# Site Content for LLMs # Generated: 2026-08-04T02:36:04.661Z # Site URL: https://julialandauer.com ### [About Julia Landauer](https://julialandauer.com/about/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: About Julia Julia Landauer is a two-time champion racecar driver, motivational keynote speaker, and entrepreneur. From breaking records on the track to inspiring audiences worldwide, Julia harnesses lessons from the high-speed world of motorsports to deliver actionable strategies for leadership, resilience, and innovation. Trailblazer in Racing A New York City native, Julia made history at age 14 as the first and youngest female champion of the Skip Barber Racing Series. Her career has spanned multiple racing series, including becoming the first woman to win a NASCAR Track Championship at Motor Mile Speedway, competing in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West, and setting a record-breaking 5th-place finish in the NASCAR Euro Series—the highest for an American in the series. She most recently raced part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Innovating Beyond the Racetrack Beyond the track, Julia's expertise extends into business strategy and storytelling. A Stanford University graduate with a degree in Science, Technology, and Society, she launched her motivational speaking career with a TEDx Talk and has since worked with Fortune 500 companies, universities, and conferences worldwide. Her insights bridge the worlds of racing, technology, and community, offering fresh perspectives on high-performance leadership. Shaping the Future Julia founded FrontRunner Strategies , a boutique advisory and coaching firm, hosts her podcast, If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer, and serves on the board of the Shift Up Now Foundation . Julia's also a member of NASCAR's Strategy & Innovation team, helping shape the future of the sport. Ready For Julia to Speak at Your Event? Julia turns 20+ years of racing at the limit into keynotes that leave audiences with practical tools for performance, resilience, and leadership under pressure. Book Julia Now Racing Highlights 2022 Julia made her debut in the NASCAR Xfinity Series 2020 Highest finishing American in the EuroNASCAR Series 2019 First woman to lead a lap in the NASCAR Pinty's Series 2016 2016 K&N Series West “Driver Achievement Award” recipient 2015 First woman to win a NASCAR Limited Late Model Championship at Motor Mile Speedway 2015 First woman to qualify on pole in a NASCAR Limited Late Model at Motor Mile Speedway 2015 First woman to win a race in a NASCAR Limited Late Model at Motor Mile Speedway 2006 First woman to win a Skip Barber Racing Series Championship --- ### [Contact Julia Landauer](https://julialandauer.com/contact/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Julia Would Love To Hear From You Follow Julia Podcast Social --- ### [Julia Landauer - Keynote Speaker](https://julialandauer.com/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Julia Landauer Julia Landauer is a champion racecar driver and keynote speaker who helps organizations build high-performing teams through greater ownership, adaptability, and resilience. With a dynamic presence, engaging storytelling, and research-backed strategies, Julia draws on more than 20 years of experience competing in elite motorsports to equip audiences with practical tools to navigate change, strengthen collaboration, and perform at their best under pressure. Book Julia As Featured In --- ### [News Updates From Julia Landauer](https://julialandauer.com/news/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: News --- ### [Collaborate With Julia Landauer](https://julialandauer.com/partners/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Ready To Collaborate With Julia? Julia collaborates with brands, businesses, and organizations to deliver impactful messaging, dynamic live experiences, and engaging digital content. As a keynote speaker, event host, and content creator, she helps clients inspire audiences, foster meaningful conversations, and elevate their events. Ways to Work with Julia Keynote Speaking High-energy, insightful talks that translate racing principles into actionable strategies for leadership, teamwork, and performance. Panel Discussions Thought-provoking conversations that bring fresh perspectives to industry challenges. Emceeing & Event Hosting A polished, engaging presence to ensure seamless event flow and audience engagement. Content Creation Authentic storytelling through video, blogs, and social media, tailored to amplify brand messaging. Introductory Videos Professional, high-impact video introductions to set the tone and build excitement for your event. Speaker Coaching Through her firm FrontRunner, Julia helps speakers refine their narrative arc, create engaging visuals, and deliver unforgettable presentations. Please visit gofrontrunner.xyz to learn more. Past Collaborations Get Started --- ### [Julia Landauer's Podcast](https://julialandauer.com/podcast/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Podcast If I'm Honest Honest conversations. Cool people. Real lessons. If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer is a podcast for people who are building, growing, and pushing themselves to the next level. Hosted by champion racecar driver and keynote speaker Julia Landauer, the show features candid conversations about chasing dreams, grit, resilience, and what it really takes to build something meaningful. With a focus on guest conversations and occasional solo episodes, Julia and her guests share stories about ambition, setbacks, confidence, and the habits that help you stay in the race till the checkered flag. Follow Along Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS Omny Studio YouTube Season Four: Latest Episodes Episode Transcripts Episode 66: Julia Landauer on the 5 Biggest Lessons for Building Something Meaningful View Transcript Episode 65: Valerie Chapman on Why Women Can't Afford to Ignore AI View Transcript Episode 64: From Stand-Up to New York Times Vows: Selena Coppock on Making Your Own Opportunities View Transcript Episode 63: Lindsay Shookus on Leaving SNL, Reinvention, and Betting on Yourself View Transcript Episode 62: From DJing Clubs to Global Stages: Mick Batyske on Longevity, Hustle, and Creative Evolution View Transcript Episode 61: From CBS News to Oatly: Yasmin Shahida on Starting From Scratch View Transcript Episode 60: Welcome to Season 4: Building Meaningful Things with Really Cool People View Transcript Season One Season Two Season Three --- ### [Racing Swag From JLR](https://julialandauer.com/shop/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Racing Swag Loading products... Shopping Cart Checkout --- ### [Speaking by Julia Landauer](https://julialandauer.com/speaking/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Speaking Julia's keynotes center around performance , resilience , and empowerment , leveraging the high-speed, high-stakes world of motorsports to deliver actionable strategies for success in both life and work. “Julia was a fantastic speaker at our client event. She is witty and honest and has an incredible ability to be both powerfully impressive and totally relatable. I would definitely recommend Julia for any speaking engagement.” Marsha Lewis - Marketing Lead, Accenture Highlights “It was a pleasure watching Julia draw in her audience and keep them engaged from beginning to end. I only wish all of our speakers were as engaging.” David Hornik - Co-founder, TEDxStanford Ready For Julia to Speak at Your Event? Julia turns 20+ years of racing at the limit into keynotes that leave audiences with practical tools for performance, resilience, and leadership under pressure. Check Availability Keynotes & Descriptions Slow In, Fast Out Racing Rules for Workplace Success Session Overview This motivational keynote for workplace success draws on the high-stakes world of motorsports to deliver actionable strategies for thriving in any professional environment. Using racing-inspired principles, Julia Landauer explores how strategic preparation, focused execution, resilience, and calculated risk-taking drive success and innovation. With high-energy racing stories and practical workplace parallels, this keynote empowers individuals and teams to embrace discomfort, push limits, and build a winning mindset. Perfect for organizations seeking a high-performance, dynamic speaker with a unique perspective on achieving peak performance and sustained success. Audience Takeaways Strategic Preparation, Vision and Focus, Risk and Resilience, Personal and Team Optimization, Adaptability Under Pressure, Sustained Performance, Winning Mindset. The Drive to Win Inspired Strategies for Self-Mastery Session Overview In her 21-year racecar driving career, Julia Landauer mastered the high-performance mindset needed to win—both on the track and in life. In this motivational keynote, Julia shares powerful, real-world lessons on leadership, teamwork, overcoming fear, and embracing discomfort to achieve personal and professional success. Through candid, engaging, and often humorous storytelling, she equips audiences with actionable strategies to take ownership of their goals, build confidence under pressure, and develop habits that drive long-term achievement. Audiences will leave inspired and ready to accelerate toward success with a champion's mindset. Audience Takeaways Ownership of Success, Fear as a Catalyst, Resilience and Grit, Embracing Authenticity, Growth in Discomfort, Preparation and Adaptation, Building Relationships. Data Drives Success Winning with Analytics, Adaptation, and Innovation Session Overview In high-stakes environments like motorsports and business, success isn't left to chance—it's powered by data-driven decision-making. With over 20 years of experience as a racecar driver and 10 years as a motivational speaker, Julia Landauer reveals how analyzing data, optimizing performance, and adapting in real time creates a competitive edge. In this keynote, she explores how data enhances leadership, strengthens collaboration, and fuels continuous innovation—whether on the track, in life, or in the workplace. Audiences will gain actionable insights on how to leverage technology, embrace iteration, and develop a strategic mindset to drive high-performance results. Audience Takeaways Preparation Creates an Edge, Data-Driven Collaboration, Innovation Through Experimentation, Clarity Builds Confidence, Leadership Shapes Data Culture Can Nice Girls Win? Owning Our Success and Elevating Each Other Session Overview Starting her racing career at just 10 years old, Julia Landauer quickly learned the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry. Through grit, collaboration, and a commitment to excellence, she overcame barriers by building strong alliances, advocating for herself, and fostering inclusive teamwork. In this empowering keynote, Julia shares powerful strategies for embracing strengths, advocating for equity, and harnessing confidence. Through candid stories and practical takeaways, she inspires audiences to champion uniqueness, embrace self-advocacy, and drive lasting change—proving that yes, nice girls can win. Audience Takeaways Ownership of Success, Recognizing and Overcoming Bias, Self-Advocacy, Building Confidence, Fostering Allyship, Collaborative Empowerment. Past Speaking Engagements “Julia represents the strength and confidence of the millennial leadership in the 21st century, and serves as a role model for our sons and daughters.” Lisa Kaplan - Conference Development, ICAN (The Institute for Career Advancement Needs) Ready For Julia to Speak at Your Event? --- ### [If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer | Season One](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/season-one/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Season One If I'm Honest Join Julia Landauer, champion racecar driver, motivational keynote speaker, and advocate for STEM education and women's empowerment, as she tells you what she's honestly thinking about. In “If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer,” Julia chats about her specific life experiences, what piqued her interest that week, what she's writing about in her journal, her opinions on the world, and some tangential thoughts. Julia delivers her perspective and advice in an honest, vulnerable, and entertaining conversational narrative, meant to feel like a conversation with your friend. So, buckle up every Wednesday to hear what she's thinking about. For more about Julia, you can follow her on Instagram and X @julialandauer. Follow Along Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS Omny Studio Season One Episode Transcripts Episode 28: Season 1 Finale View Transcript Episode 27: Ask Me Anything! View Transcript Episode 26: GUEST: Jaime Schmidt - Entrepreneur, Investor, Pickleball Enthusiast View Transcript Episode 25: Cooking and Creativity View Transcript Episode 24: Boz Saint John View Transcript Episode 23: Healthy vs Unhealthy Relationships View Transcript Episode 22: GUEST: Alanis King - Automotive and Motorsport Writer, Reporter, and Presenter View Transcript Episode 21: Being a New Yorker on 9/11 View Transcript Episode 20: GUEST: Mel Braun - Realtor-Turned-Reiki Master & Mindfulness Educator View Transcript Episode 19: We Should All Have Heroes View Transcript Episode 18: GUEST: Trey Shannon - Motorsports Trainer & Guinness World Record Holder View Transcript Episode 17: Having Hard Conversations View Transcript Episode 16: GUEST: Ryan Blaney - NASCAR Cup Series Winner View Transcript Episode 15: The Power of the Female Ally View Transcript Episode 14: The Slippery Slope of External Validation View Transcript Episode 13: GUEST: Ashley Louise - Ladies Get Paid View Transcript Episode 12: We Love Male Allies View Transcript Episode 11: Navigating Identity Shifts View Transcript Episode 10: GUEST: Hannah Newhouse - Racer Turned Broadcaster View Transcript Episode 9: Doing Hard Things View Transcript Episode 8: Hot Take: All-Women Racing Series View Transcript Episode 7: Picking Yourself Up After Disappointment View Transcript Episode 6: I’m an Expert at Dealing with Rejection View Transcript Episode 5: How to Handle Pressure Like a Pro View Transcript Episode 4: Hot Take: Formula 1 View Transcript Episode 3: Taylor Swift Taught Me to Know My Value View Transcript Episode 2: Pamela Anderson and the Judgements I’ve Made View Transcript Episode 1: Always Ask View Transcript --- ### [If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer | Season Three](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/season-three/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Season Three If I'm Honest Join Julia Landauer, champion racecar driver, motivational keynote speaker, and advocate for STEM education and women's empowerment, as she tells you what she's honestly thinking about. In “If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer,” Julia chats about her specific life experiences, what piqued her interest that week, what she's writing about in her journal, her opinions on the world, and some tangential thoughts. Julia delivers her perspective and advice in an honest, vulnerable, and entertaining conversational narrative, meant to feel like a conversation with your friend. So, buckle up every Wednesday to hear what she's thinking about. For more about Julia, you can follow her on Instagram and X @julialandauer. Follow Along Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS Omny Studio Season Three Episode Transcripts Episode 59: 5 Lessons Learned in 2024 View Transcript Episode 58: Redefining Love with Matchmaker Francesca Hogi View Transcript Episode 57: How Sequel Re-Engineered The Tampon View Transcript Episode 56: The Fuss About Aging View Transcript Episode 55: NASCAR Canada Series Winner Gary Klutt View Transcript Episode 54: The Science of a Natural High View Transcript Episode 53: Racing Communities, Abandoning Internal Misogyny, and NYC Public Schools with Motorsports Streamer Ash Kalita View Transcript Episode 52: Do Emotions Drive Better Decision Making? View Transcript Episode 51: Welcome to Season 3 - Sports Catch-Up / Season Preview View Transcript --- ### [If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer | Season Two](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/season-two/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.111Z Content: Season Two If I'm Honest Join Julia Landauer, champion racecar driver, motivational keynote speaker, and advocate for STEM education and women's empowerment, as she tells you what she's honestly thinking about. In “If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer,” Julia chats about her specific life experiences, what piqued her interest that week, what she's writing about in her journal, her opinions on the world, and some tangential thoughts. Julia delivers her perspective and advice in an honest, vulnerable, and entertaining conversational narrative, meant to feel like a conversation with your friend. So, buckle up every Wednesday to hear what she's thinking about. For more about Julia, you can follow her on Instagram and X @julialandauer. Follow Along Apple Podcasts Spotify RSS Omny Studio Season Two Episode Transcripts Episode 50: Season 2 Finale! View Transcript Episode 49: American Ninja Warrior’s Only Host and Competitor, Alex Weber View Transcript Episode 48: What is Psychological Safety? View Transcript Episode 47: Ask Me Anything (Again)! View Transcript Episode 46: The Psychology of Pre-Competition Rituals View Transcript Episode 45: Storytelling “The Moment” in Live Sports with Broadcaster Leigh Diffey View Transcript Episode 44: My Opinions on Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” View Transcript Episode 43: Sports Journalism, Gaining Confidence, and Asking Tough Questions with Danielle Trotta View Transcript Episode 42: Repurposing Ambition View Transcript Episode 41: Movie Set Props with TikTok Dad Joke Star Scott Reeder View Transcript Episode 40: Regret & 4 Tips for Self-Forgiveness View Transcript Episode 39: Hollywood Stunt Work with Brett Smrz View Transcript Episode 38: 6 Tips for Giving a Great Presentation View Transcript Episode 37: GUEST: Ashley Sanford - Monster Jam Truck Driver View Transcript Episode 36: GUEST: Fan Behavior - An F1 Podcast View Transcript Episode 35: ep-35-the-daytona-500 View Transcript Episode 34: The Magnificent Resurgence of "Fast Car" View Transcript Episode 33: GUEST: Lindsey Simcik - Almost30 Podcast Host, Community Creator, and New Mom! View Transcript Episode 32: Driving Tips From a Race Car Driver View Transcript Episode 31: GUEST: Chef Alyssa's Kitchen - Cooking Instructors and Community Builders View Transcript Episode 30: Building Strong Sibling Relationships View Transcript Episode 29: Welcome To Season 2 View Transcript --- ### [Always Ask](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/always-ask/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello everyone and welcome to the very first episode of my new podcast if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I'm Julia Landauer. Let's go on a quick speed date, shall we? So I've never done this in real life. But here we go. So I am a champion racecar driver. I'm 31 years old. I've been racing since I was 10 years old, started in go karts, went to Formula cars, and then went on the NASCAR circuit. And I'm from New York City, I went to a Math and Science High School called Stuyvesant High School for my New York listeners out there. I went to Stanford, got a bachelor of science, have always been a tech, I wouldn't say tech nerd, but I really appreciate human machine interaction. And I think technical literacy is super important. And I was on the TV show SURVIVOR while I was in college, I have given two TEDx talks, One about women's empowerment called can nice girls win races? And one about fear, Called I'm a racer, yes, I get scared. After I graduated, I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where I currently live with my husband, Ben. Ben is a really great chef, which means that I'm a forever sous chef now and human dishwasher. But we take that with with good food that comes with it. And yeah, I'm now a woman in my 30s. And I have been really grateful for all the experiences that I've had. And you know, one of my goals with keynote speaking has always been to help people live their best lives. And that's what I try to do via my Instagram Stories also, to share the little things I'm thinking about to comment on some pop culture like the recent Taylor Swift, Fernando Alonso dating rumor I mean, whoa. And yeah, so my whole goal here is to be able to have a conversation with you as friends, I hope we get to know each other more over the coming episodes. And yeah, I'm really excited to be here, and really grateful to have you with me. So it was actually quite difficult to figure out which episode was going to be the first episode. You know, in true. First Born Scorpio style, I have a very long running document with all of the episode themes, the different ideas, I'm outlining a bunch of episodes, and I was just trying to figure out what would encapsulate kind of the vibe I'm going for something I think is important. And that's how I settled on always ask. Now, I think of always asking as kind of multifaceted, there's the there's the always ask as in like, shoot your shot, you know, you're doing it for you, you're setting yourself up to potentially take advantage of an opportunity, you know, asking for what you're worth, you know, asking someone on a date, whatever it might be. So there's that, like, you know, always asking for yourself, but then I also look at always asking as kind of like aiming for clarity in relationships, you know, always asking so that you can help with communicating clearly, and maybe to avoid miscommunication and conflict, and to diversify ideas, you know, asking when you need help. So I think there's just a lot of different ways we can look at this. And it's super important. And I have three reasons that I want to share with you about why it is important to always ask. So it's probably pretty clear by now that I firmly believe that it's really, really important to ask for what we want. And what we need. And what I've heard anecdotally from talking with friends or women that I've seen at networking events, is that sometimes there's a little more hesitance for women to ask for what we want. And sometimes we tend to wait to be invited to things, whereas guys are sometimes more inclined to just go for it. It comes down to a little bit of risk aversion, you know, stuff like that. But I also read a study by bowles, Babcock and Lai. And they looked at if women and men were equally likely to negotiate compensation, and what they found was that it kind of depended on who was asking and who was being asked. And so for example, if a woman had to negotiate her compensation with a man, she was less likely to initiate that negotiation, whereas guys were equally likely to negotiate for compensation regardless of who they had to talk to. So for my ladies out there, most of us feel like this is a little bit harder, and that's completely okay. You know, imposter syndrome is real gender biases and stereotypes are real. So we have to work with what we got. But given that it is important to ask, I want to first talk about the specific importance in being clear and concise, in what you're asking for, you know, it might be obvious but clear communication is something that is some of the hardest stuff to do out there. Because we're each limited by our own mindsets, our own perspectives, our own experiences, our own filters that we view the world through. And the reality is that no one is a mind reader and and if we make assumptions about how other people are going to receive information or hear what we're saying whether this is personally or professionally or what have you, we're gonna run into obstacles, and we're going to have conflicts that were probably quite avoidable. And if I'm honest, I didn't really internalize this until a few years ago, where I had a professional experience where I was imprecise, I was making a bunch of assumptions, and it wasted my time it wasted someone else's time. And had I not figured it out through the help of my mother, I probably wouldn't have got gotten what I wanted. So a few years before the pandemic, I was asked to speak on a panel for International Women's Day in New York, it was for a big corporation. I was really excited, excited, started working with my stylist and I knew that I wanted to be trendy and smart looking and you know, put together so we had this, this really dark turtleneck and a big full skirt and boots. And I just felt great on top of the world power woman. And then I got on stage and didn't feel as trendy as these other women. But that's quite all right. And what was really cool about this conference is that the in addition to being able to talk with these women and everything, but the moderator was going to be hosting a big women's conference that was going to be highly publicized later in the year. And I knew they were still looking for speakers, I wanted to show the moderator that I was a good speaker who could articulate my thoughts. And my hope was that she would invite me to speak and I would kind of like, set it up and tee it up so that she would, you know, have the idea to ask me. Now, the problem with this was that I kind of didn't want to step on her toes. I didn't want to impose I didn't want the idea to feel like mine. I want it to feel like hers. So I just I just skirted the issue. And I look back and I realized the way I asked her, you know, or the way I told her that I wanted to be involved was very passive. And the way that I followed up with her was somewhat passive. And when I wasn't getting the reaction that I had hoped to get from her, I started venting to my mom, I just told her like, Why isn't she connecting the dots like, I know that they need speakers, she's told me I'm a good speaker, I've expressed my interest in wanting to go to this conference. And my mom immediately cut me off. And she said, Julia, did you ask this woman if she you could speak at their conference? And I said, No, I've been setting it up, you know, I've been trying to make it her idea. And she just said, you know, this is a busy woman, if you tell her that you're excited to go or that you want to attend or that you have good ideas like she's going to take that at face value, you need to just be upfront, let her know what you want, ask her nicely and see where it goes. And I didn't really believe that it would be as simple as that when I was talking with my mother. But I decided, okay, you know what this woman is a wise woman, meaning my mom is a wise woman, like, let me take her advice. So I send another email to the moderator who was hosting the conference. And I explicitly said, hey, you know, thinking more on this, I believe that I have some valuable experiences and stories that I can tell that would be really beneficial to your audience. And so if you're still looking for speakers, I'd like to propose myself as one. And she got back to me within that day and said, Julia, that's such a great idea. Thank you for asking me, I wouldn't have thought of that. And I felt like such a dumb dumb, because here I was skirting the issue trying to be clever, and then getting frustrated, because my, my cleverness was not working. And so therefore it wasn't clever. Hello. But I realized like, Oh, my goodness, this was so easy. It was not offensive, I was not stepping on toes, I was not imposing. And it was a really clear lesson in needing to be clear, and concise. No one's a mind reader, we can't make assumptions. And also, we just have to recognize that even if people are trying to help us, they might not know the best way to do that, you know, and so we have to make other people's jobs as easy as possible for them by being clear in what we need and what we want. Okay, so at this point, we know we have to ask, we know we have to be clear and concise. But I don't know if you guys have experienced this too. But for a really long time, if I wanted to reach out to someone or if I had an idea, especially if I was dealing with someone older, more professional, more mature and more experienced, I would from time to time find myself making excuses and reasons for why I shouldn't reach out or why it wouldn't work out. And this is primarily I think when it came to pitching myself for sponsorship or racing, or for asking for a professional introduction or following up on a lead for a speaking event. So it was in those kind of high stress. times when I was asking for things when I was asking for money to go racing when I was our sponsorship agreements, right and partnerships, but asking for them to make a spend asking for them to hire me for a keynote.... --- ### [Ask Me Anything!](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ask-me-anything/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, Happy Wednesday or whatever day you're listening to this episode. Oh my goodness, this last week was a busy and chaotic week. So on Tuesday, the 31st. On Halloween, I flew out to Las Vegas because I was hired to give a keynote for the SEMA show. Now, for those of you who don't know, SEMA is an automotive trade show, there's a lot of aftermarket, you know, companies OEMs, there's a lot of racing presents, it takes up the entire multi Hall Convention Center in Las Vegas, they have a lot of demonstrations and shows in the parking lots is just really big. And I had gone so many times, as you know, a young racecar driver who was trying to network and meet people and pitch people and schmooze and make my face known and just make FaceTime. So it was kind of a full circle moment to be able to be asked to come back and speak and I spoke for the SEMA education branch. And so it was the inaugural SEMA women and automotive symposium. So it was a day of women's focused content for for the automotive industry. And I was there opening keynote. So really great audience, there were about 200 people in the room, and there were a bunch of women, but there were also a lot of guys. So that was really cool to see the men who explicitly went there to see how they could help women advanced in the automotive industry. So really appreciate them and all their presence. It was a wonderful keynote, I ended up staying for the whole day. So I got to listen to the panels and the other speakers. And I got to meet Carolyn Jackson of the Barrett Jackson group. And so it was it was just really, really cool. It was fun to have you in Vegas, it was really dry. And my sinuses did not love that. But that's okay. And then the view from my hotel was actually of the sphere, the new performance hall that's there. And I gotta say a lot of it was really cool. When they had the plane advertisements. It wasn't so cool. But when they had a little smiley face guy, he brought me a lot of joy. They also had like more artistic, generative art that looked so real and crisp, it was really incredible. So I thought that was really cool. I had a lot of good sushi. And I went to the same restaurant three times in my Hotel Casino. So that was great. And then I got back late on Thursday. And then on Friday, we went up to some friends who have a Mountain House and we just had a really relaxing weekend. It was beautiful weather, we got lots of fireplace action, and lots of beautiful sunsets. And so that was just really, really relaxing after, you know, a busy few days of travel. And then the beginning of this week is good. So yeah, that is, that is a quick rundown of my week. I hope you had a good week. And I hope that you're looking forward to this episode. Okay, ask me anything. Over the last few weeks, I've put out a call on social media for any questions that you might have that you'd like me to address in an Ask Me Anything style podcast episode. And it's really because I want to make sure that I'm tackling things that you want to hear about, I get questions on social media anyway. So I figured let me go in depth, give an unfiltered answer, and you guys did not disappoint. There are a lot of different types of questions. And I'm going to go through more or less in order of how I received them. If I did have a couple of questions that were related. I tried to put them into one. And we're going to get into it. The first question is, what is your favorite vacation spot? And would you rather go by yourself with Ben, with your family or with your friends? And this is a fun question. It's one that I don't think I've ever gotten before. So kudos to you asking those tough questions. And okay, it depends on the type of vacation. So for a short, like three or four day trip, I want to go somewhere that's going to feel refreshing. And that usually involves being outside quite a bit. So maybe that's the mountains, maybe it's a short beach trip, maybe it's the desert somewhere that feels different, refreshing, and allows me to relax. If it's a bigger trip a week or two weeks, I want to go somewhere that feels really different in every aspect of the area. So the culture needs to feel different, the environment needs to feel different. It's great if the food feels different the way of life. So some specific examples of some of my favorite spots are many places in Europe, I think are really incredible to visit. And I love going to Europe, I love seeing new places going back to old places. Rome completely completely blew me away when I went there in high school. I obviously love France and go with Ben quite a bit. But then also, you know, Hawaii was so so different that's right here in the United States, even though it's very far off the United States but you know, the culture felt different though pace of life felt super different. The food was different. The environment and the landscape and the the geography was so different in the history was different. So I think it takes on a lot of different forms. And I'm excited to keep exploring because I still have more places I want to go. Like, I want to go to Portugal, I want to go to Scotland and Ireland. And I'd like to go to the Nordic countries. And I'd like to go to Asia. I've been to Tokyo once. But I'd like love to get to China, I'd love to see India. And yeah, there are a lot of lots of different places I'd like to go. And so would I rather go by myself with Ben family or friends. I don't love traveling by myself. So I don't want to do that. And I'm very lucky that growing up starting from when I was about 11, or 12, my parents took me and my siblings to Europe almost once a year, and we went on these big trips, and I loved loved going on trips with them. We haven't done a big family trip in a while, partially because you know, we're all growing up and have our own lives. I do recognize some of the ways that my family travels and my parents travel that I now like to do differently. And so Ben and I travel very well together and have a similar pace. It's a little, a little more relaxed than how my parents travel. But I do love traveling with family and also so my siblings, and I take a sibling trip every year. And we started in 2019. And we'll take three or four days to just spend unfiltered, unregulated time together, we hash out things we bond we, we dig deep, it's a lot of fun. And we've gone to Charleston, Portland, the Catskills and Rhode Island. And so we are currently in the stages of planning our next trip. But that's a really cool, non negotiable trip that we take every year. And I find it really, really special. So I love traveling with them. I love traveling with Ben, we travel a lot, whether it's domestically internationally, we go to France every year, at least once and we travel very well together, we've always done that, and I love traveling with him. And I must admit that I don't feel I've done a great job in traveling with friends throughout my adult life. And partially it's because I've been pursuing racing and a bid on a budget. But I wish I had been better about that. And I've taken some really great trips with some my friends like some of my besties from high school, and I went to Sedona the other year. And it was just so nice to be able to get out in a very different environment than how we typically know each other. We've also we traveled to Europe together in college, and my college friends and I have taken trips with the three of us. So we're doing that. But I'd like to do more with friends. And I will say here in Charlotte with our friend group here. We do take more regular trips a few times a year. So it's I think he could be better on taking more exotic trips with friends. But I'm also now that I've mentioned all that maybe it's been okay, but I could I could improve that area of my travel life. The second question I got is, if you could go back in time, what's one piece of advice you'd offer a younger Julia? Alright, so it was funny because when I got this question on Instagram, I immediately thought like, Oh, my goodness, this is totally going to depend on my mood today when I'm recording and what what had just happened. But there's actually one thing that I regularly think back on that I wish I had learned earlier, which is not to take other people's advice so seriously. And I mean that in the sense that especially being a racer from such a young age from a family that was not in the racing family, so people tried to give us help and advice. And even if they were well intentioned, I just realized that not everyone knows what they're talking about. And everyone gives advice from a place of their own personal bias and experiences. And I feel like I spent a lot of time and energy trying to do things the quote unquote, right way. And so then I would lean on people's advice, advice to try to steer myself in the right direction. And in in hindsight, I feel like it just detracted from my ability to live authentically and to develop my own sense of self. And it's interesting because Beau's ma St. John and I talked about this in the podcast episode that I had her on, where you know, the more that you lean on other people, the less you're developing your own intuition. The more you make your own decisions, the more you follow your own gut, the stronger your sense of intuition is. And I thought when she said that, that that kind of encapsulated so perfectly what I wish I had learned to do earlier because I feel like I leaned on either parents or mentors or managers or agents for confirmation that what I was doing was the right thing. And I think I could have had more faith in myself and more confidence in myself.... --- ### [ Being a New Yorker on 9/11](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/being-a-new-yorker-on-9-11/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. A few weeks ago, we recognized the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 9/11. And these attacks took place on the World Trade Center in New York City, in Pennsylvania, and in Arlington, Virginia on the Pentagon. And for those of you who don't know, I'm from New York City, and I was in third grade when these attacks took place. And I wanted to take this week's episode to talk a little bit about it, because everyone remembers where they were on the morning of 9/11 If you were in the United States in the morning, and it's such a unifying event, and it's something that most of us in this country feel emotional about. And especially since I feel like our country is kind of divided right now, I wanted to take the time to share something that has been so unifying. And on top of that, you know, 9/11 was really the first big historical event that I remember living through, like it blew my mind in high school in junior year when I took my US History test. At the end of the year, the regents exam in New York State that on the History test, they talked about 9/11. And they had a question about 9/11. And here I was, you know, 17 years old, thinking, Oh, my goodness, I lived through history, this is really bizarre. So it's a monumental event. I think it's quite a unifying event, as I mentioned. And so that's what today's episode is going to be about, I'm going to try to keep it as positive as I can, although that is challenging given the nature of the event. But the point is to really tell my story and to to discuss some of the after effects that I've noticed. And I wanted to note that if you or someone you know, lost a loved one in this attack that I'm really sorry, and my heart goes out to you and I am sending you love. And my last note is that I didn't outline this episode, as thoroughly, I wanted it to be more of a stream of consciousness episode a little more from the heart. And if it feels a little different than normal episodes, that's why but I still hope that it's valuable for you. And I hope that it helps everyone be a little introspective. On the morning of 9/11, I was in third grade on the Upper West Side, so a few miles north of the World Trade Center. And I remember that a student in my class had gone down to the nurse's office. And when he came back, he announced to the class that some of the adults who were in the lobby of our school, were talking about how two planes had hit the World Trade Center. And my nine year old brain just immediately assumed it was an accident that what a tragedy, it was that this plane had an issue and was flying low and hit the towers. And I hadn't seen any imagery at this point. And I didn't know you know what the effect would be in the surrounding area. And I knew that we had kids in my school who lived down there and all of that. But I remember just thinking was a big mistake. And throughout the day, students started getting picked up slowly, they started trickling out of the classes. My mom worked on uptown. And so she was not near it. But she was in New York, my dad's always worked in New Jersey. And so he was out there, we didn't get picked up until the end of the day. But we were immediately, you know, sent home, school was canceled for the next few days. And because they closed the bridges and tunnels into and out of the city, my dad couldn't get back into the city. So we were separated, but everyone was safe. And my mom wouldn't let my siblings watch any of the news. But she did Let me watch some of it. And I just remember thinking that it just the city that I had grown up in that just seems so indestructible was vulnerable to this attack. And it was really a lot to comprehend. I think my mom did a good job of, you know, monitoring what I could see and what I couldn't see. But it was really tough. And it was really tough having to explain to my brother who's six years younger than me what was happening, why he couldn't go to daycare and all that stuff. And it was really challenging. And I don't remember how long we were out of school, it was at least a few days. And then we started going back. And you couldn't go down to the area, obviously. But I remember one being really relieved that there were no students in our school system who lost parents down there. And knowing that that was really lucky, given how many people had died. And I just remember that so much of our schooling and our class discussions were around figuring out our feelings and what that was like, and starting to discuss, you know, these these evil forces in the world. And I don't remember a lot of the specifics, but it was definitely a moment of growth in that time. And I do remember in the weeks afterwards, months afterwards, a few things were really noticeably different. First, I remember the first time driving from New Jersey into New York City and seeing the skyline without the World Trade Center towers was really devastating. They were significantly taller than a lot of the other surrounding buildings in lower Manhattan. And so it almost felt like the tallness of those towers balanced out other parts of the skyline and had been, you know, there my whole life. So it was really weird to see these big, big towers that we're such a dominant presence, not there anymore. That's it felt really weird. I also remember that on the Fourth of July, that year, when they had fireworks, it was really scary, the people in my building didn't know or they fireworks, is it another attack, you know, once something like that happens to you or to your city or to whatever, you realize that it can happen again. And so that was a really interesting and tough thing to have to deal with. But also, it kind of felt like the city overall was kind of coming together, and collectively trying to rebuild and heal and come to terms with this attack. And there was something really comforting about that, that in a city of you know, roughly 10 million people that are all so different, that we were able to unite in at least on a on an emotional level to to try to, you know, come back after this event. And I'll be honest, it's really tough on social media to hear some of the voicemails that were left of the people on the plane, and those are public. And I think that I have to skip through them, because it's, it's so agonizing to hear the pain in their voices and coming to terms with this. So it's it's kind of a tough day, even though you know, I didn't personally know anyone who was killed in the attacks, it's still it's quite hard, because just on a basic human level, it's awful, and so, so terribly devastating that this happened. So as a New Yorker, I feel like this comes, this becomes part of your identity. Some people care about it more than others. Some people don't, a lot of people have opinions. But it is it was a really big, you know, growing up awakening moment for me and one that we talked about in school, I talked about people, it was always interesting being at the racetrack and explaining my experiences to people who had been in other parts of the country. But part of that was so eye opening that it really was a very impactful time for so many people and really brought us together as a country, which I think is a beautiful little silver lining that came from it. Now, if we fast forward about 10 years, I remember when I was at Stanford, actually, that one of the classes I had to take for my major, which my major was science, technology and society. But one of the classes was this capstone class that was around texts, and the medium on which a message is conveyed impacts the reader or the listener, the viewers interpretation. Sidenote, this was a class that I actually took right before I went on survivor. So I did this class in five weeks instead of 10. So it was a very dense, deep dive into this project. And one of our projects was to transcribe something that was audio form and put it into writing. And my year, they decided that the texts that we had to transform were, it was a news broadcast from the morning of 9/11. Now, I kind of had mixed feelings about it, because I knew it'd be a little tough. But it was really fascinating and sad and a little scary to kind of for the first time, listen to how these anchors were conveying the news and trying to be responsible in what they were delivering to viewers but also trying to learn themselves and to be as objective and hide their disbelief and to watch all that and to transcribe it into writing just a little over 10 years after the fact was quite a mindfuck, if I'm honest, like it was really bizarre to have felt like I gained more knowledge on how the world works and to feel like I understand more about motives and war and all of this stuff, to then go back and watch that and I just couldn't help but feel so bad for everyone who had to report on it real time because it was such a scary, monumental event. So that was an interesting class. So I'm I don't remember exactly the purpose of that class other than to show the difference in how you view something. And if it's transcribed into a different medium. So it was an interesting kind of text base class. But it was really the first time in my adult life that I had really thought about 9/11 from a more mature perspective, and it was tough. The last thing I want to talk about relating to 9/11. And I know this was a quick, personal experience, sharing it with you. The last thing I want to talk about is the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, it took me until 2022, to get there, but it's down at ground zero down by One World Trade Center. And it is such an incredibly well done memorial to the victims, to their families, to the city to the country, I highly encourage you, if you're in New York City, making the time to get down there to go visit it. It is very emotional, I cried a lot while I went there. Now, I do cry at a lot of things.... --- ### [Cooking and Creativity](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/cooking-creativity-pressure/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. How was everyone's weekend? mine was kind of dense Ben and I have been putting in active effort to try to be more social, try to get out and do more things. We have the incredible ability to be massive homebodies. So we've been trying to counter that. And so on Friday, we tried a new restaurant called Menya, which is a ramen place in the Elizabeth neighborhood of Charlotte really liked it. I liked the vibe, it was a lot of bar seating and then one row of tables, and just felt really cool to see them prepare everything I thought the gyoza are some of the best in my life. I love the edamame, and the ramen was really good. So I recommend Menya in Charlotte. And then we actually came home and completely rearranged our living room entryway and little foyer between our kitchen and our staircase. And that was to facilitate bringing in all the herbs that Ben has been growing outside so that we can keep them inside. Now it's getting colder. And it's a little bit of a work in progress. The living rooms not quite there, but it is fun to have a little change. And then on Saturday, we had a cooking day with a few friends and their little babies and Ben made some fresh pasta, which was really delightful. We're watching Breaking Bad. So we definitely put in a few episodes worth this weekend. And then on Sunday, we helped our friends move which was a full day endeavor. And it was fine. There are a lot of us that came together which was helpful. And we had some fun pizza with something called Benny's pizza in Charlotte, which I've never heard of. I think it's Benny's. And they were the biggest boxes of pizza, the biggest pizzas I've ever seen, so much so that these friends moved into an older house and the boxes did not fit through one of the doorways. So we had to leave them in a in a room, you know, earlier in the house. So anyway, that was a lot of fun. And then the start of the week was good. I have finalized something new I'm working on which I will share at a later date. And I am yeah, I'm really excited. And I'm realy looking forward to jumping in to today's episode because it's all about cooking. So for those of you who have been following me on Instagram for a while, you'll know that Ben's cooking both the process and the final dishes is a big part of my Instagram story presence. Ben is great cook. I'll get into this a little bit more later. But you may have noticed over the past few months that he has not been featured as prominently on my stories. Don't worry, nothing has happened with us, we are very good. But we've been traveling more, he's been gone a lot more than he was over the last few years. And even when he is home, he's also been really busy at work. So he's had later nights. So it's only fair for me to take on more of the cooking in this process. You know, I I feel a deep amount of pressure when I need to cook for Ben. And again, if you haven't seen his cooking, go to my Instagram, look at my food highlight majority of the cooking is him and majority of the food featured there is his cooking. So anyway, I feel pressure. I'll get into this more later, too. But a little while ago, both of us got a promotion for HelloFresh. And since I'm having to cook more than I would typically care to, we decided to try it. And I think a little too both of our surprises, we've actually really enjoyed it. And it's for a number of reasons. One, in terms of how much we spend on groceries, it's kind of comparable to what we spend on groceries, if we were to get all of our groceries at the store, they gave you all the ingredients that are pre measured, you get to choose from flavors and dishes that I wouldn't normally think to cook. And also by the way, this is not sponsored by HelloFresh I wish it was HelloFresh if you would like to sponsor please, you know, reach out slide into my DMs I love to work with you. But anyway, just this meal prep service in general, it's easier. And I feel like the recipes are fairly straightforward. And I feel a lot more confident cooking meals for Ben this great, you know, amateur chef, with this service as a guide. And this whole experience and me recognizing a very big difference in how I'm approaching meals and cooking with some help versus if I'm doing it by myself, got me thinking about cooking. It got me thinking about creativity. It got me thinking about the pressure that I feel. And so I wanted to discuss it with you because I feel like this might be relevant. So again, for some quick background context beyond what I've already talked about. Ben is an amazing amateur chef. He got into cooking really during the pandemic when I was living in Europe for three months without him and so he had time and he could experiment and he has historically been cooking most nights and I sous chef and I wash the dishes. It's a very rigorous and involved task but one of us has to do it. And I think it's really incredible the technique that he's developed and the flavor profile that he's developed and again go check on my Instagram because they're beautiful dishes he He made a deconstructed French onion soup and took the flavor elements and kind of redid them in different ways, which was so cool. He made a really incredible egg yolk ravioli with seared scallops and pan fried mushrooms. That was one dish, he rocks a duck breast too he rocks, making his own pizza dough and pizza. He's made sushi. I mean, he's just, it is so cool. I'm very lucky. I'm really grateful. I'm a little sad that he's not cooking as much right now. But anyway, everything is so delicious. I'm spoiled. And I've also realized that I've built up a bit of an inferiority complex. And I realized that I am kind of having and creating these power dynamics in the kitchen, in my own head. Whether or not it's sane or not, it is there it is what I'm doing, I am self sabotaging that way. And if I'm honest, every time he would ask me to cook dinner, historically, I feel a little bit of dread. On the one hand, he has become such a good cook. And I just know what I cook is not going to be as exciting or as well cooked. As as his is. So that's one thing. And I'm competitive person, I want to be really good at what I do, I want to master what I do. And I'm a recovering people pleaser. So I want to impress him, and I want to make sure that he likes what I'm cooking. So anyway, that's all at play as well. Another part is that I don't get as much joy out of cooking as I think he does. And I can find it to be quite overwhelming, especially when there's a lot of pans and pots involved. Or if the timings getting a little off or something's not going the way it should I just I get overwhelmed with that kind of quickly. I'm also aware that I have some slight more compulsions about making sure foods cooked fully, especially meats. And so I will tend to err on the side of over cooking instead of under cooking, where I know that there's a happy medium, I'm just a little nervous about making sure I don't under do it. And so yeah, and I want to make him proud and all this stuff. So I recognize that I'm putting a lot of these pressures on myself. And I know that he appreciates, when I cook, I know that I actually cook pretty well, he has not had anything that he really doesn't like that I cook like, I know, he will eat what I put in front of him. But I put these pressures on myself. And so it just makes the whole experience a little more stressful than it probably has to be in an effort to take some of this pressure off of myself and try to have some more enjoyment with cooking because we will be cooking for each other for the rest of our lives. I wanted to analyze how he approaches cooking and how I approach cooking, especially in the context of knowing each other's personalities and how we do things. And he I think comes up with flavor combinations and is able to conceptualize in his brain these flavor combinations and spices and techniques and things to try in a way that is more freeform and creative and their ideas that I don't feel like I come up with and I see this in other areas of our life as well like he's the idea guy. And so that's one thing I know that I'm actually quite good at following a recipe and I'm good at having the instructions and being able to do all the meals on pause and preparation and my technique is getting better but I need that direction I need the the instruction and guidance and how to get to where I'm going and another thing just preference wise is like I'm fine with a whole smorgasbord of flavors and textures and like a grain bowl with meat and vegetable and dairy and dressing and crunch and softness like all that is really cool and good to me and he definitely doesn't like all those texture combinations. Although he did clarify for me that if if it's done really well if the textures are really complementary in like a really synergistic way he doesn't mind but when I cook for him specifically he has found that maybe I don't have that that touch to make all the textures come together in a way that is pleasing to Him that's when he doesn't like it so much. He he said that when when it's like a piece of crunchy vegetable and some rice and some protein and there's not that cohesive nature to the texture he said quote, it's weird in my mouth quote. So that's that. Typically I've found that I don't need a dish to have a cohesive flavor profile throughout. Although now I am recognizing that some things just really don't go together very well. Like I love a soy garlic green bean situation and I could eat it all day. I could eat it warm, icky cold, but I made it with a tomato based pasta dish and got to be honest, if I'm honest as it were It really was not fantastic didn't complement each other as well as I had thought it might. But he really likes more complimentary flavor dish.... --- ### [ Picking Yourself Up After Disappointment](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/dealing-with-disappointment/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. So last episode, we talked about rejection, right rejection, maintaining enthusiasm, you know how to bounce back how to kind of have that clean slate moving forward when things don't go your way. And I firmly believe everything that I told you. At the same time, I recognize that life is nuanced, and life is a constant gray zone. And so, you know, when, when thinking about moving forward and everything, the reality is that there are also times when the rejection is so hard, and, you know, we just have extreme amounts of disappointment. And I talked briefly about the story of spending over two years trying to get to the right person at a company to pitch for sponsorship, and that one was was so rough for me, but I didn't really get into the detail of how I got to the point of being able to move forward from that disappointment. And that's how we got to today's episode of dealing with disappointment, because it would be naive to think that we can just be optimistic and positive although I am I a very optimistic and positive person. There are some real personal work that goes into bouncing back from disappointment. When I look back on this year, on 2023, and I think about what my most disappointing moment was, there are a couple of things that come to mind but the hands down biggest moment of disappointment happened right before the Daytona 500. So the Daytona 500 was in February and this year I haven't gone to a lot of NASCAR races, but you know that I did not miss the Daytona 500. For those of you who don't know, the Daytona 500 is basically NASCAR's Super Bowl. It's a little odd that it's at the beginning of the season, if I'm honest, but that's okay. And everyone comes down to Daytona Beach, Florida. It's this massive racetrack, a super speedway, the whole infield is bustling. You know, there's NASCAR fans everywhere. And it's a big spectacle, celebrities come out. It's really, really exciting. And when I go to a race, and especially down at Daytona, you know, I have my pit pass. I spent the weekend mainly with my team from last year alpha prime racing. And we, you know, have the two haulers set up, they have chairs set up, they have all their guests. And you know, they're there right across from the garages where the cars are worked on. And, you know, we have the drivers lounge, and I'm friends with the drivers and the team. And so it's really so nice after the offseason to be able to go hang out to cheer them on. When it came to on track sessions, particularly during the race, I sat on the pit box and I have a team headset. So I can go between the different cars channels, so I can listen to the drivers and the crew chiefs and the spotters. And I can just follow along with what the team was doing on track. And we have TV screens on the pit boxes. So it's crazy to be at the race, And because the track is so big, it's actually very hard to see on track activity from the pits. And so I watched most of the race from the TV screens on the pit box. And it was just really cool. There was there's always really good energy and NASCAR is celebrating their 75th year this year. And so you know, they had this big kind of industry party where Diplo performed which was super cool. As I mentioned, not a huge concert goer. I mentioned this before, but you know, it was really exciting. And kind of funny, you know, you had some of the younger people who were super excited to be hearing Diplo, and then you had some of the older people who may or may not have known who he was. But it was it took place in I believe a college gymnasium and I got to mingle with people who I've known for years as I've been on my NASCAR journey. Also during that Daytona 500 weekend, I had an interview with a local Charlotte and southeast station and got to share some of my story. And it's just really exciting because it's the start of a new season. There's so much potential that everyone feels and it's always fun to see the racing friends that I don't really see on a regular basis like people who live in different cities or some of the reporters or even the fact that most of the racing related people live up by Lake Norman and Mooresville and Huntersville. And I live down in Charlotte so it's at least a good half hour away. And if you are familiar with the Charlotte area, you know that 77 traffic is absolutely miserable and driving on it takes years off my life. The Fastpass / quick pass definitely makes it better, but I do limit my time up and down 77 If I can. Anyway, being at Daytona was really, really fun. But at the same time, it was also very, very bittersweet. So as I mentioned end of January We had been spending almost two years on and off pitching a group for sponsorship. And at the end of 2022, they had committed to a handful of races, we were building out this whole incredible activation program. We were really excited. We had done all the redlining for the contracts, it had been back and forth. And in the 11th hour, this this group fell through. And it was a very quick, short email that was sent. Basically like, hey, actually, no, we're not going to do this right now. And we had spent so much time on it, they had spent so much time on it, it was it was just so so gut wrenching. I remember, I was standing in a little foyer between the kitchen and the staircase at home, and the lights were off. And I was reading this and I just, I felt my whole body go numb and tingly. I just I could not believe that this wasn't happening. You know, it was it was like 99% there. And I had planned all my races with the team and I, you know, had visions for Oh, my goodness, you know, the racing career is really going to take off the way I wanted to, I'm going to get a more robust part time season. And then it was just ripped out from under me. It it was so weird, because it wasn't like that time back in the pandemic, when the company just didn't want to move forward after our initial conversations. And I just kind of broke down crying, that one hadn't gotten anywhere near as close, right? Like, we were so close to the finish line with sponsorship with this. And it really took like several hours for me to process and then get really, really angry and sad and disappointed and dejected. And I kind of had this crisis of okay, well, what does this mean for the rest of my my year? What does it mean for the rest of my my racing career? What is this going to do for me, like it was just this this cluster of different emotions. So the fact that this happened right before going to Daytona, you know, it made it really tough when I was down there, because on the one hand, I was happy, but at the other on the other hand, I was so bitter, and I was jealous of all the drivers. I mean, it was kind of agonizing to be there. And I wasn't planning to race that race. But it you know, it was pretty rough, cuz I just felt jealous of everyone who is getting to strap into their cars. And I knew that I no longer had a tangible plan about how to do that. And those those conflicting feelings, and the never ending feeling of disappointment and jealousy that I was feeling at the track was kind of the kick in the butt that I needed to be more intentional about actively addressing my disappointment and figuring out how to work through it. So that is the long long road that it took to get to the point of this this episode, which is to dive into disappointment and to give my perspective on what we can do to help work through it. And while I never particularly excelled at the natural sciences, I do find how the body works very exciting. And I looked into how the chemistry of disappointment works in our brain and what it what it leads to. So allow me to get a little bit nerdy with you. But the feeling of disappointment comes because two neurotransmitters, which are chemicals that relay signals between neurons in the brain, they fire at the same time. Now it is really rare for neurotransmitters to fire simultaneously. And apparently scientists only really know of three or four occasions where this happens. And in disappointment specifically, there was a study published in 2014, from UC San Diego School of Medicine. And they found that the two neurotransmitters that are transmitted at the same time are the GABA and the glutamate neurotransmitters, and they're released in the, Give me a second, the lateral habenula, I think that's how you pronounce it, part of the brain. And so the GABA neurotransmitter is the enhancing one, it's the positive makes you feel better. The glutamate is the dampening one. And so with that, you know more GABA means you're happier and the more glutamate means they're more disappointed. And they that balance is how it's determined if you're feeling a little bummed to actually being being depressed. And depression is also found in the lateral habenula. And depression comes from not producing as much GABA as you do the glutamate. And so research out of New York also showed that when working on rodents, if you get more serotonin in the brain that kind of compensates for the GABA and so that's what antidepressants target, but as a little sidebar, the problem with that is that antidepressants don't only target this balance of GABA and glutamate. It affects other parts of how the brain works and like you know, sleep and rest and all of this. So it's part of what makes it so complicated. and why antidepressants have to be so specifically formulated per person because it is very different balances in the brain. So that's a high level overview of the science behind disappointment. And this is not meant to be medical advice. This is also studies that I've read that I can put in the description by it is interesting, I think that it's, you know, disappointment, which is a fairly regular emotion comes from a fairly irregular happening in the brain. And science is all well and good.... --- ### [Doing Hard Things](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/doing-hard-things/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest, I love the name of Glennon Doyle's podcast, "we can do hard things." I love the sentiment, you know, it's this, this boost of confidence and a gentle reminder that everyone thinks that certain things are hard. And it's normal to feel that things are hard. And it's kind of become a mantra and a reminder for me, like, it's, it's okay to feel that something we want to do or have to do is not easy. And it's okay to be aware that it might not work out. And that challenging things are to be expected in life. But it's this, this, again, this little boost of confidence that we can do it. And it's an important reminder, because it is human nature 100% to tend to gravitate towards, and to seek out things that are comfortable, and things that are normal. That's how our brains work, and hard work, and therefore the discomfort and the deviation from ease that comes along with hard work are not quote unquote, normal. And they're not, quote unquote, comfortable for our human brains. And so subconsciously, hard things can feel like something that we should avoid. And if I'm honest, I feel like I either like to be exceptionally comfortable and cozy, or doing nearly impossible things, as exemplified with trying to be a professional racecar driver, or starting a podcast or whatever it might be, while also simultaneously like being a homebody and staying cozy inside. So anyway, I do like doing really hard things. And when I was thinking about it for this episode, I think there are a number of things that make the challenge, really exciting. So one, you know, it's really satisfying. And I feel very proud of myself when I work exceptionally hard and master something, that sense of pride. So whether it was, you know, wanting to go to Stanford and not getting in early decision having to figure out how to be better so that I could get in with regular decision, whether it's something like that, or if it's moving up in a racing series to try to be as good as I can, as fast as I can and become a winner and become a champion, you know, just that whole process, that journey of working hard, pushing myself is really satisfying. And I think it actually extends also to even like silly things like going running, you know, I get a runner's high. But I will also admit that running, it feels so miserable a lot of the time. But then at the end, when I get my breathing master, and I'm able to get a good stride, and maybe my time is better, like that then feels really satisfying. So it's kind of across the spectrum of feeling satisfied. I also really feel like the more challenging things I do, the more I learned about myself. And you know, I learn about how and if I'm able to rise to the occasion and develop the necessary skills needed for whatever it is I'm doing, whether that's keynote speaking or, you know, something that didn't work really well was consulting for web3 and NFT stuff, something like that, that challenge may or may not have been as successful as I would have hoped. And if I if I don't develop the skills, or I don't rise to the occasion, or I don't succeed, I learned that maybe something about that is more of a weakness or something that needs to be worked on even further. So there's a lot of personal growth that comes from doing challenging things and seeing, you know, you don't know your limits until you pass them, I really, really believe that and you don't know if you're going to pass them unless you try them. And you know, on top of all that, I know that I'm a competitive person. And I like winning. And part of that is tackling new things as we master certain things, being able to go after new things that are challenging, and to really see where we can take it. I love the potential. I love the opportunity. I love the unknown of what could happen, what could develop, where can we take something, and I think that's part of what makes tackling hard things really exciting for me. And there are other benefits, right? You know, doing hard things can boost your confidence. It really helps with mental toughness. So in general, and in the reading I had done in preparation for this podcast episode. You know, there are a lot of benefits to doing hard things on an interpersonal level on a, you know, development level. But that doesn't mean that they're any less hard to do. And interestingly, when I was doing research for this episode, I came across an empirical study from 2006. And I've linked it in my episode description, but it found from its participants that if we as people are upset if their participants were upset, they were less likely to want to do hard things. But if their participants were upbeat and positive, they were more likely to do hard things. And anecdotally, in my experience, I feel like this checks out. And you know, if I'm feeling good, I'm going to want to go challenge myself and if I'm not feeling good, I'm going to want you know comfort and I I also I find studies like this interesting to read and beneficial for my own personal sense of well being because they kind of validate what otherwise can feel like a subjective and emotional response. Right? Like, ah, I'm not feeling good. I don't want to do this. Am I just a wuss right? Am I just weak? Am I just not good enough? But no, I mean, this is something that is actually tracked across multiple groups of people. So and it's cool to know that I'm not alone in feeling the certain ways that can sometimes feel isolating, or make me feel less than. So since a non-insignificant part of doing hard things comes down to our mood and our mindset, I'lll argue that one of the key factors of doing hard things is competence. And confidence is about having a belief and a positive regard of yourself and your ability to succeed and to do things and to kind of have that positive view on yourself which goes back and reinforces that he hasn't said study. And this discussion around confidence reminds me of an experience that I had in competitive national go karting when I was 14. So we were at Daytona, daytona international speedway, we were on the infield on the go kart track for speed weeks. And again, I was 14 years old or so. And I worked with my parents and my driver coach and mechanic Glenn Butler, who's a world champion and go-karter himself. And you know, we've been working together for a little while at this point. And I think I qualified in the top 10 somewhere, I was somewhere on the front part of the grid. And we were walking through the pits and then through the grid to go line up for the race. And I knew that I was a good racer, but I was still nervous. And I guess that that really showed as I was walking through the coat or through the pits with my coach. And you know, the way we walk through the pits and go karting is the go karts, which are a couple 100 pounds, they are on top of a rolling cart basically. So Glen was pushing the go cart from the back and I was standing next to him and walking walking beside the go kart. And I guess that he saw that I was looking nervous or looking less than confident. And he looks over at me and he just says Julia, you look like you're scared little kid right now you know you're walking up to a race, you're starting in the top 10 You need to stand up straight, you need to stand up tall, keep your eyes up, look to the front of the grid, which is where you are going you out qualified all these boys and you need to scare them, you they need to know that you are not nervous. And they need to know that you are out here to win. And they need to know that you are going to absolutely be out for blood. And basically, I needed to exude that confidence. And he was very serious. And he was basically, not yelling at me, but he was being a firm coach and saying what he saw and what I needed to do, not only to try to intimidate the competition, but to also I realize gain confidence in myself. And this moment with Glenn was transformative for me and my confidence. And it was kind of like a mix of fake till you make it even if you don't feel super confident, or if you feel nervous, don't let people see that. And you know, train yourself to feel better than that. You know, it was an important lesson and not letting the competition competition see my emotions, right. And to kind of be a competitor from a 360 degree view. It was all kinds of stuff that was crucial to my development as a competitor. So Huge shouts to Glenn for helping me develop a better relationship with my own confidence and how I carry myself. So thank you. And confidence is one element needed to do hard things for sure. And in my own personal experience, I found there a few other things that are really important, that have helped me as I've tackled a number of hard things. And the first thing is to really have that positive mindset. And I've mentioned multiple times that I know that I am inherently an optimistic and positive person, I get really into my fields and my emotions, what's good and bad. But overall, I definitely have a can do mindset. And I think that that in general, even if we just go back to this 2006 study, you know, the upbeat, the positive, it helps us want to do more challenging things and to have that confidence that we can do it. I also think it's really important to have a good understanding of what my needs and my non negotiables you know, are that I need to accomplish. I think being realistic about that. And you know, being clear whether that's you know, a tangible thing a pragmatic thing, a lifestyle thing like what those non-negotiables are, because then I will be more inclined to go after it even if it's unpleasant or even if it's challenging because it has to get done. It's kind of like a survival mode but for like looking at your life and figuring out what exactly those things might be.... --- ### [GUEST: Alanis King - Automotive and Motorsport Writer, Reporter, and Presenter](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-alanis-king-automotive-and-motorsport-writer/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:05 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Alanis King who is a writer, editor podcaster and video presenter who focuses on cars and motorsports. She started writing for car magazines while in high school and never really stopped. She's worked for Jalopnik, Business Insider, Road and Track, top gear, Donut Media and many more. And she's currently a full time video presenter for Doug Demuro's online car auction website, cars and bids. She also wrote a book about Formula One called racing with rich energy. And she is just so great. Such high energy. So smart, so articulate, and I'm thrilled to have her on the show with me. Alanis, thank you for joining me on if I'm honest. Alanis King 0:42 Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here. Julia Landauer 0:45 So I saw you in my then Twitter feed a few years ago. And I don't know I just came across you. And I thought oh, my goodness, she is articulate. She is sassy. She is real. She is honest. And you know a lot about cars. So I was immediately interested. And then I think we kind of started interacting a little more over the last year or so. And 2022 When I was doing more in XFINITY and I was listening to your Twitter spaces, I've joined a few Twitter spaces. And yeah, so I'm just really thrilled to have this conversation with you, because I think you are a wonderful voice in motorsports and a different voice in motorsports. I think it's fair to say so thank you. Alanis King 1:26 Oh, my God, that's so nice. No, I was I was talking to Alex Bowman the other day. And he was like, You're feisty on Twitter. And I was like Alex, I tried to be so nice. Julia Landauer 1:36 This is the pared down. Like, Alanis King 1:39 this is me being nice. And I just love that, like people are like, oh, yeah, you're like feisty and sassy. And I'm like I am but I try not to like direct it toward people. You know, I try to be really nice to people. But I think because it's just a different voice than people are used to, like people are used to just like, generic, like updates about things like Oh, I'm doing this, or oh, this driver is doing this. And I think because I bring that like, you know, like more smart mouth side to it. People are like, Oh, you're kind of scary. Julia Landauer 2:11 That's so interesting because at least you're consistent, though, like you're consistent across the board in your tone. I think also, like I speak for myself here certainly, like I get nervous about, you know, people misunderstanding my tone, or not picking up on sass or sarcasm. And so then I'm always inclined to not send the X post at this juncture. So I'm gonna want to get into this a little bit more in a bit. But for people who may not be familiar with you, you are a motorsports journalist. And I was watching a clip that you did with Jay Leno. So Alanis King 2:45 Oh, my goodness. Julia Landauer 2:46 And I'm saying this only for the fact that you had mentioned that you got tickets to a NASCAR race when you were about 12. And that kind of hooked you on to the sport. So my question is, like, Did you know In that moment, like, I want to be involved in this forever? Or was it something that you were interested in? And then kind of dove into, was motorsports journalism always on your radar? Talk to me? Alanis King 3:07 Oh, my goodness, I love this question. Because I have such a bizarre answer. So when I was a kid, I had a very good friend who always knew what she wanted to do with her life at the time, she wanted to be a global correspondent for CNN. And we were like, 11, right. And she would always ask me, like, what do you want to do with your life? And I would say, I don't know, I really don't know there is nothing that I feel so passionate about that I want to do it every single day. And she would just respond. Like, I don't know how I don't know how that's the case. I don't know how you haven't found something that you're so passionate about that you want to do. And we're like, 12, right, gosh, and I always felt because you know, when you're a kid, and you get asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? Most of the kids have an answer. They're like, I want to be the president, I want to be a teacher, I want to be a lawyer, I want to be a doctor. And I never had that. I was like, I don't know, I really don't know what I want to be when I grow up, because I have not come across that yet. And I do think a lot of those answers come from the fact that like, you're just expected to pick something, even if it's not something that you're just like, I am so passionate about being a doctor like you're 12 you know, you're 12. And so I think people are just so pressured into picking something that they pick something. I didn't, I didn't want to do that. And I hadn't found something that I wanted to do. And so when I was 13 It was 2009. So we were about a year into the great recession. And my mom got free tickets to a NASCAR race from her job. And she said we're going to NASCAR at Texas Motor Speedway in April. And I was like that sounds awful. Like I That sounds like the worst way to spend a weekend ever. I don't want to do that. And she said it's the recession. And if you want to go on a vacation, we're going to NASCAR and I was like, That still sounds awful and we went, right. So we drove up to Texas Motor Speedway. And I remember we drive up and this facility was like, it looked like something God would live in like, it was so big, because you go to other sporting facilities, and you know, it's housing a football stadium or a basketball arena or whatever. This is a one and a half mile giant piece of pavement, basically. And you look at the walls around this thing. And it's like a, it's like a castle. It's like, it's crazy. And so I see this and I'm like, oh, okay, this is interesting. We walk in there like some dale earnhardt, jr. Shirts for sale. And my mom's like, that's Dale, Jr. and