Getting Out There After 40 Stop Holding Back!

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function. And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine. And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25 milligrams of CBD and 25 milligrams CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency. And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6. But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50. That's FLIPPING50. Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites. What are you waiting for? Good night. It's time to stop holding back and start sharing your crazy unique gifts. But it's hard, right? Like, what will people think? How do you put yourself out there at a time when very possibly the myriad of changes in your life, your hormonal physiological life, shake your confidence? It's always my hope that the strength that you gain from lifting weights is far deeper than muscle or even bone.. It's confidence, it's inner strength, it's having a voice and strength to walk away when needed. This episode is unique, and I can't wait for you to listen to this intelligent, gifted guest who's interviewing experts to reveal and uncover perimenopause informational gaps and provide solutions, or at the very least, allow her listeners— she is also a podcast host— to make informed decisions based on what is revealed in her podcast. I'm Debra Atkinson. You're listening to Flipping 50, where I address your top struggles and concerns. Most of all, though, we hope to inspire you so you expect and you demand better products and better services through your perimenopause and menopause journey and well beyond. I share what to eat, how to move, and how to change your mindset so you can have the energy and the vitality that you want, need, and deserve. In this second and better happen. If you are still in the planning stages of pulling together the exercise that supports your balance, your reaction skills and agility so you can move fast when you need to, not just on the pickleball court, your strength, your power that will power you out of your chair when you're 85, but you got to start now with a little more than that. Your balance and so much more. If you're still in the planning stages, sometimes it feels like it's a full-time job pulling all that together. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to an exercise planning e-guide plus a short masterclass. You can go through it just like I'm doing a workshop with you one-on-one, and I promise you, it's, it's almost like a little crash course in personal training. How do you create a program for yourself designed around your realistic time and energy. I got you. That'll be in the show notes. But right now, my guest today is Anne-Marie McQueen. She's a digital journalist, podcaster, former national columnist, and founding journalist at The National newspaper who has split her career between North America and Middle East. An early adopter and disruptor, she is the founder of Hot Flash Inc., a global platform providing evidence expert and experience-based information, inspiration, and entertainment via newsletter, podcast, social media, and more for women who are going through perimenopause. Here we go. You're gonna love it. Annemarie McQueen and your cat, thank you for being here.

Thank you for having me. Ninja, thank you too.

It's like a— it's a zoo here, truly. You with the cat, me with the puppy. Crossing our fingers they just behave, right? Yeah, such is life. But you know, there is a time in my life, probably when I would be 25, 30, 35, that would have really like driven me like nails on a chalkboard. Like, and now I'm like, oh, let's just go with the flow. Maybe there will be a dog bark in the back. What, what difference does it make?

Yeah, doesn't make any difference. It doesn't have to be perfect. You know that it's not been perfect so many times and it was totally fine, right?

Yep, yep. And at this point in our lives, it's always like, nobody's bleeding, nobody's dying. We're okay. Yeah, we're fine. It's not a big deal.

Yes. So their fingers and toes.

Yeah. You tell me your story. Tell me. I mean, obviously we know digital journalist, podcaster. When did you start Hot Flash Inc.? And why did it become— this is, this is the thing I'm digging into this.

Okay, so I started thinking about it, I think in 2017, 2018. And I started thinking about it because I realized I was in perimenopause and looked for information and couldn't find good information. And because I'm a content, like, obsessive, I just started thinking, oh gosh, like, I could do so much with this, right? And, um, But then, you know, I was busy and I was talking about it a lot. And, you know, like you do when you have a thought to do something, I was just sort of yapping about it to people. And it was— and then I started to do it slowly, slowly. And then in the pandemic, I'm a freelancer and a few contracts dried up and I thought, okay, well, I have to do it now. Like, there's just no other time because once this passes, I'll get busy again. And so I did. And then it's— I haven't looked back. I just started with the newsletter and I had no idea what would happen. I just started doing it. And, you know, back to the not perfection thing, it was a good idea because I think I could still be thinking about it, you know?

Yeah. So as a journalist and a freelancer, so do you pick and choose pretty carefully? I mean, has health or women's issues always been kind of a, I'm really interested in that, or not as much?

