Podcasts about so stephanie

What was supposed to be a committee examining the relationship between Canada and China has turned into something of a constitutional crisis. Opposition MPs on the ad-hoc Canada-China Committee are demanding access to classified documents to find out the reasons two scientists were fired from the National Microbiology Lab. The entire affair has led to the trashing of one of Canada's few national security transparency and oversight institutions, the shutting down of committees, government officials being publicly scolded and a cameo no one expected – Section 38 of the Canada Evidence Act. There is a lot to unpack here. So Stephanie sits down with Leah West and Philippe Lagassé to discuss the matter, what went wrong, why everyone is to blame – and whether it's all academic because and election is coming our way. Please note, this podcast was recorded on July 13, 2021. We did experience a few technical difficulties, so please excuse the recording!

If you break down the supply chain in its simplest form, basically what you have is brands procuring products and then delivering them to customers where and when they need them. Sounds easy, right? But if you've listened to this show long enough, you know that's not the case. We've heard countless guests tell us just how much the supply chain impacts their business, and they've described a number of challenges they have encountered thanks to supply chain disruptions. One thing they all had in common — they had no answers to the problems they were facing.That changes now. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, I was so excited to finally get some insight on the supply chain from a couple of guys from Blue Yonder, Omar Akilah, GVP of Product in the commerce suite, and Eugene Amigud, GVP of Product Management and Architecture. Blue Yonder is an end-to-end supply chain platform that enables companies to tackle all the problems in the supply chain, and little side note, it's currently on track to be acquired by Panasonic for a measly $7.1B. From planning to execution, to transportation management, to commerce, to promising a customer when they're going to get it and making sure that you fulfill those promises, these are just some of the things Eugene and Omar have insider knowledge of. They dug into all of those topics and more and they shared how they help brands solve issues at all stages of the supply and fulfillment process. Regardless of the issues at hand, Eugene and Omar have heard, seen, and solved for it all. They also see the trends evolving in real time, including how important same-day or next-day delivery will be in various verticals, how and where A.I. and ML are being implemented, and what kind of difference edge technology and data will have on the entire buying and shipping experience. Eugene and Omar explain it all in this awesome roundtable episode, enjoy!Main Takeaways:Stitched Together: The supply chain is made up of specific pillars that can be optimized in specific ways. The way to level up and personalize the supply chain experience for brands is to stitch together the pillars and tools to make each pillar more valuable. For example, using machine learning to help do more accurate real-time inventory and then incentivizing purchase through automated couponing will lead to more sales, and also more data to further input into an ML algorithm to keep making the system better.Knowing the Needs: Supply chain optimization is all about understanding the unique needs of a company or an industry. For medicine and pharmaceuticals, speed of delivery is critical — people need their medicine now. For grocery, being able to schedule your food to arrive on the days you need it for the meals you're cooking is most important. Once you identify what the major need is, solving for that becomes a bit easier.Gaining an Edge: The use of edge technology and data, combined with other execution tools like sensors, A.I. and ML, can change the shopping experience for customers and the supply chain experience for businesses. By bringing everything to the edge and utilizing new technology, real-time freshness and weather and harvest data can be used by businesses to update their inventory or upcoming orders and to inform customers of critical product information.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we're ready for what's next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hello, and welcome back to up next in commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, CEO at mission.org. Today, we have an epic round table with two men from Blue Yonder, Eugene and Omar. Guys, welcome to the show.Omar:Hello. Thank you.Eugene:Thank you.Stephanie:Yeah. I'm very excited to have you on. So today I'm very happy because we're finally tackling something that so many of our guests have been saying is an issue. I mean, hundreds of episodes in, and almost all of them that said supply chain is one of the biggest issues in e-commerce, but no one has had to figure it out and they always say hi, can someone come and help us with this? So I'm really excited about the conversation today. To start maybe Omar, if you could give us an overview of what is Blue Yonder.Omar:So Blue Yonder, if you think about it is really an end-to-end supply chain platform that enables companies to tackle all the problems that you talked about in the supply chain. From planning to execution, to transportation management, to commerce, to orchestrating in order to where it needs to go, to promising a customer when they're going to get it and making sure that you fulfill on those promises. So if you really think of all of the various components of the supply chain, we basically power that right from the bits and bytes that need to be in the warehouse during the time that they need to be there to planning the labor all the way to getting it to a customer.Stephanie:And what are some of the brands that you guys work with? Are they all just big brands or there some small ones in there too? What does that look like?Eugene:We work with various brands. Some of those include pretty well-known it's going to be lululemon or CVS or the worked with the [calls], [Mesias], Urban Outfitters, and so on. So pretty well recognized brands.Stephanie:Yeah. [inaudible] small guy. It's no big deal. That's awesome. So I want to talk about the landscape today of where supply chain is, because like I said, we hear that there's all these issues. There's delays. We're having a heated conversation earlier, before we were recording around our couches all being delayed. And it's very sad. So I want to hear what's going on today, or maybe what has been transforming over this past year to get us here.Omar:Yeah. And I think, again, if you take it a step back, Stephanie, I would think about it relative to every company is trying to offer a brand product value proposition. So I have my brand, I have my products and my assortments. I'm trying to price them the right way so that they resonate with you or create some differentiator in the market relative to either the quality or the price or the uniqueness of the offering. And then I'm trying to make sure I can get it to you when you need to get it. So if we think of supply chain, instead of this big, hairy monster. That's essentially what I'm trying to do, if I'm trying to make products that you love and get them in your hand when you want them from a consumer perspective. Now, to support all of that, obviously there's a element of either procuring this product from another source or I'm making it for you.Omar:That's where the supply chain varies tremendously, depending on who you're talking about in the automotive industry versus the pharma industry versus other industries. It's all about the components are still there. I need to make something or I need to procure something. I need to be able to get it to where I need it to be. And place it in the right place relative to my demand. So I know you're in Austin or I'm in California or Eugene's in Boston. And I need to make sure that the inventory is where he needs it to be, or you need it to be in order to get it in time. I need to be able to promise you that, that inventory is there and I need to be able to deliver all my promises. So if we break it down to the essence, that's what it is. Now, the complexity comes in each of the functions. If you look at each of these functions, they become domain centric functions where I need to go very deep, where I'm using machine learning.Omar:I'm using analytics to figure out, okay, how much of a product do I need to sell? During which seasons? Where are my best suppliers? Who can I get it from at the best cost? How does my network look for inbound? Am I going to get it from overseas? And then I need to go through an ocean in order to get it to a port and then truck it somewhere else? What does all of that look like? And that's where the right tools and the right software solutions become key to helping you answer those questions. Does that help?Stephanie:Yes. That makes perfect sense. So when you come in, for some of these big brands will say, I don't know, CVS or something, or anyone, where do you even start? How do you start the audit process? And maybe what are the biggest surprises? What are these brands missing, where they're like, oh, if we only knew about that 10 years ago would have been way easier.Omar:I think you'll see you Eugene and I we're riffs a little bit. I think it's a couple things Stephanie, first is the problem points that they have. We see a lot of... And everybody's a little different. Number one is, with COVID and with the fact that we all have these, and I would say this came before COVID-Stephanie:[inaudible].Omar:People just forget about that. Folks, sorry. Yes. There's a podcast, phones, phones, telephones. And more specifically the fact smartphones, where we now have a browser in our hand, and we want to understand a lot more than what we did in the past. In the past, it was more about, "Hey, you know what, J.Crew is a cool brand. I want to go into the store. I want to check it out. Now I want to browse their catalog. I want to see what's available near me. I want to see whether or not I can get it today." So typically where we start is the problem points that companies have relative to the strategy they're trying to implement and what stressors that have. So one could be, I need to expose how much inventory I have in the store and make it available to a customer.Omar:Another could be, you know what, I'm doing that, but I need to be able to optimize my inventory better, put it in the right place so that it doesn't take so long to get Stephanie and [inaudible] their couches. Those are the type of things that, depending on the problem point, and given the fact that Blue Yonder has such a robust portfolio, we start from wherever their pain point is in the supply chain. And we're typically, revert to it as the supply chain experts in these areas. Eugene:Just to add to what Omar's saying, me being in the industry for a quite long time, I took things for granted. But then if you talk to somebody outside of the industry, you always have to educate what is actual supply chain? How does it work? Everyone says, look, I just placed an order online and I get the box back. But then they partially because of COVID, what happened was government started talking about supply chain. Saying, look, if you cannot physically go into the stores, but you can come and do a pickup from the store where you order something online, you pick it up from the store has been there forever. I mean, that's why I've been doing it probably 20 years ago or more. But somewhat not as spread out, general public might not have understood it well.Eugene:And now everyone has to do that. And I was fascinated literally the spot of the news coverage, where there will be COVID numbers and the other updates, it would say, okay, physical stores for non essential brands can be open for pickup or can be open for shipping. And the reverse was, let's say stores are closed. And our customers cause that Eugene we've got we have seasonal merchandise and you have to get rid of it. What do we do? The customers are not coming into the store. What I do with that? The answer is you can ship from those stores. You can use your stores as a warehouses and again, old concept to a degree, but it just became so much spread out. And those are some of the difficulties we started ordering, discussing, helping customers to say, look, how do you handle these scenarios?Stephanie:Do you see these customers that you have actually being able to identify their problems? Because to me, if I'm a brand I'm like, I don't know what I don't know. So I don't know what J. Crew's doing versus Bombas versus these DTC companies who maybe are mainly and have always used their retail locations as fulfillment centers. Do they actually understand the problems they have?Eugene:Yeah-Eugene:Very often is a common. That's where you start. They see a problem of saying my inventory is not moving. And we have them in some of the first questions they ask us saying, look, how other customers do this? Just because of how our product used across multiple verticals in different domain, [inaudible] people do ask us all the time saying what's the best way to implement it? So now actually we find a lot is customers work with us. Not just to buy product. They say, look, bring the best practices. The lessons learned, what's the fastest way to implement that? Yes. We all know somebody else's doing ship from store, but how do you roll it out? Do you roll it out across all stores immediately? Do you pick a market where you offer some competitive differentiation, et cetera?Omar:Yeah. And I think, sorry, just to add there, I think Eugene's point is a good one. I'd look at it in two categories, generally, they know what they want to impact from a strategy perspective, they might not know how. And that's where trusted partners come into play, but Eugene's point, you typically know, you know what, I want to make the customer experience better to my customers. I have an issue with stale inventory sitting in my warehouse. I have a cost problem with how much it costs me to fulfill orders. I need to bring that down. So the problem statements are typically known. To your point, the solutions may not be. So do I go and address order optimization to fix my shipping problem?Omar:To Eugene's point, if you ship out of stores, hey, you're shipping from a closer location. You're going to get a benefit of potentially lowering your time to deliver to your customers. But your transportation costs may go up a little bit. So how do you cater for that? Do you look at other ways to do it? And that's where we would suggest, well, have you done a network model where you've assessed your ins and your outs and make sure that they're optimized accordingly? Do you need a micro fulfillment center? Do you need to ship directly from your sources? Those kinds of answers come out after that problem statement has been clearly identified. So the problem statements, I think, are very clear to your point. They may not know what the solution is to those, and that's where we typically help.Stephanie:Yeah. So is there a shiny star client where you were like, ah, this one, every time we're going to go with this playbook where we're going to implement these 10 key pieces and maybe there's a little customization based off their product. Is that a good way to think about how you guys work or is it custom every single time?Omar:I don't think it's custom every single time. I think to your point there are definitely key pillars of the supply chain that need to be aligned. And again, all of our customers, I would say are actively working on all of those pillars. Whether it's inventory planning, inventory, placement, network modeling, the commerce experience, speed and convenience to their customers. Those are all common pillars that every company is trying to figure out whether they're B2B or B2C. It really doesn't matter if they're common. Do I have the right products in the right place, fast enough to meet the demand that I have when I have it. And am I engaging my customers the way that they want to be engaged and am I promising them what they're going to get when they're going to get it, all that kind of good stuff.Omar:So I think at the end of the day, the pillars are common. What happens that uniqueness in the sauces? How do you address it for each customer? Eugene:So like Omar was saying, the pillars are common. I call them building blocks. I think what also makes us very different is the what is the absolute burning pain that the customer is experiencing. And you see different, there are some, let's say retailers, their margins are absolutely through the roof and all they care about is how do I get this product to customer's hands faster. They may not actually worry about extra three dollars and shipping just because I want to get customer to have a today or tomorrow one good example of some of these scenarios is not margins, but speed is a pharmacist. So if you think about pharmacy, if I want my order to arrive within an hour probably I need it. I need this medication. So that's one example. So absolutely I have to find the closest location and try to fulfill their orchestrate my supply chain so that I can ship it within an hour.Eugene:And the flip side is some other retailers where a good example is grocery, where I may want to get my order delivered on Friday, just because that's when I start cooking and so on. And so you can see the difference. One is immediacy. And another one is actually, I want to plan accordingly. And so you can think of supply chain being orchestrated very differently based on the customer. So from our perspective, so we have this pillar, some building blocks make them very flexible from technically to call the microservices, to make sure that you can use those and build within your whatever customer is looking to achieve. And again, those goals could be very, very different. Everyone is talking about everything going digital. The grocery going digital, this whole Omni channel scenarios. But if you look at every one of them in detail, they actually quite unique. Many of them are very unique and our job is to make sure that whatever customers are trying to achieve we enable them to do so.Stephanie:Yeah. Cool. What are some of the new trends that you all see popping up? Because I'm sure you have a lot of people coming to you and they're like, we need to do this right now because we heard other brands are doing this, or this is the way of the future. What trends are you hearing that are maybe new and even just the past couple months or so?Eugene:I think [inaudible] that's really hard this year to me is a same day or hourly delivery. That's one. Everyone talks about it. It's actually remains to be seen how hot it will remain going forward or not. And again, if I look at the Madison delivery, it's there to stay, grocery maybe. And then some that probably it will come and go. Because we see many retailers they'll enable same day delivery, but the margins are just not there or in that charging customer $20 for same day delivery of a shirt, it may not stay there. So that's an interesting one. I think it will evolve over time, but the same day delivery is definitely a very hot, a common topic that customers ask us all the time.Omar:Well, we can riff on that for a bit Stephanie, because if you think of COVID and the COVID impact. So every company that offered goods to customers wanted to get it in their hands as soon as possible to replicate the in store experience. Because you're browsing the aisle, you're looking. So now I'm focusing on my e-commerce experience, I'm focusing on my digital experience to try to mirror that. So that you can actually get it. And what's the other part of that is putting it in your basket and leaving and being able to have that item that day. So now, to Eugene's point, if you look at it, a category by category perspective, is same day uptake going to be the same across all the different industries and all the different categories.Omar:I would agree with Eugene, probably not, because now that folks are getting mobile again, we may rely on it for pharmacy. We may rely on it for grocery. We may rely on it for essentials. And we want it when we want it, but now for non-essential goods, do I really need it same day? I may be willing to wait. So that becomes the balance and the dance from a customer engagement perspective where you want to offer them the options but they may not necessarily be the option that they we'll take up every single time. And so there's a balance to Eugene's point on that cost to serve. I think the other cool trend or the other trend that I'm seeing in a Eugene and I reverse roles for a sec. You talked about the same day delivery, and I'm going to talk about the use of machine learning. So typically Stephanie, he's the tech geek and I've done-Stephanie:Yeah. We just flop [inaudible].Omar:Yeah. We just totally flop. So what I would say is like super cool that I'm seeing quite a bit in industry is the usage of machine learning to solve the problems that people cannot easily. So let's look at grocery for a second, or let's look at any other industry where products are very volatile as they're in the store because you got a lot of people coming in and out, but yet you want to promise against that store potentially because you don't want to have a distribution center that fulfilled a product to a customer to Eugene's point, if I want to deliver same day, I want to get it out of your local Safeway or Lucky's or whatever it may be. You can get it straight into your hands. So how do I factor for whether or not something's in stock or not?Omar:So that's where things like using machine learning and understanding how often they get replenished to how often a product is being demanded, how often a product is actually there, when it says it's going to be there using a brain to determine all of that probabilistically, high probability that it's there becomes easier than to do the traditional path of, I have five units at the end of the start of the day, and I sold three units in it now two. So being able to use applied machine learning and artificial intelligence in the supply chain, and I just use inventory as one, but you can think of it relative to planning. You can think of it relative to assortment residents during different seasons. Should I offer a pink jacket because of this type of season where it's going to be cold, but it's bright. So people are actually going to like the color pink more, or those kinds of things become super, super to me, exciting in terms of trends.Omar:And we're seeing it more, more, and more of the conversations are, how are you tying machine learning and artificial intelligence into your planning tools, into your commerce tools? And then we're being asked, how are you tying planning into execution? How are you bringing those two things together? So that to me is super, super exciting. I know it's exciting to you, Eugene too. We just flipped roles. We're excited about the same stuff. We're brothers from other mothers-Stephanie:[inaudible] get of my territory [inaudible].Eugene:No that's-Omar:Yeah, yeah. Exactly.Eugene:And to me to continue right to what Omar's mentioned is, to me that's almost like evolvement on visibility. So before many talks about control towers. So that's another kind of topic and now expectations are changing to say, look, from control tower and visibility I need to make it actionable. And how do you make actionable for all this visibility you actually apply in machine learning. And then if you make it actually can make it urgent and relevant to the current customer. So that's another trend that we see quite a lot now is saying, look, we have the control tower. We have this ability now, how do you make it actionable? My PO is not a writing for now another two months.Eugene:The couch discussion we had a little earlier, before we started would be good to practice practical notify customers saying that you probably do not get the couch and maybe recommend another couch or provide a different date. So of just showing this ability because of the supply chain now is being so rapidly changing, how do you react that the speed that consumer or businesses expect?Stephanie:So I have two thoughts there. First, I'm going to go with the training piece. Whenever people talk on machine learning, I obviously think it's going to blow everything out of the water. It's going to help a lot. But then I also think the people on the ground have a lot of that local knowledge where they know