I was like, who's dale jr. And she was like, That's Dale Sr.'s son. And I was like, who's Dale Sr? I didn't know what was going on. I was like, what is the I don't who is that and we go in. We went to the XFINITY race on Saturday, then it was the Nationwide Series. So we go to the nationwide race on Saturday. And these cars go by and they like take the green flag and it's a field, I think it was 40 Back then maybe 43. I'm not sure. They take the green flag. And it just like shakes the earth like the grandstands are rattling and you look off into the distance and you feel like you can see the end of the world because you're so high up watching this. And like all the smells and the sights, everything was just like extremely visceral, like, the tire smells, and the gas smells like it'll almost make you nauseous. And I was just like, Okay, this is what I want to do with my life. I don't know what's going on. I have no idea what's happening in front of me. But I've found what I want to do with my life. And so we watched that nationwide race. Kyle Busch wins the race. And we were there. We got free tickets from my mom's job. So one of her co workers was there was there. He was a huge dale earnhardt jr. fan. And he said, You can't be a fan of Kyle Busch. That guy is a punk. And I was like, he won the race. So I became a Kyle Busch fan. And it was really interesting. I rewatched, the April, Samsung 500, that first cup race I went to, I rewatched it the other day, and I didn't understand what was going on then. But in that race, Kyle had a bunch of issues on pit road, he had some issues with his wheel. And he ended up spending the whole race trying to race for his lap back. And I had no idea what was going on then. But it was so fascinating to rewatch it for the first time and see like the amount of like strategy and head down, just like driving he had to try to do to try to get labs back. It was really impressive. And that was it. I saw this and I said that's what I'm going to do. And I have not missed a NASCAR race since I watched every single race from that day forward. I had no idea who anybody was or what was going on. And I just learned everything as I went. I watched every single weekend. Julia Landauer 8:06 That is amazing. I feel like you should be a paid spokesperson for NASCAR because that was like the best advertisement for it I've ever heard. No. Especially because for those who don't know NASCAR has released all of their races, I think on Yes. Now classics channel. Yeah, exactly. So people have gone back and watch them. That is truly incredible. Do you remember where you were sitting in the grandstands section? Alanis King 8:28 109. Julia Landauer 8:30 For those of us who have not been to Texas Motor Speedway, is that like turn one? Is it straight away Alanis King 8:34 It's right on the start finish line? Like you're basically looking down. Yeah, it was section 109. And it might be in front of the start finish line and you look a little bit backward at the start finish line, but it's right in the middle. Yeah, it was section 109. And I remember watching those races we had the same tickets both days and when I was little is really interesting. When I was a young teen, I remember sitting in the grandstands watching this like once I was a fan I remember watching these races and going there is such a divide between me and the inside of the track and like the wall in the middle is the track and like I can't get down there. But I want so badly to be down there. And now that's like that's what I do. Like I'm down there, you're there and I get to do that I get to like I get to be on the other side of it whenever I want and it's just I really do try to center myself and go. What you do is very, very cool.... --- ### [ GUEST: Ashley Louise - Ladies Get Paid](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-ashley-louise-ladies-get-paid/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I'm really excited for today's guest. Because we are going to talk about finances, we're going to talk about reframing how we have discussions about finances, how we think about ourselves and our performance. And you're going to walk away with some really concrete things that you can apply to your own life. And I'm thrilled to welcome Ashley from ladies get paid. And Ashley is the co founder and CEO of ladies get paid, which has a thriving community of over 60,000 women. Ashley is an accomplished entrepreneur, community builder, marketer and brand builder who has dedicated her career to empowering women to level up personally, professionally, and financially, aka my kind of woman. So Ashley, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest, Ashley Louise 0:49 thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here. Julia Landauer 0:51 So I was thinking back so I've been following ladies get paid on various social media channels for a little while. But I believe you and I got connected recently in last couple years in the web3 space, right, like both interested in NFT's. What a journey that's been right. Ashley Louise 1:06 Yes. Yeah, we were both I think I was like, Oh, there's another woman weird. Like, we have to be friends. Like, that's literally what like what happened. I don't know exactly what the I mean, it had to be Twitter, but I was like, let's go. Julia Landauer 1:18 And it is such a male dominated space. And obviously, it's kind of volatile. But overall, I feel like my experience in the space was pretty positive. And but it's it's new, right? We're all learning basically new industry. How's it been for you? Ashley Louise 1:32 This is like a total? Well, it explains a lot about me and kind of my philosophy also for like running this company is that I always have these really strong desires to like, I'm gonna say creep on men, but like, what are the men doing to like for their businesses or to make money and that's kind of what drew me to figuring out crypto. It started actually with GameStop. And then I went from GameStop to crypto to NFT's. I went actually like really deep hardcore. I was like flipping NF T's for probably eight months. I came out six figures revenue positive. So like, I'm good, Julia Landauer 2:12 Amazing! Ashley Louise 2:13 So like, that was fun. I actually was in a like, paid flippers group on Discord where I was pretending to be a dude for three months. And it was like no way. I'd like to use my initials. So everyone assumed I was a dude. And it was the one of the more fascinating things I've ever done in my life. Julia Landauer 2:30 Oh, I'm sure you know, so much of what I talk about in keynotes and stuff is like, you never know what it's like to walk through the world in someone else's shoes. And like, especially like I think as someone who's like in a underserved demographic, and like, oh my gosh, that must have been so interesting. What was it was Was there any like one big thing that you notice as a big difference in how people interacted with you? And I think you spent a lot more time online and in chat rooms than I do. So I'm not well versed. But was there anything major was the space kind of pretty topic focused? Ashley Louise 2:58 There were and this kind of comes with the crypto audience a little bit of like, very traditional views on gender. That were like, you know, women should blank. Yeah, you know, like that kind of stuff, which generalizations nothing new here, and also because they got to know me before I gender revealed if you have like a gender reveal party in discord. No, it was funny, where to I was commenting on how like, ridiculous one of the like NFT's that minted the art was really bad. And I said something like, the boobs are crooked. And one of the people responded like that you haven't even ever seen a boob. And I was like, well, this might be the time. I was like, I'm a lesbian. Julia Landauer 3:45 Not only gender reveal, just totally warping their, their very rigid notions. Ashley Louise 3:49 Yeah, I was like, I probably seen way more than you, you know, and that was like, deep COVID. Right, like not leaving your house for weeks. So I was just like, entertained and making money. So that was fine. I mean, to me, the most fascinating part of that was like how unemotional they are about money compared to women. I mean, it is just like a spreadsheet and numbers. And like, their risk tolerance is totally different. And I think that comes from generally men don't really like suffer consequences when they make mistakes, right and like that's what makes women a little more risk averse. But yeah, they were just like, yeah, just trading million dollars today. I was like, Julia Landauer 4:30 What do you think some of that also, is it does it go down also to kind of the net worth of people like or do you find in your experience with like, views on finance, especially as it breaks down by gender are even higher net worth women more likely to be risk averse when it comes to these kind of bigger Gambles or, or were these guys not really high net worth just kind of throwing around other money or I'm interested in that breakdown? Ashley Louise 4:56 No, I mean, even the ones who are like kind of broke still, they'd be like, Oh I've got like $500 in my bank account, about to trade 300. So like, it wasn't, no even like high net worth women. I mean, look, there's women who have insane risk tolerance and do trade huge amounts. And I just think there's not as many of them. Because I mean, I think it's also ego in a lot of ways, right? Like, it's really hard to beat the market, you know. So there is that kind of like time trade off, where actively trading, no matter how much amount that you're trading is a huge time investment. And for the most part, you're probably not going to beat the market. So it's almost just like, is all that work worth it for me to literally be sitting at my computer constantly? Right? So there's some of that in there. Julia Landauer 5:43 Yeah. Ashley Louise 5:43 Women are also a women hold more than two thirds of student loan debt. Women make less money. Women have for every dollar a man has in savings, women have less, and women are more likely to have to take care of an aging parent. Julia Landauer 5:59 Yeah, right. Ashley Louise 6:00 So like, all of those things. And women, of course, also are more likely to be a single parent of a child, right? So all of those very real things make for very good reasons to not be gambling your money on shit coins. Julia Landauer 6:16 Totally, no. And I get that I like that you brought in the kind of all the other elements that don't make it an equitable playing field. Like that's going to be standard for most people. So something that you said, and I'm deviating from my notes a little bit, but something that you said was that you were kind of creeping on the guys to see how they worked in the space. And that reminded me of I was with a group and listening to some finance advice. And this was a bunch of years ago, but someone made the suggestion that if you're trying to figure out what salaries are you know, reasonable for your role, Ashley Louise 6:46 ask a white man, Julia Landauer 6:47 ask a man Yeah, especially a white man. Yeah, yeah. And so I had never thought of that. And obviously, there are some transparency laws in play now. But I think that's still so relevant. And I think we have, Ashley Louise 6:59 we always say when you're negotiating your salary, you need to ask at least five real people what their salary is, and you have to make sure, at least one of them is a white man, because white men get paid the most out of anybody. You know, we have our Slack group, there's like 60,000 Women in there. And we've had over 3 million messages exchanged over the course of a couple years. But we have a salary negotiation channel where women are actually materially in there saying, I live here, I do this for a living, this is how much money I make. And I think it's so important a that we've created a space where women can just like talk really openly than they are, feel comfortable doing that in that space. But also be even if you're not specifically talking in there, just seeing people do it, it normalizes the behavior of talking about money. It's like you're lurking, and that's having a really big effect on you just seeing people openly talk about money. So the third thing that I always say is like, if we're all gathered here today, because we are underpaid, and then we are telling each other how much we are paid. We are literally just in a cycle of underpaying ourselves, right. Like, it doesn't matter what you and I make, what matters is what the white men make. So it's like, find the white dudes and ask them how much money they make. Whenever men are like, what's the number one thing I can do to like support women in the workplace? And I always say, tell them how much money you make. Because it's like, that's real and material. Right? I ended up at ladies get paid because I had a white man who was drunk at a happy hour Tell me how much money the other man who I replaced when he left how much money that guy made. It was twice as much money as me. Julia Landauer 8:37 Oh my god. Ashley Louise 8:38 2x. Right. literally changed my whole life. Yeah, because that's how I ended up here. Like doing ladies get paid, right? Because I didn't know what to do. And I didn't know where to go to figure out what to do. Julia Landauer 8:49 Right. Ashley Louise 8:49 And someone a couple days later, like sent me this link. They're like, Hey, there's this like event, it's called ladies get paid, was like, Oh, I definitely need that. And like, now here I am. Met Claire, the CEO now that's fine. Like, but it's like, that's the goal. The goal is to like get or make more than the white man salary.... --- ### [Boz Saint John](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-bozoma-saint-john-hall-of-fame-marketing-exe/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:00 Oh my god, that was so amazing. I knew it would be like throughout that episode I was like oh my god I'm so inspired oh my god I'm like about to cry. Oh my god Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer I am so jazzed for this episode because we have Bozoma Saint John on with us. For those of you who don't know, Boz is a Hall of Fame inducted marketing executive author and entrepreneur who has a Harvard Business School case study written about her career titled leading with authenticity and urgency. In February of 2023, she published her memoir The Urgent Life, her career has spanned various industries, including roles as the global CMO of Netflix, the CMO of endeavor, the Chief Brand Officer of Uber, head of marketing of Apple Music and iTunes and head of music and entertainment marketing at PepsiCo. Boz's work has been lauded and awarded with notable recognition, including induction into the American advertising Federation Hall of achievement and billboards, Women in Music Hall of Fame, and she was crowned as the world's most influential cmo by Forbes. In addition to her memoir, she has successful online tutorials called the badass workshop. And they teach others to be their greatest selves. But by far, her greatest achievement is in raising her 14 year old daughter Lael. And this episode was so great because Boz brought her authenticity, her honesty, her vulnerability, we talked about everything from the business, to the personal things that she's worked on. We've talked about the victories and the celebrations as well as the tragedies and the hardships. And she challenged me on some ideas that I have. And I had to work really hard not to cry at some of the times that she was talking. It was just really incredible. I walked away with so much, I'm excited for you to listen, and I hope that you will follow her and pick up more of her wisdom, because she's really been through a lot and done a lot and was very generous in how vulnerable she was in sharing with us. Boz. Thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest. Bozoma Saint John 2:05 Well, thank you, Julia. First of all, I really love the title of this podcast. Julia Landauer 2:10 Thank you. Bozoma Saint John 2:12 I try my best to always be honest, in you know, every conversation, right? It's tough in every situation, every room, you know, just bringing my full self. And so in, you know, I've been on a lot of podcasts. But I saw the title of this one. And I was just like, Yeah, Julia, Julia's always had it like you always had it. So even in this space, you have it. So thank you so much. Oh, my gosh, yeah, it was interesting, like working through that. Because how do you kind of come up in a few words with something that encapsulates the theme. And what I really like is, I've always been a little self conscious about being fully transparent or authentic. In my opinion, I think I've never loved like, feedback on social media and like, knowing that I can push buttons. And you know, I'm sensitive to that. And so I like a side effect of this title is that it reminds me that I'm here for a reason to be real, to be honest and to go for it. I love it, all of that. So we're about to be real honest, Julia Landauer 3:15 we're about to be real honest. And I want to share a little bit for our listeners about how we met. So we met through Arianna Huffington back in I want to say late 2017, or 2018. It was when you were at Uber, as the Chief Brand Officer. And I went in with my former manager, and we met with you and we chatted about a whole lot of things. But something that struck me was your authenticity. And you know, for those of you who have not seen Boz, you know, she radiates brightness and color and warmth. And what I really loved was that you showed a lot of humanity and decency towards every person that I saw you interact with, regardless of who they were in the company. And it seemed like a, I was trying to think about how to describe it. It seemed like a natural intentionality with how you are interfacing with people. And so has that always been something that you feel has come naturally to you? Or is something that you actually worked on as you climbed the corporate ladder or something else? Bozoma Saint John 4:14 Yeah, well, first of all, thank you for that observation. You've described that way before so that that's really touching to me makes me like teary. But I guess you know, to answer the question, it probably just comes from a place of always feeling othered, right, and wanting to be seen, and I feel like if you want to be seen you have to see other people you know, I'm often in rooms where people don't acknowledge me the right way. And before I had the big titles, Hell Girl, with the big title sometimes they still don't acknowledge me the right way. I respect but having felt so small, a lot of times in my life, for for a majority of my life that, I never want anybody to feel that way in my presence. You know, it's like, if it doesn't matter what you're doing, you know, like, people breeze by receptionist all the time, you know, or feel like, Oh, they're not important well, but why they're, they're here at work to try and do a good job, you know what their morning was like, before you happen upon them, right? Or the most junior person on the team who nobody gives time to, because they don't think they're mature enough to have good ideas. Right? too. Sometimes, it's like, your boss's spouse, you know, so, people often ignore that person, you know, it's like, there's just a whole slew of people that get ignored. And so I think, to me, it's a combination of one having always felt other felt small, and not wanting anybody to feel that way in my presence. And then also a natural curiosity about people. I just, I'm really interested by people, I'm not going to say that, like, you know, I just blanket like people. Because people drain me sometimes, you know, but I'm curious about them. I love understanding people's stories, why they do what they do, where are they are in their life, what they're doing that day, you know, I love all of that. And so I think some of what you probably saw, and what people feel for me is just a natural curiosity about them. And then also intentionally making sure that people are seeing, Julia Landauer 6:27 I love that. And, you know, Curiosity is so important for, you know, interpersonal relationships, professional, I think we'll get into that a little bit later. But when you are interacting with these people in a professional setting, do you feel that you at all change for the most part in terms of like how you talk with your friends versus at work, and I asked that from the sense of like, with my keynote speaking, for instance, one of the things that I'm sure to tell clients ahead of time is that the way that we're engaging on the pre event call, or the way that I'm going to talk with them before I go on stage, is going to be the same on stage, maybe a little slower, maybe a little clearer. But for the most part, I want to have that continuity. Is that something that you felt that you could bring class throughout your career? Did you develop it later? Bozoma Saint John 7:12 Oh, well, I mean, early in my career, no, I didn't feel like I could be myself, for sure. I couldn't, you know, there just wasn't the allowance for it. And I was looking for somebody to give me permission, looking for somebody to acknowledge that, who I am, where I come from, what I say, in the way I say it, is as important as the next person. And I didn't have the validation. And I also want to be successful. Right? I want to be successful. So I wanted to mimic what other people did in order to become successful. It took me a long time, actually, well, to me, at least in my you know, estimation took me a long time to realize that it didn't matter what I did, that people would always see me the way that I am, you know, that I couldn't pretend it was like, I wasn't tricking anybody, by speaking in a certain way, or dressing a certain way. Or eliminating, you know, the information about whatever I did that weekend. I wasn't really tricking anyone. And it also wasn't helping me to get ahead in my career, you know, I probably would still be on that same train. And I found that like, oh, you know, pretending to be like my other male white colleagues, was getting me ahead. But that joint was not working. And so actually, from the failure of that is what allowed me then to actually be myself, you know, because I just realized, I was like, gosh, let me just throw down the sword. Because why am I fighting this? Right? Don't see me different anyway. You know, they don't see me as one of them. They see me exactly as I am. So why am I pretending that I'm not, you know, and so for me, it's like this idea of authenticity, or showing up as my full self that was born out of failure, the failure of trying to be the caricature, and I do say, caricature on purpose, because I don't actually don't think anybody fits that. You know, it's like some exaggerated vision of a senior executive in a business capacity that everybody tries to attain. It's easier for some people because they may outwardly look like that character, but they can never achieve it really, you know, and that's why you see all these executives sometimes getting exposed for the things they do, you know, at home or behind the scenes and everybody's like, shocked, like, Oh, my God, they weren't perfect. What? It's like, yeah, because you're all worshipping the wrong caricature. You're worshiping an incomplete human. Right? It's not a full picture. And so yeah, my authenticity was born out of the failure of trying to become that perfect person that everybody wanted. And when realizing that they were never going to see me as perfect anyway, so I might as well just be my wonderful flawed self. Julia Landauer 10:05 I love that.... --- ### [GUEST: Hannah Newhouse - Racer Turned Broadcaster](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-hannah-newhouse-racer-turned-broadcaster/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello everybody and welcome to the first guest segment on if I'm honest I am thrilled to be here with not only longtime friend but a racecar driver turned motorsports Reporter You can see her on NBC USA dirt vision. Ms. Hannah newhouse. Thank you so much for joining me. How are you doing? I'm so honored to be one of the first guest segments. I'm glad this panned out. Well, I remember when I posted the like that I was having a podcast and you were like, let me know if you need a guest. I will bring the wine and we are recording in the morning. So unfortunately, it's a little early for wine, but episode two we'll definitely do it. Absolutely. So Hannah, you've had an incredible career. We were talking a little before about you know, being a racecar driver exploring other things, how we got there. I've always really admired your grit and hustle and like making it work and so big fan over here. But can you take us quickly through your racing and like the main series that you competed in, and then also some of your favorite tracks and series that you raced in? Yeah, so racing synopsis second second generation racecar driver. If my dad would have had it his way, we actually probably would have been motocross racers. He was a tool enthusiast. I still think that's his first love. But when I was probably four years old, he got in a really bad dirt bike accident, and then made the decision for wheels in a roll cage for my kids. Like that's just less likely to get hurt. support that I'm a big four wheel fan I could never do too. Yeah, joke's on him though, because I still found my way into a couple casts involved in you know, go karts and in cars, but yeah, so we kind of made that transition into like go karts when I was three four, did that moved up to like create late models and create trucks when I was like 12, 13 which I now think like I see 12 year olds on the street and I cannot believe my parents ever had the gall to put me behind the wheel race car but that is a conversation for another day with them. It is mind blowing. But did that moved up into like super late models, ran regionally with some touring stuff, you know, want to track championship and super late model and then dabbled in some what was K&N West, Now ARCA West, before I made that decision, okay, I'm a big fish in a small pond out west. And if you you know, they tell you all the time you want to make it, you got to move to the east coast and packed my stuff up when I was 17 dropped out of college moved across the country and quickly found out that I was a minnow in the ocean out here on the East Coast and had to pay my bills somehow, which is how, again, a weird snowball effect I ended up here but it wouldn't have changed my journey whatsoever. And you know, you mentioned favorite racetracks. I'm biased because most of them that I raced on were West Coast tracks. But if I could pick a racetrack that I would race on every single weekend, without a doubt it would be Irwindale Speedway, which of course, is always sad because every single year I feel like we get that Irwindale Speedway turned into housing development or turned into storage units or whatever. So thankful that it's still kicking and screaming but between not one of them my home track Meridian Speedway, two very different racetracks. I've raced them both so yes, I know. Yeah, very different. Very different. But you know, the hometown feel, it's like I always say meridian is the Bowman Gray or the West Coast. We don't have as much vulgarness at maybe Meridian as they do at Bowman Gray. But nonetheless, the quarter mile was built around a football track or football, you know, stadium it's just short track racing and it's nitty gritty finest and then Irwindale Speedway is like, to me dirt racing meets pavement, because you're throwing sliders for speed. I mean, there's a great clip out there of you and me actually racing, Irwindale Speedway yeah, there it is one of the k&n races. So for non racing fans listening so some of the references Bowman, gray stadium Meridian and Irwindale. So Bowman Gray is a very short race track in the East Coast and it's known for having fights for people getting arrested. It's very sorry, it's very like trashy for lack of a better phrase. And my experience with Meridian was not quite that bad and meridian is also a really short track and when short tracks are really short, you know, there's a lot more bumping and banging there's less straight away so you have less sheer speed, but there's a lot more like kind of contact and racing actions. Irwindale is bigger at a half mile and from my memory a lot of the racing is done up by the wall. Yeah. And so instead of kind of turning in off the corner on an oval going down to the apex, the lowest point and then going back up, you're just kind of up at the wall, which was the same with actually homestead which I raced in the XFINITY series and it is so much scarier for me. I feel like that is not something that I thrive at. But I think so I know that we raced there, do we? There was one race or maybe it was at Evergreen? I don't remember but there were three women racing Were you part of that? I think it was me Nicole. Bihar. I can't remember who the third one was. Was it Brittany Zamora? Oh, it might have been because it wasn't me. Okay. I never raced a canine car there. I just reached super late. I think it was Britney Zamora. Okay. Anyway, that was cool little moment in history. Yeah. out for having three women. And now it's crazy that like pretty frequently in the Arca series, there's like three or four women. we paved, Well, we were part of the pioneers. Were there we were talking beforehand like some of the women who came before us Kenzie Ruston and Johanna Long who were also just like, total wheel women. Yeah, they're the ones that did the elbow grease me. Yeah, they did some elbow grease in for us. They did. So did you. So you grew up watching NASCAR? I'm assuming? Yeah, for the most part, probably. And people. My husband, who's a big motorsports enthusiast works in the same industry. He makes me laugh because he'll make references to like early NASCAR early racing history tidbits, and I have no idea what he's talking about can't recollect them. And he's like, Well, didn't you grew up watching it and I'm like, I probably honestly begrudgingly grew up watching it right. Like dad would sit down on the couch on Sunday. And I'm like, why are we watching this? Like I just was not I don't think I maybe had the attention span to watch it. So yes, I watched it. I can recall things but like I was not like these kids are these now adults that like, eat sleep and breathe it on Sundays, right? Like Dillon made a point to watch every IndyCar race every NASCAR race. And I was like, huh, I would much rather be outside playing in the dirt or like growing up in Idaho. Well, that's what it was. You know, just make sure you're home before the sun comes down. Yeah, yeah. So like I watched it, but Right. Yeah. And I didn't grow up watching it. I grew up watching Formula One. Okay. Yeah, Formula cars. But despite our different routes to getting to NASCAR, we have the same favorite driver in Carl Edwards. Now. I love him still love farmer Carl. Now he's a farmer. Yeah, yeah. And I think what's interesting is like, I don't feel like I have related to a lot of the NASCAR drivers, you know, being from New York, you know, we'll talk about college in a bit, but going to college and just like a very different culture. But for me with Carl Edwards, I feel like he was really classy, almost a little understated, I loved that he kind of brought legitimacy, I think, to the athleticism associated with racing that was not really acknowledged, I think for a long time. And you know, I'm saying this from kind of a distance, I've been able to speak with him a few times, but like, just good guy. And I think in any really competitive industry, the higher up you go, I think the lesson good guy people anymore. So that was like, I just, he was seemed like one of the more classy drivers to me, which I think is why I partially gravitated towards him. But what were some of the things that you loved about him. So you're gonna laugh. Because you gave this like, super knowledgeable, notable, like, here's why I love Carl Edwards. And I just remember being like a young girl and my dad being like, oh, you know, you have to pick a favorite driver. Because again, he all he wanted me to do was sit and watch NASCAR with them. And I remember being like, you know, a little teenage girl and Carla was on TV. And I was like, He's cute. Love it. And that's where the that's where it started. Now since then, similarly, so, you know, I have heard the stories about him handing out business cards to get a you know, get a ride, who's going to the racetrack finding himself to get there and handing out business cards that said, you know, if you need a driver, I'm your man. Here's my resume on a business card. Here's my contact information. That's how he ended up at Roush. He gave he gave a business card to Jack Roush, the owner and, and ended up behind the wheel. So as I got older, that was more of a draw because I respected that I was doing it. There's a picture that I have of me at Iowa Speedway in probably 2011 at an XFINITY race, and I am handing a resume and a business card similarly, so to Mike Helton, who at the time is the president of NASCAR, basically saying I don't know what you know who you know, or how you can help me, but I'm willing to do anything and everything I can and to this day when I see Mike Helton because you know he's involved in, IMSA sports car racing cause, NASCAR owns it. So he's a lot of the big IMSA races knows me by name, he'll still come up and say hello to me. And he you know, we talked about he's like, I remember this little 14, 15 year old girl that was busted a tail. And he's like, I'm so glad to see you in the industry.... --- ### [GUEST: Jaime Schmidt - Entrepreneur, Investor, Pickleball Enthusiast](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-jaime-schmidt-entrepreneur-investor-pickleba/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today I'm sitting down with Jaime Schmidt who is the founder of the brand Schmidt's naturals and is known for modernizing natural personal care products and bringing them to the mainstream market. Under her leadership, Schmidt grew into a household name and after seven years was acquired by CPG giant Unilever. She is the author of Supermaker, crafting business on your own terms, a personalized guide on how to put your business on the map, turning your passion into profit. Jaime is also an investor and co owner of color capital, a fund that invests in consumer products and emerging technologies. Most recently, Jaime co founded BFF, a brand and community that provides access and education in web3 for underrepresented groups, which has since been acquired by boss beauties, a media and entertainment brand that inspires the next generation of women and girls. And they were also my primary sponsor, and my debut Nascar xfinity race in July of 2022. So lots of cool ties between myself and Jaime. But this is the first time we've really sat down and have a conversation. And it's really fun, we just jump into some of her background with web3 and how she got into that more tech space. We talk about consumer packaged goods, we talk about her learning experiences as an entrepreneur, we dive into pickleball, a sport that she's very passionate about. And then the conversation kind of turns and we talk about mt and racing and explaining what racing is and how it's how it's very physical and the team dynamic. So it's a really engaging back and forth conversation really hitting the ethos of if I'm honest, and I'm so excited to be able to share this conversation with Jaime Schmidt with you. And as a quick episode, note, I realized while editing that we use the term web3 a lot, but then don't define it until a little bit later into the episode. So I want to define it for you that web3 is a term that's used to describe the next iteration of the internet. And it's one that's built on the blockchain technology, and it's controlled by users. So it changes the ownership structure. And it's an idea that incorporates decentralization and token based economies if you heard about NFT's, especially in 2021 and 2022. And earlier this year, that was all based in web3. So just wanted to take a minute to roughly define web3 for you as we get into this conversation, Jaime, welcome to if I'm honest. Hi, Julia. Jaime Schmidt 2:22 Thank you for having me. Well, it has been Julia Landauer 2:25 so fun to read more about you and learn more about you. And for our listeners, I was introduced to you back in, I want to say February of 2022, when you had launched BFF, with your co founders and BFF is a community and brand that's focused on web3. And it was this launch event and I was listening to you and to your co founder Brit. And I was just really, really enthralled by everything you were talking about. But then also your presence in particular, I found quite striking. And I was intrigued. And I was like, oh my goodness, I need to learn more about this woman and did a deep dive, which we'll get into. But BFF is how we know each other. And so it's really cool to get to sit down and chat with you. Jaime Schmidt 3:08 Thank you. Yeah, I love that you're a part of that event, and that we get to know each other a little bit since then just through some DMs and things. So super excited to talk Julia Landauer 3:16 to you. Yeah, and social media is so powerful in that regard. So it's really cool. So I do want to start off actually with BFF, because a bunch of my followers are also in web3, web3 enthusiasts. And with BFF, it was really an attempt to help bring more women and non binary people into web3, correct? Like that was the ethos of what we're doing. So What compelled you to jump from consumer packaged goods? Which we'll get into in a little bit, into the web3 world? Jaime Schmidt 3:45 Yeah, that's a great question. Um, you know, I haven't abandoned CPG by any means. So it's still very much of interest, and you know, when at the heart of a lot of what I do, but I was really intrigued by web3, and what it offered to the consumer space. That's when I really first got into it, I realized, you know, in terms of consumer rewards, and tokenization, you know, all the opportunities there for brands, but there was a really huge potential. And so that was kind of kick started my interest, and then just recognizing, you know, but like any other industry or any other kind of, you know, moments in history, you know, women tend to get left behind, right, if we aren't, you know, being mindful of making sure we're learning, you know, at the same pace as men and taking advantage of the opportunities available. And so, I saw that opportunity to create BFF with my co founder, Brit, she historically has done a lot of work with women and entrepreneurs, and we just really clicked and had a lot in common in that regard. So we knew that together, we could create something huge and you know, had a skill set that complemented one another and yeah, we I think we succeeded. You know, we started with the kickoff event that you mentioned, that was in early 2022. Our goal was just to It really just gives, you know, the basics of what what three really even means, you know, why should people care? You know, what, what is crypto? And you know why? Why should people be interested in it? What does it mean for different industries that we work in. And so, with that event, we, you know, we covered those basics and gave away free NF Ts to everybody that attended. So that was the first for so many women, which was really cool. And then help them set up their first crypto wallet. You know, many were so so new to it. And I to write like, I was not a self proclaimed expert in, you know, web3 and crypto, but I was learning alongside my community. And that's what made it really cool and Julia Landauer 5:35 fun. Yeah, I mean, like most industries, but then also tech industries, being male dominated such a big thing. And what I really loved what you just said about BFF was that everyone who attended got an NFT. And so much of the barrier to entry, I think, is having the confidence that what you're investing either your time or money in, is, is that worthwhile, right? And so you guys clearly established that it was and it was really feel like gave everyone a really solid ground to build and learn with you guys, which I thought was really, really cool. Jaime Schmidt 6:09 Yeah, thanks. You know, what our biggest goal was just to make sure that people understood it, you know, not, we're not our goal was never to, like, encourage people not to invest your money in Bitcoin, or crypto or whatever. It's more like, these are the opportunities, these are the things you should know like, if you're at a dinner party, for example, and the topic comes up like what what are the basics and just like a, you know, a level of understanding that you feel comfortable enough to get by and to keep an open mind or opportunities that do come up? Julia Landauer 6:35 Yeah. And something that I found personally, is that I consider myself a competent person, I consider myself smart. But I was pretty nervous getting into web3, and learning from the ground up and learning how a crypto wallet works, how you transfer things, how you have a hard wallet, and like safety around web three, and crypto and everything. And so one thing that I found, you know, months into learning months, way before I met you guys and BFF was how proud I felt after I felt like I had not mastered but gotten quite comfortable and literate in web three. And so I think that that's a nice thing that I heard other people and so on X other people talking about is like, being nervous about it, but then working through it and gaining that confidence. Yeah, that's true, like everything Jaime Schmidt 7:24 in life, right? Like even I think back to like, my early days as my entrepreneur, my first business and just like taking the leap and like trusting that you can figure it out, you know, like I there's no like, script to what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. And so you just kind of have to jump in and have the patience and like determination to figure it out. Julia Landauer 7:44 Yeah, and I think I have to assume that something around currency and finances can make things a little more stressful. So I mean, that was something that I was just, I was really proud of the community as a whole for jumping into that and tackling it and clearly building such a cool community that that you know, is thriving today. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And so piggybacking off of that big news, and we're we're definitely connected is that BFF was acquired by boss beauties recently. And first, congratulations. That is so exciting. And for listeners, boss beauties is another web3 and women's empowerment community. And they were my primary sponsor in my debut Nascar xfinity race. So we put a boss beauty PFP on the hood of the car. We had another NFT community garageXYZ on there. And it was just so cool, because it really was the first time that you know, a web3 group had sponsored a NASCAR driver, which was I was so cool. It was so so cool to do that was so Jaime Schmidt 8:45 amazing. I love that it was like a woman driver and a woman organization, right? Because it could have it could have gone the other way. Julia Landauer 8:51 Totally. And later that year, we saw that so I was like we are the trailblazers. We are the pioneers. Jaime Schmidt 8:56 I'm curious how that came up, like, Did you initiate it or they come to you? Yeah. So Julia Landauer 9:00 I had met Lisa years ago through my social canvas, which is another, you know, social, socially focused startup and helping to mentor girls. So I had known her for a little while.... --- ### [ GUEST: Mel Braun - Realtor-Turned-Reiki Master & Mindfulness Educator](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-mel-braun-realtor-turned-reiki-master-mindfu/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I am joined today by realtor turned medical Reiki master Mel Braun. So Mel is also a yoga instructor. She's a mindfulness educator. And all of this leads itself to her dedication to empowering others to connect back to their body and awaken their innate abilities to heal from within. That is her mission. And she supports this by providing education about energy body, and helping clients understand how emotions and their environmental experiences are stored in their body on an energetic level. And this can in turn affect the physical body. We had a really great discussion where we talked about what Reiki is, how she got into it, and the basics that go into this kind of energetic healing. She also very vulnerably tell stories from her own experiences that I think are quite relatable to many people. She is nine months pregnant. While we are recording this, she talks about how Reiki is incorporated into her routine with her and her baby. And she treats us to a guided meditation at the end of this episode, which left me feeling very calm, certain sensations. It was a really cool experience. And she will walk all of us through it as we're listening. So I am really excited for this episode. Mel, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest, Mel Braun 1:23 thank you so much, Julia for having me. I'm so excited. Julia Landauer 1:26 So Mel reached out and she wanted to share kind of what she's been doing with Reiki. And I was really interested because if I'm honest, I am not really well versed in more spiritual energetic healing. It is something that I've read about but you know, don't have a lot of personal experience with so I was really excited for this conversation to learn and to broaden my horizons. And so Mel and I met at a go karting track indoors with a mutual friend for her birthday. And, you know, I She has such positive energy. It's really, it's really infectious, I think. And I can see that even even again, on virtually. So as I mentioned, I'm inexperienced with Reiki, I have done one group session where I admit that I did not really feel that I noticed a big impact or difference. And so knowing that, yeah, so knowing that I'm inexperienced and may or may not have known what to be going for, I'd love it if you could share what Reiki is, you know, kind of what some of the benefits are people who typically use it and how you got into it. Mel Braun 2:39 Absolutely. Well, I have to say Reiki rookies are my absolute favorite. It's really fun when people have not been exposed to it. And I love that you were open minded for whatever reason, I think there's something to that as well. You know, when we expand our minds and open our hearts, we just perceive everything in a different way. So Reiki, you can go into a long term of a definition, but to make it simplistic, it really is just a form of Japanese healing. That is channeling the Chi which is our natural energy that flows throughout our body. And those of you that may be a little more familiar with Chinese medicine, you're probably familiar with the term chi. And so what it does is it just balances the energy in the body and how Reiki works and what differentiates me from a in a different like hands on healer, some people have had like healing touch and things like that. I've went through something called an attunement. So think of that as like an initiation of ceremonious process. And that's what allows me to channel this universal lifeforce energy, and we all have the capability to channel this energy. So that's I teach Reiki as well, all three levels, one, two, and three. And anyone is able to experience Reiki, everyone is able to channel this universal lifeforce energy after they've received the attunement. So it's really that simple. And I think when we start to understand that we are more than just this physical body, we are energetic beings. And we know that from science, we know everything is energy, the table, the desk, all these different things. And that's all that we're doing. We're just balancing the energy within our body. It's the same thing I tell people well in your terms, like a race car, right? What are you going to do if the car is not handling appropriately? You're gonna say, Hey, I feel like this needs a little more, Rear spring we need to make it a little stiffer. We need to adjust the track bar. We need to do these different things. Our bodies are the exact same thing and more of us a regular layman term. If your car is out of alignment Are you just gonna keep driving it down the road when it's veering to the left? No, we call the body shop, we take it in, we get the alignment fixed, it's the same thing. Just fix the alignment, energetic alignment in the body. It's that simple. Julia Landauer 5:16 That's such a great explanation. Mel Braun 5:18 And I think, you know, I think we all know the importance of, you know, physical maintenance on our body. Julia Landauer 5:24 And I think also now there's a lot more discussion around mental health and, you know, seeking therapists and journaling and kind of that like emotional mental balancing. And so what you're saying is that Reiki is taking a look at the at the energy, and it's kind of just an extension of some of the other elements that people are already talking about in more mainstream discussions. Mel Braun 5:48 Exactly, you nailed it. And the other thing too, that, you know, Reiki is not just an energetic it is right, we have the energetic body, but it also affects the physical body, because once we bring that energy into alignment, Reiki actually works with our endocrine system. It also helps stir up the toxins in the body, which no matter how healthy we are these days, right? What we eat, the air we breathe, which we've experienced that this year with the air quality, what we put on our skin, we are constantly taking in toxins. And the other important thing to note here talking about the mental side is the thoughts, the toxic thoughts that we have this negative self talk actually creates physical toxins in our body. So Reiki stirs up the toxins in our body, and then helps our body flush that out, which then creates our body's innate ability to heal. And this is how we heal from within. This is how we keep our body thriving. And we're not reactive to when an ailment or a disease or sicknesses come up. We're keeping our body doing what it's designed to do. Julia Landauer 6:59 Yeah, and it's interesting what you said about the negative self talk, because that is something that I talk about a lot in keynotes and how I I will admit that some things to me, I think in my maybe it's a cynical New Yorker, who knows, but like some things, right, like some things seem a little woowoo. I put quotes around that. And but as I dive into it more like when I first heard the term positive self talk, I did not feel that it applied to me, because whatever. But then I realized when I was having a rough season, how much of my own internal dialogue was really negative. And it wasn't even like bashing, but it was just negative questioning myself doubting my confidence, all of this stuff, and how that did have a very physical arc played a part in having an effect on how I carried myself how I like I saw myself in the mirror as like, the saddest version of myself I'd ever seen. So it's as you're talking more, it's very clear that a lot of it is more interconnected than then one might think, initially. So before we get into kind of more specifics, because I still, I still want help with that jump for what the actual practices which we'll get into, and there will be, yeah, fun activity at the end of this episode for everyone. , but how did you get into Reiki? Mel Braun 8:15 Ah, you know, Julia that's an interesting one. So my background is actually real estate. I've been in real estate, right at 18. And I joke, because Reiki really found me like, it was it was not something that I initially had went out seeking. And so long story short, I had, we had my husband and I two senior dogs, and I was looking at alternative ways to help support them as they were aging. And one of the ways was chiropractic. And so this chiropractor that I was seeing, we just, you know, formed a relationship over time. And she started to tell me about this healing session she did. And I was always very open minded and have probably deemed myself a little more spiritual. And she started to share with me her experience and I was totally intrigued. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I must know more. I have to go see this lady. I go for my first session. She didn't just do Reiki, she did some other energy healing. She was a shaman, all of those things. And she laid her hands on me. And I saw PhD. When I tell you I saw like, not just like a little trickle of a tear. I'm talking like that deep belly ugly crying, the tears, the snot just running everywhere. And you're just drowning in it. And what I realized in that moment, were the emotions that my body had been storing for so long my entire life. And over my childhood and into my younger adult years, I would have these interesting ailments that just didn't seem to make sense and knowing what I know now, I understand that it was energy it was Emotions trapped in my body creating these ailments. So that was my first experience. And then fast forward, I really started to get into meditation, which I'm a mindfulness meditation instructor, because real estate, you know, can be. So I had to find other ways to sleep at night and cope, right? So anyways, I started to really get into meditation, and my mom was having a lot of health issues. And in this meditation, I heard you can help your mom and I was like, and Reiki was what came to me in the meditation. So I then decided, Okay, I'm gonna go ahead and get certified.... --- ### [ GUEST: Ryan Blaney - NASCAR Cup Series Winner](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-ryan-blaney/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I am honored to have Ryan Blaney joining me today as my guest. And for my non racing fan listeners, Ryan Blaney is a NASCAR Cup Series racer driving the number 12 Team Penske Ford Mustang. He has eight career Cup wins and is currently locked into the 2023 playoffs with his win this season at charlotte motor speedway. Away from the track. He's an avid Star Wars fan, co-hosts the podcast glass case of emotion, he's a big metal and country music fan, and he has a dog named Sturgill. And we've known each other for quite a while now. And I think of him as a very well rounded person and racer. So I'm very excited. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest. Ryan Blaney 0:44 Yeah, no problem. I appreciate the nice info. When people hear I'm an avid metal and country music fan. I think that usually throws people for a loop. Those are two very different genres. But no, thanks for having me. I'm excited for it. Julia Landauer 0:56 Yeah, you bet. And we're recording this after Michigan raceway. So I was tuning in a little bit seemed like a bit of a mixed bag, there was a little bit of contact on the Sunday version of the race. And then on Monday, you were able to bring home a top 10 So how do you view the weekend? Ryan Blaney 1:11 Yeah, it's, uh, you know, Michigan, we're getting close to our playoffs here. You know, we only have a few weeks left, and Michigan is such an important track for, you know, our group, because you know, it's right Ford's backyard. My boss, Roger Penske is from that area, you know, and they actually own Michigan Speedway for a long time. So, really, really cool weekend. And, you know, it was a lot of pressure because Ford won the, eight previous races at Michigan. And so this was like, we're on our quest to 10 here. And, you know, you know, we didn't win, we got another four in victory lane. So that's nine in a row and Michigan for Ford, which is that's such a big deal for those guys. And, you know, to have the Ford family there and be so involved, like they are just, it's just really, really great to be able to go do that stuff. But yeah, not a bad weekend. Little bit more contact and controversy on Sunday than I would have liked. But luckily, you know, none of that on Monday when we had a resume, and after that reload rain delay. Julia Landauer 2:07 Yeah. So do you in general, like Michigan has a track? Ryan Blaney 2:12 Yeah, I enjoy, you know, every track that we go to is, they're all different, you know, and Michigan is a big two mile race track, one of the faster ones we go to honestly, you know, they repave it in 2012. And when they repave race tracks, you know, it takes a while to kind of age, you know, and for the track to get a little race here again. So it's in that weird process of like, it's getting there, but it needs a few more years to get as wide as race track is, which is like 80 feet. So I enjoy go on there that the speed side of it's, you know, it's nice, you know, I mean, you're going but 200 into turn one. So that's always exciting for I think people to watch and for us to be a part of. Julia Landauer 2:52 Yeah, so for Michigan, do you you go that fast? Do you turn in under flat? Or do you break before going in? Ryan Blaney 3:00 So yeah, we it's kind of very, so like qualifying your you don't, you don't lift all the way out of the throttle in the corner for qualifying, you know, you're you're turning in and you're still wide open. And then you kind of load and you might breathe it to like 80% throttle for a second, then you're back to wide open the racing side, you're it's a little different, you're kind of lifting all the way out of the gas before you turn in. But the other qualifying side, I think that's the craziest place qualify because your commitment level is so high. And you have to like convince yourself like, okay, don't lift, don't lift, you have to really be committed. And that part I think is fun. It kind of challenges you mentally as a racer, convincing yourself to do it. And then hoping your car does do it and sticks. It's like two different two different things. Julia Landauer 3:46 Yeah, my so I haven't done a ton of bigger oval tracks. But my introduction to having to turn in under full throttle was at Iowa Speedway and the K&N West car. And I remember like, I was definitely slower than I typically was in the group. And I was asking my spotter, like what's going on because they had won their, you know, the previous years, like Brandon McReynolds and I was like, I know that we can go faster. What is it and my spotter was like, Oh, I see you, you got to turn in under flat and it's like, What the fuck? Like, this is so counterintuitive. And I know it's banked enough. But it was like I learned the term pucker factor two summers ago. And so it was a like the first time going full throttle while turning because physically it's not supposed to work real pucker factor moment, but then like the, the flow is better at that point. Ryan Blaney 4:29 Right? Yeah. Well, you know, coming, you know, from like road stuff like you did for most stuff, like that's unheard of. Right? Like you don't you're braking and lifting while you're straight. And then you get all that done. And then you turn to the corner. Yeah, that the oval side is just coming. You know, it was easy for me because I just grew up in that world. But like if you were a road racer coming over, that would be the craziest thing is like you're telling me I have to turn in while still full throttle. Yeah, I kind of get all my stuff done. Yeah, that'd be a tough thing to do. Julia Landauer 4:56 Yeah, the power steering graph does not align in that way. So But especially taking a more intellectual approach to it didn't work. So cool. Well, I'm glad you I'm glad you had a good weekend. Speaking of tracks, what did you think of Chicago? Ryan Blaney 5:09 Yeah, we raced on the streets of Chicago, you know, about just over a month ago, and, and that was the first time we've ever done a street race in NASCAR. And I was pretty skeptical to be honest with you, when they announced it, you know, it's like, how is this going to work? You know, I do watch street races in every other form of race. And you know, f1 and IndyCar. And the supercars and really all road racing usually have a street course. And like, how are we going to do this? And around Chicago? Is there room around Chicago to race. And I personally thought the weekend was awesome. You know, minus the monsoon we got, which really hurt it. You know, we got tons of rain on Saturday night and Sunday. But, you know, I thought the atmosphere was great. There was a crazy amount of people there, that they've never seen a race before. They were really curious. And they came out and they were fascinated by it. So I had I had a blast. You know, I'm sure we're gonna go there next year again, and hopefully the weather cooperates and can actually have a full weekend because they had a lot of stuff playing concerts and stuff like that going on in the park. But yeah, like I said, I was one of those guys. I was super skeptical early. And then we got there. And I was like, Well, this is this is really neat that we're here. And we're able to pull this off. Julia Landauer 6:20 So what what made you skeptical, because like I think of and there's not a lot of street courses that are done in stock cars, but the Pinty's series, the Canadian NASCAR series, they they do street courses. And so it's like, it's messy. And it's bumpy, for sure. But was it kind of more of the surface itself? Or was it the whole operation? Or Ryan Blaney 6:38 what concerned me about it was, was yeah, the bumps? You know, when you go to city streets, you know, you never know how rough it's gonna be. Right. And there was some areas that were crazy rough. But then also, you know, in our cars, you know, a stock car street racing, right? You can be fenders and bumpers, and you can be pretty aggressive. Unlike a open wheel car on the street course, right? Where you're, you can't touch or else you're in trouble. And the way we race now, I mean, we, you know, we've run into each other a lot already. And I was like, Well, what if you know, one of us, we just shove someone off in the corner, there's no run off and leave room for error, you create a pile up, you know, so that was kind of my nervous part of it. But I thought we I think we had one kind of got a Waffle House stack up. But other than that, it was it was pretty good. Julia Landauer 7:29 I thought also, like I was really impressed. And I know that obviously cup drivers are very impressive, but especially the transitioning from wet to dry. That's such a challenging kind of environment to be in. And I thought I think it was turned four. I was expecting a lot more messiness there. And there was some but it was really, it was so cool to see as a fan. And I'll be honest, I don't watch every cup race start to finish because they are long races. But this one was like really captivating the whole time. So very cool that you got to do that. Ryan Blaney 7:58 Yeah, it was. It was a cool experience. That's for sure. And I look forward to doing it again. Julia Landauer 8:03 Yeah, awesome. Well, a little background information for our listeners, you and I met at what was then the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco in 2016. So I was part of NASCAR next and racing, K&N West and I think you were in cup by that point, right? Ryan Blaney 8:18 Yeah, that was my rookie year. Julia Landauer 8:20 Okay. Okay. And then Austin Dillon was there too. And I wanted to love Sonoma, because, one, it's a road course. So that's my roots, too, is kind of a home race for me since I went to school in the Bay Area. And I knew that I had friends coming out to watch and everything and it's like wine country.... --- ### [GUEST: Trey Shannon - Motorsports Trainer & Guinness World Record Holder](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/guest-trey-shannon-motorsports-trainer-guinness-wo/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I am very excited to be here with my longtime friend Trey Shannon, who is the program director at PitFit Charlotte in Cornelius North Carolina. He has been training racing drivers since 2014. Joining PitFit two years ago, Trey has been involved in motorsports for over 20 years in a variety of roles ranging from driver to spotter to data engineer, and of course, his current role as performance coach and program director at PitFit. Trey, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest, Trey Shannon 0:34 oh, thank you so much for having me. Julia Landauer 0:35 We are recording this from my office. And I don't get to see Trey as much anymore, but it's always a pleasure to hang out. So for context for our listeners, we met I believe in 2017. Back when you were kind of starting out in your coaching journey, when you were, I believe renting a room at Mountain Island fitness and drivers would go in there and we kind of use the gym and do these funky training activities with other gym members who were just there. And then we did some more specialized training in that little room. But that is how we know each other. I think I think Corey LaJoie was posting videos of training with you. And so I was like, Ah, this is great. I know that I can be stronger and more racing focus in my training efforts. So that's how we've met worked with him for then, I guess, almost five years after that throughout my racing in the minor leagues at NASCAR time. Yeah, we go way back. Trey Shannon 1:28 That's right. I had forgotten until you just mentioned that that Corey Lajoie was the one that got us. Connected. But yeah, about 2017. Sounds right. We're definitely still a mountain Island at that point. And I know you were one of the, you know, one of the originals that was with me when I opened up my facility in 2019. So I was very appreciative of you. That was with me for so long. Julia Landauer 1:49 Oh, yeah. Well, so when I joined, like, I think it was like spring of 2017. So how long at that point, had you been doing training motorsports training? Trey Shannon 1:58 So I started, it would have been around February of 2014. So my very first client was Tom Long, and he was somebody that believe it or not, our parents lived down the street from each other when we were in high school. And we actually didn't know each other. Oh, but at the beginning of 2014, he got the ride with the prototype ride with Mazda. So I reached out to him, I said, Hey, if you want to do any training, I'd love to help you out. And he said, Yeah, thanks. I'll keep it in mind and then went and did the Rolex 24 And like the next week and said, Alright, let's get training. And that was the genesis of all of it was training him. It actually started at a rec center Gym, in Charlotte. Yeah, until they kicked us out of there. And we had to go to mountain island, so it worked out pretty well. That's fine. Julia Landauer 2:44 Okay, so motorsports in general isn't the most accessible sport for a lot of people. But here you are kind of now living this really cool sports focused life in motorsports. Can you give us a little more background on your education and what you did first, because you started in a more traditional role, but then got your, you know, broke into motorsports. So tell me about that. Trey Shannon 3:06 Yeah. So I started as an engineer, and the whole time I was, you know, whole time I was studying and even before that, the whole idea was to be a part of motorsports. So I had you done some racing as the Yeah. Okay. So my dad took me to the Long Beach Grand Prix when I was four years old. That promises to be a quick story when they were starting. You've got time, you've got time. My dad took me to this race, the Long Beach Grand Prix, the first time I saw Indy cars, and I thought it was the coolest thing I've ever seen in my entire life, which was only four years up to that point. But it was just it was amazing. And I knew immediately I was like, I have to be a part of this somehow. So for the next few years, I begged my parents to get me a go kart race, go karts. And we're living in Southern California, which is not the cheapest place to live. And like you said, racing was not the most accessible. So I actually started with racing BMX, when I was about seven years old, so I started racing BMX, and that kind of progressed until I was about 12. And all of the all the other kids started growing a lot more. And suddenly, suddenly my legs weren't nearly as powerful as it were. 789 Yeah, and man when you're used to winning races, and then you go to not winning races it gets it gets slow real fast. So I got back on the I got back on the let's do a go kart bandwagon here. And you know, we're still living in Southern California. And when I, when I got to about I want to say it was maybe like 11, 12 years old, I realized that like math and science was a real strong point for me, and that I actually enjoyed it. So my whole plan became, I'm going to be an aerodynamicist or racing, my hashtag plan when I was like 12 years old. So I ended up going to Virginia Tech to study aerospace engineering plans still in motion, you know, it's still going we're heading that direction. I get my degree in in aerospace engineering. I actually end up, I ended up at AIM data systems, which for anybody who doesn't know, they, they make the data systems and like dashes and things like that for motorsports. So I ended up as a data engineer first and ultimately decided that it ended up not being as much of a challenge. You know, I knew nothing about electronics and data when I when I got there. And I learned a ton, and had kind of gotten to the point where there wasn't really too much more for me to learn. So I started to seek other opportunities. I actually interviewed with an IndyCar team, thankfully didn't take that job, because it ended up being a team that folded the next year. Oh, yeah, so I dodged that bullet, for sure. Dodged that bullet, and and thankfully didn't, you know, didn't drag my beautiful wife to Chicago to outside of Chicago, where she probably would have absolutely hated the cold and it just wouldn't have worked out very well. So you know, whether things happen for a reason or not, that's a no, that's a different conversation, but thankfully, dodged a little bit of a bullet on that one. And ended up taking a I guess, like a subcontractor engineering job in Maryland, doing what's called condition based monitoring for like Navy ships and cement plants and super, you know, nerdy engineering kind of stuff. And I'd actually kind of shifted my mindset in terms of racing to now let's get a job that's just makes enough money for me to be able to go race on my own. So I was doing that and trying to do some racing on my own got through a few races I think you and I were actually teammates for one of them with Mike Doty down it down to Daytona. Yeah, go kart. Julia Landauer 6:47 It was my local, I guess, local track team. Trey Shannon 6:52 Yeah, New York based team, but Mike was a big customer of ours at that AIM. So I I had a pretty good relationship with him. So when I was you know, switching jobs and about to make make more money, and I had a bunch saved up from you know, living with my wife now but girlfriend at the time, and like her college, townhouse, and whole bunch of money saved up. So I'm like, You know what, let's go do a nap. Let's go national go karting. Yes, exactly. So first time ever in a two stroke cart, and just you know, we'll do a national race sounds good. So had a lot of fun doing that. And try started trying to think of ways to do more racing while I was now at this new job in Maryland and making a little bit more money so I can actually think about it. And I came up with the idea to do a 24 hour Guinness World Record attempt. And through the process of training for that event, I started really falling in love with that. That whole process of training an athlete for peak performance, and I was I enjoyed being the athlete, but I also found myself starting to think about it a lot more from the trainer's my trainers perspective and the coach's perspective. So I was doing that I was training for that. And I reached out to Jim, who's now my business partner at PitFit, I reached out to him to see if he had any advice for what I was trying to do. And he invited me to come by the facility in Indianapolis for you know, a couple of workouts over the weekend and give me an assessment and see how I am with like the reaction, you know, reaction time type stuff that I had never even gotten into at that point. Julia Landauer 8:28 And for quick context for our listeners, Jim Leo and PitFit in Indy is kind of like one of the first major motorsports training facilities from what I hear me up first, yeah, Trey Shannon 8:40 the first in the US, he was first to market by, you know, 20 something years. I mean, he was way ahead of the game on that one. And in he ended up helping me out a lot with that, that record attempt he actually was my physio for it. And, again, going to work with him. I kept finding these thoughts creeping into my head of like, not only do I really enjoy this, but like, I can do this in I think I can be really good at it. And at that point, I was enjoying engineering, didn't dislike my job, but it also wasn't something that I had like still had a major passion for and I found myself really passionate about this. So I finished the record attempt. Thankfully, we got it. Good work from everyone on that one. Julia Landauer 8:40 It's hanging in your office. Trey Shannon 8:49 Yeah. Well, you know, it looks better there than in the house back. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Very cool beat. Yeah, it doesn't really go with the the feng shui of the house. So the it works better. Yeah, exactly.... --- ### [Having Hard Conversations](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/having-hard-conversations/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. So the other week, I had a speaking client and I was in their venue, which was a college communal space. And so they had set up a lot of roundtables for like lunch style. And I was on this small, small podium that was probably three steps above the floor level. And so I was a little bit higher than everyone I was giving my keynote, but it was still very intimate. You know, I was close to the audience members, I could look in everyone's eyes, it was well lit. So I am giving my keynote. And the last theme that I discussed before opening it up to q&a was about how our dreams demand discomfort, and it's a theme that I really enjoy talking about. And it's something that I feel super passionate about. So with that in mind, you know, I finish up the keynote, and I open it up to q&a. And I got a question from one of the audience members who was sitting up front who was also on the Organizing Committee, and she was going to be sitting on a panel after me. And she asked, you know, following up on your theme around discomfort, what makes you uncomfortable? And I audibly responded, oh, because I was surprised. And I hadn't gotten that question before. And, you know, I have no problem being honest, and vulnerable and transparent. I mean, all of my stories that I tell throughout the keynote are very personal and vulnerable, and I'm very honest with with everyone I talk with, but I was caught off guard with this question. And I remember actually got a little like hot and tingly as I was thinking about it, cuz I wanted to make sure I gave a good and thoughtful answer. And I had to think about it for a second. And let me tell you, when you're on stage, and you've given a 45 minute keynote, and then an audience member asks you a question that truly stumped you. It is a nerve wracking experience, because on the one hand, I want to give the best answer I can and the most authentic and the one that's most likely to be helpful. But I also can't just stand on stage thinking about it for a while. So my process for trying to find the answer to this question where I knew is a tough one. I thought back over my life as to when do I feel anxious? And when do I feel physically uncomfortable? Because that's kind of, for me the indicator that you know, I am uncomfortable. I finally answered her by saying, having hard conversations makes me uncomfortable. And I elaborated that sometimes that's professionally, sometimes that's personally, but that is one area that continues to make me uncomfortable to this day. I also realized over the following day, and after the keynote, that I found myself thinking about her question more, and I was kind of questioning myself, you know, was that the best answer? Is that a good enough answer? Should I have something it's more exciting, that makes me uncomfortable. But the reality is that it is something that's fairly mundane and something that we all go through. And I hope that is something that's relatable. And it is having hard conversations is where I find a great amount of discomfort, whereas I'm able to manage a lot of other stuff a lot more easily. All of this led me to decide that I want to do a podcast episode about having hard conversations. And while this is going to be my thing that makes me uncomfortable. I'm hoping that my process for this and working through this is applicable to you, and what makes you uncomfortable, if that's not having hard conversations, if that's something else, I'm going to share what conversations are hard for me what my symptoms are, where I know that I'm really uncomfortable, and how I've been working on it, because I am proud to report that although this will continue to be a challenging area for me, I've really done some good work on figuring out how to deal with it. So I want to preface this whole episode by saying that what I've been doing to work on this and to work on dealing with the discomfort and having these tough conversations is working. To start off, I want to share what type of conversations I find particularly difficult. So the first kind is when I have to tell someone that I'm working with that I'm unhappy with either their process or the behavior or the results or their communication or something in our professional working relationships. And I think this is particularly difficult for me because I only work closely with a few people. And so they are very, very intimate, professional relationships. And I find that I consider that to be really high stakes. Even though I know that we're all working towards a common goal, it still makes me uncomfortable. And I'm hoping that as I continue to work with more people and broaden my horizons that this becomes a little less over time but for right now that that is one type of conversation that I find really hard. There are also certain types of pitches that I have to give that that make me feel uncomfortable. There are some where I'm I'm fully confident I'm ready to go. I have 150% belief in myself and faith and what I'm doing and that it's that it's really beneficial for everyone. But there are some times where I just don't quite feel either 100% prepared or qualified. So hello impostor syndrome, your girl, Julia is also a victim of this reality. So sometimes having to pitch myself if I don't feel 100% Is is challenging for me. I also find conversations hard if it's around a conflict that I have with someone I care about who's in my inner circle, or my family or my chosen family. But I will say that with those personal relationships, there's so much on the line, and they're so important that they're stressful, but I always know that I have to have them. And the last type of conversation that I find really challenging is, maybe surprisingly to you. But if I have to negotiate or advocate for myself and my compensation, and you might be thinking, But Julia, you told us in another episode that Taylor Swift taught you to know your value, and you're completely right. But knowing that I have to advocate for myself and knowing what my value is, and that I have to advocate for it does not mean that it's easy for me, right? Like, it's not necessarily a walk in the park, I know that I have to do it. But it can still be challenging. If anyone else finds these types of conversations or other ones hard I'm I'm there with you know that we are in solidarity that this stuff is typically more challenging to deal with for us. And that is okay, because recognizing it and working on it is where the importance really come as in. So now I want to talk about the symptoms that I feel when I know that I'm uncomfortable with having these tough conversations, you know, all realize that, you know, I want to delay the call, or I'm hoping that maybe the person I'm having the conversation with will postpone or they won't pick up or something like if I find myself hoping for postponement. I know that I'm, I'm uncomfortable with this call. I also before the call will have an increased heart rate. For example, back in 2021. I talked about this before, but I had gotten hired for a remote position where we still be involved in the racing industry. And I just read in my journal that when I was about to have kind of the final solidifying call with them. Although I felt confident, although I knew that I had someone advocating for me and my, you know, being good for this role. I was so nervous, and I even wrote my journal, I am so nervous, all caps. And I don't know why. And it just goes to show that we kind of have these really physical symptoms. So anyway, I before that call before other tough conversations, I definitely have an increased heart rate. Mentally, I'll also feel a little anxious. And I'll kind of go and assume that it'll result in the worst case scenario. And I'll assume that the person will be difficult to talk with and combative. And I'm not entirely sure why, you know, that's kind of wild, because most people that we work with are not our enemies, right? They're not out to get us. But somehow I kind of don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt. And yeah, so I will find myself kind of feeling anxious in that mental way. And it's challenging, but it's something that we have to work through. I'd also encourage you to think about how you're discomforts and nerves and anxieties might manifest themselves and you physically, because once we recognize that, we can then come up with remedies and solutions to making ourselves feel better, in addition to working on longer term techniques to kind of fight some of this discomfort. So that leads me to my last section of this, which is talking about what I do to help me get through the discomfort of having hard conversations. And as I mentioned, I've been working at this actively for a little while now. And I'm finding that these techniques are working. I hope that they're valuable to you, I'd also encourage you to experiment with other things that you might be able to do. But the first thing that I do when I have a hard conversation coming up that I know is important. I know I have to deal with, I think about what my goals and objectives are for the conversation. And then I think about what the best case scenario outcome would be. And then I also think about what the worst case scenario outcome would be. And I go through a lot of different scenarios. And usually, the worst case scenario is not detrimental. And so I find that doing this little exercise is a reminder to me, that it's not the end of the world if it goes badly, and rationalizing and having that that thought with myself, I find kind of comforting because it helps me get out of my own head and it brings me back down to earth and it makes me feel a little better. I also am a big advocate for writing out what you want to say in a tough conversation. And whether that's writing out a monologue or writing out bullet points.... --- ### [Healthy vs Unhealthy Relationships](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/healthy-vs-unhealthy-relationships-ft-the-one-love/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I've wanted to talk about healthy versus unhealthy relationships since before I started this podcast, it took me a little while to find a method for delivering this episode. And once I got it and went through it a few times, I started feeling more comfortable with delivering it to you guys. And it just so happens that October is also Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And so the timing of this is aligned with the larger societal discussion that's going on right now. Educating about healthy relationships is a cause that I am very passionate about a strong supporter of, because having a solid, safe and loving relationship, whether it's romantic, or platonic, is critical for our well being and success. And unfortunately, as I'm pretty sure we all know, unhealthy relationships, and even relationship violence are far too common and affect all demographics, men, women, rich people, poor people, people of all races, unhealthy relationships, don't discriminate. And as a part of this episode, I do want to highlight The One Love Foundation and the work that they do, because they educate young people about healthy versus unhealthy relationships. And they're an organization that I have supported for a long time, because I just think the work they do is so important based around seeing those red flags and educating. And so I'll get to their specific work a little bit later. But first, I want to jump into my own relationships. And you know, looking back on them seeing what was healthy, what was unhealthy. And my hope for this episode is that you're able to get some really concrete tips as to what are signs of healthy relationships, unhealthy relationships, how we can be critical of the relationships we're in, and especially if you know someone who might be struggling in their relationship or need a different perspective, I do hope that this can be helpful in that capacity. So looking back on my past romantic relationships, like where where we've gotten to the point of being girlfriend and boyfriend, like that level of commitment, I don't think that I've really had any that have been, you know, actively unhealthy. I've never felt unsafe, or like particularly uncomfortable or controlled or anything. But if I'm honest, while I don't think any were unhealthy, I can look back and recognize some unhealthy elements that either played a part in us breaking up, or are things that grown up me and more mature me wishes I had recognized a little sooner to either have addressed them head on or to have gotten out of the relationship a little bit sooner. I want to share three examples of things that I consider unhealthy elements looking back, you could call them red flags at the time. And I recognized at the time that they made me feel uncomfortable, and I wasn't good with them. But I put up with them. And this is across various exes, or hypothetical exes. If you ask Ben, according to Ben, each other only has hypothetical exes, we are the first significant others in each other's lives. Anyway, I digress. So there was more than one ex that ended up becoming long distance. And it got to the point with each of them where I was pulling teeth to communicate. Now, for me, explicit clear and over communication is an important element of my relationships. It is something that I feel adds to trust, it adds to comfort, I need to feel like I can talk to my partner about anything and that they want to talk to me. And it's something that is just, it's a staple of what I need in a relationship. And so over time with with a couple of these exes, it was getting to the point where you know, not only did I not feel comfortable just giving a call, like I felt like I had to text to make sure they were available for me to talk with them. Whereas like in all my other relationships and friendships, I would just call my friend. On top of that I was or I should say I felt like I was the one that was doing most of the reaching out. And you know, asking if we could talk asking if we could FaceTime initiating the texts. And if you've been in a long distance relationship, you know that you know, how you reach out or trying to communicate with your person is like one of the main ways that you show that you care like that needs to be a two way street. And it wasn't like they wouldn't talk with me once we were talking or you know, on the phone like we still had decent conversations, but they were rarely initiating it. And long distance makes things harder. I totally appreciate that and get that but it shouldn't have been quite like this. And I knew in my gut that it shouldn't have been like that. And with each of these relationships, I brought up that the lack of initiation and communication was bothering me, I brought up specifically what I felt like I needed to feel more secure in the relationship. And it would change for a little bit, but then it kind of reverted back to feeling like I wasn't wanted and appreciated and wasn't being communicated with each time with each of them, I found myself making excuses for them, you know, I was justifying kind of the neglectful behavior. You know, I felt like shit, I felt like I was unwanted. But I was making excuses because I was working hard for the relationship. And, you know, I just dealt with my my feelings of discomfort with not getting the level of communication that I wanted, even though I was explicitly vocalizing that I needed it. And neither of them broke up with me, so my thought process was that they must still want to be together. And so it was worth me being frustrated and uncomfortable, because they clearly still want to be in it. And I kind of wish that I had thought more about the fact that actions speak louder than words. And if your partner is vocalizing discomfort or frustration with something in the relationship, to not see any change is a bit of a red flag. So because I thought that they still want to be with me, and that, you know, maybe my standards were too high. I just dealt with it for a little while. But it got to the point with both of them, where I couldn't sustain the discomfort anymore, I couldn't sustain the unhappiness, I found myself feeling miserable for many hours on end. And when you get to that point, the relationship is no longer net positive. So I did have to break up with them. And it was frustrating by I realized that I, in hindsight, I shouldn't have justified their inaction in trying to find a solution or compromise. And I shouldn't have made excuses for them not not, you know, working with me to figure out if there was a solution that would make me more comfortable and be within what they needed. And so I just felt kind of one sided. So that was one red flag not getting the communication that I needed. The next example of unhealthy behavior that I saw in an ex was that I definitely let get to me a little bit was when an ex judged me, and borderline shamed me for what brought me joy. And the thing that was tricky about this one was that, you know, overall, this guy was really smart, really considerate. And I think was dealing with a lot of his own anxieties and insecurities as well. And none of the shaming or judging was super explicit, or actively mean in tone or anything. But it was things like, you know, I've always enjoyed food, and I always will choose to put my money towards food experiences, restaurants, like that kind of stuff. And so, you know, making me feel bad for spending money on nice restaurants that I wanted to go experience or not wanting to go on those kinds of dates, because he didn't want to. And even though it was something that I really enjoyed, or, you know, being kind of dismissive and judgy of me for associating a Taylor Swift song with our relationship, and the, I don't want to say disgust, but he clearly like, looked down on that. And I realized, like, personality wise compatibility was not there. And he was not a little joyss kind of guy. And so that was something. But again, what was tricky about that was that it wasn't super explicit all the time. And so it was just little attitudes, or looks, or slight tones that were a little belittling, and judgy. And that just, it was something that kind of nagged at me for a little while, and I couldn't figure out why overall, I sometimes felt a little self conscious around him. And that was why, and I didn't like it. So that's the second example. And the third big red flag for me, though it was through jokes and teasing, was when an ex tried to make my friends feel bad. And let me tell you, that was a hard no, that that quickly led to a breakup. And it was earlier in my dating career dating career earlier in my dating life. And so, you know, it was a shorter relationship. But I had a hard no hard line against making people feel bad. I think that is so shitty when you go out of your way to tease and make people feel bad and especially when they've only been nice to you. So as soon as this ex was being mean to one of my friends and then also one of my siblings, that was a clear black and white No, like that was not okay. And I really believed my gut here because I saw that he kind of behaved that way with his own siblings. So, you know, for me that was a little more clear. And I really didn't tolerate that very long but but when your partner makes fun in a nasty way, like in a mean way, I think that's a major red flag, especially if you have a close relationship with your friends, or you like them, or you don't see any truth in how they're treating them or like what that's rooted in. So those are three examples of red flags or unhealthy behaviors that I look back on and recognize in past relationships, the first being, lack of communication, but also lack of effort in trying to problem solve or to find common ground that makes both people in the relationship happy and feeling safe and secure.... --- ### [Hot Take: All-Women Racing Series](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/hot-take-all-women-racing-series/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest, so sometimes I meet people who don't know anything about racing, and that's totally fine. But they'll they'll say to me, you know, this might be a silly question. But do you race against men and women or just women or just men? And I immediately tell them that it's not a silly question, because most sports are separated into men's sports and women's sports men's leagues, women's leagues. And, you know, this makes sense, there are biological differences between men and women. But racing and motorsports in general can be coed, because success and you know, winning is not based solely on brute strength, right? It's not based on running as fast as possible. It's not based on hitting a ball as hard as possible, where there will be some differences between what men can do and what women can do, generally speaking, and racing, for those who are unfamiliar is much more of an endurance sport, most professional races last at least an hour and a half. And then you have longer endurance races that are at least six hours, but can be 24 hours, NASCAR cup races are three to four hours, the XFINITY races are two to three hours. So yeah, it's not brute strength, it's much more endurance, and it gets really, really hot in the car in a NASCAR stock car, they've measured that it can get up to 150 degrees inside the cockpit in the summer. So it's this endurance event. It's all about heat management, it's about reaction times. It's about peripheral vision, it's about being able to see what's going on and get these micro clues that you can then act on, it's you know that that X factor of making a move or going for a pass or seeing a space that's available that you know, the average person might not find. So there are a lot of different things that go into being a successful racer, it's about hitting your marks perfectly. It's about consistency. And it's about maneuvering a machine and using every tool you have on your body, on your mind on your equipment to maximize that car. And so what's really cool about that is that it means that men and women can compete together at the highest levels. Now as a bit of a sidebar. So there have been discussions about you know, what are the differences between men and women? How does this affect people in the car, and there was one specific area that people are looking into with with heat management and Dr. David Ferguson, who's out of Michigan State University, he researches physiological differences in men and women in competition. And when I was speaking with him a few years ago, apparently, there was a study that looked at kind of internal core body temperatures of men and women, to see if there was a difference in how men and women you know, get hot, stay hot, whatever it might be, because the hotter you get, the more it impacts your physical and mental ability to perform at the highest level. And this study apparently looked at, you know, over looked at men and women over a 15 minute interval, and it found that women's core temperature rose more quickly than men's core temperature. However, you know, Dr. Ferguson looked into this more, you know, there's no race really no professional race, that's only 15 minutes. Additionally, Dr. Ferguson said that these drivers weren't really controlled in terms of how they were dressed, and they weren't professional racers, it was a specific event. So there were a lot of issues with using the study to claim that women were not as good as heat management as men. So Dr. Ferguson looked at data that he collected from racers over actual race distances. And if I'm understanding this correctly, he found that there was really no real difference in terms of the prolonged heat that men and women get it maybe fluctuated a little bit with a woman's menstrual period and her menstrual cycle. But overall, there were no dramatic differences, indicating that men and women can manage their heat, just as well as each other. And it's always good to see that research coming out. So all of this is to say that racing to me is super cool, because you know, it's one of the few sports that can fairly be co Ed from the grassroots level to the professional levels, and it gives women an equal chance of competing against the men. And all of this leads me into the theme of this week's Hot take episode, which is about all women racing series. I'm bringing this up now because on June 15 2023, it was announced that the most prominent all woman racing series, the W series had gone into administration, which essentially means it's no longer existing. I'll get into more of that later. But for so quick background, you know, I have only ever raised against at least a mix of men and women but mostly men. You know, for the longest time there were not enough women in any specific type of racing specialty that they could make a women's series. And in 2018, October of 2018, it was announced that the W series was coming into formation. So I have to assume the W and W series stands for women but I don't know that for a fact. But the W series was an all women, you know, 20 racer, free to enter which that is key series that they had two 30 minute practice sessions, a 30 minute qualifying session, a 30 minute sprint race. They had $1.5 million allocated for prize money every year to be distributed among the racers, each race are making at least $7,500 which I learned, you know, they were the support races for Formula One for a handful of races. They were you know, on track before them, they were able to get that exposure. They raced in 2019 2021 they skipped the pandemic year and then in 2022. The series was very publicly backed and supported by David Coulthard, who was a winning f1 driver. And the famous engineer Adrian Newey and the CEO is Catherine Catherine Bond Muir, who she did not have a racing background, but she, you know, took the helm and led the series and brought in a bunch of funding and you know, people like Caitlyn Jenner became team owners. So there was a lot of notoriety around this series. And if I'm honest, I felt a very certain type of way about it. And so did a lot of people. You know, the the announcement of the W series had very mixed reactions. You know, there were supporters like Jamie Chadwick, who ended up winning the championship for them every three for three seasons. She was in favor of it. Tatiana Calderon, who's run a handful of IndyCar races was supportive of it. And there were people who were quite against it, Pippa Mann came out and was really unhappy and considered a step backwards. Sofia Florsch, who races in European sports cars was adamantly against it. And if I'm honest, I didn't think it was a good idea initially, and I didn't support it, you know, I've always I've always loved the racing is coed. And if we can all race together, I think we should always together. And you know, on an emotional level, I love the fact that when I win a race, I am the best racecar driver on that day, right? I'm not the best female, I'm not the best of the rest, right? Just against the very best in any given series, if you win, you're just the best racer. And there are so few areas in competitive sports, where women and men can be measured equally like that. So on an emotional ego level, I find that super, super cool. And so I've always, I've always wanted to be able to race against the guys, I also really believe you know, and historically, we have proven this in any number of ways. But separate is never equal. And when I was reading about some of the articles that were coming out about the W series back in 2018, you know, there was a lot of discussion about segregation. And that was a word that was used in a lot of write ups, that you know, you can't have separate but equal, so there's that part of it as well. The other thing that that made me kind of against it was that, you know, the established racing series, the established disciplines of motorsports will likely always be the most prestigious. And so if we're going to be the best racers, and if we're going to be able to be in those competitive, you know, established racing series, we need to be able to compete against those racers. So those are some of the big the big things that my gut reaction was against the W series when it first came out. And while I still hold on to some of those sentiments, over time, and after talking with people and reading more, I have had a change of heart about some of the aspects. And I do realize that there are some benefits, like for example, the fact that it was a free full season ride in a series that supported Formula One is incredible. That's that's almost unheard of in racing. And the fact that all of these drivers actively got paid, I think the prize money for the winner of the championship was $500,000 P2 got $250,000. And it trickled down to I believe p 17. Through p 20. Got 7500. So, drivers were making money and again, racing is really pay to play. So the fact that women were getting paid to race was huge. You know, it was great exposure for drivers. You know, Jamie Chadwick is now racing in Indy NXT, which is the IndyCar feeder series. And there are others who are doing sports cars, others who have signed on to Formula One development teams, or academies, so they definitely got exposure. And I cannot take credit for this thought someone else pointed out to me, but it really did something major for optics. And what what this person meant by that was that by having an all women racing series, we're showing that a large number of women are all competing, which essentially normalizes seeing women in racing, and it will make more girls more likely to at least want to explore what racing could be to tune in to watch, right? If she can see it, she can be it. And the fact that it normalizes this huge number of women racing is probably a pretty positive and powerful thing.... --- ### [Hot Take: Formula 1](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/hot-take-formula-1/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to if I'm honest and welcome for the first time to my segment hot take. So in the previous three episodes, I have an overarching theme, I tell personal vulnerable stories and then share some of my takeaways that I hope were beneficial to you. But then for this hot take, I wanted to do something different. Sometimes there are just topics or events or things that I think are interesting that I feel a certain way about. And in those moments, I'm going to have a hot take episode with you. So a hot take is basically my commentary on a situation. It is my opinion, it might be a little emotionally charged, you might agree with me, you might think I'm full of it. And you know what you're right either way, because your hot take on my hot take is totally valid. And I do want to hear what you think about this. So let me know how you feel about this analysis. All righty. Let's jump into the first hot take, which is Formula One. So I love Formula One. I grew up watching Formula One, I started racing in Formula cars, I did road courses, I won Skip Barber Championship, which is kind of an entry level Racing School for Formula cars. You know, we had big dreams that I would be a Formula One driver and that didn't happen, but I'll get into that a little more later. But it's it's a really cool series when for people who are not racing fans racing. There are a lot of different types of motorsport series. There's Formula One, there's IndyCar there's NASCAR, there's world endurance challenge, there's rally car, there's drag racing. So there are a lot of different disciplines. The cars are different. The tracks are different. You know, NASCAR is a full body fender stock car that primarily races on ovals with some some road courses, Formula One IndyCarare Formula cars where the wheels are exposed skinny cars, high downforce, they do a mix of ovals and road courses for IndyCar and IndyCar is a North American Racing Series Formula One is exclusively road courses, and it's all over the world. So those that's kind of a breakdown of some of the kind of higher level motorsports series. And so Formula One is arguably the pinnacle of motorsports. They are the fastest road course racing cars in the world. They are some of the most technologically advanced and pushing the limits and you know, really incredible machines. And actually, a lot of the innovations in Formula One over the last handful of decades, have been used in consumer cars like hyperdrive trains or buttons on the steering wheel or adaptive suspensions. There's a lot of really cool technology that originated in Formula One, which I highly encourage you to research if that stuff is interesting to you. It's also the most expensive series now they have a budget cap for $135 million per team per year. And if you break that budget cap, then you know they're fine slap on the wrist. Red Bull had that last year, you know they do 20 to 23 races, the schedule has been fluctuating a little bit, but it's just it is so intense. There are 10 teams 20 drivers, all the teams are associated with different manufacturers and engine suppliers, some of them share engine suppliers. And it is so cutthroat from the drivers perspective, because there's a strict 20 driver limit, you know, up and coming drivers are waiting to pounce at the opportunity to get a ride in one of these cars. And unlike other sports where drivers can race part time, or you can have a one off deal. That's not the case in Formula One. So it's just so so competitive and the standards are so high. And it's just you know, it is a spectacle. Monaco is one of the most prestigious races and you see a ton of celebrities come out. But if I'm honest, hot take, I feel like Monaco has gotten kind of boring. Now. It's so iconic, but it's so hard to pass the modern nature of these cars and just how advanced they are and how hard it is to pass. It just doesn't thrive on Monaco. So my hot take is that I don't know that it should be on the schedule anymore. And speaking of the schedule, it's a very cool schedule. It used to primarily be raced in Europe, but now they race in the Middle East and Asia. They have three races in the US, Miami, Las Vegas and Austin. So they're just really hitting a lot of different markets. Although another hot take the f1 races in the US are so dang expensive. I mean, they are so much more expensive than the races in Europe. And it just makes it really inaccessible to a lot of fans. So I do hope that changes because it's just absurd. And I have been to a few races. I actually in 2007 when I was racing Formula BMW USA. So that was my second year racing cars, we were the support series for Formula One when they raced at Montreal and when they raced at the Indy road course again back in 2007. And it was so cool. I was part of the Formula BMW education and coaching program and that meant that we got coaching, we got media training, we got physical training and It also meant that we got to do track walks with some of the some of the officials to learn the track quicker. And when we were in Montreal, we were walking the track and Lewis Hamilton was also walking the track with his engineers. And we didn't say hi, like up close, but we waved and it was just really cool. That same year, Sebastian Vettel was racing for BMW Sauber at the time. But so he and Nick Heidfeld came and spoke with us. Super cool. So it was really incredible, for this 15 year old racecar driver to kind of see those superstars who are bigger than the sport doing their thing, just like we were, we were doing our track walk. So that was really cool. Back to more modern day Formula One, you know, over the last eight or so years, Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton have totally dominated. And then you know, more recently, the past two years Red Bull and Max Verstappen, and Sergio Perez, they've been really dominant, the car has been really fast. There are technical specifications that teams have to meet, but every team is responsible for developing their own car and for developing the changes to the car. And so there are some that really just kind of get all the components together perfectly. And there are others that struggle a little bit. And actually, there are some teams that purchase their equipment from other teams. So in that moment, you just gotta hope that the team you're buying from is on it this year. Like most forms of motorsports, or, you know, any kind of league in general, there are the really dominant teams kind of mid pack teams and the lower level teams. There was one American team with Haas Formula One, and I'll go through all of the teams in the drivers in a second but back to overall, you know, what's what's going on with Formula One, like most forms of motorsports, it is open to men and women. But unfortunately, also like most top level motorsports, there hasn't been a woman racing in it consistently. And you know, NASCAR had Danica Patrick at the top level IndyCar has had a few women like Pippa Mann and Katherine legge and ana beatriz Sarah Fisher Simona de Silvestro Milka Duno Danica Patrick back in the day, and drag racing has had quite a few women as well with the Force sisters and some others, although I'm less familiar with drag racing, but Formula One has not had a woman compete in a Grand Prix race since Lella Lombardi in 1976. Now, for some quick history on the leadership of Formula One, in 1978, Bernie Ecclestone who would go on to become the owner and CEO of Formula One, he, in 1978. He was a team owner, but then he was starting to transition to having more of a say, and an active role in developing the series as a whole. And he was responsible for major TV sell, selling TV rights, brought in a lot of money to the sport. He started in 1978. I think he went through, I want to say 2016, when he sold it to Liberty Media, and I think 2017 was when he was officially done. But he had this long reign over Formula One. And Bernie's well known for a number of things, you know, obviously did a lot for the sport, all that. But he's also famous for a quote that he had from 2005. And he was talking about Danica Patrick, as she was racing in IndyCar. And he said, and I quote, you know, I've got one of those wonderful ideas. Women should be dressed in white, like all the other domestic appliances, no shit, there hasn't been a woman competing in Formula One under his leadership, because he doesn't think we're full people. Since 1992, there has been one female official reserve driver, and that was Susie Wolff. She was a reserve development test driver from 2012 to 2015. She'd already married Toto Wolff by that point, and she got on track to test a few times. But you know, she never got to run a race. And she retired from that effort. 2015 And now she's the Managing Director of f1 Academy, which is Formula One's most recent attempt at an all women's series, which I do have mixed feelings about. But that'll be another episode. So for women, it's just, it's been rough. So anyway, back to the Series overview, you know, like most forms of motorsports it is pay to play I mean, that in the sense of for the development series, you know, you don't just jump into Formula One, right? You start in go karts, most likely and then you move into other single seater Formula cars, and then, you know, maybe it's F4, F3, f2, and then eventually to f1. And all of those series costs money and that's that's pretty standard in most motorsports, right. The Development Series, the the minor league series, you know, it's you got to bring the funding. So that's the case with Formula One, and then you get signed to teams Formula One drivers have some of the highest salaries for racecar drivers, Max Verstappen is reported to be making $55 million this year and it trickles all the way down to like half a million a million for the for the lower lower teams.... --- ### [How to Handle Pressure Like a Pro](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/how-to-handle-pressure-like-a-pro/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest. I'm pretty sure that each of us has felt some type of pressure at some point in our lives, maybe it's applying to college or finding a job. Maybe it's sitting pole position before the last race of the season when you have the championship on the line, who knows. But regardless of the severity, we all experience pressure. And if I'm honest, I feel pressure and nerves before every race, you know, if I don't feel nervous, if I don't have those moments of fear, and nausea, then I know that I'm not there mentally just yet. And as I mentioned, like I get, I get these really intense knots in my stomach sometimes, and I can feel my heart rate getting higher, and it's something that I have had to learn how to deal with. And I do also feel some pressure before giving keynotes, you know, I really want the audience to find it beneficial, I want them to have a good time, I want the client overall to be happy. But those are more like butterflies, I would want to say, you know, they're they're a little nervous, still have to manage it. But it's not the same level of nausea that some races bring me. And I say all this to kind of give a hard launch into the theme for this episode, which is staying focused under pressure. And feeling like we're under pressure can sometimes feel annoying. I don't know if anyone else has felt this sensation, but there are times where I have felt pressure or nervous, and I almost feel a little guilty about it. Or I feel a little inadequate about the fact that I'm feeling pressure. And I don't know why that is I'll be honest, maybe something I need to think about. But but if you feel that sense of like nagging or annoyance with the pressure, just remember that we feel pressure because we care about what we're doing. And caring is a good thing. And I care so deeply about racing. And in 2015 I started racing in NASCAR stock cars, so I had gone from Legends cars, which are like, they look like 1930s models cars at like half scale, and on ovals and road courses, you're see you sit in the middle of the car. I went from that to racing the limited late models. This was with Lee Pulliam at motor mile Speedway, and I won the first two races of the season. It was incredible. I was always finishing up front. And going into the last race of the season, I was leading only by a few points, but I could taste the victory, I could taste the championship. And I wanted it so so badly. And I was nervous. And I felt the pressure not only for me to perform, and because I wanted to win, but because my parents had been so invested in my career. And it was my first full season out of college. And so I felt like I was setting myself up for future success. So there was just a lot of pressure from a lot of different angles imposed by myself imposed by others. And I felt it. And so because of that I want to share two journal entries with you from 2015, which is when I won my limited late model Championship. The first journal entry is from August 24 2015, quote, my heart rate goes up every time I think about the last race of the season. End quote, that's the entry. So I had a long wait between that the second the last race and the last race of the season. So now I'm going to read you my journal entry from September 6 2015, which was just a few days before the last race, all caps, I need to win this championship exclamation point. I have visualized starting sixth preparing for a crash in front of me avoiding it preparing to just go, visualizing passes, side by side racing, dealing with brakes getting squishy on the restarts everything. On the one hand, I get super nervous with knots in my stomach just thinking about it. There's so much I can do with the championship. It is such a great credential. And I'm only leading by two points, anything can happen. And of course, I think about what can go wrong. On the other hand, I just have to finish ahead of the 13, who I've always been in front of and who hasn't crossed the line better than fifth. And I can finish as many as six places behind the 18. So theoretically, if I stay clean and smart, like the last few races from top three, and I don't take risks, I should get it. But again, there's so much out of my control, I have to start sixth and people can crash in front of me. Although I will go easy into turn one so I shouldn't hit hard. I have to be very conscious that the championship is my goal, which means staying clean and finishing ahead of the 13th It's not about winning this race. I've got this. I kid you not I have goosebumps reading that journal entry takes me right back to the room that I was writing it in. It was hot. You know, North Carolina in early September. I was single handedly focused on this championship. I was preparing I was watching videos I was thinking about all the scenarios to prepare for. I'm really proud of myself. It was a very mature approach to dealing with the pressure and for me, I needed to rationalize things I needed to consider all these options and do all that And when we're feeling pressure like that, or whatever you might be feeling pressure about, or if we're feeling stress, you know, our body releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol, which is a stress reaction, it's a way to help our bodies and our minds work while we are stressed. Because stress can be, you know, something really dangerous, it can be something that's high pressure. And I think that stress can be both good and bad, you know, small amounts or short amounts of stress can actually help us stay alert and stay focused and stay motivated. You know, again, going back to this idea that being being under pressure, and being stressed means that we care. But a lot of stress or feeling stressed all the time, chronic stress can can be bad, and you know, it increases our heart rate and our blood pressure, it can suppress our immune system, it cannot upset our stomachs. There are a lot of different things that that stress can do to the body which are negative. But because pressure is a part of life, I want to share some of the specific tips that I've developed and fine tuned for myself and worked with over the last decade or two that I use to optimize my performance under pressure. The first tip that I have for managing being under pressure is a mantra that my mom said to me when I was 16 and had just started racing on ovals and Ford Focus midgets with Bob East, we were in Indiana, I was struggling to put the lap together. And she said just hit your marks. Just focus on the right entry point, the right Apex the right exit hitting the gas when you need to hitting the brakes when you need to hit your marks. And I like to think of that as really, really focusing in on the present and not future tripping because sometimes that can distract us and cause us to miss step. I learned this very early on in my first year of racing go karts at Oakland Valley race Park, which is where Marco Andretti also raced go karts before me, I was a few races into my first season. And I know I finished seventh my first race, I don't remember where I finished my next few races. But in my fourth or fifth race, I was leading the race I had qualified first I was leading the race. And I had a pretty sizable lead with just a few laps to go. And I was really good at hitting those perfect marks. And I was doing all this, this was obviously before I had that mantra, but a few laps from the end, I think we had maybe like four or five laps till the end. And I started thinking about winning, I started thinking about how happy I would be how celebratory I would be, you know, I started thinking about how proud my parents would be and all this stuff. And the next thing I knew I was spinning out in the second to last corner, a few laps from the end and I was in the grass and I had to get back on track. And I ended up at the back of the pack. It was so embarrassing. I was distraught, I was so disappointed in myself. And you know, I couldn't tell you what happened. I was clearly like in my own world preemptively celebrating my dominant performance. And I lost it, I lost that focus. And I just didn't make it. And trust me, when you have something like that happen, you will never let that happen again. So focus on the present, don't future trip and focus on hitting your marks because hitting your marks will also take a big, maybe overwhelming task and break it down into more bite sized pieces. The second thing that I do to manage pressure when I'm feeling it is to visualize. There are a number of studies that have looked at visualization and the effect that it has on high performance athletes. There's a study from Kearns and Crossman from 1992, where they looked at a handful of Canadian basketball players in practice and games over a 14 week period. And they found that those players who had cognitive intervention, quote unquote, which included visualization, improve their free throw shots in both practice and, and in the games. To me, this makes a lot of sense, because in anything that's hand eye coordination, or anything where you have to physically have these, these performances, if you're able to visualize and be precise in your points, you know, that it makes sense that that would help in your real time performance. And a quick tangent here, but I was taught early on I think back in my Skip Barber days to visualize and to use that as a form of practice and preparation. And I've spoken with certain racers who can visualize their lap on track, particularly on road courses, but they can visualize a lap on a road course track to within tenths of a second of what their physical actual time is when they're driving, which I think is so impressive. But back to how visualization can help with you know, staying composed under pressure. It kind of serves as an extra form of practice.... --- ### [I’m an Expert at Dealing with Rejection](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/i-m-an-expert-at-dealing-with-rejection/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and I'm so happy to have you for another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. Before I had a speaking agent, I had a reminder set on my phone for every Tuesday at 10am, to send out pitches for speaking engagements. And this meant that I researched, you know, organizations, companies, associations, groups that were putting on conferences, women's leadership, conferences, athlete conferences, all this stuff, I did a lot of research, I had my template that I would personalize showing some of what I've done before. And of the 10 or 20, that I would send out every week, I my return rate was actually okay, I would hear back from like, two to four normally, and of those, you know, either none or one of them were interested. And, you know, every so often one of the interested ones actually materialized. But this method of sales, if you will, resulted in a lot of ignored emails and responses that were thanks, no thanks. And therefore just a lot of rejections. And it's something that I've become quite good at receiving, if I'm totally honest, if you do anything in sales, or if you are racer pitching sponsorship, or whatever it might be, you will appreciate this. And I've also recently gone through all of my journals and notebooks, you know, dating back to, I want to say 2012, like somewhere back in, in college. And they're full of to do lists and notes about meetings that I was going to have, and people I was going to be connected to and all this stuff. And it just reminded me of the hundreds, if not 1000s, probably close to 1000s of ideas that I've had and tried and figured out how to try to get off the ground. And many of them never off the ground, they you know, I would have this idea, I would think about it, I would try to find a connection, I would cold email, they would never work. The earliest example of this was back in high school, actually, Betsey Johnson was a really popular, like women's clothing brand. And she had these really fun colorful dresses. And I know that people in middle school and high school were would wear them to formals or different parties. And so I thought, Oh, my goodness, I love Betsey Johnson, and she's a New York brand. I'm a New York girl, she would be the perfect sponsor for my formula BMW USA racing series. Obviously, I look back in hindsight and recognize that this was definitely not the case. But you have to learn somehow. So I kid you not my parents supported me through this process. I think they wanted me to learn, but I, you know, typed up a cover letter with a pitch in it. I included my media materials at the time, which are so cringy I'm not gonna lie, but you know, got to start somewhere. And I literally walked this, you know, legal envelope with my printed out letters. My dad and I walked down to their headquarters somewhere, I want to say Midtown ish. But we were in New York. And so I went up to the receptionist on the main floor of their offices. And I clearly remember I went up to him and I said, Hi, I have a sponsorship proposal for Betsey Johnson, can you please see that she gets this? And he looked at me. He was like, Sure, thanks. And that was that and I left that building feeling so confident. I was so excited because I was about to get my first sponsorship, and it was going to be from Betsey Johnson, it was gonna be amazing. Needless to say, I never heard anything from Betsey Johnson and I didn't have any way to follow up without just leaving phone messages, which those went unanswered. Other ideas I've had that got a little further in the process, you know, like made it to conversation level. There were things like raising sponsorship or content creation or speaking engagements, but so many of them and we're talking so many pages worth of big notebooks full of ideas, you know, kind of initial conversations and then not having them go anywhere. And then some some of these these pitches really did work out like I had pitched Turo as a partnership and so we did a collaboration around International Women's Day and Women's History Month and they had a ladyboss campaign so that was really cool as a little victory that I got to you know, work with them and put together this campaign and be involved with them. Or you know, when I got my first paid speaking engagement that was really, really satisfying. And those are a couple examples of you know, little victories in the sales actually going well but moral of the story is that you know, many many didn't work out some did work out and I just got so used to and okay with receiving no as the answer. And don't get me wrong, I vented to my family, friends or my siblings, you know, I would write in my journal how I was feeling or if I got my hopes up for something or if I felt like something really had potential I would dramatically write about it in my journal. But I also very quickly would pick myself up and went on to the next one, because the end goal was really what was the driving force. You know, I wanted to be a racecar driver really badly, I wanted to be a motivational speaker, I wanted to be able to tell these stories, I've learned that so much of what I've loved doing is storytelling. And so I was motivated to pick it up and move to the next one, because the only way that I was going to make something work out, was going to be to act right. And to make those moves, I had control over my actions. And this leads me to one of my favorite quotes, which is from Winston Churchill. And he says, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. I'm gonna say this again, success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. Isn't this a great reframe? Once I came across this quote, and I'm a quote, girl, I have a bunch of quotes in my keynotes, I have quotes that I can just regularly tell friends, because I think these short peppy mantras can be really helpful in us recentering and us moving forward. So I kind of thought about this a lot. And I now try to look at each failure, or each non success, or each dead end, as an attitude reset, you know, that's part of what goes into it, we put all of our energy or a lot of our energy into one project, we're trying something and then when it doesn't work, it's an opportunity to have a blank slate, go to a reset. And I obviously analyze if there were things that I could have done better, and you know, things I could have done differently. And I remind myself, what I did well, and what I'm proud of. But this, this ability to move on is really important. And there was a time a few years ago where I had finally finally, after two and a half active years of searching about how to get to the right person at this company, that was kind of a sponsor that I was really hoping to have, I finally got to them, and we pitched them. And it was really exciting because the marketing people really bought into it, they loved the messaging, they thought it was really exciting. But then it just turned out that it didn't fit within their established marketing campaigns already, and it was a little too far out to think about next campaigns. And so it was nothing I did wrong. But it was a total blow. I'll be honest, when when I learned that they were not going to be moving forward with it, I literally cried. It was it was just a lot. It was also during the pandemic while I was living in Europe and homesick. But anyway, I digress. This, this experience was kind of a real test of if I was able to do what I preached doing, which is to have that reset. And the only way that I was going to get more racing in is if I was going to be able to convey that same enthusiasm that I had for that company, to the other companies that I thought could be good fits. So back to Churchill's quote, I realized that, regardless of if we are on our 100th pitch, or sale, or regardless, if we're feeling really rundown and defeated, if we aren't enthusiastic about what we're doing, and if we don't convey that enthusiasm, no one else is going to be enthusiastic about it either. And if we're trying to do anything in life, whether that's building a company, getting funding, going on a date, building a friend group, building a club working on a project, if we're doing anything that requires support, or partnership, or people getting involved, we need those other players to be enthusiastic. And so if someone were to come to you saying, Hey, I have this idea for a company, but four different people have said no, and it hasn't worked out. And I think it's a great idea, but you know, hasn't happened yet. That's not convincing at all right? If someone comes to you and say, Hey, I have this idea, these are all the reasons it's gonna work out. I'm super excited by it. I've talked to some other people about it want to get your take on it like that, that an enthusiasm? Oh, that was a terrible pronunciation. Oh, my goodness, I just sound like Ben and you know, he's English second language. So he has those weird accents at some points. It's very amusing anyway, that enthusiasm is infectious. And that enthusiasm is going to carry us both professionally and personally. Whether that's in a job interview, if you're looking for investors, if you're looking for business partners, if you're going on dates, you know, if you feel like you've been rejected from a bunch of dates, then you know, you got to make sure not to carry that energy because you want people to be excited by you. If I'm honest, before I met Ben, I had like a month and a half or two month period where I hadn't been dating in a little while and I just kind of was like ready, I was ready to go. And I went on so many first dates. It was like 10 first dates in that fairly short time period since I was traveling so much, and I got straight up ghosted by a few of them I got straight up rejected by a few of them, the other ones I didn't like, but it's just part of it.... --- ### [Navigating Identity Shifts](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/navigating-identity-shifts-personal-update/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. On my last episode, Hannah Newhouse and I spoke about identity shifts, and especially having to adjust kind of how you view yourself and how you live your life when you make a career shift. And I've been wanting to talk about this with you guys for a little bit now. But I've been trying to figure out the right way and tone and stories and all of that, because over the last few years, and more than once, I've felt like I'm nearing the end of an era and need to look to the next thing. So I'm right in the thick of this, I'm sure many of you are or have been or will be. Because we all go through big shifts, maybe you've spent 10 to 20 years in a career and are fed up and burnt out and quit in order to pivot. Maybe you're getting divorced, maybe you're switching political affiliations, maybe you've discovered that you're not straight, maybe you've had your first kid and you're becoming a parent. And these things are really, really big shifts. And I feel like we don't talk about the magnitude of these major, yet quite normal and regular shifts, I don't feel like we talk about it enough. And what I've found is that there's a lot of complexity in the emotions that we feel when we're going through these shifts, which is a lot to handle on our own. And obviously, we have friends and family and therapists and journals that we can write in. But I wanted to take some time to not only share my experiences and get really personal in terms of what I've been going through and and what I've been feeling. But I also want to share some advice that I hope is helpful if if you're navigating a similar thing. Everything that I have done for most of my life has been to be able to go racing cars. And this means like, in middle school, I would miss friend's birthday parties because the race on the championship weekend was happening and I needed to be there and I needed to fight for my title. Or thinking about when going to high school, which high schools would allow me to miss enough school to be able to compete regularly, right, you know, having to take finals on the road with my mom proctoring even decisions like how I spent my weekends how much I hung out with friends, how I spend my after school hours was working out what I ate, maintaining a really healthy, balanced diet, you know, looking into all this stuff working out like so much of what I did. And then I continued on when I went to school, so much revolved around how I would go racing. And luckily, it was working for a really long time. Right. I graduated from Stanford, and then I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, I raced in a weekly NASCAR series and won that championship. And then I was like, okay, level up, I moved up to the k&n West series, now arca West, and and finished 4th in the championship, the second second highest on my team, which was great and kept climbing that right that ladder. But then in 2018, things started to slow down a little bit. It coincided with when my parents said that they were no longer going to contribute to my racing. So that's a very real thing that US racers deal with. And, you know, I was able to fund quite a bit of racing, I was able to fund some some of the Canadian NASCAR series. And but what that meant, because I wasn't racing full time was that I really had to lean in to some of the other aspects of my life that I was able to pursue from a professional standpoint. And I largely got these because of the hook of racing, right? I continued building my speaking career which continues to go well, which is great, but put some time into that and was doing a lot more content creation with content partnerships, like with shell with turo with now this, I mean, just really cool stuff. And saw that, you know, there was there was stuff outside of racing that I could do also, by I obviously still had the goal of making it to the cup series and becoming a professional racecar driver. And my definition of professional racecar driver. And what I looked as you know, looked at as successful was being paid to race. And so I was constantly going after that goal. And then at some point, I realized that EuroNASCAR was an opportunity. And I got connected with my team and they were really good team. And I was so excited because we announced I remember January 7 2020, we announced that I was going racing in the NASCAR Euro series. And I was so excited because I was going to be introduced to a whole new demographic of fans, I was going to be able to spend seven weekends with each had to races and so there's gonna be a lot of seat time I was going to be able to really build on the stuff I was learning. And then obviously the pandemic hit and I don't want to sound like I'm whining about this, because obviously a lot of people had it way worse in the pandemic but it really truncated the racing series. So it meant that we had four race weekends for race tracks, none of the fans were there, it didn't get to go to all the tracks didn't get all the testing time ahead of time. And so it just ended up, I had such high hopes for what that season could do for my career. And I look back and you know, it probably wouldn't have had the big effects that I had hoped it would. But I look back, I'm like, Ah, well could have been. And so I was, I had to lean on my parents a little bit, because during the pandemic, a lot of my revenue sources stopped. And so they did have to help me a little bit with that season. But for the most part, I was able to pay for a lot of it through again, speaking, content, partnerships, other things that I was doing. And so, you know, I was thinking about, okay, how do we get this going for, for 2021. And then we found out in March of 2021, that that my team was not going to be participating in the Euro series. And it was too late to have a seat on a decent, you know, on a really, really good team. And I didn't want to make myself broke, for lack of a better phrase, or have to potentially lean on my parents for more just it wasn't fair. And so I ended up not doing a ton of racing and 2021 and had a slow season, because kind of the funding that I had allocated, I was really confident if it was going to work towards a really good team that it would be worthwhile. And I just couldn't guarantee that. So in this 2021 year, I was really encouraged to look to the next chapter, right? My parents were leaning pretty heavily into it. My family in general was like, you know, time to look at the next thing. And they had seen all the work I've done, they knew how much I put into it. But that's just what they were, they were trying to have me do. And I wasn't emotionally ready to do that I was not emotionally ready, my ego was not ready, I did not want to turn my back on racing. And I still held out hope that something miraculous could happen. And I would be able to somehow break through and make it to the highest levels. So even though I wasn't ready, like rationally, I understood that it was good to look towards the next chapter. I mean, I think I was 29 years old at the time, and I, you know, I was aware of life events that may or may not eventually happen, and whether that's just trying to be more financially stable, or sort of family, or at the time I had wasn't married, and so get married. And my rational brain was telling me all right, yeah, you should just kind of focus on the next chapter, you're not going to make it. But that emotional side just really couldn't, couldn't get on board. So if I'm honest, I did decide to look to what's next. Because I my rational brain overcame my emotional one. It was a really deep and painful grieving period that I went through, when I decided all right, I was going to shift my focus. And I can only describe it as grieving. I mean, it was like, it was like a part of me was dying is basically what it felt like, and it felt like kind of a bit of an identity crisis. Because this this main pillar of who I was, and how I identified racing, wasn't really serving me anymore, wasn't there anymore. And I realized I didn't really know kind of how I would redefine myself after having my whole life of having the singular definition. And then like, extra things on the side. So that was really surprisingly difficult. And again, I mentioned ego, my ego was really invested, because I thought that I could be a really big superstar, I was committed to that I had envisioned and future-tripped my life like that, and it wasn't happening. So there was that element of it. But then there was also kind of the slight fear of what is going to provide the same satisfaction and pride and excitement and you know, kind of intoxicated feeling, because there's there's just nothing like racing. For me, there is nothing that brings the adrenaline that brings the focus that brings the hardships, and then incredible highs and incredible lows, and you get used to that kind of lifestyle. And, you know, speakings got a lot of adrenaline, but it's not quite the same intensity. And so I kind of got really nervous about what that meant. And so there was this whole collection of feelings and sadness, to kind of be turning the chapter. So I go through all of this, I didn't really publicize this, but I did actually get hired for a full time remote job, kind of at the end of 2021. And I worked with that for a few months until it kind of went under and then I stopped doing that. And so I kind of been excited because that full time job was still in the industry. So I kept my toes in racing, it seemed like a nice transition. And then I, when that fell through, I was like, Well, is this the universe telling me that I shouldn't shift my focus that I shouldn't focus on what's next? And I didn't really feel like anything had changed to make the landscape and racing more likely to be successful for me.... --- ### [Pamela Anderson and the Judgements I’ve Made](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/pamela-anderson-and-making-judgements/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello everyone, and welcome to if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. We made it to episode two y'all how exciting. I will say, you know, I definitely picked up saying y'all by living in the South for now nine years or something. And it doesn't necessarily feel natural yet. I also notice that when I speak, I went from really strongly pronouncing my like, ing is like going, there was a hard G on there, I noticed that that kind of has gone away. And I also noticed that I say I instead of having a sharp eye, it's like, I don't know if that makes sense. But anyway, those are my thoughts this morning. So I watched the Pamela Anderson documentary, Pamela a love story on Netflix. And I felt compelled to talk about it not only briefly about the documentary, but then also, you know, how aggressively I felt like, Oh, my goodness, I am the culprit of making so many judgments about people. And it was really jarring for me to have this self realization. So heads up, there will be some spoilers if you haven't watched it, and you're planning to watch it, you might want to pause this episode for now. But if not, you know her story is public. But I will kind of go into some of the parts about the documentary. So if you're still waiting to watch, I would I would pause. But overall, it was such a fantastic documentary. You know, I put it on before Ben got home. And he and I are really compatible on a lot of levels. But what we watch is not really the most compatible, we've learned. And, you know, I expected to kind of just like, turn it off when he got there have our evening and pick it up later. But he sat down too and was, you know, interested? I'm sure there were other reasons he was interested. But you know, he he really enjoyed the storytelling and the backstory to her, because we all kind of know her, and especially him being from France just knew her as the American bombshell. So I was glad we got to experience this together. So for some quick backstory on the documentary, so you know, it was fantastic. It was really well done. I think it was produced by her grown sons and her and some other people maybe. But Pamela Anderson is known for Playboy and Baywatch. And she had a sex tape that was leaked. And there were other stories and shows about her, you know, there's a lot of mentions of her in the press. And she says at the beginning that she was never asked nor given compensation for all this coverage. And so my understanding is that her and her sons decided to take the narrative into their own hands, which I think is great. And, you know, for me, and I'll get into this more, the biggest takeaway that I had is just how much more interesting and smart and well rounded she is as a person, and then in turn, how much I judge others. And, you know, not just judging her, but I realized that, you know, I've probably judged quite a bit of people in my life. I know it's human nature to make judgments, right. And we all make split second decisions, it can be used as a defense mechanism. But I have no doubt that I have missed out on getting to know some really cool people because of biases and judgments that I have. And again, I know it's human nature. But there was something about watching this that just made me really I don't want to go so far as to say ashamed, but disappointed in myself. And that's what I want to jump into. In sharing her background Pamela shares that she knows she was abused as a kid by her babysitter. Her dad was the stereotypical bad boy, her parents had a really toxic and kind of volatile relationship. They left you know, her dad a bunch. You know, she was raped when she was a preteen by someone who was twice her age, and she had a lot of shame around her body. And so for her when she was approached by Playboy, for her it was really liberating. It was a way to reframe all the negativity she felt around her body and sexuality and kind of gave her autonomy over her body again. And she says that, you know, she felt liberated with those first photoshoots, because she went from shy and uncertain to really reclaiming the power. That was her sexuality. And I know that this is something that's discussed a lot in current culture, and I found it, you know, I didn't even think when I, you know, casually think about Pamela Anderson, I never would have thought of that is as empowering. And I think that says more about me than anything else. So that was kind of the first thing is like, oh my goodness, this is such a great reframe and so empowering. And, you know, I was also just taken by how smart and funny and incredibly self aware she is. And I love that she had someone or they had someone reading through her journals because she like I journaled a lot throughout her life and she wasn't comfortable reading them, but we get to hear her thoughts read by someone else. And I really loved that I thought it really added to the personal nature of this of this documentary. And yeah, and so as I'm watching through it, I realized like she and I had so much more in common than I ever would have imagined. You know, you know, she had big goals for herself. she had professional aspirations, she had a lifestyle that she wanted to live, she wanted to have a family. And you know, we've, as I said, we've both journaled for so long. But I did exactly what I said not to do in my last episode, which is that I made a ton of assumptions and judgments and, you know, assumed she was just a sex symbol and all of that. And, you know, kind of when we were done watching, I just thought to myself, who was I to label her in my own mind as less than, and again, it's something that I'm really not proud of, but really happy that I've been able to take the time to kind of be self reflective and try to improve moving forward. So obviously, I was really impressed by Pamela Anderson. And if I'm honest, I really had to dig deep afterwards and address with myself, the fact that I, in addition to judging people, I also probably haven't been giving everyone the benefit of the doubt. And I think I'm being particularly hard on myself right now. Because I think, you know, the way that we really improve is by being honest, by being self critical, I have no problem being hard on myself, and then adjusting and finding a way to move forward and forgiving myself, I think that's really important. We can get into that in another episode, too. But I realized that I sometimes assume the worst, and it seems to be more in kind of professional settings, less with personal relationships. But all of this made me really think about how we all have such different lived experiences that shape us, right. And a lot of times, we're not privy to the backgrounds of other people. But if you think about it, from the time that we're, you know, born and conscious to right now, we have so many different impressions that have made a made a lasting impact on us, you know, what types of parents we had, you know, any type of traumas that we experienced, or victories we experienced, you know, who our friends were growing up, if we had toxic relationships, if we got unsolicited feedback that was maybe more hurtful than helpful. I mean, there's just so much stuff that leaves an impression on us. And I really think that this is important to think about, and to have grace with people, especially when interacting, especially if, if you don't like what someone's doing, or any of that. And I had my big awakening to the idea that we never know what someone's going through a few years ago, when I lost a loved one. And this was before this documentary, all that but, you know, I'll never forget that Ben and I had gotten back from a run, it was during the pandemic, you know, it was really hot, I was sweaty, we were smelly. And my brother called and, you know, I excitedly picked up I talked to my siblings a lot, we're really good friends. And I'm, you know, upbeat and positive and expecting to just catch up. And, you know, he just said that a loved one had died. And I hadn't, you know, in my conscious life experienced the death of a loved one before. And, you know, I was stunned, I fell to the floor, it was very much like what you see in the movies, but I just, I had never experienced it for myself. And in the days after that, you know, I was totally grief stricken, right, you know, I didn't feel like I could do my normal activities. I was, I was processing everything. I was letting myself feel my emotions, you know, I wasn't working very much because keynotes had stopped and racing had stopped. And, you know, it was just I did not know how life could keep going on. And even right afterwards, you know, Ben and I had made plans earlier in the day to go to a bakery. And so we we walked over there. And I just remember getting angry with the people I saw on the street who were happy, because like, I was in such shock and grief, and it just seems so unfair, that everyone else around me gets to be happy. Right? And it took days before I could tell my friends about the loss. And you know, I think because I didn't have any obligations, it was almost kind of lucky, I could just be in my grief and feel it and, you know, start to move on from it. But I can't even imagine what it was like for my siblings and my parents and, you know, have to go about your day. And you might tell tell some people but not other people. And you know, long story short that dealing with such a catastrophic upset and having to go on in the world that really made me appreciate that we never know what someone is dealing with. And I would hope that people would have the grace for me in that time. And so I made the decision then and there, that because we never know what someone's going through, someone could be dealing with something major like that or even something minor, and that I made the decision that I want to choose to Lean on the side of having grace for people.... --- ### [Season 1 Finale](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/season-1-finale/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the season one finale of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Oh my goodness, how are we at 28 episodes, I look back, and I think, oh my goodness, that's a lot of content. But then I'm also like, May was a very long time ago and feels like a very long time ago. And that's when the podcast launched. So a lot has gone on. I'll get into more of a debrief of season one in a bit. But I want to share a quick note first that I will be sharing some pretty major news at the end of this episode. So I hope you'll hang on to the whole episode to be able to hear that pretty major life changing news I'm gonna share. And yes, I am teasing you. I'm doing what content creators are supposed to do, right? Create the drama, get people to stay on. So I do hope you'll hang out for that major news at the end. All right, getting into today's season finale episode, I want to give a hearty thank you to all of you for listening and for reviewing the podcast and for raiding it and subscribing. It's been so so cool, to to share this journey with you. And yeah, I'll get into a recap of the season in a little bit. But first, a recap of my week. So my birthday was on Sunday, and I am now a 32 year old woman. And let me tell you 32 starting to feel more real adulty and I was fine with 30 I was fine with 31. I was like still a sprightly young chicken. But 32 is definitely feeling more convincingly adult and I'm sure that I will continue to feel this way. Maybe I'll make it to like my 70s 80s or 90s. If I'm lucky and think Ah, now I am feeling like an adult. But yeah, 3232. So Ben surprised me with a weekend away, we went to Blowing Rock North Carolina, which about two hours outside of Charlotte. And neither of us had been there before. And it was really cute. We were actually staying in this cabin with a wood burning fireplace. And it was right in downtown historic blowing rocks. So we were able to walk to breakfast and do a little shopping and perusing and going to a bar and walk to dinner. So that was really, really cool. We went on a nice two hour hike or so on Saturday. And then you know, just kind of had chill morning on Sunday on my actual birthday and drove down. So that was really chill and fun and lovely. And I did not want a party this year. The past few years, I've been having a party with friends in Charlotte. And we've just been really busy since the end of the summer with work with travel with projects and just stuff going on. And so by the time we got to my birthday time knowing that the holidays are coming up, I just feel tired. And my friend down here said that she's explained it that sometimes she just feels like her social battery has run out. And that's kind of how I'm feeling at this moment. So no party just quality bonding time with BAE. And yeah, that was really great. And then on Monday, I went to Nashville for what I believe will be my final speaking engagement of the year. And this one was not a full 45 minute keynote with, you know, just me talking for 45 minutes. This was more of a focused and curated fireside chat for about an hour. And we touched on a lot of things from fear with racing and some of the training I do how to utilize technology. It was really fun, really interactive, I got to hang out with the group for a few different events throughout the two days. And that was really, really great. And yeah, that was my week. On to the season recap. If you don't know, the main reason I started this podcast was because I was looking for a way to create content that could complement my keynotes. I've said it in a few different episodes. Sorry if it's repetitive, but for those of you who didn't know that that was the goal. So they were more serious and feel they're more educational and feel. I tried to make them very honest and open and really vulnerable, which I think I did quite well. But I do feel looking back that they were something that you had to be ready to jump into a little more heavy content a little more big life themes, introspective, they kind of felt like therapy sessions for me. So that can always be kind of heavy. So after doing that format for a little while, I wanted to break up the heavy cadence of the podcast and I wanted to also speak with other people because while I'm quite good at talking for a long time on end and hopefully keeping you guys engaged, I also wanted to have like slightly more dynamic discussions and so then I welcomed the guest segment and was able to reach out to people that I have built relationships with and I thought they were all really cool, very different areas of expertise. We had Ashley Louise with finance we had ryan blaney who who's now the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series Champion. We had Jamie Schmidt, the founder of Schmidt's naturals, we had Bozema St. John, my trainer, Trey. You know, we just, we had this collection of people who were bringing unique backgrounds and stories to have conversations with me. And I really enjoyed that element. So that was really cool when we got into that alternating guest episode solo episode. And then as we got further into the season, I really found that I wanted to make the podcast feel even more conversational, more friendly, less academic. And I think that really came together the way I envisioned it in my cooking episode, which was where I talk about why I feel pressure with cooking and give you some of my tips for cooking. And then we brought Ben onto the podcast. And so I thought that that was really conversational, it felt more like you know, if you're cleaning the house and want to listen to something that comes on, I don't know, I just I really liked the feel I got good feedback from it. And so that's the direction that I want to take the podcast for season two. So basically, I want it to feel a little less polished, a little more real still around themes that are relevant. But maybe there'll be more micro themes and more things that we deal with on our day to day life less of the big life themes. And so I'll see how that flow goes. But I'm going to continue to bring on guests, I already have a few who have committed, which I'm super excited for. And we'll see. We'll see how it evolves. But it is a constant evolution. It's taking your feedback, I'm also thinking about, you know, What content do I want to consume? What do I want to listen to? So I'm taking all of that into consideration as I go through and build out this process. But I am gonna take a bit of a break, I have been working really hard it is so much work to do a podcast. And so for anyone who's interested in some of the behind the scenes, basically my process has been, you know, back in February, March April, when I started the big planning process for the podcast, I brainstormed a bunch of themes that I wanted to discuss whether that was Taylor Swift and knowing your value or doing hard things, or dealing with pressure or whatever it was, I knew I wanted to talk about those themes. So then I have to think about what stories do I want to tell that are personal and relevant to my life. So I looked through journals, I looked through video diaries that I take I've I've gone through like four or five different journals that I've had over the years. And I've thought about important things that really stick out of my memory relating to the theme. So there's a lot of brainstorming, I would put hours into the preparation where I would write out what I want to talk about, and I would work on the flow, and then I would get to recording it. And initially when I was learning how to record and edit, that was a multi hour process, because even just the way I spoke into the microphone initially made it harder for me to edit. So then I would have to rerecord. And it was just a whole process. And similar to my keynote speaking, I can just tell at the end of the episode, if I've recorded it well, if I'm ready to submit it for publishing. And but for a while, you know, Ben was listening to the podcast with me to help me figure out if things didn't flow well or didn't make sense and just helped me get out of my own head. That in and of itself is a somewhat difficult process, we have to coordinate stuff and we had during the evenings, and he was post work, and so doesn't always want to focus on another work project. So I've gotten more independent in that process. But it's a lot of work. And then I've now gotten these solo episodes down pretty pretty efficiently. And it's a couple hour process all together. But then I have to write the description for the podcast. And then I have to kind of take that base description. And then I put it into captions and the tone of a caption for the different social media posts. And I also find for my solo episodes, I have to figure out what sound bites will be good for the teasers that I put out. And then I have to format that in Canva, which I use. And that's been a whole process because I'm not gifted in the graphic design area. And I'm also a little too frugal to want to outsource that right now, because I had the time to do it. And so we've gone through different brand iterations even from the cover art to how I how I designed the background for a real if I do an audio teaser, and then I learned how to make a more polished branded video for my guests, as you've probably seen, and so the hours that go into all of this creative process, especially when you're not necessarily gifted in visual creative processes. It's been challenging and I've worked with my producers who they're the eighth side is part of the Octagon family. So it's been really cool to work in a house with them. And then yeah, for the guests episodes have to do all the research. So it's just it's a lot of work and at this point, having done this really on a regimented schedule since May I'm Ready for a little break. And so Season Two will premiere on Wednesday, January 10.... --- ### [Taylor Swift Taught Me to Know My Value](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/taylor-swift-taught-me-to-know-my-value/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello everyone, and welcome to If I'm Honest. So this week I get to see my my musical hero, Ms. Taylor Swift perform. And I know this is a touchy subject for some people, I will admit I didn't get these tickets My sister did, I was not successful. But I'm really excited to see her. I had gotten tickets to see her in April of 2020, when she was doing a show in Atlanta. And I obviously didn't get to do that, given the pandemic. I'm not the biggest concert goer, if I'm honest, I don't love the crowds and all the people and let's be real, I like to go to sleep at like 10pm. But this one to be able to see her in eras and to hear so many different songs. I'm just I'm really excited bonding with my sister, I'm thinking I'm going to be doing a lover era ensemble, I think my sister is doing reputation. But we will post on Instagram regardless. And we'll come back to Taylor Swift again a little bit later in this episode. So today, I want to talk about knowing your value. And there were three things that really sparked my interest in this topic for talking about it with you guys. And the first is that I'm working on a new project, it's gonna require me to kind of articulate my value and, you know, negotiate compensation. So I've been thinking, you know, from a financial standpoint, what what is necessary when knowing your value to be able to get what you deserve. The second thing that I was thinking about was, I was listening to the it's me Tinx podcast, and she has an ask me anything section and people call in and they ask her questions, and a lot of women will call in asking about boyfriends or situationships and, and there are a lot of times where they're describing just really less than behavior from their partners or guys keeping them guessing it's primarily female based audience. And as an outsider looking in, I want to be able to tell them like, look, oh, my goodness, you deserve so much more. You know, you should feel loved, you should feel wanted, there shouldn't be confusion in romantic partnerships. So I was kind of thinking about knowing your value from an interpersonal perspective. And then a couple weeks ago, I was talking with my parents about the importance of not letting people waste our time, specifically, if people say they're going to help you and then never follow through, you know, if they're all talk, no walk, and trying to be proactive, and moving on from people who make all these big proclamations, but then don't don't follow through because that, in turn wastes our time. So I was thinking about these things, I decided I wanted to chat with you about knowing your value. And I want to preface my discussion by saying that, you know, each of us will be in a different point in discovering our value, and in that journey of learning what our value is. And our value is also always evolving and changing. And as we develop more skills and more experience, our value goes up. If we jump into new new industries, then maybe our value shifts, but maybe not up or down. So it's just it's always evolving. And a lot of external influences, especially those experienced in childhood will play a part in shaping our own sense of worth. And I'm saying all this so that if anyone here is feeling a little lower on their self worth or their value spectrum, you know, there's nothing to be ashamed about with that. And I'm proud of you for recognizing it. And I hope that you'll frame it as an opportunity for growth and something where we can evolve together. And my hope is that this this episode can be helpful for you. And yeah, so let's, let's jump right into knowing your value. There are a few different ways we can look at knowing our value, you know, financially and professionally, in our romantic relationships and our platonic relationships, if we are working or not working, what strengths we have, or what weaknesses we have, and I want to focus on knowing our value financially. And I know this is coming from my own personal perspective as a freelancer and entrepreneur, but I hope it's valuable. So let's talk about financially knowing your value. We had a lot of financial transparency growing up. You know, my parents were always pretty vocal about how much money they made. I did go to a private school in New York for elementary school and middle school. And so you know, some of the kids in my classes had parents who are executives or movie stars, and so I feel like I just kind of knew, knew what they made. And my parents were pretty transparent about what it costs to lead the lifestyle that we had. And we talked about it a lot. We were aware of how much racing cost and you know, what our schools cost and, you know, percentage of what my parents made and all of that stuff. So I think that's really valuable. I think that it it kind of normalized the financial conversation and obviously, you know, there is a lot of secrecy around finances. And, you know, I think it's really cool that there's now job salary transparency in places like New York. So anyway, I digress a little bit, but we had all that growing up. So now if we, you know, fast forward to 2014, we're gonna go back to Miss Miss Taylor Swift. As I said, I'm a big Swifty. And, you know, I think it was around sometime in 2014, where she pulled her music from Spotify. And she said something to the effect of musical artists create value, and if you create value, you should be