Podcasts about tracy do

In this monthly Healthy Her segment, host Amelia Phillips answers listener questions. This episode covers the questions:  Irma: Menopause has totally confused me. Generally I eat well and exercise & strength train - but now it's like I look at food and it goes straight to my hips and thighs!! Jane: What if you exercise without food & have something @ 11am? Jo-Anne: Thoughts on intermittent fasting?  (Ie - not eating until lunchtime?) marga_q7tw: does avoiding sugar also include honey?? Tracy: Do high blood pressure & type 2 diabetes go hand in hand or are they totally separate issues to deal with? About the host: Amelia Phillips is an exercise, nutrition, parenting and business expert with a career spanning 26 years in health. She's a registered exercise scientist, nutritionist and researcher (with a masters of human nutrition). She is the co-founder of health tech company 12WBT which grew from start-up. After a successful exit, she now runs online programs using biomarkers to help members get a complete snapshot of their health. Amelia had four kids in five years and is dedicated to empowering women to build a life after kids on the foundation of health (mental and physical), connection and purpose.  If you have a question for Amelia, reach out via Insta @_amelia_phillips, or email ap@ameliaphillips.com.au  Amelia's Inner Vitality Online Program: https://innervitality.ameliaphillips.com.au/ Find out more at www.ameliaphillips.com.au CREDITSHost: Amelia Phillips                                                                                                       Audio Producer: Darren RothMusic: Matt Nicholich                                                                                                      Production Partner: Nova Entertainment Pty Ltd Healthy Her acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to their Elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What Dave and Tracy Do at Wendy's 04/29/24

Jealous Minds - Interview with Shanenn BryantToday, our guest is Shanenn Bryant, a relationship confidence expert and one of the select few who focus on jealousy in relationships. Many people have daily anxiety and mistrust of their partners, even without evidence of infidelity. This fear runs so deep from either childhood dysfunction or past infidelity that they've now developed insecure habits like checking their partner's phone, text messages, and social media accounts for any signs of infidelity. Shanenn is here on Calming the Chaos Podcast to discuss jealousy, how it can hurt relationships, and how people can move past jealousy and into trusting relationships with themselves and others. Key points and Timestamps:2:42: Shanenn's story of chaos and how she became a Jealousy Relationship Expert4:50: Shannen – “If my own father doesn't love me, then why would anyone else?”5:50 Shannen – Jealousy is shameful for people to admit. “There's a lot of time wasted when your attention is focused on your partner 90% of the time.”Jealousy affects all major life domains: Home, work, family, etc.7:27: Shanenn - The difference between jealousy and envy9:07 Shannen - How Jealousy shows up (3 ways)1. Projection – Have YOU cheated in the past, so jealousy is projected onto another person2. Protection – Were YOU in a relationship before where you were cheated on, so jealousy is protective3. Competition – Were YOU in a friend group where you were excluded or uninvited to events, so jealousy is competitive in nature. 11:46: Tracy asks Shanenn to describe some situations where people are jealousTwo buckets:1. Family of origin is unstable2. The adult experience of infidelity on you helped you to develop insecure habits of protection“Jealousy isn't a problem, it's a solution.” “What is the jealousy trying to solve?”13:47 Tracy presents Hypothetical Jealousy Situation #1 to Shannen and she responds about what she would do1. No cheating is happening, but jealousy is happening.Shanenn: The first step is you need to get self-aware of what you are doing. Then, realize that it probably has nothing to do with what your partner is doing, but how YOU are perceiving what is going on. Then, asking yourself, “Why do you have so much fear about this?” Look at the beliefs and thoughts and check the facts.18:27 Tracy presents Hypothetical Jealousy Situation #2 to Shanenn and she responds about what she would do2. Cheating has happened in the pastShanenn: It's important for the offender to come clean about the whole story of the infidelity one time, preferably in the presence of a professional. It's also important to give the offended partner time to process it, and consider the information they REALLY want to know, and what information might hurt them.21:46: Tracy – Do you work with the person who ISN'T the jealous person? Setting boundaries and limits to questions and requests for reassurance. Work toward not providing reinforcement to the jealous partner24:40 Tracy – When is there manageable jealousy and toxic jealousy? How can we figure that out and take action? Consider whether the jealous person is seeking help or working on the problem, how much love they have for the jealous partner. Seek out therapy or coaching from someone like Shanenn.27:38 – Tracy describes how she works with couples who struggle with actual infidelity“I don't know whether this couple will stay together or break it off, but I do know this is that through the process we will gain some clarity either way. Shanenn describes getting “kicked out” of couples therapyTracy – Some therapists admit they are beyond their expertise, so they do need to refer couples on30:38: We tour Shanenn's website and the products and services she has to offer www.topself.comFree resources from...

How affordable is housing in Albuquerque? (Transcript Snippet): "Tego:  Tracy. You said something and I wanna, I wanna cause you corrected me the other day w you, you hardly ever do that. So, so I was talking with our team about the market and what's going on and just going through some data. And I was talking about how, you know, these homes under the median price of two 60 are selling really quickly. Right. And, and you made a really good point. You said, look, you keep saying, it's like the lower price point. Well, we've seen, you know, million dollar homes come on the market and have multiple cash offers right away as well. So it's, it's really every price range. It is. Now the thing that's curious about that as you look at the MLS and there's six, 700 homes, all that's on the market at any given day right now in our MLS. And there are a fair amount of homes that have been on the market for 30, 40, 60, 90, 180 days. Well, obviously there's something going on there, right. And maybe, maybe their price is still just too high or maybe that's a condition issue or the old, you know, location issue. Tracy: It's some, some combination or one of those things for sure in this. Tego: Yeah. The, the, the point is that demand is there and maybe the product just isn't fitting, you know, for the people that are out there. But yeah, it's every price range is, Tracy: Do you have any stats for that? Well, Tego: Like in the, in the higher end, you know, we've basically seen double putting it on the spot. Oh no, that's fine. I can, yeah. I, you know, in the higher end, what we, somebody asked me, he said, well, what's considered a luxury in Albuquerque. And it used to be just under 500. Now. It's probably over, I haven't calculated it in, in the last couple of months. Tracy: I think it's not necessarily by the numbers. This is not where a statistician makes it make sense, but it's what is our perceived luxury price? There is a definition I know there is, but you know, in my mind, I'm not the stat person. So in my mind, it's the perceived, it's like a half a million and above is what we consider luxury generally what people think. But yes, there's a stat for it. And the number is different from that. Tego: Well, the stat is it's the top 10%. Tego: Okay. You know, this okay. Of, of all the homes that sold, what are the top 10%, you know, of all those homes, what prices, you know, in above. And, and so, yeah, right now it's right around 500,000 and above. And so if you look at that price range, 500 and above the number of sales, it's not quite double, but almost doubled versus versus last year, you look at the, what I consider like the ultra high end, maybe a million, 1,000,002 it's, it's more than doubled. https://welcomehomeabq.com Tracy & Tego Venturi Venturi Realty Group Keller Williams 1119 Alameda Blvd NW Albuquerque, NM 87114 (505) 448-8888 info@welcomehomeabq.com

Welcome to Friday, my friends! I’m happy to bring you another Q+A nutshell

The Who What How When and Why of Error Correction - TranscriptionTracy Yu: Welcome to the "TEFL Training Institute Podcast." The bite‑size TEFL podcast for teachers, trainers and managers.Ross Thorburn: Hi, everyone.Tracy: Hi, welcome to our podcast.Ross: A lot of the time when we're hanging out and we speak Chinese to each other, I often ask you to correct my Chinese if I make any mistakes. When you do, it's really annoying.[laughter]Tracy: Why is that?Ross: I don't know. It's like there's something about being corrected. You always feel that you're making a comment about how bad my Chinese is and it really annoys me. I don't know, it's funny. I always say, "Can you please correct me more?" but when you do, it's really annoying.Tracy: Do you think that helps you?Ross: Yes, but it's bad for your motivation because you feel annoyed by it.Tracy: What's the point? [laughs]Ross: The point is that today our podcast is about error correction and helping students and trainees and stuff learn from their mistakes.Tracy: As usual, we got three main questions or areas that we're going to discuss.Ross: First one is, why do students make errors?Tracy: The second one, should we correct errors?Ross: Finally, what principles are there in correcting students' errors?Why do students make errors?Ross: Why do students make errors?Tracy: One reason is, is an evidence of learning and is a part of the learning process. We learn how to drive and we learn how to...Ross: Swim. [laughs]Tracy: ...cook, how to swim and new skills. We usually make some mistakes and then from the mistakes, we can learn how to do it better.Ross: Yeah, no one does anything perfectly the first time.Tracy: The first time, yeah.Ross: That's impossible. Something I found really interesting about developmental errors is this thing called...we're not going to go too much into the weeds here with Second Language Acquisition, but I just wanted to mention this because I thought it was so cool.This is an example of U‑shaped acquisition from Rod Ellis' book, "Second Language Acquisition." Instead of me reading them out, Tracy, can you just make a sentence with each of them and I'll do a commentary?Tracy: Sure.Ross: This is for students acquiring ate, as in the past tense of eat.Tracy: I eat pizza last night.Ross: This is when you've not been able to mark the past tense, that's all, which is the first stage, and then...?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Really interesting, right? The first type of past tense verbs that students acquire are irregular ones, which Tracy just learned. Next?Tracy: I eated pizza last night.Ross: This is after you've started to learn the past tense rule of adding ‑ed onto the end of things, but you've overused it. You've overgeneralized it.Tracy: I ated pizza last night.Ross: Here you've made some hybrid between the two, and the final one?Tracy: I ate pizza last night.Ross: Great.Tracy: Which is correct.Ross: Which is, yeah, you've now acquired it. Congratulations.Tracy: [laughs] Thank you, but the second and the fifth stage, I used the words correctly, but it doesn't mean I was at the same stage of acquiring the language.Ross: Yeah, which is so interesting. This is such a great example, because it shows how making errors is evidence that you're developing.Anyway, that was the developmental kind. What's the other main reason that students make errors?Tracy: Maybe they directly translate from their first language to the language they study?Ross: It's not always a direct translation, but yeah, call it L1 transfer.Tracy: Transfer, yeah.Ross: A long time ago, people thought that all the errors came from that. Gradually, they came to realize that that's not the case and a lot of the errors that students make are the same regardless of their first language. Part of the transfer errors, they're actually harder to get rid of than the developmental errors.Should teachers correct students’ errors in ESL classes?Ross: Let's talk about the next one. Should we correct errors? What do you tell teachers on teacher training courses?Tracy: I think it really depends. Sometime, I tell them to ignore that.Ross: Wow, OK. When do you say to ignore errors?Tracy: Two main scenarios. Number one, if it's not really in a learning setting. For example, you haven't seen the students for a while and saw the students, have a chat, and then students really talkative and very motivated and probably make some mistakes and then have errors in their sentences. Really, to be honest, I don't think that's a great context for us to correct their errors.Their motivation was not to learn much, they want to communicate with you. It's probably going to demotivate the students. The second scenario is if the error is really not impeding the communication that much, you probably want to ignore it.Ross: Yeah, right. Actually, I'm going to play you a little Jeremy Harmer quote about what you were talking about there, this process of deciding if you should correct an error or not.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Jeremy Harmer: Every time a student makes a mistake in class, you have to make a judgment. That's actually not true, you have to make about four or five judgments. The first judgment you have to make is, "Was it wrong?" The second judgment is, "Actually, what was wrong?" because sometimes it's not that easy to work out what was wrong.The third judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should I just let it go?" The fourth judgment you have to make is, "Should I correct it or should somebody else correct it?" Suddenly in that one moment when students just make a mistake, you have to work out what to do.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Tracy: There are four main things that we need to consider immediately when the student make mistake. They are who, when, what, and how.Ross: What was the error? Yeah, because this is sometimes difficult to tell. Is it a pronunciation mistake or is it lexical or is it grammatical or...?Tracy: Who's going to correct it?Ross: It could be the teacher. You could try and do peer correction, you could try and get the person to correct themselves, I suppose.Tracy: Yeah, or even small groups some times. When? Should you correct the error immediately, or you're waiting? We always say delayed.Ross: The last one was?Tracy: How. What kind of techniques you are going to use?Ross: Good, hang on to that thought, because we'll talk about that in the next segment. I actually wanted to play another quote. This one's from Stephen Krashen. This is what Stephen Krashen thinks about error correction.[pre‑recorded audio starts]Stephen Krashen: Output plus correction. You say something, you make a mistake, someone corrects it. You change your idea of what the rule is. The six‑year‑old ESL child comes into the class and says to the teacher, "I comes to school every day."Teacher says, "No, no, I come to school every day." The child is supposed to think, "Oh yeah, that s doesn't go on the first person singular, it goes on the third person singular."I think that's utter fantasy, but that's the idea.[pre‑recorded audio ends]Ross: It's quite interesting. He thinks error correction is a complete waste of time. Dave Willis, the task‑based learning guru, pardon, he's someone else, just thinks error correction doesn't work.Tracy: Oh really?Ross: Not everyone says that but I just wanted to give an example of both.Tracy: That's quite confusing though. Should we correct or...?Ross: There's other research that says that you should and it does make a difference in some situations, but not in other ones. I think there's the research, not quite conclusive.Tracy: Definite law students haven't read about this research.