Thank you very much, John. I think what is truly remarkable is that even though Bretton Woods essentially collapsed with a run out of the dollar, ever since 1973, in effect, if anything, the dominance of the dollar as a reason in international financial system, and we have seen a lot of figures that won't come back on these figures, but I think it's certainly due both to phenomena linked to network externalities and all that, but also simply to the complementarity that is very present in the use of an international currency, complementarity between the different use of a currency, if you are financing in a currency, then you want liquidity in that currency, you transact in that currency, then you want to exchange rate to be paid in that currency, then your central bank has reserved in that currency, then the transaction costs are low in that currency, etc. etc. So there are complementarities both within the private sector and across the public sector and the private sector, and this makes an equilibrium very, very hard to change. We have seen that with sterling, we are seeing that with a dollar. Now, does it matter? So in fact, if anything, I think the current research in economics in academia shows that it matters even more than what we thought in the past. So there are lots of papers now that show that this business about dominant currency invoicing the fact that a lot of goods are invoiced in dollar is very important for monetary policy. It's also important for the volume of global trade. We see this amazing correlation at this stage, I would still call them correlation between the valuation of a dollar, so for example, a dollar strengthening and the decline in global volume of trade. And the effects are, these correlations are big. So that's one. We also see these big effects of a Fed on global financial condition, the global financial cycle. And that actually affects everyone. So I would say if anything, it seems to matter more from an economic point of view than maybe what we thought before. Now, there's also obviously, and we have seen this in the 2008 crisis, the international lender of last resort function, which has proved, I would say pretty crucial, 600 billion dollar liquidity which went in central Bank swaps to help the international financial system. And obviously, so that was not the IMF because the IMF cannot print dollar, that was the Fed, which is providing the liquidity. And that means a lot from the point of view of geopolitical power, also from the point of view of economic benefits. So the system has been relatively stable since, you know, the second world war with one hegemon, the US dollar and the United States. And I guess Charles Kindleberger would agree that that's hegemonic stability for you. And that seems to have worked to some extent. But now, how long is it going to last? I guess it's a big question, right? And there I see so two reasons why things might be changing. And then I will be very brief about, you know, where we might be going. So the two reasons are one, which has already been mentioned here, which is that, you know, things are stable if you have a relatively quasi benevolent hegemon. Now, if you have a hegemon who starts being over politicizing the currency and and really using it for all kinds of purposes, trust evaporates. And that tends to to speed up the exit of the current equilibrium. And we certainly see that. OK, right now, I would say. So that's one one factor. A second factor is a little bit more of a trend. And that's what I call the new Triffin dilemma. So let me tell you what was the Triffin dilemma. And then I will tell you what the new Triffin dilemma. So if you agree with me, so the original Triffin dilemma, it was in the 1960s. And it was Robert Triffin, was professor at Yale at the time, was explaining that if you have a fixed or more or less fixed reserve of gold in the United States and the dollar was backed by gold and picked at a fixed parity, well, even equity in dollars in the rest of the world was growing and growing. Eventually, if people wanted their dollars back into gold, there wouldn't be enough gold for everyone, essentially. And therefore, that can create a crisis of confidence. You start to think that your dollar is not going to be worth the parity in gold because there's just not enough gold reserves. Hence a possible run out of a dollar, which did happen. So Triffin essentially predicted it in some sense. And that was the collapse of Bretton Woods. And there was a run out of a dollar into Deutsche Mark, et cetera. Now, we don't have any more, an international monetary system backed by your commodity. We just, just not the way it works. We have flexible exchange rate and fiat currencies. However, if you think about what is the confidence in the dollar, where essentially it's the fiscal backing of the currency. People still want dollars as a result of currency because in crisis times, and we have seen it in 2008 very much, and we still see it, when things go badly, the value of a dollar, if anything goes up, okay, and we might even fly to safety in the dollar. And this is because of the credibility in the sense of a fiscal backing of the United States. So now picture yourself a world in which we have the physical capacity of the US, okay? And we have a relative size of the US going tremendously down in the world economy. So now we have a lot of liquidity outside the US, a lot of dollar liquidity in the world. There's a huge demand for US treasuries, as we know. But we have this shrinking hegemon in the middle. The relative size of the US goes down. Now, at some points, clearly, I think there will be also a confidence crisis. There just won't be enough fiscal support to back this whole dollar liquidity in the world economy. Now, when will that happen? I have no idea. And of course, also, for the crisis of confidence to realize itself, you need to be able to run out of the dollar into something else, okay? And this is where I go to the third point. So I do believe we are going to go to a more multipolar world because of this fundamental trend and also given the behavior of the current government in the US, when I don't know. But so what will be the possible substitutes there? So clearly, number two, the euro. Okay. What's missing from the euro right now? A safe asset. It's missing to complete the financial architecture of a euro area. Okay. So for a euro to become a more important currency, we miss