Episode 139 – Unstoppable Square Peg Club Founder with Sarah Trocchio

Our guest this week is Sarah Trocchio, the founder of the Square Peg Club, LLC. When I asked her about the organization name she explained that all too often in academia and elsewhere people are encouraged and even pushed hard to fit into “round holes” that do not fit them nor their personalities. Square Peg Club LLC is Sarah’s career and personal coaching program. She will tell us all about it and how she came to form her company.
 
In addition to coaching, Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology at Rider University.
 
She also is a full-time mom and partner. Her husband is a criminal defense lawyer which compliments Sarah’s own Ph.D. in criminal Justice which she received from Rutgers-Newark in 2019.
 
I found our conversation quite fascinating, illuminating, and, needless to say, quite stimulating. I hope you find our episode the same. Please let me know your thoughts.
 
About the Guest:
 
Sarah Trocchio, MSW, PhD is the proud founder and owner of the “Square Peg Club, LLC,” a career coaching & strategy firm for badass academics of all stripes looking to stir shit up in their careers. With nearly two decades of experience as an intersectional inequity scholar, social worker, and educator, Sarah channels all of that curiosity and a honed advocacy tool kit to serve academics at critical professional junctures to bravely start their Next First Thing (NFT). She obtained her MSW from Boston University in 2011, her PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers-Newark in 2019, and became nationally board certified as a coach through the Center for Credentialing Education (CCE) in 2022. In addition to helping academics get real about their core values and how they can best be activated to prompt greater professional freedom & fulfillment, Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology at Rider University.
 
Ways to connect with Alan:
 
Link to my LinkedIn page: (4) Alan R. Garcia | LinkedIn
Link to my GoFundMe page: https://gofund.me/6f090f1d
 
 
About the Host:
Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.
 
Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children’s Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association’s 2012 Hero Dog Awards.
 
https://michaelhingson.com
https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/
https://twitter.com/mhingson
https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/
 
accessiBe Links
https://accessibe.com/
https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/
 
 
 
Thanks for listening!
Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!
 
Subscribe to the podcast
If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.
 
Leave us an Apple Podcasts review
Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.
 
 
Transcription Notes

Michael Hingson  00:00
Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I’m Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that’s a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we’re happy to meet you and to have you here with us.
 
Michael Hingson  01:21
And a pleasant hello to you once again. This is your host Michael Hingson or Mike Hinson. If you prefer, you are listening to unstoppable mindset. We’re inclusion diversity in the unexpected meet and you’ve mostly if you’ve listened to this a lot heard that before but now you get to hear it again. But that’s okay. Today we get to talk with Sara Trocchio who was the founder of the square peg club and we want to learn about that and a lots of other stuff. So we’ll do that as we go forward. But Syria welcome, Sarah. Welcome to unstoppable mindset.
 
Sara Trocchio  01:55
Thank you so much for having me, Mike. I’m so thrilled to be here and delighted to have had the invitation.
 
Michael Hingson  02:01
Well, thank you. I’m really appreciate you agreeing to come on, from all the way back there in New Jersey all the way out here to Southern California. And we were just comparing notes before we started every one that I lived in Westfield for six years and had a lot of fun doing that different weather than California, although I think there are a lot of people, at least right now in the winter of California who would disagree with all the snow that Californians have had. Yeah. Have you
 
Sara Trocchio  02:28
believe that? No, I was gonna say what do you believe in New Jersey we have not had where I live more than a tiny baby dusting. That is it once.
 
Michael Hingson  02:38
So I relocated back to California at the beginning of 2002. We had been in the World Trade Center tooth in 2001 and escaped with my guide, dog Roselle. And Guide Dogs for the Blind asked me if I would come back and be a spokesperson for them. And for a variety of reasons. It seemed like a good idea, at least in part to do that. But I remember we were out in Northern California in Novato, which is about 27 miles north of San Francisco, and we were in Novato looking in that general area for a house to live in. And for us it’s a little was a little bit more difficult because my wife has always been in a wheelchair. So we either have to find something accessible or find something that we can make accessible. And we got to Novato on a Sunday and Monday morning. We got a phone call from the realtor who sold us our property when we moved to New Jersey. And she said Why are you even thinking about moving back to California when we don’t have any snow here and I guess it was a text because there was a picture of Petaluma which was about six or seven miles north of us and snow had fallen during the night and so there you go full circle moment there. We go. Petaluma doesn’t get snow. So it was so funny. Of course, by the time we got up to Petaluma because we wanted to go look at it. It was basically all gone. But yeah, now of course, the winter of 23 in California, especially up in the mountains in the Sierras, but also in Southern California has just been wretched from a snow standpoint. Mm hmm.
 
Sara Trocchio  04:20
And has it been really cold to like consistently or have you just had smatterings of bizarre weather?
 
Michael Hingson  04:25
Well, we’re I live in Victorville. We’re about 20 850 feet above sea level it gets cold in winter so we get down to 2022. Wow. But the mountains within 30 or 35 miles are what really get hit with the snow so we didn’t get any snow or just a little bit that lasted a few hours and then it was gone, but not too far away. There was a lot of snow huh?
 
Sara Trocchio  04:49
What do you know what’s also funny, Michael is we were talking a few minutes before we started about how I lived in Florida for four years with my partner and my baby when she was first born. And And apparently while we were there, it was the first time in like 36 years that in northern Florida and Tallahassee where we lived, there was snowfall. And I’m still a little angry because I was so exhausted in postpartum land. I think my baby was about five days old, and I’ve been so grumpy about moving somewhere with no stone. I remember my husband came to wake me from a precious nap to say, Sarah, you have to come outside. This is crazy. There’s snow. And I looked at him and I snapped back and I said, I do not care. You shut that door, and you let me. But my baby went out there. And it was so funny, because the next day I had been walking my dog in the local park, and I saw this woman, I’m from Boston, so I’m used to cold weather. But I saw this lady walking her dog in a full on ski suit, like top to bottom, you know, face mask full on it was a pastel blue. She was wearing snow boots. And of course, by this point, the snow had stopped and it was now 45 degrees.
 
Sara Trocchio  06:01
What a world huh? What a world I know. It’s pretty funny.
 
