Podcasts about although i'm

Welcome to Jaws month. As I look at the Steven Spielberg classic blockbuster Jaws from 1975. Although I'm not going out in that little fishing boat all by myself oh no I have Jaws super fan and returning guest Dave Hastings.   So come listen as we dive into the dark waters of Jaws and discuss everything from the differences to the book, Great White sharks, CGI vs practical effects, and more.   Enjoy     Twitter: @heresjohnnyspod @the_doctor1310   Don't forget to like, share, comment, and subscribe also leave a 5-star review on iTunes.     *please forgive the audio as I had trouble with Skype during recording* 

Thanks to Crescent Crown for sponsoring this series. This is the 6th episode in this miniseries we did with InkleDeux to get our Certified Beer Server cert. In the words of Sinatra "...you can't have one without the other!" Although I'm sure it wasn't his intent it makes me think of food and beer. Every. Single. Time.  Luckily for us, we have one of the best chefs in the universe here in AZ. Tamara Stanger from Cotton &Copper joins AJ, Luke and I to school us on the art of pairing food with beer. 

Dr. Nathan A. Pennell, associate professor and director of the lung cancer medical oncology program at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute, shares his insight on the abstracts featured at the #ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program that show promising advances for patients with lung cancer. Dr. Pennell is also a site investigator in the study by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium and discusses the findings of its first report released at #ASCO20.   Transcript ASCO Daily News: Welcome to the ASCO Daily News podcast. I'm Geraldine Carroll, a reporter for the ASCO Daily News. Today I'm speaking with Dr. Nathan Pennell, associate professor and director of the Lung Cancer Medical Oncology Program at the Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Institute. He is also a consulting editor of JCO Oncology Practice. Dr. Pennell will discuss key abstracts on lung cancer that were featured at the ASCO20 Virtual Scientific Program. He will also tell us about the first report of the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium that was discussed during the meeting. Dr. Pennell was a site investigator in the study, abstract LBA-110.   Dr. Pennell reports paid consulting for AstraZeneca, Merck, Eli Lilly, Genentech, and Bristol-Myers Squibb. Full disclosure is relating to all Daily News podcasts can be found on our episode pages. Dr. Pennell, it's great to have you on the podcast today.   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Thanks, Geraldine. I'm glad to be able to talk about these abstracts.   ASCO Daily News: So what are the key abstracts that will likely change standard of care in your opinion?   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Well, I think there was one primary abstract that really should change care, although it is not yet involving a drug that's been approved by the FDA at this time. And this was in the plenary session, so this was an abstract number LBA-005, which is the ADAURA study. So this was a phase III randomized trial of the third generation EGFR inhibitor osimertinib, given as adjuvant therapy in people with stage IB or through stage IIIA EGFR mutation positive lung cancer after surgery. Patients who had early stage EGFR mutant cancer were randomly assigned after surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy to up to three years of either osimertinib once a day or a placebo once a day, and the primary endpoint of the study was disease-free survival, with a secondary endpoint of overall survival.   So this trial did fully accrue, and we've been waiting on results. And rather unexpectedly, we recently heard that the trial had been unblinded at an interim analysis, because it had already met its end point for disease-free survival. And they kind of sneaked it into the plenary session, which I thought was really good to be able to get the data out so quickly. So essentially what the study showed was that the primary endpoint, which was disease-free survival in people with either stage II or stage IIIA EGFR mutant lung cancer was significantly longer in people who'd gotten the adjuvant osimertinib versus those who got the placebo.   In fact, at 2 years the disease-free survival was 90% in the treatment group, versus only 44% in the placebo group, with a hazard ratio of 0.17. And a very impressive looking curve. So this was, I think, a very significant finding and one to certainly congratulate the authors for such a meaningful presentation.   The good thing is that it seems to have a big impact on disease-free survival I think the criticism-- so if anyone was following along on social media, you can see there was quite a bit of discussion about this trial-- is that, of course, the most meaningful endpoint in any sort of a curative trial like this is really, does the drug prolong overall survival or does it increase the chance that you're going to be cured of your cancer? And the truth is, because the trial was unblinded so early with only 22 months follow-up, we don't know the answer to that question. In fact, most of the people on the trial were probably still on drug, which has a three-year duration of treatment and it was only 22 months of follow-up.   So we won't know, most likely, for several years, whether overall survival has been impacted by this treatment. However, since the primary endpoint has been met, I think there is a reasonable chance that this will be something that could become available for us. And then we'll have to decide whether to use it.   I think that based upon this magnitude of a difference, I do think this will be practice changing, in that, if it is approved and available for use, it will be offered to patients with resected at least stage II and III EGFR mutant lung cancer.   ASCO Daily News: Dr. Pennell, are there any new agents in development that could potentially change the treatment landscape for patients with lung cancer?   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Well, there are several abstracts that are worth highlighting, I think, in this scenario, two of which actually could change practice. Although I'm not sure that they will. And the reason I say that is that even as the data was being presented in the same month, these drugs became approved by the FDA, and so therefore are ones that we can discuss about using.   So the two abstracts I want to discuss first are 9500 and 9501, which were the CheckMate trials of nivolumab and ipilimumab versus chemotherapy in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer. The first trial was an update on the phase III CheckMate-227 study comparing nivolumab and ipilimumab. So it's an anti PD-1 agent in an anti-CTLA-4 TLC for antibody in combination, versus chemotherapy in patients who had a PD-L1 expression greater than or equal to 1%. This combination is already approved by the FDA for this indication, and the update confirmed that with longer follow-up there continues to be an overall survival benefit in this population.   There's also an indication that nivolumab and ipilimumab may prolong survival compared to chemotherapy in the less than 1% PD-L1 subgroup. However, this was not one of the primary endpoints of the study, and so the indication doesn't include that. But I think that that's the population that's very interesting and that we should think about addressing in further trials.   Now, the second abstract, which was new, was the CheckMate-9LA study. And that was, again, across all PD-L1 levels, advanced non-small-cell lung cancer, were randomized to nivolumab and ipilimumab in combination with just two cycles of platinum doublet chemotherapy, the idea being that for those patients with lower levels of PD-L1 that may be adding the chemotherapy may be beneficial. And we know that from other studies of chemoimmunotherapy.   So this was an intriguing design. And, in fact, it did meet its primary endpoint of improved overall survival across all PD-L1 levels of limited chemotherapy plus nivolumab ipilimumab compared to chemotherapy alone, with a hazard ratio of 0.66 in favor of the combination. And, very interestingly, the magnitude of survival benefit appeared to be the same across all PD-L1 levels, whether it was high, greater than 50%, or even less than 1%, It really was about the same hazard ratio, in the range of about 0.6 for survival.   So this is great. It certainly offers a new option for our patients. And the FDA did actually approve it, again, in May 2020 for the combination. The major question though, with both of these regimens, is they were superior to chemotherapy, and chemotherapy is no longer considered standard of care in the United States for patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Either single agent PD-1 drugs, such as pembrolizumab for high PD-L1 or chemotherapy plus a PD-1 agent in all other levels of PD-L1 expression is already the standard of care. And so I don't know where to put this into practice, when we already have other combinations or agents in the setting. And it's not clearly, dramatically better just looking across trials.   And so I think, while this certainly offers more options for our patients, that we'll have to wait and see if there is a patient population that would benefit especially well from one of these combinations compared to what we already have available. Certainly, the toxicity is perhaps tolerable, but perhaps somewhat more than single agent PD-1 with the combination of the CTLA-4 antibody.   Another perhaps not yet practice changing but could at some point become practice changing abstract was 9503. This was a study called the CITYSCAPE study. So these were, again, first-line stage IV non-small-cell lung cancer patients. It was randomized phase II, and they were randomly assigned to either atezolizumab, the anti PD-L1 agent plus placebo or atezolizumab plus tiragolumab, which is anti-TIGIT antibody, T-I-G-I-T, which is another immune checkpoint inhibitor. And the primary endpoint was response rate and progression-free survival.   This was for everyone with a PD-L1 level of greater than 1%. And, very interestingly, there was an improvement in both overall response rate. It was almost doubled from 21% up to 37%, with the combination of the PD-L1 inhibitor and the TIGIT inhibitor, and a longer progression-free survival. But I think what we learned in the presentation that was different from the abstract is that it seems as though this it was restricted to the subgroup of people whose PD-L1 score was greater than or equal to 50%. This is already a group for which we have aztezolizumab and pembrolizumab approved, and this had a dramatically higher response rate and progression-free survival in this group, with a hazard ratio really of 0.3 compared to atezolizumab alone.   So while this is not yet practice changing, because it's just a randomized phase II and the drug is not yet approved, I do think that this is the first signal we've seen that there may be a subgroup of people with a high PD-L1 that may benefit by adding a second immunotherapy drug. And this is well worth proceeding to a phase III trial.   And then, finally, of the agents that are potentially practice changing in the relatively near future would be abstract 9504, which was the DESTINY study. This was a single agent phase II trial using trastuzumab deruxtecan, which is an antibody drug conjugate against HER2. And this was looking specifically in a cohort of patients with HER2 mutated metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer.   There were 42 patients in this cohort that were treated with the antibody drug conjugate. All of them had been pretreated with chemotherapy and/or immune checkpoint inhibitors. And very promisingly, we saw a 62% response rate with this agent, which was really probably the highest response rate we've seen of any drug in this population of HER2 mutant lung cancer.   We know that HER2 mutant lung cancer is an identifiable population of adenocarcinoma patients. It's about 2% of adenocarcinoma patients. But for the first time, we finally saw efficacy in this population with a targeted drug. Because tyrosine kinase inhibitors have been disappointing in the past. So this drug showed a 62% response rate and, very promisingly, and estimated progression-free survival of 14 months. Very comparable to what we might see with, say, an EGFR tyrosine kinase inhibitor in mutant lung cancer.   So I think this is very promising and certainly deserves consideration for our patients with HER2 mutant lung cancer. Importantly, it also was fairly well tolerated. Now, there were some patients who got interstitial lung disease from the treatment, but all of them were grade 2 and responded to steroids. And so I think that this would be not a deal breaker in terms of toxicity. And hopefully we're soon going to have to add HER2 to our list of targeted agents that will have to be testing for in non-small-cell lung cancer.   ASCO Daily News: Well, we also heard some promising news about a randomized trial for patients with oligometastatic lung cancer that could potentially affect standard of care. Can you tell us about this study?   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Yes. I think you're referring to the SINDAS study, which is abstract number 9508. So this is basically building on what we know about patients with so-called osimertinib disease. Which means that really only a few sites of distant metastatic disease. We know from trials in non-small-cell lung cancer -- and so far, just to point out, these trials are all small phase II trials -- that by doing definitive either surgery or radiation to limited sites of metastatic disease in addition to systemic therapy, that patients may actually have longer control of their cancer and may even live longer. And this is being hopefully replicated in a phase III trial.   Now, the particular trial, the SINDAS study, was looking at the EGFR mutation positive subgroup of lung cancer patients. So this is about 15% of adenocarcinoma patients. These are treated preferentially with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which have been shown to be more effective than chemotherapy. And in this study, 133 patients who had five or fewer distant sites of metastatic disease were randomly assigned to either a tyrosine kinase inhibitor, using the first generation inhibitor, such as gefitinib or erlotinib, or the same tyrosine kinase inhibitor plus stereotactic radiation -- so ablative treatment to all of the sites of disease plus the primary tumor. The primary endpoint was progression-free survival, and the secondary endpoint was overall survival.   And while it is not surprising that this prolonged progression-free survival, because that's what we've seen consistently with this model, interestingly, there was a significant improvement in overall survival as well, with the hazard ratio of 0.68 with the addition of radiation. They did give us some breakdown of the different characteristics of the patients, and it did seem as though the number of metastases mattered. And so this might be something that could be considered more in patients who have less than two sites of disease. So really, as we know from oligometastatic disease, patients who have a single site of metastasis seemed to do better with ablative therapy, and that seems to be replicated here.   So is this practice changing now? Well, it certainly is consistent with the other phase II trials of a ablative radiation plus systemic therapy improving survival. I would like to see this replicated in a larger study before I would do this routinely. However, especially in someone who would, say, have a single site of metastatic disease, I think it would be very reasonable to consider doing radiation to that site now, based upon this data, while we're waiting for more evidence to emerge. I'm not sure I would run out and start radiating those with, say, five sites of metastatic disease, because I'm not sure that really necessarily meets the oligometastatic definition in my mind.   ASCO Daily News: And, finally, you are part of the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium, which shared its first report at the Special Clinical Science Symposium on COVID-19 and Cancer. Briefly, how does the report shed light on the potential outcome of patients with cancer who also have COVID-19?   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Now, this, I think, was very exciting, mostly because it illustrates just how well we all come together in an emergency situation. So this was a grassroots consortium, the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium, that was first started by some investigators at Vanderbilt University, but it came together with colleagues on social media. And before they knew it, they had gathered investigators from 100 different international sites to try to enter information on characteristics of their cancer patients who'd been infected with COVID. Because we were seeing results coming out of China suggesting that cancer patients maybe were at higher risk of both getting COVID and also having poor outcomes, and we really wanted to know how we could best serve our own cancer patients in the United States.   So in a tremendously short period of time, this consortium came together. And then they presented the results on Saturday of more than 900 cancer patients who had also been infected with COVID. Very interestingly, and concerningly, there was a 13% overall rate of mortality among patients in the cohort, suggesting that patients of cancer certainly are potentially at higher risk of dying than patients without cancers in overall infection rates. However, we had enough numbers to be able to pick out which patients may be at higher risk and not just all patients who'd had a history of cancer.   Those who had a history of cancer but that was in remission and did not appear to be current did not seem to be at any increased risk of bad outcomes, which was very reassuring. While patients who were older, who had significant conditions-- so COPD, heart disease, et cetera-- and especially those whose cancer was active and getting worse, seemed to do significantly worse and have a higher rate of dying from COVID. And so this really helps inform, for us, which patients we need to be most cautious of and would have the highest risk if they were to become infected with COVID-19.   ASCO Daily News: Well, thank you, Dr. Pennell, for sharing the highlights of that report. And we'll continue to follow the important work of the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium. Thank you very much, Dr. Pennell, for sharing your insights with us today on the ASCO Daily News podcast.   Dr. Nathan Pennell: Thank you, Geraldine. And I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss this.   ASCO Daily News: And thank you to our listeners for joining us today. If you're enjoying the content on the podcast, please rate and review us on Apple podcasts.   Disclaimer: The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement.      

This is day three of the series within the series where we're talking about the Faith Model or aka the ABG Model. It's a model I have been using for years to climb to level to level. Although I'm far off from where I want to be, I've come a mighty long way by using this model. The model is: A-Affirmations, B-Belief, and G-Grind. Each one is important in climbing to the new and exciting levels the Lord God has for us. It's crucial to have all three. We can't level-up with just one or two. It's a continuous process of all three that repeats itself. Now, let's talk about Grind. Are you grinding? Are you showing up? Are you working? James 2:17 says faith without works in dead, so we have to show up and "show out" for ourselves if we're going to achieve the goals we want in our lives. When we have all three, we're on to something amazing, yet the glorious process continues on and that's perfectly fine. In Sharon's Heart Website In Sharon's Heart YouTube Channel In Sharon's Heart Instagram

Contemporary black music has always had a boundary pushing relationship with black church traditions. From gospel singers like Kirk Franklin, to grime artists like Stormzy; who brought the house down at Glastonbury 2019 with an emotional rendition of his song Blinded By Your Grace. In it, he praises God, saying “Lord, I've been broken / Although I'm not worthy / You fixed me.” Fans love that musicians like Stormzy portray their real life experiences alongside expressions of their faith. Other people claim genres like grime and drill are incompatible with Christianity. As the once niche scene for religious ministry within UK rap increasingly reaches the mainstream, music and culture journalist Jesse Bernard traces the relationship between secular music and black churches in the UK. He looks at how colonialism and slavery shaped the role music plays in black Christian faith communities. And with the help of theologians and musicians, he explores why issues of social justice are frequently left unaddressed within the Church. Jesse examines how long standing social inequality and the current policy of austerity have impacted both black churches and the music being made by black artists in the UK. And he asks - is it so controversial for our everyday lives and our spiritual lives to be explored, side by side, in popular music? Produced by Tej Adeleye A Somethin' Else Production for BBC Radio 4

Last week I hung out with the Chronspiracists, Niko and Clark. They gave me lots of time to explore the Cosmic Egg concept, a syncretic synopsis of an ancient idea. Although I'm not personally sure that it's a completely true theory, I think it's one of the most fascinating ways one can look at our universe, and as a worldview, it's far more empowering than what we get from NASA, astrophysicists, and materialist/atheistic science.There are some supplementary materials that will help you visualize this idea much better than words alone can do, so check out the links below as you get started on this epic podcast.Cosmic Egg Artwork by our old friend and previous guest Hakan HisimNORBz Theory - Graphical Video Summary of Cosmic Egg TheoryIf you like what these Chronspiracy guys do, make sure and subscribe to their show and check out what they've been researching!https://anchor.fm/thechronspiracists/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Lately my mornings have been preoccupied by writing my Morning Pages, so I have neglected the podcast somewhat, but I begin this episode by talking about my new creative outlet. After that - it's all gardening! Last weekend my dad brought the tiller down to me and I began a massive overhaul of the garden that involved moving all 250+ Root Pouches out of the garden, dumping the busted pots, removing old ground cover, tilling the soil, re-grading, and finally re-covering the garden with 3 ounce woven ground cover fabric. This will serve as a weed barrier that should last 5-7 years, plus it gives the garden a beautiful, clean aesthetic that has been lacking for quite some time. Best of all - no more weeding. I finish up the episode talking about the plants that I just transplanted yesterday, March 28th. Those included: lettuce, spinach, arugula, broccoli, & green onions. Although I'm in growing zone 6, and could get frosts up until May 15th, I'm taking my chances with the mild spring - plus these crops are all very cold hardy - and if all else fails, I've got frost blankets as a backup! Let me know if you have any questions or anything I can do to help with you gardening season this year! And I would be humbled if you enjoyed the podcast and could subscribe to my channel - Mind Body Garden! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/gardening4gains/support