compensated fairly. And I just thought that was so great. You know, I thought that it was incredible that obviously, she has a lot of value, like net worth, and she is worth a lot of money and all this stuff, but you know, recognizing where different different systems were not helping the people who are providing value, I just thought that that was a really great thing to speak out on. And, you know, because I happen in 2014, you know, right, when I was graduating college, I went into the, quote, unquote, real world with this, like this idea seared into my brain, because one of my icons said it, so obviously, I'm gonna remember it a little more. But I'm really grateful for that, because I went into the world with it in the back of my mind that, okay, you know, if I create value, I should be compensated. And that's really, really powerful, whether that's professionally, I think you can kind of tweak that and make it more interpersonally as well. But it was just so so cool. So when I graduated college, my parents had made the deal with me that they would support me and pay my rent and everything, you know, for two years out of college, so that I could try to get racing off the ground and just focus on that 100%. So that's lucky, I really appreciate that. I'm grateful for that. But in the back of my mind, this whole time, I was thinking, Okay, well, how do I want to earn my living, you know, I knew that racing was gonna be really difficult, I knew that it was going to be all encompassing, that I would need some flexibility. And because I had really loved giving the TEDx talk at Stanford in May of 2014, because I knew that public speaking was a career path, if I could get good enough, then then that's something that could pay my bills. And it would allow me to have that flexibility to continue pursuing racing and other stuff. Knowing that it would be, you know, once a month, once every two months, twice a month, whatever that is. And so in April of 2015, so the year after I graduated, I started pitching myself. I did research, I literally just googled women's leadership conferences, because I knew I had the TEDx video that was women's empowerment focused, that I could send them as a really polished example of how I deliver a keynote. And I knew that it was good, I made people laugh. So I was really confident that I was good, at least at telling that story. And so I found a Women's Leadership Conference, and I sent an email pitching myself, and asked me if they needed any more speakers for their event. And quite Luckily, they did. And the woman had watched my, my TEDx video, and she said that she would love to have that be the closing keynote for the conference. I thought, great, amazing. Yes. So then comes the email where she asked me, What's my fee? You know, when can I travel in blah, blah. And I was really happy that it was an email interchange for this negotiation, because I was definitely super nervous to pitch myself. And before this, I had done a lot of research about, you know, what speakers earned. And it's a it's a pretty elusive topic, you know, obviously, you've got, you know, former presidents and athletes who give keynotes and make you know, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. But I knew that starting off, that was not going to be my fee. And so I had read things like it was basically a range of you should do it for free as a first time speaker to you should get travel covered to you should request a video of you on stage. So you can promote that to potentially making thousands of dollars for every keynote. So it was all over the place. And so I again, remembered Taylor's quote and thought, Okay, I know that I have this polished product, I know that I will spark conversation and debate and help people be introspective. I know that I'll make people laugh, which is always a plus. So I knew that it was valuable. And I knew I didn't want to do it for free. And I knew that once I had one paying client, I would be able to build off of that. So full transparency, I decided to pitch myself for $1,500 Plus travel to go out there and give this keynote and then you know, do all that. And I was so nervous waiting for her to email me back. I I remember I was just like, my heart was racing every time I saw I got a new email. And then she responded said sounds great. I'm gonna send over the contract, blah, blah.... --- ### [ The Power of the Female Ally](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/the-power-of-the-female-ally/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.112Z Content: Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. A little while ago, I had a podcast episode on the importance of male allies and some examples of how to be a good male ally. I also think it's really important for us women to know how to be a good female ally to other women. Because let me tell you, society loves pitting us women against each other. It's like it's a it's a pastime, right? And I don't know about you. But I personally feel that I've been primed for a lot of my life to feel like I should compete against other women that there's this added rivalry between other women, especially those professionally in my field, there are these greater forces that have this impact on me. Now, I recognize that this is a hefty complex issue to try to tackle and 20 minute episode, and I'm well aware that there are many factors that contribute to how anyone is primed, right. It's culture, it's politics, it's our family life, it's our school life. But I do want to take some time to really zoom in on the media aspect, because I think it is really pervasive, I think it's something that's applicable to most people, it's something that people experience throughout their whole lives. And it's a reflection of how the rest of the society functions, right, or media is rooted in some reality on how we live. And it's something I find very interesting. So we're gonna chat about it. And to exemplify this whole theme, you may remember magazine headlines that talked about how one female celebrity stole another female celebrities man, or how they had a Fallout, or how they're no longer friends, or how they're vicious towards each other, or one has a better bikini body than the other. They're just like this insane competition amongst so many women in the public eye. And it has an effect on the readership and the people who see those headlines. Or maybe it's the movies that we watched you mean girls, bride wars, something borrowed, you know, just examples of movies that I really enjoyed watching. But the women and friends are always fighting and competing and going after things that took the other one can't get them, like, it's not a healthy way to have a relationship with your best friends. And something that I have thought about a lot is that there were a lot of awesome movies of men collaborating all along Ocean's 11, right, like, even though what they were doing was illegal, you know, they were working together, they were accentuating their strengths, minimizing their weaknesses, helping each other out. And they're going after this huge goal together. So we're seeing these guys being super collaborative and supportive of each other. And for a long time, there were very few examples of the equivalent type of movie with women collaborating and working towards that goal and helping each other. Beyond this, something I learned about at Stanford was something called the Bechtel test, which is a movie test to see whether or not a film you know, was particularly sexist against women. And to pass the Bechdel test, and I will, I will link this website in the description. But to pass the Bechtel test of film needs to meet three criteria, it has to have at least two women in it, who are talking to each other about something other than a man. And they have history on this back to the beginning of movies. And right now on their database, there are a little over 10,000 movies, and 57% meet all three criteria, there is 10%, that meet two of the three criteria, there's a little less than 22%, that meet one of the three criteria, and there is about 11%, that doesn't meet the criteria. So it's a really interesting website to look through. So again, I'll link it in the description. But the whole point is that the media and cultural landscape has not been particularly good about showing women working together and supporting each other. And I think that that is not the only cause, but is a big reason why we continue to hear stories of women tearing each other down. And I don't like when I experienced this for myself in real life. For example, there was one season where there were a record number of women competing in one race for that series. And I excitedly said to the members of my team who were around me, I excitedly said, guys, we're making history this week, and we've got three women competing. And I was obviously proud of that. And someone on my team said, Ooh, cat fight. And I was just really disappointed that he was looking at this monumental historical event in the context of expecting women to fight each other just for the sake of doing that. So that is why I wanted to take this episode to share share my experiences with not only being a female ally, but receiving ally ship from other women, and to give some concrete ideas of how we can do that, what we're up against, and hope that we can be the change that we want to see. I am really happy that overall in our society and culture, I feel like I'm hearing more discussions about why it's important for women to treat each other better, and why it's important to fight against the way that we are socially primed to interact with each other. But at the same time, I'm still hearing stories of women being their own worst enemies. And especially when I go and give keynotes and I'm talking with audience members or the event planners, this is an issue that's still really prevalent in a lot of areas. And so I want to start by giving my perspective on the research that I've done on to why female rivalries still exist. So one thing that I'm hearing a lot about that it's so crucial to really grasp is the idea of scarcity mindset, whether it's for women or for anyone. Scarcity Mindset, is a belief that resources are always limited. So job opportunities, romantic partners, whatever it might be, that if we help a woman, get a promotion, then we're hurting our chances of getting a promotion, that if a woman has a happy relationship, we're not likely to get a happy relationship. It's this idea that we are in competition with each other all the time. And look, I get that to a certain degree, because for so long, there were so few women at the C level executive and corporate, you know, in certain industries at all, you know, women were only allowed to have their own bank account several decades ago, right. Like, I understand that, for a long time, there was real scarcity. And many women in the world today were raised by women who were victims of this scarcity. But I think it's really important that we don't let that historical prevalence shape how we go through the world today, there are a lot more initiatives in place, there are a lot more discussions around this, that we can push, and we can prove ourselves. And we can show results. And again, I know that there are biases against all kinds of underrepresented groups. But we need to take the charge in switching to an abundance mindset instead of a scarcity mindset. Another reason that I think female rivalries exists. And this gets a little more into biology and looking back and a little more theoretical, but on a primal level, historically, women compete with each other for mates, right. And the whole way that we were able to pass on our DNA was to be the most attractive to mates and to potentially prevent other females from getting those mates from us. But I'll argue that at this point, we are developed humans who have the mental capacities to push past that. And it has to be a mind over matter situation. I really believe that if we women step up to support each other, and to normalize collaboration amongst women, instead of competition amongst women will collectively have a ripple effect of changing the dynamic not only amongst ourselves, but how others look at us as well. This goes back to the saying that a rising tide lifts all boats, right, we can all benefit from women supporting each other and helping each other. So let's get into how to be a good female ally. We can look at female ally ship in a lot of ways. And I think, you know, kind of two big pillars are big initiatives that are public that are visible, as well as the smaller day to day initiatives that we can do to help out the women in our lives. So I want to go through five examples of how to be a good female ally. And I'm going to celebrate the women in my life who have been a part of this journey with me. And just like with my male allies episode, this is not an exhaustive list of women who have been good allies. But the women that I'm gonna celebrate here had very different ways that they were great allies. And so it's used to show the examples and so again, I've I feel very grateful. I've had a lot of great women in my life who have been supportive and so know that this is not an exhaustive list. And the first way that I want to talk about being a good female ally to another woman is to be a mentor and to share your experiences with other women to help prepare them. I have been fortunate enough to receive this from a lot of women, whether it's in school or in activities with friends, they have helped me prepare and so it's something that I kept in mind as I was getting into my mid and later 20s to be able to pay it forward. And the big example that I had for this was when I was done racing K&N West Hailie Deegan, who was a younger woman who's in racing, she was joining this K&N West team that I was on previously. So I had met her, and she had done a different type of racing. So she was fairly new to the oval racing. And I've obviously had it in the back of my mind for a long time that spotters had told me that some guys will race me harder, they don't want to get beat by the girl, kind of at the back of the pack front of the package didn't really matter, there will always be those people. And I'm very passionate about, you know, working towards equity.... --- ### [The Slippery Slope of External Validation](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/the-slippery-slope-of-external-validation/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.116Z Content: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I hope you are doing well today. So when I was planning this podcast and thinking about the audience I hope to reach or the types of people I wanted to reach, it got me thinking back to my speaking career. And you know how lucky I feel that my stories and my vulnerability and the themes that I discussed, are relevant to a pretty diverse group. I've spoken with tech companies, universities, women's groups, financial organizations, I was even brought in to speak at an asphalt Association Conference. And I talked about some of the more, you know, motivational themes, but I also talked about the differences of racing on asphalt versus concrete and showed some fun asphalt surface pictures that I had raced on that year. So it was really interesting. And, you know, I was thinking more about how over the eight or so years that I've been speaking, I've really only had two talks that to me landed super flat. And let me tell you, it was it was rough to go through this. The first one was a few years into my speaking, I was hired to speak at a university for their orientation week, and I kid you not eight people showed up for this, this talk that was in an 150 or 200 person room auditorium. So they had the lights on in the auditorium, I'm standing on stage, it was also the first time I was giving a particular talk on personal branding. And you know, the, the lights were on. So I got to see every person in the audience and bless these people who showed up and were engaged. So they were okay. But it was just, it was so hard to only speak to that small audience group. And it was also a blow to my ego. Because I was like, I flew all the way out here, you've been publicizing it, and only eight people showed up like it was just it, it hurt, it hurt. And so if I'm honest, I never gave that talk again. But that's neither here nor there. The second one that was much more nerve wracking for me was I was speaking to a group of bankers in New York, the woman who had hired me warned me that, you know, they had been out late the night before, but my keynote was at 8:30 or so in the morning on a Friday. And it was a bunch of, you know, upper middle age, guys, primarily, there were a few women in the room. But I'm enthusiastically going through my talk. And, you know, no one laughed at the places where people normally laughed. I didn't see anyone really like engaged in the subject matter or thinking it was just it was so rough, and I had to go through the 45 minutes, there were very few questions during the q&a. And I felt awful because there was no external validation in terms of how I was doing. And I was really nervous that the person who hired me was going to be really upset that she hired me. Luckily, she loved it. She just said, Look, these guys were probably hungover, but I thought you did a great job. And I say all of this to introduce the topic that I want to talk about today, which is external validation. Because for certain things, like, like keynotes, or any performance that you're hired for, or you know, work, some level of external validation is kind of important. We need to know that we're doing our job properly. We you know, as someone who's growing her client base, and you know, people who need referrals, or have repeat clients, knowing that you've done well is really important. So on the one hand, external validation is good. But I found that if we if we start to rely on that external validation, and if we start to place our own sense of worth the value in other people's reactions, that's when external validation can become a double edged sword. Like on the one hand, we all feel good when people applaud us, right? That's always great. But on the other hand, are we are we really digging into the process? Are we doing things for the process and the journey and the result? Or because it looks good? And there's no right or wrong answer, and it's going to be a balance for everyone. But I'll never forget, throughout college, I was pursuing racing, I was trying to get PR where I could, I was on survivor, all this stuff. And I was seeing this guy at one point, and he legitimately said to me, you just you just like the notoriety, you're not doing it for a passion. Cue the "she was too stunned to speak" tiktok sound. But I was flabbergasted. I was so shocked that he would have the audacity to make all the assumptions but then also that he was shaming me for it. And it really got me thinking it's kind of the first time I was really thinking about okay, well, what if I do like the notoriety? What if I do like being applauded and being recognized and, and being able to promote what I'm doing? I don't think there's anything wrong with that. So needless to say, we didn't keep seeing each other very long after that. I don't I don't need that energy in my close circle. But it was an interesting perspective on people who seek out fame or notoriety as being lesser than others. I think that's really inaccurate. But I do think it's important to think about external validation in a way that we don't limit ourselves or let ourselves feel bad or lesser than because we don't get that external validation. And if I'm honest, I love getting this kind of, you know, external support and validation, it makes me feel good. I think by nature of being a young teenager racing cars and winning, you know, I got a lot of positive feedback early on and through my teenage and early 20s years. So I feel like part of me kind of got used to being applauded for doing what I was doing just because I was doing it. And don't get me wrong, that felt great in the time, I will be the first to admit that I will let my ego get blown up and that I enjoy it. But I look back and I do realize that that probably set some unrealistic standards for kind of how I viewed myself and, you know, if I started not getting that external validation, or that unsolicited applause, if you will, I sometimes would question like, Well, okay, well, what am I doing wrong? Or am I losing my edge? Or am I less exciting, because there's less of this external validation? And that brings me back to you know, the slippery slope. And this isn't to say that I always got what I wanted and always did this. You know, there are plenty of things like schools I didn't get into teams that didn't want to work with me. I mean, when I was 12, I talked about this in a previous episode, but no teams on the national go karting level wanted to work with me. So there were things that I didn't get and back to external validation, I, I really did enjoy this. And then on top of that, I I've always felt that I've been a bit of a people pleaser, I like people to receive me Well, I like to make people feel comfortable, it's something that I'm working on. Because if we put too much stock in other people's reactions, it can negatively impact us. And when I was working on this, trying to be less of a people pleaser, I looked into some of the reasons it's bad for us. And you know, the more that we try to please other people, you know, before we work on ourselves, we're more likely to have a fear of rejection and disappointing others. And that can lead to different types of paralysis in terms of what we try to do and what we don't, it can lead to, like having really low self esteem, and also can make it harder for us to make our own decisions based on our own gut feelings. And it just, it's, it's rough all around, and it makes it hard to set healthy boundaries. So learning that there are definitely some downsides to being a people pleaser. Although we might get that little short term kick of, okay, I appreciate you, if that's our goal, we're likely to do ourselves more harm than good. And it's really powerful and empowering to become comfortable with not prioritizing, putting other people's needs and happiness above our own. So all this is to say that, you know, in my my late teens, early 20s, I feel like I had this potent combination of feeding off of the validation I got from others, while also you know, having this internal need to try to please people, this was all well and good while I was climbing while things were going really well, while there was constantly stuff going on between racing and survivor, and you know, different press that I was getting. But the issue is if you slow down, or if you stop, or if you are accomplishing less, or if you're just the less unique because there are other people coming up and they're new. If you've assessed your self worth based on this external validation, we can lose a lot of confidence and start feeling kind of bad about ourselves. And if I'm totally real with you, I started feeling this over the last few years, you know, back when I was racing regularly and making the Forbes 30 under 30 list, although I'm quite proud, I'm one of the Forbes 30 under 30 People who has not gone to jail. So that's pretty cool. And anyway, a lot of times if I had this idea, or if I had a podcast I wanted to be on or something that I want to explore. I had enough momentum behind me that I could pitch myself or have my manager at the time pitch. And I kind of got it. So whether that was I want to be on Jonathan Van Ness getting curious podcast. And that was so much fun. And they said yes, and there was excitement. And I want to speak at fortune's Most Powerful Women next gen and I got to do that, which I'm really grateful for. But these were all forms of external validation. And I undoubtedly put some of my own sense of self worth and value and importance in the world based on that, and let me tell you, it has messed with me as as I've been racing less and as I've been figuring out what else I want to do. And as I've dealt with just the realities of getting older and having these these shifts in these identity shifts, it's been really challenging.... --- ### [We Love Male Allies](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/we-love-male-allies/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.116Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. A very common question that I get as a racecar driver is what's it like to be a woman in racing? And I totally understand this question right to the outside looking in. And just in reality, racing is very male dominated. There are very few examples of women who are competing. And so naturally, people want to know, what's like, How's it different? And it's an interesting question, because for me, I've only ever been a woman in racing or girl and racing. So to me, it's normal. It's all that I know. But I know, that's not the question they're asking. And they're trying to figure out, well, how am I treated differently? How do I perceive things differently? And again, the reality is, I don't know what it's like to be a guy in racing, I think it would be quite luxurious to be a guy in racing, if I'm honest. But that is neither here nor there. Because I'm not one. So for some quick highlight answers to that question. You know, there are definitely some good things about being a woman in racing, I think that my successes are celebrated that much more and make that much more of a big splash. There's a lot of press. And it's very clear that it's inspirational to young women and girls and other women who are also pursuing male dominated industries, or whatever it might be. So that's really cool. Now, there are also some not so great things, you know, I haven't always felt like I fit in with the community. And as a kid or a young teenager, it was harder to have friends at the track, or when I was 12, I had cooties. And so you just kind of feel like an outsider for a little while. And another downside is that when women don't do well, or when I have had a bad race, or if it's taken a little longer to get used to a series, it kind of enforces these negative stereotypes about women drivers. And the last thing that I want to touch on here that I think is a little challenging for women in racing, is that I personally feel that we have to work harder to gain the respect from the team. And from the community. This certainly isn't the case with every team, but it's something I've experienced a lot. So that's a high level answer to what it's like to be a woman in racing, there's obviously a lot more depth to this, and everyone has their own experience. This is my experience. This is how I've walked through the world of racing. So I recognize that other people might have more positive, more negative, it is totally a personal experience. And I could talk about it forever. But we're not here forever. So anyway, one element about being a woman racecar driver that I hadn't really thought about before I got into it. But it became a really crucial part of my success was how I was able to develop strong alliances with men that I was working with. And male allies are super important for many women across industries. Even if we're in an equal playing field, most industries are not equitable. And it becomes really important to be able to lean on the people who help you out and allies are important for any underrepresented group. So my own personal experience is that as being a woman in a male dominated space, and it's been really satisfying to look back and see who I was able to develop a really trusting, respectful and compatible relationship where they were able to help me I was able to lean on them, we were able to address some of the discrimination that I had been feeling. And I wanted to take this episode to discuss the tangible, very real things that they did that made me feel like I was being supported in a really helpful way. And my goal is that by giving these specific examples, listeners can potentially get ideas about how YouTube can be a really good ally. And I also want to highlight the five people who did these actions and really celebrate them to celebrate what they did that was very impactful for me, and to recognize them. Because I really believe that positive reinforcement will help help these actions become more and more regular to more and more people to get that much closer to have a more equitable playing ground. And I'm grateful. So thank you to all of them in advance. I do want to preface this that I have worked with a lot of people over my 21 year career. And there are plenty of other people who have also been great to work with my dad, my brother, my boyfriend's that I had while I was racing earlier, coaches trainers, there are definitely other people who have been great allies. There have also been some people who have been really unpleasant to work with, but that's not what we're here to discuss. But again, I wanted to share these five people in these five instances that were most impactful for me and had the biggest effect in the moment and then also what I look back on. So the first way to be a great ally is to invest in women. And this could be financially literally like investing in women who starting companies, women who are doing things, or emotionally or energy wise. And the first person that I want to talk about did just that he invested in me when no one else wanted to. And this was my first go kart coach and mechanic Glenn Butler, Glenn Butler was a world champion go karter himself, and when I was about 12, and I had won a local track championship at Oakland rally race Park, apparently and I do not remember this but apparently my parents were trying to find an established you know, national touring go karting team who I could run with, and they would transport the go karts, they would work on the go karts, because my parents knew that they were limited in their capacity. And apparently, no one wanted to work with me, no one wanted to work with a 12 year old girl. And apparently, Glenn was at one of the races with the team that he was with the Birel, the Birel car team out of Canada. And he I don't know how my parents started talking with him. But they expressed that they were looking for support for me and they weren't able to find it. And he chatted with me after one of the races and he saw the fire in my eye. And he offered to help. And he offered to, you know, bring us into that team. Because he saw my talent, he saw that I was a little rough around the edges, but that that I had the talent there to be able to mold that into a winning go-karter. And sure enough, we worked together for three or four years, and we won so many races. And we were really great. And I'll talk about Glenn more in future episodes as well, because there are just so many incredible learning experiences. And he, he was the first non family member to really invest in my development and helping me get better and helping to coach me and being tough with me, but being so, so warm, and he just wanted to share the winning feeling with the driver he was working with. And it was just such a special relationship. And you know, the fact that he invested in me was huge, letting him know that I was moving up to cars and no longer racing go karts was kind of a very sad breakup. But we still keep in touch, he comes to Thanksgiving sometimes. And I'm super grateful for the fact that he took the time and energy to work with me when no one else would. So that's the first really powerful thing to do invest in women. The second way to be a great ally is to recognize discrimination. For the majority of my racing career, I have been the only woman or one of the only women on the track at any given time, although that is slowly changing. And for most of the teams that I have joined, I was the first woman that they had worked with as a driver. So I was there introduction to some of the different ways that women are treated. So I'd like to share one of the first instances where someone on my team spoke up when he saw that I was being treated differently on track. And that was in the legends car series. I raced legends cars in my early 20s. And I had a really great time with it. It was a lot of fun, quick races. I was winning in my division and having a good time. But you know, I didn't notice anything particularly different in these drivers than in other drivers I had raced against. After one of my races, one of my team guys comes into the into the infield, or sorry, into the pits after after the race. And he was like, damn, those guys were racing you hard. And I looked at him and I said, What do you mean? And he said, Oh, I mean, they they blocked you so much more. Some of these guys, when they couldn't pass you. They tried to bump you out of the way but you just held your own. I mean, you're tough out there. And this was super interesting to me. Because, again, for me, this kind of felt like the racing that I was used to I was used to people being really aggressive. But this guy had been watching these racers for years, and he's raced against them himself. And he hadn't seen them be as aggressive with some of the other guy drivers. As some of them were being with me. And he came to the conclusion that they just didn't want to get beat by the girl. And this was so liberating for me to hear because one, it kind of made every pass that I had done in my career seem that much more impressive if it was that much harder for me. But it was something where he told it to the team and then they were able to look at that and it was something I was able to keep in mind. And so because I had this objective external guy telling me and other people around me that the guys were racing me harder. I was then able to take that bit of knowledge to other teams and to let them know hey, or to let my spotters know Hey, I've been told this in the past but apparently some guys won't brace me cleanly because they don't want to get beat by the girl even if it's a subconscious thing and don't get me wrong, there are plenty of racers who have raised me cleanly we've had great battles. This is definitely not everyone.... --- ### [ We Should All Have Heroes](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/we-should-all-have-heroes/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.116Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I'm really excited for this episode because as you've probably learned by now, if you didn't know already, you know, I'm fairly aspirational. I set big goals. I like improving myself, I like striving for not necessarily perfection, but striving for being the best that I can be. And I think that having heroes plays a big part in how we're able to mold ourselves to be the version of ourselves that we want. So that is the theme of this week's episode, I'm going to talk about heroes, I'm going to talk about my heroes, why I think they're important, and how we can use them as guiding stars for how we go about living our lives. So a hero is defined as a person known for courageous acts or nobility of character. We see heroes in children's stories and movies. And it's a question that we ask a lot of high profile people in interviews, we call celebrities and athletes are heroes, we have nurses, we have doctors, we have emergency responders, there are so many types of heroes that we can have. And I think heroes are important for a few reasons. First, it's empowering to aspire to be like someone that you admire and respect, whether we know what we want to do with our lives, or how we want to live or if we're feeling a little lost. And we're trying to find some direction. And this can be when we're older, younger doesn't really matter. Having someone that you look up to whether you know them personally or not, gives you that North Star, right, it gives you that goal, it gives you that direction, if you might otherwise feel overwhelmed, because sometimes the big picture or the kind of person that you want to be or the kind of life you want to live can be very overwhelming, right? Like there's a lot of factors, there's a lot of stuff out there. And so having a way to anchor yourself in how you want to behave, how you want to be treated, how you want to treat others, can be really, really helpful. And I think that it plays a role and having heroes plays a role in helping us be our best selves. The second reason I think having Heroes is important is because having heroes helps us recognize traits that we think are valuable. I view this in a twofold way. On the one hand, having heroes allows us to think about how we want to live our own lives, how we want to behave, I might have a hero. And I think that the way that she handles herself in negotiations is really great. And that's what I want to emulate. The second way that traits are valuable. And we can recognize that is how we have relationships with our friends and our partners in our families, we might have heroes where we see the way that they communicate, or we see the way that they give grace to others, or whatever it might be. They have those traits or they have those interactions with other people. And we think that's important. And then we're gonna have an eye out for that when we're building relationships. Okay, does this person emulate something that I think is valuable? Does this person have traits that maybe mirror or similar to or tangentially related to these traits that I find really important and valuable in other people. So it can help be this litmus test to are the other people that we're building relationships serving us in the way that we want when we're building out these relationships. And the third reason that I think that having Heroes is important is because having heroes who we respect who we look up to, keeps us honest, and in check with how we're living, how we're behaving, how we're treating others, and can kind of be a litmus test. And we can always refer back you know, what our hero do this is this how someone that I respect would handle the situation or react to a situation or be spending their time or anything like that. And so for those three reasons, you know, the empowering aspect, the recognizing traits that we really like, and helping us stay honest with ourselves, amongst other things, I'm sure those things kind of lead me to find heroes really, really important. And something that I regularly take inventory of, you know, I have my my all time heroes for sure. But as I meet more people, as I see more people as I learn about other people in different industries, I regularly adjust my hero list and I regularly take a mental note of what I liked about those people. So without further ado, I want to talk about my famous heroes, and I've got four of them, two men, two women, and I'm gonna go in chronological order of learning about them and doing deep dives into them and becoming enthralled by them. My first and earliest hero that was famous that I remember is Michael Schumacher. You know, I grew up watching Formula One and at that time, he was always winning, he was dominating and I thought that he had a really great charisma. I thought he had great energy great smile it you know, loved racing was so passionate about it was so serious about it. I love that. I also really appreciated that he was so machine like and aggressive but also seemed warm and personable and funny while being one of the best. And as an aspiring racecar driver, I just thought that is what I want to be. I want to be that type of incredible driver, good team member supportive all of that stuff. So he was a longtime hero of mine. The second hero that I remember really being excited by was Amelia Earhart. So I learned about her in school. And I loved that she was a woman who is pursuing a technical and adventurous vocation, despite all the gender stereotypes, especially in her time, in seeing, you know, photos and descriptions about her, she also seemed very calm and mysterious, and all these more demure traits that I can't really achieve. Despite my efforts. I know I'm not at all mysterious, but I am trying. And I just found that really kind of mystical and cool. And, obviously, because we have limited information about her and don't have a ton of videos and everything, it's easy to kind of have that mystery, but I just thought that she was such a badass and so brave in a way that if I'm honest, I'm not sure, I would necessarily call myself right away. Although I know that sounds weird as a racecar driver. But, you know, I just thought she was so incredible. And I wanted to be like her. The next hero that I've had for a long time as Paul Newman, you know, he is the definition of renaissance man, he has had so many incredible life chapters like being an actor and being a racecar driver, being a businessman and being a philanthropist. And I just thought, wow, he just keeps doing really cool shit, that is so exciting. And he's not defined by one pillar of his career or one really intense activity that he's doing. And that kind of, for me painted the picture that I can continue to do whatever I want. And I love that. And also, I've always considered him classy. If so, again, I think I can be classy, but I always aspire to be a little classier, I think I'm a little chaotic, a little messy. So being able to kind of see this really calm, cool and collected guy was really cool. And my fourth hero that continues to be such a badass is Serena Williams, what what I found really empowering from her right away, was that she openly talked about loving to win. And when I was growing up, I didn't really see or hear a lot of women athletes, like just being totally captivated by and going after the win. You know, I heard a lot of women kind of give credit to their coaches and the team that they had behind them, which that's important for sure. But you know, it's not very ladylike historically, to want to win, to want to be the best to want to obliterate the competition. And I loved that Serena leaned into that she loved winning, that's what she was there to do. And she was fairly unapologetic about it. And being unapologetic in a healthy way is something that I continue to try to be better at. I think that comes with a certain level of confidence. I think that comes with a certain level of just, you know, innate personality traits. But I also think being unapologetic is knowing what your goals are, knowing what's important to you, knowing what your values are. And so seeing that in other people, especially Serena, makes me want to be like that so much more. So does a quick rundown of who my heroes are Michael Schumacher, Amelia Earhart, Paul Newman and Serena Williams, on the famous level, we also have a lot of everyday heroes around us. And you know, for me, my mom and my dad are true heroes i So, so admire how they raised me and my siblings, I really admire how much they prioritize family time and being able to lean on each other, you know, my my siblings, and I FaceTime every week. And it was because my parents said when I went away to college, that we had to maintain our relationship and that we had to have actual conversations with each other every week. And we did that and it became natural, and we continue to be really great friends and, you know, their parenting is just so so impressive. In addition to living life really well and enjoying little things. My parents definitely taught me to appreciate the little joys and it's something that I find so precious, and keep with me, so mom and dad are, you know, heroes of mine. I have the utmost respect for first responders, doctors, nurses, people who keep us safe. You know, I can't imagine being in that line of work. I think it sounds extremely scary and not necessarily forgiving and kind of a thankless role in a lot of ways. And so they're heroes, and you know, being able to put other people first and doing what you have to do even if it's scary. That's so admirable. And other everyday heroes are my badass friends who you know, pursue their dreams and treat people with respect and who are are kind and who want to help others and who, you know, figure it out as they go.... --- ### [Welcome To Season 2](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-29-welcome-to-season-2/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.116Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Season Two of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I'm so happy to be back. If I'm honest, I know I put that in very early this episode, I had many times in this two month break where I had an idea. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, it would be so good to podcast about this. And so I took notes. So all those ideas will eventually make their way into an episode. But yeah, I really started to use this podcast as a fun medium for sharing ideas with you and kind of having a public journal, if you will. So I'm really happy to be back. Happy New Year. Oh, my goodness, 2024. I hope you had a good holiday. I do want to have a little preface to this episode that I put off recording it as long as I could, because I got quite sick, right around the new year. And I really don't want to sound nasally when I'm recording, and I think I'm okay, but if it is a little nasally I do apologize. And that is why. So Season Two of if I'm honest, I was really looking forward to the season for a few months now, because I had ideas of how I wanted to change it from season one to season two. And season one was really philosophical and focus in a little more serious. I think the whole season tackled some bigger somatic life issues, more, more philosophical issues. And so I'm really proud of that. But I also wanted to talk about things that we deal with more and more in our day to day lives. And so that is what this season is going to look like more, it's still going to be personal storytelling, there's still going to be a theme to the episode. But I do want it to feel like how it feels when you're sitting down with your friends and talking about what's on your mind at any given time. So I'm really excited. I'm excited for the topics that we're going to have. I'm excited for the guests that we're bringing on a few of them are already recorded. And I'm reaching out to other people to be guest. So it'll be it'll be really great. And I hope it continues to be engaging for you. For this week's episode, I wanted to take the time to go through a recap of the last two months of the holidays of the first months of work. And so I'm going to end by sharing some of my New Year's resolutions because I'm a big believer in that. And that's gonna be the flow of this episode to get caught up to reacquaint ourselves. And then starting next week, we'll get into the more thematic episode elements. Alrighty, so the last two months, we've had quite a few holidays, we ended season one on November 15. And so after that, we had Thanksgiving and then Christmas and then New Year's. So for Thanksgiving, mine was super low key we went to my parents place in the woods of New Jersey. And it was just my immediate family and Ben and we had a family come over for the meal itself. But we cooked a lot my sister really took the lead on cooking and baking a lot of different things. My family does lot of different dishes and a lot of us have different responsibilities. My sole culinary contribution is always the cranberry sauce. And let me tell you, the recipe that I use is super simple. It is one I think eight ounce bag, or 12 ounce bag of whole cranberries, and then one orange with the peel on and one cup of sugar. Although sometimes I do a little less just kind of taste and then add more as you need. And then you blend it up in a food processor. Usually I do this the day before Thanksgiving, because it's really nice to let it sit in its own juices and then it gets a little more broken down by the time you get to the next day. And that is my contribution. And I did learn this year that Ben does not really like cranberry sauce and so I don't feel at all upset that the one thing I contribute to the meal he doesn't enjoy. But here we are. So we did that and we had less pies than normal. We're big on pumpkin pies and pecan pies and my sister always makes a Mississippi mud pie. By the end of the meal, I'm usually pretty stuffed and I'll have a little sliver of pumpkin and maybe Mississippi mud pie. And then Ben and I drove back down to Charlotte and we got back on on Monday evening and we immediately bought our Christmas tree. We got the Christmas tree up, let it zhuzh and relax for about a day or two and then we decorated so this was the longest amount of time that I had a Christmas tree in Charlotte which was really great. And we we do a live tree I love the way it smells. I mean I'm I'm a big fan as most people are and we're really building up our ornament collection and we regularly get each other other gifts that are ornaments. And so some of the highlights this year that were new, which one was last year, we have this Glass Blown bird, which is really, really beautiful. We have a stand up baking mixture thing like a KitchenAid. And then I got Ben a really juicy looking heirloom tomato ornament. So continuing to work on that the top of our tree is T-rex with Santa on his back. So that's, you know, classy as always. And so yeah, that was our Christmas tree, and love all the gift giving and gift buying. And I get a lot of joy out of getting things for people and coming up with creative ideas. So that was really fun. And then we celebrated Christmas with my family. And Ben and I are officially on the alternating Christmases between our families, here in the States, and then in France. So this year was Christmas with my family, which was always so nice, not a white Christmas this year, although they did get snow this past weekend for the first time. And they got over a foot which is wild. And I'm a little sad, I missed it. But after Christmas, a few days after Christmas, we flew to France, and we were there for a little less than a week. Unfortunately, that is where I got very sick. And it's now the second year in a row where I've gotten quite sick in France. So I don't know if France is trying to send me a message that he doesn't want me. But that's too bad because I'm well on my way to being a more permanent fixture in France, even if that's just regular visits from time to time. But anyway, besides getting sick, there were a lot of highlights. So first and foremost, it was great to spend time with Ben's family and our niece's are growing up. So that's really cool to see. I got to hang out with more of his high school friends and meet their babies for the first time. So that was really fun. From a culinary perspective, I spent the entire time in France feeling perpetually full because we were eating so much incredible luxurious food, whether that is Raclette, or fondue, or the Michelin rated restaurants that we went to there were a lot of prefix menus I put a lot on my story. They were just really delicious foie gras and then delicious dessert, there's a traditional pair dessert that's really decadent. And I just, I just was so so happy to have so much absolutely delicious food. And really fresh croissants and pan au chocolate from the local Boulangerie. Oh, it was so good. And this boulangerie has a what they call a petit pan. And it's pan au chocolate, so croissant with chocolate in it. But they also put this sugary icing on top. And it's just so so beautiful and sweet. And it is happiness in the morning in baked good form. So lots of really good food. And we got to end the trip by going actually over to Germany and going to this thermal bath house that was really lovely. It is a place where there's a floor with a bunch of saunas that are no clothing saunas. And I will admit that as a first time American doing this, the other year, it was a little unnerving. I was a little self conscious, it was a little awkward, because we don't do that in America very much, I don't think and so now it's fine. Now it really is, like live and let live, everyone's there just to you know, take in the steam taking the sauna. And especially being with someone else, it's really not bad, you can leave your towel on over you in the sauna or you don't have to. So it's it's really nice. And it's um, it's definitely better to, in my opinion, especially as an American to not go with family members. Like when I had my now in laws, there was a little little uncomfortable, a little awkward, but it was so rejuvenating. I'm happy to report that my French listening comprehension is way better than it was last year. And I hadn't been to France since last New Years and so I really got to have that that stark comparison. And I'm happy to say that's better. I personally didn't really think that my speaking was that much better. But Ben insisted that it is better. So I'll take it. And then we got back to New York five days later, and we were both super jet lagged. We've really struggled to stay up until 9pm Eastern time, but we have been luxuriating in the culinary scene that New York has to offer. And I'm going to share where we went that we really liked because I try not to gatekeep so the first night we got back we had dinner at Ddobar which was a Japanese Korean mix and it was counter service and it was in this bigger food hall and it was absolutely delicious. We had a 13 course prefix menu and I think it was $75 So really, really great price in my opinion for that kind of food and the quality and the wine list was really nice. So that was really delicious. Mari.ne was another counter service handroll place that we went to up in Midtown, and it was from a chef who has a Michelin star at Mari and Kochi is another of his restaurants so this is a more casual quick service handle place they have five hand rolls for $27 which I think is quite good. They're they're good size hand rolls the marinade and the fish is really delicious the dumpling was to die for. So 10/10 recommend that. We went to Los Tacos No. 1 twice because they were so flavorful and really fun standing room only spot.... --- ### [Building Strong Sibling Relationships](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-30-building-strong-sibling-relationships/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.116Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I hope everyone had a good week. Mine was very low key. I finally got back to Charlotte after three weeks on the road for the holidays, and got to go into the office for a day. We had a more social unexpected weekend we had one of our French friends here in Charlotte threw a galette Party. Galette des Rois is a three kings cake and Three Kings Day is celebrated more heavily in Europe by the party involves baking this puff pastry cake filled with frangipane. And there's a little porcelain figurine that's baked in there. And so at the party, someone who is the youngest in the group goes underneath a table randomly calls out the names of people at the party, they get the randomize slices, and then whoever has the porcelain figurine in their slice is the king or the queen of the party. It's really fun. Last year, I was the youngest person there. So I went under the table this year it was someone else. It's just it's a lot of fun. It's silly, then baked to collect cakes that we brought to it, which was really cool. And we had our host bake one that was great. And then another store bought one because there were 20 people there. And it was just a lot of fun. One of the winners used my 30th birthday Tiara as the the crown. So that was very special. He looked beautiful in the 30 tiara. And yeah, so that was fun weekend, we then also went to a friend's birthday, which was really nice. And then Ben and I caught up on household stuff that we had to do, we finally got rid of our Christmas tree, which shout out to whoever thought of inventing a nine foot garbage bag because the tree was so dry and so bristly and we had to squeeze it through a narrow doorway into a pantry through another narrow doorway through the kitchen out the door. And so it would have made a total mess if we did not have it in a bag. So that was fantastic. And then let me tell you, federal holidays hit different when you otherwise have to go into the office every day. I'm recording this on Monday. And it's really nice to just have a day to do other stuff. So yeah, working woman learning all the details. So I'm really excited for this week's episode to talk about something that's a major part of my life, which is having a strong relationship with my siblings. I started thinking about the idea for this episode, because I will regularly mentioned to people that I meet or colleagues or just in conversation that my siblings and I FaceTime every week, and every time I mentioned that people's faces light up and they you can tell that they think it's Oh, it's cool. Like, that's an interesting idea. That's a really frequent amount of time to talk with your siblings. It's dedicated sibling time. And so seeing those reactions from people made me think like, Hmm, maybe maybe there's something here. And maybe I can share something that can be helpful to other people, as you navigate your own relationships with your siblings. Or if you want to improve a relationship with your siblings, or if you're an only kid, if you're thinking about your future kids and how you want to raise multiple kids. Because we've gotten to a point my sister brother and I, that we had this really solid foundational relationship, I wanted to share what I think has been really important for helping us get to this point. For context, my younger sister, Emma is a little less than three years younger than me, and my younger brother, Aidan is almost six years younger than me. So there's a bit of a spread. And for those of you who are interested in zodiac sign, so I'm the oldest and, I'm a Scorpio, my sister's the middle, and she's a Leo and my brother's the youngest, and he's an Aries. So I don't really know what that means. But I'd love to hear in the comments if you do know what that means. Or if you feel a certain way after listening to this episode, and the eighth, and I have made it to the point where we have this wonderful, strong loving relationship, and we're supportive of each other and we help each other. And it's a really special place to be. But if I'm honest, it took a lot of work to get here, right? Any relationship, especially long lasting ones take a lot of maintenance, a lot of work and effort and sibling relationships are no different. And I think sibling relationships are interesting, because there are some unique challenges to these lifelong relationships. You know, first and foremost, we all usually have like very different personalities and different interests. And so if you think about it, siblings are in close quarters raised together, they have this familial bond, but they may or may not actually have a lot of shared interest. They may or may not have a lot of shared ways that they do things or life views or whatever that might be and Emma, Aidan, and I talked about this that if we were to all be at a party, and we were all come across each other, we're not sure that we would naturally gravitate towards each other. We have different styles we have different things that we find inter Seeing we have different ways that we communicate. So there are a lot of things that can kind of get in the way of having natural synergies. But at the same time, we love each other. And we know that we're lifelong support systems. So that can be interesting. Another area that potentially makes sibling relationships challenging is birth order. So there are a few different theories about how birth order affects your personality and how you walk through the world. And Alfred Adler is one of the more well known people to look into this. And so for a quick summary on what birth order can do for a child, according to Adler tends to be more controlling and reliable and high achiever and has a more structured life. And they may benefit from kind of the exclusive attention that they get from their parents before their siblings are born. But then at the same time, they have these high expectations put on them and these high responsibilities that go into their relationships with their siblings. If we look at the middle children, there have been some notes that maybe they might be a little more competitive, because they're there to overthrow the older sibling, or they might be a little more rebellious, because maybe there's more attention on the first sibling. And at the same time, they might be more even tempered. And they might be able to look at a situation and have a more rational approach to it. And there might be a social butterfly. And when it comes to the youngest, the baby of the family, there's a tendency that maybe they're a little more spoiled, they might also be more fun, loving, more outgoing, they might be more attention seeking. And this is not a hard and fast rule. But it's interesting to look at different families, including our own and see, well, maybe we see some of that. And even this past weekend at a party, I was talking with someone and he just had his second kid like a year ago. And he was saying that he's starting to see these differences where there's more like rule following with the first one, but she's also really ambitious. And then the second one they're seeing as being a little more mischievious. So some of these psychological or nurture related realities of birth order could also be playing into sibling relationships, which then can spur on some frustrations. I don't want to say resentment necessarily, but can make the dynamic interesting if an oldest sibling is has the tendencies to do things a certain way. And then they see their younger siblings doing things differently. And it can be challenging, right? Like that is a very real thing to deal with. The last thing I want to touch on that may impact how a sibling or multiple siblings get along with each other is how involved the parents are. And I say this, from the context of my parents have told us since we got older that they put a lot of active effort in to making sure that we had a good relationship with each other. And they persevered and pushed through our resistance when we weren't each other's biggest fans. And they, they really helped us to build those relationships. And I'll get into some of those specific things they did later. But I recognize that that's a privilege, right to have parents who are kind of committed to that and that it takes a lot of effort and time and energy. And so it's something I'm lucky for, and it's something that I have flagged for my future. If I have kids that that we will have to put a lot of effort effort into make sure that they stay close with their siblings. I think it's worth overcoming these obstacles. Because while there might be some challenges with sibling relationships, in particular, siblings also may be some of your longest life relationships, like people who've been with you from start to the finish. I like this idea that blood is thicker than water, and hopefully, unconditional love for family drives respect and trust in a way that you may or may not get with many other people in your life. And at the end of the day, no one else will have that really deep, intimate knowledge of the dynamic of what you were raised with and what imprints you had on you that might affect how you go through the world now. So especially if you're working through something or you have a challenge, a sibling will know kind of the background of what you what baggage you might be dealing with. And so I think that's a really special insight that can potentially be helpful. So with all that I want to share kind of how I want to go through this episode of tackling sibling relationships and hopefully helping you out. And so I want to share a bit of my family background and my own relationships with my siblings. I want to give some concrete tips as to how to stay close with your siblings.... --- ### [GUEST: Chef Alyssa's Kitchen - Cooking Instructors and Community Builders](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-31-guest-chef-alyssas-kitchen-cooking-instructo/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. This week I'm very excited to be joined by Alyssa and Andrew Wilen, the founders of Chef Alyssa's Kitchen here in Charlotte. Chef Alyssa's Kitchen started as an adult cooking class in Atherton market in South End, and has since expanded into its own standalone facility in lower South End, offering cooking classes, private events, corporate catering, Family Table meals, Saturday morning brunch and classes for kids and teens. Chef Alyssa has been cooking most of her life and graduated from the Art Institute of Charlotte. She's also worked in Italy and was the Executive Chef of fern. She has numerous awards, including the 40, under 40 honor by the Charlotte business journal has been recognized by Food and Wine Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and competed on beat Bobby Flay. Andrew's background is in corporate communications, business administration and leisure sports management. And he's had stints at Bank of America, Red F marketing agency and Living Social Ventures, before opening Chef Alyssa's Kitchen while he and Alyssa were dating. I'm super excited to be chatting with them, because I took my first class cooking class with them in 2015, or 2016. And it was just really cool to be able to take those classes and then see them as a small startup start to grow, and expand and give me such foundational tips for my own cooking experience. So this will be a fun conversation. We're going to chat about their relationship and you know, going into business with your romantic partner. We talked about some specific skills that are really important the Charlotte culinary scene at large. And I hope you like this conversation. Chef Alyssa and Andrew, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest. Andrew Wilen 1:37 Thanks, Julia. Yeah, this is gonna be fun. We're happy to be here. Chef Alyssa 1:40 Yeah. Thanks for having us, of course. Julia Landauer 1:42 So for our listeners, I think it was back in 2016, or 2015, when I took my first class with you. And we'll get into your origin story in a little bit. But it's been so cool to see the growth of Chef Alyssa's Kitchen to take a bunch of different classes to bring our friends there. So this is really special to be able to catch up with you in this context. So thank you again, Alyssa. I want to start off by hearing more about how you decided to take this direction because chefs kind of have a lot of different trajectories they can take, especially after being in the restaurant industry. So how did you decide on Chef Alyssa's Kitchen? And how would you kind of succinctly describe what Chef Alyssa's Kitchen is at this point? Chef Alyssa 2:26 Yeah,Julia, it's a great question. Because going through culinary school and my early jobs, I never thought this was a goal. It was always ended up some way in a restaurant. If you thought about teaching and the concept of instruction, it was just in a culinary school setting. So I knew plenty of people that kind of went into that, maybe at different points in their career. But I, I just went on to working my way up through restaurants, and then got to a point in my life where I well Andrew and I met and it was a really important part to balance, you know, work life and have time for each other. So the more we were talking, the more our, his idea of running events, being in the event industry, where he's putting on really fun things that people sign up for anything, they were time they were centered around food, or a chef was involved, because like these people love it, they get so into it, they they sell out, then and people are really engaged. And I just never had the perspective on a cooking event, or even what people know, and how they cook at home. So that really opened my eyes after he mentioned it mentioned it was like, Okay, well, let's give this a go. And the more I engaged with people aside from just putting food on a plate that they would eat, really got hooked on enjoying that process and teaching and instructing and realizing I had something to provide, instead of just, you know, with my industry skills. So it was really wonderful that I ended up on the path that I did, and it ended up here, because I would not have made the best chef to be an instructor if I hadn't really earned my stripes through the industry. And I Yeah, we love it. So at its core, which you've enjoyed so many times, being part of our shuffles as kitchen family are those events, and we make cooking and in a cooking class environment. Really fun. That's been the goal from day one. We don't want any Julia Landauer 4:38 Can confirm can confirm. Very fun. Yeah, Chef Alyssa 4:41 so we get people that you've seen that are really into establishing like being a great home cook or they are a great home cook and they're learning a certain skill. Then we also have people that are just out on a date and they want to have fun. So we set up these classes to be relaxed in a great environment with great instruction and great chefs. So we teach people and go through a whole menu back and forth, everybody gets to their to have their hand in all the dishes, not just one thing, you make the whole menu, and you sit down and enjoy it, which is the way you would want to do it if you're, if you're cooking for yourself. So make a whole great meal, sit down and eat and enjoy it. And we did that for about five years and now being in our own location are grown from our original location to being in a new spot that we custom built, has two classrooms, and we have a catering concept that is in our back kitchen. So we have a team that's dedicated to catering in the sense of like meals during the day for Office groups. And at night, people can pick up dinner, so we kind of started to understand our guests and how we wanted to make food available for them. So that's, that's what it is and how it really kind of started off. Andrew Wilen 5:52 Can I chime in for a sec too? Yeah. So something if you remember Alyssa, like when we were, we started dating, and I was running events, originally for LivingSocial. Then I moved over to a organization with the city Charlotte Center City partners, and Alyssa had just opened up a restaurant as executive chef there. And I don't come from like a food background. Like I have like that events, marketing background, and though and then we had I do events on like off hours, because that's when many events are it was still relatively Monday through Friday, I remember when we were dating, and like a list of you working like every Saturday night. And then when it was like, free time where we get to, like, hang out like if it wasn't we couldn't do like a Sunday date. It would be like Sunday night. And sometimes Alyssa would be like, oh, like, let's come over and like watch a movie. And I was like, No, I gotta work on Monday morning like. And so when we started our business, we kind of have that a little bit more in mind, kind of keeping more of this Monday through Friday. And so it took a while to build there. And so now, like, people ask us, like, Oh, why don't you do a class on Saturday night. And we're like, we don't want to, I don't know, we can work every Saturday night if we really want to. And I think it's been really cool. Where we do classes Monday through Friday, private events, public events. And when we do Saturdays, they're just some Saturday mornings, either for adults or parent child classes are really fun. You just have to take together. But now we have like a class on Monday. And people want to come and like Monday is not like a sexy night for like, yeah, like an event. You know, you think of like Thursday, Friday Saturdays for those, but it's been really cool. You know, as Alyssa was saying that you thought of teaching in like a culinary school sense. Not in like a fun, kind of interactive, like, everybody can do this, or everybody can at least enjoy themselves with good food and company. And so that can happen on a Monday night, where we do a class and or an event. Which is cool, because it definitely, I mean, it probably took like five years before we even considered doing a class on Monday because we're like, it's Monday who's gonna come? Right, on Friday? Yeah, right. Julia Landauer 8:08 So actually jumping off of that a little bit and kind of going back to getting started. So when I was reading through the bios, and recognizing that, oh, you actually were just dating, I say just dating and like, you hadn't necessarily made that commitment to spending the rest of your lives together. And it's a big commitment to get into business together. So a couple of just like specific questions. One, how long were you dating before you decided that you were gonna do this? And was Was there any hesitation? Or were you guys just like, 100%? Let's go Chef Alyssa 8:35 along the way, we stopped ourselves a little bit because of the process we take to like, the living together. Yeah, I think we've always been on the same wavelength. So we, that was immediate for us. Like we already kind of knew, like, okay, maybe we take a different path to like, get to that same result, but like, we're always on the same wavelength. So since we already knew that, coming together, and bringing our ideas together was really nice. It really well balanced, natural to, and we did stop ourselves at times, and we were like, dating and being together is what we want to pursue. Number one, we can find jobs. So do we really want to do this? And the Andrew Wilen 9:18 answer is just one. It was like a one it was it was it was like a year end with a little over Chef Alyssa 9:23 a year over a year we were dating and so cool. We're also at times in our lives, where we had already spent so many years working for other people. So we wanted to try our hand at something of our own.... --- ### [Driving Tips From a Race Car Driver](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-32-driving-tips-from-a-racecar-driver/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer! I hope you all had a nice weekend and start of your week, we had a majorly productive weekend. So Saturday was all about staying home for the first weekend in a while and we went to town on domestic stuff like we cleaned out the refrigerator and cleaned all of the shelves and reorganized the shelves in the refrigerator door so that they were more efficient for what we use them for. We also cleaned up our living room, we completely rearranged our guest room and office, which is so much calmer and streamlined and not overwhelming. So that's wonderful. We also had a pizza day on Sunday and made a whole bunch of pizza doughs. So for those of you who don't know, my husband, Ben is a very avid amateur chef and cooks a lot and experiments a lot. And it's just so fun to follow his curiosity. And him and one of our friends have really nerded out on pizza dough, like playing with the types of flour types of yeast, how long they prove for, if we cook them in the oven, or the pizza oven or something else. And so we've had some really wonderful experimentation days and Sunday was another one, we make our own tomato sauce. We have a lot of fun with the toppings and had some friends over. So that was really fun. Today's episode is one that I hope will be fun, I hope will be informative and that I care very, very passionately about. So people will ask me if Ben and I fight over who gets to drive whenever we have to go somewhere. And I immediately tell them absolutely not because I absolutely hate driving on the street. As ironic as that might be since I was a racecar driver for a really long time. But it's true I find driving on the streets super frustrating, I find it really infuriating that we don't teach people how to drive, I find that my blood pressure goes through the roof. So Ben pretty exclusively drives us. And this gets me to the point of today's episode, which is all about driving tips from a racecar driver. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I am not pointing fingers at any individual or any people who do not maybe know some of these general guidelines for driving we culturally do a terrible job of educating people if there is any education about driving. And it absolutely blows my mind that the most widely used form of transportation has no formal standardized or enforced rhyme or reason. So Auntie Julia is here today to share her wisdom for how to drive smoothly, safely. And obviously always abide by the local and standardized laws and rules for driving. I am not about rule breaking. My tips today are rather how to keep flow of traffic smooth how to be respectful for other people on the road. Because at the end of the day, with driving, we are hundreds of thousands if not millions of people interacting with each other on the roads. And so there are little things that we can do to make it more enjoyable, less stressful, and smoother for everyone. So I have spent a lot of time in the New York metropolitan area. I've spent a lot of time in the Northern California area. And I've now spent a ton of time in the south and surrounding areas around North Carolina. And what this has taught me is that there are radically different flavors of bad driving depending on where we live. For example, highway 85 around Charlotte is like a street racing. For all I know I've never done street racing though. So I don't know firsthand. But it is crazy. We got people weaving in and out of traffic. We've got people going super fast. It's it's chaotic at best. 77, on the other hand, seems to just go so slowly all the time, and people just don't move for seemingly no reason. there will be a miles long backup and then there clearly was not a crash or anything. So 77 is its own form of hell. If we go to the other side of the country, highway 101 around the San Francisco area is wild because you'll have people going 80 miles an hour in the left lane, and then you'll have people going 45 miles an hour in the right lane. And somehow this speed differential does not bother anyone or concern anyone which is so mind blowing and dangerous. And anyway. And then the New Jersey Turnpike, particularly South of New York City like if you're driving down to the Jersey Shore seems to always have cars in the exact same spot across all lanes doing the exact same speed so that you cannot get by or dropped back and is just who I'm already getting heated talking about this. I feel very passionately about proper driving and I can already tell you that this episode is going to be spicy. in addition to geographically having different flavors of bad driving. I also feel like there are different flavors of bad driving depending on if you're driving in the city, if you're driving on the highway, if you're on back roads, whatever it is, so I want to tackle all of them. And I'm going to go through some general things that I think we should all be doing, regardless of where we're driving, and then focus on some city driving tips, and then some highway driving tips. And then some country and back road driving tips. So first, some general tips that we should all be doing while we're driving, we should always be paying attention. This might sound silly, but people say that they like to zone out in the car. But that's not the time, right? We're operating heavy machines that are dangerous. There are a lot of people around us, we're having to put trust in other people to pay attention. So we need to pay attention as well. And I'll never forget that I was in college and I was volunteering to speak for an organization. And the woman picked me up from school because I didn't have a car there yet. So she picked me up. And we were driving and we were on the highway, 101 To be specific, and I just remember her saying that she couldn't imagine driving a stick shift because she doesn't want to have to pay attention while she's driving. And I'm sitting here in the passenger seat thinking, I hope that you're paying attention when you're driving because you're operating heavy machine. So anyway, we should always be paying attention and not taking things for granted. The second thing that is critical and that really boils my blood is when people don't use their blinkers. blinkers are the only way that people around us can know if and where we are going to move our heavy, fast moving and dangerous machines. And so whether that is in a city, whether it's on the highway, how is anyone supposed to know where you're gonna go, it can be startling to have a car suddenly cut in front of you. If you're trying to switch lanes, if you see that someone else has blinkers, then then you're gonna know that you can't switch lanes like there's just so many things. And it's so easy, right, they intentionally put the blinker handle right next to the steering wheel. So I beg of you, I beg of you so much. Please always use your blinkers because it is much safer, it is much more considerate to the people around you. And it is smoother for the overall flow of traffic. The last thing that's for more for general things to do while driving is with your lights. please be considerate and make sure that your high beams are off. I remember getting in an Uber and it was nighttime and the person was just driving with her high beams on and that is so so blinding it painful to have these really bright lights there just shining in your rearview mirror, or if you're coming into oncoming traffic. So a lot of cars now have automatic on and off for the high beams. But if you're not in one of those cars, please make sure that you turn off your high beams when you are around other people. Oh, also, speaking of lights being off, it is wild to me how many people in the rain don't turn their lights on, you should always have your lights on if you're using your windshield wipers. And the problem is if it's raining really heavily and let's say you have a gray car and it's torrential downpour, if you don't have your lights on, how am I supposed to know that you're there, it's very hard to see. So for your own safety, please make sure your lights are on when it's raining. Okay, so that's my tips For general driving: pay attention, use your blinkers and be conscious of how your lights are on or off. Now let's dive into city driving tips. Let's talk about merging. Merging seems to be a particularly challenging thing for many people. And we get aggressive and look I'm guilty of this too. Sometimes I don't want to let the people go, I want to get into the lane I'm moving to. But with merging, we should really think of it as like a zipper, right, we should just all embrace the fact that one person from one lane goes one person from the other lane goes. And we just alternate. And we know that people are going to do that we shouldn't give people a hard time and then people will emerge that much more quickly. The second thing that I want to point out with city driving is at red lights. So it is tempting to get distracted and to look elsewhere, whether it's going through your purse or whether it's checking your phone. But I implore you that if you're going to do that at a red light, which you shouldn't be doing, but if you're going to do it to regularly check on the light to make sure it hasn't changed. Because let me tell you, this is the bane of my existence going home from work because there is one stoplight where I have to make a left turn. And it is a very short green light for the left turn. And you can tell the people who have not taken this light before because they won't go they'll be distracted. And also few cars can get through if we don't go hungry. And so be considerate of the people behind you who might be in a hurry or might be trying to get to where they want to go. And don't take your eyes off the stoplight for too long. It's tough because I will be honest that I give a a healthy count to three.... --- ### [GUEST: Lindsey Simcik - Almost30 Podcast Host, Community Creator, and New Mom!](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-33-guest-lindsey-simcik-almost30-podcast-host-c/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today we have someone that I have known for almost seven years and that is Lindsey Simcik. Lindsey is a co founder and co host of the Almost30 podcast, a top 50 podcast and community on a mission to make people feel less alone and truly resource and supported during this transition and beyond. She is also the creator of the sacredness of being single a programming community for those who desire to embrace their single season and become more of who they really are. And she currently finds herself in a new season, which is motherhood. Several months postpartum, every day is different and filled with so much new stuff with her son Maverick. She's feeling stretched and so, so fulfilled. And I'm very, very grateful to have her on the podcast as we have both grown so much over the last almost decade. This conversation was really cool, because it was super fun to catch up after so many years of admiring each other from afar. And we talk about what it's been like building a business and community with her friend Krista and her intentionality with being single and how the work she did on herself has helped in her relationships. And we talked about how she balanced keeping her pregnancy private while also being an influencer and some of the expectations that were on her because she is a public facing person. And we also chat about what it was like for her living in New York, and then LA and then New York again, and so much more. So I hope you enjoy this discussion. Lindsey, welcome to if I'm honest, Lindsey Simcik 1:31 thank you so much for having me. I'm like having a moment. I'm like, when was the last time we were in front of mics together like it's been? Julia Landauer 1:39 It's been ages a lifetime. Yeah. So I think we were talking about it. Like, we were introduced through a mutual mentor friend, I want to say in 2016 2017 around there. And for listeners, I so fondly remember taking an Uber somewhere in LA, I don't remember where you were living, but to your apartment, which was so beautiful and Zen and like filled with light or just like, oh my gosh, this is such a calming place to go record a podcast and we we touched on heavy hitting stuff. And I'll link the my episode with almost 30 in the description here. But it was just so cool. I just I love that time of my life. So it's very cool that you were able to be a part of it. So yeah, thank you for now being on my podcast coming full circle. Lindsey Simcik 2:24 You're so welcome. And how do you feel having a pod? Oh, my Julia Landauer 2:27 goodness, it's a lot of work. I love it. I love it. But I also think what's been so interesting, and you know, we're in season two now. But with season one, kind of the evolution of what I thought I wanted the podcast to be versus what I realized it probably should be. And I thought about, you know, I wanted it to be complementing the keynote speaking I was doing. And so it was slightly heavier topics slightly more in depth, formal focused, and it was really good. But I felt like I didn't always want to listen to that content. And so for me, it was like, Okay, well, what do I want to listen to more conversational more day to day things that we're tackling? So that's what this season is about with also adding in the guest episodes. But yeah, it's, I knew it would be a lot of work. But I continue to be shocked as to like, all these different things, you have to think about, like pot, like cover art, or learning how to edit. And I don't know if you felt this, but even learning how to speak into the mic in a different way so that it's easier to edit yourself. Exactly. Lindsey Simcik 3:30 There's so much there's so many technical things that can go wrong in every recording. And I think the first six months, especially, it was just a lot of experimentation, a lot of mistakes, a lot of Yeah, moments where I'm like, Ah, I'll never do that, again, like kind of moments that really were ingrained in my brain and now have become just natural habit. And so, you know, I always tell podcasters, I'm like, Yo, don't expect the beginning to be great, right? Like, it's gonna feel good, because you're in your flow, and you're doing what you love. But you'll look back and be like, Whoa, I've come so far. And that's the point. You know, we don't want to like start at the gate. Perfect, then where do you go from there? So, yeah, there's a lot of learning in that first year. Julia Landauer 4:15 Totally. So for listeners, can you explain a little more about almost30 And then also, like, you know, kind of what you thought it was going in, if it did evolve a little bit more and obviously, it's, you know, such a powerhouse community and platform now. Yeah, Lindsey Simcik 4:30 so, my best friend and I Krista Williams, we started almost30 About seven years ago in September 2016. And it was born out of a time when both she and I were just yeah, like, honestly, shit was hitting the fan in her life in so many different ways for her I think her health was really compromised hormonally. She was super imbalanced and her energy was super low. Oh, oh, she was in between jobs trying to make a blogging career work and struggling to pay her bills. I was coming out of a long term relationship that I had blown up. I had just moved across the country. I, I was also struggling financially, like it was just a time where we're like, Yo, like, what's going on? Shouldn't we have this whole life thing, like a bit more figured out? And so we became friends during that time, and our conversations kind of centered around all of these issues. And we're like, wow, okay, we feel better, because we're not alone. There's someone else going through things. And Krista came to me one day, and she's like, do you think we could start a podcast, you know, like, we're I love podcasts, I feel like we're talking anyway, all the time. Like, I really feel like there's people out there that can relate and it would be helpful. And I'm always down to, like, do any creative project no matter what the reward is, or lack thereof. So I was like, Yeah, let's do it. I, like busted out my $15 recorder, we went into her closet in her studio apartment in Venice, for the like bedroom in my apartment that I was sharing with a couple other people. And we would record and it was not perfect, most of those episodes or conversations would never see the light of day. But we started to understand that feeling that feeling of being in flow of being on purpose of feeling really connected to what we were sharing and connected to each other. So we just kept going. And then finally we're like, let's just put it out. Let's see what happens. So in September 2016, we did that. And slowly but surely, like the community formed, definitely started with friends and family. But then it grew really organically. And, yeah, seven years later, I mean, it's a full blown community all over the world. We have the podcasts, the membership, courses and programs, we've gone on tour around the world, we have retreats. So it's yeah, it's a it's a really special special creation between us. And honestly, between me and Krista. Yes, but also between us and everyone that finds almost 30. You know, it's a collaborative thing to keep it going. And now we're working on our book, which hopefully will be like a legacy piece, you know, and ensure that almost 30 lives on, Julia Landauer 7:33 there's that really tangible component of the of a book. And that's so exciting. And we'll talk about that more in a bit. But going back to starting the podcast, and you and Krista were friends before you started, obviously. So what was it like building this platform brand business with your friend? Is it something that like went smoothly? Most of the time? Are there hurdles that you didn't expect? Like, what's that? Like? Lindsey Simcik 7:57 Yeah, it's such a great question. We get this a lot, because I think a lot of people out there see us and or other duos, who are friends or business partners and think, oh, I want to start a business with my best friend. Like that would be so fun, right? Yes, there are fun moments, but it becomes incredibly complex. It's like a marriage because you are sharing finances, you are collaborating on, you know, the day to day of running a business of managing a team now of yeah, it's just, it can be, it can be complicated. And so Kristin and I, you know, seven years in are in such a great grounded place with how we communicate, what's important to us, how we support each other, the space, we give each other, how each other leads, you know, in different areas of the business. But getting there was a journey. I'll just give you a high level of what that takes, I believe, is both of us being an individual therapy consistently. i Yeah, I'm a big believer in therapy. And it's I think the secret sauce. If you want to be professionally successful, I do think you need someone to talk to whether it's a therapist, a coach, someone to Yes, spill it, and also have a mirror put up in front of you. So that's been really important. We we've had coaches for the both of us together, which has been very, very integral, especially during times of change, whether it's like me moving across the country and having to figure out the business with each of us on on either coast or 2020. It was an interesting year, and thank God we had a coach during that time. So that's been super important. Weekly check ins, you know, weekly check ins both personally, where it's like, Yo, BFF, what's up in your life? And then also the business check in, right? Where we can kind of create a line. Otherwise it gets a little gray. You know, it's like, what are we talking about? What's the energy? And then also, I think it's really important to be okay.... --- ### [The Magnificent Resurgence of "Fast Car"](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-34-the-magnificent-resurgence-of-fast-car/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, Happy Valentine's Day to those who celebrate. We don't really celebrate on the day, quite frankly, I just don't like being with that many people who are out and about, specifically on that day. And so we went to dinner last night on Tuesday, which was delightful. But if I'm honest, I feel like my favorite Valentine's Day celebrations were when I was a kid, like pre dating, pre boyfriends maybe had crushes, I don't know. But my parents would put together little baskets of chocolates and heart shaped candies and sweethearts for me and my siblings. So that was kind of the most fun. But anyway, hope you had a good night. And if you didn't celebrate, I hope you also had a good night. The Grammys happened the other week, and I didn't watch them, but I was scrolling through X and Instagram to see the performances and to see the outfits and most importantly, to discover what the Taylor Swift reveal would be. We all thought it was gonna be reputation Taylor's version. But alas, we got a whole new album, so very excited about that. But then as I was scrolling, I also saw the full performance of Fast Car by Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. And let me tell you, I was entranced. I love the song and I'll get into that in a bit. But it felt so familiar and comfortable. And I couldn't help but feel as I was watching it, that I was so lucky to be able to see Tracy Chapman specifically perform it live and onstage in this day. So that was really, really special. And obviously it exploded it Tracy Chapman's debut album, went to the top of the charts, fast car went to the top of the charts and iTunes, her music video went to the top of the charts. I mean, it was really incredible. And it was such a moving experience for so many people. And that was so clear. And so I wanted to talk about it. I have been so moved by the resurgence of fast car over the last year and it's been such an interesting multi dimensional set of feelings that I've had towards it. And I feel like many of us have a very personal relationship with fast car that has transcended time and transcends generations. It is so relevant to so many people it is poignant and sad and hopeful. And it encapsulates such a common struggle. And I think that that really touches on so many people and Tracy Chapman's stage presence and her stillness and just the way she performs is is so impactful. And I was first introduced to fast car by my parents, they have the vinyl version. And some of my earliest memories are the robust sound of Tracy Chapman's powerful, but gentle voice blasting through these big standing stereos with the slight scratch on it from the vinyl, and we would just swing to it on the on the foyer, a floor that we had, and it became a staple song of my teenage years. Every time I listened to it, I had this visceral reaction that made me feel hopeful. It made me feel sad. It made me feel melancholy and made me feel romantic all at the same time. And in my angsty teen years I had very emotionally charged share the lyrics from the song on my Facebook page is my facebook status. Do you remember remember when we did that when we would share these really emotional lyrics and hope that someone in our circle saw them and knew the backstory of them? So anyway, I really remember sharing: "You got a fast car / is it fast enough so we can fly away" hoping that my crush saw it? I don't know if my crush ever saw it. But at one point, I did know that my crush liked the song, a different crush, and I would imagine us during the chorus when she's singing "I remember we were driving / driving in your car / speed so fast I felt like I was drunk / City Lights lay out before us / and your arm felt nice wrapped around my shoulder" and I just imagined my crush putting his arm around my shoulder. Oh, it was it was a lot teen years were so emotionally charged. I loved it. Anyway, I love the song. It was really important to me and I continue to get chills every time I listen to it and music is so beautiful and delicate and dramatic. And I love the acoustic performances and I love strings in general and and the lyrics are evocative of the gravity of a common struggle and I don't know what it's like to try to get out of the cycle of poverty specifically, but in singing this story, Tracy Chapman conveys the monumental effort and the steadfastness needed to overcome that kind of struggle. And I think that journey is something that many people really late too in some capacity or another, with the song in general, there is a calmness and there's a pragmatism, which we saw in the Grammy performance as well. And it adds to the gravity of the song in my opinion. It was so so cool to hear Tracy Chapman's voice and to hear just how rich and warm and stunning it continues to be, even as she's approaching her 60s, I mean, it's it's really incredible for some background on fast car before we get into the resurgence, so it was originally released on April 6 of 1988. And it was received well, it had good good public acknowledgement. But she then performed it kind of unexpectedly at Nelson Mandela's 70th birthday celebration, which really brought it international attention. And it got nominated at the Grammys that year for Record of the Year Song of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. And she won the Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. It reached a high of six on the billboard 100. And it was a top 10 song in the US. So it had a lot of acclaim when it came out. And, but then I think it kind of faded a little bit and didn't have that ongoing recognition. I think a lot of people continue to love the song. But out in public, it wasn't as recognized. So then in April of 2023, country singer Luke Combs released a version of Fast Car on his album. And if I'm honest, when I first heard that Luke Combs had covered it, before I actually listened to his version of the song. I had really mixed feelings, because I was really worried that his version would be an adulterated version of the song. Knowing how personally connected I always felt to that song, and how impactful it was for so many people. I was offended that someone would try to cover it like how could you do any justice to this song because Tracy Chapman's original version is so perfect. Like, how could anyone try to do anything with it? Especially country and I love country music, but it didn't feel like the right genre to even attempt to do this. But wow, I was completely wrong. Luke Combs did such a beautiful job covering fast car. Like he didn't try to remix it. I did some reading, and I learned that he really intentionally kept almost all of the original elements. He honored it and he created this beautiful cover. And that was in part because he has idolized Tracy Chaplin since he was a child. You know, she was such an important figure in his musical development, and he wanted to respect her work. So for example, there's a line that says, "I work in the market as a checkout girl," he didn't change that lyric at all. The only lyric I think he did change was at the end, she says, you've got a fast car, you she says you've got to make a decision leave tonight or live and die this way. And he changed it to still got to make a decision. So a slight difference to the meaning. But overall, he kept it true to what it was. Back to the Grammy performance, something magical happened on that stage between Tracy Chapman and Luke Combs. She seemed to be exuding this appreciation and humility and almost a disbelief that she was at the center of this major cultural moment. And he looked like he revered her he had admiration and giddiness beaming from his face and his body language. And it was an incredible five minutes and 17 seconds to experience and to witness. And I thought that Luke Combs was particularly gracious in that performance, focusing the attention on her because it was his song. That's why they were there. And so it was just really, really beautiful. And I love that Tracy Chapman is getting this rebirth for fast car. I love that she is literally cashing in. I've read that she owns the writers and publishers rights. And so she gets a large part of the royalties which have been reported to be over half a million dollars. So that is amazing. And I love the fast car went to the top of the iTunes charts after the Grammys. And she had said when she got nominated, "I never expected to find myself on the country charts. But I'm honored to be there. I'm happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced fast car." And it was pretty monumental because with this nomination, she became the first black woman in history to reach number one on the Billboard country chart as the sole songwriter. First time in history. I mean, it's 2023 that is wild. And I don't think that we can ignore that specific dynamic that's at play, which is that she is a black woman whose work is getting this notoriety now in this moment because of white man bringing it back to life. And I've thought about this undertone since it was released that sometimes, and far too often, the work of people in underrepresented groups isn't recognized properly until a white man declares it valuable. It happens a lot. I do think it's changing, but it is very real that underrepresented groups don't get recognized for their thoughts and achievements as much. And so it's tricky, and there is this undertone. But I do believe in this case that Luke Combs has masterfully walked the tightrope of paying homage to an artist that he idolizes, respecting the art as it was originally created, and giving a lot of glory to Tracy Chapman, and I think that that has to be applauded. Watching the Grammy performance, we see his incredible admiration for her. We see the honor that he feels sharing that stage with her. It was so wholesome, it was so beautiful.... --- ### [ep-35-the-daytona-500](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-35-the-daytona-500/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you had a good weekend and a good start to your week. This weekend was my last on crutches and with my boot after having foot surgery a few weeks ago, I got my stitches out yesterday, life is already so much better and I'm thrilled. So that was good. One PSA though on a serious note. If you are not handicapped, either temporarily or long term, please, please, please do not stand Wait, park in the handicap parking spots. Those are there for a reason. I think this is underappreciated if we don't ever need to use them. But people who need those spaces either because it's exhausting to crotch a long distance or because they need the ramp associated with a handicap parking spot so they can get their wheelchair up the ramp and so they have enough space to get out of their car. Everyone depends on those right. And so it was really frustrating to see food delivery service people who didn't have a nearby parking spot to just sit and have their car on idle without them in it while they went and picked up their food because it meant that I had to wait for them to get back or I had to yell out of the car. And look, I was just on crutches and I could put weight on my foot. I just couldn't easily walk. And like even that was annoying enough. And so yeah, the PSA here, please don't go into that parking spot. It's good to get steps in any way. I know that parking is frustrating, but it will be a lot more frustrating to the people who need the handicap spots who aren't able to pull into them because other people are just waiting there. So anyway, thank you in advance for respecting those spaces. This weekend was also the Daytona 500. And if you have not been to the Daytona 500 Or you don't know what the Daytona 500 is, but let me set the stage for you. The NASCAR season starts in February and the Daytona 500 is like our Super Bowl. It is the biggest race of the season. It has the biggest prize money purse, it kicks off the whole season. It's a big spectacle and a big like week long celebration where there are a lot of celebrities and there are a lot of guests that come out. There's a lot of visibility. It just has the reputation and the history of being our biggest race of the year. I'm not entirely sure why we start our season with the Super Bowl but that's okay. It works. And there are a lot of affiliate races going on at nearby racetracks for more grassroots level racing. They have the the on track events really spread out Wednesday is qualifying Thursday is the last chance qualifying races called the duels and then they have the Arca racing truck racing and XFINITY racing on the Friday and Saturday. They have the Daytona 500 On the Sunday. It's really cool. Lots of great guests, lots of fun grand marshals. And this year, unfortunately, it rained for majority of Saturday and Sunday, they had to postpone the races until Monday, which is never fun. And if you think of it just from an event management standpoint, you know all the time, energy and money that goes into setting up the weekend and having the performances and the fan zones and when the track is operating to have that all messed up is annoying. And this is the second race in a row and we're two for two now of having rain outs on us planned racing days because the clash that was the beginning of February was our exhibition race and that also had the torrential Southern California weather come in and force the race getting to get moved up a day earlier. But anyway, back to the Daytona 500. There's so much hype. It's really exciting. It takes place at Daytona Beach, Florida. And typically there are more cars that are trying to qualify for the races then are able to make it so in cup 42 cars tried to qualify for the 40 spots, which I'll talk about more but in terms of the atmosphere. So daytona international speedway is a super speedway, meaning it's over two miles. And that means it's the really big facility, it means there's a lot going on on the infield, it means that you're going to see the iconic classic NASCAR racing shots where it's big groups of 1015 20 cars that are too wide, sometimes three wide, sometimes four wide, although that doesn't work for very long. And this big, what we call pack racing because there's so much speed because you're flat out for most of the lap or if not all the lap that you're there's a lot of air resistance. And so there's a lot of drafting, which is where the car in front will cut through the air resistance and then all the cars behind them won't have that same resistance so they're able to go faster and in turn, they push that front car faster. So at these big superspeed ways. If you have one car is driving by itself, it will always be slower than the pack of cars together. There's so much to Engine and they're moving so fast within inches of each other. It's just it's really exciting. Sometimes that tight racing leads to pretty spectacular crashes. Most recently, Ryan Preece had a pretty bad crash at Daytona last year, not for the 500 for a second race they had during the year, but he did quite a few barrel rolls hit the grass went up in the air down and was able to walk away with just some black and blue eyes, which looks pretty scary, I'm going to be honest, but he was otherwise pretty well off. Ryan Newman a few years ago had a pretty nasty crash at the Daytona 500. And he barrel roll was on fire, an oncoming car hit his door while he was upside down. And so it went right into the driver's side door. And we didn't know how he was for about two days afterwards when he walked out of the hospital. So luckily, that ended a lot better than we were all worried it would. And I think this is a testament to the safety associated with these stock cars. And there has been so many improvements not only to the cars, but to the racetrack. So for example, if you think about racing and the high level physics involved, these 3400 pound machines are going really fast around a track. And so when we crash, there's a lot of kinetic energy in the crash. And so back in the olden days, you know, it was a concrete wall and the car and if the car didn't crumble, then that kinetic energy was passed on to the driver. And so the impacts were really hard. And so what they've done is that NASCAR worked with the University of Nebraska to develop these SAFER barriers. And what it is, is you have the concrete wall on the outside of the racetrack. And then on the inside, there's a combination of densely packed foam, and then hollowed out steel so that when a car crashes into that, they hit the steel than the foam and then the concrete and so there's a lot of kinetic energy absorbed by the wall so that doesn't hit the car. And then the cars are built to crumble when they crash. So that again, that crumbling absorbs the kinetic energy, so the driver absorbs the least, which that isn't to say that there aren't some heavy hits that result in high G forces on the driver. It was reported that Ryan Blaney who crashed this this weekend, he had a 55 G hit on impact. And last year, he also crashed and had a 70 G impact. So it's still pretty substantial. And it emphasizes the importance of really working on the physical strength and neck strength so that we can withstand those heavy hits. In terms of the atmosphere. I think this is really fun to talk about. Because if you haven't been to a NASCAR race, it's really hard to kind of picture what it could be like so I'm going to do my best to describe it. Because it is so electric to be at the racetrack. It is so energetic. It is intoxicating. I love being at the track. And Daytona is situated on international speedway Boulevard. And it gets packed with people trying to get into the race. It's it's a really chaotic scene. And if you're driving to the infield, the entrances underneath turn four. So there's a term for tunnel where there's one tube going into the track one tube coming out, you drive downhill into the tube underneath the racetrack and you come out and you just come out to blue sky and the high bankings of turn three, and you see the campgrounds full of people and you see all the golf carts driving everywhere. And we have to we have to make our way through different roads to go through the campgrounds through the parking lots. Get to the infield. If you don't have a hot pass, they have a fan zone where they have concessions and concerts and interviews with drivers and you can get kind of close to pit lane. And then if you have a hot pass, you can get into the garages which are fenced off the whole pit area where the haulers are set up, which are near the garages there are fenced off to those who are properly credentialed. And it's bustling. Let me tell you people are walking around so quickly. Sometimes crew members are running back and forth from pit lane to their garages. You're seeing these teams of people pushing the race cars to tech and through tech and there are fans asking for autographs. It's usually pretty hot during the Daytona 500 day itself and so people are sweaty and they're a little stinky, but everyone's excited to be there and pit lane is really busy and really crowded and you bump into people that you've known in the industry for decades and it's it's really cool. You feel the energy you feel the energy of the fans in the stands, you feel the energy of everyone around you. And the best analogy I can give is that it's kind of like an ant farm like things are just happening so quickly. You smell the rubber you feel the vibrations of the cars going around the track. It is so loud you hear how sound travels slower and it is so much it is a sensory overload for sure. But it's really, really exciting and I highly recommend to Trying to get to the infield of a racetrack. And if you're going to the stands, it's also super awesome.... --- ### [GUEST: Fan Behavior - An F1 Podcast](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-36-guest-fan-behavior-an-f1-podcast/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today we have a really fun episode that I've been looking forward to recording for a long time. Because I am joined by Hannah and Zoe who are the hosts of Fan Beahvior: an F1 podcast. I came across their content on social media because they do a really beautiful job of combining f1 commentary with pop culture, commentary and their own personal preferences and ideas. And it was just a lot of fun. So Zoe and Hannah started their f1 show back in January of 2022. After falling in love with a sport thanks to Drive to Survive. (Yes, there are those girlies). On their podcast, they discuss everything from Ferraris race strategy to Pierre Gasly's latest photo dump to Martin Brundle's grid walk. And as new fans who got into the sport through drive to survive, their goal is to learn have fun and provide a safe space for any and all f1 fans. Whether you've watched Formula One for decades, or you're just now getting into the sport, they hope that their show will be for you. And I can attest to the fact that I think they do a great job of making f1 accessible I think it's wonderful that we're seeing more and more women join the f1 content creation space, whether it's podcasting or on social media, it just makes it accessible to more people. And the more people who know about f1, or motorsports or anything in general, you know, the richer the whole experience becomes for everyone else. So I reached out to them via DM because I just really enjoyed consuming their content. And I knew that women as women in the space, we would have a great conversation. We talk about everything from f1 to NASCAR and how the NASCAR documentary series on Netflix called NASCAR: full speed will kind of open the doors for them to learn about new types of motorsport. We also talk about how they built their podcast and how it evolved from a fandom in general podcast to an f1 focused podcast, we talk about our diehard fangirl moments with Taylor Swift and Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen. And so it's just a really fun, well rounded conversation. And I'm really thankful that Zoe and Hannah joined me, Zoe, and Hannah, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest as Julia Landauer Fan Behavior 2:14 Thank you for having us. I'mso excited to be here. It's nice to finally meet you. I feel like we've been friends on social media for a while. So it's good to finally be here. Julia Landauer 2:21 It's it's great to have like a full blown conversation. And I was saying before we recorded that it just warms my heart so much to see really fun engaging and educated female content creators around racing because it is such a new thing to have it be so widespread. So for some quick context on me, so my family watched f1 growing up and I started my racing career in go karts. And then in Formula cars, I raced Formula BMW, and we were the support race for f1 in 2007, in Montreal, and at Indy when they used to race there and like, we had our education and coaching program where we did track walks, and we were walking the track at the same time as Sir Lewis Hamilton and his engineers and it was like, Oh, my God, there he is. I think that was the first race that he won. Wow. Yeah, so like, really ingrained in like f1. For a long time, I had an epic crush on Giancarlo Fisichella for a long time, who's just an older racer, and stopped watching a lot in like the 2010s. I want to say when I went to college, and then when I moved to North Carolina, and was really embedded in NASCAR culture, and then I actually jumped into drive to survive. In season three, I had a hard time getting into season one, but I got into season three. And then my husband and I were like, oh my goodness, we need to pick up watching f1 Again, and really started with the 2021 season, which still is too soon to talk about for me because I am a big Lewis fan. So that's kind of like how I got into Formula One and for you, like so many people drive to survive was your intro. So can you share some of the details of how you got started? If one of you saw it and then talk to the other one? Because your friends obviously so what's your backstory? Fan Behavior 4:08 Yeah, so Well, Hannah and I met studying abroad in London almost 10 years ago. Yeah, 10 years this summer, which is crazy. We went to college together, but we're in different grades and and so yeah, we were it was fate that brought us together studying abroad. And we've always been fangirls at heart and that's obviously the nature of our show and what we do which is fangirling out about whatever it is that we love, and so stay friends over the years and then in February 2022 I decided some random day to watch I just survive only because they had announced like a month earlier that they were going to be making the tennis version of the show, which obviously we now know is breakpoint and I'm a big tennis fan. And so I honestly I heard of Drive to survive. I knew it was Popular I knew people liked it. I like had a very vague understanding of Formula One I knew who Lewis Hamilton was, but only from like, the pop culture perspective of Lewis Hamilton, not like the racer perspective of Lewis Hamilton. So really like no understanding at all. But I was like, You know what, I should watch this drive to survive so that I can get an idea of what the tennis show will be like, because do they go in chronological order? How do they cover the sport? Like I was just curious, I also work from home. So I always kind of like to have like a show on while I'm working or whatever. So really, what I'm like completely low stakes didn't think my wife was about to change, honestly. Yeah. And started watching it became obsessed right away. We're both people that like when we get into something, we go fully into it. So I watched the, I think at that point, there were three seasons out. So I watched all three seasons, then the fourth season dropped, and then the 2022 season started. So I like waltzed right into that season. And then yeah, probably a month after I watched it, I was out to dinner with Hannah. And I was like, you've got to watch this show drive to survive. You will love it. I know you I know what you're into, like you will have you will be become just as obsessed as I am. And she watched it. And sure enough, she she did. Oh, yeah. And, you know, I watched all the seasons and all four seasons in like two weeks or something. Yes. Very, very fast. Yeah. And we were really all or nothing. Oh, hard. Yeah, go hard. Yeah, at the time was so funny, and how it all kind of worked out is we had, we had planned to start a podcast called Fan behavior. That was each episode was going to be about like a different fandom. And so we fandoms that we were part of or that had guests on to talk about what they're into. And so we did like One Direction. Taylor Swift. We had a friend on that came on talk about Broadway, like she's a big Broadway fan. But what was funny is like we we launched that podcast right as he became fans of drive to survive. And we found very quickly that all we wanted to talk about was Formula One like it was. So we were doing like all these bonus episodes about Formula One, because it was like, not what our show was supposed to be about. But we were like, let's just do it anyway. And all of our like tiktok content and Instagram content was just f1 related. And so that was the audience that we were building up with just like an F f1 audience. And then probably about six months into doing our original fan behavior show, we were like, You know what we should pivot. And we should re rebrand the show and relaunch as an f1. Show. So we we launched officially as an f1 show of January of last year. So this is we're going into our second second season as an EF f1. Podcast. So that's that's kind of our journey to where we are today. Julia Landauer 7:43 That is so cool. And I'm going to come back to the kind of the original thought podcast with him because I listened to some of them and specific ones that we're going to chat about. So we'll grade from an f1 standpoint, when you're watching drive to survive both of you like like one I think Netflix does an incredible job with Docu series by were there specific storylines, or drivers or cinematic elements that really drew you in. Fan Behavior 8:11 Yeah, I mean, I think for me, so and I've said this before, but I you know, my family watches college basketball, and then we're Kansas City Chiefs fans. I don't I'm not a sports fan. I enjoy the camaraderie of sports, the community of sports, when there's big games on I watch them with people, but I haven't spent a lot of time dedicated to a sport. If the game is on, my family's watching it. I'll watch it too. But I don't necessarily turn it on by myself. Right? This was the first thing for me that I love a story. I really liked the backstory of it. We were both One Direction obsessed. And I think a lot of the, like the time of it. There was so much YouTube content, there was so much the documentary came out like you got to I didn't let start actually I forget about this. But I didn't start liking one direction until I saw the movie, like the documentary movie, because I just didn't really listen. Like I didn't really know. And then of course, I saw Harry Styles. And I was like, Where have I been. But there was something similar about that with the sport is first of all, you are kind of progressively learning about the sport as it's happening. So it's not like I turned on a race and felt I don't like feeling stupid, which is part of being a woman and that's cool. Love that we're working on that. But I don't like when I don't understand what's going on.... --- ### [GUEST: Ashley Sanford - Monster Jam Truck Driver](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-37-guest-ashley-sanford-monster-jam-truck-drive/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today's guest is an absolute Rockstar. She is a burst of positivity. She's Ashley Sanford and she's driver of the Megalodon Monster Jam truck. She was formerly a top fuel dragster, a general adrenaline junkie, professional, fun hacker and a lover of humanity. She's a girl who's always chasing a dream. We had the pleasure of meeting back in 2022, when we were both applying for Monster Jam trucks, and she got it and I did not continue. And I love her attitude. I love her transparency, her honesty, her vulnerability. In today's episode, we talk about her Monster Jam truck experience and what she's been challenged by what's been really exciting, we go into the nitty gritty of what it's like to drive a 12,000 pound truck up and down, jumps in the air on the ground. And then we also go into some of the things that she's been through on a personal level, she had a pretty tough 2023. And we talked about some of the grief that she experienced, how she picked herself up from that, how it was a reframe for her emotionally and mentally. And she shares some really wonderful nuggets that I think we can all apply to our lives. So I hope that you liked this episode, we get really real really honest, really vulnerable. And it's really special. Ashley, welcome to if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, thank you so much for joining me, Ashley Sanford 1:27 I am so happy to be here, it feels like I'm catching up with an old friend. And I always been such a fan of you. And it's really cool. I'm just so excited for this. Likewise, Julia Landauer 1:38 likewise, and like your energy continues to be so great. And so for our listeners, Ashley and I met in 2022 When we were both applying for Monster Jam for the Monster Jam truck series, and we're going through Monster Jam University. And so we had actually met right after my debut Nascar xfinity race. So I gone from that to completely different types of vehicles. And we hit it off and we made it through a few rounds together. Ashley obviously continued on and has now competing in the Monster Jam truck series, which is so cool, but we got to spend a lot of time out in you know, the training grounds. Yeah, Ashley Sanford 2:18 yeah, middle of nowhere cornfields, but we did we got to know each other so quick. And it was just like instant friends. And no, it's been so cool to follow along with your journey in it. I mean, really was amazing. Just going there and connecting three ladies, by the way, because we did have one other lady there with us Chelsea VanCleave whose shout out to Chelsea got to bring her in. But it was just so great getting to connect and see all these women who have different backgrounds, different upbringings grew up in different parts of the country, but yet we are all passionate about being behind the wheel and yeah, just started forever friends. Like totally, Julia Landauer 2:56 totally jam. Paxton, Illinois is like very middle of the country, small town like one main street, we got to explore a bunch of the restaurants and the bars, I guess, like they weren't the most happen, but you know, like, they were the bars, two bars. So it was it was a lot of fun. You know, the one hotel but ya know, I remember you know, what was so cool. And there was one day where I was watching you guys a lot. And you guys were doing more advanced stuff than I had done in the truck. And I was just in such awe of the toughness because you guys were getting air and that means you were landing from getting air and it's just can you describe to some folks kind of what it feels like to do a wheelie where you're accelerating you hit the bump and then you go straight up in the air and land on the back wheels because that's something I've never done. And I watched you guys I was like wow, they are way busier than I am Ashley Sanford 3:55 Guy wheelies my favorite. Yeah, no, it's so crazy. Like I'm just like visually going back to that moment of like, getting to do that for the very first time. And it really is so much fun. But it's taxing Antolin on the body. But what's incredible is from that first week of going out there and doing those hits that my body has never taken in such a massive vehicle. And so going from that to now today where I've gone weekend in and you know weekend over and over again. And it's crazy. I was getting so beat up like from the beginning of like, I would be so sore and I'd have bruises and now it's like I get absolutely nothing. Your body adapts so incredibly and just like upload to the human body for Yeah, oh my gosh, it's just crazy to have experienced that like how your body adapts to those kinds of movements but it really is so fun like going back to like actually doing this guy Willie, and taking a 12,000 pound monster truck and soaring it up vertically, it is just one of those, like, kind of my very first time doing it was like, I didn't know what to expect, am I going to do a backflip Am I gonna like you don't really understand yet what the truck is going to do, where it's going to move and really the technical abilities of these trucks because you watch them in some of these drivers, which I'm starting to do now the balance seen on two wheels front and back, like they're twisting like ballerinas sometimes. And it's to this day, like going on to certain pods. And this is, you know, our track is what we call our pods, the dirts always different. So you never know what you're gonna expect to this day you learn and your body does, you know, learn and we're okay with these harder tracks, these tackier tracks, going to be less forgiving, and you know, give you that pump a little bit more. Whereas the softer tracks, you got to hit it harder. And sometimes you're not even any good enough when you're going at it full throttle, and going from my background of drag racing. So this has been so insane because the technical abilities it takes to be ahead of the truck is something way beyond I thought you got to go in those trucks and just romp around. I thought it was so easy, you know, oh, you hit this, you hit that? How hard can it be? But there were so much that really goes in between your eyes, like a part of becoming a Monster Jam driver and a successful Monster Jam driver. And it's been such a fun challenge. Yeah, Julia Landauer 6:37 oh my gosh, it's like I'm taking back to that day just watching because like from the outside looking in. I was watching you know, you were still and then you were accelerating towards this dirt mound and then you kind of hit the dirt mound with the front wheels, and then you face up towards the sky and then you come back down. Can you walk us through kind of what was the first time you did this? Can you walk us through what was going through your mind as you were approaching this dirt mound that you had to hit head on and unlike the sensation of going up, Ashley Sanford 7:09 you know I go back to it was just so like, simple. It was Tom Meents in our ears. Who for those who don't know, Tom Meents? The Professor, the goat of Monster Jam, if you will, he has done so much for Monster Jam. He is also the head teacher at Monster Jam University. And it is truly in his backyard in Paxton, Illinois, where we're doing all this literally His house is right there. We're in his backyard. So he's in our ears with our comm system. And I just remember really putting my faith in Him and being like, Okay, let's go through the steps. 123 And that was really it. And I somehow was like, at like in a peaceful meditative state because truly that was it. I'm like, okay, line up straight. fast, not too fast. Hit it, stay in it. And that was it. That's truly all I was thinking. And by doing that 123 executed a great sky Willie going out my very first day. And I mean, after that I was hooked. Julia Landauer 8:14 Yeah, no, you're a great job. Ashley Sanford 8:18 I mean, and but it's just one of those things as simple as making it sound 123 There's still so much that goes into this because there's truly moving parts. Yeah. In our brains, I mean it coming from a person who's an over thinker, usually behind the wheel. I do my best when I just let it go and do what I know what to do. Yeah, Julia Landauer 8:41 and it's kind of breaking it down into that pragmatic like step by step because my my only comparable experience which is not anywhere near the same thing was when we first did the little jump. So the dirt mounds were like what three feet high or something when we did our first job. I really remember sitting in the truck approaching being told to go and accelerating and when I hit the like smaller amount for the first time I kind of like tensed up in my body. I was like holding my breath. And then I kept accelerating you get in the air. And I know I was only like five feet in the air but my head was probably up like 12 feet in the air. And I remember thinking once I was in the air I was like, oh shit, this is gonna hurt so much. Oh my goodness. Like what's it gonna feel like when it lands I knew it had like really soft suspension. I knew it had these huge soft tires, but I was like, I'm catapulting 12,000 pounds into the air. What is it going to be like when it lands and I close my eyes? I tensed up my body and then it landed so softly I was so impressed at how soft that landing wasn't I opened my eyes. I was like cool. Let's do this again. But it's it really is something else. It's Ashley Sanford 9:48 so true though because I mean, our natural reaction is like you had said oh shit like this is gonna hurt because here I am in a vehicle flying through the air. But no, they really do set these trucks up for this and you over time you get to know the truck, you have faith in the truck, and you have your faith and your crew chiefs who are setting up the truck for you.... --- ### [6 Tips for Giving a Great Presentation](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-38-6-tips-for-giving-a-great-presentation/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you've had a good week. So far, I have had a very hectic two weeks, it started in Charlotte. And then I was in New York, and then I was back in Charlotte. And then I was in Las Vegas, and then New Jersey, and then drove down to Charlotte with Ben. And if I may go on a tangent briefly, nine and a half hours on the road is rough. And throughout the entirety of the journey, I wish I could have air dropped episode 32 of if I'm honest, which is driving tips from a racecar driver, because some of these people on the road needed some help, especially when it came to moving over to the right lane. But anyway, I digress. The reason I was in Vegas the other week was because I was giving a keynote discussion, which was super fun. It was a smaller audience of 60 people it was in a conference room, I got to be very close and in the faces of the audience members. And after I gave the discussion, I started talking with a few of the attendees. And one of them made the point that she was really excited to see that I seem so comfortable on stage and that she has a harder time giving presentation. And I realized in that moment that public speaking is definitely a very polarizing experience. Some people you know, like myself, we get adrenaline, we get the excitement, we love the interactions with the audience, and other people have a really hard time. And I do want to make a little side note that I personally believe that giving a public discussion should be a little nerve wracking because you are bringing people together, you're getting up on stage, you're commanding an audience's attention, and you want it to be worthwhile for everyone. And so of course, you're going to be a little nervous and being nervous shows that you care about that. So don't let being nervous, make you feel like you're not going to do a good job. I get nervous before every keynote, I have to do deep breathing like it's totally normal. But anyway, I also think that everyone and anyone can be a really good public speaker with the right guidance and the right work and the right mindset. And I think that's something that's not discussed enough when thinking about giving presentations, or keynotes or whatever it is. And so I wanted to take this episode to share brief history of my journey as a keynote speaker and to give six tips that I have for how to give a really great presentation. For those of you who don't know, I stumbled into being a keynote speaker because I was asked to give a Stanford TEDx talk when I was a junior in college and fun story, I actually had to decline the invitation my junior year, because the weekend that the TEDxStanford event was happening was the same weekend as the live reunion filming for Survivor, which I was on that season. So I had to be in LA for that. But luckily, Stanford asked me again my senior year to give the talk. And they told me they wanted it to be about racing and being a woman in a male dominated space. And that was the prompt. So I got to do that. And then I left college with his very polished video of me, taking an audience through a narrative journey and making three points and delivering it well. And I knew that keynote speaking could be an actual career. And I knew that it would grant me the freedom and flexibility to continue pursuing racing and to be on the road a lot and to push sponsorship. So I made my first pitch to a women's leadership conference to be one of their speakers in 2015. And episode three of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, is called Taylor Swift taught me to know my value. And I go through how I pitched myself for this conference and the very candid feedback I asked for. So that's really helpful if you're looking to pitch yourself and knowing your value. But I did that. And then since then, I have been developing keynote speaking career. I have been doing this for 10 years now and it involves constant and ongoing fine tuning. You know, as I experienced new things, I have new stories and experiences to share with an audience or sometimes they get tired of giving a certain story. Or sometimes I realized that I'm not doing a punchy enough job. Like even in Las Vegas, one of the points I made and one of the themes I discussed, I didn't feel like it really was a huge value add to the keynote. So I've decided that I'm not going to present it like that moving forward. So it's all about iterating and trying new things and, and constantly evolving as a speaker. And that's if you're doing it professionally, right. But I've been able to really learn a lot of cool tricks, tips, things that have made speaking a lot easier. And I want to share that with you guys. And I will preface this by saying that my keynotes typically fall under the motivational and inspirational umbrella. So I will come in and be relatable to most audiences. I talk about a lot of different life themes. And I do understand that a lot of people have to give a presentation that's more topic specific or more technical or educational, but my hope and expectation is that this advice will be applicable to other types of talks as well. Here are my six tips for how to give a great presentation. The most helpful tip that I learned for how to give a great presentation was to think of the presentation as having a conversation with the audience rather than giving a speech to an audience. And that means making eye contact with people it means reacting to the audience and to their reactions. It means bringing your personality on stage and welcoming your mannerisms and your speech patterns. This humanizes the whole experience for everyone. And it brings the speaker and the audience onto a more level playing field, which will resonate so much deeper with an audience. It also takes some pressure off, because we all know how to have a conversation. We're not necessarily saying we're an authority figure, but we're sharing our perspective and sharing our points or hoping to educate and a conversation is a great way to do that. The second tip that I have for how to give a great presentation, is to write out everything that you want to say and anchor your discussion in personal stories and experiences. I kid you not when I first got asked to give a 45 minute keynote, I had no idea how many stories I should tell or what the flow should be. Because I had never given a monologue for 45 minutes. My TEDx talk was three stories. It was supposed to be 12 minutes, but it ended up being eight minutes because I spoke really quickly because I was nervous. But I didn't have any idea. And so I talked with my client about what themes they wanted, and what their hope was for the discussion. And then I had to think about what stories make sense. What stories can I tell around taking ownership? What stories can I tell around perseverance? What stories can I tell about building relationships, and then I had to flesh out the stories and I had to make them relatable. And I think it's really important to stay away from generalizations or cliches. I think there's a misconception that if we say something, General, it'll be more relatable, like, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? Right? Like, yeah, we all know that. But there's nothing really moving about that. Right? What was it that you went through? What were you feeling that was so challenging, but didn't quite kill you? You know, what was your thought process? How are you overcoming it? What did you decide to do? What was the consequence of what you chose? Telling these specific stories, really give some the audience something to reach on to. And it's always fine to bring in data or research or you know, other thing that's not your own as long as you give credit. But to be specific to be anecdotal, what I have found is that as a racecar driver, so few people know what it's like to go racecar driving my experiences, in terms of how I learned them are very niche and specific. But I share what the emotions are, I share what my thought process was, I share the little details about the environment or what I was thinking about. And that is what people relate to. And we have so much more in common with people than we have differences. And so if you're able to tell those specific stories that aren't generalizations that bring in some specific points, that's going to resonate so much deeper with your audience. The third tip that I have, which is somewhat related to the stories you're telling, is to be intentional about the narrative flow. And this was something that my speaking coach for TEDx Stanford Bronwyn Saglimbeli of Bronwyn communications, really drove home for me, she was sure to emphasize the importance of just like any story, any movie, any book, we need to have the the hook that gets the audience excited. And then we need to have a methodical progression of thoughts and discussions that easy for an audience to follow. And we need some drama, we need that pinnacle of Oh, know what's going to happen. And then we need the resolution and the finale that brings it all together. And so giving a keynote presentation, or any kind of presentation is a condensed version of that, you need to have those same points you need to be able to bring in the audience. And so thinking about how you do that, whether it's the specific story, you tell, whether it's the method in which you deliver the story, if it's your body language, if it's visuals that you use, really thinking about what makes a good story and bringing in those elements. I will bring your attention also to the transitions. I think it's really easy to have abrupt transitions if you're going from one thing to another.... --- ### [Hollywood Stunt Work with Brett Smrz](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-39-hollywood-stunt-work-with-brett-smrz/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today's guest is actually someone who I raised go karts with but admittedly haven't talked with in a very long time except for the occasional social media DM. And Brett Smrz not only has overcome some substantial adversity as a teenager, but he's taken his roots in racing and developed a super interesting and really impressive career as a stunt performer. So for a little of his background, Brett Smrz began racing go karts at the age of 12 and was competing nationally and winning championships, and he graduated to the Mazda MX five cup series when he was 16. And one week after qualifying poll and finishing third in his first professional race, he suffered a serious leg injury which he will get into in this episode. Within three months of that he got back into racing cars, albeit with some adjustments, and he continued racing for quite a few years before transitioning to becoming a full time stunt performer. So away from the track, Brett has established himself as an elite stunt driver with drivers Inc. In the film, commercial and television industries including doing stunt work for six underground transformers Rise of the Beasts glee Mission Impossible Captain Marvel Ford versus Ferrari Don't worry, darling Ferrari and most recently Griselda. This was such an engaging and interesting conversation and I hardcore nerded out over a lot of technical questions about what it's like to be a stunt performer, get things done performing and I think was keynote speaking in other industries, where there's not a set way to get into it and do it. I think a lot of the details go unknown to the general population. So we talked about everything from our racing backgrounds, to his accident to how he mentally pushed through that, and how it impacted his future racing career, why he switched to stunt driving, and we go into a lot of detail. And he very generously impatiently shares a whole lot of information that I thought was super, super interesting. And I hope that you enjoyed this episode. Brett, thank you for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Brett Smrz 2:06 Thank you so much for having me, Julia, it's good to see you. Julia Landauer 2:09 It's good to see you. We were talking before we started recording that it's probably been close to 20 years since we've seen each other in person either at a go kart track or a car racing track. That's how we know each other. But it's pretty wild that we're old enough to really clearly remember, you know, 15 to 20 years ago. Brett Smrz 2:26 I know it's been a long time. And yeah, I'm glad to see we're still racing and going along with your career and all that and it's it's pretty fun to watch. And yeah, I'm glad to see you again and glad to see you're doing good. Julia Landauer 2:38 And you obviously have such an interesting and diverse career. And I mentioned a lot of what you do in the introduction, but I want to take it back to our karting roots for a hot second. So how old were you when you got into kart racing? Brett Smrz 2:50 So I was 11 years old. My dad bought a go kart for me for Christmas. I was really I really wanted to get a dirt bike and he got me this go kart and I was like I was I was really stoked for it. But I was also like, Yeah, I wish I had a dirt bike. And then but when I got to the track and started riding, driving, I was it was a lot of fun. And I just got hooked and so I was about 11 years old started racing at 12. Yeah, Julia Landauer 3:14 okay, cool. Yeah, I was similar 10 and started racing, like closer to 11. And I had started on doing the local go kart track. And then I think we met at like w k stuff, or maybe stars of Karting stuff. So did you also do like local racing regional and then move up to the national stuff? Brett Smrz 3:28 Yeah. So we started we started off with WkA and IKF and like the local Willow Springs karting series, and that was like the first year. And after the first year, my dad was just like, you're going you're getting thrown to the wolves. And that's when we just entered stars of karting and just, we were doing actually kind of a lot at that point. We were doing stars. We were doing local WKA. And then we eventually got over to the Florida winter tour. So we're kind of bouncing all over the place, you know, couldn't really pick a series we were in Rotax we kind of didn't at all. Okay, Julia Landauer 4:04 so for any listeners who aren't familiar with the early 2000s karting scene, there are a lot of different series that raced in different parts of the country. I think stars of Karting attracted more of an international audience in terms of drivers and everything. And you had many more people coming over from South America coming over from Europe, world karting association with a little more national, I think and these national series would have five or six races a year. And so like all of us kids, we just kind of hang out with each other race with each other and then see each other only a few times a year. But it was really cool. And so I had kind of stopped racing go karts, by the time I was 15 or so with a couple years of overlap with cars. At what point did you have your accident that we will talk about that kind of paused your racing career. Brett Smrz 4:52 So it was a it was actually like right after I exited karting and got into cars. I just turned 16 And that's when I had my accident. So it was like really I did one race in Formula Ford 1600. And that was at Infineon or Sears point and Julia Landauer 5:09 to throw back name Infineon, I haven't done one in a minute. I Brett Smrz 5:12 know that's what it was called then so I figured I'd you know, have nostalgia. But yeah, that Well, I did one race and then I had my accident. So it was very, it was like right in the beginning of my sports car and open wheel career. So it was it was fresh. Julia Landauer 5:26 That is tough. So can you talk us through what happened with your accident? Yeah. Brett Smrz 5:30 So I was actually at a race, I was doing an MX five cup race in Atlanta, and I flew straight home from there, got home, I went to my girlfriend's house at the time, and I jumped on a trampoline. And we were screwing around on that. And we decided to go to the second story balcony and kind of take the heights up a little bit. And my friend jumped first. And I was I was very competitive when I was younger. And I just decided that I'm going to outdo them. So I did a flip off the off the balcony, I did this big, spectacular front flip with a twist. And I landed it on my feet. But it was very it was it was a very high, you know, height. And I was still kind of twisting a little bit when I landed and it just broke my leg and cut the artery had some internal problems had got compartment syndrome, I damaged my nerve. And it was just really like a complicated situation with the brake and they couldn't close the leg and all this stuff. So I had nine surgeries lost like 50 pounds almost almost passed away from it, because it was it was starting to poison me and all that. So which is which is why they had to take it off. Yeah. Oh, Julia Landauer 6:41 my goodness. And I remember and this is gonna be another throwback name. But I remember I got a text from Zack Skolnick, who was another hardware guy who was like to trigger about Brett. And I remember for me, and like, you know, we were never besties at the track, but I feel like that was kind of the first accident of a peer that I had heard of, and I felt really bad for you. But can you walk through a little bit of kind of your emotions of you, you just get into racing cars, you're like looking to this, this cool career. And then obviously, there's a lot of trauma that you didn't have to work through what was that? Like? Brett Smrz 7:15 It was it was tough. When I first heard that it was gonna get amputated. It was it was a you know, it was mentally hard for the first day honestly, like I just I but I had a lot of time to just sit and think I was in the hospital. I was kind of on a lot of drugs at the time, honestly, when they. But um, but I really did, it didn't bother me like most people get really bothered by it. And I just decided that I'm 16 I have a lot of time ahead of me. And it just didn't bother me. So I I actually what helped me with that was that I had just finished reading Alex Zinardi's my sweetest victory his book. And he lost both of his legs and an accident, got back to racing was proved that he was you know, still able to race and be fast. So that was fresh in my brain. And then there's this stunt guy, Casey piretti. And he does all this spectacular stunt work with his prosthetic leg. He designs like these break legs and like they he can run on it and blow it off in midair and make it look like it blew up and stuff. So he's really like talented. And I've known him since I was a little kid. And so I watched him one time just sprint down the street with his prosthetic. And I was like so these visions like I it kind of helped me like mentally. And it really just set me straight for when they told me that I just decided, well, if those guys can do it, then I'm going to be one of those guys. So that's Julia Landauer 8:38 so great to see that almost like representation from such a young age. Like to your point I hadn't thought about that. So what am I correct that you come from a stunt family like was your your parents were already involved in that. And that's kind of how you knew of this stunt guy who was doing all his stuff with his prosthetic? Brett Smrz 8:55 Yeah, so my dad and my uncle are in the stunt world. And they've been doing it for almost 40 years now. So they've been around and that's my dad is the one who got me into stunts.... --- ### [Regret & 4 Tips for Self-Forgiveness](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-40-regret-4-tips-for-self-forgiveness/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I don't know if anyone else felt this way this past week, but it was a doozy. And I just felt completely spent for most of the week like, this is the most solid, I've slept in a long time I got in bed at 9:15 on Wednesday, I mean, I was quite tired. And I don't know if it's because work is definitely starting to ramp up a little bit more. Or maybe there's something with the pollen in the air, it seems like a lot of people I spoke with also felt very tired. So anyway, I hope you all we're able to take the weekend to recharge and feel more energized. Speaking of work ramping up, so I am working on a bunch of different projects. And on one of the projects, I'm working closely with someone who's helping me get information and who's reaching out to people on my behalf. And this person did something that wasn't detrimental. It wasn't bad, no harm, no foul, but it was something where we can probably do it a little differently moving forward, and it would probably be just as effective. And this person felt really bad about what they had done. And I get it like people want to do do well at work. But you know, I was kind of surprised that this person felt so bad. And while I was talking with this person, I couldn't help but see their remorse and like feel a lot of compassion for them because they want to do the best they can. And I love that. And I feel the same way. But I also wanted to kind of shake them a little bit and say "you got this, you're fine, like we are good, don't worry about it." And that got me thinking about kind of having regrets and then also the importance of learning how to forgive yourself. And so because of that, I decided that I want to chat this week about exactly that. Regret and self forgiveness. Because it's hard, right? Regret is one of the most agonizing feelings I think that I feel outside of grief, maybe. And it just, it totally sticks you in the pit of your stomach and I feel it in my heart, I feel it in my head, I just, it's this feeling of like, oh my goodness, my life could be different had I done something differently. And that's, that's a rough one to grapple with. And so because of this, and because of how intensely I really hate the feeling of regret, I've tried quite hard in my life to live intentionally and thoughtfully so that I avoid regret. But obviously, no one can avoid regret 100%. And so in prepping for this episode, I wanted to do some research on to what are the most common types of regret, right? And there are four types that I found pretty universally written about. And they are foundational regrets, boldness regrets, moral regrets, and connection regrets. So foundational regrets are those where basically we feel like we could have done work better, we could have prepared more, practiced more, done better work, things that are finance related, health related, career related things that we feel like we failed in terms of the prep work done. And so when thinking about how we can avoid foundational regrets, I think the big key is to think ahead to do a lot of thorough work and to really thoroughly prepare. The second type of regret is boldness regrets. And as you can probably expect, this revolves around inaction and the regret of not trying something, not doing something, not asking the question, not asking the person. Apparently this is a pretty big one that people feel towards the ends of their lives, like if they didn't learn a new language, or they didn't ask someone on a date, or they didn't go after a career they wanted or they didn't take the trip that they wanted, you know, things like that. And so the way we can think about trying to avoid boldness regrets is to, when in doubt, go for it, do what you want to do, try the thing that you're thinking about and don't err on the side of comfort or control or being reserved, that kind of thing. The third regret is moral regrets. And as I'm sure you can also imagine, this one revolves around when you know that you should have done something a different way because of how it impacts others kind of taking the low road instead of taking the high road for whatever reason. I think this is the area where we really need to lean into our sense of values and what tenants we live by. But if we're trying to avoid moral regrets, I think the easiest way to think about it is to when in doubt, take the high road. The last type of regret is connection regret. And this apparently is the most common type of regret that people have when they get to the end of their lives because it revolves around not nurturing and supporting relationships, whether it's not reaching out to someone who you were thinking about or if it's not putting enough time and effort into relationships that you deal with regularly. People really hate the feeling of wishing that they had made a phone call or cared more about someone or put more time into someone. And so I would say the lesson here for how to avoid connection regret Is to have empathy and to put the effort into people that you care about. After reading about these types of regrets, I realized that most of my regrets are foundational. For example, in 2019, I was racing in the Canadian NASCAR series and I led a lap in that race, I ran second in that race for a long time with my teammates who were both champions in the series. And after a round of pitstops, I wasn't at the front of the pack at this point, but I was trying hard. And I could tell I was getting a little sloppy, I could tell that I was missing my marks a little bit that I was continuing to push really hard. And I knew that I was getting a little sloppy. And instead of getting my act together, I just kept pushing hard while being a little sloppy. And lo and behold, I found myself in the outside wall of turn four. So that was rough, because that was kind of, you know, my best opportunity that year to do really well in a race. I was great at that track. I liked that track, the car was handling Well, anyway, big time regret, because it impacted the whole rest of my season. And had I just been smarter about stopping the sloppiness that I acknowledged I was doing, I probably would have had a much different season. So that's a rough one to swallow. Another example of this kind of foundational regret for me is when I was on SURVIVOR. So I made the active decision to not tell people I went to Stanford because I wanted to focus on the racing. But I also, I knew that going to Stanford came with an air of privilege. And since we were playing for a million dollars, I didn't want people to think, oh, just this privileged little kid. And so I didn't talk about that. And it impacted the game. It impacted my play. It impacted my relationship with people on the on the show. And I just did badly and I got no real airtime. And it just it went so much worse than it could have gone in my opinion. And there are definitely elements out of my control. But this very specific decision I made totally backfired. And that's my one opportunity. Although I've applied to be on Survivor again, I will not get on it, I don't think, and so it was my one opportunity to really do something super cool. And I feel like I totally fumbled it. And I do regret that to this day. I don't feel like I have a ton of connection regrets or boldness regrets or moral regrets. I live pretty strongly by my moral compass. I think I'm pretty compassionate and thoughtful towards other people. And I really love the people that I have relationships with. And so I don't find that I have many regrets in that area. But in thinking about all this, I was trying to think back to when my first real feeling of regret came. And surprise, surprise, I think it was on a go kart track. I was 11 years old. It was my first full season of racing. And I hadn't won yet. But I was leading this race, I was several kart lengths ahead of people, I had a really dominant lead. And I was probably five laps from the end of the race. And I thought, "oh my goodness, this is so exciting!" And I started to let my mind wander, I started to think about winning, I started to think about celebrating, I started to think about how proud my parents would be I started to think about how great it would feel to win a race. And the next thing I knew I was spinning through the grass and watching go karts go by on the track. It was awful. I felt so low in that moment. And I couldn't tell you what happened from the time I was leading the race that time I was in the grass, I just missed something because I wasn't focused. And oh, it was so agonizing and so embarrassing, and such a profoundly clear memory for me. And so I think once that happened, and I knew exactly what I could have done differently, I really tried to minimize that feeling moving forward. And that's kind of easier said than done, right? To say that you want to live a life with no regrets, like cool. But how do we do that? Because most of us care about what we're doing. And most of us care about how we treat people and can recognize when we do things that aren't great. I like to think about it as living very intentionally and very thoughtfully. So how does this translate into day to day life? I religiously focus on what's in my control. I am extremely compulsive about this in any situation, I think about all the elements where who can I reach out to what action can I do? How can I prepare things like that. And by focusing on that, I know that I'm giving it my all and even if things don't go my way, if I've impacted everything that's in my control. That's kind of the maximum that I can do. I also really think about when I'm in the moment and deciding how to behave, how to act, how to talk to other people. I asked myself if I'll be disappointed myself later, particularly if it doesn't end up going the way I want.... --- ### [Movie Set Props with TikTok Dad Joke Star Scott Reeder](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-41-movie-set-props-with-tiktok-dad-joke-star-sc/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Today, we have a Tiktok and YouTube star on the podcast. And we are talking with a man who combines behind the scenes movie set prop information with dad jokes. I mean, this is a dream come true for me and I love a dad joke I love upon. And so I'm thrilled that Scott Reeder who is a prop master is joining us on the podcast today. So Scott was born and raised in Southeast Texas and is based in Austin, and he's been in the film and TV industry for 35 years, working as a prop master on hundreds of TV and film projects. Among His notable credits are Friday Night Lights, Pitch Perfect, parenthood, machete, Necessary Roughness, and the leftovers. In 2004, he opened a prop shop in Austin, Texas and has rented out props to 1000s of productions across the US. And in 2020, Scott started posting film and TV related videos on social media and quickly built a large following with his comedic spin on edutainment. By combining his film industry knowledge with dad jokes and puns. Scott currently has over 1.8 million followers on Tiktok, over 950,000 subscribers on his Scott prop and roll YouTube channel. And he was so great in joining us and sharing all of the tidbits of the industry. I really, really love this conversation because not only did we learn how he got into prop work, and what it's like to play mad scientist as he's trying to develop a prop. But we also got to talk about his experience on racing and car related sets, we got to talk about the very specific props that I had questions about that were featured in a lot of his videos. And we also talk about some serious stuff like his take on the fatal tragedy, an accident that was on the rust set when a firearm was discharged and killed a member of the production set. And he also talks about what he's still working on from a prop perspective. And he's very, very chill. He's very thoughtful. I, as many of you know really adore puns and dad jokes. And that was how I originally found him when I was back on TikTok. And so I'm really excited that he's joined us and I hope you enjoy the super interesting discussion. Scott, thank you for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Scott Reeder 2:24 Thanks for having me. Julia Landauer 2:25 So for our listeners, and maybe for you too, I came across your content back when I was on TikTok. I'm no longer on TikTok. But I love that you were incorporating such clever dad jokes into all of your content. And at the time, the reason it resonated with me so much was because I was having to do physical therapy for my shoulder. So I found myself like laying on the ground doing these stretches for several minutes every day. And I got bored. And I don't know how I started. But I started delivering random dad jokes that I came across while I was doing stretching, and it was on my Instagram stories. So and then after kind of relating to you on that, I just thought the content that you were posting was so cool about everything all the behind the scenes related to props. And you know, I think so many of us appreciate what goes into making movies. But to see the science of it, the nitty gritty of it was just has always been really cool continues to be really cool. And so could you let us know what exactly is a prop master and how did you get into this industry? Scott Reeder 3:26 Well, I'm, a prop master is someone who handles anything touched or held in a film or television show or a theatrical production. I don't handle couches or paintings on the wall. That's all set decoration. But when it comes to, if it's a shootout, I provide the proper weapons. If it's a bar fight, I provide the breakaway beer bottles of bits, like said anything touched or held. I got started when I was going to the University of North Texas, just north of Dallas, in Denton, Texas. And there happened to be a movie shooting in town when I was I guess a sophomore. And I found out a location where they were going to be and I just showed up and offered to pick up trash or whatever. I started out just basically as an intern. And but I made connections on that I was very proactive. And I interned at the North Texas Film Commission where I got to go scout locations and I always knew what was coming long before it was coming to the state of Texas. So I could get my my name in the hat early on. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the first few years. But it did help pay my way through college. I was doing karaoke music videos. I was doing anything I could jump in on where Julia Landauer 4:58 I need to pause you right there. We When you say you were doing karaoke music videos, what does that mean? Like, Scott Reeder 5:04 oh, poor me, okay, back back. This, this dates me here. I go way back. So the first movie I interned on was in 1989, I was 19 years old, then I worked, there were some small production companies that would do what are called karaoke videos. And back in the day, they were like, low budget music videos. So as the words are coming up, if you're in a bar, and you're singing a song, the words would be coming up, they would have a music video that would play right behind it. And I helped make this. So that's kind of where I learned, you know, doing sound or any camera. What a grip was what I mean, you're doing something that's that low budget, you do a little bit of everything. So I always recommend to people that are wanting to get into business, to work on commercials work on the small indies, because that's where the crews are smaller, and you're given a lot more responsibility early on. And you learn how to problem solve and deal with the high pressure of you know, of having responsibility thrown on you at an early age. That's where, you know, kind of how I got started. And then I ended up working on doing props on a show called Necessary Roughness, which was a film for Paramount that came to town in the Dallas area. And I just went and basically begged the prop master for a job and got on as like a production assistant, basically. And it was it was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot. And I just started out that way doing like proper assessment work. Then I found the best training ground was being a prop buyer. Were on television. So I did a really cheesy, late night CBS show, it was for CBS. It was called Dangerous curves. And that was like no, do. And that's where, you know, we had like seven days to prep, you know, and then seven days to shoot, per episode. And then following that I got on the original Walker Texas Ranger, and I did that for years. And that's kind of how I cut my teeth in the business. But yeah, so a prop master has to break down the script, and look and see what all is needed. Figure out how much labor it's gonna take. If you've got to have anything fabricated like a rubber axe, it's the little details that you don't think about, like if we're shooting in a parking lot. And we're filming in Texas, and it's set in New York, I've got to put New York plates on all the cars and put registration stickers. If it's New York and you know, 1960 then you got to think about okay, you got to do the research and Okay, what did their you know? What did the registration stickers look like? What are the plates look like? Down to you know, then the said decorators are worried about the street signs. When did those change over? You know, you really, you know, period shows you really have to do your research because they have this thing on IMDb called the goofs in blooper section or what? And Julia Landauer 8:37 are you out on your on your shit, basically? Oh, I've Scott Reeder 8:40 been everyone that does what I do is called out on, you know, and sometimes, sometimes they're right, sometimes they're not. And I'll you know, I'll admit that, you know, I'm, I'm not perfect. I make mistakes, like everybody, so. But yeah, you've got to have some thick skin. But you know, what I loved about doing tick tock, I'll hear people do like, I'll show how to do something. Right now, whatever the trick is, be it making rubber glass or whatever, whatever it is. And someone will come in and have a way they do it. That's interesting. It's not necessarily better or, or sometimes it is, but I've learned from other people on this app as well. So that's pretty cool. Julia Landauer 9:28 That is really cool. So I have a follow up question and something that you said earlier how, you know, obviously, you have to think about license plate all these little details and like on a racing team, like Crews also have like they have just so many little details that they have to check that they have to make sure are on point and they create these massive checklists and they're pretty uniform because I do the same stuff that I attract no matter what track it is. But for you, is there the same kind of meticulous, like list making and like do you have a set thing that you have to you know, to pay attention to? or like a street scene versus a home scene versus Well, Scott Reeder 10:02 I do a breakdown of every episode. And then I send it out to the director, the producer, the art coordinator, the production designer. And we go through my list, okay. And like that's what we did today is I went through scene by scene. And just to make sure I'm on the same page as the director, and that we in that I don't miss anything. And sometimes they'll be something that's not scripted that they'd like to add, this is the opportunity to do that. And then then I continue to gather stuff. And a few days after that, we'll have a prop show until water where I will lay everything out on tables, and show everything that we have. And then they can make their final notes there. But by then we typically like start shooting the next day. And yeah, so I better really get get it in gear and but typically by the show until I know, I don't have any fires to put out really, right.... --- ### [Repurposing Ambition](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-42-repurposing-ambition/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I've been friends with someone for over a decade. And they they helped me out with some brand stuff with my racing brand and identity back when I was in college. So I've known them for a while. And this person founded an apparel company called Clade Apparel, and they have really well and sustainably made leather jackets, that's where they're starting, and all made in the US. And as part of their product launch, they also wanted to send some folks some of their jackets and explain the backstory, and then give these people the opportunity to tell their story. So I got this really incredible leather bomber, and I was able to take some photos at Golden Hour in Charlotte back late last winter, or late last fall in 2023. And then a few weeks later, we did an interview. And the whole point of this interview was to get a little more philosophical and discuss some deeper concepts, and it's condensed into a readable format. But one of the questions that they asked me was, what is your greatest ambition? And this was kind of an interesting question to get at the time, because I had just started working at NASCAR had just kind of very publicly transitioned away from racing to to the business side. And so I want to read you what my answer was. I said, "my greatest ambition was to be a professional racecar driver succeeding at the highest level. And that's a pretty big one. And it's interesting, because it really didn't occur to me that I wouldn't make it as high professionally as I was hoping for until about two years ago. Even though when I look back on my career, it definitely slowed at times. And it ebbed and flowed. But I had full faith that I was going to be able to make it as a top level professional racer until about two years ago. So now I'm redefining what my big ambitions are. I realized that you could live a whole life just focusing on your career, you could live a whole life just focusing on having a family. And you could live a whole life learning about the world, I think, to try to live fully and to accomplish all of the little and major things that you want to, while also being a present person and developing relationships and enjoying what life has to offer is pretty ambitious. And I'm realizing it's really, really hard to do all of it." That's the end of my answer to the question. I'm really proud of myself in that moment of being able to articulate this kind of redefining what ambitions are. Because it was tough, it was still like in the thick of making the transition and having mixed feelings about it. But I think this does a good job. However, as I've thought about this more, I don't think of it so much as redefining ambition. I think of it more as repurposing my ambition for life. And that's what I want to talk about today, I want to talk about how we can repurpose our ambition to find purpose to find enthusiasm for what we're doing. And to build, especially if we're starting a new chapter, building a racing career was so so exciting. And there's the on track side of it, which is all of the driving and going fast and racing against other people, you know, the competition element is so much fun, the speed is so much fun, the thrill of taking corners at high speeds and feeling the G-forces the euphoria of winning the incredible satisfaction of successfully getting a team to work together. I mean, there's so much of the on track stuff that's so, so exciting. But I've always known that I've really liked a lot of the other elements that go into building a racing career as well. And I think about it as putting together a very complex 3d puzzle. And there are multiple ways that the puzzle pieces can all fit together. And even if you get the puzzle pieces together, it's not necessarily going to end up the way you want. But it's okay because you're identifying the different components that need to come together. You're being creative and figuring out how it has to go together. And that's a really exciting process. So you have the on track stuff, as I mentioned, right, all the racing track. You also have all of the training and preparation and sim work and visualization and making yourself mentally tough to be able to attack a racetrack and to get on with the competitors. Then you have the team building aspect. As I mentioned, you know, you have to join a new team and then inspire everyone to want to work really hard to help you and to have that good chemistry with the team members and to build that trust with people, especially your spotters and your crew chief and to learn the communication with the team. And then there's the business side of racing. There's everything from having a clearly identifiable brand and with things that you stand for And social media development and fan engagement and fundraising and sponsorship and leveraging what your strengths and differentiating assets are to be able to articulate your value and get people to write checks for you and your racing career. And then there's earning a living so that you can continue to pursue the dream. So there's just so many elements. And when I thought back on it, you know, the entire process a 360 degree view of building a career in racing requires being creative, and thinking about how those pieces can fit together. It requires persistence, and proactiveness. And asking for what you want and pitching yourself and asking for help and asking for feedback and figuring out what your next steps need to be. It requires articulating your value and clearly describing your vision and how you can help others achieve their goal is by supporting you requires thinking about best case scenarios and thinking about worst case scenarios. Building racing career requires collaboration requires having really challenging conversations with people it requires letting your emotions out enough to drive you forward, but also being responsible about the fact that you are in front of a large audience, and are usually a role model for other people. And how do you balance that it requires being able to be a great coach to yourself and to pump yourself up and to be able to be your own harshest critic, so that you know how to improve. There are so many elements that go into perfecting and building and creating a racing career, just like many other careers. And what I've realized, as I've been transitioning away from driving and figuring out what really gets me as excited is that I'm learning that it's really important for me to repurpose that ambition and that element, the problem solving the puzzle creation and putting together to apply all of those same process oriented things that I loved about building my racing career, and applying it to now my more professional facing career, I expected going into a corporate career that a lot of the system oriented things that I liked, wouldn't be applied to the corporate world, right, you know, you're still building relationships, you're still creatively problem solving, you're still providing value, you're still needing to articulate your visions, it doesn't apply to my own personal endeavors. But now it's related to the sport as a whole, right, the greater greater sport of NASCAR. And so I knew that I would be able to apply these things. But I really didn't have a clearer idea of what that would look like in practice in the day to day emotionally, even how how invested, I would get in what I was doing. And I'm really excited, because now at a little over five months into this role. I feel like I'm situated enough and getting well versed enough in the business and in the people and in all of the various ecosystems that are involved in the company, where I'm able to start putting together some puzzles, it's really exciting because I see the potential of now being able to really use my brain, use my expertise, use my experiences, and really get excited about the prospect of building. And just last week, I talked to my boss about starting a project that would help the business and he agreed that it would be helpful, and I got the green light to go do it. And there's something really, really satisfying and empowering about identifying an area for improvement, thinking about an idea. And then being able to go out and try to execute it. I'm really excited. It's a little overwhelming thinking about all the things I have to do. People have to talk with people I have to get on board. But I'm I'm really excited. And it's cool to actively work towards building something to achieve a specific goal. And it makes me more confident that there's still a ton of stuff to learn. And there's still a ton of ways to feel ambitious and to realize the ambition and to channel that ambition to be able to still be competitive, to still be diligent and thorough and hardworking and have to prepare really hard and to hopefully get a similar satisfaction when something gets over the finish line. So I'm optimistic and I'm really happy to be in this position. Now. The onboarding period is a little tough for someone who likes to move fast and get things done. My call to action for you is that if you find yourself feeling stuck, or if you find yourself feeling in a bit of a lull, I want you to think back to a time when you were doing something that you were really committed to passionate about working hard for determined to make work and think about the process. to us and think about what you had to do what you had to focus on what elements of going after that goal, were really exciting. And then experiment and try to find other areas where you can apply those same processes and those same mindsets to try to go after that goal. If you can fall in love with the process, if you can fall in love with figuring out what steps need to be taken, to be able to get to your goal, it makes the journey of getting there so much more exciting.... --- ### [Sports Journalism, Gaining Confidence, and Asking Tough Questions with Danielle Trotta](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-43-sports-journalism-gaining-confidence-and-ask/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. this episode is so intense and honest and heartwarming and absolutely lovely. And we have Danielle Trotta on the show with us so Danielle has over 15 years of broadcast experience. She's covered NASCAR, the NFL NBA MLB PGA collegiate athletic Supercross and Moto GP for some of the biggest broadcasting companies worldwide. She can be her daily as a co host of Sirius XM is on track alongside larry McReynolds on Sirius XM NASCAR radio. She also currently reports for Mecum the largest car auction in the world and they're held monthly around the country and broadcast on MotorTrend and are streaming on HBO Max. A native of Westchester, New York Danielle and her husband Robby Benton call Charlotte home and share a passion for motorsports. Danielle attended Carmel High School in Carmel, Indiana, where she was part of three consecutive state championships in swimming and diving. Danielle is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte with a degree in mass communications. She joined Fox Sports in July of 2010 as a reporter for NASCAR race hub and progressed into a co hosting role in 2012. In 2014, as speed launched into what was now known as as FS1 Danielle added to her responsibilities hosting multiple shows. In 2015. She ventured into the NFL for the first time as a sideline reporter for the NFL on Fox in eighth 2018 Danielle added to her duties hosting a nightly sports talk show on NBC Sports Boston and in October of 2021, Danielle began filming my dream car, which premiered on Fox Business Channel in April 2022. And is still airing. This conversation was so incredible, because I've known Danielle since 2016 When I was in NASCAR next, and we got to go on set and record with them. And I've really, really admired her career, her dedication to her journalistic practices. I got to learn a lot about her as I was preparing for this episode. And we talked about everything from how to prepare for something that you're working on. We talked about how sports are used as a unifying factor and really helps bring people together especially during our otherwise divisive culture that we're living in right now. We talked about how she got into NASCAR and how she prepared for all of the incredible work that she did that was camera facing. We also talks about coming into your own as a woman and how how to really carve your own path and to make decisions for yourself that you are proud of and that you won't regret. We talked about how Comparison is the thief of joy. I mean, it was deep. It was honest, it was raw. I was just really, really pleased to have Danielle on our show. And so I hope you really enjoy this episode. Danielle, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest. Danielle Trotta 2:50 Well, if I'm honest, Julia, I am the one that's honored because I've always been a big fan of yours and followed your career. I love your podcast all the speaking engagements. You're doing your work at NASCAR. I'm like your number one fan. So when you asked it was an easy, yes. Julia Landauer 3:05 Oh my goodness, I'm honored. And I was trying to remember we met was it during my NASCAR neck stuff. And 2016 2017 I want to say, Danielle Trotta 3:13 yeah, you came by with that whole group of guys. And you stopped by race up? And do you remember that? Yeah, I Julia Landauer 3:21 do. I do. And they brought all of Danielle Trotta 3:24 you guys in and I think you were the only girl in the group I was. So you stood out and I naturally gravitated towards you. And I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I have to get to know this girl. And then like you talk about your Ivy League education, and like the reality stuff you've done. And you are so multifaceted. You are so interesting. You had such a cool story that I wanted to share with people and I just connected with you. And I've been a fan ever since. So that was how long ago is that? Julia? That was a while. I feel like eight years. I Julia Landauer 3:54 It's so sad to realize just how quickly time goes by. But I remember that like it was yesterday. Like it was so fun to be racing full time. It was quite an honor to get the recognition of NASCAR next. And you know, I think it was a lot of young people like my teammate at the time. Todd Gilliland, and then there were the older folks. I feel like it was Matt Tifft. Gary clued a long day, and I were like, the grandpas and grandmas of the group. Everyone else was like in their mid teenage years, but it was so fun. And we got to be on the TV sets and got to meet such cool people like you. So really, really special. And I also just learned that you're from Westchester, New York, which is just above New York City, for people who don't know, I'm from New York City. So I didn't realize we also have that close geographic origin story. Danielle Trotta 4:43 And that's why we connect we're a bunch of New York girls, and I feel like our girls, my family was like I was born in New Rochelle. Okay. Parents apartment was in Brooklyn, and that's where my great grandmother lived. And we had a lane city and yeah, A neighborhood in Brooklyn. My dad is from Morris Park. Okay. In the Bronx. Okay. I'll have to ask my parents like where our little apartment was, what part of the Bronx what part of the Bronx we were in, or Brooklyn. We had so much family like in around the area. We left there when I was like six months, then lived in our shell for a little bit and then moved to summers. I don't know if you ever that was kind of upper Westchester. Julia Landauer 5:26 Okay, I'm not as familiar. Yeah, Danielle Trotta 5:30 so it was such a great place to grow up. I mean, Julia Landauer 5:34 I love the Northeast. I love the Northeast so much. I miss it every day. I like Danielle Trotta 5:38 the weather in Charlotte. A lot better though, which I think. Yeah, fair. Julia Landauer 5:43 So tell me a little bit more about that. So you kind of moved around a little bit as a kid. Am I correct? Yeah, at around age 10. You guys left the Northeast. Is that accurate? Around Danielle Trotta 5:53 fifth grade. And then my dad's job took us to Indianapolis. So I spent fifth grade to freshman year of college in Indianapolis. So really your formative years in a suburb right outside Indy called Carmel. And it was such a great place again. I mean, I was very blessed a lot like Westchester and great school system and played a lot of sports. That's where I got into television and radio. They had eight, my high school had a fully functioning 24 hour cable access television and radio station. So cool. I know. And I knew that's what I wanted to do. So they had a program where if like you started freshman year, by the time you were a senior, you could intern at a TV station in Indy, which is a top 25 market. Julia Landauer 6:42 Oh my god. Yeah. So yeah, Danielle Trotta 6:44 I mean, there was just a lot of opportunities, the way it all kind of lined up at the time. I mean, to move around as a kid, it's scary. And I always, I still have an obsession with twins. And I think my obsession comes from the fact that like when I moved around as a kid, start over, and you don't always have a group of friends. And so you have to reintroduce yourself and meet new people and find girls who you connect with. That's hard, you know, especially through your adolescent years for two Yeah. And so I always would get jealous, and I'd see twins because I'm like, Oh, you just have like, a best friend. And it's always with you. A built in, buddy. Yeah, looking like now as an adult. I can acclimate to new environments quickly. And there's a lot of positives to it. But then I went off to college, I went to Emerson in Boston, while I was in school, my parents, my dad's jobs with them from India to Charlotte. So when I graduated, Charlotte and so that's how that happened. Julia Landauer 7:42 Okay, so backing up a little bit, you said that you knew that you always want to do broadcasting. And like, if you got into it, like when you were a freshman in high school, like how did you know that? That was what you wanted to dedicate your life to? Yeah, Danielle Trotta 7:55 I've never wanted to do anything else. I think there was like this aha moment. And maybe like sixth or seventh grade. I mean, I was pretty young. And we were watching my dad's a big stick and ball guy racing was not a part of my life. Funny enough. You know, this being a city girl. In New York. That's not really the thing. So like, my dad's first car was the New York City Subway, there just wasn't Karlova thing racing is not a thing. So he was like a big basketball guy, and he never had a son. And so he threw me in every sport. We've watched sports together. And I remember watching the NBA on NBC, on a Saturday on the couch with dad and like Hannah storm and Bob Costas are doing the pregame show. And I was like, there was a lightbulb moment when I was watching Hannah, post the pre raid or the pregame and I was like, Dad, that's what I want to do. And he's like, okay, and that was it. Literally have never wanted to do never done anything professionally. Like I waited tables and you know, had the odd kid job stuff through high school and college, but professionally, I've never wanted to or have done really anything else. Julia Landauer 9:05 That's amazing. And, and like when I think about my own career, like I also knew very early on like I think this by the time I was 12 and go karting I was like this is what I want to pursue.... --- ### [My Opinions on Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department”](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-44-my-opinions-on-taylor-swift-s-the-tortured-p/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.117Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I hope you're doing well. I got back from a bachelorette trip in Miami this weekend. And let me tell you, it was exactly what the doctor ordered. We had a beautiful rooftop dinner on Friday that just had immaculate vibes and the weather was delightful. The food was delicious. The entertainment It was very cool involved flame and dancers. And we danced on stage it was really cool. And then we went to the beach on Saturday, which was so needed my my skin needed to feel the warmth of the sun, I needed to have an attempt to not be so blinding with my bare belly, because that has not seen son in a very long time. And my natural state is fairly fair skin. So all good there. And if I'm so honest with you, I don't typically love going to Florida, but this was just so perfect. It was such a great weekend really grateful I got to do it. And yeah, I think that's probably my last bachelorette for a while at this point. I've got one or two other people who if they get married, I will probably be on their bachelorette trips. But otherwise, I think I might be rounding out this very short chapter of my life. Not many of my besties had bachelorette parties, at least not that I'm aware of. No, but they didn't partially due to COVID and all that stuff. But yeah, it's, it's done. And this timing was particularly perfect for this Bachelorette, because the bride to be is also a fellow Swiftie and we did not listen to her new album on this trip. They were not the same vibes. Not sure if she's listened to it yet. But since we are several days out from the release of the tortured poets department and the anthology, which is a double album 31 songs, several hours, it was a lot. I wanted to talk about it I wanted to give a quick, fun punchy assessment because I am a diehard Swiftie, I'm not at the level where I think she can do no wrong like that's not I like to keep people honest, obviously. And with that being said, I was really looking forward to this album, I had heard the murmurings of reasons for the breakup with Joe Alwyn involving cheating other women other priorities. And I've recognized that part of the reason I relate to Taylor Swift, on some level, obviously very different. But she's also a woman in her early mid 30s. And we are of the same generation. And so when she's going through something, I feel like I can put myself in those shoes to certain extent. For example, She and Joe were together for six years before they broke up. And at this point, I have known and been with Ben for almost six years, and it is a really substantial time in a woman's life in her late 20s, early 30s. And too, I can I can only imagine kind of some of the feelings when thinking you might be spending forever with this person and you're in prime, you know, having kid years and, and all of that. And if that's something that you want it like obviously we a lot of us feel that pressure and so I can appreciate the toughness of going through a breakup regardless, like a breakup is tough. And then especially in this time of life. So with all of that back to the album. I've been looking forward to the storytelling. Part of what I appreciate most about Taylor Swift is her storytelling. I do enjoy a lot of the music. I don't love absolutely every single song, but I do really love her storytelling. I love her wordplay. I love how she twist traditional little sayings and makes them her own. And so with this one I was like all right, we've got this personal drama, we've got this really incredible storytelling and so how's the album gonna be? So we have it now. We're ready to dissect it. Since Red came out I have a process for listening to new Taylor Swift album. I have never listened to them right on release at midnight I don't stay up for them. I don't like to stay up till midnight anyway and so it's usually a next morning thing. And before I was working the way this looked is that kind of with my coffee I would listen to the album in full once through no stopping just listen to it through and I would note down which songs particularly caught my attention or that I really liked on first listen. And then I go back and re listen to those songs that I had marked down I pay close attention to the lyrics for the fun lines. And then after I go back and re listen, if there are questions I have a references I Have, that's when I searched like some of the meanings behind the lyrics. But for some for a really clear example of one of these moments that I was like, oh my goodness, this woman is clever, was on folklore. And I remember I believe it came out July something in 2020, we were getting ready to move to our current house. And I'm listening to it drinking my coffee and the last great American dynasty came on. And she's talking about how Rebekah Harkness was the the heroine of that story and how she was the rule breaker. And on my second time, listening more closely, the bridge really knocked me off my feet, because she's singing about Rebekah Harkness and her experience in the town and at that house, and the way that the bridge goes is they say she was seen on occasion pacing the rock staring out at the midnight sea, and in a feud with her neighbor, she stole his dog and dyed at key lime green. 50 years is a long time holiday house sat quietly on that beach free of women with madness, their men and bad habits. And then it was bought by me. And I was like, Oh, my goodness, Taylor, you're so clever. It was so fun to be going through this historical play by play of how this house came to be. And this woman in history, who's a very real figure, and then Taylor Swift owns that house. I mean, that was so cool. And it was just kind of putting together all these pieces, I thought it was incredibly clever, and brought in this modern cultural relevance to this historical house. And I really feel like Taylor broke the fourth wall with listeners with that it was my first real feeling of that. And then the other little bit, that's a fun change throughout the song as she changes the last line of the chorus from, she had a marvelous time ruining everything to I had a marvelous time ruining everything. It's so clever. So anyway, after listening more closely to the lyrics of any given album, I then add those songs into my playlist rotations. So this year, and this album release was a little harder because it was over two hours, I was working, and so I had to wait later into Friday to when I could listen to it. But for a very quick summary, I really enjoyed a lot of it. I really enjoyed a lot of the tortured poets department. There are a few songs that I really loved. I felt pretty emotionally heavy. At the end of listening to it, it is it is sad, it is melancholy. And I wouldn't say that musically, it's my favorite album, if it's done really nicely with a lot of songs, but I do kind of feel like some of them become a little indistinguishable. And I don't know, if I feel like 31 songs felt like 31 songs I it's just so tough, because like damned if you do damned if you don't, at the end of normal length album, I feel like oh, it'd be so cool to get some more songs, and then get some more songs. And it's, you know, not feeling as satisfied as I kind of hoped I was but that's okay. In the end, I do feel that I got the lyrical storytelling that I had hoped for. So that's a quick synopsis. But there were three songs that I really loved. And that's what I want to talk about in a little more depth today. And they are the tortured poets department, So long, London, and I can do it with a broken heart. With the tortured poets department. My first thing that I noticed was that there were so many names dropped from Patti Smith, who I became a fan of after reading her book, just kids, which is her perspective on her love story with Robert Mapplethorpe, I just it moved me when I read this and I got very emotionally invested in her life. And she is obviously an incredible poet, and Dylan Thomas who I had to look up but he was apparently a pretty self destructive romantic poet. And let me tell you, I had thought this song had been about Joe all when throughout most of it, and then she references Lucy and Jack and I assumed that Jack was Jack Antonoff, which is her friend, but I had to look up who Lucy was. And it turns out that Lucy is Matty Healy's friend. And so yeah, it was probably not about Joe. I'm just not entirely sure. But there was a lyric that really pinged my heart. And that was, I'm not going to sing this. I don't fully memorize it, and I'm not a good singer. So anyway, it says at dinner, you take my ring off my middle finger and put it on the one that people put wedding rings on, and that's the closest I've come to my heart exploding. Oh my god, Taylor, the vulnerability in that lyric is next level and I think it's partially impactful for me because we know that she wants to find true love eternal A lot of work she wants to find her person. And truth be told, I agonized for her. That, you know, she thought she was probably going to get it and then didn't get it, especially when I thought the song was about Joe all in eight. It's just like, oh, that's, that's so tough. And, yeah, but I totally get it that, that you get excitement that you think you're gonna get engaged, and it didn't happen. But one thing I don't love about this, I don't love the I don't love how I feel when I hear these types of lyrics. But I kind of don't love when she declares that no one else will love or hold or hug or kiss or cuddle or whatever her exes the way she does, the line in the song is who's going to hug you as much as me no one, it feels a little manipulative to me. And I don't love that.... --- ### [Storytelling “The Moment” in Live Sports with Broadcaster Leigh Diffey](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-45-storytelling-the-moment-in-live-sports-with/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. If you have ever watched motorsports or the Olympics, you have probably heard Leigh Diffey as a broadcaster or a commentator on those events. And let me tell you, I am pretty pumped to share that he is our guest on this week's episode of if I'm honest, so Leigh Diffey has been in TV sports broadcasting for over 25 years. He's originally from Australia got his start in motorcycles and Supercross and and that discipline. He's worked in network TV sports on three different continents, the in Australia in the UK and Europe and in North America. He has called more categories of high level motorsport on network TV than anyone else in the world. Paris will be his six Olympic Games with three Winter Games and Paris being the third summer game. He's the first foreign voice play by play person to call the Indy 500, to the US audience to call a NASCAR cup race to US audience and to call the Olympics for NBC Sports. He is someone who I have seen on TV for decades now. And something that is always so cool to listen to is that he brings this incredible enthusiasm to his commentating and he is naturally very curious and disciplined and thorough in his preparation. And he appreciates the art of sport and capturing the intensity of that that moment where you're either winning or you're failing, or whatever it is. And this conversation was really cool, partially because I felt like I was fangirling a little bit. And it was kind of like getting to chat with someone you've always looked up to and admired. And I think he does so much for the sport of auto racing, that it was really cool to be able to have this one on one. And we talk about everything from his roots and how he got into commentating. He was originally a PE teacher, we get into what brought him to the UK and the leaps of faith that he took throughout his career. We talk about what innate traits he has to his personality that have helped him we talk about the adrenaline of telling a story in front of a live audience, the adrenaline of being able to watch sports live. And we get into some nitty gritty stuff about how you put on a broadcast and what goes into the preparation and how he's learned, really intimate details about different sports that he may not have known much about before. So it was really exciting. It was really interesting as one performer to another in a sense, we found a lot of similarities between broadcasting and this, you know, live audience storytelling, and actually being in the car and racing. It was a really interesting discussion. I am so grateful that Leigh took the time out of his busy traveling schedule to sit down with me and to chat. And he kept it really honest. And I really appreciate that. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. Leigh, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Leigh Diffey 3:06 It's good to be on here. Finally, Julia Landauer 3:09 finally, no, this is so cool, because for our listeners, we've been following each other on Twitter. I'm a big fan. I've been watching you for years. And so this is just really cool, especially as to people who do different types of storytelling, I would say, I'm really excited to get into some of your techniques, and just some of your background. And thank you again for joining me. So to get started, I learned this recently, so you actually got started as a competitor in motorsports on motorcycles. Is that correct? Leigh Diffey 3:39 Yeah, just as a kid, you know, I had my first motorcycle when I was six years old. And my dad was really into motorcycle racing. For whatever reason, my grandfather raced and rode bikes and so so race, off road, rode motorcycles on the road, but wouldn't let my father do it. I figure so kind of my dad lived vicariously through my brother and myself. And so motorcycles were our life. You know, like, for other kids in the neighborhood, they played football or cricket or tennis or something like that. Well, the defeats were the motorsport people, the motorbike people. So and you know, growing up in the 70s and 80s That was pretty weird like that. We definitely stood it out. That wasn't the norm. You know, people didn't understand it. And and certainly motorcycles weren't in the mainstream like now where you see with X Games or Monster Energy Supercross pro motocross, SM X World Championships, the exposure that the sport gets Now it didn't have back then. So to say that you did motorcycle racing as your sport was really quite odd at the time. Yeah, no, that makes sense. So then I have to ask because of what I read and tell me it's this is wrong, but that when you were a late teenager you got kinda got started in your commentating career with motorcycles. So is that accurate? Also, pretty close. I was I was, When he, I was at university and I had stopped riding, focused on school, tried to do a little bit better. And I ended up going to university to study education to be a PE teacher, and the local motorcycle club that my brother was still riding out and a lot of my mates were still racing out. I had made speeches on behalf of my brother, and the local motorcycle club, they said, Hey, you're pretty confident for a young guy behind them behind a microphone, we need a public address announcer and we'll give you $60 And I sat in the Queensland sun all day, and, but for me, it came naturally because I knew that competitors, and it was at a track that I used to race at. And so it was a nice, easy way of getting into it. I didn't grow up wanting to be a sports broadcaster or a motorsport announcer or whatever, that it was one of those stories where I literally fell into it. Julia Landauer 5:57 Well, it's also pretty cool that you got paid on your first gig. I feel like so many creatives have to volunteer their time for their first stuff to prove themselves. So that's, I mean, that's pretty great. That's a great deal. Leigh Diffey 6:08 When you're at university, your college 60 bucks is 60 bucks. I took it Julia Landauer 6:12 Yeah, it's something to work as well. I mean, like I, when I gave my first paid keynote address, and it was right out of college. And, you know, they had given a TEDx talk. So I knew I had this polished video that somewhat, you know, gave me some credibility. But they asked me, okay, cool, we'd love to hire you, what's your fee, and that was something where I had to do so much research. And I totally undervalued myself, but it was so cool to just have that baseline to then build off of, and get smarter about that. So that was a Yeah, it's an interesting way to start. So that's great. So then, so then, did you did you go into any kind of training? Or do you really just test the waters and how you delivered your broadcasting? And you obviously, you said that you have this relationship with the competitors, which brings so much color to any kind of broadcast or announcing, but it was it kind of just figure it out? Leigh Diffey 7:07 Yeah, I just figured it out and listen to the feed that feedback that my parents gave me and some other friends and, you know, friends, parents who were at the racetrack, or wherever that may have come from, but the best form of feedback was that the way that it grew was other clubs. So one of my favorite stories that I didn't know until many years later, was that the first place I ever did it was that the Ipswich motorcycle club at a racetrack called Tivoli. And about an hour from where that was hour, hour and a half from where that was was Toowoomba. And there was a track called Echo Valley. Well, the most famous racer from Toowoomba is the Indy 500 Winner Will Power team. Okay, time to time IndyCar champion. Well, lo and behold, the promoter that I worked for way back then, at Echo Valley, will will powers mum used to be his bookkeeper. And, yeah, just the small world story. So, you know, I first did it at at Tivoli, then I did it at Echo Valley and the people from another club in northern New South Wales in Ballina. They heard me and so it kind of grew bit by bit by people saying, Hey, we heard you at Tivoli, or we heard you in Ballena. And we heard you and so to me, that was pretty good feedback that I must have been doing an okay job if they if they then asked me to travel to wherever they Club was to again, and this is not radio, this is not Television, this is very, you know, this is very basic, rudimentary public address, sitting in a wooden tower, one microphone, you know, a transistor radio for as the as the break entertainment, you just stick the microphone up against the Speaker of the radio and, and it was fairly bare bones stuff, you know? Julia Landauer 8:58 Yeah, but but I feel like every, every discipline like that has unique styles and you know, unique ways that you engage the audience and engage the crowd. And so to be able to take such such bare bones tools, and do it well, and clearly make a name for yourself. And I feel like it also emphasizes the point that, especially when you're getting started, if you're passionate about something curious about something like forget about the audience, because it might be small steps to start, but you never know who might be there or how it can catch on and that's clearly worked out for you. So that's really cool. Leigh Diffey 9:32 I think the thing I think the thing that I discovered very early on, maybe even on the first day, I can't remember but I know, I know, it was very early on that I displayed genuine enthusiasm for what I was seeing in front of me. So if there was a pass, if somebody was going to make a position or lose a position or it was the last lap, and my voice, you know, went to you know, went into an excited mode and tone. And then at the same moment, because I'm sitting on the edge of the grandstand, etc, I can see people's reaction.... --- ### [The Psychology of Pre-Competition Rituals](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-46-the-psychology-of-pre-competition-rituals/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I hope you are doing well. I've been good, I've been busy, I've been ramping up at work, I've been trying to get enough vitamin D and be outside, it's been really cool, I'm really feeling satisfied with with the amount of stuff that's going on. So that's awesome. Today, I want to talk about pre competition rituals, because they've come up in a few different scenarios. So we were having a brainstorming session as to what kind of content to put out from the NASCAR channels. And we asked the crew members of various teams, what their pre race rituals were, which was super cool, I highly recommend checking out that tick tock, I'll link it in the description. I also hosted a panel with a few racers, and we were talking about pre race traditions. And so I wanted to dive into that a little bit more, because I also definitely had pre race traditions that I did for the entirety of my 21 year racing career. But I never really thought much more about the science or the psychology or why we do that. So that's what I wanted to jump into today. Before I get started on some of the things that I read about and research that I thought were particularly interesting, I did want to note that rituals are considered to be distinct from like traditional preparatory routines and habits, rituals are more rigid and more formal. And there are fixed steps. And I think the key thing is that there's no real direct function or result of doing a ritual, it is something that is personalized, it is something that is kind of separate from the actual activity that you are going into, whereas a preparatory routine or habit is something you do for warming up your muscles or getting in the right mindset. Or we'll see racers who do, you know little activities with their physios before races so that they're priming their body to be ready to make quick decisions. So rituals are distinct from from habits and pre pre competition routines. With that context, I want to first talk about a study from the University of Toronto and how they learned that rituals can actually help performance. And then I want to jump into more of the subjective observations that I've read about from different people and different sources that explain why pre competition rituals might be really beneficial. So from the University of Toronto, as I said, they learned that rituals can help performance, specifically by regulating the brain's response to personal or performance failure. And the way they discovered this was that they conducted a study that observed brain activity and measured brain activity during a series of challenging tasks, where participants sometimes did a ritual before these tasks, and then sometimes they didn't. And the task was intended to be extremely challenging, so that everyone would fail at some point. And what they found was that the people who did the rituals had less brain activity and less brain reactivity after failing, then the people who hadn't done a ritual beforehand. So this supported their hypothesis that having rituals desensitizes the brain's anxiety related reaction to an error. And if you think about how this helps with competition, if you're able to stay calm, cool and collected after making a mistake, you're that much more likely to recover and rebound quickly and get back on track. The racing example would be let's say you get oversteer or you're loose, and so your car turns more than you're expecting it to. If you freak out, you might not be able to get the car back on track quickly. Or if you go off track, or if you spin, the quicker you're able to get back going again, the better your results going to be. And so what they found is that people who did rituals regularly before these tasks, were more likely to be able to recover. I think that's interesting, because that was something we also actively trained for with PitFit in the motorsports training that I was working on. Because they really emphasize when we were training if we dropped a ball during an exercise, or if we somehow made a mistake, or didn't do as well, I remember that I would give commentary or make fun of myself and my trainer was very rigid and like no, just get back into it, get your brain back into it. Don't dwell on what you did wrong, like get back into it. And so I thought it was interesting that this study actually sees that rituals can assist in being able to get your head back into the competition mode after making a mistake. And that recovery is critical regardless of if you're in a sport competition. If you're doing anything performance if you're giving a presentation. If you're in the middle of a really important Ask if you're parenting, I mean, the ability to recover from a mistake or an error is so important. So maybe we can also think about how we can incorporate rituals into our day to day lives, to help us minimize that brain reactivity to making mistakes. The next thing that was really interesting to read about when it came to pre competition rituals was the idea that by having a standard and consistent ritual that you do before an event, it helps promote familiarity, even in different environments in different situations. And if we're focusing on athletes, we compete in very different places, racers go to different racetracks, the culture is different, the environments different, the people are different, the food is different. And so if you're able to find comfort and stability in the familiarity of your routine, and your ritual, that will help you feel more calm, and it'll help you stay more comfortable, which then helps performance. So that's a really interesting thing to think about. Again, in our day to day lives, if we're having to perform at a high level in different environments. Perhaps having a ritual will help center us even if it's on a more subconscious level. The last more subjective thing that I read about in different offices, or that rituals can make you feel lucky. And feeling like you are giving yourself an advantage or feeling like you are making yourself lucky will boost your confidence and it'll make you feel just that extra little bit better. And so that ties in with the familiarity it ties in with the reducing the reactivity to errors. But being able to do anything to get your confidence up is critical for any high performance activity. I would then argue that if you are used to doing a ritual, and for whatever reason you don't do it ahead of time, I would assume that that could also make you feel unlucky or hurt your confidence. And so it's important to make sure that if we are having these effects from rituals that we are being consistent in how we're using them before any competition, as I was reading about rituals, and some of this higher level research that was done on rituals, it also got me thinking about how in any given competitive environment, regardless of what we're doing, if we inadvertently do something that precedes a win or a strong performance, or anything like that. It might make you more inclined to repeat that action every time and it kind of ties into some superstitions that I know a lot of competitive. athletes feel that they have to do something because they just feel superstitious about it. This happened to me very early in my racing career. I clearly remember I had done my first Skip Barber race when I was 13 years old at Lime Rock. I did terribly. I have another episode about it where I explained that I was two laps down at the end of the race. It was awful. But starting the next season when I was 14, I was racing in the Skip Barber series full time and our first race was at Virginia International Raceway, we were racing the full course I had qualified pole. I was so excited. I was also so nervous. I didn't quite know what to do with the incredible turnaround from the first race of my race car driving career being two laps down to them qualifying on pole. So it's just feeling a little uneasy, very nervous. And it turns out that I was a little late getting to the grid to get ready to go out and race and I had to go to the bathroom. So I ended up sprinting to the bathroom, I sprinted to my car. And as I was getting ready and dressed, I realized I felt a little better. I felt a little calmer. I felt a little more optimistic and positive, there was something about that little burst of energy that raised my endorphins and Endorphins make you happy. And I went out and I ended up winning the race. And there was something on a subconscious psychological level that told me that I need to do that little sprint before every single race. I decided to do this partially because it physically made me feel better and it made me feel less anxious. And that was a way to treat my symptoms of fear and nervousness which I learned. But I'm looking back and I definitely also just felt superstitious that by doing the sprint, I won a race and that I had to keep doing that. And in that season in particular I won 12 of 14 races and so clearly worked. haven't won all my races since then, obviously, but it's something that I do and the next time I'm in a car I will also do a little sprint. I don't sprint to the bathroom anymore, but I do sprint down pit road or maybe I'll sprint from the hauler to pit road or something like that something to get that little burst of energy and continuing on this topic of my rituals. I don't feel like I do anything particularly crazy. But I do have things that I have to do very specifically before any competition or any any on track competition. The first is that sprint I feel like I have to do that. That's brand and might be short and might be sweet. It doesn't matter, just a nice little sprint. I also have a very specific tightness that I need my racing shoes to be at. And typically it takes several tries before I feel like I've gotten both my shoes where they need to be.... --- ### [ Ask Me Anything (Again)!](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-47-ask-me-anything-again/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. We are approaching episode 50, in a few weeks from now, how exciting is that? This is a really wonderful passion project. As I've mentioned a couple of different episodes, it's been very therapeutic to talk through some of the stuff that we've addressed. It's been really interesting to do more research into some topics that I find interesting and then share with you. It's been really cool to connect with a diversity of guests who have done different jobs and industries and actions that they've pursued. It's been really, really fun. And I'd obviously love to know what you think what has resonated with you what topics you really enjoy hearing about what maybe you don't like as much, which guests you found really great. So we'd love to hear from you either in comments and reviews. So feel free and let me know. Let's jump right into today's Ask me anything, because you guys sent in some great questions, I'm going to try to get to as many of them as I can. And if you have any more, please obviously reach out and I will try to include them in a future episode as well. The first question I want to answer is something that a lot of you asked in some variation of how much do you miss NASCAR? Does Julia miss being behind the wheel? Are you missing racing? The answer is yes, I do. Miss racing, I absolutely love racing, it's so exciting to be at the track. It's so fun to go fast, it's really satisfying to feel like you've mastered a perfect lap or to be able to win a race or even just be competitive in a way that you are judging yourself by. So I miss it a lot. But at the same time, I'm also really enjoying flexing new muscles, I'm really enjoying being able to learn more about business and corporate and to understand what goes on behind the scenes with NASCAR and to contribute to making the sport as great as possible. And to understand some of the things that have to be weighed for decision making. Whether it's on the competition side or the business side, I'm really pushing my brain and developing new skill sets and meeting a lot of cool people and being able to just push myself in a different way. And that's really cool. Episode 11 of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer addresses the more emotional side and it's called navigating identity shifts. And that's a definitely a huge significant thing that's been challenging. But overall I'm I'm content, I'm in a good place. I will say that there are little trigger moments that sometimes happen that make me feel really sad about not racing and not pursuing racing. Things like when Shane van gisbergen won his debut NASCAR cup series race in Chicago last year, the sheer elation that he felt and the happiness and the emotion and you could hear it in his voice. I had this pang of oh my god, I may never experienced that again. And that was really sad. And there are other moments where I see certain things that happened during a race or, you know, seeing things with f1 Academy, which I'm so happy for I'm so so happy that there is a real significant and financial push to encourage and support more women and girls getting into racing. Like I love that. I just kind of wish I could have been part of it too. And you know, seeing this huge surge of interest in women's sports and women in motorsports specifically, just kind of feel like my timing for being in racing was a little off, but that's okay. So besides that, you know, it is what it is. This is life, and I'm getting older. And there are other things that I'm looking forward to. But I do miss racing for sure. And I hope to do it for fun where I can. suchada, and I hope I pronounced that correctly. I'm sorry if I didn't, asked our next question, which is, is there any way to get into racing, maybe not driving but support later in life? I love this question. And I hadn't really thought about it a whole bunch until I saw it pop up. But there are a couple of ways that I want to tackle this question. So in general, there are a lot of racing clubs and track days and more like amateur style racing, whether that's SCCA or Skip Barber, or the radical race cars or different manufacturer clubs, like Porsche club Ferrari club, I'm sure there are others. But if you're looking to get involved in at track events later in life, I think that's a really cool way to either bring your own car or rent a car, just show up and watch a bunch of really cool amateur racers racing and competing and getting the camaraderie of being at the track. I think there's there's a lot there. And kind of related to that. I know that for a lot of those events and even some other higher level sanctioning bodies, you know, a lot of times tracks or racing sanctioning. bodies will look for volunteers or independent contractors to help work the race. Maybe that's officiating, or maybe that's more like flag work. Or maybe it's official work. Maybe it's go karting, maybe it's legend, cars, maybe it's these club track days, I think there's things that you can look into there. If you're thinking on more of a professional level, I can't speak to a lot of the other higher level motorsport series. But I know with NASCAR, especially on the truck level on the XFINITY level, there are a lot of smaller teams that are always looking for extra hands, or freelance people to help them out whether that's on a marketing PR side, maybe it's on the crew side. There, there is a need there. And so just putting feelers out there and reaching out to teams and trying to see if they need help, or if you can assist in any way. And then if you're thinking more like a full time job, there's opportunities on teams, there's opportunities in sanctioning bodies, there's opportunities at tracks and with facility management, and like the event management for specific events that go on. I think that's, that's what comes to mind off the top of my head, there's kind of the amateur approach and a more professional approach. But it really comes out to putting feelers out there reaching out to people leaning on your network, cold, emailing, cold calling, I'm a big fan of that. And once you get into an opportunity, you'll be able to see how much you like it if it's something you want to keep doing, or maybe pivot to another direction. The third question we got was from Corri, and she asked, at the end of the day, what does a good relationship boil down to one word or thing? And let me tell you guys, being succinct enough to describe what a relationship needs in one word is very challenging. And there are so many things that I think about with my own relationship with Ben, my own relationship with my siblings, I don't know if this question was asked in a romantic sense, or just any kind of longer relationship. But there's a lot that goes into it. But if I had to summarize what a good relationship boils down to, I think I would have to say communication. And I know it sounds cliche, and maybe a little boring. But I feel like that touches on most areas of a relationship. So let's say let's think about the beginning of a relationship. You have to be comfortable articulating what your big life goals and dreams are to make sure that the person you're interested in is kind of compatible enough, right? discussions around kids where you want to live, what lifestyle you're going for how you view finances, that's later on, but like you need to eventually become comfortable articulating what it is that you not need and want and what you're going to prioritize to make sure that you work. So that's early level, then I think whenever it comes to having any kind of problems, or disagreements, or feeling weird, or getting a weird vibe from your partner, or whatever that might be being able to talk about it pretty quickly, prevents feelings of anxiety, it prevents having maybe a miscommunication or differences in opinions snowball into bigger, their resentment towards each other, you know, you need to be able to nip that stuff in the bud. And I think even when trying to figure out maybe what's bothering you, what's bothering your partner, to be able to empathetically understand how to have that conversation and to pick up on subtle cues and give yourself what you need and what your partner needs. Is that always rooted in communication. And then you also have, you know, on the physical intimacy side, being able to communicate what you want, and if something needs to be done differently, being able to identify and vocalize it so that the other person knows what's going on. Because I mean, none of us are mind readers right. None of us know just what someone else's wants and desires will be. So being able to communicate there. And then in terms of having fun and making jokes and intellectually stimulating each other. There's, it all just comes back to communication. I think. At the same time, if I had some backup words that I could use, I would say respect is a really big one. I think empathy and compassion is a huge one. But I don't, I don't think those are as much of a central need for a good relationship as communication is. And it's so hard and it's something that's always evolving and part of its learning communication styles and understanding when someone is emotionally reacting to something versus maybe less emotionally reacting and there's it's just so complex and it's so hard and each person has their own communication styles and each couple will have have their own communication styles, what works for one couple might not work for another. And so I think that's really the route. And it's again, so challenging. But I would have to say that communication is what is really needed for a good relationship. Tom asked our fourth question, and he said, What was a bigger challenge for you competing on survivor or several hours in the 150? degree race car? Great question.... --- ### [What is Psychological Safety?](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-48-what-is-psychological-safety/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Happy Wednesday, I got to spend last weekend at North Wilkesboro Speedway for the NASCAR All Star race weekend where they had the NASCAR truck series and the NASCAR Cup Series competing. And North Wilkesboro Speedway has a lot of historical significance. It's one of those traditional old school racetracks, it got revamped and almost brought back from the dead to be able to host this this all star race. They do other, more grassroots level racing throughout the year. And it's a really fun exhibition race. There are no points for it, but they have a pit crew challenge. And they do interesting qualifying formats, and they have a fun race. I was there for Friday and Saturday. And on Saturday, they had the most torrential rain in that you could even imagine I mean, we had at least four or five inches in the span of two hours. To track lost power, the generator went out, the track is on a bit of a slope. And so turn one and two are lower than turns three and four. And so the cars that were on pit lane because we had to stop the race for the trucks about halfway through because it started raining. And the trucks that were pitted further down towards turn one, we're starting to get submerged in water and it wasn't submerged. Sorry, the the water was rising, and it was getting too high that it was going to impact the electronics and the motor and different parts of the vehicles. And so they had to move the trucks back out of the water. And if you think about a pit lane, on a race track, there's a two or so foot high wall or three foot high wall that separates the hot pit from the cold pit. And the water was up to that wall. That is how high it was down in terms one and two because of the drainage system that they had and how much water was coming down. And the fact that it was sloped, so it was wild. And I was in the officiating tower for this. And let me tell you, it was so impressive to see the NASCAR officials handle this very adverse situation. There were a lot of discussions about how to best handle it what we had to do when we made the call, we were constantly evaluating all of the different circumstantial things like the weather and lightning and what the facility rules were and how many people we had involved in what the scenarios would be if we had to postpone what were the pros, what were the cons, there was just so much that was contemplated and considered. And any any decision to either delay or postpone would have really significant consequences because fans pay money to be at the track teams and drivers work really hard to get themselves and their equipment ready for the race. And there are timing issues, and we have the surrounding area. And then there are broadcast obligation. So there's so much that's being considered. And I just have a really new appreciation for how calm, cool and collected. The officials have to be how collaborative they are, and how much it's an environment where people are encouraged to speak up. And that leads me nicely into the topic for today's episode, which is psychological safety. Now, I had not heard this term before this past week, because I gave a virtual keynote last week in the evening. And in that keynote, I had discussed teamwork and leadership and managing fear. And one of the audience members questions after I was done was whether I use psychological safety concepts when approaching working with a team and this problem solving. And I had to be honest with them that I did not know that term and that I was going to go look it up. So I decided to make an episode out of it. psychological safety means feeling safe to take interpersonal risks, to speak up to openly disagree with the people around you to give feedback and to admit mistakes without fear of negative repercussions or consequences. And so this is obviously really important for team dynamic. It's important for personal development and experimenting and overall success of any projects that any group of people are working on. And according to a Harvard Business Review article, which I will link in the description, Amy Edmondson coined the term, quote, Team psychological safety quote, when she was researching the relationship between error making and teamwork in hospitals back in the late 1990s. And when she was doing this research, she expected to find that more effective teams made fewer mistakes throughout their working process. But what she actually found is that teams who reported better teamwork dynamics actually also reported more mistakes. And when she was thinking about it, she concluded that it was probably because these teams felt more secure in their working environment. And they felt more confident in their team's ability to recognize that it's a learning experience, and then to recover from them and move on and to be supportive of that whole process. This makes sense to me. Back in Stanford, I took a class called Fail Faster. And the premise of this class was that when problem solving or when trying to develop something new, you have to be comfortable with ideating. And coming up with a bunch of ideas, testing quickly. And then if it doesn't work, moving on right away. And I think that was a general ethos for entrepreneurship and in the Bay Area. And it's also something that's really relevant in racing, because when you are out on track, and let's say you're trying to make the car better during practice, and it's doing something on turnin. And so you go and you debrief, and you have to make a change. And maybe that training, change is going to work. And maybe it's not, and maybe you have to go through several iterations of changes, or several different types of changes to the equipment, but then also the driver to try to get to that, that working rhythm where it's feeling really good. So the whole process of deep experimentation and constant iterations is really relevant in a lot of different fields. And that means that psychological safety becomes really, really important for team dynamics to be able to have a competitive advantage and get to that good result quicker. And so for a few other reasons that psychological safety is important when it comes to any team dynamic is that first, it helps team members feel more engaged and motivated, because they feel that they're being considered that their thoughts are important that it's a safe space where they can bring ideas to the table. And if they feel like they're being listened to, and being taken seriously, anyone's going to feel more engaged in that kind of environment. Another reason that psychological safety is important, is because he can actually help in better decision making. And I think this is largely due to the fact that if you're comfortable voicing your opinions, and debating and not feeling like you're being personally attacked for having a different point of view, or maybe a wrong point of view, it makes more and more people comfortable doing that, which means you're going to have more diverse perspectives, and more diverse perspectives typically lead to better problem solving. And so that will help a team make better decisions. The last big important reason for having psychological safety in your teamwork dynamics, is it is because it contributes to an environment of continuous learning and improvement. And if life is not about learning, then I don't know what it's for. Because we are constantly evolving, improving our surroundings are constantly changing, the way the world works is always changing. And so being comfortable with adapting and iterating. And experimenting becomes critical for any type of success. Moral of this first part of the story of psychological safety is that the more psychologically safe people feel on a team, the more likely they are to perform in an engaged and successful manner and the better the team is going to do. Now, as a corporate girlie who is in a corporate role, I'm now also thinking about the other half of that equation, which is how can leaders and managers and executives at companies or just team leaders in general, how can they help make teams feel that they are psychologically safe? There's an article from McKinsey that I read, which I'll also link that actually states that social scientists believe that psychological safety is a prerequisite for people to live their best, just like in Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs. So this idea of psychological safety is so fundamental to people being able to operate on a great level, there are three prongs to the type of leadership styles that McKinsey suggests could be used to help create this environment of psychological safety. And the first is consultative leadership. So this is where leaders go to all the other members of a team and discuss their ideas, ask for feedback, ask for their thoughts, give their own thoughts, and really have that two way communication regardless of what level anyone's at. And this shows that the leader wants to collaborate with everyone else, that it is a safe space that no one is above anyone else in terms of their thought process or their ideas. And that can help people feel secure in exploring their own ideas and challenging the status quo. The second type of leadership is supportive leadership, and that is giving people what they need and the added help and resources to be able to make decisions, experiment, support if they need to learn from mistakes, any number of things that help show that you are there to to aid the people who are working with you. And this can again lead to feeling more secure on your team. And doing both of those types of leadership, consultative and supportive, mean that you can then implement challenging leadership.... --- ### [American Ninja Warrior’s Only Host and Competitor, Alex Weber](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-49-american-ninja-warrior-s-only-host-and-compe/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello, everybody and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I reached out to today's guest after we were both speaking at a keynote event, and I missed his talk, but I heard incredible things and I got to look him up and was just so impressed with his backstory. So Alex Weber is our guest today on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. And Alex is a international keynote speaker award winning host for NBC. He's a competitor on the Emmy nominated series American Ninja Warrior, and author of the book failproof become the unstoppable you, but also knows what it feels like to hit challenges self doubt, uncertainty and failures and how you can overcome them. Alex gives his system to be a powerful leader ignite positive culture and accomplish your biggest goals in your career, your relationships and your life. We got to talk about everything from the competitive backgrounds that we have him on the sport of American Ninja Warrior and my racing and some of the synergies and similarities, pre competition rituals, how we train how we get into it. We then shifted gears and talked about our speaking careers, everything from how you craft a story to how you get into the weird industry that his keynote speaking and the high that we feel when we get off of the stage and how we are constantly trying to figure out how we can improve and evolve. And then we talk about a little bit on the business side of speaking what he's looking forward to in the coming months. And this was just so great, so much energy, I can only imagine the amount of energy he brings to the stage. And I hope that you enjoy this episode. Alex, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Alex Weber 1:41 Thank you for having me. I'm pumped to be here. Julia Landauer 1:43 So for our listeners, we have not actually met in person, but we are in the speaker world. And the other month, we were both speaking at a really awesome event out in Denver, and we just missed each other. For me. It was a really quick fly in one night fly out the next day. And but I was so interested by Alex's story. You heard it in the intro. So Alex first, can you tell me how one becomes the host of and then contestant on American Ninja Warrior? Is that the order that I have? Correct? Yeah, yeah. Talk to me. And Alex Weber 2:16 it is awesome to see you people were raving about your talk. And that event Cindy and the entire team there at HDI just they crush it. So they Julia Landauer 2:25 really do. Yeah, real quick sidenote, like, for people who get on stage or do speaking events, like I love all my clients. And it's always fun to engage with an audience. But when a client puts on such a high tech event like with a full on LED stage, and like all of the tools that a speaker want like confidence monitor and timer and you know when it just when they make our job easy, it makes I feel like the presentation that much more fluid. And so just treat, it's a luxury as a speaker. Alex Weber 2:58 Yeah, 100% and just the energy a and truly everyone was raving about your talk. So to learn more about you as well. And you know, my journey with American Ninja Warrior. So it's a funny thing, because there's and I know you know this in your own journey. There's like layers. So it's like how deep do you go in? Do you go from when I left playing college lacrosse and doing finance and took a leap of faith and moved to LA to do entertainment. Do where how far do you go, but really what it was was, I got hired as a host. And that at that time in my life was the biggest dream. I played college lacrosse. I did sports my entire life. And then society told me I was a former athlete. Oh, you played D1 lacrosse? You're a former athlete. How cool? I'm like, Oh, I guess I'm a former athlete that kind of crushes my soul when you say that. But I guess that's who I am. Julia Landauer 3:54 I appreciate- we can get into that too. Because like this shifting and moving on from that identity as the full time athlete. Oh my god. Okay, we've got even more to talk about. Sorry, continue. Yes. Alex Weber 4:03 Well, I love that because I think you nailed it the shift. And it's because that part of us doesn't go away. It's just where do we channel it. And I've had seasons of my life where I've channeled it to bad things because I didn't know where to put it. So I put that energy into things that didn't weren't really good, but I didn't know what to do. And then American Ninja Warrior was so incredible. So I really took a leap of faith. I went after TV hosting, and I'll never forget this. But I'm giving a slightly longer answer because that's okay. We can geek out on this stuff because I know you get it because of where you've risen to in your sports and your career. I got my first TV hosting agent after I went to a casting director workshop because I literally was like, Hey, I think I could do hosting. I wasn't very good at acting, or at least I felt like I was pretending to be people and they're like, No, next I'm like great. Do you validate parking? Okay, I'm out of here. So, I followed up this casting director, I went to her workshop and she said, Hey, I think you'd be good at hosting. And I'm, like, awesome. Like, this is just me how I am and my friends. She's like, I'm gonna get you an agent. And that was huge. And then I wrote her a message. The next day, she didn't respond, it was Facebook Messenger. A couple of days later, hey, just seeing if you saw that she didn't respond. Something went off in me where I'm like, I'm gonna follow up with this person until the end of time. And so I wrote her a message every single week for 52 weeks, like literally happy Flag Day, happy July 4, hope you had a great Easter. On the 52nd week, literally, she goes, Alex, I've sent you a meeting with this agent. And that just like kind of triggered into me of positive perseverance, just like if you really want something, stay at it. Be polite, you know, come with appreciation. Anyways, the first real job that I got hired for was NBC American Ninja Warrior. So it literally felt like going from farm League, you know, out in the 80s to now on this, like, huge stage and can't wait and the entire team and American enjoy are freaking awesome. So just the short version of it was I was hired as a host. My job was to be this goofy guy. Hey, here we are in Oklahoma City. Here's all the best athletes look at how crazy these obstacles are. And then they thought it'd be fun if I got up there and just failed for everyone's entertainment. So did that for the first year. And then on a dime. And this is what's been really relatable to audiences, my bosses and I get it, it's you get it's entertainment, it's creative. They came to me, they go, Alex, we want to go in a new direction. You need to be good at this sport. Now. I was like, Okay, I'm sorry, what's this? And so literally now my dream job in the balance, because they wouldn't be hard. They could just go find someone else. Maybe a past competitor, you know, right. So now I'm like, if Alex, if you want to keep this job, you got to get good at this impossible sport, right? That is really where so much of now what I speak on, it was just such a pressure cooker for it. Because I ended up really clocking in and we can unpack that, but for a year, I just was like Alex, alright, man, like you got to do this and started as beyond a beginner and worked my way up to we won an award for NBC, I still have it and became a competitor. So the only person ever host and then compete on the series. Julia Landauer 7:31 Well, that is such a cool legacy to have. And I guess, you know, I'm curious, because I've seen the show. I haven't watched it religiously, but I've seen it, it's a really good go to for like when you're on the road, like it's just yeah, and as a competitor and me it's always fun to watch and to root for the people who look like the underdogs. I think it's kind of my go to Yeah, how do you even best prepare for those kinds of like, challenging obstacle? Or like, is that the proper term? Or Alex Weber 7:59 yeah, and that's such I love that question, too. And again, I was so excited to do this, because of just the level that you've been at in your sport. I know that you get all the intricacies of it. And yeah, you know, I think what was really interesting was, I was an all American Division One lacrosse player, I had one US Lacrosse Coach of the Year. And then I was now a beginner. And so that was this really stark experience for me. But I realized like, okay, Alex, like, either way, you're a beginner, you can either bring in all your ego and your judgments and still be a beginner, or you can bring in humility and hunger and be a beginner. And I'm like, Alright, yeah, I get it. Like, that's the way to do it. Like, my motto was, wherever the best people are training, that's where you need to be. Because what I did in the beginning, was and I think this happens with a lot of people, I kept it at this safe distance. So I would go to my comfortable gym, LA Fitness or Equinox, and wherever I was at the gym, and I'd be like, okay, they seem to have strong upper bodies, let me do a lot of pull ups. And really what I was doing, and this happens with a lot of us is we have this big dream. And we take this first step that's kind of small, and we keep the dream still over there at a distance. And what I learned is like, the dream is still going to be daunting, whether you are at this distance or whether you're in the heartbeat of it, but the variable is how much fog is around it. Because for me when I would just go train on my own, it was still this mystical thing. But when I went and I was like, alright, that's the best American Ninja Warrior and thank you to them for being so welcoming. When I was training with them, I sucked and it was frustrating, but at least I was like, okay, they can do 100 of this thing. I can't do one.... --- ### [Season 2 Finale!](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-50-season-2-finale/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome to the season two finale of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, yes, this 50th episode is the end of season two. It has flown by. It's also been quite a bit more challenging this season, between working full time and ramping up my speaking again and all that. It's been a lot of work, and it's been really exciting. I'll get into more of a recap of season two in a bit. But first I want to talk about my sibling trip to Iceland that I just got back from on Sunday. Yes, we finally got to SIB trip time of the year. And for those of you who listened to Episode 30, which is about building strong sibling relationships. You know that my siblings and I take a trip every year. We started in 2019 once we were all done with college, and this trip is really an opportunity for us to have somewhat unstructured bonding time over a several day period away from our parents, away from significant others, and it's a really safe space. It's a space where we know that we're going to have a powwow, and in that powwow, we can share how we're feeling, what's going on, what we're proud of, what we're working on, what we're worried about. We