Michael Hingson  06:05
Well, tell us a little bit about you kind of growing up starting out. So you’re from Boston. And we’d love to hear a little bit more about your childhood and things like that. That got you started down the road of where you are now.
 
Sara Trocchio  06:17
Yeah, totally. So yeah, I grew up about an hour west of Boston, in Central Massachusetts. It’s Worcester was also sometimes known as well. That’s a good that’s a good one. I like that. That’s the you are coming. Correct. Michael.
 
Michael Hingson  06:33
I lived in Winthrop mass for three years. So I know how to save.
 
Sara Trocchio  06:37
You sure do. I worked in Winthrop, actually, for some time?
 
Michael Hingson  06:39
Most of Worchester?
 
Sara Trocchio  06:43
Yes, it is not Worchester. It is Worcester, even though that was a bit confusing. So my parents are not, we’re not from there. They sort of ended up there randomly by virtue of, of job hunts. But my mom is a refugee. She’s originally from Egypt. And they were asylees. In fact. So she grew up in Colorado Springs as a brown Jewish girl that had been recently resettled just randomly to the Mountain West, and specifically to Colorado Springs. And my dad grew up in a pretty rough and tumble neighborhood outside of Pittsburgh, by a single mom. And my parents ended up meeting in graduate school when they were becoming certified to become history teacher in Pittsburgh. So they match and they ended up sort of being on the pathway of of trying to apply for positions in various private schools. And so that took them to the northeast, because there’s a lot of private schools out there. And that’s what ended up taking us to Worcester, which is where I was born and grew up for quite some time. So this was, you know, the early 90s. My mother, by all accounts was both very career driven, and very, very family oriented. But we grew up without any sort of village, right, I sort of immediately felt the lack of having community of elders and family members in our immediate community, which on one hand, was wonderful for sort of chosen family development, on the other was was definitely challenging for two working parents. And my parents face their own challenges. My mother was Jewish, and Arabic and Jewish, and my father came from a pretty, you know, traditional third generation Italian Roman Catholic background. So there wasn’t a lot of great vibes between my parents families. In fact, when they got married in the 70s, there was a good deal of tension that there was a sort of inter ethnic and inter religious rich. So that was certainly something that punctuated some of my childhood just sort of being aware that that difference and connection across difference was not always welcomed with open arms. But my parents did a wonderful job, sort of maintaining a value set that ended up transposing itself on to everything that I ended up doing afterwards, their own marriage, even though they ended up getting divorced after 26 years, was a real sort of model for me about both the challenges and the opportunities in connecting across difference. So that really catalyzed me at first think that I wanted to be a social worker. And I did that for a couple years. That’s when I worked in Chelsea and Winthrop Michael, right near where you were. And soon after starting that process, I realized I was not going to be a social worker forever. I felt like I was participating in systems that themselves were problematic and began thinking, well, maybe I’ll be a lawyer, or maybe I’ll go and be a researcher. And so at that time, I made my way to Boston University and became a research assistant at a really wonderful research center that was housed in a school of social work. And for that, from there kind of caught the research bug and fell in love with things like focus groups and sort of all these skill sets that I’ve used as a social worker but thinking about how they could be applied to extrapolate really important insights about policy just really excited me But this was also at the height of mass incarceration. So we’re talking like 2009. And I became, it was like everywhere I turned all leads, all roads lead back to the carceral system. So I ended up finding my way to Rutgers and getting a PhD in criminal justice. Very soon after going into that program, began feeling a bit isolated, in various ways, feeling like some of the ways that higher education, particularly PhD level education operated was very myopic, and did not have any kind of working knowledge of how to support people and living whole, authentic lives as they were also pursuing graduate work. So that was a tough point. In some ways. I had a lot of friends that were, you know, getting married and starting careers, and I was partnered very heavily, but we were, you know, struggling financially, I was struggling emotionally with a lot of this sort of cut through a culture that’s really normative in graduate education, particularly having left a more collaborative environment of social work, and then going to this kind of cutthroat environment, I struggled mightily. And so since getting into the program, and learning, oh, this is a little different than they thought it was gonna be. This is not as collaborative and sort of mutual and supportive as I had hoped, particularly a program that was supposed to be around social justice, right? I just always sort of had my feelers up for for other things. And I always was disappointed that there wasn’t more room in academic spaces for talking about the experiences, particularly of marginalized people, whether they were women identifying neurodivergent, experiencing disabilities, non white, etc, there just didn’t seem to be a lot of room or space for those kinds of narratives. And so I was always seeking them on my own. I did some work in health tech company and worked with a wonderful company called wealthy that provides virtual concierge services for people that need chronic support, or that have chronic conditions that need support for caregivers. And I loved that work and thought about leaving the academy altogether, but got an opportunity to do a tenure track job. And I thought, why not do it. And then, of course, naturally, because the universe was laughing at me at all times, I had a 15 month old when I started that job. And seven months later, COVID hit me and I was even more smacked in the face with how inhospitable academic institutions were, and how hypocritical they were. Because so many of them talk about being so advanced and so progressive in terms of incorporating diverse value points and visions for like, what what the worlds can be and inviting of different perspectives, when in fact, I found there to be a real inhospitable nature. In the Academy for someone like me, that was a young mom, that was a second generation immigrant that was managing excessively difficult caregiving constraints during lockdown. And so I started getting kind of loud about it. And writing in our newspaper, and starting a book project that was about the experiences of academic motherhood. And through that started having this first mindset shift, which was, oh, I can just talk to people and be engaged in relationship building, professionally and otherwise, that feels good. And like is about connecting with people whose humanity I recognize and understand and appreciate. And so from there, I became a certified coach and have been doing my coaching practice now, working largely with folks that have experienced some degrees of marginalization in higher ed and are looking for some switch up in their careers to feel better and to feel more self actualized.
 
Michael Hingson  13:48
Well, so you did a lot of work early on, and the whole MSW world. And it was very much a collaborative effort, in a lot of ways, and you are in a social scientist in it by any standard in terms of what you did. And now you’re you’re switching from dealing with all the external stuff that a social scientist deals with, to have more of an internal mindset, or not worrying so much about the collaborative world. And I’m wondering, how, what made you decide to do that? Well, I guess I understand a little bit about what made you decide to do it, but how did you do it? And how do you how do you find all that today? Huh?
 