[laughter]Tracy: They have really high demand in classroom from teachers to correct their errors, because otherwise, you don't think they learn anything.Ross: For me, that's true. That at least some of the value in coming to a language class is you get your errors corrected, because input, you can buy a book or you can watch TV. There's lots of ways you could get input, maybe not always great for practice. A lot of people in a lot countries do have opportunities to practice English.Here in Beijing, you could just go to a Starbucks and try and find a foreigner or some people might have to speak English for work. The big advantage of going to a language class is that you get correction.Tracy: This makes me think of the students actually, in my class which I just taught this afternoon. Is about some phonological aspects and she told me at the end of the class, she said, "Oh no, I've finally realized I have no knowledge, no idea and no awareness of the features of connected speech, because I study English for so long, but I always have trouble to understand people in the listening."If I didn't have that correction in my lesson, I think she'd probably not be able to aware of the features for a long time.Ross: Yeah, absolutely. Good, you should send that to Stephen Krashen.How should teachers correct students’ ESL errors?Ross: Let's talk about some principles for error correction. We'll just pretend that we've ignored Stephen Krashen, we've decided that when students actually made an error. What do you think are some good ideas or best practices or advice on correcting errors?Tracy: I will say, the first one is, don't correct all the errors.Ross: Yeah, it'd be way too many, right?Tracy: Yeah.Ross: That'd be really annoying.Tracy: [laughs] Yeah. They won't have much time to really practice.Ross: I think as well, we know from Second Language Acquisition that not all of the errors that you correct are actually going to help the students.Tracy: Just try to prioritize errors. Of course, again, the fundamental stuff. Was your lesson aims are and then what kind of language or skills that you are trying to focus on in your class. Stick to those. That should be prioritized.Ross: Another thing to add is correct errors that effect more students instead of fewer students. I agree, if it's in your plan, then correct it, but I also think if it's a problem all the students are having or most of the students are having, then it's probably worth correcting.That's a bit about what to correct, how about some how to correct? Actually, can I play you another quote? I want to make a record for the number of quotes, someone talked, it's number three.Tracy: OK, go on.Ross: This is Herbert Puchta, I think his name is, talking about an error correction technique.Herbert Puchta: Imagine a class where lots of students have problems getting the famous third person "S" right. Take a piece of paper and write an "S" on it. Stick it somewhere on the wall. When a student makes that mistake, point to the paper, wait and smile. Most probably, the student who's just made the error will notice what you want them to do and correct themselves.Ross: I thought that was interesting, he also chose the third persons "S" as his example. I think what he's trying to say there is that's a really in‑obtrusive way of correcting a student. You can correct someone as their speaking, by pointing at something, but you don't have to interrupt them.Another one for how, this may be also related to who, is to try and get the students involved in their correction.Tracy: Yeah, I get it, but sorry, I just feel like sometimes...We talk about who and we always want to encourage students themselves to correct themselves. The techniques in how teacher try to raise their awareness of their error is repeating the error.Ross: It's interesting that you bring that up because...or the other one is called a recast when the students said something wrong and you repeat it back to them, but they say it right. There's research that shows that when you do that, a lot of students don't realize that you are correcting an error. They just think you're repeating something.Tracy: Exactly.Ross: What are some ways of raising students' awareness that they've made an error?Tracy: What I experimented today was WeChat. Of course, I think there is...Ross: For those of you know in China, WeChat's an instant messenger type thing.Tracy: I ask the students to join the group.Ross: A group chat.Tracy: Yeah, group chat. Yeah, before the lesson started. Almost at the end of the class, I listen to what they said, I posted on four or five sentences into the group chat so everybody can see it.Ross: What's in these sentences? Mistakes the students have made?Tracy: Mistakes and also correct sentences together. Of course, I changed some of the words they are using or the pronouns or places. Yeah, I just, talk to your partners and then tell each other which one you think correct and which one is not correct and the then you think the one is not correct and then you can type the correct ones and then send to the group.Ross: I think you also hit on another thing there, that's something to get students involved, but another thing is that, the anonymity. Not singling someone out.Tracy: Another thing, I always tell teachers. There should be a correction circle. You raise their awareness, usually we stop and they move on, but not, there should be another step to complete the circle which is, give students another chance to use the language correctly by themselves. For example, the pizza mistakes.Ross: I ated pizza yesterday.Tracy: I mmm pizza yesterday.Ross: I ate pizza yesterday.Tracy: What did you have for breakfast today?Ross: I ate cereal for breakfast today.Tracy: Really? Do you really? [laughs]Ross: No, I actually drank coffee today, but...[laughter]Ross: ...this is a different verb. I didn't think it would fit your point.Tracy: You know what I mean, just...Ross: Yeah, give the students a chance.Tracy: It's something can be really simple. Just ask a similar question and they can answer.Errors Wrap upTracy: We talk a lot about correcting errors, but the examples we were using really focus on the language itself, but don't forget about error correction also related to performance or behavior in class.Ross: What does that mean?Tracy: For example, teaching young learners and if the student wasn't well behaved, I think we also need to...Ross: Give feedback.Tracy: ...give feedback on that.Ross: Yeah, good point. Bye everyone, thanks for listening.Tracy: Bye.

Do lessons have a plot? Should classes have a story line? How do lesson plans resemble movie scripts? We speak with teacher trainer extraordinaire Diederik Van Gorp, about story arcs in lessons and how these affect our transitions form one activity to the next.Tracy: Hello, everyone. Welcome to our podcast today. Let me introduce our special guest, Diederik.Diederik Van Gorp: Hello.Tracy: Welcome.Diederik: Thank you very much.Ross Thorburn: Just to check because I don’t think we said last time, it’s Diederik Van Gorp, right?Diederik: Yes.Ross: Just in case there's many other Diederiks out there. [laughs]Diederik: I haven't met them yet.[laughter][crosstalk]Diederik: The dutch pronunciation would be Diederik Van Gorp. But I anglicized it slightly, I think automatically. When I was teaching children in China, it very quickly just became D.Ross: I remember you saying that to me, "Just call me D."[laughter]Diederik: The first class, you introduce yourself and I just write a letter D. They thought it was hilarious because this person just has one letter as a name.[laughter]Diederik: They're very cute.Ross: Diederik, you wanted to talk about transitions, which I think is really interesting. One, because there's not very much about it online, just as you pointed out. Two, actually when I started preparing for this, I also got to this point where I was like, "What does he mean?"Diederik: I wondered as well. At one point, I was talking to a colleague, he's like, "The transitions were very smooth in this lesson, from one stage to the next." It was very hard for me to pinpoint exactly what that was, trying to find an article, you go online, or go to your books. There's almost nothing there. I guess now, they're creating the...[crosstalk]Diederik: One of the big things in the lesson is context. There's one stage of the lesson, you're going to the next stage. It can be very abrupt, means that the learners have no idea where did this come from. Good transition is, you either refer back, for example to the context, or you point to something that's going to happen later.If you go from a nice lexis activity to a reading task and then all of a sudden there's this seven, eight words, students are matching them, you ask concept‑check questions, you drill it maybe, all of a sudden you say, "Read the text. Answer the questions." Where did this come from? It's a very clear instruction, there's no confusion possible but it's very mechanical.Linking that activity to...these words were actually in the text. By quickly pointing that out or a listing, or, "Do you remember earlier on?" "Ah, yeah, yeah, we're going to read something about your friend Bob." It gives it coherence. There's something else that I quite like, if a lesson is a narrative, if a lesson is a story, then it becomes very coherent. I like it when it comes full circle.I wrote for a while, writing dialogues for short movie clips to learn English. Basically, one of the things I learned there was, it's not just the movie that needs a beginning, middle, end. Even a dialogue needs a beginning, middle, end and there needs to be some kind of conflict.If you look at a lesson, because they argue that the human mind is a bit wired for beginning, middle, end. For a lesson, it seems to be similar. You need a beginning, set it up well. You need to the meat, the most important part of the movie, most important part of the lesson. Then, some kind of closure at the end.Very often, lessons fall flat because teachers are great at setting it up but it falls flat at the end because they run out of time and becomes very abrupt the end. That's why, watching a movie ‑‑ the bad guy got killed and that's the end of the movie ‑‑ we don't see them being happily ever after, getting married and all those things.Ross: Interesting. I remember watching Alfred Hitchcock's "Vertigo" a while ago. It does end like that. I think the woman jumps off this tower and dies. Sorry, if you've not seen it.[laughter]Diederik: Spoiler alert.[crosstalk]Ross: ...and dies. Literally, the credits come on and you're still in this shock. You're like, "Oh, that's it?" Like you say, movies always, nowadays, we have this scene.Diederik: Somehow, it links back to the beginning but there will be the change. With a lesson, that could be a nice idea to approach a lesson. If you fit your stages in there, finish on the high somehow.Tracy: Do you know there is an activity, at least we played it in Chinese a lot when I was a kid. This kind of my understanding of transition in the class. You say Chinese [Chinese] .Ross: Idiom.Diederik: Idiom?Tracy: Yeah.Diederik: The four‑character idiom?Tracy: Yeah, the four‑character idiom. The next person would have to use the last words from the last idiom and then next, the beginning of the next idiom. That's hard picture like a lesson transition.Diederik: That's interesting. The last thing you do needs to be the first thing of the next stage. Something like that?Tracy: Yes, something like that.Ross: Your example earlier, Diederik, of that read‑this‑answer‑the‑questions, it's almost so abrupt you can imagine people going, "Did I hear that right?" Whereas if you say you have that who could remember these eight words? Can you see these words anywhere here? Oh, one of them's in the title. Where do you think the other set will be? Great. Now, read this and answer the questions."Tracy: Another thing ‑‑ it might be related to transition ‑‑ is about the difficulty level. If you look at a lesson, it's a flow. Maybe at the very beginning something a little bit easier or less challenging. Then it's getting maybe a little bit more challenging. At the end, they can see how much they have improved.Diederik: Then you release the pressure again a little bit at the end test, what have you learned or something?Tracy: Yeah.Diederik: When you introduce the language in a traditionally staged lesson, maybe in a movie where the conflict is introduced, we have an obstacle to overcome, it's this language point.Ross: Is it Joseph Campbell? Is that the person? This idea of there's a story arc, there's only one story that basically people ever had...[crosstalk]Diederik: Yeah, or just a variation on the theme.[crosstalk]Ross: One great story but a lot of it. Certainly my favorite lessons that I've taught to start off with some...We're doing one like an activity. I think it's on my diploma at the beginning asking people, "Oh, I'm doing this. Are you interested in coming to this thing tonight?"People turning down this invitation and at the end of the class, you go back and do the same thing again but, like the story, the characters have changed. Except in this, the language the students are using have changed. That's the difference, that's the development that's happened which is like a story.I'm just so into this movie analogy now. You got me thinking of this great Chinese movie I love called "Shower" or Xǐ zǎo in Chinese. At some point in the movie ‑‑ it's some people who are in a bath house in Beijing ‑‑ it cuts to 50 years ago in this desert area of China. After five minutes, you start thinking, "Is this a mistake? Is there a problem with the DVD?"It creates this expectation. Eventually, it cuts back. It's like the back story. The main character says, "That was your mother." This reminded me of doing teacher training years ago, doing an activity for writing lesson, getting them to do something stupid like, "Give them a dart board but no darts. Then ask them who's the best darts player."I remember one of the trainees say, "Why are we doing this? What's the point?" One of the other ones goes, "There will be a point. You'll find out in a minute."I think it's almost that same thing, isn't it? Like with the movies, it's creating this expectation. Sometimes, I don't know what's going on here but if I have belief in this teacher, this trainer, I know there's going to be a point.Diederik: It must be there for a reason, but they must have been disappointed so many times.[laughter][music]Diederik: Just thinking of something related to transitions is, one of the main scales that a teacher needs is working with published materials, either course book or whatever that has been given to them. That teaching is going from one exercise to the next. "Are you finished?" "Yes." "Now, do exercise three. Do exercise four."The teacher actually can see the flow of that lesson and just verbalizes it almost, "Yes, now we're going to put that into practice." Maybe transition are a bit more important than you think, to bring something that's dead on the page, bring it alive, give it purpose.Tracy: When we're doing research about this topic before, not really much about it, do you think it's because transition in class, it doesn't affect the lesson a lot?Diederik: Maybe for the feeling, for motivation of the students, maybe it does a little bit more than we think it does.Ross: I think this also comes down to this idea that if your classes feel like a succession of unrelated activities, it's going to be very easy to give up as a learner. It's going to be very challenging to maintain motivation for a long period, isn't it? Like, "Why are we doing this? What's the point?"Diederik: Another gap filled.[laughter]Diederik: There's another one. I just remembered this. When I started out as a teacher trainer, I was explaining to new students, if one stage does not go well, no problem. Every stage is like a new spring, you can start anew.A stage that feels flat, the energy is drained, it was boring, whatever went on. Every stage is a new opportunity to re‑energize the students, project your voice. Transitions can actually spike the energy again.