Hey this is Angie Monroe of the warrior divas show broadcasting live each Tuesday 11 am Central from globe life park in Arlington, Texas login to hear real talk with real women that will empower and equip you to make a more powerful impact in the world each Tuesday 11 am Central on fishbowl Radio Network Hello, and welcome to warrior divas real talk for real women. I am your host Angie Leigh Monroe, our show is specifically that was right I said specifically, incorrectly because I too can mess up from time to time. It is specifically designed for our divas;  divas is an acronym for Destin inspired victorious accountable sisters. And we will be bringing guests on our show who will help in our mission to equip and empower a global community of women change agents as we make a positive impact in the world we live in. When we started divas impact four years ago, we quip that we wanted to change the way women think and speak about themselves and others. As we've progressed, so has our thinking and out of our intentions, we want to talk about things that are impacting women. So this means we talk about faith, family, fitness, finance, food and a lot of other words that don't begin with f. So today we welcome Laurie Vaughn speaks of lbs consulting loriann speaks is an expert in the area of speaker and author support. She amplifies the visibility of authors, speakers and messengers. While they do what they love. Speak. laurieann has helped spearhead multiple best selling book campaigns, editing proofing, through to launch and social media marketing to help authors create buzz and momentum throughout social media platforms and increase their Message worldwide loriann and her team have made it their mission to empower speakers to deliver their message by handling the rest of the details. Prior to starting their own company loriann had over 15 years of professional experience supporting a top 100 thought leader as she built her businesses. Welcome to the show. loriann Thanks so much, Angie. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, I personally know what a busy busy lady you are. And you've had some major projects you're working on for some of my friends, and you've done some work for me as well. But before we get into all that, what I want to visit with you about who you are and how you got here today, is that all right. Yeah, totally cool. Yeah. I love that. So if you can just kind of give us a backstory. You. You said you work for a thought leader for 15 years. I'm sure there's things you did before that. I know you're a mom. So you're one What are some of the things that kind of led you to where you are today? Well, great, yeah. Yes, I am no spring chicken. I've probably had four different careers in my lifetime. I started off in my teens and 20s being so politically involved and got my degrees in political science and economics and wanted to be in politics. Thank goodness and thank God up above that he had other plans for me, and I am not there now. So I did that. And then I became a recruiter. And when the when 911 happened, my recruiting business went to hell in a handbasket. So, I started working for this thought leader, and I was hurt for all intents purposes, girl Friday. office manager, you know, gatekeeper. And I spent 15 years learning the business of speakers and authors. And so, but really, once I had children my focus, you know, I, like I said, I started off wanting to be, like President of the United States, you know, the first woman president of the United States. Then I had children. And I realized, Oh, this is, this is what I'm good at. This is what I love. And so, when you talk about where was I, and how have I gotten here, once I had children, the business kind of went as a means to an end instead of being you know, the end all and beall and being a mom was the number one thing in my life. And, and so, you know, I did I I worked at A regular job so I could be mom and Girl Scout leader and room mom and, and be able to do all the things that I wanted to do as a mom. I love that. Sorry. I said I love that. Yeah, you know, and I and I wouldn't have traded it for the world. You know. I'm kind of glad that I never really got into the whole corporate america thing. But what got me now to owning my own company, though, is that back in December of 2017, I was laid off, my boss decided to sell our company, and I knew it was coming. But But I decided I was just going to stay until the end because she needed me. And and, and so and I knew there wasn't going to be much difference between hitting the the, you know, employment market at 59 or at 60. I was pretty bad. You know, they're not going to be doing well and I and I just sat there and went, Okay, let's just see this through to the end. And once I was laid off, it became very clear to me that once again, corporate america wasn't going to be my, you know, my journey. I must have sent out 100 different resumes and never got a call, never got a call. And so I knew if I was going to continue to work, I better start my own company. And I did and I'm so glad I did. So glad I did. Well, I love the part that you said, you know, you saw the writing on the wall you saw she was retiring, stepping away and and but you stayed until the end. I think there's so much that's lost in that finishing well, moment. You know, you you worked with this woman side by side, you served her. You served her well over the 15 years, but you also finished Well, we With her and and that's got to be a sense of accomplishment that many people miss out on today. A lot of people see the writing on the wall and they're like I'm getting out while the getting out good button right. But it's finishing well that that right there is a good wealth of information for people to grab ahold of because we've been in a couple of situations when we've been with a church that was closing its doors or a company that's closing its doors, in that finishing Well, it feels like kind of like you put your kid to bed at night, you know, you kind of you kind of made sure that from the time they rose till the time they went to bed, everything was taken care of and they were they were handled in the best way possible. And it's the closing of a chapter in in celebration of that chapter as well. Exactly in and you know, it's a karma thing as well. And it was important to support her through this process because it wasn't necessarily something she was all that jazz to do, but knew that she needed to just get out from under the actual company aspect. And just go back to being Bev and you know, and enjoying her life with her husband of 44 years. So. So I was supportive. And that's kind of the way I am with my clients now. And it is a common thing because Beth has probably introduced me and referred me to at least 1520 of our friends. Wow, over the last two and a half years, so it's it. I think you get what you get. Right? I think that's really the way life boils down. Is yet you get what you give. So I agree wholeheartedly. Good. Yeah. Well, one of the things that We've talked about whenever you and I have been on the phone before, was that you kind of not use that nurturing that you use with your children with with your thought leader that you support it with all the with all the companies you've been with, you've used that nurturing aspect of yourself. It's not a part of your DNA, it is your whole DNA. That's, that's the part that I love about you is you, you see the potential and the possibilities in in people. And you want to call that out and you want to help support that and, and push push them and challenge them. But you do it in a way that is very impactful. And I want to commend you for that while I have you on the air because you don't get to tell people that very often where they actually slow down and listen to it, say it. Well, thank you. Thank you. I have really You know, when I started the company, I wouldn't say that I was passionate about what I was doing, until I really realized how much mentoring was involved because I was now working with a lot of what I call newbies. Right? And I love mentoring. That's, that's what I'm all about. And once I embraced that, and realized, this is what I can be doing for so many people, that's when I got passionate about what I was doing. Well, I think one of the other remarks that comes to mind is something that Michael Hyatt has said before, you know, people go out and I'm gonna have you share a little more specifically about the business you started here in a minute, but Michael Hyatt commented one time and I've kind of hung my hat on it is don't go out and look for people to help you get where you're going that haven't been there you go and you look for people. To help you get where you're going that have already been there, whether it's an assistant, a coach, a mentor, whatever it is, a lot of times people go okay well I can't afford a virtual assistant a high paying virtual assistant so I'm just going to get some little girl off the street help her have her help her out, help me out, you know it's a helping each other out type of Jerry Maguire moment helped me show you the money type thing. But they're not equipped. They they haven't been where you're wanting to go and Michael Hyatt says if you want to be a fortune 500 company you need a coach that has been a leader in the fortune 500 into industry if you want to, or you need an administrative assistant that has served as a role in a fortune 500 company, you need a a support system that has been where you want to go and and i think that's beautiful because you said you work with speakers and authors and and messengers and, and those are the people that you've already served and served in a high capacity. And so you can serve your clients so much better because you've already been there done that saying that you know what to expect even before they expect it, you know how to talk them off the roof. All of that. So, so yeah, tell us tell us a little bit more about the company you started what you do, and, and what type of company it is. Well, we are a virtual assistance company, but we literally specialize in speakers, authors and podcasters. So those are our clients. Although many of the the things that I talk about and have like a, a white paper on how to increase your speaking business, if you've got a small business that you need to raise your visibility. A lot of the things that are on that list can be used for small businesses as well. But what we do is we help the speakers and authors raise their presence in social media, help them write that book and get it to bestseller status. help them find more stages. And, and, and for those that are very much established, and they've gotten to the point where they're on the stages, but they just don't have the time to deal with all the, you know, logistics and administrative stuff. Right? I was gonna say a dirty word. You know, to deal with all that we take that off their plate, and we'll handle the the business side of it, and make sure that all the T's are crossed and the i's are dotted, so that they can go out on the road, do their speeches and know everything's being taken care of. Well, I think it's, you know, one of those things that when people say Alright, I've spoken at all these places, I want to have my own event. I don't think they understand fully what all that entails. But you've put those on for people before. So, you know, having somebody like you quote unquote, in their back pocket is is a huge benefit, I'm sure. Well, yeah, there is a lot involved. And, and just knowing how to negotiate with the the venue is important, because and finding the right venue for you and your budget. So, yeah, I've been involved in in all that. But yes, there's a lot of little pieces. And I find that the creatives, which is the community that I serve, have some amazing, great ideas, but they don't know how to bring that to fruition. And that's why I come in, I'm sort of their Yin to their Yang. You know, I will reverse engineer their idea to figure out how to get there. I used an analogy explaining what to do the other day to somebody I said, when you have that picture, perfect image of what you want. She's the puzzle maker out of it. She comes in, she takes the pieces apart, and puts it in a way that you can pick your pieces together as you need, whether you're an inside to the outside or an outside to the inside person, she helps put that picture together for you. So she takes your full picture, she breaks it down into bite sized pieces, so you can put it together the way you need to put it together. And they're like, oh, okay, you know, they're like, because I can't see how to get where I'm going from looking at the big picture. I'm like, that's why you need someone with a strategy mindset, which is what you have you and it comes so natural to you. You don't get ruffled whenever one thing's not going right because you're already expecting it to not go Hopefully I've planned it out properly and nothing does go wrong. But you know, life happens and and things do go wrong. And as I tell my client, no one in the audience knows that something's wrong. Exactly like when you get married, and you know, something will go wrong, but nobody will really even notice it. You know, just go with the flow. Have a great day, do your message. And we'll make sure that everything runs smoothly. So, you know, that's and I'm pretty even keeled. I don't I don't have extreme highs or lows. So, so I can keep it together and, and make sure everything works. You know, well, even in a in a kind of, you know, emergency situation. What is that old commercial? Never let them see you sweat. Yeah, those are the people you want in your corner is the ones that never let you see like Let them see you sweat. So I know, yesterday I got a notification, I have a large organization that I'm a part of. And we have two annual or two meetings a year that we do training for new new people that have joined our organization. And we have people come from all around the world. And they ended up after some major thought in listening to research and listening to the guests and everything. They decided to postpone this one and just resume in August. And, you know, there's there's definitely some some challenges when you have a big event. I mean, we're expecting 3000 people coming. And we're now postponing this event that's supposed to happen in two weeks. And now And so, one of the things that I realized and A lot of people don't is how many how this affects a trickle effect across so many parts, like I heard today, you know, on the news they were talking about, well the event will be fine because the event has insurance and that's true the event has an entrance has an insurance policy most events have insurance policies and if you're doing an event without an insurance policy, shame on you. But um, most events have insurance policy, but the the hotel that it was being held at the servers that were there, the transportation to him from the airport, the airport, so you know, we're dealing right now, in this time and age with this thing called the corona virus. And I've got a friend that's in Italy that owns a bed and breakfast who's totally impacted by this because she's in the we're all the study abroad students are at. So although all of them have been sent home, and so the parents aren't coming to visit the kids, the kids aren't there. There's a lot that's going on. And if I were an event organizer, even though I knew I had insurance, I think I'd be freaking out right now. Do you have anybody that you're hearing that about? Well, I mean, Justin there in Texas, I know that South by Southwest was canceled, yo. And I mean, and that's millions and millions of dollars to the local, you know, economy, right. lost. So yes, this is this is definitely causing some major troubles. The, you know, the things that the conferences that I know of right now that are in our industry are still happening, because they tend to be us centric, right. So those are still going on. But yeah, I'm also a member of the meeting planners International, so I know it Hitting big time to a lot of people. And Damn, I wish I had zoom. Zoom is doing magnificently over these last couple of weeks, right? Because companies are just making them now virtual meetings. And so you know, things can we can, we can flip things around. And and as I said, you know if something goes wrong, we'll fix it. You know, if something like this happens, and we can't have a live event, so let's have a virtual event, we can do it. Well, and that's part of what we've been talking about here lately is bringing in some people in doing virtual summit with people because we can get their messages out, we can band together stronger. You know, part of what we do is dig services help promote and empower other women and doing a virtual summit and in people like well, I want to be in a room with a bunch of girlfriends. I'm like right now, you know, Or, or invite your closest friends over to your house to watch the summit together. You know, there's a lot of different ways that we can think through this and do this a little bit better. But I know I sprung that question on you and it wasn't one that we had talked about discussing, but I figured it was right there in the middle of what we're doing right now. And you know, it needed to be addressed. I heard somebody the other day telling me that they were doing an event and they had like 1000 tickets sold. It was an outdoor event in April here in Texas. And I was like, okay, so you know, what's your what what insurance agent did you use for your event planning because I know a few that are in that industry. He goes, I don't have event insurance. I'm like you What? You're talking tornado season. You're talking rainy season. You're talking you just you chose the month in Texas that you just don't do that without an insurance policy. He was like, What? I had no idea so had him on the phone with an insurance agent ASAP you know? Oh, Lord better be glad you were there. Yeah, I'm coming. I'm coming in for dummies event in April as well. Yeah, I'll be I'll be there in Texas. Yeah. In in April, in that semi neighboring town, so I will be there as well. So excited about that. So now, you said that you worked with it was Bev right. The thought leader you worked with Yeah, Beverly, Kay, she, she Beverly Kay. She's amazing in the area of career development, employee engagement and retention, and her books, which Okay, so I don't know if you know this statistics, but most business books, the average sales are like 6000 over the period of their lifespan. Bev's love lose them has sold over a million copies? Well, yeah. And what we do did is that from her books, there were workshops created that were then sold to fortune 1000 companies. So we only worked with companies of 10,000 or more employees. Wow. But yeah, yeah. So it was a, it was a nice, nice, you know, but as you know, anytime you have a company and people that you are now responsible for, it's a headache. And at 75, she said, Okay, I'm kind of done with that whole aspect. She still speaks, but there was just no need for a full time in person and so, so and I totally understood that and I kept telling her because she was, she was feeling very upset that, you know, she was gonna let me go and I said, Beth, you do not owe me a job. You know, it's okay. It's over. Kay, right. And I'm so glad that it was so positive because, as I said, she has referred me to a number of different people that I work with now. And, and I'm having much more fun because instead of one author that I knew inside and out and all her, you know, her, her her speak, so to speak, and write, you know, so it did get kind of boring. You know, work can get can be boring if you're not totally engaged. Well, now I get to work with so many different authors that I've learned from each one. And it's something different each day. So I am enjoying this fourth chapter in my life. So, you know, I mean, how many women at 62 can say, Hey, I am enjoying the heck out of working? Well, I think it's great, you know, how you speak above and how she she you know, Caring for you. It's evident that she inspired you, as well. Who were some of the other women that have been in your life that have inspired you? Well, you know, in my actual life, I mean, my mom was amazing and just really stoic. So I think I get my even keel from her. Every client I have. And I'd say probably 90% of my clients are women. Every client I have really does, you know, inspire me because I love each of their messages, and they're important. And so they inspire me to want to get them, you know, more and more visibility, because what they're talking about is important. If we're talking about you know, like, someone that's famous, my my role model, and don't laugh at me, okay? My role model is actually Dolly Parton. Oh, wow, that woman. Not only is she self deprecating, I mean, she's not full of herself, right? She's self deprecating. She is one of the most brilliant businesswoman. She has. She has a music book have over three 4000 songs that other people have sung. So, I mean, she's rolling in it, but she is also giving back. Like, like no other. Do you realize that Dolly Parton is like the number one book distributor in the world? Because she makes sure that every child that that writes to her will get a book every month from date of birth to the age of five when they enter school. Wow. I had just recently heard about her love for books and what she was doing, but I did not know that little tidbit. I believe, I believe the statistics are that she has given away over a billion books. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I hear those stories. And you know, I am small potatoes. But I hear those stories and I just think, oh, wow, Lord, can I just win the lottery and just have fun giving it away? Because that would just to me, that would make me happy. Right would make me happy. Right. So I just I just totally love Dolly Parton. I'm in love with Dolly Parton. Well, you and my husband so my husband has said that his one concert he wants to go to he wants to see he is super in love with Dolly Parton. You know, and we're, you know, we're still in our 40s and he's like, I don't know what it is. She's just she's so so engaging and so real. And doesn't take herself too seriously. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And so giving and I have never heard word one that's negative about Dolly Parton from anybody. And damn if I could look like that and still wear those heels that 80 I think she's close to 80 you know, and if it's gonna go Holy moly, really look great. Right. And you know, we've been watching we watched that heartstrings that she had on Netflix not too long ago and have watched a couple of specials that she's had on. And, and I guess the part that I appreciate is in a world where we're faced with so many fake people are people faking it till they make it? She is just real and genuine and authentic and makes you feel even through the TV like you're her best friend right there in the room whether, yeah, exactly. And she'll tell you a lot of her his fate. Yeah, she'll say a lot of you a lot of mistake, but my heart isn't. Yeah. Yeah. So, I know, I know I'm one of the people that you've inspired. So tell me about some of the people that you hope to inspire and you know what what would you like your legacy to be? You know, years from now whenever people think of you, you know, a year 510 however many years from now when they think of you what is what are some things you want them to, to say are you hope that they have felt from you? Well, on a personal basis, you know, that I was a great mom and Grammy and, and a good and a great friend, you know. I hope that people see me as you know, being giving and, and and there to help whenever is necessary. But on a business level, I would love people to realize it's never too late to go out and start your own company. You know, when they when they started saying, you know, retire at 60 or 65, we were only living till 67 or 68. Right? Well, my mom is 91 years old. Wow, I had no intention of sitting on my tush for the next 30 years. You know, I mean, the thought is just repulsive. I need to be out and about doing stuff. So I'd really love to inspire people to say, you know what, I have this amazing idea and I'm going to start a company because you don't have to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. I went into no debt, no debt. I literally started my company in my home office with a laptop and my telephone. That's it, right? I didn't even have a printer when I started. Do now but you know, it's like you can start with with being something really small with this gig economy the way that it is, you can you can do a project by project type basis, do a good job, get a referral, right? And just build it that way. Right now, I would say 95% of my business comes from referrals. So, you know, I don't have to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of marketing and all that fun stuff. Seeing as though it's really not my thing to be in front of the camera, but I i will say I do love doing the podcasts and radio shows. I always have a face for radio, but but, you know, I like to just let people know, don't just because you're over 60 does not mean we need to, you know, crawl into a ball and say we're done. We still have another good chapter or two in our, in our book. Well, and we, it's whether you start a business, whether you start a nonprofit, whether you just start a group of friends that are hanging out together, get out and do stuff with people, engage with people, pay it forward, go to the schools and read the little kids. You know, there's so much that we could be doing. My husband's been working in the plumbing industry for 30 years, his body's starting to give out so he's starting to think about what are some ways he can reinvent himself? Cool. So let's, um, let's ask you this, out of the people that you're working with now, how have they inspired you to grow your business or shift your business? We talked a little bit about the niche market of what bad ad, you know, right? I know being a verb, you can say I'm a virtual assistant and everybody wants to go Okay, here's billing. Here's this. Here's that and yeah, but you said very specifically who you work with did Beth, help you do that or the clients that you started drawing in because of your personality and and what you were good at? Well, I knew that my niece was the speaking, you know, author industry because that's where my superpowers lie. And that's what I know. So I knew that that was my niche. I didn't know really that much about podcasting, but realized that that is the media of the future, and is growing leaps and bounds. And so I embraced that whole, you know, community and what an amazing community in the podcasting world is. But my, my offerings have changed. When I first started, I thought it was going to be the administrative, you know, all administrative kind of work. And I found that that's not necessary. What especially new authors were looking for. Now, I'm not a booking agent, I don't go and find, you know, paid speaking gigs as, as the only thing that I do, and if that's all that they want, I am now referring people to a couple of booking agents that I like, right? But, but my offerings have kind of changed. And what I've realized is that there are a great number of people who have been in corporate America for 20 or 25 years, who have a story and or a method of doing something that they want to now go into consulting and be a speaker and write their own book. And so I found that my mentoring in that area is really where I'm moving towards I have other women. And that's actually another aspect of what's important to me is I hire other women who have been marginalized, such as myself, who at 60 have amazing skill sets still to offer my clients. And yet, I also have a number of young moms who don't necessarily want to work a 40 hour week, because they want to be stay at home moms, but especially here in Los Angeles, you need that extra income to make ends meet. So that I have a number of young moms that helped me with the research and data entry and things along that line that honestly, I don't want to do anymore, right. But it gives them an income to help their family out. So that's like my back end mission within the company or who I hire and why I like I really try to take on those people that quote unquote, aren't hireable because they're not willing to put in the hours of corporate, you know, work that's necessary, that kind of thing. So, so that kind of what I'm about. Well, and I think it goes hand in hand with a lot of what I'm seeing in the women's marketplace for working nowadays. There's the our riveter, that makes the purses, it's the military spouses that make the purses and they know that military spouses get transported all the time. They get MCs to move, and it's hard to find a job and then because your spouse may be deployed, you've got to have a job that will be flexible with you being mom and dad to your kids while while your spouse is deployed. So they have a business model that they have components of their purses are put together and made by these male spouses and then they come back to the warehouse to be put together. And so and there's an virtual, another virtual assistant company out there that that engages male spouses to, to work for them as well. And then you've got more and more Abby, even, even our government here, then partly because of the corona virus has been testing out more and more people working from home doing it remotely. And, and so we got to stop thinking about, you know, butts and seats in the office and start thinking about how we can still be productive and make an impact for what we need to do. There are jobs out there. There are a lot of scam jobs out there big market of right now. But there are jobs, there's ways to serve people and there's a way to serve your own bottom line. If you're just willing to look forward, I know when we started my company several years ago, I started doing social media for companies and I worked with nonprofits and businesses and everything. But then whenever I got tired of doing the social media stuff, I'd say, you kind of evolved, you start working on what you what you really love, and you, you kind of evolve and you start realizing that that part while you It was fun, and it brought in money. It's not where you want to hang your hat now, because you've grown, you've evolved. And so I brought in another mom that had just had a baby. She kind of wanted to stay home with him for a while, got her trained up, and then she kept getting more and more training, and she rolled out into her own business, and great and even from there, she's now her child's in school, and she's gone on to work for a corporate company and this is what she's doing. It wasn't something that she went to school for. She took four years of college for did all this she had real hands on OJT to learn this skill test it be able to show what all she was able to accomplish on her own. And she never worked in an office she was home for her kids she worked everything around her kids schedule you know there were a few times she'd be on a conference call video call whatever and in the background her son's you know, coloring the wall with a marker or pouring cereal places that happens. Yes, she was there. I think you need to be realistic about whether you're capable of being a virtual person, right? Um, some aren't that great at and staying on task. If if you're the kind of you know, squirrel kind of person, that might not be the way to go. Believe it or not, I was actual a Virtual Employee back in 1991. Wow. Before there was such a thing, because I had been a recruiter and got married, had my kids and decided I wanted to stay at home. And, and my boss tracked me down after, like 10 years, and tracked me down and said, I just started this new company, I really want you to come on board. And I said, Well, okay, as long as I can do it from home, and he knew what I was capable of and said, okay, right. And I owe him so much because I was able to help support my family, and yet still could be the room mom, the Girl Scout leader and everything else like that. So it, you know, through the years, I understand and I know that I have the capability to stay totally focused and on task and, you know, not go down and turn on the TV or anything along that lines. It's like I am at work. And then I'm not right. Although I'm not as good as the and not Oh, I I literally last night, I got up and I did some, some tweets and stuff for a client at like 930 at night so that I could get it all loaded up. And, you know, make her happy. So, you know, it's like, I'm not that great at not staying at work, but but I'm working on that. Yeah, I totally get it my husband, you know, owning a plumbing business. It's a 24 seven on call for commercial emergencies. He works a lot. So when works, I try and work. And in that way when he's not working, we can actually go to dinner or we can go and do some of these other things. So I have set working hours during the day that take phone calls and do appointments. But if he's working outside of those normal working hours, I'll work so that maybe I don't have to have those. You know, if I've got free time with him, I can go to breakfast or I can go to lunch or dinner or we can go shopping for the kids. So my schedule looks a little hinky yet because it's not the norm of what everybody else sees. But, you know, it's it's also something that works for us. And it's, it's this is when we're, we're connected with people. This is when we're working with people. I had somebody messaged me last week. Hey, can we get on a call today? I'm like, Nope. Not today. You know, as I say, not today, Satan. But you know, yes, we can get on it. Call it just won't be today, it may be next week into next week before I can get on a call with you. And that's because I'm trying to be diligent of my time and not just block out the time for appointments and calls with people, but also block up the time to work on the projects can work on the tasks. And I think that's part of the discipline you're talking about of having the right mindset to do the job, you know, exactly. I know, I'm being pushed and challenged on writing, and I've blocked out my writing time for my books and, and I'm working on that and it's set up as an appointment. It's an appointment with myself in my laptop, and that's where I will be there. Yes. So no, no temptations. So we're about to take a break here in a couple of minutes. And when we do, it'll just be a quick short break. But when we come back, we're going to talk about some of the victories you've had. We've had, we may have touched on some of them, but we now There's women that are challenged with what life's facing them or what they're facing in life right now, or maybe they faced it years ago and they just haven't been able to get past something that keeps holding them back. And we like to hear those stories of victory from women that have kind of weathered the storms and come out on the other side. Just as a way to shine a spotlight into those dark splay spaces and let them know that we see them there. And you know, I may not be able to reach out to somebody and help them out of the dark space they're in but maybe you have the key that can unlock that dark space. So we're going to talk about that when we come back from this break. All right, we are back with Laurie and speak says we are talking more about her starting a business at the age of 60. We'll throw that out there. I hate telling women's age on the air but I love the story behind it. So That's That in itself, you know, people start talking about wanting to wind their business down at the age of 40 or 50 or 60 in your revenue up so, to me that sounds like a huge victory, but what are some other victories you've had in your life personally, professionally? You know, what are some of the I don't I don't want to assume that you just arrived and everything was perfect. Oh, gosh, no. Well, you know, it's interesting because Andrew, you know, I'm a big girl. And and so you know, life life in Los Angeles where everyone is a thinks they need to be a Barbie. I never really quite fit in. But and so hold on a second. I'm losing you. Are you Is everything okay? Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. It filter dummy. I so apologize, but Maybe it was God saying quit talking about being fat Laureen but you know, I mean, that was a hard road and I have some some major situations of being picked on. And I'll be honest with you, it took me until I was 50 to embrace the fact that this is the size that I am, this is the size that I am going to be. And I'm not going to change for anyone else. And I if I could teach the girls out there to love themselves. You know, so that they don't go through all the trials and tribulations of not thinking you're good enough. Because you're big is so, so important to me to get that message out. Love yourself the way that you are and and you'll find out that people will gravitate towards you because you become much more sure of yourself. unconfident and unfortunately, like I said, it took me to my 50s before I said, I'm done with this, you know, this is me Get over it. So, you know, that was that was part of my growing up and and maturing and you know, I guess another victory over the stuff when when bad things happen you know I went through a divorce and and and I still have yet to to remarry i mean you know there have been a couple of really nice men in my life but I I realized and here's something that I could do it myself that I didn't need a man to give me my worth, or to take care of me financially. I was capable doing it myself. Now, that doesn't mean that I wouldn't love to have a partner in life. But I realized I didn't need it. So I wasn't going to settle. Right? For someone that wasn't right for me. And I think too many of us women, you know, think that we have to have that man in our life. And and I say no at bros, embrace your powers yourself. Especially if it's a it's not a healthy relationship. So I guess those are really, I kind of have had a great life with you. I mean, I've been very lucky. So, you know, so and I'm the type of person that I have always looked at the glass half full, and I focus on the positives. And so that's what's really important when I went through the divorce My reaction was, okay. I don't want someone that doesn't want to be with me. Go Go. It's okay. But I have friends that to this day still can't stand my assessment. I let it go ages ago right ages ago. Let it go. If I can fix something, I fix it. I kind of tease sometimes I say I'm a guy with boobs. Because I am that type of person that if I, I want to fix it for you. I'm not one that just wants to listen and go all. Okay, I hear ya. Now I want to fix it. Right? I'm so much more like a guy in that way. But if I can't fix it, I let it go. And I won't. I won't sit there and and, you know, let it fester in my life. If there's nothing I can do about it. I don't have control. I let it go and I put it in God's hands. That's all good. Well, I think I think you touched on something there you know your your divorce, there may be people that are more devastated for you than you were actually devastated in the divorce. And a few years ago, I was doing a training down in San Antonio and we were having people do a life map. And on this life map, we had them put everything that was positive in their life above a line, write it on this big poster board, everything that they had encountered negatively in their life, they wrote below the line. And there were two women at the same table. And they both had divorce on there's one handed above the line, one headed below the line. The one that headed above the line said she had been set free from a very toxic relationship. The one the below the line was just totally devastated that her marriage had ended and basically her life had stalled out from that point in her life. And she just wasn't living and so It was beautiful watching that one that the divorce was freeing for her to be able to speak life and freedom into this other woman. And you know it their their experiences in the moment were very different. But the the ability to help that one that was stuck in the darkness come out of it was so beautiful to watch. And they spent weeks and months talking with each other and encouraging each other and empowering each other. Through that it was more one sided for a while. But then after that, while they they became really good friends and started doing some workshops for women that were going through divorce, and it said it in their work. Their theme was it doesn't matter how you're viewing your divorce, this workshop is for women to help you move on to the next chapter, you know, and it was it was a great thing that they did and and i don't know that they do those workshops. anymore but it was it was two polar opposite views of how one in one thing can impact a person. And exactly, you know, I know I've had this conversation with another friend of mine when I had my sexual assault, she had a sexual assault as well. Well, our reactions were two totally different reactions to it, you know, and, and, but it doesn't mean that we can't help somebody I can help somebody that had the opposite reaction I had she can help somebody that had the opposite reaction she had as we talk about it and open it up and peel back the layers of of what it all is but it goes back to more of what you you shared about loving yourself. You know, you have to do that first. Well, you know, there's this great gal Allison Donaghy, who is a podcaster. Her with Dominic No thinking, and she is all about taking yourself out of a victim state and into a freedom state. And part of that is just, you know, letting it go and understanding what your part in the situation was. You know, I mean, when I went through the divorce, and he cheated to get out, you know, but, you know, it was his fault, right? But no, there there, you know, there were things that after 15 years of marriage, you know, life got you know, we were all wrapped up and I was wrapped up in the kids with kids, kids. And and so, you know, I didn't probably give him the attention that he wanted. I will own that part. Right. Not that it was not this is doing right. But I will own that part, that maybe I was being the best wife either. And so, so I loved her framing of being able to get out of the victim state and into the freedom state because of the fact you can see where you own it, and then let it go. Right, right. And that's what we need to do is you need to just let it go. Let it go and move on. And I know that it's easier said than done. But, you know, and depending, especially depending on the situation, you know, an assault is is completely different than a divorce. Although it is and it isn't, if you think about it, right, because you can still be a victim either way, right? But, but it's like, move, you gotta let it go and move on. Because otherwise they're still having that control over you. Well, you know, I we when I left working at the church I was at before I started my business. We had this I worked in the business office, we had this thing that used to happen where there was stuff that was bought for our offices and they were bought specifically for our style or our look or or whatever the decor person that came in that decorated our offices decorated it towards our style. So when we left we had we normally had the option to ask to purchase or you know, because they would be redecorating it for the next person. So I went nice specifically asked for the chair that I had. It's kind of like the chair I'm sitting in today kind of an area on type chair. And it was very ergonomically correct. And I'd had the chair for five years it was kind of it had some issues with it, but it was molded to my but you know, to be honest, I liked that. I liked that chair. And my boss. I went to him and st if I could have the chair and he goes well as long as so and so approves that I have no problem with it. So it's getting close to the day that I'm leaving the company and everything and he comes back to me. He goes, if you're gonna get that chair I need, you know, we're getting your final paycheck and all that stuff lined out. I need to know what price you were told on it from, you know, whatever the facilities department was, and that asset I was told no. And the look on my boss's face because it was his boss that told me no, the look of my boss's face was just pure shock. Because in the five years I'd been there, nobody had told me no before. And he just looked at me and started and he goes, No, seriously, I'm like, I'm, I'm serious. Todd told me no, he's like, No, he didn't tell it's never told, you know. And, and for me, it was kind of like, Alright, now I have a right to be offended because I Even even Josh thinks it's wrong that I'm offended that that Todd told me now that he said no. And, you know, it wasn't a big offense. I'm using this kind of tongue in cheek because it's a funny story. I mean, Todd even came to me one day, I'm training my replacement, and I've got her staying there. And Todd comes running down the hall with this phone and he's got the old Groucho Marx song. It doesn't matter what you say how you phrase it, anyway, I'm against it. And he's playing that and I'm like, Pastor Todd, please meet my replacement. You know, I'm introducing Rosie's trash talking me it was a great moment. But this this business of mystery was kind of taking up an offense for me. I'm like, I don't know what the deal is. I'm not offended. It just shocked me and, and then that moment I went from dealing with my own shock to now I'm dealing with his feelings about this and you A lot of times when we tell somebody we're getting a divorce, or we've been fired, or, you know, we've been assaulted or whatever the tragic moment that comes up, we don't even get a chance to deal with our own emotions first and foremost, because we're constantly dealing with other people's emotions about what happened to us. So what I what I like is you keep saying, Let it go move on, you've got friends that were offended, but you're not letting them impact how you feel, or how your own you're feeling about yourself. Because you're like, it's done. It's over with I've moved on we say girl with long hair, because that's what we were called when we were in the military. I mean guy with long hair. That's what we were when we were in the military. We're just dudes with long hair. So you know, the not letting other people's thoughts come in and keep you stuck. Is it Something that I picked up in what you said you know those people can be offended and be mad at your ex and never want to speak to him again or, and that's fine. That's their feelings and their emotions. But you know, it doesn't disqualify you who you are what you were called to be how great you are and, and you know, it doesn't define anything else about you. It doesn't allow you to I tell people it's okay to park your boat there for a little bit but don't build a mansion around it. Oh, I like that. I like that. So I love that analogy. Yeah, if you need to go go to the gym, punch a couple of punching bags, do some kickboxing whatever, get it out of your system, and then move on. And in. Too often we're hearing that these people are parking their boats and building a mansion and and they've now got land attached to this. This thing that is become a problem in their life and You know, they'll never break the boundaries of that land because they're just, they're too hung up and what has happened to them that they can't see the rest of the world out there that's there for them at the moment and look at you, you're touching so many lives through the people that you serve. You know, every time one of those speakers you work with goes out and speaks or does a podcast or does whatever it is that they're doing. That's one of your touch points. Every time they're writing a book and putting a book out. That's one of your touch points. It may not be your voice, it may not be your thing, but you've touched it, and it's a an extension of what you've done and and all because you didn't sit back and go, Oh, well. He said I wasn't worth it. Or, you know, yeah, you're you're doing it or, you know, you say the face for radio jokingly and all that self deprecating thing, but you've got a voice that needs to be heard and needs to be shared and It doesn't matter what means it gets out there. It doesn't matter what you look like it needs to be heard. And you're not letting any of it stop you. So right, good job. Right. Thanks. Yeah, no, I think we need to embrace our own superpowers and embrace your worst. And, and unfortunately, it does take some of us longer than others. And I would love to see, you know, women, younger women having that confidence from the get go. And I think that's actually one of the things I'm probably most proud of is my daughter, who, up until about a year and a half ago was bigger than I still had the most self assured, amazing personality. You know, that just nothing stopped her. Right and Yet, you know, she was bigger than I. And I swear people are just getting mean more mean and more mean or meaner and meaner. I don't know, which is the correct way. But over the last year and a half though, she has lost 140 pounds. Wow. So wait, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, because she is so determined and so sure of herself, that when she finally made the decision, because she had had a couple kids and want to be there for them. Right, right. She made that decision and stuck to it. But, but it wasn't based on just the her luck. It was based on her health. So you know, just just having your own power is important. And you need to embrace that. Sounds like she's got some tenacity for my mama. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think so. I think We are we are very, we are very similar people. You know, we don't take a lot of stuff from people, right. I edited there too. But yeah, you know, we are, I have raised some real self assured women. And I have an amazing son, who also has a very self assured wife, who he supports and they support each other. I think, you know, as you say, what are some of the victories the victories are that all three of my kids are amazing adults who are happily married, and their spouses are amazing. And what more can I ask? They're happy, you know, and they, and they're giving me grandbabies. in Erie, we're done. I'm so upset. I'm not gonna have any more babies. Yeah, well, my, my two grandkids just turned six this week. So this weekend, so yeah, and I'm not called Grameen diva is my grandma name. So Oh, I love it. I love it. I love it. I love though. They, they definitely call me Davis. So I love that. But, um, so, in the middle of that, you know, what I love? What I kind of heard between the lines is, you know, your daughter with that transition and her outer appearance. You know, a lot of times people look at, you know, people that are overweight like myself, and they think that they're not strong that they're not self assured. Now we can walk in the room and prove them wrong, but first glance there, they're not gonna think that right off the bat. And so, one of the things that I've realized even through my my transformation of Losing weight, and still not near my goal weight yet, but in my transformation of losing weight is people do start looking at you differently. They do start thinking about you differently. And the thing is, is it's hard to explain that I never thought differently about myself. You just did. Right. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And yet, it's, it's also important to as long as you're healthy, right, right. To to accept yourself. Right. And so, so that's, that, to me is very important. You know, one of the things that always irritated me is that fat slob seemed to go together, right? Well, you will never, ever see me out in public. not totally put together. Every You know, there is no And, you know, dressed appropriately. And, you know, it's just so I have that in and of myself is just like, you may call me fat. But you will never call me a slob. Right? Right? Because that's, that's fine. I'm a big girl, too bad. Get over it. This is me. At this point. If I lost weight, it'd just be hanging skin. So I don't really care. It's like, no way. It's like, I'm healthy. You know, I'm not on any meds. I'm all good. So. So it's like, move on. Let's get on to the business. And I think I come across with a level of confidence that most people don't really, you know, stop and think, well, I don't want to work with her. She's sad. Right? Right. Well, it has. What's important is our brain. Exactly in it and it's one of those. One of those comments somebody made the comment what was it about it? A year ago, there was an event A friend of mine was on and they had only seen her headshots and if you look at her headshots, you think she's fairly skinny. You know very always put together. All of that right? Well then they invited her because they listened to her on a podcast how great she was an invited or to speak at an event and then they were it was a health and wellness event that she was speaking at. And she's got these amazing clients all over the West Coast and she's ran several multi million dollar businesses and and all in the skincare business and Health and Wellness Business, but she's not the model size. She's not skinny. She's not what everybody puts in when she showed up at the event. They were offended because of her size. Nice started being ugly to her. And oh my gosh. And she was like, wait a minute you listen to my podcasts, you heard the wealth of information I have. And they're like, Yeah, but the way you're you talked about on your podcast and what you're dealing with, don't seem to match up and she goes, show me where and they couldn't show her where what she was saying didn't match up with what she had promoted. It just they had a instant flip in their head as to what they had envisioned and what they had hoped to see. And of course, every other person up there look like canon Barbie, you know? And yeah, I'm like, but this is real life. This is gonna get the people that you want to help to get to Ken and Barbie status or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, but well, and and I mean, she's being real. Oh, yeah, exactly. at that. Yeah. That's just ridiculous. really ridiculous. And, and, and hopefully she stuck to her, you know, her principal, and she told him she wouldn't. She told him she would not worry about speaking from their stage. So that day, she really didn't need to speak from their stage, she would just take her check and go home. Oh, good for her. And they're like, well, if you're not speaking, we don't want to, we're not gonna pay you and she goes, No, we have a contract. You can just pay me and I will leave that way. You don't have to be disgusted by my appearance, and they're like, we never used the word disgusted and she's like, but she did in a not so kind way, you know, she, she was very firm. She's a businesswoman. So she is very good and strong and confident because they weren't seeing her the way she saw herself. Mm hmm. And I think I think that's, that's something that we have to be mindful of. We may think That we're, you know, strong and powerful and mighty. But we also realize that maybe not everybody sees us the way we see ourselves. And sometimes we just have to remove ourselves from their presence because it'll never be realized. And sadly, but the other side can also be true. You could see a beautiful girl who you think has it all together? And she does not think at all highly of herself. Exactly. So, you know, it's like, so love thyself, right, right. Know thyself. Well, I think we're all in whether you're gorgeous or not gorgeous or fat or skinny, or purple or brown or whatever. You're all beautiful, because God made you that way. So well, the way I look at it, and I do Do you know, it's one of those things that you you look at it and you go, Okay, I have been at the place where I believe the things people said negatively about me more moreso than then I should have, but then I evolved and then I started realizing that as long as I keep harping on those negative things, I will never see the positive things. So then I started shifting my thought process and and there will still be days. I'll go in Angie Lee Monroe, what were you thinking in? And I give myself that talk or, you know, come on, girl, get it together. Yeah. My husband I were talking I've had a couple of low memory things here lately that I'm just like, Okay, what in the world is going on with me? And, you know, it may it starts to make you think, Okay, well, I'm just not got it together. I'm just not this. I'm just not that. But really what it is, is you're not taking time to put margin and to allow room to breathe. It's what it is. And so in doing that, I had To be hold myself a little more accountable to how much I was putting on my plate, how much I was expecting of others how much I was expecting of myself. And I'm just gonna lead into our next little segment because what I know about you is when it comes to helping people reach their professional goals, your great accountability partner, I mean, you are the way you phrase things as you phrase things to set people up for success. So you were working on a project for me last summer and you're like, Okay, I'm going to get this to you by such and such time. How much time do you need to review it so we could set up a call? It was so there wasn't just a deadline on you. There was a deadline on me as well. And, and many people seem to blur the line between politeness and accountability. So, you know, I've told the story before my friend that never really wanted to hold me accountable for working out The gym because she didn't want to be held accountable for working out in the gym. But when we were in the office space together, she was phenomenal at it. I've had people I've given permission to, to speak into my life and say, you know, hold me accountable for doing things on certain dates and times and be consistent. But then they don't because they know that I'm a strong individual person. And I know that I know I should be doing it. But just because I know I should go to the gym and eat healthy every day doesn't mean that I necessarily do. And I've given permission to somebody to speak into my life to hold me accountable in those areas. And they don't, because they're afraid it's not polite to speak into that. Then we have a problem. So yeah, well with Yeah, with my clients. It really is. That's what they've asked me to do. And I'm not only holding them accountable, but I'm making the business accountable. As I told you earlier, you know, mentoring has really been my passion. And I think my clients all know that if I call them on something, or if I tell them, you know, you really should think about this, you know, going forward, they know it comes from a place of love, and a place of trying to make them better. So, you know, I don't think I've ever really gotten, you know, negative negative with anyone. But, you know, I will, I will say, Wait, stop you, we need to look at this. Right. And I think they know that, that when I push back or when I hold them accountable, it's only for their own good. Yeah. And and, and that's one of the things that people don't realize is if you're asking somebody to hold you accountable, or you're holding somebody accountable, you've been given a treasure in that moment. You've been given insight you've been given authority you've been given You know, I get tickled at people going, Well, I just want to be an authority figure, I just want to have a voice into this area. And so, you know, I'll test out with people. I'm like, Okay, well, I'm gonna give you permission to challenge me in this area. And then they don't brilliant. And then they don't. And, I mean, the ones that do are awesome at it at all times, you know, and then I'll go, I'll kind of push back with them on in a joking way of, well, this was a test it was only a test. Like, no, not by, you know, I'll have some they'll go Nope, not buying it. If you you wouldn't have come up with that thought if you really didn't want to do it or, you know, so they'll, they'll push back and then there's the ones that, you know, you tell them to challenge you in an area and they just never hear from them again. Yeah, well, yeah. So you just say you sit there and you go, Okay, got it. Move on. right on to another accountability partner. I think we've all kind of been in now. masterminds and and, and what not nice still, to this day have a number of masterminds that I'm involved in, in an effort to learn more, and have myself grow as well as helping my other mastermind attendees. So, yeah, going forward. It's not only just the accountability function, but that have you thought about type function rail to give you another aspect that you may never have even looked at? And so I'm a big believer in the whole mastermind system. Well, whenever you're looking at your accountability partners, whether you're being the accountability partner, you're you're looking for somebody to be an accountability partner. And, you know, what are some of the boundaries that you look for? With accountability partners, do you set up phone calls? Do you set up appointments with them? What does having an accountability partner in your life look like? Yeah, well I have mentors which are those that are ahead of me in the business game that I tend to think that you know that we're such a virtual world. My meetings with them are usually zoom meetings. So that I get that one on one I can see what's landing and what's not. And or, you know, we can have a real you know, face to face. This is what's happening. What do I do now kind of thing? Because I will I'll be the first to admit, I don't know everything about everything. Amen. No, I am, I am. I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. So I believe in listening to everyone and although there are times when I can be a bit of an intellectual snob and I really am trying to work on that I have learned in my life that I can learn from anybody. And we need to take people's feedback and live in it for a sec. And either Okay, I see where she's coming from, you know, and and go with it or not. Yeah. And just as I tell my clients, well, here's what I think you should do, but it is still your voice, your message, your social media, whatever, it's still up to you. So here's what I think. But, you know, it is still you that is out there. And it's your presence so well, I think Yeah, I'm in a number of masterminds. I think I have the I think I know the answer you're gonna give to this but I'm gonna ask it anyway because I think the question needs to be asked and answered in a more in your face way, but when you have people that come to you. And we'll just use me as an example, say I come to you. And I'm wanting you to hold me accountable in these areas. And I'm just not pulling my weight in that relationship. And but you can see so much more potential for me that I'm really giving towards the effort that I'm asking you to hold me accountable for. So my question to you is this. Do you keep pushing them and challenging them? Or do you find a way to basically tell them or tell yourself to let it go until they're ready to come to that realization? Oh, yeah, I'll have all sort of have a come to Jesus with them. But if they still aren't getting it, I'll say, you know what, I'm here whenever you're ready to level up or to scale your business or whatever it may be. I'm here when you're when you're ready, but I cannot Be the one that cares the most about getting you to the next level, right? it you have to have that burning desire, you know, to actually make it come to fruition, if you are not passionate and have that burning desire, it's not gonna work anyway. Right? Even if I have the burning desire, right, right, you have to have it. So, I usually, you know, I do let it go in a way that I let them know why. Because you don't seem to be ready. Now I just had something pop in my head, you know, and it's, it's a wondering question. So I'm just gonna put it out there for those that are listening and those that are listening either live or to the, to the recording. You know, I want to ask myself this question and then also, as the audience are those that let me figure out how we're going phrase that those that are asking for you to hold them accountable and are not giving back the full weight of what she is so so you so let's just say I expect more from Susie q out here than she's actually

MSR is closing down, But I'm not going anywhere, In fact, This is awesome for you! Here's why... Many of you guys and gals are former athletes... You guys are looking to overcome low energy levels so you can show up for those who matter most to you. You guys are wanting to lead yourself to optimized health so you can lead your loved ones and your teams more effectively. You want to be the absolute best version of yourself so you have the energy and vitality to create the life you truly want. And you guys (ya'll) are who I've been trying to reach! While many of you may be sad that the podcast is "closing down" The Game of Marketing Siege has been won in the sense of finding "Who?". (Although I'm well aware that the game of marketing never stops) So it's merely transforming. The question now becomes what do you want and how can I serve you at the highest level? The stars are aligning for me and you. Listen to find out more! By the way, If you are a former athlete who's ready to Re-Awaken Your Competitive Spirit and Thrive At Your Ideal Bodyweight, then you can grab the first 3 chapters of the book Amanda and I wrote for you over Christmas and New Year's Here: https://gearitupinsider.com/athlete-book --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/marty-white/message

In my first recorded episode of 2020 I spend the first 14 minutes reflecting on my progress as a podcaster and struggling comedian. Although I'm not into resolutions, I am trying to give people their flowers when I have the opportunity. Ricky Gervais: 14:10But=Rights: 31:30Kevin Hart Documentary: 34:20WWIII: 50:30Kardashian's Charitable Contributions: 58:48What happens after the break up: 105:40Put the Bottle Down: 109:00Questions Session: 112:10Sports:Rules of Pick up Basketball: 116:30Kobe and his Daughter 119:20Brady and Belichick: 121:05Rooney Rule 124:10***Disclaimer, I referred to the Plastic Cup Boys as the Red Cup Boys. Same same Boss, y'all get the idea.

Fortunately, my step kids have never called me the Step Monster. Although I'm certain they've thought of it or other unpleasant words. I'm almost always, Stacy or Seesi or Dad's Wife (in humor). I learned stepping into a their world with a genuine desire to do the right thing didn't mean life would work out really well, even though I knew them for some time before my husband and I were partners. Stepmomming doesn't mean that you won't feel defeated, feel as if you add no value or aren't valued. More often than not, we feel two steps forward and five steps back and the feeling of defeat and sometimes rejection can feel worse than when are our own kids drive us crazy or reject us. It's possible we try harder to fit in with our step kids than with our own. Fellow stepmoms, allow yourself space to breathe, healthy boundaries and the importance of 'not my issue to solve,' no matter how much you believe you know better. Cheers. Thanks for listening! Stacy Website: thecuriositycoach.co Instagram: skehrenidema Facebook:stacyidemacoaching Medium: skehrenidema Twitter: stacyidema ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Music by Pond5 Cover photo by Shari Fleming Photography Photo artwork by Derek Hood

I strongly believe upland hunting doesn't get the shine that it deserves. Although I'm still very new to it, I have fallen in love with it quickly. In this episode we dissect a recent pheasant and quail hunt we went in on Northern Kansas. We talk about what worked, how poor of a shot I can be sometimes, how much joy it adds to the experience to have your dog out there hunting with you, and how it was truly one of the most fun hunting experiences I have ever had. We also give some advice on how someone who is interested in the craft could get started in chasing upland birds. Give this episode a listen. I promise you won't regret it. 

BE SURE TO SEE THE SHOWNOTES AND LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE. Eve Picker: Hey, everyone, this is Eve Picker, and if you listen to this podcast series, you're going to learn how to make some change.   Eve Picker: Hi there. Thanks so much for joining me today for the latest episode of Impact Real Estate Investing. My guest today is Scott Choppin. Scott is the founder of the Urban Pacific family of companies, and he likes to describe himself as a contrarian developer. What's that, you ask? Urban Pacific's workforce housing projects use private equity, while serving middle-income stable multigenerational families. Their townhouses are generally five bedroom, an anathema in this millennial studio apartment era. That's why they are contrarian.   Eve Picker: Still, Scott's projects have historically generated 25-percent-plus investor internal rate of return. Scott points out that multigenerational living is growing in the US. A report from the Pew Research Center shows that 20 percent of adults, or 64 million people, are living with two or more adult generations in a single household.   Eve Picker: Be sure to go to EvePicker.com to find out more about Scott on the show notes page for this episode and be sure to sign up for my newsletter, so you can access information about impact real estate investing and get the latest news about the exciting projects on my crowdfunding platform, Small Change.   Eve Picker: Scott, thanks so much for joining me on this podcast. I've been really fascinated to see your e-newsletters arrive in my inbox talking about contrarian development and other things like that. I was hoping you could just tell us a little bit about what you do and what you're working on today?   Scott Choppin: Sure, sure, absolutely. Thank you, Eve. Happy to be with you here. Let me do this - let me just give the briefest of backgrounds, and this will build background for yourself and your audience about why we are then doing what we're doing in our development operations today.   Scott Choppin: Scott Choppin, founder, and CEO of the Urban Pacific Group of Companies. Basically, background, probably 30-plus years in various forms of the real estate development business, away from working in the field as a construction worker, all the way up through today, running a development company as the CEO.   Scott Choppin: Two key points in my career really guide what we do today. My first job out of college, I worked for a guy named Mike Costa at a division of company that was called, at the time, Kaufman & Broad; now known as KB Home. Our division that Mike ran and where I worked was called Kaufman & Broad Multi-Housing Group. That was a developer and syndicator of affordable housing communities really throughout the nation.   Scott Choppin: It was a corporate in-house offer, meaning it was KB investing in affordable housing projects, and then it grew into a full syndication shop. My role there was as a project manager on the development side. So, I joined Mike's team as the really super-green assistant project manager and left there as their most seasoned senior project manager with full P&L responsibility for multiple projects at any given time - all development, all new construction, and all affordable housing.   Scott Choppin: I left there, and I went to work for a couple of different companies, but the most noteworthy one is a group called Sares-Regis Group in Orange County, here in Southern California where we live. I worked there for a period of time, and that gave me exposure on the market rate side. KB was affordable; purely new construction. Sares-Regis was new construction, but market rate.   Scott Choppin: Then I left Sares-Regis Group to found what is now the Urban Pacific Group of Companies. We're on our 19th year of operations now, and we have always focused on infill development. That's our specialty. That's something that we are passionate about. We have done various product types, as you would imagine. We've done affordable housing. We've done market rate. We've done both for sale and rental projects. Over the last few years, let's say since about 2012, we've been entirely focused on rental housing only, and that's both market rate and affordable, as I said before.   Scott Choppin: Then, in 2016, we started to note that in particular marketplaces where we're in action on projects, particularly Southern California, it appeared that there was starting to be a pretty big wave of a certain type of project. That was what we describe internally as a podium project, but specifically built and designed to serve the millennial market, meaning a lot of studio, and one-bedroom units.   Scott Choppin: In 2016, we made the conscious decision to exit all the projects that we had that were that type of project. Of course, they were they were the right projects at that time, meaning demographically, the millennial generation is the largest single cohort, demographically, that we've ever had in the United States.   Eve Picker: Just to explain to our listeners who may not be real estate developers, a podium project is one that has a first floor that's retail, or other uses like that, acting as a podium for upper-floor residential, right?   Scott Choppin: Correct. I would only add to that description that it's ... The way I describe it, Eve, is that it's parking underneath in a concrete parking structure, many times faced with retail on the street, as you describe - mixed use. Then, three, four, five or more stories of stick-built wood-framed apartment or condo construction sitting on top of the parking deck. In other words, you've got the podium is the parking garage, and then the units above that, so-   Eve Picker: I think for those of us in the industry, we know what it looks like, but I think for people who are not, they're going to start realizing how many of those projects [cross talk].   Scott Choppin: Yeah, they'll start to show up for them ... Thank you for asking. I use it commonly, but in the industry it's- even sometimes, I get people who are investors that may not use that terminology, so thank you for that.   Eve Picker: Oh, that's okay.   Scott Choppin: Just to completed ... Back to the second question, which is what are we doing now, I think relevant to what your podcast subject is - focus on impact investing - in 2016, we were very aware of how much new product was coming into the marketplace in this specific demographic. In other words, a lot of studio and one-bedroom units in these downtown infill locations. Again, a great business plan, but we have always been a company that looked for specialized niche products, or contrarian investment and development type of opportunities.   Scott Choppin: In 2016, we basically sold everything off that was a podium, or studio, and one-bedroom type designs, and we started to look for, very consciously, a new type of product that we could develop that would be different; that would be something that wasn't mainstream in the marketplace. What we basically settled on, or not even settled on; what started to appear for us was a middle market workforce housing product.   Scott Choppin: As I spoke before, I was in affordable housing, and then I went into market rate housing. You can think of those as two ends of a spectrum. You've got true affordable housing on one side - 60 percent and below on median incomes, government-subsidized, using tax credit financing. On the other side of the spectrum is pure market rate - your standard LP market rate equity; pretty mainstream debt products on construction, on-prem loans.   Scott Choppin: We saw a gap in the middle. We can talk more about the middle, but the middle, for us, is really from an income and rental standpoint. We want to serve middle-income families with a rental product that's purposely designed and built to serve them as a family, and obviously relative to the markets that we're in, particularly Southern California. We created a new product we call UTH, which stands for urban town house. We're exclusively focused on that particular product, which is a middle-income, privately financed workforce housing product type, or rental housing offer. Let me stop there, and then see what questions that generates.   Eve Picker: Be sure to go to EvePicker.com and sign up for my free educational newsletter about impact real estate investing. You'll be among the first to hear about new projects you can invest in. That's EvePicker.com. Thanks so much.   Eve Picker: The big question is how does that serve the middle market, that particular housing type?   Scott Choppin: The middle market, really, I think of in three ways. The first way is really the most important, which is that this is a middle-income offer. You call it moderate-income housing; call it middle-income housing; call it workforce housing. There's different definitions of it, and it all depends on the person who's listening, the definition.   Scott Choppin: From our standpoint, the most important thing that we focus on is being in between those two spectrums that we talked about - true affordable housing, and market rate - right? If you look at, statistically, in the US rental housing markets, what you're starting to see is a movement of the middle class, or moderate-income families, into a higher level of their incomes going towards rental housing-   Eve Picker: Traditionally, the rule's been never spend more than a third of your income on your housing needs, right?   Scott Choppin: Exactly [cross talk]   Eve Picker: -seen statistics lately, which are closer to 50 percent.   Scott Choppin: Correct. In fact, I was reading an article today that ... I think these are for true lower-income families and individuals. Some people are paying up to 90 percent [cross talk]   Eve Picker: Oh, that's shocking.   Scott Choppin: -that's an extreme, and we know that exists, because that's what the true affordable-housing market serves. I have a graph, which I can share with you as needed, but basically the graph tracks average incomes across the US, and average rents across the US, and graphs those two, relative to each other.   Scott Choppin: What you see, what's really apparent when you look at it visually, and we know this - incomes are stagnant, or flat, and rents are generally trending up at a good clip. What we're dealing with, and what we are seeing, and why we created this product type is an ever-widening divergence between the rental rates and median incomes, or average incomes, however you want to describe it.   Scott Choppin: What's happening, what that does is that moves that middle-income family, or that moderate-income family into a housing distress mode, where traditionally, if you went back 10 years, 20 years, 30, and longer in the history, a average working-class blue-collar moderate-income family could afford to rent. In fact, in many cases, they could afford to buy houses. That's starting to lessen at a fairly dramatic pace, and our UTH product is there to address that. I'll stop there ... There's a couple other ways that we talk about it, why it's middle. I'll let you guide me as to how we continue on that.   Eve Picker: I know that you're focused on multigenerational, which is pretty unusual, too. You've mentioned before that many of these podium projects were focused on millennials. I'm in Pittsburgh, which sees these trends a little later than on the West Coast, certainly, but I've noticed here the abundance of that type of housing-   Scott Choppin: That abundance of the studio, and one-bedroom housing, you mean?   Eve Picker: Yeah.   Scott Choppin: Exactly right. UTH is unique for what we described previously on serving a moderate-income family, and we can talk in more detail later about how the rents work, and what makes them a naturally occurring moderate-income housing offer. The main mechanism of how we produce that benefit to the families ... In other words, what is the mechanism, financially, that has a non-covenanted- I mean, no true government rent restriction model- allow it to naturally serve moderate-income families ...   Scott Choppin: The way we do this, Eve, is UTH is unique in that all of our units are designed and built to be five-bedroom townhouse units. All the units have five bedrooms, four baths. They're in a three-story town home model - garage on the ground floor, and a bedroom/bathroom on the ground floor. In fact, that ground-floor bedroom/bathroom is what provides the multigenerational component. Then, we have kitchen, dining, living, and the rest of the bedrooms throughout the two upper floors.   Scott Choppin: Where the multigenerational design component ... We didn't start with that. We actually started, originally, with a four-bedroom product type. As we were developing the business plan of UTH and coming up with a strategy of how this would work, in totality, it sort of showed up for us that we're serving middle-income families, blue-collar working families in Southern California, because that's where we're predominately developing the UTH model. From a demographic standpoint, our main renter profile are Hispanic families in low, and lower-middle-income neighborhoods throughout, let's say, Southern L.A., and northern Orange County, around where we're based.   Scott Choppin: What that provided for us with some guidance. We said if we're going to serve these families- we already knew we were going to do five bedrooms. We know we are renting purposely to larger families. What is the makeup of that family? Typically, you have two to four wage-earners; that might be mom and dad, aunt, or uncle, and then, maybe an adult child or two that are still living with their family. Then you have some number of small kids that are either kids of the parents, or possibly kids of the adult kids. Always, we were seeing grandma, or grandma and grandpa being part of that family group. When we would talk to them when we were renting units, we would see this.   Scott Choppin: Combining with other signals that we were seeing in the marketplace, we said we've got to do this ground-floor bedroom/bathroom. That would serve the older generations of that family, where they don't have to necessarily walk up and down the stairs. We don't have elevators in these units, in part, to keep them cost-effective, but this is a way that a person can live with their family; even be separated a little bit. For their own privacy, they're downstairs. This has turned out to be, really, a very primary part of our offer. We now only do five-bedroom town house units with that ground-floor bedroom/bathroom. We're not doing any units that don't have that.   Eve Picker: It's really interesting, because that's quite contrary to US culture to have many generations living together. Although, I think that's being forced upon us now with the boomerang kids, right?   Scott Choppin: Yeah. The way we look at it is this, and you make an excellent point ... If you look at traditional American '50s-era nuclear family - mom, and dad, and 2.3 kids; a garage, and two cars in the garage, that kind of thing .... If you look even further back in history, in both American culture, but let's just say European culture; really, anywhere around the world, the lifestyle of the '50s-era nuclear family in America was an anomaly.   Scott Choppin: It was an anomaly because, if you look back historically ... I did research, and we looked up what was the makeup of the household in the Medieval era in England, as an example. It was interesting because the way they described it is they said the household in that era was multigenerational, already. That existed just inherently, and that was a function of multiple reasons. The two primary reasons and really the main reason was economics. The idea of maybe one, or two wage earners affording a house by themselves was really- it didn't exist. What that caused people to do is they would have other parts of their family who were also bringing income to the family group to afford this house, or even that described, in older eras, taking on boarders; almost complete strangers.   Scott Choppin: The idea of this nuclear family house is really ... If you look at it historically, it's a blip on the timeline. If you go forward, now - I have a graph which I'm happy to share with you - we're now in a multigenerational growth cycle in the American housing markets, where one example is the boomerang kids. I think that, for economic reasons, people are starting to live multigenerationally, and we're at the highest point of that amount of families that are living multigenerationally. At least the stat that I have shows that 64 percent of households in the United States live multigenerationally, and it's an upward trend on the graph. It's at its highest point. I think that, again, is an economic function.   Eve Picker: Yeah, I grew up in a multigenerational family, and I think it was way more than economics. There was always an adult around for kids, and it just made life so much easier [cross talk]   Scott Choppin: Great. So, let me add something. The way we think of these tenants, the family profiles, we really think of them in three ways. You've triggered me to think about this. The first way that these families live is that they basically share incomes, and they share costs among the larger family group. That's the economic part of it that I described.   Scott Choppin: Two is that, because of the incomes that they're at - either low, very low, or moderate incomes - they tend to have a limited number of cars. Cars are a thing in California and designing buildings to house cars - it's a pretty sensitive subject in some parts of people who are in the business. The reality is, functionally, this is what's needed, but we don't see a high car ownership. Your classic suburban house would have a family of four or five, and they'd have like 10 cars. I'm being [cross talk] right? We get this come up as we present this model to cities. The reaction is, "Oh, my gosh, we're gonna have so many cars." Functionally, again economics, they don't own so many cars.   Scott Choppin: The third component- sorry-   Eve Picker: Well, it's better for the environment, and better for cities, and better on so many levels, right?   Scott Choppin: Absolutely. Agreed. Then, the third component is, just to wrap up, and this is what you alluded to, is because we're multigenerational, and because we are multi-wage earners, the way we look at it, and the way we've seen it actually work is that generally an adult will be at home at all times during the day. That means when kids get home from school, somebody will be there for them. There's no economics around that.   Scott Choppin: You could maybe say it's a cultural thing, but, to me, this is when we think about social ethics, and social impact ... How do we, as a developer, and how do I, as the CEO, want to present our model to the marketplace? Although investors go, "Maybe that's important, maybe that's not." For me, I go, this is a really important thing that avoids latchkey-kid syndrome. It keeps the family tighter. This is, Eve, in your experience living multigenerationally, is that you're going to always have an adult; it might be grandma, it might be Uncle Joe, who works the night shift, but it's a real key component of this model that we very much are encouraged by and even want to do more of.   Eve Picker: I really like it. In a way, it reminds me of the trendier version of this, which we call co-housing, right?   Scott Choppin: Mm-hmm. Co-living, right. Agreed, yeah.   Eve Picker: Co-living, co-housing, which is popping up to serve, I think, probably more millennials, who want to share costs and amenities, so, for a different reason. It's all kind of this sharing economy, isn't it?   Scott Choppin: It is, it is. In fact, we think of this in really three ways. In fact, we have a relationship with the folks at Common, which is one of the primary sort of co-living offers that we've seen in the marketplace. I actually sat on a panel at a conference with Shana Lee, who was one of their acquisitions folks in California at the time. It was interesting, I hadn't seen her presentation in full until I sat on the stage with her. It was amazing to me, because as she started to describe their product, she goes, "We build five-bedroom units, or six-bedroom units." She and I connected after the panel, and we said we should really meet, because clearly what we're doing and what you guys are doing has a lot of alignment, but for different marketplaces, right?   Eve Picker: Different market, yeah.   Scott Choppin: As you described, this is millennial. This is sharing economy. Very high-end finishes. They want to locate in trendier neighborhoods. Our model, you [cross talk].   Eve Picker: They want yoga.   Scott Choppin: Yeah. Well, they want yoga, and they want rooftop decks, and really high-end kitchen finishes. I mean, the product is beautiful, no doubt. What this did, in this conversation, Eve, is it really opened my eyes that basically our model, UTH, is a co-living model.   Eve Picker: Yes.   Scott Choppin: We just happen to be oriented around single-family groups, or family groups, generally. The economics benefit of the sharing are the same. In other words, if you say I've got ... Maybe in a co-living for millennials, everybody's an income generator for each bedroom, so a five-bedroom unit would have five income-earners. Our model is the same, except maybe we have two to four wage-earners. Again, it's sharing costs and sharing ... Well, not really income on the co-living millennial side, but certainly, these families are [cross talk]   Eve Picker: -sharing responsibilities and sharing products. I mean they may not be sharing- there's cost-sharing, as well.   Scott Choppin: Yeah, true.   Eve Picker: The fact that we were building for 10 vehicles in the suburbs was kind of crazy. How much could you possibly drive one vehicle?   Scott Choppin: Right. Agreed. In fact, just an interesting note, as I was having a conversation with one of our project managers - he's managing one of our projects in Montebello, up in San Gabriel Valley - he and I were having this conversation about families, who would come to look at the units, would start to have a conversation as he was talking with them, and touring them. They really broke it down into what is the cost per bedroom. They were, of course, looking at the whole-dollar rent, and for our five-bedroom units, were averaging between $,3000 and $3,500 ... The families were going, "How much per bedroom? Is it $500, $600, $700 per bedroom?"   Scott Choppin: For them, they were like, "That's actually affordable." Now, we know that in the marketplace, on a whole-dollar rent basis, $3,500 a month is not affordable in that context of how people think of it generically, but when you overlay that rent amount, given the total income that's produced in a family group with four wage-earners, then it actually does drop truly into the 80 to 120 percent of median area income, so our product is a naturally occurring moderate-income housing offer, truly.   Scott Choppin: Now, we don't put a covenant on it. People, when they look at it, like when I have conversations with affordable housing- pure affordable housing people, they go, "Oh, that's not really that, because that's ... It's not restricted, and it doesn't have a 55-five year covenant." I go, "True," and we do have projects that have a certain number of units restricted in them.   But, what I go is, "If you put a covenant on it, then it will change the dynamic of the investment model for raising capital," and then we go back to, now, this true affordable housing model where I always say that total subsidy to develop a true affordable housing is always going to be finite. There will never be enough subsidy to subsidize enough projects to serve all that very low, and low-income families across the US. There's not enough capital in the marketplace to do that. There never will be, so I say it's finite.   Scott Choppin: Our model, then, yes, we don't have a covenant; yes, there is some potential for rents to rise, but we are serving a family group, at least in the early stages of it, that didn't have that offer. They couldn't go rent a five-bedroom unit for $3,500. Their next choice was to rent a five-bedroom house for $4,000, $5,000, depending on the market.   Eve Picker: Yeah. No, no, it's great. How many of these units have you built?   Scott Choppin: The early stages of the cycle in, let's say, 2017-2018, we were very careful to keep the project sizes low and the number of projects low in what we call our demonstration phase. We were literally doing three-, four-, five-, seven-unit projects. We did that purposely, because I had three things that I wanted to prove in the demonstration phase.   Scott Choppin: One is that we could rent the units for what we projected; that we truly were going to deliver the rents at the amounts that we thought we should get. Two is that we could build them at the cost that we projected ... Rising construction costs, everybody's dealing with that, and it's particularly distinct in California. Third and most importantly for us, as a non-affordable housing, or at least development projects that don't have subsidy and covenants, we have to have a certain value when we get to the end of the project; that it delivers the value or valuation that we intend. We've actually closed and completed the demonstration phase. We've been able to deliver, on average, about 26 percent internal rate of return to our equity investors [cross talk]   Eve Picker: That's pretty fabulous.   Scott Choppin: We've sold those projects, and now we're moving into a new phase which I'm calling our production phase, and we're probably about a year into that. What that has us do is go up in volume, but particularly go up in project size. As an example, we recently won an RFP in a city called El Monte, in Southern California. That's a little over a five-acre site, and we'll end up doing somewhere around 53 of these UTH units in a single project. The total unit count is probably no more than about 70 units right now, all told, between what's in the pipeline and what we've built and sold, but I consciously wanted to go in a very disciplined [cross talk]   Eve Picker: You should not apologize for innovating something brand new. 70 units is pretty, pretty fabulous, considering-   Scott Choppin: Well, I appreciate that. I think that one of the reasons why I was attracted to being ... I mean, you and I know each other, and we've had many conversations, but part of my obligation is I need to get the news about this innovation out into the marketplace, one, to raise more capital, but also, I think this is a solution amongst many that are needed in this new environment of just highly constrained development pipelines and low production of housing. We're going to need many answers, and this is one of them.   Eve Picker: This is just one of them, yeah. Tell me, how did banks receive this, when you went to finance the earliest project?   Scott Choppin: Sure. We actually used-   Eve Picker: You know that's a loaded question, right?   Scott Choppin: Yeah, of course, and it's a valid question. It's one we considered. We went out and talked to about 10 different banks, and we got a variety of answers, as you would well imagine, right? Everybody looked at it differently. It sort of fell into two categories of reactions. One, to be honest with you, on the commercial banking side, without having a demonstrated pipeline of successful projects and the product being so innovative, and different, and uncommon, we just- we got a lot of ... They were nice, but they were like, "Yeah, we don't think this is for us. This is so unusual. We don't know the valuation model. We don't know who buys this." We were prepared for that. I went into those meetings knowing that that was probably what we were going to hear.   Scott Choppin: The other group of lenders that we talked to were a variety of ... We have some private lenders that we have longstanding relationships with, and then we have a small group of, I'll call, community lending groups [cross talk]   Eve Picker: Institutions, yeah.   Scott Choppin: -or institutions. One of the one of the folks that we've had conversations with is Century Housing, which is a local nonprofit in Southern California. They have something called the Century Community Lending Fund, and that's run by a woman named Tracey Burns, who's a longtime colleague of mine from the Kaufman & Broad days. We haven't done a project with them yet, but it very much fits inside what they are after. Their fund is a conglomeration of monies from B of A, Wells, and US Bank. Their business plan, their mandate, is to lend to projects that have unusual characteristics. Maybe they're true affordable, but maybe they're just infill in communities that need it, and certainly UTH fits in that well-   Eve Picker: But this is my beef ... You're innovating, and you're doing it very carefully, and you're showing that it's successful. It's very difficult to find funding for that [cross talk] traditional financing for that innovation. Yet, we all know how much this sort of housing, or any sort of affordable housing is needed. Why on earth should it be so difficult? It's easy for the podium projects to get financing.   Scott Choppin: Amazingly so, right.   Eve Picker: Yet, we don't really need them anymore. In fact, quite the reverse; we need them to stop, because they've flooded the market.   Scott Choppin: Agreed, yeah.   Eve Picker: I don't get it [cross talk] change this ... Can we really wait five to 10 years, while a bank, or banks, or traditional financial institutions become comfortable enough with a new model?   Scott Choppin: The joke that I would say to the commercial banking guys, and folks that we knew, and these were usually people I already knew and had relationships with ... I said, "Hey, look, by the time the model proves itself the way you guys want, this cycle will be over [cross talk] saturated ..." That's maybe why the podium projects are the way you describe. It's lemmings into the sea. Everybody is going to follow what everybody else is doing.   Scott Choppin: For me, Eve, I'm sort of ... I've made peace with that process of frustrating bankers, or having them frustrate me, or the projects, because this project and product type is so different that, almost at every turn, city- conversations with council members and planning staff, I know I'm either going to get, "Wow, this is great! I love this," or, "Wow, holy cow. I don't even know how to deal with this. In fact, I'm sort of freaked out by the number of bedrooms," imagining the worst case scenarios.   Scott Choppin: Equity investors have been very polarized. They either get it, and they're like, "Wow, this is ..." but people who know, like particularly what I find is people that are from already existing housing-constrained marketplaces ... Let's say an investor's from New York, or Southern California, from the Bay Area. They already know this housing constraint story. When this shows up, they go, "Oh, I get it." Not even a thought about it. I don't even have to really describe it to them much more.   Scott Choppin: People who are from maybe more non-constrained markets, let's say somebody's from Texas, and I don't have any specific example of anybody who's done this, but when you can build housing really unfettered from a zoning, or capital-constraint standpoint, well, then you don't have that issue of  constrained housing and rising costs. I can say any coastal urban market pretty much has this issue, and so, in fact, the larger-   Eve Picker: We have this issue in the Rust Belt cities for different reasons, but I am extremely frustrated by it. You know that's why I built Small Change. It was really because I had this feeling that innovative projects were really being squashed by our financial institutions-   Scott Choppin: I agree, yeah.   Eve Picker: -yet innovation is the only way we're going to solve these problems, build better cities, house everyone, and all of the other things we need to do. It's [cross talk]   Scott Choppin: Agreed. Eve, this is what I love about ... Although I'm looking for the right deal to do with you guys, I will tell you, as we have conversations with other groups that are in the same space that you are, everybody is so focused on just whatever is the path of least resistance. Many groups that I'm talking to now are all about value-add apartment acquisition. Even just the development model is anathema to them. Again, I understand that, but they're so not creative.   Scott Choppin: I think part of what happens, particularly in the crowdfunding space, is I think you get a lot of people who are tech people going into real estate. My opinion, my assessment of it, is they are scared of it. Whereas, you ... In fact, I was thinking about it this morning, as I was getting ready to do this interview. You've developed your own projects, right, Eve?   Eve Picker: Yes.   Scott Choppin: You've gone through the process of doing that. I would say 99 out of 100 people that I talk to in the crowdfunding space, usually they're very early in their careers, so they haven't gone through any seasoning, and real estate's just a product that happens to be combined with tech, in this standpoint. They're not seasoned in the way that folks like you and I are. I mean that in the best way. It's just real estate development is a very, very tricky business, and it takes a lot of strategic knowledge to be able to do it competently. That doesn't happen when you're in early phases of your career.   Eve Picker: It takes a long time to see the results, too, of your hypothesis, right?   Scott Choppin: Agreed.   Eve Picker: Whatever you take on, it takes a while before you can actually see the results-   Scott Choppin: Correct, and that's, in fact, why we did the demonstration phase, because I've certainly been guilty, as any other developer, of finding what I thought was a great idea and just launching as big as you could. I've had some successes in that manner, or methodology, and I've had some failures. From that, I just said, "Hey, look, let's do this very rigorous and disciplined; let's prove the model ..." because we could've done the early projects, Eve, and they would've failed, or at least- not failed, because any housing you build new in California is pretty much going to have  good value, but does it ...   Scott Choppin: My criteria was does it serve the families that we intended in the way we intended, in the way they need, and does it produce sufficient yield to investors for me to compete in the capital-raising process? Those were the two criteria. If either one of those failed, then we were done and go on to do something else.   Eve Picker: I think you described why we called ourselves Small Change. Small change leads to big change, right? [cross talk]   Scott Choppin: Right, right, and I am very encouraged. If anything in new trends - not that crowdfunding is a trend - but we haven't seen the broad base of different types of offers and different ways of looking at it. I mean, your combination of social impact and crowdfunding is, to me, just amazing. I'm rooting for you guys to grow, to be bigger than-.   Eve Picker: Well, we're going to talk about that, because you might help us.   Scott Choppin: Okay, great. Looking forward to it.   Eve Picker: Yeah, so I think this is really interesting stuff. You have some investors who took the plunge with you.   Scott Choppin: Right.   Eve Picker: They're interested in impact, really. I'm wondering what you think the future of real estate impact investing looks like?   Scott Choppin: That's an excellent question, and I might just answer it in a different way than you had conveyed the question. Our early investors, they recognized the social impact, but I don't think they were driven by it primarily. Of course, any investor that's not purely social impact coming from a source of capital that doesn't need to produce returns, they need to produce returns. They're looking for me to do that, and that's primary. I would say they are predominantly oriented around making a profit, and receiving yield back, and getting their money back in the first place.   Scott Choppin: I have had many conversations with ... We, in the beginning of UTH, thought social-impact funds, social-impact organizations - this is just right in the right space for them, meaning UTH, naturally occurring moderate income. I personally have found it a little bit of a challenge to get on people's radars for a couple reasons. This is no complaint; this is just me being my blunt, honest self.   Scott Choppin: One is that, rightly so, most social-impact organizations, housing is low on the priority list and I don't ... Go get it, right? If you're oriented to making the highest impact with the dollars that you have available to do that, housing may or may not be functionally appropriate for that.   Scott Choppin: Also, what I found was that when I started to talk about moderate-income housing, we didn't fit the model of what people were looking for in the social-impact space, relative to housing. What I mean by that is that they said, "Look, if we're going to invest our dollars in projects, we want to invest in neighborhoods and the demographic profile, the renter profile, at 20, 30, 40, certainly below 60 percent of median income, because that's where the need is highest. That's where the housing constraint and strain on families is the highest. I completely acknowledge that. My background in affordable housing has me understand that intuitively.   Scott Choppin: Social-impact capital coming into that space will have an impact and, in fact, will arguably ... I said earlier, subsidy is finite, right? I was meaning government subsidy, but you could argue social-impact capital appropriately invested could raise that level of finite-ness. I would also say, still, without just a natural market mechanism, I think that we're going to always have some constraints.   Scott Choppin: Again, no complaint. Just an observation. I saw social impact, at least the groups that I talked to, said ... They got it. They said, "We get this, and we see the value and the social-impact value for it, but we're focused in this 60-percent or below space." I had a great conversation with the person who runs The Enterprise Group in Southern California. I think it was just like she got it, but I think it was just not where their focus was. They were focused on true affordable housing. When that started to become a theme or regular reaction ... I mean, we continue to track social-impact investors, and I think there will be a time when that's appropriate, or at least somebody has the investment mandate or the criteria, where middle-income families will be part of what they need to point their dollars at.   Scott Choppin: I think there's almost a little bit of a competitive feeling, like, "Well, if I invest dollar in your project that's serving working families that takes a dollar away from the homeless project that I need to support." Again, I don't dispute the idea. To me, it was almost too ... The story is a broader story of that [cross talk] housing constraint and the pressure on families across the income spectrum is happening at all levels. That then, to me, says then solutions need to be at all parts of the spectrum. We just happen to be in this particular moderate-income part of the spectrum.   Eve Picker: Well, this has really been fascinating. I have three final questions that I'd like to ask you, if that's okay?   Scott Choppin: Sure, absolutely.   Eve Picker: What's the key factor for you that makes a real estate project impactful?   Scott Choppin: Where I'd go to is neighborhoods and demographics relative to the locations of those neighborhoods, and I'll tell you what I mean by that. In essence, our UTH model, really ... We seek out lower, and lower middle-income neighborhoods that traditionally don't see much development, because the economic conditions of those neighborhoods don't suggest to the development marketplace that this is a place to build. Maybe affordable housing, but nothing other than that.   Scott Choppin: As an example, in Fullerton, we're developing a project in West Fullerton that hasn't seen any new housing developed in that neighborhood, let's say in a few blocks' radius from our site, in probably 40 or 50 years, which is amazing to me. We're in probably the most constrained marketplace in United States, and this neighborhood is untouched, right?   Eve Picker: Right.   Scott Choppin: There's different reasons for that - zoning, economics, and that kind of thing. I'm encouraged to be able to go into a neighborhood and say we can create this new housing opportunity for families that, by the way, already live there. The families that rent our units are already in this neighborhood, or they're a couple neighborhoods over, but they're already living in this neighborhood, except that they may be living in two two-bedrooms, side by side, or one part of the family lives in this unit, and the other part of family is a couple blocks over. We're just giving them a space to come together.   Scott Choppin: The other part of it that I see as impactful is that, naturally, because of the neighborhoods that we select, and because of where the folks who rent our units already live, this naturally has them be closer to the important things in their lives. In fact, I describe this tenant profile as sticky. What I mean by that is that they have things that exist for them already, where they live, and where our new units are located that have them be very stable and families that basically stay. Social networks is that the main way to describe that. That's churches, community, community work or involvement in the community that they have; that's schools. Their kids go to school ...   Scott Choppin: Most importantly is that these units, because of their infill locations, are generally closer to the jobs these folks work at, which, as you would imagine, are more blue collar, or service worker jobs where ... None of our families who we've rented to or in our units now, none of them commute- do this hour or two-hour commute each way. They just don't do it. What they do is they look for the unit that is close by to their work, and that's ... They don't do it in a way that we think, where a millennial person might say, "Look, I really want to live close to my job, because I want to ride my bike, or I want to ride and train."   Scott Choppin: These families make the same decisions, but for different logic. One is, "I don't want to drive my car that much because maybe it's not a great car. It still runs good. Gets me to work, but I can't drive it two hours back and forth." Plus, I think just naturally, they understand the trade-off of that. Because the way they share rents and incomes, it gives them the capacity to stay in infill locations. By sharing more costs amongst the bigger group, that allows them now to stay ...   Scott Choppin: In one of our downtown Long Beach projects - we have actually two - we say that, just generally, our tenant profile is the dad is a truck driver at the Port of Los Angeles, or Port of Long Beach. That's where his job is. He goes there. Then, our two new communities that are in downtown Long Beach are between 10 and 15 minutes away from that job on surface streets. Doesn't get on the freeway; drives to his job. That job probably produces $50,000 or $60,000 a year; maybe less, maybe more, depending on the person. When that's combined with the other incomes for the families, now they can afford that $3,000 or $3,500 a month rent at 30 percent of their income, because [cross talk] jointly, they're making $100,000, $110,000, $120,000 a year.   Eve Picker: The next question I have is it that you can raise money through equity crowdfunding. Is there another reason to use it, to involve investors through crowdfunding that you can think of?   Scott Choppin: Well, there is. It's a great question. I haven't thought of it this way, but I think ... Look, I think, as any developer, our job is to raise capital. If I look at my primary responsibility, I'd say I have to always be raising capital. I see crowdfunding in a couple different ways that way.   Scott Choppin: One, it's a new technology, or it's a new process of raising capital. I'm always- just naturally, how I am as a learner, and a person of business, I'm always looking for that more effective, more technologically efficient way to manage our business. I see crowdfunding as having ... It gives us the capability to have a wider audience for our product offer. A project goes out, and now we can see where ... I have my network of investors, and I'm always expanding that network. I am building networks of networks to produce new capital opportunities, new investors. But crowdfunding is like that, on steroids, right?   Eve Picker: Yeah.   Scott Choppin: We have technological platforms. Obviously, crowdfunding groups like yours have their own investor base, so I'm able to broaden the reach of our offer, but also, yours is a separate new network [cross talk] so that is a capability to access that.   Eve Picker: This is a big question, but if you could do one thing to improve real estate development in the US, what would that be?   Scott Choppin: Yeah, so, [cross talk] easy question. I would ... There's a lot of dialogue on the social media platforms about zoning reform. If you look at your standard American city, almost any major urban metro, in the '50s, and '60s, and '70s, many cities converted what was historically neighborhoods or zoning areas that allowed apartments, or more dense housing. They down-zoned almost consistently across major urban metros in the States.   Scott Choppin: We are seeing the very cutting edge of that right now. Oregon is working on removing single-family zoning entirely. I want to say it was Minnesota, or Wisconsin, I can't remember which, they are starting to say, "Look, we are eliminating single-family zoning." That, as a zoning tool, or at least that type of zoning is-   Eve Picker: That's interesting.   Scott Choppin: -very ineffective in solving housing constraint. In fact, it's the reason for housing constraint; in my mind, the primary reason. Also, if we're going to meet our environmental greenhouse gas emissions standards, we cannot continue to build, nor can we allow single-family neighborhoods to exist as they are, because basically, when we build dense housing, it's proven by research, that type of lifestyle reduces vehicle trips; has people use more transportation that's alternate to cars.   Scott Choppin: In fact, in California, there's a new ... I don't know if it was a report, or an article that basically said California will not meet its greenhouse emissions gas levels by just having cars be better at producing less smog. Their claim - I believe it, and I think it was based on real research - said the only way we're going to get there is that we need to reform zoning, and we need to basically build more dense.   Eve Picker: Yeah. Well, look, thank you very much. This was really fascinating. I feel like I learned a lot [cross talk] and I want to talk to you a little bit more about it off the air, but I really appreciate the time you've taken with me today. It was a really interesting conversation.   Scott Choppin: Thanks Eve. Appreciate the invite, and I enjoyed the conversation, as well. Thank you so much.   Eve Picker: I really enjoyed talking to Scott today, and I learned a lot. I hope you did, too. Scott reminded us all that subsidy is finite, so building market rate solutions for the housing crisis is an imperative. He noted that the '50s-era household in the US - a suburban home with mom, dad, 2.3 kids, and five cars - was an anomaly. We need to get over it. I love that he has shown a much needed, and affordable housing model can be financed through private equity.   Eve Picker: To find out more about impact real estate investing and to get access to the show notes for today's episode, please go to EvePicker.com, where you can also sign up for my newsletter to find out more about how to make money in real estate, while doing good for society at the same time. Thanks so much for spending your time with me today, and thank you, Scott, for sharing your thoughts. We'll talk again soon, but for now, this is Eve Picker signing off to go make some change.

