Casey Sucks at Work/Life Balance

Casey Markee is an SEO expert who now has SEO audits booked up through next year. Somehow, he finds the time to speak at several digital marketing conferences, which is where we met. We bonded over a love of food and being Kansans, and he’s joining me on this episode to discuss a big topic: Work/Life Balance.

In this episode, we cover:

  • Why work/life balance is often harder for business owners/entrepreneurs
  • How working from home can contribute negatively to work/life balance
  • The “hustle culture” and how it’s detrimental for most people
  • The importance of scheduling out work and your vacations

Listen to the episode below and don’t forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, or follow us on your favorite podcast platform.

Photo by Alice Donovan Rouse on Unsplash

Sarah Sucks at Sleeping

Ever since Sarah was a baby, she’s had trouble sleeping. She’s tried it all; medication, meditation, even working herself to the bone. While some things have worked, like watching Ferriss Bueller every night before she went to sleep, they all seem to stop working eventually.

Sarah and I discuss:

  • The struggles only insomniacs know
  • When to just work and clean when you can’t sleep
  • How our partners adjust to our crazy sleep patterns
  • Why a sleep routine sometimes doesn’t help.

Listen to the episode below. You can also check out Sarah and her husband Austin’s podcast, Will This be On The Test? which covers history and fun facts you didn’t know.

Photo by Content Pixie on Unsplash

Mark Sucks at Ignoring Online Arguments

Mark Traphagen and I have known each other for years from the digital marketing conference circuit. In this StoryShout episode, we discuss something that Mark sucks at: not arguing with strangers (and even people he knows) on the internet.

Mark is very active on social, especially Twitter and Facebook. We drill down into:

  • How hard it is to not engage with trolls 
  • When an argument is worth having and when you should just ignore someone
  • How online arguments can affect real-life relationships
  • How to use cues to decode a person’s true meaning behind what they are saying
  • Why it’s so hard to take someone’s word online, especially if it doesn’t seem like they are being nice

Listen to the episode right now below and also leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or follow us on your favorite podcast player.

Photo by Mr TT on Unsplash.

Michelle Sucks at Interior Design

Join one of my oldest friends (in length of friendship, not age! 😛 ), Michelle Luna, to cover what she sucks at: interior design. Even though one of Michelle’s best friends is an interior designer, her design skills leave something to the imagination (in her opinion).

In this episode, we cover:

  • Our favorite home decor items at our mothers’ houses
  • What to even put on a blank white wall
  • Why cheap photo frames are usually a no go
  • How interior design plays into other areas of art and design
  • Word signs, want to hate ‘em, kind of love ‘em (sometimes)

Listen to the episode now below or on any platform you get your podcasts. Please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, I’d really appreciate it.

Geoffrey Sucks at Typing

In this episode, my colleague Geoffrey joins StoryShout to discuss what he sucks at: typing. Geoffrey and I cover the following in our episode:

  • How technology has changed for us as high schoolers compared to teens now
  • How we learned how to type
  • Other ways to communicate when you are a slow typer
  • When it’s better to call someone instead of typing out a message to them

Listen to our episode below and don’t forget to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts:

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash.

StoryShout is Live!

Exciting news! We launched with three new episodes yesterday.

To celebrate the launch, we are holding a launch party TODAY at 3pm central. One of our first podcast guests, Keith Goode, will be showing us how to make three cocktails. We will also be having guests on for discussion questions and giving away gift cards.

To join us for the launch party, use Riverside or join us on Facebook Live.

To leave a review for StoryShout or subscribe in your favorite podcast player, find it on this link.

Why Failure is Important

Why Failure is Important, How Failure Helps Grow Creative Businesses, and How to Break the Obstacles to Success.

Failing is part of life. In business, it’s a core concept you need to understand so you can grow your business.

But why is it so difficult to fail? Because you get to feel so much better about yourself for failing. You get to stay stuck in what’s normal instead of genuinely attempting something.

Failing shows that you attempted something new.

How to Handle Failure

“Failure is the opportunity for personal growth.” — Steve Jobs

If you are a CEO or COO, how do you take failure when you don’t know when it will happen or how big it will be? And how do you handle it when the first thing you think of is how big the problem is?

It’s time to accept fear (and learn from it).

Failure, as mentioned, is a way of life. Not failing means it doesn’t mean you aren’t progressing forward.

To accept failure, we have to look more deeply inside ourselves and find the way we are processing failure in all its forms. By processing it as a learning experience, we can better mentally prepare ourselves for the other side of fear of failure.

Here’s a good video from Lisa Nicholas that can help shift your fear mindset:

What to do After Failure

Failure is normal. Everyone faces it, and everyone needs to live with it on a regular basis. However, failure is not bad in the way that it is commonly perceived. In fact, it’s a gift, when you learn how to accept it. In fact, you could say that failing (at least at times) is a natural process of living.

Why do some people get more out of failing at something than others? Often we look at negative outcomes and assume that they’re the result of a failure. In fact, research suggests that this is far from true. It’s important to recognize that we’re not the people, that we’re just part of the process of life, and failure is just a part of the journey.

Achieving success is the single greatest factor in developing a successful relationship with failure. This is because once you actually get up and decide to treat failure as part of your life instead of something to get rid of.

Photo by Miguel Á. Padriñán from Pexels

Welcome to StoryShout!

Hi friends, I’m launching a new podcast (reusing the StoryShout name!) as a side project and would love some volunteers for my first guests! StoryShout is a weekly 30-60 minute podcast that asks someone every week: “What do you suck at?”


The twist: Instead of trying to help you, we have a lighthearted conversation about how this “failure” has affected your life. It can be anything (but we will try to keep it relatively clean), from returning text messages or being a good friend to buying the right birthday presents.

Basically, a nice lil roast starring yourself and me.
If you think you’d be a good guest, please fill out my google form and I’ll get back to you soon! Episodes will also appear as video on our YouTube and social channels. Fill out this form if you’re interested.


And if you want to learn when episodes launch, we’re StoryShout on all main social channels and you can sign up for our mailing list.