Episode #49: Behind The Scenes - The Book & The Podcast
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Michelle Fox: Welcome to Nourish. I am Michelle Fox, Culinary Nutritionist health coach, and your host for this podcast. I teach a busy professionals how to get more nutrition in their bodies. And how to have more fun in their home kitchens. If you struggle with consistency. Or sometimes forget to make your needs a priority.
You, my friend are in the right place. Join me each week for inspiration to increase your energy. Strengthen your mindset, manage your hormonal woes and so much more. You have a lot on your plate, but that does not mean your nutrition should suffer. You deserve to live in a body and have a life that you love.
So let's dig in. We are on episode [00:01:00] 49 already. Oh my goodness. That means we are only a few episodes away from our one year anniversary. The team and I have some fun things planned, so stay tuned. And this is actually the perfect time for me to just pause and say thank you. Thank you for being part of this journey with me.
I can tell you I feel like we've been doing this work for quite a few years, which we have. And I also can tell you, it feels like we are just getting started. So if you've been with me from the beginning or if you are just learning about my work, sincerely, I wanna say thank you for being a part of this community because you just by being here and listening to this podcast, and or if you're watching it on YouTube, Just by being part of our community, you are helping my mission, which is to heal and to create healthier communities one person at a time.[00:02:00]
So thank you. It's also a great time to ask you, have you shared this podcast and or the book and or my YouTube channel with any of your friends? If you, my friend, are in perimenopause and or menopause, you are in the right place and there is a great chance that you have a friend or a coworker who is in the same place.
So will you introduce her to this work as well? That way you two are a part of this mission of healing the community. So with that, I'm sure you saw the title of today's episode, which is Behind the Scenes, the book and the podcast, and from my friends who are watching on YouTube.
Yes. You see, I'm giving in jazz hands because it has been a process. With that said, the process has been so worthwhile and a lot of it has been relatively easy, and [00:03:00] so I wanted to kind of pull the curtain back and share with you because I see you, I know you, you are a fellow creative, and there is a good chance you've said at least once in your life that you wanted to write a book and or perhaps there's like these ideas trickling in your head of wanting to start a podcast.
In real life, IRL as the cool kids say, I have run into you and you have told me I would love to start a podcast. And my answer a hundred percent of the time is awesome. Let me support you. Let me know how I can help you. and so with this episode, I wanna just give you, A few of the steps I took to create both and truly, maybe that's what we should have titled this podcast is Creation - Let's have some fun because whether you are writing a book, hosting a podcast, painting a [00:04:00] picture, dancing in your kitchen or in your living room or in the shower, singing in your car, whatever that creation is, you know your girls here to support you and love on you. So today's episode, though, I'm going to keep it very specific on writing.
The book and hosting the podcast. So the book is called, is It Hot in Here or is it Just Me? Seven Steps to Dramatically Reduce Your Hot Flashes through the Power of Nutrition, and then of course, because you're here with me, you know the podcast is called Nourish with Michelle Fox. I want to start. With where the ideas came from for both.
So one, I do call it a book because it is filled with resources. It is designed with you in mind because I do not want my friends suffering. It is [00:05:00] specific. I give you seven steps on how to eliminate a lot of the menopausal symptoms you may be experiencing. With that said,
It is an eide. So once you purchase, if you go to michelle fox.com, you'll see an easy link to purchase there. At the time of this recording, it's only $11, so you absolutely deserve to treat yourself to this guide, But I wanna bring that up Because I just wanna make it crystal clear, this is not a hardcover book. We are in the process of actually getting it on Amazon though, so stay tuned for that. I'll definitely let you know when that's available for your Kindle purchase. But for now, it is an Egu. And I wanna be clear, because the production of a hardcover book and even the Kindle, it's a few different steps than the Eide where.
you have access to click the buy now button, and you get the link and then you have a downloadable copy at your fingertips to [00:06:00] read. Your timing, because I know my friends are busy, so I kept that in mind as well. These were seven quick steps, but I also write it in a way that hopefully as you're reading it, you feel like I'm holding your hand and we're walking through some of these symptoms together so that you can eliminate them that much quicker and with love and with support.
As far as the inspiration for creating the podcast, honestly I feel like I kind of just fell on it. I, I don't mind sharing with you. I use Kajabi for my back office, so that's for my emails. I use the Kaja, the Kajabi. What am, am I a senior citizen now? It's very possible, so I use. Hi Joby for sending out my emails for hosting my website, for hosting my group coaching programs, for hosting [00:07:00] my communities, for hosting the courses, also for hosting the book, is it Hot in here?
