Then the next day you'll think, "Oh my gosh this is the worst thing!" Then a few days later you'll think, "Oh this is really good!" Isn't that the truth? When Kim designs bags or new products, she likes to make one, step back for a bit, then re-examine who work to figure out if she really likes it or not.We agree! A little space from your creative work can do wonders for your perspective. And likely, it isn't the best or the worst, but somewhere in the middle. Just put it out into the world and likely some people will love it... and some won't. And that's ok! Kim Takes all her Own Photos...of herself? Sarah and I were dying to know how Kim gets such great photos of her bags! And... most of those photos have her in them holding the bags and showing them off. (Seriously, if you haven't clicked over to Kim's site yet, now's the time to do it... her photos are amazing.) So how does Kim manage to take all her own photos... while she's in them?! Kim sets her camera up on a tripod. FYI - she uses a Nikon D700 (just a step below a professional camera) She configures her camera to a remote. Kim says if you look closely at some of her photos you can see the remote in her hand, although she tries her best to hide it! Kim tethers her camera to her I-mac so her photos are automatically imported into Lightroom. This allows Kim to immediately see how her photos look on a computer screen and accurately assess what needs tweaking. Kim snaps several different positions of her holding each bag. She grabs a photo, quickly edits it, and uploads it into a Shopify in a draft setting so she can compare it to her current product photos. This helps her to make sure the white balance is correct for her new batch of photos. Once the white balance is right, Kim sets up Lightroom so that it will automatically apply all of those edits to the next picture. Gorgeous photos and cohesive look... DONE! Kim says she used to take all the photos at once then sit down at her computer to edit only to find out that something was off. Now she saves herself loads of time by seeing the photos on the computer immediately and making adjustments before she takes too many photos that aren't right. So... what's a tether?With Lightroom starting a "tether" is one of the features offered. (Kim has a subscription to Lightroom and Photoshop through Adobe Creative Clouse for $10/month.) To start a tether, just use the mini USB port to connect your camera directly to your computer .Then start your tether in lightroom, and your photos will show up on your computer screen right away instead of on your camera screen. Kim's other Killer Tool:  Dropbox. Kim exports her photos as a square to dropbox, so that way she's ready to upload them to her website or use them on Instagram. To Photoshop or not to Photoshop: Kim says she struggles with Photoshop because she has a tendency to over-edit, and in the end, she doesn't even remember what the photo was supposed to look like!Instead, she uses Lightroom to work on her exposure and white balance, so edits there and stores her pictures. Light room can also store all her original photos, so even if she makes edits to a photo, the original will always be there. Wow! I'm so impressed with the way Kim streamlines her photography process. It's obvious that she's got things down pat because her site and her Instagram feed are just filled with beautiful, creative photos of her products. Kim's Adorable Mom Moment You'll have to tune in to hear how Kim's son Teddy is creating his own "department" within her business - so cute! Stay in Touch with Kim! LucyJaneTotes.comLucyJaneTotes.Etsy.com

David & Dwaine talk about the Premiere of Survivor: Worlds Apart and then read, listen to and discuss listener's thoughts on the episode.                 Survivor30, White Collar, Blue Collar, No Collar, S30, Reality TV, Survivor 30, Season 30, Cast Assessment, Jeff Probst, Max Dawson, So Kim, Tony Vlachos, CBS, CBS Survivor, Premier, Premeir, Premeire

This week we interviewed So Kim. She left the game in episode 1 of Survivor Worlds Apart. The Survivor gods played a mean joke on So. She was originally slated to be on season 29, but that fell through. She got a second chance, geared up to play again in season 30 only to be voted out first. Listen to this interview to hear how she prepared, what went on that wasn't shown, a review of her tribemates and more! If you enjoyed this interview, check out our others here: SFP Audio Interviews Past SFP Video Interviews Survivor Fans Podcast Homepage Links for Today's Show So at CBS Survivor Fever: Survivor Worlds Apart Survivor Links News Archive at Sir Linksalot Contact Info: Voicemail: 206-350-1547 Email: joannandstacyshow@gmail.com Survivor Fans Podcast P.O. Box 2811 Orangevale, CA 95662 Enjoy, Jo Ann and Stacy *Image is copyright and courtesy of CBS

