Feels Herders

What do ADHD, generational trauma, workplace burnout, and pecan pie have in common? Apparently, quite a lot.

This week, Ash and Sarah welcome the wonderfully unfiltered Beth Nelson for a conversation about navigating neurodiversity, the exhausting art of masking, and the lessons we've learned the hard way. From late-life ADHD discoveries and psychological safety to toxic workplace expectations, taking your damn vacation days, and the myth of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, the three explore what it really means to survive—and thrive—in today's working world.

Along the way, there are thought ferrets, cauldron witches, questionable coping mechanisms, and plenty of colorful language.

The takeaway? Share your wisdom, protect your boundaries, find your community, and, as Beth's Papaw always said, "Don't let the bastards get you down."

I suppose we should warn you that this is a LONG episode. What? We had a lot to talk about and we try not to edit. So . . . yeah. You've been warned!

Is starting your own business really any riskier than having a job these days? And if job security is already dead, what exactly are we protecting ourselves from?

This week, Ash and Betts welcome their first-ever guest, Brian Levine (formerly of GitHub, Plaid, Abstract, and more), to challenge everything we think we know about employment, entrepreneurship, and this increasingly absurd hell . . . uhhh . . . I mean job market that we find ourselves in.

We get into the realities of freelancing and fractional leadership, why selling yourself is somehow harder than doing the actual work, the bullshit of modern hiring, and what happens when startup founders lose touch with the people keeping their companies alive.

Naturally, we also (drunkenly) wander into evergreen topics like capitalism, burnout, perfectionism, therapy, and the emotional damage customer support professionals are literally paid to absorb. So, you know, a typical Tuesday for the folks over here at Feels Herders.

Come for the career advice. Stay for the existential crisis, (not at all) questionable sobriety, and absolutely zero guarantees of staying on topic.

CW: This episode gets HEAVY. Suicidal ideation, a recent death in the family, incarceration, food insecurity, homelessness, and substance use as a coping mechanism.

Sarah started us off with memento mori, and it went about how you would expect with us.

In this episode, we talked a lot about knowing when to leave a job, and it turns out we are a study in opposites. Sarah has left every job she has ever had and has never once been fired or laid off. Ash does his best to never leave anything without having the next thing lined up.

Thus enters the "fuck you fund", survivorship bias, and what it means to be truly hungry. We talk about the skills involved in staying at a gig that nobody ever seems to write about, and we talk about the signs that it is time to go: bonus structures that keep getting rewritten, paychecks that slip, and enforced siloing.

Then we get all soppy about parenthood, and Ash cries on tape. Sorry about that.

Feels Herders is Ash Rhodes and Sarah Betts talking about support, leadership, and feelings. Tangents are the brand. The ENTIRE brand.

CW: Brief discussion of sexual harassment of support staff, and of discriminatory layoffs.

Ash's previous boss, Morgan Reed, wrote in with a question, and we did what we always do, which is answer MAAAAAYBE half of it and then wander off somewhere else entirely.

The topic was difficult customers and difficult bosses. Sarah has fired exactly two B2B customers and explains the only argument that has ever worked, which involves a spreadsheet and basically not a single mention of anyone's suffering. We get into grey rocking, the point where customers stop getting second chances, and that stomach-churning, horrifying moment when you go digging and discover that the customer really was right the whole time (we really are the baddies)

Then bosses . . . How working with them involves figuring out what keeps them up at night, which report they open first, and what metrics prick their ears up. Sarah explained the gorilla experiment, and Ash admitted that he has some trust issues, even with good bosses following far too many experiences with REALLY bad ones.

We also got into why you should never be the only person at your company who knows you exist or what you do, and what really happens to people who burn the place down on the way out. Nobody warns you about the private Slack groups that exist across industries, but they're terrifying.

Feels Herders is Ash Rhodes and Sarah Betts talking about support, leadership, and feelings. Tangents are the brand. The ENTIRE brand.

CW: From approximately minutes 36 to 40, we talk about spotting potential predators in the workplace (and elsewhere), including a reference to assault.

It only took about 90 seconds or so for Betts to completely lose track of the topic on this one, so you just know it's going to be a wild ride. Especially since it was her turn to be "in charge" (as much as either of us ever is).

I'm not gonna lie to you, we went all over the place . . . personally, I'm blaming Sarah. We talked about Ash's "man page" for dating (which is less dirty than you probably think), Sarah's "user guide" for work (which is not dirty at all), weirdly, Ash's grandpa (no, really), the Scotty Principle, being a Lighthouse, treating your reps like frightened animals (in a good way), and all sorts of other things that I would probably remember better if I wasn't also still drunk.

Sidenote: Did you know that artificial grape flavour is delicious? Because it IS.

So anyway. Point is that you should really listen. It's good. I mean . . . probably. Listen and then report back and let me know, OK? OK.

Following a Terrifying! and Harrowing!! trip to the City of Lights, Ash drags Betts kicking and screaming back into the proverbial recording booth to get another episode of Feels Herders going.

This time, the two riff off of Bett's recent post featuring one of Ash's favourite pieces of art: "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (which, in researching this post, Ash discovered to his dismay that he has been calling it the wrong thing this whole time, and that the ACTUAL title is "La Trahison des Images" or "The Treason of Images") and discussed how we do not have metrics as our customers and the conundrum that is "industry standard" KPIs.

Plus, for your listening pleasure: compounding pharmacies, Ash's blood feud with DirecTV, and a public service reminder that if you're not cringing at your past self, you're not growing.

All of that and more on this episode of Feels Herders!

In our second episode, we steer right into the curve and talk openly about Sarah's burnout.

How she recognized that she was experiencing it, how she's been dealing with it, and what she would like everyone to really know about it. Not for her, but for themselves.

Also, everyone is drunk or stoned. As one does.

Welcome to the Feels Herders podcast!

This is a special first episode because it is almost certainly the only one that will be edited and will DEFINITELY be the only one where both Betts and Ash will be sober.

Tune in and listen to these two old friends (who have never actually met IRL) talk about the reality of working and leading in the Customer-facing industry while also speaking candidly about their own lives and worlds.

Because pretending like our lives can actually be separated from the work we do is... definitely not a thing!