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daleisgreat · 3 years ago

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Star Trek: The Next Generation: Season Seven

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-Finally, after three years of watching mostly one episode a week, I have finished my re-watch of all seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation (season seven trailer)! I am thrilled to present my final entry here chronicling my adventures with the crew of the Enterprise! For the final season I was able to slightly bump up my viewing habits and mostly stuck to watching two episodes a week, and thus I was able to make faster progress on this final season! Somehow, my horrendously outdated Samsung Galaxy S7 phone has managed to barely limp along this entire journey with me, and the gloriously awful pics featured throughout this article are courtesy of that wonderful device. -Season six wrapped with an enticing cliffhanger to “Descent” where Lore managed to work some sinister sorcery to recruit a squadron of Borg and hack into the code banks of Data (Brent Spiner) in order to recruit him to join his cause. Season seven had a great kickoff to resolve this new threat, and had a satisfying conclusion at putting an end to Lore once and for all. I would rank “Descent” on the higher end of TNG two-part arcs, as the Lore/Borg/Data combination proved to be an intriguing antagonist to see how they would be dealt with.

Picard is ready for combat on the left, while falling ill on the Enterprise leads to crew members tripping with some wild illusions on the right! -I was a little bummed to see a complete lack of appearances from Whoopi Goldberg in her role as Guinan in the final season. I am presuming it must have been scheduling conflicts as she has always been in high demand, especially around this time just a couple years after her Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress in Ghost. Whoopi would return as Guinan in two of the four Star Trek movies based on TNG cast.

-A pair of recurring characters that did return for their final episodes this season are Michelle Forbes as Ensign Lt. Ro Lauren and Wil Wheaton as Wesley Crusher. Ro is fresh off tactical training for an important undercover mission that conclusively decides her fate with Starfleet as she would never appear in another Star Trek series or film again after this. According to my research I was surprised to learn it took a last minute agreement with Forbes within a week before filming to get her to reprise her role as she was starting to distance herself from the brand after initial plans to make her a mainstay on Deep Space Nine fizzled. Wesley Crusher’s final appearance had a better payoff in “Journey’s End” where during a vision quest he finally is deemed ready by a previous guest character, The Traveler (Eric Menyuk), to join him on a mystical journey to see Wesley fulfill his supernatural potential. I had no idea they were going to payoff these vague promises The Traveler alluded to in Wesley way back in season two, so big props to the cast and crew making that happen! -Other past recurring characters returned, but only to see them casted in middling-to-disappointing episodes. This is the case for Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz) in the head-scratching “Genesis” episode that has the Enterprise staff fall victim to a virus that de-evolves them into various primates. The love-or-hate mother of Deanna Troi (Marina Sirtis), Lwaxana (Majel Barrett), has a major sendoff in her final episode where we learn all about her tragic backstory.

-Speaking of mediocre episodes, season seven has a bit more than previous seasons. A two-parter sees Riker and Picard go undercover to form a fake mutiny to sniff out a Vulcan double agent, and while it is not terrible by any means, the whole arc seems bloated and the second episode feels unnecessary. “Phantasms” is as bizarre as the dreams Data (Brent Spiner) has in the episode, but Data later has a redeeming character episode in “Inheritance” where he meets his mother…..then later hits another stumble in “Thine Own Self” where his radioactive experiments causes a planet’s population to become seriously ill. I will give season seven the benefit of the doubt for the noticeable bump up in lackluster episodes because several of the bonus interviews own up to this and attribute it to the cast and crew being spread thin with the final season of TNG, the second season of Deep Space Nine and being in pre-production of the first season of Voyager and the upcoming movie with the TNG crew, Generations. -The holodeck’s sendoff in TNG, “Emergence” is a decent affair that sees the crew go aboard the Orient Express to solve the mystery of how the holodeck becomes self-aware. The episode had a few promising moments, but could have been better. While I enjoyed the quality of holodeck episodes overall in TNG, from what I understand the holodeck episodes greatly suffer going forward and falls victim to holodeck malfunctions and sexual fantasy tropes.

Worf once again has a strong set of character-focused episodes this season. You have not lived until witnessing Worf adopt a cat for an episode, and experience a birthday party time-loop. -Worf (Michael Dorn) has one of the strongest slate of character episodes this season. Seeing Worf being a curmudgeon at his birthday party was pulled off to perfection! “Homeward” is a feel-good family episode where Worf resolves his rocky relationship with his foster brother, Nikolai (Paul Sorvino). The best Worf-centered episode is saved for last where he trains Alexander (James Sloyan) in the arts of becoming a Klingon warrior with the help of a mysterious Klingon friend.

-A couple other episodes that made strong impressions on me this season are “The Pegasus” and “Lower Decks.” In the former, Terry O’ Quinn of Lost fame, appears here as a higher-up from Starfleet to track down the lost USS Pegasus, but Picard (Patrick Stewart) eventually discovers a grand cover-up that has an enticing way of finding the truth of what Quinn’s character is hiding. “Lower Decks” is entirely focused on the background Ensigns and ancillary characters like Nurse Ogawa (Patti Yasutake). The last couple years saw the streaming service, Paramount+ (formerly CBS All Access) launch a Star Trek: Lower Decks animated series with the very same premise, and if you are a fan of the cartoon, you owe it to yourself to track down this episode as its source material. “Interface” and “Bloodlines” are both strong episodes dealing with long forgotten family members. The former has Geordi (LeVar Burton) risking his life with prototype tech to save his mother (Madge Sinclair), and the latter deals with Picard’s surprise of finding out he had a son (Ken Olandt) from a decades-prior relationship.

-Now to the moment of truth, it is time to cover the final two-part episode, “All Good Things…” The series finale naturally focuses on Jean-Luc as he finds himself constantly time-warping between three different time periods to solve a new challenge bestowed onto him by none other than Q (John de Lancie). I loved how they brought it back full-circle with one of the time periods emanating from the same setting as the original pilot episode of TNG where Q puts the then-newly assembled Enterprise crew on trial. The cast and crew hold nothing back for the final episode with an enthralling narrative as Picard pieces together Q’s final challenge, and has an emotional final scene where after seven seasons, Picard finally joins his crew for a round of poker. -Here is the paragraph with my obligatory kudos to the countless hours spent remastering TNG in HD for the BluRay set. I am not a video-phile and cannot immaculately explain with the proper tech verbiage on how they did it. All I can say is the staff painstakingly made it look like they shot it today, and it does not have any of the old fuzzy standard definition effects that would happen when forcing an SD resolution onto an HD set. Just watch this indicative video that overlays the remastered HD transfer over the SD version to see for yourself. I will also give yearly props to the podcast, Star Trek: The Next Conversation which chronicles every individual episode of TNG and has served as the best supplementary listening material to get the most out of every episode for me. The podcast took a hiatus during the pandemic, and only recently picked up again and are only a couple episodes into season seven as of this writing, so I will pat myself on the back at catching up to them when I was nearly a season and a half behind them when I started from the beginning of TNG.

-You guys know I love covering the bonus features, and season seven of the BluRay is absolutely jacked with them with previous bonus interviews and specials, and all new HD extras. According to my notes, it all added up for just over five hours of bonus materials, and that is not including a handful of commentary tracks on selected episodes. Going over each and every piece of bonus content will kill me, so instead I will highlight the handful that I got the most out of: -----Captain’s Tribute (16 min) – Stewart gives loving testimonials to the cast and crew. A lesson he learned from a dialog with Michael Dorn and LeVar Burton was a key takeaway here. -----In Conversation: Lensing ST: TNG (42 min) - This one is a new HD extra aimed at special effects enthusiasts where a roundtable discussion with camera operators and directors of photography reunite to talk shop of the many highs and lows of on the set production. While a fair amount of trade vernacular went right over my head, they provided ample context and their enthusiasm for their craft is irresistible!

I know it is asking a lot to dive into the many hours of bonus interviews, but nearly most of it is incredibly insightful and well worth your time! -----Starfleet Moments & Memories (30 min) – Awesome feature showcasing the camaraderie and humor between takes that indicates a true sense of friendship among the cast and crew. -----Closed Set: Tour of Real Enterprise (11 min) – The Okundas give a private, narrated, tour of the Enterprise filled with fun facts like how the set for sickbay gained a reputation among cast and crew as “nap-bay.” Every person should have their own nap-bay! -----Journeys End: The Saga of TNG (45 min) – Original 1994 TV special hosted by Jonathan Frakes celebrating the end of an era. ----Sky’s the Limit: Eclipse of TNG (89 min) – Three part special with part one primarily focused on the cast and crew having a lot of projects on their plate the final year and lovingly throwing shade at Picket Fences for stealing their Emmy award! Part two interviews various directors of episodes about their process, and Seth McFarlane shares a special moment he had with a fan on how the show saved their life. The third part interviews a lot of the cast on how they felt the show wrapped, with a couple highlights being Sirtis not being fond of the Worf/Deanna courtship, and Patrick Stewart remarking when asked about future projects that he would consider them, but thought they would ultimately be unnecessary. This was obviously recorded several years before Stewart would return as Picard in the current Paramount+ series, Picard.

-Suffice it to say, the extra features do not disappoint! As I foreshadowed above, there is an apparent dip in quality this season overall compared to the high bar set from seasons three through six, but I will cut the cast and crew some slack since they were seriously overworked during the 1993-94 season. There are still many excellent episodes though as I dissected above, and a terrific series finale that puts the best damn bow they possibly could on the TV series. Thank you so much for joining me on this ride over the past three years and bearing with me on my never-ending entries covering the series. If you missed out on previous entries, click here to see all my previous season recaps of The Next Generation, or click here to continue my journey with TNG crew with my reviews of all the Star Trek motion pictures.

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Past TV/Web Series Blogs 2013-14 TV Season Recap 2014-15 TV Season Recap 2015-16 TV Season Recap 2016-17 TV Season Recap 2017-18 TV Season Recap 2018-19 TV Season Recap 2019-20 TV Season Recap Adventures of Briscoe County Jr: The Complete Series Baseball: A Ken Burns series Angry Videogame Nerd Home Video Collections Cobra Kai – Seasons 1-2 Mortal Kombat: Legacy - Season 1 | Season 2 OJ: Made in America: 30 for 30 RedvsBlue - Seasons 1-13 Roseanne – Seasons 1-9 Seinfeld - Final Season Star Trek: Next Generation – Seasons 1-7 Superheroes: A Never-Ending Battle Superheroes: Pioneers of Television The Vietnam War: A Ken Burns series X-Men – The Animated Series: Volumes 4-5

#star trek #Star Trek TNG #picard #data #Patrick Stewart #Brent Spiner #jonathan frakes #gates mcfadden #Marina Sirtis #levar burton #Michael Dorn #Wil Wheaton #whoopi goldberg #dwight schultz

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gethealthy18-blog · 4 years ago

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351: A Parent’s Guide to Precocious Puberty & How to Slow It Down With Dr. Anne Marie Fine

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/351-a-parents-guide-to-precocious-puberty-how-to-slow-it-down-with-dr-anne-marie-fine/

351: A Parent’s Guide to Precocious Puberty & How to Slow It Down With Dr. Anne Marie Fine

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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This episode is sponsored by Joovv, a natural red light therapy in your very own home. We may not think of light when we think of essential nutrients that our body needs, but light is absolutely necessary! This is the reason I go outside as soon as possible after waking up in the morning, and the reason I spend time in front of my Joovv. Light is energy and our bodies need light in certain forms in order to sustain healthy cellular function. Red light in particular, especially in certain wavelengths, has very specific benefits for hair, skin, and cellular energy. I like Joovv because they are third-party tested for safety and performance and use a Patented modular design which allows you easily treat your whole body in under 20 minute and lets you use anything from a small system to a larger system that you would find in a Chiropractors office. Joovv uses clinically proven wavelengths of light that provide energy to the body. They have Bundle pricing discounts which allow you to save more money when purchasing larger setups. Get free shipping at joovv.com/wellnessmama and use code WELLNESSMAMA for a free gift!

Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, that’s wellnesse.com with an E on the end, which is my new line of completely natural and completely effective personal care products like hair care and toothpaste and now hand sanitizer. So make sure to check that out. This episode is a big one for any parents with preteens or kids that are getting close to that age because it’s all about precocious puberty and how we can help make sure our kids don’t go through puberty too early and what we can do to support them when they do.

Dr. Anne-Marie Fine is my guest today. She’s a doctor, award-winning researcher, and best-selling author, and the founder and CEO of IAMFINE, which is based on her personal and clinical experience with chronic disease called by environmental toxicity. And environmental toxicity is a big factor when it comes to precocious puberty. We’re gonna go deep on that today. But she also works with those with autoimmune disease, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, brain fog, cancer, etc., and she’s done a lot of research on the rising environmental concentrations of 80,000 new chemicals in our environment and how this expresses in every phase of life, from preconception and pregnancy to precocious puberty, and even to health and hormone problems as adults.

So, a very information-packed episode that I know you will enjoy. And without further ado, let’s jump in. Dr. Fine, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Dr. Fine: Well, thanks for inviting me. I’m happy to be here.

Katie: I am really excited to chat with you about a topic that is coming up more and more with my readers and my listeners, which makes me think that it must be on the rise. And that topic is precocious puberty. And I think that there’s a lot of factors that go into this. And I think a lot of them have to do with an area of research and work that you do all the time. So, I guess, to start, for anyone who’s not familiar with that term, let’s define what the term precocious puberty is.

Dr. Fine: Precocious puberty is a label given to the fact that the boys and the girls are reaching certain signs of puberty, like pubic hair and changes in breast development, and breast budding, and genitalia. It’s really the age at which this is occurring in the boys and girls. And the problem is that the age at which this is happening has been declining pretty much globally. And so, people want to know why because there are implications for early puberty. And the other thing about precocious puberty is that the mainstream conventional medical doctors are just simply changing what’s normal to what they’re seeing in the practice. And so, now they’re saying that precocious puberty is the appearance of any sign of secondary sex characteristics in boys younger than age 9, and in girls younger than age 7.5 or 8. Whereas normal puberty in a girl is what they’re saying now is anywhere from 8 to 13 years of age, when really, 12 to 13 for a girl is, for about the last 50 to 75 years has been more of the norm, not 8 to 13 years of age.

Katie: Wow. And from what I’ve read, that change in age, and the percentage of people who are going through puberty earlier, that’s rising relatively drastically, like you said, compared to previous generations. What do you think are some of the factors in that pretty rapid change?

Dr. Fine: Well, the one that I’m not gonna talk about too much because I wanna really get into the chemical contributors like endocrine disruptors, but one of the other environmental factors involved in earlier puberty is the rise in obesity. And that has been fueling it as well. And our fat cells actually make estrogen. And so, that’s something that has been looked at as well. But there are many chemicals that I want to talk about, like pesticides, fungicides, herbicides, cleaning substances, cosmetic products, dyes, plastic solvents that are termed endocrine disruptors, meaning that they have the ability to change how our hormones work in extremely tiny doses. And this is the key, extremely tiny doses. And that’s how our own hormones work. Very tiny doses of hormones actually have large effects.

So when you have these teeny-tiny doses of chemicals in the environment, particularly at certain vulnerable ages of development, like in fetuses, for example, when certain…when your reproductive organs are actually becoming into being. They’re actually developing and the brain is developing. When you have exposure to these substances, you’re going to get something that may not manifest until puberty, or may not manifest. The breast cancer and prostate cancer increases risk. You may not see that until these people are adults. But some of the origins of these instigators are actually in fetuses. And that’s why it’s really important to do a preconception detox for women who are wanting to conceive because it starts there. We really have to look at where the baby starts.

Katie: Okay. So, let’s go, kind of, almost maybe on a timeline. Because obviously, parents who are dealing with, like, children now are worried about this phase being imminent. They don’t have the ability to go back and do preconception over. I know, I’ve read so much since I had my firstborn kids. I wish I could’ve changed things then. So I definitely want to make sure we see…you know, obviously, we’re not judging or trying…..anyone who’s not there. But let’s start there, like in a perfect world, what would we do before we even conceive to help give our kids the best hormonal start?

Dr. Fine: Before conception, the best thing to do is to see a doctor trained in Environmental Medicine who will take a very thorough history, including an environmental history to get likely exposures and where the person lives. There’s so much we can do with looking at, you know, with the internet, you can look up places by zip code and see what the main chemicals are in that environment. And then those people, and it really should be men and women, the sperm actually does carry environmental contaminant information into the new baby. Traditionally, we have focused on the mother though. And then those prospective parents need to be tested to see what contaminants, what kinds of chemicals is really high in them. And so, the program is going to be designed personally for those people.

So, it’s not… The same people don’t do the same thing. There is no reason to do, like, a heavy metal detox on somebody who doesn’t have a problem with heavy metals, right. So, you want to see what problems, what environmental exposures those people have so that you can really zero in on them and make sure that you’re doing a good detox. And then as far as some of us have already had kids, oh, wow, do I know that? Because I’m a mother too, and I’ve already had my kids. And I had them long ago before women were told anything about what to avoid, even when you’re expecting. And so, when I was pregnant, the only thing we were told was avoid alcohol and caffeine. That was it. And I have to tell you, I ate so much tuna when I was pregnant.

And, you know, that’s high in mercury. And I wound up with these kids who had ADHD, and I’m like, “I wonder what happened because, you know, I thought I was doing a good job.” But I did a course correction in childhood. I tested them for heavy metals and mercury. And when I saw it was high, I was able to go in and do some heavy metal chelation or detoxification. And I was really pleased to do that because when you’re a mother, one thing to remember, because you may have a lot of younger mothers listening right now, is when you have your children at home, that’s an ideal time to work with them. If you’ve missed something, like I most certainly did, to do the course correction and take care of it. Because once they’re 18 and leave the home, you know, your word is not the gospel anymore.

As a mother, it’s a lot harder to be able to go back and to do something. Unless of course, it’s their personal motivation, then, of course, that comes into play. So, I really feel that you made such a good point. A lot of us didn’t have that option. I certainly had never heard about it. And so, you just need to as you have children, and even in your own cells, as you grow, you always have the opportunity to make course corrections and to go back and to test and to really do a deep dive into what could be causing your particular health concerns. And then to be able to, you know, decrease your body burden of chemicals. So, it is not too late.

And also I want to say, I want to make this clear as well because this is what I see in my practice, sometimes, the mothers, they come in when they’re already pregnant. So, that’s not an ideal time, right? Or they’ve waited so long to get pregnant because of career concerns or financial concerns that now they’re concerned about, you know, getting to be too old and not being able to conceive. And they may not feel, you know, the need to take time out before they conceive to do preconception care. And so, those are some real…those are real-life issues that do crop up, but it is something that I do recommend. But, you know, it’s something that you have to, sort of, fix it in your head before the time arrives when you’re already pregnant, or you feel like, “I’m so old. I’ve just gotta get pregnant.” That’s really more important, right?

Katie: Yeah, exactly. And there’s a message of hope too, for anyone listening. I always try to remind everyone, you know, I didn’t figure out most of this stuff, sounds like you as well, until I was an adult and had autoimmune disease, and then had to undo all the damage and figure out what was wrong. And so, if we’re talking about this for our kids, even us starting when they’re children at all is an advantage over waiting until they’re adults. You know, so anytime, like the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is today. We always can start with what we know now.

And so, I would guess also, there’s kind of a spectrum. So, I think of it as like for autoimmune disease, for instance, I’ve kind of explained it that we all have a bucket and you can fill the bucket with any number of things. You could put marbles, or sand, or pine cones, or whatever it may be. But when you reach the top, it’s going to overflow. The idea being when you fill up that bucket and it gets overwhelmed, you’re gonna end up with some kind of problem and it’s gonna manifest differently for each of us. And I think of environmental toxins kind of in the same way.

The body is able to handle small amounts of these things and it’s pretty resilient. But when you reach a certain level of exposure, it’s going to bubble over. And so, you can tell me if that analogy maybe doesn’t work here, but that’s my thought with kids. And so, if we can mitigate their exposure and do things when they’re young to help them avoid filling up the bucket in the first place, that’s an advantage. Or if we can do things to help them take things back out of the bucket, that’s another advantage. And the earlier we can do that, the better. But anytime is a great time to start.

Dr. Fine: Absolutely, Katie. I so agree. We call that the rain barrel theory. And it’s true, it doesn’t matter what’s in there. Lots of things go in there, environmental toxins go in there, but also stress goes in there, and poor nutrition goes in there. And once it reaches the top, the next thing in, no matter what it is, if it overflows, that’s what’s going to trigger the disease. And so, the idea, it can be super specific if you are testing for it and looking carefully for it, but also, the pervading theory is that anything you can do to lower your bucket would be helpful, and to start at any time is helpful.

And by the way, even if you, you know, are super careful with your pregnancy and childhood, as we live and accumulate years, and our earth continues to be polluted, even when we’re careful, we are always accumulating body burden of chemicals. And so, it becomes necessary to make it a part of your daily life, but also, every now and then, to do a detox and lower that body burden before it overflows. Or a lot of people will wait until they have the actual, for example, autoimmune disease or something, and then they will go ahead and do it, or they get cancer or something like that. But it’s not a one and done. And so, it’s something that we really have to put in our toolbox and in the back of our head that this is an area that we need to pay attention to throughout life.

Katie: Absolutely. Okay. So, let’s go deeper on into chapters, especially for the subset of parents listening who are asking me these questions via email or direct message, who want to know, you know, if my kid…maybe they didn’t even expect this, my kid is at these younger ages and starting to show symptoms of potential precocious puberty. Like, what do they need to know about endocrine disrupters so explain what those are and where they are most often found when we’re talking about our kids?

Dr. Fine: Okay. So, let’s talk about specifics with the early puberty. Two of the biggest contributors to this precocious puberty are, I would say, BPA and phthalates which are plasticizers. So, the whole category of plastics is something that I’m gonna focus on here. And I’m gonna talk about them separately, but I’m gonna just tell you a few of the places where they are. Children’s toys contain phthalates, like that rubber ducky in the bath. Those rubber, soft rubber toys are phthalates. The shower curtain in your bathroom, if it’s vinyl, it’s got phthalates. And the problem with phthalates is that they’re not bonded to that underlying material. They are constantly falling off into the air. And so even your dust in your home has phthalates in it.

And so, believe it or not, Katie, this is so easy and free to do for everybody. But we need to dust more often and more carefully in our house, and that will keep environmental toxins down. You would not believe what’s in your dust, okay. And then in our cleaning products, we also have phthalates and our personal care products because phthalates are also used as incense, as scent fixatives. And so, the easy way to know that is to look at the ingredient list. And if you see the word fragrance or perfume on the ingredient list, that’s your cue that most likely those substances contain fragrances. You will never see phthalate on a label of anything. It’s just not required to be listed. Fragrances are a protected trade secret, and the word fragrance can hide up to 80 or 100 different chemicals and you don’t really know what they are, okay. So, let me just go through a few more of these and then we’ll back up a little. So, that covers the phthalates pretty well.

And then also, I wanna talk about plug-in air fresheners. Everyone listening should just after they hear this, they should just unplug them and throw them away because they contain phthalates. They contain formaldehyde, which is a carcinogen. They contain benzene, which is another carcinogen. And they are just emitting these into the air. And so you’re breathing them into your body. Phthalates can also be absorbed transdermally. So, if you have a scent emitter in your house, even those little sticks that you put in the jar of sense, if your skin is bare, and you’re…and it’s…I mean, you can’t even see it, but you are absorbing this stuff multiple different ways.

When you go to a department store and you’re walking in, and you’ve got the perfume sprayers, and I hate that. And so I always say, “No, thank you.” And I feel pretty virtuous about that. But then I discovered probably three or four years ago, that even if you yourself did not put any of it on your own skin, just walking through that cloud of perfume, every inch of your skin that was exposed you are absorbing that which means fragrance is like the new secondhand smoke. If you’re sitting in an office, for example, and you yourself don’t wear scents because you don’t want the endocrine-disrupting effects of phthalates, but let’s say you’re…the other people in the office are wearing scented…and it’s not just perfume, perfume is an obvious one, perfume and aftershave are obvious, but it’s underarm deodorant. It’s body lotion. It’s makeup. It’s hairspray. It’s many other things.

And so, if someone in your office is wearing it, you’re exposed even though you yourself did not consent. And you were educated enough to say “No,” and you’re using unscented products such as laundry detergent, dryer sheets, all of these things have phthalates. Our homes are just pumped through with endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are contributing to many things. Not just precocious puberty, they’re contributing to…they make you fat. They predispose you to diabetes and other health problems.

And also, I wanted to mention that the Endocrine Society, which is the world’s largest professional association of medical and research endocrinologists. So these are very conventional doctors, and even they have come on board and they consider reducing endocrine-disrupting chemical impacts to be one of their highest public health goals. So, when they came out with that a few years ago, you know, that was pretty profound that it’s being recognized everywhere.

