The Liz Moody Podcast - Answering Your Qs: Politics, My Morning Routine, Podcast Secrets, & More

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

It’s Q&A time! You all submitted questions and your favorite guest, my husband Zack, is joining us to play host for this interview. You wanted to know everything from how I started my podcast (and any industry insider secrets), to the morning routine changes that have changed my life, how to stay sane in the current political climate, where I do (and don’t) spend my money, and more.  If you like this episode, check out I Did an 8 Day Meditation Retreat to Rewire My Brain for Joy – Here Are My Biggest Takeaways. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome.  This episode is sponsored by: AG1: visit drinkag1.com/lizmoody and get your FREE year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travel packs today. Puori: go to puori.com/LIZMOODY and use promo code LIZMOODY for 20% sitewide. Goodles: available nationwide at major grocery stores, Target, and Walmart or visit www.goodles.com. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 306. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast, where every week we are sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I'm your host, Liz Moody, and I am a best-selling author and longtime journalist. Today I'm going to be answering questions that you sent in on Instagram. You sent in hundreds of questions. We are obviously not going to be able to get to that many, but we're going to get to as many as we possibly can. I snuck a peek at these.

They are juicy, but I left final selection up to our question asker today, who is my husband, Zach, you guys probably recognize him from all of the previous podcast episodes that he has been on. But I'm so grateful that you're here today. And I'm very happy to be here. All right, you want to get right into it? Get right into it. Yeah. So in general, I mean, I don't think I need to give you too much background. It's really interesting to see what people are interested in in your life. A lot of it, you know, there's a number of things about business and about how you operate the business and how what the kind of financial and kind of businessy side of like running a podcast is. Okay. Interesting. Juicy.

So, yeah. The first step you took to start your business is how I want to kind of start today off. I started my business while I still had a full-time job, which I actually do recommend unless you are independently wealthy because it takes a lot of pressure off of the business itself to pay out and be able to support your life. I've seen a lot of people quit a job to start a business, to go after a dream, and then they feel like they have this ticking clock in the background the entire time that they're going after that dream, and it makes them think more poorly. There's really interesting research that shows that, and I share this all the time, but I think it's a fascinating fact that if we are stressed, the part of our brain that

problem solves, that makes good decisions, that makes creative connections, is literally turned off. So if you have this ticking clock of, oh, I only have two months to make this business work, I only have six months to make this business work, that is going to make you make worse decisions. It's going to make you make less creative connections and that's going to make you less able to problem solve. So if you can avoid getting yourself in that situation, I highly recommend that. And that's what I did. So I worked a full-time job and I was an editor in New York City, which was a writing job. And I wrote my first two cookbooks. I'd actually written my first book before I got that job. And then I wrote my second book while I was working there. So I was like

developing recipes till midnight in our teeny tiny New York City apartment. I remember those times. Well, we use the floor spaces counter space a lot. Like, so you'd come in and there'd be like baking sheets all over the floor. We could have been one square of counterments. I have stepped on a hot baking sheet before and I would not recommend it to anybody. Yeah, zero out of ten. So I wrote that cookbook there.

And then when it came time to go on tour for that cookbook, that's when I took the step to sort of begin to leave that job. And even then, I didn't leave completely. I was an editor at large for that job for a year after I left it full time. So I was still doing quite a bit of work for them and quite a bit of my income still came from that job. And also during that year, that's when I was starting the podcast. I was really trying to like build out that part of my business. And it had been, I want to say about a year.

It was January of 2020, which is some foreshadowing. But you and I sat down and we went through the financials of my. income and we realized that I was spending more than half of my time on my editorial job, but 75% of my income was coming from outside of my editorial job. And that's when I felt comfortable taking the plunge to go full time. So it was a very slow process, it's a very methodical process. It was a very data-driven process. Like it was literally when a financial equation tipped in a certain way that I felt comfortable taking a step to leave. And I'd also booked enough contracts that January that I felt like, okay, if this keeps up for the year, I'm going to be