[music]Ross: I want to talk about what I actually thought you meant by transitions, which is completely different. What I think we spoke about there was teaching for adults or maybe teenagers but probably not like six‑year‑olds.What I actually ended up writing about, taking notes on, was going from one activity to another with some very young learners, almost like this classroom management idea for kindergarten students. As an example, the chaos of some six‑year‑olds with bags coming in to a classroom...Diederik: Almost a routine, in this part of the room, this happens, this is the storytelling corner, here we do the book work.Ross: This is obviously potential, "All right. Everyone, move to the front of the room!" Then there's this, you can just imagine a car leaving a cloud of dust, things are flying out.Diederik: The transition then would be sometimes counting, maybe sometimes a song.Ross: Exactly. The idea that if you have those in place and you trained your students on them then all those moving from this part of the room to that part of the room or from a writing or a coloring activity, to another, are smoother and safer.Diederik: Different cues, basically. That's similar to teaching adults. Some of the automatic things you do ‑‑ like they worked on their own and you let them compare around as in pairs ‑‑ there's this moment they do it automatically. They're also transitions, I guess.Ross: The commonality between the two of those is that if you do a good job of them, they should become so natural that the longer you work with the students, almost the less instructions you need to give.Diederik: I've seen a beautiful thing once where the student was so used to the techniques, because this person just came every month to every class of every training teacher, that if the teacher was about to give the handouts, while giving the instructions, she would give an act...[laughter]Diederik: It was like, "Oh, instruction before handout." She wouldn't say it. It's like she knew it.Ross: Did you go by that point about it being logical and making sense? It reminds me of...Tracy, when you and I were in India a few years ago, we booked these cinema tickets. It was some beautiful old cinema in Jaipur. We bought these tickets. I think we assumed it was in English or at least it would have English subtitles, but it didn't. It was all in Hindi and had Hindi subtitles.Because of the genre of the film, which was like Arnold Schwarzenegger‑esque action film, we were able to follow and understand the whole thing. It made complete sense even though we couldn't really understand a word in the whole movie. I think that's similar, isn't it?Diederik: Yes, it's very similar. I remember watching Disney movies on the small screen in a long‑distance bus in Turkey. It was all in Turkish. I could understand everything, I think "Kung Fu Panda" and I'm indeed [inaudible 12:56] . It's like, yeah, this is the moment that the obstacle is introduced.Ross: It's almost like that you think of the brain being hardwired, the stories are hardwired for a language classes, something, right? They will know the beginning, middle, end.Diederik: When people really hate a movie, very often, it's an art‑type movie that they accidentally watched. A lot of people do like it but they're not the mainstream.Ross: Or it doesn't wrap up at the end, there's no ending to it.Diederik: Like the Coen Brothers movies, [inaudible 13:20] at the end.Ross: That almost reminds me of another point. I think Donald Freeman had an article. It was called "From Teacher to Teacher Trainer." He talks about, how can you tell if your training was successful?He said, people smiling, high‑fiving each other at the classroom doesn't mean they learned anything. People leaving confused and disappointed doesn't mean they didn't learn anything. That's almost like the Coen Brothers just because at the end of the movie, "What on earth was that about?" It doesn't mean it was a bad movie.Diederik: It makes you think maybe.Ross: Those are movies that I love where you're still thinking about what could the ending mean weeks or months after.Diederik: Let's say an action movie, the immediate response is satisfaction but you want to remember it, you want to talk about it more.[music]Tracy: Thanks very much for listening. Thank you so much, Diederik, for coming to our podcast.Diederik: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.Tracy: All right. See you next time.Diederik: See you.

Episode #18: Difference Makers with Tracy Do and Ashley McGrath - Between the Ladies Launch Between the Johns are road tripping around the country this summer. In this episode we are on location from Teachers College in New York City. Our guests today are Tracy Do and Ashley McGrath from Rowland Unified School District. Tracy is an instructional coach at Jellick Elementary and Ashley is a teacher at Rowland Elementary.  We talk about their passion for literacy and the launch of their podcast Between the Ladies. Connect with our guests at: @BtwntheLadies  @MsTracyDo @AshleyLyMcGrath  Please rate and review us on iTunes, that helps others find out about our podcast. Connect with us on Twitter @staumont and @jmartinez727 and check out our website betweenthejohns.com Music by Bensound.com We are elementary school principals in Rowland Unified School District in Southern California. We have launched this podcast as part of our inquiry to learn, share and apply effective leadership practice. Join our Personal Learning Network as we learn, grow, and connect with others. 

All language lessons need a context. Language must be learned and practiced in context. Without context, students cannot remember or use new vocabulary. You've probably heard these arguments before (possibly on this podcast), but are they true? We discuss the pros and cons of context with our friend and teacher trainer (and former many other things!) Diederik Van Gorp.Tracy: Hello, everyone. Welcome back. Today we have a special guest, and this guest you've never listened to. His experience and valuable input in ELT. We have Diederik.Diederik Van Gorp: Hello, thank you. I'm very happy to be here.Tracy: Diederik...Ross Thorburn: It's awesome to have you on.Tracy: Would you like to introduce yourself?Diederik: Yes. I'm Diederik. I was born in Belgium. I got into ELT in 2001. I took my Trinity certTESOL in 2001 in winter. Pretty much went straight to China to teach, and then 17 years later I am still doing this.It brought me to very interesting places. I worked in China. I worked in Hong Kong. I worked in the States. I worked in Uzbekistan, Spain, Italy, and now, I'm back in China.I worked in, I think, probably every aspect of the industries. Obviously, teaching. Teaching all ages and levels. I was a DOS so I managed schools.I managed larger regions. The materials. I was an examiner. I wrote materials to prep people for exams.I'm a teacher trainer, mainly for Trinity. I'm also a moderator for Trinity, so I go to other courses and check if they meet the requirements, and now I'm a certTESOL trainer for Trinity. That's mainly what I do at the moment.Ross: That's it for the podcast. [laughs] It's so much experience I took 15 minutes. You were also my boss for a little while.Diederik: Yes.Ross: Correct. As I said earlier, you were probably the first person to make me realize it was more to teaching English than just flashcards and fly swats.Tracy: Finally.Ross: Today we're going to do, I think, two parts. Over at context, we could talk about, first of all, the Trinity advantages first.Diederik: Yes.Ross: Then talk about the tyranny. I thought we can call this context, "Triumph or Tyranny."Advantages of Context Ross: Let's start off with talking about some of the advantages of context. I don't know if it's since I did my diploma, it's become more and more popular or if it's just something that I've become more and more aware of. It's definitely something I've been borderline obsessed about. Might be in the past, probably too much.What of your experiences been with that and your opinions on it?Diederik: Very similar. At some point, I would say it was the only thing that I would not question in like a sacred cow context. The context has to be right, has to be relevant, has to be real‑world.When you see a lesson and the context is absolutely right. It's beautiful. The students are so talkative. They keep on going because it works but getting the context totally right is very hard.What I tell trainee teachers, "When you think about context, the more WH questions you can answer, probably the tighter the context is." If you can answer only one, then you probably just have a topic, let's say, what.The why and the when are also very important, and who are you talking to. Sometimes that's maybe one that you can't quite answer, and then you feel there's something missing in the free practice, or whatever.For example, there was one lesson I observed that was really good but it was something was lacking. It was about movies, so they were recommending movies to each other, but in the end, it was mechanical. They were doing it because they were nice students and it was nice language.In the end, there was something lacking and it was the why. Why are we talking about movies? Why are we even recommending it to each other?Just a simple thing like, "Well, today's a rainy day. OK, let's go to the cinema." There's a lot more purpose to it.I still think that the why is one of the more crucial ones.Ross: It almost seems to be like a task out come type thing. That if we had this task, then what's the result we need to get at the end?Diederik: Exactly. I think task‑based learning has had a massive influence on it. Especially it seems to be that one of it needs to be relevant, needs to be real world.Tracy: Because I think the most important thing of having the context, why the students are really motivated, because there is a connection. You talk about real‑life situations. Even though sometimes maybe something the students haven't experienced it yet, but they can see there might be a chance in the future and they can be in that situation.I think that's the intrinsic motivation for learners to be connected to that context.Diederik: Yes. It's too often forgotten, "Why are we here?" It's because you need to use it outside of the classroom, there are no flashcards there.[laughter]Tracy: Yes.Diederik: Hey, you're not going to rank or turn over flashcards and use the word in a sentence.Tracy: I was thinking, maybe we can give a little bit explanation about what context is, because when I was doing teacher training, it seems so many teachers that couldn't fully understand what it is.Ross: I was thinking about this today, sort of the context continuum perhaps. Maybe at one end, you've got turning over name and flashcards, where there's no who, what, why, when or where. We're just in a language classroom naming flashcards or the fill in the blank. What is it like, "Bob went to work by blank."[laughter]Ross: Who's Bob? Where does he work, that kind of thing.Diederik: I think at the other extreme, was maybe when the context is real, or the students might believe it to be real. Like, "We're actually talking about something that is," for example, "where are we going to go on our class outing?" Or, "Can you give me advice about learning English?" Or the teacher one, where the teacher comes in and brings in a problem and pretend it's real life, and the students then react to that.Ross: See? That is being at the far end of the continuum where it's real or you're pretending it to be real. I think slightly further down is that cafe type of situation. Maybe where, "We're in a Cafe and we're having small talk about this," and it's obviously pretend, but it's maybe realistic. Then gradually that fades away all the way down to naming flashcards.Diederik: Basically, any language doesn't exist in isolation, especially fixed expressions or sentences on larger utterances. You need context, what was said before that? What comes after, but beyond the sentence?Tracy: I'd like to share an interesting story. After a teacher, she told me, her daughter went back home, and then she asked her, "What did you learn in your English class today?" Her daughter said, "Oh, we learned something about subject plus beaver plus I‑N‑G."She said, "OK, can you make a sentence?" "No, no, no. That's what I learned, subject plus beaver plus I‑N‑G."I think that's so interesting that definitely she remembered the form, but I think the teacher didn't really explore the context and when, in what situation you were using this form.Ross: I think you've found something even further along the continuum, beyond the flashcard thing.Tracy: Yeah, yeah.Disadvantages of Context Ross: Diederik. Can you remember the moment when you started to sacrifice or question the sacred cow?Diederik: Yeah. A little bit of context first, of course.Ross: Yeah.Tracy: [laughs]Diederik: When I became a trainer for the Trinity diploma course, a relevant context ‑‑ real‑world context ‑‑ is a must‑pass criteria. For whatever reason, you cannot justify this context to. That it has to match your learner's needs, interests, everything, then it's a straight fail.OK, but then you sometimes see actually lessons that are quite interesting, students are engaged, there is a topic that obviously is new for them, they never thought about, and it's a straight fail, and I think that's a bit difficult to justify. That's where I think that something can become a bit of a straitjacket.There's so many interesting things and so much languages that you cannot immediately think of a clear context, while the context might be totally new to your learners that you just exclude it from it. That's when if context is the only guiding principle, there's so much language you can't cover, so many interesting topics that you can't do.I had a lesson on poetry. It was a straight fail. Teachers go all out of their way to come up with a context, waste 15 minutes to set something up, and you think, "Those 15 minuets could have been spent better," because it has to be a real world, so they come up with very elaborate contexts like, "Yeah, this is something I can imagine to be real."Also, there's quite a lot of language that there's no specific context for it. Talking about your childhood, talking about music, favorites, so it's like, when do you actually talk about your childhood? So you have to go all out of the way to create some kind of situation where you might be talking to somebody like that. Is that really worth all the time? I don't think so.Tracy: I think that's why I noticed when I was a trainer for CerTESOL and also assessing DIP, I feel like most of the teachers there are choosing topics like travel, holidays, and work‑related.Diederik: Yes. Airport...Tracy: Yeah.Diederik: And everything is real, and it becomes so limiting.Tracy: Exactly.Diederik: There was once a lesson about a religious cult that I saw.Ross: [laughs]Diederik: It was fascinating, but obviously, it was a straight fail, because you can't begin to justify it. Not...Ross: [laughs] Unless you're in a cult.Diederik: [laughs] Yes, exactly! It's the same. Let's say, predictions. Actually, a fun context is fortune telling. That would be a straight fail, so you go into something a bit more boring like career consultancy.You do limit it a bit if it has to be absolutely real world. I think sometimes there's a bit of negative backwash of a qualification like that becomes gospel, and that people who almost brainwashed by that experience constantly think, "Oh, it has to be relevant," that when they leave, they get a bit too much like that, and then they limit themselves in the real world. Well, it's just one thing.When I was a student of English in high school, what we talked about, it was about racism, homophobia. We were 16, 17. Those were not the topics of our choice, you know? We want to maybe talk about music or something.But there are obviously had something a bit... We want them to talk about social issues, and ethical dilemmas, and all the thing...Ross: This is an English class, is it?Diederik: Yeah.Ross: OK.Tracy: Wow.Diederik: We would never really had vocabulary lessons. I remember moving to England, I didn't know the words for Hoover.[laughter]Diederik: I could talk about social issues...[crosstalk]Ross: He means "vacuum cleaner," if you're American.Diederik: Yeah.[laughter]Diederik: In that context, you would limit yourself. I mean, the world of a 16‑year‑old and maybe many people back then maybe didn't travel that much. "What are you interested in?" "Nothing."[laughter]Diederik: "Nirvana, The Red Hot Chili Peppers..."