talk about things related to all of us. And it's also a really cool time where we we go in knowing that we're welcoming unsolicited feedback, and we trust each other enough to do it respectfully, and we know that it's always coming from a place of caring and wanting the best for each other. Sometimes it skews really heavy on one sibling. Sometimes there's stuff that all of us have to think about, but it's really incredible. And we all agree that this was probably our best sibling trip yet. Combination of the vibes during the trip and what we were chatting about and the location, it was our first international sibling trip, and so that added a little pizzazz to the whole weekend. And it was in Iceland. Now, I had been to Iceland in 2007 when I was part of the Formula BMW education and coaching program. And so there were about 10 or 12 of us, younger, like teenagers, early, 20 drivers, who went over to see the BMW factories in Germany and to do some stuff over there. On our way back, we were flying back to New York, our one of our engines gave out on the plane, and so we had to do an emergency landing at the nearest airport, which happened to be Reykjavik. So we had 12 hours in Iceland in August, in 2007 and we got to see the blue lagoons, and we got to go on these big cliffs. I don't remember all of it, but I do remember that, and it was really cool. So this was a fun way to revisit and make my own agenda, knowing some of the stuff I had known from that past trip. This was a short trip. Most of our sibling trips are three to four days, and it's really a chance to reset. And it didn't even feel too short, to be honest, because I think Iceland is a nice balance of being far enough away that you feel like you're going to a really cool new place, but it's only a four hour time difference from the East Coast, and it's a five hour flight, so it doesn't feel that jarring. And we left on Wednesday, May 29 and as we were getting ready to meet up to go to the airport, we saw that a volcano erupted again right near Reykjavik and the blue lagoons and stuff. And so we were partially wondering, okay, well, Are we flying to Iceland? Is this a problem for us? But our flight was scheduled, and we knew that the town near the volcano was evacuated, but we weren't planning on going there right away. So it was all good, and we we flew out. We had some delays getting out, which was a little stressful and a little nerve wracking, that maybe they were going to cancel our flight due to weather. But we made it, and we landed in Iceland on Thursday morning, and our plan was to immediately drive out to the southeastern coast. We were going to spend about five hours driving to diamond Beach, which is a black sand beach that has big chunks of ice on it and just looks like diamonds are scattered throughout this. This sand beach and Iceland is so, so cool because, one, it is not very populated, and there's a lot of basically untouched land. And I kid you not, the only road that was going from the Reykjavik area out to the out on the southern coast to the east. Eastern side was one two lane highway where the speed limit was 90 kilometers an hour, which is less than 60 miles an hour, and it just keeps going. And there really were not a lot of cars on that road. And we drove through so many incredibly different micro climates. One area was kind of rainy and overcast and looked very lush, and there was a little more mountainous. Another area felt like we were on a different planet. It was so dry and Rocky, and you had little little mounds here and there. And then there were other areas where we saw snow capped mountains. And then there. Were other areas where we saw glaciers. It was so incredible. And as my sister heard from one of her friends, the weather can change in an instant. So we had rain, we had heavy wind, we had major fog and smog and dust storms, and then sunshine. And I was starting to get a little tired at one point, after a red eye, and then driving for a few hours, and we decided to get out and look around at this, this house that had been built into the side of a mountain, basically. And we get out, and there are these huge gusts of wind and and it was so cold, and it woke us right up. And then I was good to go for the rest of the drive. We keep making our way eastwards, and we we finally get to the area of diamond beach, and we saw that a lot of people were parked in this one parking lot just off the side of the main road, and all we could see was this little hill of dirt, this mound. And we park, we get out, we walk up, and as we crest the top, we see this big lagoon full of large chunks of ice that just goes for a while, and then we see this big glacier in the background. And it was so beautiful. It was there's something so cool about seeing big chunks of ice that are just floating around in the water. And we kept driving to go to the other side of this lagoon, and we got to get up on the shore of the water and see these ice chunks. And some of the ice chunks were floating, and some of them were bobbing in the water, and we're talking massive, massive chunks of ice, like bigger than cars. And it was just really romantic and wonderful and kind of magical. And then we crossed the street and got to diamond beach on the black sand beach, and we didn't see a ton of ice, but there were still some ice chunks. It had just melted a lot by that point. And then we drive about another hour to where we were staying, which is the town of Hofn, spelled H, O, F n, and this was a lovely little place. It was just a random hotel, literally off that main road, but we went to dinner at a place called Otto matur and Drykkur. And I'm sure I did not pronounce that right, but that was my best shot. And this meal was amazing. I had a smoked cod that was so light and fluffy but also so rich and flavorful, a lot of really great vegetables. Emma and Aiden had great dishes. We had a beautiful homemade sourdough bread with a whipped butter, and then I think, lava salt that we had to sprinkle into the butter. Oh, it was so good. And I kid you not, I had one of my top five desserts that I've ever had in my life, and all it was was a Blackberry tart, but the pastry of this chart, the creaminess and vanilla and rich, complex flavor of the filling with the fruit on top, it was a religious experience. It was so good. So when we went to bed, and it is trippy, because in the summertime, it feels like it doesn't fully get dark. It the sun didn't set till around 11, 11:30. But even at 12, one in the night, it's still pretty light out. It is so weird, and it totally trips you up. Between the jet lag and that lighting. It makes it so you just don't want to go to bed, and then it's just, it's just light all the way around. And the curtains are really incredible in every place that we stay. I guess they're prepared for this. But it was just, it was so cool to be 11pm and looking like you could just go outside for a walk. That's so nice. So that was really, really cool. Second day we got up, had a delightful continental breakfast. I love a European style continental breakfast. My sister loved that they had canned fish that were basically preserved, and eating that for breakfast. And the egg situation was fantastic. Great jams, Nutella, as always. And then we started driving back westward. So we had made it to our furthest East Point. We started driving West, and we were trying to get to Vik, which is another city on the southern coast, and we this time, we made a bunch of stops at different hiking points. We had some really brutal wind at one of them, we had a beautiful, lush hike that would have been absolutely stunning had not been raining the whole time, but it was still very cool. I just wasn't totally prepared clothing wise. And we made it to our place in Vik and we stayed in a little house. It was a tiny house that we rented. Had another great dinner where we had carrot soup and we had the great Icelandic gin and tonics. Mine had lemon and thyme. My sisters had blueberries. It was absolutely delicious. And their their food is so good, it is really expensive. Food and drink is expensive in Iceland, and I think that's the same in most Nordic countries. But oh my goodness, it is fresh, and they do it well. That second day, Friday was when we had our powwow. And it was just really good. It was really fruitful. I'm really grateful for my siblings to be able to have these conversations. And then we went to sleep and woke up and started driving to Reykjavik. We had planned to make some more stops on the way to Reykjavik, but it was really nasty weather. It was raining, it was cold. There was really low, dense fog, so we just couldn't see very much.... --- ### [Welcome to Season 3 - Sports Catch-Up / Season Preview](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-51-welcome-to-season-3-sports-catch-up-season-p/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:00 hello and welcome to season three of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, you guys, we are in our third season. That is so cool. Thank you so much for being along for this journey. It has been an incredibly satisfying passion project. I have had great feedback from you guys. It's been really interesting to hear you disagree with me or agree with me. It's been cool to have this outlet to be able to dive into topics that I'm excited about. It's been incredible to be able to talk with so many really cool and accomplished people as our guest. You guys have really enjoyed those episodes. And yeah, here we are. Season three is going to be a little bit different than season one and season two, not just in thematic stuff, but we are going to take it back a little bit. Gonna be doing one episode every two weeks instead of every week, and they will still come out on Wednesdays, but we're gonna do one episode every two weeks, there's going to be 10 episodes that's going to take us through the end of 2024 still going to be a mix of topics that I'm excited about and guests, which I will get into more later, but this is something that I think will be helpful as I balance work and keynote speaking and having a life and doing the podcasting. So really excited for this new format. It's going to keep it fun. Going to keep it free. Keep it fresh. And yeah, so I've missed you, and it's been two months roughly since we had my last episode, and quite a bit has happened since then. If we look at the world at large, a lot of stuff politically has happened. It's very different political ground for America right now than it was back in June. Sports wise, we've had some twists and turns with NASCAR and Formula One and the Olympics, which I want to get into. Personally, we were able to go celebrate two friends marriages in Europe on two weddings in three days. It was very aggressive. We had to go from Corsica to Hamburg, Germany, during the global IT outage, which we made it like, really, really unexpectedly, really grateful. We made it there. No problem. It was so nice to celebrate love. I am such a sap. I love love, and I cry a lot. And even at the wedding, where I wasn't as familiar with the people they were Ben's friends from college. I was crying, even though a lot of it was in French, and I didn't understand everything. And then the second wedding we went to, which was in Germany, was for two of our friends, where Ben pointed out that it was the first wedding where I know both the people personally and have developed the same relationship with both of them, and so it was just really beautiful. I really ugly cried with hot tears that were painful. It was just it was so incredible to see their appreciation for each other and their loved ones and friends and family, and we all flew out there to see them. And I just love it so much. I just love weddings anyway. So we did that. We made it back. Work has really ramped up at NASCAR. It's really exciting. I'm I'm having to learn a lot, you know, some of that basic business and corporate information, and navigating a lot of new things. So that's been really cool. And yeah, speaking is going to pick back up again here at the end of the summer, and I'm working on a new keynote that's going to be a completely different narrative arc, different stories. It's the first real revamp of keynotes that I have done in many, many years. So it's daunting. It's a big task. It's a lot of creative time, which is hard to find when you're working nine to five, but I'm, I'm really excited for all of that. So for the first part of this episode, I want to dive into some sports related things that have happened since June, so that I can give my opinion, some big things that I think about, including the Olympics. And then I'll close out this this episode by talking about some of the specific topics I'll get into in season three. So let's talk about NASCAR first for a little bit. Obviously, I'm biased, obviously I am working there, but I still love the racing. I still love what the series is doing. I am so happy that Chicago, for the second year, was more or less a really great show. We saw some really incredible racing. Weather was a little less of a factor, still a factor, still a pain in the butt. I don't think NASCAR can catch a break when it comes to Chicago weather for their spectacle race, but at least they were able to get concerts in. They were able to get a lot of new fans to the track. NASCAR also unveiled their partnership with ABB and the electric vehicle. It's really cool to see what we're doing with that. And, yeah, it's just a fun race. Shane Van Gisbergen is so fun to watch, not only on the track because he's so aggressive, but so clean, but then he's also really great from an interviewing perspective and personality perspective, and I think NASCAR is really lucky to have him being part of our sport now. Yeah. And on the lesser, great news with NASCAR. Unfortunately, at that same weekend, it was announced that Hailie Deegan and her team were parting ways. Now, Hailie Deegan is the only full time female racer in any of the three NAS national NASCAR series, and it's just disappointing. Regardless, there are rumors as to why they they parted ways. I'm not going to look into the rumors or speculation because I do not know firsthand what happened, but either way, it's a bummer to lose that representation, especially because at least in the immediate aftermath, the team had cited that they wanted to be able to get a veteran in the car, to be able to help them improve from a technological standpoint and from a car performance standpoint, and they got eighth with joey logano at Chicago, but for the two oval races after that, they got 20 something and a DNF. So they're not really getting the development and I think that they were hoping for. So NASCAR has been on a break for the Olympics because we share a broadcast partner with NBC, and so I'm going to be really paying attention to how that team does moving forward, and just kind of seeing personally what what's going on. Because either way it's it's a bummer to not have any women racing full time. I'm very saddened by that, because I think again, racing is one of those really cool sports where we can be co-ed from an from a physicality standpoint and from a performance standpoint, and I think we just have a little ways to go. So we will see. In positive female racing NASCAR news, I am really excited by kind of the next generation that's coming up. There are a lot of women in their late teens who are winning in midgets and sprint cars on dirt, and who are winning super late model races and competing up front in the Arca series. So I I'm looking forward to seeing how those women do in the coming years, jumping into Formula One. For my fellow Lewis fans, this has been a fun few races for us, hasn't it? Because starting in June and July for some of those races, I think we were seeing Hamilton, Mercedes were doing incrementally better. And then there was that breakthrough win at Silverstone for Hamilton, which is so powerful, the fact that he gets to win at his home track, at his team's home track at Silverstone on his final year with Mercedes. It's just it was really poetic. It's so fun to watch. I think he's really graceful, really, really generous with his team and fans and all the support that he gets. And then he inherited the win at Spa when, unfortunately, George had his problem. But it's fun to see them come back, and it's really fun to see multiple teams competing up front. I know there are certain adverse situations that verb found himself in which handicapped him a bit, but in general, I love seeing more teams being competitive. So between McLaren, Mercedes and Red Bull, we're seeing some real feisty fights on the f1 track. So excited to get back to that when we're back from their summer break. And the last sports related thing that I want to talk about is the Olympics. The Olympics have been delivering on so many levels this year. It has been so much fun to watch Simone Biles, Ilona Maher, like there are so many storylines, Team USA, the French love for their French athletes, which I'm now kind of tangentially invested in because of Ben, there's so much going on. So let's first dive into Simone Biles, I will admit, and it pains me to admit this, but when Simone withdrew from Tokyo for the Olympics because she cited her mental health, I I had weird feelings about because I feel like the way it was communicated did not really do the severity of her issue justice. So it seemed like she just pulled out. And reality is, obviously she was experiencing a disconnect between her mind and her body, almost like a sense of vertigo, I think is a way to describe it to non gymnast, but the twisties is what she had. And when we learn more details, it made a whole lot more sense why she withdrew. If you can't safely know where you are in the air, you could dangerously land on your neck. You could break your neck, you could become paralyzed. Like, obviously that is a huge issue, but it was a it was communicated in such a weird way. So anyway, once I learned that, I was like, oh my goodness, I hope that she can come back. That's got to be such a tough way to end your Olympic career with that withdrawal, right? And so to see her come back and to dominate on the team and dominate on the all around and get that gold medal, it was such a beautiful, powerful redemption performance that she got to do to claim the gold in a couple of different competitions. And I know that all of us older people in our 30s are like, Oh, everyone there is young, but at 27 she's she's old for a gymnast. And it's really cool to see her just be peak form. It's really great to see. Her team rally behind her. The power in her moves is so incredible. And I just like I get tired watching what she's doing. And let's talk about the beam.... --- ### [Do Emotions Drive Better Decision Making?](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-52-do-emotions-drive-better-decision-making/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.120Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Julia, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I hope you're having a nice day that you've had a good two weeks in the first episode of this season. I talked about how this season is going to focus on themes related to human performance, and I wanted to lean into human performance, because I love learning about how the brain and body work. I love pushing myself to excellence, and that was something I really enjoyed challenging myself with when I was an active race car driver from a teenager to in my 20s and early 30s, it was just really cool to build mental toughness, physical toughness and really find out what I'm capable of on that physical, mental performance level. And in general, I feel like I haven't been paying as much attention to human performance and learning about our bodies and minds, because I'm not a particularly active athlete anymore. I stay in shape, I exercise, I like doing all of that, but really trying to maximize my performance has not been something that I'm focusing on. But as I've grown up a little bit, and as I get into corporate and as I talk with friends and family, it's it's really clear that human performance and maximizing our potential and physically and mentally is really important, and so that's why I wanted to dig into that, specifically with a focus on the mental elements of human performance. And I want to jump into the mental side, because our minds are so, so powerful, both in a positive and a negative way. If we think about visualization, you can visualize things and really think about perfectly hitting your marks and doing everything right, and then that becomes a really beneficial tool for practice and preparation. But if you visualize doing negative things that can bite you in the butt, for example, as racers, if we think about driving into the wall and crashing, we are more likely to drive into the wall and crash. So it's really powerful to see that our minds can sway us in positive and negative directions. We can also look at self talk, right, how we have our internal dialog with ourselves. If that's negative nagging and bringing us down that's going to negatively impact our perspective on life, our outlook on life, whereas if we have positive self talk and we encourage ourselves and we're gracious with ourselves, we're more likely to see positive performance. And I think that that's a really powerful thing to keep in mind, and a reason why our brains and our minds and our mental abilities are so important to pay attention to, so that we can be in control and take responsibility of how we're viewing the world and how we're viewing ourselves. To kick it off, I want to talk about our emotions and emotional intelligence. This topic has sprung up more explicitly in my life over the last few weeks, and I've taken notes, and I've saved articles. And so that's what made me want to jump into this, because emotional regulation is something that I think far too few people were raised with, but yet is so critical. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to share some of the background that I've been thinking about with emotional intelligence, pull in a few articles that I've read, I will link everything in the episode description, and I'll give kind of my perspective and some of the research that I've seen onto the reasons why emotional intelligence is really important and why emotional intelligence can actually make us smarter. Historically, being quote, unquote, emotional was unequivocally a bad thing when talking about trying to be successful, right? If you're at work, you don't show emotion, you know, if you're you know, you're trying to climb the ladder, you know, don't show your weaknesses. Don't show your vulnerabilities. And weaknesses and vulnerabilities were associated with emotions. I think it was a particularly potent thing to think about if you were a woman versus a man. You know, women who were perceived as getting emotional and being sad or being warm and fuzzy or expressing themselves that way showed weakness in a way that wasn't as attributed to men. And interestingly, I don't think that there was the same discussion around men getting angry, which is something that has been portrayed in media a lot in literature, but anger, for whatever reason, is not attributed to being a super negative emotion, particularly in the context of men getting angry, but it's still bad if women get angry at work and then loud and angry, and it's not good. So anyway, I digress a little bit. But in general, the advice was to not let yourself get emotional, not to show that, quote, unquote, softer side of you, not to make big decisions when you get emotional. And that reacting emotionally can maybe give you tunnel vision, and so you won't see the big picture, etc, etc. So in general, there was this commonly held belief that we shouldn't let ourselves get emotional. Rather, we should muster through it, have a stiff upper lip and keep it together. And when I think about my upbringing, which was primarily in the 2000s as a older kid, young teenager, even things like going to therapy or people being really in depth about their emotions with their friends. You know, not all of that was discussed, and that was not that long ago. It was like 1015, years ago, right? So that was a commonly held belief. Now, as more and more research is coming out, and as we're experiencing these bigger cultural shifts, we are acknowledging that dealing with our emotions is extremely important, and it's extremely important for a number of reasons. First, if we're able to handle and go through our emotions, we're going to be more likely to get to the root of a problem that's causing those emotions to be able to come with a more reasonable solution. Dealing with our emotions also is likely to reduce interpersonal violence. It's likely to curb outbursts, and it's a key for helping us feel more in control of our day to day lives, especially when so much in the world is out of our control, right? We need to try to take back as much autonomy as we can, and really working through our emotions is a great way to do that. I recently read an op ed by David Brooks where he essentially says that we need emotions to make decisions, and that the commonly accepted research indicates that emotions actually can help us react to and process our situations, which this is a far departure from the idea that you should totally squash any emotions that you feel that so many of us live by for so long, and so it's likely the case that emotional intelligence actually leads to more rational thinking and better decision making. I want to read an excerpt from this David Brooks article, which, again, I will link that kind of outlines how the different emotions can frame our minds to look at a situation. He says, In other words, emotions slant the mind in one direction or another, depending on circumstances. Indignation helps us focus on injustice. Awe motivates us to feel small in the presence of grandeur and to be good to others. Euphoria puts us in a risk taking frame of mind. Happiness makes people more creative, more flexible in their thinking. Disgust primes us to reject immoral behavior. Fear helps amplify our senses and focus attention. Anxiety puts us in a pessimistic state of mind, less likely to take chances. Sadness improves memory, helps us make more accurate judgments, makes us clearer communicators and more attentive to fairness. When I read this and when I was thinking about it as how it related to my life, I definitively decided that we definitely need emotional self awareness, and that is something that we need to really help others find as well, because not only will it help us on our own personal journeys, but it will help others and those we love help us build better relationships. It's definitely a big old ripple effect, and one of the things I really like about this excerpt is that it drives home the fact that our minds and our emotions are so interconnected with the world around us, right our surroundings and our circumstances may lead us to feel a certain emotion, and by embracing that emotion, we're more likely to have a reaction and a thought process that's best suited for that situation, and then we're more likely to make a good decision. That is so cool. We are all connected in this really abstract but also very granular way. And that was just one of those kind of out of body experiences to think about that we really are one with nature and with what's around us. Now, one note I do have from this excerpt is that Brooks doesn't really address anger and how anger slants our minds, and we know that anger can be an aggressive and destructive emotion. So if I had to surmise, I'd say that anger overwhelms us and potentially makes us combative. And so maybe there are certain emotions where we have to preemptively know that we have to take a beat before reacting, and that our gut reaction in that moment to that situation with these emotions maybe is not what we should act on. So I would be super interested to know his follow up thoughts on like, how you deal with those more aggressive emotions, but he didn't write about them. So that's just my my own perspective. So if we know that emotional intelligence is important, I would hope that in the future and in the years to come, we will continue to integrate emotional education into our. Schools and into our lives and in our media, because there's no doubt that not enough people are getting this kind of education. One, it's an abstract topic that maybe people don't know about. Two, it's something that's only recently been accepted as important, as opposed to being like fluffy and potentially a weakness.... --- ### [Racing Communities, Abandoning Internal Misogyny, and NYC Public Schools with Motorsports Streamer Ash Kalita](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-53-racing-communities-abandoning-internal-misog/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome to the first guest episode of season three of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I am so thrilled to have Ash Kalita, who is known as Ashvandelay, on the show today. Ash is a motorsports Twitch streamer and a creator who works with Oracle Red Bull Racing, NASCAR, Fanatec, GT, World Challenge America. Her love of the sport is the foundation of her community, and she aims to inform and inspire anyone who wants to learn more about the industry, about racing, or is just looking for a safe space to be yourself from Formula One to NASCAR to Indy and all wheels in between. We're big fans of racing around here, and let me tell you, Ash embodies that to a T. It was really cool, not only to discover that we have a lot of background similarities from being from New York and going to specialized public high schools, we have been navigating the motorsports field as women for many years. She shared some of the things that she's really excited about for women in motorsports, and some of the things that she has seen changing. We talk about how she creates content in her creative process. We talk about what it's like to be a streamer, and we jump into a lot of really fun, honest, vulnerable Conversations. I'm in awe of Ash and how she uses her platform to advocate for things that she cares about and to keep it honest and to really create an incredible, safe and entertaining space. And I love her content so much. So I really hope that you enjoy this episode with Ash. Ash, thank you so much for joining me on, if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. Ash Kalita 1:32 Thank you so much for having me. And I also love the podcast title. It's, uh, I think there's gonna be a lot of honesty flying around. So I'm pretty stoked. Julia Landauer 1:38 We like to keep it real. So I appreciate that, and I'm gonna just jump off, because I did not learn this until just before we started recording. But we are both from New York City. We both graduated high school in 2010 we both went to specialized public high schools in New York and guys, that is so monumental, I think, to have two women who are in motor sports, who are from New York City, who then also went to these public nerdy high schools. So this was so cool to discover. Ash Kalita 2:03 Yeah, it's a small world. I mean, in motorsports specifically, but yeah, it's cool in New York City, with, like, a city of 8 million people that we found the two folks in the same year, specialized high school life going through it. It's Julia Landauer 2:13 so cool. And my sister went to the same school as you and your brother went to my school. So I mean, just really, really cool. And bring so many things together synergistically. So I want to get into some details about that later. But first for our listeners, who, many are not necessarily motorsports fans. Can you get into your background and how you got into motorsports streaming and just your foray into motorsports? Ash Kalita 2:38 Sure, so my parents are Polish immigrants. They immigrated to New York City, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in the late 80s, and they opened up Polish Deli. We grew up around other immigrants and children of immigrants and whatnot. So, you know, grandparents in Poland, so big Polish family, the the usual shenanigans. If anyone's from Greenpoint, they know. So when Robert Kubica started racing in Formula One in 2006 it was a it was a decently big deal. And my dad is like, that Father in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, where, if any Polish person does something cool, we all know about it. We're all emailed, we're all texted that he emailed us about this person that we need to read up on it. He knows that everyone's percentage of Polish ancestry who's famous be like, Oh, that person's great, great grandfather's polish. Did you? Did you know that? And amazing. So we had a route for Robert Kubica in our house. We started watching Formula One. And, you know, student six just been watching Formula One, and I went to college in Florida, so that kind of introduced me to NASCAR and IMSA. And we what is the Daytona 24 a little less for the racing, a little bit more for the infield partying. But was familiar with what IMSA was. Daytona 24 um, fast forward to 2020, the pandemic, which I'm, I mean, everyone went through, you know, mental health here, nor there of some kind. I was in a DC basement apartment. My my window view was our dumpsters of the apartment building. So it was just, I was just not having it was just not a good apartment, I know, from New York City, but they were, like, their roaches involved. It was just I was not having good it was I had to sit there and to be in that apartment, and I was like, fighting for my life. So I found communities online, like on twitch or the video games that I played. So I would interact with the people in a live chat, right? The streamer would be responding to folks you would come together to play a game together. And my therapist recommended that I do that similarly to, like a motorsport community. And she's like, to talk about motorsport. She's like, I don't know how this Twitch thing works, but you know, they're yapping to you. She's like, you talk about what you love. And I was like, Okay, that's a goal we work towards. So I started streaming the Formula 1 2021 season as a watch alongs and qualifying and such, and then as kind of start simmering, because it just kind of goes hand in hand. In hand when you're looking for audience to cross pollinate, right? And eventually people are like, oh, you should do other you should cover other racing, like you should do watch, like we would watch, if we watched NASCAR, if you watched IMSA, if you watch WEC, like, let's, let's just watch races together. So that's kind of where I started growing in the motorsport realm and learning all of. Products. People wanted more information or wanted me to talk about it. Julia Landauer 5:03 That is really, really cool, that it was, it was grown out of, like, your own mental health journey, and, you know, growing personally and finding those outlets. And I think that's really powerful. Were you transparent with that kind of as you were building your community and as you were kind of hosting these online communities, or was it more just, this is racing. Let's talk about racing. Ash Kalita 5:27 Oh, I'm pretty transparent, pretty open about it. I do set some boundaries right between because, like, there's parasocial relationships where people have come up to me on racetracks and they're like, oh my gosh, and they know a lot about me, because I tend to talk a lot during the three hour NASCAR watch alongs, right? And then I'll be like, I'm so sorry. I don't know who you are. And they'll be like, I'm Matthew. And they're like, I don't know what that is like, I only know you by your username, so unless your name is like, Matthew on my Twitch chat, yeah, I know what your name like, I don't know you. Like, that's trippy. It's a little strange. Like, I there's like, obviously no, usually no, ill intent of like this, but like they know you, or like they know me through the camera. They see my motions. They see my basement here, my decor and everything. And I talk about, like, my workday and stuff and the races, but like, I don't know much about them. Like, they'll tell them, like, yeah, my day went well. Work a little bit in the chat, but to the extent they know me. So it's always interesting when it's, like, a very one sided conversation, right? And I'm like, What's I need? Like, name tags of like, usernames and real Julia Landauer 6:28 name, right? Like, you knew that, like, Hello, I am whoever this is the this is the community I'm part of. This is, Ash Kalita 6:35 yeah, I'm snowglobe446 am I really with Matthew. Like, I need some kind of, yeah, but it grew out of just community, love and engagement, stuff like that. So I greatly appreciate them for always, not only educating me, because I don't know everything about motorsports, which is kind of why, right? I love it. So I feel like, out of college, you kind of stop learning, you kind of stop being forced to learn. So motorsports, I'm always constantly googling things. I'm always like, you know, getting an aerodynamics degree one race, so then maybe, like, a physics degree in the next so I know a lot of folks who either work in the series. I have someone who works for thorsport and NASCAR. He's one of my community members and has really helpful information. I know someone who works for Firestone and IndyCar really helpful information. And, like, they just answer the questions the community and for myself. So it's become kind of like a team effort here. Julia Landauer 7:20 That's great. So before you started streaming, and like, had your face on camera, did you, were you kind of open about your identity as a woman in motorsports? And I asked that from the lens of, you know, I got really into web three and nfts and, like, joined discords, and, you know, there were a handful of women who were in the space as well. It was not it was predominantly men. And I had a few people who were really active in these chat rooms saying that they kind of had an ambiguous username. And then, like people seemed to be surprised when they found out that they were women in the space. Did you experiencing anything like that? Or were you kind of transparent about who you were? Ash Kalita 8:03 I browse lurk the Reddit sometimes for like, Formula One, sports car racing and things like that. And, yeah, my name is just ambiguous, not by fault. It just, I just happen to, like, make it that way. But everyone, yeah, there's always that surprise when it's like, oh, okay, I've never been meant. Sorry. Excuse me, met with any kind of like weirdness, luckily, either, because I've made my privacy settings very strict, it's just like, I just let that like crazy fester into the dark of void of the internet. Usually everyone's like, Oh, and then we move on.... --- ### [The Science of a Natural High](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-54-the-science-of-a-natural-high/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:00 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I don't do drugs, but I do know that it is really hard to beat the feeling of an incredible high that you get after you've accomplished something amazing, whether that's the high of winning a race or the high of falling in love or the high of getting a promotion, or the high of performing something and coming off stage and feeling that euphoric feeling of applause and knowing that you killed it, it's incredible, and Our brains organically do something that makes us feel so euphoric, and because it is truly, truly a great feeling, I am going to explain how our brains produce this natural high, what we can do in our day to day lives to achieve it, and then also a greater discussion around pleasure in general. So I hope you enjoy this discussion. I originally started thinking about the natural highs that we get a couple years ago. I was discussing my keynote with my communications coach, and she's incredible, and she has helped me navigate how to create fun narratives for different audiences. And we were talking about how great it feels to get off the stage, how great it feels to know that you've inspired and that you've entertained and you've made people laugh. And I remember she said that, yeah, it was a really great feeling. But she said, I know it's not real life, so I try to stop that feeling and get off of that high as soon as I can, because how can I go back to my family or my real life if I'm on this high? And she asked me, what I do to get off of that high? And I looked at her, and I thought about it, and I realized I I didn't try to get off that high. I never once thought that I would try to minimize the incredible feeling I felt after doing a great job. And so we had this conversation, and I understood her point that when you're feeling euphoric and incredible and everyone else around you isn't that it can be a bit of a mismatch on energies. But I also feel that one, the world is so miserable a lot of the time, and there's so much negativity out there, and there are constantly people trying to bring you down or take away credit or minimize your feeling of goodness, that I'm going to ride that wave of that natural high as long as I can, I understand that the elevated heart rate and the, you know, high positive stress levels of that is not Sustainable, not something you want to have all the time. But why would you want to stop that? And it got me thinking, and I hadn't even started my podcast yet, when I started thinking about this, and then with this theme that we have, this season of human performance and excellence and all of that, it seems like it makes sense. Because, you know, I love the feeling of winning. Many people do I love the feeling of doing a great job. And so that's why I wanted to jump into some of the science behind this natural high, recognizing that it can also be addicting, right? Using substances to get a high is not the only way that we might get addicted to something. And so I do want to preface this discussion by saying that if you are struggling with substance abuse, or you think you might be struggling with some addictions, you can call the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration national Helpline at 1-800-662-4357 again, that's 1-800-662-4357 you can always also call 988, or 911, in the event of emergency. But back to the discussion of the natural high. It can be addicting, and I'm not advocating for that. I think that compulsory or compulsionary activities of any type, whether that is compulsively exercising to get that high or doing other things to get the high. Isn't healthy either, but a good dose of it, I think, is important. I think as humans, we need to feel happy, we need to feel joy, we need to feel pleasure. So first I'm going to jump into the science of this natural high and what technically happens in our bodies and brains, and then I'll pivot to the greater discussion around pleasure. So a natural high comes from the release of endorphins. And if you've watched Legally Blonde, you know that Endorphins make you happy and happy people just don't kill their husbands. But the more scientific explanation of what happens is that during times of stress or pain, the body releases the chemical endorphin into the brain, and it's near the hypothalamus and the pituitary glands, and endorphins are the natural painkillers. They are what make you feel desensitized to pain or minimize anxiety and make you feel better. Yeah, the word endorphins actually comes from two different words, endogenous, which means inside the body, and morphine, which is the medication that doctors prescribe to relieve pain. And so endogenous, morphine, endorphin. It doesn't quite work with the I any sound at the end, but it's close enough. But yeah, the body releases the chemical endorphin into the brain. And this can happen from things as simple as laughing or eating a delicious meal, bigger things like falling in love, going for a run and getting the runners higher, rigorous exercise, having sex, ultraviolet light, apparently can increase release of endorphins. But interestingly enough, and I did not know this before doing research for this episode, the endorphins are not what causes euphoria, because endorphins don't pass the blood brain barrier, which was a new concept for me. Maybe I learned it in high school. I don't remember. But because that, in addition to to endorphins, the body also produces endocannabinoids, which are like a natural cannabis that comes in the body. And endocannabinoids also get released during that time of exercise or when your heart rate is elevated, and it leaves that temporary feeling of calm and content and minimized anxiety, that euphoric feeling that we think about. The endocannabinoids also serve as regulatory functions for other parts of the body, such as for sleep and for mood, appetite, learning, memory, body temperature, pain, immune functions and fertility. And fun fact, the first endocannabinoid to be discovered, which was in 1992 was called anandamide. I think I pronounced that incorrectly, but that's okay, anandamide, anandamide, and that name comes from the Sanskrit word Ananda, which means bliss or delight, so quite appropriately named in terms of the first cannabis natural high release or feeling. So anyway, when we do something that involves a high heart rate stress, the combination of endorphins and endocannabinoids and probably adrenaline and cortisol, all of that going produces this feeling of high and again, on a personal level, I have felt that a lot at the racetrack, whether it's winning a race or doing significantly better, or, you know, the best that I had done to that point, or that feeling of hitting perfect marks and hitting The Apex perfectly, and running that perfect lap where just everything flows. And it kind of feels like you're on the subconscious level, you're in the zone. It's just it's so hard to explain, but you kind of just feel like you're levitating above everything that's happening. And it's intoxicating. It's incredible. I love it so, so much. And then I also have felt that I do get the runner's high, not if I go past like four miles, if I go past four miles, I'm like, this is now just painful, but the runner's high, and that feeling of satisfaction afterwards, and certainly when I'm on stage, that's the that's the place where I'm getting that feeling of incredible high the Most, I think, and the most intense version of that when I know that I've entertained and made people laugh and hopefully inspired, but I also realize how many ways we can find it in our day to day lives, and maybe it's a slightly different intensity level. But back to the list I read, you know, laughing letting our guard down enough to welcome in humor and to react to situations, even if it's not what's socially acceptable, like letting our guards down so that we can really experience in the moment, I think can provide some of that feeling of euphoria. I also will die on this hill that it's important to have little joys, and so really taking a moment to appreciate that perfect culinary experience of breathing in as you're taking the bite and all of your sensories are overloaded, it's that perfect bite of whatever it is, whether it's ice cream or whether it's a, you know, Michelin star meal, like really taking the time to Appreciate that. Meditating is another way where I haven't gotten into it, but I've heard from a lot of people firsthand that you can kind of have this out of body mind experience when you're going through meditation, to be able to have that that calmness and that delight and that stress free moment. There are also other things, like having intercourse or flirting with people, and, you know, building up that tension. So there are a lot of different ways that you can have this this high. And so again, please be responsible. Please reach out if you need help. But that is a summary of the science behind the euphoric feeling of a natural high. High and different ways that you can go about finding it. I will also link resources in the description if anyone needs them. So back to my discussion with my communications coach, when she said that the natural high is not real life and that she should get back to real life. I want to revisit a subtext that I picked up on, which was the minimization of pleasure, focusing in on the US specifically, I think we have a big problem when it comes to our cultural desire to minimize pleasure, and this spans a lot of different areas, right? We minimize vacation time, if we have any at all, we don't emphasize the importance of meal time or healthy and pleasurable eating. We don't have comprehensive sex education, and we shame people for not being productive. Silliness as adults is not considered professional or good. And I think this is a really problematic thing. Life is so dense.... --- ### [The Fuss About Aging](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-56-the-fuss-about-aging/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I don't know about you, but I have noticed another spike in our culture's obsession with anti aging and reducing age related effects, and this has always been prominent in life, I think, especially when it comes to marketing services or products that can help, quote unquote, reduce aging effects. And with what I think is particularly potent for women and girls to maintain a youthful appearance and to maintain, quote unquote, attractive to others, and all of that stuff. But recently, we've seen some specific examples of that going to the next level, and this is through biohackers and content we're seeing on social media and services that are available new technologies that are out there. There's a lot going on. So what I want to do for today's episode, in the context of this season in general, with human performance, I want to dive into some of the ways that we're seeing this obsession with anti aging play out in culture. I also want to talk about some research that actually observes biological things that happen as we age. And then I want to jump into things that the everyday person can do to try to live as healthy and well in as good a state for as long as they can now. I want to preface this episode by saying I am not a medical professional. I am merely consuming research and trying to be as objective and critical about where the research is coming from, but then also encourage everyone to do their own research. So you may have heard of Bryan Johnson, who is famous for spending $2 million a year to try to lower his biological age and potentially not die. He says that for the first time in human history, because of all of our technological advancements, medical advancements, AI, knowledge, understanding, research that's done, we are at the first time in our in our existence, looking at death as more of a question, not necessarily a guarantee. Now I don't, I don't know how I feel about that, and I'm not saying any of that is right or wrong, but what he's doing and why he gets to that point is because he is spending a ton of money and all of his time measuring as many elements of his body as he can to see how he can get all of these measurements into an optimal state and optimal results, and this is what we call biohacking. Biohacking is not new. There have been biohackers, whether it's Dave Asprey with his bulletproof method, which is incorporating fats into your coffee to try to help brain performance and doing at certain times during the day. There are other examples of biohacking, like cryo chambers or how you use saunas or water, training, breathing, work, even diets, I think, could be kind of put into the biohacking category if you're having a specific type of diet that's specifically targeting certain things to help manipulate your body and your mind to increase longevity or whatever the end result is. So biohacking is not new. But what's interesting about Bryan Johnson one he's so prominent, there's a lot of press around him, and there's a lot of content that he puts out there on his website, Bryanjohnson.com that outlines specifically what he is measuring, what his results are, what his diet is, what his sleep, exercise, what he calls his quote, unquote blueprint. He puts all that online so it's fairly transparent. If he's telling the truth, it's all transparent. And as a curious person who's always been interested in human performance, it's pretty cool to see what what is being measured and understanding what we can get more knowledge about to potentially help ourselves. And he also takes it a bit further than just the biohacking itself. Like, you know, I'm curious as to what compels someone to try to reverse nature's course and upset the evolution that we have had as humans. And where all living organisms eventually die. You know what compels someone to do that? And I was watching him on Andrew Schulz's Flagrant podcast, which is three hours, like it was a long episode, but I was listening to him, and one of the comments that he made as to why it makes sense for him to pursue this research is because the human objective is, quote, unquote, don't die. And if you think about this, whether or not you want to love him or you want to hate him, when you think about this, he's not wrong, right? If humans feel that their life's in danger, they're going to remove themselves from that situation. You know, if someone is crashing on the road, you're going to swerve out of the way. To try to avoid that, because you want to protect your life. If you know that you have a disease or get sick, you're going to try to seek medical treatment so that you can survive that illness or cancer or whatever it is, so that you can keep living. I think at our core, we do want to try to survive. So the way he frames it is that the human existence is the ultimate cooperation game. People have the same objective, and for the most part, we want to help other people meet that objective. So it got a little philosophical there, but it was interesting, I think, to hear kind of this broader reason why trying to prevent death is not necessarily an out there kind of concept. Again, I think the idea of living forever sounds incredibly daunting and overwhelming, but that's just my personal opinion, and I am intrigued to see the further research that comes out from his endeavors. So all this to say that biohacking is out there, and there's this kind of almost like primal need by some people to try to outrun death, if you will, which, however you want to feel about it. It's interesting to observe from afar, on a more relatable level, when I am on social media, whether Tiktok, Instagram, whatever I feel like I am bombarded with content that's about how we can keep our faces looking young, how we can stay in shape, how we bounce back, all this stuff, and I think it plagues everyone. But I think women have been the particular target of anti aging, you know, maximizing their youthful appearance, because that is our culture, and that's what we do, but it's out there a lot, and we see a lot of it. And I think with social media, we're exposed to so many more things that you can do, right? There's Botox, there's fillers, there's laser treatments, there's red light therapy. There are different types of scraping off your the dead skins on your face. There are injections that you can do for facials. There's way to boost collagen. There are topical solutions. There are injections. I mean, there's so much that's out there to try to get us to appear youthful. And I'm not saying any of this in a judgy way. I'm saying that I've observed that it's out there. And look, I certainly feel the pressure to try to maintain my youthful appearance, especially in my 30s, where I'm noticing so many more wrinkles and gray hairs and stiffness in my joints and my body taking longer to bounce back from adverse situations, whether that's a rigorous hike or drinking a little too much, right? Our bodies age, and I'm feeling the effects, and I recognize that there's so much out there to try to get us to buy into reversing those aging effects. And truth be told, I would love to slow down the effects of aging. I first noticed my body starting to physically feel like it was declining when I was 26 on the one hand, I was starting to get a bunch of gray hairs, but I also noticed that if I sat on the ground for too long, my knees were really stiff when I stood up, or it was more easy for me to sleep in a funky way that then put my back neck in a crick for a couple days, like it was the first time where I thought, Oh, this is what the rest of My life is like, and it's only going to get worse. So once that started happening, I decided to be a little more proactive in doing what I could to treat my body with the respect that it deserves, and stretch really well, hydrate, eat well, and I definitely experiment with moisturizers and serums, and I dye my hair regularly so I can cover up the grays, because I really don't like them, even though I know they're natural. And I get Botox periodically, all things that, you know, try, that I do to contribute to minimizing the speed at which I age. For better or worse, I'm, you know, one day, I would hope that I had no shits to give and wouldn't care about aging. But we're not there yet. We're not there yet. And one tangent that's more anecdotal than anything else, and it's not commentary, it's just an observation. I've found over the last you know, five or six years that I've been traveling to France regularly with Ben when I go over there, and I'm with people, especially women, that are my age, a little younger, a little older, I find that there's way less use of Botox and fillers over there. Again, this is just my observation, but culturally, it doesn't seem that anti aging in a non natural way or an injected way is as big of a thing over there. So again, just observation and to have the confidence of a French woman would be so, so cool, because I do have confidence. Don't get me wrong, I'm a confident person, but there's a little genetic qua to a French woman's confidence, and I hope that I will I, gain some of that through osmosis, through my through my marriage, so girl can dream. Anyway. I say all this to address the fact that, again, anti aging sentiments are abundant in our culture, and a lot of what I just addressed was more on a superficial or surface level, but then there's also a lot on the core and molecular level of our beings that people are trying to do to minimize the effects of aging. Pivoting a bit. I do want to jump into some research that actually observes some of the different stages of aging. And there was recently research that came out of Stanford University (go card) that observed these biological stages of aging.... --- ### [How Sequel Re-Engineered The Tampon](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-57-how-sequel-re-engineered-the-tampon/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:00 Julia, hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. This week's guest is the incredibly cool, incredibly smart, incredibly accomplished, Amanda Calabrese. Now I'm going to preface this by saying that we have a lot of synergies. We are both former competitive athletes. We both went to Stanford. We both are operating in male dominated fields, and we both care deeply about women's hygiene and Femcare products, which is how Amanda became the CMO and co founder of Sequ,l a women's health company that's focused on product innovation addressing unmet needs of women. The company's first product a redesign of the tampon as the Sequel spiral tampon is FDA approved as a medical device, and features a proprietary spiral design that is engineered to be more fluid mechanically efficient, meaning it is designed to absorb more evenly and not leak before it's full, which, if you've used tampons, you know that that is an incredibly important feature, something that doesn't always work out in our favor and causes a lot of stress. Amanda was named to the 2023 Forbes 30 Under 30 list. She represented the United States in the sport of Surf Life Saving she's a nine time national champion, and has the most wins in her event, which is beach flags for any person, male or female, in the history of life saving sport, in the US. What a badass. When not working on Sequel or competing, Amanda is searching for her next adrenaline rush, surfing, swimming and skiing in San Francisco, where she lives. I adored this conversation. I was so happy to be introduced to Amanda. I see so many similarities between her and myself. I really admire the mission driven nature of the products that she and her co founder have been creating. And as someone who is so big on women's empowerment, so much of that is just getting us to a level playing field and trying to alleviate some of the stress that's associated with some of the things that women uniquely have to deal with. And we talk about everything from starting up the company, how they got the idea, the R & D, how they are partnering and expanding their time at the Paris Olympics, recent partnerships, they've had what they're looking to for the future. We get into what it's like to be a woman seeking VC funding. We talk about the importance and the critical nature of storytelling, how that plays throughout our lives, and it's just so much fun. So I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Amanda Calabrese, who is the CMO and co founder of Sequ.l Amanda, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, Amanda Calabrese 2:35 I am so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. Oh, Julia Landauer 2:39 of course, now we have a lot of synergies, right? We both were competitive athletes. Both went to Stanford. Both care deeply about women's health and feminine care and hygiene, and so it was just a matter of time before our path met, I think. And it's just so cool to see what you have done, and for some additional context for our listeners. For a long time, I have said that my dream sponsor would have been a tampon company, because a number of things. One, I I really care about destigmatizing and getting rid of the taboo and just normalizing, like women's health and menstruation and everything like that. I also thought it would be so audacious to put a big tampon on the side of a race car. Like, just from a marketing perspective, it seems cool. NASCAR has a almost 40% female fan base, so just kind of like, it seemed like it would be super cool. And like, I pitched it, I was able, for a few years period, to pitch some smaller companies, some global companies. It didn't stick. But that's okay. I think that the work you're doing is so cool. So anyway, I personally was really interested in talking with you. I think this is really exciting. And I think one thing that I read some in some press that you had was that you guys wanted to focus on revitalizing a quote, unquote sleepy industry, which is kind of what I want to jump into first so like, how did you come up with the idea to shake up the sleepy industry? How did you come up with the idea of redeveloping a tampon? And can you talk about the sequel shape and what makes it different? Amanda Calabrese 4:15 So we actually started with our own experiences, right? I mean, similar to your athletic career, racing, and I'm sure you've had your fair share of of having your period, having to go out for a race, my co founder and I had these same experiences in our athletic careers, right? So I was wearing a red, white and blue bikini, going out and racing all over the world. I competed for the US life saving team for almost 10 years, my co founder played, do you all lacrosse at Stanford wearing a white Home Team skirt? And the idea for sequel came from those moments. And for Greta, it was, you know, her teammates yelling, can you check me? Like, can you can you look at my skirt? And you're like, supposed to be focusing on the game you're playing. But actually you're focusing on whether you have a red stain. And for me, it was like, I'm totally I'm competing against some of the best people in my sport in the world. I'm lining up at the beach. And instead of being like, Okay, what's my race plan? What am I doing entering the ocean? Where am I going? What are the conditions looking like? I'm like, Okay, what is my tampon doing? How long have I been wearing it? Do I trust it to hold up in this race? And that's the checklist I'm going through. It's not my race plan. And when Greta and I came together and realized that we had these shared experiences, we knew that we also had the expertise from our time at Stanford to think about a better solution. And so it really started with our own experiences as high level athletes. Now we were in the perfect environment to really see if we could make a difference. And we started more broadly with the period space and period category, right? Talking to people about what they were using. Were using tampons, pads, menstrual cups, menstrual discs, were really popular when we were starting the company, and we recognized everyone we were speaking to, or most people that we were speaking to were using tampons. And that was because we were speaking to a lot of very active women, a lot of people that were on our sports teams or people that we exercised with, and so we landed on re engineering, or at that point, attempting to re engineer tampon, because that's what most of the people we spoke to were using, and that's also 70% of us women report tampons as their product of choice. So that's what, where we could have the biggest impact on the market. Everybody was saying the same thing. My tampon leaks far before it's full. It's unreliable, it's uncomfortable. I pull it out, there's a red line down the side. The whole rest of the product is bare. I'm like, are you even doing your job right? And so we really wanted to focus on that, that failure, right? The product failure that causes the distraction whether the product's gonna fail or not. And so we, I mean, we discovered that vertical channels that are present on almost all of the tampons on the market are funneling the fluid away from the absorbent core, causing it to not absorb evenly, and then, in turn, causing the product to potentially leak before it is full. And so what we ideated at the D.School at Stanford, and what we ultimately ended up developing, is a helical spiral that goes around the outside of the tampon. This helps the tampon absorb more evenly, in stages, into Completion, without failing before it is full and it again, it helps prevent that premature leakage. And so the goal is to have a tampon that is more reliable, and the goal is to have a product that we all can wear, whether we're in sports, competing at the top of our game, or just going to yoga or walking on the street, having something that we can actually depend on and trust. And so we've it's been five years of developing that product since since we started at Stanford. But I mean, I couldn't be more proud to actually have the product out in the world today. It's, it's really cool to go from like, you know, dorm room sketch to, okay, this is actually real. Julia Landauer 8:30 That is crazy. I feel like that's like the, like Stanford vibe, like Silicon Valley vibe, of like, the dream of that ideation to actual product, which I want to get to in a little bit. But I also just want to take a second to give some context for our listeners who have not used a tampon or don't have a period, right? Because, like, Yeah, I think what you talked about about the distractions that you then have to deal with when you should be focusing on whatever task is at hand, and this spans like competitive athletes, but also, like, you know you're not supposed to keep a tampon in for more than eight hours for risk of bacteria development and all that. And so, you know, if you're lucky enough to sleep more than eight hours, or don't have to do that like you have to think about it as it relates to when you're sleeping, or do you have to set an alarm early? Or, you know, if you have to fly when you have your period, like so, many different factors can affect the flow and the heaviness, and it could change. And if you're in a foreign environment, or if you're like in a different climate, or tropic like, it can impact your body. And so there are just so many times where you then have to think about that. And it's partially because there's still taboo, and people, for whatever reason, shame women about period stuff, and there's negative connotations with it. But it's also a public health thing, like it's not sanitary if you're, if anyone from any type part of your body is bleeding around other people, right? Like, that's, so it's, it's, I don't mean that in a negative way.... --- ### [Redefining Love with Matchmaker Francesca Hogi](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-58-redefining-love-with-matchmaker-francesca-ho/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, this week's guest is Francesca hoagie, who is a TED speaker, host of the dear Franny podcast, and an internationally recognized expert on dating relationships and human connection. She's the author of the forthcoming book How to find true love, unlock romantic flow and create lasting relationships. She's been featured in media outlets such as the Today Show Marie Claire, The New York Times, Harper's Bazaar, and the Huffington Post. She works with individuals and teams, and is the founder of the true love society, a community for those seeking deeper self and romantic love. Prior to her love career, Francesca was a corporate lawyer and competed on two seasons of the iconic reality show survivor, and that is how Francesca and I met. We were both on season 26 of Survivor, fans versus favorites caramel and island. It was a bit of a doozy for both of us for different reasons, and we'll talk about that both the majority of the time, talking about love. And Francesca is a romantic. I'm a romantic, and it was really cool to hear her story of how she went from pursuing her lawyer career, which is what she was educated in and what she was trained to do, and her big aha moment, and that journey of self discovery to realize her new calling, which was helping people find internal love and external love. We talk about the commodification of love in our culture and how it's pushed to be scarce when, in reality, love is an abundant resource. And I go through my results from taking her online dating archetype quiz, which you can also take on her website. And we also talk about the dating climate right now. You know, I found Ben, my husband, on dating app, and it was obviously different six years ago than it is now. But she gives us some really tactful advice for how to approach the apps and using them as a tool instead of something that you are hooked on. And all of this was so much fun. It's incredible to see how much heart and soul she pours into this and how much she wants to help people, and knows that everyone has the capacity for really deep, meaningful love. And I hope that this this episode is inspiring for you, and definitely reach out. I'll link all of her stuff in the description, and let's get into it. Francesca, thank you so much for joining me on if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, thank you for having me, Julia, it's good to see you. It's been years. It has been so long. So as I mentioned in the intro, Francesca and I met on survivor, and I think that the reunion so that would have been in 2013 2014 2013 2014 2013 would have been the last time that we saw each other in person. Oh, my goodness, 12 years ago, or 11 years, I don't know, 11, over a decade, and I recently went to my 10 year college reunion, and so that, like, for some reason that was hitting me, like, how am I old enough to be 10 years out of college? It's wild. I mean, I have a birthday in two days, and I'm like, I am half a century old. It's wild. Oh, you don't look at at all. And it is wild, though, in time. And you know, we can get into this a little bit later, but just it almost makes me sad a little bit, because, you like, I want to appreciate so many of the little things that are going on, but then you have real world stuff that you have to deal with. And I don't know, getting older is just so many, you get so many realizations, I guess, yeah, it's, it's non stop. I love it. I mean, I'm very much embraced aging. So I'm excited about it. I'm excited about turning 50. I'm, you know, I know, I know that I'm going to be really excited to turn 61 day. You know, if I hopefully I'll make it. Yeah, you know. But I think, you know, Speaker 1 3:41 I think one, you know that expression youth is wasted on the young in the like, and when you're young, you hate that expression so much because you're like, you old people, like, you know, like, you're the ones who are wasting your life. Like, I got it all figured out, and I think about that now, how I'm like, Oh, wow, like I get it now. But I think that the world has changed so much, and the way that we live has changed so much that it's like it just does not mean the same thing to be 50 in 2024 that it meant in, you know, 1974 which is a year that I was born, right? Which was like 50 year olds in 1974 were old people, yeah, Julia Landauer 4:23 oh, yeah. Totally, totally. And I think, you know, everything from, you know, discussions around wellness to staying more active to, I don't know, I feel like people diversify what they do a lot more now than they did back in the day. And I'm sure that that plays a part. But, but, yeah, I I was really excited to be in my 30s. Like, I like my 20s too. And I think because of pursuing racing, like, I had a very exciting and less stressful in some ways, 20s. But then when I got into my 30s, I was like, wow, hopefully I'm going to continue to give fewer shits because I'm who. Bit of a people pleaser. And, you know, I'm fairly confrontation averse, but you just you shed some of the bullshit, basically as you get older. And that's been really liberating and satisfying. Speaker 1 5:12 Yeah, yeah, oh my gosh. I remember waking up on my 40th birthday, and I was like, like, I thought the 30s were hard. I thought the 30s were hard. I feel for people in their 30s, because I do think there is, like, you know, you can clearly see how you've grown since your 20s, but you're also still like, I don't feel like an adult. It's Julia Landauer 5:33 wild how much I don't feel like an adult. Like, I feel like an 18 year old. Yeah, Speaker 1 5:37 exactly. So it's like, I feel like like a teenager playing grown up. I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. Like, I feel like the 30s. For me, the 30s were pretty, like, existential and I, like, when I woke up on my 40th birthday, I just felt this sense of relief. Like, like, Oh my God. Like, I am, like, out of fucks to give good. And I'm like, Oh my God. Like, I've wasted a lot of time being really hung up on a lot of things that I just suddenly like, Dude, it was like, somebody flipped a switch. Julia Landauer 6:14 That's so powerful, though. And it's like, cool that it's that sudden to be able to have such, like, a dramatic mindset shift. Kind of it was dramatic, Speaker 1 6:22 yeah, and so and so I got so excited, because I was like, Oh my God, if this is how I feel turning 40, like, imagine what I'm going to feel like turning 50. So I've literally been looking forward to this for 10 years. Julia Landauer 6:33 Oh well, I'm so glad that you're here. Have the best time celebrating this milestone, because that is so so cool, and we'll pour one out for you tonight. And please do you bet so for our listeners, Francesca and I met on survivor, as I mentioned, and I Speaker 1 6:53 think we actually met after survivor, really neat on the show Julia Landauer 7:00 after we were voted out back story. So for those of you who are not familiar with survivor, you start off on tribes, and you're the tribes are isolated from each other, except throughout the challenges, and then you merge, and then everyone's together. So friendships and I both got voted out before the merge. So it was we didn't meet on the show. You're totally right. And I think it's fair to say that survivor was a character building experience for both of us, for different reasons. For me, as I got eviscerated by the eventual winner, john cochran on the episode, I was voted out for how boring I was, and that was lasting impression, minimal air time. I was probably somewhat standoffish. I knew that I was being a little more quiet because of some of my strategy plays, but also I was, like, a 20 year old girl, basically, that was, like, first time, couldn't trust anyone. So it was, it was a character building experience for me, it's young to play that game, yeah. And I, like, hadn't been, hadn't been in a position where I couldn't trust anyone. And I also, I look back now. I'm like, like, I really would want to play again. I've applied several times to try to play again, and then I watch it, and I'm like, I'm just not sure I have it in me to be as deceptive as you need to be, and to be like, totally for yourself in a lot of ways. Like, I think I could do 30 something year old Julia would do a lot better than 20 year old Julia, but know that I necessarily would be like an iconic survivor player, even if I could do it again, yeah, Speaker 1 8:26 yeah. I think, yeah. I don't know. I don't know about me like, I think, I mean, I fundamentally feel like I'm, I'm, I think there's a universe where I could totally win survivor, but I think there are more universes where I would continue to be the first person voted Julia Landauer 8:44 out. So can you explain why? In more detail, survivor was character building for you. Speaker 1 8:49 Um, I mean, it was character building for me. Because I, you know, what's the thing that everybody dreads going on a reality show? Like, you just don't want to be the first person off, like, that's like, that's like, the worst thing that can happen, right, right? And so on my first season, that's what happened. And then on my second season, which is the season that you and I were on Julia that season, I was like, oh, there's no way this is going to happen, because it was such a fluke, it happened the first time, and this time, like, I'm playing with people who I actually, like, I knew, like, you know, like Cochrane and I used to be, like, like, close friends. Like, we used to talk on the phone all the time. He, I was like, you know, his coach, basically, you know, like, Andrea and I, like, used to be friends. Like, she's, like, spent the night at my house, you know, like, so I'm so in my mind, I'm like, you know, why wouldn't like, we're friends? Like, why? Like, of course, you're gonna align with your friends. But anyway, that didn't happen.... --- ### [5 Lessons Learned in 2024](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-59-5-lessons-learned-in-2024/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:00 Music, hello everybody, and welcome to the season three finale of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer. I'm going to do my very, very best to not sound too nasally. And I thank you for your patience as you listen to the sick voice. I put off recording this episode as long as possible after a very nasty bout of sickness, which I'm clearly not fully recovered from. But alas, the show must go on, and we are rounding out our third season the show and this podcast started in May of 2023, and it was an opportunity for me to connect with you guys in a different way. It stemmed from my keynote speaking, actually, and people wanting more content and more stories and more perspectives, which was so cool and reassuring that the messaging that I was delivering was was valuable, and so that was really, really cool. It's been a fun journey. It is exceptionally difficult to maintain a podcast, especially once you start working full time. So I have total appreciation and admiration for the folks who work full time and continue doing podcasting full time. I've done it for about a year now, and things are just ramping up, and my focuses are changing, and, you know, it's been a really fun journey. I'm not quite sure what the future of this podcast is, but for for now, at this point, we're probably going to take a little break, not retired entirely. Clearly, I am not a fan of fully stepping away from anything. I like to leave that leave the door open. But right now, I think we're, we're going to to take a pause. And this is the 59th episode. I can't tell you how much my OCD is killing me that I wasn't happy with one of my episodes a few weeks back, and so couldn't have a nice round 60 for my three seasons. But you know what? There are bigger problems in the world, so we're going to move on from that. And when I was thinking about how I wanted to close out this incredible, therapeutic, interesting, educational podcast for me and hopefully for you guys too, I decided I wanted to keep it simple and share five lessons that I've learned throughout 2024 a lot of these are going to be rooted in my corporate experience and at work, but they're relevant for everyone, regardless of what you're doing. The first big lesson that I learned this year is that good communication is really hard. And I knew this. I knew this conceptually. You hear people talking about it all the time, but there was a big shift in going from freelancing and how I was having to communicate before starting a full time job versus afterwards. The main ways that I communicated before working in corporate were with my family and friends, which is very intentional and practiced, and we we ask for feedback, and we try to communicate in a way that is effective for all of us. There's a lot of active work that goes into making that communication, because it happens all the time, right? Another big form of communication had been in keynotes, which are very planned and thought out and practiced and had feedback, and very little of that is spur of the moment communication. And then there was a lot of communication with my racing teams with that they were the same people for a year. So I was able to pay really close attention and learn their styles and experiment and have, you know, different chances to continue communication. And we were all clearly working towards that common goal of trying to do the best we could on track. And so when you have that very clear unifying goal, I think it helps with communication, because you know, where you're all trying to get in corporate, everyone's got different agendas. Everyone has different levels of involvement with other people. You might need favors from someone. You might have regular communication with someone. You might not know someone well enough to know what their style is. And it's really, really challenging to bop around quickly figure out how people communicate and to get out of your own mindset. It's also interesting, because you're interacting with so many different types of people in a corporate setting, and so everyone naturally has different strengths and weaknesses, and if you're not privy to them, or if you're not interfacing in person, or if you don't see the nuances of how anyone else is, you might be less inclined to be able to communicate most effectively, and so you have to somewhat develop a one size fits all method for communicating to be able to be most effective with the most number of people. And I feel like in corporate, you're able to see how bad communication transpires as well. And there. People who run people the wrong way, and I can hear it specifically because of tone used, or because of word choice, or kind of not putting themselves in other people's shoes. And so the big, the big takeaways that I've had in this, you know, year or so in corporate when it comes to communication, are that tone really matters, and I think it's pretty easy to come across as passive, aggressive or condescending, and that has an impact on people. And there are ways to get the same message across in a different tone that I think will be more empowering and encouraging than being negative and having a negative tone with people. The second big thing that I've learned with communication that is something I should have thought about a lot more early on, but that context matters, and the reality is that no one has the lens with which you are about to communicate. So if you're about to send an email, if you're about to start a phone call, you know you've just been thinking about whatever it is that you're going to communicate, the other person hasn't. And I have found myself getting called out by people I