Episode 20: Natali Morris on Emerging Tech Journalism
In this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to journalist and podcaster Natali Morris. They talked with Natali about what it means to be an online personality, parenting in the digital age, and how the internet and web have shifted the dynamics of traditional media.
Transcript
Announcer:
Welcome to Surfacing. In this episode, hosts Lisa Welchman and Andy Vitale speak to podcaster and journalist Natali Morris. This episode saw discussion of what it means to be an online personality, parenting in the digital age, and how the internet and web have shifted the dynamics of traditional media.
Andy Vitale:
Hey Natali, welcome. Thanks for coming on the show. I'd love for you to just take a couple of seconds and tell everybody about yourself.
Natali Morris:
Okay. I guess one of the reasons you might think of me when you think of this topic is because I was one of the OG podcasters. I started video podcasting way early, back in the early aughts. And so I did some audio podcasting, but mostly video when it was so nascent. We thought that it was a mixture of blogging and vlogging and news. And so I was pulled from a podcast called Cranky Geeks with John Dvorak, which was also one of the original video podcasts. And I was a guest on that one time and Adam Curry came along and he said, "I saw you on that show. I think you should do your own show." Which still blows my mind that that happened because I wasn't very good on it. I was a technology reporter before that for PC Magazine and the San Francisco Examiner, but I decided to give it a try.
Natali Morris:
I was young and dumb enough to do it. And, oh gosh, if you asked me what year it is, I can't really remember. I want to say 2002, 2003. And so I cut my teeth on broadcasting on the internet where it just didn't seem to matter much back in the day. It was like TV news was where it's really at and then the rest of us would fiddle around on the internet and see what's what. And so I did a show on a network called Podshow, which was owned by Adam Curry and he had a business partner at the time named Ron Bloom. So anyway, I did this show called TeXtra, and then I was moved over to CNET. I was recruited to move to New York and do a similar news show about technology, daily show on CNET TV, and then CNET was acquired by CBS. And then I became the technology reporter for CBS News for a while.
Natali Morris:
And so that is how I cut my teeth as being someone who was new to the technology. But now news is news. On the internet and on TV, it's really the same. We didn't see it going that direction at the time. I think we thought it would be one or the other. But it's interesting now how they merge. Since being a technology reporter on broadcast TV, I've since left network news and I live in Europe now with my family. My husband was also a news anchor. And so what we do together now is we take our love for news and our ability to broadcast and we just sort of took it on the road and we do it ourselves. So we have a daily YouTube show called Morning Invest that my husband anchors. Sometimes I'll fill in, sometimes not. Mostly because I don't like to get camera and [crosstalk 00:03:53] much longer.
Lisa Welchman:
It's a thing.
Natali Morris:
Yeah. So most of my news chops now goes into the newsletter. So there's a Morning Invest newsletter, and then there's a Morning Invest YouTube show. And we've been able to build our own audience around this love for talking about the news. But really our bent is about financial empowerment, delivering news that helps people break through politics and partisan media and all of that stuff. We want people to be entertained and informed, but also empowered. I guess, if I were to rank those things in our intentions, I would put empowered first and then informed and then entertained. Yeah, that's sort of our motto. And so we still do news, but we do it for ourselves.
Lisa Welchman:
So one of the interesting things about you is that you... Usually on this show, we are talking to people who are fingers on keys, domain experts in the digital space. They literally write code, design things, UX. And that's not you, but like me, but even more in a more detached way, because at least my antecedence are from that, I started out in that way and now I'm a management consultant helping people in that space.
Natali Morris:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
But you've always been an informed lurker, right? For digital spaces. And now you're hands in because you were also early adopter from the video stuff. I heard what you were saying. But just in this very weird demographic that Andy and I talked to are just like UX designers, coders, we haven't talked to a you before. I guess that's what we're saying. So you have a very, very-
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Content creator slash lurker. Right.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you have a very, very interesting perspective historically on the arc, not only the work that you've done watching news transform and being a transformer in that space yourself, but just in general. And I'm just wondering, when you think about the time from 2000 to now and what's happened in terms of just the arc of activities, Andy and I started this podcast because we were talking a lot about digital safety, some of the accidents and mistakes that have happened with some of the big dotcoms and just in general, what are your thoughts about that? Where are you? How do you think we're doing in the digital world? It's a very, very broad question, but what are some of your internal rants or happiness statements that you might have about what's happening online right now?