And a few other items. And so Kajabi happens to also offer the podcasting arm, so it looked relatively easy. I watched the how to set it up YouTube video, and it was like easier than I even thought it might be. So I wanna offer that up to you, that if you are thinking of starting a podcast, check out Google, check out YouTube.
You'll a lot of great answers
and beyond that, I've got a lot to share around nutrition and around menopause and around being a working professional and about being a mother and a wife. And I have found that blogging, while I still love writing, and I still will post a blog here and there, but talking it out has been. [00:08:00] So much more healing for me, and I truly believe for the community as well, including, hopefully you've heard at least one, if not all, 50 of my community conversations with fellow entrepreneurs, fellow healers, fellow fellow seekers of the light, and the podcast has just opened up that world for me, which I am entirely grateful for.
Also, I hope you see the connection, the Nourish with Michelle Fox podcast. I truly want to nourish my fellow. Women on this journey and with the book, it was very targeted to women and our journey around perimenopause and menopause because I cannot stress enough, I do not want anybody suffering. So let's talk next about the research and the planning. I am a bit [00:09:00] guilty of kind of rushing things off when people are like, how do you do that? I'm like, it's easy. I do have to be reminded that yes, we all have different gifts. I do happen to be gifted with technology and with building community.
So as I say this, I'm starting, I'm trying to stay very mindful of the fact that not everybody has that gift. you know, if we wanna contrast and compare, I can tell you I don't have the gift of braiding hair. That's one thing I always used to wish that I could braid my own daughter's hair, which, I have not been able to do.
I can't braid my hair. So that's just one kind of silly example of something that I know that other people are very gifted in, like my mom and my sister. I didn't get that gift. Oh, one other kind of side note directions. Are you two directionally challenged? I can tell you I am so grateful for the G P s on this iPhone here because [00:10:00] that's something that I feel like you either have or you don't have.
That's something I don't have. Okay, so moving on. Let, let's bring it back in. Let me, let me stay focused here. So I just wanna share that with you to say, with my gift, I did do the research and the planning before creating the podcast, before writing the book. So let's talk about the podcast first.
I researched the name. If you've been with me from the beginning, then you know this used to have a, a different name. We just changed it to Nourish two months ago, and I bring that up to share with you that I. If you are interested, just start because you can change the name, you can change the graphics, you can change your intro and outro if you want, as many times as you want.
I probably wouldn't recommend doing it too often, but the point is, once you start, that's gonna help you get the [00:11:00] momentum to keep going. And so the research I did, I mentioned earlier, I watched a YouTube video or two on how to set up a podcast. I chose to. Use r s s feed through Kajabi, but there's Lipsy, there's Spotify.
I think you can go directly through Apple, perhaps like there's a lot of ways that you can create your own r s s feed for your podcast If you want to use another. Podcast provider to upload your podcast. What other research did I Oh, I researched the name. So you just do a quick Google search on that as well. So once you come up with your name, see if anybody else has that name as well. I, of course use my brand colors to create a graphic for the cover for my podcast.
And. I decided on a format on how I wanted to blog. I [00:12:00] decided on a niche that I wanna focus on, which of course is women busy, professional women who are most likely going through perimenopause or menopause. I researched how to find intro and outro music and get the rights to that.
And then I played. I played a lot. I did quite a few recordings ahead of time to see what looked right, what sounded right. I can show you my microphone. The brand is toner. I think I spent maybe $50 on this mic in the beginning. I didn't have a professional microphone. I ha, I just used my. the earplug that plugs into the phone, the apple earplug and the sound was relatively fine.
And so again, I just offer up to let you know there's a lot of relatively easy ways to create the podcast and if you are thinking about doing it, hopefully you hear my voice in your [00:13:00] head saying Yes, just do it. I also want to say with the research part, I. Looked at what some other podcasters were doing and how frequently they were posting podcast episodes.
I have decided, as you've seen, to be once a week where every Tuesday morning, rain or shine. For this entire year. Every Tuesday morning a podcast episode goes out. You could choose, maybe you wanna do one episode per month and that would be perfectly fine. Maybe you wanna do five episodes per week and that would be perfectly fine.
