So that's kind of how we got the idea.

Yeah.

And just starting the agency, we actually had our agency and our core services in place.

We haven't had clients in place before we put the direct mail on the forefront.

And it was the typical, you're reaching out, you're going to networking events, you're basically groveling and begging people to be a client of yours so we were like how do we do this better like how do we offer them something that is extremely valuable that doesn't cost them a lot of money and that they believe in already because not every business owner is on board with ai and automation and online stuff so we're like how do we give them something they believe in And that is how we came up with this.

You know, there's tons of versions of this online.

So we just kind of took that and made it our own.

Is that accurate?

Why are people paying you $3,000 for them?

Because it's put up for a year in front of thousands of customers inside of a local restaurant or just any busy local business.

So if it's going inside of Bob's Pizza, and Bob's Pizza gets 10,000 customers a month, that means that their business is displayed in front of those customers, and all the specials of that restaurant are written on it.

So people are already looking at it.

They're already sitting there.

They're looking at the board trying to decide, and then they might glance down and go, "My roof is leaking.

I'm gonna call Rick's Roofing."

What's the argument for that?

What's an interesting sort of halfway mark, isn't it, between getting it off your chest, but also making it a bit public? What do you think people get out of that?

think, yeah, it is interesting, isn't it? Sometimes you just want to write something, you don't want it to see the light of day.

You don't want anyone to see it.

I suppose we all feel like that if we are journalists or write a diary.

But in the case of being burnt or hurt or betrayed or someone's just been a real asshole to you and you have no way of really telling them in an articulate way because when we're heartbroken, you know, that's all out the window, isn't it? We just can't say what we want to say in the moment a lot of the time.

So Letter to My Ex really exists for getting everything, like I said, off your chest and getting it down in a way that you would like to say to that person.

So a lot of the letters are very sweary.

the truth doesn't bring closure

Because, I mean, it's tough when you have a family member that has to travel and be gone and have the kids trying to figure out, okay, where's daddy? Where's mommy? Yeah.

Well, and I think, too, one of the biggest struggles with the touring industry specifically versus just a, you know, traditional, you know, nine to five, like dad's gone nine to five and comes home is that the the touring life, the timing of everything there does not line up with the kids life at all.

when he has free time, it's like during, during the day, depending on what his role is, but it's like either during the day before soundcheck and then soundcheck happens when kids are usually getting home from school.

And then once soundcheck is over, then he's starting to get into like the actual show and the show goes late night and load out and all of that.

And so like the entire time that the kid is, home from school, going into dinner, into bedtime, he is completely unavailable for video calling, for texting, for phone calls.

And if the person on the road is in the production side, a lot of times, even during the day, they're loading in and setting up and doing all this- Troubleshooting.

Troubleshooting and back end stuff.

I mean, who is that for? I'd love to hear a little bit more about who this is all intended for.

Mm.

The tank is saltwater, so we're really buoyant in there, so a huge part is them learning how to control that buoyancy.

We do wear weights in the tank- So that we're not just completely corked up.

So you learn buoyancy, you learn acting with your face, being comfortable.

Our tank isn't very deep, but it's built in a very specific way, and you can't physically swim on the surface of the water.

So navigating our tank, our performers have to learn where they can get a breath without knocking themselves out.

[laughs] They have to learn where they can come to gracefully rest, because when your head is above the water, it looks awful to see, like, doggy paddling.

Sure

Right.

So you're maybe if you're somebody I actually, this was me.

I, um, had a lot of food noise in my head where I would think about eating most of the day.

When's my next meal going to be? What am I going to eat? I wasn't overweight, but I had this like mental chatter about food.

When I was done eating, I'm like, ah, but you know, chocolate sounds nice.

So, so we can actually turn that volume down or off to where you can sit down, you can have your full meal and you're done and you feel good.

When we take a high enough dose, it can suppress people's appetite maybe too much, which is where I actually like to have...

And at one time, one point during this journey, she actually went to the emergency room because she was faint and she passed out and it

Rachel, what does this deal mean for the UK TV ecosystem?

So I think, you know, representing 70% of the advertising opportunities available across UK TV is enormous.

So I think in the first instance, it represents an enormous amount of consolidation in terms of ad funded TV.

I never think that deals of that size and consolidation of that nature is necessarily a good thing, certainly not for consumers.