the same thing that would make the euro area more stable. So that would be a policy goal. And I think it had been neglected. But I think Europeans are becoming a little bit more aware of that. And there's a lot more attention given to these matters, at least I hope now. So that's the euro story. The R&B. The R&B clearly varies the political will. As we've seen from the data, we are still way below what it would require for an international currency to be viable, prime of convertibility, liquidity of market, et cetera. But there's clearly a push from the Chinese authority. And given the size of China, I think if there is, at some point, things start to move, they could move actually maybe quicker than we expect. And one reason for that was that for the moment, maybe we, you know, we see a whole area in the world economy, which is more or less pegging to the dollar, stabilizing its exchange rate with the dollar. But by doing so, it's also stabilizing its exchange rate with China because they are shadowing a little bit each other. And if at some point, we see a decoupling between China and the dollar, it could be actually the true economic area because of the trade links, et cetera, is a Chinese economic area rather than the dollar one. And so this could actually speed things up maybe quicker than we think. But we are still not there for sure. And then I would just say one last thing, which is, you know, we've seen recently some contests coming from the private sector. You know, Libra will probably not happen. We don't know that or other things like that. So why? Because these things build on an existing network. Of course, they lack any other good functions of money, et cetera. So again, I don't think it's a viable proposition. But at least in terms of scale, I think that's something that is really new because of the existing network, which could right away play in the medium of exchange function. But of course, doesn't have any fiscal backing. This is why by the way, the synthetic hegemonic or synthetic hegemonic currency of Marconi, which is like a, you know, like an SDR, but with digital currency, is also not going to fly. Because for the same reason the SDR did not fly, because it doesn't have liquidity provision and the fiscal backing.


They're full screen this. All right, for those of you who don't know, this is the BDD B-HAT session. If you're mistaken, this is not the twig session with Morton DK, so don't expect any Danish jokes. It's not too late if you want to take off for that one. So yeah, my name is Mike Nielsen, and this is Enabling Better Builds with BDD. So what today we'll be covering during this session? What is BDD? What is it good for? What it's not good for? How OpenSorcer uses it in our build stack? How to set up B-HAT? How to, and finally, how to give back to the community since that's really what we're all here about. First of all, to learn and to give back to the community and to network, and then secondly, to give back to the community. All right, can I see before? My D.to user name is Nielsenem, and my Twitter handle is OSWebGuy, because Nielsenem is those darn names. Nielsenem on Twitter is actually a Danish guy, so I wish I could have gotten that handle. Again, I work at OpenSorcery in sunny Portland, Oregon. All right, so what is BDD? BDD stands for Behavior-Driven Development. It's a variant of test-driven development in that you write your tests and then write code to pass those tests. It represents a paradigm that turns user stories, something that business developers and sales and marketing use to kind of grab and understand a project from a client's perspective. Those usually get translated into requirements or spec which then engineers see. BeHat basically turns user stories into usable working acceptance tests that can be run wherever, whenever, and however the engineering, QA, or project management staff sees fit. So BDD for PHP uses BeHat or it's for those who've played Cards Against Humanity, Bs? For PHP and Drupal especially, we have our version of BDD is called BeHat. So BeHat is the PHP framework for BDD. There's also one called Cucumber for Ruby which is why yet there's that subtle difference. The PHP framework translates human-readable text into something testable which is then passed off to another, you can use BeHat to test anything actually, you can test the command line if you wanted. BeHat then passed off to another PHP library called Mink and the Mink actually is the testing framework that runs drivers to either pass or fail a particular piece of BeHat, a particular BeHat scenario. And so Mink goes through the DOM and then lines in a BeHat scenario are referred to as steps and so every time you create a new step, if it's not already in the BeHat library, you have to create what's called a step definition and we'll cover that later. There are many drivers. You probably heard of one, Selenium. Anyone here done Selenium testing? Yeah, I feel you. How often did it break? All the time, daily, weekly? Oh wow, I've never had it break hourly on me. I've had it break daily. Most of the time the PMs would just be like, just ignore it, which is the worst possible thing if a testing framework fails because if a testing framework fails, it ought to at least deserve someone's attention. That's the big, that's the problem. So if you're ignoring Selenium tests failing because they fail too often, that's a problem with either the way that the tests are being implemented or with the testing framework itself. So Selenium, BeHat tests will actually run Selenium tests. So you don't have to write Selenium tests anymore.  