So then, the other one that I want to talk about is the Bisphenols, Bisphenol A, BPA. And BPA is also part of plastic and predisposing to precocious puberty. And it’s found in the polycarbonate water containers. It’s found in thermal receipts. Thermal receipts is actually a really large source of this. And just like the phthalates, this chemical is not bound very tightly to the underlying material. And just touching it, this has been proven in studies, within seconds, if you take that person’s blood which they have, within seconds, not very many, you have BPA in the bloodstream. So, things are easily transferred, the BPA transfers from the thermal receipt onto your skin, into your body. And if you have used hand sanitizer prior to handling the receipt, you get about 10 times more BPA into your blood because the hand sanitizer contains things that are known penetration enhancers.

And that’s something to be thinking about these days because the use of hand sanitizer has increased. So, where do you find the thermal receipts? You’re going to find them in pretty much everywhere, the grocery store, the bank, the post office, if you get receipts at the gas station, you know, airline tickets. They’re pretty much everywhere, fast food places, other restaurants. But here’s the thing, we don’t have to accept them. So, just say no. Unless you are buying something that you might have to return, you know, you can just say, do you need the receipt for your restaurant meal? Take a picture of it on your phone or have it emailed to you. It’s no…it does you no good to take those things.

And then the other problem for ladies especially is when we stuff those receipts in our purses, that BPA is just coming off and touching everything in your purse. And when you stick your hand in your purse to find your cell phone, or your glasses, or your wallet, every time you put your hand in your purse, you’re just coating your hands with BPA. And so, I’ll just leave this tip here right now so I don’t forget it. But what I have my patients do is the ladies, I have them empty out their purse at home, get rid of all the receipts, take a cloth that’s wet with hot water, wipe out the inside of the purse, wipe everything off, every…the wallet, the phone, the makeup kit, everything. And then, get a Ziploc bag or something like that and put it in your purse. And if you must take a receipt, put it in your Ziploc bag segregate it from touching anything else in your purse.

Now, for the men, they’re discovering that, you know, same thing happens. The man puts it in their wallet. So, money is now contaminated with BPA and BPS. So, you know, it’s something that avoidance is really key here. You have to be really careful and aware of BPA. It’s insidious. The CDC has been tracking chemicals in our blood for decades. And at last count, it’s like BPA was in 95% of U.S. people, even though their half-life is pretty short. So, if it’s been found in 95% of Americans, that just means we’re exposed so ubiquitously that you could take our blood at any time and we would have it just because, you know, the stuff we were exposed to maybe two days ago, that’s gone. But now the stuff we were exposed to today, now that’s in there.

So, the BPA story I had…you know, I have a patient, we have to be really careful because sometimes I get patients who are looking at certain things in their environment, like the water supply and saying, “I can do better.” Yes, we can all do better, right. So, that’s good. And then they were ordering it from one of the water purification, I’m not gonna name them, who deliver it to your house on a regular schedule. And it’s purified, and then you can look up the water on their website and see what’s in it and what’s not in it. And it’s really interesting. I looked up this particular water, it actually was…it was pretty good water. But all of the containers were made of polycarbonate, BPA. And so, you don’t know how long that water, that good water, you know, about how long it’s been sitting in there touching the BPA which is coming off into it.

When they’re on these hot trucks being delivered, you don’t know how long they’re on there. You don’t know how long they sat on a shelf in the warehouse before it was even shipped to you. And what’s interesting is I called the company to talk about this, basically to ask them were they aware that this was not a good idea, and they basically said, “Yes, we’re aware that our containers contain BPA. However, we don’t feel that there is a health issue there. And so we are…you know, we’re still gonna use it.” And so, they haven’t really caught up to the science. And it’s really, unfortunately, mommas, it’s up to us to be our own FDA and to be able to be more discerning about what we allow into our homes. And so that…so, the idea of getting purified water is a good idea. There’s so much crap in the waters.

I’ve got a whole…I teach doctors environmental medicine. And one of my…one of the talks that I’ve gotten the most positive feedback on is the one that I did on, “What is in our water?” You would not believe it. But anyway, so with water, you do not want to drink bottled water of any kind, no matter how good you think the water is supposed to be on the inside. You want to have water that is in a glass bottle. And that’s really important. And that’s something that as families…and by the way, when I was a young mother, I did not know this. And so that was something that was overlooked. But thankfully, I eventually was able to get a reverse osmosis water system and not worry about that. And so, we have to just…like Katie said, you just have to start where you are. There’s no value in saying “Oh, woe is me….. I did it wrong.” No, you just start where you are. And you make the better decision and then you move forward.

Katie: Exactly. Well, and looks like I’ll just jump in on the water note because I think you’re right. And I have posts about this that I’ll link in the show notes as well at wellnessmama.fm. And I know you have resources as well. So, those will all be linked in the show notes. But when I started learning about this, getting rid of plastic can seem so overwhelming. And I’m a big fan of the 80-20 rule. So, for me personally, I figured out based on the current research, the biggest sources of exposure, like you mentioned, are inhalation via the air, and our water supply, and especially plastic water bottles, which are also horrible for the planet. So, we prioritized getting a water filter, actually a whole house filter we have at this point, and under the sink filter, and switching to using reusable metal water bottles, which is also much more eco-friendly as well. And that’s one change that makes a big, big, big difference.

And so if we can just move away from drinking out of disposable single used plastic in general, that’s a huge thing. We also put air filters in our house and don’t use air fresheners, of course, and switch to things like plastic-free in the kitchen. And I have resources to help walk people through all of that. But again, it’s like any incremental change you can make in this is a big deal, especially when we’re talking about kids. And that doesn’t mean you have to, you know, do it all overnight. This can definitely be a process, but it’s an important one to be aware of, certainly.

Dr. Fine: Yeah. And so, that’s what you wanna focus on when you have the kids at home, I think we wanna get back to how do you…what do you do with these kids who have precocious puberty? You have to look at, “Oh my gosh, I’ve gotta call out this one company.” Well, maybe not by name. But I think we have to take a really deeper look at what is in our homes because that’s where you as mothers, that’s where we make the most difference. The home is our domain. And we are the ones who are able to set it up in the way we want. And so, we really want to…like you said, Katie, we really want to root out all of the plastics, and all of the scented.

Honestly, I think the plastics and the scents in our home, those two…and to dust more, because I didn’t even talk about the flame retardants and all the other things that are in your house dust. But I believe, dusting twice a week, getting rid of plastic, getting rid of all of the scented products in your house, and eating organic, those things together are really going to be important for limiting things in your children that are endocrine disruptors. And we haven’t really talked about pesticides, but I want to add something here. The pesticides have been shown to lower children’s IQs. And in the animal kingdom, they are seeing hermaphrodite frogs, and coming about because of the feminizing effect.

We didn’t really talk about boys too much. But we have a twin problem with precocious puberty in the girls, and the feminization of boys via chemicals in the environment that act like estrogens. And so, pesticides are one of the vehicles that do this. But also, the phthalates are feminizing on the boys. And the studies are showing that the male infants are having changed male genitalia. And the way it’s changed is it’s showing a feminization of that male baby which, you know, in our audience of mothers who already have children, that may not be relevant right this minute, but I’ll tell you where it’s relevant.

Mothers, have you noticed that they are now marketing to our teenage boys? They’re marketing these products, these body scented products. And the marketing is very, very strongly suggesting, for example, that, you know, if the boys use these products, they can get not only one girl, but two girls. I mean, I have this in my slides for my doctors, it’s really wild. And these products, if you look at them carefully, they not only contain phthalates, they are so strongly scented, they have lots of phthalates in them. And phthalates are decreasing testosterone. So, you may not…that problem may not lead to a precocious puberty in a boy, but the lack of testosterone most certainly leads to abnormal male development.

And so, that’s something else that we want to consider in our homes. We want to think about the decrease in testosterone and sperm counts. And, I mean, the reproductive organs and systems in both boys and girls have been under attack for a while. And we are just now starting to see more of this. I wrote an article a couple of years ago for Thrive Global, in it where I basically…the title of it, if you want to look it up, is “The Handmaid’s Tale Becomes a Reality.” Because that is an Emmy Award-winning TV show that shows what happens when they polluted their environment with pesticides and chemicals. And they are now having trouble reproducing.

They have to get the handmaids in to be…someone who has been proven to have been able to carry a child. Basically they’re outsourcing the baby-making, right? And this show is incredibly popular. And it boggles the imagination because people act like it’s entertainment, but it’s really not because this is what we’re seeing in our patient population. We’re seeing a rise in infertility and a rise in assisted fertility techniques. And we’re seeing a rise in birth defects and a rise in, you know, developmental problems in our children. And so, all of this is stemming from these chemicals that have insidious negative implications at teeny-tiny doses, but that we’re getting those teeny-tiny doses all the time.

And that’s why, Katie, I wanna…you did say something that I do wanna kind of pounce on here. Air filters. Love air filters. 20 years ago when I started practicing medicine, I used to recommend them for my asthmatic patients. Not anymore. I think everybody should have them in their homes, in their bedrooms, in their children’s bedrooms. So, at least when you’re sleeping, you are able to filter out many of these things. We do not have good air. And the air in your home is between 5 and 10 times more toxic than your outdoor air, which is super toxic, and that’s because your home is off-gassing a lot of different things.

But that’s…we’re getting a little bit away from what we were talking about. But I wanted to bring that in too because you mentioned it. So, air filters, avoiding plastic, avoiding scented products, dusting really well, vacuuming with a really good vacuum cleaner. Most of them are just, I don’t know if you’re aware of that, they are just…you vacuum and then it’s like the dust just kind of goes out of the bag. You’re not…you’ve gotta have a good HEPA filter in there, so that when you are vacuuming you are truly getting rid and capturing the dust particles because the dust in your home is toxic. And then pesticide-free is something that you want to also focus on.

Katie: Totally agree. And I think, when it comes to endocrine disrupters and hormones in general, you know, getting rid of the bad stuff is a very important, big huge part of the equation. And then once you tackle that step, it’s then figuring out ways to support the body as well. Because I think it’s a balance when you’re talking about holistic health of removing the bad and then giving the body the good. And so, I think that’s another key area I would love to talk about and hear your thoughts. And a few of the things I’ve noticed and I do have kids in the almost puberty age, I haven’t had any, like, make that jump yet, we’re right on the cusp of it.

And so, thinking of things like supporting the body nutritionally with tons of micronutrients during that time, especially we know things like leafy greens bind to extra estrogen in the body. So, we wanna make sure our kids are getting a wide variety of different sources of micronutrients from ideally fresh local produce whenever possible. And just being cognizant of them getting enough nutrients because puberty, of course, is a time of increased demand on the body and very rapid growth. But I’m curious if you have any dietary or supplementation recommendations for both supporting kids from not going through puberty too early, which of course, you know, avoid processed foods and foods that contain plastic, like we talked about, but then also when it is the right time for them to go through puberty, how can we nutritionally support them best through that process?

Dr. Fine: I recommend, and this is kind of an area that I didn’t focus on too much before, but when I said no plastic, that includes processed foods that are packaged in plastic. Because in Puerto Rico years ago, they were finding premature puberty in female girls. They were finding little girls sprouting breasts, and getting their periods at 2, 3, and 4 years old. So, that is way worse than what we’re seeing here, right? And so, they tested these girls in Puerto Rico, what on earth is causing that? And they discovered it was phthalates, okay. And so, what they discovered, they had to kind of be detectives and say, “Well, where are the phthalates coming from?”

And one of the things they concluded was that Puerto Rico is an island, everything is shipped in, and everything is shipped in covered in plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic. So, your food being covered in plastic, your meats, your fat, fatty products like meats are being covered in plastic. You want to eat fresh. Well, okay, let’s just go back to the meat. If you’re buying meat, I recommend buying the grass-fed organic kinds of meats from the kind of place where it hasn’t been sitting there in a case wrapped in plastic styrofoam on the bottom and plastic on top. Go to the kind of store that is just sitting open in a case. And then you can wrap it, or the butcher will wrap it in a butcher paper. And then, you know, you take it home and you cook it. And then that way, it’s not just sitting in all of those wrappings of plastic for so long. So, I do recommend that.

Whole foods, fresh fruits, and vegetables for sure. I see that the children today are not really getting very many. And the problem is, as you alluded to, our detoxification systems in our bodies, they run on nutrients. The nutrients are the cofactors that…we have detoxification enzymes in our bodies, and if you are nutritionally deficient in some of them, they’re just not gonna run. And so, by saturating their diets with the micronutrients and the greens, in particular, I really like the dark leafy greens, but I really like broccoli, garlic is really good for supporting detox enzymes. I’m not a big fan of a lot of kale because kale is high in thallium, which is a heavy metal. And I’m seeing that the people who are eating a lot of green smoothies, because, of course, I test my patients, right? And so, a lot of the green smoothie eaters are coming up super high in thallium. And thallium is a very toxic heavy metal, and it’s in our organic and commercial kale now.

And why is it there? Because certain chemicals are polluting the agricultural water. And when you say a vegetable or fruit is being grown organically, those organic standards do not include the kind of water that’s being used. So, I’m having people be careful with kale right now. But I do love the isocyanides, I like the cruciferous vegetables. I like the cauliflower, the garlic, the berries are always really important, anthocyanidins and berries are really important for detox and good health. And so, your colored, I just said colored vegetables and I just realized cauliflower is white. The colored fruits and vegetables are what you really want to emphasize but cauliflower, it turns out, is a superfood, so don’t let the white color fool you. Just make sure you get plenty of other colored fruits and vegetables in there as well.

And then I have people stay away from sweetened drinks, even fruit drinks. I don’t like…I think having kids drink predominantly water is the way to go, purified water. And by the way, we need…your liver requires water to detoxify properly. And if you are dehydrated, you cannot detoxify properly. And I see a lot of people just not drinking enough water. I would have to say, most of the people I see are dehydrated. And so, let’s not forget that because that’s so simple, make your kids drink water.

So, did you have any other questions about the food? And then, of course…oh, one more thing, I do wanna say this, the food supply has gotten contaminated as well, not just with pesticides and herbicides. Do you know that the almonds are now being fumigated with propylene oxide? And I test for that. And so, I see that in my patients too. I just…it is just kind of criminal, people are eating almonds thinking they’re good, that there’s FDA requirement, that they’ve gotta be fumigated and that’s kind of a nightmare. So, you have to be…you have to really do your homework and find the clean foods.

And sometimes the animal foods are the most highly contaminated with something called POP, persistent organic pollutants like PCBs. And so, you want to make sure that even if you are a meat-eating family, you want to make sure that those meats, like if you’re gonna give salmon, it’s gotta be wild salmon because the farm salmon is the highest source of PCBs in the diet. And butter is the next one. Butter, the epidemiologists, when they go into a new area and they want to sort of get a quick and dirty idea of how much PCBs are contaminating that area, they will test the local butter. And that would be something that’s not dependent on whether or not that butter is organic. Because it’s not a pesticide, it’s something that is, even though PCBs have been banned since the ’70s, they’re in our earth’s soil and water, and the cows are eating grass off of the earth.

So, it’s not something that just getting organic butter is gonna make sure you don’t get any PCBs. So, animal products are the high…and they’ve shown this in all the…when they look at women who are vegan versus women who are not, one of the big differences they see is persistent organic pollutants. The vegans who aren’t eating animal products are really far cleaner from that one thing. So, you wanna make sure there’s plenty of plant foods in the diet. And if you’re going to eat the meat, you want to get as clean as you can with as few wrappings as you can.

Katie: Exactly. Yeah. I think those are all very, very important tips.

Before we move on, just to kind of piggyback on what you just said. I think a couple of other areas as parents that we can focus on that are really helpful are, one area right now of emerging research is, for instance, light exposure. And this is an area people tend to maybe discount because we can’t see the immediate effects or feel them as drastically as what we can feel what we eat, but there’s all kinds of research about exposure to artificial light at certain times of day impacting hormone levels. And also lack of exposure to natural light, and how that can affect proper hormone patterns. And this is true in adults and also in children.

And so, I always try to mention this to parents because if you were talking about young children, fixing light patterns can really help their sleep quality and how long they sleep. If you’re talking about teenagers, same thing, but it can also have an impact on those hormone shifts. And then for us as adults, we can see, and eye measuring can see differences in sleep quality. So, a tip there, I say is if possible, get outside and get your kids outside for at least half an hour as soon as possible after waking up because that natural light can signal important receptors in the back of the eye that are really important for not just circadian hormones like melatonin, but also for the proper hormone cycles, whether it be in children or adults.

And the same thing with avoiding artificial light at night. So this is another form of indoor pollution that often gets ignored, but when kids are getting exposure to blue light late into the evening, it confuses their body’s natural hormone responses. So, avoiding screens, using natural forms of light that don’t have blue light after dark, that’s been another key that was really helpful to us. I’m curious if you have any tips as well for exercise because we know the stats that kids today are not moving as much as kids in previous generations, but then there’s also evidence that, you know, too much exercise too young can be harmful. So, when we’re talking about balancing hormones and supporting kids in these different ages, any advice for what types of exercise to focus on with them?

Dr. Fine: Oh, the exercise thing kind of plays right into what I said at the beginning of our talk where rising levels of fat and obesity is also contributing to precocious puberty. And so, it’s very true once they took the physical ed out of the school, and the kids got really invested in their devices. Childhood Education has really dropped off a cliff and I don’t think that’s healthy. And by the way, you know, exercise is good for…it’s good for brain development, and it’s good for so many different things. I think, one of the things I’ve seen as a mother too is that the kids who…right now I’m talking girls, most girls and boys do some sort of sport when they’re young like soccer. And what I noticed in the girls who once they hit puberty, they stopped and didn’t pick up anything else, versus the ones who stuck with it or picked up a different sport, the girls who stopped are the ones who, honestly, by the end of high school they were already kind of plumping up, right?

And if you look back over, you know, my childhood, for example, there just wasn’t…kids just played from the time…they had recess at school and then they played from the time they got home till it got dark. There was so much exercise in a day. And I believe, as human beings, we evolved on a lot of exercise. Now, it wasn’t…as you alluded to, it wasn’t like training for marathons every day, that’s too much. But it was movement. And it was outside in the sunlight because I am seeing that research on natural sunlight on our skin. And it is very important not just for vitamin D, but those that full-spectrum lighting from the sun has health benefits that we’re just now beginning to understand.

So, I’m a big advocate of kids spending a lot of time outside playing. It might not even be a sport, but you can play outside when you’re little. It could be a sport. I don’t like sports with the head injuries, like the heading in soccer. I’m not a big fan of head injuries, like, from football or soccer or things like that. But having said that, I like soccer because, you know, there’s running and kicking, I think that’s a good sport. So, I think it should…if they’re not athletically inclined, I think riding a bicycle or playing outside is highly, highly recommended. And by the way, exercise is important for detox as well. It’s part of the things that you’re increasing circulation. Hopefully, there’s some sweating and that’s how you can dump some of your toxins out. But exercise and sunlight are very, very important.

The blue light thing is really key too because the kids are staying on their devices late into the night, and then that messes up their sleep. And you’ve got to have proper sleep. At any stage in your life, you’ve gotta have proper sleep or your body doesn’t work right. Guess what’s one of the things our bodies do in sleep? They detox. There’s no…they don’t have to metabolize or digest your food. They don’t have to, like, send energy to your limbs to move. Your body is working on detox while you sleep. Your skin, your brain is detoxing while you sleep. And so, we have to naturally maximize our body’s ability to detox on its own, as well as avoid the things that we know are gonna make us go in the wrong direction. And then thirdly, we need to buckle down and just, you know, get the proper guidance to do a really good detoxification several times, I would say, in your life.

Katie: Definitely. Yeah, I definitely agree with that. Are there any supplements offhand that come to mind that can help either with avoiding precocious puberty or that are helpful during puberty? And I know, I got one question from a reader. There’s an additive called inositol I think that’s used in certain teen multivitamins, and if that’s safe or recommended or not? I know my default with my kids right now is to focus on just gut health, so I give them high-quality probiotics and prebiotics. And then also, just supporting again from a nutrient perspective with as much whole foods as possible, and making sure they’re getting enough protein which supports proper hormones, but any other suggestions you would make?

Dr. Fine: You know, it’s really difficult to make a broad-spectrum recommendation for supplements. Because when I see children in my practice, it’s like they’re coming to me for a reason, and so everything I do is very specific to that one person. And so, to come up with something broad-spectrum and say everybody should take this. Really, I think, a probiotic is a good idea, Katie. I think gut health is super important. But beyond that, I’m a little bit…especially with the kids, I really like to push the good food, the nutritious food like you are. I really like to push that and not… I remember using, like, powdered greens, you know, with my kids and powdered fruit. I did use something like that. But without knowing what… I mean, the kids today are really having a lot of health challenges. And so, a lot of them could benefit from supplements. But to just say every kid, every preteen or teen needs a certain supplement, I don’t think I would be comfortable with that. Except for probiotics, I think that you could make a strong case for that. And, you know, as long as it was a really good one.

Katie: Absolutely. And I will also say one that I do with my kids, I order at-home tests for vitamin D. So, even if you’re not, can take the kids in for a full workup which I actually would recommend that as well, but I do test all of my kids for vitamin D and then make sure they’re either getting in the sun or getting vitamin D. Because we know vitamin D is actually a pre-hormone, not just a vitamin, and so that one seems extremely essential for proper hormone regulation. I’m guessing you probably see that in your patients as well, low vitamin D levels correlating with hormone issues.

Dr. Fine: Well, what I see, I’ve practiced in Arizona and Southern California for my whole 20-year practice. And I just was so shocked to see how low everybody’s vitamin D was. I just, I mean, we’re in sunny areas, I just can’t understand it, except that nobody’s outside. But, yes. Yes, I have seen that and there are other issues with low vitamin D having to do with immune status and immune health that are also very important. I’m curious with your…well, you probably don’t wanna say, but the vitamin D issue is such a conundrum because I will tell you this, in Arizona, I used to have my patients commit to 10 minutes of sun on as much skin as they could bear around noon, which is a certain time of the day when certain rays were at its highest.

And, you know, 10 minutes, that’s not a lot. And, much to my surprise, when I retested them, it didn’t really bring it up. And I just found that shocking, that the vitamin D level… So, I will say that I’ve had to supplement lots…probably most of my patients with vitamin D supplementation, even though I theoretically and philosophically would rather people get it from the sun. For some reason, I’m not seeing sunlight producing the levels of vitamin D that I would like to see in people. And I mean, I’ve seen levels as low as 17 in my cancer patients, right? You know, that’s pretty low.

Katie: Yeah, I think this is definitely something that’s epidemic. And I know it’s controversial, but I do spend time daily in the sun, not ever to burn, but just to get vitamin D. And I think healthy sun exposure is really important. And I do that with my kids as well. But I’m also, I will supplement with vitamin D, and also along with it, vitamin K at times just if their levels are low. Just because I know how important that one is for the immune system, for hormones, for so many aspects of that. And we’re getting really close to the end of our time. We might have to do a whole other episode just on precocious puberty at some point, but I know there’s a lot…the other aspect of this that’s not just specifically health and lab-related is, how can we support our kids in this age with body image and emerging from puberty with a healthy body image on the other side? And I’m curious how you navigated that with your own kids, especially since I’m still in this phase and haven’t really figured it out totally myself yet.

Dr. Fine: Oh, that’s such a good subject. Oh, that is so, so tricky, because we’re fighting media portrayals of unattainable…especially for the girls, unattainable body images. And the girls are starting to think they’re fat as young as age 8 or 9. So, I have a daughter and a son, so I got to do both. I really…how did I do it? I just never focused on…I tried to build body confidence by looking at and praising how well the body works, like “Look at you run. Look at you go. Oh, you wanna take karate?” Really praising how the body functions as opposed to how it looks. And so, there really wasn’t in my bringing up my kids, there really wasn’t…I didn’t really emphasize, “Oh, you look so beautiful today.” Right? I didn’t really talk about. I didn’t really say that. I focused on other attributes.

And I think I did it on purpose because I know that even when I was growing up, there was all kinds of body image, and anorexia, and bulimia, and all of this stuff, and it seems to start…well, years ago, it started in teenagerhood, but now it’s like preteens and young teens are starting, men and women are starting to have these unrealistic ideas of how their body should look. I think that the media today is more accepting of diverse body types than ever before. And I think that’s really a good thing. But I would just focus on body functionality, body health, you know, other things instead of, “Did you gain weight?” You know, “That dress is looking really tight on you.” I would never point that out to a girl.

Katie: For sure. I have taken the same approach with my daughters and my sons. I’m just focusing on the body being an amazing, incredible tool and like a machine that we can use to do incredible things versus how it looks. And it’s sad, but I had to realize this and learn this lesson as an adult over even the last few years, I would say is when I finally actually learned it and started to love my own body for what it can do and not just how it looks, or what I perceived as how it didn’t look, how it was supposed to. And that’s even after growing six babies from scratch in my body, and all of these other things it had done. It took me being that old and working through a bunch of trauma to get to that point where I could actually appreciate it. So, I think the mindset piece is key as well. And hopefully, giving our kids a foundation to respect their bodies and to treat them well out of respect and love, not to pry them out of lack, it’s a big key.

Dr. Fine: Yes, I agree. Good job.