work with in a neutral way, but being called out because I'll ask them a question that, in my mind, makes total sense, like, I'll send them a note on teams chat, and I'll get called out. I remember this one guy called me out because he was like, I'm not sure I know what you're talking about. And I realized that I had not provided any context as to which project that we had been working on I was referring to. And it was kind of the kick in the butt that I needed to realize, like, okay, no one knows where I'm coming from, and someone might receive my email when they're in the middle of something else entirely. And so again, I think that's a kind of a bubble that you live in with freelance a little bit. And I don't know, maybe I'm maybe that's just me, but I've been much more careful now about providing context when I reach out to people, so that it's as quick for them to understand where I'm coming from, and they're most likely to get it not get frustrated with me for not being explicit and clear, and overall, it helps communication. So I still have a long way to go with communicating, and I'm continuing to learn so much, and I'm kind of surprised that I still had so much to learn with communication, but it really is different in corporate it's pretty exciting. It's also cool to learn how other people communicate, and kind of pick the things that I really like from other people. I do feel like I've become a better listener, and I pause a lot more before responding or before contributing. I let other people talk more, and it's it's incredible how that changes the dynamic, and it's really exciting. The second lesson that I feel I have gotten more examples of and more explicit examples of this past year is that everyone is learning on the fly. I had done advising, I had done consulting, I had done freelance work, content creation, keynote speaking, you know, business development, I've done all this stuff, but not in the corporate setting. And there were so many things that I had to learn everything from, you know, I had relationships with people at NASCAR prior, and how does my camaraderie with them, or how do my interactions with them change a little bit or shift a little bit to fit the the atmosphere of an office setting? Or I had to learn, you know, proper amount of time to follow up with someone. I had to learn what the flow was of NASCAR. And from a season perspective, when are people really busy? When are people in a slower period? How do, how do interactions with leadership work, all of that stuff? And I just felt like I was clearly playing catch up for people, from people who were there for a while or had other jobs. And so I clearly remember there was one time, probably back in August, where I was doing something completely new to me, completely out of my depth, and was learning a lot, asking a lot of questions of my colleagues and my teammates. And I remember I was on a one on one call with someone, and I vocalized I appreciated their patience, because I haven't done this before and I'm learning. And this person immediately said, Oh, that was the same with me when I started. I had never done this, even though I had all these jobs before. And it made me feel a lot better, and it made me realize that we're all learning. And I think it's easy to have imposter syndrome if you're new to a situation, but there was something about hearing from multiple people that they also had to learn for the first time, or had to learn other things for the first time, that made me feel a lot less alone, and made me feel confident that I would figure it out like I had figured out a lot of new things before in my in my life, and so being able to learn on the fly is important. It's something everyone's doing. Um, I've also learned that I don't have to tell people that I don't know what I'm doing, and I like to be transparent. And I found that on racing teams, it was really important to be clear about what I was learning for the first time or what was new.... --- ### [NASCAR Canada Series Winner Gary Klutt](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/nascar-canada-series-winner-gary-klutt/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Julia Landauer 0:04 Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I am very pleased to bring you a fun and honest and in depth conversation with someone that I have known for quite a few years now, and that is fellow race car driver, Gary Klutt. So Gary Klutt is a driver in the NASCAR Canada Series. He is from Canada and lives there, and he's a real estate developer, a property manager, mortgage fund manager, and is involved in the Legendary Motorcar Company's YouTube channel. And we got to meet back in 2016 in the NASCAR next series, which we'll get into. But I've always really appreciated his one, skill as a race car driver, and his demeanor, and he his maturity, and it's always very cool to connect with with people in the racing community that you vibe with. And for some career highlights, he was the NASCAR candidate series Rookie of the Year. He's a four time pole winner. He's gotten wins a lot of podiums, many top fives. He's the SVRA vintage national winner at COTA. He's done three NASCAR truck series starts. He's done one NASCAR Cup Series start, and he is a Canadian National karting champion. This conversation is really fun. We get into some nerdy, nitty gritty things around motorsports, which I think are really interesting in terms of mentality, preparation, specific race tracks, driving different vehicles. We then also talk about the importance of balance, and for him, how he viewed racing and how it fit in with the rest of the things that he's doing in his life, which I think was really admirable and a different way to approach racing from how I did. And then we end kind of talking about a lot of wellness and a lot of things that he has experimented with to help his well being, mentally and physically, to be the best that he can be, for himself, but then also for his family and his loved ones. How it plays in with racing and he shares some specific things that he does does to to really be his best self. So I am really happy to have this conversation, and I hope you enjoy. Gary, thank you so much for joining me on, If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer! Gary Klutt 2:06 Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Julia Landauer 2:08 For those of you who don't know, I was on Gary's podcast last year. I believe so I will link that episode in the description as well. But Gary and I met in 2016 in the NASCAR next program. And before we get into that, Gary, can you just give a snapshot of how you got into racing? Gary Klutt 2:27 Yeah, I think I was probably six years old. My dad came home with a...no no. That's ...we went to go watch the Barry Grand Prix in in maybe 97 or 98 and, you know, I vaguely remember it, and he said that, you know, is this something that looks cool? And, of course, you know, as like, a five or six year old boy, it looked pretty cool. So he brought home a go kart. And then for maybe one summer before I started racing, we'd go at like, 5am to the GO train station parking lot in my hometown, and he'd set up like water bottles and cones, and I just drive around. Anyway, yeah, started, started racing. So that was, that was the introduction to go kart racing. I think I did three snowmobile races before that as a pretty little kid. And then kind of realized that type of racing is pretty gnarly. Same, same with BMX racing I did before that, too, and I think my parents pulled the plug when, you know, we were all witness to some guy breaking a collarbone, screaming, you know, dislocated shoulder. They're like, Oh, this looks dangerous. So Julia Landauer 3:39 four wheels are definitely safer than two or none in the case with snowmobile, Gary Klutt 3:45 yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. So, yeah, seven years old, kind of the when everyone our age started racing, that was as young as you could be. Julia Landauer 3:54 And where are you from in Canada again, Gary Klutt 3:56 so call it half an hour, half an hour, 40 minutes west of Toronto, Georgetown, Ontario, small, little town that but as as big cities sprawl, we get closer and closer to the city every year, Julia Landauer 4:12 right, right? So what would what were your local go kart tracks? Because I did some racing up in Canada, and I was on the Birel team with Enzo Chiovitti And that whole group. So did some driving up there. Gary Klutt 4:25 So I started at Waterloo Kart Club, which was in Kitchener, and then went to Mosport, and so, yeah, and then running Ron Fellows, we, you know, run Mosport, Goodwood, Barry, Innisfil, Sutton, Hamilton, nice. Julia Landauer 4:41 I think I've only been to one or two of those, but most poor I always remember being a really fun go kart track, killer Gary Klutt 4:48 track, killer track, like it was spectacular as far as go kart racing goes. And you could run the long DDT track. And I remember being whatever, 10 years old, watching people go in 80s. And 125 shifter card since right a huge straightaway, like they were doing, I don't know, 125 miles an hour. Julia Landauer 5:08 It's absolutely wild. And when I tell people that you can get that fast in a Go-Kart, I think it's so incomprehensible to so many people, because especially if you think about like, rental go karts that you can do indoors, or something like, our go karts are super high performance. And I think the only time that I had gotten really, really fast, I ran the junior ICA go-kart at Jacksonville, Florida, like Jacksonville, I don't know if you ever been there has also a very long straightaway that leads into, like a banked hairpin. And it is, it's so bone chillingly fast. And then I think it would be harder, though, if you have to, like, come to a very slow corner after that, and you feel that deceleration at Jacksonville, you kind of kept up a decent amount of speed going to the first corner. But go karts were the most fun form of racing for me. I think, I think that, yeah, so fast. Gary Klutt 5:55 I kind of agree. And certainly the best competition as far as racing, you know, you can kind of pass on demand. No one was going to drive away just because the draft was such a big factor that so much race craft was learned by the time you're 12 years old. Julia Landauer 6:15 Yeah. And something I just thought about was, like, people kind of will ask, do you like oval racing or road course racing better? And I would say, like technically driving a track. I think road course racing is more interesting side by side racing. I think oval racing can be more interesting, but when you take it into go karts, that's like the perfect combination of both, because you do have the technical components of road course but then things happen so quickly because it's a much shorter track. So you have, I feel like a lot more side by side racing than you might race cars, which is so great. Yeah, Gary Klutt 6:50 for sure. I remember being in a full size car for the first time on a road course, and it was, you know, so much about just trying to trying to squeeze a lap time out. And every once in a while you get an opportunity to pass but it was a big adjustment, right? Julia Landauer 7:08 So, when did you move from go karting to cars? The Gary Klutt 7:12 in I guess I was 14 years old and you could do the Bridgestone in a Formula 2000 the Bridgetown Racing School at most port. Oh, yeah. So you could do that. So I did that. And then I think, you know, whatever one want to race out of it or something. And did a handful of races there. But then, as far as actually, actually racing, I did a few dirt modified races when I was 15, and that was my first time in a full, full size car. First time seeing a dirt oval was warm ups. Julia Landauer 7:50 I've never driven on dirt. What, what's the biggest difference? I guess, for you, if you could name one big difference between dirt and asphalt? Gary Klutt 8:01 Yeah, I think just how violent it is really, you know, it's, it's more akin to to racing dirt bikes than, like, you know, you're hanging onto the wheel, you're being bucked around just to end, how fast everything happens, how short the races are. It's just, you know, full throttle. I probably still haven't done enough of it to really know all the nuances. Julia Landauer 8:30 So, but was it, would they have been open wheel modifieds? I guess that's, Gary Klutt 8:34 yeah. So, like, there was the fenders on the on the rear end, but and then the front wheels were open. Okay. Julia Landauer 8:39 Okay, cool. So you, I believe, have done the most racing in the Canadian NASCAR series, right? Absolutely. Yeah. So when did you get started there? Gary Klutt 8:49 So my dad started racing right around the time I was born, and just as a nature of the business, he he started vintage racing, and then in the 2000s he, I don't know how he got talked into it, he bought an old Roush Trans Am car, and so he did a couple Trans Am races. So he was always kind of looking to do a handful of road course races every year that were competitive, because he had a taste of the Trans Am series. And in, you know, 99, 2000, 2001 it was still pretty competitive. So he bought an old cast car in 2007 became the Canadian NASCAR series. And then he had always rented cars out and built cars for customers of his for vintage racing. And one of his good customers who vintage race with him had the racing bug, you know, has since run Le Mans is sick for it said, Hey, build me. Build me. Another one of those. We're going to go race most port. We're going to race Three Rivers. We're going to race Montreal with the bush series. And the Toronto Indy. So my dad built that car, and I guess the first year or second year he was running it, he couldn't make the most portrays. And I think I was 16, and it was like a month leading up to it, my dad said, Hey, like, the car's sitting here. Do you want to jump in it and like, oh, shit, I hadn't done I'd been in one of those cars once before. Obviously, I said yes, but man, I felt like I was in over my head. Julia Landauer 10:36 Oh, I can imagine.... --- ### [Welcome to Season 4: Building Meaningful Things with Really Cool People](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/welcome-to-season-4-building-meaningful-things-with-really-cool-people/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Hello everybody, and welcome to season four of if I'm honest with Julia Landauer, I am so happy to be back here in this medium with you and excited for what we have in front of us. Heads up, this is a purely informational episode. I'm going to give a rundown of who I am. I'm going to talk about what we've done historically on on, if I'm honest, and I'm going to give a teaser as to what we've got for season four. So please feel free to skip but for anyone who wants to learn a little more context before listening to the episodes, I'm very happy to have you here for any new listeners. Hi, I'm Julia, thrilled to have you. It's been quite a journey over the last few years that we've we've had this podcast, and so let me kick off with some context on who I am. I am a former racing champion who spent over 20 years in motorsports. I am from New York City. I'm a very proud New Yorker. And while I was building my racing career over my 20s, primarily, I also started building up a keynote speaking career, and that launched after I gave a TEDx talk called Can Nice Girls Win (Races)? It was so cool to be on stage. It was so cool to make people laugh. So was able to turn that into a parallel career. With my racing, I had huge dreams of becoming the next Jeff Gordon or Jimmie Johnson, and unfortunately, it didn't quite work out for me that way, that being said, I was able to race in so many different series, I was able to win, have championships, work with incredible people, race all over the world, and it was really special to be able to dedicate so much of my life to that. But all good things come to an end, and a few years ago, I did recognize that it was it was time to step back from active driving, and this was a very challenging decision. I'll get into it more in a little bit. But in that period of switching from focusing on racing to what was next, I decided to start a podcast. I wanted to listen to the feedback that I was getting from my audience members when I would give keynotes that they wanted more material. They wanted some follow up. And so I thought this was a really cool way to dive into subjects, do some research, share my perspective, and give some actionable tips to people who wanted it. So that's how the podcast started. Built it up. I also started working on the corporate side of NASCAR, on the strategy and innovation team, which it is interesting to be a 30 something year old woman joining corporate for the first time. There are a lot of lessons to learn, and one of those lessons is balancing a full time job with everything else that you do. So because of all that, at the end of season three, which was the end of 2024 I decided to put a pause on the podcast, and there have been a few big things that have happened since then. The first big thing was that, as I mentioned, it was really challenging to step away from racing, and I found that I had to be very intentional about how I was redefining my purpose and identity, because for so long I had been Julia the race car driver, and it didn't really fit anymore if you weren't pursuing that again. And I knew it was going to be challenging, but I was deeply unprepared for how much grieving I would do, how bitter I would be, and how long it would take for me to get over it and to move on and to feel more positive about life in general, and and I talked about this in real time a little bit in the in this, if I'm honest, episodes 11 and 42 tap into it a little bit, but it was, it was quite a journey. I'm very happy to say I'm on the other side of it now. And I think for anyone who hasn't had that kind of big thing professionally, I think the best way to describe it is that it's kind of like a breakup, a really gnarly breakup, where where you still love each other, like there's nothing really wrong, but you know, it's no longer serving you, and that's really challenging. And I could have chased the racing dream forever, but knew it wasn't great for that, not the best decision for future Julia. Future Julia and Ben. So Ben is my husband, and there were a lot of lot of reasons that went into stepping away, but it's been really great since then, I was reminded that there's a lot of other cool stuff in life, and have continued to develop with NASCAR on the corporate side. Have continued my keynote speaking, and I adore, I adore getting on stage. It's just so so cool, and it's a really fun especially in this day and age where everything is so digital, to have that in person interaction with a large group of people where we're all kind of sharing that moment at the same time is really special. And so thank you to all my clients who trust me with their audiences. But the most important development since season three, and the one that's most personally impactful is Drum roll, please. I moved back to New York with my husband after 10 years of living in Charlotte, North Carolina. It had been so long since I had been a New Yorker, and I am so happy to be back. I am so happy to feel like I belong in the place that I'm living. Charlotte was wonderful. It served a really good professional purpose. It was great. I met Ben, I made incredible lifelong friendships, and learned so much, but I didn't truly feel. Comfortable and like I belonged. So it's great to be back in my hometown. It's great to feel the vibrancy of the city, to meet people, and it's just really good for my soul. And it was a big lift to get here. It took a lot of planning and diligence and discipline and acknowledging that our home size is significantly smaller than what we had in Charlotte, but that's okay, because we were in New York, and now that I'm in New York, I also have a lot more access to really great studio space and podcast so shout out to fringe studios, who have provided a wonderful setting to be able to have these conversations and share these stories with you. So that's a whirlwind tour of who I am and where we've been. So now to give you some context on if I'm honest, because Season Four is definitely going to be different than the previous seasons. Season One was largely solo episodes, and again, this was a continuation of my keynote speaking. It was a way to share my thoughts on a variety of different topics, things like internal dialogs and asking for what you want. That was my first episode. I talked about how Taylor Swift taught me to know my value. That was the third episode. I also talked about thriving for through rejection, if, if you're a freelancer, if you are building something, if you're needing other people's support, if you're trying to get funding, like you know that rejection is a big part of the process. So that was episode six. I also talk about external validation, and I realized that I loved external validation, and I put a lot of weight in it and learning that that's not necessarily the most effective way to be true to yourself and to build so that was episode 14, seasons two and three, and the end of season one also started incorporating some really cool guests. We had marketing executive and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Bozoma St. John and Boz is incredible. She lifts everyone up who she's around, and she's so open and vulnerable. It was an incredible conversation. That was episode 24 we also talked with Jamie Schmidt of Schmidt's naturals, and she sold her company to Unilever. And that was an incredible episode. Episode 25 we have the almost 30 co founder and host of the podcast, Lindsey Simcik, who was episode 33 I also also took time to talk about things that were just really interesting to me, like Luke Combs take on Fast Car. Fast Car was one of my favorite songs growing up, and I thought he was so respectful in how he covered it. And it was such a big cultural moment for a lot of a lot of reasons. So that was episode 34 and then I also talk about things like regret and self forgiveness, because I think that's something that's easier said than done. I talk with some of my guests about regret in the season. It's just such a potent, potent feeling. So that was episode 40 and season four, as I mentioned, is going to be a little different. I wanted to root my conversations in a bit more of a theme, and was thinking about what I find most interesting and what I think is so cool about different people and different perspectives. And so we're going to be exploring how people build really cool things, and we're talking services, businesses, lifestyles, companies, products, whatever it might be, we're going to be guest forward and guest focused, and we're going to have really candid conversations about grit and resilience and just what it really takes to build something meaningful. And I think it's really special that we get to now have these conversations in person, because I think that you can pick up on little things, little body language things, little facial movements, you can have those really, really intense conversations that are a little harder to accomplish on virtual so I'm personally really excited to be able to do this in person. And I think that by having also personal anecdotes, it gives listeners something to really latch on to because we're going to talk about how they built, what they were building, what the pathways were like, what the what the nuts and bolts were like, everything about from feelings to pragmatic things, is just there's a lot that goes into building. And some of these guests I know personally. So thank you to my friends who have come on the pod and some I cold emailed. Thank you to all of those guests who graciously opened my email and agreed to join us, and I'm really looking forward to all of the guests to give you a little sampling. We will have people like sports media executives. We'll have corporate directors, musical artists, Emmy Award winning TV producers, quantum physicists and so many more cool people. And we're all having honest conversations and talking about the lessons that we've learned.... --- ### [From CBS News to Oatly: Yasmin Shahida on Starting From Scratch](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-61-from-cbs-news-to-oatly-yasmin-shahida-on-starting-from-scratch/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.122Z Content: Hello everybody, and welcome back to if I'm honest, and I am so, so excited and ready to be back in conversation with really cool people. My first guest being someone that I have known for basically 20 years, which is crazy to think about, but Yasmin Shahida is the Senior Director of PR at Oatly, and she leads external communications across North America. In her role, she oversees brand storytelling, corporate communications, executive visibility, media relations and strategic PR initiatives that help shape oatly's presence in culture and the marketplace, something that is so important for every company, it's a really cool company. And before Oatly, she was at away and she was also at the wing in New York City. She worked at chef's club by food and wine, and she started her career in broadcast journalism at CBS News. So she has so many different experiences, I can't wait to dive into her experiences, her life story, how she is building her career in corporate communications, and how that carries over into other elements of her life. So I hope you really enjoy this episode. Yasmin, thank you so much for joining me on, if I'm honest, thank you for having me. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm good, just busy time, always in the spring, but very happy to be here. And so good to see you. It's so good to see you too. I'm so honored that you are my first guest of this new season, and I'm honored in this wonderful studio. It feels so professional, so really, really happy about that. And I mentioned in the intro that we've known each other for 20 years, basically, if I did the math properly, long time, and we went to middle school together, which was so cool. Our school combined, loved meshing our friend groups, and then you went to school in North Carolina. I obviously lived in North Carolina. We didn't overlap, though, I don't know. I think you came to North Carolina after we graduated, because you were in California, obviously for school. And then I thought about staying around and ended up actually leaving North Carolina just for job purposes after school. So we missed each other. We did miss each other, but lots of synergies, and it's been so fun to follow you on Instagram. We're gonna get into your Instagram a little later, @traveleatnyc, but there's great food, great travels. It's been so fun to keep up with your life that way. But before we do that, I want to talk about everything you've been building in the communication space, because communications are obviously so important, corporate, personal. We all communicate all the time, whether it's written, text, emails, body language, social media, everything, right? And it's so it's super important. And you're currently the senior director of PR at Oli, and I read in an interview that you described your role as sitting between brand culture and competition, which I thought was a really interesting descriptor. So can you share what corporate communications is so that we're all on the same page as we get into this discussion? Absolutely, yes. I will say, like, it is definitely, you know, I think taking a step back PR in general is something that people don't really have, like, a firm grasp on a lot of the time they're like, does that mean you're just pitching stories, or does that mean you're just dealing with crises? And I think corporate communications in particular is interesting. It's, it is a little more interesting to me than consumer comms, because consumer comms tends to be more of what you think of when you think of traditional PR. It's really the like, you know, product storytelling, talking about what the thing is that you're working on to the consumer, but corporate comms is really more like the connective tissue between what a company does and what the world understands it to do or be. And so it doesn't just mean that traditional earned media, which is those the pitching of those stories, but it also means executive visibility, it also means crisis management, it also means internal alignment and working with the internal comms team to ensure that everything that you're sort of talking about externally, and the way that you're presenting yourself as a company aligns with what You're actually doing as a company internally. So it's there are more layers to it, I'd say, than just sort of the traditional consumer comms, which I think is what oftentimes people associate PR with. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And I now have a few years of corporate under my belt, and I think that piece of kind of like that external language with the internal language is so important, hard to capture, and you have so many different types of people working at a company. I don't know how big is Oatly only. It's like around 200 or so people in North America. Okay, okay, and so you were telling me that it's, it's a remote company in North America. And so what like layer of complexity does that add to that kind of matching internal and external communications and those synergies? Yeah, it's so funny, because I've worked at big companies before, but I've never, I've never done comms at a big, global company, and there are so many nuances when you think of. Out. You know how companies work in France versus Sweden, versus the United States versus Canada, and so it's not like you can just sort of do this one size fits all, blanket approach. You really have to be nuanced on the way that you you know what products you have. We have different products in different markets, the way that you're marketing those products, you're talking about those products, what executives, you know, you're you're sort of utilizing, and then you know, what are the topics that are really important to that specific environment? So in the United States, people really care about health and nutrition. That's something that's been really big over the last couple years, and a big focus for us. Whereas, you know, some of the the narratives around health and nutrition are very different when you go to Sweden, which is where the company is based, but yes, as you said, we're fully remote, which is, which is really great. And I, I was a little wary of it when I first started. I was like, Is this going to be really challenging as a new employee, you know, getting to know people, but Oatly is just so fantastic. It's like, truly the best job I've ever had. I love it so much, great. And they've made it really easy to connect, whether it's just like meeting up at a shared workspace, or flying to Sweden, as I did a couple weeks ago, to meet with the team over there. So it's been really, really seamless, I want to say, because, despite the fact that we don't have a physical office space, that seems like such a huge feat for a company to achieve, which is really cool. So I want to go back to something that you said about how the different different countries where Oatly works and where the offices are have different priorities. And so the US has wellness and nutrition. What other pillars are we focused on here? Yeah, the US market's super interesting. And I think, as we all probably know, you know, the news cycle is really crazy. There's a lot going on in the world, and I think social media adds a whole other layer to it, because you're not just getting your information from traditional news sources, it's also from people you follow and trust on social media. And sometimes they have, you know, the they have the background, as you know, medical doctors and nutritionists, and sometimes they don't, but they are very passionate about their opinions of things, and that can have the ability to sway a lot of people. So I think the unique dynamic at play here is health and nutrition is definitely top of mind. There's so many trends that we're seeing right now. You know, protein is in pretty much any food product you could ever imagine, and I think that really is something that stemmed directly from social media. And a lot of what people were talking about about health on social media. And so for us, it's the same, you know, we're looking at issues of health and nutrition, our products are fortified and very good for you. And we've had to, sort of like, you know, educate people to a certain extent, because not all, not dairy alternatives, are created equal, and even not all oat milks are created equal. So that's something that, you know, I think we've put a lot of focus on over the last couple years, but there's so many, you know, things that are constantly changing in the US. Yeah, okay, so that stems something that I want to go to, because you had a LinkedIn post, and it was what you're seeing in the beverage CPG scene, consumer packaged goods space. And a couple of the things that you pointed out, you said, protein is still king, which you talked about, gut health is having a moment. Sour is going mainstream. Guava is the new it fruit flavor. And you had some stuff on pickles and the sour stuff. So when, when you see these trends, and you learn this this material through work, how much do you apply to your personal life, your personal consumption life, or or is it more like education that you then make informed decisions about? So I try not to be like a walking Trend Report, but I do love, to stay on top of the trends. And that post in particular that you're referencing came out of Expo West, which is the largest natural foods conference that happens every year, year in the United States. It's in Anaheim, and I went for the first time this year, and I was just kind of blown away by the scale of it. But there are three, I think, over 3000 food brands that come together and they set up booths.... --- ### [From DJing Clubs to Global Stages: Mick Batyske on Longevity, Hustle, and Creative Evolution](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-62-from-djing-clubs-to-global-stages-mick-batyske-on-longevity-hustle-and-creative-evolution/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: hello everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest. This week I am so excited to have Mick Batyske on the show. Mick is a DJ, content creator, tech investor, inspirational speaker, and music curator. Forbes has said that Mick walks a tightrope between entertainer and entrepreneur. Vogue said he keeps the dance floor going all night, and Drake once said mixed mixes were pivotal in his life as a DJ. Mick is a regular at Art Basel, Cannes Leon, CES, F1, the Grammys, NBA All-Star in the Super Bowl. Some of his clients have included A16Z, Cartier, GQ, Instagram, LeBron James, Michelle Obama, at the NBA, Prince, Spotify, and Vanity Fair, and more. That is an all-star lineup, and he has helped create social campaigns for brands like Avion, Cadillac, LinkedIn, McAllen, Maserati, New Balance, Public, and Tonal. As more than just a DJ, Mick invests in and advises a wide array of startups and early-stage companies. His investments include Anchor, Backdrop Freestyle, Last Crum, Quicknode, and Tiny Organics. He speaks regularly on creativity, entrepreneurship, and culture to brands, conferences, and universities, and he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Carolyn, and his 10 year old son, Myles. This conversation was so much fun, and he shared so much with us, everything from the nitty gritty of how he built up his career as a DJ, some of the things that he wished he had done differently, what it looks like to do outbound pitches to get engagements to pay the bills, how he approaches the creative process, and how he's evolved his brand and what he's pursuing professionally to meet the needs of who he is as a person as he's growing, and also what the world is doing around him. So he, he is so generous with his thoughts and his time, and this was a really, really interesting discussion with a lot of parallels to my own life, so I thought it was very, very cool, and I hope you enjoy this episode, Mick. Thank you so much for joining me on If I'm Honest. Hi, I'm excited to be honest today. I love that, that's a good attitude going in. So, how are things going in general right now? If I'm honest, thank you so much. Yeah, pretty good, you know. Good days, bad days, more good days than bad. That's all you can really hope for, right? You have kind of blessed if you're batting above 50% on that. Yeah, that's a great way of phrasing it. So, you are super cool and multifaceted, and I think I started following you first on LinkedIn, and then had the gall to ask for a connection, and then that's a good flow. Like, I liked, I need more of that. I mean, yeah, people like finding me on that first. I think that's al.. I think I'll have a better life when I grow up. The more people do that, you have really cool.. I mean, you have really cool content. We'll get into that more. But thank you, first and foremost, for responding to my cold email to come on here. This is awesome. It's so fun to.. I think, especially people pursuing non-traditional careers or things that you're not taught in school. I always like to hear other people's stories, and so we will jump right in. A lot of people have passions and hobbies, but very few, I think, you know, pursue them as a way to make a living. And so you were DJing in college, you became a professional DJ out of college with the Cleveland Cavaliers. How, how did you jump into pursuing that as a career? I mean, I don't know. Okay, to be honest with you, like, I didn't really plan on this until significantly after college. Like, it was a college, it was a, it was just a hobby in college. I played drums growing up, I couldn't bring drums into a dorm room, so I brought turntables, taught myself how to DJ. It was cool. This was like 96 so like there weren't DJs like for now, like everybody's a DJ now, right now, man. I was like two DJs in my entire college, so it was unique and it was fun, and it was a great way. I'm an introvert, so it was a great way for me to like make friends and get a college girlfriend and all of those things. And that was fun. I graduated, thought I was gonna be done. Drop market sucked. This is like the year 2000 in Cleveland, Ohio. I was a marketing background, very creative person. The marketing stuff in Cleveland was not.. there wasn't, you know, the internet was still new. That's how old I am. Like, there was social, didn't exist. Like, there weren't cool tech companies. Like, anything that was marketing-related was very analytic-based. I was like, that's not for me. So I just kept DJing, and then I went back to grad school, and then around that time I kind of started realizing, oh, there's there could be a path here, and at that time my career had evolved from college radio to commercial radio, from local, like college bars to every nightclub in Cleveland, and then from every nightclub in Cleveland to like the Rock Hall of Fame, and all that, you know, I love being from Cleveland, but we have like three things - we have like the Cavs, the Browns, the what are they now, the Guardians, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and all amazing things. But I was doing all those things, and at that point they were all kind of like synergetically working in my favor to make a big move out, and then few years later I was able to move to New York, kind of throw all my eggs in one basket and landed here. That's really cool. So, as you were, you know, doing the DJing in Ohio, were you starting to make money off of it then? And, like, treating it as that was how I supported myself. Like, okay, so it wasn't the marketing job. No, no, I went to school. I have a BA in marketing. I have a master's in marketing. Have all this shit I paid for that taught me a lot about, like, life, but I've never used it within the four walls of, like, a corporate building. I got me an internship when I was in grad school for some bank in Cleveland, and, like, I got, like, fired from my internship for being too sarcastic. Oh, wow, that's too bad. But you know, it worked out, and yeah, no, I've always worked for myself, really, since I was 18, I mean, even if you want to go back further than that, like, my family had my grandpa at a drugstore, and I, he gave me my first job when I was in seventh grade, and I worked from that until the day I went to college, so, like, it wasn't like working for myself, but it was, in a sense, that it was like the family business, like, I feel very fortunate, and I learned so much entrepreneurial things and hustle from him. Yeah, then I guess I guess I look back in life, a lot of it applied itself to how I've done my own thing. Yeah, so when you moved to New York, I'm a horrible employee. Hey, that's okay. Oh, my clients love me, but like, I'm like, like, like, if I had a boss for that, yeah, yeah. Okay, so when you moved to New York, you said that you were putting all your eggs in one basket. What does that look like on the business side, like from the change from Ohio? And I'm meaning, like, you know, at some point if you're a freelancer, you know, sometimes you set up a legal entity, or you do, like, some of the.. I was just a sole proprietor working off my social, you know, for.. I will, I will happily say, or sadly say that for far too long. Okay, my wife will tell you that I finally grew up recently, but you know, like, let's just say, like, a lot of people have my social security number, so, like, you know, identity fraud is common for me. Happens every freeze your social, it's a credit report, security number does, anyways, like, you know, they give you a little blue card, I've used that twice in my entire life, you know. Then you, like, I lost it. You need it to get something, and then you need to get another social security card. But then they're like, "We need your social security card to get a social security card. I'm like, "What the fuck? Like, this is, you're making it this far. Yeah, like, but anyways, yeah, it was just kind of like figuring it out, and that's that's what I did. And it was just like, you know, it wasn't glamorous, it wasn't luxurious, it was doing whatever I could do once I got here to make ends meet, and there were cool things that were coming into.. I had enough relationships to, you know, I wouldn't have moved here if I didn't know I had a baseline of success that could potentially.. I wouldn't say success, but like stability, yeah, but then you know when you're trying to grow, you can't really turn down anything, so I did everything and anything, and some of those things ended up being like incredible things, and a lot of those things ended up being like things that I barely even remember, right, for very little money, for very long hours, very, you know, shitty conditions, yeah, but all of those things like build you like, like I'm definitely like 30,000 hours into my Malcolm Gladwell DJ career, and I'm glad for all of those opportunities, because now it doesn't matter where I am in the world, like whenever shit goes wrong, because it inevitably does, and it doesn't matter who I'm working for, or like what the money is, like something still can, the same things go wrong, but all the things that went wrong when you're making $200 at four in the morning, they're a lot easier to fix when you're paying for a family, and you're paying, yeah, you know, but the same shit goes wrong, right? You just have a better.. I'm glad I solved it under like tough circumstances, so that, like, now I could solve it. When you're solving them in ease, yeah, it's much better. No, totally. So one more question, because then I want to get into the craft of DJing, but before we do that, you said that you, you wouldn't have made the move to New York if you hadn't had some sense that there was some stability.... --- ### [Lindsay Shookus on Leaving SNL, Reinvention, and Betting on Yourself](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-63-lindsay-shookus-on-leaving-snl-reinvention-and-betting-on-yourself/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of If I'm Honest. Apologies in advance for the nasally sounding voice I have - allergies really put me in my place this week. But today I'm so excited to share that we have Lindsay Shookus on the show today, and she is a seven time Emmy winning and two time Peabody winning television producer, speaker, and executive coach for 20 years. She was a veteran producer on Saturday Night Live, where she ran the talent department and was responsible for booking the host, musical guests, and cast. Most recently, she executive produced the sports Emmy-nominated HBO docuseries, Alex Vs A-Rod. And today, she brings all the lessons she learned in trust and leadership to stages and executive teams across the country, as a keynote speaker and executive coach, she works with senior leaders, rising talent, and organizations to build credibility, strengthen transformational relationships, and lead with confidence under pressure. She also executive produced Miley Cyrus's New Year's Eve party, was an associate producer on the critically acclaimed TV show 30 Rock, and produced NBC's Adele Live in New York City special. Her work has been recognized by The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard Magazine, Bustle, and Elle magazine. She's also the founder of Women Work Fucking Hard, a community committed to empowering women founders and business leaders. She studied journalism at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a member of the 2022 class of Henry Cowen Fellows within the Aspen Global Leadership Network at the Aspen Institute, and she resides in New York City with her family team. Lindsay is so cool, and we realized when we met prior that we had so many similarities and synergies across our career paths, our lives, what we're focusing on, and so it was really special to dive into what made her so special at SNL, and what she took from that two decade career, and then applies to what she's building now. She gets really, really honest about some of the things she's working through, some very cool mantras that we can all use to help us get out of lulls and tough, tough times, and she just shares so many gems about how she views the world, how she thinks about the world, what she's trying to share with others, and the energy is just incredible. So, I really hope that you enjoy this conversation with Lindsay Shookus. Lindsay, thank you so much for joining me on. If I'm honest, thanks for having me. You've had a busy week. I've had one of those mornings where, if I'm really honest, before I walked in here, I like had to stop, and I put my head against the wall, and I had to.. I literally like outside. Oh, I didn't see that you got it together, literally nose to wall. Had to take three deep breaths before I walked in. Is that how you do your deep breathing? Or, I normally don't go to a wall, but it was just like I compelled you. I felt like I had to like collect myself. I wasn't able to be in the dark, so I was like, just get next to a wall and close your eyes. Oh, would you otherwise go in the dark, like if you were at home? I would just go to quiet private, take some deep breath in the hallway of the building. But you know what, we love that this recording studio is multipurpose now. Yeah, it can be a good centering meditation center and also podcast studio. Exactly. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us. And obviously, I feel like we have so many synergies, it was so fun to talk with you ahead of time, and I've read your intro, like everyone knows who you are, but to kind of jump into the start, you graduated from UNC Chapel Hill, so again, North Carolina, New York connection, love that, and you had a journalism degree, and then you became Marcy Klein's assistant on Saturday Night Live, did you always know that you wanted to go into TV or show business or not? And then, how did you get that gig specifically? I mean, I think, like many people, if I, if I knew that job was an option, I would have been like, yeah, that sounds great, you know. But I grew up in Buffalo, New York, and, and my version of show business was like, I went to, like, regional theater, and you know, like, the anchor of the local news was, like, the biggest deal in the world, like, it wasn't even, like, a thought in my brain, because I didn't know it existed, you know. Obviously, I knew, show, but you don't think of, like, the people who are putting it on. I wasn't really thinking about producing when I was, even though I was, like, born a producer, my mother would say, yeah, I didn't realize you could get paid to do that, so, so it didn't even occur to me until I moved here, and then the first, like, interview I was given was it Saturday Night Live? I mean, it's, did you apply for it, or did you get connected for it? Like, no, I tell this, like, chocolate chip story, chocolate chip cookie story, where I had an internship in a film at a film studio, when I was in college, my once in one semester I couldn't really afford to move to New York, and everybody did, and like stay in the dorms, they were just too expensive. So I lived outside the city in my aunt's house, I commuted back and forth to have my internship, where I really, if I'm honest, I was like, you know, faxing things, and I love that. Thank you for the plug, ding ding ding, every time you say it, you're one of the first people to organically. I say that all the time. Oh my gosh, I'm so hot. Again, another synergy. Sorry to interrupt. We should, we could have a drinking game, but I, I was, I was like faxing things, and I remember photocopying newspaper clippings. I wasn't like really like stretching myself in my internship, but. I really liked my boss, her name was Terry Connors, and I remembered her birthday. And the next summer, when I went back to Buffalo, I was trying to make money, so I could move to New York. I was away, I was waitressing. I think every kid should have to waitress or serve. And I remembered her birthday, I couldn't really afford to, like, get her a gift, so I baked her pocket ship cookies, and I put them in the mail. No, didn't FedEx them, mail them USPS. She got like seven day old cookies in the mail, and I think she was so impressed that I remembered her birthday, and that I like did something about it as a, as a 22 year old. And so when I moved to New York, she was the really the only person I knew in show business. I emailed her, and she was like, let me see what I can do, and the first thing she came back with was like, do you want to interview to be Lorne Michaels' assistant? Oh my gosh, by the time I got there, they had filled that position. Yeah, but then I got immediately kind of swooped over to the talent department to interview there. That is so cool. So, let me ask you, do you like, do you remember everyone's birthday? Is that kind of a thoughtfulness that you naturally possessed, or was a little bit like, okay, I know she's important. I know this is her birthday, let me remember. No wrong answer, right? But like, was that who you like? I'm a gift giver, like, gift. If, if you went into my apartment, I, you know, New York City apartment, don't have room for much. I have two, two gift closets that are labeled, and they're all mostly women-founded companies, but like, I gift, I write notes, and I gift, and it's always been, and, my, you know, obviously, when I was younger, I wasn't as great as a thank you note writer, but now I really pride myself in, like, writing the notes. It makes such a big difference to take a slight tangent. So, like, we bought our apartment, and the management company helped us a lot, and, like, they rushed it, like, we had a very short timeline, and we just, I wrote them along with our broker and our attorney, like handwritten thank you notes from me and Ben, and I get an email, like a week or two later, and she's like, "Oh my god, I've been having a week, and it was just so nice to get this note, and you just have no idea how impactful this was. Thank you so much. And again, it's something I like doing, I like people to know that I'm grateful for them, or that I appreciate them, and it's just so nice that you can know it, like, makes such a positive impact. So, oh, by the way, talk about a way to stand out, especially nowadays. Like, I mean, gifts - I don't think you have to give gifts. I just love doing it. I love thinking it through when it would make someone happy, and I think I'm like the friend who's a little annoying, because, like, I like, you know, I don't just like buy the shirt, yeah. Like, I like really think it through, like, what would be special, yeah. But the note is just something that doesn't take that much time, and it, the impact of the time spent versus the impact, the return on investment is just incredible. It's incredible, and especially if it comes naturally, naturally to you, it just like it flows. It's not an upset, you don't set a reminder or anything, it just like does that. But I think that's a huge, a huge, yeah. Well, I credit it for like helping me get my, my start at Saturday Night Live, so I think it paid off. That's so cool. So, so you're 22 or 23 when you're starting, so you said that you, you ended up in the talent department. Did you stay in the talent department the whole 20 years that you were there? Okay, but you did a lot of different things. Well, you know, I moved my way up, yeah, the food chain. Yeah, so can you explain, like, some of your titles again? I mean, they're all like, it was like I went from assistant to, I think, I jumped over talent associate, they didn't make me do that. Then I was talent coordinator, then talent executive, then associate producer, then maybe co-producer, then producer. I mean, like, it's like that kind of thing, you know. It's SNL, you know, in television, obviously, there's all these different kinds of producers.... --- ### [From Stand-Up to New York Times Vows: Selena Coppock on Making Your Own Opportunities](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-64-from-stand-up-to-new-york-times-vows-selena-coppock-on-making-your-own-opportunities/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Hello everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. Today's guest came as a result of a DM that I sent, and I'm so excited to have Selena Coppock on the show today. Selena is a former standup comedian and current writer and podcaster based in New York City. She's the creator and voice of @nytvows, which is a parody Twitter X and Instagram account that lampoons a New York Times wedding section, the wedding industrial complex, wasps, and so much more. Her years of cracking wise in that account landed her a 2024 nuptials in the actual vows section. She is a creator and host of Two Wick Minimum, America's favorite and only podcast about candles. Yes, it's for real. And she is the former co-host of Betche's Brides, a podcast where she and her bestie, Chelsea, would dish and discuss all things matrimonial as she was planning her wedding. You can listen to her debut stand-up album, Seen Better Days, which is Little Lamb Recordings, on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your albums, and it hit number one on the iTunes comedy chart, and you're going to love it. Selena was also a guest star on the sitcom Red Oaks on Amazon Prime Video, and worked as a creative consultant on Younger, which was on TV land. I was introduced to Selena through NYT Vows, and found her quick wick and snarkiness at some of the kind of cultural things that were happening in the times to be so funny, and just clearly so smart. And as I dug into her more, and saw all the different avenues that she then built her career based on her stand-up comedy days, was really inspirational and really admirable. And I was so excited to have this conversation with her. We talk about how she approached all the different facets of what she does, we talk about some of the things that were really challenging, we talk about things that she was sure we're gonna work out, and then they didn't work out, and they led her to something else. And we talk about everything from young comics now and content creators, and how the landscape has changed. She was really, really vulnerable and insightful with a lot of firsthand experience that she generously shared with us. And I highly encourage you to check out her album, which is Her Pride and Joy. So I hope you enjoy this discussion with Selena Coppock. Selena, thank you so much for joining me on If I'm Honest. I'm so excited to be here, Julia. As I said in the intro, like I've been following you for years, and so when I moved back to New York, it was a goal of mine from before I moved back here to connect with you. So this is just a dream come true. So thank you. I am so honored. Honestly, writing little jokes on the internet is so much fun, and it's introduced me to so many wonderful people. The internet has a lot of terrible places, but a lot of really wonderful places. That's true. Yeah, so how are you doing this week? I'm doing well. I'm excited. Summer in the city is my favorite, and I usually stay here in New York in the summer and go to the beach at Coney Island, and so I'm just thrilled that it's getting warmer. Yeah, I maybe I missed some of our spring with travel, but I feel like spring was very short. Yeah, it really was. There was very little like open window period. I agree, I agree. It's felt like kind of, yeah, I know. Yeah, well, that sounds like an amazing summer, and I kind of forgot about Coney Island, so I'm gonna have to take my husband for the first time, because I don't think he's ever been. It's a great, a lot of people never go. It's like all you got to do is stay on the subway all the way, and then you get dumped out into this like wackadoom wonderland. I mean, it's really fun. There's the beach, there's, you know, rides to ride, good food to eat, clams. It's just a lot of fun. I definitely went on a date in high school out to Coney Island, and I'm just not remembering. You're a New York native, I'm from New York. Yeah, I went to Stuy and grew up here, and yeah, I definitely had a date on Coney Island. Yeah, that's cute. Yeah, so you are such a multi-hyphenate. I want to make sure I get everything. You're a former stand-up comedian, writer, podcaster, content creator. What would you say is like the core string that connects all of those things that you do, I think it's two things, it is fun and it's connection, and, and I, because I do feel like, you know, there's.. I always often go back to this one saying from Victor Borg, I think, if I'm pronouncing it right, which is, laughter is the shortest distance between two people. Oh, I love that, I really love that, and I truly feel that way. And when I was doing stand-up, I felt I really felt like it was just so important to connect with people, but also to give people a fun experience. And you know, I mean, when I, you know, I started doing stand-up, actually in Boston, where I grew up, and then moved to New York. I moved to New York in 2006 and you know, was doing awful open mics in like dumpy places, where it would literally rain through the ceiling, and you know, but then also doing other, you know, everything from that to like a great show at a, you know, traditional club or a great show at an alternative venue, and I always took it very seriously that, like, the people in the audience, they are spending their night here with us, and maybe they got a babysitter for the kids, and maybe they, you know, had to ride a long train ride or get parking, and they're doing a two drink minimum, and so we are here to give them a fun night. And I really felt like I'm the tour guide on this journey and this experience, and you know, some people I came up with, they love to do stand up and, you know, get really pulled. Political and dig in or talk about really upsetting topics, and my style is always just like, nope, let's keep it fun, you know, like people come here to escape from the horrors of, you know, of real reality, or things are going through, or you know, geopolitical landscape, and I really think it's so important that we have fun, and so that's often been a through line of a lot of my creative endeavors, because I just sort of don't take it that seriously, like I'm just here to have a good time, and you know, I have this silly podcast about candles that's like, so it's called Two Wick Minimum, it's like I just interview people talking about literally how they feel about candles, and you know, which is just like it's so silly, it's really light, and it's for everyone, like it could run the political, you know, gamut of you don't have to agree with me politically to appreciate a good candle, right, and I kind of, you know, I sort of like that, that I just, I want everyone to feel connected and to just have a good time. Well, and I think that that's so, like, so critical right now too, when we're like everything is so polarizing, and so, and I think you're seeing so much less of that in spaces, and so, thank you on behalf of whoever, that for, for, for doing that, because I think it's so important. But was there a time when you were young that you realized that, like, fun and connection piece was really important? It took a little while, because I think you know, first I was doing improv, and then I got into stand-up, and I, you know, you can't sometimes get thrust into a thing you don't quite know what it is you're looking for, or you think, oh, everyone is everyone's goal here is to have for com is to, I used to feel as though I assume everyone's goal is to just be a comedian and have comedy pay for your life, and that was sort of how I was acting for a couple years, and then I remember this wonderful comedian, Jerry Logan, who's so funny, he lives in LA now, you know, he said to me one time, just randomly waiting to go on stage, he's like, well, you know, like it's that's kind of such a rarity, and so there's other goals out of this thing, and there's other ways to feel as though you'd succeeded, and it really struck me, and that I stumbled upon this book, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which I love that book so much. It's so brilliant, and it's just about how everyone can be creative, and in it she talks about how if you demand that your art pay for your life, you will resent your art. And so that's why I've always kept a nine to five job that thankfully I get some flexibility, but just because I need to make, I can only be creative, I can only be relaxed enough to create and write jokes and put on shows and have ideas if I know every two weeks the paycheck is going to hit, right? I have insurance, I can pay my rent, you know. Yeah, no, that's really it's really great, I think, to kind of get that perspective from someone kind of earlier on in your career, because as you were saying that, like in tying it back to myself and racing, it kind of reminds me of something that someone else had said on the platform, a fellow racer, about how he'd love to be like a full-time amateur or an enthusiast, in that you can still work as hard, you can still push as hard, train as hard, whatever it is, or you know, create as, as prolifically, but if you're not dependent on that paycheck, it doesn't feel like either you're going to burn out or that you are not going to make it.... --- ### [Valerie Chapman on Why Women Can't Afford to Ignore AI](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-65-valerie-chapman-on-why-women-cant-afford-to-ignore-ai/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Hello everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. Today was a very special recording. We had a guest from out of town, and Valerie Chapman is the co-founder and CEO of Ruth AI, an AI-powered career platform building agents to close the $1.6 trillion gender wage gap through personal branding, salary negotiation, and career advancement. Her Fortune op-ed on the AI gender gap, informed by a conversation with Open AI CEO Sam Altman, has become a defining piece in the national conversation around women and artificial intelligence. Valerie has generated over 120 million impressions across platforms, teaching women about how to use AI, and she has hosted hackathons at San Francisco's TransAmerica Pyramid and New York's Hearst Tower in partnership with Open AI and Hearst Lab, bringing together women builders to create AI tools for social good. A graduate of New York University, Valerie is based in San Francisco, and this was really fun because Valerie is in the thick of building right now, and she was in stealth mode, she recognized a social good mission that she could lend her expertise and her experience to, and in today's conversation we go through everything from how her previous career as a fashion model and as a brand consultant led her to recognize this opportunity that she could build in, and she gets very transparent about what goes into the building process while in stealth mode. How she met her co-founder. Why helping to give women the tools to be able to help shape the infrastructure of AI is really important, and we get into some of the backlash that certain celebrities have faced with trying to push women into AI, but we also address the problems that happen when any kind of technology is built off of a single type of user, and so she gives her perspective as to why this is a really important conversation. We talk about some of the ways that you can onboard into using AI, and at the very least educate yourself to be able to make an informed decision as to whether or not you're going to use it. So this was really fun. We, we had a really great time. It was so cool to see this young, young woman building so much cool stuff, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it. Valerie, thank you so much for joining me on If I'm Honest. Thank you so much for having me. So, this is really fun how this came together, and I'm so glad that we're matching. For listeners, we're both wearing yellow, which is not the most common color. I don't think it's my best color, it's a great color on you. Thank you. You know, I actually asked ChatGPT. I was like, "Is this in my color season? Oh my goodness, like, yes, that's a great use of ChatGPT. I kind.. I do, at some point, want to get my like colors analyzed. I work with a stylist, so I trust her, and like, if I see something, especially like pastel colors that I think make me look a little washed out, I just don't wear them, but I'd love to. Yeah, yeah, no, I've been doing Rent the Runway lately, not an ad, but no, but like they want a sponsor, I use them all the time, so it's like leveled me up for sure, and I've used it to like I'll analyze my cart, and then I'll be like, okay, what's my color like based on the selfie that I've just given you, and it'll be like, yeah, take out that gray thing, take out this, take out that, and then I just don't do those, and then I feel like I do have a stylist. It's that's amazing. Yeah, and I think also, like with gray in particular, like it's such a good, like it's such a good safe color, but I have a very hard time finding the right shade for my complexion, so yeah, struggles. But anyway, I know, so hard, so hard, and we women are, I think, assessed a lot more on what we're wearing and how we look. Yeah, I think about it a lot, because, like you said, like you know, there's that standard, and especially like if you're on podcasts or you're going to meetings with people, like it is something you have to think about totally. So I cold reached out to you, like the other week this came together very quickly, because you live in San Francisco, which we love, San Francisco, but you're in New York, so what's bringing you to New York right now? Yeah, I'm actually in town. I'm also doing some interviews. I've been getting more into interviewing more like C-suite people, so I recently did the CMO of LinkedIn [Jessica Jensen], and gonna get more into that. So here for that, just like business meetings overall, I feel like, and some like VC kind of like warm like meetings that I'm having at the moment, yeah. So we're gonna get into why you're having those meetings for your company, but when you're interviewing these people, do you enjoy, like, do you have a lot of fun doing it, or is it kind of like information gathering? Like, how do you approach it? Yeah, I think I do have a lot of fun with it. I feel like as a child I was very much like the person who would like put on their camera on their Mac and be like, welcome to my show. Yeah, so it's actually very fun and very full circle to kind of be doing this work now, because it's not like I like came out of college and was like, I want to interview people or I want to like, you know, have this company that like closes the wage gap. It definitely did not start like that, and so I think it's kind of cool to like be now in a place where I'm like, wow, I'm actually living a life that's pretty aligned to something I was doing as a child, too. That's cool, and, like, I don't know, I find it just so fun, like, you never know the synergies you're gonna have with someone, and I personally feel like all the benefits that technology and social media have, like that in-person human connection is lacking, I think, in. Lot of people's lives, and so to be able to kind of have that in a like for your own creative endeavors, but then also for that business building, it's just a really cool. I'm loving it. I'm loving all the women like starting podcasts, like you know, I'm like thinking about that, like eventually. Right now, I'm just doing like the interviews, kind of just to get them up on like LinkedIn. I think it helps like your personal brand and your presence to, like, be, you know, having a conversation with, you know, another leader in the space. So, yeah, I think that's where things are moving, and people want to watch them, especially now that, like, Spotify has, like, the video podcasting. So I think it's kind of only just beginning, and even though people have said, like, oh, the podcast space is too saturated, I don't think that's true at all. I think everything's gonna have listenership, and like, a lot of people will turn, tune in for you specifically, or the content, and like, yes, some will be super massive with tons of downloads and everything, but it is a labor of love. I will say, if you ever jump into the podcast, I actually used to like be a podcast producer, I've had like so many different hustles in my time, I love it. We're gonna go, how, how much it takes. Yeah, no, it's a lot in the whole video. Like, I, I outsource for a video editor named Emmie Leary. Shout out to Emmy, because she does an amazing show. I mean, yeah, because I really don't like video editing, and so, like, I really applaud the podcasters who are taking that on themselves too, because it's just, it's to me, it's so, so hard to do that video, but back to you. You are the founder of Ruth, which Ruth's mission is to use AI to close the gender wage gap and to help advance women's careers. And I mentioned this before we started recording, like I'm so excited to be talking to you now, because I've spoken with other people who have already built what they're doing, or like are in a further along stage in their career, but you're like really in the thick of it, like you kind of just launched publicly, right? Yeah, that's correct. We actually came out of stealth in about December. Okay, so and I feel like we've taken a very unconventional approach. I think a lot of people come out and they're like, okay, here's our beta, use our product asap, and I think that is what Silicon Valley would definitely promote, so like, just get it out there, have people use it, but my co-founder and I feel like our expertise has been in community building and bringing the right rooms together, so we really wanted to lean into our strengths, and so we decided actually to come out of Stealth at an in-person event that we hosted, so we hosted one of America's first ever women's vibe coding hackathons at the Transamerica Pyramid Center in November, and that's when we officially came out of style to that, like, small group of some VCs, some, you know, content creators in the tech space, as well as the builders who were in our hackathon, and it was a very intimate moment that we then turned into a content moment, and then, you know, a few, you know, about a week later, did the big, like, reveal on social launched a whole like cinematic video, and we just felt like there was a big part of what we were building that needed more storytelling. So we came out with the video that kind of like went viral, where it showcased what it would look like to have more women building and like making decisions in the boardroom. So I think with our company, because the mission is so big, right, like AI agents to close the gender wage gap. We felt we kind of had to put out, like, a certain level of, like, propaganda in a way, or like, change people's perception of, like, you know, women building. And so we're kind of taking a different approach, in the sense that we care a lot about building community, building, like, digital storytelling. And then, of course, you know, in the next month or so, we're going to put out our beta. Yeah. Okay. Cool. So, for anyone who doesn't know, can you explain vibe coding? Yes.... --- ### [Julia Landauer on the 5 Biggest Lessons for Building Something Meaningful](https://julialandauer.com/if-im-honest-with-julia-landauer/ep-66-julia-landauer-on-the-5-biggest-lessons-for-building-something-meaningful/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to If I'm Honest with Julia Landauer. I want to take a minute to share the extreme joy I feel to be back in the podcasting medium. Like I knew I would be excited for it, but it is so cool to be able to meet in person, to be able to reach out to really cool people building meaningful things and hear from their experiences, hear what they've learned, what they're looking forward to, and to really focus on that human connection and that self betterment has been really such a treat to be able to dive into over the past few months. And it has been a lot of work. This is done, you know, in the hours before and after my full time job. On the weekends. I had to edit the audio on the train down to see my grandma at one point, and it's just it's a lot of work. It takes a village. I want to get into that in a second, but I did want to take a moment on this solo episode to share a little bit about like actually the work that goes into making an episode. So I'm very lucky that I get to work with a few people, but what I'm responsible for is figuring out who I want to have on the podcast, and then figuring out a way to reach out to them, follow up. Some people I know, some people it's a cold outreach, and then I do all of the planning for what the episode is going to entail, what questions I'm going to ask, what I want the narrative flow to roughly feel like, and then we come in, we record in the studio. I then receive the assets from the studio, and I watch through the video, and I identify the segments that I would like my video editor to focus on for our sizzle reel that we post on social media. So I do all that. I then create the full YouTube video, and I do all the audio editing and putting in the intro, outro, all of that stuff, and then come up with the titles and descriptions and social captions. Use AI for that because that's it can do a better job summarizing everything than I can, and it's really cool to be able to lean into that creativity. But they're definitely the village of people who who make it possible. So first and foremost, shout out to Jesse and Chris at Fringe because the studio is amazing. They turn around the files, and it just it makes it so easy for me to then do my job. Also, want to give a big shout out to Emmie Leary, who's my video editor, and again, she is able to hear the messy way I articulate what I want, and she's done a great job. And it's so fun to see see also the guests get excited by by the video assets that we have, and then the last people I want to shout out are Amanda and Jason at Octagon for doing all the backend producing and making sure that it gets on the RSS feeds and that everything's all set from that capacity. So that's kind of what goes into it. I'm very lucky to be working with a lot of people. I don't think I would be able to do it without them, and it's made this journey more manageable and a ton of fun. So, what I want to do today, now that I've given you a glimpse of what it's like to podcast, I wanted to share some of the themes that I have picked out from the various guests that we've had. We've had five guests who are in very different times in their lives. They are pursuing very different things, but they're all building something meaningful, or many meaningful things, and so I want to highlight the five themes that have pretty much come up in every discussion I've had as a kind of a mid-season or this point of the season recap, and then share some of my own commentary on it. But as a as a recap for who we've had, our first guest was Yasmin Shahida, who is a corporate communications leader. Then we spoke with Mick Batyske, who is a DJ and culture strategist. We had Lindsay Shookus, who's an Emmy-winning TV producer and keynote speaker. We had Selena Coppock, who's a comedian, writer, and book editor. And we just most recently spoke with Valerie Chapman, who's the founder and CEO of Ruth AI. So as I mentioned, they're all in different industries. They're different ages, but there were five big threads that seemed to sew through each of their experiences, and I'm going to share those with you now. The first big theme that became very clear was that building isn't linear, and reinvention is part of the process. I think this is an interesting throughline because what I've noticed is that different guests come from a different, you know, starting point. Some of us know exactly what we want to do from the get go, from the time we're young, and we we work hard to get that. Other people don't know what they want to do, kind of identify their talents or identify things that really excite them, and then they build from there. So it's kind of an all-inclusive, universal experience that, regardless of where you're starting from and what your vision is or isn't, you're gonna have to be okay with things not being linear, and you're gonna have to reinvent yourself. And a couple of the big examples that I wanted to share with you around that was when we spoke with Yasmin. She had been pursuing a career in broadcast journalism. She was working at CBS, and then she decided to make this pivot to something she was passionate about with food and hospitality, and then got into startups and is now working at Oatly. But she talked about the importance for her and for her mental well-being and personal well-being to pursue curiosity instead of the. More traditional path that was expected, and she also talked about telling people about what you want because some of the opportunities that you will find in life are from people who are connecting dots for us that we might not have the ability to do ourselves. Lindsay also is you know most well known for being a producer on Saturday Night Live, but after 20 years she stepped away from it. She knew it was the right time. It was not an easy transition. She talked about the identity crisis she had afterwards, but she also talked about the realization through some help from Alex Rodriguez that you're not supposed to recreate what you had before. It sets too high of a standard, and it kind of robs you of the joy of creating something new. And she also talked about the importance of betting on yourself, and you know, we if other people would support us, we should definitely be supporting ourselves as well. And the last thing that she described, which I thought was really great and super relatable, was that she talked about that transition from one big career to whatever was next as wobbly, but ultimately really freeing. And I think that's a really important thing to remember. The last person I want to highlight with this idea that building is not linear is with our most recent guest, Valerie. So Valerie had two layoffs; she was laid off twice before she was 25, and we talk a little bit about that happening to her at that point in her life versus later in life and her perspective on that. But basically, she had kind of was out of the out of the gate of college, and the traditional path that had been sold to her was not working. So she pivoted and started creating content, and then she built a one-person business, and then she's now building Ruth AI and trying to help other women have more options as they continue their career paths. So, being prepared to know that that's what it's going to be like seemed to be something that all of our guests had in common, and that was really cool to hear about. The second theme that I adore, and I think I followed personally throughout my life as well, is that nobody waited for permission. Everyone who was pursuing something, you know, and going for it full time, they had conviction that it was time to do it. And sometimes that conviction came from recognizing a skill or a talent and knowing it could be a career. Sometimes it was having a gut feeling that what you were doing wasn't wasn't working and you needed to try something else. But whatever it was, not waiting for permission or the invitation and creating the opportunity themselves is something that was a throughline for all of our guests. And Mick, who is a DJ, he found DJing opportunities while he was in college to be able to continue that art form. He immediately pitched himself for local gigs in Cleveland before moving to New York and then also continuing to grow. And what I really liked is that he really focused on creating kind of like a flywheel of career avenues that he could continue to build and pursue that would evolve with him as he grew, and he's now managing himself and making his own rules, which is really really cool. And the the last example I want to share for not waiting for permission is with Selena. So Selena, you know, she was an actor, a stand-up comedian, a writer, and she really loved acting. But she didn't wait for it to happen for her and for her to get her big break. And she just so she decided to create her own comedy show. She didn't wait for book publishers and you know writing a book to be a big success that catapulted her. She created her own social media channel with NYT vows to kind of create a space to bring humor and people together. And she basically was so so driven from a pretty early age to create her own opportunities and not wait for gatekeepers to let her in, which I think is a lot of really great self-awareness to have early on. The big lesson that I took away from our guests when it comes to waiting for permission is that instead of trying to make sure everything's lined up perfectly or to wait for people to invite you, we always have to remember that action creates clarity. And I want to say that again because I think a lot of us can get caught up on not knowing how we're going to figure it out or not knowing how we're going to do something, you will find the answer when you start acting. Action creates clarity because then you know what's happening and like you know what what steps aren't working. You identify new things and it builds on itself.... --- ### [Privacy Policy](https://julialandauer.com/privacy-policy/) Date: 2026-08-04T02:35:53.124Z Content: Last updated: August 17, 2025 Julia Landauer (“we,” “our,” or “us”) respects your privacy. This policy explains what information we collect and how we use it. Information We Collect Contact forms: When you reach out, we may collect your name, email address, phone number, and message. Analytics: We use standard website analytics tools (like Google Analytics) to understand how visitors use our site. Cookies: We may use cookies to improve your browsing experience. How We Use Your Information To respond to your inquiries. To improve our website and services. To send updates if you’ve opted into emails (you can unsubscribe anytime). Sharing Your Information We do not sell or rent your personal information. 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