Sara Trocchio  14:36
Yeah, I mean, I think for a long time, even so I originally thought I was going to be a clinical social worker, right. I thought I was going to be a therapist. That’s what I set out to do in college. That’s when I went and got my master’s degree what I thought I was going to do, and I think I got turned off by the internal world because as I was exposed to it, it was very sterile, right? It was very medical model really Did right when, when we were training therapists 15 years ago, I mean, we were trying to approximate what it was like to be a medical provider, right, just thinking about mental health rather than a physiological condition. And so part of me always felt like, this is incomplete, right? This isn’t this doesn’t capture sort of all the experiences that are structural and systematic and systemic that I know people like my parents encountered, and experience their life. And so with that, on top of the sort of sterility and sense that, oh, you’re a therapist, but you should never talk about your own life, like that’s not relevant to the client relationship. turns me off to this internal world. And I think I made assumptions about the internal world that were false, right. And that’s part of growing and becoming wiser as we realize some of the ways that we’ve made assumptions that are short sighted and not fully sort of complete in their in their picture. And so I realized that as much as those structural facets and conditions are really important, it’s also really important for us to understand how we think and see the world and in turn, how we think and see ourselves as being positioned within that world. And how much being able to see our own potential, and our own desire actually can be expansive in terms of the external world. And so I would say that now, I’m more integrated, or integrative in my approach I, in my work with clients, we don’t pretend that the structural stuff doesn’t exist, it’s surely a frame that we use to think about our internal worlds. But I’m also no longer at a place in my life, where I feel like the internal aspects of our identities and our universes should be ignore, right, in place of thinking exclusively about external facets. So there’s been some personal growth in that way, as I’ve also been growing professionally.
 
Michael Hingson  16:58
How well tell me a little bit more about what you mean, in terms of the the differences between the internal world and the external world?
 
Sara Trocchio  17:06
Yeah, I mean, so my training is as a critical social scientist, right? And so critical theory is about systems and processes and often policy right? And so thinking about how does one’s identity map on to larger historical patterns, right, larger for instances of oppression when we’re talking about women, or gender or sexual identity, or disability or age or, or race or ethnicity? And so that’s the frame that I ended up moving, like fully into, when I decided, nope, I’m not going to be a therapist. And I think part of me said, I’m gonna have this clean break. And I’m going to start thinking largely on the aggregate, like, largely in terms of macro level trends, and not necessarily what’s happening with respect to one’s internal world, because I was so used to looking outward and being outward facing in terms of the things that I was researching, right. So it’s this person’s experience, as they experience the court system is a representation, right of these giant, massive structural problems. And that’s how I was trained to think as a social scientist. And that’s what a lot of my work used to focus on. And I think, going through this deeply painful experience of COVID, and being a new professor and a new mom at the same time, and a really inhospitable place, made me realize that I could lean on those sorts of external explanations, all I wanted, and I could continue to be talking about them and writing about them and advocating for change. But that wasn’t the complete picture, either. And there was internal work that I needed to do to shift the way I thought about my circumstances and what was possible in those circumstances. And that’s something that I spend a good deal of time focusing on with my clients.
 
Michael Hingson  18:56
So do psychologists and psychiatrists focus more on the internal or are they really more victims of the external world as well?
 
Sara Trocchio  19:06
I think traditionally, psychologists and psychiatrists are deeply internally facing right, we’re used to having a psychologist or a mental health practitioner, have a big DSM five diagnostic book and listen to what a client’s saying, but to be able to match that expression of one’s internal life with diagnosis, right. And then for that therapist or that mental health practitioner to provide expert guidance about how to quiet or calm one’s internal world, and there’s not often much attention, I think increasingly there is now as actually ironically, coaching principles have made their way into psychotherapy, much more so than they did 15 or 20 years ago. But when I was being trained, it was much more about one’s internal life and internal circumstances.
 
Michael Hingson  19:55
Do you think that even in the EMS world, there’s any movement toward a Understanding and empathizing a little bit more with internal kinds of things for people, or are they really still looking for those outside norms and do everything according to the patterns that they think they see externally? Yeah, I
 
Sara Trocchio  20:15
would say there’s a little bit more integration happening on both ends, I think yes. In the way that I was sharing about sort of mental health practitioners, we’re seeing more integration of, of acknowledgment that external factors are deeply important in shaping one’s internal life. And I do think to some extent, there has been greater focus on how one views themself, and possibilities that exist in lie within our own selfhood. In in social science, I certainly think that there is some movement happening there
 
Michael Hingson  20:45
to know Are you still a professor today?
 
Sara Trocchio  20:49
I am, as of today, I am still a professor. Yes. So I’m very busy. I basically have 1.75 jobs right now. And it takes a lot of a lot of balancing a lot of work, and sometimes some flailing to make it happen.
 
Michael Hingson  21:06
What kind of mindset shifts? Did you have to go through though, to really get more into the coaching environment? You’ve talked some about that, but I’d love to learn a little bit more about that. And, and how did you also learn to be able to if you’d had to do so switch back and forth between the two worlds?
 
Sara Trocchio  21:25
Oh, yes. I mean, like today, just to give you an example, I was actually I’m on a search committee for two faculty searches right now in my full time job. So we had six back to back interviews for that, I took my dog for a quick walk, because that for me is meditative. Came back, and I’m doing this wonderful call with you. And then I have a call the coaching clients before I go turn on the mom hat. So yes, it requires agility. And I will say that, you know, again, coming back to this notion of like how the internal and external worlds are integrated, because PhD programs are so terribly funded in our country. I was always required to sort of hustle as a PhD student, I had to learn from the get go, that I was not just going to be a PhD student or graduate student, or doing dissertation research or teaching, but I was also going to be doing all those things, and have another part time job or to, to be able to pay the bills. And so I think, in part, and again, this is kind of a mindset shift, mindset shift, framing, myself, traditionally, as a victim of my circumstances, like, Oh, this is so terrible, I don’t get paid enough. This is so ridiculous. I’m nearly 30. All my other friends are having careers buying houses. And I’m, you know, making $18,000 a year a baseline to work 50 hours a week, and then on top of that have to work more. But what I will say is that got me very comfortable and adept and agile at switching between roles and sort of accepting that as something that that helps keep me fresh and smart, and in tune with what’s happening in the world. So I think that that those circumstances, whoever challenging they were, allowed me to have a very sort of entrepreneurial thanks that, even though I didn’t see it that way, necessarily, since becoming a PhD student over, you know, at this point, nearly 15 years ago,
 
Michael Hingson  23:24
it seems that in our world, more and more, we need to really deal with different kinds of situations and be able to adapt and go from one thing to another, it isn’t good enough to just be a blacksmith, and then you go home and somebody else is doing the rest of the work and so on how do we get more people to adopt or learn how to create an environment where in their own lives, where they can move from one thing to another and be comfortable about doing that?
 
