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Follow Friday

Follow Friday – Julie Nolke

2020 has been a year for the history books for sure. There’s a joke I saw on the internet that said when kids go to college to study history in the future. If they choose to have an emphasis on 2020, they will need to specify which quarter they are going to focus their studies on.

As we roll into the end of November and those of us in the United States get ready to celebrate a non-traditional Thanksgiving I keep hearing, “I can’t wait for 2020 to be over.” The realist in me wants to ask these folks what do they expect will magically happen on January 1, 2021, but out of love, I keep my mouth shut. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to put 2020 behind me, but I sincerely feel like we’re in for a long haul, we have a long road ahead of us and there will be a lot of work for those of us who lead to help others as we come out of this pandemic.

With how heavy this year has been, humor has been absolutely necessary. That’s where Julie Nolke comes in. Julie is a Canadian actress and comedian that used her quarantine to bring her craft to others via YouTube. I haven’t watched many of her videos outside of her Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self series but the few I have are just as funny.

On this final Friday before Thanksgiving, I want to spread a little joy through humor to those of you reading my blog, and I’ll start by sharing Julie’s pandemic videos. Enjoy and have a great Thanksgiving!

I’m going to apologize in advance for the swear words, sorry…

Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self – Part 1
Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self – Part 2
Explaining the Pandemic to my Past Self – Part 3

Follow Julie Nolke: YouTube | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

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Follow Friday Uncategorized

Follow Friday – The Hustle

What… in… the… heck… is… The Hustle?

“I knew it! You’re just out to get something from me!”

You

Please keep reading, I can explain.

To this point, all of my Follow Friday posts to date have been about people. I have had the recommendations section of my site since I started rebuilding the site because I wanted to have a place where I could point my readers to resources they would find useful. Several of the links on that page are referral or affiliate links and I try to state that plainly at the top of the page so there is no trickery involved. Honestly, if you find that offensive, I would have no problem whatsoever with you opening a new tab and googling each of the links I provide, but when it costs you nothing for me to earn swag or even financial compensation for referring you, that seems ok to me because I use and find value in each of the products, services, and subscriptions I recommend.

Share graphic located in each of The Hustle newsletters

That being said, I have been toying around with the idea of including some of the newsletters and tools I use/follow for a few weeks now, but it wasn’t until this week that I felt I was truly doing it for the right reasons. Over this past weekend, Joe Biden was announced as the projected winner of the 2020 presidential election. Then, on Monday, the news broke that there had been major progress in a vaccine to combat the Coronavirus which caused a huge “rotation” in the stock market, to the tune of double-digit percentage swings on entire segments of the stock market. On Tuesday, I was instant messaging with one of my friends/co-workers about it and took a screenshot of a section of The Hustle from that day and sent it to him. After he read it, he asked where it came from because he knew it didn’t come from The Morning Brew, another email newsletter he knew I subscribed to. I sent him a link to The Hustle and asked him what his thoughts were around me posting a Follow Friday post about it explaining that I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t be received poorly. A good discussion ensued and here we are and I’m posting a Follow Friday post about The Hustle.

So what is The Hustle? Like The Morning Brew, which you may have heard about recently because they were recently acquired by Insider Inc., The Hustle is a daily business-focused email newsletter that tries to not just report what happened but do it in a way that is informative and fun with just a hint of snark. Credit to The Hustle, their first mention the day after The Morning Brew was acquired was a congratulation to the Brew Crew, one of their primary competitors. As you can see in the featured image on this post, the advertisement is that you get the scoop on business & tech in 5 minutes or less. They also have a funny Friday Shower Thoughts section which combs the r/ShowerThoughts subreddit for comedic/insightful gold.

If you’re someone who is in a corporate or startup environment that wants to stay informed about what’s going on in the business & tech world, The Hustle is definitely worth checking out.

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Follow Friday

Follow Friday – Jane Gasdaska

The email said, “What in the world are you doing?”

At that point in May 2018, I had been traveling a lot, somewhere in the ballpark of 4 or 5 trips within the span of a few weeks, which meant I was reading A LOT and had been churning through books and making a lot of updates to Goodreads which triggered almost daily updates to Jane Gasdaska. She had taken one of the status update emails from Goodreads and forwarded it to me asking how in the world I had been reading so much lately.

I first met Jane when she was the keynote speaker at an internal tech conference at Phillips 66 in 2014. At the time Jane was a leader within our commercial organization and was a great fit for what we wanted as a keynote speaker. As a member of the core leadership team, I was given the opportunity to go to dinner with our IT leadership team sponsors including our CIO as well as Jane and her assistant. We had a great dinner out with a lot of great conversation, and Jane revealed her I ♥ IT shirt (pictured above). The tech conference was a hit and Jane did a phenomenal job as our keynote speaker. At some point during the conference, it came up that Jane and I were both avid readers, and a couple of years later we connected on Goodreads.

