Podcasts about so lucy

The Lucy spacecraft is headed for the Trojan asteroids – big chunks of rock and metal that share an orbit with Jupiter. But it’s checking out some other sights along the way. This weekend, for example, it’ll pass just a few hundred miles from a body in the asteroid belt, between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. Lucy is named for the fossilized remains of a human ancestor. The name was selected because the Trojans are fossil remnants of the early solar system. The mission’s current target is 52246 Donaldjohanson – named for the scientist who discovered Lucy half a century ago. The name was chosen after the asteroid was picked as a target for the spacecraft. The asteroid is pretty small – only about two and a half miles in diameter. And Lucy will zip by at 30,000 miles per hour. So it won’t have long to study the target. But its pictures and other observations ought to tell us about the asteroid’s mass, shape, and composition. Donaldjohanson is one of about 2,000 asteroids that are related – they were splintered off a parent body by a big collision. So Lucy’s encounter should tell us not only about Donaldjohanson’s history, but the history of its entire family. This is Lucy’s second encounter with a member of the asteroid belt. After today, the craft isn’t scheduled to check out any other sights along the way. It’ll reach the Trojans in August of 2027. Script by Damond Benningfield

So Lucy. It's been established that a little Lucy goes a long way. A lot of Lucy makes us want to die. So why? Why are we being tortured? Maybe it's best just to put the whole Home & Heart ugliness behind us. Gia would rather talk about horses anyway. And saddles. And girth (?!). Speaking of ugliness, what is Ava up to? Nina is already a bit of a trainwreck, so why is Ava piling on? Wouldn't it be smarter to watch from a safe distance, like a barstool at the Metro Court? Between Nina and Sonny, Ava is playing a dangerous game! Is Lucy playing a game too? As long as Maxie comes out of it unscathed, go ahead and have your fun, Lucy. Also, would it be possible to give Scotty a little more camera time? And maybe bring back Liesl while we're at it? That would be delightful. Thanks.   #mauricebenard  #kellythiebaud #rogerhowarth #maurawest #steveburton #delirious #tshirtgiveaway #barshampoo #daydrinkingwithsethmeyers #hillstreetblues #kinshriner #saveava #nicholaschavez #savediane #stonewallkitchen #hallandoates #superstore #freaksandgeeks #waitingonafriend #memyselfi #freefallin #alanarkin #whosgonnarideyourwildhorses #maneater #whippingpost #colonoscopy #takethenap #alleymills #billylibby #chickadee #fortgorgeous #robertgossett #daydrinkingwithsethandlizzo #marcuscoloma #useastaplegun #riptwitch #ripepiphany #ripsonyaeddy  #waywardchickadee #barshampoo #ripmiffy #lovedogs #justinebateman #brookeshields #neilgaiman #dnice #cq #deborahcox #malcolmjamalwarner #lume #ripjacklynzeman #jasonmomoa #adambelanoff #thecloser #majorcrimes #wings #murphybrown #thecosbyshow #pinkalicious #ripbillymiller #ripmatthewperry #riptylerchristopher #ripandrebraugher 

About the Artist: In this episode of the "Express Your Wonders" podcast, we are treated to the talents of Lucy Wood. Lucy's deep engagement with music is rooted in soulful expression and aiding others. After a significant period of self-reflection and healing, she has dedicated herself to working with special needs individuals, fostering their creative and communicative abilities through music and writing. As both an artist and a guide, Lucy embodies her core belief that music is a powerful vessel for healing, self-discovery, and bringing love into this world. Episode Summary: Host Bronwyn Corkery brings a dynamic new episode of "Express Your Wonders," featuring the official launch of the podcast's theme song on Spotify, penned by the talented Lucy Wood. This show promises to delve into the creative process and personal journey behind the music that frames each episode, offering an inspiring narrative about transformation and empowerment. Join us as we explore how music can mirror and shape our emotions and intentions, setting the stage for personal growth and digital decluttering. Bronwyn shares her personal story of tidying up her living space, echoing the broader theme of decluttering and mental wellness that pervades the episode. The digital detox challenge, forming the backdrop of the episode's first half, serves as a metaphor for the song's central theme: a personal reset and emotional clearing through music and creative expression. Each narrative element woven into this episode is carefully selected to spark inner transformation, underscored by the resonance of Lucy Wood's soulful song, which listeners can now enjoy in full on Spotify. Key Takeaways: * Lucy Wood's journey of deep healing has led to a powerful mix of personal fulfillment and creative output, culminating in the production of a song that epitomizes the podcast's themes of overcoming limiting beliefs and embracing self-worth. * The song "Brand New Day" serves as an anthem of empowerment, designed to resonate with listeners and uplift those struggling to transcend their past and rebuild a stronger self. * The "express your wonders spring cleaning challenge" urges listeners to take actionable steps towards a digital detox, suggesting a meaningful parallel between organizing one's surroundings and one's mental and emotional clarity. * The episode underscores the profound impact of music on setting intentions and emotions for the day, especially as part of a morning routine. * A celebration of the song's release and an invitation to the audience to download it on Spotify, encouraging the sharing of the episode to spread the message of hope and renewal encapsulated within. Notable Quotes: * “Writing my own music and singing has never and will never leave my life. It is who I am at my core. But finding other ways to bring that natural ability to help others is something I don't take for granted.” - Lucy Wood * "Each morning I blast my music. I sing, I dance. You know how they say dance as if no one is watching? Well, that's me in the morning." - Bronwyn Corkery * "All we truly need is unconditional support and love for one another." - Lucy Wood * "Sending love to you all through this song and every day, never forget how loved and important you are." - Lucy Wood * "So Lucy found a way to follow what was in her heart and has balanced her passion to help others while still producing her own music." - Bronwyn Corkery Resources: * Song: "Brand New Day" by Lucy Wood Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/track/0TEPOktEg4ppgqFciZi2Ar?si=-1e5dL4ATcynWDI9aCmIZw * Lucy Wood's previous podcast episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/express-your-wonders/id1540867144?i=1000644343124 * Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2683141258615952 * Weekly emails subscription: https://express-your-wonders.ck.page/a57cf3e85b

Welcome back to the outdoor biz podcast. You are in for a treat today. Episode 374 of The Outdoor Biz Podcast features my conversation with Yoon Kim and Lucie Hanes from Outdoor Media Summit. If you're not familiar with the Outdoor Media Summit we're going to fix that. An annual event where the folks on the media side of the outdoor biz get together to network, connect with brands, participate in educational workshops and more helping move the industry forward. Facebook Twitter Instagram The Outdoor Biz Podcast Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Sign up for my Newsletter HERE. I'd love to hear your feedback about the show! You can contact me here: email: rick@theoutdoorbizpodcast.com or leave me a message on Speakpipe! Presented to by Wolfgang: Show Notes Let's begin with a little bit about you. Lucy, How did you get into the outdoor lifestyle? I was lucky enough to have a very outdoorsy dad who took me on my first hike when I was less than a year old. I mean, obviously, I was not hiking, but I was nice and toasty on his back. So I grew up hiking, and backpacking and then got into whitewater kayaking through passengers adventure camp in Richmond, Virginia. I think I started kayaking then. So that was kind of my first introduction to adventure outdoor sports. Yoon, how about you? I think when I was in college. I had a roommate who was really into the outdoors. I wasn't really into it, but he kind of made it a point to bring me into his sports, which were climbing and mountain biking at the time. And I never really, it's like, for me at first it was just kind of, something that people like me didn't really do. But he, he was pretty insistent about climbing with him on Wednesdays. Marty Combs was the roommate. So you guys are both now involved with the Outdoor Media Summit. For listeners who might not be familiar, tell us about the Outdoor Media Summit. How did it start? Who attends? What kind of things goes on? The content? Lucy, you wanna take a crack at it? Let's start with how it started. How did it start? Yoon- Well I can tell you how it started. So back in the day there, there still is, there's a conference called Shift, which is for land managers and it's mostly for land managers and conservation agencies in Jackson Hole. Christian Beckwith reached out to me and said we wanna bring some media to shift. This is back in 2013 when he reached out to me, the first show I believe, and he said, Hey, we wanna bring media to this conference. How do we do it? You and I have heard a lot of people in media and you're doing a lot of freelance writing and know a lot of editors. So I was like well, have a gathering for media people and, do a separate conference at the same time. It's your conference. He like he, we got some money for some money and you pull together some media folks. And I just wasn't interested. I was doing some other stuff. Then he talked to me a few times and I was like, sure, why not? We'll try it. And so that was the first blogger summit at the time, it was a gathering of like 30 bloggers and that was the first Outdoor Media Summit. And where was it? In Jacksonville. And who at it were bloggers to start with now who attends now? It's pretty much all media from all walks of life related to the outdoors, right? Writers, bloggers, photographers. There's print media and digital media. But we like to focus on, print folks, editors, freelancers, as well as podcasters, bloggers, and Instagrammers. We try to get, the whole spectrum of, of media. It's not just, it's not just words and audio. It can be video, it can be a short form, it can be long form. We're trying to expand the definition of what media really counts as. And what about the content? Tell our listeners about the content you guys provide at the summit. It's, it's great content, by the way. So our kind of philosophy on how we deliver content is at two levels. There's the keynote level and the breakout session-level. The keynote level is a bigger picture, higher level. This is where we're gonna have advocacy themes and like the industry hoorah moments. They get everyone under one roof and let's, think as a community towards, some big high-level talk. So that's kinda at the, at the, the keynote level. The breakout session level is very tactical, very how-to, and it's really aimed at helping you be better at your job as media or as a marketing professional. So those are our two audiences. And then we have our group activities, which is a little bit different. That's more of, business development, business partnership, finding, these silly games and silly ways to bring people together. But at the end of it, we're always, we're very intentional on how we program these things. Because we wanna put media and marketers together and see how they can collaborate to create these business partnerships. So Lucy, would you add anything to that? Yeah, going back to that point about, the immediate and advanced-level content. I think a, a main point of doing that is that we are trying to be this conference for media by media. So that means that everyone that's presenting is also participating. It's this circular relationship. You're not just, you're not just there to share your secrets. You're there to learn other people's secrets too. Just because you're an expert in one thing doesn't mean that you are in some other aspect of media that could really apply to. to you and your future. So we want to be able to have content that speaks to people that are experts that have been doing this for years and decades and think that they don't have anything new to learn, but they definitely do right? Lucy, how'd you get involved with the outdoor media? Yeah, I mean, it's kind of a funny story. I was I had just quit my job managing a climbing gym and was doing some contract work for Unionized Mutual friend and colleague Aaron Bible while I was kind of in between jobs. Was not planning on taking any sort of conventional job ever Again, turned out that this was not one, but I started doing some contract work for Erin who introduced me to Yoon. Started working with Yon a little bit, just on the side doing some research and writing for him. We met for the first time in person at last year's summer or met over breakfast, and said, eh, why not? And here we are. But really it was the kind of the magic of creating a community that lured me in and realizing that, there's a way, to create something powerful enough that it's worth any sacrifice. I think you guys have struck a chord on something different. I mean, we were talking about gathering places and things, and I think we've all been to various trade shows and I think things evolve over time. And if they don't stay fresh, people drop out and go do other things. And I think what you guys bring to the table is a different way of, of that gathering point. Was that conscious or did it just evolve as you created it?  Yeah. It's funny, we had a Dennis Lu on from outside. He compared what Outdoor Media Summit felt like to what OR felt like 25 years ago. It's one of my favorite testimonials. And I think there is intentionality in creating that vibe, that authenticity. Our steering committee is made up of top names in the outdoor industry, top brands and media. And this is truly a gathering that's designed by our community. We're not owned by private equity. We don't have shareholders and we're only responsible to our community. And that's it. I think there's a real hunger for something different, like you're saying, Rick for a gathering place that is authentic, that is built for us, and something that's also cost-effective, yet hyper-efficient and sustainable. There's a lot of intentionality in how we build that programming. And it's funny, like sometimes people will realize like, wait a minute, that's why they do that. They'll be like, come up. Is that why you guys do that? Like, yep, we do that. People have been attending since 2016. What do you think drives the growth and keeps them coming back? Is it that different format? Is it camaraderie and team building? Is it a combination of all of the above? Lucy, feel free to jump here anytime, I feel like there's a magic that we're trying to capture, which is that authenticity piece, but there's also gotta be that like productivity slash like, I've gotta have ROI on this thing. You can't just go to somewhere and have an amazingly great time walking around. So we're trying to find that balance, and I think that balance is in programming. And so this week we have a steering committee made up, it's the top names, right? The junkies and they're guiding how we're productive. But at the same time make it more authentic. And then we have these kinds of silly brainstorming games on like, how can we come up with new ideas around this stuff? But the ideas that they come up with are, it's really pent-up demand, right? This is stuff that they've been thinking about for a long time that they haven't been able to introduce a trade show environment, but an environment like ours, a little bit more flexible. It's also only media and marketers. So like we can do some things, it's not including sales reps and retail. Right. Distributors and, everyone else involved in the industry. It's just made for marketers at Brands and media. Editors at media. So I think we can create programming that's specific to the needs of those two audiences. There's a third that we're trying to capture here and that's PR folks, PR folks are such an important part of this media ecosystem. And we haven't done a great job at like building programming. Because I think they are an important cog in the wheel. You've been working with a lot of events for a long time. And we talked a little bit about how they're gonna change. Is there anything else that you think other events might be evolving to? Yoon, you've been involved with some trade shows as of late, the big gear show I think we've all been to, but what about other events? What do you think is gonna happen in the trade show world? That's a great question. So this is kinda what I'm seeing is it seems like the evolution or, you could even say the disruption in the event. And outdoor for us. And we, we call ourselves outdoor, but there's, there are 38 other outdoor industries that are part of, that say that they're outdoor. So we'll just say that we're kinda the human-powered corner of the outdoor industry. Right. Fish guys, call themselves outdoor. The boating guys now, call themselves all these different guys say they're outdoor. I think we're more in the human-powered direction. What I saw on bike was, after Interbike went away and the industry needed a new gathering place. They gathered, they rallied around conferences. So first it was people for Bikes. I'm also on the people for bikes events and marketing subcommittee, And that's, that's a really cool volunteer subcommittee position. What I see kind of happening in outdoor is similar to what happened in bike, they may be like five years ahead of us. This trade show went away again because of business proposition. The trade show model doesn't serve brands like it used to. And there's kind of two directions in the aftermath. One is conferences and the other is b2b2c, which is that business to business to consumer. So I see that happening in outdoor where, big gear show and both, kind going for this consumer model, the b2 B2C model. And then there's the conference piece. I think that we're the only real business conference. There are other conferences out there, but yeah, the Outdoor Writer's Conference is pretty business-related from a writer's perspective, right? They go there to meet people where they're gonna create their articles and photography programs and all this stuff for a business purpose. So there are other, other conferences out there, and I think. Really the niche events, the hyper niche-focused events like us, and then the regional shows, right? So in the aftermath of the Old Glory days of trade shows, I wrote a big, long article about this in Outside Business Journal. It's titled of Trade Shows or something. It was a pretty fun piece. Side Ghost wrote it, but Ken Kenji and I wrote it together. And it just kind of, outlays our thoughts on where we think the future of the events industry's headed for outdoor. And that's kind what we came up with is the old heyday of, everything can be done under one roof, every single type of professional can come together and it's gonna be a super long show. With, half a million dollar expenses from a brand, a two-story double-decker, giant booths, those days are over. The dates of rampant spending and events are now being fractured and going to the consumer model where that can continue. The B2C consumer model and then hyper-focused events and then regional events are kinda where we see the evolution going. Alright, let's shift gears and have a little fun. Let's go to the lightning round. How about that? What outdoor activities do you guys participate in? Lucy, how about you? I know you run a lot, right? Yeah. I am a dual sport athlete. I am an ultra trail runner and rock climber. Attempting to take both of those to the semi-pro level. Yeah, that's kind of what I do. It doesn't leave too much energy for anything else. Yoon, how about you? I'd say fly fishing is probably up there at the top of my jams with mount biking. I'm in, I live in Bentonville, so by nature of my backyard, there are tons of biking opportunities out here, and I climb as much as I can, and I ski and snowboard as much as I can. Yoon, how about you all that gear you've reviewed all those years? What's your favorite piece under a hundred bucks? You know what's funny is, I used to, you're right, I used to get tons and tons of gear right? When and I got to a point where I didn't like getting apparel anymore cause I would just get so much of it, right? And I didn't know what to do with it. And then I don't know when this was, maybe five years ago, I decided, you know what, I'm gonna wear the same exact thing every single day. And so I bought, 20 of the same shirts and I got like five, the same merino wool sweaters for the winter. And I got eight pairs of Livsn pants. And I know this is not that sexy of a piece of gear. But it's something that I wear every single day is these Livsn Flex Canvas pants. Like six months outta the year or however long it's, I'm wearing these Flex Canvas pants and I can wear them to semi-formal events. Also, Livsn is based in Bentonville, so I can get away with a little bit more if I'm wearing these. So people recognize like, you're supporting the local community. It has kinda a hometown hero status out here. Yeah. Yeah. Shout out to those guys. Lucie- So mine is gonna be a little bit unconventional in that I feel like it's the one thing that allows me to do everything else. Because I think that a lot of people that spend a lot of time doing very active things in the outdoors, we put our bodies through some hell, It's not necessarily the healthiest thing that we can do for ourselves to be pushing our body to that extent all the time. A few years ago, stumbled upon this, this business called Physivantage that makes basically supplements mainly for climbers, but outdoor athletes in general. And using their collagen every day, it saved my tendons from just rigorous damage. As I put them through a lot on the wall and on the trails. So using that every day has been really helpful to me. And that is the main thing. Like it, it keeps me getting out and it keeps me from being injured. And what's it called again? It's run by the climber, Eric Horst. And it's spelled p h y s i v a n t a g e. How about books? Are you guys, I think you guys are both avid readers. Give us a couple of your favorite books. Lucie- I will always keep coming back to Lynn Hill's biography, climbing free or autobiography that she wrote, I mean, many, many years ago. I think it came out in the nineties. But she is just my ultimate climbing hero. If you haven't read it or if anyone hasn't read it, it's worth a read for sure. Yoon, I don't know about my favorite book. It's probably gonna be a Malcolm Gladwell, his series. But I'll say probably the most recent book that I read which I just finished up the other day I thought was really interesting. It's called The Tyranny of Merit. It's like a social justice slash political philosophy. More on political philosophy on it's a pretty interesting read. I'm, and I'm not sure if I agree with everything in the book, but it's really challenging. As we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to say or ask of our listeners? So I teased something earlier about this programming that we built for PR folks. So it's two things. One of 'em is still a little under embargo at the moment but it's gonna be cool. It's a specific track for PR folks and we're still developing the programming and that's why I can't talk about it. We've got some partners but it's gonna be really good, but the programming is gonna be specific for PR folks. And then the other piece is gonna be before the show, have opening night reception on the first night. So before that we're gonna be doing an event called New Gear Speed. And as a media person, you'll love it. Cause probably what you hate most as a media person is walking around aimlessly in the aisles between half-hour appointments, right? Well, what do, do now for 30 minutes and you're walking around listening, kinda hoping someone asks, calls your name, or run into someone that you know. And then you gotta do that for three days, right? And it's just a really inefficient way to do product. So one of the most common things I hear from media is, man, I wish we could take three days of trade show, just put it into three hours, and just do a speed date of 10 minutes of 30 different brands. And they just tell me what product they want me to write about, the new product, why it's important, and why I should write about it. And then gimme the best basics of costs and specs. And then move on. And then after meeting 30 brands, 30 products after 10 minutes with each brand, I can walk out and I know the 13 products I'm gonna write about this year and then be done with it. And then they can move on education and focus on education. That's what we did is we created the speed date format. And we didn't create this, this is something that came outta our steering committee meeting, which was cool. Like media, just being like, yeah, it's my pet peeve. I hate walking aimlessly for the next meeting. Someone, please solve this. So that's our coolest new program. Rick, I've got a question for you. What makes you want to come back to Outdoor Media Summit? It's a combination of things. One is being new to media and interacting with the media folks, I just learned so much just from the conversations in the halls really, or in the hotel lobby. I'm not a media guy. I've never been a media guy. I've been a sales and product guy my whole life, and even though I interacted with those guys a little bit, the marketing guys did all that, not me. I was busy selling to the retailers or whatever. So that's what I got most out of it was just that interaction about, listening to what they do and how they do it. And I feel like my show was designed to share the stories of the people because I think we all have such great stories, such great backgrounds, and many of us have been in it a long time. So it's great, history and experience to pass on. And a podcast is perfect for that. So that's why I go, is to catch those people. I think of all the events I've been to, your event does that the best? I get a lot outta the Outdoor Writer's Association conference too. But the trade shows, they're not for that. Right? They're for something different. I totally get it. But that's what I get outta your event. I don't think there's one best. There are so many people that do so many great things. But yeah, as far as interaction, like you say, you curate every minute so that whatever you're doing is working. Because every minute I'm not bored, I'm not looking around for something to do. I'm gonna run into somebody in the lobby. I'm gonna run into somebody in the aisle or walking outta the room, going into another room, or I'm gonna sit next to somebody at the thing I'm sitting at. And just being a new media guy, that's helped me a ton. And I just bought my ticket yesterday, so I'll be back. As we wrap up here can people find you? What's the best way to reach out to you if they wanna ask questions? Yoon? Yeah. My email is yoon@outdoormediasummit.com. I answer every email that comes through. I think I do. Pretty sure I do. Lucy, how about you? Yeah, you can also email me at the same lucie@outdoormediasummit.com or on Instagram at the same @luciehaines We're pretty darn responsive. We love communicating with people. Outdoor Media Summit is intimate and small for a reason and that's so that we can personally interact with everybody, and that's very important to us.