Katie: Awesome. Well, our interview has flown by. I know that you have a gift that you wanna give to the subscribers which I will put in the show notes that I don’t say your email or anything out loud and that you also have a course all about detoxification for people who this is very top of mind for whether it be preconception or precocious puberty, whatever it may be. So, those links will be in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm. And I know you’re also available online and at drannemariefine.com is that right?

Dr. Fine: Yeah, drannemariefine.com, that’s my website. And, yeah, I’m offering a complimentary 15-minute call to see if this is a good fit for exploring how a personalized detox can work for you. I’m also, on my website, I just wanna point out that my…the book that I wrote and the products that I have are in the realm of clean beauty. So that’s another passion for me, and something I didn’t bring up so much with the boys and girls. But, wow, if they’re putting stuff on their face, the girls’ makeup, especially the teen makeup is very toxic. And you’ve gotta take a really strong look at that. And the boys’ products are, like I mentioned, varying into a very, very disturbing trend. And so, we have to be careful with that too.

Katie: I agree. Well, thank you so much. This has been such an information-packed episode. Hopefully, it helps a lot of parents and a lot of teenagers and preteens as well. And I’m really appreciative of your time today.

Dr. Fine: Well, thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me. It was fun.

Katie: And thanks to all of you as always for listening, for sharing your most valuable asset, your time with both of us today. We’re very grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/anne-marie-fine/

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nprinterns · 7 years ago

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Intern Guest Post: Rachel Sacks

Development intern Rachel Sacks has composed this blog post for what to do when you’ve been picked as an intern and want to make the best of networking possibilities. Check it out!

MAKING CONNECTIONS AS AN INTERN

I’m not gonna lie—working at NPR Headquarters is exciting. Voices you’ve only heard on the air suddenly become associated with bodies, and Tiny Desk concerts become a regular part of your schedule, and. NPR news is streamed live in the elevators (and bathrooms). The most exciting part of working at NPR, however, is access to the brilliant, knowledgeable, and kind folks all throughout the building. My strongest recommendation during your time here is to reach out as much as possible and learn from people you might not get to meet otherwise. These are my tips for making the most of creating connections.

BE THE SQUEAKY WHEEL—BUT NOT TOO SQUEAKY Put yourself out there. Seriously, reach out to people that you’ve never met before but want to get to know, and if they don’t respond just stop by their desk or send a follow-up email. I truly believe that respectful persistence is the driving force to achieving goals, and sometimes it really is necessary when the person you want to meet also needs to cover breaking news or has a podcast production deadline or simply isn’t the most timely responder to non-emergency emails. This doesn’t mean get in the way of their work (also known as being too squeaky), but it does mean that it can be very worth your time to gently remind them that you’re interested in their work and getting to know them.

MAKING THE COLD EMAIL WARM With so many emails filling inboxes, it’s important to make your introductory message has some charm. As tempting as it might be to send something along the lines of “HI OMG I LOVE YOU HOW CAN I BE LIKE YOU,” it’s really best to avoid that path—especially because the reality is that this is an office space and not the front row of a Beyoncé concert. First, calmly introduce yourself, and mention what you admire about their work. Then, explain why exactly you want to meet with them, and be as specific and personal as possible. Maybe you want to learn a certain skillset, or they cover specific topics in a field you want to enter. Finally, THANK THEM. Keep it concise, keep it personal, and keep it in your inbox so that when they respond you can save the email chain forever as a souvenir of the amazing connections you made at NPR.

FAME ISN’T EVERYTHING Make sure not to limit yourself to the big names at NPR. As cool as it might feel to tell your friends that you chatted with some of the most famous names in radio, there are so many interesting folks in a variety of departments that are worth getting to know. When I wanted to learn more about the Hidden Brain podcast, I reached out to Tara Boyle, the supervising producer whose name wasn’t familiar to me. She was wonderful to talk with and taught me so much about Hidden Brain’s production. She even invited me to one of the team meetings so I could get a better idea of what working on a podcast looks like. From finance, to development, to audio, to music, the building is filled with so many folks to learn from.

WONDROUS WALK-ABOUTS At least once a day, I get up from my desk and walk around the building. I find this especially useful since my department (Development) isn’t in the newsroom, so I take this time to get to know the ins and outs of the various news desks and podcasts downstairs. I get to know where the offices are of people I want to meet and observe the lively conversations happening in every corner of the room. I find this essential to learning more about the structure of NPR and the different jobs at play—giving me a better idea of what skills I want to gain, and who I want to meet with and learn from. I also take this opportunity to chat with the interns I pass and learn about the work that they’re doing. I’ve made connections that way too! While chatting one day with Dayana Mustak, the How I Built This intern, she introduced me to Guy Raz, former correspondent at NPR and current host of three NPR podcasts. This is a perfect example of when I got to know a fellow intern, learned a bit about her job and the making of a podcast, and got to meet the host too!

NATIONAL PUBLIC HAPPY HOUR My favorite people at NPR are the interns. The interns at NPR are friendly, easygoing, and ambitious, and they make the internship extra fabulous. Spend time with interns. Eat lunch together. Talk about projects and collaborate together. Go to happy hour together—a D.C trend and a great way to get discounted food and drinks while getting to know new friends! It is so fortunate to have a large group of people ready to have fun both at work and in the streets of D.C!

Here are a few examples of when these tips have led to successful connections for fellow NPR interns!

KEVIN GARCIA - diversity intern - After introducing myself in person to Leah Donnella, a news assistant for Code Switch, I followed up with her through email and we made lunch plans for later that week. Over lunch, we bonded over unexpected similarities—Leah went to college in Southern California while I’m from Los Angeles, and we both came to NPR not having a background in journalism. She asked me about what I was hoping to get done during my internship, as well as what I hoped to do after NPR, and gave me tons of support and guidance about how to achieve my goals. I thought it was really cool that she was willing to spend some time with me and help me get my bearings in the newsroom, and it showed me that NPR folks really do want to see interns succeed!

LOUISA LINCOLN, sponsorship intern - As an intern in the sponsorship department (National Public Media), I wanted to get a better understanding of the business and revenue-generating operations happening in the building. I reached out to Alaina Gibbs, who works in the development department, to get a sense of the work that she does with the NPR Foundation Board and with the donor relations team. She responded to my email within a few minutes and was so friendly and willing to chat. We met for coffee at Sound Bites the other day and had a great conversation about working in development for nonprofit journalism organizations and about the work she does here. She even provided some very helpful career guidance suggestions and offered to connect me with other people in the development department to learn what they do. It was definitely scary to send her a cold email, but I'm so glad we were able to connect!

JENNA STERNER, training photography intern - About a month and a half into my internship, I made a personal goal to email one new person each week with the hope of setting up a meeting with them. I came across the name Hannah Bloch, and shamelessly looked her up. Her Twitter bio alone was enough to get me interested, where she had listed her past experience at National Geographic and as a Time correspondent in Pakistan. I wrote up an email essentially telling her that I had researched her and was so fascinated by her experiences. I said I would love to spend 15 or 20 minutes learning more about what brought her to NPR and the work she’s doing now. She immediately responded with “Happy to chat! How about today at 3 pm?” It meant a lot to me for her to take the time and share a piece of her life with me. It also fueled my fire to start emailing people nonstop until I could set up more meetings! This building is packed with cool people who have incredible fascinating stories and it is absolutely worth reaching out and saying hello because you never know who you may meet!

#npr #npr interns #intern #interns #internship #intern tips

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cecillewhite · 5 years ago

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Podcast 31: Inside Open Source Learning Systems – With eThink CEO Brian Carlson

WELCOME TO EPISODE 31 OF THE TALENTED LEARNING SHOW

To find out more about this podcast series or to see the full collection of episodes visit The Talented Learning Show main page.

EPISODE 31 – TOPIC SUMMARY AND GUEST:

The learning technology world moves so fast, it can be hard for practitioners to stay ahead of the curve. That’s why I invite innovation leaders to share updates in these 30-minute audio sprints.

For example, today we welcome a leader in the open source learning community, Brian Carlson, Co-Founder and CEO of eThink Education.

Join us as we discuss the latest developments in open source learning systems. You’ll also hear why these advances are important – especially for extended enterprise education.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

Open source learning platforms like Moodle have driven closed source LMS vendors to reduce their price points dramatically over the years.

Open source learning systems are widely used. In fact, with a whopping 176 million users, Moodle is the world’s most popular learning platform – not just among educational institutions, but associations and corporations, as well.

Professional services are a key differentiator for open source learning solution providers, particularly compared to proprietary LMS vendors.

Q&A HIGHLIGHTS:

Let’s start with a quick look at your background as a learning systems innovator…

I began my career as a teacher for two years on a small island just off the coast of Australia. It was a sustainable development position with an organization similar to the Peace Corps, and I loved it.

Then, after I returned to the States, I worked as a technical consultant for six years at a company which, through multiple acquisitions, became part of Ellucian, the largest student information system company in the world.

What prompted you to start eThink?

I’ve always been entrepreneurial in nature. And while I was at Ellucian, working with different colleges and universities, I saw open source as an interesting opportunity.

RSVP FOR THE DECEMBER WEBINAR NOW!

Moodle was just emerging as an open-source learning platform, and my business partner Cheryl Patsavos and I realized we could do very well by capitalizing on that. So about 12 years ago we founded eThink as a Moodle services provider.

So you started with LMS services for the education market?

Originally, Moodle focused on higher education and K-12 markets, so we began by supporting those clients. But because Moodle is based on open source, it quickly evolved to support nonprofit, government and corporate needs – including extended enterprise applications.

So we continued to expand our services to support a business-oriented derivative of Moodle called Totara. And our Totara services have been a tremendous success.

How do you describe eThink’s mission?

Ultimately, we empower organizations to maximize their learning initiatives through fully managed solutions.

In other words, whatever an organization wants to achieve – whether the use case is internal or external, and whatever the industry may be – we configure a solution that best meets the client’s objectives. This may come from any combination of products we offer, as well as partner solutions that work with ours.

So you’re kind of like a software company, but much more, because you’re software agnostic, right? Plus you provide all the support clients need?

Yes. That’s what makes us different. We’re not the only vendor that provides open source learning solutions. But we are 100% focused on services that meet our client needs. We have to be.

That’s how we keep our client base. It’s important to be pretty unique on the services side and deliver a lot of value.

Maybe we should take a quick step back. People may know of Moodle, but they may not understand open source, in general. Could you briefly explain the concept and what it means for learning systems?

Sure, John. On a day-to-day basis, we talk to many people who are confused by this because they aren’t immersed in technology.

Open source just means that the code base is freely available on the internet, and everyone can look at it line-by-line. Also, anyone can add to the code. This community involvement is how open source software improves over time.

Got it…

Open source software is actually surprisingly common. Think of the smartphones we use. iPhones are based on Apple’s closed source mobile operating system, but Android-based phones are open source products.

Interestingly, when Apple launched the iPhone, it dominated the smartphone industry. But now only 10% of us are iPhone users, while 85% of us use Android phones. That illustrates how open source can shape a market.

Wow…

Another great example of an open platform is WordPress. Almost everyone I know runs a website on WordPress. There are closed source blogging options, but they’re not nearly as popular.

We’re one of those WordPress users at Talented Learning, but I’ve never thought much about the open source angle. So for these open source initiatives, who creates the core code?

REPLAY THE WEBINAR NOW!

You know, there are books written on each open source movement. But with Moodle specifically, it started in Australia when Martin Dougiamas was working on his graduate thesis project in late 2001.

His university relied on Blackboard LMS, which was the predominant academic learning management system at the time. They had nearly 100% market share. It was absurd. Since Blackboard was the only game in town, the price points were very high.

Ouch.

So Martin decided to publish a free code base on the internet, similar to open source projects in other industries. This way, universities everywhere could apply their deep academic and technical talent to contribute various code elements.

With this public, community-driven approach, any educational institution can run a less expensive alternative to Blackboard LMS.

Sure…

Actually, Blackboard prices have come down considerably over the years because of new competition from alternatives like Moodle.

And almost every open source story I’ve seen starts with this kind of question:

“What would it look like if we had more eyeballs and more community involved in product development and made it a free project?”

Excellent.

Then for every open source effort, there are logical next-step challenges like how to maintain the core code, and how to fund staff who can make sure that the best ideas are added and there’s some quality control.

Different business models have emerged to address these administrative issues. Yet they all start in a similar way.

But Moodle’s growth, in particular, has been fascinating. It quickly became the most widely used learning management system in the world – both in academia and in the corporate space. And it’s still the leading platform.

Wow.

Most people don’t realize how popular Moodle is. But worldwide, no one else is even close. In global market share, it beats every other product by a mile – especially in certain categories.

Moodle adoption is so massive because people can easily download it for free and configure their own implementation. Or, if they need assistance, they can rely on services like ours.

On the corporate side, there’s a perception that Moodle isn’t really designed for the business market. Do you agree?

Definitely not. It’s true that Moodle was originally built for academia. And when Martin first started, he gained a lot of traction in colleges and universities. That’s where this perception comes from.

But today, if I look at our Moodle-related sales over the last two years, probably 75% of net new logos are from outside of academia. Many people find our business emphasis very surprising.

So, with such deep global market penetration, is there any direct open source competition?

Others have tried. You need to scale and you need enough contributing members for an open source effort to find its legs.

Moodle has been up and running for about 18 years, so it certainly reached the critical mass needed for success.

Makes sense.

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Over the years, a few other organizations have come and gone because they never received the amount of traction needed for a successful open source project.

They may have looked at the core Moodle code and decided to add some elements to create what’s called a fork of that code. That’s what Totara did. And no one else has done it as effectively.

Totara approached this with an eye toward extended enterprise professional development. And Totara has definitely found success.

Right.

Totara’s channel model is similar to Moodle’s. And in some cases, Totara’s offering competes with Moodle, which has led to improvement of both products. When one takes a step forward, the other tries to match or beat it, which is great for customers.

Isn’t Moodle creating its own corporate version?

You’re right. In response to Totara’s success, Moodle is creating its own corporate-focused version called Moodle Workplace.

We’ve been a big contributor to that for the last two years, while it was mostly in stealth mode. But recently, they made it public. And honestly, they’ve got some great new functionality – great UI and UX changes.

This move is important, because Moodle is already used by corporate, nonprofit and government entities for professional education. But they needed to address this more strategically by wrapping their story around it and including specific functionality to back it up.

Interesting…

Frankly, I think they’ve done a nice job. We can already see that Moodle Workplace is very competitive.

We have clients that look at all three options – Moodle, Moodle Workplace and Totara. Some say Totara is a better fit for their specific needs. Some choose Moodle and others go with Moodle Workplace.

We stay agnostic. We put the solutions in front of our clients, but we let them choose. We listen to their need set and mock-up what the functionality would look like in those scenarios. But Moodle Workplace is making things more interesting.

Today, nearly 1000 different learning systems are available. 99% of them are commercial off-the-shelf, SaaS or cloud-based systems. Why would I choose an open source LMS over those?

There are so many reasons why it makes sense to at least consider an open source solution as a finalist when selecting an LMS.

First, the business model is flipped on its head, compared to closed source solutions. We don’t own the product – the community does. In other words, a license doesn’t lock you into a specific vendor for software or service. This gives you much more control.

Great point.

Another consideration is our flexibility in manipulating code and configuring it to meet specific needs. This flexibility really shines through with integrations.

These days, most organizations need to integrate all sorts of different things with their LMS. Upfront, you may not be aware of everything you’ll need. Instead, items surface down the road. And when they do, we’re here to help you adapt.

That certainly makes sense for extended enterprise scenarios, where integrations are especially important.

Right.

So let’s talk more about cost. Open source code is free, but once you add-in professional services, does the cost advantage hold up?

Core Moodle is a free solution. But we joke that it’s more like free like a puppy than a free beer.

Obviously, if you run this “free” solution on your own servers with your own people, there’s a cost. But if we do it for you, we believe we can do it at a lower price point.

Okay…

But from a broader perspective, data from the last couple of decades shows that open source solutions like Moodle and Totara have actually forced LMS price points down as much as 90%.

It’s certainly in that ballpark for per-user-costs, compared to the early 2000s.

Impressive.

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This has forced commoditization of closed source LMS solutions. But I tend not to lead on cost alone. That’s because proprietary LMS vendors aren’t our only competitors.

We compete with other open source solution providers, as well. And that competition incentivizes us to be incredibly proactive when it comes to service.

We’re highly consultative with our clients. And our responsiveness borders on obsession.

For instance, we respond to service tickets in less than an hour. Compare that with the average response time from other vendors, which can be closer to several days. That’s significant.

Although (like most vendors) you don’t want to lead with cost, I bet it makes a big difference at scale.

Yes, a massive difference.

Sure. Because it’s not uncommon for a small company to have a lot of customers.

Yep. Some of our client sites serve over 100,000 users. Several are approaching a million users. For them, it becomes extraordinarily inexpensive. But closed source learning platforms don’t seem to scale nearly as well when it comes to price.

So, what should associations or businesses know about customization? If they modify open source code, won’t that lead to complications in the future?

That’s precisely the basis for our business model, John. I can’t tell you how often prospects say, “We want to choose you because we can customize everything.” And we say, “Nope, you don’t want to customize.”

And then you show them a better way…

Yep. Nearly 100% of our solutions do not involve customization. Instead, we focus on configuration. Because when you customize core code, you’re adding a need to re-customize after future releases. That potentially adds costs and even some management risk. We don’t do that.

Good to know.

Moodle has over 1300 free modules available. So most of the time when someone says, “Can you do this?” it’s already been done. We can find it on the open source community. Or if it isn’t available, but the value is justified, we can develop a module.

For example, we just developed a Cvent plug-in in conjunction with our client, The Ohio State University. Rather than targeting students or faculty, it’s designed for professional certification training partnerships in the nonprofit sector.

This is a great example of a situation where you should create a module rather than owning it yourself. Hundreds of organizations are likely to find it useful. Our client saw the value in developing and sharing this module because they won’t have to maintain it. This approach essentially eliminates future cost-of-ownership for them.

Nice…

That’s the open source model. It’s the power of community. More often than not, we can apply or enhance something that’s already available, rather than trying to develop it from scratch. This avoids future risk or cost.

Excellent. So, let’s say I’m shopping for an extended enterprise LMS. What are the top three reasons why I should consider open source…?

…FOR COMPLETE ANSWERS TO THIS QUESTION AND MORE, LISTEN TO THE FULL 30-MINUTE PODCAST!

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The Hidden Value of Open Source

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Until recently, most open-source learning solutions served the academic market. Not anymore. Now, corporations big and small are leveraging the unique strengths of open source to deliver world-class learning solutions at an affordable price.

Do the advantages of open source make sense for your organization?

Join John Leh, Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, as he hosts a roundtable discussion with Randy Jones, VP of Business Development at eThink Education; Laura Kiley, Channel Partner Manager at GO1 and Ollie Browning, UK Sales Director at GO1.

You’ll get practical advice and insights, including:

Business and educational benefits of open source

Anatomy of an open source learning solution

Examples of successful solutions

Differences between open source and a commercial LMS

Role of content in employee and extended enterprise solutions

Top 5 uses of an open source LMS

Tips for getting started

Need Proven LMS Selection Guidance?

Looking for a learning platform that truly fits your organization’s needs? We’re here to help! Submit the form below to schedule a free preliminary consultation at your convenience.

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blackbrian6-blog · 5 years ago

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The Weekly Roundup: Your Go-To Guide For Everything You May Have Missed This Week & More! 3/23 – 3/29

Welcome to Ben Greenfield's Weekly Roundup and Cool New Discoveries!

Ben Greenfield's discoveries from the latest news from the fronts of fitness, nutrition, health, wellness, biohacking and anti-aging research. I also recap my upcoming events and special announcements so you can keep up with giveaways, discounts and more!

New Discoveries Of The Week: Cool New Things I'm Trying, Books I'm Reading, And More!

– Awesome “Cookbook” I Discovered

–The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science: This book was winner of the James Beard Award for General Cooking and the IACP Cookbook of the Year Award and described by the New York Times Book Review as “the one book you must have, no matter what you’re planning to cook or where your skill level falls.”

…Ever wondered how to pan-fry a steak with a charred crust and an interior that's perfectly medium-rare from edge to edge when you cut into it? How to make homemade mac ‘n' cheese that is as satisfyingly gooey and velvety-smooth as the blue box stuff, but far tastier? How to roast a succulent, moist turkey (forget about brining!)―and use a foolproof method that works every time? Author J. Kenji López-Alt has pondered all these questions and more.

In The Food Lab, Kenji focuses on the science behind beloved American dishes, delving into the interactions between heat, energy, and molecules that create great food. Kenji shows that conventional methods often don’t work that well, and home cooks can achieve far better results using new―but simple―techniques.

In hundreds of easy-to-make recipes, you will find out how to make a foolproof Hollandaise sauce in just two minutes, how to transform one simple tomato sauce into a half dozen dishes, and much more. It's blowing the mind of my little food podcasting twin boys, and I'm digging it, too. You can grab the cookbook (along with its 1000+ color photographs here).

– My Afternoon Chocolate “Tea”

MiCacao Tea: I've mentioned MiCacao tea once or twice on previous podcasts and posts. My friend Tucker Max recently informed me he doesn't drink coffee in the morning but he does drink chocolate every morning and proceeded to tell me about “MiCacao Tea.” I ordered it from Amazon and I must admit that it literally tastes like drinking a chocolate bar.

It is a loose-leaf chocolate tea made from the shell of the cacao bean and is 100% cocoa-based. It is completely natural, preservative free, without any artificial flavors or starches, and is also organic, gluten-free, vegan, and sugar-free. The ingredients are – drumroll please… cacao nibs and cacao shells. Can't beat that. Click here to grab a bag from Amazon (I blend two full tablespoons with hot water in my NutriBullet, along with cinnamon, stevia, a pinch of sea salt, and, for a real party in your mouth, a tablespoon of coconut oil). Bon appétit!

Podcasts I Recorded This Week:

The Most Powerful Electrical Muscle Stimulation Device Known To Humankind (& Exactly How To Use It).

This episode was brought to you by Organifi Green Juice, Birdwell Beach Britches – code: BEN, and Kion

KetoFasting: The Dark Side of Fasting & Ketosis (+How To Use Cyclic Ketosis To Fix The Issues)

This episode was brought to you by Trusii, Clearlight Saunas Fit Vine Wine and Kion

Click here to go Premium and access an entire vault of never-before-seen videos, audios, PDFs, and every past episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast.

Articles I Published This Week:

My full article feed and all past archives of my articles are here if you want to check out past articles.

Special Announcements:

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Articles & Podcasts I Was Featured In This Week:

– Kris Gethin, Founder of the Dramatic Transformation Principle, Interviews Ben Greenfield

– The Easy Way to Stop Eating Junk Food

– Why Is Silicon Valley So Obsessed With the Virtue of Suffering?

Upcoming Events:

– April 6, 2019: The Future of Personalized and Precision Medicine with Horses, Bourbon, and Ben Greenfield at The Kentucky Castle, Versailles, Kentucky. I join doctors Matt Dawson and Mike Mallin for a special presentation on the future of medicine. Register here to join us for this unique & extremely limited event.

– April 12 – 13, 2019: FitCon Summit, Salt Lake City, Utah. FitCon® encourages everyone to Find Their Fit. It does not matter whether it is powerlifting, Crossfit, bodybuilding, roller derby, or even axe throwing. Be sure to visit the Kion booth in the expo! Get your tickets here. Use code: BEN50 to save $50.

– April 26 – 28, 2019: Paleo f(x) Conference, Austin, Texas. Join me, staff from my company, Kion, and the rest of your tribe at Paleo f(x)™ 2019, the largest gathering of Paleo / ancestral health / keto / functional medicine / strength & conditioning experts in the world… see everything you'll get out of this enriching, enlightening event. Besides, April is a wonderful time of year to visit Austin, TX….Get your tickets here.

– June 6, 2019: An Afternoon of Transformation with Ben Greenfield, Denver, Colorado. A special event hosted by MaxLiving, which exists to transform lives through chiropractic.

– June 15, 2019: Ultimate Fitness Run, Mt. Spokane, Washington. Join me and my family for a fun, as-competitive-as-you-make-it day outside for an OCR-style challenge. Register here while you still can. This event sells out quickly each year. Save with code: Ben10UFR and register here.

– June 23 – July 7, 2019: European Detox Retreat, Paracelsus al Ronc, Switzerland. At this 2019 liver detox and R&R retreat at the beautiful Swiss Mountain Clinic in the Italian quarter of Switzerland, you'll stay on-site and receive diagnostics and treatments from the best doctors of biological medicine to detox your liver and your soul. Here's the link to more info.

-View Ben's Calendar Here

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My Most Popular Facebook Post This Week:

When it comes to “biohacking” sleep, it seems that the single most important (and confusing) variable for most folks is…

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Leave your comments below – and any news or discoveries that you think I missed!

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Source: https://bengreenfieldfitness.com/article/weekly-roundup-articles/weekly-roundup-3-23-3-29/

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itsantraajaal · 4 years ago

Text

Everything about SEO

WHAT IS SEO & WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Digital Marketing | Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

You’ve probably heard a hundred times that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a vital digital marketing tool, but even if you have a basic understanding of what it entails, you may still not have a solid grasp on this complex and multifaceted creature.