great. And then, of course, it's like two months later, the whole world shut down and brands completely stopped paying money for a number of months. And it all worked out. And it was those decisions, the, well, I think we have enough runway that actually made your finances kind of like make sense and line up for that period of time, which was really great. A hundred percent. So I would say, I know it's exhausting. I know so many of us are like burnt out right now. And that doesn't feel like the advice you may want to hear. But I highly, highly, highly recommend if you have a dream, if you have a dream you want to go after, a passion, you want to go after a pivot you want to make, as much as you can do that while still within the comfort of your current career, it just makes it

much easier. When I talk to founders of businesses and kind of other people that are jumping off into their next thing, I number of times hear that like people really like the pressure of like, I've cut all ties. I have a runway of however much savings I set aside for this. I need to motivate myself. How would you handle that motivation for somebody who's having to basically do two jobs at once or can be caught up in one thing and pulled away from whatever this passion project actually is? Two things. I would say one, like research just again is so strongly shows that stress shuts off the exact parts of your brain that you need to make this thing work. So you might think your stress that's motivating you and I think it's a really common fallacy that we all

believe, like that our stress is motivating us, but actually our stress is working against us. And whatever we are able to accomplish when we are stressed, we would probably be able to accomplish 10 times better if we were doing it when we are not stressed. So we give stress a lot of credit for stuff that is our own doing and that we would do better without the stress. The second thing that I would say is if you cannot find intrinsic motivation for whatever you're going after, that's probably a sign that either you shouldn't be going after the thing or maybe entrepreneur life isn't going to be for you. Entrepreneur life requires a lot of intrinsic motivation.

And I think we pedestalize entrepreneurial life. And there's a lot of benefits to it. You can make your own schedule for many entrepreneurial jobs. If you are the person who owns the company, if the company does really well, there's going to be a lot of financial upside for you. But I also think that there's a lot of benefits to working for a company that is not your own.

There's also a lot of benefits depending on your value. to not having your job be your passion. And so if that intrinsic motivation isn't coming, if you need some sort of external motivation, I think that might be a good sign that maybe you should reconsider that path. That's a good point. I think that a number of people could hear that in the entrepreneurial space and be like, oh, good unlock. What does your team look like?

You have co-workers. I have other people in your life. It's not just you in a box making podcasts. True or false. We have two full-time team members. We have somebody who's more on the operation side, and then we have somebody who is producing the podcast and helping with the social content around the podcast and things like that.

You help out with a lot of the stuff with the team, a lot of the tech stuff and a lot of the strategy stuff. And then we have a number of freelancers who, like, edit the podcast and do our video edits and stuff like that. And then I have a manager who books all of my branded content. And so she'll either bring brands to me and be like, hey, Liz, do you want to work with these people? Which I always feel bad because the answer is usually no.

And then I'll not only say no, I'll kind of say why she shouldn't have her other clients, like work with the brand too. That's good feedback. I'm not going to tell them that. Or like, this company is shady for this reason or this company is like false promoting something for whatever. I just do a deep dive into them. We don't like greenwashing here.

And she's like, thanks, Liz. Or I'll send her companies, which is far my preferred way of working with brands that I'm already using in my life and then she'll do outreach to them. This one's fun. How's Zach? I feel like I haven't seen him in a while. Here he is. How are you? How are you in?

Great. How am I doing? I'm doing okay. I think, as everybody else knows, like, we lost, like, our really amazing, wonderful family member slash kitten a couple months ago. now, which is wild that it's already been a couple months, but like it hurts an incredibly large amount. And I think it caught me off guard. How bad it hurt? How what? How bad it hurt caught you off guard? How bad it hurt caught me off guard. Yeah, the act, like the action, like losing her was also incredibly surprising. Yeah. But yeah, no, it caught me off guard how much

pain and grief there is in that space. So that's been like an interesting exploration. Have you found any positives in that. Positives and grief. And experiencing different parts of your psychology and physiology in this way. Hmm. Yeah. It's funny because in some ways it lines up with like a really interesting other thing I've been doing in my life, which is aligning emotions into meditation more.

Like we did that genre retreat. Which I have a whole episode on. If you would like to listen to that episode, I can link it in the show notes. They're fantastic. But it's been a practice I've been keeping going. At first it was like really difficult to meditate and try to meditate on like concepts of joy and happiness when this like really awful grieving thing happened. And I was just finding myself like crying while meditating and crying like just being totally like distraught. The second I tried to like turn on any emotion or amplify any emotion.

It took time. But now I feel like I have maybe more capacity to feel the like joy and appreciation I had with her than I maybe would have without that. kind of framework and methodology of thinking and practice? I'm not there. I know. Oh, I know. My meditation practice was going so well after a retreat. And then Bella died.

And I just bawl every time I meditate. Because if you didn't listen to that episode, basically the style of meditation is you meditate on things that elicit strong positive emotions. So my object of meditation had been her. Whoops. And my relationship with her and seeing her sit in the sun. and smile and just like enjoy her life. And yeah, so I just cry uncontrollably. And so I feel like I fully lost my practice, which is a goal to get back, certainly. Also, I owe everybody listening

a podcast on grief. I've said several times that I'm going to do one. I did a ton of research on grief because that's in part how I process things. I've read a bunch of books. I've listened to a bunch of podcasts. I highly recommend Anderson Cooper's podcast all there is if you are experiencing grief. I'm not trying to hold out. I just don't feel like I'm through it in a way where I can help people. I cry every day about her. And I feel like if I do a podcast about it, I will sit there and cry for 30 minutes. Which could be cathartic in its own way. Which could be cathartic. So all I can say about grief right now is that if you're there, I'm there with you. And if you feel pressured to get over it, there's no timeline for that.

and there is no over it. There's no conclusion, I think we're trying to reach. And someday, hopefully, in the not-so-distant future, I will do a podcast about what I've learned about grief. I can confirm that there are a million books in our shared Kindle library about grief right now. Is there, like, one thing that has maybe not, like, felt like, but, like, looked like the most awesome takeaway, something you could share offhand?

It's just that so many people have gotten through it and survived. It is the most universal human experience to love is to sign up for grief. You are either leaving the people and the creatures you love or they are leaving you at some point. And that is the human experience. And so one, knowing that it's so universal, even though it's so weirdly taboo and we don't talk about it, I can walk down the street and look at people and be like, you've probably experienced grief, you've probably experienced grief, you've probably experienced grief. And that gives me a sense of shared humanity.

and then the other thing that has helped the most is the idea that I'm on this planet to experience my full range of humanness as much as possible. And grief is part of that, especially because it is so interlinked with love. Because we have such strong love, we have such strong grief. And I'm here to have all of the strong emotions and experiences that I can. So that's beautiful. Yeah, I still don't. I still want her back.

Yeah. But that's beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Okay. So speaking of how to get yourself out of bed in the morning after something, how to become a morning person for good. Permanent morning person status. I thought you meant as opposed to for evil.

You know, you're out doing. Yeah. Yeah. There's enough morning people for evil out there. Like, okay, so I'm not a morning person, as you might be aware. I'm not inherently a morning person. My circadian rhythm skews later. I tend to be more of a night owl.

However, I have recently in my life been converted to somewhat of a morning world, and I want to be really clear. Morning person for me with my circadian rhythm and my schedule, I wake up at like 7.38. I'm not a 5 a.m. girl. There's a range. There's a range. And I think that's okay. And I think there's a lot of prestige or like applause around like, oh, I woke up at 5 a.m. It's like if you don't, if that's not your vibe, your schedule,

your schedule doesn't require that. Like, cool, don't do that. I wake up at 730 or 8, which is embarrassingly earlier than I used to. But the thing that persuaded me to start having a morning routine and to start waking up in the morning is the idea that you get to take time for you before you give your time to everybody else. If somebody had explained morning routine, like that to me 10 years ago, I would have been like, oh, okay, that is why we're doing this. Now I am on board. It is you get to take time to feel the way that you want to feel to give to yourself before you're going to work and giving to the world, to your boss, to your coworkers, to your email inbox, et cetera. And so I think however long you need to do to have that time

and whatever time you need to wake up to have that time is great. Like, again, it doesn't need to be 5 a.m. It doesn't need to be this incredibly long morning routine. But I think for me, how do you become a morning person for good is realizing why you want to be a morning person. For me, when I give to myself first, I show up the entire day in a completely different way. On days where I don't have a morning routine or where I kind of like lay in bed and rot, by God forbid, reach for my phone in the morning, my mood for the entire day is worse. I am more anxious. I am more distracted. I am less productive. I am less happy. I'm less energetic. I feel worse all day long on days where my phone is plugged in a different room and I roll out of bed whenever I wake up. I don't wake up with an alarm.