Amy: Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy! I'm Amy McPhie Allebest. Today we will be covering two speeches by Eleanor Roosevelt that were delivered to the United Nations in the aftermath of World War 2. First, an Open Letter to the Women of the World, and second, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Roosevelt referred to the declaration in particular as being a new “Magna Carta” for humanity, and it truly was a revolutionary document that continues to be a reference point for international human rights. But before we dive into these remarkable texts, I want to introduce my reading partner for today, Lucy Allebest. Hi, Lucy, thanks for being here! Lucy: Hi! Thanks for having me! Amy: Lucy is my second daughter. A fun fact about my three daughters is that they all have different hair and eye colors. We call them our “neopolitan pack” because we have a chocolate, a strawberry, and a vanilla, and Lucy is our strawberry, with red hair and green eyes. She's also about 5 inches taller than I am. So Lucy, can you tell us a little more about yourself? Lucy: Of course! I am currently a senior in high school, which means much of my time is spent doing school work and college applications. But in my free time I enjoy writing, doing theatre,  especially Shakespeare, and learning about all things History. I'm also an excellent organizer, and I've been told I'm good at doing accents from all over the British Isles, but no I will not demonstrate.    Amy: And then I like to ask my reading partners what Breaking Down Patriarchy  means to them, or why they wanted to be a part of this project.   Lucy: I was so excited to be a part of this project not only because I'm so proud of my mom for all of the work that she has put in, but also because I feel like it is my responsibility as a young woman to educate myself on what's essentially my history. As someone who loves history and wants to study it further in college, I think it is crucial that I learn the stories of half of the human  population. I honestly feel let down by how little my public education has taught me about women's history, and I can't imagine it's going to get dramatically better even in college. It seems like people don't study women's history unless they major in Women's studies. So in order to fill in that huge gap in my knowledge of history and do what I can to resist the patriarchy which has always frustrated me, I was eager to take these first steps on my journey towards enlightenment and empowerment.    Amy: Yes it's true - I had you show me your AP US History textbook that one time to see how many women were in there, and it's better than when I was in HS, but still for the most part they're just sidelined in those special blue-highlighted paragraphs.   Lucy: Yeah, they're like “fun facts!” I got the sense that my teacher was adding more material to the curriculum that wasn't in the book. Which I was really grateful for, but at the same time when she would add extra stuff about women, I kept thinking, “why isn't this in the text book?” Amy: Well I should thank your teacher then, because you ended up knowing a ton more than I had ever learned about History in general, and about women's history specifically. In fact that's why I asked you to do this episode on the UN declarations and Eleanor Roosevelt - because one day you were talking about it and teaching me all kinds of things I had never heard before.   So before we get into the text, can you tell us about the author and the historical context that led to Eleanor Roosevelt writing these speeches?   Lucy: Yes! Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was born on October 11, 1884. Sadly, both of her parents and one of her brothers died when she was young. At 15, she attended school in London, then returned to the U.S., and when she was 21 years old she married her fifth cousin once removed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in 1905. The Roosevelts' marriage was...