About Today's Guest Kim Walsh-Phillips On The Sales Podcast Session 80 ( http://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/80/ ) Kim Walsh-Phillips is an Online and Offline direct response marketer, author and consultant to the direct response marketing king, Dan Kennedy ( http://amzn.to/UXafGF ). But she didn't even know what direct response marketing was five years ago. Hear her story of taking fast action and producing massive results both online and offline and how you can, too. Rubber-Meets-The-Road Tip * Kim took massive action. As soon as she heard about "direct response marketing" she applied it to her own business she had owned for 10 years. It was a tough change but she wasn't making money in her "image-advertising agency." > > > > Kim “was the hardest working poor person.” > > " How did @ KWalshPhillips ( https://twitter.com/KWalshPhillips ) stop being the "hardest working poor person?" * After getting married and getting pregnant she realized things had to change. She prayed and “ Dan Kennedy ( https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/rcmm/wschaeffer/ ) was the answer to her prayers.” (He loves it when she says that.) * She applied these direct response marketing ideas taught by Dan Kennedy to her own business to prove they worked then did them for her clients. * Working harder was not the answer - and IS NOT the answer. * Maybe you're doing the wrong things. * Kim had to change her strategies. She sought out people that “appeared” successful then verified that they were successful then applied what they taught. Ask them for advice, for book ideas. * Within this hour you can start collecting leads via LeadPages ( http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?aff_id=2640&offer_id=6 ) , get the word out on a Facebook Fan Page, etc. > > > > Kim says to create a free GoToWebinar account (free for 30 days), setup a LeadPages > ( http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?aff_id=2640&offer_id=6 ) account (maybe > $47 for the first month) then create great content on a Facebook Fan Page > to promote selling a consulting service that runs $97 per session. Write > three posts per day and leverage Facebook's Ad Manager to focus my ad on > the right people. Spend maybe $25/day. In two weeks start promoting this > via email. > > * Think strategically. GoToWebinar will collect emails for you and send reminders. Personalize those messages. * Kim is placing thousands of dollars a day into Facebook advertising and all industries can leverage Facebook ads. * Find the right mix between ALL sales and NO sales in your advertising and messaging. * Be engaging vs. entertaining if your industry does not lend itself to being cute and creative. * If you do a Desktop Newsfeed Likes promotion - Fans of FanPages convert to buyers at a lower cost per transaction. So build your Likes with a little focus but get their email address by redirecting new Likes to a Tab on your FanPage and then offer them a bonus for signing up. * “Click Like If You Believe Marketing Should Produce Results” * Make the initial Like to cold traffic about (15 minutes) * Run a Likes Ad to your audience with an image of both of us from the podcast and drive them to a Page with a bonus offer so I get their email address. * LeadPages ( http://link.leadpages.net/aff_c?aff_id=2640&offer_id=6 ) will publish straight to Facebook Tabs. * Kim only spends money on direct mail on clients that spend at least $30. * Maybe warm up the clients before the course starts. * But she will spend money on high-dollar prospects. * She uses direct mail heavily in the customer acquisition process for hard-to-reach prospects like doctors. She'll Fedex packages to them. > > > > Export LinkedIn Contacts and import them into Facebook and advertise just > to them. So Kim will send those doctors a Fedex package, a Facebook ad, an > email and a voice broadcast. Facebook will let you target professions in > someone's title or college major such as “dental” or “dentist.” > > * Kim's accountability partner recommended Dan Kennedy ( https://gkic.infusionsoft.com/go/rcmm/wschaeffer/ ). Now she does all of his social media marketing. * *Google+* * Great to be on it because Google loves it. * Post all of your blog content to it. * Write down 25 questions your prospects have and just write the audience. * TextBroker ( https://www.textbroker.com ) will write content for you. * Post your old stuff, too. * Post your link to your old stuff * *Twitter* * Not good for selling anything but good at getting media stories, list building and interviews. * Find people you want to connect with and go to their accounts and see what they share or retweet and use with hashtags and share content under those categories. * Kim has not found great ROI on advertising on Twitter but in general it's not cheap. * *Pinterest* - can be excellent for a visual market. * *LinkedIn* is good for one-to-one selling. * *Facebook* is still the best ROI for one-to-many. * Kim teaches this live from time to time. Check out Six Social Media Secrets ( http://sixsocialmediasecrets.com ) and Get on her list to get notified. * GKIC came to Kim two weeks ago and let her know that Facebook is bringing them better clients at a better ROI. * You can do this yourself and you should get educated yourself before you hire someone to help you. > > > > Reach, clicks, impressions DO NOT MATTER. Cost per acquisition is the key! > > > "Reach, clicks, impressions DO NOT MATTER. Cost per acquisition is the key!" says @ KWalshPhillips ( https://twitter.com/KWalshPhillips ) " Links Mentioned * Kim's live training, Six Social Media Secrets ( http://sixsocialmediasecrets.com ) * Connect with Kim Walsh-Phillips on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/KWalshPhillips ) * Visit Kim on the web at IO Creative Group ( http://www.iocreativegroup.com ) and Kim Walsh-Phillips dot com ( http://www.kimwalshphillips.com ). * Buy her book, Awareness Campaigns are Stupid: And Other Insider Secrets to Stop Being an Advertising Victim and Start Monetizing Your Marketing (Volume 1) ( http://amzn.to/1kiDiQR ) * Get content written by TextBroker ( https://www.textbroker.com ). Get all of the show notes for every episode of The Sales Podcast ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/podcasts/ ) with Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer® ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/ ). Use these resources to grow your sales: * Sell More This Month ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/30-day-sales-growth ) * Hire Better Salespeople ( https://talentgenius.simplybook.me/v2/ ) * Hire The Best Keynote Speaker ( https://www.wesschaeffer.com/ ) * Find Your Best CRM ( https://info.thesaleswhisperer.com/best-crm-quiz ) * Join the Free Facebook Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/theimplementors/ ) Check out early episodes of The Sales Podcast: * Episodes 1 to 10 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-one-to-ten ). * Episodes 11 to 20 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/the-sales-podcast-episodes-11-20 ). * Episodes 21 to 30 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-21-30 ). * Episodes 31 to 40 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-31-40 ). * Episodes 41 to 50 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-41-50 ). * Episodes 51 to 60 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-51-60 ). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-sales-podcast/exclusive-content Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy