Podcasts about so natalie

Wool fiber carding and preparation is our topic in this episode as our Summer Spin In continues. Current spinning and knitting projects along with a couple of rants are also on the program! Show notes with full transcript, photos, and links can be found in the podcast section of our shop website: TwoEwesFiberAdventures.com. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Subscribe on Android or Subscribe on Google Podcasts Marsha's Projects I frogged the foot of my Drops Fabel sock, turned the heel and I am knitting the gusset. Picked up a long dormant shawl called Simple Shawl by Jane Hunter that I started in March 2018. Using Michael CWD in the colorway San Francisco Fog. Cast on the pullover Atlas by Jared Flood for my brother. The yarn I'm using is Navia Tradition. My gauge is 20st/4” instead of 24st/4” so I am making the smallest size. I have knit about 7” of the body, excluding the ribbing. Because I cast on with a provisional cast on and the body is all stockinette it is very curly. It looks like a holiday wreath! In the last episode, I mentioned that the color work chart distinguishes “dominant” color and I was guessing what this meant. Thank goodness for YouTube and Jared Flood who has a great video explaining why we want to pick a dominant color and the technique for doing this. I'm still spinning on my green/brown merino.  Hidden Brain: This is the link to the website. Then search for the episode, “Why We Hold Onto Things” from May 31, 2021. I was unable to put a direct link to the  episode. Kelly's Projects I finished carding about 400 grams of Oxford batts and sampled them. Yes, actually sampled! I made two small skeins of about 20 g each. One is 2 ply and the other is 3-ply. Since the fleece was slightly sticky I used boiled water to put in the wash bowl and they both washed up nicely. I like the 2 ply best. It is softer and fluffier. I now have a full bobbin of singles all spun up. Here is the project page for this handspun.    I started a handspun sweater! I am using a new pattern called Dark Green Forest (Ravelry link) by Christina Körber-Reith. She also has the patterns at her website, Strickhauzeit. Her website also has both measuring/fitting and bust dart tutorials.  Summer Spin In Topics Don't forget your tetanus shot! From Nathalie (SuperKip) Two additions that might be helpful: Don't prep fleece when you're pregnant (toxoplasmosis is a danger) For ‘rescue'-fleeces, a flick-carder is also very helpful, this also gets rid of many waste types of yarn. Carding Fiber preparation tools: Hand cards, flick carder, mini combs, combs, drum carder, blending board Hand Carding with Beth Smith Spin Off Free Guide to Wool Carding and Combing Skirting How to Skirt a Fleece by the Spinning Loft How to Skirt a Fleece Video by Rayne Fiber Arts Mill processing Fiber Shed Mill Inventory Producer Directory Fiber Prep Ravelry Group: Fleece Processor List Mendocino Wool and Fiber Valley Oak Wool Mill Morro Fleece Works Full Transcript Marsha 0:03 Hi, this is Marsha Kelly 0:04 and this is Kelly. Marsha 0:05 We are the Two Ewes of Two Ewes Fiber Adventures. Thanks for stopping by. Kelly 0:10 You'll hear about knitting, spinning, dyeing, crocheting, and just about anything else we can think of as a way to play with string. Marsha 0:17 We blog and post show notes at toTwo Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com. Kelly 0:22 And we invite you to join our Two Ewes Fiber Adventures group on Ravelry. I'm 1hundredprojects, Marsha 0:29 and I am betterinmotion. Kelly 0:31 We are both on Instagram and Ravelry. And we look forward to meeting you there. Both 0:35 Enjoy the episode. Marsha 0:43 Good morning, Kelly. Kelly 0:44 Good morning, Marsha. Marsha 0:45 Well, how are you today? Kelly 0:47 I'm doing fine. I'm out in the trailer. I've been complaining about how cold it is here. It's in the 60s again, again every day. Well, not right now it's less than that here now. But I'm wearing an undershirt, a long sleeve shirt, a flannel shirt. And on top of the flannel shirt I have a shirt jacket that will probably come off as we go. But it's cold here. Marsha 1:19 Well, it's cool today. I don't know what the temperature is. But it's it's overcast. And the wind is blowing. It's very cool. And I but I have to say I'm not complaining. It feels very nice. After that hot hot weather we had Kelly 1:29 Yeah. Marsha 1:30 It was like 110. Like, I still, even now two weeks later, people are still like how'd you do with that heat, right. But everybody's asking, but so it's nice. And it's overcast and breezy and cool. But that's how it was yesterday morning. And then it turned out to be a beautiful day it was actually quite warm. So yeah, sort of typical for us is cool, and overcast and sort of misty in the morning. And then Kelly 1:55 Yeah, it's been wet almost every morning here for the last week. So it's been cold in the house. And of course I'm not going to-- I am not running the heater in July. That's ridiculous. Marsha 2:10 I don't know if they have this in other parts of the country. But there's a group in in Seattle, all the neighborhoods have a group in this way. It's called Buy Nothing. And it's basically where you can't sell anything. You just post everything out for free. So I've been posting up things like yesterday, well, the one that I thought was so interesting is--I think I got it as a Christmas gift years ago.It's a, it's for grilling, it's a fork, but also has a thermometer in it. Like 10 people wanted it. So I just had to pick somebody. And then other stuff nobody wants, you know, but it's kind of fun. I mean, you know, Kelly, remember you were talking about in front of your house, because you do live on a high traffic street. You just were putting stuff out in front and then and then it was fun to see how fast it went. And then you started going around looking for things to give away. It's kind of like, it's like now I'm very motivated. And I'll tell you why I'm motivated in a second. But anyway, someone's coming today to pick up--I have an old ice cream maker, you know that we had probably in the 60s, right? That we used to make ice cream. It's the hand crank kind that you put ice in and the rock salt and stuff. And so and she's all-- this woman is super excited about it, because she's gonna use it for their Campfire or Girl Scout troop to make ice cream, which is really fun that's going to get used, right? Kelly 3:33 Yeah. Marsha 3:33 it's it's kind of fun. It's a little addictive. And you know how I am. For years, I've had such a hard time getting rid of stuff. But people are so excited about it. You know, and this other woman, you know, she's excited because I just posted up-- I have a, you know, a large, really large stainless steel mixing bowl. And I posted that up and she's like, Oh, I'm a baker. And I said I'm a baker too, you know. So I thought maybe I'll meet my neighbors this way. Because it's just, you have to be in a certain block radius. So, um, so probably I think it's, I think it's nationwide. Kelly 4:11 I don't know. Marsha 4:13 So I will... let me just say why I'm doing this as is. You know I've...as you know, the listeners now I have my house that I've had in Ballard for many years. I'm getting that ready to rent. I moved into the house I was growing up in. I've had to combine two households. And I've done really well getting rid of stuff. But there was that last stuff that you know, that you hang on to. You think maybe I'll use it, right? Maybe I will make ice cream in the hand crank ice cream maker. And I've been thinking that for how many years? My mother had it in her basement and I thought it's never going to happen. So and if I do get a wild hair that I am, I will go buy one again but I'm probably never going to miss that thing. So I'm...and I had a...Yeah, there's all kinds of things I'm getting rid of and little things but they'll just make space and so I'm now motivated. In the basement because... and Kelly you know this and people if you're following my Instagram feed, you probably know what I'm doing. But I took everything in the basement.. The basement is divided into half. One half is...there's a rec room with a fireplace and a bedroom. And the other half we always called it the dirty part of the basement. But that's where the washer and dryer is and the workbench and stuff, the furnace, hot water heater. So I took everything out of that dirty part of the basement and put it into the rec room. Then I had the wiring redone the plumbing redone for a new hot water heater, new washer dryer, new sink. And then we painted the walls because it was just bare concrete walls. Well actually, they've been painted with calcimite which is like, almost like a chalk like substance, and it doesn't... you can't paint over it. The paint just peels off, so I had to wash down all the walls. Scrub the floor, degrease the floor. So I painted the walls, the trim on the windows, I painted the floor... two coats of concrete paint on the floors. So now I... last night I started moving things back. But Kelly, did you look at my Instagram post this morning? Kelly 6:20 No. Marsha 6:21 I think I posted it last night of the shelving unit, Ben shaking it. He said they're not safe. So I ordered last night, I just saw that you can go and order and pay for stuff at Home Depot and just go pick it up. So I ordered it and I get a text in about 15 minutes that it's ready. So Ben went over and picked up the shelving units and we built three shelving units. So today after we finish recording, I'm going to now start putting things that I'm keeping back on the shelf. And my plan is, if it doesn't fit on those three shelving units I'm not keeping it. Kelly 6:55 Oh, that's a good idea. it will keep you honest Marsha 6:57 And my other plan . Yes, and this is my other rule. Nothing sits on the floor. If it sits on it, I can't keep it if it sits on the floor. It has to go up on a shelf. Is that a good plan? Kelly 7:11 Yeah. Marsha 7:12 Do you think it's attainable? Kelly 7:14 I don't know. We'll see. How many people want your free stuff? Marsha 7:22 Yeah. Kelly 7:26 Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Marsha 7:28 So anyway, and I will put a... Well I think I got kind of motivated too because pulling everything out... when I saw all of the stuff in the rec room my thought was, I'm one item away from being a hoarder. One more item and it might be at the tipping point. And then as Ben said to me, you know, a lot of stuff is not my stuff. A lot of it is stuff that is other people's stuff that I inherited. So like, I've talked about this before, but you know, 10 sets of dishes that were all inherited from various relatives that I didn't buy, I don't want them, but I now have them. And I don't know what to do with them. And so and then along those lines, having that conversation with Ben sort of motivated me. It did, it sort of did motivate me and then also, he recommended the podcast Hidden Brain. I think the show airs on NPR, but it also is in the form of a podcast and he had an episode and I will try and find a link to it. I forgotten the name of it. But it's something basically about why we keep things and a lot of times it has no monetary value but it has sentimental value. And how do you and how... Which is true. Like I have these...I talk about all these dishes I have. That old treadle sewing machine... things I don't necessarily want. But the people who gave them to me really wanted me to have them. My aunt really wanted me to have that treadle sewing machine but I don't use it. So it's silly to keep it but I feel sort of duty bound to keep it, you know, and all the family history and photographs. I don't want them. And so I've decided I'm going to contact other members of the family and see if they want them. So they can store them and not me. Kelly 9:18 You should just do like my aunt's have done and... Marsha 9:24 just put it on their porch... Kelly 9:27 Grab a batch of pictures, stick them in a bag and just either put them in the mail and send them or, well, like my my aunt will send something home with Aunt Betty or my mom drops something off when she comes here. It's like you start divesting yourself by giving the stuff to to other people. So yeah, like zucchini. You can just drop it on their porch. [laughing] Marsha 9:54 And you speed away. [laughing] Maybe I should put my family photos on Buy Nothing. if you want instant family. Kelly 10:02 Funny! Marsha 10:02 No, I just think... and like the other thing too is I have been saddled with things. I adored my aunt. I loved her, my dad's sister, but she did all the family history. And I have three banker boxes full of all of her research, two trunks full of photographs. And I don't know how many plastic bins full of photographs. And I got, well, chosen or saddled with the family history stuff. And I, the truth is, I don't really care that much. And I know that's terrible to say, because everybody's doing all this family research, but somebody else in the family who is more motivated and cares more than I care should probably do it because I... My aunt, I think thought I cared a lot more than I really cared about all the family history. So anyway, way too much information about what's going on here. But I'm in purge mode. Kelly 11:05 All right. Marsha 11:07 So, Kelly, yes. Should we talk about, like, fibery things now? Kelly 11:11 I think so. Marsha 11:12 Okay. Kelly 11:13 You're not purging any of that. Right? Marsha 11:19 Well, I know I'm not yet right. Not now. But I do need to figure out a different way of storing. Kelly 11:23 Well, that's a perpetual question. What do you do? Yeah. How do you store those? Yeah, yeah. Marsha 11:28 So let's get to projects. Do you want to go first? Kelly 11:31 Sure. I'll go first, because mine is short. Oh, first of all, Marsha 11:35 is that good? Kelly 11:36 I don't know. Well, it's fine. It's, it's kind of normal. It's kind of the way it's been recently. But I finished carding about well... I'm gonna say finished because the Oxford fleece was in two bags. And I finished one bag of the Oxford a fleece and it's about it's about 400 grams. And so then I sampled. So I, I made a two ply, about 20 gram skein, I think, of two ply and a small skein also of three ply to see which I liked better. And I was, I was thinking I was gonna like the three ply better, but I liked... I actually liked the two ply better. It's fluffier, part of it might just be the amount of twist that I put in the three ply. Even though I like a nice round three ply. This particular yarn that I made, it feels sort of buttoned up. It's kind of like, you know, it's round. And, and, and, you know, bouncy, like a three ply is, but it feels kind of just too much twist. There's just too much, too much twist in it. And it just really wants to be a little looser. At least that's what I'm thinking. If I had done the three ply, with less twist. I mean, normally, you put a little more in, because you're going to be untwisting a little bit more when you ply the three ply. And so I think that might be what happened. I wasn't intentionally doing that, but maybe that's what happened. Anyway, it just feels a little too tight. And the other one feels nice and fluffy and loose. And so think I'm gonna do a two ply. And so I started a bobbin. Last-- yesterday, and I managed to spin an entire bobbin, most of a bobbin, of this Oxford fleece. So I'm still keeping my options open that I may opt to do a three ply. You know, I'm not gonna ply it right away. Think about it, and I'll do a second bobbin first before I decide, but I'm pretty sure I want to do a two ply with this. So it's nice, it's it's springy. It's softer than I expected it to be based on when I was carding it. Marsha 14:06 Mm hmm. Kelly 14:08 But it's like a medium You know, kind of a medium workhorse kind of fleece but softer than the Perendale. That Perendale that I talked about a couple of episodes ago, that blue and green one. Blue, green and yellow from the prepared fiber that I bought from Sheep Spot. The Oxford is a little softer than that. Actually is quite a bit-- it feels quite a bit softer than that now that I'm spinning it. Now I think I mentioned that I didn't do the best washing job when I first washed it, so it's a little sticky. So I just when I washed it, I just used boiling water in the bowl, along with some soap and washed the skeins and they came out really nice. So I wasn't too worried about it. I had done that before. So I wasn't too worried about the, the fact that it was a little sticky spinning. And it's perfect for spinning now. Because even though you know, even though the weather is cool here, you know, it has been in the high 60s. So if I sit in a little sunny spot and spin, it slips really nicely. You know, it's more lanoliny than sticky once it gets a little warmed up. So I mean, I'm not, this is not spinning in the grease by any means. It's... Marsha 15:32 Right. Kelly 15:33 It's, it's clean, but it's still got more lanolin in it then I really liked to have. So that's one thing that I'm working on. My spinning project. But I also started another project for our spin-in which is, you know, making something out of your handspun. So I started a handspun sweater. Marsha 15:59 Oh, Kelly 16:00 So I spun the yarn years ago, well, over several years. Maybe people who've been listening for a while might remember. It's the CVM fleece and I had it processed at Yolo fiber mill which is now Valley Oak Wool Mill, a different owner. But it's up in Woodland, California. And I had it when we first moved here to this house, so that would have been '05. I'd had the fleece for at least at least a year, maybe came from the fair in 2004. Sat around here for a while before I sent it away to be processed. And then once it came back, I started spinning it and I used that same fleece for the... There was like six pounds of it. And I used that same fleece that sort of taupey beige fleece for the Orca sweater, the Orcas Run sweater, my big, bulky sweater. But this is a fingering weight, three ply, and then I dyed it red over the kind of beige color. So that made it kind of a terracotta, rust, I don't know what you would call it exactly. But it's real pretty. The dye color was called dark red. And I found a pattern. So, again, I had talked many times about what pattern I was going to use, right? I had a couple of choices in my queue that I was pretty sure I was going to use one of them. And then finally I just decided you know what I'm going to go looking again. And so I found a pattern called Dark Green Forest. And it's by Christina Korber-Reith. Korber-Reith is her last name, k o, r, b e r, dash r, e, i, t, h, she's German. And I actually looked up how you how you pronounce it. Marsha 18:17 Mm hmm. Kelly 18:17 In German. And...but I can't say it that way. I did the best I could. But she has, she has some really interesting patterns. Nice, kind of the long sweaters that I like, cozy and casual. The one I'm using has a cable like a honeycomb cable down the sleeve. It's got a saddle shoulder, which... I don't know if I've ever done an actual saddle shoulder before. But I think this is a saddle shoulder because the cable comes down from the collar and then goes down, down the top of the shoulder and then down the arm. The collar is a square collar. I don't know that it would be called a shawl collar. But it's nice. It's...you start at the... you start at the collarr and go down and it's it's one of those collars that folds over and is just square. You know, it's just Marsha 19:22 like a sailor's collar. Is that what they call it? Kelly 19:24 Yes. Yeah, I think that is what you would call it. That is what it's like, exactly like that. And it has ribbing on it. So I've gotten... I've gotten down... I'm in the the arm hole increases. Marsha 19:43 Mm hmm. Kelly 19:45 But I got messed up somehow. And I need to... I'm trying to decide whether I want to go forward and see if I'm in the right place for the cable. You know that cable crossing, or do I want to rip it back again, because I already ripped it back once to to get back to where I thought I knew where I was. And now it's not looking right. So. So I have to decide what I want to do. Do I want to forge ahead? Assuming that I'm right?Or, or did I somehow make a mistake again, not paying attention and get an extra, you know, an extra row in there. So. So anyway, that's where I am with that. But I'm really liking the pattern. It's fun. It's well written. I've made good progress, but with a collar that big. I still haven't gotten that far down, you know? Yeah, I'm in the, in the yoke. A little bit below what she calls the yoke in her pattern, so. But I'm excited about it. I have a sweater on the needles again, something more than a dish cloth. Marsha 20:55 Mm hmm. Well, I was just looking at the pattern. I think it's a very nice pattern. And I love the color. That terracotta color, I think is really nice. Kelly 21:03 Thank you. Yeah, I'm really pleased with it. I was laughing because somebody, I was talking to somebody about making things. And I suddenly realized, I like everything I make. I mean, it's good, right? I'm making it so it should be made the way I like it. But, but it was kind of funny. This person that I was talking to was much more critical of her stuff than I am. I'm like, you know, Oh, I like that. You say Oh, I like the color. I'm like, yeah, isn't it great? Oh, I like how your sweater turned out! Yeah, yeah, isn't it great? [laughing] Marsha 21:48 That's interesting. I'm trying to think... do I like everything I make? I like most things. I've had some. I say I like everything I've made. I like the yarn and the color and stuff. Sometimes. They don't fit right. Kelly 22:05 Yeah, I have some. Yeah, I have some fit complaints about some of the things I've made. Mostly related to raglan sleeve shaping that has the raglan part starting at like two stitches. And yeah, my top of my shoulder is much broader than two stitches. So unless we're talking about, you know, a totally high neck collar, that's not enough. But even those, I mean, I yeah. I guess it has to do with when, right? Especially when I'm making it or when I first finish it. It's like, Oh, I love this! Once it's in my drawer or closet for a while I sometimes realize oh, I don't love this as much as I thought I did. You know? Marsha 22:56 Yeah, Kelly 22:56 I--you know, I noticed because I don't grab it out as much. Marsha 22:59 Yeah, yeah. Kelly 23:01 But yeah, no, I'm not very critical of my own work. There's, I've made-- I did make one hat that I thought okay, this is really ugly. Marsha 23:12 Was that the charity hat you made? That you were talking about in the last episode or two episodes? Kelly 23:17 Oh, no, I, well...I guess I could count that one. I think that one's kind of ugly. And oh, well, not ugly, just not the best thing I've ever made. So maybe two things. No, this is one I made a long, long time ago. And I was going to a meeting and I just had to grab stuff to make a hat. You know, I knew I was going to be sitting in a meeting for a long time. So I just grabbed yarn. And the colors didn't really go together. And then I decided to make stripes. Because I thought oh, if I if I make the stripes of this way, it'll look better the colors will actually go together. One was like a teal and the other one was like a rust color. And they just didn't, you know that can be... that could be a really pretty combination. But this particular teal and the particular rust just wasn't wasn't a good mix. So I know that that hat sat in my stash for a long time with me thinking, well, maybe it's not so bad if I look at it in a different light. Oh, I think it's all right. Or then I thought, oh, maybe I'll just overdye it and I thought you know, I just just put it in the bag of goodwill stuff. Marsha 24:26 Mm hmm. Kelly 24:28 So I finally did get rid of it. And one of my, you know, times of going through the closet and getting rid of stuff that hat went in. So yeah. Anyway, but those are my only two. Really my only two projects at this moment are the spinning project and the new sweater on the needles. So... Marsha 24:48 Well, very nice. You're busy. Kelly 24:50 Yeah, I had hoped to wash fleece. And I won't go into a lot of gory detail but my top load washing machine from 30 years finally died. So... Marsha 25:06 Yes, so did you get another top load? Kelly 25:08 Yeah, yeah, it's another just basic washing machine. So it's coming on Friday. Marsha 25:14 30 years. That's actually a really long time for... I mean today for appliances, Kelly 25:21 The one we just bought will not last 30 years, I'm sure. Marsha 25:24 Well, good. Kelly 25:25 So we'll hope it works. Nobody at the place knew anything about, you know, things like can you just... Marsha 25:32 can you wash a fleece in it? Right?They really couldn't answer that question. [laughing] Kelly 25:34 Will it just spin and drain? Oh, you know, can you open it up in the middle of the cycle? You know, all that stuff. They didn't know anything about it. So we'll see. I have my fingers crossed. I think I'll be able to use it. I'll be able to figure something out. It has a pause button. So you know it locks but it does have a pause button. So I should be able to... Yeah, I should be able to do something with it. I don't know. But it doesn't have... it has an automatic water level. That might be a problem. Marsha 26:08 Oh, yeah, cuz you want to Kelly 26:10 Yeah, cuz I wanted to fill and then put stuff in. So I need-- I might need to figure out how to make it fill with nothing in it. Stupid. I don't know why they can't just make a--Well, I won't go into a ramt. It just, it's just ridiculous. There's nothing wrong with a regular washer. And I you know, I was reading through all of the things and oh, you know, you need this washer because it's gonna make your clothes last longer. I'm sorry. People don't want their clothes to last longer. People want to go shopping and buy a new outfit next month. It doesn't make any sense. Marsha 26:51 Actually, that's a really good point. I never thought about that. Because that was the the selling point of those front load front load washing machines is they're more gentle on your clothing because there isn't the agitation. But to your point, we don't want our clothes to last because we buy clothes are so inexpensive that we just buy new clothes. Kelly 27:11 And honestly, my clothes have gone in a... Now I just sound like an old lady on a rant but my clothing has gone into a top load agitator washer for 60 years. I have never felt like my clothing wore out too fast from going in the washing machine. Never! Not once have I had something that I thought, oh my god, it just wore out so fast from going in the washing machine. Marsha 27:40 Okay, so since we're on rants, I'm going to add my little rant to this. It's not about washing machines and appliances, which that could be a whole--that's a whole nother podcast of ranting! Light bulbs. So Marsha 27:54 Oh no Marsha! [laughing] Marsha 27:57 I'm gonna say... [laughing] But here's the thing. I remember when they came out with the LED light bulbs. And the big selling point of those light bulbs is that they were going to last 25 or 30 years. So I had all these random light bulbs, and I discovered most of my lamps are three way. So I bought all new light bulbs. Because I as I say had all these different light bulbs. And so I bought all new three way light bulbs. Put them in probably two months ago, and two of them have burned out. Now, I think... And I clearly sound like a conspiracy theorist when I say this, but I don't think I am. I think it's the truth. I think they're designed to break because it's not-- it doesn't make any sense. It's not a smart business model to make light bulbs that last 30 years right? Because nobody's gonna go buy your light bulbs. They won't buy them again for 30 years. Kelly 28:50 right Marsha 28:50 So the business model is they use less energy, which is good. But they cost more. Like I don't know, they cost more to make? I have no idea. They cost more to buy which is good for the manufacturer. And you have to buy them just as frequently or more frequently than an incandescent bulb so it's a great business... it's a business model that makes sense. You don't want them to last. Planned obsolescence. You don't want things to last, you want things to slow down. You know, you want things to break and wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Old lady, old lady Failor here! Kelly 29:30 And old lady Locke here having our rants Marsha 29:34 Okay, does that make me sound like a conspiracy? Kelly 29:38 No, why would you make something-- Why would you make something like a light bulb that would last for 25 years? Because yeah, once people... Marsha 29:47 It's a bad business. Kelly 29:48 It's not an appliance. I mean appliances don't even last 25 years! Marsha 29:53 Your furnace! The furnace doesn't last. I mean it's funny, the the oil furnace that was in the house. This house was put in 1929 and my parents took it out in the 70s so that still forty... but there was nothing wrong with it they just wanted... they were sold a bill of goods that electric was better which is ridiculous. Kelly 30:14 Okay, now, last one last rant! That big green furnace in the basement that I loved the look of? We had replaced and it had, I mean it had had trouble and it was inefficient and eventually we did end up getting a new one last year because our furnace had gone out a couple of times. Remember it was out for a while last November a year ago? So it had died. This is again a 1920s furnace they had to cut it up to get it out of the basement because it was so big. So we get a new one and it has a thermostat on it with a programmer, right? Prrogrammed thermostat and Roberts like okay, we have to do this because programming your thermostat is really really more efficient because you know you you have a timer, blah, blah... I said it's not more efficient because if you have it on a timer it's going to come on whether or not I'm cold. If I'm cold I turn it on and when I'm not cold anymore I turn it off and that's more efficient. He's like, no no it's much better... Guess what! Even though our furnace is much more efficient then the old one was, because we had it on the timer for the winter our heating bill was more! Marsha 31:37 Oh yeah? Kelly 31:38 I'm turning that off so now I'm only going to turn it on when I'm cold and turn it down and not turn it on in the morning you know before you get up. It just... Marsha 31:53 Yeah. well I say that's an interesting point because I know that they...The reason they say that you should have a program is that then you're not like, oh I'm cold turn it up and then it's putting all this energy into heating it up. You know it's just like it keeps it at this constant temperature but to keep it the constant temperature you're using energy, right. So I can see there are these things we accept as the truth that are not necessarily the truth. Kelly 32:18 Yes. Marsha 32:19 Well... furnaces. I go back to furnaces. My friend Susanna she has a house built in like 1900, I think. Here in Seattle, and she has the original furnace. Yeah, and it works. Yeah. So think how old that furnaces like over 120 years old. Kelly 32:35 Yeah, very cool. Marsha 32:36 And it works fine. So and I've spent evenings in her house and it's a lovely temperature. So there you go. Okay, and enough ranting Where are we I think because we got sent we went down this rabbit hole of ranting I believe I'm talking about my projects. Kelly 32:50 Oh my gosh, yes, you are. Quickly. [laughing] Sorry. Marsha 32:55 I have to get through these fast. Okay, so my socks. I frogged my socks because, remember the socks I'm making. I forgot to turn the heel. So I rip that out and I turn the heel and I'm now working on the gusset. Kelly 33:07 Oh, good. Marsha 33:08 I'm working intermittently on my Simple Shawl that I started years ago but I work on that periodically. I'm still spinning the green brown Merino. Nothing new to report on that. So I will.. don't need to talk about that. Since we talked too much on our rants, I won't go into all of that. But I did cast on the pullover Atlas by Jared Flood for... And I'm making this for my brother. And the last episode I had swatched. I talked all about swatches. And so I'm not getting gauge. I'm getting 20 stitches in four inches as opposed to 24 stitches in four inches. Okay, so based on his size and my gauge, I'm making the smallest size. And that's... and so he brought back the the other Jared flood sweater I made for him and which we talked about. Is it Cobblestone? Yeah, he brought that back and I measured that and it's the same, it's gonna be a little bit bigger, maybe about an inch bigger, which I think is good because he doesn't want... he wants it more slim. As I talked about in the last episode, he wants it a bit more slim fitting, I don't think it should be super slim fitting based on the weight of this wool. So I think it's gonna be the perfect size. Kelly 34:22 Well, that's good. Marsha 34:24 So that's good. I do have... But now I want to talk about the color work. I do have some concerns about the color work, but I have to let it go. Because... well I shouldn't even say this, it's perfect. I know I'm just kind of concerned. So the body of the sweater is this very bright grass, Kelly green kind of. And then the color work is in a navy blue and kind of a light like a sky blue robin's egg blue. My concern is, you know, when you...when you talk about, like you take a picture of your color work and put it in black and white, and you see how the colors work then and what stands out? My concern is that the, the...when you look at them together, the light blue and the green, sort of blend together a little bit. There's not as much distinction between the Navy and the green or the Navy in the light blue. I'm, I'm committed to using these colors. So I don't I mean, I'd have to buy a different color. And looking at the colors. I... there's like there's not, there's not a huge range of colors in this yarn. So my options are like red, brown, white, gray. And that's... I'm kind of wondering if maybe, like the white would be, I don't know. I think I'm just gonna start knitting it and see how... because just looking... because I didn't complete the whole color work pattern. And maybe it will all be fine. In the end. I don't know. Kelly 36:04 Well, and Mark chose those colors, right? Marsha 36:08 Yeah, well, Yes, he did. Kelly 36:13 Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what he wanted. Marsha 36:17 Yes. But I think there's one thing picking the colors. And then picking colors for color work. Kelly 36:21 Yeah. Marsha 36:22 Right. Because I don't know that much about it. And he knows nothing. Well, he knows a lot about color. Don't get me wrong. He knows a lot about putting colors together because of his background in design. But a knitted fabric? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know. Kelly 36:38 He was looking at the pattern. I remember him looking at the pattern and right, and looking at the colors that he selected. So I don't know, anyway. Yeah. Marsha 36:49 So yeah. I'm not gonna worry about it. It's just something that's just is flickering through my brain. I wonder, huh? Wondering. And but again, when you complete the pattern, it might be fine. Just doing... I think I did 10 rows of the pattern. And the whole colorwork thing is well over that. So anyway, but the other thing I want to say is, do you remember in the last episode, we were talking about that in the pattern, it's a very well written pattern. But when you get to the color chart, it actually tells you on each row, which is your dominant color, and I had no idea what they were talking about. And so I said, I'm assuming the dominant color is going to be you knit..., you hold it in your dominant hand, in my case, that's my right hand. That's completely wrong. [laughing] So anybody who listened and knows anything about color work will know that that's wrong. This is what happens when you have no information, but you act like you're an authority. So I anyway, I... Kelly, you had pointed out that Jared Flood actually has a good video on explaining dominance. And so I put a link in the show notes about that, you actually are supposed to hold the the dominant color in your left hand. And I would I recommend the video, there's other videos out there too, but explains why you want to pick a color as a dominant color. And then also how you use it. Typically, people hold the dominant color in their left hand, he is not as fast that way. He actually holds both colors in his right hand. But he has this very interesting technique, which he demonstrates in the video of twisting your hand, so that you have the two different different yarns available. And he also talks about, there's another video he does about stranding and how you capture the floats in the back, which is very good. And this is all common knowledge for people who do a lot of color work. Not having done any color work, this is really informative. So I'll put, I put a link in the show notes on the video about dominant color. And then also in their patterns, they tell you which is the dominant color. But he said most color work patterns, they don't tell you. So also techniques for deciding which would be the dominant color. Kelly 39:04 Oh, that's good. Because Yeah, I have noticed that that's not something that's usually in the in the description. Yeah, at least in the description. Like, when you read the pattern, the pattern page, you know the description in the pattern page, you don't see it. Maybe in the written pattern, it will tell you but but yeah, that's good. Marsha 39:24 And then he and then even to the point to where the dominant color may change throughout the pattern. So you know, like in so like... Kelly 39:35 interesting. Marsha 39:36 Yeah, so yeah, so that was just very interesting, something I knew nothing about and I made that offhand remark and I realized like I was wrong! So I just want people to know and I, I did there were some comments in the show notes and people had posted. One listener posted a video, a link to a video in there. So all that was really helpful. So I just wanted to share that That's so... That is it for me with projects. Kelly 40:03 All right. Marsha 40:04 Oh, and I should say too about this sweater, and I talked about this before--that you're supposed to do a tubular cast on. And then knit two and a half inches of ribbing, and then start the body. And as I talked about in the past, and in the last episode, I'm doing a provisional cast on and just starting with the stockinette. And then I'm going to go back and do the ribbing. So I have done about seven inches of the stockinette. If I had included the ribbing, I'm supposed to knit it from the cast on with the ribbing, I'm supposed to about 10 and a half inches of the body where I then start doing shaping though, Kelly 40:41 So you're close to shaping. Marsha 40:43 Yeah. This, if I subtract the two and a half inches, I need to knit eight inches, and I'm about at seven inches now. So another inch and I'm going to start the shaping. When you do this technique, it's very curly. It's like I'm going around and around and around and it never seems like I'm getting anywhere. Yes, it looks like it looks like a holiday wreath because it's bright green. And it's just basically a big log, I mean and a big umm... Yeah, it's like, it's like a wreath, kind of. Around and around. It never seems to grow. So and I think I may have done this with his other sweater too, is that when I finished the whole sweater, I will probably wash and block it before I go back and do the ribbing. Because it is so curly. I think it's gonna be very difficult to measure how it should be. Kelly 41:34 Yeah. Marsha 41:37 So, but I'll report in on this. So as I say that's it for... that's it for projects for me. Kelly 41:44 Good. Sounds like you're making good progress. Marsha 41:49 on some projects, yeah, not so much on others. Kelly 41:53 Well, the summer spin is moving along. And it's also Tour de Fleece. I forget what day we're on now, I was doing pretty well at the beginning of it. Accounting for what I was doing each day that had to do with spinning. I had a couple of days that I didn't card or spin or anything so I got kind of off. But anyway Tour de Fleece is going on. The summer spin in is going on. And in this episode, we're going to talk a little bit about fiber preparation. Marsha 42:27 So and Kelly, you mentioned this last time, but we'll mention again. Don't forget your tetanus shot. Kelly 42:32 Oh, yeah. And then we had some feedback, too. Marsha 42:34 Yeah. So Natalie, Superkip. She added don't prep fleece when you're pregnant. And because toxoplasmosis is a danger and I'm not sure what that is. I honestly did not Google it. All I know is, it's a danger. So okay. And I did watch a video to where she said she always wears gloves. Just latex gloves on. So that's probably smart to do too. And then Kelly 43:00 I have to say I wouldn't do that. Yeah. I like the feel of it. I know. But if you're squeamish about about touching, yeah, I guess. Marsha 43:13 Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so I wanted to mention that. Kelly 43:19 And then she also mentioned about when we talked a little bit about the rescue fleeces that might have more stuff in that, you know, bargain fleeces that might have stuff in them, more so than something that you'd buy at a fiber festival. And she mentioned a flick carder being really helpful. And I had forgotten to mention that but yeah, that is a good example. Its a good use for flick carder, if you can somewhat keep the locks of your fleece intact. When you wash it, if it's the type of fleece where that happens. Then you can kind of just brush them out with a flick carder, brush out the ends and you can get out a lot of the waste that way. Marsha 44:02 The first thing I was just going to mention is if you if you get a raw fleece and you know we've talked about washing it, but what we did not talk about was skirting. And so I was just gonna mention, we won't go into great detail but the concept of skirting as you lay the fleece out with the cut side down, and the so called dirty part up and then you just go around and you pull out areas that are matted, or areas where the fibers look like they're broken. If there are manure tags on it, or bad stuff that you just don't want in there. Probably as we talked about in the last episode if you've bought a fleece at you know like from a show it probably will be pretty well skirted, but it's a good idea just to go through it again. The other comment too on the video Well, I'll just say I put a link in to a video by Rain Fiber Arts. That was very good. And she is talking about how to skirt a fleece. And she also talks too, if you see if there's any signs of eggs, or moths or something, and just don't even let that into your house. Kelly, you can add something to this too, about, what are your thoughts about things to look for, when you're skirting that you'd want to pull out? Kelly 45:30 Usually the parts that you don't want are around the edges, you know, so like the, if the fleece has been rolled up, and you can unroll it and see kind of, you know, depending on how it's been rolled, and how well you're able to unroll it, you might not exactly be able to see the shape of the sheep. But you know, like the manure tags would be in the back edge, the britch wool, which is the wool on the backs and kind of toward the backs of their legs, is more coarse, usually and that's towards the edge of the fleece. If they have, you know, the fleece around their legs might have been, well, like the fleece that I was carding the Oxford, there were some sections of that fleece, some pieces of that fleece that had dark hairs in it from the leg. Dark leg hairs in it, which really, if I had been doing a better job, I would have, I would have skirted a little bit better and taken taken that out. And that would have been around the edge, as well. Yeah, sometimes, sometimes around their neck, you'll find a lot of hay from, you know, from eating. And so you can take some of that out, if you want to, you know, be real harsh with your skirting and get out the most of the veg manner. So a lot of it is around the edges. The other thing that I wish I had done more of with this fleece that I have, is... and I did a little bit of it when I was picking and carding. But a lot of times you can shake the fleece, if you can shake the fleece. Especially if you have... I would love to have a table that was like mesh. Because the second cuts, any second cuts, well, you know, a lot of that will fall away, a lot of the veg matter will fall away, some of the things that you don't want will fall away and, and you can see it a little bit better if you shake it, you can see, you know, where are those areas where you have second cuts and those little short bits. So I need to do a better job of that. My habit is, you know, to look at the fleece when I first get it home, and then roll it back up and put it away and then I get on a tear about washing and I just grab some of it, you know. What I really should do is lay it back out, sort it. Look for places where the fleece is really nice and put all that together. And wash just that section and be really intentional about what parts of it you wash, as opposed to just, you know, grab a piece of it that's going to fit in the washer and wash it. So you can be intentional about your fleece, if especially if you get a nice one, right? Where you want to keep the nicest bits together. If it's a fleece like a lot of the... And maybe this is why I do it. A lot of the bargain fleeces that I've gotten, you know, they're just jumbled in a bag. And there's no knowing what what part of the fleece is what. So that's how I got my start and maybe that's why I have some bad habits when it comes to grabbing out bits to wash. Marsha 48:56 Yeah. The first fleece I bought was actually a Shetland fleece. And I just took it out of the bag and I put it i... like tore it in half or smaller batches and just washed the whole thing. Yeah. And that was a mistake because what... and now this is specific to Shetland, but I took a class by Judith McKenzie about taking a Shetland fleece and because the fiber so different depending on where it is on the sheep, you really don't want to take the... You can do anything you want to do, but it's better to separate out the different fiber, different textures and fibers because-- and I didn't know that about a Shetland. So I just, you know... but I think in any fleece there are going to be different textures depending on where it is on the sheep. So I did that. I just washed all of it and carded it and started spinning it. Is it bad? No, not necessarily but it could have been better. Kelly 50:00 Yeah, it's just different. You know, if you if you want a really super... if you want to get like, every type of yarn you can get from a fleece, then you have to be more intentional about it, right? You'll find the finest part and you'll make a nice yarn that's fine and soft. With the more coarse part, you'll make something that's a more workhorse yarn. But, but if you want to just make a sweater, you just mix it all together and make a sweater. I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that. Yeah, right. Marsha 50:36 Well, and I was... the other thing I was gonna say about skirting is sort of, for me, you know how I am. It's like, I want to use every bit of it. Because this precious thing I bought, I want to use every bit of it. Yeah. And it's okay to be aggressive, you know? Yeah. Well, you don't need to save all of it. It's okay. Kelly 50:53 I think I've told this story before about the, I think it was like 40 pounds of fleece that I got from... I was at a spinning day and somebody said, Oh, you know, my brother in law has fleece in his barn. Would you be interested? I'm like, of course! So I went and got this 40 pounds of fleece. And I'm pretty sure that's what it came out to be. And anyway, I opened it all up on my lawn and made piles. And I found myself at the end, even though I had so much of it, I found myself going back to the trash pile and taking taking bits that I had skirted out and putting them back. So yeah, you know, it's hard. It's greed. Fleece Greed is a real thing. Right? So, but but some people are better at that than than others. And then there are some people who keep their carding waste. You know, when I'm carding, and I clean off the carder, the waste that's on the small drum of the carder, I toss it. But there are people who save that and use it for something else, you know, and you can do that. But I, that's not something I do. I think about it. [laughing] And then I tell myself how much fleece I have in the garage. And I toss it in the bin. Marsha 52:23 So about carding, let's talk a little bit about carding, then, oh, as I say, it's a huge subject. So and we can't go into the minutiae of it. But let's just talk sort of, in general about carding. The different tools and whatnot. Kelly 52:33 Well, I put a couple of links in the show notes about it, I have a drum carder, and I, one of the things that I can say for sure, whether using hand cards or a drum carder, is that you really want to not overload, you know. Less is more. You really can go faster if you don't try to put too much in. And I have also learned that it's faster for me, even though it doesn't seem like it, if I do some picking first, which is like separating all the fibers. And so I'll just, you know, stand at the table and pick a whole bunch of, you know, like a whole box of fiber, one of those, you know, reams of paper boxes. I'll take a bunch of fiber, and I'll do the picking until I've got a good amount in one of those boxes, and then I'll start carding. And that really helps because it's already-- the fibers already separated and doesn't get clumped and stuck in the drum carder, and then I usually do two passes. With this fleece that I have, I did the first pass and got a bunch of batts. And then I pulled off strips from each one of those bats and blended them you know, blended them together and did a second pass. I've done with some fleeces depending on how, how much what kind of fleece it is and how it looks, I might do a third, a third pass. Or if I'm blending two colors together. I'll do, you know, I'll do each color that I'm blending, each part that I'm blending separately. And then I'll pull strips off and weigh them and run them through the carder together and then probably have to do a third pass to get them better blended. The first pass usually isn't very well blended and then the second one is much better. So I do a first one to just kind of get everything organized separately. And then a second one to blend and then a third one to finish the blending if I want the blending to be more even. So you can do the same thing with the hand cards, the blending. I've done that before. It's not so... I don't do so much weighing when I use the hand cards, I just kind of eyeball how much I'm putting on. I might weigh it ahead of time to say like, I want 70% of this and 30% of that. And so I have my two piles. But then when I put it onto the cards, I'm not weighing each time I use the hand cards, I'm not weighing these. So yeah, that Carding is... I enjoy it, it seems like it will be a slow process. But actually, that 400 grams that I carded, you know, went through the carder, I picked it, and then it went through the carder twice. And it was a, you know, a couple of hours, maybe two or three times during the week. So I mean, that's not that much time. It didn't seem like it was that much time. Marsha 55:53 No, it's not bad. You just listen to podcasts or watch TV or something. Yeah, Kelly 55:58 yeah. Or listen to a zoom meeting. [laughing] Kelly 56:09 So that's um, that's how I card. Now, the flick carder, we talked a little bit about that already. That kind of requires that you have the lock structure still intact in your fleece. And then I just put it on my lap on top of like a magazine on top of my lap and just brush out the end of the of the, the tip end of the fleece and then turn it around and brush out the the back end of that lock and then set it aside and start another one. And that works really well. I don't have mini combs. And I kind of would like to have mini combs. I have the big combs that you clamp onto a table and I took a class on using those, which was really good. But I haven't really used my combs much since then. They're I mean, they're really a nice piece of equipment. But for some reason I'm not... I'm just not in the habit of getting them out and using them. And I think mini combs might be something that I might like to have. Because, just because they're something you can just sit and do. Marsha 57:17 Right, right. Kelly 57:19 So I'd be interested to hear what people think about mini combs. And then the other thing I have not used is a blending board. And I know most of the time people are using a blending board with fiber that's already processed to to you know, mix colors together and make interesting rolags or punis. So, but that's not something that I've ever done. So I'd be interested to know how many of our listeners have used either a blending board or mini combs and whether they think either one of those things is kind of an essential, an essential tool. Marsha 58:04 How big are mini combs? Kelly 58:04 About, probably about, I would say the ones I've seen, maybe about two and a half to three inches across. They're smaller than hand cards. Marsha 58:16 Okay. Kelly 58:17 But they they have the same kind of, you know, like, the same kind of tines as like the bigger combs. I think two rows of tines. And you use them the same way where you put them perpendicular to one another. Like you put the fiber on the one comb and then you... Marsha 58:35 Oh here I'm looking online at them right now as we speak. Kelly 58:39 So I've been thinking about maybe getting a set of mini combs, because that is one type of preparation that I haven't ever done. And I know there are a lot of people who really like it and you can get a lot of the garbage out of your fleece that way. Moreso than with carding. More waste, you know, there's more waste, but you get more of the best part of the fiber. Marsha 59:12 Right. Yeah. Okay. Kelly 59:15 So, anyway, so that's my, my experience of of carding and combing fiber preparation. So and I have a couple--Like I said, I have a couple of links in the show notes for that. Marsha 59:28 Okay, good. The other thing that we I just I thought that we decided we should talk just touch on, too, is also mill processing. You don't necessarily have to process this yourself. And so we have some links in the show notes. Fibershed did a mill inventory of mills across the... Well Fiber shed is a California based group. So they show one mill in California, they show mills across the country, but they don't have them listed by name, so. But the link is in there, it's interesting to look at. There's also a link to the producer directory. And that Kelly too, we were talking about that before we recorded. That has not just mills, but people who are producing fiber. And also on Ravelry there's a Fiber Prep Ravelry group. And they don't have mills listed in like a central location to go to see all the mills that are listed. But in the discussion thread, people are talking about the different mills. Yeah, I think my sense is, what you have to do is you just have to Google mills for processing, wool, alpaca, whatever and search for the mills. I know some of the mills popped up. But I know the three that I know, fairly locally to me. They're processing their fiber for their own yarn. They're not processing fiber anymore for people who just want to have a fleece processed. So yeah, there are mills out there. I think though, you have to just Google and start searching. As we said, there, it's difficult to find one location that just has a list of all of the mills doing small batches of in the United States, right? Kelly 1:01:21 Yeah, Valley Oak Wool Mill is the one that that I've used in California. And then there's also Mendocino Wool and Fiber Company. Again, this is just California. I think the eastern part of the United States has a couple of really well used mills and there are a lot. There are more of them in that area. But yeah, Mendocino Wool and Fiber is the other one. I haven't used them but their website, I can put their link in the show notes as well. mendowool.com is their website Marsha 1:02:01 When we... what we talked about in the last episode is you know if they can't... most not all, but mills can either just wash it and and prep it for spinning or you can just have it processed into roving or you can have it processed into yarn if you want to do that. But that's another resource. Kelly 1:02:23 And it is true there are a lot more of them that process your wooll into fiber preparations. Morro Fleeceworks is another one in California that I was forgetting. A lot more of them process into roving than process all the way to yarn. There's a real lack of mills, small mills, that process your wool all the way to yarn, and a lot more of them just the process or fiber. Marsha 1:02:58 Yeah. So I just wanted to mention that. All right. Um, so let's just briefly talk about carding. I, you know, I have a drum Carter, I have the carding the combs that I use. I don't have a blending board, which would be kind of nice because I do remember I bought... I think it was up on Whidbey Island at the Whidbey Island spinners... little packets of mohair locks that were dyed. And those are great to blend in. So I was thinking I should probably get it. It'd be nice to get a blending board but all in good time. Right. Kelly 1:03:45 Mm hmm. Well, you can do that blending with your with your drum carder too. Marsha 1:03:51 Yeah, that's how I've done it in the past, because I did some at your house with your drum carder. So I should, I should try it here. Anyway, so anything else we need to add to this topic? Kelly 1:04:06 Um, I think if you are going to go look at the fleece processor list in the Ravelry group that we've posted, if you are going to go look at that list, I would suggest starting at the most recent posts. Because the thread has been going for like six years or something. So you know, something you get out on page one is maybe not even...Maybe not even there anymore. Marsha 1:04:34 Yeah, yeah. Kelly 1:04:36 Yeah. So Well, I'd be interested in hearing what other people do and also you know, if you have a mill that you've used to process fleece that we haven't mentioned. Maybe we could start a list. Marsha 1:04:53 Yeah, there you go. Maybe. Yeah, we should! I know like some people have used Shepherds Wool that does Crazy that we like so much. People have had yarn prop don't Kelly 1:05:07 Stone Hedge Marsha 1:05:08 Stone Hedge. That's the one! That's the name of it I want to say because they make shepherds wool their worsted weight. Yeah. So I know that they've had them. So maybe we should start a list Kelly. if nobody's done it, maybe we need to. Kelly 1:05:24 Yes. Well, we can start by-- we can start by asking our listeners to provide us feedback. With mills that they've used or that they know of in their area. We've got three California ones listed on our show notes for today. But yeah, we need to put in some other states. Yeah. All right. Project. Project. Yes. Just what I need. [laughing] Marsha 1:05:53 So anyway, but the summer spin-in goes through Labor Day, which is September 6. Kelly 1:06:00 So and we have two finished object threads. One is for finished spinning. And the other one is for finished projects. So if you're making something out of hand spun, you can join us. You don't have to be spinning this summer to join in. Marsha 1:06:15 Yeah. Kelly breaking in while editing 1:06:18 Oh, coming in from the future, to say that we forgot to tell you that we will have prizes from Three Green Sisters again this year! We'll talk more about that next episode. Marsha 1:06:31 Okay, Kelly. So and then do we have any more housekeeping? Kelly 1:06:34 I don't think so. Marsha 1:06:36 All right. Well, then, I guess we'll say goodbye. Kelly 1:06:38 All right, Marsha. Marsha 1:06:40 We'll talk we'll talk to weeks. Kelly 1:06:41 Okay. Bye bye. Marsha 1:06:42 Alrighty. Bye bye. Kelly 1:06:43 Thank you so much for listening. To subscribe to the podcast visit to Two Ewes Fiber Adventures dot com Marsha 1:06:50 Join us on our adventures on Ravelry and Instagram. I am betterinmotion and Kelly is 1hundredprojects. Kelly 1:06:58 Until next time, we're the Two Ewes doing our part for world fleece! Transcribed by https://otter.ai  

In this BlackGirlMagic Episode, Ekemini and Christina are at the table with Natalie Lauren Sims. They talk about Natalie's hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma on the heels of the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre. Learn more about Natalie Lauren Sims: Art is where we wander until our voice finds us. And like all truth, it finds us eventually. As stubborn as a sunrise, arriving to set the captives of darkness free, Natalie Lauren's work is the “Art of Liberation.” In the spirit of unrelenting audacity inherited from her hometown, the same womb that birthed Black Wall Street; Natalie Lauren is a multi-sensory storyteller. Advocating for untold stories of black women is a burden too significant to be restricted to one medium. So Natalie has set out to master a mixed media form of storytelling, utilizing Songwriting, Painting, and Creative Direction. Her art is an homage created to disrupt the silence and the monolithic identity seeking to oppress black women into a digestible narrative for everyone else but themselves. Natalie aims to curate a safe space for black women to explore the fullness of their humanity found in radical BEING instead of consistent DOING. IVP Truth's Table Discount for Soul Care in African American Practice by Barbara L. Peacock: Truth's Table listeners can save 30% off Soul Care in African American Practice when they order at https://www.ivpress.com/soul-care-in-african-american-practice using promo code TRUTH21 offer expires on September 30, 2021. Sponsor: IVP The Coming Race Wars Video: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zybfbz5o2a0edxh/AAD-T2nlGJ1AAWWK_VerZwRYa?dl=0 Black Women, join Truth's Table Black Women's Discipleship Group on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/truthstablediscipleship Support Truth's Table: Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TruthsTable PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/TruthsTable Merchandise: https://teespring.com/shop/truthstable?pid=46&cid=2742

One of the most common questions I get asked when it comes to podcasting is ‘how do I work with sponsors?’ and on today's podcast episode, I'm going to walk you through the three ways on how to make money with your podcast. I’ll also be diving into why sponsorship should be the last way in which you approach making money with your podcast. A few of the questions I hear most often are:How do I make money? How do I work with sponsors? How many downloads do I need?What I'm going to share with you today is my personal opinion after running and producing a podcast since 2015. There are three key ways (buckets) to make money from your podcast. They are:Marketing Your Own Products & ServicesAffiliate MarketingSponsorships Marketing Your Own Products & ServicesDo you sell courses or digital services such as group coaching or copywriting? Market these. Promote them to your listeners and allow them to gain traction with your audience. Spend time building out your own offerings rather than spending hours looking for sponsors. If you don't have a business yet, no worries. If you simply have an idea of the type of business you want to start it doesn't necessarily commit you to figuring out the product right away. If you're clear on the direction you want to go with your business you could set up the content of your podcast to provide value and solutions for the pain points of your audience. What you would do is invite your audience to engage with you beyond the podcast. This could be in the form of a free guide/ download, an offer for a free training, the offer to join a free Facebook group, etc., so that you can really begin to nurture and build that stronger relationship with them before you even try to sell them anything. When you are ready to start selling to them, you’ve already built that ‘Know, Like & Trust’ factor with them. Affiliate MarketingMaybe you don’t have a product or service yet, but you know about a software that would benefit your audience. By sharing a software/ product/ service of someone else's using a unique URL code, you get a piece of that revenue by sharing. This is affiliate marketing. When I first got into online business, I remember learning about affiliate marketing and I thought, ‘oh my god, this is so gross’; and the truth is, you're going to find whatever you look for in life and I think I was looking for that.Now, I look at affiliate marketing and think, ‘okay, this totally makes sense’. The thing I love about affiliate marketing is when you share a product or service with your audience, it's simply the business's way of compensating you. So rather than the company paying for their own marketing, by you sharing their product or service with your audience, they're essentially redirecting that money to you.A great example of this is a few years ago my friend Natalie Bacon had a blogging course. She started her online business blogging about finance and she created a course. I had people in my audience asking me if I could talk about blogging and essentially, I was like, ‘No, I actually can't because I can talk about podcasting’, just not about blogging. So Natalie and I partnered together to do a webinar training for anyone who wanted to learn how to blog. For me it was truly an aligned fit because she taught people how to start a blog, and she was successful at it, and with the podcast I was able to then share with my audience about the free training. Once the training was over Natalie then promoted her (paid) course to all of the attendees and anyone who enrolled in her course using my link, I then received an affiliate commission.An example of a software service that I'm an affiliate of is Podia. If you go to the She Did It Her Way website and look under ‘Start A Business’ you'll see Podia listed. If you click that link, it is an affiliate link. There are two reasons why I promote Podia:I use it personallyI love it These are excellent examples of aligned affiliate marketing and having integrity behind who you partner up with. Affiliate marketing, when you do it right and you do it intentionally, can be lucrative. Lastly, you can certainly be able to create revenue in your business from using affiliate marketing. SponsorshipsSponsorships are a wonderful way to generate revenue and we have generated 1,000s of dollars in sponsorship revenue with the podcast. I am so grateful to be able to have so many of you to tune in and listen to the show, which then allows for brands to reach out to us to say, ‘hey, your audience and what we offer is in line, can we do a partnership?’.There are highs and lows with sponsorships. 95% of the time sponsors and brands have reached out to us, so I wasn't investing my time or energy trying to seek out sponsorships. I think that's something that's really key is that in the beginning, your time is so limited. You should always be assessing our time in terms of ‘if I say yes to one thing, then what am I indirectly saying no to?’. I recommend that the time that you're going to spend reaching out to sponsorships and cultivating that relationship and finding those that are going to sponsor your podcast and instead use those hours and really invest in marketing your own products or services. So the way that I like to look at sponsorship is it's great when it's there and it comes in a supplemental, but it's not the backbone of how I make money. Do we still work with sponsors when it's a good fit and it's aligned? Yes, absolutely. I always want to make sure 1) I am protecting your ears. I'm not just going to serve up a ton of ads on my show. 2) It has to make sense and feel really good. Sponsorship is a great supplement, but I would not consider it the end-all-be-all. Upcoming TrainingInside my upcoming training, How to Launch Your Podcast In 5 Easy Steps, I'm covering my exact plug-and-play content planning framework. I'm going through the specific tech setup that you need and also some of the specifics I teach to my students inside Podcast Your Way. This way you can actually start recording the day after you leave the training, and have specific tangible next steps laid out for you. Grab your seat here.I am so grateful that you tuned into it another podcast episode and until next time, keep doing it your way, Insights:“Spend time building out your own offerings rather than spending hours looking for sponsors.”“The thing I love about affiliate marketing is when you share a product or service with your audience, it's simply the business's way of compensating you.”“Affiliate marketing, when you do it right and you do it intentionally, can be lucrative.”“So the way that I like to look at sponsorship is it's great when it's there and it comes in a supplemental, but it's not the backbone of how I make money.”Resources:Podcast Your WayPodiaLaunch Your Podcast in 5 Easy Steps!

Listen to this podcast, in which Sara Colman, RD, CDE, the manager of Kidney Care Nutrition for DaVita interviews Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD, a dietitian for DaVita in Longview, Texas, on the importance of clinicians emphasizing moderation rather than elimination in a kidney-friendly diet. Natalie and Sara discuss the typical diets for end stage kidney disease patients on dialysis, including the different modalities of peritoneal dialysis, home hemodialysis and in-center dialysis. They examine how the kidney diet compares to some of the generally popular diets, what some of the biggest misconceptions are about kidney friendly diets, what some of the common barriers are that prevent diet adherence, how nutrition can affect quality of life, what overall goals dietitians have for their patients, how clinicians can advise patients to incorporate some of their favorite foods, even those that are not kidney friendly, in their diets and how to use the recipes on davita.com in meal planning and other nutrition resources available to patients and clinicians. Podcast Transcript:   Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (00:43): Hello, and welcome to the DaVita Medical Insights Podcast. My name is Sarah Colman, RD, CDE and I'm the davita.com nutrition manager for DaVita kidney care. Over the past decade, we've seen a shift from a strict mineral based kidney diet to one that includes more healthy whole foods and even questioning the benefits of the old kidney diet. Today's can they diet continues to evolve with even more research. I'm excited to join on the phone today by Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD, a dietician for DaVita in Longview, Texas, as we discuss the importance of clinicians emphasizing moderation rather than elimination and kidney friendly diet. Thank you for joining us, Natalie. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (01:28): Hi, Sarah. Thank you for having me today. I'm very excited to be here and to be able to speak on such an important topic. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (01:36): Great. Well, let's get started. Can you tell me about the typical diets for end-stage kidney disease patients on dialysis, including modalities such as peritoneal dialysis, home hemodialysis and in-center dialysis? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (01:52): Yes, I do have a little disclaimer first. The diet guidelines that I'm talking about today are focused on patients who have what we call end-stage kidney disease. So they are on some form of dialysis. Nutrition recommendations are very different for people with chronic kidney disease, stage one through four or those trying to preserve remaining kidney function. So just to be clear, these diet guidelines we're going to talk about are focused on patients who are receiving dialysis treatment. So the most basic diet guidelines, once a patient's on a high protein diet, the dialysis treatment increases their calorie needs, their protein needs, so we do need them to increase their protein intake, which is something they may have not been used to if they had been following a low protein diet prior to dialysis. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (02:55): We also want them to limit their potassium intake. So certain fruits and vegetables are going to be high in potassium. We would want them to try to limit those, cut back as much as possible. We also want them to watch their phosphorus intake. That's usually found in foods either naturally or sometimes your food companies add that as a preservative. So that's another thing that they have to watch out for. Low salt or low sodium is another one of the diet recommendations, and then low fluids. So sometimes patients on dialysis, you have to limit their fluid intake to avoid gaining too much fluid in their body. So that's pretty common for them to have to follow. Now, those are typically the recommendations for the in-center dialysis patients. Those are the patients that are coming usually three treatments a week. For the patients doing home dialysis, they may be doing shorter, more frequent dialysis treatments, so they may not have to be quite as strict with their diet. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (04:14): Then they get a little more wiggle room since they are doing more frequent treatment. Then with PD, or peritoneal dialysis, the PD solution absolutely removes more potassium from the blood than just your standard hemodialysis. So those patients actually may have to follow a high potassium diet. They may be encouraged to eat certain foods that your in-center or your home dialysis patients are told to limit. Then also the PD solution is a kind of a sugar solution, so your body does absorb some of those calories. So this can cause problems with weight gain or blood sugar levels, so they may have to work with their dietician to try to modify their calorie or their carbohydrate intake. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (05:12): Well, sounds like a lot to remember when it comes to kidney diets. Good thing we have the dieticians there to help work with patients and guide them in what they need for their individual needs. So we know that there's a lot of diets out there. It seems like every month or so we have a new popular fad diet. We have people who are eating keto or very low carb. We have other healthy type diets like Mediterranean Diet. So overall, how does the kidney diet compare to some of these popular diets or general healthy eating recommendations? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (05:49): Yes, you're right. It seems like every month there's a news fad diet popping up. So usually when you hear the word diet, we think of cutting out certain foods or food groups or restricting yourself to a certain calorie amount until you reach a goal. So there's some sort of end goal in mind, like a certain dress size or a pants size or a number on the sale. There's some goal that the people following these diets are trying to reach. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (06:28): So the difference between that and the kidney diet is the kidney diet is lifelong. Of course, we do have certain, I'll say, goals that we want you to achieve. We want certain blood levels to be within target ranges. We want you to meet what we call your target weight when you come in to your treatment. So we do have small goals, but as far as the true end goal, there really isn't one. This is a lifelong way of eating. So we really want to work with our patients and help them create actions that they can implement forever. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (07:16): Natalie, I find that there are a lot of patients who come to dialysis with so much confusion, and I think part of that is because in earlier stages of kidney disease, they may or may not need a low potassium diet. They may be restricting protein to help decrease waste buildup in their blood. Then a person comes to dialysis, all of a sudden they may not be eliminating enough fluid, the kidneys are starting to shut down more and more. So I think this causes a lot of confusion when a person comes to the dialysis center and starts dialyzing, and they're unsure. They have mixed messages about what to eat, what not to eat, what their allowances are. So in your eyes, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you hear about kidney friendly diets? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (08:08): Some of the biggest things that I hear that are definitely not true is that you can never eat a high potassium fruit or vegetable ever again. Probably the most common high potassium fruits or vegetables are bananas, tomatoes, avocados. So it's definitely a myth that you can never, ever have a single bite of those foods ever again if you're on dialysis. If anyone has ever looked at the DaVita website with our recipe book or cookbook, we have recipes that have avocados, tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, but they're all in moderation or smaller portions. So we still do want to work these foods into our diet. They can provide a lot of flavor, a lot of color to our meals, but we just have to watch how much we eat at one time. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (09:16): Another myth is that the diet is just simply too hard to follow, and yes, it is very complex, but it's not impossible. We're not asking our patients to track their potassium intake down to the very last milligram. I don't ask mine to even really track their grams of protein. We simplify it as much as we can and try to make it very doable. So I encouraged them to do more of just asking themselves, "Does this meal include any high protein food?" So rather than count grams of protein, I just want them to say if a high protein food is included in the meal. So for example, a patient told me yesterday that their breakfast was usually a couple pieces of toast and some black coffee. So we talked about how that didn't have a lot of protein in it. So we talked about adding an egg or two to try to get their protein intake up. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (10:31): So once you're sure you've got some good protein with that meal, I encourage them to ask themselves, "Are there any high potassium foods that I need to watch out for?" So if they are out at a restaurant, if the side for their meal was going to be potatoes, which we know have a lot of potassium in them, if that's something they're trying to cut back on, then we can see if we can swap that out for a lower potassium vegetable. Then third question is, "Are there any high phosphorus foods I should be careful of?" So I teach my patients to be able to identify some typical hight phosphorus foods, which ones to try to avoid as much as possible and which ones to cut back on. So for example, cheese is one of the more common high phosphorus foods. So I encourage them to either use a smaller portion or ask for the tea to be put on the side of the plate so that they can control the amount on there. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (11:41): So I would say compared to calorie counting and macro counting and the true keto diet where you're watching every last gram of carb that you serve yourself, honestly, the kidney diet seems a lot easier than that. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (12:04): But that really makes a difference. I know as soon as you tell me not to eat something, especially if it's something like chocolate that I really love, I'm going to start craving it. So I'm sure for dialysis patients, just knowing that if there's something you truly want to eat, there is a way to work it into your diet. It's working with your dietician and finding out what's the results after you've added that item. I think as clinicians that's one thing that we can do, is just really give that flexibility but also monitoring the effects of making changes in a person's usual renal diet. So Natalie, as a dietician, what are some of the common barriers that you see that prevent diet adherence? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (12:54): Definitely I would say with a patient who's new to dialysis, a lot of times they're just very overwhelmed. Their whole life has suddenly changed. Depending on what type of dialysis they're doing, let's just say they're doing in-center dialysis, so that means all of a sudden for three or four hours at a time, three or four times a week, depending on their dialysis constrictions, suddenly they have to be in this dialysis center, hooked up to a machine, there's monitors everywhere, there's beeping, there's blood, there's needles. It's actually kind of scary when you think about it. As comforting as the teammates try to be with all the patients, it is a very overwhelming life altering thing to start dialysis. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (13:56): So in addition to dealing with all that, now we want you to remember all these different food rules and only eat these few foods and don't eat anything that you enjoy eating, it's a little unrealistic for us to expect that from our patients. So that's probably the first barrier that I see, is they're just not ready to take in the education fully just yet, or they're just overwhelmed with everything and they can't quite focus on that. So just working with them, small changes that they can make over gradual amount of time helps. Like you said, there's certain foods that you may find comfort in like chocolate or ice cream. Where if I go tell you, "Okay, no more chocolate, no more ice cream, no more this, no more that," that suddenly is just consuming your mind. That's all you think about. That's all you crave. So for someone to kind of take away that last little bit of comfort is very frustrating, very overwhelming. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (15:11): Another barrier would be just the lack of understanding. Our patients are just like anyone else. They're flooded with the messages from the TV commercials and the late night infomercials and the magazines about the latest fad diets. So sometimes it's just kind of a disconnect between what the media tells us, what our friends following the latest fad diet or selling a weight loss supplement is telling us, and then what our dialysis dietician is telling us. So it can all be very confusing and kind of mixed messages there. A lot of the patients haven't had true diet education before. So this may be their first experience ever being told to watch what they eat and things like that. So definitely just lack of understanding is another barrier. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (16:20): I think that with that, often patients are given food lists and the list may say foods you can eat. Foods to avoid or limit. That focus is so much on the word avoid, but you have to remind patients that it says, "Or limit." So there may be some foods on that list that, yes, you do need to avoid altogether, but often there's many foods on that list that that can be included. It's just limiting the amount and the frequency. I think that's one thing that we can do as clinicians, is help patients to understand that that's their focus, that it's not as strict or as awful or as bad as they initially might think that changing their diet can be. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (17:10): So we think a lot about quality of life with our patients and we know that when a person is not getting the right nutrient balance, if they're malnourished, if they're having appetite problems or maybe they just have that fear of eating, that can all affect a person's quality of life. So in your eyes, Natalie, how can nutrition affect quality of life and what can we do to improve it through better nutrition? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (17:45): Nutrition does play a big role in quality of life. So although following the kidney diet won't reverse the need for dialysis, it can help them manage some of the symptoms that they may be dealing with. So watching their salt intake, it's more than just we don't want you to eat all the salt. Watching their salt intake will help decrease their blood pressure, which can help them avoid a stroke or a heart attack. Watching their fluid intake helps them breathe easier, and it keeps their heart from having to work harder from carrying all this extra fluid weight around. Limiting their calcium and their phosphorous intake helps them improve or preserve their bone health, so it keeps their bones strong and healthy. Limiting their potassium intake can help avoid issues with heart rhythms, eating a high protein diet will help keep their albumin level up which helps keep their bodies healthy and they feel well, they have more energy. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (19:09): Then we can also work with our patients on if they have diabetes and they want to help manage their blood sugar levels, or they want to lose weight to prepare for kidney transplant. We work with them on all aspects of that. I have some patients that will joke around with me saying, "I know my phosphorus is high. I know I came in with a lot fluid today" and I remind them, "We do want you to meet these certain metrics, but more than that, we want you to feel good. We want you to stay healthy." So if they come in with a lot of extra fluid on them, I ask them, "How are you feeling today? How do you feel with all that extra fluid?" And they'll tell me, "It's really hard to breathe. It's hard to get around. It was hard to play with my grandkids this weekend." Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (20:06): So we talk about it's more than just meeting the goal on a piece of paper. We want them to be able to do all the things that they want to do. Same thing with phosphorus. We have a goal that we want the patient to meet on paper, but if they're itching, if their phosphorus is high and it's causing a lot of calciphylaxis, they're having very weakened bones and things like that, we want to help them want to change their eating habits so that they can improve those things. Not just meet this paper goal that we have for them. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (20:53): I think that's a great point, Natalie, that if you can tie in how your nutrition or the way you're eating can impact how you're feeling, but also how that impacts your day-to-day activities, especially when it comes to interacting with your family and friends. I think that's a real selling point when it comes to the importance of diet and what a difference it can make in how a patient is feeling. I know that we have individual goals for patients, but there's also overall goals. I thought maybe you could talk a little bit about what is your overall goal for your patients? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (21:40): Well, my overall goal is really just to educate my patients so that they do understand how to follow this diet, how it's going to improve their quality of life, how it will make them feel. Some of my patients, and I'm sure other dieticians, they'll jokingly call us the food police. "Oh, here comes the food police to tell me what I shouldn't be eating." That's definitely not what we want to be called. Most of us didn't become dieticians because we hate food. It's usually quite the opposite. We love food as well, so much that we chose to get a degree in it. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (22:27): So my goal for my patients is just to have a true understanding of the diet and the benefits of following these guidelines. Then also just to help empower them to make their own choices. A lot of times with kidney disease and having to do dialysis, they feel sort of a loss of control over their lives. So food is one of the things that they do have absolute control over. So DaVita has a program called Epic. It stands for empowering patients in their care, and it helps dieticians and teammate really try to find out what's important to the patient and really kind of give them back that sense of control over their lives. So I [inaudible 00:23:32] my patients that they are in charge of themselves. I'm not here to tell them don't eat that or to take away a dark soda if I see them with a dark soda at their treatment. My job is just to educate them so that they know that drinking that dark soda, because it has a lot of phosphorus, it may increase their phosphorus level in their blood, which could harm their bones in the long run. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (24:03): So as long as they understand that when they make their diet choices, then I've done my job. Now, next step, I would want to try to find out if there was a way that they could be motivated to make those healthier diets swaps and to exchange that for a low phosphorus drink, but again, that's up to them. If they're not ready to change or if that soda is just extremely comforting to them right now we definitely won't push them. Because at the end of the day, we all have to eat to live. Food really should be enjoyable. It should be something that you can still sit down and have a meal with your family members who aren't on dialysis. You shouldn't feel like you have to cook totally different meals and eat at one end of the table while they eat at the other. So we don't want it to be disconnecting. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (25:14): So it sounds like a lot of it coming to the patient is the matter of choice and maybe the power of choice being educated to make the best choices. At the same time, we know that patients are going to include some of those not-so-friendly kidney foods, whether it's a special celebration or it's a craving that they have. We need to prepare patients to be able to work some of those foods into their diets. So what are some things that clinicians can advise patients to do that can help them in incorporating small amounts of some of these foods that patients feel I can never have, or I shouldn't be eating this. How can we help them as clinicians to incorporate some of those foods in their diets? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (26:12): Yes, you're right. Our patients are definitely going to encounter times where they may not have kidney friendly food available to them. It could be on purpose, I'll say, but it could also be not on purpose. Like their power goes out. They're staying with a friend for the weekend and that friend has a bunch of junk food and things that aren't so kidney friendly at their house. So we definitely want to prepare our patients with what to do in these situations. So right off the bat, I would say portion control is number one. So when it comes to chips, candy, kind of more the dessert, sweat treat items, if you can buy those in snack size versions, usually that helps with kind of limiting yourself to a smaller portion size, rather than buying a large bag and then trying to limit yourself, reaching back in for just a few more chips or whatever it is. So buying the snack size versions of the chips and the candies. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (27:42): Another thing that helps with portion control is using smaller plates or bowls or glasses. If you have a huge plate but the serving size for food is one cup, when you put one cup of food on a huge plate, it doesn't look like you have very much food. But if you have a smaller dish or a smaller plate, then when you put the one type of food in there it looks like it goes further. So it's kind of a mind trick, where you now you should only be eating this certain amount, but you feel like you had more when it takes up more room on your plate. Another good way to do portion control is if you're out at a restaurant to order off of the kid's menu or split a meal with a friend, or have the cook or the waiter divide your meal in half and put half in a to-go box to eat at a another meal time. So those are some things to do for portion control. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (28:56): Another tip would be to measure your food. Even as a dietician working with food, many, many years, I still have to measure food sometimes. I don't trust myself to accurately estimate what a half of a cup or a quarter of a cup looks like. So if you're not sure, just get out those measuring spoons and measure it. Another big tip would be to make healthier versions of the foods that you love at home. So when my patients tell me that they love pizza, they just cannot give up pizza, I just tell them, "Good. I don't want you to give up pizza. I want you to learn how to make a healthier version of that pizza." So I share the DaVita recipes with them, where you still have the tomato sauce, but you control how much that you put on your pizza so it'll have a little bit less tomatoes, little bit less cheese. Maybe we added in some extra meat or some extra vegetables to make up for that. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (30:17): Same thing with burgers, casseroles. I encourage so many of our patients to look on the DaVita website at the recipes because there's a lot of comfort food like chilies and soups and things like that that can be made in very kidney friendly, healthy ways. Then another thing would be to stop kind of mindless eating. I think our culture today, rarely do we sit down at a dinner table anymore. We're always eating on the go, eating in front of the TV. So we may end up eating a large amount really, really quickly and not realize that we're full because we ate our whole meal in five minutes, or we were focused on watching a TV show and we just keep eating, keep eating, keep reaching back into that bag for more and more. So it's really easy to kind of let your portion sizes get away from you when you're not focused on your meal. So just truly being engaged at meal time, and that can definitely help portion control and things like that. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (31:50): Great tips, Natalie. I think another thing too is you talk about the recipes on davita.com, which we have over 1100, and part of it goes with planning a meal. So if you are trying a new recipe, planning what goes with that meal or thinking of a way to then kind of put everything together. I know as a dietician, that's one of the things that you do, is just helping patients to come up with ideas for meals, that also what they want may be providing them with a kidney friendly version of that, like you mentioned the pizza, and then putting it all together into a satisfying meal. I think that's so important. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (32:34): Thanks for those tips that you provided and all of the great information, Natalie. Is there anything else you'd like to add for our clinician audience today? Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (32:45): Really just to encourage your patients to look at the DaVita diet [inaudible 00:32:55] section for recipes and things like that, and then having the clinicians ... Go on there yourself, see how user-friendly it is. I go on there all the time just for recipes for myself. It has a very cool search feature where if you have one ingredient that you're like, "It's about to go bad in my fridge, I need to use it, but I just can't think of a recipe to use it," you just type in that one ingredient and it pulls up tons of recipes. So I personally use that all the time. So I definitely encourage the clinicians to check out the resources available to our patients, just so they're familiar with them themselves. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (33:44): Then don't hesitate to reach out to the dietician at your clinic. I may be biased, but I think our DaVita dieticians are some of the best in the field. They work so hard to provide awesome care for the patients. They're constantly coming up with tips and blog posts and recipes and educational handouts and just so much to help our patients. It really does take a village to take care of these patients. So the more closely that we work with each other, the better care that we provide. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (34:29): That's pretty awesome, Natalie. Thanks again for joining me and discussing the importance of clinicians emphasizing moderation rather than elimination in kidney friendly diet. Natalie Sexton, MS, RDN, CSR, LD (34:42): Thank you so much for having me today, Sarah. I really appreciate the opportunity to talk about this topic. Sarah Colman, RD, CDE (34:49): Wonderful. Thank you. So listeners, thank you for tuning in and be sure to check out other DaVita Medical Insights episodes for more kidney care educational podcasts. You can also find additional kidney care, thought leadership and industry news by following @DaVitaDoc on Twitter. Thank you so much for joining our podcast today.  

Spiritus Christi Father Jim Callan November 29, 2020 As you know there are two Christmas:  One begins on Black Friday, it’s a mad frenzy of commercialization and shopping and shopping until the holiday of Christmas.  The other began about ten minutes ago when Natalie lit the Advent candle. Actually, Natalie, your name means Christmas.  You are the perfect person to do this, thank you so much.  So Natalie got us going with the first Advent day and this is a The post Beauty is Beautiful appeared first on Spiritus Christi Church.

Natalie Schlute is an intuitive success coach and law of attraction expert. She helps women manifest the life of their dreams by following their intuition and reframing their limiting beliefs. Her own personal journey lead her from feeling lost, depressed, and struggling with chronic health issues to creating her dream business, attracting her soulmate husband, and experiencing abundance in her health and finances. Show Notes: Natalie has an online course and group coaching program "Step into Your Power Academy." She also does one on one coaching and energy healing. Check out Natalie's FREE Video Series and her FREE Guided Meditation. You can find tons of free content on her website, in her Facebook Group, YouTube Channel, Podcast, and on Instagram. Connect with me across all of my social channels: Search My Social Partial Transcript (read the Full Transcript HERE): Kimberly Olson: Welcome back to another episode of The Goal Digger Girl. My name is Kimberly Olson, and I'm so excited to bring on special guest, Natalie Schlute. She is the creator of The Successful Soul podcast. We've had an opportunity to get to know each other, and I'm obsessed. So I wanted to bring her to you guys because you know, when I start busting out mindset and things like that, you're like, "but what about Instagram stories?". And then when we start talking about the mindset, you're like, "Oh wait, this is everything. This is so important". It's the foundation of everything that you want in your life, we need to get into this. And I found the girl who like totally gets it. So Natalie, welcome on. Thanks for being here today. Natalie Schlute: Oh, thank you, Kimberly. I'm so honored and excited to be here with you as well, and your audience. Natalie Schlute: Oh, I'm so excited. I just know them and they're gonna like, just become obsessed with you as well. So let's start with this - so you can of course share what you do, but I would love to talk about how you got into it as well, because I feel like it is pretty unique as far as what you do. I mean, we're all unique, but you know what I mean? Like the space you're in, it's not oversaturated. We need more people like you out there. So do you mind sharing that with my listeners, mostly moms, mostly female entrepreneurs, most of them exhausted, overwhelmed and need this today. But can you share a little bit about your background and how you got into what you do? Natalie Schlute: Yes, I'm well, I call myself an Intuitive Success Coach. If we go like logistics, yes, I got Life Coach Certified and hypnotherapy, NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming, understanding the subconscious mind, some Reiki energy work in there. I've had coaches that were psychics and metaphysicians because I was starting to get a lot of psychic impressions, and I didn't know how to navigate it. I couldn't just go to a regular therapist. Right. A little different. I needed someone who really understood, like, "why am I seeing these visions and experiencing these things?" I guess, you know, if I go back to my childhood, I definitely had the intuitive impressions coming through. Then I just didn't know what it was. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thegoaldiggergirl/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thegoaldiggergirl/support

Finding ourselves, properly discovering who we are, deep beneath the surface is the very beginning of an awakening to life so much fuller than we may have ever imagined. In fact I imagine this will be one of those episodes that we revisit and listen to again and again as it’s a treasure trove of much wisdom. To hear more from Natalie, to try her meditations or classes, you can visit www.thecreateseries.com or you can  listen to her podcast called Let’s Play In a nutshell, we hear a LOT of thought provoking things in this episode,  we talk about the impact of life before lockdown and why we often felt so empty and unfulfilled and how if we are willing to, we can learn to expand into ourselves so that we can feel more deeply, listen to and connect with our instincts and that inner voice more regularly, Natalie talks about how to truly find ourselves so that we can BE ourselves, there’s so much in here that I know you’ll love! Natalie Roy is a Canadian actress and brings such a rich conversation to this episode. I invited her on last year after hearing her speak on our emotional anatomy and instantly knew she was someone we would enjoy hearing more from. We had talked about doing something around last Christmas but it didn’t pan out which looking back, I’m really glad about as I think the timing is so much better now as I think we are all that much more open to discover or at least consider that deeper connection within ourselves with the hopes of finding peace from within, because calming the storm on the inside is surely the only way to survive the storm on the outside – and boy does it feel like we are in the midst of one at the moment! So Natalie is an actress who lives in New York, you might recognise her from Law and Order, The Affair or Finding Erica, she’s an author, a fellow podcaster and most importantly is someone who embraces all aspects of what it means to be human – she’s a teacher of yoga and meditation and has some fantastic insight into what it means to be human, we cover a lot of ground from the spiritual to the practical, to how to go about creating our new normal to be one that serves us well, understanding why we meditate and that 3 minutes really is enough, we touch on the quantum realm, holding loss and fear at the same time as growth and opportunity – there is so much ahead and I really hope that you enjoy listening. If you’d like to check out some of those meditations or courses that Natalie spoke about, go to www.thecreateseries.com and don't forget the podcast Let’s Play I think a great take away from this is being curious about the evidence we are collecting and I’d love to hear how that impacts how you feel going forwards so please do reach out to Natalie and also do continue with conversations on our Facebook Group page. My website is here or you can find me on social media by searching for Pipa Gordon. Thank you for listening

0:00Enabled warriors, welcome to another edition of the special Coronavirus0:04episodes. We are here today0:06with Natalie Wilson and her episode will be coming out really really soon. So Natalie is a fundraising gal. Natalie works for EDS UK and wanted to have a bit of a chat about how the Coronavirus is affecting charities and in particular support groups. So hey, hey, Natalie, how you doing today?0:24Yeah, very well. Thank you. Awesome. So0:27let's have a quick chat about how you think COVID is affecting the sort of face to face meetups that you would normally have had with EDS patients.0:38Yeah, definitely. So I mean, part of a big part of a charity and what we do is support you know, everyone in the local communities with Ehlers danlos Syndrome, and we have a network across the K and of volunteers that run kind of physical support group meetings and As well as working on the fundraising manager for charity, but as well as working for the charity, I've also always volunteered to run my local support groups. I did this a long time before I started working for charity. And so I've always run physical support groups, and quite Luckily, about six months ago, and because of the nature of the condition, and the charity started running a few online and it was very much meant to be kind of a trial, you know, try get everything working, yeah, see if they work and that, you know, only started at the beginning of this year. And, and obviously, you know, since kind of all of the lockdown and kind of social isolation, isolation of them COVID all of the physical support groups have had to stop and and, you know, over These a lot of people in our community, sometimes the only time they come out for houses is to come to the support group meetings, you know, it's a big thing for them. And, and luckily, we've managed to move a lot of our support group meetings online. And I and it's funny funny, we're talking about this today because I ran my first local one last night. And the charity has been doing a lot of kind of more national things. So we've been having things like puzzle clubs and book clubs. Again, we've got a session every week that anyone can come and chat about their anxieties. But yeah, so coffee. So a lot of areas are having things like coffee mornings and things like that. And so I had I have my first proper meeting, you know, last night and it was good. We've talked a lot about kind of worries. And and it's very much you know, Normal support group meeting would be to talk about the problems with your conditions and you know where you can get help. And does anyone have any advice for me doing this, this and this but last night, it was very much that mixed with kind of COVID anxieties, and I think it hit God Of course, it's hit everyone really hard. It's hit, you know, lots of communities but for people with Ehlers danlos Syndrome, you know, a lot of people are seeing physios regularly and they're having help with massage regularly and you know, any anything that they're kind of doing is very much often supported by other people helping them in daily life. And, you know, cleaners and carers although care is obviously still still very much helping and, and our chat last night, kind of moved on to how can people start doing things themselves. You know, and a lot of people are having online meetings though zoom calls is kind of what we've been using to charity with their local physio, and to help them with new exercises or what exercises they should be doing now. And a lot of people last night in my meeting, we're talking about kind of like, self massage and how they're kind of relieving the aches and pains their muscles, so it was, yeah, it was quite a different meeting. And, but it's, it was good, and it was nice. And it and there was actually people in my meeting last night that have never been able to come to a physical meeting. Yeah, aren't travelled or they can't drive or it's even though I do the I do the Thames Valley area

This will be one of two final instalments of Badass Womans Hour as we know it! Emma and Natalie are moving onto new adventures and Harriet will be going it solo from now on. So here's a whole hour and half of badass chat!On this final Badass Womans Hour show with the original line up of wonderful ladies, they're talking the eradication of tampon tax, falling, water and sisterhood!The first guests are Laura and Nicky, two inspiring woman both living with terminal cancer who have started a support group for women fighting cancer, secondary sisters. They share what this means for day to day life and why they were inspired to create this support network.So Natalie is off to a new job, she will be the new CEO of Belu Water, however before she leaves the show she invited the current CEO into the studio Karen Lynch, explains how the company is looking at the environmental impact of our water use and how they can change and create positive disruption in the industry.Amy Peake is the founder of Loving Humanity who provide women and girls in war zones with access sanitary products, she shares the tales that made her want to help these women and her journey to becoming an activist.Author Claire Nelson shares her incredible story of a fall that changed her life, after an adventures trip to escape London, which resulted in a physical injury that turned her life upside down, her book "Things I Learned From Falling" is out now.And the final guest is Christy Lefteri the author of Bee Keeper of Aleppo she shares with the ladies the stories from the time she spent in a women's and children's centre in Athens, and how her own family history played a part in her humanitarian work and writing.For information on all your hosts you can click on their names:Harriet MinterNatalie CampbellEmma Sexton If you want to get in touch you can find us on all the socials under this name: @badasswomenshrAnd for more about the podcast head here: https://www.badasswomenshour.com See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Her roots are in Latrobe (that's LAY-trobe to all you non-yinzers out there). Natalie grew up singing, dancing and song writing. She had a dream. This dream has taken her around the country, from playing the "circuit" down south all the way to the West Coast. Singing and writing just came naturally to her. So does giving back. So Natalie decided to come home. Home to Pittsburgh. Where it all started for her, and where she hopes to shine her light on a city rising once again. Here series, N'at About Town, can be seen on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and her website, NatalieShugars.com. I sat down with Natalie at the Abbey on Butler Street in Lawrenceville to ask her about her journey, her dreams, and her feelings about the Steel City. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/pittsburghbeautiful/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pittsburghbeautiful/support

To equate the world of entrepreneurism with football, most of the cheering comes when a quarterback throws a touchdown pass to a wide receiver. In business, those are the billion-dollar IPOs that gain most of the media attention. But entrepreneurism — capitalism – is mostly a ground game. Put your head down, start a business, commit yourself, and pick up maybe three yards or five yards at a time. Much in the way that Natalie Mangrum, a teacher from Baltimore has, after a rough start, been steadily adding parents as customers and fellow teachers as after-hours tutors for her increasingly successful business, Maryland Teacher Tutors. Natalie tells about her struggles in getting the business running, and what its current success feels like to her. Listen in for her story. Key Takeaways: [:22] Ray Hoffman introduces Natalie Mangrum, CEO and founder of Maryland Teacher Tutors. [1:11] Natalie, as a seven-year-old child in Sunday School, naturally took to gathering her peers around her and being in the role of teacher. [1:34] Natalie’s natural desire to lead and help, motivate, and inspire prompted her to want to teach as her career. [2:01] Being the oldest child in her family, Natalie modeled behavior for her siblings and told them what to expect in kindergarten when they started to go to school. She credits God for giving her a teaching personality. [2:33] Natalie talks about a favorite fourth-grade teacher of hers that she wanted to emulate and a favorite high-school English teacher who made literature come alive in new ways for her. Everyone in the class was engaged in and excited about what they learned. [3:10] Ray and Natalie reminisce about their favorite teachers who influenced them for life. Everyone Natalie talks to has a favorite teacher whose name they remember. [3:32] Natalie never had a thought of starting a business. She thought of moving up to administration. She was happy to be a teacher. Natalie’s father was a contractor, so she knew a little about entrepreneurship from watching him. [4:51] Natalie was a reading specialist in Baltimore City Schools. The reading specialist would pull a struggling student out of the classroom for a lesson. Natalie asked the principal if a class of 10 to 12 students could be taught at once, during language arts. That would prevent the stigma of the students being pulled out of class. [6:10] It would also allow Natalie consistent time to work with the students on their reading skills. A couple of hours a week of being pulled out of class wasn’t enough for students with academic deficits. The principal agreed to support Natalie. She selected small groups of students from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades for her classes. [6:46] These students were behind their classes. Natalie worked with them in groups and on average, the students started making academic gains of two-and-a-half to three years in just a few months. The sixth graders started at a fourth-grade level and moved to at or above a sixth-grade level in less than a year. [7:14] That is when Natalie started to realize the power of having an expert teacher focusing on a small group or a single student. One seventh-grade student was at a fourth- or fifth-grade level when she started, and was “nailing” 11th-grade SAT questions when she left. Students were leaving her class a lot above their grade level. [7:56] That planted the seed that one-on-one teaching is powerful. Natalie was still not thinking of becoming an entrepreneur at all. Several months later, a parent who was a friend, asked her if she could help her child who was struggling with reading. Natalie started working with that child and got a referral from the parent to other parents. [8:25] Natalie’s schedule quickly filled up. She had two small children and a husband who was only good at making toast. Her husband needed her at home before 8pm. Natalie didn’t want to turn families away, so she reached out to a colleague for help. When the colleague’s schedule filled up, Natalie reached out to another teacher. [9:07] That’s how the company came to be — not with a business plan, but as people coming together with a solution to a need in their community. Once Natalie had a fifth teacher, she decided to make a company out of it. She wanted parents to pay a company, not to write checks to her. It needed to feel official and legitimate. [9:47] Natalie never intended for the company to be large. She named it just what it was, Maryland Teacher Tutors. [9:58] Ray notes that this company was created only because there were a couple of men who could only make toast! [10:15] Before Natalie was a reading specialist she was a regular classroom teacher. She had the knowledge of what it looks like to be an effective teacher. Before she started as a reading specialist, she spent a summer researching blogs, articles, and resources on helping kids who struggle with reading. [10:52] Natalie came across a resource that she decided was the approach for her. It looked like a very consistent way to get kids from point A to point B. The approach was always the same from the beginning but Natalie got more effective in it, over time. [11:28] Even more than the approach, when you give a student one-on-one attention for their specific problem you have identified, five days a week, over time, the child will improve and learn more. [12:00] The technique, added to the teacher inspiring the student to do better, combine to a successful outcome for the student. Working hard, the students became smarter. They start with low self-confidence and low skills, and as they learn, they grow confident in their abilities. [13:33] Around the time that Natalie created the company, the snowball effect had tapered off and she found that she needed to start marketing. So Natalie started learning about entrepreneurship, getting around people who were successful, joining entrepreneurial groups, and calling business owners she knew. [14:34] Natalie started forming a strategy for growing her business. She is still in that process. It will never end. For the first year of business, Natalie felt she was constantly pushing it uphill. After a couple of years, they seemed to hit the top of the hill and start rolling down the other side. Systems and processes in place are working well. [15:36] In the first year it was really hard to carry on! There were days Natalie wanted to cry and pull the blanket over her head all day in bed. Entrepreneurship can really be rough. [15:53] Natalie started the company in 2015. Most of 2016 was not easy for her. [16:10] There came a time when parents started calling again after being referred on Facebook, LinkedIn, or by a friend and Natalie felt like she could pull back somewhat on the brand exposure and marketing. All of the work was starting to pay off. People were starting to recognize that they were really good at their work. [17:36] The company was founded with $100. That was the amount needed to open the company bank account. Natalie never sought capital investors or loans. They built the company from the ground up, without debt. [18:32] On the website there is a statement, “We are 100% confident in our business model.” In terms of the competition that naturally goes with entrepreneurism and capitalism, they maintain that their model of using only certified teachers working in the student’s home, delivers better results than other mentoring business models. [18:56] Teachers are trained effectively to pass along and deliver information in a way that makes the most sense for the student. Early on, people Natalie trusted told her that her business model would never work. They recommended hiring college students instead of certified teachers to save money. As a teacher, Natalie disagreed. [20:02] Natalie was never going to change from using certified teachers only. Another huge aspect is one-on-one teaching. Progress happens fastest with an expert teacher identifying exactly what the problem is tripping up one student and addressing those areas with that student individually. That’s what teachers do. [21:04] Maryland Teacher Tutors contracts with about 45 certified teachers. They all teach in a classroom during the day and are 1099 contractors in the evening. Natalie is the only staff person. She contracts with marketing companies as needed. [21:42] Natalie has a new book on Amazon, Owning It. The book is a compilation of stories from Natalie’s life where she walks through the difficult times she says she brought on herself. She wants the book to be empowering for herself and others, about rising above mistakes to doing well. [22:53] Natalie tells of a business mistake — isolating herself. On her own, she almost called it quits for the business and put it behind her. She had not reached out to anyone or asked for help. Fortunately, that’s when the calls started coming in and she saw success on the horizon. She wishes she had not let herself feel so alone. [24:02] Natalie would advise entrepreneurs to have conversations with other entrepreneurs. As a new entrepreneur, Natalie didn’t know what questions she should ask or things she should consider. It is important to put yourself around people who have successful businesses. They were able to draw out of Natalie what she needed. [24:50] Natalie is hearing from other teachers around the country, and in the Bahamas, who hope to duplicate the business model of Maryland Teacher Tutors. Natalie has given information to others, but, so far, no one has followed through to do it. When it comes to being an entrepreneur, you have it, or you don’t. [25:51] What is Natalie’s vision for growth? Natalie believes it should be nationwide. As long as Natalie is the CEO, she would like to see it become a strong Mid-Atlantic brand. Natalie would love to expand into Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and Virginia. That is where her plans are. At some point, Natalie will want someone to take the reins. [26:47] Natalie cannot see herself being CEO of the company if it went nation-wide. [27:10] Natalie has some clients in New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C. Those clients are working with the company online. Eventually, Natalie wants certified teachers contracted in different states. They want to move slowly but surely and they’re making their way there. [28:09] Natalie’s children are now 17 and 15. [28:31] Natalie has recently identified the biggest reward she gets from her company — having a company that is outstanding in the way they do business, where both teachers and parents praise the experience Maryland Teacher Tutors has created. Teachers love the work and parents give testimonials of the results. [29:35] Natalie compares her company to Chick-fil-A, that really stands apart in how they do fast food. They go above and beyond and excel at everything. That’s how Natalie wants Maryland Teacher Tutors to be seen. [30:28] Ray wishes Natalie Mangrum continued success and hopes to follow this company for years to come. This is Capitalism.   Mentioned in This Episode: Stephens.com Maryland Teacher Tutors Baltimore City Schools Owning It: It’s My Story and I’ll Share If I Want To, by Natalie Mangrum McDonald’s Wendy’s Burger King Chick-fil-A

Haha, what's up, guys? This is Steve Larsen.   This is Sales Funnel Radio, and before we cue the intro here, I want you to know, this episode for me was really special.   I interview an incredible entrepreneur. Her name is Natalie Hodson. She's fantastic. I love learning and studying from her.   She's gonna talk about some things that went on kinda crazy in her life, and how to leverage the crazy things inside of your life for your audience - particularly around the subject of vulnerability.   So this is how to be vulnerable without looking like you're weak, right? And for a lot of guys, that's super important.   For a lot of selling in general, that's super important - the purpose is not to look like you're weak.   So anyways, let's cue the intro here. I hope you guys enjoy it, and if you have liked this, please reach out to her and say thank you. She puts some really amazing things out.   Thanks, guys, so much, and see you on the episode.   I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my nine to five to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business.   The real question is, how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer.   Join me and follow along as I learn, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels.   My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. What's going on, everyone?   Hey, it's Steve Larsen, and I'm really excited to have you here today.   Stephen: I have someone that I've been trying to get on the podcast for a very long time - because I just think the world of her. It's been super amazing to get to know this person. Anyways, I'm excited about it.   The first time that I got to hear this story,  it was heart-wrenching for me to see, not just everything that had happened, but the inspiration that it's causing in other people's lives.   The way it's changing other people's lives is a huge deal.   It was fascinating for me to see that this is real, you know, this is a big deal.   I already knew that, but just to continue to watch it in application... I was like, "Gosh, the thousands and thousands and thousands of lives that it's changed."   It's my incredible honor and privilege to have you on the show. Guys, I wanna welcome Natalie Hodson. How are you doing?   Natalie - Hey, thank you so much, Stephen. That was an amazing intro.   Stephen - I mean it.   Natalie -  I'm so excited to be here too. I've watched your stuff, and I've binge listened to all your podcasts. Your advice has helped me so much, so it's like a win-win. I'm excited - you're excited. It's awesome.   Stephen - Oh, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.  I know a lot of people may not know about you yet, and frankly, it's just a matter of time... I think everyone's gonna know who you are.   Natalie - Aw, thank you.   Stephen - Could you tell us a little bit about your story, and kind of the background, 'cause it's inspiring, and...   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - There's obviously funnels in there, but that's a vehicle for this whole thing. You're changing people's lives, and I'd love you to grace my audience with that... that'd be great.   Natalie - Totally. Well, there's a long version and a short version. I'll try to keep it towards the short version, but I tend to be long-winded.   So at any point, if you're like, "Natalie, take it this direction," you know...   Stephen - We have happy ears.   Natalie - So I'm in the fitness space. But I always say that I accidentally fell into the fitness industry because I was a history major in school. I didn't know:   #1: That there even was a fitness industry   #2: That I ever wanted to be a part of it.   After I had my son, I gained 70 pounds when I was pregnant with him. I was like big, out here. He was a 10-pound baby.   Stephen - 70 pounds?   Natalie - Yeah, I was really big. And after I had him, I remember feeling lost. I remember looking in the mirror and feeling like, "I don't even recognize myself... I just wanted to feel like myself again," and it wasn't even so much about the weight. I just didn't feel like me.   So I started a blog, and honestly, it was like an online journal - just as a way to keep me accountable for my fitness stuff.   I didn't tell a single person that I knew in real life, because I was embarrassed.  I didn't want the people I knew to know what I was struggling.   This was when Pinterest very first got started, about eight years ago.  I just started sharing...   I like to cook, so I started sharing healthy recipes, and I started putting them on Pinterest.   And honestly, if you look at my first pins back then, they were taken with a flip phone, just awful photos, but luckily for me, now people are taking gorgeous pictures for me.   So I started to get a lot of traffic to my website.   Stephen - You were just kinda documenting what you were doing?   Natalie - I was just documenting what I was doing and sharing.   This was right when Facebook groups weren't even a thing, and I started a Facebook group with this training program I was doing. I started sharing my ups and my downs, just because I felt like it was a safe space.   I was really vulnerable and telling, you know, my struggles; like I got called out of the gym daycare again - just like real struggles, you know?   I was struggling with all this stuff. And so, I did that 12-week program, and had awesome results, and got some recognition from bodybuilding.com.   I was getting a lot of traffic to my site. So I was like, man, if I'm getting traffic, I might as well monetize it. So I got certified as a personal trainer and started writing - I wrote a couple of ebooks.  I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't how to write an ebook. I just kind of figured it out as I went.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And then, I started recognizing, basically, like, long story short, what happened is one day...   I was at an event, and this girl came up to me. And she's like, "I love following your stuff! I could never do what you do, because I have stretched skin after I had my babies, and I could never look like you."   I got really confused in the moment, 'cause I was like, "What are you talking about? I have tons of stretched skin."   And then I started realizing that, I don't share that. I have all these beautiful professional photos where I stand up straight, and I angle myself just right so you can't see it, right?   Stephen - Right, yeah.   Natalie - Posture and perfect looking. I started realizing, like, "Holy crap," in my head, I look down, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I have stretched skin, whatever," but I wasn't like, showing that to anybody else.   And so, that night, I pulled out my camera, and I filmed this video,  just saying to people, "Look, I recognize that I've never shown you... this is what that looks like."   People talk about that a lot, but this was six years ago, and really, nobody was talking about it.   I remember the first time I posted that video, my hand was shaking. I thought I was gonna lose every follower I had. But I was like, "I know that if I'm struggling with this, other people are too."   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And I posted it, and I shut my computer down. I wouldn't look at it, 'cause I was like, "everybody's gonna hate this."   When I opened it up an hour later, there were just thousands of comments, and that video went kind of viral.   Then I started realizing that the more I talked about things that felt scary or uncomfortable, it was actually more of like a magnet. People started to feel like, "Whoa, she gets me. Whoa, she's talking about things that I think in my head, but nobody's really talking about."   And then what happened is it started to  heal broken parts of me too - because I started to realize that those fears and insecurities weren't even real. It was just the story that I was telling myself.   So the more I talked about my story, the less power it had over me.   And so, total side note here, fast forward to right now... 'cause this was years ago... but I feel like I worked through all that body image stuff kind of on accident.   Stephen - Sure.   Natalie - I was being vulnerable, and it's crazy, 'cause right now, I'm going through a very similar process. I'm trying to do a lot of self-work. Learning to be perfectly imperfect with the body stuff - I feel like I did that, and I'm okay with it.   Stephen - “Perfectly imperfect” - that's cool.   Natalie - Yeah, and now it's like, "Okay, how can I...?" I've always struggled with this idea of perfection, and now with relationships, I'm trying to recognize that it's okay to not be perfect in relationships. That when you work through the hard stuff, when you talk about the hard stuff, it actually...   So anyways, I'll turn back now. I skipped a big chunk in there, but...   Stephen - No, that's fascinating what you just said... We will come back to that.   Natalie - Okay.   Stephen - Keep going, 'cause there's this whole spot... I'm like, "This is so cool."   Natalie -  I might not have the right words for it, because I'm just starting to figure it out. It's what I was talking to my friend Yara about last night.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - So, anyways, I built this big audience, all organically. I had about 400,000 followers, but I wasn't really monetizing it.   I was selling ebooks and making decent, good money, probably  around six figures as a stay at home mom - so it was good. Like, it was awesome, and I was enjoying it. I was writing.   And then I went through a divorce. And then it got really scary, because I was like, "All right, I don't have child support, I don't have alimony.  I have to figure this out."   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And it just so happened... like, you know, I swear, a lot of times, things fall in place when they're supposed to, or you meet people when you're supposed to.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - It just so happened that... I don't know actually what happened. I don't know if my name got thrown around in a mastermind or something, but all of a sudden, I got emails or phone calls from eight different people wanting to build a funnel for me in ClickFunnels, and all this stuff.   I was like, "What? what is a funnel? What is this?" And so, I started researching and googling, and I kept seeing this name, Russell Brunson.   It's so embarrassing now 'cause I know what a good, honest, genuine hard-working guy Russell is... but honestly, at first, I was like, "Is this a scam? Why are people promising me the world, and like telling me they can..."   Usually, if somebody tells you something that's too good to be true - it is, right?     ...And they're like, "With that audience, you can make all this money." And I was so skeptical.   But the embarrassing part is, Russell wrestled in college with my cousin, and we live like just right down the street from each other. So we had all these mutual friends.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - I messaged him on Facebook, and basically just... I mean, I didn't say, "Is your company a scam?"... but that's basically... I mean it was rude!   And now that I know who Russell is, I'm like so embarrassed, and I'm so grateful he didn't just say, "See ya, I'm never talking to you again."   So I started finding out about ClickFunnels, and then I read his DotCom Secrets book, and I was like, "What?"   'Cause  I'd built this big audience, but never in my life had I even spent a dime on Facebook ads.   So, I started reading his book, and I was like, "What? These are real secrets. Why is he sharing this?"   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Look, this is my original notepad.   Stephen - What?   Natalie - That's crazy. I was organizing my office, and it happened to be sitting here.   So what I did, this was cool. I pulled out this notepad, and as I went through the book, I started saying, "How can I apply that to my business?" Like, five variables of successful campaigns:   Step one, who are your competitors? And I started writing down who are my actual competitors? This is cool. Blast from the past.   Stephen - That's so cool. I just found mine the other day.   Natalie - No way!   Stephen - Yeah, it's just right over here - the exact same thing. I was just showing it to somebody else. But, yeah, I found mine. It's like going way back.  "I remember the first time I realized this!" This is a huge deal.   Natalie -  I was mind-blown, and I was like, "What?" And so, I started implementing it, and I was like, "This works!"   I brought somebody on to help me with building the funnel at the beginning. Now we've since split ways...   So we launched the funnel. So, okay,  this story's getting very long, so we'll wrap it up, but...   Stephen - No, it's awesome. Super valuable.   Natalie - Okay, so, basically, at that point, I was like, "Hey, my back's against the wall. I need to figure out, how am I gonna monetize what I have here?"   So what I did was, I looked at my Google Analytics on my website.  I was like, my audience is telling me what they're interested in through my analytics, right? So, I took my five most popular blog posts, and I said, okay, I'm gonna make an offer around each of these.   Stephen - Wow.   Natalie - So the first one was this weird word called Diastasis Recti. Which is basically ab separation.   When you're pregnant, your abs can separate to make room for the baby, and in about two-thirds of women, they don't always come back together the right way. So it can cause you to look pregnant, even if you're eating right or exercising. It can cause you to have like just core weakness.   The other post was this thing called Pelvic Floor Dysfunction, which in layman's terms means like, if you laugh, cough, sneeze, jump on a trampoline, exercise too hard, a lot of times, women, after they have babies, will pee their pants a little bit.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And so it just so happened that one of my good friends from college had just gotten her Ph.D. in this specific area.   So, I reached out to her, and I was like, "Hey, Monique, I am getting a massive amount of traffic to this blog post. Do you think we could do something together?"   And that's when she told me. She's like, "Oh my gosh, Natalie, the peeing your pants stuff doesn't have to happen! Just 'cause it's common, and happens to so many women it doesn't mean that it's normal or healthy. It can be improved."   And I was really skeptical again at first. I was like, "Yeah, right!" I was like, "Yeah, I've had two 10-pound babies." I got kind of defensive.   Stephen - Your kids were 10 pounds?   Natalie - Yeah, both of 'em. Isn't that crazy?   Stephen - Oh my gosh. Our first two were five and a half.   Natalie - Oh, wow.   Stephen - We have little kids.   Natalie - Yeah, and I had 'em at home too, with midwives, yeah.   Stephen - Oh my gosh.   Natalie - It was crazy. So crazy.   Stephen - Amazing.   Natalie - So, long story short, last year, it was November of last year,  I talked to her. It was that first conversation. And it's funny, 'cause we have the Facebook messages still with the date.   And I said, "Hey, do you think we can write a program helping women?"   Because she put me through a program, and it totally worked.  I knew that if I'm struggling with this, other women must be too.     We started talking about it on Thanksgiving. We began writing it at Christmas. We launched on January 31st.   It was like, a month, a month, a month.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - And we launched it through ClickFunnels, and within four months, we'd sold a million dollars of this $37 ebook.   Stephen - Do the math on that, people.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - How many people? That's crazy.   Natalie - Yeah, it was really crazy. We don't sell the physical version, but this is the physical version, and it's just an ebook. I mean, there's nothing super fancy about it. It's kind of text, parts of it are kind of textbooky.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I partnered with the doctor to write that. I'm glad I did because she has the credibility, and I have the connection, so it's kind of like a one-two punch.   Stephen - I love that, yeah.   Natalie - I don't think I could have created that program 100% on my own, because when you're talking about the body and anatomy - there are so many things that I wasn't qualified to talk about, but anyways.   So then, it was this whirlwind of like, "Holy crap." Before this, it was just me in front of my computer answering emails.   Then all of a sudden, it's like, "whoa," we have this big company and this big machine, and I need to learn how to hire people and scale and be a CEO of a company instead of just like, a little solopreneur.   Last year was a real whirlwind of a year. I had to learn how to be tough with business. I had to learn the value and the importance of contracts and of not let people take advantage of you.   I had to grow and scale - and create value. I mean, just everything was...   Conceptually, I knew what I needed to do, but applying it was kind of a whirlwind.   I still feel like we're still... we'll always be working on our businesses, but...   So, that was the world's longest answer to "How you got started," but that's how I got involved in the ClickFunnels community.   The one thing I will say is; if anybody is watching this and is skeptical, "I understand," 'cause I felt the exact same way.   But if you just do what Stephen teaches, what Russell teaches it works. It really, really works! It's not scammy.   If you have a good product and a good message to give to the world, follow the system and don't try to change it, and it will work. That's all I did.   I didn't do anything fancy, other than I came up with the idea and the program...  I just did what you guys say to do, and it worked.   Stephen - That's so cool. That's so awesome.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - That's so awesome. Yeah, sometimes people look at it. I had a buddy who looked at it once, and he's like, "That looks like it's scammy," - you know, the same kind of thing. I'm like, "Ah, no, we actually end up delivering more value than if you don't do it this way."   Natalie - Yes, 100% agreed.   Stephen - Fascinating.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - You gave a speech at Funnel Hacking Live which was incredible.  I was so excited. I think we were sitting in the front row, or something like that, I was pumped.   I was like, "Yeah, Natalie's next!" You gave a speech about vulnerability. And you talked about some of the ways you build in vulnerability - and this isn't a weakness.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - Right, but how do you find the strength to be vulnerable?   I guess, first of all, can you tell us what it means to be vulnerable?   You're such an... I don't know if you wanna call it vulnerability secrets, vulnerability expert, or hacks? Whatever, like, but you're really good at doing this in a way that doesn't come across, you know...   It seems like most people are like, "I'm not gonna be vulnerable 'cause it means I'm weak."   Natalie - No, it's not.  I get that, 'cause I felt that way for a long, long time.   So first off, I think a lot of times, especially if you're talking to guys, they will hear the word vulnerable, and they'll be like, "I'm a man. I am not vulnerable," right? And I get that.   So, another way of saying "be vulnerable" is just "be real," right?   Look at Russell. He shares the ups and the downs, and because he shares the downs, you wanna champion and root for him on the ups.   If somebody only shares the good times, then you don't connect as much.   It's almost like we naturally, as humans, have a tendency to...   If you think somebody is only always doing good, it's harder to wanna cheer for them and root for them, you know?   Stephen - "Yeah, the cards are always in that guy's favor... are you kidding?"   Natalie - Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, when it comes to being vulnerable, it's not about crying all the time, and it's not even about being vulnerable all the time.   If you look at my content, 80 to 90% of it is just really good quality content, and then occasionally, I'll add some real honest truth or raw moments into what I share. And what it does is it brings, this isn't my phrase... it from an author named Brene Brown, her books changed my life.   *Natalie looks for books* I don't have them here, but "Daring Greatly" and "Rising Strong" literally, personally and professionally, changed my life.   Brenee is a shame and vulnerability researcher. She teaches that vulnerability is the ultimate human connector because vulnerability and shame cannot survive together.   And so the more vulnerable you are, the less shame can survive, and the less power that story has over you.   And so, you know, we all have moments that we feel embarrassed to talk about, or we think that people will judge us, or we feel ashamed, and what's crazy.   I've found that the more you talk about the hard stuff:   #1: The less shame you feel talking about it, and you start to feel more comfortable with it   #2: People start to open up to you and say, "oh my gosh, me too. I didn't think anybody experienced that."   And so what happens is it creates a different level of trust with your audience.   However, there's a fine line between being vulnerable to get sales and actually being vulnerable, right? That's kind of hard to teach. And so, you know, I didn't start this off saying, "I'm gonna be vulnerable so I can build a big audience and make all this money."   I genuinely have a heart to help people, and selfishly, it helped me along the way, too, because it made me feel less insecure about these things.   People always say, "Okay I get it in theory, it makes sense to be vulnerable, but how do you actually do that without coming across as that crazy person on Facebook that puts all their drama there?"   Stephen - Always crying, the person like, "Oh, crap, unfollow."   Natalie - Yeah, and you're just like, Where's the popcorn. Let's watch their drama unfold." And so I kind of have this four-step system that I didn't mean to create. It's just how I naturally write, but it works really well.   The first thing that I do is #1, remember that you don't always have to share your vulnerable moments in the moment.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - So, if you haven't worked through something and you're still feeling very fragile about it - it's okay to wait to share. Because, I've made that mistake before.   If you get criticism back and you haven't really worked through it yet, that criticism can be shattering to your confidence.   And so, one of the tricks that I have...   For a long time, I struggled, 'cause when you're going through the vulnerable stage when you're really sad or excited or happy or embarrassed or feeling ashamed when you're in the moment, the feelings feel very real...   But sometimes it's hard to sit in front of your computer later and remember the real emotion that you felt during that moment.   So one of the things that I do now, a trick that I have, is I'll pull out my phone and pull up the notes section when I'm in that moment feeling, you know, small or hurt or scared or whatever the feeling is, right? It can be good or bad.   And I'll just shorthand write out the raw feelings. Not like full paragraphs, but, now I have this big catalog of feelings, so if I want to tell a story that relates to this, that relates to body image, or that relates to whatever,  I have all these raw emotions to draw on.   I'm not faking vulnerability. It's my real stuff.  It's my real moments that I can draw from and turn into actual stories.   Another tip: A little family joke is that I'm really bad at analogies, and my family calls them "Natalogies" because a lot of times, like, you know...   The whole crux of expert secrets, is you have to be able to do epiphany bridges and analogies. And my analogies do not make sense half of the time.   I'll say them, and people are like, "that didn't make sense?" I'm just not good at them.   I hope someday, I can learn to be better at analogies. So what I try to do instead is just pull on these stories that I have - and kind of weave it together instead - 'cause my "it's kind of likes" never actually make sense.   So that's like my trick, you know how Russell talks about in the soap opera sequences, to start with the drama - to start with the most dramatic point, and then you tell the back story...   In my posts, a lot of times, I do that.   I start with like the hurt, the pain. Whatever you're feeling, the run moment, start with that, 'cause then people will automatically be like, "Whoa. She's talking about something nobody talks about."   And then what I do is I, and this is just my style. Everybody will find their own style.   But my step number two is to show myself some grace. Remind myself "perfectly imperfect, it's okay," or,  just show yourself some grace, and in some words, type that out.   Then the third step is to try to remind myself of a time when this has happened before and I worked through it -  or when somebody else has gone through something like this and worked through it.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And then the fourth step is; I always finish up on a positive note.   So like, either how I worked through it - if this is a past experience, or if I don't know how to work through it, I share what my plan is to try to work through it, even if you fail trying, right?   So what it does is it puts people, like, when you're, when you start with the raw stuff, it makes people feel like, “whoa, like, that could be me, because I've felt that exact same way.”   And then you're giving yourself grace, and you're teaching other people how to show, how to give themselves grace if they're in the same shoes, and then when you talk about how you work through it.   It's like, somebody else could look at you, look at your situation and say, “Whoa, I'm in that situation too, and if she can work through it, I probably can, too.”   And so, I think that's why a lot of my content has gone really viral, is because I make it relatable by sharing, it's not fake. I mean, they're the real moments, and then I come up with like a positive, and it's not.   Stephen - End with hope at the end.   Natalie - It ends with hope, yeah, but it's not like, talking down to somebody.   It's not like, you have to do x, y, and z, or I'm so perfect on my high horse here.   It's more like, we're in this together. We're all in the arena, and we've all fallen down. Let's dust off our knees, and this is how I'm gonna try to stand up. I might get knocked back again, but like, this is what I'm trying.   I don't know if that makes sense at all, but I think that's why... there's an underlying subtleness of talking down to somebody or being on the same playing field and championing everybody to come up together.   I don't know if I have the language to always describe how I do it, but that's kind of the feeling behind it.   I have written and deleted and written and deleted, 'cause I'm like,“This feels like I know everything,” or you know, I'm like talking down, and I never want that to come across that way.   Stephen - Right. Absolutely, and you know, you know what it reminded me of is so like, you know, we always tell people, like, start publishing before you have a big following.   Natalie - Mmhmm.   Stephen - So that you can bring them with you and you become the expert in front of them.   Natalie - Exactly.   Stephen - Rather than become an expert and then start publishing, 'cause it's so less believable.   You've done the same thing with the vulnerability, which is fascinating. Like, yes, start it. Don't be afraid to talk about the low moments, not that it always needs to be low, and it probably shouldn't always be, but you know...   Natalie - Totally.   Stephen - But being open about what's actually going on and doing it in front of 'em rises everyone together. That's fascinating.   Natalie - Well, and what's crazy is that it never gets... well, it's always a process, right?   So, what's weird is that eight years ago, for me to talk about the body image stuff, it was so hard for me, 'cause that's where I was. I was in that phase of my life where I was really struggling with that, right?   And so, I did the work, and I went through the process unintentionally.   I didn't know I was doing the work at the time. I was just being vulnerable. I was sharing.   So what's cool is that, fast forward to now, I don't really have all of those body image insecurities that I had then, and I think it's honestly because I was willing to talk about it in the moment.   Now, fast forward to today, and the issues that I'm struggling with are different.   I'm a different person than I was eight years ago, right?   So when I built my audience with talking about the body image stuff, now, it's like, "okay, I don't feel like I have to talk about that as much, 'cause I've not grown past it," - that's not the right word, but  it's not my main focus anymore. And now it's...   Like, okay, you know, I went through a divorce, and I haven't really talked about that very much publicly.   But now it's like, "Okay, now I'm sitting in this moment where  I'm at a crossroads." Am I gonna do what has worked for me in the past and be vulnerable and open up and share these things that feel uncomfortable to me again, right?   It's not the body image stuff anymore. Now it's personal development and relationships and the struggles that I've had with my business.   Like, it's always changing.   So vulnerability is never like, you just learn how to be vulnerable and you've got it. Like, it's always easy.   It is easier for me to be vulnerable on the body image stuff, but now it's shifted to "how can I grow?"   And the only hope I have is that I know that it worked with the body stuff. So  I'm hoping that five years down the road, I can look back and say, "Okay, I was scared to be vulnerable.  I was scared to talk about these things, but it got me into this confident, comfortable zone because I shared."   Stephen - No, totally, totally. Like, I went through a lot of the exact same, you know, it's funny because I feel like it's the emotion that binds people.   While I haven't gone through a divorce, there are other times where I felt really vulnerable as well. And so whilst that person may not have gone through a divorce, if we didn't have the same experiences, we did have the same emotions, and being able to expose the emotion, I feel like, is what binds people. I think it's interesting what you said.   Anyway, quirks, the little quirks that you have or the little vulnerabilities you have, that's your superpower. That's the reason people follow you. They don't follow you because of pure perfection 24/7. That actually annoys people after a while. But you actually get personal healing along the way. Like that's so, that's so amazing.   Could you tell us a little bit... I mean, this is Sales Funnel Radio, and you're talking about your sales funnel. Like, what does this have to do with sales funnels? Why does it matter? 'Cause it totally does, but just for everyone else, you know.   Natalie - Well, it 100% matters because the thing that I've learned is although I'm not the best trainer in the world. Like, I will be the first to admit that. Yes, I'm a personal trainer, but like, people don't buy my programs because....   I mean there are probably people that can talk science better than I can. I stumble over my words. I have mild dyslexia, and I mix up scientific terms all the time. But the reason people follow me and the reason people buy my programs, the reason we were able to sell so many of this book, is because of the connection.   I owned a company called Dollar Workout Club a couple of years ago, and we would film our workouts, and we never cut the cameras. And we would always be joking and be like, "guys, if you're at home you can relate to the doorbell ringing or whatever, right?" And it was very relatable.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Well, in one of the workouts, I happened to be wearing gray shorts, and Drew, the only guy, the other trainer, wrote the workout, and it was all jumping exercises, right?   So, we're doing the jumping, and I'm like, "Oh, crap." I could tell I was like, peeing my pants a little bit, right?   It was so embarrassing.  I'm wearing gray shorts and you can see this little tiny spot, then by the end, my whole butt was just... it was so gross. It's just covered in pee. At the end, I'm trying to stretch and turn sideways so you can't see.   Anyways, I could have never shared that, and I didn't for a while. I was really embarrassed about it. But we have that footage. So then when I went to go create this program, I could take screenshots from that video. I could take the actual video and put it in my funnel.   So what happened is people were like, "Whoa, this woman actually peed her pants." Like, this is embarrassing. I mean, truth be told, this program almost didn't come out, 'cause I had to have a heart-to-heart with myself really, and say, "okay, Natalie, are you willing to tell the whole world that you used to pee your pants," you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - But what happens is then you can put those real stories in your funnel. You can put the photos. And it's kind of like instead of social proof this is your real story and your real-life proof.   "Whoa, this woman understands me and this woman gets me." Because the truth is that real change, like, I can give you the best meal plan and the best workout program in the whole world, but it's not gonna have a lasting, long-term effect until you make that internal change and have that belief in yourself.   I feel like that is my gift, is helping people see their value and their power. And so, you know...   Stephen - People kind of have an identity shift with the vulnerability that you have, almost. That's fascinating.   Natalie - 100%. And so that's the psychology behind it.  I think that when you are willing to be real vulnerable, not fake vulnerable... If you're willing to be real vulnerable, people can relate to that. And once people relate to it, they begin to trust you, and then once they trust you, they'll buy from you.   My biggest fear is that when people listen to me talk about this, they're gonna be like, "Oh, I see dollar signs. I'm just gonna like, figure out how I can be vulnerable." But the truth is, people are smart. Your customers are smart, and they will smell out fake vulnerability.   Stephen - Right.   Natalie - And so.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - The biggest thing... If you're sitting there and you're thinking, "There's no way I could ever talk about this," then you're on the right path. That's how you know it's real vulnerability.   If you seriously feel nervous to share it and talk about it, and you think: “Everybody will think I'm a fraud. Everybody will think I'm a bad parent." Everybody will think I'm a bad husband or wife. Nobody's gonna find me attractive."   All of these things, these stories that we tell ourselves that you feel if you start talking about, people are gonna think you're terrible... Guess what? That's the real good stuff that you need to be talking about and sharing if you wanna create real connection and live a wholehearted life.   Stephen - Totally believe that yeah. 'Cause I struggled. Anyway, when you got up, and you were speaking about that on stage, I was like, "Man, I know, I feel ya, holy crap."   I had like, zero confidence. So rather than choose not to be active and do this game, I just called out my fear publicly, and that became a theme for a little bit.   It was like, "Look, guys, I don't really wanna be doing this, although I got something cool to show you, all right?"   And for a while, that was the theme of it. And then as I grew up and healed, (I like how you said that) I passed certain things in front of the audience.   Then it was like, "Whoa, I've gotta wait for this new episode," or "what's he doing now?" And it was crazy, crazy. That was worth more than me putting hundreds of episodes out of just the best content ever.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - It was crazy, crazy what that did.   So, what would you say is, like...   So you tell people, go ahead and start recording down things that are going on in the moment. Don't feel the pressure to go ahead and say it in the moment, which I totally agree with. I don't know if I can handle that.   Natalie - Well, and it can be whatever platform you like the most, right? Mine happened to be Facebook, but some people are better at YouTube, or some people are better at podcasting or Instagram.   There's not one that's better or worse. Just find what feels the easiest for you and start there.   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I will say too...   So, one of the downsides of being vulnerable is, and I don't let this scare you from being vulnerable, but it does happen. It still happens to me.   So when you're open and transparent about your life, for some reason, and I get it. We're that way with celebrities, right?   You're like, "I wanna know why they broke up." And both sides of the story; people feel like they know every aspect of your life. And I do share a lot, but I don't share everything.   And so what can happen is that you get harsh people on the internet. And we all get that anyways. Even just last night.   I get mean from people messages every day pretty much.   Luckily, I have my team now to kind of shield me from it, just 'cause it's like silly.   Stephen - I have to do the same, yeah.   Natalie - Yeah, just 'cause it's hard for me to continue to be vulnerable if I'm always reading the negative messages.   Stephen - Yeah, I'm the same.   Natalie - But one woman was like, "You are so different from how you used to be. You used to share your progress photos, and now you just talk about your life."   The truth is, we all change and grow as people, right? And so for me, posting an ab selfie now, I don't get validation or fulfillment. I don't need that like I did six years ago. So, yeah, if you look at my feed, I don't post as much like, like, body image stuff, because I'm kind of like in a different space.   And so what will happen is that as you're transparently sharing what you're focused on in your life, sometimes, you will get people that you don't attract anymore.   Like, they're still in a different area, and they want to follow people that are in that area, and that's okay.   What I've had to learn is that the number-one thing when you get mean people on the internet, and it took me a long time to figure this out, is that it's so much more about them and what they're personally struggling with than it is about you, you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - Okay, so, for example, my peach tree. So we had a big wind storm. I'm sure you saw it 'cause we live in the same town.   So, this tree that I've nurtured for two years, finally had some fruit coming off of it, well the storm completely broke the tree, and I was really sad. I posted about it on my Insta Story, and she wrote back, and she was calling me all these mean names, and she's like, "To think that your biggest worry right now is that your peach tree died. My mom just died, and my brother is sick."     And I realize she's hurting because of that, and she's lashing out at me, right?   So it's a reflection of her. It's not a reflection of me. And so that was the hardest thing I had to learn, being open and vulnerable in the online space, is that you will get critics.   I always say it's like the people in the peanut gallery out there who aren't, like...   I'll listen to criticism from people who are in the arena with me, right, people who are battling and fighting and trying and working hard, but if it's just a critic out in the peanut gallery that isn't there fighting along with me, then their opinion doesn't matter.   It's probably more about them than me.   Stephen - You're better than I am, then. There are times I just, I don't know.   Natalie - Well, I did block her.   Stephen - I like to fight with 'em sometimes. And I shouldn't, and I'm growing past that, and there's me being vulnerable. I like to stir the pot sometimes when it's already brewing.   Natalie - You should talk about that, Stephen. So you should talk about it-  not just like the fun, "I said this, and he said that" but the real issues, "why did that trigger you?" And what's the story behind that insecurity?   Those are the things that people love. Not just the story, but going deeper into the feeling or the "why" behind it - you know?   Stephen - Yeah.   Natalie - I don't know.   Stephen - I told you, yeah, some of it's going on right now still with some other people. Like, it comes in waves. I don't know if that happens for you too.   Natalie - Yes.   Stephen - It's like the criticism goes down, whoa, and then it goes away, and you're like, everything rocks, and then you try something big again, and everyone's like, "whoa!" Not everyone, but there's like, anyway, the talking heads, as I call them, come on out. It's the armchair quarterbacks.   Natalie - Uh-huh, 100%.   Stephen - Yeah, I told you, and I've been planning on doing that. Funny you say that. I just haven't quite formulated how to do it yet, so.   Natalie - Yeah.   Stephen - It's top of mind.   I wanna thank you for being on here with everyone, and guys, Sales Funnel Radio, we're talking about vulnerability.   This is everything, especially if you are the attractive character in your own business - which I hope that you are, and you choose to be.   This is not a tiny subject. It's something that you will not have the choice to go around. You will address it whether it's through haters or your own personal growth. You're gonna get it.   So, please, please go follow Natalie. Natalie, where should people go to follow you?   Natalie - My website is nataliehodson.com, or Facebook is Natalie Hodson Official. Instagram is nataliehodson1   Stephen - Cool.   Natalie - If anybody has any questions, you know, you can leave 'em, and I'll keep checking 'em. I'll answer them and stuff.   The books that I talked about are Brene Brown's Daring Greatly and Rising Strong.  I think they're books every single human being on this planet should listen to.   I call the books magic, 'cause I've listened to them probably six times now, and every time, I need to hear a different piece. I gain something different from them every time, you know? They're good books.   Stephen - I wrote it down. I'm excited. I'm gonna go get them right after this.   Natalie - Cool.   Stephen - That's awesome. Everyone, guys, thank you so much.   Please reach out to Natalie and say thank you and go follow her, and watch her practice what she preaches on this stuff. It's fantastic and amazing - and that lets her audience open up as well.   So Natalie, thank you so much for being on, and it's been a pleasure.   Natalie - Yeah, you're so welcome.   Stephen - Woohoo, hey, thanks for listening.   Hey, many don't know that I actually made my first money online as an affiliate marketer.   If you wanna know how I funded my entire company without using any of my own money ever, you can learn to do the same for free at affiliateoutrage.com.

Maren is out — So Natalie has called upon her two BFF’s, Michael and Roger, to fill in. In the first installment of “We're All Mirandas,” they’re getting into how Sex and the City came to be, dissecting the not-so-great pilot, …and what good would an FGF episode be without a Connie Britton tangent?! (Warning! Major Nashville season five spoilers!) And this week in fangirling: La Croix’s fancy flavors, a “new love” for Arlissa, and a Martin Sheen sighting.    ***  Brought to you by TV Time: http://bit.ly/2rxbrSz Fangirl Merch: https://fangirlfridayspodcast.threadless.com/ Instagram: @fangirlfridayspodcast Facebook: @fangirlfridayspodcast Twitter: @fgfpodcast