SEO is made up of multiple different elements, and knowing what they are and how they work is key to understanding why SEO is so important. In short, SEO is significant because it makes your website more visible, and that means more traffic and more opportunities to convert prospects into customers.

Beyond that, it is also a valuable tool for brand awareness, building relationships with prospects, and positioning yourself as an authoritative and trustworthy expert in your field. So without further ado, here's everything you need to know about SEO and why it’s vital in today’s digital world.

The Crucial Elements of SEO

Keywords

Long gone are the days when keywords were the only SEO technique that mattered, but that doesn’t mean they aren't still crucial. The difference is that today, keywords must be well-researched, carefully chosen, and judiciously used in your content in order to be effective. But what are keywords, exactly? Keywords are words and phrases that prospects use to find online content and that brands can then use to connect with prospects who are looking for their products and services.

When researching keywords, it’s important to look for ones that have high search rates and low competition and to choose short-tail keywords long-tail keywords, and local keywords to work into your content. You can also use keywords to optimize all your titles, URLs, and other on-page SEO elements.

Content

Content is a vital part of SEO because it’s the vehicle you use to reach and engage audiences. For instance, if you owned a nursery and wanted to increase your visibility, you might publish a series of blogs about gardening, choosing the right species of plants, growing tips, and more. When a person who wanted to know about gardening went looking for that information, your blog would come up, and you'd be able to build a relationship with that prospect by providing valuable information. When the time came for that prospect to buy a plant, for instance, you’d be the first nursery that came to mind. Today’s content must be educational, but also interesting, relevant, engaging, and shareable. Content comes in a variety of forms, including:

Web page content

Videos

Blogs

Infographics

Podcasts

Whitepapers and e-books

Social media posts

Local Listings

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO involves external optimization practices that happen away from your site rather than on it. The main technique used for off-page SEO is backlink building since quality backlinks to your site from external sites tell search engines that your site is valuable and high-quality, and this builds authority.

There are many tactics to backlink building, and some of the current best practices include guest blogging, creating lots of infographics that will be highly shared, and mentioning influencers in your content.

Local SEO

Local SEO is becoming increasingly important as more and more people use mobile devices for search. These days, 57% of all searches are performed from tablets and smartphones, and half of those searches have local intent.

If you owned a restaurant, for instance, then local SEO would ensure that when people in your area went looking for the best restaurants in town, they’ll come across your site. Along with using local keywords, other local SEO best practices include claiming directory listings, creating location-specific pages for your site, and creating pages for your business on Google My Business, Google+, and Google Maps.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing refers to paid marketing efforts, and it includes things like native ads, Google AdWords, social media ads, pay-per-click, Google shopping ads, display ads, and more.

Although SEM isn't usually a major component of a comprehensive SEO strategy, it does have its place because it can help you reach new and highly targeted audiences..

Understanding the Importance of SEO for Modern Businesses

Visibility and Rankings

One of the most important functions of SEO is increasing visibility, which means making it easier for prospects to find you when they search for something you have to offer. Visibility is directly related to your ranking.

The higher you rank on a search engine result page (SERP), the more likely prospects are to see you and click through to your site. The more effective your SEO efforts, the higher your ranking and the better your visibility, which is especially important when you consider that a quarter of web users never click past the first SERP.

Web Traffic

Increased web traffic is one of the main goals of SEO, and you increase traffic when you increase visibility and rankings. Consider this for a moment: nearly 33% of clicks go to the first ranking page, and the first five listings get over 75% of all clicks.

If you want more prospects to find your website through a search engine, then you need SEO practices that will help you rank among the top five positions, and ideally number one.

Authority

The concept of authority is relatively new in SEO, but it’s becoming increasingly important to search engines because it’s becoming more important to web users. Essentially, authority means that your website is trustworthy, high quality, relevant, and has something to offer. The more authority your site has, the higher your ranking will be, and the more prospects will come to trust your brand.

Creating a Better Visitor Experience

Another reason SEO is critical is because all the time you put into generating great content and optimizing your site with on-page SEO improves the usability of your site, and this creates a seamless and positive customer experience.

For instance, when you take steps to make your site responsive, it will make it usable for all your mobile visitors as well as people who visit from a laptop or desktop. Similarly, by increasing your page load speed, you'll reduce your bounce rate and encourage visitors to spend longer on your site. Nearly 50% of consumers expect a page to load within two seconds, and the longer the load time, the higher the bounce rate and the lower your conversions.

Growth

In the end, the ultimate reason SEO is essential is that it can help you achieve many of your business goals. SEO can help you build better relationships with your audience, improve the customer experience, increase your authority, drive more people to your site, give you an edge over the competition, and increase conversions, which means more sales, more loyal customers, and more growth for your business.

Search Engines Are Fallible

A final note that’s worth mentioning is that SEO is important because search engines aren’t perfect, and if you don’t take steps to counter their failings, then your website will pay the price.

For example, if a site doesn’t have a proper link structure, then search engines may not crawl and index the site properly, and this can lower rankings. Moreover, coding errors can block search engines entirely, making it impossible for your site to rank, no matter how much time you put into other SEO efforts. Other common areas where search engines can run into problems include:

Duplicate pages

Forms

Images, flash, audio files, video, and other non-textual content

Language and Semantics

Final thoughts

As you can see, SEO is a complex undertaking that involves many different techniques, tactics, and best practices. Moreover, these best practices are always evolving as consumer and web-user behaviors change, as new technologies emerge, and as search engines change their algorithms. That being said, SEO is still of the utmost importance for any business that wants to be visible online, so your efforts are well worth it.

SEO can help a business accomplish a number of goals, including ones involving brand awareness, traffic, conversions, customer experience, and much more, which is why it’s so important for digital marketers to have a solid grasp of what SEO is, how it can help achieve goals, and what the most cutting-edge best practices are.

Learn the tools and technologies needed to meet the challenges of tomorrow with a Professional Diploma in Search Marketing. Download a brochure today!

Stay connected with Antraajaal more information about our best branding and digital marketing services

#seo company in chandigarh #best seo agency in chandigarh #ANTRAAJAAL

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douglassmiith · 4 years ago

Text

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

An equivalent experience is one that has been deliberately conceived of and built to be able to be used by the widest possible range of people. To create an equivalent experience, you must understand all the different ways people interact with technology, as well as common barriers they experience.

If you spend enough time interacting with digital accessibility practitioners, you may encounter the phrase “equivalent experience.” This saying concisely sums up a lot of the philosophy behind accessibility work.

Our industry tends to place a lot of focus on how, often at the expense of why. For accessibility-related concerns, it is vital to learn about the history, and lived experiences of disabled people as a context for understanding the need for design and code created with access in mind.

This is the first of two articles on the topic of equivalency, and how it relates to digital accessibility. It will help us define what an equivalent experience is. Once we have a common understanding established, I’ll then discuss how to go about implementing equivalent experiences for common accessibility-related issues.

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

The previous list may not be the most comfortable thing to read. If you haven’t closed the browser tab already, take a moment to consider your daily workflows, as well as who your coworkers are, and you’ll begin to understand what I’m getting at.

At its core, delivering an equivalent experience is ultimately about preserving intent — with the intent being the motivating force behind creating a website or web app and all the content and features it contains.

This translates to making the meaning behind every interaction, every component, every photo or illustration, every line of code being understandable by the widest range of people, regardless of their device or ability.

Prior Art

I’m not the first person to discuss this topic (and hopefully not the last). Speaker, trainer, and consultant Nicolas Steenhout is one such advocate. His great post, Accessibility is about people, not standards, is well worth reading.

If you’re the kind of person who is into podcasts, his A11y Rules has a wonderful series called Soundbites. It features “short discussions with people with disabilities about the barriers they encounter on the web.” These insightful interviews also touch on what this article discusses.

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

Showing examples of what something is not can be a way to help define it. For equivalent experiences, an example would be a web app geared towards use by the general public not having a mobile breakpoint.

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

Most likely, whoever conceived of, designed, and developed this didn’t stop to think about circumstances other than their own. In this sort of (unfortunately still all too common) scenario, I all but guarantee that the web app looks great on the laptops or desktops of the designers and developers who made it.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

People using a smartphone to access this website are victims of circumstance. The extra effort someone needs to do to get it to work indirectly communicates that they weren’t a priority, and therefore not valued. If you’ve used the web for any significant portion of time, I’m willing to bet this, or a similar experience has happened to you.

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

Screen zooming is when someone is prevented from being able to zoom their displays and make text larger—many native mobile apps are guilty of this. When you disallow this sort of behavior, you’re telling prospective users that unless they have vision similar to you, you aren’t interested in them being able to use your app.

For this scenario, a gentle reminder that we will all get older, and with aging comes a whole host of vision-related concerns. A question you should be asking yourself is if your future self will be capable of using the things your present self is making. A follow-up question is if you’re also asking the people you’re managing this.

I just had my eyes dilated, so I can’t read any text that isn’t comically large. I don’t know how to use a screen reader. I’ll be fine in a few hours, but this has been a fascinating journey into how well third-party iOS apps respect text size accessibility settings!

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

To pass the pepper, the machine, sends it through an elaborate system of weights, counterweights, ramps, rolling objects, catapults, guillotines, burners, timers, carousels, etc. — all constructed from commonly found kitchen items. While this setup will technically ensure the pepper is passed, it is an annoying, overwrought, time-intensive process.

Many digital experiences are a lot like a Rube Goldberg machine when it comes to accessibility. Since accessibility issues are so prevalent, many forms of assistive technology provide a large suite of features to allow their user to work around common obstacles.

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

Frustratingly, the extra time and effort a disabled person has to put into operating a technically accessible experience may feed back into their disability condition(s). For example, the presence of a motor control disability such as arthritis may make the overall experience even more taxing.

Cognitive accessibility concerns are also another important thing to consider. What may seem easy to understand or intuitive to use for one person may not be for another. This is especially prevalent in situations where there is:

Cognitive accessibility isn’t an abstract concern, either. Poor user interface design that ignores the circumstances of the end user and dumps too much cognitive load onto them can have very real, very serious consequences.

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

These factors are not mutually exclusive. Proponents of Spoon Theory know that inaccessible experiences conspire to sap a person’s mental and physical energy, leaving them exhausted and demotivated. Worse, these sorts of scenarios are often more than just a person perpetually operating at a diminished capacity.

Frustrating digital experiences can lead to a person abandoning them outright, internalizing the system’s fault as their own personal failure. This abandonment may also translate to a person’s willingness and ability to operate other digital interfaces. In other words: the more we turn people away, the more they’ll stop trying to show up.

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

I also took a purposely loose definition of assistive technology. All-too-often we assume the term “accessible” only means “works in a screen reader.” The truth of the matter is that assistive technology is so much more than that.

The way the web is built — its foundational principles and behaviors — make it extraordinarily adaptable. It’s us, the people who build on and for the web, who break that. By failing to consider these devices and methods of interacting with web content, we implicitly drift further away from equivalency.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

Damien Senger, digital designer, uses a browser extension called Midnight Lizard to enforce a similar experience across multiple websites. This helps them “to focus on the content directly and to limit having too big differences between websites. It is also helping me to avoid too harsh color contrasts that are really uncomfortable.“

Damien also writes, “Often websites are really difficult to read for me because either of the lack of consistency in the layout, too narrow lines or just not enough balance between font size and line height. Related to that, color can create a lot of unhelpful distraction and I am struggling when too harsh contrast is nearby text.”

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

It’s not too difficult to imagine why distracting and annoying your users is a bad idea. In the case of ads, the industry is unregulated, meaning that rules to prohibit ADHD, migraine, and/or seizure-triggering animations aren’t honored. Through this lens, an ad blocker is a form of consumer self-defense.

I’ll say it again: Telling users their access isn’t as important as your bottom line is a BAD take. Ads are fine as long as they don’t create a barrier by moving! #ADHD #A11y #PSH #WCAG https://t.co/i6mifI0JRE

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Kenny Hitt also chimes in about ads: “…regardless of the platform, the thing that annoys me most are websites with ads that essentially cause the site to constantly auto update. This prevents me as a screen reader user from reading the content of those websites.”

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

A lack of an equivalent experience translates directly to lost opportunity. Many individuals I spoke with mentioned that they’d abandon a digital experience that was inaccessible more often than not.

Brian Moore mentions, “there are web sites where I like their products a lot but won’t buy them because the site itself is such a struggle, and attempts to reach out have met with either silence or resistance to taking any action.”

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Fluance’s entire web presence exists to sell products. While updating a website or web app to be accessible can be an effort-intensive process, it would definitely be in Fluance’s best interest to make sure its checkout user flow is as robust as it could be.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Opportunity isn’t limited to just e-commerce, either. As more and more services digitize, we paradoxically push more people out of being to live in the society that relies on these digitized services—people with protected rights. Again, this shift away from an equivalent experience is the culprit.

Justin Yarbrough was “applying for an accessibility-related job with the Arizona Department of Economic Security over the summer, where they wanted me to take an assessment. The button to start the assessment was a clickable div. They wound up waving the assessment requirement for the position.”

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

Soren Hamby, product marketing agency manager and design advocate, writes of their experiences using screen magnification software and screen reading capabilities. Soren has “varying levels of vision so [they] tend to not always need the same level of accommodation.”

Of note, Soren mentions their struggles with grocery delivery apps, specifically “the carts often only read the quantities rather than the item name. It’s much easier to order with a sighted person.”

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

Second is the fact that Soren uses multiple forms of assistive technology, with the mix a shifting combination depending on a combination of their task at hand and how well the digital interface meets their access needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

Having to rely on the help of a sighted person to order groceries is not ideal. For many, the acquiring, preparation, and consuming of food can be highly personal acts. Being forced to incorporate outside assistance into this process is far different than willingly inviting someone in to share an experience. The same notion applies to every other digital product, as well.

Kenny also mentions grocery apps: “…my local Kroger grocery store has started an app redesign in June 2019 that is breaking accessibility with their app.” In discussing this regression, he goes on to elaborate, “Because I can’t financially change to another business, I won’t let it drop. Kroger is going to discover that I don’t stop with a problem. Persistence in solving problems is a requirement for any disabled person if you want to succeed in the world.”

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

Kroger would be wise to listen to Kenny’s feedback. The grocery company Winn-Dixie was recently successfully sued for not being operable with a screen reader. The lawsuit argued that the grocer’s website was heavily integrated with their physical stores, and therefore violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Another recent case involves the Domino’s Pizza franchise. Taken all the way to the Supreme Court, the ruling clearly and unambiguously states that preventing someone from using a website or app, simply because they used screen reading software, is unconstitutional.

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

Despite some ugly misconceptions about the ruling, the evidence is clear: in the United States, there is now legal precedent for private companies to be sued for violating civil rights via an inaccessible digital experience. Europe and some parts of Asia have similar laws, as well.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny, who started using a computer with a screen reader in 1984 says, “When I run into accessibility issues nowadays, I’ll try reporting it, when I get the usual response from the feedback of the person not caring, I just give up and walk away. If [the response] comes from somebody in marketing agency who doesn’t understand accessibility, I just give up and go away. There’s no point in trying to teach these people about accessibility.”

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

“If I find significant issues with a site, I do report it. Depending on who I talk to it ranges from ‘here’s what doesn’t work’ to all kinds of technical detail about why if I can get to the right people.”

Getting it to the right people is key. Another part of equivalent experience is handling feedback in a timely and constructive way, much as how you would with any other issue with your product or service.

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

Also know that assigning someone to mind an email address to conduct tasks on behalf of an assistive technology user is not an appropriate, effective, or sustainable solution. Remember the concerns surrounding autonomy discussed earlier.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

We’ve covered actual people’s everyday frustrations, as well as civil rights and the current legal landscape. If these don’t motivate you, allow me to present another factor to consider: profit.

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

First is the Click Away Pound Survey, a survey conducted in both 2016 and 2019 to “explore the online shopping experience of people with disabilities and examine the cost to business of ignoring disabled shoppers.”

The survey discovered that more than 4 million people abandoned a retail website because of the access barriers they found. These people represent 17.1 billion pounds (~$21.1 billion USD) in lost potential revenue.

Second is the The Purchasing Power of Working-Age Adults With Disabilities (PDF), conducted in 2018 by the American Institutes for Research. This study discovered that there is an estimated $490 billion in disposable income amongst disabled working-age adults. That’s billion with a capital B.

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

First is that from a historical perspective, the web is still very much new. On top of that, its ubiquity is even more recent, meaning that use by the general population is a small sliver of the amount of time it’s been around.

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

This is a gigantic market that we, as an industry, are only now becoming aware of. Rather than approaching accessibility with a mindset of risk aversion, why not use this learning as a great way to view your current and future business opportunities?

Complying with the ADA is by definition the legally required minimum for accessibility. It doesn’t account for a good user experience, usability, and innovation. Unless you strive for the minimum all the time, compliance is not enough.https://t.co/qOYw6ji23u

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

Too often we think of accessibility as a problem to be solved, rather than a way of looking at the world. Equivalent experiences necessitate that we question our assumptions and biases and think about experiences outside of our own. It can be an uncomfortable thing to think about at first, but it’s all in the service of making things usable for all.

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

Via http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/

source https://scpie.weebly.com/blog/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they

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laurelkrugerr · 4 years ago

Text

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

Prior Art

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/ source https://scpie1.blogspot.com/2020/05/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they.html

0 notes

riichardwilson · 4 years ago

Text

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

Prior Art

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/ source https://scpie.tumblr.com/post/619383176177090560

0 notes

scpie · 4 years ago

Text

Equivalent Experiences: What Are They?

About The Author

Eric is a Boston-based designer who helps create straightforward solutions that address a person’s practical, physical, cognitive, and emotional needs. More about Eric Bailey …

The State Of Things

The truth of the matter is that even though we live in a multi-device world full of smartphones, augmented reality, voice assistants, and IoT smart sensors, our default is still predominately:

Visual,

large screen,

fast connection,

powerful computer and display,

male,

white,

wealthy,

young,

Western,

technologically-literate,

and abled.

This is reflective of the biases that are inherent in how we design, develop and grow products.

Prior Art

What Isn’t An Equivalent Experience?

It’s not difficult to imagine a situation where I’d want to adjust my work benefits while on the go. (Large preview)

With this example, everyone using a device with a small display is forced to pinch, pan, and zoom to get what they need. Here, the burden is placed on anyone whose only crime was using a smartphone.

A designer saying, “it has enough contrast for me and my ‘old’ eyes” is the same as when a dev says, “works on my machine.”

The thing is though, we don’t design or develop for ourselves.

So, are we really ok with saying, “you don’t matter” to folks who are not like us? #a11y

— Heather (@_hmig) December 19, 2019

This example is also a hop, skip, and a jump away from another common, yet serious accessibility issue we often don’t consider: screen zooming:

Screen Zooming

(Thread)

— Em Lazer-Walker (@lazerwalker) January 29, 2020

Accessible Experiences Aren’t Necessarily Equivalent Ones

This might be a little difficult of a concept to grasp at first. Let’s use this Rube Goldberg machine made by Joseph Herscher to pass the pepper to his dinner guest to compare:

[embedded content]

Unfortunately, discovering obstacles, and then figuring out and activating the appropriate combination of features to overcome them can take a disproportionate amount of time and effort.

To say it another way: A simple click on a button for an abled person may take far more time and effort for a disabled person, depending on how the button has been made.

Chilling Effects

The military is full of examples of poor interfaces being forced on people who don’t have a choice in the matter. It’s also one of the origins of Inclusive Design thinking. (Large preview)

Compounding Effects

“Nobody has complained before” is a silly excuse for not caring about accessibility. You’re right, they didn’t complain. They left.

— Vote blue, no matter who. (@karlgroves) December 8, 2018

Don’t Take My Word For It

To make the abstract immediate, I reached out on Twitter to ask people about their experiences using assistive technology to browse the web.

Consistency

For some, assistive technology can mean specialized browser extensions. These micro-apps are used to enhance, augment, and customize a browsing experience to better suit someone’s needs.

How To Maintain Equivalency

In addition, Damien also augments their browsing experience by using ad blocking technology “not only for ads but to block animations or content that are too distracting for my ADHD.”

— Shell Little (@ShellELittle) February 27, 2020

Again, a lack of regulation means the user must take measures into their own hands to keep the experience equivalent.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Opportunity

Brian cites the Fluance website as the most recent example. The bugs present in its shopping user flows prevents him from buying high-end consumer audio equipment.

Those lost sales add up. (Large preview)

Jim Kiely tells me about his brother, who “has stopped paying his water bill online because the city water website [doesn’t] work well with a screen reader and high contrast.”

Personally, I have friends who have been prevented from submitting résumés to multiple sites because their job application portals were inaccessible.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Adaptability

There are three things to consider here:

First is the surface-level acknowledgment that the app operates differently for different people, the main point this article is driving at.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Make sure that the labels for your interactive controls are relevant and concise.

Incorporate disability scenarios and conditions into your design personas.

Avoid using absolute length units. (No, seriously.)

Avoid setting maximum widths and heights.

Avoid using fixed and sticky-scrolling components, especially larger-sized ones.

Test your layouts by zooming and/or increasing your default type size to make sure that content does not get obscured.

This brings us to our third and most important point:

Autonomy

This app looks great, provided you can see it. (Large preview)

Equality

For both cases, the cost to implement fixes were far cheaper than going to court—something to think about the next time you’re deciding where to order pizza.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Reactivity

Another way to maintain an equivalent experience — one that is often not thought about — is to give reports about accessibility issues the same weight and concern as other software bugs.

Reported accessibility issues are oftentimes downplayed and ignored, or are sent to someone ignorant of the issue and/or powerless to fix it.

Kenny’s view is shared by many others in the disability community. Remember what I said about compounding effects earlier.

Brian reports that,

Responding to an accessibility issue is easy:

Thank the person for taking the time and effort to report the issue.

Acknowledge the issue and identify what person or team will be handling it.

Ask clarifying questions as needed.

Offer potential workarounds, with the understanding that they’re only temporary until the underlying issue is addressed.

Offer to involve them in the process, including notifying them when the issue has been fixed.

Being open, honest, and transparent about your bug fixing process goes a long way to establishing trust in a population that has historically and routinely been overlooked.

How To Maintain Equivalency

Create an accessibility statement, including known issues, a tentative timeline for their fixes, and easy to discover contact information.

Ensure that anyone customer-facing (quality assurance, customer support, marketing agency, etc.) are trained on protocol for accessibility-related issue reporting.

Quantify accessibility-related issues, both internal and reported.

Be on the lookout for patterns and trends with discovered accessibility issues, as they represent learning opportunities.

Understand that not all platforms to collect feedback are created equal.

Motivation

There are two provoking studies I’d like to call attention to, but they are by no means the only studies performed in this space.

(Large preview)

There are two of the (many) takeaways from these studies I’d like to highlight:

Second is that the general population contains many people who are disabled, and that their needs are not being met. These unmet needs represent billions of dollars of potential revenue.

— mikey is at home (@mikeyil) March 5, 2020

Let’s Not Stop Here

As web professionals, it is our job, and our privilege to ensure that the experiences we deliver are equivalent. In the second part, we’ll investigate how to do just that.

Further Reading

“WCAG Primer,” Tetra Logical

“The Web Accessibility Basics,” Marco Zehe’s Accessibility Blog

“Web Accessibility Checklist: 15 Things To Improve Your Website Accessibility,” WebsiteSetup.org

“The Importance Of Manual Accessibility Testing: Call The Professionals,” Eric Bailey, Smashing Magazine

“Taking Accessibility Beyond Compliance,” Dennis Deacon, 24 Accessibility

“Videos Of People With Disabilities Using Tech,” Hampus Sethfors, Axess Lab

“Web Accessibility Perspectives: Explore The Impact And Benefits For Everyone,” Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), W3C

Thank you to Brian Moore, Damien Senger, Jim Kiely, Justin Yarbrough, Kenny Hitt, and Soren Hamby for sharing their insights and experiences.

(ra, il)

Website Design & SEO Delray Beach by DBL07.co

Delray Beach SEO

source http://www.scpie.org/equivalent-experiences-what-are-they/

0 notes

gethealthy18-blog · 4 years ago

Text

345: How to Use Circadian Fasting to Improve Health & Slow Aging With Dr. Amy Shah

New Post has been published on http://healingawerness.com/news/345-how-to-use-circadian-fasting-to-improve-health-slow-aging-with-dr-amy-shah/

345: How to Use Circadian Fasting to Improve Health & Slow Aging With Dr. Amy Shah

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This podcast is sponsored by Jigsaw Health, my source for magnesium. You probably know, if you’ve read my blog, that magnesium is responsible for over 300 biochemical reactions in the body. It impacts blood pressure, metabolism, immune function, and many other aspects of health, including hormones. It’s known as the master mineral and it’s one of the few supplements I take regularly. And I have found a specific way to take it that works best for me in very specific forms because if magnesium is taken in the wrong way it can lead to digestive upset or if it’s taken too quickly it can cause all kinds of problems. So, I take two supplements. One called MagSRT which is a slow release form of the dimagnesium malate. The slow release technology makes it easier on the digestive system. So I don’t get any of the digestive disturbance that comes with some forms of magnesium. I take this form in the morning and at lunch. So, two capsules with breakfast, two capsules with lunch. And at night, I take a different product MagSoothe, which is magnesium glycinate which is magnesium bound with the amino acid glycine to help sleep. And in combination, I noticed the biggest effect from those two particular products. You can check them both out and save by going to jigsawhealth.com/wellnessmama. And the code wellness10 will give you $10 off any order.