Natali Morris:
Yeah, I think when I started with putting my face on camera as a news person, I felt like I had a voice because someone else decided I had a voice. This instance it was network executives who decided this person's worthy of stepping in front of a camera. And I watch my kids' TikTok generation and they say what they have to say and no one gives them permission to have a voice. And I kind of love that. In a way, it makes me feel... Well, I find that it's beautiful and it's also humbling. Because I had to wait for someone to give me permission to be worthy and they don't. I decided the at, let's say, New Kids on the Block were awesome because the network executives told me so. The Spice Girls were a conglomerate's decision. Those girls didn't even know each other, right?
Natali Morris:
And so what I loved and what was said to me was all decided by executives, mostly white males. And that is not the case anymore. And so I find these people who just decide to use their voice and it's beautiful. My kids were telling me about... They love Mr. Beast. They love, I don't know, they'll come up with some YouTuber that they love, and I'm like, "I love that you guys decided who's famous instead of the networks deciding and who's famous." I remember once having a pitch meeting with a producer at CBS and I said, "I think we should do a piece on Fred Figglehorn." Do you remember who that was, Fred Figglehorn? It was a teenage kid who he sped up all of his audio when he did... I don't think it was TikTok. I know it wasn't TikTok. What was the Twitter micro blogging? It was that one. I can't remember now.
Andy Vitale:
It was Vine.
Natali Morris:
Vine. Thank you. Yes. He was a Vine star.
Lisa Welchman:
Oh, I just Googled him and I see his face. I know his face. Okay.
Natali Morris:
And it was like, "Hey, everybody, Fred Figglehorn..." Right?
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, yeah.
Natali Morris:
And that's what made him so popular and tweeny girls loved him. And we tried to get him on the show and we were the number three morning show at the time, we didn't have a lot of clout. It was like if The Today Show calls, yes. Early Show, I don't know. And so for some reason we didn't do the piece. And I remembered that the network executives were like, "Who is this?" And the producer was like, "Let me call my teenage daughters." And he on speaker. And he's like, "Hey girls, do you know who Fred Figglehorn is?" And they were like, "Oh my gosh, Daddy. [inaudible 00:09:10]" And it was like I was trying to bring this person who had established their own credo beyond the networks to the networks. And they're like, "We don't get it. We make stars. They don't make themselves. How can that be?"
Natali Morris:
And it's just totally democratized itself. And I think that that's beautiful. And also, like I said, humbling because I have struggled to have a voice that no one gave me permission to have. Because a network had to say, "Yes, she can do this piece. Yes, she can have this job. Yes, she can be on our air." And so I was always waiting for permission. And so maybe my generation, now I'm 42, struggles with knowing how to just speak without permission, or at least maybe that's my personal struggle, and my kids' generation will not. So you can see, I love it and I'm intimidated by it.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. That really, really resonates with me. I mean, I'm older than you even. I'm in my fifties. And so the way that you frame that really is resonating with me. Obviously this podcast, I'm always talking to Andy about like, "I need to talk less and you need to talk more." I have full of opinions and insights, but when I speak with particularly women younger than me and Black women in tech younger than me, they often criticize me for not being more forthright and out there. And I'm like, "Well, that's not a space that I was allowed to occupy. When I started giving keynotes to technology conferences, I was often the only Black person in the room at these events." And so it was really quite unusual for that to happen. So that really sounds like an important thing.
Lisa Welchman:
I think that's a really good way to describe the generational divide that's happening. And also the fact that some people aren't interested in being that out there as well. But I think this permission slip component is really amazing and you've really described a lot of the positive side of that. What about the other side? Which is the reality that anybody in the world can put whatever they want online for, deceptive reasons. You talked about tweens. And so tweens, that's a very, very vulnerable age for boys and girls, but my bias is towards girls. Lots of crazy stuff happening to your body and a lot of pressure on emerging women to be a certain way, look a certain way, do certain things. I think that's when maybe some of the bullying can start online as well in that environment. What do you see going on on the other side of that coin?