The default out of the box one is one called Goot and it's basically a wrapper for curl. So it renders the page in HTML, Goot then curls for whatever you're looking for and then passes it back to Mink, which then gives it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. There's also ones, Sahi is another one. I haven't had a whole lot of experience with it. The other one that I've also heard is really, really sexy. They have a headless JavaScript Mink driver called ZombieJS and appropriately for headless JavaScript. And that one tests not just the DOM but also any kind of interactivity that JavaScript you might end up having. So for Drupal, we have Drupal where in BeHats and there are several projects that bring BeHat into Drupal. My personal preference is the Drupal extension and it's on D.Auto project, Drupal extension. And this one actually grew up out of the D.Auto 6-7 upgrade. They wanted to make sure there was no breakage and as opposed to having someone physically test every single piece of D.Auto for breakages, they actually contracted out with OpenSorcery among other people and some community members and wrote a whole bunch of BeHat tests to make sure that when they upgraded D.Auto to seven, it wouldn't break. And I'm personally, just full disclosure, I have a connection to this project. A couple of good friends of mine, Jonathan Headstrom and Melissa Anderson are the car maintainers on this module. So let's, so I'm kind of, I have a preference for this one. It's got some of the more active maintainers and then it also has probably some of the better step definitions, I'd like to say. So what is BeHat good for? BeHat is great at getting every member of the team speaking the same vocabulary or how to avoid this. Let's see if I can, on the full screen. I can't see this comic so you're gonna have to tell me if it's, if you can read it. So basically it's a comedy of errors on pretty much any software project. So you have the customer explained it, how project leader understood it, and how the analyst designed it. I can kind of see things. Scream at me if I'm going too fast. What the programmer wrote, that's not funny. I can definitely say I've implemented a couple of swings off of the branch. Yeah, what the beta tester sees. Since this is a DevOps check I figured that bottom, that bottom middle one was the most appropriate. And then the client, and then that was the last one. So really honestly it's kind of hilarious because how often do we get projects where the client has this big, exhaustive document and then six months into the project and you're like what do you actually want? How many times did it actually happen? It's happened to me at least once. There have been several times where yeah, the client is billed for a theme park and all they want is a tire swing. So that's what Behat is really great about. It's creating a central source for everyone. Also because these scenarios, Behat scenarios are human readable, they're client readable. Like they're really simple to read. And encourages the client to think critically about the project. And because the individual client, the whole team is involved in creating and curating the scenarios. That's a big piece of it. What is it not good for? Scenarios, they're meant to be read by the client. So unless your client is Edward Snowden, PHP unit tests are not gonna overlap with any Behat. So do not think that PHP unit tests or simple tests are competing directly with Behat. They're completely different spheres of operations. Also test coverage. There are several in the community that actually myself included. I'm trying to pull Behat tests out of my vocabulary because tests imply test coverage. And I know that's every engineer's dream to work on a project where you have test coverage. Where you can 100% flawlessly say the tests are passing, this thing works. It's bulletproof. Behat, you can't get test coverage. Unless you can matrix style Jack into a client's head and get absolutely every single business case and business value out of them, you're never gonna be able, it's a concept that's not analogous to Behat. So OpenSource uses Behat and we use it primarily as an acceptance testing framework. Like I said before, acceptance testing is making sure that the client's, what the client asked for is being achieved. And we also use it as a kind of a backdoor, kind of a backdoor regression testing. So if the Behat's test passed in the past, a lot of mouth for it there, if the Behat's tests passed previously and they are no longer passing, that means that something has happened and that the engineers need to go in and suss out what exactly happened. So, and the tests are run on Jenkins. We have a Jenkins server running locally and it happens anytime someone pushes to GitHub, we have a commit hook that pulls in the changes, runs the Behat tests on a build script and then runs a set of a build composer and then runs the tests. They can also be run locally by developers at any time. So it's a nice way for developers to kind of double check before they commit anything and blow up everyone else's work. So, since both developers in Jenkins do customize the Behat YAML for Dockroot, the Behat YAML file is basically, it's kind of like the settings.php, it's got a whole bunch of just settings for Dockroot, file system, region settings, all this stuff and obviously, environments vary from developer to developer and obviously the test host is a different host from locally, we split the Behat.YAML file, that's central settings file into three. So we have Behat.YAML, which is where we put our regions and the type of the tester, the driver, all that stuff and then we have a Behat.Local.YAML, that one is actually put in as a default and then is copied out of the repo per developer. So that's where each developer then customizes, okay, mine's under slash home, mic, work, whatever client and then for the Drupal root and then, or for the file system path and then the Drupal root will be something like client.dev, so that's that and then the Behat.Testing.YAML has the file path and URL for testing on the test host. So how to set up one word, composer, this is not working. There we go and get buffering, gift buffering. Really? Really? This was working flawlessly like 20 minutes ago. Not to go back. What? I'm sorry guys, folks, there we go. Just hoping for a little humor there. All right, so basically you go to composer. For those of you, composer is a package manager much in the same way app get or the app store, kind of. I'm stretching the metaphor there. It's a package manager for PHP. Basically you can tell PHP, your core PHP on your machine to go out and grab PHP packages. Symphony actually uses this. Composer, uses composer, Behat uses composer. There's a lot of big projects use composer to build and manage the package dependencies when you're building a something in PHP. So I'd recommend just Google that and figure out and there's a lot, there's a pretty big amount of steps. So after composer, so you copy the Behat.YAML file, you customize it, you run bin Behat, dash dash init, that will set up your features directory and if there's any errors, like if you didn't build something properly, it'll let you know and then follow the rest of the steps on Wilson Anderson's