Coming off the back of a very spooky Friday 13th/Full moon combo, I was in the mood to hit up some horror. Enter one of my favorite films from 2017, CREEP 2. Armed with only one drinking rule, I found myself delighted by this 78-minute wonder, and booze aside, could not have picked a more-perfect film for episode 15 (what does that mean? I don't know). Although I'm recording solo, back in the closet of shame, I'm actually not the saddest thing from this mid-September week, as I introduce a brand new segment from Labeja Kodua Okullu: LABEJA'S SAD MAN SCENARIOS.

There is a lot of debate over the health benefits of smoothies and also the health benefits of smoothies over juices.   Although I'm not a nutritionist, I take a common-sense approach towards nutrition and I would say, that smoothies and juices definitely their place in moderation. I know I always feel good after having either a smoothie or juice and I definitely feel so much better after I've done a smoothie / juice cleanse. In this podcast, I give you 5 of the best recipes I’ve tasted!

Friday August 23, 2019 - WE MADE IT! In this episode - I share with you, leadership, BESCPC, and...poetry? Yes. Although - I'm no poet. Happy weekend!

I've had a lot of "How did you get to where you are now in your business?" questions and "How do I grow my Instagram following." DM's. Although I'm nowhere near where I want to be, I’m constantly preparing for the life that is not yet meant to be mine. @getfitbabe_

In today's podcast, I talk about my own journey in relationships and how my past mistakes and experiences shaped me into today's version of myself.  It took me a long time to understand my worth and to learn how to stand up for myself in relationships. Although I'm in a great place in my life now, it wasn't always that way.  Today's message is all about knowing who you are and truly owning your own worth instead of allowing others (especially significant others) to define you.

Dr. Shannon Tapia stops by the podcast, and we talk about relationships, stand up comedy, and when to get married. It's a real talk which shows how life can take different turns when you least expect it. We started talking about how she was able to get into stand-up, and how she was able to turn bad experiences into good learning moments and her advice for women in medicine. Something that I learned about Dr. Tapia during this podcast is her ability to not let things faze her. In a world where there is a culture of instant gratification, there is solace in the fact that she is adamant about not letting the outside world define her view of how things are going in her professional life. Also, we talked about how she planned around a family during her time in medical school, and how she planned around her boards (Step 1 and Step 2). Dr. Tapia also explained to me how "if you're a physician and a Mom, you're pretty much working 190% of the time" Although I'm not a female pre-med student, I do understand that there are experiences that I won't ever get. However, that's the goal of this podcast: to gain perspectives that I wouldn't have gained otherwise. In this world, as Dr. Tapia says, you have to take any advice with a grain of salt -- the narrow perspective by which we see the world is limited, however, that's equally as true for other people. One of the goals of this podcast is to make sure that I am able to think, read, and write. That's not going to change as I make these podcasts and go through medical school. If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Tapia, definitely check out her blog: http://medicineontap.net/

I speak to all sorts of audiences. This audience was a group of teenage girls ranging from 12 - 18 who attend The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Although I'm not usually so open about my religion and belief in God on my podcasts; I also can't hide the fact that it is a huge part of who I am. Feel free to skip if you're not inclined to listen to eipisodes that include the words "God" and "Jesus."