what's in style based off the people that come in. So how do we think about training the models where people can actually help with that and influence the outcome. So it's not just a computer guessing and applying the same algorithm to Austin versus Washington state. And then whereas people they're picking inventory, I'm thinking of these consignments jobs here who pick this awesome inventory and they're so close to what people in Austin want versus what someone in DC would want very different or San Jose. Omar, no one would want something that's here. Probably. How do you [inaudible] all that?Omar:We're weird too. We're weird [inaudible].Stephanie:We're all weird in our own way.Omar:Yeah, yeah. Come on, [inaudible].Stephanie:Very different kinds of weird. Yeah, how do you think about that customization piece and training so that people on the ground floor can help influence the outcome of those models?Eugene:Yeah. So a couple of things. So in general, and it lists in the industry, we work with people just don't trust machine learning to begin with. Part of the job security part of it is uncertainty. My favorite comment was one customer and we were trying to talk about machine learning and he said, look, Eugene, would you put your child in a school bus that's driven by machine learning? And that was a fair question-Stephanie:I would. I drive a Tesla, I'm all about it.Eugene:No. But he didn't ask about the car, he asked about school bus. A little bit more complex. So it was a tricky question, but a fair question. And I think the takeaway there is you need to build a system that users can trust. And there are various ways of doing it. One is training. So how much data you need? So very common question. I said, look, we don't have the data. You'll ask us for two years for some data, we don't have two years worth of data. And now it's actually worse because the last year of COVID data is very often useless.Stephanie:Yeah. We talked about this actually with Stitch Fix where she's like, we had the VP of data science come on. And it's just like, if we use this last year of data, we would have all the wrong models because everyone wants athleisure and yoga pants. And she's like, and that will not be the trend in the next year or two-Omar:In the next year.Eugene:[crosstalk] where they had stores closed all 2000 or 3000, whatever stores, the physical walls. So you can learn too much from that. So to your point, training, I couldn't think of more relevant than more right time question than now, about training. So you have to be very careful of what data use, what is [inaudible] they're used to train that, but also the way we think about that, we actually give users manual controls together with machine learning and a lot of insights onto machine. So we don't just spit out the data and say, well, trust us, that's the best way. But whenever we make a decision, we try to capture all the decision criteria that was used during the time. And it's almost like degenerated audit for it.Eugene:So that is the best way you found to build trust to people who use it try to business owners of those components to say, look, you made the decision because of that, or can I change few levers manually because I don't have the enough historical data. So then you are playing with some levers to begin with while you collecting historical data, and then you start trusting more and more the machine learning and you are adjusting those levers and say, look, now it's less manual and more automatic. So the rollout, the transition, the insights, all super important. And again, many of these are very urgent. We're talking about customers can say, look, in two months, I want this up and running. I may not have historical data.Eugene:So, there's always a combination. Enough historical data to train. So you say, look, we'll start training, you will start collecting the data, doing cleansing and whatever, but you have some manual ways to control it while you're building more and more trust to your machine learning data. Omar you want to add?Omar:No, no. I was just going to say, I mean, you hit the nail on the head and I think Stephanie, one of the issues again is, I think now the application of AI and ML in retail or in manufacturing or in the different industries, is relatively new and so are the solution providers [inaudible]. So to Eugene's point, giving transparency was a problem. In some cases, they thought that look, they aren't using my peers and even us to some degree. But that's not the case with us. But if I show what's happening on potentially exposing my solution to you, which frankly, is what you have to do. Because in order for me to trust you, to Eugene's point, I have to understand what you're doing, and why you're doing it, so that you build what Eugene highlighted which is confidence.Omar:And being able to say, hey, look, if you're not confident above 90% in this decision and I would argue your point on self-driving. If you can't drive this thing 99.9% to the rules of the road, I'm not going to trust you. I'm going to grab it. But if you can, and you prove to me that you can, and that you have, over the past year, you have, then you know what, yeah. I trust you. So the ability to actually understand and have the control of what it's doing, and be able to have the control of, yes, I want to accept you or no I don't, becomes critical to machine learning [inaudible] Yeah. Absolutely critical. And-Stephanie:Yes. And what I love about that it's leveling everyone up in the industry because then everyone is like a data scientist. Everyone is understanding the weighting of the different variables and how to play with it and put their own human element into it. I guess we're really leveling everyone up in the industry.Omar:And it's not creating it and the thing that I think is interesting is everybody says, hey, you know what, This is my secret vow, but the point is you get to innovate on top of it. You get to use data science to really create unique experiences for your target segment which could be different than your competitors target segment. That's how you get to differentiate as well. So the ability to truly understand your market, truly understand your supply chain, truly understand what you can improve within it becomes... Again, to me, I geek out with Eugene on that quite a bit. Because I just think it's super, super cool. That and same day delivery of course.Stephanie:I love that. I mean, it seems like transparency and visibility are the way forward in this industry. I'm even thinking about same day delivery. Does it matter? Does it not? Maybe depends on the industry but probably what matters most is the messaging behind that, of where is my package. It can be 20 days out in the future as long as I actually can go and look into that. Are you guys seeing some trends around companies really try to put everything forward when it comes to being very transparent around where things are, what the process looks like? So customers are like fully in the loop?Eugene:Yeah. I didn't. At some degree you summarized by Blue Yonder bought Yon tricks right in the company we founded. At the core of it is you have supply chain and when we got together, we said, look, if you take the supply chain and you bring up, which could be scary because it puts a lot of pressure on supply but if you bring it up, front and center, and make it transparent and visible, that's where the power is. So that the core that's really why we came together with Blue Yonder and Yon tricks to try to achieve that. It's also the technical side of me. That's where the complexities are because when you show this transparency, if you think of a supply chain, it historically tend to be more of a background jobs. So there's something in the background that gets your box out, et cetera.Eugene:Now, if you want to take all that and expose it front and center, it can no longer be a background. I cannot say, well, customer, I'll tell you where your order is in 30 minutes. I need to respond in five milliseconds maybe, because it needs to show on your mobile phone within some low millisecond response times. So the technical challenges to do that is actually quite interesting network excites us and we talk about it a lot is the architecture. You can't just take an old program that was written back in the day and say, look, now it's exposed to the front end. Now it's about sides. Now you can compete with Amazon. It doesn't form the plan. All my talks, quite a lot about some of those vertical integrated supply chain in the industry. So you may want to touch on that, but that's really irrelevant to what you said.Stephanie:[inaudible].Omar:Yeah. Yeah. I would start first, maybe Stephanie, with of what you said and I'm going to go back to machine learning for a second. In understanding customer behaviors, there is definitely a balance between what you're willing to deal with in terms of time and speed, and what you're willing to pay for depending on the product assortment, and what it is, and when it is, when you're buying it. So number one to your point, accuracy in reliability is absolutely tantamount to any kind of promises that I'm engaging in. And I think you're just seeing that across every retailer that's now trying to build it. Every reseller now, every retailer now, again another trend that you're seeing, you look at the product details page, guess what you're seeing now, order now get it tomorrow, order now, get it in 10 days, you're seeing dates now.Omar:You're not seeing date ranges anymore, five days, four days, you're seeing July Wednesday, July 3rd. To Eugene's point that now puts stress on the supply chain to make sure that that happens. But you're no longer seeing three to five business days. And if you are, they are actively looking at how do they make that a different proposition. And then to your point, there's analysis being done on the backend branching. Will Stephanie still buy this thing if the lead time is greater than this or not? Right from analyzing trends, do they know? For these type of products, I really need the offers same day delivery. I need to make sure that it's available within 24 hours and get it in our hands in three days. If it's more than three days or four days, or five days, she doesn't buy for abandonment and analyzing what that does to your shopping cart and behavior.Omar:So that's one, the second use to what Eugene was talking about is now, these different pillars of the supply chain, the power of being able to go deep within them to surface those promises, but then stitch them together. To actually provide a unique value proposition to you, and I'm going to say a word that people aren't going to like and influence your behavior to what I want you to do, becomes super powerful. As an example, I'm in the shopping cart, you have three items in your shopping cart. Those three, I understand that they're actually going to be expensive for me to fulfill, I can incent you and you've seen this with colds and others to go and pick up in store, and I'll give you a coupon. And I know that when you walk into the store, you attach more. But now I've actually connected two things that are typically not connected, which is, pricing and promotion, with delivery execution. Typically those are separate.Omar:And in the old world they were completely separate. Now I'm tying them together. So the ability to actually create these domain centric microservices, that are loosely coupled, that can work on their own, but then once I integrate them together they work seamlessly in the response times required, at the scale required because we're not talking about that yet. We haven't talked about that but one of the big things is build the internet, the website has an SLA of how quick things need to come back. And how high it needs to scale with execution systems, were not necessarily built for that. So being able to actually scale to those kinds of volumes while providing very deep intelligence on the supply chain, is not an easy problem. It is a problem we solve, we're very proud of the fact that we solved that, but it's not an easy problem to address.Omar:So the power of the domain centric microservices that can be a single call, regardless of who's calling it, the integration and the stitching between the two, coupled with the intelligence on top of it to understand what behavior you want, and what behavior I want from you becomes truly, in my opinion the secret to success.Stephanie:Yeah. I love the idea of stitching things together. It have made a perfect little model in my mind around what's happening. What are some of the... Maybe like one or two case studies of a company like Kohl's, or whoever you want to highlight coming in, getting all of this working together, and then being like, well, here's the results that happened in however long it took.Omar:Sure. So I think there's a couple of things here and Eugene, I'll rely on you. So one, industry examples, obviously Amazon. You see it all the time. As you think of... And again from a Blue Yonder customer perspective, you think of grocery, you think of all of the different, retail clients that we had at Yon tricks. They're all on this journey to connect and I use Petco as one of my key examples. You look at their ability to deliver. Not only commitments to their customers, but they've actually been able to make them things like, free same day delivery in certain markets and free one to two day delivery. It really helped them turn the corner where they rapidly added capabilities. So time to value becomes a very, very important on anything that's doing, because these transformation projects are huge, and they take a very long period of time.Omar:But if you think of what Petco has been able to do in a short period of time to highlight Petco in a minute, or again, we can talk industry wise about what Amazon has been able to do with whole foods and delivery, you can see Albertsons and Safeway and what they're doing right in terms of innovation there. But if I highlight Petco for a second, you look at the ability that they were able to turn on 1500 stores into ship from stores. They were able to, without going into all the detail but being able to do all of that and surface them into customer value at the time that customers needed it, and be able to pivot and even pivot strategies along the way as they were understanding customer behaviors, that becomes what makes me smile because that's exactly what we want these platforms to be able to do. And hopefully that answers a couple of key points. We can go deep on each but, yeah.Stephanie:That's great. I mean, pivoting is definitely seems like, you have to be able to do that in this day and age you got to be able to go quickly, move where your customers are going, because you never know what's coming next. When it comes to what's coming next I want to hear what do you guys think are the biggest disruptions coming into supply chain? What are you thinking around blockchain, or what other crazy ideas are you thinking, or like, this is going to come and impact everything. And Eugene, maybe this is your-Eugene:I'll start and then I'm not going to have it. Well, one part of [inaudible] is as it's known the Panasonic intense to acquire a Blue Yonder. And one interesting part of that, and that's primarily an industry. But somewhat related to that is edge. So you can do a lot with... So we talked about visibility, we talked about machine learning. The part is missing in all this equation and throughout the industry, is the edge intelligence. So now if you can see when customers walking into the store, and again, they're point solutions here and there. I don't think it's been as broad as we would like let's say, customer walks into the store. And you can just scan the face. And have understanding of the mood of the customer, what recommendations and what offers are there. On inventoring, again, knowing where the items are in real time, not just saying that, yes, the [inaudible] is arriving 20 days from now.Eugene:But actually have a sensor on that specific item and knowing that it's going from China to maybe west coast on the truck to Minneapolis somewhere. So with the edge data, you can machine learning and visibility and all this execution becomes on steroids. That's one trend that I think we'll evolve quite a bit machine learning in general. We'll just spread out. On top of the execution side, automation is a big one, again, we think about it in the context of an edge. So you come to the store to pickup and you have this bag automatically available to you. It's rolled out on a robot. So those few Omar, you want to add a few more?Omar:No, no. I think you spot-on. I mean, even if I expand what Eugene just said, think about freshness as well where I actually can use the edge technology via temperature sensors to actually tell you how fresh a particular product is. And if somebody takes it off of a shelf, I'm automatically replenishing either from my back room or creating an order because you know what, my plan of what I was going to be replenished has now spiked given the demand because it was hotter in a given area. So using weather and different spikes that may occur. So when you think of edge, and when you think of applying other intelligence in like sensors, robotics, those kind of things, automation process efficiency become key. On the other side of that when you think about the customer engagement and being able to truly reach the customer, to me, what becomes super, super exciting is you think of getting people products and we're already seeing it which was interesting is that, a couple of years ago, being able to see delivery day was a big deal.Omar:Now, you're able to select time, "Hey, I want it between this time and this time." And I don't think that going to go away. I think that you're going to see brands do everything they can to look at a customer's lifetime value and pull out all the stops relative to engagement. And how I engage with you, whether it's the stuff that I talked about relative to coupons, relative to loyalty programs, relative to same day delivery, time slots, all of those kinds of things, but being able to truly understand my customer lifetime value with a customer and be able to cater specific needs around them. Also, becomes a second key trend that I believe you're going to see all the companies moving to, and you've already seen some of it with loyalty programs and other things and differentiated benefits as a result. So I think those two, I mean, I think we're very excited and obviously I've already told you, I'm super excited about how things stitch together.Omar:And we're actively building those stitch components. Real time demand, into planning, into the internet of things, to understand and edge, to understand what's actually happening collaboration with suppliers in real time, so that you can actually order and adjust plans dynamically, extend your assortment as needed, their little like I could geek out for a very long time, but there's a lot I think that is going to come in this supply chain that you'll see over time. And it's all catered around making Stephanie's life easier when she's buying her couch. Right?Stephanie:All right. So the one thing I also want to bring up, you mentioned earlier about an acquisition and I wanted to touch on that because you guys are interesting. You worked at Yon tricks before you had the company Yon tricks before you got acquired by Blue Yonder. And now Panasonic is looking to acquire Blue Yonder for, I think it was $7.1 billion with a B. I want to hear about that journey because that's very fun. And I haven't had many companies on the show. You can talk about that.Eugene:Yes. That's quite interesting, with a year ago, exactly a year ago, because it was in July, Yon tricks was acquired by Blue Yonder. And this was an interesting transition exciting a little bit nervous, et cetera. But we were able... The acquisition was the strategy was of investment and growth. It was very well understood the supply chain needs to have this transparency to the customer, bring it to the front end, et cetera, from commerce perspective. And that was pretty much investment going forward. And I guess we are little bit fortunate within the Blue Yonder because other parts of the Blue Yonder obviously didn't go through that acquisition, but we just did. And so we understand the process maybe a little bit better. It's a little bit fresh in our minds. I'm very excited actually about Panasonic, because to me that looks very similar trend, but like you said, on a much bigger scale.Eugene:It's a investment strategy clearly, it's a growth strategy, and bringing the supply chain with the edge, arrived with the sound of the automation, bringing it all together. It's very exciting. So to me, we were the micro experiment within the Blue Yonder and now that becomes a macro experiment between Panasonic and Blue Yonder. So again, you'll find me as one of the most optimistic people. Whenever there's acquisition, people are always a little bit nervous and concerned. But because we just went through the journey and whatever we were able to achieve in one year, it would be absolutely impossible to achieve the same without the acquisition because when we were a startup, we were self-funded and we could grow organically, et cetera, but just with this acquisition It accelerated up. And now I see that. And I'm imagining you are assuming everything goes as planned as announced the possibility there is quite exciting.Stephanie:Omar, anything to add?Omar:think it's very, very exciting. I would say we were that micro spark into a rich strategy that I think the region leadership team at Blue Yonder had in terms of where they see the industry going and I think it's a testament to their vision. So, I mean, again, a Panasonic acquisition, if you think about it, traditionally, it would be like a supply chain company coming together with Panasonic. How does that make sense? But then when you think about the application opportunities within manufacturing, the ports importation within the four walls of a retail facility or store, warehousing, robotics, all of that kind of thing. It makes a lot of sense. So I think I'm very excited about it.Omar:I think again, to your point and to Eugene's point we've written a wave that's been tremendously fun for us. Eugene and I worked together at target and Yon tricks and beyond. So being able and the greater Yon tricks' team which was a family coming into the Blue Yonder family and being welcomed as well as we were. And then now being a part of this new chapter in this new journey and being able to help write those stories. Yeah. It's very humbling and it's a very fun thing to be part of, to be honest. It's pretty cool.Eugene:And that ties back to [inaudible] again, what you're talking about, the edge With Panasonic financial, the other part of it, you asked, what are the new trends? The other trend and I forgot to mention last time is B2C moving to B2B in terms of expectations. So now when we in a B2B if I'm in a manufacturing facility and I'm ordering PLS. I'm in the IT department, I'm ordering servers, et cetera, the expectations of those consumer shops so much on the retail websites, which are putting all new capabilities, we don't expect any more to... We are shopping at some against some ERP system. We just blue screens or whatever else.Eugene:So this whole digital revolution It's capturing B2B now. And that's, we really see it accelerating whether it's direct to consumer from the manufacturer. So whether it's a B2B or all these other flavors. The three PLS, et cetera, this digital revolution is taking over from what we've seen in B2C, what we all as people just used to and spreading around there. And I think that's also quite exciting. And with Panasonic empowering some of that makes it even more powerful.Stephanie:Yes. I love that. And you definitely see that in all the industries too are trying to approach B2B in the same way they're doing B2C and some industries that's perfect. And some maybe not, but awesome. Well, it's been a pleasure having you both on such a fun round table, such a good vibe, where can people hear more or learn more about Blue Yonder and you guys?Eugene:Thank you Stephanie for your time.Omar:Yeah. So Stephanie, obviously through our website Eugene and I, of course are all over. So, also LinkedIn, people can feel free to ping us there. As well as through again our Blue Yonder website and the different category pages of the different solutions that they need. So that's definitely available, but this has been a lot of fun. Thank you very, very much for your time.Stephanie:Of course, thank you guys.