[laughter]Ross: Even that, I think we were talking about this earlier. Even that, what's the context for talking about music? Where's this task out come for that? It's very difficult to pinpoint something.Diederik: It's very hard.Ross: Beyond going, you're in a cafe and music comes on in Starbucks. You say to you friend I don't like this.Diederik: You want to change it. You want to go to the jukebox.[laughter]Ross: We scraped all our money together. We only had [inaudible 11:26] . We could only choose the one song in the jukebox. That's it.Diederik: That was an interesting thing as well. You were talking about these ethical dilemmas. Actually, when a teacher went out of the way and would talk about something you're interested in, you didn't like it.I remember teaching something around Nirvana which was very popular back in the day. That's like, "No, no, no. That's our music. You don't touch this. This is not the classroom topic."Ross: Yeah. It seems like there was this underlying assumption that all language is used to achieve a goal, isn't there? But, of course, it's really not. If you think about this conversation, what's our goal to record it?[laughter]Ross: Why? There's no goal.Diederik: We should put waffling maybe a bit more on the pedestal. Today the context is we're going to waffle.Ross: Yeah. If you actually looked at this sort of maybe the origins of language, a lot of it comes down to forming relationships with people gossiping so that people can adhere to social standards. Even just things like thinking. The whole idea that is it possible to think if you don't know a language? Maybe it's not.The person you speak to the most in your life is yourself in your own head. What's the communication or the odds in there? You write a diary. Why? What's the point that you see?Diederik: That's a very good point. A lot is bonding. Sometimes, you showing empathy or something. Actually, not because you're friends.Ross: To wrap up then, do we have any rules or guidance or guidelines for teachers of when is it useful to adhere to context? When is it useful to stab the sacred cow?Diederik: My most recent experience of learning a language just a few years ago in Spain, I really didn't like to first stage of the lesson. It's setting the context and engaging to steer it.I don't need to see a picture of a closed shop. Let's just practice the language.Give my feedback on if I'm using the vocabulary correctly. The phrases are how much those had cost? I know that. There you could use that language.Ross: I've seen a closed shop before.Tracy: Do you think it's because of the learner like a young learner or adult learners? Do you think it's related?Diederik: I was thinking about it. Also, it had to do with my level. I was very much A1.You've got clothing items. It's basically you're in a shop. You'll ask how much it costs, what is my size? It's very concrete.Once it becomes less concrete, then indeed, you do maybe have to spend a bit more time on the context. Once you're into phrases like, "Don't worry. I'll pick you up," or something, then you do need context.At least, brainstorm ideas for context. Maybe at the lower level, sometimes it's better to just spend less time on that and just get to the practice which I guess happens in teaching learners on low levels.Tracy: Thank you so much, Diederik, for coming to our podcast.Diederik: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

At one end of the spectrum, language classes often include memorization and paraphrasing and at the other end creativity in the form of writing and role plays. In the middle lurks critical thinking. What is its place in the language classroom?Tracy: Hi, everyone.Ross Thorburn: This week on the podcast we have a special guest.Tracy: John Hughes.Ross: John Hughes is an award‑winning ELT coursebook writer and a teacher trainer. He's written over 30 coursebooks, as well as methodology books.Tracy: He's twice been ELTon award finalist. In 2016, received the David Riley Award for Innovation in Business English and ESP for the book "ETpedia Business English."Ross: Today we're going to talk to John about critical thinking. As usual, we've got three points. The first segment, we'll start off by asking John about what critical thinking is and why a language teacher should bother teaching it.Tracy: Then we'll get some of his idea for critical thinking activities for different levels and age groups and finally...Ross: We'll ask him about some of the challenges in including critical thinking in language classes and how we can overcome these.What is critical thinking and why should language teachers teach it?Ross: Hi, John. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Do you want to start off by telling us a little bit about what critical thinking is? I'm sure most of our listeners have heard of the term critical thinking before but it would be really useful to get your definition.John Hughes: It depends on the context because the history of critical thinking is such that it's developed into different sorts of strands. We can talk about critical thinking in its very traditional sense which goes back to this idea of questioning. If you read texts about critical thinking, they start referring to people like Socrates.In essence, it's about reading a text, questioning the evidence, looking more deeply at the sources and at the research. It's linked to this whole vocabulary that's emerged, things like post‑truths. It's this idea that everybody needs to be a critical thinker in terms of being able to look at information, news coming online and decide what is true and what is fake.In terms of education and its impact on ELT, critical thinking is much more linked to the idea of lower order and higher order thinking. Language teaching is not just about memory and recall and basic understanding of language.It's actually that ability to analyze language, to evaluate it, to go further with it, and perhaps to be creative with it. When you talk about critical thinking in that higher order thinking way, people start talking about Bloom's taxonomy.Tracy: Given what you just said, John, why is critical thinking something that language teachers should bother to teach? Could we just argue that there is something that should be covered in perhaps other areas of education?Ross: Like math class, or history, or science or something.John: There's a couple issues here. In terms of English language teachers, if, in general, many of those use a communicative language approach, there's a lot of resources that already exist that encourage group communication, group problem solving, those types of collaborative tasks that by their very nature require students to apply some critical thinking.We're well‑placed to develop those critical thinking skills anyway. The other side of it is whether as a language teacher we see ourselves more broadly. The term used is often the term educator. We're more than simply just teaching language.We're also educating our students perhaps to approach things in different ways, think in different ways, that may influence their learning, not just within language learning, but also in all sorts of other areas, and their ability to what could be called life skills or communicative soft skills. It's that type of thing.Ross: For teachers who are planning on using critical thinking activities in a lesson, what stage in the lesson do you think it would be most appropriate to add a critical thinking activity? Is there a particular stage, like in discovering language, or preparing students to talk, or as part of a role play, that you think it's most effective?John: Yeah, it's a mindset in the sense of how you approach different parts of the lesson. For example, if you think about your lead‑in task, you might ask students questions to which they already know the answers.For example, if you were doing a lesson on the topic of sports, you might say, "What sports do you like playing? Which sports do you like watching?" They would just draw on their existing knowledge.If on the other hand, you showed students a photograph and it wasn't quite clear what they were looking at, or it was a slightly abstract photograph where the students had to think more deeply about what it was and what they thought the topic of the lesson might be about, you instantly get your tapping into students' more critical thinking.If you're doing a grammar presentation, you might take the approach, "I'm just going to tell students the grammar rule. They're going to learn that rule." If it's learned that regular verbs end in ‑ed in the past simple, as a teacher you make a decision. Do I just tell them that that is the rule, or do I give them a task where they have to discover it?Maybe they read the verbs in context in a text. They recognize that it's written about the past. You encourage them with a guided discovery approach to discover the rule. I would say that's a balance. It's all about using both approaches to teaching a grammar point.Ross: Is it like a lens through which you can view a lesson and ensure it's balanced, as in the same way, you might look at your lesson plan and say, "Is there enough movement in there, or is there enough variety in interaction patterns?" Is that how you see it?John: Yeah, I think you can look at when, for example, as a coursebook writer, if I write a lesson, you're looking at the flow of your tasks and you're aware that sometimes you're writing exercises which could be called lower order thinking.You might think, "Well, I've done four or five of those in a row. It's time that I stretch the student more. I'm going to include some higher order thinking task." Equally, don't always make your lessons all singing or dancing creative experiences. Sometimes students just need to do those more traditional language exercises.Critical thinking activities for ESL classesTracy: Can you introduce some examples of typical critical thinking activities that teachers could use in their classrooms?John: Simple approaches would be when you do group work, and you ask students to brainstorm all the different types of holidays that might be appropriate for a certain person. Afterwards, look at what you've brainstormed, choose the two or three best ideas. Then choose the best one and present it to the class.What you've got going on there is some creative thinking with the brainstorm. The critical thinking kicks in because you actually start to analyze and evaluate those ideas. It's that kind of process.Teachers can use that approach all the time with all lessons, particularly case studies, problem‑solving tasks, that kind of thing. That all requires students to read deeply, think deeply about a problem and respond in a reasoned, rational kind of way. It's useful for practicing the English they want. It's also a skill that they use or need to develop their own work.Ross: I guess up to this point we've been talking about using critical thinking with adults or older students. Do you think critical thinking naturally lends itself more to adults than to teaching teens or teaching young learners perhaps?John: I don't have much of a background in teaching young learners, but people who do...For example, a colleague of mine called Vanessa Reis Esteves, she wrote a book called "ETpedia Young Learners."She would probably argue that the six, seven‑year‑olds at that age there's a natural critical thinking mindset. There's that age when kids ask "Why?" about everything and question everything.In terms of maybe teenagers, if we imagine that they're quite a visual generation, critical thinking tasks with images are quite a nice way into a lesson. For example, there's a very good book called "The Mind's Eye." I think it was edited by Alan Maley. It was one of the first books that just included sets of pictures.Instead of asking students to describe what was in the picture, they had tasks like, "Imagine you just walked into this picture. What would you say?" or "Look at this picture. What do you think was happening before this picture?" or "What's the character in the picture about to say to the other person?"Also the use of video, simple tasks like playing a stretch of video with the sound off and get students to script that and so on. It's quite a simple way to get students personalizing text or using text in quite creative ways.When should we teach critical thinking in EFL, and when should we not?Tracy: Do you think there are cultures or contexts in particular which critical thinking tasks work better than others?John: Yeah, it's a contentious area. I've read all sorts of research papers on this topic and looking at critical thinking and whether it's cultural. I'm a bit skeptical of it all because I've met lots of individual students who have come to class naturally with a critical thinking mindset. They've been from all over, from all sorts of different parts of the world.There's an educational culture. There's obviously the education system that you've grown up in, and have you been in classrooms where you've been encouraged to ask questions, or not accept everything at face value. That naturally impacts on, when you arrive as a student in class, what your natural assumptions are about what happens in the classroom.If you've got a student who's come through an education system where they've been encouraged to put up their hand and ask questions themselves, naturally that student comes across as being more of a critical thinker. We also shouldn't confuse the fact sometimes that students not saying anything does not equal them not thinking critically about something.Ross: I'm sure most teachers have been in the situation before of giving students a discussion or debate and it ends up finishing a lot quicker, maybe without the depth that we were hoping for. What can teachers do to make sure that those critical tasks work more effectively?John: Maybe the problem is that we haven't actually spent the time providing them with the language they need to express their opinion. There's two things going on here. There's, perhaps, students are thinking critically, but they don't have the language they need to express themselves, to say what they're thinking. We have to make sure we've taught them the language they're going to need.Tracy: John, you just mentioned that preparing students linguistically for our critical thinking task. What might that process actually look like? What would a typical preparation for a critical thinking task be?John: You have to scaffold things. Sometimes if you want students to have a certain discussion or write a particular text, I do think it's helpful to have given them some models. They may have listened to a conversation that models certain language and certain ideas, or they might have read a text.They need time to have studied those things and identified their internal structure or the key phrases that might be useful for themselves. Planning time, students notoriously don't spend much time planning.If you ask them to write an essay, you've have that experience of students starting to write the essay straight away without spending a useful 5 or 10 minutes just brainstorming, planning, thinking about the structure. It's that planning critical thinking time that's the difference between a really good essay and one that meanders and loses its way halfway through.More about John HughesRoss: Finally, for anyone who wants to read more about critical thinking, your blog is www.elteachertrainer.com?John: That's right.Ross: Do you have anywhere else that you'd recommend for listeners to go to read more of your stuff or to find out more about critical thinking?John: Well, we're bringing out a methodology book with National Geographic Learning. It'll be out the beginning of next year, which gives the background theory but also will include practical ideas and activities. Really just demonstrate how critical thinking can be integrated as part of language teaching.The other course book series, I have a series called "Life" with National Geographic Learning which was our attempt with a general English course to highlight and feature the idea of critical thinking and creative thinking into language teaching so that the material we've provided hopefully provides a balance between lower order and higher order thinking.Ross: Thanks again so much for coming on the podcast, John, and sharing all those amazing ideas.John: You're welcome. It was very nice to speak with you. Thanks.Tracy: Bye.Ross: Bye.