Fast forward to 2018, I read the email mentioned above as I was waiting for one of my co-workers to check out of the hotel in Vegas where I had been a speaker at the ServiceNow Knowledge18 User Group Conference, a final commitment from my previous role in the Customer Support Technology group at Phillips 66. I shot Jane a quick response apologizing for blowing up her inbox and explained that due to my new role as well as commitments from my previous role I had been traveling quite a bit, and I asked how she had been and how she was liking her new (and current) role in Organizational Change Management. That led to a quick touchpoint phone call and an ongoing mentor/mentee relationship where she and I touch base every couple of months to trade stories on how things are going, anywhere I might be stuck, what we’re reading, the pulse in the organization, and the occasional technical troubleshooting that I provide for her. It has been a great two-way street that I look forward to as I see the appointment coming on my calendar.

As a Phillips 66 employee, I am able to receive her Monday Moment blog posts via internal email, but she also posts them on her blog every week. You should check them out on her blog.

Follow Jane Gasdaska: Twitter | LinkedIn | Goodreads | Blog

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

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Follow Friday

Follow Friday – Paul Carter

Back in 2012, I had a pretty major back episode that required disc decompression therapy to allow me to get back to some semblance of normal. There was a combination of events that led to the episode, but one of them was a very high-intensity plyometric workout. After that episode, I realized a lot of things I had been taught about lifting, working out, and fundamental strength, as well as many of the underlying assumptions in my lifting, were incorrect which had led to a relatively speaking weak core. As I was laying on the decompression table day after day, I resolved to challenge all of my assumptions which resulted in me searching out websites like T-Nation where they post a lot of content for seasoned lifters who are looking to up their workout game. I already mentioned Lee Boyce last week, this week I want to introduce you to Paul Carter. When you first see his pictures, you realize this dude is JACKED and after watching a few of his lifts on Instagram, you realize it’s not all show, the man is a BEAST. But what I feel really sets Paul apart is he is not afraid to shy away from taboo subjects like emotional & mental health. Subjects that you typically don’t find talked about much and he’s not afraid to call anyone out. For example, a little over a month ago, he posted this little gem.

But he’ll also post these as well!

The caption he posted on this image is fantastic, go check it out!

These have been some of my favorite posts of his lately. If I have learned anything the last few years (since Michael died) it is that strength looks a lot different than what I thought it looked like. Loving so deeply you get emotional is strength, real men do cry, and I’m worth loving.

Finally, I also appreciate posts like these two, they’ve really gotten me thinking recently.

On the last one, he said something in the caption that really struck home for me (relevant parts pasted below).


Words are incredibly important and play a huge role in allowing us to connect and communicate and get to know each other.

But if you want to cut through the bullshit about what’s really important to someone then simply look at their behavior. And see if the words and actions consistently line up.

If someone gets up at 4 a.m. to train, and runs off to work two jobs then as you can imagine, training is important to them.

If someone tells you that it’s important to them to lose fat, and get in shape, but won’t stay on plan with their diet, training, sleep, etc, then what are they really saying?

I don’t know how many times I’ve said, “I’m trying to lose weight.” when let’s be honest, if I was really trying to lose weight, my behavior would be different. So there it is, one of the things I respect about Paul is he challenges me to be a better me and I need to be hungry for awhile…

P.S. – the dude has EPIC cheat meals, but he’s earned them 😁.

Follow Paul Carter: Yoke Squad | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

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Follow Friday

Follow Friday – Tarana Burk

Tarana Burk photo credit - Dougal Macarthur
Photo credit Dougal Macarthur

One day on my drive to work I was listening to the Unlocking Us Podcast by Brené Brown and heard one of the most eye-opening and enlightening podcast episodes I’ve ever heard. In the episode I listened to, I was privileged to be introduced to Tarana Burk. Tarana has been fighting the fight for racial and gender equality for close to 30 years and is the creator of the Me Too Movement. I can’t say enough about how this episode opened my eyes and helped me begin to understand the fight that women and people of color go through on a daily basis. Everyone should listen to this episode!

Follow Tarana: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Website

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.

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Follow Friday Fun

Follow Friday – Rafael Grassetti

Raf Grassetti | Instagram

Growing up in the ’80s and ’90s, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) were a large part of my childhood. I loved watching the TV show, had a bunch of the action figures, and went to my first concert to see them right around the time of the first live-action movie. I found Rafael Grassetti a few months ago on Instagram and have been following him ever since. His 3D artwork is amazing, but he took it to another level with the release of his TMNT series. I absolutely love it and have now used it as the background on all my devices.

Follow Rafael: Instagram | Twitter | Facebook | ArtStation

Follow Friday posts are posts where I highlight someone I follow as a way to promote and encourage other people.