Like the danger is that, again, it creates more homogenous content.

You stop, you know, you lose perhaps the originality of ITV and, you know, because when it first started as a TV broadcaster, part of its remit was to produce shows you know, sort of original, unusual quality content.

And I wonder where that will go, what the departure from that might look like as a result.

And so you can't have one without the other.

Yeah

... finale, I just feel like almost [laughs]Kada and Zach, I understand that their Paradise Cove meeting was a call back to their date, but Kada has been in the villa for at least five weeks, and they gave her Subway sandwiches with tomatoes on them, and I know that every production person who ever took her order for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, she probably said, "I don't like tomatoes.

Don't put-"

Mm.

"You never laid down and rolled over and just let it take you.

You got up time and time again, stood up, and fought back, came back," never once acknowledging.

He was saying it as if she heard ...

There was the Twitter challenge, and she heard from fans that she was ugly.

you landed where you are today, how it all evolved?

Yeah, sure.

So I've been freelancing for over 25 years.

And as you said, I juggle two businesses.

I also have a podcast called The Content Byte and another sort of secret podcast for another part of my membership, but that one's not public.

And yeah, I use a really good colored coded calendar to keep everything going.

But yeah, so my day job, you touched on that.

So Do you want to tell people about your headache

So kind of what would be a good kind of checklist for a woman if she's like, you know, I've feel I've got this and this and my gut's telling me and I kind of feel what when you specifically when you use the term slipping, can you kind of narrate that a little bit so someone may see themselves in that story? Absolutely.

I think if we compiled a comprehensive list of the physical and emotional and psychological symptoms that women report during the menopausal transition.

So to clarify that language, menopause, the average age of menopause is 52.

It is officially diagnosed only in retrospect.

So when you have gone one year without a period, we can look back and say that's menopause.

But leading up to it, what starts to happen is hormonal irregularity, hormonal variability, hormonal chaos.

to be precise, and the effects that women feel in their body when sometimes their ovaries release an egg and they have the predictable spike in estrogen and then the spike in progesterone that we're all used to having over our normal cycle years, that starts to go haywire.

Sure.

Mm, for sure

... or like [laughs] the like...

It's, it's like kind of the one thing I'm really doing for myself throughout the day, whereas the rest of the day I often feel like, um, is taking care of other people, or taking care of the house, or taking care of the dogs.

And, um, so it's, it's really...

Once I like put it in that context, then I can feel really excited to chase the best version of myself in that context.

And that, again, looks probably really different than the Rachel trying to make the Olympic team in 2021 and 2024.

But, um, yeah, it's, it's exciting to me though, and I think, I hope that's what every runner at every level feels, is that whatever they're chasing in whatever season of their life is exciting to them, and it doesn't have to be, um, running a certain time or making a certain team to feel validating.

Hmm

Yeah

... "Okay, we're gonna get a motherWe're gonna get a reality star Mm-hmm.

We're gonna get someone who we know wants to be loved- Yes ... and has love to give.

Mm-hmm.

And then when I sat [laughs] with the reality of it all, I was like, [laughs] "You know what? This probably wasn't the best decision." Mm-mm.

We cannot, we ca- I, I think it's almost like putting our reality stars in politics.

Like, we need to keep franchises- I understand ... franchise agnostic.

Mm.

How did you come up with the idea?

So we had something similar.

It was a larger postcard.

Here, I'll show you what ours looks like here.

It's on a six and a half by 12 postcard.

When we initially started doing this, we were actually doing a nine by 12 postcard, which is just a little bit bigger.

But the play on that one was that it goes to 10,000 homes at a time.

And so barring that, you almost have to set something like that up in advance to have kind of a presence or a home base.

So that's kind of how we got the idea.

Yeah.

And just starting the agency, we actually had our agency and our core services in place.

We haven't had clients in place before we put the direct mail on the forefront.

And it was the typical, you're reaching out, you're going to networking events, you're basically groveling and begging people to be a client of yours.

So we were like, how do we do this better? How do we offer them something that is extremely valuable, that doesn't cost them a lot of money, and that they believe in already? Because Not every business owner is on board with AI and automation and online stuff.

So we're like, how do we give them something they believe in? And that is how we came up with this.

Is that accurate?