Natali Morris:
My view on that is that my children can have their devices around certain timeframes and things like that. But I have always told them, "Everything online is something that I can see. I may open up your apps. I may read through them. I'm not going to make a habit of it, but you have to know that I will see it." And I would rather than practice it early, rather than just get online and then not understand the attention. And my daughter, she likes to do these synced up TikToks where they're dancing to a song and she does the same stinking over and over again. And my mom-
Lisa Welchman:
She's getting good though. I'm sure she's getting good.
Natali Morris:
Right. My mom and sister are like, "Oh, she likes this attention." And I was like, "Would you say that about a boy?" And I was interested about that reaction because I don't think she's attention-getting, I know her well and she's shy. I think she's expressing herself. And I don't like it that they have assigned this intention to her without asking or without knowing, or because they think that she is a beautiful little girl and that is attention worthy, and so therefore, they think that it is attention-seeking. And I said, "How else is she going to express herself then? She wants to dance to this thing and I don't have a problem with it. And I talked to her about her intentions and she does these. And the other day she had her bath towel on the floor behind her and she hadn't combed out her hair so it looked really stringy. And I was like, "I'm not going to say anything about the hair because I don't want her to think that she should look a certain way."
Lisa Welchman:
It's tough, yeah, yeah.
Natali Morris:
But then I'm like, "Comb your hair." Because I'm her mom. Right? So I said nothing about that. But I was like, "Hey, do you think maybe should clean up your room before you do those things?" I don't want her to think everything has to be perfect, but I do want her to-
Lisa Welchman:
But there are some parameters, yeah.
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Pick up the towel for mold reasons. You know?
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. What you're describing is what I often think critically of as life as performance. And so I was a philosophy major. And so one of the things that's really interesting about this generation, and it's a not even a negative, it literally is just sort of observing, an observation of what's really different is for good and for not good reasons, of just the sense that you are not alive or you're not a person unless you're seen by other people online.
Natali Morris:
Right, yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
I don't know how that's going to end up. Coming out of my mouth in that way, that sounds not positive. But I don't know that that's the case. Because there are things that I'm sure my generation did that looked really odd to my parents, and back on down the line. Everything evolves over time. So I'm really just watching that and going like, "This is really interesting. This is just a really interesting pattern." And it's hard to parent through dynamics that you didn't have when you were growing up. I think that's what's really difficult about having kids right now, even my son, who's 26, when he got to middle school, social media was just hitting and the idea that a child would have a mobile phone was just hitting and it was like, "What?" You just didn't even know how to make a choice because it wasn't in your world pattern. So I wish you well with all that, it sounds like you're thoughtful about it.
Natali Morris:
I want her and my son... I have two daughters, the littlest is too small for that, but I want them to understand that they cannot value themselves based on what their feedback is. And that's something that takes practice and I have to model it. So in the early days of me being on the internet, I let them dress me up really cute and wore lower cut tops than I wear now. And I was 20 something and now I'm 42. And so it used to be that if you Googled, my maiden name was Natali Del Conte, one of the first like search results... You know how Google gives you suggested search terms? It was like, "Natali Del Conte boobs." So I was one of those girls. Not because I put them out there, but because I had them and that was, you know....
Lisa Welchman:
They show up sometimes.
Natali Morris:
I don't think that I flaunted them, but I wore them.
Lisa Welchman:
Well it's part of your body.
Natali Morris:
This was my pre-nursing life. And they were nice and they were worth Googling. And now people don't Google, "Natali Morris boobs." As far as I know it's not one of the main search results. And I have to learn that I am validated in a different way. I have different values. I cannot value myself based on a public opinion. And I have to do that gracefully. And I have to teach my children that you are not what the feedback is online.
Natali Morris:
But there is positives and negatives to it. I have a friend whose niece has a very rare childhood lymphoma and she became a little bit of a TikTok star because she did these dances with her chemo nurses. And her mother was like, "I struggled with this. But it gives her so much confidence when she is isolated having chemotherapy during the pandemic."
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, it's positive for her.