Behat setup page. And that's, oops, sorry, that's the URL for the Behat extension or for the Drupal extension for Wilson Anderson. So after init, you'll wanna check the step definitions and you do that by using the DL option and you'll get a pretty much a wall of text. What you can do is you can pass in DL and then something you're interested in. For example, you could do bin Behat DL node and it will show you all, it actually just does like a quick regex or something like that to figure out any step definitions that have node in the step title. So, and so before you should see step definitions, obviously some of them will have like, give an IM or user with roll through, that's obviously a Drupal one. The last one, one of the last ones I wanted to cover was giving back. The Drupal extension, one of the best parts about the Drupal extension is anytime you write a step definition, that's a piece of code that evaluates that human readable text and passes it to Mink for acceptance, anytime you write a step definition, you've basically expanded the vocabulary that Behat has at a moment's notice. So, you know, if you write one for say, for Beanslide or fieldable panels paints, if you write step definitions that tie in with those modules, if you contribute those back to the community and those, anytime anyone runs Bin Behat DL panel, they're gonna see fieldable panels paints if they've got their setup correctly. So, anytime you create a custom step definition, you've basically done the work that no one else should ever have to do ever again. So, writing Behat step definitions are pretty easy, but wouldn't it be so much easier if they were already written for you? If you could just literally search through, find the module you're, find the step definitions that correspond to the module you're looking for, and then just grab and go. My dream, personally, is if you have, you know, I know everyone at some point or other has built a brochureware site. If you could write a Behat set of scenarios, Behat features and scenarios for a brochureware site without ever having to write a custom step definition, that's my dream. So, you could literally pick up a project, you know, the marketing staff could suss out their needs. They could write the Beehat tests engineers might double check them and maybe rewrite them to see if they fit with the existing step definitions. The client would sign off on the revised steps, and then when that Behat scenario passes, you're done. How would that be for amazing?  It passes the Behat, the Behat scenarios pass, you're done. And anytime the paths fail, you've got a regression, you fix it, it's no big deal. So, this is where you all come in. If anyone's got contrib modules, I thoroughly recommend if you can just start the basics.  These are simple things that almost everyone uses when they come to a contrib module. And the nice thing about it is if you set up your Behat.yaml file to look through like your site's all directory, it will find, it will look for Behat.includes files, which will be part of the contrib module and it will include those steps automatically. So, it's a single line in your settings file and every step for every contrib module would be loaded. So, if you're a maintainer or co-maintener of a contrib module, setting up steps, basic steps are super easy and would help a lot of people kind of getting on board. You know, if you've got a, if you're building your own steps, if you're building custom step definitions for a particular module, I'm not a module maintainer so I say don't open up an issue. I would say open up an issue, but maybe not be surprised if the module maintainer closes it, but at the least point you'll have, you know, you can put in the title Behat Step Definitions, Behat Step Definitions for this module and I guarantee you I would totally pick up those step definitions and use them. The nice, the best part about Drupal.org is the fact that the patches live on even if the issue is closed. So, the patches will be used. It will be put to good use, I can guarantee you that. My machine is really bogging down with this. All right, I know this is probably the quickest hour long presentation you've ever had. Does anyone have any questions? Just so we're recording this, so would you mind queuing up at the mic so we can make sure we have all of, we have the questions recorded for posterity. Thank you. Do you have any strategies for debugging? Because it seems like a lot of times I'll get my tests written and then it'll be looking for something on the page that if I do a dump, there it is and the test fails and that's as far as I get. Oh boy, so you're already using show last response. That's show last response, there's, okay, so basically what'll happen, Behat has this amazing step that's in, I think it's actually in core, in Behat core. And it basically says, given I am here and this happens, show last response. You got me. That's pretty much, yeah. Show last response is probably the best one. You can also, there's also print last response. Have you tried using that one? That one actually prints the, it actually just prints the whole DOM out. And so you can double check to make sure that what you're, what's being looked for in the driver is being actually output by into the browser. So, you know, kind of that reconciliation between what the test is, what the scenario's expecting, excuse me, what the scenario, that disconnect between what the scenario's expecting and what the browser's producing, you know, you can reconcile that. I, my two favorite, my favorite one is probably show last response and then print last response. They're probably my two favorites. You should be able to, like do like a print R, a Drush print R that should be able to output any of that other markup. Did that answer your question? All right, thank you. So my company is currently working on migrating from Selenium to Behat. Excellent. And I'm like sort of spearheading that. And I was wondering what your strategies were for dealing with multiple sources of scenarios. So one person, we're having a lot of people write them and one person might say a custom step and I press whatever and another person might use something similar to communicate that. Like I click, you know, X. So it's to humans, it might mean the same thing, but to Behat, those are separate steps. And so we get two step definitions and that can get kind of hairy if there's a lot of custom step definitions. Yeah. I would probably say the best, this is obviously, you know, 70% of all software problems are people problems, you know. I would actually probably say if you have like an architect position or like a project manager or someone doing IA, that seems like, basically what you're saying is, you know, they're people that are communicating and they're not, they're using a semi unified vocabulary and what needs to happen is you need to have someone on the team that has enough clout to kind of say, you know, you click buttons, you don't press them.  