In this episode, we discuss how teachers can personalize lessons and materials for students, how trainers can personalize development for teachers and how managers can personalize work for their staff.Tracy Yu: Hey, Ross.Ross Thorburn: Hey, Tracy.Tracy: I really like your shirt.Ross: Thanks.Tracy: Did you buy it in a shop or...?Ross: I got it tailor‑made.Tracy: Really? Also, it must be really expensive.Ross: Not really.Tracy: It's quite interesting actually in our lives. We are trying to have tailored, customized, and personalized experience like tailor‑made cloth. The same thing for learning, and our students also are looking forward to something actually tailored and personalized for their experience.Ross: If you're listening to this podcast now, you've tailored your radio experience. 20 years ago, what you listened to on a radio would just be whatever was on the radio at the time, but that's not true anymore, is it? The same goes for TV as well where you can choose what shows you want to watch and download them and watch them whenever you want.That's how we get personalization the rest of our lives. Why is it important then for students to have personalization and personalized learning experience?Tracy: Because it engages students in the whole process. If they can talk about something or learn something that's relevant to their lives, their interests and preferences, and it's more likely for them to get involved in the process. There would be more engage. They will have more curiosities to find out more information.Ross: Can I add in a little quote from the Khan Academy? He's talking here about what happens in regular one size fits all classes. He's comparing it to riding a bike.Khan: In a traditional classroom, you have a couple of a homework, homework, lecture, homework, lecture, and then you have snapshot exam. That exam, whether you get a 70 percent, and 80 percent, a 90 percent, or a 95 percent, the class moves on to the next topic.You go build on that in the next concept. That's analogous to, imagine, learning to ride a bicycle. I give you that bicycle for two weeks. I come back after two weeks, and I say, "Well, let's see." You're having trouble taking left turns. You can't quite stop. You're an 80 percent bicyclist, so I put a big C stamp on your forehead.I say, "Here's a unicycle." As ridiculous as that sounds, that's exactly what's happening in our classrooms right now.Tracy: I think it's going to be very interesting to have a discussion about how we can personalize in education. We've got three questions to discuss. The first one?Ross: How can you personalize learning for student? The second one?Tracy: How do you personalize development for teachers? The last?Ross: If you're a manager, how can you personalize work experience for your staff?[background music]Ross: Let's talk about personalization for students. We have an acronym today to help you remember. The acronym for personalizing for students is...Tracy: CONNECT.Ross: Let's go through them. The first C is for...Tracy: Content.Ross: Right. The idea here is that whatever you're teaching, you can connect that content to the students' lives, like where they're from, what they like doing.Tracy: Just making more localized, represent the students' background and where they are from. Sometime, we may have a discussion about something, but the very common situation I experienced was the students told me, "Oh, I don't know what to say."In this point, I don't think the teacher personalized the lesson enough. The teacher can provide the students a chance to link their assumed knowledge and their experience to the new language or concept they're learning in the lesson.Ross: That was C was for content. What is O?Tracy: O is for outcome. How I understand this point is how we set personal learning objectives in class. For example, maybe we have like five new words or maybe two structures that you expect students to achieve in the lesson. It's impossible for every single student achieves the same thing.Don't force the students to achieve the same thing in the same class because they're different.Ross: Throughout different levels to begin with so that they could be able to get to the same point at the end. Yeah, absolutely.Tracy: Next one is N.Ross: N for needs. Something I heard David Graddol say a while ago at ITEFL, he was talking about how if you're a waiter and you're beginner level, often what you get covered in a course book is talking about yourself, describing your family, describing your clothes.He said, "If I go into a restaurant and meet a waiter with A1 level English, I don't want to talk to him about his family, [laughs] I want to order a meal."The point here is to think about why your students are learning English and then taking that into account in what you decide to teach them.Tracy: However, do you think the reason why they're learning the language is because they are preparing themselves for future?Ross: Yes and no. I can see that a lot of people need to learn English to pass a test. A classic thing that I think I have mentioned on this podcast before, is that a lot kids I've met, one of the mains of authentic ways to use English is when they go abroad with their parents.They have to help their parents buy things or translate things but we never really do any translation in class with students. You pretend to be the mom, I'll pretend to be the shopkeeper, and you can translate. I think that's a great example of a need that we don't really fill.That was content, outcomes, need. What's the second N?Tracy: The second N is noticing learning and how can we make the learning visible, and also outreach our students' awareness about how they learn and what they learn. It's everyone...Ross: Everyone will learn a different thing. There's nothing really more personalize than that is talking about what you learned. Even, what activities you found were the most helpful for you in class? You can do that with almost any age group.I remember teaching three‑year‑olds and giving them smiley face and sad face flashcards, after we would play game. For example, that you just say, "Oh, did you like it, or did you not like it?" They could use the flashcards to tell you about their preferences.What's next?Tracy: E means engage. Engage students by choosing activity that match their preferences.Ross: Not learning styles.Tracy: [laughs] Yes.Ross: The point here is that most of what we talked about so far is personalizing the what of the lesson, but here I ' talking about personalizing the how. So funny, for me, students like what activities do they like? Maybe by doing a thing, I mentioned before, "Did you enjoy that? Did you not enjoy that?" Asking it at the end of the class.What was useful? What was not useful? With that all, you can do surveys with them. You can even notice overseas students' reactions and find out what they seem to be more interested in or engaged in.Tracy: Overall, it just means we need to differentiate the task and activity, and to make sure this variety of things going on or use in a class.Ross: That work?Tracy: Yes.[laughter]Ross: The next one is...Tracy: Choice. We try to empower our students by giving them voice and choice during the learning process. Students know what are most suitable for them. Parents always believe, "We are the experts and know what's suitable for them." Actually, no. "I know myself. I know. I don't like doing that. I know it doesn't work. I'm not interest in it."Give them the option. The last one is T.Ross: For tailoring language practice.Tracy: For example, there is accuracy‑based activity, and you have gap fill or make sentences. The sentence probably have a person, like Ross, but the student's name is not Ross, it's Tim.You can just let the students to change the name to someone that they know and make sure the content of the language production, something that they're familiar with, not just imagine a person on its feet or try to make up some facts that they've never heard about. Just make it relative to what they know, what they are sure about, and they feel more confident or more willing to share with us.Ross: CONNECT, C‑O‑N‑N‑E‑C‑T. C is for...Tracy: Content.Ross: O is for...Tracy: Outcomes.Ross: N is for...Tracy: Needs.Ross: N, again, [laughs] is for...Tracy: Noticing learning.Ross: E is for...Tracy: Engage.Ross: C is for...Tracy: Choice.Ross: T is for...Tracy: Tailor language practice.[background music]Ross: Let's talk about how to personalize development for teachers.Tracy: This just reminds me of a teacher telling me and said, "Oh, I've been to this training before but I have to go to this training." I asked him, "Why?" "Because my manager runs this training. I have to be there. Otherwise, I am not showing...I care about personal or career development." It's quite funny.Have you ever got this kind of feedback from teacher were heard?Ross: I've definitely seen it, like, "Oh, we're running a training this week on X." It's like, "Why are you running a training on that?" The person's like, "They read about it the week before." They thought it was interesting, or it's something they know a lot about. It's centered on the needs of the presenter to share rather than the needs of the trainees to learn something.It has a problem.Tracy: How can we solve this problem?Ross: We need to get out of this mindset that the best way for teachers to learn is to have whenever it's 5 people or 20 people or 100 people sitting in a room at the same time, looking at someone going through a PPT. That's not what teacher development should be.Teacher development should start off with either you or you with someone else observing a video of your lesson or someone observing you teach a class, and talking about what went well, what didn't go well, what some of themes were in the lesson, what things you would like to improve on.If you're a manager, for example, or a trainer, then saying, "Why don't you go and observe this person, and you can see them do this thing that you feel didn't go very well, or why don't you read this book, or watch this YouTube video."Tracy: I don't understand. My question is, or my concern is if you have a group of teachers, maybe 200, 500, 1,000, or 10,000, how can you do that? How can you make it so personalize because you have such a big number of teacher?Ross: In those circumstances, it's still possible, for example, to give teachers the tools to observe their own classes. You can quite easily stick your mobile phone at the back of the room, hit record, and then sit down for an hour, the next day or something, and watch back just to work on them.Tracy: When he's very self‑disciplined and...Ross: Again, I think this is one of the problems. There's an assumption that if he sticks on bodies in the room with someone who's presenting something, learning will occur.Tracy: That's true.Ross: I don't think that's true.Tracy: People who are doing training and ask them to sit in training sessions, they believe and the teachers who have never exposed to the concept or information before, it's great for them to understand and learn. For people who have already knew this, and it's great for them to consolidate that area so it won't hurt anyone.Do you think that's right or...?Ross: No. Anytime you force people to develop, it harms [laughs] their attitude towards development. With that stuff, I think it can be harmful. It's also harmful just in the way it treats teachers that assumes that you don't have the knowledge or self‑awareness to know how you should develop.[background music]Ross: Last point, and it's, how do you think as a manager you can personalize the experience of your staff work?Tracy: First of all, you have the same things like we do with our students. Have a chat with them. What's your favorite cartoon?[laughter]Tracy: Do you like playing soccer?Ross: You're talking about the students, not the teachers here, right?Tracy: No, I'm just talking about...I think for managers, it's the same thing. You need to speak to your staff like, "What are you interested?"I manage a team and always try to have a small chat with the team members and just say, "Hey, what are doing? What are you working on?" Then just ask how they feel about it and also something they're super interested and they want to get involved in it in the future.If readily there are some opportunities to provide to them, and we can make the work or tasks even more personalize because everybody got their expertise that something they would like to develop even more.Ross: Maybe key difference here between the students coming to class, we assume maybe that the students don't have to be there, and the same with the teachers developing, they don't have to do it.Of course, the difference with staff is that you're paying people to be at work. It's a limit to choice. When you said one ways, maybe, asking people like, "What they'd like doing?" think in other ways looking at or asking people what they want to do in the future.For example, even if someone's planning on leaving your school in six months' time or a year's time, if you can find out where they're going, what they want to do, and again, you can try and find some tasks for them to work, which match their interest or help build their skills in the directions that they want to go into in the future.[background music]Tracy: Thanks very much for listening to our podcast. That means you've already personalized your own development. That's the first step. Thank you. See you next time. Bye.For more podcast, videos and blogs, visit our website www.tefltraininginstitute.com.Ross: If you thought of a question or a topic you would like to discuss, leave us a comment.Tracy: If you want to keep up to date with our latest content, add us on WeChat at @TEFLtraininginstitute.Ross: If you enjoy our podcast, please rate us on iTunes

Marketing is all about making a connection. If you want to be successful in business, you need to create a “Genuine Handshake” between you and your prospect. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, start by building an online platform where like-minded people can get-together, share and engage with one another. Check Out This Jam-Packed Podcast And Learn: - Which FREE Tool Tracy recommends that helped her build her list and boost her connections - 3 Essential Tips For Growing Your List Right NOW! - Marketing's Biggest Problem And How To Overcome It - Top 4 “Eye-Opening” Marketing Mistakes That You’ve Probably Already Made - How To “Ace” Marketing Using Social Media Tracy Moore is an accomplished marketing expert and business owner with 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. She has experience with firms from start-up, to mid-market, to Fortune 100 firms. A business owner of seven years, Tracy understands the challenges small businesses face. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing, sales, and networking skills. As a Marketing Business Partner in the Hewlett Packard Strategic Sales Center, Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multi-million dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International Paper, Cardinal Health, and AlleganyEnergy. Now combining her strong marketing expertise and understanding of growing a small business, Tracy is leading Marketing Eye Dallas. She is helping small to mid-sized business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives and ultimately grow their business. Tracy The Woman With A “Marketing Eye” How did Tracy start leading the “Marketing Eye Dallas” Marketing Agency,  to it’s known success?  Marketing Eye originally started in Australia and founded by Melissa Smith, who grew the business so large making her irresistible, that even international clients wanted to partner with her. The same time that Melissa decided to bring her business in the United States, that is the exact time also that Tracy is getting ready to sell her business which she owns for seven years. Selling her business will ultimately make her passion for marketing a living and owning a marketing firm a reality.  