This podcast is sponsored by BLUblox. That’s B-L-U-B-L-O-X, which is an advanced light-filtering eyewear company. You’ve probably seen pictures of me on social media wearing orange glasses of various types at night. And here’s why. In nature, we aren’t exposed to certain types of light after dark, specifically, blue light, because that type of light signals the body that it’s daytime. That in turn suppresses melatonin and can interfere with sleep. This is the reason that a really dramatic study found that camping for seven days straight with no artificial light at all could actually completely reset and heal circadian rhythm and help a lot of light-related problems, like seasonal affective disorder. This is also the reason that I wear orange glasses after dark to block these types of light and protect my sleep, which I am adamant about protecting. I also wear certain types of yellow glasses and anti-fatigue glasses during the day if I want a computer to reduce eye fatigue. BLUblox has orange glasses and yellow glasses. Their orange glasses for nighttime wear are designed to block 100% of the wavelengths between 400 nanometers and 550 nanometers, which are the ones that are studied to interfere with sleep and melatonin production, and circadian rhythm. My kids also wear these kinds of glasses at night. And I noticed a difference in their sleep as well, which is a huge win for a mom. This is especially important when we’re watching a family movie at night or looking at any kind of screen as the artificial light, there is a source of blue light and can interfere with sleep. You can learn more, they have a ton of educational content and check out all of their innovative protective glasses by going to blublox.com/wellnessmama and using the code wellnessmama to save 15%.

Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, that’s Wellnesse with an E on the end, which is my new line of personal care products like hair care and toothpaste that are completely safe and as effective as conventional alternatives. And this episode, I am so excited to have today’s repeat guest Dr. Amy Shah, who is a double board-certified doctor and nutrition expert, with training from Cornell, Columbia, and Harvard University. She’s also one of my favorite people to follow on Instagram @fastingmd. And drawing from her background in internal medicine and allergy and Immunology, as well as her own wellness journey, she has dedicated her practice to helping her patients feel better and live healthier, using integrative and holistic approaches to wellness. She has a list as long as my arm of accolades and awards but she’s also just a great voice for moms and women in health in very practical ways. And in this episode, we go deep on the idea of something called circadian fasting, which even if you’re not into fasting at all, it’s a very easy intro way to get into fasting with a lot of really profound benefits. So she explains how you can use this simple method as a method of anti-aging for a lot of aspects of health. She really goes deep on the research and how you can implement it. Really fascinating episode and I can’t wait to jump in. Here we go. Dr. Amy, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Dr. Shah: Thank you so much for having me again, Katie.

Katie: Well, your first episode was so popular and I loved our conversation that I knew I wanted to have you back on. And I have seen you posting so much right on Instagram and about one of my favorite topics that I knew we had to have an in-depth conversation about it and that is fasting in all of its forms, but specifically, circadian fasting which you are a big proponent of. So to start broad, can you explain what that means? What circadian fasting is?

Dr. Shah: Yes. So, I know Katie, you’re a busy mom. I’m a busy mom. And I know a lot of your listeners are busy in so many different ways. And I was trying to think of a way to incorporate intermittent fasting in my life that made sense into a busy life with a family. And when I found the science behind circadian rhythms, which is basically that every single cell in our body has a clock and if you can tune your body to this clock, everything works better: your gut, your brain, your immune system, your hormones specifically. So I’m combining the science of circadian rhythms with the science of intermittent fasting. And that’s what circadian fasting is. And so it sounds really complicated, but really, it’s super simple.

It’s basically not eating three hours before bed, and then going to bed, and then waking up and having breakfast and so there’ll be a break of between 12 to 16 or 18 hours between the last time you ate food the night before, and the first time you eat food the next day. And so it’s something that’s maybe a little stretch if you’re someone who’s a typical American who eats, you know, 15, 16 hours a day, but it’s not so much of a stressful stretch that you can’t incorporate it into your busy life.

Katie: Yeah, and I think there’s an important distinction here that we can talk about because this kind of lines up with the idea of time-restricted eating or time-restricted feeding. And I know, there have been a lot of studies on this by people like Dr. Satchin Panda, and others. And the data really is compelling when they look at time-restricted eating and different windows from eating in even just like a 12-hour window or an 8-hour window.

I know they’ve done research on cancer patients and all kinds of different scenarios and found that eating and even just a little bit shorter of a window is important, but I feel like circadian fasting is supportive in another degree as well, which is that you’re kind of timing this with the body’s natural rhythm, with sleep and with light in a lot of cases, because typically we’re sleeping when it’s dark. And so avoiding eating after dark and avoiding eating during that time. But what does the data say that you’re seeing about the benefits of time-restricted eating and especially in circadian fasting when you’re timing it with your sleep?

Dr. Shah: Yes, so great questions, and absolutely in the science, scientific literature, this type of intermittent fasting is really considered time-restricted eating or time-restricted feeding when it comes to animal studies. And so the animal studies have been quite robust. Dr. Panda is one of the lead researchers at the Salk Institute and they talk about it’s not, you know, just what you eat, it’s when you eat. You could feed animals, the same exact diet, but you restrict the time that they eat it in. And they have less disease than the animals who are eating all day and all night long. And it makes sense, Katie, because think about it, our bodies are set to have a metabolism time and a repair and renew time and because we can’t be doing everything all the time.

So there has to be a timing a time where we actually repair and renew. And the trigger for that for us is nighttime, and the trigger is no food. So for example, when your body senses that there’s no food coming, it switches on the repair renewal pathways, which we so badly need. But if you think about it, it’s like having guests all the time.

So if in a typical Western diet, we are having guests all the time, all day, all night until the very late into the night, sometimes 11, 12 midnight. So it’s like, how could you ever clean your kitchen, deep clean your house if you’re constantly entertaining guests. And so you think about it the same way, like if you’re constantly eating when are you ever gonna get to deep clean and repair your cell and that’s why they think that timing your food, as well as restricting your food and making good food choices are all equivalently important in long-term health.

Katie: Got it and I know it’s… I’ve done a lot of research kind of a deep dive into this as well in the past few years. And the research in general about fasting really is incredible and there’s so many different types, obviously. And everything from water fasting, which they’ve done studies with chemo patients on, all the way to just eating in a time-restricted window. And then, of course, everything in between. Are there any other benefits that we know from the literature on fasting in general? And can you get these same benefits from shorter-term circadian fasting versus a water fast? Or are there a time and a place for a water fast as well?

Dr. Shah: So you mean like an extended water fast versus kind of the shorter windows?

Katie: Yes.

Dr. Shah: So definitely there’s so many benefits of fasting for 24 hours or even I know you do even extended fasting like 3 and 5 days. And I think that the benefits of those are enormous, you know, because you really get into the autophagy zone, which is basically happening at all levels. It’s happening right now to you even if you’re not fasted, but it really ramps up at the 24, at the 48-hour, so there are life-lengthening benefits, anti-aging benefits, metabolism benefits that happen with longer fasts, but you can get so many of those benefits even with this shorter windows of fasting.

And so I think that what I was really shocked at was Ruth Patterson’s study which looked at breast cancer survivors, and they looked at women who had a history of breast cancer and had them do either like, you know, 13 hours of fasting or no fasting at all, just regular advice because they said, “You know, we wanna give these women who are breast cancer survivors, the least stressful activity, don’t want to bombard them with long fasts because they’re already possibly, you know, suffering in other ways.”

And so they did this short fasting intervals, kind of like what we’re talking about with the circadian fasting and they only fasted about 13 hours a night. And they saw over the long term a 34% decrease in breast cancer recurrence. And for me, that is enough to say, “Hey, you know, even in people who have not had breast cancer that has big implications for us as a society, because it’s one of the first big human trials, looking at shorter fasting intervals.”

Katie: Gotcha. And I feel like my listeners probably do have a pretty good idea, but for anyone who hasn’t heard the term autophagy before, can you explain that to us?

Dr. Shah: Yes, sure. So, you know, there is a process that happens in our cell. It’s basically self-cleaning of the cell. So when autophagy is happening and this happens in certain states. It happens with, you know, intermittent fasting can definitely stimulate it, exercise can stimulate it, heat stress can often simulate. So basically, what happens is, your body turns on this process or turns up, I guess I should say because it’s always happening at some low levels, turns up the process of cleaning up our cells. They take out the garbage, they clean out the cell. It’s actually like a self-cleaning method. And the reason why that’s so important, Katie, is that we know that when you’re looking at aging cells, they’re really not doing as much. Their autophagy levels are just lower and slower.

And as the cell gets older, it’s almost a way you can age the cell. If you look at a cell under the microscope, when it isn’t undergoing that self-cleaning process, it just looks older, not functioning as well as a younger cell that has a robust autophagy process. So if you can boost the levels of how much autophagy you’re doing on a regular basis by intermittent fasting or exercise, like why wouldn’t you do that? It’s like a free anti-aging tool that you can use because that cell, under the microscope looks as young as a younger cell. And you can imagine that there is actually no medication, no cream, no other thing that we have in this world that actually does that. So that’s kind of the very exciting part of autophagy. It’s not just for disease, but also for anti-aging.

Katie: Awesome, I think that’s a good segue too. So let’s talk about the aging component, because hopefully most people listening don’t have something like breast cancer or worrying about that recurring or a serious health problem. But fasting has a lot of implications in the aging process as well, from what I understand. So if someone is just looking to kind of age more gracefully, what can fasting do there?

Dr. Shah: Yeah, so just like I told you every skin cell, every cell in our body has a clock, even our skin cells. So the example of skin seems to hit home for women really well because if you think about it, our skin has cells that have clocks as well. And so what they found in a study was that, hey, if you eat late into the night, your skin actually ages faster, you have more UV damage because your cells never get a chance to do that cleanup process, that sweep kind of repair process.

And so you end up having less UV damage when you are doing time-restricted feeding or time-restricted eating, so circadian fasting, in other words. And so for women, less UV damage means less age spots, less wrinkles, and basically, you know, having younger-looking skin that comes from no cream, but comes from actually activity that you can do for free.

Katie: I love that. And so when you talked about fasting and especially longer fast, I wanted to have a note here specific to women because I know there’s conflicting advice about if women should do long fasts in general, and if so, if there’s any special considerations, and I’ll be the first to say that even though this is something I do relatively regularly, it’s not something I recommend across the board or to anyone.

It’s just I know, what works for me after a lot of years of experimentation. And importantly, making sure my hormones and my gut were both in a really good place before I started doing long fasting. But you mentioned there are some benefits to longer fasting, do you have any special considerations that you would give to women, especially if they’re considering that, and is this something you do as well?

Dr. Shah: Great question. So I am that person who tried, you know, longer fasting and failed and learned the hard way that it wasn’t for me, but that’s not to say that I won’t do longer fasting but what I tell women especially and not every woman, like you said, everybody’s very different, depending on your genetics, depending on your baseline health status, your gut and your hormones.

But for many, many women in childbearing age, they have a hard time with longer fasts because we think that our bodies, hormonally, are designed to protect against long-term starvation because we, you know, in the case of if we were going to carry a fetus, potentially, our body is protecting us, and turning off ovulation or turning off the ability to carry a baby, if it senses that you’re in starvation, or long term starvation. So what happens to many people and what happened to me and what could happen potentially we still don’t understand exactly is that you start fasting too aggressively for your own body, and maybe too fast and what you end up having is hormonal disarray.

Your body starts to turn off the signals for ovulation and then you get, say, a missed period or you get a longer cycle or you get an irregular cycle. And those to me are danger signs when someone is fasting that, hey, this is an alarm that your body is setting off that, hey, we don’t feel like your body is capable of carrying a child. And even if you’re not interested in getting pregnant, that’s a sign that you are going a little too hard on the fasting or a lot too hard. And for me, that actually did happen. I first, you know, started fasting really aggressively. First, I started, you know, 16 hours of fasting every day. And then like day three, I start to get really, really hungry and really tired.

So I tell people that that’s another sign, your hunger, your cravings, your mood, and your energy are great markers, non-invasive markers of how a health plan is going for you. If by day three, four, five, you are feeling exhausted, you’re having cravings, you’re feeling moody, your sleep is disturbed. That’s a sign you need to back off. But say you don’t listen to those signs, like I didn’t listen to those signs. And this happens to a lot of other women. And you just keep going and you’ve tried to even do more aggressive ones like 24, maybe 30, 48, and you notice that now, “Oh, I missed my period, I’m always usually at 28 days. And now, I didn’t have one for, say, 35 or I didn’t have one at all.” That, to me, is a sign that there is something off. The health of your cycles is the health of a woman’s hormones. It’s a sign. So that’s when I back off.

Now, there’s very few studies on this. There’s a couple of animal studies that looked at very aggressive, prolonged fasting in rat studies, and they did see a halt in ovulation. But I tell women, “Listen, this is not something that you cannot do just because, you know, at the extremes, it could be too aggressive for you. Just work yourself up.” So the long answer to your short question is work yourself up to that position, just like you mentioned, you really worked on it and you worked on working your body up to that point.

And so if you have been doing intermittent fasting or circadian fasting or anything, and for, you know, months and maybe years, and you want to try a extended fast, that is something that you could do in a crescendo fashion. So now I’ve worked myself up, so I do a 24-hour kind of a dinner to dinner fast, once a month. According to the research studies that were done on the Mormon population, they do a Sunday fast, and they have found enormous differences in cardiac outcomes in people who do that Sunday fast versus people who do not even when they try to control for all the other health practices that, you know, Mormon population may do differently than the general population. They still found that the Sunday fast was an independent item or independent activity that improved cardiac outcomes in that population.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a great point. And like you said, working up to it, I think is key. And like with any study, we can use studies for good kind of general information. But I’m a big proponent of at the end of the day, we’re all responsible for our own health and we find our best health when we figure out specifically what works best for us based on experimentation and genes and testing. And so if I’m doing a long fast, I’m definitely testing first. I’m letting my doctor know. I know my level is going in. I’m testing coming out to make sure I haven’t messed, interfered with hormones or hurt my thyroid. I’m very cautious of that.

And I know a lot of people like that seems like a lot and something I feel like I need to do if I’m going to do extended fasts and something not everybody necessarily is willing to do and that’s why I’m like, I don’t think long fasting necessarily is for everyone. But that’s why things like circadian fasting are amazing because you can get, like you said, not all but most of the benefits with much shorter fast like that. And I feel like it’s been a common theme in research and even just a lot of experts will say, you know, don’t eat late at night or don’t eat right before bed.

That’s recurring advice. But the research really supports that. Even if that’s the only change you make. Like you said, I feel like you get such a boost by not eating late at night. Are there specific guidelines that are helpful? For instance, like I feel great when I stop eating at like 5 or 6, like pretty early in the evening, even though I’m not going to bed at 8:00. Are there guidelines for helping figure out that kind of sweet spot ratio of how far in advance of either sunset or bedtime?

Dr. Shah: Yes, so I love how you’re phrasing it. There’s so many benefits of, you know, people will criticize me and say, “Oh, my God, you’re promoting this very unhealthy practice that’s restrictive.” And what I come back with them is, you know, actually what we’re doing as a status quo is the unhealthy practice, which is eating late into the night, telling people to eat every couple of hours. Like, that is actually the unhealthy recommendation. So not eating three hours before bed should be a standard recommendation for better gut health, for better sleep, you know, for better mental health.

And what I usually tell people is, when I work with people, I say, “You know, start with that, and do, say, 12 hours in the beginning, if you’ve never, ever, ever tried this before.” That would be a good spot to start. And, you know, of course, check with your doctor because not everybody fits into that category. But many, many people can start at the 12-hour point. So maybe it’s like from 7 to 7. And then, just like you’re mentioning, Katie, I am the same way, like, say you get used to the 12-hour thing and that’s still a big improvement off of what you were doing before. And then three days a week, you push that, so you may push that, meaning eat your dinner even earlier.

So maybe you decide with your family that, hey, we’re gonna eat a very early dinner tonight and, you know, this seems so crazy to some people and so doable to others. So it really just depends on your lifestyle, to maybe eat dinner at 5, or maybe end your dinner at 6, a couple of days a week, maybe non-consecutive days. And see how you feel in the morning. That’s when I think the magic really starts to happen is when you stop eating at 5 and then maybe you don’t eat again till 8 or 9 in the morning after a fasted workout. And that’s when you actually gonna get into that autophagy and into that metabolic switching zone. That’s when you’re gonna see even additional benefits from doing this kind of fasting.

Katie: And another area that I think I’m curious your take on so I’ve noticed I feel better when I eat lunch as my biggest meal because it tends to be higher in protein and just higher in food volume, which then gives me more time to digest all of that before bedtime, even though I’m still eating a smaller dinner. Do you know if there’s any research that backs that up, I know, in some countries lunch is the bigger meal and dinner is lower?

Dr. Shah: Yeah, I think that, you know, the research really does look at 12 to 5 being a good digestion zone. And, actually, very interesting because this is where Ayurveda, like, Eastern medicine and Western medicine kind of agree is to eat the bulk of your meals between that. Exactly what you just said, between the hours of 12 and 5, where you’re, kind of, you know, maybe eating a smaller dinner, and you’re eating a no or smaller breakfast. And that seems to be the kind of strongest digestion and that is something, like, I love when Eastern and Western medicine agree on something.

And that’s one of the places that seems to be really powerful and agree, so exactly when I described the circadian rhythm because people will say, “Give me some guidelines like some bumpers.” And I say, “Okay, well if you ate the bulk of your meals between 12 and 5 and then maybe stopped eating around 5 or 6, a couple of days a week, and then you’re stopping your blue light and I know you’re a proponent of this, too, say, you stop all the blue light 90 minutes before bed because this is all kind of circadian sinking. And as you know, one bout of blue light delays your melatonin by 90 minutes.

So say you stop everything, the blue lights, 90 minutes before bed and you just use, you know, either blue light blocking glasses or you just use no blue light, just a very soft yellow light or no light. And then you read a book, or do your skincare routine, or play with your kids, or whatever it may be to wind down, maybe there’s some meditation in that, and then you go to sleep ideally, say, 10:00, okay? And then 11:00 you get usually one hour after you go to bed, you get this huge burst of human growth hormone HGH, which is the hormone that repairs your injuries. That’s the one that everybody loves for skin and muscle repair and making you feel younger and more energetic, so you get that big burst.

So they call it beauty sleep for a reason because there’s actually is a burst. You get a second smaller burst right before you wake up as well or early in the morning as well. And so say, then you know about all these sleep studies that show that you have, there’s so much benefit in sleeping about eight hours. So you wake up, say, at 6 a.m. and what I recommend people do is get some sunlight. Get some sunlight, if you live in a place that even has some daylight between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. go outside barefoot, if you can, get some daylight and really start your day in a very positive fashion. You will see your energy levels skyrocket.

If you can fast, do a fasted workout before you break your fast even better. So that’s kind of like rough goalposts throughout the day. And I tell people listen, I understand people have different schedules, you know, you may work a night shift, I get it like this is not supposed to be, you know, right for 100% of the population. But if you’re someone who’s like, “Hey, I want some goalpost to figure out how to do this, and try it for my own body,” that would be something I would suggest.

Katie: Yeah, I love everything you brought up. And I think just two important things to echo and to go a little deeper on, the first being, like eating in that shorter window and not snacking. I feel like a lot of adults will sometimes consider that advice. But then they’re hesitant to not give their kids lots of snacks or to not just feed kids whenever they’re hungry, even if it’s late at night.

And so I’m really curious your take on that as a parent because I know, from the research I’ve read at least, even any break that we give ourselves from digestion is really beneficial like you said to the liver, and in so many other ways, including during the day. So while we think we only eat 3 meals a day, when researchers actually look at it, most people in the U.S. eat up to 17 meals a day, because every time we ingest even just like a mouthful of food, our digestive process starts. And we don’t really give our bodies a break from that. So I’m curious, how do you navigate this with your kids and are there any other considerations?

Dr. Shah: Okay, so let’s be honest, Katie. During quarantine, it’s been like a total snack/eating fest in our house. And we had to really curb that exact problem is that, you know, when you’re home and you have access to food, you have access to the kitchen all the time, there’s a tendency to really snack a lot more. And you’re right, in the American culture for children, especially there is almost not more than two hours that go by without someone eating something. And so what I have roughly done with my own kids, and I think it really depends on the age of your children. But what I’ve done is…my kids are 10 and 12. And they do really well with kind of a 12-hour fast, which basically is not like a stepping stone.

But basically, what we say is after dinner, they have a dessert. And we allow dessert after dinner as their dessert-of-the-day kind of thing. And then they don’t eat anything after that, until the next day. And that way that kinda gives bookends to the day like I always say, we’ll save it for dessert or…you know, because they’ll be asking me for a snack or sweet snack and they’re like, so innocent, these children, of course, for them, their taste buds are going to be lit up. Their brain is going to light up when they eat a processed sugary snack. And so they’re going to want that much more than a piece of fruit, for example.

So the way I kind of navigate around that instead of saying, no all the time, I say, you know what, if there’s something, like, a homemade chocolate dessert that you wanna have, you save it for once you finish your meals for the day, and then we’re gonna basically stop for the rest of the night. So they eat their one snack or whatever dessert after dinner, and then they’re done for the night. And the reason why I say 12 hours is a good benchmark is that it’s basically three hours before bed, and then they wake up and they can eat breakfast again. And that’s, you know, with growing children, you always want to weigh the risks and the benefits of a lot of this stuff.

Katie: I definitely agree. And I also love that you brought up light. Because I think this is an area that we’re just starting to understand the research on and people are kind of finally coming around to, but it can be really, really dramatic. And I think it’s easy to discount because unlike food, we don’t feel an immediate energy boost, or we don’t necessarily feel the immediate change from changing our light habits. But over time, I’ve seen the results of this in my lab work and certainly in my sleep quality and in my kids’ sleep quality.

So I think this is a big one for parents that you touched on. And I’d love to go a little deeper on it because, like you, we’re big fans of the morning sunlight as a family, and I’ll drink tea or coffee outside, often, non-caloric, so I’m still in that fasting window. But that makes a huge, huge difference in sleep both for adults, and especially in kids. And I know for parents, like anything you can do that makes your kids sleep better, you wanna know. So talk a little bit more about how we can use light to our advantage, especially hand in hand with this type of circadian fasting.

Dr. Shah: So exactly what you said, you know, sleep is at, you know, every time I read the research on sleep, and I know that your audience and my audience is so in-tune with this. And we’ve heard all the benefits of sleep ranging from the brain benefits, the gut benefits to the hormone benefits to the, you know, there’s just benefits on benefits. But there’s, children especially, are sensitive to this light, dark cycle. And I think that what we do wrong as a culture is, you know, we don’t do morning sunlight outdoors and get nature time. And then we don’t have an evening wind-down routine. And then the children, just like us, are wound up at bed. And just like I said, you know, one bout of blue light.

So one show in the evening is delaying their melatonin release by 90 minutes, and you need that melatonin release to actually feel sleepy. And so what I usually recommend to people and what I do myself is that about, you know, calculate 90 minutes before their bedtime, and then that’s when the devices and everything turns off. If you do, you know, allow them to have that depending on their age. And then maybe you do an evening routine, just like the adults do an evening routine. My children have an evening routine that they do, and maybe that includes a little bit of reading. Maybe that’s a little meditation practice, maybe that’s just, you know, talking softly, going over your day in the darkness.

And it’s so crazy, Katie, that this is like weird to people. Because, you know, if you think about it for hundreds and thousands of years, that’s how life was. I mean, until, what, smartphones didn’t even come out till, you know, I was in college. I think I started using… No, actually way later than that. It was computers and email that we started using in college. And then so you can imagine that it wasn’t too long ago, that turning up blue lights was standard because there wasn’t, you know, it was really just the TV that you could be using. So we really need to reset the way we, you know, set up our kids for the night so that they can get a restful sleep as well.

Katie: Absolutely, yeah, I think that’s so so important. These little things can make a huge, huge difference. And also when it comes to light is the issue of vitamin D and sunlight. And I would love to hear your take on this because I know that the research shows that vitamin D levels are really important for a whole lot of aspects of health and that it’s not just a vitamin, it’s actually a pre-hormone.

And right now, of course, we’re seeing data about vitamin D being important for good outcomes with upper respiratory infections. We know it’s tied to the immune system. We know for kids and hormones, it’s vitally important and that you definitely don’t want to have very low vitamin D levels. And I’m a big fan of getting moderate sunlight for this reason and also testing vitamin D and supplementing, if necessary. But it seems like you are also a fan of getting sunlight in appropriate amounts and vitamin D through the sun, but I’d love to hear your take on that in detail.