It's interesting 'cause in the fullness of time, things become apparent. I would've told you, oh, you know, 20 years ago, I would've said, I would have said, no, I'm a serious journalist and I've heard City Hall and I'm aiming to be on Parliament Hill. That's what we call it in Canada. You know, in the nation's capital, that's where I'm headed. But looking back, I have always dipped and focused and been pulled back into health and women's health. And it's not a surprise to me now looking back because when I was 27 and my mom was 53, the age that I am now, she died of pancreatic cancer. And my mom was always sort of, unwell. She was a nurse and she was lovely, but she had a lot of health problems. And so looking back, it's not a surprise to me. I was sort of trying to unravel all the things that happened to her and I guess sort of figure out what would be happening to me and prevent those things.

Very cool. Okay. So now I have this image of you like on Capitol Hill, shoving a microphone in, shouting among all the journalists. I watched too much TV.

In the scrum. In the scrum, yeah.

Right. So, I mean, you've always then, if that's even true, my mythological image of you, you've always put yourself out there. Is that true?

Yes, that is true. And you know what? I have a funny picture that was on the front page of another newspaper of a scrum outside the Supreme Court. There was a ruling and I'm there with my serious journalist face, you know, listening and ready to ask a question. So it's funny that you say that. Yeah, I've always put myself out there. I guess you could say that. I remember in journalism school, like, them asking for a volunteer, and with my heart pounding, I just got up and did it. And I think going first is a good thing. And I've been lucky, you know. I was given a column when I went up to the nation's capital, working at a daily newspaper there pretty early on. And that runs with your picture, and that's an opinion. And there was no social media to worry about then, but there was my email inbox. To open replies from. So it's been something that I've been doing for a long time, and I guess I'm comfortable with it until, until things get uncomfortable.

Well, and so do you experience that? I mean, like so many maybe careers or even entrepreneurships, you start the thing, you get it rolling, and then you realize you're much more comfortable doing things that at first were very uncomfortable. You think, oh, I'm gonna coast along like this, but you can't. And then it's like you have to go through this whole thing over and over again. It's like, get uncomfortable, comfortable, get uncomfortable, you know. So are you still experiencing that? And have you had pushback as you've talked more about perimenopause and menopause?

Okay, well, there's two pieces here, right? Because yeah, one is that reporting on this specifically. And the other thing is me starting my own thing because when you're a journalist, you talk to a lot of other people who are doing their own thing and you're writing about it, you're writing about them, you're writing about other people doing other things. And that's something that I think at some point, maybe you want to do your own thing. And you realize once you start doing that, you realize how hard that is.. And so I, you know, I learned to write. I went to a screenwriting school for a week in England and I wrote a screenplay, hardest thing I've ever done. It's not very good. You're probably not going to see it in cinemas. And I thought, oh my gosh, I could never review a movie again because now that I know how hard it is. And I feel like that about, I feel like that about business because just doing this myself and figuring out the digital platform side of it is really, really difficult. The journalism side of it, I'm comfortable. Being on the outside. What's interesting with this is that once I started to get attention, there's a lot of people who, who are like, oh, we love what you're doing, but they love it until I cover something in a way that they don't like.

Does that make sense? Oh, amen. You have just described my week, actually. I had the strangest comment, you know, and it is that one comment instead of the hundred. That keep you up, you know, it's like, what?

Really? Okay, I want to know what it is now.

Well, it's just— it's— here's the example. Let's see if I can paint a picture without having the person listen and feel like I just revealed her. But I think you know how it is when you first— we first get new information and we are just not ready for it. We treat it— the human nature is to treat it as hocus-pocus and bewitchery, and we ridicule those people. It's all the great inventors and creators got this throughout history until they were dead. We didn't accept what they were doing. But, you know, I've been sharing a couple things that are kind of a little broader than and then exercise effects on muscle and bone and brain health because our audience and community are asking for these things. And potentially it's the nature of fitness. I'm in front of them a little more often, maybe for longer periods of time, and you get comfortable asking questions and having conversations. So in part, I feel like it's my responsibility to stay within my scope, but to reach out and pull people in, experts who can talk about additional things, you know. And, and this is one example, right? I mean, we were talking strength training makes you stronger, but what I'd love to think for every listener here is that they're getting stronger on the inside. And maybe instead of holding back and keeping something a secret or saying, I can't do this, they feel like, I can, I can do this. And that's what you know, today is all about for, for some listener. But, you know, I'm getting pushback because I think it's maybe the first time someone heard this new idea, wow, this new concept, and, and it happened to be about vibrational energy. And she was like, I can't keep following this and weird stuff Debra's sharing. And I'm like, what, really?