Marketing Eye is a perfect fit for her. After many conversations with Melissa, Tracy became the first licensed franchised owner of Marketing Eye in the US. Marketing Agency Owner Uses This One "Free Tool" To Build Her List And Boost Her Connections - And It’s Available To Almost Everyone Tracy highlighted that marketing is all about making a connection. It is a human to human interaction. If you want to be successful in this business, have a Genuine Handshake. Build an online platform where like-minded people can get together and engage with one another. Cultivate your community by being involved. Being involved offers you wonders, as it will lead to you having connections with people who you never thought were out there.  Tracy continues by saying, “If you want to connect and build a great list of connections, LinkedIn is a great starting point.” Tracy’s Top 3 Essential Tips For Growing Your List That You Need To Start Using In Your Business Right NOW! Make a Genuine Connection. Spend time in finding people who may be good alliance partners for you, people who have the a business that’s complementary to yours.  Create a solid connection with them in a way where leads can be shared. Just imagine having a TON of qualified leads and how they can help you grow your business. Do not isolate yourself. Are you one of the many entrepreneurs who isolate themselves while running their business? You need to stop isolating yourself right now. Again, marketing is all about making a connection. You need to learn how to Interact with a wide variety of people. Consider changing the way you interact even with your employees-- you may be surprised that they can provide you with great and valuable ideas that will positively affect your business growth and help overcome huge challenges. Maximize the use of social media Do you have your own social or community group, like LinkedIn or Facebook groups/pages? Are you involved in or part of an online social media community page/group? If you don’t have one, start one or at least get involved starting today. Social media nowadays, offers the greatest platform for you to make a connection. It’s especially valuable for finding other entrepreneurs that you can share your ideas with and talk about your situation. You may learn how other successful entrepreneurs balance things in their life, grow past their challenges or even find a secret formula they’re using to grow their business.   Being part of a community or group where you can learn, share and bounce your ideas off one another will make you realize, you’re not alone and will help keep you motivated and energized. What Is Marketing’s Biggest Problem And How To Overcome It? Being part of the marketing industry is difficult. In this interview, Tracy points out the biggest problem in this industry. What is that problem? Not all entrepreneurs are born marketers. Some are born “Sales People” who most of the time, perceive “Sales” as "Marketing". In reality, sales is NOT the same thing as marketing. Tracy says, “Before sales and marketing problems can be solved, you as an entrepreneur must face this fact first.”  Once you conquered this problem, only then that you can make the right decisions for your businesses. 4 Eye-Opening Marketing Challenges That You Didn't Know Aside from the “biggest problem” in business previously mentioned, Tracy provides below, the top 4 challenges that marketers are facing right now. No Cash Generating Clients No one can run a business and have employees without great clients that makes cash flow possible. Choosing, attracting and keeping the right clients is an essential part of the business that every entrepreneur should not ignore. Marketing Know-Hows  While running a small to medium sized business, sometimes, managing cash flow is also the responsibility of the business owner. If an entrepreneur doesn’t have a rock solid understanding of what marketing is, especially the constant shifting of client goals, then the company will suffer.   Don’t want to face the reality  Face the reality that your business needs some marketing structure and flow. Meet with marketing agencies or marketing coaches who have proven successes and let them take a look at your business. They will make sure that you are on track and working within your budget. They can also help you stay in line with what you want to do or achieve in your business. Keep Yourself Positive  Tracy considers this the biggest challenge of them all. Every entrepreneur needs to accept the fact that there will always be ups and downs. Sad to say, some failed with their business mainly because of losing their positive outlook, they just can’t keep up with the pressure. How To Ace Your Marketing Strategy In Social Media Do you want people to follow you? Do you want your business to be successful? Then follow Tracy’s Time Tested, Marketing Strategies... Consistency and Transparency  You need to ask yourself, How often do I post on my social media pages? If the answer is not so often, It’s time to check your social media strategy. Tracy highlighted that as an entrepreneur may want things to always be updated and always connected. Sending out consistent and transparent messages across all of your social media profiles, all the time, is very important.  We have to focus on building a platform where top of the mind awareness is being practiced and people can respond genuinely, engage with you by sharing insights...and where most importantly, they can make a connection with you. Try to get your followers to not just share or like your post, but also really connect with you. It’s important for them to leave valuable comments or great insights on your posts. Consistency and building your audience might take some serious time and effort, but once people are engaged and responding to you, then it’s all worth it. Love to hate Spamming Always have an awareness. Make sure that what you’re sending out is not spam. Tracy explains, if you’re making connections, we have to learn how to connect the right way and not just the “spam” way. Social Media Tip (Tracy highly recommends LinkedIn, which is a great way to connect with people and make alliances for networking, sales and finding new clients, etc) How To Have The Same Marketing Eye Like Tracy If you want to have the same marketing eye as Tracy’s, start connecting and be engage with her now. What sort of services she offers? Tracy can help you mostly with everything about Marketing and PR. From branding to websites, to content development, creating blogs, checking your existing marketing strategy and improving it and a lot more. Everything that falls under the marketing umbrella, she can help you.  Tracy can be contacted via her website at marketingeyedallas.com. Tracy’s Irresistible Special Offer That You Have To Grab Now She is offering a two hours, no obligation marketing discussion, where you can sit down with her and she will look at your marketing strategy. If you’re not in the Dallas area, get her special offer and you can discuss everything through Skype. If you’re in the Dallas area, good news, she can meet you. She will take a look at your social media, your web, branding, logo and we’ll also do a little bit of analysis on how that compares your other competitors in the industry, the people that you’re competing against and Tracy will let you know your business holes and gaps, including the areas that you can revisit and strengthen to improve your marketing.   [content_toggle style="1" label="Click%20Here%20To%20Read%20The%20Entire%20Transcript%20Of%20The%20Show" hide_label="Hide"] Tracy:              Hi. This is Tracy Moore with Marketing eye Dallas. This is social media hour with Nile and Jordan and we’re going to be talking about growing your business through social media today. Woman:          In business and know the way forward most include social media. Perhaps you find it a bit confusing. Even frustrating. Well, you have no idea how to make it work for your business. Fear not. We interview some of the best social media experts in business who will share their experiences, ideas and knowledge. Plus offer tips and tricks to make using social media a breeze. Leverage the power of social media and grow your business now. Welcome to social media business hour with your host Nile Nickel. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 Jordan, I always enjoy our different news, different views segments. I still haven’t got used to the label that my wife has given it and I know we officially renamed it but -- Jordan:            Yeah. What’s wrong -- what do you not like about weird ass news? Nile:                 I just have trouble with that ass part in it even though I’ve got an ass hat. Don’t know. I’ll work on it. Okay? Jordan:            You’ve got to get over that. Nile:                 I know. I know. I so much do. Well, we have a great guest tonight. You heard from the tease at the beginning. We’ve got Tracy Moore with us and Tracy is a marketing expert and business owner extraordinaire. She’s got over 20 years of experience developing client relationships through marketing and sales. I have to say something Jordan. I hear this all the time and Tracy knows that I like to make fun of bios. Jordan:            Okay. Nile:                 People can make fun of mine all over the place. But I hear this developing client relationships. You know what I think of? I think of that big piece of apparatus that they used to have in the -- like pharmacy CVS, Walgreens, whatever that developed photographs. We dump our clients in and they come out all developed. Don’t you wish it was that easy Tracy? Tracy:              Oh, I do. I wish it was that easy. Yeah. Not all of them develop so well. Nile:                 Exactly. Well, she has experience with firms from startups to mid market to fortune 100 firms. That’s a lot of ground to cover. And as a business owner of seven years Tracy understands the challenges that small businesses like so many of our listeners face every day. She grew her franchise territory to the second highest grossing location out of 100 territories using her strong marketing skills, sales and networking skills. We like to talk about networking skills because we like to talk about Linked In and I know when we were talking before we started the interview today you talked a little bit about Linked In Tracy so I know that we’ll be talking about that today. Tracy:              Good. I love Linked In. Nile:                 So as a marketing business partner in the Hewlett and Packard strategic sales center -- I know. It’ll get better before the end of the show. Tracy:              Tongue twister. Nile:                 That’s right. Tracy designed and implemented strategic marketing plans that helped HP win multimillion dollar pursuits with companies such as American Express, International paper, Cardinal health and Allegheny energy. So now combining her strong marketing expertise and the understanding of growing a small business Tracy is leading Marketing eye Dallas. Okay Tracy, so Marketing eye Dallas. Where did that name come from? Tracy:              So it’s not mine. Though I think it’s actually a good name. Marketing eye actually started in Australia so it’s basically targeted small and medium size businesses. The founder Melisa Smith started the business about eight to nine years ago. She grew it very large in Australia. She had some international clients. Came -- she had a couple of clients in New York and decided to start and bring the business here to the US and Atlanta about two and a half years ago. I knew that I was getting ready to sell the business that I had been running for seven years and that I always wanted to go ahead and start my own marketing firm. I started doing some research to see exactly -- I sort of knew what format I was wanting to do and what type of marketing firm but I just wanted to see -- do my research, figure out what’s out there, what models I liked. I came across Marketing eye. I really liked it. I thought it was a good fit for where my experience was, where my knowledge was and the kind of clients I like to work with and there is a little piece on the Marketing eye site that said they were looking for licensees so after many Skype conversations across the pond Melisa and I talked and I am licensee number one in the United States. Nile:                 Oh, that’s pretty cool. Tracy:              Yeah. so that’s how I got started and I had been a franchisee for years with a company that has lots of franchisees and I said this will be good because I kind of know a little bit about how the structure will go and she has a great model so that’s how we started working together. Nile:                 Sounds great. well, I know right now you’re helping a number of small to medium size business owners develop solid marketing strategies and initiatives to help them grow their business and I think that’s a great thing especially with the experience you have. But when I look at your experience, you’re the mother of two, you’ve got a 13 year old and you’ve got a 10 year old. Tracy:              Yes. Nile:                 So you’re a mother, a wife and a small business owner. What? Are you crazy? I mean, do you still have hair left? Tracy:              Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It’s really crazy and then going into the teenage years kind of makes it even a little bit more scary. So yeah. That’s a lot to handle. It always seems really good on paper but then when you live it sometimes some days are more challenging than others. Nile:                 Well, I have a nine year old daughter and she was talking to me this weekend and she looked into my eyes very seriously -- in fact Jordan, I haven’t told you this story yet. She looked at me and she said dad, you know what? And her -- we call her Liberty. I said no. what Liberty? And she goes you know, puberty really sucks. So with a 13 year old and a 10 year old guess what I -- I understand where you’re at and I agree with her. Puberty sucks. Jordan:            From the mouths of babes. Tracy:              Yes, yes. Nile:                 I figured that was her bit of wisdom that comes into the podcast this week. But let me ask you a question just before we really get started and we get heavy into things. What’s the one thing do you think that most people don’t know about you but that’s sort of fascinating and interesting at least to you? That’s a hard question, isn't it? Tracy:              Yeah. It is a very hard question. I’m trying to think what would be most interesting. Obviously I was going to say I get bored easily because I keep starting businesses and I don’t generally jump to new companies a lot but I do start new ideas which is kind of why it’s fun to work with other businesses because I can just pretend I’m their marketing person and I get a lot of them and it keeps me very active. I mean, I just -- I guess I never really intended for this to be my journey I guess. I always thought that I was going to end up to be a college professor and it just -- that’s not the -- I -- that was my intent all along was to be a professor and now I’m a business owner so kind of a different trail that I went down but I kind of like it. Nile:                 Well, we could call you a professor of practical business applications now. Tracy:              Yeah. I’ll take that. Nile:                 There we go. I haven’t answered that question for most people Jordan but I’ve been thinking about it. Jordan:            Okay. Nile:                 Because I talked to you about it a little bit today but the thing that I think most people would find surprising about me because I think in today’s world it’s unusual and that is that I always have two silver dollars in my pocket. Jordan:            Yes. Yes, you do. Nile:                 How many people carry silver dollars anymore? Jordan:            Just weird ones. Nile:                 Just weird -- well, I have one that’s a money clip but i have one that’s the same year as my oldest son’s birth. Jordan:            Okay. Nile:                 And so I just find that fascinating. It’s just sort of a neat thing. So we talk about some weird things that people would find interesting and they’d never know but I’ve never asked you Jordan. Jordan:            Why I carry silver dollars around? Nile:                 We’ll leave you alone for now. We’ll get to the interesting part. Tracy’s far more interesting than you. Jordan:            And cuter. Nile:                 Much cuter. Jordan:            Yes. Nile:                 Much