Dr. Shah: Katie, you summarize it amazingly well. Honestly, because I think that what you have to understand is vitamin D is an immune modulator. And that’s a fancy way of saying that it works with the immune system. It works like a hormone. It works in a way that we have not seen any other vitamin work. In fact, when I was in immunology fellowship, it was hormone of the year, because of its effects on the immune system that we’re finding out now are huge. And I do believe that much of the population has a vitamin D deficiency.

In fact, the correlative studies on COVID and vitamin D are very, very interesting. So what they found is that when you looked at vitamin D levels, the people who were deficient, just had very, very much different course of COVID than people who had adequate D levels. And so not only did we know that it stops you from getting respiratory viruses, but it’s sure that it can improve your outcomes once you are infected. And so that has been really interesting in the situation, but we know that it works like a hormone.

So if you’re trying to balance your hormones, vitamin D is imperative, testing your levels is imperative. I do believe, again, like you in getting moderate sunlight and so what people may say is like, “Okay, well, like how do you weigh this against the dermatologist recommendations of sunscreen all the time?” And so what I do for myself and, you know, it’s not perfect, but this is what I like, is if I can get a chance to do sunlight in the morning, which I do most days like you do, I go out without any kind of sunscreen or anything, basically first thing in the morning and get that morning sunlight.

So it’s really good for my circadian rhythms, get a little bit of vitamin D, and then start my day. And then, you know, later in the…if you live in a very hot place like I do, like, you know, the afternoon sun is quite strong in summer. So that’s when I’m wearing sunscreen and not spending more than, you know, 10 minutes bathing in the sun. So that’s basically how I couch both sides of the story here.

Katie: Got it.

Okay, so if you don’t mind, can you take us through… I know you’ve kind of mentioned parts of your daily routine. But for you as a busy mom and a doctor and someone who is up on the research and understands circadian fasting and implements all of this, can you kind of walk us through what a day might look like? I know there’s no like average day, especially right now. But just kind of some of the things that you do daily in what order?

Dr. Shah: Yeah, great. So let’s start with waking up. So I wake up about 6:00 and I did that because I trained my body to start to sync with circadian rhythm. So naturally, I wake up around then. I will go barefoot outside. And I know not everybody has the opportunity to do this. If you live in a high rise, you’re not gonna walk out in your pajamas like in barefoot so just keep in mind that obviously you can change all of this or some of this. So I walk outside if I can, get a couple of stretches in the sunlight, sometimes I will do my gratitude right there. So it’s done for the day. Gratitude statements changes everything even if you just name two or three things you’re grateful for, especially around this time where mental health can really suffer.

And so but you can say, “You know, I know this is happening to me, but I’m so happy to have my health and the health of my family. And I’m so lucky that I have a home to sleep in, and a home to be, you know, quarantined in.” So then I go inside and I get ready for the day. And usually what that means is a workout first. So then I’ll get ready in my workout clothes and my sneakers and I’ll go, if I can do a nature-based workout, I will do that. So there’s studies, Katie, that show that rhythmic exercise is really, really calming for the brain. So rhythmic exercise is like walking or skating or swimming. Something that, you know, you develop a breathing rhythm and a movement rhythm.

It’s almost like moving meditation and so I love to incorporate some of that into my day if I can and I try to do it fasted. And first thing in the morning in nature because, you know, as moms we love to multitask, and this is like getting all of those things in one. And so then after that, I will usually shower and then break my fast and usually when I break my fast I break it first with water throughout but with a tea and nuts. And the reason why I do that is that whenever you’re breaking your fast you don’t wanna like immediately eat a huge meal. And this is more important when you’re doing longer fasts, but I also think that in general I just made it a habit of kinda starting with a smaller meal or smaller snack, I guess I would call it and start with the tea and nuts and I just kind of kinda go slow with that.

And then I will have my full meal. And my full meal in the morning is really not that big. It’s usually a deconstructed smoothie because right now I got sick of having smoothies. So it’s really just berries and veggies and nuts. And what I do is I take it with me to work and basically, you know, I’ll have it. I’ll have the berries probably on the way to work and I’ll have some of the other stuff throughout a little bit in the morning. And then I won’t have anything until about 12 depending on when I break the fast. You know, sometimes I’ll break the fast. Say, so if I’m giving you a typical example and I woke up at 6:00, and I started working out from 7:00 to 8:00, then I’ll break my fast at 8:30 or 9:00.

And I do that because there is some evidence that if you’re trying to maintain muscle mass or trying to build muscle mass, you can time your protein kind of one hour after you break that fasted workout to retain some of the benefits of weight training. And so I do that. And my protein will be something like usually a plant-based protein either black bean sprout, or tofu hummus, or it could be a…sometimes if I’m in a rush it will be like a vegan protein shake or a chia pudding, something like that.

And then I’ll have, I always, always plan to have two big vegetable-based meals a day. So usually it’s at 12:00 and 5:00. And the reason why I do that is because there’s so much benefit in feeding your gut bacteria, prebiotic fiber, so fibrous foods, especially from vegetables can be transformative to your gut health. And, you know, gut health is immune health. And gut health is hormone health. So that’s what I do for those meals. So it could be a stir-fry, it could be a soup, it could be a salad, but something plant-based, vegetable-based, I mean, and very, very heavy on the vegetables. And then I will come home from work and spend time with the kids. And I usually, what I do is about 8:00, I will really, 7:30, 8;00, we really turn off all the blue lights.

So all their computers, iPhones, everything around 7:30, 8:00 go off. And so everybody knows they can’t text me after 8:00 because I probably won’t answer till the next morning. And so I know that if it’s an emergency, they have the home line or whatever. So then basically, that’s when I do my wind-down routine. So the kids have a wind-down routine, I have a wind-down, my husband has a wind-down routine. And then we basically wind-down, I do my skincare, I do my prep for the next day, do a little more gratitude or a little meditation if I can, and then it’s lights out at 10. And that way I know I’m getting about eight hours of sleep every day. So that’s kind of a rough outline of the day.

Katie: I love that. And I love that you mentioned gratitude and just kind of bullet journaling a couple few things a day, I think that also makes a much bigger difference than we ever can anticipate just to shift our mindset like that. And I know you’ve also posted something on Instagram that I loved recently, “That which you don’t change, you choose.”

And I feel like, you have so many great quotes about focusing on the positive and focusing on the things we have the ability to choose and to impact which, especially right now seems ever-important of, you know, because we can feel so uncertain and so helpless at times, but yet, we still all have the power over things like this. Like when we eat and what we eat and who we spend time with. With our family, you know, whether we go outside in the morning. There’s so many small positive changes that we can make that make such a big difference. And I love that that’s your focus in so many of your posts.

Dr. Shah: Yeah, and I think, Katie, and right back at you because I honestly really, really can relate to so many of your posts. They are so thoughtful. And I think that what I’m trying to tell people is what works for me. Like, I was in that dark place once and here’s how I got out. And, like, right now with this whole, you know, COVID thing and quarantine, I also struggled a lot in the very beginning because what we don’t know makes us anxious, like the future and the past are what our anxieties come from, right?

And so what I had to do for myself is I had to say, “I need to focus on what I can control.” And so that’s what I was sharing with people. I said, “Hey, you can control only you and your own practices and your own habits. And if you would do that, that will take your anxiety level way down and bring your happiness level way up.” Because as soon as you finish the task of, say, going outside in the morning and getting some sunlight, as soon as you finish the task of like, hey, I finished my meals at 6 p.m. you feel accomplished, you feel like you are controlling your environment and you feel good about that. And so anxiety goes way down and that’s what I found was so helpful for me and that’s why I share with a lot of people online, too.

Katie: I love that. I’m curious, just on a personal level, any supplements or like beauty routines or things that you’d give advice to women especially?

Dr. Shah: That’s a good question, Katie. I am so anti-supplements only because I just hate having to think about a million things in the morning to take, and so I’m very big on minimizing how much you take every day because these are all things that are modulating your body that can be best done by food. But if for targeted practices like for example, you know, melatonin has been really helpful for me to shift my sleep schedule. So if you’re someone who is thinking about trying the circadian rhythm and trying to get back on track and you’re just so off, you don’t even know where to start, I would say, “Hey, maybe you try taking melatonin about 90 minutes before you want to go to sleep and maybe you just take one milligram,” because most, you know, store-bought melatonin is at very, very high dose and so or you use another kind of natural sleep remedy, chamomile or something like that.

You try that before bed to kind of reset your rhythm and I do that every time I travel or if I’m off schedule because of, you know, other things going on. And I do love vitamin D as we discussed. That’s one of the only supplements that I take on a regular basis. And then I like adaptogens like ashwagandha, I like amla, I like Rhodiola. Because I feel that when you are in the situation, there are certain points in your life and you may be in that point right now where your life feels like you’re doing everything right, but you really need support on the stress-control hormone balancing aspect, that’s when these adaptogens can really be helpful. And I do use them from time to time when I’m in those states.

And that’s really what I’d actually use when I was in my own kind of dark place and I had to take my health back to a different level. I am a fan of omega-3s, but I’ll be honest, I’m not so great about taking them all the time. I really try to eat a very, very good diet and hope that I’m getting, you know, at least some of that from there. And then other than that, sometimes I take magnesium, which is a nice way also to calm the body down in the evenings. Something like a natural calm or whatever. And then, during this time, there are lots of people who’ve been asking me like, “What about vitamin C?” And I am a huge fan of vitamin C.

And I think that if you’re someone who wants to boost up or support your immune processes, and you’re doing everything else, right, and you wanna add some vitamin C, I think it’s a very safe supplement because vitamin C is one of the vitamins that you can pee or poop out if you have too much. Like, there are some vitamins A, D, E, and K where you can overdose because your body is not capable of… It basically stores in the fat instead of being excreted. But vitamin C is quite safe and can be taken at very high levels. And once your body doesn’t need it, you’ll just pee or poop it out and that’s it. So during this time, a lot of people have chosen to do that and I think that is definitely something that’s valid.

Katie: I love that. Any advice just kind of, you know, and when this airs hopefully we’ll be in a little bit different of a scenario right now. But just from like mom to mom, any advice in navigating this kind of constant changing dynamic with families and with all of that brink of health and for just how we interact?

Dr. Shah: Yeah, you mean social aspects or just in general?

Katie: Both. I feel like people are kind of in a definitely increased stress right now, just because of, and when you said uncertainty is one of the biggest factors in stress. So is loneliness. And so a lot of us are having to navigate like isolation plus extra time with kids plus extra chaos. Anything that you’re finding that’s helpful?

Dr. Shah: That’s a great question. And I think from mom to mom, I think my children are in the same situation. I think that being outdoors and, you know, the calming effects of nature has really transformed us and every time someone asks me what to do is get outside, go for a walk, move your body, be in nature, you will feel so much better. And the other technique is that gratitude is like practices with your children like, hey, isn’t it so great, you know, aren’t you so grateful that you’re able to go for a walk right now? Or aren’t you so grateful that you can still learn from home and you don’t have to attend school? And really flip the script so that you’re not always talking about anxiety-producing things.

And now, in the beginning, this is so bad. But, Katie, we would watch like the news every evening, because we were, you know, all of us were in the state of like, constant change. And there was so much going on that we would just like, watch the news. And then, of course, after like, a week of that it got really old and really anxiety-producing and I couldn’t sleep well even if I’ve turned off the TV way before bedtime. And so what I realized is, hey, I need to compartmentalize and only consume the news when my mind is mentally ready for that. And so I only do it like twice a day now. And because for me as a physician, I need to keep up on the science and the literature. So twice a day I check in on what’s going on in the world. And then I don’t look at it after that.

Katie: That’s a great point. I think I’ve had to limit. I actually have done that for probably a decade now. I just like limit exposure to the news and to most aspects of the media. And I realized I am not any less informed about the world or like, the world hasn’t ended, because I’m not aware of all the things going on at all times. And my stress level is dramatically less. And I think right now you’re right, that such an important point is in whatever way it works best for us individually, like limit the sources of that because all of them are stressful right now. There’s always so much uncertainty and we do have control over what we let in and I think that’s a really, really important point.

Dr. Shah: Yeah, I think it makes your mental health better. And, you know, honestly, I think that, for me, I get so much more from discussions with really educated people. And so what I’ve been trying to do is having some real-life phone, or FaceTime, or online discussions with people who are very, very well-versed, so you get the benefits of relationship and get the benefits of conversation without having that scary kind of anxiety-provoking headline of the news. And that’s what I’m trying also when I do my Instagram updates. I try to be really like as if a friend is talking to a friend instead of being like attention-grabbing and anxiety-producing with my headlines.

Katie: I love that. And then lastly, as we wrap up, I know I need to respect your time, you’re a busy doctor, but are there any books, podcast sources of inspiration for you right now that are helping you keep things positive or that you’ve just read and loved lately?

Dr. Shah: Oh, that’s a great question. So I have really, really loved a new book. Have you ever heard of David Goggins?

Katie: I don’t think so.

Dr. Shah: His book is “Can’t Hurt Me” by David Goggins. And it is so, so inspirational because it’s talking about someone who really went through a lot of struggles in his life. It’s kind of a biography. And it’s been so inspirational to me because I just look at his life story, and it really gives us perspective on how to be strong. It’s almost like a combination of biography and self-help. But I really, really have loved it. And I know you love reading, so that’s a great one. It’s right up your alley as well. I love your podcast and I think it’s a really great source of information. And that David Goggins’ book is really life-changing, you should check it out.

Katie: Awesome. I’ll make sure that is linked in the show notes as well as your website and your Instagram, which I’m a big fan of like I said, I follow it. But I really appreciate you being on. I hope this encouraged a lot of people to consider circadian fasting, which I think is the perfect, gentle intro into fasting. And if even if that’s all you ever try, like, Dr. Amy, explained, there are so many benefits. I would love for you guys to give it a try to let us know how it goes on Instagram or in the comments. But, Dr. Amy, thank you so much. I know how busy you are. And it’s truly an honor that you’ve spent time with us today.

Dr. Shah: Oh, Katie, thank you so much for having me on. It was an honor and pleasure.

Katie: And thanks as always to all of you for listening and sharing your most valuable asset, your time with both of us today. We’re so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama Podcast.”

Source: https://wellnessmama.com/podcast/circadian-fasting/

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itslikethatfrenchthing · 5 years ago

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SALES TIPS: HOW TO SKYROCKET SALES ON YOUR PRODUCT BUSINESS WEBSITE

If you’re hoping to increase sales, you’re on the right track. Because today, we’re going to get into some sales tips.

Increasing sales is the key to any successful business. But the quick spike in revenue isn’t the only benefit you’ll get.

Increasing sales has an exponential value.

According to research conducted by Monetate, loyal shoppers are worth 5x more than their first-time counterparts.

By adding to that first sale with subsequent sales, you can completely change the way your customers interact with you.

It’s critical to make as many first sales as you can. Then you want to keep improving your funnel so you can effectively sell to as many new and old customers as possible.

In this article, I’ll show you 6 of the most important areas you need to focus on to start increasing sales on your product based business website.

Let’s get started!

Sales Tips #1 | Create A Homepage That Sells

One of the biggest keys to success in sales is to think of your homepage as your digital storefront. It’s one of the first pages users will interact with, so it should guide them to the places you really want them to visit.

The most important part of your homepage that you need to focus on is the “Hero Section”, otherwise known as above the fold.

That is the top banner, photo slider, or whatever you have right at the very top of the page under the main menu. This is where you’ll make that first impression and it’s also likely to get the most clicks.

What to put there? Your most important call to action.

I’d recommend showcasing things like:

New products/collections

Any sales you have going on

A link to your shop

Further down your homepage, you can place another slightly less important call to action to direct traffic elsewhere. This acts as more of a fallback because most users will click that top link. This could be things like:

Your top 3 selling categories

A link to learn more about your brand

Read your blog (more on this later)

Although the goal is to sell your products, you shouldn’t only link to pages with those products. This can come across as being too salesy and doesn’t give new customers the opportunity to learn more a bout your brand first.

Conscious buyers will want to get to know the face or team behind a brand before they purchase. Use your homepage as an opportunity to guide users to pages to do just that, like your blog, about page, or an opt-in to join your email list.

Sales Tips #2 | Make Sure Your Main Menu Is User-Friendly

We just talked about how to build a user-friendly homepage that is primed to sell. But what about the rest of your website? It’s really important to think about how you can guide a user around, instead of giving them LOADS of options (which only leads to confusion).

When it comes to sales tips for success, my biggest advice is to keep your main menu simple and to the point.

I know it can be tempting to have these really complex drop-down menus that give your customers all of the category options up-front. But think about how you can get them where they want to go in three clicks or less, without overwhelming them with everything at once.

This could mean having a “Shop” navigation item that takes them to a page with all of the categories.

Or, maybe you want to divide things into categories such as Women, Men, and Kids, and then a few select sub-categories in a drop-down menu like Shirts, Jumpers, and Dresses.

The rule of thumb is to keep your main navigation simple and clean. Keep drop-down menus organised and only use them when they are essential.

Sales Tips #3 | Your Checkout Process Needs To Be Easy

Let’s chat for a second about your checkout process. The easier you make this, the more people will actually follow-through with buying things. This also equals more money in your pocket.

Make your “Add to Cart” or “Buy Now” buttons easy to see by giving them a unique colour that stands out on the page. You want to make the cart icon or button easy to spot so people know where to checkout.

Once a user is in the cart, they should see the following pages:

Cart page where they can review everything and proceed to checkout

Checkout page where they enter their billing, shipping, and credit card info

You can either have them checkout on the page above or give them one last opportunity to review their cart. Personally, I prefer having the checkout and review on one page to simplify the process.

Whenever you’re considering the user experience of your website, ask yourself: how can I make this process even easier for my customers?

Sales Tips #4 | Share Your Core Values

As I mentioned earlier, customers today are very interested in learning about the brands they buy from. We are all conscious consumers who want to spend our hard earned money with brands who have similar values to us. One of the sales techniques you can use is to make your values obvious right from the get-go.

Add your values to your homepage or about page so that customers can see them easily. This establishes trust and shows how important these things are to you.

Your values could be ethical:

Fair-trade

Consciously scoured materials

Vegan/Cruelty-Free

All natural or organic

Ethically manufactured

These kinds of core values are ideas for green beauty brands, slow fashion, and other brands with an ethical component. What makes your brand stand out? Why does your niche like to buy from you? These are the things you want to showcase here to connect with your buyers.

Your core values could also be customer or quality focused:

A money-back guarantee

Great return policy - stand behind your products

How is the product made?

What is the quality like? Are the fabrics or materials unique?

Share testimonials or social proof about how amazing your product is.

All of these things build trust so that people want to buy from your brand. It shows that you stand behind your products and value your customers, while testimonials showcase how happy others have been with your product. It all builds up that know like, and trust factor.

Sales Tips #5 | Create Content

Creating content is essential for service based business owners, but is often overlooked for product based shops.

Perhaps you don’t know what you should write about. Or maybe you don’t understand how writing blog posts, creating podcasts or making YouTube videos could help sell your products.

Hear me out.

Creating content of some kind helps to drive traffic to your website. Without traffic, you have no one to sell to. End of story.

Having a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel wull help you to attract that niche you want to sell to.

Start by creating content that they would find helpful. What problems does your audience have and how can your products help solve those problems? Brainstorm some content ideas and I bet you’ll be surprised what you can come up with!

And, since you are a product based business, make sure you share your latest offerings in your content. For example, this could be a try-on video showcasing your new collection. Or, a blog post with the lifestyle photos and tips and tricks on how to use your products.

You can also collaborate with bloggers and influencers to create content for your brand. This could be in the form of guest posting to get in front of a new audience. Or you might want to work with influencers by providing them with free products to test out or doing paid posts.

P.S. If you want to create consistently, be sure to download the FREE 3-month content calendar, so you can start putting all this into action!

Sales Tips #6 | Have An Email Opt-In

Building up your email list means that you have the chance to jump into your potential customer’s inbox at any time. That is such a powerful marketing tool!

Plus, by opting into your email list, these people aren’t just random website visitors. They are warm leads that are interested in your products and what you offer. If you aren’t growing your list, you really need to start today.

Now, we just talked about creating content - so let’s start with content upgrades.

These are little freebies that you add to the end of a blog post to encourage users to join your email list. For product based businesses, I find that quizzes, checklists, and how to guides tend to work best. In general, courses, workshops, and worksheets are better for service based entrepreneurs.

Another way to get users to join your email list is to offer a discount code. This works SO well for product based businesses and is easy to implement using any email service provider.

Try adding this kind of opt-in to your website’s footer or as a pop-up to give those who already want to buy an incentive to do so.

And there you have it! 6 things every product based business website needs to succeed. Now put these sales tips and tricks into practice and watch your sales start to increase.

Which of these sales tips are you going to implement first? Let me know your biggest takeaway in the comments!

Don’t forget to download your FREE 3-month content calendar so you can start creating content for your blog consistently!

from Blog https://ift.tt/2kI7fBb via IFTTT

#Blog

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goodra-king · 6 years ago

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Transcript of Why All Business Owners Should Become Authors

Transcript of Why All Business Owners Should Become Authors written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

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Transcript

John Jantsch: Choosing the right domain name is critical to ensuring the success of your small business, but it’s got a little harder. But now you can choose a .us domain to help your business stand out, reserve your .us web address today, go to launchwith.us and use my promo code, podcast, for my special offer.

John Jantsch: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Dan Janal, he is a publicity and marketing expert and an author of about a dozen books, including the one we’re going to talk about today, Write Your Book In a Flash. So Dan, thanks for joining me.

Dan Janal: Hey John, pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me, John.

John Jantsch: So I find myself, my listeners are probably getting tired of this. I find myself reminiscing these days about the old days and the folks that have been doing this as long as I have. And I think you and I probably first bumped paths maybe close to 20 years ago around your service that I think still is around today called PR Leads. Do you remember that?

Dan Janal: Yeah, it still is and it’s still helping a lot of people. We have a lot more imitators now, which is fine. Every business has imitators and that’s cool. It proves the concept and it also forces me to be more creative in saying, “what else can I do to help more people?” And that’s why I decided to write my new book, which is called Write Your Book In a Flash.

John Jantsch: Yeah, we’re going to, we’re definitely going to talk about that. But let’s just first talk about books in general and writing books in general. I wrote my first, I don’t think I wrote my first book until 2006, so you wrote yours about 10 years before that maybe, on a topic that was just getting started, internet marketing. So what’s, for you, what’s changed about book writing? I mean it was hard, sort of slogging work back then and a lot of stuff’s come along that’s made it easier, hasn’t it?

Dan Janal: It sure has. You know, back then there was no such thing really as self publishing. It was a big, if you were self publishing, it was very long, expensive, difficult. Today many books are self published and it’s pretty easy. You just write your book, show your book around to a few other people to get some thoughts and feedback as well, but the actual printing process is pretty easy. You go to Kindle Direct Publishing, which is part of Amazon, and you upload your book and bingo, you’re in business. You know, you hire an artist on Fiverr to do a cover for you. Maybe a hire someone on Fiverr to lay out the book for you so it looks a little bit better than what Word can do, and your business.

Dan Janal: When I self published my first book, which was early in 1991, it cost thousands and thousands of dollars. And then when my first commercially published book was done, the book you’re referring to, The Online Marketing Handbook, which was one of the first books about marketing on the Internet 25 years ago, a traditional publisher handled that and it cost them thousands and thousands of dollars for proofreading and copy editing and publishing and printing and distribution and warehouse and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, anyone can write a book really fast, get it online and start making money and helping people.

John Jantsch: So here’s a question I do get a lot since you talked about self publish versus the traditional publisher. Is there, I mean, is there one way that you should go? Is there one better than another? Do they have pros and cons? I’m curious how you answer that when people ask you that.

Dan Janal: Sure. We could take about an hour answering it, but here’s a short answer. If, you can build your house yourself or you could hire a general contractor. [inaudible] yourself, a lot of money, it’ll be done a lot faster, but you have to shoulder all the burdens yourself, the copy editing, the proofreading, the layout, the ISBN numbers, loading it to Amazon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You can do all that and you can do it really, really fast. So if your purpose is to get your book out fast, have a big business card for yourself to help you stand out from everyone else, then self publishing is definitely the way to go.

Dan Janal: If you are so lucky as to get an offer from a publisher who wanted to print your book and publish your book, it will probably take them about two years to get it into their production cycle. So if you want to make an impact fast, self publishing is still the way to go. And if you’re very successful at it, you will attract a publisher who will put it into their publication cycle.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I mean, just for context, I’m just finishing up or just finished, turned in my manuscript for my sixth book and I signed the contract for that book last July. I turned it in May 1st and it’s going to drop October 22nd. So that’s a real, today, timeline still for the traditional publisher.

Dan Janal: Right. That’s not bad. Six months is not bad. And if they publish it then they’re shouldering the costs of printing, proofreading, copy editing and all the other good things. So all you have to do is be brilliant, which is good.