That's the beautiful thing with podcasting. You can go at your own pace, like it's your show. You get to do what you want. As far as the research and planning with my book and. I feel like I need to backtrack on that as well. I love saying book because I mean, it just feels good to say book, but it's also super simple.
It's a [00:14:00] digital guide to be more clear, and I was coached by GLO Atan Mo last summer, and she gave us the challenge slash charge to write an e-guide in our niche. We were. Multiple people from different industries, and she kind of walked us through how to get started and how to write it. So I do feel very grateful that I learned that from her.
I also went back to Google and researched Eide, what goes into it? So I created an outline. This guide I will share with you. I started writing it. Last September, and I didn't publish it until this past June. So that was, that was almost 10 months it took me. So I also wanna offer that to you to let you know this was not an overnight situation.
When [00:15:00] I'd get an idea, I'd jot it down when I found. Well, let's be real. We never find extra time. I will say when I made the time on the calendar, I would kind of spread it out like two to four hours per week. I would tell myself, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna sit down, we're gonna write, and then I'd move on.
But it was always like in the back of my mind, letting me know, we gotta get this out, we gotta help others. Let's go. And so, To me, 10 months sounds like a long time. When I mentioned that to a girlfriend the other day, she's like, oh my gosh, that's really fast. It takes many people many years to write a book.
So you know, you are the only one that gets to decide you timing and what timing makes sense for you To write this book and or digital guide.
I also have to share that [00:16:00] there were many times I put hours on the calendar to write the book, and not only did I not write the book in those hours, you could find me napping. You could find me doing some jumping jacks to keep the the energy going. Right before I hit record on this podcast, you would have seen me vacuuming my house because Chloe's dog hair got a little out of control.
But I also could tell, like I was kind of not hesitating, but a lot of times, and tell me if you relate to this, as creatives, we need to run things physically through our body before the creativity can. Come in and come out. And so I think by, you know, moving that vacuum cleaner back and forth, it helped me get the extra boost that I needed to actually hit record on this podcast.
And so there were many sessions [00:17:00] like that where I may have found myself a bit distracted, but then oftentimes I would come straight back to the work and knock it out. I only share that story with you to ensure that you're giving yourself compassion as you decide to embark on whichever creative process that you are choosing.
Let's go to the editing and the polishing of the digital guide I had help.
Another thing I want to share with you, My fellow Striver, a lot of us have a hard time asking for help. I have been in that camp for most of my life. I still feel like that is a work in progress, but now that I am 50 and I have teenagers who are very capable, I will tell you [00:18:00] I have learned that I.
Feel so much better and have so much more energy when I do ask for help. And so with that, I had a friend help me with some of the editing. We kind of bartered for services. And then I also had Shirley Lynn, our digital marketing assistant here. She did a lot of the graphics updates. She did a lot of the cleanup with the formatting.
She did amazing work. And so I am super grateful because yes, I could have knocked it out on my own, but it wouldn't have looked as good. It wouldn't have been as easy on the eye to read because there were things that I didn't realize I was missing. and it probably just wouldn't have been as beautiful of a book.
As it is now,
I feel really proud of this book and I hope it lands for you as well.
So out of all the things I create [00:19:00] here at Michelle Fox, culinary nutritionist, why did I choose to talk about the book and the podcast behind the scenes? It's because they're both intertwined as far as creating for my community.
We talked earlier about creating, just creating. The reason why I wanted to highlight the podcast and the digital guide in this episode is just to highlight some of the similarities between my creations behind the scenes, and so podcasting is a way that I can reach you, my community through your earbuds and or if you're watching this through.
I was about to say the YouTube again, I am having a senior moment. It's all good. It's all good. [00:20:00] If you're watching this on YouTube, then you know I'm talking to you like we're in this together. And then of course, my book The Seven Steps. And you know what? Speaking of YouTube, my friends on YouTube, you're gonna get a special treat.
I am going to share my screen. For my friends who have not found the YouTube channel yet, head on over there. I'm at @michellefoxlove. Hit the subscribe button and then of course, come and let me know that you saw this episode on the app. So let's share my screen because I want to just give you a little taste of this gorgeous guide.
So from my podcast listeners, I'm gonna walk you through what I'm looking at. So I'm looking at the cover and let's make it a little bit smaller. The view. So it's the cover. Is it hot in here or is it just [00:21:00] me? Seven steps to dramatically reduce your hot flashes through the power of nutrition, and then I walk you through a welcome.