Natali Morris:
But there are people, jerks who are going to say, "You're doing this to get attention." People do say that on her TikTok, to a bald 13 year old in a chemo ward. So yeah, there's always going to be jerks, but that models the world. You always have to be ready to tune out the jerks and always be ready to validate yourself internally.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. I think just one last thing, I'm sure Andy's got a mountain of questions too. I like what you're having to say and it reminds me that part of the challenges of this online spaces is yes, there's always been jerks, but it's the internet and the web and social media allow people to put their whole internal monologue online.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
So you might have been in your middle school doing a dance in the classroom or in the cafeteria dancing or singing and there might have been people hating on you or thinking, "Oh, she's just showing off." But that just never made it to you for the most part.
Natali Morris:
Right, yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
It stayed in somebody's head or it stayed in a little clique. And so I think it is materially different that people's internal and sometimes anonymous opinions about things show up online and that a person has to hear it. That this chemo person has to even see that sort of thing. It's very, very different. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what types of therapies and new cultural and social norms that we put in place to temper that.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
Right? And what types of things parents have to do to protect.
Natali Morris:
It takes a really involved parent.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, to protect your child and help them cope with that new reality. And so it sounds like you've really put a lot of thought in it and that your kids are really lucky to have you and your experience at the table to help them navigate that world. Because I don't think every child has a parent who is media savvy and understands the impact that that can have on them.
Natali Morris:
And my husband is good about it too. He always says that, "When I was on Fox News, there would be 2 million people watching with 2 million different opinions. And the only one that's true is mine." And so you cannot play to other people's opinions either on TV or on the internet or on TikTok or on a podcast. You can only really know what to think of yourself. And so yeah, we have the advantage of having people say horrible things about out us straight to our @ replies. And we just have taken it. For the most part, I have been able to laugh it off. I think it's pretty amusing that someone would use their energy to reach out and stab somebody on the internet. But yeah, that's, I can't say that it all rolls off your back. It doesn't.
Andy Vitale:
So Natali, I think back to the early days of the iPhone and social media really becoming a thing and every day there you were reporting a new gadget, a new app, new technology, the pace of innovation, even though it wasn't grand innovation, it was new things almost every day.
Natali Morris:
All the time, yeah.
Andy Vitale:
So what was it like being in the space at that time, seeing all these new things pop up and at the same time, we've learned over time that from creating new things at that pace, we weren't paying attention to the damage that it could cause, it was just, "Let's get first to market." In that space at that time, did you see the potential danger that could happen or that was happening? Or was it just like, "There's so many things that I'm just paying attention to one thing at the time."
Natali Morris:
Yes, I definitely did. And I am the kind of person who still reads books. I don't like to read a lot of long form content on the internet. I like to just read a fully formed book about things. And I noticed that the internet was keeping our attention span and this tech was not taking into account any of these sort of neurological changes that could be a result of these technologies. It was just, "Let's move out new things, let's try new things." And then I remember I got an email once from a viewer. I don't remember if it was an email or a tweet. We did a piece on... At the time it was so novel that airplanes had wifi. And so we were reporting, "Now American Airlines has wifi. Now this has wifi." And I went to this conference, a tech conference and this French guy was like, "Why are we doing this? Why can't you just read a book? This is the last protected space is in the air. Should we be doing this?"
Lisa Welchman:
I remember the vast majority of my book I wrote on an airplane. It was, it was kind of like you looked forward to it, right?
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember once, so I got on an airplane and my Kindle died right during takeoff and it was from San Francisco to New York and I was like, "I might die because I had no book to read. Why'd I do this?"
Lisa Welchman:
Oh no. That's when you start reading the inflight... The inflight magazine becomes very interesting.
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I survived it. I don't know how. But I used to just read a book cover to cover when I would go back and forth from New York to San Francisco. And this viewer wrote me about inflight wifi, because I totally agreed. I did not think that that was necessary. And he said, "How much longer will this kind of thing go in your show and how much longer will it just be part of our world that Starbucks has wifi and American Airlines has wifi? How much longer until technology is just life and it's not so much gadgets and connectivity and those kind of things, it's just, that's what..." And I have thought so much about that comment because we were thinking that all of these things were a piece of like of a nascent type of life. And now they are transparent in our lives and it's more uncommon not to have wifi than it is to have wifi. Those things wouldn't make headlines any longer.