Find us: Head to our community page to register & join the MindfulCommerce community as an expert, brand or merchantInstagram: @mindfulcommerceFacebook @MindfulCommerceContact Us - info@mindfulcommerce.ioWhere to find Scott Goodman:Scott Goodman - Email: scott.goodman@okendo.ioWhere to find Rachel Tyers:Rachel Tyers - Email: rachel.tyers@okendo.ioWhere to find Okendo:Okendo - WebsiteOkendo - MindfulCommerce directory listing Where to find Lucy Roberts:Lucy Roberts - Email: lucy@bravetheskies.comWhere to find Brave the Skies:Brave the Skies - WebsiteWhere to find Reverie the Boutique:Reverie - WebsiteReverie - InstagramLinks Mentioned in Episode:Urth (formerly Gobe)Activated EcoFinisterreWAGWanderer BraceletsFoursixtySpellRixoLSKD (Loose Kid)KlaviyoHerbivoreGorgias - Shopify AppFashion Impact - Shopify AppShownotes:Krissie Leyland  0:00  Hello, and welcome to The MindfulCommerce Podcast, a place where we talk to ecommerce brands and service providers and developers who care about protecting our planet. I'm Krissie. Rich Bunker  0:11  And I'm Rich, and we're your hosts. This podcast is an extension of the MindfulCommerce Community.Krissie Leyland  0:18  The MindfulCommerce Community is a safe place for ecommerce brands and experts to connect, collaborate and explore opportunities to work together to unleash the power of ecommerce as a force for good.Rich Bunker  0:30  You can join by going to mindfulcommerce.io and by clicking 'Community'. See you there!Krissie Leyland  0:36  Hello, and welcome to a brand new series of The MindfulCommerce Podcast! So this is going to be slightly different. We are re-uploading or uploading events that we have done in the community. And today, this is an event we did in January-so the beginning of this year: 2021-with Okendo, which is a customer review app for Shopify stores, and Brave the Skies & Reverie The Boutique. So we spoke to Scott, just to get a little intro into what how Okendo came about. And if you would like to hear more information about Reverie The Boutique, Lucy's brand and Brave the Skies, which is a Shopify Plus agency that she is MD for, then you can head to episode number four. There, we talk about the intersection between ecommerce and sustainability. Anyway, let's get to the event then. So this is all about how online stores can create better connections with their customers. We talk about user generated content, influencer marketing, reviews, obviously with Okendo and email marketing as well and how you can combine all of those together to create the perfect strategy to connect with your customers on another level. In particular, we talk about this from a perspective of a small brand with not such a big budget. So hopefully, this will really help you to create your new strategy for the year going forward. Yeah, so we hope you enjoy. If you like it, please subscribe. Join the community so that you can be aware of these events and join them as they are actually happening live and you can ask your own questions! So let's now go and speak to Scott:Scott Goodman  2:43  Hey, guys, so I'm Scott, I'm Okendo's, APAC and EU/UK market lead. I've been tasked to kind of give you some background into Okendo's fruition. What's our story? How did we come about? So Okendo is a Sydney-founded tech startup. The idea or concept that started the journey was actually to do video reviews. Now obviously, we have evolved a lot since that concept. But at that time, text reviews was the standard, there was nothing else. So we saw an avenue to do video reviews. And now you know, we're in 2021 and we do text, we do video, we do photos, we do q&a and we integrate with a wealth of different Shopify partner partners out there, cross loyalty, email, subscription, those types of things.So we now services over 3000 customers for Shopify plus partner. And we have some of the world's biggest brands on our on our platform, so it's a super exciting time. We, strength to strength, growth to growth, milestone to milestone: everything changes every day. But with all these positive changes, we do need to be wary of the effect that we're having on the earth. So we need to support sustainable culture, support sustainable brands and we are definitely seeing a very, very positive trend of this with merchants using Okendo. We have some amazing brands who very much pioneered this and we're very happy to support them.So I've been tasked to kind of speak to two different tips on how sustainable brands can use Okendo and facilitate that review capture. So the first one is actually a fantastic initiative, which a brand called Urth (formerly Gobe) is Australian camera gear manufacturer. What they do is: they run loyalty line. Basically, with every review that they capture, you get loyalty points. And then what they were doing is they would assign X amount of loyalty points equals planting three trees. So for every review that we were getting, my goal was was giving back to the community, giving back to the earth and planting trees. I I think that is absolutely fantastic. You know, it doesn't pigeonhole you to just doing trees. It can be given back to charities, it can be whatever you'd like, but that's a super easy way to give back and a super easy way for all your customers to be involved. I think that's fantastic.The second idea, which I see brands doing, and the one that I want to speak about is quite Activated Eco, another Australian brand. Kudos to them down in Victoria. But basically, their pioneering product is stainless steel pegs. Super simple, but game changing. No longer are they breaking plastic pegs... The sun damage, having to repurchase them every six months. You buy once, you have them for the rest of your life. So what they're doing is they're collecting that content of photos of just clothes hanging up, but it's people's everyday experiences. And they're using that for retargeting ads across social media organic posts. And it's showcasing their five star experience with some personal UGC content. And that's going a long, long way, in showcasing the use case scenario for that product. It's a no brainer, right? But also showcasing real experiences with that product. So it's doing incredibly well for them. We're big supporters of both those brands and we do have many more brands doing different things out there like that. Thanks!Krissie Leyland  6:24  Thank you so much, Scott. That was great, really interesting to hear how sustainable brands are using Okendo to their advantage and also for the planet. So thank you so much. Okay, now we are going to go straight into the event.Welcome, everybody and thank you very much for coming. I'm Krissie and I am one of the two cofounders from MindfulCommerce. Rich couldn't attend but he said hi. MindfulCommerce is a community of ecommerce brands, service providers and developers who share a common goal. And that goal is to make ecommerce more sustainable and positively impactful. So we have a Facebook group, a Slack channel and an expert directory. And some of you are already in the community and it's great to see you! Kat is our marketing whiz and she's going to be co hosting with me today. This event is casual, relaxed and collaborative. It's a nice conversation between nice people. If you want to unmute then unmute, and say whatever within reason and there will be some time for q&a at the end. Over to you Kat. Cat Hunter  7:35  Okay, thank you so much Krissie. So, as she said, I'm Cat! I help out with marketing some stuff for MindfulCommerce something I'm super happy to be involved with. I'm absolutely loving everything that I'm seeing in the community at the moment and how it's growing, especially kind of in the in the wake of the crazy year that was 2020. There's been like a huge growth in interest in this. So it's been really lovely to see the community kind of really growing legs and taking off. Just to give you a little bit about my background, I'm actually ex Shopify, so I worked on the partner programme at Shopify for three years, and ran lots of their events for them. I got super into the world of ecommerce and then eventually decided to go freelance as a copywriter and content creator, but I'm still very much working within the realms of ecommerce and SaaS. So that's my bag, but obviously really interested in sustainability and making the industry as green as possible too.So without further ado, we will introduce our amazing panellists. Today, we're super duper happy to have them join us for this event. So first of all, we'll say hello to Lucy. So Lucy is not only the MD of a Shopify Plus agency called Brave the Skies, who are on a mission to create, launch and grow online stores with their expert crew of very skilled designers, marketers and developers, but she's also the founder of an online boutique called Reverie, which is a really luxurious, sustainable vegan brand. We really recommend checking them out if you haven't already. Krissie is repping some of the jewellery today, very subtly. So she really knows her stuff when it comes to creating these customer connections and ecommerce and most importantly within the sustainable ecommerce space.Also joining us today we have Rachel from Okendo. Hi Rachel! Rachel is VP of partnerships at Okendo. And we're incredibly grateful that she's joined us because it's very early in the morning, where she is. Okendo, as you all know, is a customer view app for Shopify stores but it's more than just a customer review app to us that MindfulCommerce. We think they have like a sort of secret superpower for sustainability and fighting climate change. Because Okendo not only creates great customer connections through reviews and some fantastic integrations which Rachel will talk about, they also help tackle one of the biggest issues in ecommerce when it comes to carbon emissions, which is returns.Gerry McGovern gave us a crazy stat the other day that it will take 1.5 billion trees to be planted to deal with the annual ecommerce returns in the US alone, in terms of carbon emissions. So reducing the number of returns is making ecommerce more sustainable. By having that user generated content, those reviews embedded in your site, people are able to make better choices, more informed choices about the the items that they're buying and hopefully this leads to fewer returns! Okendo is used by some really great sustainable brands like Finisterre, and WAG. They enable customers to show how the products really are. You know, how they fit into their life, helping people buy the right thing the first time.This event today, it's the first event of the of the year for MindfulCommerce. The first of many, we're hoping. We're going to be running these throughout the year. And they are very much a community focused event, we want to make sure that we are providing you guys with the content that you're looking for. With regard to that, when we set about trying to set up this first January event, we polled the community in the Facebook group, which you should all be, hopefully lovely active members of. Loud and clear, you told us that what you wanted to hear about was customer connections. We kind of had a sneaking suspicion that the topic might be something kind of along those lines, because we've been talking about this quite a lot behind the scenes, and customer connection really matters more in 2021 than it ever has before. I think the pandemic has really accelerated ecommerce.You may have seen some stats laying around that ecommerce has grown more in the it's basically had like five years growth in one year, in terms of how it has been accelerated by the demands placed upon it by the pandemic. And customer expectations have also kind of been accelerated in line with that. So, it's a really great area to invest your time and resources in, in terms of creating those lasting more authentic, deeper connections with your customers. We all know that retention is more cost effective than acquisition. And loyal, engaged customers are generating higher rate of ease and have better purchase purchase latency status, etc. So all in all, brands are looking to really create those deeper, more reliable connections with their customers going forward into this year.So yeah, great topic. Thanks for choosing it, guys! And once again, we are super, super honoured to have Rachel joining us to talk about customer connection from their own experiences. So without further ado, I will pass over to Krissie, who I think is going to kick us off with a few questions. And we will have questions for a while and then we will take Q&A from the floor. Over to Krissie. Krissie Leyland  12:47  Thank you so much, Cat. That was awesome. And so Rachel, can you tell us about like some more about Okendo and how customers can leverage the tool to create better customer connections? Rachel Tyers  13:01  Yeah, sure. So Okendo is a Shopify specific customer marketing platform. We work with about 2000, fast growing DTC brands. And we're really focused on helping them in their marketing across the board. So not just reviews, but how can we leverage your social proof to improve each area of your business or all the channels that you're marketing from? So I think a really important thing is that we know reviews increased conversion on site. Partly all of us on this group chat look at reviews before purchasing and product. The stat is 93% of people will read reviews before they purchase something and it's just showing you that there's credibility there because you've got that social proof. "Okay, these people like this product, so I probably will too!" It really puts our minds at ease when we're used to going into a retail store and maybe looking at some clothing, trying it on... having that self experience, which we can't have anymore, unless we're purchasing a product with the intention of maybe returning it later, which of course we don't want to do: Not sustainable, we don't want those carbon emissions. So by reading other people's feedback, we're able to sort of simulate that experience. But beyond that, it allows you to sort of create these connections with your audience. With a lot of brands that we work with, we see them using reviews as a tool to leverage to actually speak directly to your customer and allow your customer to speak back to you.We work with a company called Wanderer Bracelets. They are a sustainable brands that employs Balinese artists to make these custom bracelets. They pay the Balinese artists a fair wage that allows them to support their family. So reading through these reviews, it's so interesting to me because I'm able to connect with the person and their reviews. So this lady Tiffany, she ordered them for her girls, and her friend bought this anklet for the boys, for the preschool that they went to. They're all best friends. So all of a sudden, I'm having this deeper connection with the brand and with the product when I'm able to submit and let them know why I bought the product and how I feel about it. And then me as a reader or us reading together, we're able to see how personal and how beautiful the stories are there. So it's really helping to build out those connections that we're feeling with the brains. Krissie Leyland  15:45  Okay, great. So it's all about showing what your current customers think of your products. And then how does that help you to connect with new customers, for example?Rachel Tyers  15:58  So you can use those UGC, so these are generated content or the review content in your marketing as well. So you can push the star ratings through to Google product listing ads, and there, we know that if your Google Shopping ad has stars on the bottom, people are going to be more likely to click through than if it doesn't. So that can help draw more customers in. Or you can also leverage the user generated photo or video content for your other marketing campaigns. So in my decade of experience in Facebook media buying before I moved into partnership, the highest converting ad creative was always the scrappy UGC. So I put together UGC video, taking little sound bites are people saying how they love the product, how they use the product, what they think of it... And then you chop that together to make this really kind of like scrappy, bit short, sharp and entertaining. user generated content mashed-up clip. When you're using that across Facebook, or Instagram marketing, it often feels more real, more believable and more compelling. It's more natural in the setting that you're showing it because we're used to having our friends like talking to the camera, or the celebrities that we follow whatever it is, kind of scrappy. So if we're presenting something back that feels natural on that platform, sometimes it gets more attention. Because it feels real, you're also more likely to be building that the credibility and the trust side of things.Krissie Leyland  17:36  Yeah, definitely. I think I'm the kind of person who say, for example, I'm on an online store and I've seen a product that I quite like, I'll always go to something like Instagram, and look for real life people that are wearing that product orusing that product. Kind of putting myself in that person's shoes, or the item that I'm looking at and just thinking, "how do I relate to this person? And are they you know, a similar type of person? What are they doing? Are they outdoors?" Which is the kind of person I am, I like to be outdoors. So I'll relate to it more and and probably want to buy it if I can see someone in real life using it. So that makes a lot of sense. And so with Okendo, and I'm pretty sure you work with another app, which helps with that. Can you talk a bit about that one? Rachel Tyers  18:35  Sure. We work really well alongside Foursixty. They are a UGC platform that allows you to curate images that you're tagged in on Instagram and show those on your site. There are all of these images that people have tagged on Instagram, and then you're able to go in, and you can actually shop that product from within the image. And then you've got the Okendo five star ratings being pulled through here to add that little bit of social proof. So it's pretty nice to be able to use those together really compelling, you can put it anywhere on your site. Then of course, you as a brand own any of the imagery or any of the contents committed via Foursixty or via Okendo. So you can use it to leverage your products across all the marketing campaigns too.Krissie Leyland  19:39  That's really cool. I'm just thinking about like, people in the audience and the businesses that they've got and that sounds really great. But with the user generated content, sorry I'm still talking about that... Can you kind of say if someone's tagged you in something you're not very happy with, and you're like my my target audience won't relate to that, can you not accept it? Rachel Tyers  20:04  Yeah, absolutely. So on the Okendo site, you might get a review that has an image alongside it and really love their review, you love the story in it or it's just great content but this image maybe isn't on brand. It's super easy for you to hide that image and then publish the review. You can also set up automations in the back end so that all of your four or five star reviews that have positive sentiment get automatically published, so it's one less thing for you to do. But maybe if it's a four or five star review with a photo, it doesn't get automatically published so you have control to really maintain that brand image. The same thing for Foursixty on that UGC side: you curate everything in the back end, before it goes live on your site. So there are no mishaps of someone showing their new underwear that maybe isn't strictly on brand for you. Krissie Leyland  20:59Yeah you don't want that... [ laughs ] Lucy, I have a question for you related to UGC. I think you are a big fan of micro-influencers. So do you want to talk about that and introduce and what you're up to?Lucy Roberts  21:20  Yeah, for sure. I think I absolutely love the whole concept of user generated content. I think it's so smart. I think there are some brands who just use it so so well. A personal favourite of mine, and I think Rachel's probably heard of them as well as they're an Australian brand, is Spell and the Gypsy. I'm not quite sure how many people on the call have heard of them. But if you haven't, like please go and look at their Instagram page on our website, immediately. They do UGC so well. A feature that I really love on their product pages is you know how at the bottom of your standard econ product page, you'll have, "you may also like" and they also have a little bit where you can toggle to like "as seen on Insta". And it's really that thing that Krissie was talking about just there, which is you can see the product that you're looking at, in a real life situation. So it's not just on a 5'11", size 8 model. I'm 5'3.5" and like a solid size 8 or 10 so that's really not relevant to me. But having those micro-influencers, who really become more like brand ambassadors for you, as opposed to kind of having that influencer tag associated to them. They're uploading their content, they're sharing it, they love the brand. And it really becomes like more of a cult following, which I think a lot of Australian brands do really well. So I used to work for a brand called Cinnamon. And there was this insane cult following around the brand like people couldn't get enough of it. There's a few brands that we're working with, at the moment at Brave the Skies, which is the agency which I run. So for example, Rixo, Kitri and Les Girls Les Boys have this really interactive conversation with their customers, except that Les Girls Les Boys are actually using their customer base to cast for the upcoming campaign that the basically the tagline is "Show us your underwear." This is a really weird concept, but it works for them. Their tagline is "bed to street". The idea is that you wear oversized pyjamas and you wear their pyjamas shirt tucked into your leggings. And then you go to the shops like that. Stuff is amazing quality, the brand is really cool. But all of their customers, especially once you have really active social profiles, so specifically your Gen Z & Millennials have this really interesting opportunity to become micro-influencers or almost brand ambassadors. I could talk about this all day, so I'm probably gonna let someone else talk.Krissie Leyland  24:00  I was gonna ask how can a brand do this? They're like "Right, that sounds great. I want to find some micro-influencers, and I want to generate some user generated content." How can they find the right people to create these great customer connections that they can relate to?Lucy Roberts  24:18 I think if I could answer that one from more of a Reverie standpoint, which is the brand which I started a couple of months ago, I've actually got these little cards I'm just gonna reach behind my computer. Don't mind me guys, sorry. All of the orders that I send out have little "Thank you" cards. I don't know if you guys can see... Krissie, you've seen a few of these but essentially on it, it says "Thank you so much. We sincerely hope you enjoy your purchase from Reverie. Please tag us on Instagram with our hashtag and our handles so we can follow your daydream too!" The whole messaging of the brand, Reverie is a fanciful state of musing or a daydream. So we've only built on this.I say we because it's myself, my fiance, he's definitely a really big part of like building the brand. It's all about involving people in this concept of the daydream. So a lot of the brand messaging on Instagram and email is very much about letters, follow your Daydream come and join our Daydream. It's really conversational.And I find that when you're really authentic about your brand, and you really kind of back yourself, and we do this with Brave the Skies as well. We have a really heavy space-themed brand with the agency, people really respond well to that. If you really back your own brand, people naturally want to buy into it and get involved. I think I've been really lucky with the kind of brand messaging across social channels like Facebook and Instagram, mainly. It seems to attract some really wonderful people who have really similar values, who really like the brand aesthetic, who naturally want to be part of the conversation and support a small business. And especially when you send a really nice order out with a really cute little card. I always write a handwritten message on the back to say, "This is one of my favourite products, too. I really hope you love it." It's genuine and it's nice for people to want to help and to want to share it and to spread the message. I suppose in a way your customers become your micro-influencers.Krissie Leyland  26:20  Yeah, it's amazing. Every time we... well, I've made a few orders on Reverie and also, my partner got me a really nice Christmas present from there, which is this one. Yeah, we both went, "Oh, look! It's handwritten." It's really nice. Like, it just connects to the brand. and the person behind the brands. You know, the necklace and jewellery is really nice but it's nice to know that there's a person there. And it's real and authentic. Yeah, I love it. I was going to ask about-Sorry, I am going to ask you another question-the conversation and how do you keep the conversation going from that lovely card over to social media? And which kind of, again, going back to the connections: How does it help with engagement and how do we continue the conversation? Lucy Roberts  27:15  Yeah, that's a really good question. I think for a lot of customers, the journey tends to start on social, especially when I think with Instagram's algorithm, for example, it changes all the time. I'm sure there's loads of you guys who are listening at the moment who have your own small page or small business that you're starting Instagrams algorithm can really trip us up, and it's super annoying. At the moment, I think it's based quite heavily on whether or not somebody saves your images. So, I tried to make a lot of the images quite save-friendly. So a really nice image that you might want to come back to later, like a nice shot of interiors. Everyone might notice how fantastic Rachel's background is... I've been lusting after this call. But I love sharing content that people find some kind of escapism in. And I think that that starts to build a bit of an aesthetic for your brand.So I find that there's a lot of customers, who are always the ones who like everything on Instagram who comment on everything on Instagram and same with Facebook. And I always reply to everybody. The thing that I've said since day one: even if it's just an emoji, I want to reply to and acknowledge that it's there. Because I think a relationship where you're not just a faceless brand. There's actually someone behind it. A lot of people messaged me now and say, "Hey Lucy, when is this coming back into stock? I really like it." And when that kind of continues on to the website, for example, if somebody places an order, I've got a really good memory. It's one of my very few very strong skills, I'm really good at names. So I'll always remember if I see a name on an order, I'm like, I'm sure she's liked a couple of things on Instagram before I'll go back and check before I write the card.And I've had this absolutely amazing woman who was the first person to follow me on Instagram who wasn't a family member or a friend. She's called Elizabeth, and I absolutely love her. She likes everything, she shares everything, she comments and everything, she always buys a candle. And I actually did a post on Instagram might have been last week or the week before. But it was really it was really authentic. I just wanted to kind of appreciate her and give her something back. She always sends messages from her Pinterest board that she thinks that I'd really liked for the Reverie feed. So I've kind of done a bit of a story and a Facebook post about how she was the first person who I didn't know who followed my page and how it's so nice that she's been there since day one. And just like celebrating that connection that I have with her... though I've never met her. Obviously, we've only ever messaged on Instagram, but somehow we've kind of built this amazing connection and almost a friendship, just through her engagement with the tone of voice that I'm using on Instagram.There's been a couple of people like her. I think Instagram can get quite a bad rap for being quite toxic but I've had nothing but positive experiences through doing it for Reverie. Had an amazing call with a lovely girl in South Africa last Friday, we had a coffee. She's starting a brand &  we had a nice chat about it. I think the connections really come down to, as well as everything that Rachel has said, which is obviously so valuable about the reviews like collecting feedback, like simulating that in store experience. It's just for me, it's complete authenticity, and just having a really, really honest tone of voice and speaking to someone as though they're in the same room as you, I guess. Yeah, it's really long-winded answer again. I'm really sorry.Krissie Leyland  30:49  I love that though. It's almost like everyone here. Well, I've met Alice and Cat in real life, but everybody else I've probably never met you. But I feel like we know each other and it's really nice. Yeah, just wanted to say that.Lucy Roberts  31:10  You know, we love a good tag on Instagram. That was something that said "normalise girls messaging each other on Facebook and Instagram to be mates."Krissie Leyland  31:22  Yeah, it's amazing. I love it. Especially at the moment, you know, crazy times. It's nice to be able to connect to people still online. Thank you internet. Me and Alice, we met in Portugal on a surf trip and now we're reconnecting over business, brands, ecommerce and how she built websites. It's just great. I love this. So Cat, do you want to ask some questions?Cat Hunter  31:59  Absolutely. I do. I was thinking from what you were saying, that idea about starting up conversations, about that two way flow that connection necessitates by its very, very nature. Obviously, it's so important that it's a two way street. I was just wondering, Rachel, perhaps you could tell us a bit more about how brands can ensure that they're getting that right. That idea of, of listening to customers, as well as kind of initiating that conversation... making sure that that connection is a two way flow?Rachel Tyers  32:30  Yeah, definitely. I think there are a few really great platforms and ideas you can have in your back pocket for that. And a way that Okendo allows you to connect with customers beyond the reviews is the Q&A section of the widget. So customers can actually directly ask you questions there, and you can respond to them. Another really good tool that we love working with is Gorgias. Gorgias allows you to collect any customer questions or concerns from multiple platforms, and then you have them all in one place where you can respond to them. So I think being able to offer really great customer service in that way, definitely helps you to grow your brand and create that bond with your audience, like Lucy mentioned.Another good way to use customer feedback is by collecting information on your product, and actually implementing that in your product strategy. So we have a client: LSKD, an Australian streetwear brand that did just this. They were wanting to create the best leggings out there. I want to show what their widget looks like, actually. They used a few different slider bars on their widget to collect information around the product quality, the design and the sizing. So they actually went through many iterations of their product until they got to a level where almost all of these product slider bars were hitting excellent. And it was super important to them that they were listening to what the customer wanted, what they thought of the current product, and then continuing to build upon that. So through doing that, they'd be able to really gain that cult following. They have an incredible product now that people are coming back to buy again and every colour, which I think is always what you want as a brand. They were able to also create those bonds with the customers and they incentivize. So when somebody gave them product feedback and spent their valuable time to do so, they would offer a percentage of coupon for them on the site. So I think that has really allowed them to grow into the brand they are today.Lucy Roberts  34:50  I love that. I think that's so cool. I want those sliders. Can you talk about the sliders later, Rachel?Cat Hunter  34:55  I know, that's something I write about as, as a sort of technical content writer at the moment is audience segmentation and how that can be used. That's something that a lot of smaller brands want to get started with. They know that they could be using their audience data in a more informed & strategic way and really honing in on specific messaging for specific segments of their audience. Maybe they just haven't got it off the ground yet or they haven't started. But I'd love to hear maybe from either of you, if you have anything to say about audience segmentation, and what that can do to strengthen that one-to-one kind of connection that people feel with a brand.Rachel Tyers  35:42  Yeah, I'd love to jump in here, Lucy, and then hand over to you. So I think being able to segment allows us to create these stronger one-to-one connections, because I want to feel like a brand is talking to me about something that I'm interested in as something that affects me personally, rather than just "Hey, I'm one of your many 1000 customers, and I'm just another number." So a way that we allow our brands to do that through Okendo is through using our customer attributes to collect a bit of information on our audience and then we can sync that over into Klaviyo and use it in special ways.I'll share my screen again to show an example. This is WAG, they are a dog treats company that's made with natural and sustainable ingredients. And they have been using our Klaviyo integration. So what that does is it allows you to sync all of this customer data into your Klaviyo or Omnisend customer data profile. Then we can segment out based on the dog breed, the dog age, and the eating habits. Then using those segments, WAG is able to recommend specific products that are going to be right for that dog for your pet. So using that segmentation strategy, they were actually able to increase the revenue per recipient by about 430% just by speaking to that customer.Then another example here, we've got Herbivore who is a cruelty free and vegan brand that we work with. They actually collect information around skin type, and skin concerns. So you can imagine if I've got perhaps acne or dryness, and I get an email that in the copy says, "Hey! Help with dry skin" in the subject line, whatever it may be and it's something that actually relates to me or pertains to what I'm actually interested in solving, then I've got more likelihood of clicking through and converting for that product. It cuts through the noise and we know that our email tends to get clogged up with a lot of other noise. So if you're able to speak directly to that shopper, then you're more likely to build that connection there. Cat Hunter  38:11  Just speaking with my like content marketing hat on as well, that could be really interesting in terms of the way that you structure your content marketing too. Just knowing kind of which topics are going to land well, which ones to be promoting more to which segments, writing "buying guides" and things like that must be very helpful to know how your audience demographic is skewed across those different kind of attributes.Rachel Tyers  38:35  Right, absolutely. Lucy, do you have anything to add from the marketing strategy side on segmentation?Lucy Roberts  38:43  To be honest, I think I think you've pretty much covered it. From a kind of more of an established merchant perspective, something like Okendo, which is what Rachel's obviously talking about is amazing. Having that integration with Klaviyo as well is so powerful, because you can start to target those segments with automated workflows. But the agency side of me is like "100%, that's the way to go", but the Reverie side of me doesn't have the budget to really have a powerful option like that in-house because obviously, it's all self funded, and you're a little bit more scrappy when you're a startup. So a lot of the tools that I would use for my own brand as well would just be things like Facebook Insights or Instagram Business Insights.Reverie's built on the Shopify platform just on one of our pre-budget plans, but you can still get a decent amount of data and understanding as to, even if it's just gender split. You know, like 70% female, largely between 25 and 35 (years). Even the most kind of basic bits of data, I find can be really helpful, especially when you are a small brand and every pound that you're spending on stock or anything really is very important. For me, I've tried to very much build a picture of who the reverie customer is. I think there's roughly three personas and I do try to validate that with any bit of data that I can glean from any of the platforms that I use. But 100% the segmentation of those one on one conversations and connections is amazing. And Krissie, we're getting some questions in this chat.Krissie Leyland  40:28  Yes, so I was gonna go to the question that Chris Butterworth just put in there, which is a brilliant question and I love it. So we are talking about gathering data about your customers, but one thing that we talk about at MindfulCommerce is storing data and being really mindful about the data that you collect, to kind of ensure that you need the data and it's actually going to be useful. So Chris's question was, "what are people's thoughts on the ethics of collecting all of this customer data to allow this almost one-on-one targeting?" It's a great question and it's a rabbit hole that I go down often. So, Chris, do you want to unmute and talk about your thoughts?Chris Butterworth  41:30  Yeah, I've just seen Vickie's response to it as well, "if they the customer voluntarily gives it" I mean, as part of GDPR within the EU, obviously, you have to get consent, or at least let people know that you are tracking. My concern is how much data that is collected is actually useful. Not just from an ethical standpoint, but from a sustainable standpoint, obviously, the more data you collect, the more data is transmitted, the more data is stored. So it's kind of just to try and cover both of those areas, really, just to try and get people's thoughts on it... whether it is completely ethical or not.Krissie Leyland  42:21  So just to explain it a little bit more, like you said, it's not just about the ethics of GDPR, and stuff like that. It's about the more data that you store, the more impact it has on the planet, and the more energy that you basically zapped from the earth. What Chris and I are saying is just be mindful of the data that you collect. Lucy, what your thoughts are on that because you're a small brand. At Reverie, like you said, you don't collect much customer data, but say a client at Brave the Skies... Is it something that you might bring in conversation or do you just collect needless data?Lucy Roberts  43:13  I would potentially suggest that no data is useless or needless, I have very strong views on not sharing data with other businesses that you haven't directly opted into. I hate it when that kind of thing, those damn T's and C's that you have to click to check out that drives me mad. I hate hearing from businesses that I haven't directly signed up with. So if something like that does happen, I do make it a personal mission to find out who sold my data and wage war with them. That in the spirit of creating more meaningful connections with customers, offering a better service offering more value, I think as long as you're using the data proactively that you have, and like you say, You're not just collecting data for the sake of collecting data, then I think ethically, I'm on board with it. As long as it's being used responsibly, and in a way that genuinely benefits the customer and not the business. Yeah, then I think it's a nice thing to be able to do because tying back to everything that Cat and Rachel were talking about, like at the started at the start of the chat, like having those better connections, being able to not necessarily sell a product better, but advise the customer better on things like the fit or things like whether or not based on your previous purchase in the previous data that we've collected, we're pretty sure we're actually 85% sure that the size eight is going to fit you then I think that that solves the problem as well. So it's interesting, it's almost a bit of a double edged sword. It's like we didn't have the data, we might create more returns which might create more questions. Rachel, help me out.Rachel Tyers  45:04  For midsize enterprises, the data were collecting is only scratching the very surface. It's so insignificant compared to the billions of points of data that Facebook or Google stores on every single one of us. And as SMPs, we use that too. So all of the Facebook marketing targeting that we're using, which is very comprehensive, incredible, and allows us to get in front of customers that are going to be interested in our products, that is stored somewhere. And that's significantly more than, like a couple of skin type questions that you might have on your reviews widget. So I think that's like more of a consideration and there's certainly a line. You know, it's always really creepy, when I'm talking about back pain, and my phone is sitting here, and then I get ads on Instagram. And I'm like, "Okay, back pain ads? Come on. My phone wasn't even unlocked!" So it's tricky. But that said, we're opting in for this every time we use Facebook or Instagram, like we have opted in to share all of our data with Facebook. So, you know, it's definitely a grey area. It's really creepy as a consumer, but it's really fantastic as a marketer.Krissie Leyland  46:23  Yeah, it's like Lucy said, it's definitely double edged. I think, what Chris will say and what I will always say is, just please be mindful of the data that you collect. Don't store it for too long if you find out that you don't need it or use it. Going back to customer connections, it can be really great if you can personalise things, and for example, you're using data to create an ad that's more relevant. Perhaps, that's okay. But yeah, just be mindful. Thank you so much, Chris. I love that question. And I think we should do it entirely different event with me, you and Cat and anyone wants to join about that. And so yeah, thank you!Lucy Roberts  47:14  There is a really good question that's just popped up in the chat about sensitive versus non sensitive data, which I think is a really, really interesting question. I don't think there's any need for anyone to collect sensitive data. I don't think marketers need it. I think everything that Rachel was just saying is completely accurate. Like it is a marketer's dream to have access to loads of information and data about your age, your buying patterns, which device you shop on, that kind of thing. But I really can't find a use case for a marketer to need the full name of somebody, the full address of somebody. I don't think anything needs to be that specific. So if I was being targeted based on very sensitive data, like, you know, my exact age or my birthday, or whatever, unless i'd specifically opted in because I wanted a 10% discount on my birthday,, I would be pretty annoyed about that. So I would always say sensitive data is no no.Krissie Leyland  48:21  I totally agree. So, again, thank you those really good questions and I like that topic a lot. Shall we go back to marketing and customer connections? So Lucy, you mentioned something called opti-channel marketing.Lucy Roberts  48:50  It's a good little buzzword, isn't it?Krissie Leyland  48:54  It is, it's a new one! It's anew one even to me & Cat! We were like, "what is it?"Lucy Roberts  49:01  I've had quite a few people talking about it recently. I was just mentioning to you ladies, before we jumped on the call: I've just started as an associate lecturer on a fashion course up in Newcastle at the university there. One of the senior lecturers that I was speaking to was talking about how they're talking to the students about the concept opti-channel marketing. I was like, "but surely you mean omni-channel?" and she was like, "No, I mean, opti-channel." Okay, so I was doing a bit of research into it and the more I looked into it, the more I thought "this is actually so smart." Because for being an omni channel retailer, you're everywhere where your customer is and your brand is everywhere. But this concept of opti-channel marketing is more about optimising your brand, your tone of voice and your message for the channel that you're operating on. So you might speak to a slightly different set of customers who engage with you more on email marketing. So your tone of voice might be a little bit more salesy. It might be a little bit more, "hey, you bought this, you might like this as well!" Whereas your conversations on a social platform like Facebook, or Instagram might be more about those one-on-one connections, where you've got the same people commenting and messaging every time. So you can be a lot more, "hey, I'm the face behind the brand. Let's have a chat. I'm really glad you like this image. What do you think about this?"So, I really liked this idea of this opti-channel suggestion. It's something that I've spoken to a couple of our clients about at the agency and it seems to have struck a chord with a couple of them. Because they think you very much do present yourself and your brand in very different ways, depending on the circumstance. It goes back to what Rachel was talking about before, which is more about customer segmentation and there are certain segments of customers who respond really well, for example to "we've got a flash sale", because the only time they're going to buy it is if it's on discount. But then you've got another section of customers who are incredibly brand loyal, and anything you put out they want to buy, because you have promised them that it's got your stamp for approval, and they're just going to buy it anyway. So I think this concept of opti-channel is actually I think it's common sense for a lot of people and I think we do it anyway. But I quite like that there's that there's a name for it, so I'm going with it.Krissie Leyland  51:27  Love it. That's really cool. Yeah, I was just like, "what? what is this" and Cat said, "That's good! Give us the dirt!"Lucy Roberts  51:36  Coin the term, take it and run! Go for it.Krissie Leyland  51:42  I'll be an opti-channel marketing agency!Lucy Roberts  51:47  I would like a revenue share please. [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  51:52  Yeah! Rachel, what do you have any thoughts on that? Have you ever heard of that concept before?Rachel Tyers  51:59  I haven't heard of that concept before, but it makes so much sense. I think, when we were kind of getting used to SMS being a part of our structure, people or brands werre worried about, "okay, we're sending an email to this person and we're also sending them an SMS... Isn't that a bit much? You know, we're double handing this message." But being able to use the correct sort of address in SMS is going to be really different to what you're using an email and you know, it's so short-handed and sort of off the cuff. Maybe you're throwing in a few emojis if you've got extra budget for SMS that month. So it's really different way of messaging someone, and both are equally valuable.Lucy Roberts  52:51  Chris is throwing me a curveball here. It doesn't seem like he's on board with opti-channel marketing.Chris Butterworth  52:57  Sorry, it's because I come from a brand background. So a lot of the work that I've done is basically been all about kind of consistent brand experience and brand strategy, and that sort of side of things. So changing your voice depending on the medium is a little bit odd to me, purely because I would think about it is something where it's completely consistent in terms of tone of voice and everything like that.Lucy Roberts  53:27  I totally get what you're saying. I think you're totally right in that all of your core values and your core messaging should always be the same. But the way that I thought about it was, I'm the same person as an individual. I am very much the same person in every situation, but I definitely have a phone voice. I'm definitely extra polite. When I'm around my parents friends, I'm definitely a little bit more of a wine girl with my girlfriends. And I'm to be honest, a bit of a loose cannon with my fiance, but I'm still the same person all around. I think you naturally have slightly different versions of yourself, even though you're still the same base person, it's still the same brands. You just act ever so slightly differently depending on your environment. So I'm going to go with that metaphor. I think it works.Chris Butterworth  54:22  Absolutely amazing. Yeah, I didn't even really think about it that way.Krissie Leyland  54:27  That is so good.Lucy Roberts  54:28  Yes, Thank you so much!Cat Hunter  54:29  We have a question from Bridget as well in the in the Q&A. I'll read out. So Bridget says that she has a question on marketing strategy. They recently launched a sustainability Shopify tool for fashion retailers. We know that consumers are interested in sustainability ratings, but our tool is a b2b product. Any tips on how we can get in touch with the right type of retailers?Lucy Roberts  55:01  First of all, I would love to hear about it because I'm sure the merchants that we work with that Krissie works with at her agency and that I work with... 100% would love to hear more about that. Bridget, I'm actually going to drop my email address in the chat. So, yeah I'd love to hear more about.Bridget  55:24  Sure! We only launched about a month ago, and we've got some traction, but we put so much work into it. Really, I guess, you know, the more work we put in, the more we thought we were just gonna blow up as soon as we launched. Guess things are harder once you're in the real world. So I'm just trying to reach out to brands, because I know a lot of consumers will be interested in seeing this, but it's just sort of highlighting the need to retailers and trying to get in touch with the right people because Shopify is so vast. Yeah, I think it's a good tool and we really thought of all the hypotheticals. What if this, what if that? It has a lot of flexibility, but in doing that, I worry that we've made our marketing more complicated. And so yeah, please let me know if anyone's interested.Lucy Roberts  56:13  I mean, I'd love a demo of it. Maybe we could connect and kind of chat about it more. From my experience in the agency, for example, I went down & met Rixo, which is a brand that we launched on Shopify Plus middle of last year. As part of their discovery, I kept saying to them, like, what about sustainability? What are you guys doing there? I mean, you sell 350 pound viscose dresses, like made in China? What's the message? Like? Where's that price coming from? And I don't think the founders were really expecting somebody to ask a question like that. I think they have enough of a cult following that the dresses sell themselves but we ended up doing a really big section on the site about meet the makers. And like, who's actually designed the clothes where they're being made. Like, where the factories are, what factories specialise in. I think that the more you almost propose the tool to brands, even brands, who aren't actively doing anything on sustainability on their websites, they naturally want to be associated with it, because most of them are thinking about it, they're just not doing anything about it. I always think those Rixos & Les Girls Les Boys, the independently owned small-medium sized business, I think they're going to be your bread and butter for it all like that on Shopify, for sure. I'd be more than happy to help in any way I can and get you connected with merchants like that.Bridget  57:42  That would be great. Yes, please.Krissie Leyland  57:45  I was just gonna say... Well, I know what the apps called, but can you tell everyone what the app is called?Bridget  57:53  That's just another example of how marketing is not my... But yes it's called Fashion Impact - Clothing. I have a data science background. It's not actually my main job. It's a hobby that we started in March when the first lockdown hit. Then my husband is a programmer for Shopify tools. So yeah, it's obviously a passion of ours. We launched it in December. In the end, I really hoping to get some traction on it. You know, because it's a business to business product, I guess it makes the marketing, a little bit more complicated for us. We're used to being at the bottom end of business to consumer marketing. So we know, how we received that and those kind of strategies at a basic level. But we are out of our depth, I guess a little bit when it comes to business to business marketing. But platforms like this are so helpful, and I'm really enjoying this.Rachel Tyers  58:46  Bridget, I would just say, if you can get some data and metrics around how the app helps is stored, and that becomes really compelling. For me, like I really love LinkedIn for reaching out to brands. I think, like the SMB area is a really good place to start and get those early adopters on the board, get more data and metrics, and then even working with agencies. I mean, being in partnerships, I know that if I make friends with a great agency and show them with my show them my product, it's way better use of my time than going out to each company individually. So I think that would be a strong sell for you, especially if you're looking at agencies that are focused on ethical marketing or ethical development. So there are those agencies that are specialising in that space. And then for me, if anyone's interested in learning more about Okendo, I will drop my email in the chat. I'm happy to do a demo with you or chat more about your marketing strategy. And thank you so much Krissie for inviting me to share some time with you all today.Krissie Leyland  59:52  You're very welcome. Thank you. And yes! Lucy?Lucy Roberts  1:00:02  I've had I've had a great time like, this has been so much fun. It's been a lovely like relaxed conversation. It's been great to see some new faces and put some faces to names. I dropped my email in the chat as well. But if anybody ever needs any advice or anything on like startup brands or anything Shopify or econ related, just drop me an email, I'm always happy to help, or LinkedIn is cool, too. And everyone, make sure you're following Reverie the Boutique on Instagram, and save everything for the algorithm! [ laughs ]Krissie Leyland  1:00:38  Yeah, if it helps, I'll save everything! Yeah, thank you so much, everyone. There'll be lots more events like this, I hope. People like Bridget, and everybody in the ecommerce space, this is a place to connect! And, yeah, I loved it... thank you so much! Thank you very much as well to our panellists, Rachel, Lucy... and Chris and Bridget for coming on in. If you're not a member of the MindfulCommerce Community yet, please, please join us if you're interested in ecommerce sustainability, and helping to make the ecommerce world more positively impactful. Also, don't forget to have a look at our brand new MindfulCommerce Directory listings for all the experts, including Okendo, and you can learn a bit more about them on there. Yeah, thank you so much. This has been great. This is the first event I've ever done like this. So yeah, thank you again.Cat Hunter  1:01:43  And we will create a space to kind of continue this discussion on the MindfulCommerce Community on the Facebook group. So if people do want to have a space to connect or raise any issues that are questions that they had, that kind of grew out of the conversation that they've heard today, if you want to carry on the conversation, then that's very much what the MindfulCommerce Community is all about. So we will make sure that there's a clearly identified thread in the Facebook group for you to get.Krissie Leyland  1:02:10  Yeah, and so a little task to take away: Just think about what you're going to do to create better connections with your customers this year and then let us know you know, on Instagram, whatever, and tag us! Yeah, let's start a conversation!Cat Hunter  1:02:27  Fantastic. Thanks ever so much, everyone! Rich Bunker  1:02:32 We hope you enjoyed the episode today. If you did, you're probably like being in our community. There's a whole host of exciting things going on.Krissie Leyland  1:02:39  So don't forget to join by going to mindfulcommerce.io, click on 'Community' and register from there.Rich Bunker  1:02:46  If you liked this episode, please share the review and remember to subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As the Coronovirus pandemic has changed many aspects of life over the past many months, the gardens and green spaces all across the UK have continued in full glory over the spring - but Summer has arrived and for many the outdoors is the sanctuary from the continued uncertainty of what lies ahead. Head Gardeners Saul and Lucy have still been full at work at Stonelands and Easy Donyland (as well as their own gardens) and continue to share their lives as professional horticulturists, there tips and tricks and their observations of their gardening lives.You may have noticed on the podcast that Lucy has an overriding passion for all things edible - but its not only at East Donyland where there is a significant proportion on land devoted to productive horticulture. At home she has transformed the garden around her house into a beautiful and bountiful space - with both Fruit and Veg in abundance. SO Lucy gives us a little tour of whats going on in her garden at the moment, and shares with you why she loves this certain aspect of gardening. Twitter links:Saul @GardeningSaulLucy @HeadGardenerLCIntro and Outro music from https://filmmusic.io"Fireflies and Stardust" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