Have you ever wished that you and your partner could communicate better with one another and avoid conflict? Communication can feel very complex - but today we’re going to show you some very specific and practical exercises you can do with your partner that will improve your communication, mindset, and relationship satisfaction. This week, our guest is Jonathan Robinson, the author of many books including More Love Less Conflict: A Communication Playbook for Couples. Jonathan Robinson has worked with many couples and has been featured on TV and media - most notably he was on Oprah several times! By the end of this episode, you’ll have some new, practical ways to approach communication that will have an immediate impact on your experience in a relationship. Also, announcing that tickets are on sale for Relationship Alive...LIVE! featuring Terry Real. We'll have a musical guest (Katie Matzell trio), and you'll also have the chance to ask YOUR questions. The show will be on June 6, 2019, at One Longfellow Square in Portland, Maine. Limited seats available. Click here to buy your tickets now! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Our sponsor today is Blinkist. Blinkist is the only app that takes the best key takeaways and the need-to-know information from thousands of nonfiction books and condenses them down into just 15 minutes that you can read or listen to. Go to Blinkist.com/ALIVE to start your free 7-day trial. Resources: Visit Jonathan’s website to learn more about his work. Pick up your copy of Jonathan Robinson’s book, More Love Less Conflict: A Communication Playbook for Couples. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/morelove to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jonathan Robinson. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. Today we're going to get really practical and we're going to get really practical about communication. But not only are we going to get practical about communication, we're also going to get practical about communication in a way that will bring you closer to your partner. And we're also going to address this from the perspective of things that you can do with your partner, structured exercises that will definitely take you to a new level of understanding and intimacy and vulnerability. And on top of that, we're going to get some tips about how to do things on your own, kinda renegade style, so that if your partner isn't necessarily signing up for communication exercises 101, you can still make huge progress in your relationship and your connection. And in order to have today's conversation, we have with us yet another esteemed guest. His name is Jonathan Robinson and he's the author of the book More Love Less Conflict: A Communication Playbook for Couples, among many other books. Jonathan has worked with many couples, has worked with Fortune 500 companies, and has been featured on TV and media. Neil Sattin: Notably, he was on Oprah several times. And as you'll see his words are practical, applicable to your life. And they make a lot of sense, but they're not necessarily the kind of thing that you would automatically think to do. They're the kinds of things that once you hear them, you'll be like, "Oh yeah, of course, that's the way I should have been doing this all along." So I'm excited to have Jonathan here with us today. We are going to dive in momentarily, but before we do, just a reminder that if you want to download a detailed transcript of today's episode, you can visit NeilSattin.com/morelove. That's the word more and the word love kinda squished together. And along with the transcript, Jonathan Robinson has also generously offered to combine with that his 50 desires. It's a list of things that are these universal desires that can, as you'll see, help you really get more in touch with what it is you're after anyway in your relationship and in any given moment. So that is also free for you when you download the transcript. And again, that's at NeilSattin.com/morelove. Neil Sattin: Or you can simply text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions which will lead you to a page where you can download the transcript, the bonus desires, worksheet, and a lot of other goodies as well from our other episodes. I think that's it for now. Jonathan Robinson, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive. Jonathan Robinson: Well, thank you, Neil. This will be fun. Neil Sattin: I sure hope so. Let's see. How can we make it fun? Let's just start right in with something super fun. One thing that I really appreciate about your book, as I just mentioned, is how practical it is not only for people who have a partner who's willing to sit down with them and go through something structured but also the way that you're always offering these helpful hints that allow someone to just kind of incorporate it into their lives on their own and change the steps of the dance. And I'm wondering, obviously, ideally our partners work with us on the project of our relationships, but I'm wondering what you've seen as far as people taking some of these plays in your communication playbook and putting them into practice on their own, and what kinds of results you've seen them effect in their relationships. Jonathan Robinson: Well, in fact, it's pretty rare to have two partners that both want to work on a relationship. If you have that, usually there's not that much of a problem. So mostly I get couples who are basically on the verge of divorce where one person is dragged in kicking and screaming. And even in those situations, if you have the right method, the right technologies so to speak, you can still get to a place of love often in like 20 minutes. So I use the analogy, if you're trying to go from where you are in Portland, Maine to California, well, if you have a plane, you can do it in six hours. If you don't have a plane, it's going to take you a couple of years. So some of these tools are really amazing technology that helps us get back to a place of love very quickly. Neil Sattin: And some of them I noticed, okay, that kind of reminds me of Imago or that reminds me of something I've seen in the Gottman's work. And have some of those things just been trial and error on your part or what's that process of discovery like for you in coming up with these ways to help people in their communication? Jonathan Robinson: Well, I use it in my own marriage, but also with my clients. And what I notice is that when people are upset they can't remember Imago stuff or Gottman stuff necessarily. They're too complex for most couples. So I tried to make it so that anything I taught in my book could be pretty well done in 20 seconds or less. Now, there's a few exceptions, but I know when I'm really stressed out or upset, I don't remember all the theory. What I remember is maybe I can say three words or maybe I can complete a sentence. So I tried to find the best and easiest methods that can be done usually in under 20 seconds. And that's usually what people actually can do, but the good news is, if they do it, it does lead to a transformation. My wife and I, when we first married we argued a lot, and I was looking for a way that even though we were upset, we could avoid arguments. Jonathan Robinson: So I came up with a method called the Yellow Light Method, which just involves saying two words and if I can remember to say those two words we avoid arguments. And in the last five years, we've only had one argument. And basically, the method is if you're finding that you're upset or your partner's upset either you can say yellow light, and that's a signal to take two minutes out and take some deep breaths and then restart the conversation. And when you interrupt that momentum of upset, usually you don't go into an argument. So those are the type of methods I like the most. The ones that are so simple yet work pretty much 100% of the time. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's so important, too, to have something reliable that you can turn to that doesn't require a lot of thought, because as we've talked about here on the show a lot, you're not even really able to think. That part of your brain that accesses creative problem-solving thinking, it tends to go offline as soon as you start to feel your heart beating a little more quickly and get into that disconnected angry or hurt wanting to escape, angry wanting to fight, whatever it is. When you're in that mode, having to think it through is probably one of the most challenging things you have to do. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, I can't do it, so I can't expect other people too. [chuckle] That's why they pass... These methods have passed the most severe test possible. Do they actually work in my life? Neil Sattin: Yeah, that's super important. And I like, too, that you offer examples in the book of things that happen with your wife. It's kind of a new theme here on the show because I think it's easy to get the impression that when you know all this stuff about relationships that things are smooth sailing all the time, and it's never challenging. And people like the Gottmans, they must just never fight. It's always bliss. It's always cherishing. And so lately, I've been asking my guests to name some of their own challenges just to make it real. And so I like that you offer that in your book, as well. These are challenges we've experienced and how I've used this particular exercise or how my wife and I have used it to help ourselves in these moments. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, that's been a way to keep it on us, because we all face challenges in relationships. It's just a matter of whether you have ways of getting around those challenges or if you resort to the time tested tried-and-true method that most couples work or use, which is blame. And as you know, Neil, blame never works. Never once have I blamed my wife for my annoyance or blamed her and telling her what she does wrong where she then came back and said, "Oh yeah, now I see where you're talking about. I'm going to have to change that." I bat zero for 500 on that one. So that got me looking for other ways to do it. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, and it's funny how ineffective so many of our innate strategies are, and yet without a new repertoire that's just what you do over and over again. Even though if you were to step back and look at the evidence, "Did this work? Did anything change? Do I feel more connected?" Any of that, the answer would probably be no for most of those things people just do. Blame, complain. Jonathan Robinson: Shame. Neil Sattin: Shame. Yeah, exactly. Criticize. Yeah, all those kinds of things. Jonathan Robinson: Well, most of us, most couples don't even have 15 minutes of communication education in their life. And I think of a marriage or communication is something that we're doing all the time. We should have a lot of practice at it. If you even had 15 minutes on how to fly a plane, you would have a chance of not crashing, but if you don't have those 15 minutes and you have to take over a plane in mid-flight, you're probably going to crash. And that's an experience a lot of couples have is that they just don't have any other methods they've been taught other than blame, shame, complain. And therefore, that's what the habit they fall back into when things get tense. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, well, fortunately, we don't just have 15 minutes now. We have a good 45 minutes where we can help you who are listening come up the curve a little bit more. We're going to give you some cool exercises and things to try. And then, I'm just thinking about the study that... I just had John and Julie Gottman on the show and they were talking about this study where there were these married couples, I think they had children, both worked and they figured out that basically, these people had 15 minutes of communication time period, over the course of a week. That that was it. And of course, that time was more or less about the bills and logistics. And so if we can save that for you so that that 15 minutes can be something truly special and hopefully you have more than 15 minutes with your partner or with the people closest to you, then I'll feel like we did a good job here today, Jonathan. Jonathan Robinson: That sounds good. Neil Sattin: Awesome. So where's a good place to start? I know that I mentioned the universal desires when I first was talking about what we're going to talk about today, and maybe that would be a good place for us to just kinda drop in. But I'm open to your influence here about where do you like to start people out on this journey? Jonathan Robinson: Well, you mentioned the Gottmans and they've done some great work. And one of the things I liked about them is they said that probably the best predictor of how happy couples are is the amount of appreciations they give to each other or the ratio of appreciations to criticism. So a very simple method, and I like simple, is that I have couples complete this sentence, "Something I noticed today about you that I appreciate is... " and you just complete that sentence. I have couples do that once a day and people are often hesitant like, "Oh, that's too simple or too mechanical," but it really does make a huge difference. And I'm a typical guy, so I actually have my iPhone remind me to do this every day, otherwise, I forget. And it's amazing how that can really help bond couples. Or if I did it with you, Neil. Something I noticed about you that I appreciate is that you're very clear in your communication. We had to do some scheduling stuff, but you were always very clear and helpful and before the show, during the show, it just makes it much easier to be a guest when I know where you're at and what you're thinking. Jonathan Robinson: So I'm already thinking that thought, but when we say our appreciations, it helps to more bond, whether it be a couple or friendship. And that's something that's so easy to do that most people are missing out on because they don't make it a habit. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, and when I think about for a lot of us that can equal love or feeling loved is it gets conflated with appreciation, and so it's like you don't really feel like you're being loved by your partner if you're not getting that kind of acknowledgment from them about how you shine in their eyes. Jonathan Robinson: Exactly, it's probably the quickest way for couples to feel emotionally connected. Neil Sattin: And I really like the sentence stem approach, "Something I noticed about you today that I appreciate is," I think that's good because it gives us a way to focus our attention rather than being lost in the sea of all the possible appreciations. It's like pull something out of today, out of this moment. because I can imagine even just sitting down with my wife, Chloe, and what it feels like to have her attention. Even that in the moment would be something I would really appreciate, I'd probably want to reflect that right back to her just like how good it feels to experience her listening to me. Jonathan Robinson: I like the method of sentence stems because they're so simple and yet can be so effective. I'll put out a couple more of the ones I really like. One is, "Something I've been hesitant to talk to you about lately is... " That helps bring in the difficult things that we sometimes avoid. Or how about this one? If you're in a disagreement and you're both trying to blame each other to use this sentence stem, "A way I see that I contributed to this upset is... " You say that and it immediately changes the energy of the conversation because now you're taking some responsibility which then leads to your partner doing that. So there's a lot of sentence stems in the More Love Less Conflict book that work really powerfully and immediately. And they only take 20 seconds to complete. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and that one you just named for diffusing conflict, I experienced that just the other day where Chloe and I, we had an argument about something. Oh, I remember exactly what it was. Sometimes our lives get a little busy and I think I've even mentioned on the show before that there can be dishes in the sink. And we each could be responsible for doing more dishes, I think. Our dog sometimes does more dishes than we do. And so there were no dishes, I was in a rush, I was making a meal. And we have a stack of special dishes that we're really not supposed to use. But rather than use a dish... I actually, come to think of it, I had just washed a bunch of dishes, but they were still wet and I didn't want to dry the dish with a towel, so I just reached for the special dish from the pile of special dishes. And Chloe got really angry at me. "Don't use one of those dishes. You just washed all of those dishes. I've asked you not to use those dishes." So innocent enough, I'm reaching for the dishes, and it would have been so easy for me to just get really angry and in fact, I did get angry. I was like, "Don't tell me what to do." Neil Sattin: It was really a glorious moment for us of conflict. And we each stepped away for a minute or two, because we had been under a lot of stress that day, a lot of pressure. And then I came back, and I said something like, "I'm really sorry that I just yelled," or "I just yelled at you just then. I see that I went to use one of those dishes, and I know you've asked me not to use them a lot. And even though I feel like it's my right [chuckle] to take them, I recognize that you asked me not to, and I did anyway, and I can see how that must have felt like I was slighting you or not really paying attention to what you've asked me to do in the past." Neil Sattin: And I will say that it didn't sound exactly like that when I said it to her. But it was along those lines. And it was really hard and painful for me to say that, because like you mention in your book, my ego just wanted to be right and wanted to make her wrong for having spoken up about it or tried to control me or whatever it was, that was her part in the dance. But I did have my part in the dance, and through owning it, right afterward Chloe said, "Yeah, I really... The way that I said that I'm really sorry, I know that must have... You must felt like I was really coming down on you or talking down to you," or something like that is what she said. And that was it, argument over, [chuckle] and we went back to just being connected and loving, and it was a really quick transformation. It's amazing because that gap from Maine to California that you were talking about earlier, that can feel like it's going to take two years, and it really can be as quick as making a shift like that. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, yeah. And one of the things I like about the sentence stems is that it can be hard to figure it out the right thing to say on your own, but if you have the first part of the sentence memorized like, "I see the way that I contributed to this upset is... " then it becomes relatively easy and easier on your ego to just say that sentence and then the shift happens. So I always try to take these big ideas like taking responsibility or being more appreciative and turn them into a method or a technology that's so simple that even me at my worst can do it. And it seems like that's really what people need because we often know the theory, we often know what we're supposed to do, but when the rubber hits the road, we don't have that keyword to say that is really going to turn it in a new direction. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, are there other magical sentence stems that come to mind? Jonathan Robinson: Well, there's 30 of them in the book. [chuckle] I'll spread 'em out through this interview. One thing that I like as a sentence stem is just saying, "Right now, I'm feeling... " Whatever you're feeling, and then, "Right now I'm wanting... " whatever you're wanting, because saying what you're feeling and wanting is really key information for your partner. And normally, we're very indirect, we're very not good at saying that in a way that our partner gets. So during the day, if I'm spending time with my wife, I'll think that sentence stem "Right now, I'm feeling like I want to be more connected with you. I guess I'm wanting a hug right now." And that helps point me in the right direction. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's important, you talk about this in the book, in the chapter where you're covering that sentence stem in particular, how important it is to identify what you're actually feeling versus, "I'm feeling like you're being an idiot right now," [chuckle] which is what people sometimes tend to do, which is to take an I feel statement and attach a judgment on the end of it, as opposed to just owning what they're actually feeling in that moment. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, that's why I have, in the book, a page of just feelings. Here are 30 feelings. You're probably feeling one of these, you're not feeling... Even if you're thinking I'm feeling like they're an idiot, what you're probably feeling is I'm feeling annoyed or I'm feeling frustrated. And to some extent, that's a learning process because a lot of couples don't have that practice where they say, well, this really isn't a feeling. What am I feeling? So having a list in front of you can actually be very helpful that way. Neil Sattin: Right, yeah, won't that be great when... I think you talk about this in terms of languages and communication, but to be able to Google how am I feeling right now? And get an [chuckle] Oh, turns out that I'm feeling annoyed right now. That makes sense, actually. Thanks, Google. Yeah, and then the second part of that stem, I'm feeling this, and what I'd really like is... And I think I'm not getting it quite right, but that last part of really being able to identify what it is you would like and what the desire might be underneath that seems so important for people to get clear on. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, there's really two things that people want. They want... And usually, it looks like I want them to give me a certain action like maybe a hug or I want them to do the dishes. But underneath that, we think that if they did those things, we would get a certain desire fulfilled. Like if they gave me a hug I'd feel more connected, or if they did the dishes I'd feel more respected or something like that. So knowing what the ultimate aim is the ultimate desire or need you're trying to fulfill can be very helpful because they might do the dishes in a way that is throwing the dishes around and being upset while they're doing it, and the dishes get done, but you don't feel more respected at the end of it. Neil Sattin: Right, right, and how useful is it for you to be clear about that with your partner so that the underlying motivations are the realm that you're dealing in, not trying in this roundabout way to get your needs or desires met. Jonathan Robinson: And in fact, most partners are much more open to satisfying our underlying desires than they are to satisfying our other requests. If you said, "Well, I want you to do the dishes," they might have some resistance, but if you said, "What I'm really wanting is I'm wanting to feel more respected and more connected to you." That tends to be more vulnerable, and vulnerability is a real key to intimacy. If you look at the word intimacy, the instructions are there, into me see. So when we reveal what we're really wanting on an emotional level, that tends to open up our partners' hearts and makes them more connected and more open to doing what we want. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and then does it make sense to you to follow up with once your partner's offered vulnerability like that to ask, "What could I do that would help you feel seen and respected." Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Neil Sattin: And then they'll say, "You could do the dishes." [laughter] Jonathan Robinson: Actually, probably just asking what can I do to help you feel more respected would help them to feel more respected. Neil Sattin: True. Jonathan Robinson: But the dishes might be another way as well. Neil Sattin: It might be, but what occurs to me is that it's more likely that if the dishes were kind of a surrogate for that feeling seen and respected that now that the true desire is out in the open, that on further reflection someone might be like, "Well, the dishes would be nice, but what would really help me feel seen and respected would be if I could talk to you about my day and have you just listen with your undivided attention." Jonathan Robinson: Right, you're getting to a place where you're much more effective in satisfying your partner's real needs. And that's something that's really critical, because a lot of times partners don't even know what their partner's real needs are, and even if they do know what they are, which is unusual, they may be very ineffective in satisfying them. Take the issue of sex, which is a good example. A lot of couples don't ever directly say what they most enjoy in bed, so they find that they put up with their partner doing things which is not really what really does it for them. So here's a good sentence stem: Three things I really love that you do in bed are... And three things that I really don't care for much are... Just completing that sentence can improve your love life 50% in five minutes. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I'm curious for you when someone hears three things I love are blank, that's going to feel really good. Three things that I don't particularly care for, it seems like it would be really easy for the person receiving that to, if nothing else, just kind of feel bad about it, but maybe even to go into a shame spiral, or it could be really bad. So what do you recommend people do to help create a safe container for offering more negative feedback? Jonathan Robinson: I have a lot of suggestions for that in the More Love, Less Conflict book. One example is always end on a positive note, either something you appreciate or something that you like. But sometimes what's necessary is just a time out, like if you're going to give some kind of feedback that's negative that the other person can't respond for, say, 12 hours, because a lot of times we have an immediate reaction and then after five minutes we realize, well, that's actually useful feedback, or it's no big deal. So creating that safe container can be either ending with something positive or creating a time period where neither person can react to it. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and during that time period, what do you suggest people do to take care of themselves if they need that? Jonathan Robinson: I actually do make several suggestions, and I have a list from watching funny YouTube videos to calling a friend to going to the gym. But I find that if couples are feeling connected and they feel respected and appreciated, and they're doing all those other things when you get a little bit of "negative feedback," it doesn't overwhelm them. What happens normally is that people aren't getting any positive stuff, so when they get another piece of negative feedback it can overwhelm them, and then you get into problems. So as long as you have love in your emotional bank account, so to speak, a little bit of feedback that tells you how you can do something better usually is not that big of a deal. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so important to probably to put your focus on some of the things we were talking about a moment ago, like offering the appreciations, and all the ways that you really do appreciate or resonate with your partner the things that you love about them, or the things that you see in them, so that when it comes time to offer something a little bit more discerning, let's say, [chuckle] it can soften the blow a little bit. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, and there's other ways, too, for example, sometimes I have couples give what could be called negative feedback in a written form, while ending with a positive thing, and it can be easier to just read it and take some time on your own rather than have that person right there, which might be more triggering. So there's a lot of different ways to create a safe container, and people's job is to find what works for them because different things can work for different couples. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, I'm thinking, too, you offer an anecdote in the book More Love, Less Conflict during the exercise about withholding and couples being able to give a voice to the things that they've been holding back from each other. And that's something that could be really edgy or scary depending on what's being withheld, but even there you talk about wanting people to end on a positive note, something maybe really good or a deep desire that they've been withholding. And you mention this one couple that talks about how in trouble their marriage is, and how one is feeling hopeless, and the other has been flirting with someone at the office, and these are coming out in the withholdings, but then they end with these statements about really wanting to feel connected with each other and how much it feels like that shifts the dynamic for them, even though they have also offered some incredibly vulnerable and hard truths to each other. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, you know, one moment of vulnerability or appreciation seems to be able to overshadow even years of negativity. Now, I've had couples who come into my office, they've been arguing and screaming each other for decades. And sometimes I'll have them do a couple of positive things, like saying what they appreciate or being vulnerable through certain sentence stems, and 10 minutes later they're holding hands and loving. And I find that is like a miracle because they've had years of negativity and yet their hearts really want to have that connection, they just haven't had the simple, reliable way of doing that. But once they do have that way, the bonding can happen very, very quickly, and I think that's a real testament to the human heart and spirit. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, the light it shines is much brighter than the darkness we can find ourselves in at times. And just to be clear for you listening, the withholding sentence stem, I just happened to have it in front of me right here: There's something I've been withholding, would you like to hear it? So again, important that your partner actually know that they're about to receive something. And then this is one of those cases where you mentioned, Jonathan, that it's helpful to create a container that says we're not even... We're not going to talk about this for 24 hours, and what is being offered is held sacred in some way, which is a great spin on it because I think so often when something is revealed that's been withheld, it can, just in and of itself, no matter what the content is, feel like a betrayal of some sort. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, yeah. And that's probably the edgiest exercise in the book, and it's not something that one starts with, you kind of build to that, because if you're going to deal with difficult stuff, it's good to have some love in your emotional bank account because those types of things are like a withdrawal, and you don't want to withdraw into bankruptcy, so I encourage people to have some connection, and when you have to deal with the hard stuff, then you'll be able to weather that storm, because you already have a bunch of connection banked, so to speak. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, and that, for some reason, is making me think of two other things that you mentioned in the book, one being the higher self-exercise. And I think I like that because we so often want to be able to give advice to our partners, or fix their problems, or tell them how they should be that will make our lives easier, and the higher self is a bridge into that in a way that's actually really connecting. Jonathan Robinson: That's a fun game. Neil Sattin: Yeah, could you talk about how that one's done? Jonathan Robinson: Well, you do want to sometimes give your partner advice, and sometimes they see you, they know you better than you know you sometimes. So something my wife and I might do is I'll say, "Do you want to play the higher self-game," and she'll say, "Okay," and we take turns kind of being each other's guru, so I might say, "Well, I'm married to this woman who gets self-righteous really quickly. Dear guru what would you suggest I do when she gets really reactive and self-righteous quickly?" [chuckle] Jonathan Robinson: And then she has to answer as like a relationship guru. Well, it sounds like you might want to try this, this, and this, and it's kind of fun because rather than going back and forth and trying to prove that we're right, or you should do this, it's kind of like a game and it sets it up in a fun way where I can hear what she has to say. And a lot of times her advice to me about her has been right on because she knows what I'm doing that might make it better for her. And it's just kind of a fun way of being with each other where you can temporarily go into the role of advice-giver or a teacher without all the normal ramifications of that. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and you mentioned an important aspect of that often being that the advice giver, guru, person sit with their eyes closed or blindfolded. Jonathan Robinson: Yes, because that changes the normal mechanical way that you might be with each other. When you close your eyes and you're trying to give advice, it tends to help you to go deeper within and it also shuts you off from whether your partner is reacting to your advice. You get to really tune into, "What do I have to say to this question?" And that way it can be more pure and more truthful rather than a mechanical reaction to maybe how you think they're going to take it. Neil Sattin: Got it. Jonathan Robinson: I must say, Neil, I think you know this book better than I do at this point. I'm very depressed. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Well, it's fresh in my mind, so that's helpful, but don't worry, there will be no test. Nothing more than what we're already doing, I guess. Jonathan Robinson: Okay. Neil Sattin: It seems important to clarify, too, that if you're not doing that one as a structured exercise, one thing I noticed was that the simple practice isn't an offer to give your partner advice, it's asking them for advice. Can I get your best advice about something? So if you were going to sort of surreptitiously engage their higher self that's how you come at it when you're doing it more renegade style? Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, and people love that question, "Gee, honey, can I get your best advice about this?" And that's usually that asking for help in that vulnerable way usually leads to a lot more intimacy. Neil Sattin: When it comes to knowing your partner better, we touched on this earlier when we were talking about the desires and wondering whether or not we actually know what our partner's deepest desires are and that's something I appreciate about that list of 50, I'm sure there are more than that, right? But 50 is a pretty good start and it helps you I think access the nuances of how these desires are slightly different than each other And I think it's also important, I loved your exercise on the perfect partner, and how we can share information with each other in a safe way about what we wish we were experiencing from the other person as a way to help them. It's like I'm helping you help me. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, it's kind of like painting a picture. Sometimes the best way to learn is through an example, and somebody can tell you what Yosemite looks like but one picture of Yosemite and the game's over. You don't need to say anything more. And the same thing with what we want. So, writing out what my perfect partner would do, or what my perfect partner would say helps me to get example of what my wife is really wanting because I always thought that she wanted me to fix her problems and then she wrote out, "Well, my perfect partner would say this, this and this," and she never mentioned fixing her problems, she really wanted somebody who was incredibly empathetic. And when I really understood that she's not wanting my advice, she's wanting my empathy, my understanding, it helped me to change how I was with her, and now she has said, "Wow, you're really good at being my perfect partner now." And of course, that leads to more love. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I did an episode a while ago on writing the user manual for you for your partner. This is kind of my guide to me and how that can be such a sweet offering to your partner. I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how to do that in a way that doesn't come across as a criticism. Jonathan Robinson: Well, one sentence stem that can be a very simple way of doing it is to say something like three things that tend to trigger me are, so you're talking about you rather than your partner or three things that almost always lead me to feel more loving are... Because a lot of times we'll say that that person really pushes our buttons. Well, it's good to tell your partner what your buttons are. So that they know to avoid them, but we not only have upset buttons, we have love buttons. If my wife gives me a shoulder massage, I love her. A Gorilla could give me a shoulder massage, I'd love that gorilla that's just how I'm wired. Whereas, if I speak to my wife in a certain tone of voice, that she finds very loving, that is her love button. So just knowing what really triggers your partner towards upset or towards love in a very simple way is very valuable information. A lot of couples really don't know that information. Neil Sattin: That just feels like how helpful would that be in general if we just knew that about each other. I've heard Dan Sullivan, who has, he leads this company called Strategic Coach, he talks about that in the context of the work environment and giving the people who work with you like, "This is the recipe. If you want to piss me off, these are the things you can do," and basically listing all the kind of triggers that he has and if nothing else, once you know what triggers your partner, you gotta think twice before doing it or after you do it, maybe you'll think again like "Oh, I just did that thing that I know triggers them." Jonathan Robinson: Right, right. One thing that people often ask me about attitudes towards their partner, and if you can have an attitude of gratitude in your heart for your partner, I find that that makes love flow much more easily. Neil Sattin: Oh my goddess, I love that anecdote that you talked... Did you actually go to India for that, is that story true that happened? Jonathan Robinson: That story is true. I went to see another guru as well while I was there but... So the story is that this friend comes back from India and he says his guru gave him a magical mantra to help him to feel more grateful for both his life and his wife. And I'm always interested in very simple methods. So I said, "Well, what's the mantra?" He said, "Well, you'll have to go to India to get it." and I go "damn but India is a hard place to get to, it's 18,000 miles away" but I make a trip, because I wanted to visit this guru and another guru. So I get there and I have to wait in line five hours to talk to the guru for a minute, but I do that, I'm kinda pissed off because I didn't get this mantra from my friend. I told the guru I wanted this magical mantra for feeling more grateful towards my wife and such, and he says, in an Indian accent, "Ah, yes, my mantra is the most powerful mantra on earth." He leans into my ear to whisper it to me and he says, "Whenever possible, repeat the following words. The mantra I give you are the words thank you." While I look at him, I think he's joking with me and then, but he's not smiling, so I go, "Thank you, that's it? I traveled 18,000 miles to get 'thank you', that's it?" So he looks at me, he says, "No, no, no, 'that's it' is the mantra you have been using and that makes you feel like you never have enough, my mantra is 'thank you,' not 'that's it,' 'that's it' will take you nowhere." [laughter] Jonathan Robinson: So I'm totally pissed off at this point. And so I look at him, I kind of sneered him, I say, "Well then, thank you." And then he sneers at me, he says, "Thank you is not the mantra, you must say it from your heart many times a day, so when you wake up and you see your wife, say thank you from your heart and when you eat breakfast together, and you're enjoying talking, say Thank you from your heart, and when you see your child, say thank you from your heart and soon you will be filled with gratitude." Well, because I traveled so far, I actually did this and I found that to my amazement, it actually worked just taking a second, connecting with my heart and thinking and feeling thank you. My wife literally knows the days that I'm doing that without me saying anything. She says, "Your energy changes and I just feel so much more connected to you." Gratitude is like a secret back door that allows love in. And it's one more method that just seems to work that once you have that technology, it's almost like a superpower. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, I have a good friend who was going through a really stressful time in his life and came through it and when I was speaking to him about it, I asked, "What did you rely on when you were going through all that stress?" And the number one thing he said was, "I developed a gratitude practice and every morning when I woke up, I just spend five minutes basically in silent prayer thinking about all the things that I'm grateful for in my life, and that in and of itself pretty much turned things around for me." So it's so powerful. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, and the other thing I like which I think is so underrated is the power of good questions. On my website, I have what's called the 12 questions of instant intimacy that people can download for free. And if you ask the right question even if you're with a partner who doesn't want to do any communication, doesn't want to do any counseling, if you ask the right question, it opens up a magical door to intimacy. And I found that these 12 questions pretty much work with everyone. They work with your lover, your child, your co-worker, they're like secret weapons, so to speak, in the battle to have more love and less conflict. So I really like asking good questions, like an example might be, "What's been the highlight of your week or what gives you your greatest sense of joy in your life right now?" More people like talking about that, it makes them feel good. Or you ask, "What's one of the most amazing things you've ever experienced in your life? And people love these questions, but we don't ask them. And in this day and age, there's a lot of business, there's a lot of superficiality, but people really want deep connection and these types of questions help to open the door to depth and intimacy very, very quickly. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, I like one of the ones that you offer and you also have a separate exercise, that's kind of similar to this question, but it's what's something that you really want me to know about you? Jonathan Robinson: Yeah. Because if you can get people to feel they understand each other that is a real key. I never had couples come into my office and say, "Jonathan, we really understand each other quite well, that's why we want a divorce." [chuckle] Jonathan Robinson: But I do get the opposite, "We don't know, he doesn't understand me, I don't understand her," that can lead to trouble. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Well, in case you didn't get it when Jonathan just mentioned it, the full list of the 12 questions that lead to deeper intimacy is available on his website for this work, and that website is morelovelessconflict.com. And if you go to that site, right on the front page there, you'll be able to download the 12 questions for deeper intimacy and we'll have a link to that as well as anything else that feels relevant especially a link to Jonathan's book on Amazon, on the show notes page for this episode, so you can visit, again, Neilsattin.com/morelove, all squished together as one word. To see the show notes, download a transcript, you'll also get, as a bonus for downloading the transcript, the 50 universal desires worksheet, and then on top of that, we'll point you in the right direction to access more of Jonathan Robinson's work, which is I just love it, it's so imminently practical and useful, really usable. So I hope that you're able to practice some of the sentence stems that you've heard today and then put them to use in your life. Neil Sattin: So Jonathan before we go, I'm wondering, I'm trying to think now through because there are so many... And we've covered so many in this conversation together, and there are so many more in your book. So it really is, I feel like someone could get the book and kind of open to any page and be like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to try that tonight." It has that kind of flavor to it. So I'm wondering if you can talk about the process of when you actually do want something to change in your relationship, what have you found as a good way to help couples navigate? Like well, this really, this isn't okay the way it is right now, and I really want this one particular thing to shift if we could make that happen. Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, that's a really big area. And of course, I talked about that a lot in the book. I think if you have the right ingredients then you can make it happen, if you don't, blame never works. You don't shame people into changing but if couples really are feeling close to each other and they make a request for something very specific, and then say, "How can I support you or what can I do to change something that bothers you, so we both are working on something that will benefit the relationship." That has a much better chance of success than the blame, complain, shame, method of changing which basically never works. So having good communication, saying something very precise, very specific, being willing to change something about yourself at the same time that your partner wants, that can be a really good method for couples actually making the difficult effort it requires to change something about yourself. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, and I love that, too, because in there, I feel like there's also an acknowledgment of how often we actually do know what would be meaningful for our partners, we may not know exactly what their deepest desires are, and that's why I think those conversations are helpful, but just like you could say, and you mentioned this in the book, if you ask someone, "Would you know how to piss off your partner?" They could do it, they could probably list 10 ways to do that. If you get right down deep into what you know about your partner, you probably also know something that would really light them up or make them feel super special, or loved, and I think it's great to offer those kinds of things. I mean, why not, right? If you can make someone's day, why wouldn't you? Jonathan Robinson: Yeah, yeah, and the other thing is, I think a lot of partners have to be focused on what feeds their soul, what feeds their sense of peace because when you feel peaceful and loving on your own, you probably make a better partner. I do a podcast called Awareness Explorers in which I interview spiritual teachers and I mentioned before like Dalai Lama, Adyashanti. Yeah, various people. And I'm always asking them, "What are your suggestions for going back to a place of peace?" Because I think the two most important things in life are peace and love and there's other ways to get them. You could have world peace, but what's the chance of that going to happen? That's not going to happen. So, how can you find inner peace? Now, with love, if you're lucky, you find a partner and you learn how to communicate that leads to a lot more love in your life, but there's also an inner way to love, loving yourself, having a connection with a higher power. But our mission in life should we decide to accept it is to find different paths to greater peace and love because when we're in touch with those things, we're at our best and we make a better partner, and we're better and more effective in the world, as well. Neil Sattin: Totally agree, totally agree. Although I'm struck by your cynicism about world peace, I think it's possible, maybe sometime in... Jonathan Robinson: Okay, maybe. Neil Sattin: Our children's lifetimes, our children's children. I'm holding out the hope for that. One thing that I'm wondering before we go is whether... So many couples... This is so ironic, I think they come into... They're in that moment of struggle and often really not knowing if they should stay in the relationship that they're in, especially when they're in the midst of big conflict. And then it can get confusing, right? Because if you have some technology that actually helps you get along and connect, well then it can feel like, "Well, do I want to leave this person or don't I?" And I'm wondering if you have... And I recognize this could be a whole another hour's conversation so I'm not entirely being fair to you and just asking for your quick take on this, but is there a place that you go that helps a couple be resourceful or maybe an individual who's contemplating that? Should I stay or should I go question, that makes that practical for them like a sense of like, well, even if you can get along, maybe if this is happening, you're not right together, or maybe this is the kind of thing you don't want to tolerate. Yeah, how do people make that call for themselves? Jonathan Robinson: Actually, I think that's really simple. What I find is when couples fully communicate honestly and vulnerably, one of two things will happen, they will either very quickly get back to a place of deep love and connection in which case, of course, they want to stay together or if they're very honest and communicating without blame and letting out all the things that they've been withholding, they may get to a place where they realize they want totally different things, and then they would naturally want to separate because we're not going after the same things in life anymore. But the key is really good communication. It will create the clarity that often is not there when couples are not so honest or so clear and vulnerable in their communication. Neil Sattin: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think it's important to qualify that, just because you want two completely different things or 10 completely different things that doesn't necessarily mean you’re doomed, but if you're communicating clearly about it, then you get the opportunity to discover if you can navigate each other's vastly different desires and that feels good or generative or does it feel like there's just no way, in which case you're dealing with a deal-breaker. Jonathan Robinson: Right, right, and you're right, that you can want different things and still have a happy marriage. It's just a matter of whether you're able to navigate those things in a way that is agreeable to both people. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, it makes total sense. Well, Jonathan, it's been such a pleasure to talk to you today, and I'm glad we finally made it work with all those scheduling issues that were totally on me. Just so if you're listening, you're like, "What's up with Jonathan and his scheduling?" No, it was me. And so again, I appreciate your patience with that. And it was well worth the wait, so sweet to talk with you. Jonathan's book, More Love Less Conflict, a communication playbook for couples is available from a bookseller near you or online, and you can visit Jonathan's website Morelovelessconflict.com or you can check out his podcast that he just mentioned, Awareness Explorers, which is fascinating conversations with pioneers on the edge of consciousness. And Jonathan, is there anything else you'd like to add about ways people can find out about your work? I know you have a totally different body of work that you do, as well, and so, there's anything you'd like to add right now, this would be a great time. Jonathan Robinson: Just that people should download those questions at Morelovelessconflict.com and keep exploring stuff. I'm not naturally good at this stuff, which allows me to get good at teaching it, because by finding methods that worked for my wife and I really made a huge difference. I also want to say Neil, you're a great interviewer, I see why your podcast is so popular. It's really fun to go into some depth about some of these issues and hopefully help some people. Neil Sattin: Well, thank you so much for saying that. I appreciate it. Jonathan Robinson: You deserve it. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Okay.  