Natali Morris:
And so I remembered thinking about technology will just eventually exist in the background. And I think that we're there. That is the life that we got to, like it or not. And of course I worry about... Well, I worry about two things. I worry about what it's doing to us. I worry about what it does to my kids all the time. I'm always fighting them about screen time. I hate that word. My two least favorite words, screen times and snacks kill me. But I worry also about being worried. Because I know that aging makes you afraid of things that are behind you and things that are new that you may not understand. And I don't want to be that a person who is just like, "Well, it's not the way. I don't understand that. Why do we need this? This wasn't like it was in my day." So I try to not worry too much about things that scare me and just acknowledge like, "Huh, I don't understand that."
Natali Morris:
I don't really do TikToks. I don't feel like I understand how to present myself there. And I notice there's something inside of me that's triggered like, "That's stupid. I'm not there. I don't understand it." And so I fight myself to think that things that are new are not stupid just because I don't understand them. I don't think that most of my generation will feel that way. I think as we go forward, we will feel like our parents, like, "What's this? I don't want it." And I just want to embrace things and understand them in a more conscious way and not just be afraid because I'm afraid. So they're two different things here is like, how do we as we age stay open-minded to what could be good and what we don't understand? But then how do we, as a society also protect ourselves from what technology is doing to us. Those are two different things that I struggle with.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. That's really fascinating the way you're describing it because it harks back to something that Andy and I talk a lot about with digital makers, the classical website makers that we're talking to and talking with a lot, which is intent.
Natali Morris:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
And so it's funny to hear you describe your fear or sort of visceral reaction to TikTok because a minute ago, or several minutes ago, you were almost the exact opposite, you were taking up for your child and saying to your mom, "They're just trying to express themselves." And so I think you-
Natali Morris:
Right. She knows how, right? And I don't. I feel silly on it.
Lisa Welchman:
Right. But you're accepting that those are two different things, you using it, but you're also understanding your child intent.
Natali Morris:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
And so I think for everybody, when we approach or look at a new technology, that's what's going to keep us on an even keel, "What's the intent of this? Is it a positive intent or is the intention sort of malevolent?" And I think a lot of technologies can wrap around both of those two themes.
Natali Morris:
Everyone is always scared of innovation in some level. Socrates was afraid of the written word because he thought that it would reduce our ability to memorize things.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, partially. You're talking to a philosophy major. That's part of Socrates' problem, not all of it.
Natali Morris:
Right. But I mean that's indicative of how we are always afraid of innovation. And maybe for valid reasons. But the written word did not... Well, I don't know if I want to make that statement. Would I say the written word did not destroy society? No. I have to think about that a little bit more because it was kept from people.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, it's complex.
Natali Morris:
I want to say, I am glad for the written word. How about that?
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, it's just like you want to be on record.
Natali Morris:
Yeah.
Lisa Welchman:
That'll be our headline. "Shockingly, in this podcast, Natali Morris rejects the written word."
Natali Morris:
I'm not sure how I feel about TikTok. I'm not sure how I feel about writing. So we're really throwing it back.
Lisa Welchman:
But that's good.
Natali Morris:
I don't know. But I think about that a lot because I realize there are always valid reasons to be afraid of things. I'm not dismissing Socrates' concerns at all. It was valid. And so we need to always temper ourselves with the fact that resistance to innovation is appropriate. Period/
Lisa Welchman:
Or expected. It's part of the human condition.
Natali Morris:
Normal, right.
Lisa Welchman:
Normal, that's a fantastic word. I think what you're pointing to is another theme that comes up in this podcast, which is human beings over time have lived in a stream of technological innovation. That's what we do. From fire to whatever. And every time we-
Natali Morris:
Go through the Epcot ball, man.
Lisa Welchman:
Right, right. And every time we work through a technology, it shapes and forms us. And I think you're pointing to the fact that we need to be conscious about the fact that it shapes and forms us. And we need to be, at least I'm going to say this, we need to be intentional about the way that it shapes and forms us, instead of just letting it sort of blow us around in ways that we can't understand.