Okay. Well, I guess, yeah, I mean, it's funny when that strong reaction comes, right? Like, I find that people are really willing to talk about the physical stuff. And really, that the strong reaction often comes to the other stuff, right? And it's like, we are all things. I'm really into all that stuff too. So I'm sure that people have the same reaction to me when I talk about some other things, you know? And I think people will just say, oh, there's no science to that. There's no data to that. And I think a lot of times there is, they just aren't paying attention to it. But also I think sometimes we don't have, just because we don't have science doesn't mean that something isn't happening, you know? And I love, I believe in vibrations and energy and all of those things. I think we are like a universe within us. You know, and we don't even know half.

Yeah, no, totally agree. And I think we're seeing this like whole wake-up about meditation, and at one point that was like nobody would have done that. And so many more people, I think, we're craving positivity, the ability to create and have some control over what happens.

Oh yeah. And you know, in I'm really noticing this in our lives. We've seen such a swing, right? Like, I remember that you wouldn't even say you were going to therapy 25 years ago or talk about even wanting to or even having any emotional problems. You'd really be select with who you would tell that to. And now I'm really interested. I personally have been doing things like somatic bodywork and some really cool breathwork with hypnosis and binaural beats mixed in. And they have really improved and accelerated sort of like some emotional healing I'm doing. And I just think, I just think it's all on the menu. And it's not, if it's not harmful, then, then why are we so scared of it? You know, but when you said that through history, when are we ever going to learn that ridiculing new ideas No, we're not. We're never going to learn. That's not how humans are. And I feel that sometimes too, when someone punctures through a belief that I have about something, your first reaction is no, no, no. It's just the way we are.

Yeah. But I so wish, and I wish this for myself, that instead of getting angry, we could get curious first.

I know. I know. I mean, I guess it's that little, the distance between. The anger, 'cause there's a bit of, it's a dissonance, right? I believed this and now this person is saying this. And I don't wanna have to change my mind about that too, right? And especially at this, I find at this stage, I'm just every day thinking, oh, oh, that's not what I thought it was. Oh, that's not what I thought it. So it's accelerated, right? So I just, when the space is shrinking between me getting grouchy about it, but if it's something I've thought for a long time, What am I going to do? As long as I don't get outwardly cranky about it or leave a crappy social media comment, then that's—

I could— but I don't. There is a reason I have a customer service staff. Yeah, I should never be in there ever.

No, no, no.

You know, they say don't respond right away or don't send it right away. That's me. I never send it right away.

Okay, so it's a— sorry to interrupt— it's a special feeling that you get when someone says something. And like you said, the 1 in 100 will really get to you.

It's true. And, you know, in a part, I think that's not all bad because it still says you still care. You know, you care. And maybe sometimes when it really gets to you, you feel like, is there a little truth to this, to the way that I relate it, to the way that I communicated it? Maybe even not to the thing, but could 'How could I have done this differently?' I think there is that.

Yeah, that's very, that's very healthy. I'm gonna remember that next time I get a little touchy.

I will too, but usually not first, maybe fourth or fifth.

Yeah.

Okay, so most recently, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time, probably. I mean, as a journalist, I think actually I'm very, like, in awe of covering so much in the bandwidth and the broadness of what you have to do to study, to, to ask intelligent questions. But most recently, you know, as you're midlife yourself, I mean, what steps have you taken to put yourself out there, to, to overcome any fears or conditioning about what will people think?

Wow. That's— what steps have I taken to do that? First of all, I love this time of life because I have a confidence that I didn't maybe have before and a resilience, I think. But making things good and not perfect is probably my number one goal. Like, great is the enemy of good. And for example, I have my own podcast. I just crossed 100 episodes, which is nothing, I think, compared to you. But I was thinking— Congrats. I made a little video. Thank you. I made a little video when I was starting and I was like, you just have to start. And it's true. You just do. And it will get better as you go. And when I see what other people do and I get depressed, I'm like, but I'm improving all the time. And I don't think people understand how, like, life-affirming and energy-giving it is when you have a purpose. So I really floundered in my 40s. I mean, I had a great job, a bit of a golden handcuffs job, and I enjoyed it at first. And it was just becoming like, I want to do something else. And so when I finally settled on this, I'm just so galvanized and rejuvenated by it that it fuels me. Does that make sense? So I don't know whether that's a change so much as just I found, I found, and it's a real intersection of all of the things I've done in my career. I always tried to stay current. I picked up blogging. I remember I took a coding course back when the internet came. I picked up social media and I've always done that stuff. So this is a real intersection. I really make sure not to talk about things until I've learned about them. Because look, this subject is so vast and there's so many specialists. And so I'm trying not to, I'm trying to stay in my lane until I get more of an expertise and whether that means having a number of guests on my podcast and understanding the breadth of something. And then just trying to understand and reassure myself because I do feel crazy sometimes, Deb, when I spot the gaps in like doctors' knowledge, does that make sense? Like I'll interview a doctor and I'll be like, oh my gosh, they don't know this thing or they don't see this thing. That's crazy. How do I, Annemarie McQueen sitting in Abu Dhabi at my computer in my apartment know that and they don't know that? I just try to remind myself that I took this perch that I like, I'm above, not above, but you know what I mean? I'm not sort of, I'm sort of agnostic. Like I'll go from mainstream to holistic. I'm in the middle. I'm a very moderate person. I accept all things. And that means I see, I sound like I'm comparing myself to God. I'm not, that's not what I mean. I just, I can see things that other people can't see because they're immersed in their own area, in their own niche. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it totally does make sense.