Phil is out doing some really awesome recording stuff! So Stephanie “phills-in” for him tonight and she wants to talk about loving your body. We are joined by Charles' friend Brad the Blind. He has some fun bashing Charles along with everyone else. It's an interesting journey through why we get bad body images and how we have worked towards loving our bodies. We Show Some Love: We show the love for Friday Night Vibe Featured Guest: Brad the Blind Follow, Like, and Subscribe: @AlmostDailyPod FB/AlmostDailyPod Anchor.fm/AlmostDailyPod Contact us: AlmostDailyPod@gmail.com Hosts: Charles McFall, Philip Keating, Tony P. Henderson, and Mike Ellison Music is: Cherry Metal by Arthur Vyncke used under the Creative Commons License --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/inadditionpod/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/inadditionpod/support

Stephenie Woods was beyond exhausted. She’d just had a c-section a week earlier, when she gave birth to her daughter, Abby. So Stephanie laid down on her couch for a nap. Abby was asleep in her crib, and Stephanie’s one-year-old son, Conner, was in his playpen. Stephenie woke to a stranger at her door. The woman was Shannon Torrez. She told Stephenie that her car had broken down. Could she use her phone? Could she use her bathroom? Stephenie was groggy and taken off guard. Bewildered, she agreed to help the woman. But Shannon wasn’t there for Stephenie’s phone. She was there for her baby. Then Kristin tells us about Elizabeth Thomas. In the fall of 2016, 15-year-old Elizabeth was at a particularly vulnerable time in her life. She and her siblings had been homeschooled their whole lives by an abusive mother. The kids eventually made the brave decision to call Child Protective Services on their mother, and she was removed from the home. This meant that at 15, Elizabeth would enter public school for the first time. It was a rocky transition, but her health teacher, Tad Cummins made it better. He took a special interest in her. He cared for her. At least, it seemed that way at first. And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Kristin pulled from: The 20/20 episode, “From Classroom to Captive” “‘The devil won, my dad freaked out,’ daughter of Tad Cummins pens letter before sentencing,” by Caitlyn Shelton for News Channel 9 “Teen kidnapped by former Maury County teacher Tad Cummins settles suit for $650,000,” by James Bennett for the Columbia Daily Herald “Tad Cummins sentenced to 20 years in prison for taking a teenage student from home for sex,” by Adam Tamburin for The Tennesseean “Tad Cummins’ wife files for divorce amidst Elizabeth Thomas Amber Alert,” by Natalie Neysa Alund for USA Today Network “Tad Cummins sentencing: Read the teen victim’s statement to teacher who took her for sex,” on The Tennessean In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “Shannon Torrez” episode Snapped “MO Newborn Abducted Day of Stillbirth” NBC14 News “Kidnapped Baby Found” ABC News “Judge Gives Torrez Maximum Sentence” by Maggie Rotermund,http://emissourian.com “Franklin County woman sentenced in throat slashing and kidnapping” by Betsy Taylor/The Associated Press, The Columbia Missourian “Woman Gets 30 Years For Newborn Abduction” by The Associated Press, CBS News

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Stephanie Weyrauch on the show to discuss budgeting.  An active member of the national physical therapy community, Stephanie has served on multiple national task forces for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and actively lobbies for healthcare policy issues at the local, state, and national levels of government. Stephanie is a nationally sought after speaker and consultant for topics on social media use, generational issues, and organizational membership. In this episode, we discuss: -Stephanie’s experience paying off student loans and still enjoying her lifestyle -The budgeting tools you need to manage your expenses -Why an accountability partner can help keep your budgetary goals on track -How to incorporate pro bono work into your practice -And so much more! Resources: Stephanie Weyrauch Instagram Stephanie Weyrauch Twitter Stephanie Weyrauch Facebook Email: sweyrauchpt@gmail.com Dave Ramsey’s Complete Guide to Money - Hardcover Book The Total Money Makeover Dave Ramsey Podcast Every Dollar App   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about the Redoc Patient Portal here.     For more information on Stephanie: Dr. Stephanie Weyrauch is employed as a physical therapist at Physical Therapy and Sports Medicine Centers in Orange, Connecticut. She received her Doctorate in Physical Therapy and Master of Science in Clinical Investigation from Washington University in St. Louis. Dr. Weyrauch has served as a consultant for a multi-billion dollar company to develop a workplace injury prevention program, which resulted in improved health outcomes, OSHA recordables, and decreased healthcare costs for the company’s workforce. She has served on multiple national task forces for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and actively lobbies for healthcare policy issues at the local, state, and national levels of government. Currently, she serves as Vice President of the American Physical Therapy Association Connecticut Chapter and is a member of the American Congress for Rehabilitation Medicine. Dr. Weyrauch is also the co-host for The Healthcare Education Transformation Podcast, which focuses on innovations in healthcare education and delivery. Dr. Weyrauch has performed scientific research through grants from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation at world-renowned institutions including Stanford University and Washington University in St. Louis. Her research examining movement patterns and outcomes in people with and without low back pain has led to numerous local, regional, and national presentations and a peer-reviewed publication in Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, a top journal in rehabilitation.   Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy (00:00): We are the facebook group so we'll be checking the comments regularly, but just know that we will be checking and we'll probably be a couple seconds behind you guys. So if you are on and you are watching throughout any point in our talk today about setting a budget definitely write your comments down like questions. Whether for me mostly directed to Stephanie and we will get to those questions as well throughout the talk or throughout this very informative talk. I was saying before we went on the air that I'm really excited to listen to this because I have always been impressed with the way that Stephanie and her husband Deland have been able to create their life and their budget, and it's still full and they get to do the things they want to do and go where they want to go all while maintaining a budget and all while they both have student loans. Karen Litzy (01:07): So what I'll do first is it's for people in the group who aren't familiar with you, Stephanie just talk a little bit more about yourself and then we'll talk about how you set your budget and what kind of framework you follow.   Stephanie Weyrauch: Well, thanks Karen, for having me on, I'm really excited to talk about this because I'm running a budget as something that was really hard for me to do for a long time. I wasn't really raised to think about money growing up. So it's not, when I went through PT school, I just got my student loans and spent my money as I saw fit. And didn't really think about my money. So I'm Stephanie, Weyrauch, I'm a physical therapist here in Orange, Connecticut. I work at a private practice called physical therapy and sports medicine centers. Stephanie Weyrauch (01:55): And I do a little bit of consulting work privately through four different companies to try to help with occupational medicine and try to prevent any type of work injuries that happened in the workplace. So that's kinda my background a little bit, but when I went to, when I graduated from PT school and went to my first job, and at the time I was working in Minnesota, my student loans were becoming due and my husband is a physician. So he has a lot of student loans as well. So at the time total, we had pretty close to $300,000 in student loans. So quite a bit. And when my student loans were coming due and my boss hands me this little application for my 401k and like all these other very adult things, I just, I panicked. And I was like, I don't even know what a 401k is. Stephanie Weyrauch (02:44): I don't know how to pay my student loans. My husband was in medical school at the time. So I was the only one working. And my boss was just like, hold on. He's like, it's okay. I can help you. And so he handed me this book called the total money makeover by Dave Ramsey. And I read it and it changed my life. It changed the way that I thought about money. It changed the way that I handled money and it really empowered me to pay off my student loans and to not be afraid of debt to basically conquer it. So that's kind of the background behind it in the book. And also on his podcast, the Dave Ramsey show, he talks about how to manage a budget and how to set up a budget and how to stick to a budget. So the app that I use is called every dollar it's free. Stephanie Weyrauch (03:30): You can download it on, you can download it on Apple or Android, it kind of looks like this. So you can kind of set up, you can put in how much money you make and also what your expenses are for the month. Basically, it's very easy to use. You can use it on your phone or your computer. And so I started using that at the time, we were a one income household. I did pick up an extra job in a skilled nursing facility because my goal was, I didn't want to accumulate any more debt. So my goal was to try to make enough money and save enough money that we could pay for my husband's last year of medical school, which he went to an instate school. So his tuition was $25,000, which is very cheap, I think, by medical school standards. Stephanie Weyrauch (04:19): And we were able to cashflow that entire year of medical school, just off of the extra job that I was working at the skilled nursing facility. So every month, basically what I do is I go into the app before the month starts, I put in how much money I'm expected to make. Now, one of the things that happens when you're in private practice, especially if you're starting out is you may not know exactly how much you're going to make. And so it's hard to put in your budget like, Oh, I'm going to make, let's say, as Karen was talking about in the last course, you know, paying yourself by, let's say by biweekly or by month bi-monthly I'm gonna make $2,000 this next two weeks. Like you can't necessarily do that in Dave Ramsey's book. He has a sheet that you can use that lays out how you can do a budget based off of an income that fluctuates. Stephanie Weyrauch (05:11): I've never had a fluctuating income, so I've never used it, but he talks all about that in his book. And it's very easy to follow because he also talks about that if you are in debt and you're trying to pay off your debt, there's a certain amount, certain things you need to pay first. So food, shelter, lights, those are like the main things that you need to make sure that you focus on first. And then also the next thing would be like clothing. If let's say you're, you need to buy clothing. For some reason, I have really don't buy a lot of clothes. So I don't necessarily have to worry about that. And then after that is, comes your debt and any other miscellaneous things. So in this budget, you set up your income. If you were planning on giving any of your money away and like doing some charitable giving, that's something that he puts in there. Stephanie Weyrauch (06:02): If you're saving any money, there's a section for that. So then you can set aside how much money you want to save. And then for housing in my budget, I have my rent electricity. I put my cell phone cause that's my phone bill in there, my internet, and then my laundry. So those are like the five budget items that I have in there. And then in that month I set how much money I'm going to spend. And he thinks of a budget, not necessarily as a restriction, but permission for you to spend your money. So like throughout the month, if let's say your needs change, you can kind of rearrange how much money you're putting aside. So let's say for transportation, I need, let's say I'm taking my car. Cause I'm going to drive to a couple of patients’ houses. But this month, most of my patients are within a two mile radius of me. Stephanie Weyrauch (06:53): They're not far away, so I don't have to drive as much. So at the beginning of the month, I thought maybe I have to drive more. So let's say I set a hundred dollars for my gas and auto budget, and now I'm realizing I don't need that much. So what I could do with that is let's say I only need $50. So that extra 50, that I'm saving, I could potentially move to, let's say my savings, or if I have debt that I need to pay, I can move it down towards my debt. So you're giving yourself permission to spend that much money per month. The next item line item is food. So I've had groceries. And then I have, we have a section for restaurants. So if we want to eat out now with the pandemic, one of the things that was kind of nice about the pandemic is we weren't eating out nearly as much, but our grocery bill went like way up. Stephanie Weyrauch (07:38): So I noticed that we've been spending a ton more money on groceries. And I think it's mostly because food has gone up. So I had to adjust our budget based on that. Now this month we're, you know, things are starting to open up a little bit more here in Connecticut and Deland and I really haven't been able to go out and eat very much. And so now we're trying to put a little bit more money towards our restaurant budget because we want to enjoy that experience since we haven't had it for so long. So typically I set aside maybe $150 a month for restaurants, but this month we doubled that just because we haven't hardly eaten out at all in so long. So again, it's permission to use your money in the way that you think is going to be good for that month. Stephanie Weyrauch (08:27): And then there's a section for lifestyle. So I put like my subscriptions in there. So my Peloton subscription and my Netflix subscription, and then I have a vacation with my mom, hopefully coming up. And so I've been, you know, find some hotels and stuff for that. So I've been putting that under that, and then this one's going to be big if you're in private practice insurance and taxes. So there's another section for that. So if you have your, let's say it's the month where you have to pay your quarterly taxes, or let's say, instead of saving all this money and doing it in one month, you divide it up into three months. Well then you can kind of equally divide that four month, and then that way you're not forgetting to pay it. And then of course the last line item is debt. And so how much money you're going to be spending towards your debt that month. Stephanie Weyrauch (09:20): And then what happens is it will take, it'll give you like a picture and a graph of how much you're spending. So let's see if I can bring that up. So, so basically this is my debt and how much I spend this, this past 12 months on different things. So you can see that most of what I've been spending has been on my debt is debt, the green light, this light green color, this big one, that's all how much money that I've spent on debt this year, so far this year. So, you know, Karen had mentioned the other day that deal and I paid a lot on debt and we have, since I've been on this budget, I have been dedicated to becoming debt free. Stephanie Weyrauch (10:09): And our goal has been to be debt free in a total of seven years. So right now we're in year four of that. And within those four years, we've paid off $150,000 in debt, which is a lot. And that includes the cashflowing of Deland’s medical school, plus our move that we had to cash flow from North Dakota to here in Connecticut. So I'm not saying it's easy, like I'm not saying I live a luxurious life at all, but I would say that I definitely, like Karen said, I'm able to like go, I'm able to go well before the pandemic, I'm able to go to New York city, like once a month and see Karen and like hang out with my friends. But I plan for that every month. And if something comes up where I'm not able to do that, then I just have to make sure that I don't do it. Stephanie Weyrauch (11:00): And so it takes discipline, which you're all in private practice and you've started your private practice. So you obviously are all disciplined individuals. I will say that when you're managing a budget too, it always helps to have a partner who will keep you accountable. I am a spender and Deland is a saver. And so if I had my choice, I would probably go over our budget every month. But Deland is very good at saying now, Stephanie, do you really need that. And I fortunately must admit many times no. So having an accountability partner is really important. If you're in a private practice, that accountability partner can be your spouse or your partner, or it can be your business partner, or it could be a trusted friend. So having maybe you guys are both managing budgets at the same time and you can kind of be each other's encourager. Stephanie Weyrauch (11:53): So that is something that's how I run our budget. It is definitely, I definitely don't live a very luxurious lifestyle, but I wouldn't say that I'm just sitting at home, eating ramen noodles all the time either. So I'm able to put most of the money that we spend every month goes towards debt. So probably half of our budget each month goes towards debt, but that's just because we are dedicated to making sure that we become debt free within the next four years. So, yeah. And, and there may be people on here who have no debt and don't awesome. Right? And so that part of the budget and the app, I mean, how wonderful, if you don't have student loan debt, maybe you have credit card debt, and you're putting something towards that each month. But I think if you don't have, if you're past the student loans or you didn't have to have, you didn't have to take out any student loans, then you can certainly take that money that would go to debt. Stephanie Weyrauch (12:57): It would be substantially smaller if we're just talking about credit cards and you could say, you know, I'm going to dedicate it to XYZ. Now what happens? Oh, quick question. So what was the Dave Ramsey book? I put two books. One was the total money makeover and the other's complete guide to money. I put them both in the comments section here, but where was the one that said he had like that's total money makeover. Okay. The total variable with the variable income. Yep. That's at the very back of it. And you can just copy and I mean, I'm sure that there's a copy of it too, on the internet. You could Google it and it's palatable.   Karen Litzy: Okay, great. Yeah. I think that for me, I look at, you know, this I'm taking care of your budget. I think a big part of it is writing everything down, right? It's the same way when we say to our patients to keep a journal or an exercise log, or if you've ever done weight Watchers, you have to write everything that you eat using weight Watchers. This is kind of the same thing. It sounds like this app, and you're really having to write everything down each month is definitely keeps you accountable, but also gets you into the habit of doing it. Stephanie Weyrauch (13:44): Yes. I definitely agree with that. And you know, the other thing too, that Dave Ramsey talks about in his book is he has these specific baby steps that you work towards to building wealth. So obviously I think all of our goals, some days to be financially stable and successful, right? So even utilizing his principles towards your business, I think is really important, especially because look at what happened to us during this pandemic. Stephanie Weyrauch (14:34): I mean, 80% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and a lot of us needed PPP loans. And like some people's businesses just weren't prepared for this. So in his book, he talks about like having a small saving, like emergency funds, you know, paying off debt so that you can become debt free would be the next step after that. And then saving three to six months of expenses. And, you know, after this pandemic, one of the things I think I've learned is having that six months expenses saved is like so important and notice that it's six months of expenses, not six months of your monthly budget, but expenses. So then when you have an emergency, like something that you just can't even control, like you feel more in control, you're able to maybe provide more for your employees, or if you, you know, or even your help your patients out a little bit more pay your bills. Stephanie Weyrauch (15:31): And then the last three steps, which if you're a business owner, I mean, it's pay for kids' college, which you don't have to worry about that as a business owner, but pay off your mortgage. So if you have a brick and mortar practice paying that off, and then the last one would be to give charitable giving. And if there's one thing I think this will therapist are really good at it's giving to charity, i.e. giving out our services for free sometimes. So, I mean, at that point, when you're in that point in the baby steps, like you hypothetically are set enough that potentially you could do some pro bono work with your business, which would then put your business on the map as being a very solid community practice as well. So, I mean, I think a lot of the day to day principles that he talks about in the total money maker, that's meant for day to day stuff could easily be applied to business. Karen Litzy (16:21): Yeah. And I'm glad that you brought up the pro bono because the question that Gina had was, how do you decide on that pro bono? How does that fit into the budget? What kind of a sliding scale do you use and how do you do that? If you are a private practice, what kind of sliding scale are you using and how do you decide what to charge? And, you know, I say like I have a real Frank discussion with the individual patient. And if they say, you know, listen, I really need the help. If they were referred to me from another therapist who they were seeing using their insurance. And they say, you know, so-and-so says, you're the best person. You're best equipped for this. This is what I can afford. Can you do it? And because my business is at that point now where I don't, I can, I'm able to offer that kind of service. Karen Litzy (17:11): Then I say, yes, I can do it for this price. You know? So that's kind of how, and it's also depends on like, if the person, if I have to travel an hour and a half to get there and an hour and a half back, then it might not be best. Which in which case, I'm happy to find them, someone that will work for them. So I think when you're looking at the pro bono costs, if you're traveling to patients, you have to look at your travel time. You have to look at how that's going to cut into your overall budgeting and your overall key performance indicators, which we'll have a whole other talk about KPIs. But I think the bottom line is you have to know how much does your business need per month to be able to do everything you just said, right Stephanie. Karen Litzy (17:57): To be able to keep the lights on, to have shelter. So how much does your business need each month just in expenses? Have you met that goal, then? How are you able to pay for your insurance and your taxes, which I would say go into just the sheer expense of running the business. Yes. I would agree with that too. So that's the sheer expense of running the business. Do you need another new fancy gym equipment or this, that, and the other thing? No. Right. So if you can forego that to maybe help someone else at a pro bono rate or at a reduced rate, then my inclination is to forgo the fancy new treadmill and to treat the person that needs it. So I think how you decide what that pro bono rate is, I think depends on the person in front of you. Karen Litzy (18:51): And you could say, you know, you can ask, ask around and just say, Hey, listen, this is what other physical therapy practices are doing. This is what I'm comfortable with. This is what the least amount I can charge so that I break even. And I think people understand that. So I think when you're thinking about what's the lowest charge you can give to someone that would be it, or you can go perfectly free. If you can say, you know, I can treat, I can do one session free per week, and I'm still, you know, in the green and I'm not in the red, then go for it, you know, but I think you have to know how much you can make to keep your company in the green, and then you can decide, well, this would be my lowest pro bono charge. Karen Litzy (19:37): And then if someone comes in, who's really, really of need, or you're volunteering through an organization or something like that, where you're treating someone for free, then, you know, I think in my opinion, I think that's the best way to go about it. I'm sure there's some legal aspects around that. But from what I can tell in speaking with lawyers, they say, it's your rate. You know, you just have to be clear about what it is. You, Stephanie, where are you where you are? Do you have a pro bono rate?   