Natali Morris:
And one thing I've practiced since becoming a mother is trying to figure out when something bothers me, I'm like, "What is really bothering me here?" It's one thing you try to teach your kids, you can feel like, "I'm all agitated but can you find the source of it?" And then think, "Oh, is that valid? Should I feel that way? Or am I just being insecure?" We all have to get to the root of why we're resistanced to things and it's not going to be the same for you versus for me versus for anybody. Like I said, some of my resistance could be that I don't want to put 42 year old Natali Del Conte boobs on camera the same way I was ready to do that at 28. And what if someone says something? That those kind of things are valid, but they're mine. So we all have to figure out like, "What is my resistance here?"
Andy Vitale:
Yeah. As we've talked, I've been thinking about, again, just the harm of technology, but as a digital creator. You talked about comments and messages and bullying, but you've persevered and you've continued to create content. So I'm just curious what drives you to continue to create content on a daily basis knowing the potential harm that could come your way? And just facing that and moving forward and continuing this desire to continue to create content in the digital space?
Natali Morris:
I am very comfortable with my written word, which is why our newsletter has become my main source of self expression. Because I write it every day and that just feels really good to me. My husband, though, he really is the driver of continuing video work. I don't know if I would have the confidence to do it. In fact, I do know that I wouldn't have the confidence to do it. Because even after I left full-time broadcast, I never started my own thing, even though I had a following. It was him that decided to start his own thing because he just loves the medium of television. I started as a writer. So I'm confident continuing as a writer. And there are times when I watch my old demo reels and I think, "Huh, I was pretty good on camera. Why don't I keep doing this?"
Natali Morris:
I just lacked the confidence without a white male executive telling me I should do it. I'm not proud of that. It's just how I was conditioned. And I have had to continue to find the confidence to do things like that because it just wasn't in me. I used to have the broadcast coach was like, "You have daddy issues." And I don't have issues with my father that are, I think, damaging to my psyche, but there is something there inside me that's like, "Do I have permission to speak?" Raising my hand.
Lisa Welchman:
But weren't you speaking before the networks found you? Initially weren't you... You said you were sort of cutting edge on that. I don't want to-
Natali Morris:
But it wasn't me that put me on there. I was discovered. It would never have been my idea to do that. Before that I was writing for newspapers. I was writing for the Oakland Tribune, the San Francisco Examiner. It was me applying for jobs and asking for permission. It wouldn't have been in me to just start a blog. It just wouldn't have occurred to me. I wish it had, but it didn't. And so I have always been the kind of person that it's been harder to give permission to to speak. In fact, have you ever heard of human design?
Lisa Welchman:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Natali Morris:
I did a human design analysis recently, and even the person who did it is like, "You don't like to just do things that no one asked you for." It's harder for some people to do that.
Lisa Welchman:
That's interesting.
Natali Morris:
And so that has been one of my greater challenges in the latter part of my career, where I'm not someone who just gets plucked up for being cute and capable of speaking on camera, to give myself permission to do that is hard. My husband's really fearless though. He can do it. And so I'm lucky that I follow his lead towards doing that. And there are plenty of times that I kick myself for just not having done it myself, like when I left my broadcast platforms, catapulting those into my own thing. But I wasn't ready. And also I was in it. I was one of those moms, I have three kids and I was always up to my elbows in them. So I made that choice and I made it consciously and I wouldn't do it any other way.
Natali Morris:
I had some job offers to go back to web TV when they were really little and I just couldn't do it. And I was lucky enough to have that choice. But motherhood erodes your confidence in yourself. And I think that I can say that as a blanket statement, that once you have started to shift your gaze to these little people, you've shifted it off of you and you forget what you have to offer. And that was absolutely... It's a possibility for everyone, it was absolutely a surety for me. It happened. And so, like I said, I will struggle to continue to create things that feel comfortable me because I took this long break and because I am the kind of person who always waited for permission.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. That's fascinating to hear you talk in this way and I appreciate you being so vulnerable and honest with your experiences. It's really interesting. It's funny, I have the exact opposite response to motherhood, which is it built in me so much capacity and confidence of what I'm capable of doing, and also refined and made clear to me what my personal priorities were. And so if you're looking at it really from a pure play successful business person out in the world perspective, people often say things to me like, "Oh, Lisa, it's too bad, you could have been so much more."