I wake up at like 7.30 or 8 o'clock every day. The things that I like to do are one cirque walk. I like to go outside before I look at my phone screen. So I pee and then I brush my teeth, which is the very first thing I do. I chug a glass of water and I go outside and do a 10 to 15 minute circwalk. I'm wearing my circwalk sweatshirt I'm representing right now. Noted. And I do that before I look at my phone screen. If I just do that, that changes the entire course of my day. If I can, I like to do my workout in the morning and I've been doing a sauna session at the gym and I only do 20 minutes. 20 minutes has been shown to have most of the benefits kind of tip at 20 minutes for a sauna. So I do like a 30 minute weight training workout or I do one of the re-hit cardio workouts that we talk about

in our New Year's workout plan. And then I do a 20-minute sauna and in the sauna, I have it stacked that and I'll read a business book. I'll read a book that's going to help me in my business in some way. So I'm already turning on my brain to think in that way. And when I'm doing my workout, I'm tending to listen to like a motivational podcast, something that's getting me excited for the day towards the end of the day is when I listen to more of like my girly pop fun episodes that I'm not learning anything from. But I'm kind of trying to keep the stuff I'm doing in my morning. The content is around the way that I want to feel that day and setting me up to turn on my leader brain, my business brain, my strategy brain. So I'm reading a business book in the sauna

and then I come home and I shower and I start my day and I'm usually sitting at my computer starting my work at like 9.30. I do breakfast before I go to the gym too and I just heat up some meal prep for that. Yeah, it doesn't take much. I think figuring out what are the few things that make you feel the way that you want to feel for your day? What are the few things if you were going to say, I'm going to get back to me. I'm going to set myself up to feel the way that. I want to feel, how can I create enough time in my morning to have those things? For me, understanding that why and understanding the things that tipped for me that actually changed the next 10 hours of my day in a significant way was really motivating. When it comes to wellness,

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I love that. On the back of that, would any of those be the habit that made the biggest change in your life for you? Because that's another question. Honestly, yes. Yes, because when I don't have a morning routine, I feel like crap all day. And you've seen this. You've seen this recently because even though I'm trying to do all this stuff and I tend

to be pretty good, I still have off days. I've had days recently where I had a dream about Bella. I woke up. I was crying in the morning. I was like, life sucks. I reached for my phone. I started scrolling in bed. And I was depressed all day long.

I felt so different. And when I'm in those states, often I'm like, my whole life needs to change. I need to make these big shifts when actually doing the little things that make your brain feel different can be more important than doing these big shifts. I'm not saying these big shifts don't matter. put your brain in the best possible position to know if you need to make these big shifts. So for me, I have had days very recently where I've started with no morning routine and I felt depressed and anxious and did not accomplish anything all day. And I've had days like today where I did my morning routine and I've gotten so much done.

I felt so much better. And it's really helped me live the life that I want to live. We have another question, though, that says, what do you do after bad night's sleep and how do you not let that ruin your day? People are really interested in the circadian kind of like moment. I've had many bad night's sleep. The number, number, number one thing for me is to remind myself of all of the past days that I've had where I didn't sleep well and I had a great day anyway. So like I went on the Today Show and the night before the Today Show, I got like four hours asleep. I was on California time and I'd flown to New York the day before and my makeup

artist shut up like two hours late, which was really stressful. Terrifying. It was terrifying because I was sitting there and I was like, am I capable of doing my own hair and makeup to go on the Today Show? And you have quite an early call time. So I'm up there. Like I'm like 6 a.m. waiting for my makeup artist and like frantically calling them. Anyways, I did not sleep well the night before because I was so anxious about Today Show. I was on the wrong times and whatever. And I went on the Today Show and I crushed it. And I felt great. And then I had a really fun rest of my day because I was like hanging out with friends and celebrating. Similarly, the last time I went to Disneyland, I, didn't sleep very well the night before I went because I was so excited about going to Disneyland because I love Disneyland so much. So I was like, oh, I'm up at like 3 a.m. And I'm like, oh, I'm ruining this thing that I'm so excited about because I can't sleep because I'm so excited. But then I went to Disneyland and I had a really great day. And it did not matter that I didn't sleep. Our bodies are so much more resilient than we think. And I think looking for proof points in your past to that resilience. And if you don't have them, then say tomorrow's