Stephanie Weyrauch: Yeah, so typically our pro bono rate is like $40 per session is what we'll do, but we are flexible. I mean, again, our practice, luckily my boss, he's been an amazing leader throughout all of this. We didn't have to fully lay off any of our physical therapists and we have five physical therapists, but we were very strategic with how we worked and when we worked. Stephanie Weyrauch (20:30): And so we've had that freedom from kind of how we've been running our practice to allow for us to sometimes even treat patients where they pay like $10 for a session. So, I mean, it varies from situation to situation. Things that we consider is how dedicated is the patient? Is this a patient that's actually going to come to therapy? Or is this a patient that's going to flake out on us because we don't want to save them a spot and then they not show up consistently also we've had instances where we've had maybe some where we've thought the insurance was one thing and it came out somewhere else. And so we ended up using the visits that we were given and the insurance company won't give them any more visits, which is a mistake on our part. So we always want to do, we always want to do right with any mistakes that we make. Stephanie Weyrauch (21:21): That is another thing that we'll consider, or sometimes if we have a Medicare patient that can't afford their copay, you know, we'll exchange services and other ways, you know, whether it be like they come in and maybe fix something in our clinic. And then we exchange that with our services, bartering, bartering. Yeah. So, we've been able to be flexible. But again, we built up our practice enough. We've been in business now for over eight years and we're a well established in the community that we are able to do that if you're starting out, you may not be able to do it right away, but you can work up towards that as you start to manage your money and start to make a profit. Karen Litzy (22:12): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that example. And I think that you'll find that in most physical therapy practices, they have a pro bono rate. They work with people they're flexible. Every practice I've ever been in the owners have been super flexible because in the end, we're all in the business of getting people better. And sometimes that business, maybe doesn't yield a profit of $200 per person. Maybe sometimes it's 10, but if our business is to get people better, then that's what we want to do. And I will also say this just because that person let's say your patient needs that pro bono care, they can't, it doesn't mean that they don't know people who they will scream to the rooftops of how wonderful you are and how great you were and how easy you were to work with too. A lot of their friends or to their communities. And then all of a sudden you're bringing in more business because you did a good thing. Karen Litzy (23:05): So don't discount that. And perhaps, you know, that person can be the stellar Google review you need, they can be that video testimonial on your website. They can be that written testimonial on Yelp or on your website. So these are all ways to like, incorporate your pro bono services by saying, Hey, listen, we're happy to do this. If you're pleased with your service, if you feel better, we would love for you to put up a thing on Google or put up a review on Google or Yelp or on our website, if you're comfortable doing that. Right. I totally agree with that. That's another great way. So that's right. It's the same thing as, like I said what would the other night talking about lead magnets, put something out there that people can use. They then give you their email. And all of a sudden you've made this really fruitful transaction for the both of you. Karen Litzy (24:00): And that's what that pro bono type of situation can do. So just always think there's always ways to leverage a visit that has nothing to do with money. That's right. So, all right. So Stephanie, let's talk about if you would like to sort of wrap it up on the big budget issues that people need to be aware of. And I also put just so people know, I also put every dollar, the app in the comments as well.   Stephanie Weyrauch: Perfect. So I would say that the first thing that you need to know is you need to stick with the budget. I mean, there's no point having a budget and you don't stick with it. Accountability partner, I think is key. Having somebody there that will keep you accountable. I mean, you're in private practice. You're probably a very accountable person, but it's still good to have somebody there that asks that says, do you really need that this month? Stephanie Weyrauch (25:02): Or are you sure that this is what you want to spend on this specific line item? So having the accountability, I think is the key and sticking to your budget is the absolute key. I think that if you allow yourself to go over your budget and you're like, Oh, it's just one month that develops bad habits. You just gotta break all your bad habits right now. And that budget is like your gospel. You need to have a monthly budget meeting with your staff. If you have a staff, if you don't have a staff, it's just you with your accountability partner and say, this is what I'm going to spend. You know, I have a little bit of extra money that I can spend it on. What, what should I spend it on? Should I spend it on my charity work? Stephanie Weyrauch (25:48): Should I spend it on my debt? Should I spend it on getting new equipment and have that accountability partner help you with those decisions? If you want somebody to help you, but at least they can be there to basically ask you those questions of is this really necessary? I think if you can stick to your budget, you will feel so much better about your business. You will be less stressed. Like Karen said, you will feel like you've been like you, you have all this extra money because you know where all your money is. And the reason that the every dollar app is called every dollar is because you give every dollar a name. You don't have any extra money floating around in your budget. You put it where it goes for that month. The other thing is, is that to think of the budget as permission to spend money versus being super strict with it. Stephanie Weyrauch (26:41): So you still have the bulk amount of money that you're spending that you, that you have for the month. But, you know, if you notice again, like let's say you don't have to drive as much, you can take that extra money that you would typically spend driving and put it towards a different line item, but just make sure that your budget always adds up to all these total $0. You have nothing left. Everything is going to something in the budget and it has a name. Your budget is your baby. You would not name your baby nothing. Well, no, I'm just kidding. Karen Litzy (27:26): Yeah, no, I think that's a really great point. And even if that money is savings, right, it goes, it has a name. So nothing thing, I'm just going to leave it in the bank. It's going somewhere every month. I love that. All right. So we have stick with it. Don't break it, give it a name, anything else? And just accountability partners. Yeah. All right. Well, this was great, Stephanie, and I hope that people this gives everyone an idea of having a good starting point, downloading the app, maybe reading the book. Like I said again, to repeat the name of the book, the total money makeover by Dave Ramsey, and every dollar.com or every dollar app. And in there, it also has in the book, like Stephanie said, it also has information for people who don't have that steady every two week paycheck. But if you're an entrepreneur, it gives you ways in order to kind of work around that as well. Stephanie Weyrauch (28:27): And if you do end up, if you guys are podcast listeners, and if you download the Dave Ramsey show podcast, a lot of his podcasts focuses on entrepreneurship and on business ownership. And so he has a lot of really great advice on running a business and budgeting for business. The budget that I talked about is more, it can be both used as a personal budget or a business budget, but he does talk a lot about business ownership in his podcast as well. So I would definitely recommend checking that out. If you have extra time and want something to play in the background, it's a good podcast to listen to in the background. You don't have to sit there and like learn from it. It's just kind of there. And he's a pretty entertaining guy. Yeah. I took one of his it was like a longer course a couple of years ago. So I still have all of the materials and everything like that. So yeah, he's very entertaining and he knows what he's doing and it works. Stephanie Weyrauch (29:15): And I will say, you know, you can have a personal budget and a business budget. You don't have to have just one. You can have personal, you can have business and then you'll know exactly where literally every dollar in your business and every dollar in your personal life is going. And like I said, on our talk, you know, after reading profit first from Mike, I just found it amazing of like, yeah, I know now where every dollar is going to. So now that I know where every dollar is going to my big buckets, I can now use this to see where it goes to the very last dollar.   Karen Litzy: Right. Yeah. And like I said, when you do a budget, it's amazing how much extra money you have. And you're like, wow, I didn't know. I had all this money. What was I spending on before? Stephanie Weyrauch (30:03): Right. What kind of nonsense was I doing before?   Karen Litzy: Yeah. That's one thing that I have to tell you after instituting profit first, I was like, the hell was I doing like, seriously? What was I doing before? Because I have so much more money in savings. I don't have to worry about paying taxes. Everything's awesome. Like, what was I doing? I can't explain it, but now it's like, yeah, now I get it. Now I understand. And I feel like you know, like you said, Oh, this is a grownup thing. Oh yeah. So I was like adulting hardcore when I learned this. So I think that's great. And now Steph, before we jump off, where can people reach out to you or find you social media if they have questions?   Stephanie Weyrauch: So I'm on Facebook. Stephanie Weyrauch. Or you can find me on Instagram or Twitter at theSteph21 and I'm available on any of those platforms.   Karen Litzy: Perfect. Well, thank you so much. And everyone, thanks for indulging us, at least here in the Northeast on a very rainy, very rainy Saturday to talk about setting your budget, sticking to your budget and creating more wealth from the money you're already taking in. So Stephanie, thank you so much. And everyone, thanks so much for listening.   Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

My guest this episode is Stephanie Williams of Vegan What? A vegan lifestyle advocate for over 9+ years, Stephanie shares how she improved her health by going vegan and how her journey went from a little flirtation with vegan recipes to a committed relationship with a plant-based lifestyle. After losing a few family members to unhealthy lifestyles, some with conditions that could've been improved by dietary changes, Stephanie wanted to make healthy lifestyle changes herself. She also had some health concerns, as genetic diseases like diabetes runs in her family as well as her husband's. So Stephanie decided that it was time to make a change. She fell in love with the vegan lifestyle and how it changed her health and life. Stephanie lost 30 pounds and got her omnivore husband to eat more plant-based foods with her. Stephanie created the Dope Meal Planner for those who want to know how to go vegan and eat more plant-based foods, but need some help on where to start. The planner offers different recipes each week, along with a customizable grocery list and meal prep videos. We discuss: Stephanie's journey to a vegan diet and lifestyle How losing family and personal health issues inspired her to change Alicia Silverstone's vegan cookbook The Kind Diet Weight loss and health benefits of going plant-based Vegan junk food vs. whole unprocessed food The "Standard American Diet" and processed vegan foods Stephanie's Vegan What? Dope Meal Planner Her philosophy on going vegan by one meal a day Why meal planning with prep and batch cooking makes a difference How Stephanie created the Dope Meal Planner to please her husband's palate How to get husbands/or partners and family to try plant-based food Bringing on the flavor in plant-based vegan cooking Stephanie's childhood favorite foods and influences How she went from a "Chicken Wing Queen" to Vegan Stephanie's healthy influence on her mom's Southern home cooking Food deserts and access to fresh produce and local farms Why connection to community supports positive change Promoting more diverse voices in the black vegan community What we can do to amplify black voices in the vegan media Why brands must support People of Color to grow the vegan movement The importance of including POC in the plant-based community Stephanie's quotes: "People don't care about how much you know until you show people how much you care." "We need more white vegans to be allies and come together with us so we can all fight the same (health) problem." Stephanie's Dope Meal Planner, eBooks & Apparel: VeganWhat.org DopeMealPlanner.com Vegan What eBooks Vegan What Apparel Dope Vegan Recipes Find Stephanie on: Instagram: @veganwhat Facebook: Vegan, What? YouTube: Vegan, What? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/plantfull/support

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, Jenna Kantor guests hosts and interviews Stephanie Weyrauch on advocacy mentorship.  An active member of the national physical therapy community, Stephanie has served on multiple national task forces for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and actively lobbies for healthcare policy issues at the local, state, and national levels of government. Stephanie is a nationally sought after speaker and consultant for topics on social media use, generational issues, and organizational membership. In this episode, we discuss: -Why you need an advocacy mentor to help guide you through healthcare policy -The benefits of being a mentor -The key to having successful advocacy efforts -And so much more! Resources: Stephanie Weyrauch Instagram Stephanie Weyrauch Twitter Stephanie Weyrauch Facebook Email: sweyrauchpt@gmail.com   A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode!  Learn more about the Redoc Patient Portal here.                                                                      For more information on Stephanie: An active member of the national physical therapy community, Stephanie has served on multiple national task forces for the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) and actively lobbies for healthcare policy issues at the local, state, and national levels of government. Stephanie is a nationally sought after speaker and consultant for topics on social media use, generational issues, and organizational membership. Stephanie serves as the Vice President for the Connecticut Physical Therapy Association. She is also the co-host for The Healthcare Education Transformation Podcast, which focuses on innovations in healthcare education and delivery.   Stephanie is a Passionate Chicago Cubs fan who enjoys playing the saxophone, writing and weightlifting in her spare time. During business and leisure travels, she is always up for exploring local foodie and coffee destinations.   For more information on Jenna: Jenna Kantor (co-founder) is a bubbly and energetic girl who was born and raised in Petaluma, California. Growing up, she trained and performed ballet throughout the United States. After earning a BA in Dance and Drama at the University of California, Irvine, she worked professionally in musical theatre for 15+ years with tours, regional theatres, & overseas (www.jennakantor.com) until she found herself ready to move onto a new chapter in her life – a career in Physical Therapy. Jenna is currently in her 3rd year at Columbia University’s Physical Therapy Program. She is also a co-founder of the podcast, “Physiotherapy Performance Perspectives,” has an evidence-based monthly youtube series titled “Injury Prevention for Dancers,” is a NY SSIG Co-Founder, NYPTA Student Conclave 2017 Development Team, works with the NYPTA Greater New York Legislative Task Force and is the NYPTA Public Policy Committee Student Liaison. Jenna aspires to be a physical therapist for amateur and professional performers to help ensure long, healthy careers. To learn more, please check out her website: www.jennafkantor.wixsite.com/jkpt   Read the full transcript below: Jenna Kantor (00:03): Hello. Hello. Hello, this is Jenna Kantor. I'm here with Stephanie Weyrauch. You guys probably know. I mean she's not any stranger to this podcast. How many podcasts have you done on this specific one? I wish I could say third time as a charm as we go. But I wanted to bring on the good old Stephanie Weyrauch however you want to refer to her. Or you could be like, hello, master or master, whatever you prefer. I'm going to bring on Stephanie today because she's actually my advocacy mentor. And I wanted to bring her on to talk about this because I don't think people realize this can be a thing. And so I'm like you want to come on, she's all, yo, let's do it. So this is where we are. And I wanted to open this up, especially to any student physical therapist grads who are looking to get more involved with the APTA and just don't get that guidance from someone that they trust and who believes in that. So Stephanie, why do you think I wanted to work with you? Stephanie Weyrauch (01:21): I think that to do with the women in PT summit. I mean I know that, I remember the first time that we met Jenna, we were at the women in PT summit. I had seen a lot of your videos on social media and you and I were friends in social media and so I remember I came up to you and I said, Oh, you're going to at four. And you said, Oh my God, you've seen my stuff. That's so cool. Sort of talking and I think you based off of your interest in advocacy and based off of, I think you knowing that I was involved in advocacy, we just started talking about it and I think that that's just how the hell, it was a really organic thing. It wasn't anything that was really formal. It was just like, Hey, we have this common interest. We know we both enjoy. I mean we both are passionate about the profession and I think that's kind of what led you to me. Jenna Kantor (02:12): Yeah. It's funny to say it's not horrible, but to be, I remember when I asked you, I felt like I was asking you to be my girlfriend. Will you? Will you be my advocacy is a big deal. I think this is important to bring up as somebody who's really watched to continue my involvement with the APTA making changes that I foresee that will be so great for its growth. I really wanted to bring this up because it's necessarily easy to find the right person. I think of it as dating. At the end of the day, there's a lot of people who will give you tidbits, but for somebody like you or I can say, Hey, I need to talk to, they'll be available to talk to like brainstorm or whatever, or even if it's just a hard time, get through a Rocky space. Just brainstorming, but that's extremely valuable. A lot of physical therapists who are involved, they don't necessarily believe in beyond that level where I feel comfortable to be open. Stephanie Weyrauch (03:23): Yeah, I mean I think that, you know, you make a really good point about finding the right person because you know, while people say that you can go up to anybody and say, Hey, will you mentor me? I mean you really have to build that relationship, which is what advocacy is all about, right? I have been a really good advocate. It's all about building relationships and so finding that person that you can be yourself around yet that person is going to be honest enough with you to tell them you know, the things that you either need to improve on. Be that critical feedback, but also give you that positive feedback to reinforce that you're doing the things and finding that balance. So I think that you make a good point