I am so beyond stoked to have the crazy/amazing Lucy Aitkenread on the podcast this week as we continue our July Theme of - You Can Go Your Own Way. So Lucy's bio describes her as 'Mama/writer/earthlover. Lives in a yurt etc' hahaha BUT Lucy is SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT. She is a total expander for me when it comes to questioning everything and creating an intentional life for her and her family In this episode we chat about how Lucy left London come to NZ and set up her life in an off-the-grid Yurt in rural Waikato. We chat about how her upbringing shaped her and what the first small steps she took were to start REALLY diving deep into what kind of life felt aligned to her values. Lucy also gives some great tips on finding your peeps and also talks about her synchronistic experience that lead her on the unschooling path with her two daughters, Ramona (9) & Juno (7). If you would love to know more about Lucy's Spring Retreat that we metion at the end (and that i'm attending woop woop) called Dancing Forest Sisterhood click the link below for all the deets https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflXaDK7CfrtMEjCTWhOgx50EgTQIkdOIT8g6Z6EhqI9S6xWA/viewform   Lucy also has an INCREDIBLE amount of amazing content on her website http://lulastic.co.uk/ And if you are interested at all in unschooling then Lou is also runninig her DISCO online course again in November so check out the website for more details or get in touch with her on her Instagram @lulasticblog

LinksAs this episode goes live this is your final opportunity to support the https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology (crowdfunder) for this podcast and the Do More Than Therapy community. If you know we need to step out of the therapy room and start making bigger impact you belong in this community. https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology (Become a founding member and start to make the change you want to see.) Feel like you've got a book in you? https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology (The Crowdfunder) has you covered bag yourself an amazing self publishing workshop for just https://natwestbackherbusiness.co.uk/thebusinessofpsychology (£25 here.) Missed the deadline? Don't worry head to drrosie.co.uk and you can still get a place. You can buyhttps://smile.amazon.co.uk/Brighter-Futures-Confident-Children-parenting/dp/1911383132/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2R8V41PIXFLQK&keywords=brighter+futures+book&qid=1584302908&sprefix=brighter+futures%2Caps%2C145&sr=8-1 ( "Brighter Futures", Lucy's amazing book here.) www.theyarethefuture.co.uk. Facebook @tatfwellbeing. Instagram @tatf_drlucy Twitter @DrLucyRussell. https://learndobecome.com/ (https://learndobecome.com/) Transcript of Episode:Rosie (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=B-3cBrAfWcJulBtFMZs1aQIo_87lXtX_vA3PIhBArNHV3kxtGB6nek7MsdETEj9CMr4OYLWBKX85T7Z4X1P14XEdcJE&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=0.25 (00:00)): Today I'm talking to Dr. Lucy Russell. Lucy is the clinical lead for a successful child psychology group practice in Buckinghamshire called Everlief. If you follow her online, her passion for reaching parents of school-aged children is clear, and she's done an amazing job of reaching more families with the book she co-wrote with her colleagues, Brighter Futures. Brighter Futures is a book that I'm really happy to have my hands on before my kids hit school age, and Lucy is here to tell us how she made it all happen. So Lucy, hi and welcome to the podcast. Lucy (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=qtXBAT4v3ookcJKRHJsRZrjtZgFwBkfMcvSVgEYBpdnR-L9fvJQ5zeXZ-TfNYXRVN2Ke9JXdmCR7R95O3aJ_4sbjotw&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=31.82 (00:31)): Hi. Inspiration: What motivated Lucy to Write Her BookRosie (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=epBpCbmiToh0vPUFuPmCohqbq71q5pq39YjbWgyCYmKlhZ9T6XFqwgwHsQutSig_QXI7MqrM9I1HNRfBsd5q-GqByOk&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=32.27 (00:32)): Can you start by telling us a little bit about what inspired you to write the book and who it's intended to help? Lucy (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=pxfjivsrFkfx7lWC7zhoIjGI2OyCkfotpLS5jFCUqMwPgSEjgGqENQ3aMbNn1eFQqn2V7hQ3SkuwX-S1xvdlLjQsmTI&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=40.36 (00:40)): Well, okay, what inspired me, like you, wanting to do something more. I do face-to-face therapy, and I enjoy it, but I wanted to do something more that reached a wider audience of parents and also something a bit more preventative because parents come to me when they've hit crisis point pretty much. So I was looking to do something that helped them before they got to that stage. And also the families that come to our clinic have suggested writing a book over the years, and so finally a few of us got round to it and wrote that book. Rosie (https://www.rev.com/transcript-editor/Edit?token=sVI-oBrGOFT-doFDEjBNrN8Bvuv96EHXqjDvdQJCciao8A-JxLZSdk97qLIKmohY9kIKMrohFAv2M8BjtSCVifXD8lk&loadFrom=DocumentDeeplink&ts=82.61 (01:22)): Yeah. I mean, I really resonate with that experience because I think so many families that I see are just saying, "Why couldn't we have had this help sooner? Why wasn't there something available that was more affordable at an earlier point?" And a lot of people are also saying, "I've got a friend who really needs this, but they can't afford to come and see you." And that's definitely what drives me to try and do something at a more...