It's simple enough, but yeah, it's kind of maddening. Usually I would say, my personal opinion is up to the project managers to kind of be like, hey, QA staff or client, you know, these steps are, you know, we have an established method for this. Go with it. Reconciling is probably, is the best way. I would say the workaround, if that's totally not an option, is just the duct tape and bailing wire of just, you know, throwing in a couple of custom step definitions. The third option definitely is, of course, you can also, because the way Behat works is that just, it writes regexes for these, you could rewrite the regex for the click, push, button thing. That's probably, that's an equally valid thing, but it might, you know, for some of us who aren't Perl developers might not be the, it might not be the easiest way. So, thank you. Hi. If one of my primary outputs of Drupal is services, can Behat test the services, the JSON or whatever. JSON services. That's an interesting question. What was that? It does? Excellent. I have, services are definitely something that are, I would love to say that, apparently it does. I can't speak to that. I've never actually, I've never seen that happen. But again, like I said, implementing step definite, custom step definitions is easy enough. If the, if the tests, if the steps aren't what you're anticipating, that's one avenue to go with. I would say it's definitely, it's definitely possible. It would not surprise me at all. So what the gentleman in the back actually mentioned is that you can, you can use XD bug to step through. That's another, that's probably, probably my last, my last best chance is to see if, if various bills are being set using XD bug, stepping through the, you know, stepping through the boot process and all that stuff. I would definitely say that's, that's probably the most exhaustive way. It's the bet, the downside is it's the most exhaustive way. So the other behats, it's a bit, it's a bit magical. It's a bit of a black box. Any other questions? All righty. Well, thank you everyone. You can, you're only, you're only a half an hour past Morton's, or Morton DK's twig session. So if you want to feel free, jump into that. All right, thank you everyone.


Hi, this is George Kau and today I'm here with one of my clients Kim Marie and she has some wonderful Transformation wisdom to share with us today as well as we'll start with a with a few minutes of Business lessons from building her coaching business over the years. But first I want to say hi. Hi Kim. Hi George Thanks so much for having me. I appreciate being here. Yeah, thanks for being here So I'm going to read out your bio Kim first so everyone has some contacts And then we'll go into talking a bit about what you've learned as you've built up your coaching business over the years So Kim Marie is a transformational life and leadership mentor She guides people to reconnect with the roots of who they are and what matters most Kim reanimates a sense of purpose and Empowerment with her unique blend of archetypal wisdom character strengths esoteric and indigenous wisdom and habit breaking programs that empower individuals to break chains of old patterns and conditioning and Bring solace to their soul and that word solace. Well, we'll talk about that certainly Kim is a guide on the journey from the numbing status quo to the sense of peace and fulfillment That comes with being aligned with our true self and you can learn more about Kim at her website Kim Marie coaching calm and of course, I'll put the link in the notes of the video. So Kim just before we get into You're going to be sharing with us the kind of the four stages of the That the hero hero in his journey and I'm really looking forward to that But before we get there a lot of the folks watching this are our entrepreneurial and building Business of their of their own so you've got a couple of lessons that you wanted to share in in building yours So I'll kind of let you let you share those and then and then by five any questions. I'll ask you sure sure You know, I've actually been doing this work for nine years. I actually just had my nine-year anniversary So that was a big deal Um and at the same time I have not been a hundred percent sustainable So I've been supplementing my income with part-time jobs. I happen to be a single mom So it's always been kind of this juggling act where You know, I feel very stretched thin a lot of times and What I notice is that even if I can't always be consistent with what I'm doing in my business If I constantly sit in my heart and just keep coming from that place of heartfelt Authenticity then people will resonate with me, you know, they'll they'll come back and say wow that really spoke to me or wow That really that really helped me feel something deep within me and and I feel in a way that I can pick up Right where I left off. So that that's like the biggest lesson is coming coming from that place of heart and and really Continuing to learn through that over the years that when I speak my truth and The wisdom that I gained from my own experiences. It just it always makes a big difference and resonates with people So yeah, and and by resonating you mean people Step up and say hey, I want your support and what your coaching support in my life And yeah, it's absolutely absolutely. So um, I just want to say I mean being being a single mom You got two two boys, right? Yeah, two teenage boys My god, you have basically two full-time jobs plus you have some part-time Additional work aside from your business as well. So I just want to I want to honor the fact that you You have you have a lot in your plate and and the fact that you are still Continuing to come back with authenticity to your business Nine years. I mean the fact that you are now with renewed energy Continuing to come back and reconnect and build and you just had I mean before