about making sure that you're finding the right person. And my advice to people is if you are interested in finding an advocacy mentor, just a mentor in general, try to foster that connection. That relationship is really important. Jenna Kantor (04:27): I remember it was a process for me because now they know what they're doing. They have what I want and everything, but I didn't feel a hundred percent and I think that is something we forget. You just think they're amazing, but how do they make you feel about yourself when you're with them? Do they make you feel good? I've had conversations with you where you've started to get me, you know, you're like, I think this, and I said our walls, that's not where you want. It may have been with the step never on me. Things that were my specific goals and values about within myself. It's been very helpful finding someone who I can be me all the way, which is a challenge. Stephanie Weyrauch (05:28): And I think that that's an important thing for mentors is that creating a mini, you're creating a person who is their own individual person and has attributes that they can bring to the table to make them strong advocate or you know, whatever the mentorship relationship is about, you're just moving them along. I always think that, you know, being a mentor is even cooler than accomplishing something yourself because the mentee accomplishes something in that route. And you foster that accomplishment by, you know, facilitating their growth and making sure that they're connected with the right people. I mean, that's just as rewarding and if not even more, all the extra people that you get to touch in addition to, you know, your own personal development as an advocate in your own personal development as a leader. So I think that, you know, it's something that not only helps you as the individual mentee, but you as the mentor, it allows you to have a larger reach and what you will have just in your little bubble who in your own advocacy thing. Jenna Kantor (06:44): Yeah, that's true. That's really, really true. And it's not easy because like you mentioned earlier, there are people who many people say, Oh yeah, I just spoke to anyone. So you have to make a decision for yourself. Are you good with getting snippets of people and having a law or would you want someone that's going to be viable for you, devoted to investing time, give you that advice and guidance? There's no wrong answer to that. I discovered that I needed only one. Stephanie became Michael B wonder what would be a Harry Potter reference. Stephanie Weyrauch (07:30): So I mean, Elvis stumbled or of course not Baltimore. Baltimore does not. Definitely not. No way. Don't compare me to Baltimore compared me to the more. I think that that's another thing about mentorship that can be challenging is the time commitment. And you're right, you can have multiple mentors that you know, don't really need, that you don't really need to spend a lot of time with. But again, if that mentor is really into facilitating your growth, they're going to be, it's going to be okay that they're going to invest time. And you know, it may not be like a one hour weekly phone call when you see them. Like they're going to want to spend two hours. You can just catch up and see how you're doing. Or they'll text you or email you back and forth. And those are the men. Those are the relationships that are built on, that are built on exactly what you said, relationship. It's not just built on a normal face to face. I mean somebody that you barely know, this is something that you've cultivated, watered, and now the seeds are growing in the beautiful tree is starting to really fester to help kind of bring about that relationship that's needed to have that effective mentor help you. Jenna Kantor (08:57): I'm realizing we're making an assumption here. So let's answer the question. Why is it good? Why is it beneficial to have? Stephanie Weyrauch (09:04): I think that the benefit for it is because it helps you prep, it prevents you from making mistakes that most people make. And when I think one of the best things about having a mentor, you grow and become better, faster than maybe somebody who had to figure out along the way. Granted there's been multiple people along in the history of time who've been able to figure out their own way, but potentially they could have burned some bridges along the way. They could have had some set backs, they may have missed opportunity. And if there's one thing we know about advocacy, it's all about opportunity. And it's all about presenting your argument in the right way, at the right time for the right things that are going on. And so understanding that and understanding that, especially in today's very polarized political environment, making sure that you are approaching these issues in a way that is proper and in a way that's going to be effective. Because ultimately when you're advocating, you're advocating for your patients, you might be advocating a little bit through your profession, but in general, when you advocate, you make sure that people are getting great care. And right now our healthcare policy is very polarizing. There's lots of different opinions about it. And if you are with the right person and they're guiding you the right way, you're going to go about it in a way that's not going to be as potentially detrimental to the message that you want to send. Jenna Kantor (10:45): Yeah. And you're hitting on lots of great. Just like anything, any relationship that relationships, and I'm going to sum it up with a word. You could get blacklist, you can't, it's not like there's a horrible place. Nobody that made no, ain't nobody got time for that. But if you're a person who's constantly coming out like a douche, you're not going to want to know you. Just like you make me feel like crap. That's a thing. So to get, and it's even if you think you are doing something, you never really realize. If you might be cutting down on someone who was put in a lot of hard work, a lot of hard work for zero reimbursement for the profession and that has to be considered even if you completely disagree with it. Stephanie Weyrauch (11:40): Right. Well and advocacy takes a long time too. I mean, it's not something that you can go to one meeting and all of a sudden now you have a law passed. I mean it takes 10 it can take up to 20 years as we saw with the Medicare therapy cap to have something actually happen. And that's like a long history of that's like a, Oh that's a history in itself. 20 years. I mean I'm only 30 years old. That means that when I was 10 stuff was going on that I don't even wouldn't even know about. And if I don't have that historical knowledge and that historical information, how can I be an effective advocate? So by having a mentor who knows that history and can help guide you along some of those talking points that you have, because either you don't know the history, you're too young to know the history or you just aren't as familiar with the talking points themselves. You have that person there can give you that. And then when you go to advocate, you have that much more credibility. If there's anything that is really important in advocacy, it's first off, it's credibility and second off it's relationships. What type of relationship have you built with that person? Because if you're a credible person and you have a relationship with them, the chances of them actually listening to you when that app comes, who's a lot better than you're just random person that has no credibility, right? Jenna Kantor (13:09): Does natural delight is the things that I personally want to change just for voices, lesser known voices too. That's my own little personal agenda is the important part of this podcast. Very important part. Very, important part of advocacy. Advocate for lameness. So after answering, why do you have to, is it a must in order to achieve what you want within the physical therapy profession? Advocacy wise? Stephanie Weyrauch (13:50): I mean I would say yes because I don't know how many of our listeners are experts in healthcare policy, but my guess is that there's not a ton that are experts in health care policy and if you are an expert in health policy, my guess is that you've had a lot of mentorship along the way. I know for me, I mean healthcare policy changes daily and for me, how I have learned has been from being by people who I would consider our healthcare policy experts in addition to them giving me resources that I can use so that I myself can become a health care policy, not to mention really keep emotion out of politics and that is path of what advocacy is, is trying to present a logical argument that isn't based off of emotion, was based off of somebody else's emotion. That's going to further the policy agenda that you're trying to advocate for. And I think one of the hardest parts about advocacy, personal emotion out of the picture. Stephanie Weyrauch (15:10): You're there to advocate for your patients. You're not there to advocate for yourself in the end. It doesn't really matter what you believe, it matters what is needed for your patients. And so having just a mentor there to guide you through some of those, that emotional roller coaster of politics and emotion, individual politics with societal politics I think is an essential part of being an effective healthcare advocate. Additionally, there's so much information and having somebody there to help you kind of focus that information and help you figure out what you need to learn and what you can focus on is also really important. I would say yes. Having a mentor is extremely important. Jenna Kantor (16:02): I love that and on that note person who has been on this podcast now for this is four times. How can people find you if they haven't listened to you? Stephanie Weyrauch (16:20): So you can find me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @TheSteph21 I'm on Facebook and Instagram. You can find me there or if you want to email me, you can email me sweyrauchpt@gmail.com but I would say the best way to reach out to me is probably Twitter. Jenna Kantor (16:48): Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet. Well, thank you so much Stephanie, for coming on. It's a joy to share your expertise, to share you with others. Even though I want to claim you all. Stephanie Weyrauch (17:04): Thank you for the wonderful opportunity to come on. I'm healthy, wealthy, and smart. Well, once again, and of course it's always great to chat with you about something that I really love. Advocacy. Jenna Kantor (17:16): Heck yeah, me too.   Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram  and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest!  Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

Aging takes place against a backdrop of grief. It’s the little losses and then the larger losses Today my guest is Stephanie Raffelock. Stephanie wrote a cute inspirational book called, A Delightful Little Book on Aging. I read the book and I absolutely loved it!  How Did the Book Come About? The book sort of came about on accident for Stephanie. She was writing for a website and she got feedback from women all around the world. They had told her that they too were experiencing this kind of shift in their lives as they were entering into their 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. Stephanie began to see that there are two ways to navigate the waters of aging. One way is to embrace the years, the strength, courage, and nobility that comes with growing older. The other way was to simply say aging sucks, I don’t like it and I’m going to fight it for as long as possible.  She collected and compiled many of the essays and articles she had written to put into this book. It’s not a how-to book, it’s not a self-help book. It is a book of personal essays of personal experience of navigating the waters against a backdrop of grief, reclamation, vison, and laughter.    The Monkey Bar Incident Stephanie’s husband had clients in town, and they lived near a lake at the time. They decided to walk around the lake and all around the lake they have little exercise or play areas. So, one area might have swings and then you walk a little bit further and there might be a jungle jim. Then there is a spot that has monkey bars.  Stephanie remembers the monkey bars from when she was little, and it was her favorite thing in school playground swinging from bar to bar. She didn’t know what got into her that evening, but she put her hand on the ladder and climbed up the first bar. She swung to reach the other bar and then she fell! Embarrassed as her husband and his clients ran over to see if she was ok. Stephanie's husband asked what were you doing? She knew what she was doing, she was trying to be young. There was this moment of realization that her muscle tone and connective tissue were not the same as when she was younger, and it was not going to be the same. That athletic prowess of one in their 30’s, 40’s and even 50’s ceases to be. There are things that fall away from us. There are little losses. Aging takes place against a backdrop of grief. It’s the little losses and then the larger losses.  Grief It puts us in a unique kind of situation to live in these times. A time of coronavirus where we are all living against a backdrop of grief. As an older person, Stephanie knows what it is to feel vulnerable. Now the whole playing field has been leveled so society is feeling vulnerable. Stephanie knows how to navigate vulnerability. You embrace it. You realize you don’t have control over everything and you also realize that grief is a bridge. It’s not like an end result, it’s not a place to get stuck. It’s a bridge to something new.  The idea of allowing one’s self to feel deeply and to cry is something that is not on the surface. That’s something you do in private. Or as Stephanie's mother used to say “don’t air your dirty laundry”. I think it’s a real shame that we don’t have a container for grief in our culture where people can cry about what’s going on because in the tears is this great soul bath. It’s this great releasing of those things so that you don’t have to carry the weight of the burden of sorrow with you. The way to unburden your self is to let yourself cry and then you get to move on.  Gratitude I asked Stephanie how to start the process of gratitude and she knew exactly when she started. Stephanie had a friend in Arizona who was a woman from India. She had told her about her mother who never got out of bed without saying thank you before her feet even hit the floor. And something about that captured her. So Stephanie began to experiment with that.

Stephanie Kram never expected to be leading a high school ministry, but God unmistakably called her to it. The fruit of the ministry testifies to that well enough: the meetings are overflowing capacity and tons of kids have decided to follow Jesus. It all started one day when when Stephanie was scrolling through Instagram and noticed an account talking about something called Jesus Club. Fast forward to a little while later and she found herself listening to an out-of-town speaker at local church named Brian Barcelona. Brian just happened to be the founder of Jesus Club. While Stephanie listened to this man testify to how God had been using Jesus Club to reach kids, she had what she can only describe as the most powerful encounter with God she’s ever had. She felt the Holy Spirit come over her and bear witness to her soul that she was supposed to do something similar in a local high school. The high school she had in mind had a reputation as not being very friendly to ministries, however. Even local Young Life staff reported not being able to be on campus. Nonetheless, she felt led to pursue this particular high school as the site for her Jesus Club. So prayerfully, Stephanie pursued and obtained a meeting with the school principal. The morning of the meeting she read in her Bible about Jesus instructing the apostles to not prepare anything to say before they were brought before leaders because the Holy Spirit would direct their mouths in the moment. So Stephanie surrendered her preparation to God and prayerfully went to her meeting. In the meeting the principal initially seemed skeptical but stephanie was just straightforward about her intentions and her heart for his students. The principal seemed almost immediately change demeanors and began to tell her about several difficulties he was encountering among the student body. He then asked how she could help. From this point, Stephanie was allowed to begin to pursue starting a club on campus. As soon as she stepped foot on campus, God began opening doors. Pretty soon after she entered the school, a young woman came up to her who remembered her from a previous job Stephanie had mentoring youth. This girl happened to be a follower of Christ, herself, and upon learning what Stephanie was up to, she told her about a teacher in the school who oversaw a Bible club. Stephanie met with this teacher who then told her that the club had been dying and she had been earnestly praying for the Lord to send someone to spearhead a new effort with it. She also shared that the existing name of the club was Jesus Club–the very name Stephanie had in mind for the club and the name of the original ministry that had inspired it. From there the club grew from a few students to 80 regular attendees and even more who have given their life to Christ in the few years since Stephanie stepped foot on campus. The club has had an impact on kids from virtually every walk of life. Stephanie is joined by her husband Mark, who has taken on a leadership role alongside her and Jon Osterman (from episode 13). The couple shares several miraculous and encouraging stories from their time in Jesus Club. Listen to this week’s episode for the entire encouraging story! HIGHLIGHTS The teacher/club adviser who originally led the the club belongs to a small local church that have been praying for the kids of the school by name for years. The Krams shared with particular fondness their experiences sharing the love of Christ with members of a group of gay students. Some were enthusiastic about the invitation but one in particular seemed the least open in the group to attending the club but ended up giving his life to Christ. The club packs out two classrooms and the club leadership is actively petitioning the school administration to meet in the gym.

In today's episode, we'll talk about healing diet and intuitive eating I’m a health care professional trained in using food as a way of healing the physical body. Healing diet, restrictive and elimination food protocol is what I studied for years yet today I very seldom recommend it. Why? I have seen and experienced too many situations that healing diets, restrictive and elimination food protocols actually caused more collateral damages than benefits. Furthermore, in most clinical cases what really was causing the health issue had nothing to do with food. So, why obsess about food? If I can, I'd like to take you back in 2015... Carole breaks down I was sitting in my clinic office talking to a patient seeking help with rheumatoid arthritis. She was in the middle of a major flare-up. All joints in her lower body were painfully swollen and she was in a 9/10 pain level. She wanted me to examine her AIP (auto-immune protocol) dietary protocol & supplement protocol and advise her on what she was doing wrong so she could get over the massive flare-up... she was desperately looking for me to find what she was doing wrong. I read all her testing reports, looked over her medications, supplement and food journals. She was doing everything perfectly... she was eating on point and has been for months. I couldn’t find anything wrong with her diet or supplement or medication. Then while looking at her, a little voice in my head told me to ask her about her husband.... with hesitation I did. “How your is husband doing, Carole?” She crumbled on the seat in tears... and she cried for a solid 10 minutes barely taking a breath. Her husband had asked her for a divorce 4 weeks earlier. Her flare-up was triggered by the divorce NOT the food... when she finally was able to breathe and talk, the first thing that came out of her mouth was: “So Stephanie, what can I do with my diet to help myself through this situation?” “Carole, this is not about the food... you need help emotionally. This situation is very traumatic to you now and your body is flaring up because of it.” “No... I know it’s what I’m doing with my food. It’s always the food. I’m not trying hard enough.” “It’s not about the food: It’s about the relationship to healing.” - Jessica Flannigan, author of the Loving Diet Let’s reflect on your journey with healing diets. Are you currently participating in healing your health using food or are you wanting to use food to support your health? If so, how do you answer these questions: What’s my ‘why’ for using food for my health? My secret WHY? Is it weight loss or healing? Is it healing so I can finally lose weight? Have I looked at my health situation from all angles 4 bodies: Mental, Emotional, Spiritual and last Physical. Do I really like this food? Am I forcing myself to eat food I do not enjoy because it’s good for me? Do I have any feelings of guilt or diet mentality around this food choice? Did I allow my nutrition knowledge to guide this choice for my health without sacrificing pleasure? Am I putting pressure on myself to be a ‘perfect’ healing diet participant? Is this choice coming from a place of self-care or self-control? These are the same questions I ask myself as a practitioner when assessing a client’s ability to use food for healing their health. It will usually take 12-18 months of solid intuitive eating living before one is able to approach food with restriction without triggering the diet mindset. Another way to see this is that it takes 12-18 months for women to finally accept their body image as is so they can separate health from body image and no longer seek to heal their physical body so they can lose weight. In today’s episode, we'll interview Jessica Flanigan, Clinical Nutritionist, Co-Founder of The Institute of Spiritual Coaching and is the author of the first mind-body book about Autoimmune Disease, The Loving Diet. Jessica has spent the last six years of her clinical nutrition practice focusing on working with clients in Autoimmune Paleo, but has since moved on to more advanced functional medicine-based gut restoration applications to remove restriction from her client’s protocols and work with clients struggling with disordered eating with her program, Transformational Eating™. What you'll learn listening to this episode: The article that Jessica wrote that sent the AIP community in shock The link between restrictive diet and disordered eating behaviors Orthorexia: What is it and how it’s linked to AIP protocol The danger of self-diagnosis What you are likely missing in your protocol and why food alone isn’t working.   Mentioned on the show: Grab your FREE guide to Intuitive Eating  Study on low FODMAP and disordered eating The silent truth about AIP, Restrictive Diet and Disordered Eating article     Connect with our Guest: Website Instagram Facebook  