John Jantsch: Well, you know, I’m a sure thing Dan, so that’s why they had no problem with that. So here’s the big question then of course, and it used to be people would sit around in literary rooms and think, “huh, not everybody should write a book,” but you’re suggesting that every business owner, let’s stay in that category because that’s who my listeners are generally, would you go as far as saying every business owner should have or at least think about a book?

Dan Janal: Definitely. I just worked with one of my clients who owns a HVAC company in Ohio and he wanted a book to stand out from the crowd. And it’s a really good book and it’s a book that can make him stand out from all the other competitors who have good jobs, good recommendations, and everyone on this call has the same thing. We’ve all gone to good schools, we all have good clients, we all have good recommendations, so how is a prospect to separate one from another? It might be because you’re the person who wrote a book. And a person who writes a book is an expert. They’re the acknowledged expert.

Dan Janal: And if you give your book away at a networking meeting or a breakfast meeting or you are more proactive and send it out to your top five prospects, they all keep the book forever. It’ll be on their bookshelves. It’ll stand as a silent sales person for you for a long time until they’re ready to say, “you know, I need a new HVAC system. I know there, I met a guy at a networking session, he wrote a book, it had an orange cover, let me see. Oh, there it is!” You know, and bingo, you get the job. So that’s why every business person needs a book, to stand out from the crowd.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I’m glad you used HVAC as an example because I think it’s getting harder and harder to stand out as a marketing consultant with a book. You know, there are a lot of fields that are pretty crowded with that. But the real opportunity is in those industries where people go, “no HVAC contractor has a book. That’s stupid.” I mean that’s the real opportunity, isn’t it?

Dan Janal: It is. And you’re right in saying that for a marketing consultant or a coach or lots of other businesses, everyone has a book. So if you don’t have a book, then you are not even at the starting gate, you’re not to be taken seriously because everyone else does have that entry level requirement of a book.

John Jantsch: So let’s just stay on the HVAC person. Just for grins. You know, I work with HVAC folks and trying to get them to even give me an idea for a blog post sometimes is hard. I mean, how do you coach people, again, I know the answer is obvious, but a lot of people don’t get this. I mean, how do you coach people on the fact that they do have the information? There’s stuff that they know that people would want to write about. I mean, how do you get that out of them?

Dan Janal: Sure. There are a couple of ways. First you have to realize the only reason someone will buy a book, any book, or read a book, any book, is because they have a problem and they need to solve it. So you should survey your prospects and say, “what is your biggest problem?” And then you have eight chapters that talk about those eight problems and you show them that you are the trusted leader who’s been there and done that, who can take them from mess to success because you’ve done that and you’ve proven that with your book.

John Jantsch: You know, I love sharing tips and resources with small business owners and one of them is you’ve got to choose the right web address for your business and it’s gotten harder. All the good names are gone. But you can take a short relevant .us web address and maybe come up with the best possible name for your business while it’s still available. I want you to reserve your .us web address today. So I’ve arranged a special offer for my listeners. Register your .us domain for just $1.49 for a year. Plus you get free website builder and hosting services for six months. So to go get my special offer, go to launchwith.us and use my promo code, podcast. That’s launchwith.us, promo code, podcast.

John Jantsch: How far do you think a book like that, you know, they’re not angling for the New York Times bestseller list, I mean, as you called it, it’s a great business card. It’s a marketing brochure almost. So how far does a person that writes a book with that objective in mind go in terms of selling what they do? I mean, is it, you know, do you educate, educate, educate, and you hope they call you? Or do you educate and then say, “call me.”

Dan Janal: You do you do both. You educate, but people are suddenly learning that they know, like, and trust you. And the last chapter can very much be a call to action that says, “okay, if you need my help, here’s how I help people.” You can even have one sheets that are advertisements in the back of the book that are real direct calls to action, like a page on your website so people can take action. Because you know, think about it. If you’re a reader, you don’t know that the author is actually doing the work. They think that the author is a writer. They don’t know that they’re actually the provider of those services. They don’t make logical connection. You do. I do. We think they do. They don’t.

Dan Janal: So you have to tell them that, yes, you can install their heating system. Yes, you can install swimming pools, you can be their dentist. So yeah, yeah, you have to be overt. But during the writing of the book, you can subtly pepper your stores by saying, “when I consulted with this company,” or “when I installed this deck for, in this subdivision, blah, blah, blah,” then people will say, “oh yeah, he installs decks in subdivisions.” So there are ways to do it that are subtle and effective.

John Jantsch: So if I’m sitting out there thinking, “okay, this sounds like a good idea, but like what’s involved in this?” I mean, what are the steps really that somebody needs to at least count on either doing themselves or hiring somebody to do?

Dan Janal: Well, those are two great options. And I do work with people who don’t have the time or energy or ability to write books themselves and we can walk through that process. But for someone who would like to do it themselves, some people like to write and some people don’t like to write. If you don’t like to write, don’t turn off this podcast because you can dictate your book. In fact, you may be doing 20 minute sessions at the Rotary Club talking about how to choose the dentist, or what’s [inaudible] in building your deck, or hiring a realtor, or selling your home, or all those other ideas. Well record that and then give it to a transcriber who have to their automated transcription services on the Internet now, and then give it to an editor and they’ll turn it into readable material for you.

Dan Janal: But really think about the eight problems that your potential audience has, and those become the eight chapters in your book. The first chapter is an overview chapter that tells your story, who you are, the struggles you’ve had, how you came to be a success in the field you are today, and what people are going to learn by reading this book. Then you use the eight problems that you’re solving, and then the last chapter is the call to action chapter. That’s it, 10 chapters, 20,000 words, 2000 words per chapter. It’s like a very long blog post. Anyone can do this.

John Jantsch: Yeah, I love that you say that about recording too because for some people that’s just a lot easier in terms of them formulating their thoughts. But I’ll tell you, I can talk 150 words a minute. I can type 45, 50 on a good day. So it’s just a lot faster. And I would be remiss if I didn’t note that one of our sponsors of our show is rev.com which is an awesome transcription service. Alright, you call yourself a book coach, or at least that’s one of your titles. What does a book coach actually do to help somebody get a book written?

Dan Janal: We do a number of great things were a cheerleader, we’re an accountability partner, and we’re also an editor. So the coaching service can help you write the outline, write your marketing materials, get you focused on what your book should be about when you hit those inevitable dips, as we all do for writer’s block and whatever. Then the coach acts as your cheerleader, your accountability partner to get you back in the groove. And they also give you feedback on your writing and any other questions you have about the publishing industry.

Dan Janal: There’s also something called a content development editor, which is something I did for the HVAC guy cause he only wrote [inaudible] and his copy editor said, “you know, you really need to show this to a developmental editor.” And what she meant by that was, “you told the same story three times in three different chapters. You told this story and it really didn’t make the point that you thought it would make, you know the whole chapter on this topic, but your stories really don’t mash and you need more information. You make these assertions, but you need statistics.”

Dan Janal: So they, they act as your editor and your friend to guide you in the right direction saying, “you know, here’s what your book really needs.” So some developmental editors just give a review of a first draft and say, chapter by chapter, “here’s what’s good, here’s what needs work.” And they’re done with it. Other developmental editors actually work with you more hand in hand and they do that first overview, but then they work with you to make sure that you bring it up to that level that is expected to make it a professional book. And of course most people are aware of proofreaders and copy editors and that’s the lower level work, to be honest, because that’s the nitty gritty and they’re looking for typos and grammar and punctuation and all that stuff. That’s the very last thing you need to do.

John Jantsch: Yeah, they don’t care what you said just as long as you said it right. It’s going to have a look at that.

Dan Janal: Exactly. As long as there’s a period at the end of the sentence, they’re happy.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And that’s, what you just described, is pretty typical of the traditional publishing model. You know, you have that overarching person that wants to make sure the narrative runs through the book in the right way and that the reader gets kind of the impact delivered and then you’ve got that person looking for inconsistencies throughout. And then you’ve got, as you said, the person that’s looking for typos and commas and semicolons. So it really, a lot of people underestimate how much editing, I suppose, goes into a well written book.

Dan Janal: It really does take a village to write a book because if you write a book by yourself, it could be good, but two heads are better than one. So having someone look over your shoulder and say, “hey, you did this, the story goes on too long,” or “you don’t have enough stories,” or “you need statistics to back up your claims here,” or “you have too many statistics, you’re going to bore people to death!” You lose perspective, and that’s where the developmental editor comes in and saves your butt.

John Jantsch: So a really favorite headline it seems of the Internet marketing folks is to say, “I’m going to reveal the number one secret that nobody in the industry wants you to know,” that’s like a hook to really bring people in. So what’s the number one secret that book authors don’t want you to know?

Dan Janal: Well, book authors want you to know everything and that may be the problem. No one wants to read the encyclopedia about your topic. Today’s reader wants to pick up a book when they get on a plane in New York and finish it by the time they land in Los Angeles, if not before. So books are getting smaller, easier to read, a lot of cartoons, images, things that make the world just easier to understand. So I think a big problem that a lot of people have when they sit down to write a book is they think, “well I have to cover everything about this industry,” and the answer really is no. It goes back to those eight problems that your prospects have. So they come to know, like, and trust you, so they want to hire you.

John Jantsch: So in the title of your book, which is Write Your Book In a Flash, I want to just get a sense, if I’m listening, what’s ‘a flash’ mean? I mean, if I’ve got the book and I’ve got a reasonable, you know, handle on what the topics should be and whatnot, what’s in a flash? From the time I maybe contact you, or from the time that I start writing to the whole publishing, out there, people can buy it now.

Dan Janal: Great question. It’s different for different people because the number one question that I get on my forums is, “I don’t have time to write a book. I have kids, I have work, I this, I that, blah blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” I think if you have 15 minutes a day to write a book, you can write a book in four months. Because in 15 minutes a day you can write about 250 words. So four days you have a thousand words. You need 20,000 words for a book. Do the math yourself. If you can carve out 15 minutes a day by waking up earlier, by going to sleep later, by taking 15 minutes off of your lunch hour, by not watching television for 15 minutes, any of those things, you can write a book in three to four months.

Dan Janal: And if I were your coach, same thing. It can be done that fast. Cause again, books only need to be about 20,000 to 25,000 words. So it’s a whole different world today than when Good to Great was being published, which is way more words. So you can get by with doing less and have more impact.

John Jantsch: Well, and I think a lot of people underestimate. There are very few people sitting around in their robe, you know, writing books. I mean most people write books when they’re done with their day job. So most of the books that you see out there are written in that fashion. They’re not people sitting around writing books for four months in their writing cabin in the mountains. So where can people find out more about not only Write Your Book In a Flash, but about the work that you’re doing? Where would you send people?

Dan Janal: Thank you. I believe in consistent branding. So Write Your Book In a Flash is the name of my book, it’s the name of my website, it’s the name of my Facebook page, it’s the name my YouTube channel where I have lots of questions from people and we answer them through YouTube. So writeyourbookinaflash.com will take you to all of those places.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Dan, thanks for stopping by. You’re still in the Minneapolis area, is that right?

Dan Janal: Yes, I am.

John Jantsch: Awesome. Well, it was great catching up with you and a really important topic. Everybody should write a book and they should write it in a flash. I think that sounds awesome. So hopefully we’ll bump into, you won’t be 10 years or so before the next time we chat.

Dan Janal: That’ll be great. Thank you very much for the opportunity. I appreciate [inaudible] helping your listeners.

from http://bit.ly/2H8d1V4

#Marketing Plan

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cathrynstreich · 6 years ago

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Setting Up a Real Estate Dream Team

The following information is provided by the Center for REALTOR® Development (CRD), with assistance from Lauren Hampton and the Podfly editorial team, and recaps CRD Podcast Episode 11.

Teams are an increasingly popular method of serving clients in the purchase and sale of a home. Teams in real estate are the future because the job is getting harder, and it’s almost impossible for one person to do it all on their own without dropping the ball on something.

Episode 11 of the Center for REALTOR® Development’s (CRD) Podcast is all about teamwork in real estate, whether you want to build a team, join a team or communicate better with a team. Our guest Matthew Rathbun comes with substantial firsthand experience. After years of observing teams and being a part of them himself, Rathbun has learned what works with teams and what doesn’t.

Below are 10 important pieces of advice from Rathbun to consider when designing a real estate team.

Planning Business planning is a huge part of starting a team. A very healthy team is a great work environment, but it requires significant planning. The No. 1 failure is that teams become an agent and an assistant and they get to a point where they just start throwing people together as a team, rather than sitting down and making a plan for moving forward.

Good Fit We typically default to what we do best, and when you look for people to fill out your team, you want someone whose skills and traits are compatible with yours, but not exactly the same. Rathbun suggests using online personality tests and a two-system interview process to help with rounding out the personalities and skillsets of your team.

Clear Expectations Setting up expectations is one of the most important parts of setting up a successful relationship. This helps establish the relationship with you and your team members, as well as among your team. If you look like you have your stuff together, you will have more success finding a good fit for you. A good team needs to have structure and vision to help itself grow.

Job Descriptions When you get to the point when you’re ready to hire someone, you want to have a written job description. You need to have something to hold them accountable for and they need to have something to measure up to. Every team is unique in what positions they need to have filled, but it all needs to be written out from a practical standpoint, as well as for legal purposes.

Training Another thing to consider as a team leader is the element of training. With a huge influx of newer and younger agents, they might be expecting education and mentoring. As a team leader, you are taking responsibility for people’s livelihoods. Once you find the right person, you have to intentionally spend time with them cloning your good skills, as well as sharing where you’ve made mistakes so they don’t do the same thing.

Rules and Policies (Especially Around Agency) There are different levels of rules for every state and also every broker. Rathbun and host Monica Neubauer discuss some of the legal aspects of agency. The broker needs to make decisions about dual agency and make sure the client signs an agreement, if that’s the case. Team leaders should ensure that listing specialists are not sharing more information than they have to with buyer specialists. Any potential conflict of interest should be disclosed. If you think of the team as an entity, it makes it much easier to make the rest of those decisions.

Balance of Effort A team should provide new members with some leads, with the expectation that they eventually start to generate their own business. There should be a balance between personal production and supporting the team. Team members should be looking for people who are a doing a moderate amount of production and could benefit from the training of the team, both for themselves and the team as a whole.

Financial Splits Financial splits are specific to your team, how many people are on your team and what they’re doing. Every situation is different, and in many cases states do not allow agents to pay other agents, so the broker becomes responsible for this. You have to start with what the broker permits. If you’re starting a team, there should be a higher percentage of compensation for agent-generated business than team-generated business. A portion of everything that comes in should go into an account for fees.

Support It’s important to establish an environment that supports teams—not just a place to work, but things like technologies, policies and training. When it comes to administrative help, Rathbun recommends using any of the virtual assistant programs out there in the beginning. Virtual assistant sites probably have someone with experience and ideas that could work for you. This is likely not a long-term solution, but can be good in the interim until you find and can afford the right person to bring on.

Communication With large teams, communication can be very difficult, both within the team and between the team and the client. Having a good rapport with the buyer agent and the client is crucial to continued business. A big part of the systemization of your team should be focused on how you can communicate literally, clearly and well. If you have a transaction coordinator, they should be introduced early on to the client and the opposing agent of the team, and all communication should funnel through one person, or two, at most.

Our monthly podcast focuses on education in the real estate industry. It addresses formal education programs (such as those from NAR) and informal sources of industry knowledge (such as peers and mentors). Its intended audiences include REALTORS®, real estate professionals, allied professions (such as appraisers and lenders), educators, education providers, and consumers. To listen or subscribe, visit www.crdpodcast.com.

To learn much more about developing and managing healthy and effective real estate teams, consider obtaining REBI’s Certified Real Estate Team Specialist (C-RETS) certification. This entire month of February, all the C-RETS online certification courses are offered at 25% off their regular prices.

For more information, please visit RISMedia’s online learning portal from NAR’s Center for REALTOR® Development (CRD) and the Learning Library. Here, real estate professionals can sign up for online professional development courses, industry designations, certifications, CE credits, Code of Ethics programs and more. NAR’s CRD also offers monthly specials and important education updates. New users will need to register for an account.

The post Setting Up a Real Estate Dream Team appeared first on RISMedia.

Setting Up a Real Estate Dream Team published first on https://thegardenresidences.tumblr.com/

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dorothydelgadillo · 6 years ago

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"How to Build a Successful Channel Marketing Program Ft. Bryn Jones of PartnerStack" (Inbound Success Ep. 76)

How do companies with successful channel marketing programs increase customer lifetime value by 150% while decreasing the cost of customer acquisition by up to 75%?

Bryn Jones

This week onThe Inbound Success Podcast I'm joined by Bryn Jones, the CEO of PartnerStack - a SaaS platform that enables companies to build and manage partner channel marketing programs.

PartnerStack's clients range from startups to publicly traded companies like Intuit and Shopify. What they all have in common is channel marketing, and the insights that Bryn has gained by working with them have made him an authority on what it takes to build a successful partner channel.

In this week's episode, he talks about the types of companies that are a good fit for channel marketing (TL;DR - it's just about everybody), when to start a channel, what it takes to build a successful channel, how much it costs, and what kinds of results you should expect.

This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live, the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with keynote speakers including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel.

Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".

Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live

Some highlights from my conversation with Bryn include:

PartnerStack helps companies grow through partnerships by providing the technology layer that enables them to build a partner channel marketing program.

Approximately 30% of the software sold every year is sold through channel programs.

Partner channels are the best way to get in front of the late adopters and laggards in the market, which is the majority of the market.

Bryn believes that partner channels can work for any type of business.

The best way to start a partner channel is to identify four different potential types of partners, and the work with ten companies in each category (so 40 total). From that initial 40, you will be able to identify which category is the best fit for your business.

Companies with partner channels, on average, have customer lifetime values that are 1.5 times higher than those without channel programs.

When it comes to partner incentives, start with basic recognition (ex. thank you notes). When you're ready to scale up, cash rewards tend to work better than coupons or gift cards.

HubSpot, Shopify and Intuit are all companies with best-in-class partner programs.

Bryn says that companies that have partner programs aren't selling an opportunity to earn a commission. They're selling an opportunity to do business.

The most successful partner channels aren't selling incentives, they are selling value that the company (that offers the partner program) can go through and then provide to the partner.

When creating a new partner channel program, start by building out a portal and automating communication with partners. Make sure to create case studies about your partners' successes.

Companies with $3 to $5 million in annual revenues are generally a good fit for starting a partner channel.

If you're serious about doing this, and doing it well, be prepared to hire a dedicated full time person to work on your partner channel and give them at least six months to become successful.

The typical partner channel program can increase customer lifetime value by 150% and decrease the cost of customer acquisition by up to 75%.

Resources from this episode:

Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS"

Visit the PartnerStack website

Email Bryn at [email protected]

Bryn Jones on Twitter

Connect with Bryn on LinkedIn

Listen to the podcast to learn more about what types of companies are a good fit for channel marketing, when to start one, and what the specific characteristics are of the most successful partner channel marketing programs.

Transcript

Kathleen Booth (Host):Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and today my guess is Bryn Jones who's the co-founder and CEO of PartnerStack. Welcome Bryn. Bryn Jones (Guest): Hey how are you? Kathleen, how are you?

Bryn and Kathleen recording this episode

Kathleen: I'm great, thanks. How are you doing?

Bryn: Good, good. I'm in California today, so doing some last minute travel right before the year ends, getting in front of customers.

Kathleen: Nice. The last minute hustle. Hopefully you get to wrap that up soon and have a little down time for the holidays.

Bryn: Yeah, yeah. No, it's ... I mean, that's the great thing about enterprise software is it's pedal to the metal, but the holidays does leave a little bit of time for people to rest and recuperate, so looking forward to getting back into the office next week and putting a solid plan together for next year.

Kathleen: Yeah, it sure beats being in retail this time of year.

Bryn: Absolutely.

About PartnerStack

Kathleen: So before we jump into our conversation for today, tell our audience a little bit about yourself, and about PartnerStack, and what it does.

Bryn: Yeah, perfect. Yeah so PartnerStack, we're a three year old company.

Three years ago we got into a business incubator called Y Combinator. We went in as an idea, and we came out as a semi-functioning product.

But what it is that we do is we let companies grow through partnerships. What that means is we're the technology layer that lets companies go and build partner or channel programs.

So an example of this would be Intuit. They drive about 20% of their revenue through accountants, bookkeepers, and financial institutions. Except this whole process is incredibly challenging to 1) manage, and 2) actually ensure that it's in fact successful.

We're the layer of technology that lets marketers get back to being marketers, and get away from being administrators.

Kathleen: I definitely feel like it shows that you went through Y Combinator, because you have your value prop and pitch completely nailed down, which I know that gets drilled into you when you go through these incubators and accelerators, that being one of the, obviously the most famous ones.

So what led you to wanting to create the solution? Was it something from your background or experience? Did you see that pain point?

Bryn: Super interesting. So my other founders and I, we actually built another company while I was in graduate school. The company was like Slack, except it was pretty much worse in every other way in that the product wasn't as good, we certainly didn't have the revenue growth, and we definitely weren't able to go fundraise.

But what we realized is we could instead innovate on business model. I don't think enough technology companies go through and do this, and so we started working with a network of agencies.

These networks of agencies, they would send us business, and we'd simply send them a commission. This was incredibly interesting, because people started reaching out to us saying, "Hey, how are you managing your channel program? How are you managing your partner program?" Quite frankly, we just said, "What's that?"

It took us down this big path where we realized, there's a ton of software sold each year, and 30% of the is coming through channel partners.

This is kind of like the last fossil inside of a technology company, that technology hasn't had to go through it and understand distribution. But really it's the best way to get in front of the late adopters and laggards in the market, which is the majority of the market.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's really interesting. I have been a participant in channel programs. I've been a value-added reseller, a partner, whatever you want to call it, for quite a few years, with several different technology companies. But I have never been in a company that had a partner or reseller program.

So if somebody is listening and they're the in-house marketer, what would you say are the questions they should be asking themselves to understand better whether a channel program is right for their business?

How To Know If A Channel Marketing Program Is Right For Your Business

Bryn: Gotcha. We firmly believe that channel works for everyone's business. The reason why we believe that, is because we can see that is in fact true. Specifically in software, it works really well.

What it really it comes down to is: Who are your channel partners? Is it more of an affiliate? Is it a larger partnership with a bank? Is it a partnership through accountants and bookkeepers?

Everyone has a specific channel partner that will work for them, and you might not get it right the first time. So really it's a process about running experiments where you're first off, trying to determine the channel partner profile.

You do this by finding 10 channel partners and making them successful, and then replicating it over, and over, and over. Now the best way that we recommend for companies to go on and do this, is to write down four different channel partners they believe will work, and go and try to backfill it. So it ends up resulting in you actually getting 40 channel partners onboard.

The reality is, is one of those groups will work really well. One of those groups will work sort of well. The other two groups will in fact fail, so that's the starting point of a channel program.

It does work for everyone. It depends on what your goals are.

This isn't a marketing channel that you turn on overnight and it immediately starts pumping out lots of revenue. But the reason why people need to go through and invest in it early, is because the lifetime value, sorry, the cost to acquire customers through channel is actually less expense than through any other means.

Then the lifetime value of those customers is significantly more. We're seeing in our customers it's up to 1.5 times more, and so it's an investment worth making early days, because it's the only thing that's going to let you go through it in scale.

Kathleen: Now you said when you were talking about that this, that channel can work for everyone. Do you mean everyone in software, or everyone period?

Bryn: Well, it's interesting. I think everyone period. Technology companies are the ones where we've gone through it and focused, but most other sectors are using channel in some way, shape, or form today.

The best example would be the way Toyota sells their cars through a network of dealerships. They don't think of that as channel, but certainly it is channel. Those dealerships are owned by independent business people, and that relationship is always challenging.

So nontraditional sectors have done a very good job at understanding channel. It just hasn't been formally called that, and so what we're seeing in the space is actually some of the most innovative stuff, is really coming out of agencies, in the way that they go through and manage their referrals, because it drives so much of their business.

Kathleen: Yeah, it's funny when you say that these other industries are doing it without calling it channel, because what first came to my mind was specialist physicians.

For example, I've worked for years with a client that does laser eye surgery. They get all of their business through referrals. I had a call the other day with a company that just does medical imaging, so MRIs, all of their business. Nobody goes in the phone book to pick out where they're going to get their MRI. It all comes through a referring physician.

So in the medical field, it's incredibly common. I think we as consumers experience channels all the time. I think a lot of people just don't know that there's a name for that.

Bryn: Yeah, it's the infrastructure underneath of the way that those referrals go through and work, and so our thesis is that this is actually much more scientific than it has been.

There is a way to go through and do it. You can optimize that process, and when you optimize that process, you just get a better ROI.

How To Start A Channel Marketing Program

Kathleen: Yeah, so if somebody is listening and they think a channel could work for them, you mentioned that the first step is to figure out four, let's call it buckets, of types of channel partners, and to backfill those buckets, 10 partners in each bucket, so you've got 40 partners.

Then it sounded like what you were saying is to do almost an A/B test, only I guess in this case it would be an A/B/C/D test, and figure out which of those is working the best. Is that accurate?