Sara Trocchio  23:56
I think that is such a good question. And I will say, I have seen in my teaching, and I’ve been teaching college students for a decade and masters students for over a decade in various combinations. But I have actually seen for all the increased technology and all the instant gratification that’s available, that agility is decreasing. And it concerns me actually. And I think part of it is connected to the fact that we are so invested in sort of the next step, we’re what we’re doing that is going to amplify us in some way educationally or professionally, that we don’t fully stop to be that playful in what we’re doing. And I have found that having a playful spirit. And thinking about oneself is sort of being on a playground and moving from structure to structure from the seesaw to the swings. excetera is what keeps me sort of buoyed and buoyant as I’m moving between different identities and different roles. I think that the more that we sort of let go of this really narrow focus on solely sort of getting the things crossed off our list that we need to get crossed off to be on this one, you know, ascendant path or trajectory, the more playful we are. And the less seriously we take our investment in just one particular lane or one particular area of focus. And the more fun we have, and the more easy it becomes for us to move agilely between different areas and identities and tasks. Do you think that’s
 
Michael Hingson  25:35
more of a worldwide thing? Or is it something that probably we see in the US that we just take things so seriously, and we we don’t play? Hmm,
 
Sara Trocchio  25:46
I think that’s also a great question. I’m not sure I would, I would think that in a lot of industrialized Western societies, we’ve moved a little away from play, particularly as technology and an access to education has changed, in that people now sort of have, to some extent greater ability to access technology to quote unquote, get ahead, whether that’s somebody that has a personal computer, or is able to easily go to a library and use one, of course, smartphones have created some some more uniform access to sort of like goal setting and goal attainment, however, sort of jumbled attention might be in those pursuits. And I think, you know, to some extent, those are patterns that probably are happening worldwide. So I think, in the United States, particularly with our puritanical roots and our bootstrapping sort of mentality that I would expect it to be especially pronounced here. Yeah.
 
Michael Hingson  26:44
And we take things so seriously, I, every time I have these kinds of discussions, reminds me of, I think in places like France, where people are supposed to take the month of August off and relax and play. Yeah. And we don’t have nearly enough of that here. And we don’t encourage it. Do you think that COVID as maybe started us down a road of shifting away from that a little bit and maybe working a little bit toward play? Or do you think we’ll just go back to kind of the the typical way we do things in the typical mindsets that we’ve established?
 
Sara Trocchio  27:18
That’s also such a great question, Michael, I think that I saw glimmers of that sort of in the immediate return to in person learning in person meetings. And now I kind of see people be relatively shell shocked by all of the sort of consequences to our mental health and our well being that the pandemic created, but feverishly kind of trying to get back on task or back on track. So I did see part of that sort of that possibility, that little glistening moment of like, oh, maybe we can all just enjoy the human beings a little bit more and be a little bit more playful. But I have seen that sort of begin to erode and noisy a lot of people, whether they’re Gen Z students, or millennial professionals saying, Okay, that was all well and good. But now I need to get back on track.
 
Michael Hingson  28:10
How do we get people to recognize that we can’t get back to open quote, normal End of quote, because normal will never be the same again.
 
Sara Trocchio  28:20
Yeah,
 
Sara Trocchio  28:21
I mean, I think I’m, I think I still struggle with that to some extent, because we’re, we’re fighting against the grain of decades or years of socialization about that sort of way that we are just taught to put our head down and put one foot in front of the other until we get to the thing, and then the next thing after that, and then the next thing after that. And, you know, it’s so fascinating, I was just talking to a really good friend of mine, who is she works in elementary, middle school. And she was saying that, you know, she’s had so many parents reach out to her because she does the Gifted and Talented program. And she just said to me, Sarah, I just wish that we could all just let kids be kids a little bit more. And she said, I saw that, you know, as we were returning back from COVID. And she said, it takes such intentional conversations with parents and with children to say, you know, what, actually like this is the period of life where we it is so developmentally appropriate to play. And if we rush past that so much, then we’re going to get to the point which I see now as a professor, where 1920 and 21 year olds are so distracted by their to do list and to their, you know, goal setting for their trajectory that they can’t even sit in a class and enjoy it. I just got an email from a student that said, Hey, Dr. Chi, I’ve been so disengaged. I can’t even focus on being present in class because all I’m thinking about are my grad school applications. Right? And so I think it’s about having people model that that is okay that it’s okay to go off course sometimes. In fact, sometimes the most beauty and power is in those moments that are off course and if we so so certainly regulate and curate our time. And so that we don’t allow ourselves to go off course, we’re missing out on so much of the joy and fun and splendor of this human experience.
 
Michael Hingson  30:09
So what will you say to that student? Or have you yet? Or how do you respond to that?
 
Sara Trocchio  30:14
You know, that’s so interesting. I have not responded to them yet. Because I’ve been marinating on that. I’ve been thinking, what do I want to say to the student that I’ve known, you know, for three years, and they were able to, even during COVID, sort of be more present. And now that they’re getting to this natural inflection point of, oh, I’m about to graduate, they feel this intense pressure. And so I think I will just try to tell them, It’s okay to slow down, it’s okay to be off course, it’s okay to circumvent a traditional path or trajectory. And in many ways, you know, I work with my clients who are often, you know, professors, and, you know, some of them are in their 50s, or 60s, when they come to me that this idea of like having such a solid and rigid five year plan is both silly, right? Because we all know, like, not care, what we set out to do many times. And it actually takes us away from some of our core best functions as human beings, which are to be present focused, to be off course, to be in the moment of our humanity, to find humor and joy in those moments. And then once we’ve reset, and rest from the sort of rigor of our goal, achievement, come back to our goals and figure out with critical reflection, is this even something that I actually want and desire?
 