00:47                                     This is Changing the Face of Yoga and this is the hundred and fourth episode. I'm very excited to welcome Stephanie Spence to the podcast and she has a really interesting topic. We're going to talk about how to be environmentally aware as a Yogi. 01:03                                     Thanks so much for having me. 01:05                                     Oh, you're welcome. I think this is a great topic. Stephanie has been practicing yoga for almost 40 years, which is pretty incredible in and of its self, she's a yoga educator and author, an inspirational speaker and activist and a creative leader. She's based in Coronado, California, and she's a trail blazer with an inspiring and empowering approach to self inquiry and personal development. Her book, Yoga wisdom: Warrior Tales Inspiring you on an off your Mat is available wherever books are sold. She's committed to helping ignite the desire for others to create a life of health and joy for themselves through a sustainable practice of yoga for a lifetime of transformation. She's on a mission to inspire the whole world to practice yoga. Welcome Stephanie, and is there anything else you'd like to add to that? 02:10                                     No. Stephanie, thank you so much. I'm just so honored to be here and always thrilled to meet another Stephanie. 02:15                                     I know there's so few of us in the world now. Stephanie put out a Facebook post, which I thought was really fascinating about how yogis and why Yogis should be environmentally sensitive and look to saving the planet in their own way. Stephanie has agreed to talk about this because I think it's important for all Yogis to kind of get this thought in their brain. Do I, and how do I be better at this? So Stephanie, what I think we were talking before, and you said there was, what, 300,000 yogis? 03:01                                     No, in fact, I think now the new numbers, 300 million Yogis on the planet. And collectively I really think we have an opportunity to shift either awareness or what would be really incredible is to shift practices around the value set,  in the lens through which we're searching for goods and services in the marketplace.                                                  So I think I just started thinking about, okay, I don't know if I've been responsible in figuring out where I'm getting my products, goods and services until I had a personal experience working at a yoga studio where the people that were running the studio were incredibly unethical. And ever since then it really shifted my life and my awareness around the idea of, wow, are we just doing yoga poses or are we actually really trying to live a yogic life? And I think most people would like to really take their practice off the mat. So that's where this idea came from, was working at this studio where the people didn't pay yoga teachers and didn't source the materials and the things that they were selling from respectable and ethical sources. And it really was upsetting to me at the time because I kept on saying, this is so not yoga. And then I thought to myself, well, how, how can I explain that to somebody else? 04:40                                     I was looking at my stuff that I have and my blocks and my mats and all of that seem to be plastic-based in one way or another. And I have tried mats that were natural fibers and they didn't work very well. So how do we go about being more ethical and yet still be safe in some ways? 05:14                                     I think that's a really good question. I think the positive ethical qualities that you're talking about are outlined in Hatha Yoga And if you'll allow me, I'd like us to even talk about some of those qualities because you're right, I mean, it's expensive to go out and, and try all these different products and there's so many designations now when you look, and I think people are heavily influenced by a couple of buzz words that they hear all the time.                                                 And a friend of mine works in the green movement in sustainable fashion. And I started to ask him how do people even find these things out? And how many people really are going to take the time to dig really deep and figure out if that mat actually is going to break back down and become less of a carbon footprint or  how can we reduce the damage that we're doing to the oceans. Your brain can just explode thinking about all these big questions. 06:28                                     So I think for me, I try and break it down and use these 10 principles to kind of help me assess for myself how I'm conducting myself in the world. 06:47                                     For instance, the first one, nonviolence, which is a Ahimsa, it's really about, people always think about, oh, don't kill other beings, but it's really about being peaceful. And the way that I like to look at that as it pertains to this subject is that as I am out in the world, I'm trying to match my sensibilities with the values that I am aspiring to. And I think so the idea that if I can take something as simple a concept as being peaceful with the idea that wow, these things that I'm buying and using does it have that same effect on the world? And then another one is truthfulness, which is Satya. And so it's not only about being honest with yourself, it's about being honest with others and living in truth. So if, if you're honest with yourself and others, I'm also expecting other people to give full disclosure. So you should be able to go on to anybody's site and they should not only have like their ethics or their company code of conduct or their mission statement. They should have something that you should be able to access. And I think that's a really interesting one is truthfulness or the Satya is that it's really not only about being honest with ourselves and others, it's about these companies being honest with us as well. Right. Another one that I like to look at is the third one, it's righteousness, which is a Asteya. And it's really about like non-stealing or non-cheating But more than that it's actually defined as looking at fair trade. So for instance, in exchange for product goods and services, a fair price or a fair way of operating in the world. And I think so many companies now, thank God, have done a really good job of perhaps giving up a portion of their proceeds to a charity or have looked at ways of making things affordable for the masses instead of like organic food, just being accessible to people, to rich people or that kind of principle. I think this falls under that category, meaning that if you feel really good about your exchange with a consumer or a company, I think that's a yoga observance. And I think that my behavior in the world for inspired living from these companies, their products, their services or their professional practices should match what we're trying to do and, and how we're trying to live. 10:18                                     I think that's a really great idea. But how do we get that kind of information out there? 10:24                                     That's a really good question. I think you have to discern for yourself, not only through trusted sources and evaluating, maybe the marketing of how you're receiving information. It's become a really big buzz right now in the United States about what is fake news or what is it. But I think we've always been subjected to subtle forms or call it manipulation or advertising or marketing, but now that we've determined through problems that they've had through social media, for instance, Facebook, but you can actually now be, manipulated into thinking good or bad things or using your own judgment has become, I think, trickier. So you're right, I think it's up to us to live in a spiritual focus, which actually takes me to number four, which is wisdom, which is Brahmacharya. So as I live in this spiritual focus and as I'm cultivating my inner and outer happiness, I think being centered in that is really important. So I don't know about you, but I think this makes me think about the difference between like a habit and a ritual. Like is it just habit to assume that the way that you see this information or this product or whatever if it has that good vibe and a good feeling and you know, peaceful colors and beautiful people or whatever, you're just kind of assuming based on a million different things that they hire really powerful marketing teams to put together for them, that they have your wellbeing in mind. 12:34                                     But I think we just have to remind ourselves it's a business. I try and live with the spiritual focus. I think sometimes I actually even become a little naive in practicing this, this quality of Brahmacharya which is wisdom. But I don't want to be ignorant to the realities of a purchasing goods because it is a business, right? So I don't know about you, but I think sometimes I've bought things thinking that I was doing the right thing, but you're right. Like I'll bring home a mat and it just falls apart. So I think I have to be very careful of saying, well maybe somebody is trying to do the right thing, but, but unless I am accountable to myself to really do the research, I think it's just, instead of it being a practice, it's more of a habit. It's just, I'm going to kind of default to the idea that, oh, if this major brand said something that it must be really good for me because they're yogis right 13:51                                     Now that's a great point. Because the marketing can fool us. They look very Yogic, shall we say. But you really have to do some research to confirm that. 14:09                                     Right, exactly. And it is a sad, but true for me, it's amazing how all of these challenges become these lessons. I mean, we talk about it all the time, but when I worked for this yoga studio, I assumed because they were running a yoga studio, that the people that were running the studio were ethical and very yoga centered and, even I only worked there part time for a short period of time. I talk about this in my book. It was when I was first diving deeper into yoga because you're right, I've practiced for 40 years, but I've only been a yoga teacher now for about 15. But as I was diving deeper into what do I really want to do with this yoga teaching certificate? I actually considered opening a studio. So I thought I should work at one to see what it's really like. And thank God for me encountering this awful experience. I ended up finding out a lot about myself and a lot about how I wanted to move forward in the yoga community. And that's why I ended up writing a book instead. But at the time it was so shocking to me, Stephanie, they reported to the government that I made like thousands of dollars working for them when I actually hadn't. 15:32                                     So not only did they not pay their teachers, they have these products that were cheap and sourced from bad sources and whatever. And I found that out only because I was working there. And then on top of it, they lied to the government about how much they paid me. I mean, the whole thing just sounds crazy, but I think that's why I'm still talking about it because it left a huge impact on me. And that's why, I think this is kind of an interesting subject. I think we have a choice and, and that's one of the really cool things that yoga teaches, that we are designing our life, that we are accountable for how we move and operate through the world. And obviously everybody wants to do that in a really wonderful, healthy body, mind and spirit. 16:26                                     We got to Brahmacharya I think the next one is, is simplicity, which is Aparigraha. I never say that correctly. I'm trying to say these slowly because I mispronounce them terribly. And a lot of this is not only being moderate and external in outwardly ways, but also the energy that you use in your actions and how you consume is actually defined in this simplicity principle, which I think is really interesting.                                                 The next one is worship of a spiritual goal. And that's Ishvara Pranidanha and that is, is how we remind ourselves and again and again of our spiritual goal. So in other words as I apply it to this we daily practice, I have to kind of use the energy to force myself to evaluate these things. 17:37                                     It's so much easier just to have somebody else tell us what to do. I think this idea of worship of a spiritual goal and practicing  our spiritual goals is we are accountable is the way I interpret this.                                                 The next one is sacrificing the ego which is Satya, but I think that really to have a purity of mind, speech and body of a clarity of thought. I don't know necessarily how it would really apply it to this, but I think it just means that as, as we clean out our own house and our own body, mind and spirit, you want to take care of, of, of how you maintain that. So again, I think it's about am I constantly living the principles in the way that I want to exist in the world. These observances, but I think we're supposed to follow.                                                 The next one is self-discipline, which is Tapas. A lot of people know that word, but that really just same thing, kind of as a reflection of the last one. It means to live a disciplined life. And I think that it's cool that we're kind of accountable and I love it that people look to us as teachers and how we lead by example more than how we lead. And I think the real integrity comes in when you not only talk these things but if you walk the walk too.                                                 The next one we have a couple more is a reading, which is Svadhyaya. And that's really just like a mantra or a meditation. And I think sometimes keeping us on the spiritual path. It connects us in a way that makes us like spiritual victors. I feel like the sense of community that I'm talking about, that if all of us came together and just even try to couple of these things that we're talking about today that we could really effect change on a global scale. I think that's just really amazing.                                                 The last one is a contentment or Santosha. And really that's just being satisfied with one has and of course in a state of gratitude, I think you operate from a place of, wow, do I really need more? Do I need more yoga pants? Do I need more stuff? Do I need more products? Now I've found that sometimes I'll dedicate the idea that instead of going out and buying something else, I'll spend that money to invest on either, I don't know, like a online class on yoga philosophy or something. Now this just applies to yoga, but I don't know about you, but the number one thing that people ask me all the time is, how can I take what I'm doing on my mat off the mat? So I think that it's really just about how are we conducting ourselves in the world in a way that really feels like it's part of a bigger yoga community. So that's one of the reasons I think it's cool. You and I are even talking, it is a global conversation now and I just love that. 21:05                                     I think I'm going to divert a little bit here, but it is a question that keeps coming up, which is obviously yoga has a real basis in philosophy. It's not just an exercise, but how do you recommend or do you yourself bring that philosophy onto the mat other than how we act and how we model. I certainly think that's important, but I'm wondering, a lot of people kind of want to share it and yet it seems to be a rather difficult thing in some ways. 21:41                                     No, I think that's a really good question. For me. I think it's so easy to cut to the chase when I just asked myself, how you do yoga is how you do life. So as I'm so grateful that I've been able to practice yoga now for 40 years. I've obviously gone through a lot of different phases, this is my healthiest lifelong companion and my buddy and my teacher and my go to because I have been able to develop self-awareness and trust my intuition. But more than that I am constantly still unfolding in a really cool organic way. So for instance, the other day I went to a yoga class and I was frustrated because I felt like the teacher was doing dangerous sequencing. So I had to ask myself, okay, first off, am I frustrated in the rest of my life and where's that coming from?          Or more than that, it's sometimes really challenging for me to speak up and I had to ask myself is it, do I want to try and talk to this person or do I just do my deal and leave or, so I think there's so much investigation of the philosophy that while you're on your mat, you can, if you want to use it as a tool for self-awareness and to reveal to you aspects of your life. Sometimes it's just a matter of asking myself, well, am I getting what I need? I've recently discovered that I was actually doing yoga that wasn't as physically easy or as physically challenging as I needed because I had dropped into too much of the philosophy or the other yummy aspects. And I had to ask myself, wow, if you want to practice yoga forever, even if it's just yin or, something on the physical side, I can be able to move and do what I want and move through the world in a way that I feel good. and without the physical practice it is a body, mind and spirit. So I like all three components. Some people, especially in the west, it's super-fitness oriented right now. You can easily fall into an imbalance of even the things that you're trying to do. 24:35                                     I think it is. I think it is an interesting concept that teachers have to get across that yes, I am your guide, but you are in charge of your yoga on the mat and you really have to go in deep and think, is this what I want and should I do this this way or can I do it another way ? I think that is important because I think sometimes people aren't used to that gentle way of guiding. They're used to you do this now and do four push-ups or whatever. 25:15                                     I think you're so right, it's so much easier just to have somebody else tell you what to do. And sometimes I actually want to go to a class because of that. I just don't want to think today, I just want somebody else to tell me what to do. But what I've found is that there's kind of no escaping it as you're just there by yourself. You're right. A good teacher will present what they have to share that day. And it's really up to you to whether or not you take something with you. Right. 25:50                                     I have one question at the end: , is there anything that we have talked about or that you want to go into more depth with that you want the listeners to know or something that we haven't covered at all? 26:07                                     I think what you're saying about this idea of the responsibility of teachers is kind of interesting and as you just said it, I thought we do sometimes too, I think Yoga teachers are set to a yummy, lovey, huggy bear kind of group of really nice people. And I think sometimes too, we need to challenge ourselves that people really are listening to us. And perhaps maybe talk about something like this in a class or you know, if you have a website or blog or you send out a newsletter, I just think it would be interesting. You don't have to support or discourage somebody from any certain company or product or whatever. But I think until something personally happened to me, I didn't start thinking about this. And because I also have a friend of mine who is an ethical fashion, he's really at the forefront of this. 27:09                                     And I said to them all, of course I'd like to buy clothes that are ethically sourced and the people aren't in a sweatshop somewhere and they're treated well and whatever. I said, but my God, we're so busy and there's so much information out there. How do I find those things out? He said, well, there's a lot of really good people that are trying to do that. Same with Yoga teachers. I think there's a lot of really good people on the planet that are serving others by doing this. So maybe this is just something else that you would introduce. 27:40                                     Thank you so much; it's really been fascinating. I've never thought of applying those 10 principles to environmental good. They are so all encompassing, aren't they? That we can really use them to think our way through almost any problem that we might have. 28:10                                     I think so. And I think everybody will have their own interpretation of these. You know, as I, as I talked through them, you'll have a different interpretation too, which I think is actually a really beautiful aspect of this. So that's awesome. Thank you so much for having me. 28:26                                     You're welcome. I really enjoyed this. It was a really different way to think about yoga and what are our responsibilities might be. There is quite a responsibility to being a teacher I think, and introducing yoga to people. 28:42                                     I feel really lucky I've been able to do this. I hope that your listeners will check out my book and if you want to find me for more information or if you want to send me a question or are you hate what I say or you want to connect I am on Stephanie spence.com. 29:46                                     So thank you so much Stephanie. I just, I thought it was a really interesting podcast that is a really new way to look at philosophy. For some reason philosophy seems to be coming up a lot with the podcast guests these days and I think that's probably a good thing. 30:00                                     Thank you so much. Have a super rest of your day.                                                 Contacts:                                                 Instagram: Stephanie Yogini                                                 Facebook: Spence yoga wisdom.                                                 Twitte:r Stephanieyogayoginic.                                                 Book: Yoga wisdom: Warrior tails inspiring you on and off your mat. It is also a 2018 Nautilus book award winner. And you can get it at Amazon and all those places that we usually go to get our books.