With the extra-long mid-season break this year, it feels like it's been awhile! So Lucy and I decided to try something new and get caught up on the story with a recap and moments that stood out. We enjoyed looking back on what's been a great season so far, plus we talk about our hopes for the rest of the season, read your hopes and feedback, and go over the latest Walking Dead news. This podcast is made possible by listeners like you (and you too) who have supported us at patreon.com/jasonandkaren. On the next episode of the Patreon-exclusive Jason & Karen Show podcast Karen and I are covering the Oscar-winning movie Parasite from Korean writer/director Bong Joon Ho, plus our usual goofiness. If you'd like to give us a call, you can call us at (650) 485-3323 or email brains@podcastica.com. Look for us on Facebook at facebook.com/deadcast and on Twitter at twitter.com/jasonandkaren. You can download, subscribe, rate, and review us on Apple Podcasts or in iTunes by going to walkingdeadcast.com/itunes. Next episode: TWD S10 mid-season premiere! Support the show.

Eating Right For and On Your Outdoor Adventures Nutrition can be especially important when you are exerting so many calories hiking, biking or paddling!  You are burning a ton of calories, so you need nutritious fuel from the food but you also need a lot of calories.  The conundrum is you are no doubt trying to minimize pack weight.  What to do?  I asked nutrition expert, Lucy Hayhurst of Well Balanced Nutrition to join us on the show today. Meet Lucy Haywurst, Nutritionist and Founder Well Balanced Nutrition Lucy studied Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Dayton and completed her Dietetic Internship at West Virginia University Hospitals. After becoming a registered dietitian, she moved to Durham, NC and started Well Balanced Nutrition. With over 10 years of practicing nutrition and wellness coaching Lucy offers a unique perspective coming to the table as an expert in behavior change. She helps take what you know and turn it into lifestyle habits. Lucy combines her enthusiasm for fitness and playing in nature with her love for nutritious food and the result is a fun, interactive adventure for her clients. Lucy can light up a room and inspire a crowd. In addition to individual counseling, she is an author and motivational speaker. Fuel vs Fluff Nutritious foods are the fuel that give you the energy for your adventures.  But there is also a place for ‘fluff’! A well balanced diet builds your glycogen stores (carbohydrate energy storehouse).  Fuel your tank with complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, beans, sweet potatoes and such.  The complex carbs burn more slowly and help keep your energy more consistent all day. However, when you need a quick burst of energy, say you are about to do a major ascent, this is the time for fluff, or the simple carbs (think the ‘white’ foods like white bread, chips, etc.):  Lucy loves candy corn and nuts; I prefer a Snickers bar. While researching, I read a great article in Backpacker magazine that had a wonderful analogy from Julia Delves of Trailside Kitchen: “Eating refined carbohydrates is like trying to keep a bonfire going all night with newspaper,” she says.  ” Eating unrefined complex carbohydrates, like brown rice or quinoa, is like using large logs. They burn better and longer, give off better heat, and improve your overall enjoyment.” Fat is Your Friend Not all fats are created equal:  Good fats have Omega 3 and are actually good for you plus make food taste good! Lucy says that a good fat is one that you eat in its original state.  Good sources of Good Fat include avocados, nuts and olive oil.  Contrast this with the high fat in potato chips or candy.  These products have been processed so that they are no longer in their original state.  While ‘baby’ carrots are simply shaved down carrots and are therefore ‘processed’, they are still ‘carrots’ and that is still the only ingredient listed on the package.  Potato chips, on the other hand, will list multiple ingredients, many of which are unpronouncable.  So now it’s no longer just a potato and from the long ingredients list, you have a good indication that potato chips do not include good fats. FREE Monthly Cheat Sheets Download the Nutrition Cheat Sheet and then you will automatically get all future FREE downloads in a once a month email for both the Adventure Travel Show AND Active Travel Adventures podcast – sweet!  Click the box above! I don’t sell your info or spam you – I promise!  Kit Salt is BAD, right?  Wrong!    You can lose a lot of salt and electrolytes while on your outdoor adventures.  Sports drinks are often loaded with sugar (and sometimes TOO much salt).  Lucy recommends adding electrolytes to your water and avoiding the sports drinks.  Lucy likes a tasty electrolyte brand called Skratch.  You can lose about a gram of salt per liter of sweat.  If you see a white ring around your hat or collar, you may be a salty sweater.  And I thought it was sunscreen:)  Another easy and tasty way to add salt is to season your food with hot sauce!  You want the color of your urine to be as clear as possible…if it’s yellow, you are not drinking enough water!  Hydration is just as important as good nutrition!  If you don’t want to carry so much water (it weighs 8 pounds/gallon or 1kg/L), bring a water treatment system.  Learn which one works best for you on Episode 3 of the Adventure Travel Show podcast.  Listen or download here (and see more info!), or on any podcast app. Backpacking Food Lucy says the time it’s most important to focus on nutrition is BEFORE your adventure.  But, you can be a little slack when you are on your adventure.  And sometimes “fluff” can even be helpful! It’s best to graze during the day to keep your energy up, even if it’s just a little.  For someone small like Lucy, a Fig Newton or something similar each hour of hiking works.  Someone larger might need a handful of nuts. ENERGY BARS Often not the best choice.  Try when possible to go with the whole food options like nuts, hard boiled eggs, cheese, etc.  But when you need a burst of energy, an RX Bar would be better for you than a Snickers Bar, but both would give you the necessary burst.  Lucy says that if you can recognize most of the ingredients, you are probably fine.  Nonetheless, the RX Bars are a better choice because they use ingredients you would put on your grocery list.  Best Camping and Backpacking Food Options Healthy backpacking food doesn’t have to weigh a ton.  Here are some of my favorite hiking foods.  Be sure to load up on hiking snacks as it’s best to graze throughout the day.  Your hiking meals can be easy AND nutritious if you choose from the list below.  Breakfast: Instant Oatmeal with nuts, dried fruit and cinnamon. Instant Mashed Potatoes with chunks of Beef Jerky Whole wheat tortilla with peanut butter and dried bananas It’s best to graze all day No crash snacks: Peatnut butter on whole wheat tortilla.  I like to also sprinkle it with raisins and roll it up.  Lasts for days without refrigeration and tastes like a PB&J treat! Honey or Oat Bran Sesame sticks (look for near the produce section).  Mix in some nuts for more fat and protein. Assortment of trail mix: some sweet and some salty so you don’t get tired of it. Dinner: Freeze dried meals are generally more nutritious than dehydrated meals (where the process can dignificantly reduce nutrients).  The freeze dried food retains nutrients but is expensive.  These meals are easy because all you do is add water.  Lucy’s fav is Mountain House Beef Stroganoff. If you want to make your own meals, a hiking buddy RAVES about the food in the cookbook, Lip Smacking Backpacking!  I’ve bought it but haven’t cooked anything from it yet. Other favorites include instant mashed potatoes, pasta and quick cook rice, stuffing mix.  I like the preseasoned pasta dishes and then add tuna or jerky for protein.  Soup mixes are also light yet tasty. For protein, hard cheeses can last a few days without refrigeration.  Hard meats like salami and pepperoni do not require refrigeration. Tuna in the foil packets, especially if packed in olive oil is tasty.  DON’T BRING CANS – too heavy!  The foil package doesn’t take up much room or weigh much in your trash zip bag. FRESH FOOD Alas, most fresh food does not travel well.  You are lucky to get a day out of it, and it is usually pretty heavy since much of it is made of water. If you do bring, say a banana or apple, PACK OUT the skin and core.  Even though it is biodegradable, animals will eat it and then can learn to associate humans with food.  BAD IDEA!  Leave no Trace includes everything! How Much Food to Bring?  The goal is to bring just slightly more than you’ll need.  Many people bring too much food, which means lugging around pounds of excess weight.  Rule of Thumb (adjust for your weight and how long you’ve been out):  1.5 -2.5 pounds of food per day.   GOAL:  Calorie dense food     Example: Let’s say an energy bar has 230 calories and weighs 65g, or 2.3 oz.  230/2.3 = a calorie density of 100.  Compare that to a piece of candy that has 360 calories and weighs 2.5 oz => 360/2.5 = 144.  This means the candy will give you more calories for the weight you are carrying.  So if you are doing a LONG day’s adventure, even though you want to eat nutritiously pre-adventure, for today, you might choose the candy.  For contrast, let’s look at carrots which have  about 40 calories per 100 g, or 3.5 oz.  40/3.5 =11.4 calorie density.  WAY more nutritious, but you’d have to eat almost 13 carrots to get the same calories at the piece of candy (and carry WAY more weight!!!).  Plus, who wants to eat 13 carrots at a time?  If you are just beginning your adventure, you don’t need quite as much as these figures, I’ve discovered the hard, heavy way.  I find it takes several days for my body to become a calorie craving machine! Calorie Rule of Thumb:  Shoot for 120-130 calories/oz Naughty Food Company Tricks Enriched:  They’ve taken out the whole grain goodness and replaced it with refined flour and some vitamins.  Go for the whole grains instead. Natural:  This term really means nothing when it comes to food labeling.  Ignore it. Multi-Grain:  Just because it’s multi-grain doesn’t mean it’s WHOLE grains (see enriched above). Cholesterol or Gluten-Free:  You’ll see this often on packages that NEVER had cholesterol or gluten to begin with.  The company is just trying to ride a trend.  You’ll see this trend bandwagon also with the word “protein”. “Protein”  is sometimes soy protein isolate, which while a protein, not something you’d put on your grocery list.  Lucy encourages us to buy foods that have ingredients we recognize and would put on our grocery list. Reach out to Lucy for:  Nutritional Education Wellness Coaching Learn Intuitive and Mindful Eating Get Lucy’s helpful FREE Newsletter packed with recipes, motivation and ideas! Apply for a FREE coaching Call! Snicker Trifle Thanks to the MSR Summit Register for the recipe!  Check out this link for more of their great backpacking recipes! Ingredients: ¼ Jell-O Chocolate Fudge Pudding 3 tbsp. Powdered Milk 1 tbsp. Powdered Butter ¼ cup Caramel Bits 3 tbsp. Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallow Bits 2 tbsp. chopped roasted and salted peanuts Frontcountry (before you head out): Add all ingredients to a Ziploc bag and mix to incorporate. On the trail: When you arrive at camp, add ¾ cup cold water to the dried mixture. Stir thoroughly to incorporate. Seal the bag. By the time you’ve finished setting up camp for the night, the trifle will have set and will be ready to eat. Enjoy! Jason Koop’s Secret Rice Ball Recipe Jason Koop trains and coaches athletes.  This is the rice ball recipe Lucy recommended.  Learn more about Jason and his coaching here. Sweet and Salty Rice Balls Makes about 12 rice balls. 2 Eggs 1 1/2 Cups Uncooked Basmati Rice 2 Tbsp. Honey 1 Tbsp. Soy Sauce Instructions: Cook the rice. Scramble and cook the eggs. Combine rice, eggs, honey, and soy sauce in a larger mixing bowl. Scoop small portions into sandwich bags and tie the ends off. Per Ball: Calories 115 // Carbohydrate 20 g // Protein 2 g // Sodium 327 mg [blog_promo promo_categories=”camp” ids=”” /] Bacon and Egg Rice Balls Makes about 12 rice balls. 2 Eggs 2 Strips Bacon 1 1/2 Cups Uncooked Basmati Rice 2 oz. Grated Parmesan Cheese Salt to Taste Instructions: Cook the rice. Scramble and cook the eggs. Cook the bacon. Drain excess fat and chop. Combine rice, eggs, bacon, cheese, and salt in a larger mixing bowl. Scoop small portions into sandwich bags and tie the ends off. Per Ball: Calories 133 // Carbohydrate 18 g // Protein 4 g // Fat 5 g // Sodium 327 mg   The links on this site may contain affiliate links which means I may earn a small commission if you use them.  I encourage you to use them if you are going to buy the item anyway because at no additional cost to you, you are supporting and helping to defray the cost of this podcast.  Many thanks!   Lucy’s Well Balanced Workbook TGIM Check out Lucy’s 52 week workbook to help you get on track.  It’s only $1.99! Complete Transcription Note:  This transcription is 'machine' transcribed so there is bound to be boo boo's.  However, it will give you a general idea and time stamp of when who said what:)   Kit: (00:00) To pack or not to pack, to eat or not to eat and what to eat. That is the question. That is the adventures dilemma. Eat impact the food fuel you'll need to successfully complete your adventure while minimizing pack weight, learn tips and rules of thumb of what food to pack on your next adventure. I'm also learned when it's a great idea to eat candy corn, all this and more coming up next, welcome to the venture travel show podcast. I'm your host kit parks. Whether you're backpacking, day packing, bike packing, or even paddling space and or weight is always the issue and making sure that you have the energy that you need to complete your adventure is obviously super important as well. You sure don't want to bunk out or hit a wall before you've gotten to the end point of the day. And like I said, it's the conundrum. Kit: (01:01) How do we balance weight, space, and fuel? And by fuel I mean food fuel. So I've asked one of my hiking buddies, Lucy, who knows all about this stuff to join us on the program today. Our guest today is Lucy Hayhurst. Lucy studied nutrition and dietetics at the University of Dayton and completed her dietetic internship at West Virginia University hospitals. After becoming a registered dietician, she moved to Durham, North Carolina and started well balanced nutrition with her. Over 10 years of Practicing Nutrition and Wellness coaching, Lucy offers a unique perspective. Come to the table as an expert in behavior change. She helps take what you'd know and turn it into lifestyle habits. Lucy combines her enthusiasm for fitness and playing in nature with her love for nutritious food and the result is a fun, interactive adventure for her clients. Lucy can light up a room and inspire a crowd in addition to individual counseling. Kit: (01:55) She's also an author and motivational speaker before it gets started to all the information that we talk about today. Plus a lot more of more technical information is on the website, adventure, travel show, podcasts. Slash. Nutrition. I've got tons more tips, ideas, and some recipes and link to even more recipes so you keep your energy levels up high for your entire adventure. So let's get started with Lucy. So Lucy, I first met you when we were at us. In the same hiking club in Raleigh and we've actually been backpacking together. How did you get involved in all this outdoor adventure activity? Lucy: (02:33) Well, I started playing outside when I moved to North Carolina back in 2009 and I didn't have a job. I didn't have a lot of money and I realized that you could hike all day and it costs almost nothing. So that really got me into the woods. And then it was when I met my ex who introduced me to a lot more adventure and we met Whitewater rafting in West Virginia. Kit: (02:59) That's another thing I love to do as well. In fact, I'm going to be going on my very first long rafting trip for a whole week out in Idaho this summer. So I'm really excited about that. Lucy: (03:07) I'm excited to hear about it. Kit: (03:10) Today we're going to be talking about your nutritionist and we're going to talk about getting healthier or doing healthy things for our bodies home, doing some of these adventures. Cause a lot of times we tend to just grab the convenient junk food, whatnot. But you've got some better ideas for us and about things that we should be doing both before our adventure in preparation. And also once you're on the trip. So how important is it for us to have the proper nutrition before we go on some of these adventures? Lucy: (03:37) You know, I love this question because part of the reason I go backpacking is so that I can eat candy, corn and peanuts, which is one of my favorite trail mixes and nobody would really qualify that as a health food. But as you know, and everybody out there that's done those kinds of backpacking adventures, there's a lot of calories that you're burning. And so every now and then having a little bit of what we call fluff, like candy corn is okay, it's not going to kill us. But what I talk about with people, especially those getting ready for something that's rigorous, whether it's a race or an a travel adventure that we really want to focus on fueling our bodies. So do you think about this concept of food is fuel or fluff? Oftentimes people are labeling food is good and bad and I can tell you that doesn't really help them out much because then they just get in this spiral of, oh I was bad today. And they just continue to make less healthy choices versus saying, oh, I've eaten good fuel for my body and now I've got a little bit of room left. Let me enjoy a little, you know, potato chips or a few candy corns or whatever it might be. Kit: (05:00) When we go out there, one of the considerations for a lot of us, whether we're backpacking or bike packing or even rafting for that matter, weight is an issue and a lot of the junky food tends to be lighter weight. What's she, what kinds of things should we be thinking about? Cause we've got to balance the weight with the nutrition with also taste. And so how, what's our thought process or how do we go about figuring out what we want to do? Lucy: (05:24) So I think that this is a bit of two conversations, so I'm curious, should we start with the before the trip or do you want to dive right in? Sure. Okay. Kit: (05:35) But before the trip, how do we get our bodies prepared as far as nutrition goes Lucy: (05:40) when we're preparing. Then anytime that you're in that kind of training mode, I got to listen to the podcast where you were talking with the trainer and I really enjoyed that because it's that reminder that we probably shouldn't expect our bodies to just go out and hike up the mountain without having any preparation, especially if you're carrying weight and that's where training your body as well as training what fuel you're going to use while you're out there. Super important. So before you go, it's really a matter of finding the right foods in balance. We had talked a little bit before about should I eat three meals a day or should I snack throughout the day and on this journey, whatever adventure you're going on. But specifically on the journey of life, your body is unique to you and the best part of the journey is learning what is gonna work best for you. Lucy: (06:38) So there might be a little bit of playing around with that as you get ready for your travel adventure and knowing that. All right, let me put this to the test because if you go out into the wilderness and you've packed nothing but rice and beans, but you haven't really eaten any rice and beans, but you are deciding like, oh, I'm going to be healthy while I'm in the woods, you might end up really regretting that with some gastrointestinal pain or just other yuckiness. My, uh, my husband was in his sleeping bag after a particularly fibrous dinner and he had bought one of those, what are they called? The sock things that you can fit your whole body into. It's like a giant sheet. Anyway, he was worried that that little bag was going to become a, a giant poop. So gotta be careful, try out your fruits. Kit: (07:37) Is there a different mix of, of the fats, proteins, and carbs that we need to think about before because assuming that we're going to be extending more energy than normal, is there a certain components we have to think about ahead of time? And then let's talk too about once we're out there too. So still in the pre training mode are the things that we need to get our body used to because it could be using more of that once we're out on our activity. Lucy: (08:01) Yes. Yeah, and it's going to be activity dependent, but a lot of times, especially this day and age where carbs are still considered evil, then people really underestimate how many carbohydrates they are burning out on the trails. So being sure that you do have sufficient what we call the simple as well as complex carbs Kit: (08:25) and tell us the difference between complex and simple carbs. Lucy: (08:28) So the difference between simple and complex is sometimes easy, right? If you look at a piece of white bread, most of the buns you find at restaurants, so on and so forth, that's going to be simple carbs. That means they go into your body, they break down pretty quickly, turn to sugar, which turns to energy. So these are great when you're doing those activities and your body just needs that energy available. But we also want to make sure that we combine include plenty of complex carbs. So that's going to be the more brown foods, right? So the whole grains, the sweet potatoes, Keene, Wa, butternut squash, so on and so forth. Kit: (09:12) So on our adventure, there's a place for both of them. Exactly when we're out there, we actually want some of the, when I call the white things versus the brown things. I spend my days at home trying to avoid all those white things. Ha ha ha. That's half the reason I go backpacking. So it looks like we want the whites or the simple carbs when we're about to do a major center, something that we need a lot of energy quickly. How about fats? Fats, ah, Lucy: (09:41) let's say it together. Fat is our friend. Ooh, I like the way you speak. Tell us why that is our friend. That is, first of all, it's what makes the food tasty so we can't forget that fat is really important for helping us absorb the vitamins and minerals that are fat soluble and it's also there to keep us full longer. If you think about those little Debbies, then those are pretty high in sugar. I don't know about the fat content or protein for that matter, but the fat and protein are especially important for keeping us going longer. Kit: (10:23) Does it make a difference which kind of fat? Lucy: (10:25) Oh yeah, but that would be a whole episode all in itself. Kit: (10:29) How about a couple of rules of thumb instead? Lucy: (10:32) Yes. If you look at it and you can identify the original source of where it came from, then that's a pretty good indicator that it's a good fat. So you think about your nuts that you put in your trail mix. That's great. Think about the coconut oil that you use to make the granola. That's wonderful. Thinking about Avocados, not that everybody's bringing those on the trail, but I did do that in my last backpacking adventure. Thinking about nut butters and these kinds of healthy fats are going to be better fuel. Kit: (11:06) At the end of the interview I'll have some more details about what she's talking about here as well as on the website, adventure, travel show, podcast. Slash. Nutrition. What about meat? Fats like beef, fat. That's something we can pronounce and we can see where it came from. Lucy: (11:21) Yes. Uh, coming from my perspective, I always encourage more happy, healthy meat. So things that are grass fed, organically raised, those are going to be a better option. Kit: (11:33) And then how about salt when we're out there too, cause we're perspiring so much. Is Salt something we need to be paying attention to? Lucy: (11:41) Certainly. And it's going to be there whether or not you try to add it. For most of us, so anytime you're eating anything out of a crinkly, there's typically going to be sodium included. When this becomes really important for our profuse of sweaters, especially those that have discovered that white rain around their hats or maybe around their t-shirts. If you're seeing that, that's a pretty good indicator that you are a salty sweater, which means it might be a little extra important for you to intentionally add salt, whether that's doing the salt tabs for people that are really into more of the endurance longterm kind of activities. Those might come in and, or I'm a big advocate of hot sauce because it's tasty and salty. Kit: (12:37) I love that tip. That's a great tip. Well, it appears I'm one of those salty sweaters. I just thought that was dirt or sunscreen or something. I never really made that connection. I didn't know I was leeching out my salt at those electrolytes. So it's not just about the salt. Lucy: (12:52) People put a lot of emphasis on salt, but we can't forget magnesium, potassium and the other electrolytes are also important to Kit: (13:00) replenish. If I see those rings on my hat, does that tell me that I'm not drinking enough water? No. It means you're drinking lots of it Lucy: (13:07) water and your body's getting rid of it as it sees fit, um, to try and keep you cool. And some people found that there's a lot of benefit. They carry the little powders of different electrolyte enhancers. So you know, especially when you're on the trails, sometimes just drinking water all day it gets old. And at the end of the day having one of these little powders, there's one in particular called scratch that I've heard great things about. Uh, I haven't tried it yet myself, but it's a good electrolyte blend and it's a little flavorful. Kit: (13:41) All right, I'll have to put a link to that in the show notes and on the website. So let's talk about things that we can, again, we get back to, it's hard to, to carry things on the trail or in a backpack of, or our bike pack. We're bike packing. What are some nice healthy options of things that actually tastes good that we could be bringing with us? Such good questions. I subscribe to that Lucy: (14:04) the lighter is better and so I do partake in those frozen meals. Actually, I was on a backpacking trip with a friend of mine who knew I was a dietician and he was excited and he didn't say this ahead of time, but he was looking forward to traveling with the dietician to see what I ate, assuming it was going to just be the pinnacle of health and wellness, so he was really horrified when I pulled out my most favorite meal, which is the mountain house beef stroganoff to have for dinner that night because I don't subscribe to needing to focus on your health on the trail. That's something that you need to be doing off the trail, but there are ways to be healthier while you're out there without adding a lot of, for instance, I really love those little pouches of the fruit and Veggie blends just to give me a little like wink and a nudge at some nutrition. That's the colorful kinds of nutrition. They're not always the most lightweight, so some people also get into the freeze dried fruits or vegetables. I did start making some of my own backpacking meals, so I was able to sneak in a little bit more veggies with some freeze dried carrots, potatoes, celery and so forth. Kit: (15:24) One thing I learned in my research is that the freeze dried food is better for you than the dehydrated food because you lose some of the nutrients when they dehydrate it. But the freeze dried not so much and it has a significantly longer shelf life, sometimes up to 30 years. So what's the deal on when to eat? When we're out on our adventures? Do we graze all day long? Do we eat our three square or what? What's, what's the latest on that Lucy: (15:52) yet? That's a good question. I always encourage that you're doing a little bit throughout. So if you're doing something that's requiring a lot of energy, um, hiking, biking, paddling, whatever, then anything over an hour we recommend that you refuel with some sort of, typically some carb and depending how long you're going, maybe carb as well as protein. So I take marathon runners as an example because they've needed to get good at this running three and four hours where you don't necessarily feel hungry. I eat breakfast and I can go hike, you know, two or three hours and not really feel hunger, but my brain starts obsessive thinking of food and that's when I know, oh I guess my body's trying to tell me that I need a little bit more energy right now even though my mind is like I just ate. It's been two hours. Kit: (16:51) So are we talking a handful of trail mix or talk to us a little bit about portion size. Lucy: (16:56) That depends on your size. I'm not a particularly big person, so I'll have one fig Newton and that'll be fine for another hour. But for somebody that's bigger and or carrying more weight on their back or otherwise they are going to need more energy. So it's very, very body dependent. There's not a super secret magical formula. It's a matter of tuning in and listening to your body and if at the end of the day you feel like a bottomless pit and you just can't get full, then that's a good indicator that you didn't eat enough and you need to do a little bit more feeling throughout the day tomorrow. Kit: (17:33) Now let's talk about energy bars. I hear they're good. I hear they're bad to hear. They're full of sugar. I hear they're just wasted calories. So do you have any opinions on those? Lucy: (17:42) I do. So I was at a convenience store tour with a client of mine and we were at all the foods that they offer at at a normal gas station store and we got to the Plethora of energy bars and he's not going on the trail. He's good about to get on an airplane. So he's like, which one is the best one? And I had to be honest with him for that scenario, when you have apples and are boiled eggs or yogurt without a lot of sugar or nuts, when you have other whole food options, I'm always going to encourage you to eat that first. When you're eating a bar, they've taken whole foods and processed them into this, what they call a health food. But if that was really true, then that wouldn't be able to live on the shelf in your cupboard for a months or years at a time. So when you're on the trail, I think that there's plenty of good options because sometimes you just need energy. So it's not about being perfect picture of health, it's about being fueled for what you're doing. So I would say, yeah, I'd rather you choose an rx bar versus a snickers bar because our x bar is going to be a little bit better balanced energy. Kit: (19:06) So if we're trying to be healthy and we're looking at these bars, are there any rules of thumb or any advice of this many grams of sugar is good or bad or tall? Talk a little bit about that. Lucy: (19:17) Yes. Yes. When health is your, would your motivator, I mean, what's you're going for? I skipped the nutrition facts numbers because it's not, it's a jumble and I'd rather you just go straight to the ingredients list. Um, I mentioned the rx bars because when you go the ingredients list, you'll see it's nuts. It's egg whites that they've powdered and it's dates or some other dried fruit. It's whole real foods. I don't know. I don't necessarily want to pick on the ones that I don't agree with. I just always encourage people to look at the ingredients and if you can recognize most or all of the ingredients is things that you would put on your very own grocery shopping list. Then choose that. If you can't pronounce it and you don't know where you would find Gargamel and so lasts of then then that might be something that you can put back on the shelf Kit: (20:16) at home. I try not to buy things that come in boxes or bags and kind of use as my rule of thumb to keep away from the processed foods array. The way I understand it, they're removing a lot of the nutrients when they do a lot of the processing. So can you talk to us a little bit about what is processed food? Lucy: (20:34) Well, if you are going to the grocery store, 99% of the food that you're buying is processed, processed simply means that somebody else came in and has prepared this for you in some way. So if you look at, we'll go to the produce section, kind of visualize that. You can see there's whole carrots and then you can see those carrot chips or those baby carrots. Those baby carrots are processed. That's just big carrots. What they've dwindled down into a little baby size, bite size. So, and that's in a bag, but then you get into the what's actually in this. So we're now in the aisle and we're talking about Ritz crackers. Then that's where it's like, okay, that's processed in a way that there's, when you look at that label, it's enriched wheat flour and that word enriched. That means that they've taken the whole grain, they've stripped all the nutrients out of it, and now it's just white flour. Kit: (21:41) And so if I understand it right, I think they strip out the, the whole grains are what we consider the goodness of it. And then they quote unquote enrich it by adding some vitamins back to it. Lucy: (21:51) Exactly. Yeah. It's a, it's very much like that, so it's back to the ingredients list. When you look at that bag of baby carrots, it still just says carrots. So even though it's processed, it's still a good choice. But then if you look at the laundry list of ingredients on cereals and other types of foods and bags and boxes, then that's when we know it's probably better just to make a different choice. Kit: (22:17) So they trick us with the word enrich, trying to make us think that that's good for us. They also trick us with the word natural, which I believe does even have an official definition, so you can pretty much use that however you'd like. Any other words? They trick us with multi-grain. Oh boy. Tell us why. Lucy: (22:37) Yeah, often they, they want you to think that you're being virtuous because it's multi-grain, but that doesn't actually mean that it's a whole grain. It just means they put a bunch of different grains into that particular food. Kit: (22:51) Okay. I've fallen for that one. Any other ones you can think of that's a good one. Lucy: (22:56) Cholesterol three your pretzels were always cholesterol free. They just decided to put that on the label because they can, Kit: (23:05) I often see packages touted gluten free. Gluten free. Exactly. They'll put on packages of things that never had any wheat in them. Exactly. But they're just trying to sell something and yeah, they're riding a trend. Lucy: (23:20) [inaudible] and so, well we see that a lot with protein. Now. I've been hearing a lot of my clients are choosing special k protein blend and so I finally looked at the label this week and they add soy protein isolate, which I'm not saying that's not real food, but it's not necessarily something you're going to put on your grocery list again. So I'd rather you eat a hard boiled egg with a bowl of oatmeal or something. Whole grain, like whole grain toast from bakery. Okay. Kit: (23:56) What other advice would you give us? Uh, things that we can think about or bring with us when we go out on the trailer or bike pack or wherever it is that we're going. Lucy: (24:04) The travel food is, I've just learned about a really wonderful resource. I'm going to have to send it to you cause I can't think off the top of my head what it's called. But for the cyclists of the world, there's something called these rice balls or, or rice bars and you can make them sweet or savory. So for people that are just feeling a little inundated with all this sweet that's jammed packed on the, you know, in the bars and so on. These rice balls basically make rice and then you put a layer of maybe it's barbecue meat or maybe it's um, cinnamon apples or blueberries or whatever. And then you do another layer of rice and you make it so that at this own little energy bar that you can wrap up in foil and it's really easy to, to eat while you're out on, out on the trails. Kit: (25:02) Are these rice balls good for multiple days or is it something you have to eat within a couple of hours? Lucy: (25:08) Oh, it's good for multi multiple days. Well, it's not something I'd keep on me for over a week, but if you're out there for a couple days and then it's going to be all right. Kit: (25:21) Okay. Yeah. I'm always afraid about things going bad on me. So a big fan of I'm at, one thing I like to do is take a tortilla and spreads and peanut butter on it and put some raisins on it and roll that up. And that's delicious. That's a great one. I don't, I only eat it when I'm camping, but it's actually pretty darn good. Any other favorite things that you'd like to bring on that would fall in the nutritious side that are also good to bring out? Lucy: (25:46) Yeah, I really like the Sandwich thins. Uh, so, um, do a veggie patty, like some sort of, um, Morningstar, whatever vegetable tatty that I can heat up and then toast the sandwich then. And I'll do that and I'll bring those little packets of mayonnaise and mustard with me and I'll have a delicious little Kit: (26:09) fake hamburger on the trail. Any of the things that you want to tell us about things that we should be thinking about for nutrition and keeping ourselves in balance while we're getting ready to do our adventures or out on our adventures. I always just Lucy: (26:23) remind people that your body's telling you things all day, every day and the key is learning to tune in, so on this journey, a whatever next adventure you're preparing for while you're training or while you're getting ready for the adventure. Start Tuning in and noticing when can I tell I'm hungry after an adventure and how do I know when I've had enough and what are the best snacks that are going to not give me, you know, blow to, or yeah, I can just give me enough fuel to keep going. Kit: (27:00) That sounds like something we should be doing everyday anyway, just to see how the different foods make our bodies feel. Yes, ma'am. Just being a little bit more mindful afterwards. We know we're supposed to be mindful while we're eating, but not always doing that, but I probably don't think afterwards, Oh, do you know they didn't really sit that well with me or that did great and feel wonderful. Lucy: (27:19) [inaudible] exactly. Kit: (27:22) So good. Now listen, I understand that you finally wrote the book. You told me you were going to write it. Why don't you tell me about that? Lucy: (27:28) I did a, well it's called T. G. I m, start happy, stay healthy and it's a workbook that you could, it's designed to be a once one entry per week, so 52 weeks, but you could also read the book front to back in about an hour if you want to. And it's the idea that when we start with the idea of loving this journey of being our happy, happiest, and healthiest selves, start happy, stay healthy. If you come to it with the approach of I'm going to learn to enjoy this journey, then it goes a lot better than when we're punishing ourselves and dieting and restricting. And so the, each of the entries just offers a different tip and tool of how to treat yourself well on the journey of life. Kit: (28:25) Can you share one of the tips that are in the book? Lucy: (28:27) Certainly. All right, so one of my favorite entries for this upcoming travels spring in summer and fall season, it's staying well balanced through summer vacations and I provide five different tips for how to enjoy your vacation without feeling like he's completely run yourself off the road of healthy and happy and it includes certain tips. Obviously if it's a travel adventure then you're already going to be physically active hopefully. And then it just talks about being careful about what we're drinking, how many calories we're taking in that way. Also just the importance of fiber because you like to keep things moving while you're traveling. At least I know I do. Kit: (29:14) Well, I'll put a link to in the show notes for your book. Um, is that available everywhere or how, how do people find it? Lucy: (29:21) It's on Amazon. Kit: (29:24) Don Amazon. Okay. I'll put an Amazon link into the show notes and on the website and then also tell us a little bit about your, your coaching and your well balanced nutrition business. Lucy: (29:35) I be going to, well balanced nutrition. It's, you know, how you go on Google or any website and find, there's just 14,000 different new diet and lifestyle recommendations, right? It's like, I don't know, should I be Vegan? Should I go Paleo? Should I whatever it, there's so many options and it's very confusing. And what we do as nutrition wellness experts is we take a lot of what you already know and help you make it become your lifestyle. So we're talking about behavior change and longterm goal achievement instead of those chronic fad diets. Kit: (30:22) Can you share a success story about one of your clients? Lucy: (30:25) Oh my gosh, yes, please. I have one that she was, or she is an avid hiker, loves to go stomp in the woods as she says. And she broke her ankle unfortunately while hiking twice, um, in the last two years. And the last one really got her down and out. I'm needless to say, she, when she was out of commission from hiking, she got a little depressed. So we've met in November of last year in 2018 and she recognized that there was some emotional eating going on in the evenings. So that was really the first thing that we tackled. And she developed some other tools and coping mechanisms where she was no longer relying on the food at night. And then in January she got some blood results from the doctor that she did not like. So she was very motivated to address some of her other eating habits. And together with, we have an online tracking tool, so of course an app where we're able to stay in touch with our clients in between appointments and we are able to watch what you're eating, give some guidance and feedback to help you make those really healthy, well balanced choices. And she's now lost about 27 pounds and is hiking at least three or four miles almost every day. Kit: (31:44) Hey, good for her. Now Lucy, can people do this online with you or do they have to live in the triangle area of North Carolina? Lucy: (31:51) It depends, um, on your preference. We do have virtual sessions available. Insurance covers our services if you're in the area, we're in south Durham. Kit: (32:04) Oh good, good. I'll make sure I'll put links to everything in the show notes in the website so that people will be able to find you and Lucy, it's been great talking to you. It's been so long. I'm so glad to hear about you and your business and I remember you saying on our backpacking trip that you wanted to do that new, you went out and you actually did it and you've been doing it now for over five years. It's wonderful. Lucy: (32:24) Yes. Thank you so much. You were very helpful on the journey and I'm so grateful. Kit: (32:30) I've got a few more of the nitty gritty details of some of the things that we need to think about when we're thinking about our nutrition both before and during our one, whatever our adventure might be. And I'll put all these in, like I said, the show notes and the website. However, I will also have a downloadable pdf that you can either download or it'll come automatically with the monthly newsletter next month that'll have some of the key figures that you need to know to kind of get an idea of what you need to do and bring. So it'll all be in on a single piece of paper. Make it nice and easy. So anyway, a couple of takeaways and a couple of things that we need to add to Lucy's and my discussion. I love how she said think of food as fuel or fluff. Kit: (33:10) And the important takeaway that we've got from today is obviously we all know we should be fueling our body with nutritious foods. However, the fluff comes in handy. Let's say you're about to do a major ascent or there's something you're about to do. This going to take a whole lot of energy. The fluff is what's going to get you that energy quickly because it breaks down so quickly. So that's when you want Lucy's case, the candy corn or for me a snickers bar or something like that, that if you just need that little burst of energy, that's when you use the simple carbohydrates, the complex carbs, keep your energy at a good level all the time. And talking about energy, where does it come from? There's an important thing I learned about [inaudible], I'm probably saying this wrong glycogen and this is your stored energy, your stored carbs. The body can only store so much about 500 calories worth in your liver and anywhere, depending on your body, 500 to 2000 calories in your muscles. So these are our gas tanks. We have to keep refilling. If you're doing something with high intensity, you've got to keep that constantly replenished. So that means adding 15 to 30 grams early to top of our tanks. Kit: (34:22) And also I read too that if you're, let's say you're doing a long distance hike or you're really, really pushing yourself on whatever it is that you're doing. And most examples that I read about it would be like long distance hiking where every day you're getting up in, you're hiking, you know, anywhere between 10 and 30 miles a day, whatever the case may be, they encourage you to eat your last meal like 30 minutes before bed so that during the night your body stores that glycogen so you're ready to go the next day. When you don't get the proper nutrients and you don't replenish your body, not only are you losing the energy stores, but you might also be missing out on some of the micronutrients and some of the negative effects of those. If you're not getting enough vitamin C, that's going to depress your immunity and also can cause some damage to connective tissues, which is super important. Kit: (35:08) When you're doing something with your muscles in your body, that's really important, so you've got to figure out some way to add some vitamin C to your date. A lack of vitamin C can also exacerbate some aching swollen muscles. If you're not getting enough vitamin B's at the B vitamins, that's going to really affect your energy and your and your metabolism. I'll also affect your nervous system. If you don't get enough vitamin B, you might become sluggish, you might make some bad decisions, your brain's going to be a little foggy, so super important as well, and you need to try to get some calcium in there somewhere too because that can create some cramps. And so when did you get all cramped up in hiking, you're probably not getting enough calcium, particularly for women. You want to make sure you're getting enough iron and a good source of that could be some dehydrated Kale. He probably didn't get a taste it just mix it in with something else. Kit: (35:58) Your backpack food tends to be a little bit bland, so I'd also recommend bringing an assortment of spices, particularly the hotter ones, like the red pepper flakes, chili powders, et cetera. Lucy recommends bringing the hot sauce. It a lot of times you get the little condiments from the packets and I also like to say the condiments like the Manet's a mustard, they're great for travel. Changing up your spices can make the same foods taste different every night, which will help a little bit. To give you a little bit of variety at little pack weight, I want to talk about different meal ideas like breakfast, one of my favorites, and it's kind of counterintuitive, but I like something warm in the morning, particularly if it's a little chilly in the morning. I liked instant mashed potatoes with beef jerky chunks in it. It gave me some protein, it was warm, it was filling, it was easy and fast. So that's one of my go to favorites of course, oatmeal. And if you could add some nuts in that and some dried fruits that makes that quite tasted, it brings some cinnamon. Kit: (36:58) One of my favorite lunch things, as I mentioned earlier, is taken a whole wheat Tortilla, slathering it with peanut butter and then sprinkling with raisins and rolling that up. It lasts a long time. So you can carry that with you for several days, not worrying about refrigeration and it's tasty. Filling full of good proteins and good snacks that you can bring nuts. Of course they're, they're calorie dense and they've got the good fats in them so, and the protein. So that's, that's an excellent source. Also hard cheeses, you can bring hard cheeses and they will last a few days for that. Refrigeration, none in the soft ones, but the hard ones. Also hard meats like Salamis and pepperoni's don't need refrigeration as well. That's great to get some extra protein dinners. The packaged meals were usually my go to and now after what I've learned from Lucy and in my research, I'm going to stick just with the freeze dried versus the dehydrated because of the better quality of the food with it. Kit: (37:54) The nutrients are preserved better. Yes, but they're expensive if you don't want to spend the money. I met a man when I was hiking up in my hiking robe up in Raleigh and he said he had to deal with his backpacking buddy. He had to carry the kitchen and the food in exchange for the buddy making and preparing all the food and the buddy used a cookbook called lip smack and backpacking and he said everything that the guy made was delicious. So I'll put a link to that too on the website and in the show notes. [inaudible] Kit: (38:26) good source of carbs are those little honey sesame sticks you can buy and I like these little upbrand sticks that I get over it and like the near the vegetable area I throw myself, but they're also greatest snacking foods. It's a good idea to bring a little bit of a small container of olive oil or canola oil to add a little bit more fat to your dinners as well. Some of my favorite protein sources are of course beef jerky, beans, nuts, seeds, powdered milk, powdered soy protein plus you get some calcium with these last two. I like the tuna that comes in the foil packets and then if you get some of the oil, if you get it in the olive oil, that's going to add a little bit more fat to it. And again, like I used those little convenient store Manet's is that don't need to be refrigerated so I can make like a tuna salad in the pouch and speak in the pouches. Kit: (39:15) Please do practice the leave. No trace. You pack out all of your garbage. That includes your toilet paper. I usually keep a big Ziploc bag and I labeled trash. I don't get it confused and everything goes in there and don't forget to drink plenty of water. Hydration is super important. If possible, use one of those bladders that so that you have constant access. You'll tend to drink more if it's there and you don't have to drop your pack or get somebody to grab your bottle for you. You can learn more about your water options and what a treatment options. On episode number three of this podcast, the adventure travel show podcast, I'll also put a link to that in the show notes, and a good rule of thumb is if your urine is yellow, you're not drinking enough. It should be close to clear and that tells you that your body is getting proper hydration and consider bringing some of the electrolytes because the sports drinks I keep reading are not really the best thing for you. Kit: (40:12) Some of them have too much sugar, some of them have too much salt. If you want to make your own mix, you can add some salt to water. When you're sweating and you're working out, you lose about a gram of salt per liter and when looking at the labels, as Lucy suggested, anything that says Syrup means sugar. The only good syrup's truly are the honey and maple syrup and try to get your sugar more from the fruits than from the processed sugars that they add in there. Remember, you don't have to memorize all this stuff. I've got it on the website for you. Adventure travel show, podcast.com/nutrition and there's also going to be a recipe for ace, a snickers trifle and links to some other recipes as well that you might find interesting. I hope you learned a lot from today's program and many thanks to Lucy for coming on the show to help us out. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so already, it's free and available on all podcast apps, including now Pandora, which we were selected to join. If you've enjoyed today's program, please share it with your adventurous friends. Word of mouth is the number one way that podcasts are found, and so you are instrumental in building this podcast. Thanks. I sure do appreciate it. I also really appreciate that you give your time to listen to this podcast. Thanks. Until next time, this is kit parks adventure on. Nutrition for Outdoor Adventures by Kit Parks is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Based on a work at http://adventuretravelshowpodcast.com/outdoor-adventure-nutrition/. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://activetraveladventures.com/contact-us/.