DAY 03. Although I'm excited by all the newness of my weight loss adventure, I thought it might be good for me to identify the excuses that I've used in the past that I've let sabotage my weight loss journey. In the past I've started out with a lot of momentum and then fizzle out. This time is different. Yes, I'm super excited by the novelty of starting something new. This time, I tell myself that I am no longer going to  give myself the gift of excuses to get out of doing what I know I should be doing in order to lose weight. Social Media Info 1. @weightlossdiaries2019 2. #weightlossdiariespodcast Subscribe! 1. Subscribe to Non-Itunes RSS Feed 2. Weight Loss Diaries Podcast Page

Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola had to apologize after passengers called their in-flight napkins “creepy” for encouraging romantic advances their flights. #delta #coke #masculinity Delta Airlines and Coca-Cola, as part of a Diet Coke marketing campaign, distributed napkins for their passengers with messages like "because you're on a plane full of interesting people and hey... you never know". These napkins feature a message that encourages people to give their name and phone number to a fellow passenger they have a “crush” on. On the back, there are two blank lines to be filled in with a name and number. Fine print on the side of the napkin encourages the reader to, “Be a little old school. Write down your number & give it to your plane crush. You never know…” Needless to say that there was an insane backlash about it on the internet. Although I'm not interested in talking about this backlash, I wanted to tackle this from a masculine perspective. Why handling these napkins is definitely a bad way to approach your "plance crush" and what can men learn from this whole experience the next time they approach a girl in order to not be creepy.

Although I'm always pretty secretive about the music I'm working on, there are 2 people who I confide in to give me their honest feedback about my progress: my brother Mario and my partner Erica. They both provide different types of feedback, both so so valuable. I recommend having an "inner circle" of some sort when it comes to the music you are making. People that can tell you how they feel straight out, and if they think you could perform, record, or mix something better. I'm outrageously grateful for them :D --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/danbarracuda/support

Hello Podcast Subscribers! Here's a Free Gift for you! It's a 132.1 hz "Om" Frequency Binaural Beat! I made these with my Frequency Sticks!!! Although I'm told this is my fake name for "Tuning Fork"... Want to download this without all my talking? Go to https://beyondhomosapien.com/sound Totally free to download! Enjoy! Much Love! -Paul Tokgozoglu

HAPPY MONDAY MOTIVATION! Welcome back to the weekly podcast No More Excuses! MERRY CHRISTMAS-EVE! You all ROCK! I appreciate you reading this, listening to the podcast (I think some of you actually do listen to it!) AND for those of you who SHARE the podcast! THANK YOU! If you don't share it... please do. It really only take a hot sec! :) It's been a FUN month for me. This was the first year I did the FINISH THE YEAR STRONG CHALLENGE and it's been fun hearing from those who took part, how it's helped them, and it's helped ME as well! Although I'm not quite in the Christmas spirit this year, the FUNtivities are still going on! I achieved my BIG GOAL of finishing my third book, then I kept going by hosting two book release parties! I've sold LOTS of books... and I am NOT STOPPING NOW!  One thing a day up until the end of the year. But... why stop there? Let's keep going! Like I talked about in last week's podcast, you have to BUILD UPON where you are and who you are TODAY! The progress and success you've had. Why would I stop trying to promote my book? It's a marketing tool! If you hit your sales goals, why wouldn't you try to do that again? If you achieved your weight loss goal, it's not over! You have to KEEP IT OFF! Maintain, right? So, listen in this week as I talk about a huge challenge I recently had, like many of you. Sometimes you have to be grateful that shit happens as hit helps you DIG DEEPER, and... KEEP GOING! Even if you just started (like a new client of mine!) I look forward to hearing from you after you listen in! Have a Merry Christmas and... KEEP ON KEEPING ON! You have SEVEN DAYS LEFT! Even if you're off work, there's things you can do for YOU! You've got this! Cheers! Sandi  

This week we'll be covering a show that at the time of this release has been cancelled but has plenty of episode to offer you. The Sip or "The Service Industry Podcast" is comedic podcast hosted by Grant and Kevin who are in the Food Service Industry. The show covers topics from "How to gauge tipping" to "The worst customers ever" and through this you'll gain an understanding of just what it's like to work on the other side of your table. Although I'm not in the food service industry I found this podcast enjoyable and hysterical to hear what it's like. If you enjoy this episode please take a moment to follow The Sip on social media and subscribe to them wherever you're listening to Podcast Junkie.  The SipFacebookWebsite Podcast JunkieTwitterFacebookInstagram

In this episode, I discuss my experience running my first big race here in the city which is the Capitol City 10 Miler/ Turkey Burner 5K. This was a little more than just a race to me as I took a trip down memory lane running past a few familiar places on this course. I reveal my finish time which wasn't bad for my first major race in the city but I knew I could've done better. Finally, I discuss how I'm looking forward to my first ever Jingle Bells Run on December. 1st. Although I'm looking to beat my run time from my previous race, I will be taking all that the holiday-themed atmosphere has to offer!! A special thank you to Centerpoint Fellowship Church and sponsors for putting on a race that was both challenging and fun! I really enjoyed the partylike atmosphere as well as the delicious

Jenn and guest Vanessa Diaz discuss Portuguese novels, ghost stories, unreliable narrators, and more in this week's episode of Get Booked. This episode is sponsored by The Devil's Thiefby Lisa Maxwell and Flight or Fright, edited by Stephen King and Bev Vincent.   Questions:   1. Hello Amanda and Jenn, This month, after a harrowing vacation planning session wherein I blindly threw a dart at a map, I booked a flight to Portugal. Shortly, after booking my ticket, I realized I really don't know much about the country and its literature. Can you help me find something to read that's either set in Portugal or by a Portuguese author before my trip? I've read a number of books about Spain and books by Spanish authors, so I'd prefer to avoid overlap. Although I'm open to non-fiction, I would prefer a fiction recommendation. I read almost every genre within fiction, but I tend to avoid YA and romance. To give you a general feel for my taste in books, some of my all-time favourites books are: -A Little Life by Hanya Yanigahara, -The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, -Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, and -Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Many thanks, --Rebecca   2. Hi Amanda and Jenn, First I want to say I love your show and I read a lot of your recommendations. So I absolutely loved I Am Pilgrim and need some more books like it. I love books that have multiple plot lines that converge in the end. Please help me find some more books to put on my shelf. I will read anything except Romance. I prefer mystery and historical fiction. By the way if this finds its way on the show that would be great. Thanks --Brittney   3. Hi Guys! I’m looking for a book recs for good horror novels that involve ghosts. I’m a huge horror movie fan and particularly love ghost stories & found footage movies. In reading, however, I’ve stuck mostly with Urban & High Fantasy novels. I’m looking to expand my taste a bit this year and have also found that I’m running out of horror movies to watch. I’ve attempted a few Stephen King novels including “It" but have a hard time digesting the homophobia within towns make up. I understand where the novel comes from and usually don’t have a problem with being faced with the uglier side of humanity. However, because of that particular form of ugly, I’m extremely tentative when it comes to horror books. Can you recommend some horror novels centered around hauntings & ghost stories? Bonus if they include LGBT characters — particularly gay or lesbian couples. Thank you for your time, --Oddy   4. I am going through a difficult breakup and am finding escaping into reading a healthy way to deal with my feelings. I recently read The Night Circus for the first time and found it was a great book for me right now not necessarily because of the genre but because of the immersive environment the author creates and because the ending is generally happy. I started reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell hoping it would provide a similar imaginative environment but I'm finding the beginning a little slow. I am open to any genre of book as long as it is immersive and not depressing. Thank you for your help! --Lauren   5. Hi, I love your podcast, and I'm so happy it comes out every week now! I was wondering if you can help me find more books with an unreliable narrator. I have read Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, Await Your Reply, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Where'd You Go, Bernadette. I particularly enjoy books when you don't actually know if the narrator is unreliable or not until you get into it as opposed to Mr Ripley where I knew from the start. Thanks! I await your reply. ;-) --Kaci   6. Books with borderline characters or any type of mental illness? --Sad reader   7. Hi gang, Greetings from Buenos Aires, Argentina!!!!! My name is Agustin I´m looking for recommendations for books about libraries and or books or in which these elements are important to the plot.......... quite specific, sorry :( but i´m hooked and I crave these kinds of books!!!! Basically I´ve read: THE LIBRARY AT MOUNT CHAR by Scott Hawkins ALL THE NAMES by Jose Saramago THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Ecco (awesome!!) MR. PENUMBRA´S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE by Robin Sloan THE SHADOW OF THE WIND by Carlos Ruiz Zafón And I don´t know about any other books along these lines. Never miss an episode! help me get booked, you are my only hope!!! :P love, --Agustin!   Books Discussed: Mech Cadet Yu by Greg Pak, art by Takeshi Miyazawa Improvement by Joan Silber Everything's Trash, But It's Ok by Phoebe Robinson Blindness by Jose Saramago (tw: sexual assault, violence, rape) The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due (tw: racial violence, rape, harm to children) Affinity by Sarah Waters (tw: mention of suicide) The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia Wrede The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield Turn of Mind by Alice LaPlante Our Kind of Cruelty by Araminta Hall Borderline by Mishell Baker (tw: self harm, suicide) (Don’t) Call Me Crazy edited by Kelly Jensen Long Division by Kiese Laymon The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte Labyrinth of the Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