going to be my proof point for my resilience. When you're up at three or four in the morning, tomorrow, that's your chance to prove that resilience to yourself. And then you can put that in your little proof point pocket and you can pull it out later when you need it. My proof point pocket is chock full of a little fun experience like that. Yeah. And I think that, yeah, I just think we're much more resilient than we think. And that's been the single thing that's helped me the most is because, interestingly, it will actually help you sleep better. The thing that is usually keeping us up is stress. And so if you can take the stress of I need to sleep so that I can have X type of day tomorrow. If you say to yourself, I have proof I can have

X type of day tomorrow no matter what, you're going to alleviate a lot of that stress and you're more likely to sleep. I think that's great. I'm going to do a bit of a subject change here. Yeah. People want to know what you spend the majority of your money on. We have suggestions like health, your business, travel, sleep. You can jump in here as somebody who's very in our finances. I would say probably health, but specifically food. I spend quite a bit of money on food because I have a meal prep person. I love her. Shout out, Rachel.

I send her recipes every week. And then she goes grocery shopping for those recipes and makes those recipes and delivers them in little glass containers that we put in our fridge and our freezer. And that's the vast, fast, fast, vast majority of what we eat. So I'm paying her for her time. And then I also tend to pay for pretty high quality groceries. It's something that I remember when it, tipped in our life. It was when we were, I was shopping the grocery store and I had the thought,

like, I have enough money that I can buy olipop without thinking about it. And it was a really your olipop budget is like something we really need to talk about. And it was, it was a, it was a, it was a really big moment in my life. It felt very significant to me because before that I had been hemming and hawing about buying luxury kind of groceries like that. And it felt like a tipping point. And also like not that long before that, I'd be like excited when my parents would come to town and they would take me grocery shopping. And now I pay for groceries when my parents come to town or I take them out to dinner and things like that. And that feels really, really good. And that definitely made me feel proud of what I've accomplished in my life. So I've given myself

sort of carte blanche at this point to buy the quality of groceries that I would like. And I spend quite a bit of money there plus our meal prep person, Rachel. We pay for a house cleaner to come once a week. That's also a splurge, but one that I think is really worth it. If you're a long time listener of the pod, you know that I'm really messy and Zach is less messy. And this has been a couples therapy tool as much as anything else. Yes. And then probably travel. I love experiences. I love adventures. I also love really nice hotels. I love treating family members to experiences and adventures and creating memories with the people that I love. And so travel has probably been a big expense. Are there any that I'm missing? I don't spend money on clothes.

As you might notice, if you're watching this on video, I basically wear my Liz Moody merch sweatshirts every day. Which I feel that this is why you made the merch. Not why I made the merch. I love the idea of having a uniform. Like I want to look good, but I don't need to look different. I just want to look good. You know what I mean. So I don't spend money on clothes.

Well, you know what's interesting is I think there's a theme in the things you do spend money on. And I think there's like a philosophy behind how you spend money. Tell me my money philosophy. Right. It's time. I think understanding that time. is one of our most valuable resources, the support in cleaning and support in food and meal prep, those are such like strong, acute ways of reclaiming and using some personal capital to open up more

time in your life to do the things that are important to you, be that work more or other things. And time is like to that same end, I recognize particularly with family, time is a really precious resource that we're not going to have an infinite amount of in the future. And so I do think that's why taking my family on trips and stuff has become more important to me. That was... You were like, I was going to say that. I was going to say that. But it's better coming from you, I suppose.

