Leaders and Their Stories

Richard Lowe: Hello!

Michelle A. Hardwick: Hi.

Richard Lowe: How you doing.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Can you? I'm good. Can you see me.

Richard Lowe: You're all. Oh, I see you now.

Michelle A. Hardwick: There we go! There we go!

Richard Lowe: There you are. Hello! Hello! Hello!

Michelle A. Hardwick: Hey, Richard, how are you today.

Richard Lowe: I'm doing well, how are things over in? I guess you're in the Uk.

Michelle A. Hardwick: No, I'm in Ireland.

Richard Lowe: And Ireland.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, it's as you would expect, wet, miserable.

Michelle A. Hardwick: We've had a couple of days of sunshine and promise of weather, nice weather next week, but.

Richard Lowe: I see, I see.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Knows

Michelle A. Hardwick: well, at least, at least you only have the entertainment that's going on in politics right now in the Us. From a distance.

Richard Lowe: But we're not. We're not gonna get into that. But.

Michelle A. Hardwick: No, no, good Lord, yeah, it it seems to be.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Remember the show.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Get into that yet.

Richard Lowe: Remember the Shel Montes flying, flying circus.

Michelle A. Hardwick: No, no, I don't. No, but I know the muppets.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, Monty, Monty Python, Monty Python's flying.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Monty? Python. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Lowe: Reminds me of that.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Crazy. Crazy. Crazy.

Richard Lowe: Yeah. Their their jokes had no punchline. So I'm sitting here. Keep waiting for the punchline, and there's no punch line coming.

Michelle A. Hardwick: No, no, it is reality, nothing.

Richard Lowe: I can do about it. So I don't even I don't even watch the news anymore, because who cares.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Actually, you know, I think that's a really good strategy, because otherwise you'd get either totally depressed or so frustrated. You would explode.

Richard Lowe: I'll go bonkers, bonkers.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: And I got enough things that are gonna make me go bonkers.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yes.

Richard Lowe: You know, like the subject we're supposed to talk about today. No, I'm kidding.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Indeed. Indeed. Yeah, yeah.

Richard Lowe: Yes.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: So you're here for the the podcast.

Michelle A. Hardwick: I am indeed. Yeah, little nervous. I have to say, that's okay.

Richard Lowe: Hey? I'm gonna beat you up pretty bad, so don't worry about it.

Michelle A. Hardwick: They'll be.

Richard Lowe: Find it's a conversation. Think of it as a conversation.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Richard Lowe: Conversation among friends. Only a million friends.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Richard Lowe: I wish.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, that'd be lovely if that happens. But oh, when that happens, let's put it like that.

Richard Lowe: Yeah, yeah, don't have that many subscribers yet, but there it will grow, it will. And why not?

Richard Lowe: Because I haven't quite figured that out yet.

Richard Lowe: But I have 36. I have 36 podcasts, all out on Youtube now

Richard Lowe: and on my site,

Richard Lowe: decided to stop upgrading my site. Because, I'm not getting any traffic there on the podcast I'm just going to do Youtube. Now.

Richard Lowe: good idea, focus on getting the traffic there.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Good idea.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: And I need to. I need to actually give the link out to everybody. That's some doing that today, hopefully. So everybody gets the link to their thing.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Oh, that'd be good!

Richard Lowe: Yeah, it looks well, that's been sending them out, willy nilly. But I'm gonna just send out all of them.

Richard Lowe: Give people a postage, you know, stuff like that.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Michelle A. Hardwick: That's good. Yeah. It's a big learning curve, isn't it, Richard?

Richard Lowe: Yes.

Michelle A. Hardwick: T.

Richard Lowe: Just fired my marketing company, but

Michelle A. Hardwick: Oh, God!

Richard Lowe: It was a good parting. We we parted as friends.

Richard Lowe: We're having a final meeting right after this one. So we got a hard stop.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Okay.