Bryn: That's 100% accurate. You create the buckets, and you're trying to build a persona behind it.

Where is this person located? What is their age demographic? What is their occupation? Maybe most importantly, what is the reason they are sending me business?

You go through and you run those A/B tests, and you try to figure out who's going to most effectively send you the business. When you do, you have to figure out what's the incentive you will then go through and provide them. Is it a discount? Is it a coupon? Is it a reward? Is it cash?

We've seen companies go through it and work through this. It could just be as simple as co-marketing material, writing a blog post, or featuring people.

People like to be recognized for the work that they do. I mean, it could quite frankly be as simple as sending a thank you letter.

But no one has enough process, we believe, behind the way that you go through it and recognize, and incentivize people to help you grow your business.

Structuring The Right Incentives For Channel Partners

Kathleen: Have you seen any evidence of what types of incentives tend to produce the best outcomes in channel programs?

Bryn: It depends on what the goal of the channel program is.

We find, as funny as it sounds, very basic things work, so just general recognition; thank you letters, acknowledging that you did in fact receive benefit, and that you appreciate that.

Most people drop the ball there, and so that's a very basic step that can be done. "Hey, you know what, thank you for sending me Sally over. Got her all setup and it was really great. You really helped me out here." That's the most basic version of that.

Then it can go all the way up to cash rewards. Though some people sometimes think, "Oh cash, that doesn't feel very good, maybe that's not what I want to go through it and do," the reality is, it works more often than gift cards.

From the data that we've seen on our platform, cash works more in building a program that can infinitely scale, than just coupons, because what ends up happening, or gift cards, what ends up happening is you just bring in people to your program that just want to get gift cards. There's a very small segment of the population that only wants that, and so it's a very misleading idea.

I mean, we always tell people, "If you were to go through and partner with Amazon, you couldn't pay them in Amazon gift cards, so why do you think that you can build a longterm scalable program where it's like this?"

Kathleen: Yeah, I would tend to agree with that, having been on the partner side. I would think that gift cards could potentially work if your ideal partner is an individual, truly an individual person, because then their incentive is, "Sure this is money I can spend on myself."

But if your partner is any kind of a company, gift cards have to be used by somebody. I think what's attractive about it ...

I used to own my own marketing agency, and we were partners with a lot of different organizations, probably the most prominent of which was HubSpot, which has a very good partner program, 20% in perpetuity of any monthly recurring revenue that you sell.

What was attractive about it for me was that I was in a business where there wasn't a lot of - what's the word I'm looking for? - residual income, if you will. You're selling your hours, your time, it's not super scalable.

But a partner commission changes the game a little bit, if you can accumulate enough to make it meaningful, so I would agree with that.

Bryn: Yeah. No, and that's what we're seeing. I mean ultimately if you go through and invest in the channel, what you want to do is you want to enable people to be able to earn a living, build a career, build a business off of the channel program that you go through and build.

If you accomplish that, then you will have an incredibly successful channel program.

That is an optimal end state that I think that everybody can go through it and work to, as long as people understand that it's doing the basics really well. But you have to be working towards, "How is this a longterm sustainable channel that runs and operates completely on its own?"

There's many different touchpoints that get you there to that.

Bryn: It's interesting that you mentioned HubSpot. I mean, we always point to them as the leader in understanding channel at a very early day. Peter Caputa, and the work that he did to really create a community around it, it's not just about money. It's teaching people how to build services around software, and that had never been done before.

Yeah, it was incredibly impressive the way that that's happened.

Kathleen: Yeah, Pete Caputa, he's an amazing guy. He's also who introduced us, so shout-out to Pete.

I have to underscore what you just said, because it's kind of blown me away. I mean, becoming a part of that partner program was a major game changer for my business and therefore as a result, for my life. I've said that to him. In fact, I said that to him on his birthday this year.

But the thing that amazed me about it was how almost religious people got as part of that partner program. I mean, I always saw a ton of value in it, but there were partners ...

It was incredibly common to hear people say, "I bleed orange, or I drink the orange Kool-Aid," because HubSpot's logo is orange, which are pretty extreme statements if you really think about the meaning behind them.

People who would paint their office walls orange, buy orange clothes, I mean it really was this incredibly evangelical approach to being a part of a partner program. You don't see that very often, so I think that that's to me the clearest manifestation of the value that Pete delivered to the partners that joined in the HubSpot partner program.

Bryn: Yeah, and you know what, there are other programs that are like this that work well, specifically in SaaS I can point to Shopify.

Shopify has built thousands of agencies in this point in time that help people go through and service Shopify stores. Excuse me. It all comes down to the fact that they know they aren't selling an opportunity to earn a commission. They're selling an opportunity to do business.

"They aren't selling an opportunity to earn a commission. They're selling an opportunity to do business."

~Bryn Jones Click to Tweet this

Though it sounds very different, you're selling a partnership. What are you bringing to the table when you're setting that partnership up? It starts very low in the funnel, all the way from the thank you letter, to the coupon, to the recognition and the co-marketing stuff, and then all the way up to cash.

So there is a step by step process in which you go through and built this. But it's just having a key, like, treat your partners the same way you would treat your employees.

Bryn: If you come at it with that type of approach, and though it sounds very soft, you can unpack it, and they are very, very, very specific things that you can go through, to do to make that work.

What Makes For a Successful Channel Program?

Kathleen: Yeah. Now in my experience, as I mentioned, I've been a member of quite a few partner programs.

What's really interesting to me anecdotally, is that, I think in every case the platform that I was a partner for, and I'm thinking of SAS software partnerships right now, in every case the platform was a great platform that delivered plenty of value.

But the degree of value that I would say I derived and the platform did out of the partnership really varies. So there would be some companies like HubSpot, where my company, myself, the company I'm with now, we're very invested in that relationship.

Then there's others where it's just like a failure to launch. It never really gets off the ground.

At least in my experience, very little of that has to do with the actual incentives. You might have comparable incentives across five partnership programs, and have five very, very different results.

So can you talk a little bit about ... For a company that wants to start a channel program, once they put that incentive in place, what are the other building blocks that are necessary to set partners up for success, and to have a longterm, really thriving partner relationship?

Bryn: Yeah, so I mean the first and most important thing is that you aren't selling incentives, you are selling value that you can go through and then provide to the partner. That's not some abstract thing. You actually need to teach and train the partner how to go through and sell your product, or make the recommendation for you. You need to invest heavily, heavily in training and education materials that partners can through and access, so that they can understand how to sell your product.

"You aren't selling incentives, you are selling value that you can go through and then provide to the partner."

~ Bryn Jones Click to Tweet this

Bryn: It's not like selling to a customer. It's again, selling a relationship. It's the same way as you would onboard an employee, so that's the first step that needs to occur.

You need to understand that there needs to be an investment into understanding the value. For you as a company, you need to understand what the partner wants out of the relationship, because again, it's not just money, and so you need to spend some time to go through and do that investigation.

They may not tell you. In fact, they probably won't, because they even know. But often what we find it is, is you as a company understand the value of your product, but I need to be trained the same way as an employee would be. That takes a lot of hand holding, beyond ...

Specific things, you could put a learning management system in place, invest in technology. If you're going to invest in technology to employees that you bring on, whether that be through Slack, your CRM, many of the marketing automation tools that are in fact out there, you need to invest in technology to go through and then support your partner ecosystem.

That technology starts with a learning management system. You should probably go through and create a basic portal. I'm not going to go through and hawk our platform, but then there are other things you need to go through and consider.

You need to be building email campaigns to ensure that partners, once they come on board, they are in fact getting engaged.

You need to think of it like a pipeline. Top of funnel is opening up and bringing new partners in, and then mid funnel is really how do you ensure that partners are moving through that pipeline.

You need to determine when you should go through and reach out to them. If you can go through and do it, you're not going to make everyone successful all the time, but there's at least a lifeline. You're building a lifeline for them to reach out to you when they need help.

That's why channel is a longterm investment. But those are some of the specific things we can think through.

Then there's even more granular stuff. Build case studies, not where you talk about your product, but where you talk about your partner, and their company, and their clients, and the way that they're going through and selling, and the struggles that they're going through and facing.

If you can build those case studies, and you can work alongside the partners to actually promote them inside of your blog, that's how you quickly build a community.

Kathleen: Absolutely. That's been my experience, is that a lot of, especially if you're working with agencies for example, well, and I would think that this is true of most partner relationships, that that agency, that company, that is your partner is running their own business, they have a lot going on, their number one focus is not the partnership generally. So the easier you can make it for them to be successful, it's almost like, "Can you spoon feed success to them?"

This is what HubSpot did really well. It had phenomenal partner onboarding. The partner success managers are great. They gave us a ton of content that we could white label and use in own marketing.

I mean, that's making it easy. We needed to get leads as an agency, and HubSpot would just give us all this content, whether it was eBooks, or infographics, or what have you, that we could put our logo on and send out, and even change, customize copy.

Making it that easy made it easy for us to invest in the partnership, so I would definitely agree with what you said there.

Bryn: Yeah, just treat your partners like they're employees. For the people that are the marketers really driving these initiatives inside of organizations, I recognize one of the hardest challenges that everyone has is actually getting buy-in from executives.

The best way to go through and communicate this to executives when this comes up, is to walk them through that. If these people are going to provide us a lower cost to acquire customers, a higher lifetime value, why aren't we willing to treat them the same way as we would any salesperson, or any other marketer that were to come on here?

If you really push that and understand how aggressively you can go through and push it, it's very surprising how quickly finance comes in and says, "That makes sense."

It's also important to understand that this isn't something that gets turned on and works overnight, but is the only way that you will truly continue to scale up longterm in the business.

Then the other thing where we see people fail often is when they think there's one partnership that will work. "Oh, this one partnership is going to change the direction of our company." That's where you see a lot of scar tissue, you know? People have learned their lessons.

Lots of scars have come from thinking through this one partnership with this one big company, that's going to change everything. Where reality is, those partnerships, to be frank, I have never seen them lead to anything, and so don't do that.

That's certainly not the place that you want to go through and start with, because it costs so many resources, it takes so much time, and the likelihood of the payoff actually happening is actually very low.

Kathleen: It's also incredibly risky. When I hear that, I think about a portfolio investment strategy. If you went to your financial advisor, they would never say to put all of your money into one stock. It could be an incredibly well performing stock, but they would never say put everything into that one stock, because you would have all your eggs in one basket.

If that thing disappears, if that partner disappears, even if it is a successful relationship that does bear fruit, if all of the sudden in year two something happens and it goes away, what are you left with? Nothing, you have nothing.

Bryn: I feel so bad. I'll tell you from our experience. One of the most challenging things for use when we first started PartnerStack in 2015 was customer development. The reason being is, we would go out and talk to partner, or channel, or community managers.

No joke, we tracked it in our CRM, and 30% of the time, they would end up losing their job within six months of a conversation happening. We went back and looked at why they were losing their job, and very often, very high percentage of the time, it was because the pursuit of one single partnership.

To this day, we've never seen that payoff. It's something that we always, always, always warn people about.

You cannot under invest in this channel. It takes time, and there is no silver bullets, there's just a lot of lead.

If you get that buy-in, and you communicate that across the company, it ultimately will be something that's successful.

I mean, look at HubSpot. 40% of the revenue comes through channel.

You can go through and look at companies like Shopify. When they IPO'd, 25% of their revenue was coming through channel, and so it's a huge, huge, huge opportunity. It's the only way you'll go through it and hit scale. It's just making sure you have buy-in.

When Should You Start A Channel Program?

Kathleen: So is there a certain point in a company's maturity when starting a channel program makes sense? It sounds like it's somewhat resource intensive to do it well, so is this something that you've seen companies do right out of the gate successfully? Or do they need to have a little time, and experience, and track record underneath them before they should move to starting a channel?

Bryn: It's my belief that channel, when you make the investment, you can do it very early.

The way you can do it is, it's very important to collect the data required to build those personas that we discussed, those four different buckets. The sooner you can start collecting that data, the better those personas become.

We think that starting early is good. But when you start, you have to think of it as an experiment. All you're doing when you put a channel program in place, is you're putting a sign on the door that says, we're open for business. You should expect nothing to come through. You should just track it, and collect the data on it.

Where we see it start to really work is when companies hit that three to five million inflection point, and it's because, simply put, companies have it figured out. They know where to collect payment information.

We've seen people, and have had instances where people got really upset where channel programs didn't work. We've gone through, dug into their program and realized, they actually forgot to collect payment information.

This doesn't fix a broken product or a broken process. But it will accelerate growth once you hit those inflection points, so I say three to five million is typically when you want to ... you know you ... If you're in a three to five million dollar revenue run rate, in order for you to hit 15 to 20, you're going to need to invest in channel in some way, shape, or form.

The sooner you do it, the better.

But that being said, we've worked with companies who have had less than 250,000 dollars in revenue, and have now grown revenues upwards and over three million dollars in revenue, because they really invested and understood channel. So there's no wrong time, but there's certainly an optimum time.

What Does It Cost To Start And Run A Channel Marketing Program?

Kathleen: Yeah. From a resource standpoint, walk me through what a company should be prepared to invest, in terms of staff to support this; level of effort, budget. I know you can't give me specifics, but give me a general sense of it they want to go in with their eyes wide open, what does it take to do this well?

Bryn: You need a dedicated person on this program at the very least - one person where their job is to figure out channel partners. That is what their job is. You can't pull them off and having them do case studies. Or you can't pull them off and doing smaller tasks that go through and then pop up.

You need to give one person a responsibility. You need to make one person responsible for channel. That one person can, within a six month period, should be able to generate significant revenue. I don't mean cover the cost of their salary by any means, but we've seen it go through and happen. But it will be a substantial amount of revenue, and you can see the path of growth going forward.

If you interrupt that person, if you put them on different projects, if you say, "Okay, not only are you managing channel, but you're going to manage community too" very, very clear and concise in what their role was.

Their goal needs to be, first to recruit partners, then to take those partners and turn them into people that actually engaged. Once they are in fact engaged - engagement looks like training, day to day communication, opening and reading emails - once they are in fact engaged, they are actually starting to send you business or have ideas of how they will go through and send you business.

But you need at least one person dedicated to it. I cannot stress that enough.

Then after the fact, you hit a point where you decide, do you want to solve this with people, or do you want to solve this with technology?

That's typically where PartnerStack comes in. We've seen companies, you would be very surprised at how big companies can become, just managing this with people. Though it's a really good thing, because they're figured this thing out, it's also very expensive.

So there are companies where there are several hundred people working on channel alone, manually at the end of each month calling people and asking, "Hey, did you close this account? Did you close that account?"

Oh, there's a channel conflict. That being where a partner sends business, and then a sales rep goes and closes it. Who are you paying the commission to? That's why it's important, once you hit that one to three mark, that you need to put technology in behind it.

I mean, we've talked with companies where they've overpaid channel partners millions of dollars each year, because it wasn't gone through and tracked correctly.

So there does need to be technology at some point in time. You do need to convince finance that it's worth an investment. But it's very easy to go through and point to.

Kathleen: I can definitely speak from the user standpoint about why that is important, because I remember ... Again, we're part of several channel partner programs.

I would say HubSpot is, again, is the most professional in terms of how it's run. But it's also evolved a lot over the years. When I first joined that partner program, we were still entering our leads into a dedicated Salesforce portal. Now they've got lead registration seamlessly a part of their CRM, which is genius. You don't have to leave the environment you're working in.

To me, lead registration is one of the biggest pain points. I'm part of other partner programs where there is no good system. You have to email your partner rep. It's so imperfect.

Then once you've done that, you don't know how to track it, because there isn't a portal that you can look in. So it's messy, and if that's messy, then I think that slows things down quite a bit for the use.

I know for myself, if you don't have a clear sense of, "Alright, what am I working on? What is closed? What's in the pipeline?" it's hard to be effective. It's hard to get excited about it too.

Bryn: Yeah, I think that this is all about optimizing for the partner's experience, and so everything that we do, every investment that we make is to try to enable that.

So we try to automate programs as much as possible, as much as you possibly can, because that improves the partner experience.

If you can improve, build the perfect partner experience, those partners will more likely than not be successful on your platform.

But the reality is, is where partnerships and channel, today in 2018, is where sales operations was in 2000, where is didn't exist before things like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Where marketing automation was in 2005 to 2008, that's the state of things today. So if you go back and compare to sales operation and marking automation, and you see the structure, the infrastructure, the requirements, and ultimately the returns that the investments in fact made, it's easy to go through and justify something further up front.

Fortunately today, there are ... We're not certainly the only people in this space. We see other people do a really great job of stuff, and there's a lot of options for when that comes up.

But at the end of the day, you have to optimize for partner experience. Your partners are going to tell you. Quite frankly, if they're not telling you, they're telling you. Silence is negative feedback, and I don't think people quite realize that too often.

PartnerStack's Partner Channel

Kathleen: Now, does PartnerStack have a partner channel?

Bryn: Yes we do. We do have a partner channel. We've had a partner channel since day one. Since year one in our business, it's driven revenue for us.

Certainly like everybody, you can through ... There are improvements for it to go through and be made. But for us, working with agencies has been, it's so much fun, because all the sudden, we're training people how to add another service line to their business. We're training them that they can go to their clients, and they can differentiate themselves on the market and say, "Hey, not only can we do email marketing, can we manage your website, can we do PR, but also we can know how to go through and manage the channel."

When we walk agencies and our partners through that, the level of excitement that they have is unbelievable, because quite frankly, there are only so many new services that can be launched. This is something that's unique. We've seen agencies be very successful and generate a lot of new business of it.

What Kinds of Results Can You Expect With A Partner Channel Marketing Program?

Kathleen: Yeah. Walk me through the results. You have your own partner program. You work with companies. Obviously by definition, everyone that is a client of yours has a partner program.

Can you tell me a little bit about the kinds of results you're seeing, either for yourselves, or for the companies that are using your platform?

Bryn: Yeah, so I won't use specific customer names, but I will talk about some of the results that we've seen. We've seen early stage companies go from 250,000 dollars in revenue, to over a million five in revenue, in less than 16 months.

This is completely bootstrapped, a team of four people moving upwards of a team of 10. We're driving upwards of 50% of their revenue, and it's awesome to see.

We work with larger companies where people have hit annual milestones for their partner program within 24 hours of launching with our platform, because all of a sudden there was a way to go through and track stuff. Those people go through and get promotions because of it, which is incredibly exciting.

I think that there are over 100,000 partners that are on our platform, that companies go through and work with today. What's unique about us is we believe very firmly, again, in partner experience. For us, that actually means enabling partners to join a broader network, where they can go through and pick other packages, and services that they can go through and promote. Companies go through a buy-in to this, so it's worked really well.

It's been fun to watch. It's so fun to watch people go through it and be successful in their jobs, whether they be partners or companies that we've gone through and worked with.

I mean for us, it accounts for 30% of our revenue, and drives 40% of our leads. We have a unique system in that there's a tiered version of it where you're dropped in. We give you an opportunity. We train you, and if you are in fact successful, we can move you to the next tier, and so I know that my customer success and sales teams love our partners. It's just fun to work with them.

Kathleen: Now you started out talking about how prevalent channel programs are for software companies. I know for that particular vertical, two of the most important business metrics that they track are cost of customer acquisition, and lifetime value of a customer. In fact that ratio of LTV to CAC also is very important.

You mentioned in the beginning that partner programs can really help optimize that. What have you seen, as far as how much does having a partner program enable you to bring that CAC, or cost of customer acquisition, down? How much does it extend the lifetime value?

Bryn: Yeah, so we're seeing lifetime value for some of our customers to be over 200%. Median is about 150%, more than what they're currently used to. Anything over what they have now, everyone is happy with. But median returns, 150%. But we're seeing people as much as over 200%.

The CAC is the thing that is incredibly interesting. We enable companies to go through and experiment with different incentives. Today you could go through and launch a bonus program where you pay an extra hundred dollars. Next month, maybe that that's not what you're going to go through and do, so we've been able to go through and test that.

We've decreased CAC upwards of 75% in some companies.

Kathleen: Wow.

Bryn: Yeah. Some companies get really aggressive with their programs in the beginning and over invest, and actually try to not do that, because they're looking to improve engagement so much. But it's a result of not only are you unloading the cost of sales, I mean, this is the thing that people don't talk about enough, it's actually the cost of support after the fact. It's very hard to go through and quite frankly quantify that.

But with our big customers that have those resources, those massive, massive finance teams, they've gone through and done it. That alone is enough for their finance teams to go through and invest in the tech to through it and support it.

Kathleen: Wow, those are some impressive numbers. Well, so interesting, and this has really been the first time we've talked a lot of about channel programs on this podcast, so I'm really glad we had an opportunity to chat about it.

Kathleen's Two Questions

Kathleen: I want to switch gears, because I want to make sure we have time for the two questions that I always ask all of my guests.

My loyal listeners will have heard me say this time and time again, but I would love to know from your standpoint, we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast, so company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now?

Bryn: That's really interesting. One of the companies that we see that has been doing a really great job of this, and that have been actually using their partner network to go through it and do it, is Intuit.

Intuit has turned to their community to build content, and it's working really well. It's been very cool to see such a big company go through it and move so quickly, to go through it and take advantage of the opportunity.

There's of course smaller companies that we've seen do a good job on this. But Intuit is the best example. Of course, I'm going to be biased with it. Intuit is the best example because they've leveraged their channel, their partners to actually create the content required to drive those advanced sales.

Kathleen: Yeah, that's interesting, especially because they're such traditional industry, that a lot of people think of as very stodgy, so knowing that they're at the forefront of that is really fascinating.

Now I'm going to have to take a look at Intuit's content, which I would normally not look at, now that I'm not a business owner anymore. But I did used to be in and out of QuickBooks every single day of my life for 11 years, so maybe I'll pay it a visit again.

Kathleen: Second question, the world of digital marketing is changing at a lightning pace. How do you personally stay up to date and on top of all the new developments?

Bryn: It's so tricky. One of the things that I've been doing lately is actually cutting the number of tools and technologies that I use way down. So instead of being spread out across all these social media platforms, I just focus on one.

Kathleen: Which one?

Bryn: Oddly enough, I go through and focus on LinkedIn. That's where I get most of my value from. I'm also following things on Twitter. That's certainly an area.

But at the end of the day, with all this extra noise in the environment, I actually listen to people. I'm going through referrals more. I'm talking with my peers and asking them what works.

I actually have a number of people through Y Combinator that I have biweekly calls with them still, that we've been continuing for three years now. We talk about it, what are the best things that we're seeing in the market.

We also ask our customers when we're in the middle of doing any type of sale. We say, "Hey, just out of curiosity, do you have any new tools or technology that you're using?"

As much as it's going through, researching and seeing what's out there, it still goes back to the basics.

For me, it's limiting my consumption of technology, and going to the source, going to people, because I think with this influx of tools that are on the market, it's so hard to know which one is the best one to go through and pick. You have to go through and use referrals the way that you've always had to.

So it's interesting, it's this weird thing that kind of through it and happened.

Kathleen: Yeah, for me it's my podcast. I call or email people like you, because I'm interested in learning more. I interview you, and that's how I learn. If other people listen too, great, but I always say I would do it even if nobody listened, because it's-

Bryn: Yeah, that's such a ... Maybe we'll have to start doing one, because that sounds like a really great idea to go through and learn how to, to go through it and talk with people. Talking with people is very underrated.

Kathleen: Yeah, I would so agree. I've learned more doing this than I have doing anything else honestly. Well if you start a podcast, let me know how it goes. I'd love to hear about that.

Bryn: I'll be calling you and we'll get you on there, first thing.

Kathleen: There you go.

How Reach Bryn Jones

Kathleen: Well, so much fun talking with you. I've learned a lot about channel marketing, and I'm sure there are people listening that want to learn more, might have questions.

What is the best way for them to learn more about PartnerStack, as well as connect with you as an individual online?

Bryn: Yeah, so I mean, reach out to me on LinkedIn. I spend a lot of time on there. Connect with me, message me. I usually get back within 24 to 48 hours.

People can reach out to me through email. It's first Bryn, B-R-Y-N @PartnerStack.com.

You should check out PartnerStack or PartnerStack.com. Message one of our support or sales reps. We'll get you on the phone, and mostly walk you through what the potential is.

One of the biggest things we push on people is like, "Hey, maybe now isn't the right time to go through it and invest in technology. Maybe you need to figure out your four buckets before you come through it and buy the platform." We love talking about this. We don't think enough people are talking about this, and so if you're interested, feel free to reach out any time, happy to always have a conversation about this.

Kathleen: That is the mark of a great salesperson by the way - the salesperson who tells you, "You're not ready for us," and tells you what to do in order to get ready.

Awesome, well thank you so much Bryn.

If you are listening and you found value out of this or you learned something new, you know what to do. Please leave the podcast a review on Apple Podcasts, or on the platform of your choice.

As always, if you know someone else that's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love for them to be my next interview.

That's it for this week. Thanks Bryn.

Bryn: Thank you so much.

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from Web Developers World https://www.impactbnd.com/blog/how-to-build-channel-marketing-program-bryn-jones-partnerstack

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