Natali Morris:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Welchman:
Right? But if I look at it from my own value system and structure, I feel like, not 100%, but to a large extent, I called my shots. And I made the choice of things that were really important to me. And so I think it's important to hear your story and important to understand that there's a lot of different ways to evaluate success in life.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.
Lisa Welchman:
And one of them, the vocational thing. And then the last thing I'll say on that, which is your story, and I'm hearing it, which is, I also hear the story of somebody who loves to write. And so another side of this thing is wow, you were writing, at some point somebody... You have other talents and skills, as we all do, we have other talents and skills that we never actualize and fulfill, somebody else looked at you, saw something else, plucked you out of the writing and had you do that. And it sounds like through this journey, you've actually made it back to the thing that you really love to do and that you chose to do in the first place, which is writing. Which is also another positive way to look at you as a really powerful woman who likes to write and enjoys being a mom and takes that responsibility seriously.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I appreciate it when I'm allowed to do things on camera or when I do things for our show, I'm glad to do it. And then it reminds me that I'm good at something else. But like I said, I'm lazy about getting camera ready.
Lisa Welchman:
It's a thing.
Natali Morris:
So I'm glad to not be the regular person.
Lisa Welchman:
It's a real thing.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, yeah. Definitely. And I would say that's one of the main things I miss about going on the networks is that-
Lisa Welchman:
They get you camera ready.
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Like Tina Fey says in her book, Bossypants, you can show up looking like uncooked chicken and then they just pull miracles. I loved that. But I'm also glad that I don't have it every day. It's not good for your hair. It's not good for your skin. But man, that was nice though.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, yeah.
Andy Vitale:
The other thing that I'd love to just touch on a little bit, back to technology, is the difference between what you saw in the United States as far as technology and the response to technology and the interactions with people, versus what it's like in Europe and Portugal. Is it a cultural difference? Is it a technological difference? Is it a human difference? What are the differences?
Natali Morris:
Yeah, well, when my kids started at an international school, I remembered thinking like, "Where's the email from the class mom before school starts? Or where's the class email list?" That does not exist in Europe. They are very strict about privacy. You cannot post about your kid's school. You cannot post pictures of them there that have any recognizable images. You cannot write to the class list unless everyone has opted in. Privacy is a real concern there. That was not a thing in the US. Just automatically the school gave out your contact information to the class mom or the class dad, and they started writing you and you were automatically involved. You had to opt out of pictures of your kids on the school website instead of opt in. And here, there are no pictures of kids. It's like the back of their heads raising their hand or something. I appreciate that privacy is such a big concern here in a way that it wasn't in the US. And we've seen this in the courts.
Natali Morris:
Google has faced so much privacy litigation in Europe in a way that it did not in the United States. In fact, most of the big tech companies have. Google because they're the biggest litigation. But I didn't think that that would really be a thing. But then also technology, it works better in bureaucracy in Europe than it did in the US. For instance, you get a healthcare number here and then all of your health records are on this database. So then it's not my responsibility to take vaccine records around, it's just there. In the US, it's so privatized that it's hard. If you're in one system, then you have to get your records and request them and move them to another system. It's kind of crazy how that works. And it's so hard to navigate as a person. And then I noticed that my dentist is really high tech, like the most high tech dentist I've ever seen. And I was like, "What are these machines?" And he goes, "They're actually made in the America, but because of the licensing, they're not used there."
Natali Morris:
And so America has a lot of restrictive rules that prevents certain technology from getting into the marketplace around patents and things. I mean, you know this, our medical system in America is... I don't even have to finish the sentence. You know what it is. It is not like that in Europe. And because I am a resident here, I have free healthcare. I pay extra for private insurance because it's requested for visa holders. I don't have a visa, I have a residency card. And I'm happy to do it. You have to show that to get your first residency card. You don't have to show it for the second. But we kept it because we liked our plan. But it's really, really cheap comparatively. And it's easier and we have access to more things. And they use technology to great effect. It's kind of shocking. It's a whole different world that I did not anticipate.
Lisa Welchman:
I have a whole thick conversation that I could have around that. That's one of my-
Natali Morris:
Around medical insurance.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, I'm hearing what you're saying about that. And I'm moving to The Netherlands from the US, both for personal reasons, political reasons. And one of the drivers is around healthcare. As I age and get older, being able to control those costs and to have a sensible system. But I'm also noticing, and I've mentioned before in the podcast, GDPR in the EU and just the attention that they pay to privacy and the respect, even at the most tactical level. I'm dealing with mom and pop shop sometimes and they know.