Michael Hingson  31:31
Yeah, and, you know, I think, as, as a person who does some writing, although I don’t do the prolific amount of writing that number of people do, but I’ve learned a lot about writer’s block, and how writers work and so on. And also just about thinking, and one of the things that comes to mind when we’re having this discussion is that if you are able to let things go, and go think of something else. The reality is that you probably know what you really need to do, but you need to let it come out. And if you go off and do other things, the answer, the solution will come to you. But you have to let it come to you. You can’t just force it. And all too often writers just you know, they work and they work and they work. But I always hear from people that I know of as professional writers, when they get writer’s block, if they just stop and go do something else, take a walk or do something else or whatever, go on vacation, something will break loose, and the answer will actually come and like your students the same sort of thing. Why are you worried about getting into graduate school? What can you do? Right, this second? Have you done your applications? Well, if you have, then what can you do? It is not under your control anymore. So don’t worry about the things that you can’t control focus on what you can let the rest deal with itself.
 
Sara Trocchio  33:00
Yes, and in fact, to, to have a student that’s already burnt out, right, the further burning themselves out by stress of continuing education, you know, kind of makes your point beautifully, and we have so much research on creativity, that speaks exactly to what you’re saying, empirically, Michael, which is that you can’t rush it and in our brains are other are like other muscles, they need rest time, right? They they’re not going to atrophy if we’re not using them at 95% 95% of the time, and engaging different parts of our bodies and minds and spirits is actually really good for our brains, you know, using our physical bodies connecting over laughter over humor, loving someone else. If that’s not, quote, unquote, productive, those are all things that we know can actually spur creativity and a wish people felt more of a permission structure in our society at this time to lean into those things.
 
Michael Hingson  34:00
Yeah, play is an interesting concept. And we’ve talked about it but the reality is play is something that can take on many forms, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you go play as we’re typically used to it. It may very well be that you just let your mind wander and you go off and you do something else. You go read, that’s play. You go watch TV. Well, I’m not sure about watching TV, but you know, there’s not much on TV. Well, there is sometimes. But you know, the point is that it can take on so many different forms. But if you don’t allow it to happen, and history shows us the value of allowing it to happen. If you don’t allow the brain to just take its time and put things together. Then we get very unproductive and we go crazy. Mm.
 
Sara Trocchio  34:50
And even if we are productive, we’re not always sure that the things that we’re producing are in alignment with who we are and what we want, because we haven’t taken time Apart from the work itself to draw meaning about the work itself, and that is a cyclical thing that I see so many people struggle with, whether they’re new college students, or hearing from my friend that works in an elementary school system, you know, fourth graders up to people that are, you know, tenured professors looking for the next thing, because all this productivity, even if you’ve mastered the productivity itself, isn’t generative, right in a way that we would want it to be, if we were actually moving in alignment with our values and our human needs.
 
Michael Hingson  35:35
There is something to be said for trying to be more like a kid, because kids haven’t learned to lock down on all of these different things. And kids do play, they let their brains wander, they do so many different things. And in reality, a lot of the times, especially if given the opportunity, they do them well, and we could learn so much from them. And it’s something that we just don’t see nearly as much as we should, that is being like a kid taking the time, letting yourself be distracted. It don’t have to be on 24 hours a day, I had a guide dog, my six guide dog, who, as I describe it had a type A mentality and personality. She could not leave work at the office, if you will, when we got home from work, she still followed me around, she always had to monitor what I was doing. The other dogs in the House wanted to play and she would actually curl her lip at them she wouldn’t play. She was so serious, that after about 18 months, she literally became afraid of guiding, she just stressed herself out. And it’s been a lesson that has stuck with me ever since how she could have done so much better if she had just allowed herself to relax a little bit more. And the reality is it is just like people, I’d never seen it in a dog like that before. But the reality is it was there. And it was such a vivid example of the kinds of things that you’re talking about and the kinds of things that all of us should do.
 
Sara Trocchio  37:20
And interestingly, one of the reasons that I love dogs so much, because they they pull us out of that impulse that we’ve been trained into, leaning into, which is to go go go produce, produce, produce, think about the next thing, think about the next thing. So powerful story that a dog that sort of ran counter to that taught you your own lesson in that.
 
Michael Hingson  37:43
Yeah, that was so it was so surprising to experience it. And it was so sad that we had to retire her and she went back to the people who raised her. I don’t know anything about what her life was like there, but she didn’t have to guide so maybe she learned to relax. I would like to think that she did.
 
Sara Trocchio  38:02
Yeah, me too. Well,
 
Michael Hingson  38:05
so in your coaching, I’d love some stories or my examples about mindset shifts, and the kinds of things that you’ve been able to help your, your your clients do, and how they really shifted in how that affected them as they went forward from working with you.
 