cuter. Jordan:            Yeah. Nile:                 I can look at her picture and smile. I’ll leave that alone with you. So you use social media a lot in your businesses and we talked about that just a bit. What do you use and why? Tracy:              So I had an art business. I still actually have it but -- going into the hand off stages. But with that business I used Facebook and anytime that you’re doing a B to C it’s a really great way to communicate to people and I used it as a communication tool. Letting people know when we were going to have art classes, what children were drawing, things that they may be interested in from a family standpoint so if there was an art festival that was going on I’d add in a little bit of information if I knew about something and I thought it was a really great thing that they might be interested in doing because they had children and I had children. And I think it was -- and I’ll come back to this several times. It’s always about making a connection with people. They want to see a human side, they want to -- they don’t want to look at something that seems static or is boring. That isn't a way to engage people, it’s not a way for people to want to share anything that you have and it’s also not a way for them to respond back. When people did respond back so that they love the pitcher that a child drew or grandma wrote oh, good job Johnny. We would chime in and a lot of times we would really encourage the teacher because I don’t -- I run the business but not teach the classes. The teacher to say we had so much fun in that class. It’s just a nice way to connect. Working now in a marketing business where we do so much from a B to B standpoint Linked In is terrific because once again you make those connections, you can talk back and forth, you can comment on people’s posts, they can comment on yours. And once again you are basically making a handshake to people, having a conversation with them and engaging them. when people just post really boring stuff or they just keep reposting other people’s stuff but they don’t make any comments that’s really boring and not very engaging and no one will want to engage with them so really what you’re doing is -- like we’re doing here is you want to have a conversation. Twitter works both from a B to B and a B to C standpoint so those are the three primary ones. I should probably get myself a little more on Instagram. My kids go at me all the time because they love Instagram but -- which -- but if you have a visual business Instagram is terrific for that. Jordan:            Well, let’s talk about those. But first let’s go back -- I want to talk about the art classes that you were talking about earlier. What kind of art was it by the way? Tracy:              It was drawing so visual drawing skills for children three and a half to 12. Jordan:            Oh, that’s cool. Okay. And did you build a website for that? Tracy:              So the website -- it’s a franchise organization. There is a franchise or -- and then you have what they call mini sites and that’s a great way for you to be able to optimize your site so when people were looking for locations in the North Dallas area they could find me. So I manipulated it a little bit but I didn’t necessarily create it. Jordan:            Okay. Good, good. So I guess the point that I was driving to is that you didn’t spend a whole bunch of time trying to cultivate your list? I mean, that’s really what we’re talking about is getting a list of people who are likeminded, who have similar interests. You went to social media to really cultivate that list. I mean, it sounds like you had a micro site but it was really kind of just to use it because it was there and why not, right. But you didn’t spend thousands of dollars building up a site to build your community and your list. You went to social media and you cultivated it there first. Tracy:              Exactly. And then on every communication I would send out I would have the Facebook link and then you want to go ahead and when you get people in -- and once you get involve you want them to share it with other people and that’s kind of how you can cultivate that. Jordan:            Yeah. I absolutely love it. and by the way Nile, I mean, how many entrepreneurs do we run into where it never occurs to them that all they really have to do is build a Facebook page or a Facebook group or maybe a Linked In group and then just go and get those hot prospects or those people who are part of their community and just get them to engage with them there instead of spending all the money getting a website built and business cards and whatever else. You could start a lot easier. Nile:                 You absolutely can and I so much like what Tracy said here because what she’s talked about is engagement and we know how critical it is to engage with people. It’s just -- it’s one of the most overlooked things that happen today so when we look at the engagement we know it’s critical but she talked about building her list through it, she talked about communication so I know all of those things absolutely were critical and part of what Tracy was doing to build her business. And so I can't wait to hear how she built her business and what her challenges were in our very next segment. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 Hey Jordan. Jordan:            Nile. Nile:                 Our first segment was so great I can't wait to hear more from Tracy and what she’s done to build her business but Tracy one of the things that I’m really curious about is I know that every time that somebody starts off and you’d mentioned in the first segment for that matter; you’d mentioned how you really always thought you’d be a college professor. Obviously there were a number of things that happened along the way that changed your path. You’ve had some challenge. What have been the most difficult lessons you’ve learned in this process and challenges in building the business you’ve been building? Tracy:              Well, I mean, with any business I think there’s a lot of challenges. I went to a school that was all about entrepreneurship and undergrad and I remember the one thing that they told us which always will come back to me and it’s so true is cash flow is king. I mean, you must have cash flow client. You can't run a business and have employees without some clients and cash flow coming in. so that was -- that’s always been a big issue with every business that I’d had. I’d try to make sure that I’ve always kind of padded the amount that I need because I worked in the corporate environment for years so I would go to work, they would pay me, that’s how it worked out. Now, working for myself I work really, really hard. Sometimes it takes a little bit longer to get paid than other times. And then there’s always also trying to always find that balance so you -- work starts coming in, you’re like great, this is terrific, I’ve got lots of work coming in, I have to hire someone new but you don’t want to hire someone that’s really great but maybe the work goes away because you have to make sure that there’s always that balance. So I think with any business owner that’s always one of the biggest challenges and I think the other big challenge is just staying really positive because the business has ups and downs. Sometimes you take it a little bit personal but it’s always business and so I kind of try to come back to -- okay. What would I do if I was running someone else’s business? How would I respond to the things that go on? But at the end of the day I pretty much put my heart and soul into the businesses that I run. Nile:                 Well, no. I could also see how cash flow is so critical in that process too. But you mentioned something in that explanation balance and clearly you have a lot to balance. You’re a business owner, you’re a mother, you’re a husband -- you’re a husband. You’re a wife. You’ve got a lot to balance there. Do you really think that there’s such a thing as balance in being a business owner or for that matter in life today? Tracy:              I think as soon as you achieve it it kind of slips and everything changes. Kind of like raising children, right. So as soon as you get used to pre puberty, clean years, then they go into your teen years. Same thing about -- as soon as you get them to sleep at night then they start walking all day. So it’s -- I mean, I think the same thing with business. I mean, as soon as you get everything balanced then you’re like oh, gosh. What’s -- and now I need more clients and then that’s more clients come in and everything gets a little bit more hectic and you’re like oh. And then you get that all under control. So no. I mean, I think it’s an ongoing struggle. there’s a couple of things though that I do that just sort of help me and one of those things is I kind of structure my business so that there’s certain times that I spend with my family and those are family times so it doesn’t seep in too much into all of my personal life and then also I exercise. I run, I do pilates, I do yoga. It’s not that I’m exercise clean. It’s just that it’s nice just to have a little bit of time that is mine and it’s away from the phone and it’s away from the computer and it’s away from anyone asking me a question so that’s always nice. Nile:                 That makes perfect, perfect sense and I think those are absolutely great tips for trying to get some of the balance that you’ve got to achieve. So let’s jump back into the business side and the social media part of the business that you do. Clearly you help a lot of businesses with their marketing so and you’re talking about what to do with social media so how about we talk about the do’s and dont’s but let’s talk about the do’s first. If you were to give a client sort of the high level advice. Maybe 10000 foot advice on what they should be doing with social media as a sales tool what would your advice be? Tracy:              Well, you want to have some consistency, you want things to link together, you want to have a consistent message, you want to have consistency in how often you put information out on social media so something people tell me they use social media and then I ask how many blogs they’ve written and then they’re like one. Six months ago. And how many times have you tweeted or how many times have you posted something on Linked In? Well, I did once and no one responded or liked it. So it really has to -- there has to be a consistency because what you’re doing is you’re basically showing up. you want to build that top of mind awareness but you also want people to get to know you and people don’t get to know you if they’ve only seen you one time so definitely be consistent and then make connections and connections go two ways so if you want people to comment on the things that you post you need to be able to be engaging other people as well and the things that they’re posting. Nile:                 Yeah. I think that’s great advice. The consistency thing is so big. And I see so many people that say hey, I’m a blogger. And you’re right. They’ve published one blog. I guess that’s sort of like a virgin. You’re only a virgin once. I don’t know. That’s sort of my whacky mind. Maybe a way to remember. You’ve to have consistency in doing this. Just because you’ve done it once doesn't change your title. Well, that’s the do’s. What about the dont’s? Tracy:              Okay. So the dont’s are -- yeah. Don’t be annoying I guess is one of the things. I mean, and when I say that I mean make sure that you don’t over tweet, over share information so Linked In is a very -- is a great place to share great business advice and it’s nice to be human, show a little personal side but you don’t want to expose yourself to everyone because no one is interested in that and even on Facebook. So Facebook is a place where a lot of times people are very exposed but if you’re handing a business _____33:48 a little bit. Also make sure that what you’re sending out is not just really spamming so if you’re making connections on Linked In which is a great way to connect with -- making alliances, networking, sales, finding new clients, sending messages. That’s a terrific way to do it but when you make those connections you need to have read their profile, looked at their website and make a personal comment to them that connects you and shows that you actually took a little bit of time and you’re not sending the same email to them that you sent to a 100 other people. Nile:                 Such a good piece of advice. I have a friend that will remain nameless now. I actually have more than one friend but this particular friend -- well, it goes back to that annoying part. I might press some buttons there. Who knows? But this particular friend is just getting ready to release a book and it will be out just a little bit later in the fall and I saw his post about it earlier today and I commented on it and he liked the comment and he immediately sent a comment back and then I went to look at his feed and he had probably at the time I looked at it maybe 30 comments in his feed and he had responded to every single one of them. Jordan:            Oh, good for him. Good for him. Nile:                 That goes with the engagement. It really goes with the connection, carrying on the conversation and all of that. so I like your advice there but one of the things that everybody talks about today is being transparent and so how do we manage this transparency especially on a site like Linked In that’s sort of a stiff business professional site? And I love Linked In but Linked In is a little bit more that way. How do we manage the transparency without crossing the boundaries? Tracy:              Well, I mean, I think there -- yeah. There’s always those rules of what -- politics and religion shouldn’t be there. Things that you would say when you go to a networking event -- sometimes there’s a great story that you can tell but it’s not so insanely personal. I think that there’s other places to be really personal. Oh, and I’m going to add this one thing because it just drives me nuts. But it is a very professional place so that your photo should be this -- should be professional and then on your personal Facebook page you can have a picture of yourself at a party and that’s totally fine because everybody will say oh, yeah. I was there too. But that shouldn’t be your Linked In photo. That’s also being a little bit overly open. But I do think it’s a gray line and I’ve talked to a lot of bloggers who write blogs and there’s this gray line that you kind of need to walk because nobody wants to read a blog that reads like something a professor would’ve -- going back to the being a professor. That sounds like something that you would read in a classroom. You want it to be engaging, you want it to be fun, you want there to be a story and you want someone to seem kind of human but you also don’t want to know all the skeletons that are in the closet. Nile:                 No. That makes perfect sense and I think I could go with that. one of the things that I found that’s interesting -- I’m a real analytical guy and I like to look at the analytics on social media and clearly politics just don’t play in social media at all. They have a very strong negative taint that they bring to your post as analytics show. But the one thing that surprised me is because sometimes you could put religious post up there and I know I look at them and I may not highly of them one way or another but the religious posts as far as the analytics go don’t seem to affect the way people interact or view you. Tracy:              Yeah. That might be true. Nile:                 Yeah. So politics, bad spelling, bad grammar -- I’m dead already. And cursing. Those are the things that really tend to pull somebody’s social media post down. So I find that interesting and your comments are great on that. I want to ask you a quick question. We’ve only got a couple of minutes left in this segment but -- and we may have to carry from this segment to the next segment with the answer and that’s okay but you talk about growing your business through networking on social media. What’s sort of the big tip that you could give our listeners as a takeaway from