Natali Morris:
Right. And you wouldn't think elementary school class list.
Lisa Welchman:
Right. That's exactly right.
Natali Morris:
It's just not something that occurred to me until I was like [crosstalk 00:41:42].
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, when I moved into this condominium building that I live in right now, they have a list of all the residents here. It's your name, your unit number, your phone number and your email address.
Natali Morris:
Oh my God.
Lisa Welchman:
Right? And it's the directory. And so I remember going up to them to the desk and saying, "Look, I made an email address specifically for this condo." And I was like, "This is the only information. You can say, 'Lisa, she lives in this unit and this is how I want people to contact me.'" You would've thought I asked for like... I got pegged as the difficult person who didn't want to communicate with people. And I was like, "No, I just don't want all of my personal information flying around." And so it is a cultural sensibility about privacy that's really very, very different. And it'll be interesting to see how all of this broad and wide openness that we have in the US and probably in other countries as well, but this is my experience, this just sort of untamed abandon with which we embrace these technologies.
Natali Morris:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Lisa Welchman:
How much of it we can get back in the can and how much it we can't. Because a lot of people really formed their business models around this wild openness and this lack of privacy. So it will be really, really interesting to watch that over time.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, it'll be interesting how... Like I said, there'll be things that you didn't even think of that will be unrecognizable to you when you move abroad. And then you're like, "Huh, why don't we do that?" Little things that you just don't expect, like protecting children and the rights of children and protecting someone's home address and protecting someone's email address. Someone warned me when I moved abroad, "Europeans love bureaucracy. They love it. Love." As someone who's a Virgo, I'm fine with that. I have all my paperwork color coded and labeled and I'm fine with it. And so these bureaucratic systems, they exist to protect people as much as they exist to help the government run smoothly.
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah. That's right.
Natali Morris:
And yeah, I like it. It works for me. It wouldn't work for all sensibilities.
Lisa Welchman:
Cool.
Andy Vitale:
So Natali, we want to be respectful of your time. If people wanted to find out what you've got going on, get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do so?
Natali Morris:
So our newsletter is morninginvest.com. It's a free daily newsletter. It's written, again, with the intention of empowering and informing people. And I think if you've listened to the podcast this far, you'll recognize my voice in that writing. I put a lot of myself into it. And then our morning show, which my husband hosts is youtube.com/morninginvest. And then if you just seek me out on the normal social networks. I do have a website, but it's Natali with an I, no E, Morris the normal sounding way.
Andy Vitale:
Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on.
Lisa Welchman:
It was great to meet you, Natali.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, you too. Yeah, thanks for inviting me on. And Andy, I'm sorry, you're not in New Zealand. We were talking before the podcast about how years ago we connected on Twitter, it would be more than a decade, I'm sure of it, right? And I saw your name and I read some stuff you were saying. And then I must have below that tweet saw somebody else who lived in New Zealand and I connected those bits of information in brain. And so I have always thought when I've seen your name that you lived in New Zealand or Australia. I'm sure there are so many pieces of information that I've fused about people that way that are wrong. But it just made me laugh and you're like, "No, I'm not there."
Lisa Welchman:
I still think that he would love New Zealand.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah.
Natali Morris:
You thrive there. Maybe that's a sole clue. I don't know.
Andy Vitale:
Yeah, I almost used that as the wrap up. I was going to say, "It's getting late here in New Zealand."
Natali Morris:
Right. It probably is.
Lisa Welchman:
Well, yeah, that's cool. I definitely when it gets super cold and dark in January and February in The Netherlands, I might be heading your direction to warm my toes, Natali.
Natali Morris:
Yeah. Oh, I know. I know. Yeah, that's going to be a tough one. We considered The Netherlands too. And then I was like, "Dark at 3:00? Don't know if I can do that."
Lisa Welchman:
Yeah, yeah. We'll see what happens with that. But thank you so much for your time. It was lovely to meet you.
Natali Morris:
Yeah, you too. Thank you for the invitation.
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