Sara Trocchio  38:25
Yeah, I mean, one of the things I love so much about coaching is that it is, by definition, something that is client centered where the client is creating the agenda. And it is not a top down relationship whatsoever. So I work in full, collective partnership with a client. So there’s no one, you know, client story that maps on to perfectly another client story. But what is so powerful to me is seeing how in the early phases of working together, and on average, I spend usually about four to six weeks, you know, sort of getting to know a client and then beginning to have them identify what they are most jazzed about once they learn to sort of block out all the other noise about what they’ve been told they should care about what they should be focusing on. And I would say that, you know, over the length of the what usually ends up being about five months that we work together. At the beginning, there is such a discomfort about looking inward. And again, that discomfort that I have shared with clients, you know, in my own path and trajectory. There’s such a discomfort about actually asking, What do I desire. And it’s such a simple, simple thing, but it actually takes months often to get people comfortable with identifying and then naming and then claiming those desires. And when I see clients that are able to do that it is just very powerful. Particularly because an academic settings, there are all of these mandates, right? Have you need to be this productive in this way you need to publish in this regard, you need to be on this speaker circuit that is very, very easy for these people that have spent so much time with their brains and their intellect, just being completely unable to use those same sort of like rigorous intellectual skills to ascertain and then go after what they actually want. So that is like, in a nutshell, what I work with clients on and I have had so many amazing stories I’ve had, you know, stories of people that were, you know, shut out of academic job searches that felt like they were gonna have to leave that worked with me. And were actually really able to get clear on what is this thing called, like, bi directional fit? And why does it matter? Like why should I not just be concerned with being deferential to the point that anybody that could hire me will? Why don’t I really laser focus on what it is in an employment setting that I want in need, and being pretty ruthless about seeking out those kinds of settings. So I’ve had folks that were on job searches for years and years, and then started working with me and ended up getting like, really wonderful, quote unquote, non prestigious academic jobs that have made them so damn happy. I’ve worked with other people that have completely renegotiated the terms, their jobs in their institutions, right that at first, when they came to see me thought, I am so done with X place or y place, I just want to run away and go work at Trader Joe’s stocking shelves. Well, was it really that or was it that they had not felt empowered to actually identify a name what they needed, which in some cases is, I don’t want to be teaching anymore, I want to shift into a different role where I’m doing strategic programming that’s focused on Dei, for instance, I’ve had other people just realize, you know, this whole higher ed thing, it’s just not for me, I just want way more time to be able to work remotely plug and chug at something and then have so much so much energy and time for my family. And so I’ve had people that have been able to name that and left for industry jobs, and are now in the process of moving abroad with their families, because now their jobs and the flexibilities have allowed them to, for the first time in their lives, actually have the possibility of moving to Portugal, for instance, be a real thing that they can not just express wanting, but actually go out and get. And so there isn’t one typical story, but truly, it’s about, like, what is this process of self actualization? What is this thing of being self centered in quotes that we’ve often been taught, particularly women, we should not be? And how do we sort of massage the edges of that socialization and get people first, being comfortable being uncomfortable with the focus being on themselves and their desire? And then secondly, equipping them with their competence and the skills that they need to actually go get the stuff they
 
Michael Hingson  43:04
want? Well, so one of the questions that comes to mind is, have you ever said to anyone, nothing wrong with going off and having a second job of socking sales at Trader Joe’s, it’ll take your mind off of stuff. What do you think?
 
Sara Trocchio  43:20
Totally. Yeah. And that’s, that’s something we entertain, right. And I’ve had clients that say, Yeah, I’d like to just use my hands, right? Like I’ve been in such a, you know, myopically intellectual space for so long. I just want to use my hands. So I’ve worked with other clients. Thinking about for instance, launching their own businesses where they do like event and artists retreats, even though they’re they’re trained in the humanities and have been professors, but they want to go become photographers, and then create retreats where other people can go and explore something artistic, that has nothing to do right with what their PhD was in, or what their dissertation focused on, or what their quote unquote area of expertise says that they have on their website. But guess what, it makes them really happy. And that’s great.
 
Michael Hingson  44:08
And that’s great. I, when I’ve worked too hard, I like to cook. And there are parts of cooking that I like or not that I like that I do well and parts that I don’t, but when it’s time to stop doing, whether it’s podcasts or other kinds of things, or preparing to do a speech, I’ll go look at cooking something. And I have the luxury of listening to books a lot, as opposed to reading braille, and I read Braille too, but I love to cook and read at the same time because both of those are different than what I do most of the time. And they take my mind off the other stuff and I when I start to see my mind drifting back to Well, I gotta think about this. I will say, ah, that comes later. And it works. It does.
 
Sara Trocchio  44:57
It does. And that’s the thing like realizing that we can have moving meditation in so much of what we do, right, this notion that you have to be in some, you know, forest in the woods, you know, sitting in silence to have that reset, I think keeps a lot of people from feeling like they can ever get a break. And that is actually one of my favorite things. When I’m not doing yoga, or running or walking my dog, or just being playful with five year olds, I love to turn on an audio book, or an album that I really love and just cook, right. And I think it’s so important that we like normalize those kinds of desires as much as we normalize any intellectual or professional desire to because they’re equally as important.
 
Michael Hingson  45:44
Yeah, we need to recognize that not only don’t we control everything, but we don’t need to control everything. And it is so hard to get people to see that because in our society, we seem to always want to just be forced, or we accept going down the road of well, you just got to control it all on it doesn’t work. Totally. Because control is there, when there are things that we have control over that we sometimes don’t realize, but take, you know all the stuff that’s going on in our political arena right now. So everybody’s mad at Donald Trump, or they’re mad at Joe Biden, or whatever. The issue is, how much of that do you have control over? Well, the answer is you do every four years, or whenever. But once that decision is made, what are you going to be able to do about it? Well, you can write to Congress, or whatever the case happens to be. But still, if we take it personally, we don’t recognize we made our choice as a country at any given time, we now need to recognize it. We don’t have control over it for a while. Let’s step back and observe what goes on. And that’s part of the problem. We don’t tend to do that. One of the things that I advocate a lot is every night before you go to sleep, while you’re lying in bed, even just lay back and think about what happened today. How did it go? What worked? What didn’t work in your mind? Even with what worked and worked? Well? Could I have done it better? And the things that didn’t work? Well? Why didn’t they work? Well, and what can I do about it? I’ve been saying a number of times lately, I’m my own worst critic. So when I listen to a speech that I’ve given, I’m my own worst critic. I’m tougher on me than anybody else. But I realized that’s the wrong thing to say, I’m my own best teacher, go back and listen to the speech, but listen to it, and go, oh, there’s not a learning moment or a teaching moment that didn’t go like it should, I’m not going to beat myself up over it, I am going to do better next time. And here’s what I’m going to do better. And take that time at the end of the day to think about and analyze, it doesn’t take a long time. But invariably, not only does it help me sleep better. But invariably, what it also does is it helps me recognize what all happened. And if I do it consistently, I won’t make the same mistakes, or do the same things in the same way. When they should change too many times before I change it. I my own best teacher.
 
Sara Trocchio  48:28
Yeah, yeah. And that’s that’s a mindset thing, right. But I think many people that I work with, because academic spaces are so hypercritical are just so fundamentally unsure of how to even begin changing that narrative. And it takes a lot of like massaging the edges of that big, old self hating that, that so many of us ended up getting getting sucked in, and believe that if we have not been perfect, then we have completely failed. And in fact, that is not how so much of our lives work. And there are so much there. There are so many lessons and so much actual joy that can come in those messy middle moments too.
 