before this we're talking you just sold 300 of your 80 of your sacred Knights journal and So that's not that's not that's a that's a lot of people who are buying into your product and then doing the process with you and so Yeah, so I want to congratulate you on that So anything else you want to say before I move on to the hero's journey. Yeah I do want to point out to that the other big lesson that I think is is critical And you you commented about you know that by resonate it means people say hey I want to work with you I have found as much as I I can say that I can miss consistency and come with heart and that helps I will also say consistency is one of the biggest things I've learned because when I am consistent That's what really builds the trust, you know, like people may resonate But they might not always enroll unless I am more consistent I do find that when I'm more consistent the enrollments happen more regularly more frequently more easily more readily So that's that's always been a big challenge. Like I said dealing stretch thin But you know coming from the heart helps for sure and I think it's number one But that consistency would have to be number two for me in terms of what I've learned So and that's something you've reinforced so much and and it really resonates and is so true for me, too Wow, that's that's great. And especially Somebody who has a lot on their plate really busy like yourself that consistency is Maybe more challenging but funny thing that's you know one of the old lines It's like about the old sayings about busyness like oh if you want something done give it to a busy person so in a way you Have had to Just be really efficient with your time and and with consistency It's like if you can find a way to slot that into your time and and make it a habit Then even with all that you have to do You're coming back to you know connect with your audience. Bless them is gonna happen, you know Yes, so that's that's really great. So I would love for you to share with us what you've learned in Your own work with clients over the years in terms of the hero heroine's journey I know you have four stages that you want to talk talk to us through briefly It's not not like we have a I mean we wish I wish we had hours and hours to talk about this because there's a lot But but yeah, just share with us give us an overview of that. Yeah. Yeah So so over the years of coaching and teaching classes and running programs and different things What I've come to see and I have a deep passion for the hero's journey myself. And so looking at that and understanding like Joseph Campbell's amazing stages of the hero's journey Looking at that along with a lot of the other wisdom teachings that I've come across and then seeing the experiences that Clients have had and that I've had in my own life What I have found is there are four main stages that we all go through and that if we understand these stages we can stay connected on our path a whole lot more potently and consistently and Easily and we feel like we're just more in that flow and I like to equate the stages to the water of life So I look at it as you know, you begin you have all these tributaries Okay, and and these tributaries kind of represent parts of ourselves and we might have some that are rushing and flowing really Strongly and some that are dried up and barely trickling and others that are just kind of still and running smoothly And we never know but there's all these aspects and it's about looking at these aspects of ourselves And that stage I call remembering. This is the remembering of who we are You know noticing these parts of ourselves that maybe we've forgotten or lost track of or ignored or for whatever reason Whether it's traumas or experiences or even cultural, you know in positions, if you will societal Norms that we're trying to conform to so that first stage of really remembering who we are understanding the parts of ourselves and then Continuing with that water analogy. We have this idea that these tributaries eventually flow into the river And so you have this Reconnection that's the next stage we remember and then we start to reconnect at all We bring it together into the flow of the river, which of course the river Needs the flow the water going through it, but it also needs the river banks and so this idea of connecting. It's a beautiful Blending of what I like to call the healthy sacred feminine along with the healthy sacred masculine We have to have both and we tune into that within ourselves We reconnect to our values to what matters to us to what feels important You know to who we really are remembering it, but then reconnecting to it and from there The river flows into the ocean of possibility is how I like to look at it so we're flowing into this next stage, which is the re-envisioning stage and When we re-envision our life based on what we've now remembered and what we've reconnected to so we're Standing in this truth of who we are or at least a remembering of that truth We might not be quite there yet in terms of really embodying it yet And we're standing in the values that we reconnected to now we can say, you know what I have a different vision for my life I have a different Perspective now that I can look at things differently, but just as with any ocean, you know There can be big waves that can topple you over We might need to learn to swim or float or surf and we have to we have to be able to navigate those kinds of different Terrain or or weather if you will and so I find that that Re-envisioning stage when people are going through that it can actually be one of the hardest, you know It's like they feel like they might be drowning because there's so much and they realize maybe that a lot of what They're doing in their life now isn't fully aligned with What they really see for themselves based on this new remembering and new connecting and but once they Are able to learn to surf to learn to float to learn to swim then it's it's this beautiful Recycling I really believe this journey is a spiral journey And so it's like that water evaporates up into the clouds to become rain to pour down and and replenish the Tributaries to bubble up with new springs and we get to start again And and that's really a rebirthing process We rebirth as we rise up and we share this new vision We start to step into and embody this new truth that we've found about ourselves And then we give back we give back that