I rambled that answer so much, but those are just things I remind myself of when I get really like, oh gosh, what am I doing? How do I know? What direction do I go in? Those are sort of my guiding principles.

So interestingly, that makes me I want to ask this question. So you're reading your bio, digital journalist, podcaster, former national columnist, all the things. So with your podcast, how are you positioning yourself? Are you positioning yourself as like you're the, the person who's doing the investigation and digging down into into like bringing light through people you interview, or you're wanting to position yourself as the expert?

That's interesting because I've been— people have been saying expert to me more and more, and I guess I'm still very uncomfortable with it because how I feel like there's so many facets of midlife and menopause, like how do you become an expert in all of it? I, for now, I just really want to delve into a lot of the areas that don't get discussed. I'm not interested in having the same old discussion that I hear already, even though we just started really talking about it. I'm not interested in sort of the generic narrative discussions that go on. So I don't even know if that answers your question. I'm not comfortable with being the expert. Although I do sometimes say, this is what I've learned about this, this is what I've learned about that. Yeah.

But I think that I can't quite put my thumb on it, but I think you have a very unique expertise in that because you will talk to so many people, you have just this unique angle and because of your background, you have this expertise in terms of pulling it all together, creating a, here's where we have gaps. Like here's where there are incongruencies, you know, among those experts that I've interviewed. I mean, you will be like the one revealing like, this is what we need. This is where we have a gap in our research or in programming or products or, Or whatnot. And I never use that word. I don't know why I said that. Whatnot.

Who says that? Yeah, that's a great word. Whatnot. Okay, so that is— yeah, I mean, it does consistently surprise me that I'm still the only person doing that. There are journalists who've written books about menopause and cover it occasionally, But one thing that I'm not is a cheerleader for any one way to approach menopause. And I find that the journalists that have written about it have sort of taken on that role. And I had an exchange with a British journalist once, and she said something like, I think we need to get in line. And I was like, oh no, I don't think that. If there's anything I'm a cheerleader for, it's women having informed consent and taking radical personal responsibility for their health in a way that we never have before and knowing exactly what's going on. And I know a lot of people don't want to rise to that challenge, but I think that this is the time. But yeah, I do see, I do see a lot from where I'm sitting. I mean, I have interviewed like, over, I mean, dozens and dozens of doctors, and there is a vast difference. And of course, we have the mainstream physicians and the integrative and functional people who are, you know, they're really ahead of the curve, and a lot of women do better with them, even the naturopathic doctors. And then of course, both sides get vilified, which I don't really have time for.

Yeah, but I love what you've said. You know, it is unique, and I think you are It's such an advantage the way you're doing it. Like you've said, journalists have written books and then they kind of really probably are doing what anybody does writing a research paper. They look for the research that represents the idea that they had in the first place and ignore the other side. But, you know, by the time a book is published, it's outdated. I mean, we're already on to, you know, the next thing. So you're like in real time, which is magical.