This week, we’re talking about long-term care and why it’s important to make some decisions today about how you’re going to pay for long-term care in retirement. Yesterday we talked about the harsh reality of the long-term care landscape - there’s a decent chance (about 50/50) that you’ll need long-term care in your lifetime, and it can be very expensive to pay for - potentially wiping out your retirement nest egg. Today we’re talking about how you can protect yourself financially if you need long-term care. I have a client, we’ll call her Lucy, who’s husband battled Alzheimer's for 9 years. The first 7 of those 9 years, she cared for him in their home, but the last 2 years, she could no longer care for him on her own and he moved to a memory care facility. The care Lucy was providing for those 7 years was an incredible burden, but when he moved to memory care, it began to take a serious financial toll on Lucy. And I became genuinely concerned she was going to run out of money. Their investment portfolio was not large enough to support the large withdrawals she was taking out to pay for his care. And they didn’t have long-term care insurance. As long as they still had assets, Medicaid wasn’t going to kick in. So Lucy was left with draining their savings to pay for her husband’s care.  All the while worrying if there would be anything left for her. Thankfully in the end, she did not run out of money after paying for her late husband’s long-term care. But the cost of long-term care did some damage to her nest egg, and it caused enormous financial stress and worry for Lucy that she would be left with nothing. This story illustrates how important it is for those of you in the middle to take a serious look at long-term care insurance. The poor will be covered by medicaid and the rich have plenty of assets to pay for long-term care. But if your retirement will be wiped out if you need to spend upwards of $200,000 on long-term care over your lifetime, then you’ll want to look seriously at long-term care insurance. That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. --------- >>> Subscribe on iTunes: https://apple.co/2DI2LSP >>> Subscribe on Amazon Alexa: https://amzn.to/2xRKrCs >>> Check out our blog: https://truenorthretirementadvisors.com/blog/ ---------- Tags: retirement, investing, money, finance, financial planning, retirement planning, saving money, personal finance, wealth management, long term care, long term care insurance, long term care definition, long term care cost, what is long term care facility, long term care options, long term care insurance, long term care insurance cost, alternatives to long term care insurance, long term care insurance quotes, long term care insurance definition, pros and cons of long term care insurance, probability of needing long term care, long term care insurance companies, when to buy long term care insurance, long term care medicaid

In last week’s episode 8, I was going to comment at the end about my interview with Charley and Ruth Shirley, but our executive producer, Carol thought that would detract from what they had to say. So rather than prattle on (Carol hates prattle), she suggested I put my comments in the show notes, which I did. At the end of the show I mentioned that today’s episode would be about the four levels of relationship skills, which I’ve been looking forward to discussing. But in our production meeting this week on the top floor of our international headquarters here in New Berlin, Wisconsin, Carol suggested we put that off to next week, and instead for today, I should share those observations I had about the interview last week with Ruth and Charley. I so often don’t know what I’m doing, but Carol does, so I’m going to trust her judgement and go with her instincts. The more I reflect on that interview, the more it strikes me how it’s a wonderful example of what great relationships look like. It illustrates principles that would be helpful for all of us to consider in our relationships. You don’t necessarily have to have listened to the interview in episode 8, but it would be more powerful if you could, if you have not already done so. You can also go back and listen after this episode. But I’ll summarize parts of it as we who along today. The interview last week started with me reading a Facebook post from my friend Charley Shirley that he wrote in September 2012 about his wife and youngest daughter. I’ll just read what he wrote; it’s not long. Charley writes the following: "I absolutely cherish my wife, Ruth. About five weeks ago she and my youngest daughter were driving back from the East coast where they had just dropped off my oldest daughter at graduate school. As they drove west they passed through Youngstown, OH. "The city is a special place and holds some of my most cherished memories of my life. Youngstown is where my first wife, Bev, was from and where we got married one bright sunny September day almost thirty years ago. We went on our honeymoon and a couple weeks later we were back at our home in Dallas, TX. "Tragically, late one Saturday night just five months after the wedding, we were driving home from a Bible study. A drunken driver lost control of his truck and broadsided our car. Bev was critically injured and after lingering in a coma for six days died from her injuries. The funeral was back in her home town - Youngstown, OH and that is where she was buried. "Several years ago I was talking to my youngest daughter about Bev and mentioned that if she was ever near Youngstown to please go by the grave and pay her respects. So Lucy and Ruth found the cemetery and located Bev's grave. "The marker was overgrown with grass and Ruth, ever the gardener, worked diligently to make it tidy. "So, while Ruth clipped weeds and grass, Lucy snapped this picture. I cried when I saw it. Ruth cleaning Bev's grave marker." ___________________________ So that’s the Facebook post that caught my eye, including the photo that Charley shared. Fast forward six years later to late 2018 when I interviewed Charley and Ruth. I’ll summarize the interview, which you can hear in its entirety in Episode 8. I asked Ruth and Charley what the story behind the Facebook post was like for each of them. Charley started by talking about Lucy calling him at work while she and Ruth were near Youngstown, Ohio to get directions to find the grave, which was a bit of a challenge. Anxious to get home from their thousand mile road trip, Ruth spoke about initially not wanting to stop. But she knew it would mean a lot to Charley, and also to their youngest daughter. So she did. Once they found the grave marker, Ruth cleaned it up with the only thing she had - her car keys. While she did, Lucy snapped a picture of Ruth cutting weeds and grass from around the grave marker. Ruth talked about how this moment deeply affected her and Lucy, how they both cried, and how Ruth described it as standing on “Holy Ground.” Ruth also talked about the profound effect this had on Lucy. Charley talked about the shadow that Lucy cast while taking a picture of her mother cleaning the grave marker. He saw a connection in this shadow between Lucy and Bev, as they were both the second child of their respective parents. He summed it up best when he said the point of this story for him was about healing. How what his 2nd wife, and 2nd daughter, did to honor his first wife brought closure to a tragedy that happened over 30 years ago. That was the interview in a nutshell. I came away from our time together with several important lessons and principles about relationships that would serve all of us well if we practiced them in our relationships. 1. Healing often takes time. Sometime a long time. It had been over 33 years since Charley’s first wife, Bev, had died. And this graveyard story of a few years ago contributed to Charley’s healing. We need to be patient with others and ourselves with the time it takes to heal. For Charley, and for some of us, the healing comes from clarifying what our future holds. 2. It pays to listen well to people, especially the people closest to us. On the way home from Connecticut to Wisconsin, Lucy REMEMBERED what her dad had said, “If you ever are near Youngstown, Ohio…..” Lucy had a holy curiosity about her dad’s past. She asked about Bev. She wanted to know, because she realized that this particular relationship is an important part of his life. And her relationship with her dad is an important part of hers. 3. To care well usually takes sacrifice. I felt for Ruth in this story. After moving your daughter into a 3rd floor apartment on a hot summer day, and then start off on a thousand mile road trip back home, and then to take a time-consuming detour to look for the grave of someone you never met, well that’s sacrifice. 4. Sometimes the best care we can provide is when we have limited resources and don’t know what to do. Ruth and Lucy had difficulty finding the cemetery, and then the grave. But the difficulty didn’t stop them. All they had were car keys. Ah, the car keys. 5. It’s okay when our first inclination is to not inconvenience ourselves for the sake of another. That’s normal. Ruth was very transparent in saying she felt guilty about her initial reaction. What is beautiful is when we move past our first thoughts because we know we can honor and bless someone if we don’t give in to our basic human preference for convenience. Hats off to Ruth! 6. God at times uses symbols within events to let us know he loves us, cares for us, and that he is there for us. The picture of Lucy’s shadow over Ruth cleaning Bev’s grave marker. Ruth cleaning up what others have ignored. For Charley, it “closed the loop,” as he put it. Lucy’s shadow in the picture represented the future he wondered about over 30 years ago. Because he was able to move well through his grief after that tragic event happened, he was able to re-marry. He was able to have children, one of whom cast a shadow over both the current and former wife. Lucy’s shadow connected the three of them to bring closure to the tragedy that happened so long ago 7. We really are all connected to each other, if for no other reason than we all come from the same source, God himself. Some day in eternity we will see all these connections, some of which we don’t quite understand in this life. For those of us with a relationship with Jesus, we will see Bev one day, and I bet she will thank Charley for sharing the story of their 21 months together. She will thank Ruth and Lucy for honoring her the day they cleaned off her grave marker. And all of us will give thanks to the Lord for the relationships he gave us, which if we look carefully enough, we’ll see, all point directly back to him. 8. There are things God is doing in our lives that at times we just cannot explain. Why did Charley survive the car accident and Bev didn’t. The feeling of “Holy Ground” that Ruth talked about over Bev’s grave. Lucy feeling a connection with Bev, her father’s first wife. Unrelated to her by blood, but somehow related by spirit in ways we cannot explain. Shadows really do connect us. Before I close, here’s the he main take-away from today’s episode, our show in a sentence We can be agents of healing when we listen well, when we inconvenience ourselves, and when we use the limited resources available to us. To respond to today’s episode, how might God be preparing you to be an agent of healing in one of your relationships? Where do you need to sacrifice your needs in order to help someone find closure to a difficult part of their life? Coming up next week In next week’s episode we’ll talk about four levels of relationship skills. Relationships require skill, and the good news is that anyone with the right heart can learn those skills if they want to. We’ll show you how. Quote of the Week Life only really begins when it ends here on earth, that all that is here, is only the prologue before the curtain goes up. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer Resource mentioned on today’s show Episode 008_How a Wife and Her Daughter Brought Healing

Lucy was my guest on the podcast back in January, 2018 (episode 45). In that episode, Lucy shared her background; how she first started running as a way to spend time with her Dad, her first 100km race at 16 through to her victory in 2017 at the 100km Ultra Trail Australia race (also her 21st birthday). At the time of that episode, Lucy was still getting her head around the news she had secured an entry to the Western States Endurance Run (WSER); not only one of the world’s most prestigious 100mi/160km races, but it would also be Lucy’s first attempt at that distance. So Lucy returns to Sparta Chicks Radio this week to share how the race, and 2018, unfolded for her — including why she labelled her blog post about the race ‘Show Up, Blow Up, Grow Up’. Here’s a #spoileralert - Lucy finished 3rd at WSER this year; an extraordinary performance for someone so young, and racing that distance for the first time, against the best in the world. Get the full show notes for the episode here. — Visit the Sparta Chicks Radio website here Follow Sparta Chicks Radio on Facebook: facebook.com/SpartaChicks  Follow Lucy on Instagram: instagram.com/lucy_bartholomew 

We recorded an excellent episode and then it all exploded. So Lucy and Ben decided to get together again to drink more and discuss Genital Jousting. It's just come out of early access with a story mode. Ben drinks the Icelandic White Ale from Einstok Olgerd and Lucy has the Punchline Brewery No Eye Dear saison.

We recorded an excellent episode and then it all exploded. So Lucy and Ben decided to get together again to drink more and discuss Genital Jousting. It’s just come out of early access with a story mode. Ben drinks the Icelandic White Ale from Einstok Olgerd and Lucy has the Punchline Brewery No Eye Dear saison.

By sheer coincidence – or was it something more? – the epic first season of Riverdale drew to a close just as one of its acknowledged influences, Twin Peaks, returned to the airwaves (or fiber optic cables? WiFi?). So Lucy and Evan invite pop culture writer Andy Burns, author of the Twin Peaks book Wrapped in Plastic and Riverdale enthusiast onto the 'cast. The three pound at the ice of Episode 13, "The Sweet Hereafter," to get to the metaphorical drowning Blossoms within. Listen in to hear discussions on: when and if Riverdale will ever intersect with the Black Lodge the vagaries of the American foster care system Cheryl Blossom's repeated use of the word "mommy" why Archie washes his hands before breakfast and, of course, who shot Fred Andrews? All this and more in Episode 19 of Radio Free Riverdale. Pour yourself a milkshake and join us. And follow Andy Burns at @biffbampop.