Speaking of time, people wonder how to get through this, their words, political nightmare, without losing my sanity. This administration has explicitly said that one of their tactics is essentially shock and awe. They're trying to do so much at once that nobody can kind of focus and nobody can push back against the various things that they're doing. So if you feel overwhelmed by the current political climate, it is intentional. It is because this administration is trying to overwhelm you. And so the best thing that you can do is not let that happen. Don't be a victim to the news cycle. I think too many of us are scrolling on social media.

we're letting the content that we consume find us. We're letting it choose us. Instead of curating an algorithm that shows us the type of content that we're interested in. So like if you stop and watch every political video that comes across your feed, you are going to be served every single political video. I stopped and watched every plane crash video. And now I get literally every plane crash video because my algorithm's like, oh, you're interested in this.

You can mark not interested. You can hit the three buttons on the top right. Do not show me content like this. I'm not saying you should put your head in the sand. I'm saying that you need to choose when you are consuming the news content that you are consuming and you need to choose how you are consuming it because otherwise it's going to mess with your emotions in a way that make you far less capable of taking action. You want to be in a state where you have gotten your information and any actions that you

want to take. You have the resources, the reserve, the mental health to take that action. and so many of us are just being firehosed with information right now. And then we're sitting back, we're rocking back and forth, and we're completely paralyzed and unable to take the actions that we need to take. So number one, literally, I strongly encourage people to unfollow any political content and any news content and say, do not show me this. And then make a list of good sources for this information and seek it out when you want that

information. I particularly think that long-form information is going to be far more your friend. I think podcasts are generally going to be a lot less sensationalistic, a lot less designed to elicit fear and strong reactions. Think longer-form articles, longer-form information. You're still getting the information, but you're choosing when you get it and you're not being riled up by it. There's also a ton of good substacks. And then two, I would say to broaden your news sources to get international opinions to get thought through opinions that differ from your own. So many of us are just hearing our own thoughts reiterated to us louder and louder or hearing perspectives that are the exact opposite design to infuriate us when I think thoughtful informed information from all

different facets of the world can be really helpful. And three, I would say, engaging in your local community as much as possible. I think that the national, political are so important. State politics are so important, but the things that are impacting many of our day-to-day lives are often happening at a local level and we have more agency often at a local level. Four, remember that it's a marathon, not a sprint, and also taking care of your mental health is not a cop out. It doesn't make you a worse citizen. It actually makes you a better citizen because, remember, when we are stressed, we cannot come up with creative solutions, we cannot problem solve. It literally turns off those parts of our brain. So staying in a constant

of stress is not making you more able to make the change that you want to see. And then five, lastly, I would say pick a few key issues. Again, the strategy of this administration is to firehose us with so much going on that we feel overwhelmed and don't do anything. So I think picking a few key issues for me, the environment is a top, top, top issue. So I'm following what's going on with the environment. I'm following legislation. I'm donating to organizations that are helping with the environment, that are helping

with environmental voters. That is a really, really core issue for me. Your core issues are not going to be the same as mine, but picking the things that really matter to you and following those and making change in those is also going to be really helpful, I think. And that's certainly something that I've been doing. I love all of those, but especially at the last point, like, we can't be everywhere all at once, but if the things that are most important to you, try to be there, you know, and have that be your greatest good in that. It's really lovely. I think we have time for a few rapid fire questions, and then we're all set. All right?

Yes. Rapid fire question one. People want to know, do podcasters pay people to be on their podcast? Would you pay a guest to be here today? No. Am I getting paid? No, you're not getting paid for this. And I probably wouldn't pay you anyway.

All right. But no, podcasters do not pay guests, and they may pay for travel, but they do not pay guests to be on the show. what does happen more often than I would like is that guests pay podcasters to be on shows. Drama. And I think you can sometimes tell shows that are doing this because you're kind of like, well, why is that got us on there? It's often because they've paid, especially if they're brand founder and they're trying to promote their business. We have a pretty hard, fast rule.

We briefly dabbled essentially in taking money from guests because it's so commonly done. It's so commonly done in the podcast world that guests pay to be on. on shows. We experimented with it, I want to say once or twice, definitely once, maybe twice. And my philosophy was like, everybody else seems to be doing this. And if I do a really good episode that provides value to my audience and it's somebody that I would enjoy having on anyways, then I'm okay taking the money for it. And I disclose it to the audience, which does not happen in 99% of these cases. I am, I am disappointed with how often I'm like, oh, wow, they have that cool guest on. And they're like, yeah, that's that there. No, it's wild.

once you can tell the guests that are paying to be on and like that it's not disclosed. It's just insane to me. Just disclose. I'll still listen. I realize that it really started to mess with my ethics as a journalist because not trusting the source is like a huge part of trusting the information that you're getting. And so if you can't trust the source, whether the source is paid or not paid, like you can't trust that the source would be there without paying this money for it.