Yeah. And I think about writing a book too, but yeah, I don't really know how to go about that because it's changing so quickly. And I think we have enough books that are everything you need to know about menopause, which is ridiculous. Like there's just not a possible way that you can have everything you need to know about menopause. The problem is it's a problem and it's an advantage. I've been going through this while I've been researching it. And so have a few of the other journalists. And then, you know, I think you've probably seen this too. When people go through something and they find something that helps them, they become very tied to that thing, right? And defensive of it. So what— I haven't gone on hormone therapy, and that's because I didn't know I was in perimenopause for a really long time. And then I had two different doctors who wouldn't give it to me. And now I feel like I'm through menopause and I don't really know if I need it, although there is a whole contingent that says, yes, you do, because you need to protect yourself from disease and it's good for longevity and all those things. I'm sort of in this position of like, should I take it? Would it help me report on it better? Or by not taking it, can I be a little bit more objective in this conversation? Because the pendulum is definitely swinging back to, hormone therapy, like, is the greatest thing ever and minimizing side effects and risks. And so that's a big question for me, like, how do I stay as sort of objective as I can? Yeah.

So can I ask you, and I think this is one way that every listener and, and you and I stay somewhat objective and make decisions based on where we're at, are you measuring like measuring your bone density, measuring your muscle mass?

Oh, so that's really interesting. I have not done that.

What the heck are you doing? I'm gonna have to come over there.

No, no, I've got like a list of things. I had a full cardio, cardioscopy, cardio workup, very healthy. I'm gonna do a sort of a cognoscopy and I'm gonna do the bone density. As well. And the only— there is one aspect of the cardio. I haven't talked about any of this 'cause I'm just gradually doing it. I'm doing a lot of testing. I'm doing DNA testing. I know this is controversial. I'm doing a Dutch Light testing 'cause I'm really interested in how I'm metabolizing things. So I'm doing a whole series of it, yeah. And, but I have always exercised. And done weight-bearing exercise and I'm very strong. So I could be shocking, Deb, I don't know. Like I feel, I'm not a spindly person. I could be shocked to get my bone density results, but—

Insulted, a lot of women are insulted. Yeah, insulted.

Yeah, like I don't deserve this, are you kidding me? Yeah. Yeah, so yes, thank you for the encouragement. It is definitely on my list of things to do.

Well, and I think that's like— I'm a big proponent of don't fix it if it's not broken. And yet, of course, like as you say, the longevity piece, like we, we don't yet know because our generation will be the first generation to have a diversity of these people used HRT till death do us part, these people did not. What's the difference between the two of them? So, you know, until we come back later in a different life, we won't know what happened. But, um, you know, when you're measuring your muscle, when you're measuring your bone density, you know, from, okay, here's where I am now, you know, and what's happening to me over months and years, you know, you know, you know if what you're doing right now is working, you know. And it may be that you decide, okay, well, maybe I need to test something else because I used all the tricks in my bag thus far. So I think that's for, for many women, you know, the persuasive argument for change is, okay, what I'm doing now is giving me the results I have right now, and I'm getting— do I want to keep going down this path?

Yeah. And I, you know, I just went through a whole health— and I haven't talked about this very much, but my health experience exploded last year. I mean, I was very, very sick this time last year. And basically, for most of my life, I had IBS and I just dealt with it. I just sort of went on and occasionally I would ask the doctor about it and it would get better and it would get worse with my diet and whatever. But it sort of, you know, this time last year and by January, I had like low thyroid, Hashimoto's, fatty liver, prediabetes, insulin resistance, leaky gut. I was a mess. I was exhausted. I was depressed. And that was just from, as best as I can determine, years of gut dysbiosis, basically. Just my system just couldn't handle it. So it was very hard to deal with that. And I was feeling so bad. I'm like, okay, maybe I should take hormone therapy. And I'm glad that I ended up finding the right doctor and sorting that out. So I found just through happenstance because I was at the hospital, I was talking to specialists, no one's putting anything together. I had about probably 20 pounds, 'cause I've since lost 20 pounds of, I just called it weight that I didn't deserve because I did, I was exercising and a lot of women talk about this. I had a healthy diet, but I found a doctor who's a general practitioner, but with a double major in homeopathy and gut, specialty, and she's also counseling. So she was just, she's just amazing. She's from Norway and she helped me just heal my gut and then reverse everything and lose, just drop weight, like not having any. And so I have a, I'm cautious in talking about this because it's an N of 1, you know, this is just me. This is just how I've, I've helped things, but I feel very, very Inspired by the resilience of my body and by the sort of the magic that's involved in just supporting it, how it comes back. You know, like the look on my gastroenterologist's face when I came, I came in and he saw all my blood work and my fatty liver results. Like he just, he was so delighted. Like he just doesn't see it very often, you know? And So I don't know, I just feel really in awe of my body. And so I'm just really happy with it right now. And that's because I just went through menopause in August. It's been a heck of a year, like emotionally and physically, that's a real storm, I think, that transmenopausal year at the best of times. And I lost that weight going through menopause. I'm really into the power of, of figuring out what's going on and supporting yourself. But I know that that's difficult for a lot of people. And I know that it was hard for me too. So, you know, I had to change a lot of things.