Audio File:  Download MP3Transcript: An Interview with Beth Marcus Former Founder and CTO, Zeemote Date: January 22, 2010 Entrepreneurial Heroes Interview with Beth Marcus [music] Lucy Sanders: Hi, this is Lucy Sanders, I'm the CEO of the National Center for Women in Information Technology or NC WIT, and this is another in our podcast series with women who have started IT companies, very successful women I might add... Larry Nelson: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: ...that have started IT companies. With me Larry Nelson from W3W3.com. Hi Larry. Larry: Hi, I'm really happy to be here. This is going to be an exciting interview. Lucy: Well, and these interviews have been very well received at W3W3. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that. Larry: Well we host a special channel, "Heroes for NC WIT, " and we get a tremendous amount of traffic from, everything from small business owners to C level, high level executives from enterprise size companies and it's very interesting and the thing that we like about it so much it's really helping support a push for more young girls to get into IT. Lucy: Well, very good. Well, you know this interview is going to be no exception to our great interview series. Today we're talking with Beth Marcus, who is the CEO, the founding CEO of Playsmart, a new venture for her, she's a serial entrepreneur. She's founded a number of companies including Exos which she sold to Microsoft on the middle of nineteen nineties. And she is, I think easily one of the most technical people we've spoken to in this interview series with a history at MIT, and a PhD and patents and very, very impressive technical entrepreneur. Welcome Beth. Beth Marcus: Thank you. Lovely to be here chatting with you. Lucy: Well we are really interested first to find out a little bit about Playsmart, your new venture. And we understand it is really geared towards having safe environments for children on the Internet. Can you tell us more about it? Beth: Sure. It's a complete media solution for kids, ages one to eight. It allows them to be entertained, educated, connected to other family members around the world and allows the parents to control what's happening with the kids' interaction with those environments and make it totally safe. No commercials are passed to the kids. Once they get into the Playsmart system which can run on any PC or netbook they can't get out of it accidentally or otherwise and they can't get to any content or interaction that their parents don't pre-approve. Lucy: That's pretty interesting. Larry: Boy I'll say. I've got seven grandchildren, I'm happy to hear that. Beth: In fact, one of the features that some of our investors are interested in is Skyping to grandchildren that you can do through Playsmart. All you do is click on a picture of your grandparent and it makes the call for you. Lucy: Oh, that is really cool, you know. My mother's on Skype too and you know she, I mean I actually think the other end could use some help with that, you know? Larry: Yes, I agree. Beth: Yeah. Lucy: I mean she loves Skype. Beth: My daughter is how I got involved in this. I do a lot of advising of other start up CEO's and I thought I was going to be taking a break from being a CEO and just help a bunch of other people, and an entrepreneur came to me and said, you know, "Let me show you what I've got, " and it was for kids and I have a five year old. So I said, "Susie, let's play with this thing, " and she said, "Oh, this is so cool." You know and her interaction with it is what convinced me to get involved with the company and become a CEO. Lucy: You know, we've had a couple of people we've interviewed whose children have helped them form the idea for their next venture or at least encouraged them to get involved. That's really interesting. So Beth give our listeners a sense of how you first got into technology. I mean you have a very extensive technical background as I mentioned before. What first interested you in technology? Beth: A million years ago when I was in school I liked science and math and I played around with computers. And I'm probably going to give away my age, but wrote programs in Basic that ran on paper tape into a terminal. Lucy: I did that too. So don't feel bad. Beth: And then, I ended up going to MIT because they had a lot of interesting science and math. And what got me into more core technology was freshman year at MIT they have a seminar series that you do, typically in January and I took aluminum bicycle frame building because I loved bikes and I thought that would be cool. I had never seen a machine shop, I didn't know what welding was. I had never done any of the stuff and through that seminar I got fascinated by making stuff and ended up being in mechanical engineering. Lucy: Well and we noticed you were judge for First Robotics which I think further extend... Beth: Ten years, which is a lot of fun. Lucy: Yeah, you're love of making things. Larry and I both judge as well with First, so it's a great program. So what technologies do you look out there today across the technical space? What technologies do you find really cool and interesting today? Beth: Of course the last company I was in was the mobile space so I think the evolution of mobile devices into computers that you carry around with you is very interesting. I mean, when I started Zeemote in 2005, when I said, "These are the computers you're going to carry with you 24/7" the potential investors looked at me like I was from Mars. Larry: Yeah. Beth: And now people do. Lucy: They certainly do and in fact the number of people are looking at mobile devices as a real tool to help third world developing countries as well. Larry: Awesome. Beth: Well, they don't have land lines. Lucy: Exactly. Beth: And even though we have them, a lot of people don't use them anymore. Larry: Yeah, let me kind of switch gears here for a second. Two part related questions. One is, why are you an entrepreneur? And what is it about entrepreneurship that makes you tick? Beth: Well, I think it's a challenge. The first company I started, I remember we had built some high end controllers, exoskeleton controllers for robots in space for NASA and other people. And I got this idea that we ought to be able to take this technology and make it into a consumer product. And I was giving a talk at a Virtual Reality Conference and somebody from a not to be named defunct computer company said, "Well if you can't spend two hundred and fifty thousand dollars on a reality engine you shouldn't be doing VR." And I said, "We're going to do it on PC's and we're going to make a hundred dollar joystick and everyone's going to use them but they're not going to know that it's VR." And that sort of a challenge where somebody says, "Oh you can't do that." [laughter] Or even sometimes why would somebody want that. And then you put it in front of them and they go, "Oh wow. That makes my life easier"or "That makes my health better." You know. That exciting to me. Lucy: It's a very incredibly important point I think, you know, maybe I'll just digress a moment and say that you know there's always this tug of war in any corporation big or small between the business side and the technical side and often I think the business side can't necessarily see the power of technology until a technologist puts it in front of him. And... Beth: That's why I advise all the companies that I get involved with to get those prototypes built as quickly as possible with as little money as possible and get it into the hands of the end users. Because there's where you're going to find out are you smoking something and convincing yourself there's a market or does somebody really care about this. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: And you learn so much that most entrepreneurs will tell you that the thing that they thought they were starting their company on is not the one they made money on. And it's the ones who iterate and spend time with the consumer whether they're a consumer or a corporate customer or whatever kind of customer, the ones that spend the time and listen to the customer are the ones that figure it out and succeed. Lucy: That is a really important point and I think, looking forward, we may have to ask you again a month from now but you know we do a Toolbox series as well and I think that it would be great to hear your advice for entrepreneurs because that advice around prototyping is excellent. Beth: I was going to be writing a book this year. Lucy: [laughs] Now you are running a company. Beth: Company...My God. I spent some time on it this summer capturing things like that and interviewing other entrepreneurs and then I said, "OK, I got to put this aside until I do this center and I'll come back again." Lucy: I think it will be fabulous because of your technical background. I'm sure you'd have some really valuable insights there. Beth: And I am a published poet. So... Right in the way that is intelligible to the rest of the world. Larry: So now there is a third interview. Lucy: A third... [laughs] Larry: A poetry. Lucy: Yeah. You are really digging yourself into a hole. So, along the lines of entrepreneurship, we found that many entrepreneurs can point to a particular person or a group of people who influence them or help them along their way as an entrepreneur. Who are your role models and how do they influence you? Beth: I think the first person who got me the sort of excitement at making stuff work was this professor in MIT Woody Flowers who was involved in the First Robotics Company. Lucy: Absolutely, I have seen him. I have never met him. Beth: But he was an early mentor of mine and I became a judge for this mechanical engineering design contest while I was still a student. And then that's sort of got me excited about the excitement of innovating and trying new things and testing your ideas. And then when I went to start my first company, I joined the MIT enterprise forum and there were a number of people there who I had no idea even what a business plan was. And I was going to write one to raise money. So I listened to other people talk about their businesses and I got some of those people to help me write my first business plan. And then later on, a man named Don Spero started a company called Fusion Systems down in the DC area that successfully flowed against the Japanese and the patent area. Kind of taught me about intellectual property and the value of it and also mentored me generally because of his long experience in running companies. And then when I was running Exos and I realized that I was out of my debts from a management point of view. I hired a guy named [indecipherable 10:03] to come in and run my company. And he became a mentor of mine and he is still to this day a friend. So all along the way, I think the lesson for an entrepreneur is to talk to anybody you can everywhere about what you are doing and try and connect with them because you never know when you are going to stand next to the person who is going to get you a deal like I did when I was in a party in MIT. And I stand next to Bob Metcalf who introduced me to the Logitech guys that told me what product to build for an Exos to get an exit. Or whether I am going to hire somebody who turns out to be my mentor and teach me about business that leaves the exit in the company. Larry: Wow. Beth, let me ask this question. First of all, you just mentioned about you are going to write a book this year but now you are running a company instead. It took me three years to write a book that I just had published called Mastering Change. So I just want to let you know that you can do that too. Beth: Yeah but I have a five year old and a puppy. Larry: Yeah, I got you. [laughs] Beth: So I said my daughter is most important, my business is second most important and the rest will just have to wait. Larry: There you go. I agree with that. Lucy: Although I could throw little barb in here and say Larry is a five year old but... [Larry clears his throat] Go ahead Larry I was... Beth: Anything about relationship in any of that. So? Lucy: [laughs] Larry: I have been married for 40 years. What are you going to do? Beth: Adolescence. I am not married so... If any of your listeners want to apply for the job, I take resumes. Larry: We make a little commission on this... Lucy: Yeah... [mumbles] Larry: Yeah. Speaking of all that stuff, what is the toughest thing that you ever had to do in your career? Beth: I think the first time I had to fire people was probably the worst moment because at Exos we started out as a medical company and we grew to a million and a half in revenues selling orthopedic rehab devices using our technology. And we realized we probably sold all the units that whatever be sold because we were teaching people how to turn on the computer not have a measure motions and force in patients. They didn't care about that. They use a plastic protractor and so we figured that out and we had to restart the company, went from 32 people down to about eight in one day. Lucy: That's tough. Beth: And I believe that I had helped outplace...anybody who wanted to be outplaced in great jobs elsewhere, and I am friends with some of the people who left the company at that point for years. And some of my hired again into other companies. I feel good about it. I remember at the end I closed my door and I just cried because these were my friends. Lucy: We hear that a lot from entrepreneurs. I think that is a very tough thing to...not just let people go but it is theirs loss and also downsizing the company and restarting it. That is all tough stuff. Beth: Yeah. Perhaps to tell you that I learned in that experience that if I had done it sooner, everybody would have been happier. Both the people who did not fit the business we are getting into and the investors and everybody would have done better. So, my advice to entrepreneurs is don't be afraid to hire but don't be afraid to fire the person who is the wrong person for the job. You are not doing them or you any favors by keeping them around if they are not working. Larry: Yeah. Lucy: It is the truth. We have learned that lesson unfortunately in the Telecom downsizing. Well that's great advice and it gets us to our next question about advice for young people about entrepreneurship and you have given us some perils already. And I wander around online and I found some presentation you made about naming your company. What I found was pretty interesting. Beth: That is a new one. [laughs] I give that to an MIT class because I am still on the faculty there. So occasionally faculty members will call me up and ask me to come, give lecture to their class and the senior mechanical engineering design class didn't have a clue how to name their product. So I came and I gave a lecture. Lucy: That's good. I can't wait for your book. And so, what kind of advice would you give to budding entrepreneurs that you haven't already told us? Beth: I think the most important thing that I talk to any entrepreneur that I coached from day one is why are you doing this? What are your personal goals? What are your financial goals? How does that fit with your family? And if you evaluate that first and write it down and keep it in front of you and then say, is what I am doing today serving my goals, the company's goals and my family's goals? And when those things start to not match, that is when you get into trouble. And if you don't bother to figure it out first, then you don't have a road map because I made this mistake. I ran a company called Glow Dog which was a failure. It was a failure because we were just about break even and about a million plus in revenue and our Christmas shipments were on the water on 911. We had just grown to the size where we need to manufacture in China instead of the United States in order to compete and they were in the container on the ocean and they could not get in the United States so there was no Christmas. And we had to sell the assets and fold the company because I didn't feel like there was going to be a return on investment if I brought in more capital. But what I didn't think about when I started that company was what was the right size for this business and did that kind of a business match what I personally wanted to do? It was just interesting. People loved the product. They were reflective coating for people and pets. And you walking your dog at night, you don't get run over, right? Well, it turned out our customers were fashion stores in Tokyo who liked the logo I designed. I didn't even know it was reflective and it was a 33% margin business in an industry that is not very protectable and that I had no expertise in. What was I doing, doing this business? So, I raised a bunch of money to make a big play, before I realized that this really was a brand company, not a technology company. I raised the right amount of money for a technology company to get launched, but it turned out technology didn't matter, and to make a brand like Tommy Hilfiger or Ralph Lauren, you need tens of millions of dollars. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: ... and you need expertise, which I didn't have. So, if I had understood my own personal goals and what kind of a work environment I wanted, and what the end game looked like at the beginning, I probably wouldn't have made those mistakes. Because Glow Dog could have been a very profitable, between $2 and $10 million dollar clothing company and pet product company, if that was its goal. It wouldn't have raised as much money. It wouldn't have spent as much money, and it might still be around today. Larry: You obviously didn't know all your life that you were going to become an entrepreneur and since we're... Beth: I thought I was going to be an academic. Larry: There you go, see... Lucy: Well, you're that too, so there you go. Larry: A little change. Beth: So, I'm an academic. I play at academia. [laughter] Beth: I actually have on one occasion taken money from MIT to teach a class, and I realized that it was not for me. Because along with taking the money, comes a lot of faculty meetings and policies and procedures, and entrepreneurs don't really love those things. What's good about a company that's under 25 people is you don't need a huge amount of that stuff to be successful. Larry: Right. Beth: Some people are really good at structure and organization and detail, and that's not me. Larry: Not you, no. Well, then, what were the characteristics that made you really become a successful entrepreneur? We want to reach out this way, because we have many young people and employers and parents, who want to know what secrets they should look at when it comes to entrepreneurism. Beth: Certainly, like anything else it can be taught, and it can be learned over time. So, if you want to be an entrepreneur and you don't really understand what it is, go get a job or an internship with an entrepreneurial firm and get to know that person who started the company and watch them. Do it a couple of times. You'll learn whether it suits you or not. But in terms of what I think gives me an advantage; first of all, unbridled optimism to the point of stupidity at times. [laughter] Larry: I love it! Beth: You know, "You can't do that! You can't do that!" "Sure I can! Sure I can!" You know there is a limit, you beat your head against the wall a few times and you walk away, but hammering on and being tenacious at getting your objective. If it doesn't happen the way you think, you think of a second way. If it doesn't happen that way, you think of a third way. Maybe you don't end up accomplishing what you set out to do, but in the course of trying to accomplish it, you figure out where the real value is. So, it's a combination of being tenacious, and also being aware and being willing to change, and willing to take advantage of what God, the world, whatever, has presented to you in terms of opportunity. So, if you're trying to build widget A, and nobody wants widget A, but in order to make widget A, you had to make a fixture. And it turns out loads of people want that fixture, well go sell a fixture. Don't keep trying to sell a widget that nobody wants. Lucy: Exactly. I like that, 'unbridled optimism on the verge of stupidity.' I am just going to have to remember that one. Larry: I was looking in a mirror when you said that, yes. Beth: Also, you have to be able to learn from everybody around you. Lucy: That's totally right. Beth: Willing to talk about what you do in a pleasant way, not obnoxious, but to anyone who will listen. Because you never know where you're going to learn something, or who's going to have, "Gee. I know the guy who started that company that you want to have buy your company" or "Gee. I had a company like that, and we made this mistake" and so you can learn to avoid that mistake. Lucy: Absolutely. Beth: Or somebody you want to hire. And don't be afraid to hire people who know a lot more than you do. Lucy: Totally. Beth: It's a matter of risk right. If you're an investor, and I've done some investing as well, you look at what's the total risk package for this business. And anything, absolutely anything you can do to reduce the risk is a good thing. And so the more experience you have that's relative to the business you're in, even if you don't know it yourself or understand it. It's going to reduce that risk. Lucy: Well and that's great advice I think. It's all pointing towards another interview I think Larry. Beth: You could have me talking for days. Lucy: I know. No, no ...I've got all kinds of plans for you know now. So you've already mentioned to us that you are a published poet and we know you're a judge for many years with First Robotics. What else are you doing to bring balance into your professional and personal lives? Beth: Well, I mean it's a struggle. I mean I'm a single mom, so there is no such thing as balance in my life. But, I do things like, I've got a calendar I just printed out this morning because I wasn't sticking to my exercise routine. And just like my daughter gets stars for reading books and she turns it in at school every month. I'm going to have her help me put stars on my calendar for my exercise. Lucy: Oh, that's nice. Beth: And I have family dinner night, where I cut off work early usually on Fridays, so that I can cook a meal. And we can sit down and eat together because it doesn't happen that often. And when I was growing up that was something that was somewhat absent and I wanted my daughter to have that, and I wanted me to have that too. Because, there is this idea that, when I was in the beginning of my entrepreneurial career, I obsessed about the business 24/7 and drove myself nuts. You know, I hardly slept, and that's not the best way to be productive. As I've gotten older, I work smarter. And so I do everything that I can do to make every minute of my time incredibly effective. If I'm having a bad day and I'm not productive. I'm not going to hammer my head against the computer or the telephone, which is where most of my work happens. I'll go and do something nice for myself for an hour. You know, call a friend, go have a coffee, or do an errand I need for my home. Go do some food shopping and come back. And then I'm refreshed and renewed. I listen to books on tape at night as I'm falling asleep so that I can't think about business at night. I love novels and I love fiction. So that for me blocks out my ability to think business. Lucy: That's a great idea. Larry: Yeah, it really is, wow. You know Beth, you have achieved so much in so many different ways. Going back to your first company that you ended up selling to Microsoft and all the other Wins and that challenges along the way. You've achieved a lot what's up for you next? Beth: I would like to have a huge exit in Playsmart. So if anybody is listening who wants to buy a company like that, that's the goal. To build this to where there is enormous excitement about the product and many, many families are using it. And then get a bigger company with huge resources behind it. And then I'll be happy to step back, finish my book and invest and advise in others. Lucy: Wow, and we would love to see you write that book. Larry: Boy, I'll say. Lucy: That would be I mean great, great advice here and we thank you for taking time to talk to us. I want to remind those who are listening to this interview that they can find it at W3W3.com. Larry: That's right and we'll have it up also on our blog as well as our podcast directory so you can download it 24/7. Lucy: Well, I'm pleased to pass it... Beth: And if there are there any moms of kids interested in Playsmart. That's at Playsmart send me an email, I'll make sure you find out about a product when it's out this summer. Lucy: Absolutely, and we'll have that as well in the bio up on the site. So everybody can find it when they come to download the podcast. Very good, well thank you very much. Larry: Thank you. [music] Series: Entrepreneurial HeroesInterviewee: Beth MarcusInterview Summary: Beth Marcus has been Founder and CEO of several successful startups, most notably EXOS, Inc., which was venture-backed and sold to Microsoft in 1996. Since then she has been involved in 14 start-ups in a variety of fields as a founder, investor, or advisor. Release Date: January 22, 2010Interview Subject: Beth MarcusInterviewer(s): Lucy Sanders, Larry NelsonDuration: 24:00