that? Tracy:              Well, I think it’s just good to go find other people who may be a good alliance for you so who do a business that’s complementary to yours, one where you can share leads. Also as an entrepreneur a lot of times you feel a little isolated so you’re running a business, you may have employees but you don’t have anyone who you can share ideas on growth or challenges so I’ve also used social media to find other entrepreneurs that I can talk to and say well, how do you handle this situation or how do you balance these things and it’s just as nice because then you feel like you have some -- a group that you can learn from, bounce ideas off of and not feel so alone on the entrepreneurial journey. Nile:                 This segment Jordan has been power packed. We’ve talked about cash flow, balance, consistency, one of the do’s that you want to do, making connections and connections are sort of a two way street. Man, just so many things and it’s always neat when we get that heavy into something like that and it’s just so power packed. So this is definitely a segment that people want to go back to and listen to over and over again. Hey listen, we’ll be right back. Join us on our next segment. Jordan:            Hello and thank you again for joining us. This is Nile’s trusty sidekick and co-host Jordan and I’d like to take a moment to share with you how you can benefit from Nile’s incredible experience using social media for real business success. If you’re an entrepreneur or thinking about starting your own business then using social media might be the most cost effective and time effective way to get your business real results. That’s not to mention much of what you can do to get those terrific results on social media is even free. Take Linked In for example. Nile always says it’s the best social media platform for business today. And that’s why I recommend you go to linkedinfocus.com and start your social media education today. Sign up for Nile’s free tips, tricks and strategies. Once again, it’s free and it only takes a few seconds. Go to linkedinfocus.com today. You’ll be glad you did. Nile:                 Wow Jordan, we’re already into segment three of our interview on the social media business hour with Tracy. Jordan:            Time flies while you’re having fun. Nile:                 Tracy you are such an awesome guest. You’ve given such great information. I’m blown away quite personally so thank you. Tracy:              Well, thank you. Thanks for having me. Nile:                 Well, it’s great to be here. but I think you’ve got so much more to share and one of the things that we want to know -- I know you’ve got a special offer for some of our listeners as well so we’ll talk about that when we get to the end of the segment here but we talked about how you could grow your business through networking on social media. You gave us some great tips in the last segment. One of the things I loved was you talked about finding complementary businesses that you could share leads with or anything. I’m curious. Can you expand that just a bit and maybe give us some examples that you’ve used? Tracy:              Yeah. So I’m always looking for people that i can help solve of issue that they may have, right. A gap in their business, something that they’re needing. So there’s a couple I’ve reached out and been working with some venture capitalists so what they do a lot of times is they decide whether or not they’re going to invest in a company and they’re usually great financial and ops people so they go in and they can run all the numbers and look at where a business should be but one of the areas that they generally aren’t as strong in is in the marketing and the market analysis. So I’ll go in and be able to do an analysis of where the market sits, where the market’s going, growing, where that particular businesses in comparison to others in the industry. We break it down with all the different marketing elements and then we can relay that information back. Another thing that we do for venture capitalists is when they do decide that they’re going to invest in a company most generally they need an infusion of marketing so they need either rebranding. A lot of them need new websites because their websites are old. They need to be optimized, social media, all of those things. What we’ve found is a lot of these businesses are actually -- have -- were very strong, did very well for years, the owners are older as they transfer to more millenials or a younger generation. Some of those things that you need now. Social media, really great website for inbound marketing. They just don’t currently exist. So that’s where we can jump in. I’ve also found people who do the same thing that I do. They outsource HR services so if someone needs HR services a lot of times they’ll also need marketing services so we work with the same types of businesses and the same types of people who say hey, I don’t really want to bring in a full staff. I would really like to have you either come in and supplement the staff that I have or be my entire department. So that’s been really helpful because you can share those leads and you do a similar type of business or you fill a need that someone needs. Nile:                 Well, I like the idea of looking at synergistic businesses too. I heard you say that and it makes sense. If somebody’s got to outsource marketing and they’re looking at branding and new websites and all of that type stuff it’s sort of -- it makes sense that they might need to outsource some other things like HR services for example. A perfect, perfect idea. I really appreciate that illustration as well. So now we’ve got through the do’s and dont’s of social media, we’ve got through some of the ways to grow your business through networking on social media. How do you best target these specific groups that you’re talking about using social media? And I’m curious if Linked In is your golden tool or if you use other things as well. Tracy:              Well, Linked In is my favorite so -- and Linked In is great because you can actually go through -- I think sometimes you have to purchase a little bit higher package but once you do you can go in and sort exactly what you’re looking for so you can find the size of business, the industry and then you can look at the different individuals. A lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll look through, I’ll go check out their website, I can read their profile so I know a little bit more about them and then I can determine whether or not I might be able to help them. So that’s a great way from an outbound standpoint that you can find people and -- so I like Linked In in that way. Twitter, you can always go -- there’s always following other followers so you can look and say there is a business that may be complementary to yours, maybe your competitors but you can always go and follow those followers and then start making connections in that regard. With Linked In it’s a little bit more direct and you can definitely kind of stick out your hand to do a handshake so that’s a little bit faster than Twitter but I know that Twitter can be very successful just for making those communications. Most generally, when I start making the communications on Twitter I jump over and also connect with those people on Linked In. Nile:                 I use Linked In the same way and I think it’s great for everybody to use it. It surprises me how many people don’t. So great advice there and -- Tracy:              And like with any other marketing you have to connect with multiple people so a lot of times I meet with people and I ask them if they’ve used it in that manner and they say well, I did and I contacted two people and they didn’t respond back and -- like well, that’s because you only contacted two people. You have to contact -- sometimes it takes quite a few people to find people who are wanting your services or who are engaged on Linked In. so just because they’re out there doesn’t mean that they’re engaged even though it should ping over to their email. But it’s also like going to a networking event. If you went to a networking event and you talked to two people and left or a party and you only talk to two people you may not have very much fun or meet anybody very interesting so sometimes you’ve got to talk to a few more people to find the people that are interesting that you want to connect with. Nile:                 I hear that advice so many times and you know my weird mind Jordan. I always get different thoughts with it. But I always come back to networking being so much like personal relationships, like dating and can you imagine only asking two people out on dates in your life? Because one of the two -- you’re looking for your potential partner but you’re only going to ask two of them. Jordan:            Yeah, yeah. Nile:                 How many people would remain single forever? Jordan:            Yeah. That’s a good point. I wonder why people do that because you and I both have heard that kind of story over and over again. Do you think it’s fear? Do you think people are just generally afraid of putting themselves out there? Nile:                 I do. I do. I think after you’ve done it a 100 times -- at that point in time I think you’re comfortable about it and you’ve sort of just -- you go with the flow, you’re having fun with it. Jordan:            How about you Tracy? Do you think there are any other emotions wrapped up in that? Tracy:              I mean, I think there’s two reasons. I mean, one I think is fear. Yeah. There’s always that I was rejected by two people and then also I think people are expecting that -- well, I reached out to someone. Why didn’t they reach out to me. Now, generally the people who tell me this that they’ve reached out to two people when we start getting contacts and we start connecting with people on Linked In I’ll tell them oh, well, we’ve had five people respond to you and here’s what they say and they’re usually like oh, I’m not interested in at least four of them. Well, likewise. It’s a -- it works the same way. So it’s also like if you’re driving down the street and you’re hungry and you see all these signs for all this different food, right. You’re not going to stop at all of them hopefully. So you pick the ones that you think are going to be a good fit for you and so if a client isn't -- if I’m not a right fit for them well, they’re probably not a right fit for me so what we want to have is a really good, strong working relationship that’s successful for both of us. Nile:                 You looked at my profile picture on Linked In, didn’t you? I know. Because talking about those fast food restaurants and stopping at every one of them. Just saying. Jordan:            You just don’t want those business owners to feel bad that you passed by them and didn’t give them any business. Nile:                 That’s really what it is. Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this but have you ever done a fast food gourmet meal? That’s where you figure out who has the absolute best French fries or onion rings, whatever it may be. The best burger or a taco or whatever it may be and you end up going to five or six of these to prepare the perfect fast food gourmet -- you’ve never done that? Jordan:            Only in America. Nile:                 Only in America. Jordan:            Only in America. Nile:                 Well listen, after all of this fun and frivolity I know a lot of people would like to engage with you. What sort of services do you offer and how do people best engage with you? Tracy:              So we’re a full service marketing firm meaning that we can do everything from branding to websites to content development, blogs, your traditional marketing collateral, PR. So basically everything that falls under that marketing umbrella we can do for them. They can contact us on our website at marketingeyedallas.com so we’re really easy to find. Nile:                 Now the eye is E-Y-E? Not just the letter I? Tracy:              E-Y-E. Yeah. So it’s like the eye, like seeing. So basically what we are is we’re your marketing eye. We take a look at your marketing, find out where the holes are and then we keep watch to make sure that everything is consistent, running smoothly and working to the best that it can. Nile:                 And of course we share all these links out on social media business hour so everybody could always go to social media business hour and find all of the links that you’re talking about. Now, one of the things that you’ve done is you’ve got a special offer for our listeners. Now, I want to tell our listeners right up front. I think she’s crazy. I mean, I think she’s totally crazy. So I’m not even going to talk about the special offer. I’m going to let you talk about it because I’m not claiming any liability here. I think you’re doing something that is just tremendously powerful and valuable for any listener that would like to take you up on the offer so could you tell us a little bit about that? Tracy:              Yeah. So we are offering two hours, no obligation for us to sit down and look at your marketing. So if you’re not in the Dallas area we can Skype. If you’re in the Dallas area we can meet but what we’ll do is we’ll look at your social media, your web, your branding, your logo and we’ll also do a little bit of analysis on how that compares to maybe some of the other competitors in the industry and the people that you’re competing against and let you know kind of where those holes and gaps are and what areas that you could strengthen to improve your marketing. So many times that our clients -- marketing is not the business that they’re in so they think that things are going really well and then we turn down and we say things aren’t really going as well. we have a client who gave us all of their social media the other day and we realized that some other social media’s a little negative so we want to make sure that we’re turning that around and figure out how to change that. Sometimes we found that we have clients who have multiple Twitter accounts and they had no idea so some are dying and they’re splitting their people -- splitting their followers. So we can go ahead and take a look and find out where there might be some issues and where there is definitely opportunity for improvement. Nile:                 Well, we will have the links for that special offer on our website at socialmediabusinesshour.com. I think that is quite generous. I know that there are so many marketing firms that -- for that type of sort of consult you could easily pay a 1000 dollars or more so I think that that is a huge offer Tracy and as the host of the show I thank you so much because I love when our listeners get great value out of the show. So thank you so much for that. Tracy:              Thanks. I love helping businesses though. Nile:                 Well, I know that they’re going to love what you can do for them and to our listeners, I’d like to thank you for joining us on the social media business hour. Hopefully you learned a few new ideas or concepts. Maybe you were just reminded of a few things you already know but you haven’t been doing to improve or grow your business. Our desire is that you take just one of the things that you learned or were reminded of today and you apply it to your business this week. We know that a small change can make a big difference. I’m committed to bringing you at least one new idea each week that you could implement so go back and listen to either segment one, two or three. Maybe all three of them. Identify just one small change that you could make to your business this week and see what a big difference it will make for you. So until next week, this is Nile Nickel. Now, go make it happen. Woman:         Social media business hour is powered by linkedinfocus.com. For show notes, updates and to pick up the latest tips and tricks head over to socialmediabusinesshour.com. Until next time. Thanks for listening. [/content_toggle] Weblinks: Website: www.marketingeyedallas.comFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/marketingeyeLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tracymooremktgTwitter: @marketingeyeus / @tracy.mooremktg