One of the more endearing parts of my personality (I hope) is my tendency to go ALL IN on reality television shows, as friends who have been forced to receive my weekly email recaps of The Bachelor and The Challenge will attest to (yes, I still watch The Challenge and am in the Bill Simmons/David Jacoby camp of considering it America's fifth professional sport). But I'm late to the Survivor franchise, which is mildly embarrassing considering it's considered by many to be the greatest reality television competition of all time, with the greatest host of all time (Jeff Probst) behind the wheel. When I began watching this season, I immediately noticed one contestant whose passion and positivity jumped through the screen — and when I learned she was from the Chicago area, a yogi who had quit her job in corporate finance, and a self-published author on the subject of female solo travel, well, I knew I had to talk to her. The first thing you realize when talking to Stephanie Johnson of Survivor: Ghost Island is that everything she says has the subtle hint of an exclamation point at the end of it. That enthusiasm persists even in situations that would leave the rest of us despondent — like being randomly chosen for exile on Ghost Island, a precarious situation that Johnson knew would likely lead to her being voted off at the next tribal council. But instead of wallowing on Ghost Island, Johnson took comfort in enjoying her present and mentally resetting from the 24/7 nature of Survivor's social game. "What I allowed myself to do for that 24 hours that I was out there was to flip out of game mind and just be in Fiji on a beach by myself," shared Johnson. "And so I climbed up on top of the rocks and I watched this sunset. I collected shells, I sat, and I had this cry fest. I just kind of allowed myself to be in the moment and experience it." She continued, "I knew that I was going to be in trouble if we lost, so I really wanted to soak it up, and that ended up being my last sunset in Fiji was alone on Ghost Island. I didn't want to go out, but I'm glad that I was able to at least watch [the sunset] and take advantage of it  — and kind of do that alone." The second thing is that when Johnson goes in on a big goal, she goes ALL. IN. Like quitting her job in corporate finance to immediately travel to Hawaii for a month-long yoga teacher training. Or like deciding to trek and backpack solo through nearly 50 miles of Patagonia, despite never having taken on a journey of that magnitude before. Or, like watching the first season of Survivor in 2000 and deciding it was her destiny to be on the show — and then applying for 17 years in a row until the casting department decided it was time to put her on. Reminisced Johnson, "I was sitting in my college dorm room at Utah State University, and the show came on and it sparked a sense of wonder and adventure in me, and it was something that I didn't know existed until I saw these crazy people out on an island surviving — but for some reason that seemed so appealing to me. And so I started applying season two and I can't even tell you how many applications I have sent in over the years because we used to have to do them on VHS tapes!" The beauty in Johnson's story comes from the fact that while she was constantly applying to Survivor, she was finding fulfillment in her life in other ways — and eventually, chasing those passions became what got her cast on season 36. "At some point you have to just go on and live your life and keep pursuing the dream. You have to carve your own path and your own journey and your own experiences," Johnson believes. And that life event that eventually led to her (finally) getting cast? "Honestly, it happened because of Ironman Arizona — that's when I caught their attention. It's like I said: I needed to build up this life experience, but [the triathlon] was just my passion. I never went in to triathlon or running with the intention that it would get me on Survivor, but by doing what I loved and just following my heart and my curiosities it, [Survivor] came to me. It was just like the domino effect: one thing after the other, after the other, until it finally transpired." And while she may not have won this season of Survivor, Johnson isn't done chasing big goals — and she gave us an exclusive on what's coming up next for her. "I am going to enter the world of real legit ultra running, and I want to do a 100 mile race so I'm going to be planning on doing that sometime soon." Johnson confides. "After being in Patagonia out there in the mountains, it really spurred that desire to do these hundred mile endurance races that I see all my friends doing, and it seems almost like a spiritual experience. I know that sounds really weird, but I really want to tap into that mental strength that it takes to do that." After listening to our interview, you can watch Johnson in the live reunion finale of Survivor: Ghost Island on Wednesday, May 23. And if you enjoyed listening, subscribe anywhere you get your podcasts and leave us a rating or a review on Apple Podcasts. --- JAC:Welcome to #WeGotGoals, a podcast by aSweatLife.com, on which we talked to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen; with me, I have Kristen Geil and Cindy Kuzma. CK:Good morning, Jeana. KG: Morning, Jeana. JAC: Good morning. CK: Uh, Jeana, I know that this is kind of a big day. It's a big week. You have a pretty big announcement at aSweaLlife this week, right? JAC:Yes. This week we announced our fifth #SweatWorkingWeek. #SweatWorking Week is like restaurant week for fitness here in Chicago. We get really excited about it. We create a schedule, we invite everybody to participate in a week where we invite them to try new things and meet new people. And this time around we'll have breakfast and learns every morning, where we're will help people set and achieve big goals. And then we'll also have big events every evening built around neighborhoods and exploring those neighborhoods through fitness. The whole week will end in a fitness festival which will be announced later this week. CK:And when is this week of awesomeness? JAC:The next one will be in June 4th through the 9th. The 9th will be the fitness festival. So come on down, come on down. JAC: Now let's get to the show. Kristen, you did the interview this week and it was super exciting. I know because you are a fan of reality TV. So talk me through this. KG:Yes, I am a reality TV junkie and this week I spoke with Stephanie Johnson who is on this current season of Survivor called Ghost Island and it's airing right now on Wednesday nights and I think there is a couple of weeks left before the finale. JAC:So she talked to you in real time about how she ended up on the show and how she ended up on the show was a story of not quitting. So tell me how many times did she apply to be on survivor? KG:So Stephanie told me that she watched the very first season of Survivor and applied every single season after that, once, twice a year. I think it ended up being about 17 years that she was constantly applying for this television show and she is the type of person who when she decides she wants something, she goes all in. And that's just another example of how she really sets her mind to something and will work to achieve it. But what I also thought was interesting about her persistence in applying to Survivor was that it was never the only focus of her life. Throughout it, she was finding other ways to fulfill herself, whether it was by quitting her job in corporate finance, becoming a yoga teacher and eventually training for an Ironman triathlon. And it was after she completed that Ironman that the Survivor casting production crew decided that was the special thing that made them want her on the show this time. So by fulfilling her life in other areas, she was actually, although unwittingly working towards her dream of being on Survivor. CK: And it sounds like Stephanie has this really amazing ability to kind of take something that might be difficult or challenging and turn it into an opportunity. And she did that on the show when she was sent to Ghost Island, right? Can you talk a little bit about that? KG: Yes. So on this season, the Ghost Island twist, was that your. At any time, you could be randomly chosen to go to this Ghost Island, which was basically exile. So Stephanie was chosen, she randomly drew the stone that would send her to Ghost Island and it's looked on as a downside because you're taken out of the politicking before a tribal council vote, so it's never an advantage to go to Ghost Island necessarily. And Stephanie also knew that she was sort of on the bottom of her tribe that particular week. KG:So getting sent to Ghost Island was probably the nail in her coffin, but instead of getting really frustrated about how she couldn't do anything about the situation and how she was taken out of the game somewhat unfairly, she decided to turn it into a positive and she focused on the fact that she was alone on a beautiful desert island in Fiji and just really appreciate her gorgeous surroundings and sort of get her mind reset from the constant game mode when you're on a reality competition like Survivor. And I thought that was really beautiful. I thought that was a great perspective shift and it was so, it was done so consciously and so mindfully that I can see how it fits in with her personality that will come through in our interview. CK: I thought this was a great one, and as someone who does not watch Survivor, I was actually really fascinated by it and I think I'm going to have to go back and catch up on the season now, so thanks for doing this interview Kristen, and I am excited to share it. Here's Kristen with Stephanie. KG: Welcome to the #WeGotGoals podcast. My name is Kristen Geil and today I am here with Stephanie Johnson, who was most recently on this current season of Survivor: Ghost Island. Stephanie, how are you today? SJ: I’m great. How are you doing? KG: Oh, I'm good. It's actually a warm weather day in Chicago for once, so I feel like everyone just starts off their day on a better foot once the weather gets up like this. SJ: Exactly. I feel like springtime just popped up and everybody's outside now. It's fantastic. KG: Well, I know who you are. Obviously because I am a Survivor fan and I've been keeping up with the season, but can you give our listeners a quick introduction of just who Stephanie Johnson is? SJ: Um, well, I was, like you said most recently on the 36th season of Survivor, Ghost Island, which was a huge dream and goal of mine since season one, episode one. SJ:So it was an incredible experience to finally live out my dream. I've done two Ironman events, full Ironmen, and a handful of half Ironmen, I do ultra marathons, marathons, and then I'm also a yoga instructor, meditation coach, Reiki Master. I have a female triathlon clothing line. So I'm kind of all over the place. I am most recently an author, writing about travel, which is something that I am extremely passionate as well. KG:  Yeah. It sounds like you have your hands in a little bit of everything, but I know that before you were a yoga teacher, you worked in corporate finance, which seems like the complete opposite of everything you are doing today. SJ: Oh, it's totally the opposite. So I grew up in Boise, Idaho and you know, small town and all I ever wanted to do was move to a big city and work in a high-rise and work in finance. SJ:And so I went to college for it. I moved out to the big city. I got my high-rise, I got my job and I did it throughout my 20s. But then I just realized that, you know, even though I had pursued that dream and made it come true that after doing it for a certain amount of years, it just wasn't my dream anymore and that it was OK that that was my dream, and it was also OK that that wasn't my dream anymore and it was just time to pursue the next thing and what it was that I wanted to do for the rest of my life and create a career. So I quit my corporate job and I went off to a Yoga Ashram in Hawaii for a month and did a complete immersion in yoga and meditation and came back and like you said, drastically different career path. KG: And it seems like you didn't even dip your toe in the water a little bit. Like you went in all out when you decided you wanted to switch things up. SJ: Oh yeah, it was, it was just boom, done. And I had looked into different programs that took a year, but I'm kind of an intense, passionate personality. So for me just throwing myself into five hours of meditation a day and five hours of practice and you know, we had these long, 15-hour days at the Ashram, but that just fit my personality best and it was what was relatable and how I was able to learn everything. It was definitely, you know, that immersion, passionate, intense situation catered to my learning style. KG: And it seems like that's an aspect of your personality that makes you so well suited for endurance races and triathlons. Is that how you found triathlon or how did you get started with those? SJ: You know, triathlon came later to me. I was always active. I did yoga, I went to the gym, but it wasn't until I was later in my 20s and then really it was when I started going through my divorce and I was leaving my religion and I needed some sort of structure in the chaos of my life and I was turning 30 and I thought, you know, running a marathon has always been on my bucket list. I have these crazy runner friends that do it all the time, so why don't I just do a marathon add it into the mix. And it ended up being perfect for me though because for four days a week I had that absolute structure and the great and amazing thing about marathon training, especially when it's your first time and you're really coming from no athletic running base, is you see the improvements week by week. You see your endurance. SJ:You all of a sudden are running 16 miles for a training run and you couldn't run 16 minutes eight weeks ago, you know? So it was an incredible inner strength building and inner confidence building experience for me to train for that very first marathon and I got hooked after that. I loved the running community. I loved the support that I was getting, the friends that I was meeting and so that's when I got hooked is when I turned 30 and I ran that first marathon and it completely changed my perception of myself and the course of my life, to be honest. KG: I’ve had a few marathons under my belt and I can totally relate to what you're saying about how training for that first one, you get addicted to adding a little bit of mileage each week and you're like, I've never done this distance before. I've never run this far. And each week it gets a little bit more exciting to push your limits and see what your body can do. SJ: Yeah, it's. It is. It's a, it's a little bit like you said, kind of like an addiction just to see like what else can I do? What am I capable of? If I can do this, can I do that? And I mean, we definitely all have our limitations, but it's very fascinating seeing that that strength grow and build and like I said, it's just such a confidence booster. And so that's how I got into the running portion of triathlon. I, you know, I was doing the running portion before I even dabbled into triathlon. KG: Well, let's go back. Let's back up a little bit because you've already described so many interesting and varied accomplishments. I'm really interested to hear your answer to the first big question we ask everyone who comes on the podcast and that is, what is a big goal you've achieved in the past, why was it important to you and how did you get to achieving that goal? SJ: You know, it's, it's, I have, I have three that I could, I could say. KG: Let's go for it, why not? SJ: Well then we'll just, we'll just go for it. Like you said. Okay. So the first would be definitely Ironman. And it did come to me later on in life as a goal. You know, it was never a life goal. I thought that people were like crazy who did that type of thing. I didn't know how to swim laps at all, but once I started swimming and I took that chance on myself and I had. I met a friend who was, he was 86 and we just bonded and he, he became my swim coach and we, we just, we had so much fun training that as soon as I caught onto swimming, I knew I wanted to go the full way and it was a huge goal and a huge dream to eventually do a full Ironman even though I had no idea how I was going to physically do 140 miles in a day. SJ:140.6. I guess you gotta add in the .6. Exactly. But it became really important to me because it was like I, like I mentioned with the marathon, it was something that I focused on every single day and it brought a sense of community to me. It brought so many new friends and I loved being able to see what I was actually capable of because that to me was the impossible. It was completely impossible in my head, before I made up my mind that I was going to do it, and even sitting there at the start line of Ironman Arizona in 2015, I thought to myself, this is freaking impossible. What am I doing? I need to run off and go to Denny's and get some pancakes instead of starting this long day that I'm about to have. Like, what am I doing? So until you actually cross that line, it does seem impossible, but you know, it became hugely important to me just on a personal level to, to accomplish this and to kind of prove to myself that I was capable of this and it was important to me to show my children that you can do anything you set your mind to. SJ:You know, I always preach that on social media, dream big. You can do anything. But if I'm not walking the walk, I should not be talking the talk because that's another huge thing with me is I like to be authentic and vulnerable and very real. And I feel like if I'm telling my kids, you know, you can do this, you can do anything. I need to be able to back that up with proof, so on a personal level it was important to me, but then as a mother it was extremely important to me as well. KG: Well, that's enough for one goal. That was just the first one. What other, what were the two other ones you mentioned? SJ: You know, definitely Survivor, like getting onto Survivor was, like I said, a 17 year goal for me, I knew I wanted to be on the second I started watching that show and I remember exactly where I was when I started watching it. SJ:I was sitting in my college dorm room at Utah State University and the show came on and it was, it sparked a sense of wonder and adventure in me and it was something that I didn't know existed until I saw these crazy people out on an island surviving, but for some reason that seemed so appealing to me. And so I started applying season 2 and I can't even tell you how many applications I have sent in over the years because we used to have to do them on VHS tapes. Like, oh my gosh, you know, like you even like, remember, VHS tapes. It was crazy. It was crazy hard to actually get a video into them and you had to mail it in. And so I sent those in. I went to open casting calls, I, you know, and then finally, you know, now they do it on the Internet. So I would have been able to just send things in. SJ:So when I got the call that it was just, it was mind blowing to me that all that persistence finally paid off and it's just, it I can't describe like you know it for 17 years, you think about something most every week because it's on, you know, nine months out of the year and then it finally happens and you realize that, you know, you have this huge dream that you want and you're doing everything you can. But at some point you have to just go on and live your life and keep, keep pursuing the dream. But you have to carve your own, you know, your own path and your own journey and your own experiences. Because in the end, when I look back, you know, the woman that I am today is not the, obviously not the same person I was 15 years ago and the life experience that I have now and who I am now as the person that needed to be on the show and meet the people that I met and so it's just timing is everything, but 17 years is a really long time. KG:It makes me wonder what the casting crew was thinking the entire time we're going to if they just flipped through the applications every year. And were like, Oh, here's Stephanie again. Still at it. And then I wonder what made them decide now was the right time to cast you? SJ: Yeah, it's crazy. And I, and you know it honestly, it happened because of Ironman Arizona, you know, that's when I caught their attention. And so it is, you know, if you look at like the series of events in a life as you know, almost like dominoes falling one after the next. It's like I said, I needed to build up this life experience, but it was just my passion. I never went in to triathlon or running with the intention that it would get me on Survivor, but by doing what I loved and just following my heart and my curiosities it, you know, it came to me, so it was just, it's like the domino effect, one thing after the other, after the other until it finally transpired. SJ:But yeah, it was kind of a crazy, crazy scenario how it all happened. KG: Yeah, that's amazing. It's wild how those things work out, but it seems to show that it was meant to be. And while you were fulfilling your own passions, it was just leading you the direction that you are supposed to be going all along. SJ: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Life has a funny way of doing that. KG: Yeah, it sure does. Well, I want to come back to your Survivor journey, but let's go ahead and knock that third big goal out because I'm super curious to hear what this one is going to be. SJ: Yeah. So the third one is writing and writing. I've always loved to write and I always had this spark of curiosity of what it would be like to be a writer, but I'm not classically trained. I never went to college for it. SJ:It was just something that I, I did and I, you know, I have a blog and everything and I, I write articles and do different things, but I always wanted to write a book on something, but he just never knew what it was. Like what was my thing? And I vividly remember, this happened after I was voted out of survivor and I was talking to one of the other contestants and, you know, I'm like, Geez, like I feel like I just reached my big goal. It's time to set a new one now, you know, because I'm very goal oriented person and it's like I needed something else. And I said, I've been talking about this for years, so I want to become an author. And so when I got home I realized that my thing was solo traveling as a, as a woman. SJ:And I wanted to write about my experience with that. And you know, I tried the publishing route, I tried to go through, you know, different publishers and editors and it's just a crazy process. So I finally said, look, we live in a day and age when you can literally do anything yourself. Musicians can get their music out on Spotify and artists can get their work out on Instagram. And I'm like, why can't I publish a book? And so I researched and I researched and you know, all the backend work that goes into figuring out how do you write, edit and publish a book? And I figured it all out, you know, with it definitely took months and months of research. But I finally did it. And so publishing my first book was a huge goal for me that I reached. And it's only the beginning—I feel that it’s something that I created and it's my, it's like my little baby and now I'm going to fuel that and add onto that and just continue on with it because I really enjoy creating these books, especially on travel. So yeah. So that was a, that was the other one, is becoming an author, a published author. KG:Congratulations on that is someone who makes a living cranking out thousand word blog posts several times a day. The idea of writing a full book is daunting to say the least. So it's amazing that you were able to take that dream and figure out a path to make it happen yourself. SJ: Yeah. Well thank you. KG: Let's go back to your time on Survivor. When the show started, I'm assuming that your goal like everyone else to was to win, and to outlast everybody else. SJ: Yes. KG: But what specific strategies were you trying to go about making that happen? What was your game plan? SJ:You know, you definitely go in with the intention to win. I wanted to enjoy the experience because I had wanted this for so long, but you also like just with my personality, I had such a burning passion to win and you start the game and you look around and immediately I wanted to create strong social bonds with people. I knew that my social skills were going to be what would get me the furthest. I actually didn't tell anybody out there that I did triathlon or that I was a runner. I didn't want them to know my endurance and that I had that mental strength to really push through. So I told them, you know, I did yoga and I lift some weights and stuff, but he really kept a lot of that part hidden. So I knew that I had to rely on a lot of my social strength and building relationships and just being able to relate to people and I did. I mean I created really great bonds with a lot of people out there, very personal and you know, I had a lot of very intimate moments with people. And so that was initially my strategy going in was to create those bonds. KG:And you said it yourself. The social aspect of the game is so big in Survivor. What did you take away from your time on the show in terms of learning how to get along with a group of strangers, especially when everyone's trying to accomplish the same thing? SJ:Oh man, there's so much that I took away. It's, it's hard because you're in a scenario where you are, you know, the first night you all are sleeping in your bra and underwear and in bikini's next to each other for body heat. So you become really, really raw and close with these people very fast and there's like a very intimate bond that you make with these people very quickly and it's very deep and that part is very real. But yet you're in a game setting where it's not real life. And so you have to navigate between what conversations are real and what's not real. And you know, I'm definitely a lover, and not a hater, fighter. So it was hard for me, you know, a couple of the votes to, to vote people out. But you, you realize also you have to flip your mind back that you're in a game for you know a million dollars and if you want to stay, you have to. You have to be able to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the end. Yet you really do create real bonds and feelings towards these people because like I said, you have just this intimate, raw like down to like primal, like eating and, and warmth and sleeping with each other really quick. So I think that it taught me how quickly you can bond with people that you have nothing in common with, nothing, and from all different walks of life, you know, when you're stuck in a very primal situation basically. So it's been interesting taking those relationships also out of the game and how deep those relationships are, friendships that we've made are based on based on that, that connection that you make those first few days. KG:Yeah. It seems like it's something that you guys have in common because obviously so few of the population is able to experience that. So it's a really strong bonding moment between all of you. SJ:Yes, definitely. And that human connection is, it's very real and you know, you're, you're taken away from your phones and you're having real conversations with people eye to eye where you're, you have no distractions, of you know your phone going off or taking care of the kids or you have to do go, go to work or do this or that and so it makes you realize how much technology plays into our relationships and when you come out of the game, I bet it's like I crave more of that, that real relationship with people, you know, I don't want to have an only texting relationship with somebody because I know what it feels like to sit down with somebody without a cell phone and have a really deep conversation and laugh and cry or whatever you end up doing, but without any distractions. And so it does make you want to discover more depth in relationships when you get out of the game or at least it has for me. KG:And that's interesting too considering your scenes and theme was Ghost Island, which plays off isolation from the community and you made a trip to Ghost Island right before you were voted off. What was that isolation like for you and how were you able to navigate it by yourself? SJ:So you know, I do a lot of solo travel so I'm very used to being alone and I thought, no problem, I've got this, like and I was very excited to go to Ghost Island because you get to play for an advantage. And at the time where I was at I did not know that you didn't get an advantage because all I knew from Jacob and Kellen is that you get to at least play for an advantage. Jacob did and got, you know, the legacy advantage and Kellen just decided not to because she didn't want a chance to lose her vote. So when I got there and I got that I couldn't play a game. That is, that was this sinking feeling for me because I knew I was already in trouble and now I'm isolated and now I can’t, I don't have any advantage and now I'm stuck on a freaking island by myself. SJ:And so I just, I had a feeling like I was in bad shape if we lost the next immunity challenge. So what I allowed myself to do is for that 24 hours that I was out there, whatever it was, is flip out of game mind and just be in Fiji on a beach by myself. And so I climbed up on top of the rocks and I watched the sunset. I collected shells, you know, I definitely like, you see me on the show. I cry all that. I, I'm like the resident crier of the group. Like I sat and I had like this cry fest. I miss my kids, but I like was collecting like I said shells and stones and you know, I sat in the water and just tried to like bathe because you know, that's how we, that's how we wash out there and it's just in the ocean. SJ:And the one advantage that we had out there is this massive thing of rice. So I ate until I almost threw up like this rice and yeah, so I just kind of allowed myself to be in the moment and experience it. And I, you know, I did go through my mind any scenario that I could come up with for back at camp when I came back, but I knew that I was, I knew that I was going to be in trouble if we lost, so I really wanted to soak up and that ended up being my last sunset in Fiji was alone on Ghost Island. Well last sunset on the show, last sunset on the show was on Ghost Island. So I really, I really do feel like I didn't want to go out, but I'm glad that I was able to at least watch it and take advantage of it and kind of do that alone. KG:That's such a beautiful sentiment because I can see how being in such an uncomfortable environment would really magnify your feelings. Like the highest would feel really high and the lows would feel really low. So it's really impressive that you were able to tap into some mindfulness to