Michael Hingson  49:16
And that’s again, why I have realized I should not be hypercritical and say I’m my own worst critic. I’m my own best teacher, because it’s a much more positive way of doing the same thing. You’re not changing the whole environment, but you’re changing how you approach it and what you look at. And invariably, there’s no doubt I think anywhere that when you do things in a positive way, it’s going to stick with you more and you’re going to feel more and feel better about it. Then, if it’s always negative, well, I screwed that up and I’ve got to deal with it right? I didn’t screw it up. All right, I need to look at what needs to become better and become more positive. about that.
 
Sara Trocchio  50:02
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
 
Michael Hingson  50:06
So you go through mindset shifts all the time. I mean, you talk today about what you’ve already done, and then you came back here and you’re doing this and then you’re going off to another call, then you go get to deal with a five year old. Lot of minds, mind shifts, how does all that work for you? How do you do that? Yeah, having talked about dealing with your husband and talking about legal things, or anything, yeah, but that’s another story.
 
Sara Trocchio  50:32
Yeah, that’s another story. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s about you know, just staying grounded and feeling like, there is a thread that connects all of this. And so long as the thread that is connecting, all of it is joyful to me ultimately, and is in alignment with who I am and what I value, then I actually see them as much more sort of like, complementary and integrated parts. So, you know, my experience, as a professor deeply informs how I show up as a coach, right? My experience as a coach deeply informs how I show up. As a professor, as a friend, as a researcher, my experience talking to people that I meet on social media, or in other avenues, like yourself, make makes me a richer person. And I bring that richness and depth to the way that I approach my client work or being a professor or writing or showing up in partnership. And so I think of them all sort of as these different branches that emanate from the same route. And I think the problem is that sometimes people have built roots that are either in authentic order rotting, or unstable, and so then all the branches that flow from them are mired in that IK. And as much as we can sort of double down and making sure that the thread or the root of what we’re doing is all connected to who we are. And what we believe in, it makes it so much easier to move with agility, across different dimensions and in different roles.
 
Michael Hingson  52:02
What are some of the tools or resources or exercises or processes that you teach people, or that you could advise people who are listening to this that they could put in place to help with their own mindset shifts, and just adopting a better and more positive mindset in their lives?
 
Sara Trocchio  52:18
One of my favorite things is just what I call the 10 Slash 80 rule, which is literally in a given moment, can you take a quick audit of what you’re doing, how you’re reacting to it, how you’re moving through space, how you’re showing up in a given role? And again, this will connect to everything we’ve been talking about, Michael, but what would your 10 year old self say about it? And what do you think your 80 year old self will say about it? And it’s just really like, take a moment, take a beat, in the midst of all of the stress and all of the sort of like existential questioning that we can sometimes do about three career for me, is this the right thing that I’m doing? Is this the right role? Was a speaking engagement successful? And I’ve really tried to have my clients feel excited about approaching their tasks in their roles with that kind of curiosity, which is, what would my 10 year old self say about what I’m doing right now? Am I honoring that 10 year old self, and am I also on the other side of things, honoring the memory I want to have at this moment when I’m 80 years old. And that has been a really powerful shift for people, and also just making people in vain, also, sort of comfortable with going into their bodies and into their sensory experiences. I’m obviously like, I love my brain and spend a lot of time thinking about my mind, you know, but it’s also important for us to just be in touch with the rest of our bodies and what it feels like to be in a rhythm that honors our whole selfhood. And so sometimes asking those questions, makes people kind of think like, am I actually like, in this continuity of the human experience that I’m having? Am I honoring all the pieces of myself? And if I’m not like, Is my would my 10 year old self say I’m not honoring them, because I’m not being curious enough or playful enough. And what my 80 year old self say that I’m not honoring them, because I’m perhaps straying a little bit from my core values that I know, like, really, really anchor me to this human experience. So that’s one thing I’d share what else? I think, you know, just the idea that it is so deeply important to take space and time to flesh out what we want, and to flesh out how we get there and in the gogogo life, right, like it’s so we’ve normalized to some extent taking an hour every two weeks or so for therapy. But the coaching conversations that I have people just say having someone bearing witness to my humanity and allowing me to spaciously sort of like be in my Self is so deeply liberatory and expansive. So finding those moments finding those times to have the agenda be about increasing the spaciousness with which you are showing up in a given moment of sort of like luxury being like beat taking as a luxury but unnecessary one, being in your desire, sharing what you wish for what you hope, and having people that are lovingly sort of holding you accountable to making sure that you are living according to those things that you consistently say, are important and necessary for your life, not just your career, but your life and your humanity.
 
Michael Hingson  55:39
So you have been coaching and you formed the square peg club. Where did where did you come up with that name, and is that the organization that you created for your your coaching career?
 
Sara Trocchio  55:54
It is yes. And, and I came up with a square peg club, because I want people to feel like they have, like I said, the space, the safety, the nurturing and the play, to find this the shape that suits them best right to not keep feeling like they have to J, you know, this square peg into a round hole, because that’s what they’ve been told they need to just push on and be a professor, you’ve got this golden ticket of becoming a professor. So you better sit down and put your head down and be grateful. We’re in fact, if we can just say maybe you need a different container. However, broadly, we wanted to find that. And that’s okay. And that’s the ethos of the square peg club. That’s why I named it what it is, and then called it a club because of playfulness, right? Because I want people to feel like this is not some always Uber serious venture, that even figuring out who we are, and what we need can be fun and should be playful and inherently collaborative.
 
Michael Hingson  56:57
So one of these days, you’ll have to get all your plans together and have a party somewhere.
 
Sara Trocchio  57:01
Absolutely, I am totally there for that. I’ll invite you to you can come and bring a dog or two or three that Delight me
 
Michael Hingson  57:07
always glad to do that. And my dog will go anywhere and take the harness off, and he will be around the room in New York seconds. Awesome. I
 
Sara Trocchio  57:17
love it. Mind you.
 
Michael Hingson  57:18
He’s he’s quite the cutie. Oh, I
 
Sara Trocchio  57:22
love it.
 