Richard Lowe: But it should be fine, but

Richard Lowe: just picking up the pieces. This is the 5th one I've gone through in less than a year. It's very frustrating. This is the last one I'm doing. I'm not doing this anymore.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Right? Right?

Michelle A. Hardwick: Okay.

Richard Lowe: I I've learned enough where I could do better with 2 arms tied behind my back and a blindfold than any of these companies.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Good grief.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Michelle A. Hardwick: That's disappointing. That really is.

Richard Lowe: Very, very.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah.

Richard Lowe: And I thought I was getting some good graphics and things. And then I went out on Fiverr. You know, Fiverr.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yes, I do.

Richard Lowe: Picking up some much, much better graphics, for almost no cost.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Wow!

Richard Lowe: So

Richard Lowe: it's like, okay, fine moving on moving on. That's a that's a that's a lot of money saved each month.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Indeed, and we live and learn, we do live and.

Richard Lowe: That's the only way to look at it. Okay, so today, we're looking at doing a podcast.

Michelle A. Hardwick: We are.

Richard Lowe: What I'm going to do is just announce the. Podcast

Richard Lowe: so I'm gonna introduce it. And then I'm gonna say, it's Michelle, right? Pronounce Michelle.

Michelle A. Hardwick: That's right, Michelle. That's right.

Richard Lowe: Could be Michele or Mccall, or.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Or

Michelle A. Hardwick: no. No, I got plagued by the Beatles all my life. That me shell my bell, you know. So that people thought that was the 1st time I'd ever heard it, and thought they were hilarious. But actually it wasn't. It would have been the 1 millionth time. So.

Richard Lowe: Yeah.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Good. Yeah.

Richard Lowe: Richard is, except for some reason. Dick is Richard and I used to get hit by that when I was a kid.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, yeah.

Richard Lowe: No, I just ignore it. I don't care. I'm too old to care.

Richard Lowe: So I'm gonna just say, here's Michelle. She's gonna talk about.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, women's issues.

Michelle A. Hardwick: So no, I I'm it's really a call to men. So I am in the process of

Michelle A. Hardwick: collecting research from men about their experience of menopause. So that's really I I would love to get

Michelle A. Hardwick: their experience and put that in a book that would be

Michelle A. Hardwick: a practical emotional support and guide for men who are journeying through the menopause with a woman.

Richard Lowe: So how about emotional support for men regarding menopause or something like that? Okay.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Absolutely so. It would be great if if they I just want to hear from them the strategies that worked. You know the challenges, the questions that they might have

Michelle A. Hardwick: and.

Richard Lowe: Here's the title How to keep your face intact within the age of.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, yeah.

Richard Lowe: How to survive.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Menopause, Wingman. So it's really about kind of not being a spectator sport, you know. It's about being her wingman, and

Michelle A. Hardwick: that, you know you. You got to get in the game. You gotta get there. You've got to get

Michelle A. Hardwick: out of off the sideline and into the game, and really support her as a team. So all the rules and everything that did apply before, and the playing field has now changed. So it's very much about.

Richard Lowe: Weapons ready, no.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, have the temperature on, you know, almost freezing. But there's kind of things that are really important that I guess we've never really spoken about so myself. I never knew anything about the menopause. So

Michelle A. Hardwick: you know how to expect someone else who's with me to know also. So that's really where I'm at is sort of as I've been working with women. It's becoming more clear that, you know, and also you mentioned it, too, that you'd wish that you had some kind of support. So that's really it's off the back of that. To be honest, Richard, you know.

Richard Lowe: Well, this is all great material for talking. So let's get started on the podcast.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Wait!

Richard Lowe: So this is Michelle Hardwick. I'll start the podcast. In a minute. I haven't started it yet.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Okay.

Richard Lowe: Michelle Hardwick, and the book is called.

Michelle A. Hardwick: Menopause, Wingman.

Richard Lowe: Wingman menopause. Wingman. Okay? So I'm gonna turn off the recording.