Yeah.

Wow.

I love that story. I love that statement. That's my drop of the day, right? I feel delighted with my body. I so, so love, you know, that for so many women.

Yeah, yeah. Who's delighted with their body most of their life, right? I'm like anyone else. Yeah, she's as everyone else. And it's really, really beautiful at 53 to be— I, you know, I was lifting weights today and I was like, I really like my body.

That is so good. Oh my gosh. And I mean, placebo effect, right? I love it. You know, you're saying that to every cell in your body when you say that. I mean, you're only going to get better results. So that's very cool.

Very cool. I love placebo effect, by the way. Me too. Why is that kind of a dirty word? Why has that been a dirty word? I remember about 10 years ago on the news desk I was working and there's this crusty old editor from Washington. And I think we were editing a story about homeopathy coming to Abu Dhabi. And then he was like, placebo effect. And I said, but Bill, isn't placebo effect amazing? Like, isn't it just the power of your mind? Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, so good. Okay, so big bold question of the day. You know, you interview a lot of people, and I think you have an end audience. So I don't know about you, but I always imagine I'm talking to an audience of people. I'm talking to this audience of women, and I have a responsibility What do you think holds most women back from maybe doing something that, that they fear a little? They fear putting themselves out there or taking this risk or this next step, especially at this point in their lives.

Okay, I think that they think that other people have something special that they don't have. Some added ability or added confidence. And I think once you just start doing some things, you realize that people who do the things have the same fears and trepidation. They just do it anyway. There is a book called "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway," and I love it. I can't remember who wrote it, but that's all it is. You just do it scared. And you do it imperfectly. And then you get a little bit of confidence when it goes well and you realize that things don't really fall apart when it goes badly. And then even when it goes badly, you can deal with it. That's what I think. That's what used to hold me back. I used to think that other people had a special sort of confidence or a special sort of talent or something that I didn't have. You know, like, and, and I just wish everyone would realize we all have it, the, the, the ability. Just have to figure out what it is. And whatever it is you, you want, and we, I think we all have it, it just takes some time to find. If you follow that thread, it will get you there.

Very cool. Very well said. Okay. So with all of this, I mean, you really have some great things, I'm sure, lined up for 2024. Anything that you want to tease?

Oh my gosh. Okay. For 2024, I really, really, really want to start doing webinars, like courses to get at perimenopause. So I want to start with an overview and then I want to start diving into the different things that people can do. And I'm working on unraveling the tech behind that. I have an assistant and I really, really want to put my research into a digital book. You mentioned that, you know, I would love to write a book and get an agent and do the whole thing. But I think first I would just like to put what I have into a digital book for people. Just get everything together and get that out, like, because I can do that much faster. Um, so those two things I would really like to get happening in the first half of 2024.

Very cool. So it's the end of 2024, and what are you grateful for having done this past year?

I'm grateful for having written my first book and having held a couple of webinars that have sold well and helped women. And I would love to have a book deal because what I'd really like to write is a combination sort of memoir of my own no good perimenopause and have that be inspiring, but wrap up some of the, the things I've learned that will help other people.

Very cool. Okay, see what we did there? Placebo effect. So perfect. All right, where can listeners find and follow you?

Okay, so it's Hot Flash Inc everywhere. I have a Substack newsletter, so that's on Substack. It's Hot Flash Inc. Hot Flash Inc is my website, and Hot Flash Inc across all socials. And the podcast is called that as well, wherever you get podcasts.

Beautiful. That was awesome. It's been— it flew, actually. It's been so great to talk to you.

Oh my gosh, that was—

yeah.

Oh, it was good to talk to you too. I'm a huge fan. Thank you so much.

You are welcome. Okay, listeners, so I know probably I missed a question that you wish I would have asked, but I want you to go and follow Annemarie on Hot Flash Inc. at Instagram, and I want you to send her a DM and say you came from Flipping 50 so she knows. Promise me that you will do that. And then, cause I know she'll tell me, she'll say, oh, guess what? Yeah. So, okay. So you're going to find show notes where all of the links to reaching to her in social and on her website are here in the show notes. And that'll be at flipping50.com/stop-holding-back. And what are you waiting for? Let's start flipping 50 today.