wisdom we share that wisdom and then we go and we look deeper We start to go into the deeper layers and so those are the four main stages that that I really See all the clients. I've seen it in myself in my own journey I see it in the overarching heroes journey that Joseph Campbell talks about this remembering reconnecting Re-envisioning and ultimately rebirthing into something new. Wow, that's beautiful. I would love for you to Kind of give us some Something like some some example or if it's a whether it's a story from your own life of Applying these stages or it's some a client more anonymous Or or just a story from a friend or something just Help us to see how these four stages might be connected I don't know if that's if these four stages are applied to any particular area of life Or is it sort of the holistic view that you work with clients on so? Yeah, it's a great question. So Two things I'm thinking of and One is so I remember a number of years ago. I had this situation in my life where I Noticed that Leadership seemed to be a really strong aspect of what I loved and what I felt naturally inclined toward but I also attracted clients in the realm of leadership And so what I thought to myself well, you know, I'm coach trained Yes, and I have like an incredibly diverse background which I could spend a long time talking about here But I won't but I started going yeah, but you know, I didn't do any formal leadership training So who am I to to do this? But this was me looking at the tributaries like these aspects of myself where I went well But you know, I've shown up as a leader there and there and isn't that interesting that this has happened and I was in meditation one day and I just had this huge aha moment because I kept questioning myself in relation to my business and Saying, you know, who am I to help leaders because what do I have and I felt like I got yelled at by my guides where they said What do you want? You've been in the military officer training. You've managed corporate accounts You've done this this this and that you know done all these things. What more leadership training do you need? And that was what I felt like I was hearing and all of a sudden it reconnected and I went oh, yes This is where I belong This is this is who I am and it's always been who I am and I think because I left Corporate and government work. I always felt especially according to the status quo That I was a failure on some level like I had failed at leadership because I chose not to stay in those areas that didn't resonate for my soul and and then I had this huge epiphany that was like no Actually, that was the most courageous thing you could do you left and so many of your peers are still there and actually miserable because They they just kept going because that's what you're supposed to do or that's where the income is or that's you know What they feel there they have to do because that's the training they're used to or whatever the reason is So many people stay stuck in that and so that led to this Re-envisioning, you know, what can I do now? How can I bring this to my work? how can I show up and really stand in that leadership and and reframe the story that I had about me being a leader and showing up for leaders and And ultimately, you know, that's that's been a huge rebirthing process in my business and how I've shown up for others and so that's that's one example of this this four stage process and I just wanted to mention that Within each of the stages another thing that I also started attracting was I would get clients who they were leaders but they had also been through some significant Addiction challenges, whether it was even just really significant habits and patterns not necessarily Hard substances, but somewhere I got some clients that were like maybe eight years recovered alcoholic or 20 years or whatever it was and I started noticing a correlation between the habit-breaking patterns that I had used in the AA program and And so there were 12 stages or 12 virtues I know you work with the virtues George and and work with those as part of your energy reboot each day and I have 12 virtues that I practice month by month, you know months to month and and I noticed they Correlated very strongly with like the 12-step program and for habit-breaking and 12 steps of the hero's journey and What I saw was the virtue that I work with as that correlates to the first step That I want to share with your audience is courage. Oh and and before you go there So you mentioned we've talked about the four stages of the hero heroine's journey But then how does the 12 steps relate to the four stages? Maybe you can yeah So within each of the four stages there are three steps. Okay. Got it. Okay. Yeah, so so that remembering, you know, if we're gonna take that That step that leap to really look at a different aspect of ourselves It requires tremendous courage because part of it is we also have to be willing to face What we what we have been what we have forgotten and that can be hard it can bring up shame it can bring up anxiety and It's often very challenging and it's not at all unlike the addict who's first step is I Have a real problem here that I need to change and I can't do this by myself And it takes tremendous courage for us to step into that place of humility Surrender and take that step into courage, which was the virtue. I was working with I was working with the virtues for Over a decade and then I started seeing the correlation with the 12 step program and the hero's journey So this has been this incredible evolution Which you know has has created the foundation of my work. So yeah, yeah, that's that's wonderful I don't know if you can hear my my dog is So yeah, that's amazing and I could see why Clients can benefit so much from your work because you have a very clear framework of transformation and you have I mean, I can see how this the four stages or these virtues or the 12 steps can apply to you know career it can apply to You know habit breaking and habit creation it could apply probably to relationships and and probably to health and and and you know family relationships, etc So Do you want to mention a couple of the Life areas or issues that you find you really enjoy working with clients on? Yeah, you know, I love that you just said all these areas because you know You've posted a lot of things and written a lot about whether we should niche or not niche and That's been a