Then how can you trust that the information? is unbiased in what you need to hear. So I put a full cabosh on doing paid guests. I want to say like two years ago. And I'm really, really, really happy with the decision. I've left a lot of money on the table doing that. And I will still have on people who have brands if I would have that person on anyway. A lot of people in the public sphere have brands. That's just kind of like the way of the world, the way of capitalism these days. A lot of people doing really great work who have really great information have brands. Tim Specter is the, the co-founder, he's chief science office, something like that for Zoe Nutrition.

Shannon Richter, who I had on recently, is the founder of Evela Fitness. Neither of those people paid to be on the show. And my rule with them is that I had to want to have them on completely outside of their brand. And I basically also, like, not allowed to talk about their brand. Like, they can talk about it in a normal way, but, like, you are here to serve the audience and to answer my questions with all of your great information. And I may work with those companies in the future because it tends to be that I would like a founder that would create a brand who's like the type of founder who'd be on the show.

Like I love Zoe Nutrition and I love Eflow Fitness. I think they're both incredible brands. I may work with them for brand partnerships in the future, but the content of the show is never going to be sponsored. And somebody who is on the show will never be paying to be on the show because I believe that compromises the trust of the audience and the information that I'm sharing. And that's hugely, hugely, hugely important to me. That's really great. That was not a quick fire answer. Not remotely rapid. Okay. Then time for one more in the same vein. Yeah. How do you see the podcast evolving and maybe

your brand in general evolving moving forward over this new year? So we've been doing the solo Monday episodes, which I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on. Like are we liking these of I like a really quick little short episode. And I also like my chance to kind of share my own thoughts and also to distill all this information that we're getting on the podcast and kind of focus, focus it into specific pain points, problems, et cetera, that we're trying to solve. So I'd love to know your guys' thoughts. Are we liking the Monday episodes? Like, what's the vibe? If so, we'll keep them. I've been really enjoying doing them. And I don't feel bad or ashamed to say that I would like to be the number one health podcast in the world. And I would like to be one

of the top podcasts in the world period. I am so proud of the content that we share. I am so proud of the people whose lives we've been able to change. I'm also acutely aware of the same and very specific perspective voices have occupied a lot of those top spots for years and years and years. And I'm ambitious and I like that about myself. And so my dream for this podcast is for it to continue to grow and grow and grow and grow and to be able to do even better production, to get even better guests, to get all the things that like come along with that growth and to change more lives. Like my favorite, favorite, favorite part of my job is when people message me or come up to me on the street and tell me that their life changed because of something that was shared on the podcast

or on my Instagram. And to be able to do that even more is just like my biggest stream. So yeah, that's my goal. And every single time, like I know I say this all the time, but every single time any of you share the podcast. You send a link to a friend, a family member, put it on your company's Slack channel. Like that is the thing or write a review that hugely, hugely helps. Share it on your Instagram stories. Like these are the things. These are the reasons the podcast has been able to grow in the way that it has. It's all because of you guys. And I'm so,

so appreciative of it. So I get all these DMs all the time from people are like, I shared it with six friends this week. And I just in like, thank you. That makes all the difference in the world. We love. All right. That's really sweet. Let's what's in there. Okay. Thanks. Thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me. Make sure that you're following the Liz Moody podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or on YouTube. So episodes show up right in your feed and you never have to go like search for the podcast anywhere or you miss out on an episode that could have made you healthier or happier. And you can now watch full video episodes on YouTube and on Spotify too for everybody watching.

Hello, it has been so lovely to hang out with you. And remember to head over to lizmoody.substack.com to sign up for our new. newsletter, the takeaway. You're going to get key action steps for each episode, plus tons of bonus content that you will not find anywhere else. You'd also come hang out on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody. I ask for questions for these types of episodes in my stories. So if you're following over there, you can submit a question for the next Q&A episode. Okay, I love you, and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.

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