Michael Hingson  57:23
You know, the the whole idea, though, is absolutely fascinating. One of the things that you said just a little while ago, it’s still my favorite thing is curiosity. I think we are just never curious enough. And, you know, I will go to museums, and I’ll go even into stores, and I’ll start touching people or touching things. Now people don’t want to do that, that gets dangerous, but touching things. And and people Why are you doing that? I’m looking at it. You know? Why don’t we do more to be more curious and to allow curiosity. And it’s such a frustrating thing. Because we don’t encourage it when people ask me about the internet. And on I hear people talking about the internet or now we got things like chat GPT and other things. And people are talking about the bad parts about it. And there are bad parts about it. There are bad ways that it’s misused. But it’s all part of such a treasure trove that we’re creating an expanding that can help us in so many ways. One of the things that I do is I work for accessiBe, which is a company that makes products to help make the internet website world more accessible and inclusive for people with disabilities. And some people really knock the artificial intelligence part of what accessiBE does. And my response is, you’re showing your lack of vision, because that AI is something that will grow over time. And in the internet, in general, is such a treasure trove, if we choose to use it that way. Mm
 
Sara Trocchio  58:54
hmm. I love that. I agree. Right? Curiosity play all the things.
 
Michael Hingson  58:58
It is it is it is all the same. What’s some of the best advice you’ve ever received about mindsets? And just in general? Oh,
 
Sara Trocchio  59:08
that is just so it’s such a good big question. I know, have fun, like don’t forget to have fun. You know, this notion that we think we have more control than we do has actually been really, really helpful to me and present, you know, present centering my life and the experiences that I have, whether they be professional or not. And you know, another piece that I’ve received that I think is really helpful is you know, give yourself permission to get rid of a five year plan. Give yourself permission to just see and to know that inherently human beings are afraid of risk like we are psychologically wired to be afraid of risk. But risk taking is part of one of the things that connects me to my humanity in the boldest ways and you know risk taking is actually part of a well lived life, not completely reckless risk taking. But intentional, enthusiastic, necessarily knowing what’s on the other side risk taking is one of the richest ways we can engage with the world.
 
Michael Hingson  1:00:17
Do you think we’re psychologically wired to be risk averse? Or is it a learned behavior?
 
Sara Trocchio  1:00:23
I think it’s both. But I think we have a lot of evidence showing that we are actually psychologically averse to it, because of our evolution and not wanting to run the runway and find ourselves in the mouth of a cheetah. But I think some of it as well in connection to what we were sharing earlier about, just the way that we are especially focused on, you know, goal, achieving, and having a plan and sticking to it has certainly created learned behaviors that have, I think, exacerbated that instinctive response,
 
Michael Hingson  1:00:54
I think about my parents who were in the political world, and well, in the political world, conservative, and in the educational world, not as well educated as some, my mother was a high school graduate, my father graduated eighth grade. And we’re both pretty much self taught after that. But they were told when I was born, that I should just be sent off to a home because no blind child could ever grow up to amount to anything. And my parents said, You’re wrong, he can grow up to be whatever he wants. And they took risks by any standard that you would be, they let me explore my neighborhoods, they let me ride a bike. And they didn’t prevent that stuff. And I think all too often, people don’t do that, and won’t do that. They don’t allow kids, especially blind kids, or kids with disabilities to explore as much as they can, especially in the case of blind kids who can move about, but need to have that ability and need to create the ability to explore and then have the opportunity to do it, to learn the world. And I realized that today, we’re in a much scarier world where there’s so many predators out there, but still, we’ve got to give people the opportunity to grow.
 
Sara Trocchio  1:02:08
Absolutely, I mean, grow through play, and failures, replay.
 
Michael Hingson  1:02:11
And, and learning experiences. Yeah. What’s the best advice contrasting to what you’ve received? What’s the best advice you’ve ever given? Do you think to people?
 
Sara Trocchio  1:02:21
Or would it be the same? I think it would be the same. And just don’t be afraid to take up space. Don’t be afraid to take up space. You have written books. I have a co
 
Sara Trocchio  1:02:36
edited book. Yes. That’s coming out on academic motherhood and virtual communities. Yeah. That’s contributed to other books. Yeah.
 
Michael Hingson  1:02:44
Yeah. That’s great. Well, we, we certainly hope that that is very successful. And when will it be coming out?
 
Sara Trocchio  1:02:52
It will be coming out in July. It’s being published by Palgrave Macmillan. And it’s called it takes a village
 
Sara Trocchio  1:02:58
as it does. Absolutely. And that’s the way that’d be good to have a village. Yes, absolutely.
 
Michael Hingson  1:03:08
Well, Sarah, this has absolutely been enjoyable. And I don’t know whether you have watched clocks. I just looked at the clock. Now, our in two minutes, so we’ve been having fun. So I want to, I want to thank you, again, for being here. And I want to thank you for listening to us today. If people want to reach out to you, how do they do that?
 
Sara Trocchio  1:03:28
They can find me on Twitter at S B T R O C C H I O, they can find me on LinkedIn, they can also find the Square Peg Club on Facebook, as well as on LinkedIn. And I have a public coaching profile on practice, P R A C T I C E.do. You can look me up there, and my new website is coming out imminently. So be on the Be on the lookout for that.
 
Michael Hingson  1:03:51
Well, we need to talk to you to make sure that the website when it comes out is accessible. And I would love to help with that.
 
Sara Trocchio  1:03:56
Absolutely. Thank you. I would love that. I will send you a draft of it as soon as I get it back from my developer. Absolutely. Cool.
 
Michael Hingson  1:04:04
Well, thank you again. And again. Thank you all for listening. We really appreciate your time with us today. And if you would, we would appreciate a five star rating wherever you’re listening to this podcast. I’d love to hear your thoughts about it as well as and Sarah, this includes you if you know of anyone else who you think ought to be on this podcast, unstoppable mindset. I’d love to hear from any of you about that. You can reach me by going to our podcast page, which is Michael hingson H i n g s o n.com/podcast. Or email me at Michaelhi at accessibe A C C E S S I B E.com. So please give us a five star rating we value that but we want your thoughts and your comments and I know Sarah would love to hear from you. And once again, Sarah, I want to really thank you for the time that you spent with us today. I think it’s been fun. And I learned a lot and I appreciate I’m always learning when I can.
 
Sara Trocchio  1:05:02
Thank you so much, Michael. It was so wonderful. Thank you for the invite you have a wonderful weekend
 
Michael Hingson  1:05:11
You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you’ll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you’re on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you’re there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.