Stephanie Calahan is the Business Vision Catalyst who is known for the fast transformation that she facilitates with her clients through working at the intersection of heart and head. She works with busy, purpose-driven entrepreneurs to own their brilliance, leverage their business and get their message out with power, ease and joy so they can make a powerfully positive difference in the world, exponentially up their level profits, shift their mindsets towards possibility and take a no-excuses approach to boldly creating a highly successful and meaningful business built around who they are. With her unique combination of right brained and left brained thinking, intuitive incite, passion, results based coaching, powerful questioning and strategic systemizing magic. In record time, her clients dance with joy as their visions become reality in their business. After risking personal health and happiness as a high achieving executive and former jet-lagged consultant in corporate America, Stephanie vowed not only to create a life of real freedom for herself and her family but also to teach fellow entrepreneurs how to do the same. Questions Tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey How do you feel about customer service as a business owner on a global level and do you think there’s room for improvement?  What are some everyday solutions that you believe can help improve customer experience? How do you stay motivated everyday? What are some important considerations for an entrepreneur or an online business owner would need to take into account in order to be successful? What is one online resource, website, tool or app you cannot live without in your business? What are some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? If you were sitting across the table from another business owner and they said to you that they feel they have great products and services but lack the consistently motivated human capital, what advice would you give that person to have a successful business? What is one thing that is going on in your life right now that you are really excited about – something that you are either working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can our listeners find you online? What is one quote or saying that you live by or that inspires you in times of adversity? Highlights Stephanie started by stating that she worked a little over a decade consulting for Fortune Fifty/ Fortune One Hundred clients and leading a team of 250 to 300 people. She stated that there was a lot of activity and stress involved with that world of work. When she started working there, she thought she was going to retire from where she started as she was a true blue employee that really believed in the work that she was doing and was going to continue that until her retirement. Into her experience with that career, the company went from a privately held LLC to a publicly traded company, and when they made that shift in corporate organization, there was a drastic shift in the corporate culture, there was a drastic shift in the treatment of their clients, there was a drastic shift in the treatment of their employees and that no longer matched who she was. The company moved from being people-focused to being bottom-line focused. A lot of the things they did in support of their clients as well as a lot of things that they had done culturally in support of their own associates were disappearing. She was being asked a lot of times to do different things on many occasions that was right on her ethical borders so much so that there were days late into that experience where she was getting physically ill at work because the people that Stephanie reported to were just asking her to do things that were not right for a myriad of reasons, they weren’t illegal but they were just not right. Fortunately, her husband who is very supportive had a conversation and they decided that it was time for her to walk away, it took her about 2 years to be brave enough to talk to her husband but she was nervous because that meant she was walking away from a high 6 figure income and they decided that it was the absolute right choice and she did that and decided to start Calahan Solutions rather than getting another job. When she went to decide what she was going to do within Calahan Solutions, she looked at the work that she did that she wanted to bring with her, the parts of that corporate experience she wanted to bring with her that were positive, the things that she enjoyed doing, the things that she was good at doing. She looked at her peer reviews and reviews from the leadership team that she reported to and looked at the things she did really well and just combined all of that into a business. Her business has morphed and changed quite a bit over the years because one of the things that she didn’t let go of was over working, she was a workaholic and almost worked herself to death. In 2009 she was told she would not see 2010 because she was so ill and so in the course of getting well, she had to rethink her business and that rethinking of her business and how she wanted to deliver services allowed her to become fully her and not hold back because there was this workaholic part of her and there was a part of her that thinks that people are not interested in that aspect of her and so she blocked a lot of who she was too. While that health experience was a scary one, she was actually really grateful because it brought her to where she is today. It has also allowed her to recognize that life is really short and if it’s going to be short, if we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow, then she needs to be the best she can be everyday and so it has given her motivation to really go for those things in her business that are important rather than letting fear hold her back. Stephanie shared that Customer Service/Client Service is one of the most integral parts of what she does. The work that she does, all the way from the conversations that she is having now, the blog post that she writes, the interactions that she has with her clients, the interactions that she has with her prospects are all about service. The work that she does is transformational and if people don’t feel well cared for, they can’t take part in that transformation in a really significant way and then the work that they do is the same thing. The more you can think about the experiences that you are providing whether it is through the conversations that you are having, whether it is through the on-boarding processes that you have when you have new clients but even if you have products that you sell in a store, products that you sell online, think all the way through that experience to make sure that it’s something that’s going to be really positive and enjoyable for the people that are doing business with you. Stephanie shared that one solution she thinks can apply to a lot of people listening is to think through the experience your customers are having when they are interacting with you online and that can be a lot of different things. Stephanie shared an experience that she had (a bad customer experience), that she also wrote a blog post about it. She stated that there was someone she was following online that she really respected and she decided to purchase a product online from this person, she made the purchase on a Friday night and all of a sudden she got 7 different receipts for that same purchase and the purchase was not a low price purchase. Her credit card got impacted by over US $4,000.00 from that one purchase because it wasn’t a US $4,000.00 purchase; it was 7 different purchases of the exact same product. She then franticly started making phone calls to the company trying to get a hold of anybody because that wasn’t her intent to spend that amount of money and she didn’t want to buy 7 versions of the digital product. After 4 hours of calling different numbers, she eventually got someone who had absolutely nothing to do with her purchase, she told the person that she needed their help to escalate the problem, she needed the money to be put back on her card immediately. With all said and done, everything got resolved but it was 4 hours of her time in panic, stress and also unnecessary because if when they had put the product up on their shopping cart they had ensured someone to test it and actually pretend to make a purchase, they would have seen what happens from the customers’ perspective. Stephanie Calahan further stated just because you have stuff set up correctly in the first place for product A doesn’t mean that product B is going to be set up correctly. Test every single one of them, look at the landing pages you’re going to have, look at the thank you pages you’re going to have, look at the emails going out, look at the impact it has on a credit card and what the credit card receipts have because the more smooth you can make that process, the happier a customer you are going to have. Stephanie advised in her own business - she has a few family members that are not that technically inclined that she would ask to run through the process for her and she will refund it right away. Just for them to go through it and let her know if there is anything confusing or if the process was clunky in any way and give her that feedback. She stated that there are a lot of big corporations; the amazons of the world who have teams of people that they call usability testing but smaller businesses don’t have teams of people to do usability testing but you can do something really simple like that which doesn’t take a lot of time that can really save your reputation and relationships by investing in time to do that. In reference to the question of recommendations that Stephanie has for a company that has a physical storefront with items for sale (brick and mortar). The solution she suggests is to be present. In our world of ever changing attention spans where we could have an iPad going, the cash register going, our phone ringing and someone at the counter, just pay attention. Whoever you are interacting with whether it’s on the phone or at the counter, give them your full attention for the time frame that you’re having an interaction with them and let them know they are important to you because they are, they are your customers. Give them the respect that they deserve as they are doing an exchange with you, whether it’s asking a question or making a purchase. Some people look at customer service only from the perspective as people that are giving you money and that they become the customer when they have made a purchase from you. However, the truth is they are your customer the minute they’re in your sphere of influence because the conversations and relationships that you build with people even before they have made a purchase influence how they feel about you. After asking Stephanie Calahan how she stays motivated everyday - she believes in having a big Why? Simon Sinek has a TED talk video on YouTube Start With Why. It’s about getting that piece that’s deep inside of you that you tap into that allows you to do all the things that you absolutely adore about your business and to also do the things that you are less excited about. She stated that her “Why” ties back to her personal experiences. She mentioned that in 2009 she was really ill almost lost her life and the reason she is here today is because a really good friend introduced her to a holistic health coach that helped her figure out the complex mess that she was in and helped her so that she could be here today. She realized that after she got well and learned more about his business, that there is no way she would have found him if she hadn’t been personally introduced to him by a friend and there are so many different world changers that are out there and he would not consider himself a world changer but he changed her world because she’s here today because of the work she did with him. She stated that there are so many world changers like him that are so amazing like him but people don’t know they exist. So her “Why” is to help change the world in a very positive way by helping those world changers get found and be aligned with clients and do what they do best. Stephanie stated one of the most important things that entrepreneurs and businesses should take in account is to build a business that is in alignment with who you really are. There are a lot of people that build businesses based off of what one guru or another says and it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and it doesn’t work and then they’re always pushing rather than letting the beauty of life and the beauty of their ideal clients find them and just flow. She shared that the first thing she would suggest a business owner do is look at what they have going on in their life right now and identify those spots that are really feeling off and get honest about it and adjust. The more you can build a business aligned around who you are then the more comfortable you are and not comfortable in a bad way as she is a believer in stepping out of your comfort zone, “comfortable” meaning it matches who you are from an energy level, from a spiritual level, from a business strategy level and from a learning and personality values level. The more your business is in alignment with who you are and the less you’re pushing, the more energy you have to be focused on somebody else namely your customers or your clients. When you have a business model that is always making you stressed, you don’t have the mental capacity to be thinking of other people in the same way as you do when you are truly joyous about the work you do. Stephanie also stated that one of her programs is called “Money, Mindset and Magnetism”, the clients that align and sign up to be a part of that program are typically having challenges with their sales in one way or another and what she finds is the case with every single private client that comes into that program is that initially they are more focused on themselves, they are not selfish people but they are more focused on themselves than on the people that they are meant to serve, so their sales conversations just implode. They don’t work as well as they could and there’s so many things when we are solid within who we are and our mindset is clean and confident then we are in a different mental space to be able to truly think about the person on the other side of the counter, on the other side of the phone, over Skype, over Google Hangout, whichever way you connect with your ideal customer or client that it allows you to think from their perspective and get much more creative with how you can make their experience a positive one. When customers | clients | patients have a more positive experience, they’re more likely to continue to want to work with you. When asked what is the one app, website, resource or tool that she absolutely cannot live without in her business - Stephanie shared that she adores Infusionsoft (https://www.infusionsoft.com) which is an all in one marketing tool that allows you to make your customer experience very personalized and build relationships with the people you are interacting with rather than it being transaction based. There are different components and there is one component called “Customer Relationship Management Section” and that’s where you can gather all kinds of information about your clients and customers and give yourself good information in order to interact with them. If you do online sales or brick and mortar sales then this tool will allow you to identify who signed up for what giveaway you have, who purchases a product and it allows you to have a more intelligent conversation with them. If you are in a business where it is more one on one interaction, it allows you to note the important things you learned about those people that you are working with. She calls it her memory in a box, she can go back to that person’s record anytime and know what they talked about, what they are interested in and it helps her refresh her memory so that she can treat the people that she is working with, with great respect and honor. She further stated it is more than a CRM as there is also an Auto Responder portion where you can do newsletters, you can do automated communication based off of the types of interactions the customers and clients are having with you or your site. There’s a Shopping Cart portion, there’s a number of different elements that can be used to allow you to know what your customer is interested in and then be able to serve them with that. Stephanie mentioned that the tool – Infusionsoft (https://www.infusionsoft.com) was built specifically for small businesses and they have customers that are in service coaching industries but they have people that run all kinds of different brick and mortar stores whether it’s retail stores and they have customers all over the globe doing all different types of businesses but it specifically for the small business. Stephanie mentioned that she has been doing business with them (Infusionsoft) for a number of years and like a lot of businesses, they have some growing pains, at one point they were getting customers so fast that their customer service wasn’t so good for a while but they addressed that. They recognized where their growing pains were starting to cause them problems and they made adjustments. So Stephanie suggests as another tip - as your business grows, the way that you interact with your customers will need to change and so be open for that and look at those spots where maybe things are falling through the cracks that didn’t use to fall through the cracks and those are customer improvement opportunities too. Stephanie shared that when she thinks about Customer Service, one book that is really fantastic is “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t” by Jim Collins. You can be a good company and make a lot of money or you can be a great company that makes a lot of money and makes an impact too. In Jim’s book, he did a study of a number of different organizations just understanding why were some companies merely really good and others great and what did the great ones have in common? And one of those things that all the great ones have in common was really good customer service. Stephanie mentioned that when she framed her business, she had to decide if she wanted to be mass numbers or did she want to be high touch and by high touch, she means how well did she know the people she was working with and how involved did she get with them in relation to the work they are doing together. Stephanie Calahan decided that high touch was really where she wanted to sit in that coaching space and so she has a unique rule that she wants to be able to love her customers unconditionally in order to work with them because when you can accept your customers and clients unconditionally in the coaching space, then you have the ability to really help empower them to make fantastic changes in the direction they want to go in their business so customer service is one of the ways that she is able to do that. She also stated that another great book is “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions” by Guy Kawasaki which is about relationships and talking about how you engage with your community, with your tribe, and with your audience. She also mentioned “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini which is a different form of engagement but understanding how the words that you use impact the people you are working with so to make sure that you’re conscious about that and how you interact with people. Yanique asked Stephanie…..we have a lot of listeners who are business owners and managers who feel they have great products and services but they lack the constantly motivated Human Capital.  If you were sitting across the table from that person, what’s the one piece of advice that you would give them to have a successful business? Stephanie Calahan shared that one advice that she would give is if you are lacking the human capital, systemize. There are so many different technologies out there that allow you to be fantastic at what you do. She then gave an example, when she first started her business; she was going back and forth in email with people anytime she wanted to schedule anything and she could have a lot of people going back and forth with at any given point trying to schedule a conversation on the phone or face to face and sometimes she dropped the ball because she would miss an email or her phone wouldn’t sync to her computer. That is a relationship gap when you don’t reply when you should and so one way that she automated that piece of it was to set up an online availability calendar that syncs with her calendar that is outlining when she’s available for different types of conversations. Let’s say she meets someone on a Facebook group and goes back and forth on messenger. Now, if she wants to schedule a conversation, she can say go to this URL and pick any time that works for you, you can trust that any time that’s on that calendar that shows available that she is also available and it eliminates that back and forth, it eliminates that unproductive time and allows her to have more time for the important things of the conversation and there is a lot of different things you can do within your business to automate different administrative functions and different operational functions so that you are freeing up more time to do the things that you really love to do. When you talk about those businesses that don’t have a lot of human capital, there are some things where people interaction is critical and there are some things like scheduling a meeting that is really administrative and the technology is there that makes it so easy and so streamlined that it is a happier customer experience than the aggravation of all the back and forth. So it ultimately ends up being a better customer experience by automating that piece and frees you up to have more time to be able to do those pieces that are more important face to face or voice to voice. One thing that is going on in Stephanie’s life right now that she is working on to develop herself and her people – she stated that the thing she has been working on for the last couple of months that she is the most excited about is something that came from a love of wanting to combine the concerns of people who are Podcast hosts, Radio Show hosts and the concerns of people that are guest on these shows. She is writing a book right now that is called “Guest Appearance Gold: Sky Rocket Your Reach, Grow Your Influence and Attract Great Clients by Leveraging Your Guest Appearances and Expert Interviews” and she was hearing from hosts that they have all of these guests on their shows and they don’t do anything to help promote the show, they just come on and do their thing and then they get off and that’s a frustration from the hosts perspective. She was also hearing from the guest expert side of going on these shows that it isn’t really doing a whole lot for their business and that’s largely because there’s this whole piece in the middle that’s missing that wasn’t being leveraged by the guest experts and so she has written that book and it started out as a simple check list and after 60 pages, she said it’s not really a simple check list anymore because she was giving a lot of why’s behind different things that people could do and so her intention when the book is done is to give it away because she would like more people to be able to really get the biggest return on investment and in this case it is a time investment that will benefit hosts of shows as well as benefit the people that are experts on those shows. Stephanie stated that what is interesting about when you go on shows; it’s a two way customer service experience because the host is the customer of the guest but the guest is also the customer of the host, when you’re really working together then you can get amazing exposure for the conversation you had together which benefits everybody. Stephanie says that listeners can find her on: Stephanie Calahan Website Stephanie Calahan Twitter Stephanie Calahan Instagram Stephanie Calahan Facebook Stephanie Calahan LinkedIn Stephanie Calahan Youtube Stephanie Calahan Google+ In reference to one quote or saying that Stephanie has that she reverts to during times of adversity and challenge. Stephanie stated that she has many as she has been collecting quotes since Elementary School but the one that comes to mind is by Alan Cohen “It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.” Links  “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t” by Jim Collins “Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions” by Guy Kawasaki “Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion” by Robert Cialdini Infusionsoft Stephanie Calahan Website Stephanie Calahan Twitter Stephanie Calahan Instagram Stephanie Calahan Facebook Stephanie Calahan LinkedIn Stephanie Calahan Youtube Stephanie Calahan Google+ Simon Sinek TED talk Youtube Video