struggle of mine because what I find is every time I try to niche I get you know Something totally different that shows up as my next client and and I've really surrendered into that aspect that no This is about a journey to the soul and to your point when when that is where we're going Whatever the issue is whether it is the relationships and the communication that we need to you know work on or improve upon Or it's our vocation and how we're showing up and how we're making a difference and how we're aligned authentically or not or Whether it's our family and parenting, you know, I've had clients in all of these different realms and ultimately It's always about coming back to the self to the true essence of who you are because in that way You you naturally don't want to do unhealthy things for example or you naturally Find yourself wanting to serve and and be the best of yourself for your children or for your your boss or your You know employees or your co-workers or whatever it is and and people find I remember when I did my very first Group pro group coaching program one of the women was saying to me my husband is changing so much I don't understand why but it wasn't him. That's changing. It was her that was changing You know that was this aspect of you know, she was showing up differently learning to communicate differently with him and and seeing something happening and transforming that wasn't even necessary On her list of why she showed up in my program So that's what I love about the work is that it really gets to the root of our inner wisdom and our inner Knowing and the truth of who we are Yeah, that's beautiful because when we know how to transform in that deep way Yeah, it affects all areas of our life and it affects people around us in positive ways because we're transforming positive ways So I love that. Um, I would love for you to take a couple minutes and tell us about the solace program This is a is it a new way that you're now working with clients or you tell us about that. Yeah, thank you so you mentioned earlier of my sacred nights of winter journal and Solace kind of evolved out of that I every year for five years now I have put out a journal that people work with between Christmas and Epiphany so it's December 24th through January 6th, and it's a journal that takes people through these 12 virtues One night associated with each month of the coming year and the journal becomes a guide for your new year like if you take the time to commit to the journaling it becomes this guide and Many many people wanted to know how can I keep this going through the year? How can I continue this work and make sure I stay aligned with all this great journaling that I've done during the sacred nights? And so I created a program actually a couple of years ago I did a local program here. I live in Boulder, Colorado and had a group here working on the on this process and it was so transformative and As I've continued the sacred nights work more and more people are asking so this is the first year that I've created a program That's online and available to everyone Anywhere and I'll be having monthly wisdom teachings that associate with these 12, you know these 12 virtues, but it'll Over time it's kind of meant to be an ongoing membership that supports you I wanted to create something sustainable that was sustainably affordable, but also Something that could keep working with you in day-to-day life Because to me if it's something that feels really removed and you're studying it and it's separate from your day-to-day life It's not it's not gonna stick. It's not gonna become a practice that lives in you every day so that's kind of how solace was born and It's really again a journey that journey to the soul to this true self and and and Reconnecting and remembering and re-envisioning what you want to create for yourself. So yeah, it's great And there's solace that you have a couple of ways people can work with you and with with solace There's one way that's just the the monthly teachings Right or sir, and then there's another level where they get to work with you one to one and set up So it's kind of like however people want to engage with that they can Exactly exactly. Yeah, that everybody can be and I did change I had I used to sell coaching packages where I would sell maybe six at a time And it had a certain price and again that lump sum was often challenging for people so I really wanted to move to more of a monthly situation where it became part of your monthly budget part of the ongoing work that is a priority in your life and So I decided solace is going to be for everyone all of my clients So so they can have the coaching package, but solace is automatically a part of it So they're getting this wonderful structure like those riverbanks, right? that they can flow through and and have something to work with each month and then and then the personalized coaching if That's what they want as well to focus on their own personal specific challenges and You know relationships or work or whatever it is that they're wanting to dive deeper into and apply the principles to then we can go into that as well So yeah, yeah, that's great I will make sure that there's a link for the solace program specifically in the notes of the video So if if you've been watching this or listening to this and you resonate with the hero and hero's journey You can maybe see yourself in in somewhere along the journey or wanting to take that journey and you want a Very qualified and compassionate coach to Help you transform through that journey into your hearts and souls wisdom your true self I recommend you check out solace and contact Kim. She's very approachable and she can answer any questions So Kim, thanks for being here today and thanks for your your wonderful work Is there any kind of final words of wisdom or solace that you want to leave us with? Thank you George so much It's really been such a delight to connect with you and your community and I joined your master heart program this year and I'm just super excited because it feels like something I get to give myself as solace for my soul But but in a in a resonant way that that is that sustainable concept So I just want to say thank you so much and I really appreciate you and the community that you've created Well, it's it's a real joy to have you in the community. So thank you and I look forward to seeing How people can benefit from from your work?