I share a little bit about my backstory. This, my timeline. It's been really interesting. I've been getting. Amazing feedback from people who have already purchased the digital guide, and they said they had no idea about my journey. And so just, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but just as a, 30,000 square foot view, if you cannot see the screen.
I'll start from the bottom, which is in 1995, I graduated from, NYU in applied psychology, and we move up the scale, and I'll just finish up to the very top, which is that I launched the podcast Nourish with Michelle Fox. Hopefully that's a little teaser to get you over to YouTube so you can see the rest of the timeline here.
And [00:22:00] then with the contents, you can see the steps that I talk you through in the guide. And let's just click on step two. Significantly decreasing our sugar intake. I have a quote by Maya Angelou that I do wanna read to you right now, and it says, we delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.
And the reason why I love that quote is because often in this very noisy world, we can see perhaps what looks like the picture of perfect health. I. One. You know, I hate the word perfect. There's no such thing as perfection in culinary nutrition, but you know what I'm saying? Especially in this Instagram social media world, there are a lot of images of, you know, the [00:23:00] standard or traditional beauty profile or concept.
And while you may be looking at that woman that you find, Aspirational, inspirational. It's sometimes easy to forget that. Wow, I bet she had a journey to get to that place. And so I love just the reminder that, the butterfly wasn't always beautiful to begin with, but she does the work and clearly it's worth it.
One of the things I wanted to highlight here, as I'm scrolling down in this section around sugar and how we can release the sugar, I start off saying that some studies have suggested that sugar is as addictive as cocaine according to addiction center.com. So if you feel addicted to sugar, please know that you are not crazy and you are not alone.[00:24:00]
And then I go on to share how and why sugar affects us the way it does. Specifically when we are going through perimenopause and or menopause. I cite my sources. We have quite a few sources in the book as well that you can go to if you want more information. And then I also. Have links for videos that you can see some of the examples I give of easy to grab sugar-free snacks and snacks that can help to keep your blood sugar balanced and your hormones balanced.
And then it looks like I end with a reminder to stay on track with your water consumption, which is one of the steps as well. And then at the end of every section, I do have a reflection part where you can click in the box and you can [00:25:00] type. So I'll just say thank you, but you can type your reflections right on screen.
and so my goal. Sharing this digital guide is to make the information as easy as possible for you, and to make it a tool that you can incorporate in your day-to-day, very busy life.
And you know what, I'm gonna stop the screen share there. If you want more goodness, then of course head to michelle fox.com and grab your copy of this digital guide as well.
So, this has been a quickie episode, but I sincerely hope that. Steven, just one thing I said may be a little nudge for you to create and creating in your zone. And if you truly want to learn how to podcast and you want more information, I. Send me an email [email protected]. I will share with you, I have [00:26:00] two other friends who have requested that I put a course together around that, and if the interest is big enough, then of course I would be happy to share what I know about podcasting so that you too can share your message.
And just a reminder, you get to create in your own time whether you are writing a blog post. Once a year, once a month, five times a week. You get to do that. Whether you're creating the podcast, whether you are writing a digital guide, whether you're writing a book, I want you creating, this is our time, and the world wants our stories.
The world needs our stories. And so let me know. Let me know if this podcast is landing for you. Again, you can reach out to us at [email protected] or come find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and let us know what you [00:27:00] think.
We will be back next week with a guest interview. We have Jenn Uhen, and I cannot wait to share this conversation with you because we will be talking about you and your money. One of my favorite things to talk about and so I think you're gonna love that one as well. In the meantime, Head to michelle fox.com. Grab your copy of, Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Because you deserve to feel better in your body and I've got you. Alright, that's all for now. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you next Tuesday.
I'll talk to you soon.
Michelle Fox:
Thanks so much for listening to Nourish. Have you been driving, doing laundry or walking around the neighborhood? Sweet. I've got show notes for you. Hop on over to michellefox.com/podcast. When you [00:28:00] are ready. I will let you know that on the page, you will find resources to support what you just learned on today's show. And then of course you can grab some health supportive freebies as well.
If you enjoy this episode, I would be honored. If you would leave a review on whichever podcast platform you are listening on. It will help me with my mission to build healthier communities. One person at a time and it will help you because you will be part of that mission.
I'll be back next week and I encourage you to keep showing up for yourself and know that you and your health matter. Big love. [00:29:00]