How do you apply ancient Buddhist wisdom to your relationship in a way that helps you connect with your partner? How do you build the intimacy even if you're not feeling the love? One day, as Susan Piver was experiencing what felt like an unsolvable problem in her relationship, she heard a voice say “Begin at the beginning - the four noble truths”. And much like the four noble truths of the Buddha, which identify the cause of suffering (and the cure), Susan Piver’s new book The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships can help you identify not only why relationships can be challenging - but also what to do about it. Along the way, you’ll also learn some powerful strategies for getting centered, finding your own sense of balance, and building the strength and resilience of your relationship - despite all the complexities. Also, please check out our first episode with Susan Piver: Episode 8 - How to Tackle the Hard Questions As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode has a cool new sponsor with a special offer for you - GreenChef.us/alive. GreenChef.us is a USDA certified organic company, with a wide variety of meal plans to make having healthier food easy and convenient for you. And they’re offering you $50 off your first box to give them a try! Just visit GreenChef.us/alive and use the coupon code “ALIVE” at checkout for $50 off, and enjoy the delicious recipes and fresh ingredients that GreenChef sends your way. Resources: Check out Susan Piver’s website Read Susan Piver’s new book, The Four Noble Truths of Love (or check out her bestselling book to foster conversation with your partner, The Hard Questions) FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict… Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/susan2 Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Susan Piver. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host Neil Sattin. On this show we are focused time and time again about how to have amazing relationships. And this begs the question, "What makes for an amazing relationship?" And of course, part of that, in fact a big part of that, is the intention that you set. I'm not saying that you rigidly hold to an agenda of what you think your relationship should be, but more that you create a vision with your partner for what you want. And at the same time, if that vision doesn't include some flexibility, some resilience, the ability to work with whatever your relationship brings to you, then you might be in for a really hard time. Neil Sattin: And some aspect of that hard time is probably part of the game. And that is all what we are going to talk about today. We are having a return visit from one of the guests who was here at the very beginning of the Relationship Alive podcast, when it was just a vision more or less that I had. Her name is Susan Piver. And you may recall her from Episode Eight, talking about how to tackle the hard questions. And that's referring to her New York Times bestselling book, "The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say I Do". And as you might recall from that, I love questions, they're at the heart of curiosity and which is such an important element in having a successful relationship. But there's more. And thankfully, Susan Piver has been writing about it. In fact, she also is an accomplished and practising Buddhist meditator and mindfulness practitioner and mindfulness teacher and instructor. Neil Sattin: And her latest book, 'The Four Noble Truths of Love', is all about Buddhist wisdom for your relationship. And it contains some unconventional truths that will actually probably be really enlightening for you and for many of you, perhaps even very reassuring in terms of your own experience of relationship. And once you shine your vision and your light on the truth of what is happening, then it gives you a lot of power to work with it. And that's what Susan Piver's latest book is all about. So if you're interested in hearing the first episode that I mentioned, you can visit neilsattin.com/susan. She was the first Susan that we spoke to, so she got to lay claim to the name "Susan" forever for the Relationship Alive podcast. And if you want to download a transcript of this episode, you can visit neilsattin.com/susan2, the number "2," or you can text the word "passion" to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. So I think that's it. Without further ado, Susan Piver, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive. Susan Piver: I am so glad to be here, Neil. Thank you so much for asking me. Neil Sattin: You're most welcome. Yeah, it's great to have you here. And I particularly love your take on relationship, and I have to admit that when I first heard the title of your latest book, 'The Four Noble Truths of Love', I was prepared for something that was a little high-minded or philosophical, and I wasn't prepared for it to be so gritty, the way the book actually is. And so I really appreciate that, your ability to bring some philosophical concepts in a way that's really grounded in what our experience in love can be. Susan Piver: Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm glad. Thank you. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I would say what inspired you, but... And maybe you could talk a little bit about that for people who don't know much about Buddhism and why did you write these 'Four Noble Truths of Love'? What led you to distill it that way? Susan Piver: Yeah, sure, I'm happy to. Well, I was in a place in my marriage... This was, I don't know, some time ago, where I could not get along with my husband. As you know, you're married. Neil Sattin: Yep. Susan Piver: The relationships go through these crazy phases where you feel close and you feel passionate and you feel connected and held, and then one day something happens and you feel distant and unhappy. And we were in a particular cycle that was very unpleasant. We weren't screaming at each other, we weren't furious, nobody had done anything "wrong", we just could not get along. Everything one person said or did hurt the other person or made them angry. And it was bizarre. Even the most simplest questions like, "What do you wanna have for dinner?", could make us have an argument. It felt insane and we didn't know why, and it went on for weeks, and months. Susan Piver: One day I was sitting at my desk, just crying basically, because I did not know how to fix this problem and we had tried talking to each other and not talking to each other, and going to a marriage counselor, and we tried all sorts of things. And I realized as I was sitting at my desk, "I do not know how to fix this, I don't even know where to begin." And a voice said to me or I had a thought, I don't know what it was, but it said, "Begin at the beginning. At the beginning are four noble truths." So this meant something to me as a long time Buddhist practitioner, because the four noble truths, the first teachings that the Buddha gave upon attaining enlightenment, are like the core of the entire Buddhist path to this day. So I'm like, "Oh, four noble truths. Yes, I know what they are, but how would they apply to my relationship?" The four noble truths of Buddhism are the first truth is, life is suffering. And I know that sounds terrible, I don't think the Buddha meant life sucks. It meant something more like life is unsatisfying. Meaning, you think, "Well, if I have this job or this relationship or this amount of money or this accomplishment, I will be safe, I will be free from suffering, I will be happy." Susan Piver: And yeah, those things are great and they will make you happy for a time, but they will not exempt you from the suffering of being human, that's a bummer. [chuckle] And the second noble truth is called, the cause of suffering. The cause of suffering is called grasping, which basically means pretending like the first noble truth is not true and trying nonetheless to create stable ground for yourself and trying to hold on to the things you think will make you happy, and push away the things that you think will make you unhappy. While that is a very sensible approach to life, it's still not gonna create the kind of stability that we hope for. And the third noble truth is called the cessation of suffering, which means something like, now that you know the cause, you also know the cure. If the cause is grasping, stop grasping, which obviously is not that simple but there's some insight there. You stop grasping. Susan Piver: And the fourth noble truth is called the eightfold path, Buddhism is full of numbers, as I'm sure you know. And the eightfold path are the eight steps that you could take that would eliminate grasping, and therefore exempt you from suffering. And the eightfold path are things like right view, and so on. So okay, I thought, "Well, that's cool. What does this have to do with my love life though?" And so I just started noodling around with these four truths which basically, as I say, follow a sequence, there's a statement of the truth, the cause of the truth, the cure for the suffering, and then the steps you can take to put that cure into play. So when it came to love, what I came up with is the first noble truth of love is that relationships never stabilize, they are uncomfortable. Neil Sattin: Dun dun dun. Susan Piver: [chuckle] Why didn't anyone ever tell us this? Sorry. It never stabilizes. You can be in a period, like we were talking about earlier, where everything's great, and then that disappears and a different phase arises, they're like weather fronts. And the discomfort of relationships is present at every point in the relationship arc. If you are going on a blind date, you don't even know the person. It's already very uncomfortable 'cause you think, " Oh, what if they don't like me?" or, "What if they do like me?" or, "What if I start recreating all my relationship problems before dessert?", and it's just uncomfortable. And then if you fall in love, of course, it's fantastic. But it's also uncomfortable in its own way, because it's so intense, so fraught. And you think, "What did that look mean? And maybe I shouldn't have worn those pants," or every moment is very heightened, which is heavenly, like I say, but it's also uncomfortable. And then in a longterm relationship, the discomfort morphs into something called irritation. There just is this perpetual, maybe not constant, but this relatively constant irritation of living with another person. No matter how much you like each other and love each other, it gives rise to this kind of, you're rubbing against each other in an uncomfortable way, because for various reasons. Susan Piver: I don't know what the real reason is, but anyone who's been in a relationship for more than a year will say, "Yeah, I don't like the way they do this and they don't like the way I do that," and there's tiny things, but they cause irritation. So that's the first noble truth. The relationships don't stabilize and they are uncomfortable. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and that was for me, just reading that, I felt this big yes within me. Like of course, and in so much of the grasping on to this idea that a perfect relationship is always smiles, is never suffering, is perfect parenting, is we're always amazing lovers together, that's just a recipe for disappointment over and over again. And also for, I think, a lot of us to feel like, "If that's what you subscribe to, well, wow, I must be doing really horribly." Susan Piver: [chuckle] Yeah. Neil Sattin: Or it's what drives people apart, because they think, "Well, we're not having that ideal thing. So there must be some fatal flaw to this particular connection." Susan Piver: Yep, and to add to that confusion is sometimes there is a fatal flaw. And it's not always easy to tell the difference, but for the lion's share of what we experience in what I would call ordinary relationship problems, which can range from anything from, "You're always late, and that really makes me mad," to, "Oh, you didn't tell me that you were contemplating gender reassignment surgery." That's a big deal, big, big deal. But none of those things are indications of harm, I would say, although they may be painful. Intentional harm. So I just wanna make clear that I exempt from this whole view, relationship problems that are rooted in abuse of any kind or addiction. Those are different kinds of problems, a different arena, and these things don't apply. But otherwise, yeah, we think... When most of us say we're looking for love, we don't really mean that. It's something that I've noticed in myself and others. We're not looking for love, we're looking for safety, we're looking for someone who will help us make a cocoon where we can retreat when it's a little dramatic, or overly traumatized. But we're looking for someone who will help us escape sorrow and make us feel whole, and healed, and hopefully the person you're in love with will do those things for you. Susan Piver: But it's not that simple. So there's actually nothing less safe than love. And when we try to make it safe, it becomes something else. Not love exactly, but yeah. So I felt relief too when I realized that, by the way, like, "Oh yeah, there are things that are wrong in this relationship, but we're not doing anything wrong in the sense that this is, this was a bad choice. Neil Sattin: Right right. And I really like that you make that distinction, that in a relationship where you're experiencing abuse or one or both of you is plagued by addiction, that changes the rules a bit, in terms of what one should do, I think to get help and what's acceptable in a relationship. Susan Piver: I agree. Neil Sattin: And this question around safety, this was actually... I'm so glad that you brought this up right now, because this was actually one of the things that I felt myself... That was a little edgy for me. And the reason why being, not because I think that relationships are safe, in fact I think that the act of being so vulnerable automatically exposes you to being the potential to be harmed by your partner. And so much of what we have to do is learn how to embrace that vulnerability without succumbing to the fear that your partner is actually out to get you, which is what that kind of vigilance can feel like, right? Susan Piver: Yeah. Neil Sattin: But on the flip side, there's so much important material and juice there in relationship for couples who are paying attention to the safety, the safety of their, the container of their relationship, actually helping each other stay out of a primal brain-triggered state as much as possible, not that you'll never get there. This is my own personal view. So, I'm curious for you, how do you reconcile that between... Well, there is some safety to the container that we want to be conscious of and actually contributing to, and then there's this statement of yours that lands right in that, which is that love isn't safe. Susan Piver: Well that's a great question. It's a really good question. And I would say the answer has something to do with trust. Obviously the opposite of safe is untrustworthy, unsafe. So I'm just gonna share with you a little anecdote from my own life. When my husband, my now husband and I first got involved, he was going through a very difficult divorce, and I didn't know how it was gonna work out for us. It really could just as easily have gone in any direction because it was just a very, very tumultuous time in his life. And friends would say to me, "This is a danger side, or this is a red flag or whatever." Yeah, but at no point to this very day, have I ever doubted how he felt about me, or what his intentions were toward me. Susan Piver: So even though it could have just as easily have gone completely off the rails, and it was very unsafe, I did not distrust him. And to this day, I can't explain why, but there was just this instinct. This guy is on my side, and neither of us knows how it's gonna play out. But I don't doubt, I don't doubt who he is and what he feels. So that... Without that, almost nothing could have happened. Without that, it's very, very hard to allow for even the slightest vulnerability, and I would say, nor should you allow for it, because that foundational trust, which feels different to different people and is based on different things, it can't be described or there's no... It's not formulaic. But without that, for me, I would have, it would have been a very bad, very bad experience. So does that make sense? Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I appreciate that you're making the distinction that it had what you needed to feel, at a foundational level, you could trust this person. Susan Piver: I knew he loved me. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. And yet you also go on to describe, in your book, times where you're convinced that you hate him and he hates you and that's part of the cycle, right? That we can experience? Susan Piver: Yes it is. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I think that at the beginning of a relationship, part of... Whether it's the divine purpose or the genetic purpose of all those neurochemicals that go through our bodies, is to make us trust the other person before we really should on some level, you know? Susan Piver: Interesting. Neil Sattin: That it puts us in a state where we're willing to be a little bit more vulnerable. So it gets us, and I'm just thinking off the top of my head now, but maybe it gets us into proximity in a way that allows for true intimacy. Now we're getting in maybe into the spiritual component of why this all might happen, but it's that proximity that allows the true intimacy to blossom. Susan Piver: Interesting. That's very interesting. Neil Sattin: Well, we heard it here first. [laughter] Susan Piver: Yes we did. Neil Sattin: So there's... So if relationships are never stable, then let's go to the second truth that you wrote about in your book. Susan Piver: Okay. The second truth is the cause of the problem which, oversimplified, is thinking that they should be stable and comfortable actually makes them unstable and uncomfortable. So imagine if you just sort of gave up the idea that it's gonna be comfortable, it's going to be... Someday we're gonna hit the relationship lotto number and we're gonna fix this problem, we're gonna solve this issue, or we're gonna create this thing that we don't have that we need, and once we get all these things in a row, we're gonna go into some relationship evenness that will not change. And aiming toward that, driving toward that vision of what this relationship should be, I, in my own relationship, actually is a cause of a lot of discomfort. Susan Piver: I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to solve our problems. We have lots of problems and we're trying to solve them all the time and constantly adjusting, and tweaking, and reviewing, and working, and losing the thread and regaining the thread with the issues that are in our relationship. So I'm not saying that you just should stop doing that, but if you think, "Well, we're gonna tweak this thing and then it's gonna be perfect, and I'm gonna get everything I need and so will the other person. And unless that happens, it's not good." A lot of pain between two people. So the second noble truth is, "Thinking it should be stable adds to the instability." Neil Sattin: Yeah, I've read that and I was like, "Wow, that is so brilliant." That it's that expectation that really adds all this, like an extra layer of anxiety and fuel to the fire of whatever... Whatever is happening in that moment. So if what's... If something comes up that makes you really uncomfortable and rather than being able to be present for it, you have all this, "It shouldn't be this way. Oh no, something is wrong." If those are the kinds of things that are coming up, then it actually removes you, it removes you from being able to respond and then, at the same time, it adds all this intensity to whatever is come up. Susan Piver: Agreed. Agreed. And the brilliance is in the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, in this sense, because the first noble truth, as you remember, is, "Life the suffering." Second noble truth is, "The cause of suffering is grasping." So it's very interesting. It doesn't say, "The suffering is the suffering." [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Right. Susan Piver: It says, "Grasping is the suffering." So in other words, suffering is part of the deal. We're all gonna have losses, we're all gonna have problems, we're all gonna gain things, and lose things and that is unavoidable. But in the Buddhist view, that is not considered the real suffering. Although of course it is, but the real suffering is what we add on top of it, which, in this case, is called grasping. So mapped over to relationships, yes, there are going to be problems. You're going to like each other, you're not going to like each other, there's going to be desires, there's gonna be disconnection. That's gonna happen, that's what we saw... That's part of the relationship mandala. But thinking it shouldn't be that way, actually causes more pain than the pain points themselves. Neil Sattin: I'm just laughing on some level, because while we're having this conversation, I'm noticing that we've had a little bit of Internet difficulty, and I don't think it's bad enough that... I think everyone listening is getting everything you're saying, and I'm glad, because it's really important. And I'm noticing that I think the local airport changed the flight patterns, so there are airplanes flying overhead now. The next door neighbor's dog is barking, and within me is the potential for all this grasping, like, "Oh, it shouldn't, it shouldn't be this way. I should be in a soundproofed hermetic chamber with a big fibre optic tube connecting you and me directly so that there are no hitches." [chuckle] Neil Sattin: So while we're talking, I myself am embracing this practice of like, "Okay, this is what is, this is what's happening right now." Here in... Susan Piver: Wow. Neil Sattin: In the podcast. Susan Piver: That's interesting, that's very interesting. That's a perfect illustration. It's a perfect illustration. And sometimes in Buddhism that's called the suffering of suffering, the suffering of succotash. [laughter] Susan Piver: There's suffering and then there's the suffering of suffering. So in relationships, there's the discomfort and then, which is natural, and then there's the discomfort of the discomfort, which is optional. Neil Sattin: Right, right, yeah, and when you're talking about that too, I think you talk a lot in your book about projections and this has come up on the show before, this notion of what's within you that you wish were happening or that you think is happening, versus what actually is happening and how much those projections are getting in the way of the is-ness of what is actually happening right there in front of you. Susan Piver: Yeah, it's very hard to see. It's very hard to see. We're all looking through a particular lens. Neil Sattin: So like the Buddhist noble truths lay out this very logical argument about why life is so hard and how to deal with it. I know, I totally oversimplified that. [chuckle] Susan Piver: No, that was good, I think that was accurate. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: But here we are, we are on this path through the relationship Noble Truths, and we've got, relationships are never gonna be stable. Trying to make them stable is why you're having such a hard time. And then this is where it really gets beautiful is, I think, I mean it's been beautiful all along, Susan, but with the third Truth, which is what we bring... So take it away, Susan. [chuckle] Susan Piver: Yeah, and I appreciate that and I agree, this is where... 'Cause I think the first two sound like, "Okay, it's a problem, deal with it." The third one is... Actually can be quite beautiful. So the third noble truth of love is that meeting the instability together is love or loving. So, in other words, rather than trying to get it to stabilize, and this is what you need to do to make it stable, and this is what I need to do to make it stable, and I don't wanna do that and you should do this instead and all of that. Conversations that must be had but, nonetheless, if instead of looking at each other as the source of the problem and the solution, I would say a great partner is one who will instead turn to stand shoulder to shoulder with you, to look out at the arc of the ride that you are on together now. Susan Piver: Usually, like I say, we look at each other. You did this, I did that. But this... And good, you should do that. But this part says, "Well, you could also notice what's happening right now in your relationship, together, meaning... And open to it." Meaning now, oh, we love each other, this is great. Now, we don't really like each other, I don't know why. Now you really like me and I'm not that interested in you. And now we can get along and now we can't get along. Someone who will be like... I picture it as someone that's on a roller coaster ride with you. And you're not trying to flat straighten out the ride, you're just dipping and diving together and staying seated together. To me, that is a great partner. Just someone who will be on the ride with you. I don't mean that in a cavalier way, I mean literally join you in this incredible ride and be on it together. Whatever's happening, whether you're going uphill or downhill. Neil Sattin: Right, being willing to say, "Here we are." Susan Piver: Yeah, exactly. Neil Sattin: And there's a lot of power in that, in that willingness to just be. And you talk about this too. I'm curious, maybe we can bring that in now, is the power of honesty, being honest about what is. But, and this veers us into the fourth noble truth, which is about the path and how honesty is used. And maybe we could talk about how that's part of the path and how that weaves into where we're going from here. Susan Piver: Sure, yeah, thank you. So the fourth noble truth says, "Here's how you could possibly do these things, potentially do these things." And I looked at the three basic cycles of teachings within Buddhism and what they suggest, in terms of creating a spiritual path, and mapped them over to what they would mean to me, 'cause all of this is what it means to me and then I'm sharing it so it's useful to others. How would I map those into my relationship? So, they're basically four qualities. The first two belong to the first cycle. Then the third and fourth belong to the second and third cycles, sorry to be confusing. And the first quality that is... These first two qualities create the foundation for a relationship. And just like anything, a house, or spiritual path, or a piece of art, if you don't have a foundation, you're not getting anywhere. You have to have the foundation for your relationship, for your house, for your whatever it is you're doing. And the qualities that create a foundation, meaning if you don't have them, you're not gonna be able to build anything, are first, honesty. Susan Piver: So that doesn't mean saying what you think the moment you think it. That's silly. It means first knowing the truth yourself about who you are and what you feel. And that doesn't mean you have to know yourself perfectly and always be completely clear about how you feel. But it means knowing when you are clear and knowing when you are not. Knowing when you know the truth and knowing when you don't and then adapting your behavior to that truth. So if you can't be honest, or you're with someone who can't be honest, not because they're a liar necessarily, although some people are, but because they don't know how to tell the truth, it's gonna be very hard to have a relationship. You could have a great time. You could have an awesome love affair, but it would be hard to make a relationship, I think. And the second quality that is foundational, it sounds funny, I think, is called good manners. And I don't mean knowing which fork to use particularly, but... Neil Sattin: But that is so important. Susan Piver: Knowing which fork to use? Neil Sattin: Yes. [laughter] Susan Piver: Well, if it's important to you, then it is important, Neil. And in addition, it's important to... Good manners are very profound. They're predicated on awareness that there's actually another person present. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Susan Piver: And taking an interest in what they think and what they feel and what they need. Not that you have to supply it, but... Oh, this is what they're experiencing now. How could I help? How could I know when I can't help and back away? How can I notice where they are in their inner life and just recognize it? So, if you're with someone who is not aware that you're there, and therefore cannot have good manners, well then obviously there's very little you can do in terms of a relationship. So honesty and good manners, I would say, are foundational. And then the third quality here is just simply called openness, or openheartedness, and this refers also to the part, the cycle in the Buddhist teachings. First you create your foundation by being disciplined and keeping things simple and so on, and then your heart naturally opens to others. Susan Piver: And this is the part in the Buddhist cycle where you think, "Oh, I'm not the only person here on earth, there are others. And I could actually begin to look at them as having equal importance to myself, if not greater, from time to time." It's radical, quite radical. And in a relationship, what it means is that you actually look at the other person as having at least equal importance to yourself in the relationship. I have to say, I found that quite shocking. I thought my relationship was about me, and sometimes I was like, "Oh well, now I guess it's about him." Neither of those... Sometimes both of those are true, but really it's about us thinking about us, not to the exclusion of you or me, but can I look at this person as having equal status in this relationship? It sounds like a silly question, but it's surprising how infrequently we act as if that was true. Susan Piver: And then the fourth step here is called letting go or going beyond, and what it means in this context is looking at everything that happens between the two of you, good, bad, and ugly, not as a way to create more love or an opportunity to create more love, 'cause sometimes there is more love and sometimes there isn't, but as an opportunity to deepen intimacy. And this, when I realized it, was very, very heartening to me, because I knew, even before we got married, I cannot commit to loving this person. Sometimes, I will feel love, and sometimes I won't. But what I can commit to is to deepen intimacy and to look at everything that happens between us. Not, again, as a way to have more love, but to have more intimacy, to know each other better. And I have found that there's nothing that you cannot feed into the intimacy machine, because love, like I say, comes and goes, but intimacy has no end. You never get to a point where you're like, "Oh yeah, we know each other perfectly. There's no... Nothing more to reveal or know." There's always more. And so, that is an honest commitment. "I vow to deepen intimacy" is a more true vow, I think, than, "I vow to love." So I found that really inspiring. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah, it's so, it's so expensive. And I think in terms of, especially if you're feeling like your relationship has gotten stale or boring, a more conventional approach to that might be to try to add some novelty, right? So like make things spicier. Susan Piver: Right. Neil Sattin: What I hear you saying is that, that my... Yeah, all the gears are turning right now. That that stagnation could be from not really turning towards your partner and from not actually meeting the person, the full human who is right there in front of you with their own set of needs, desires, etcetera, and that through leaning in with each other and creating more intimacy even in those moments, even in those moments where the love may not fully be there, or you might have the caring, but not the fire, or it could be any number of permutations of how you feel towards the person, but that the willingness to turn in and be present with what is happening creates intimacy that ultimately creates more, creates more. And more vibrancy, maybe is the word that I'm looking for. Susan Piver: Yeah, I would say the vibrancy is always possible, but it creates problems for me, or I would think, to look at boredom as a problem that needs to be solved. We all prefer a relationship that's exciting and dynamic to one that is dull, obviously. And maybe it is dull for some reason that you should investigate. Absolutely, and do that investigation, but it's also possible to just be bored together. What is it like when we're bored together? Let's, let's... Can we do that? Can we be side by side in this bored, boring place? I know that doesn't sound like fun, but there's something very, at the same time, intimate about being where you are together. In fact, there is no other definition of intimacy, I don't think, than just being where you actually are together. And again, I know that this doesn't sound like fun. [chuckle] Susan Piver: And this is not three ways to keep it awesome, this is not that book. [chuckle] Susan Piver: If you have ever been on a retreat, for example, where there's silence, you find that at first it's intimidating or, "Oh, it's gonna be lonely or sad or whatever," but after a while you find that it is so intimate to just not talk, but to be with other people. It's bizarre. All of these projections, drop away and you just are together. So, excuse me, the idea that you could be with someone to whom you have nothing to say right now, but just be there, it's very intimate. It's strange. I remember after being on my first silent retreat thinking to myself somewhere in the middle of it, "What were all those words I used to say? [chuckle] Why did I need to say that?" Anything, because just being together without a particular agenda is really, really deep and rich. Neil Sattin: Yeah, an experience that I've had that's along those lines, I have done a silent retreat, but we also, my wife and I are a part of this practice that we do called Infinity Practice. And every year we have a retreat, and one of the things that we do is we do a form of muscle testing before we speak. So that nothing that you say is something that you haven't tested strong. Like that it's generative to actually say this thing. Susan Piver: Wow. Neil Sattin: So that's been another little twist on that is just feeling how much we use words idly versus when are we actually... When are we saying something that actually contributes to the life around us? Susan Piver: That's so interesting. What is it called? Infinity what? Neil Sattin: Well, we've been studying with a teacher in actually out in the Northampton area. Infinity Healing Practice. It's something that she created. And I've talked about it a little bit here on the show. I think we're five years into our training with this person. Susan Piver: That sounds great. Neil Sattin: It's sort of a blend of Shamanist practices and neural science and acupressure, and it's got a lot of different components to it. Susan Piver: Cool. Neil Sattin: Yeah. But we actually use muscle testing all the time in our relationship, when we're trying to make choices about things, or what we're gonna do, or what we're gonna eat, or who's gonna massage the other person, things like that. [laughter] Susan Piver: That's an awesome idea. I'm gonna try that. I think that sounds great. My husband will really roll his eyes and laugh at me. I don't care. It will be... I think he would actually end up enjoying it. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's handy and fun. It also has a little, not that this is intentional or by design, but it makes it all feel kinda like a game, and you realize also that some of it is kind of arbitrary. Some of the things that we take so seriously, "Well, I massaged you last night, now I'm gonna message you again?" That you can go like, "Well yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. For some reason that's generative. So I guess it's my turn to give again." Susan Piver: That's awesome. Neil Sattin: And that reminds me too of one thing that you speak about that's so important. First I'm thinking about overall, how relationship is a practice. And then you also mention the act of loving and giving love, and how that's an element that you find is missing from a lot of the popular culture about how to get love or how to preserve the love in a relationship. Susan Piver: Yeah, it's interesting. If you look at the self help books about relationships. I've noticed this when I wrote my very first book, "The hard questions", that you mentioned earlier, 'cause I was like looking for books, like, "How do you do this whole being married thing?", and I noticed that all, I'll say 100%, although I'm sure there's some exceptions, but 100% of the books that I found were about how to get love. How to get someone to love you, how to get love to return to you, how to get more love, and none of them were about how to give love, unless it was in the service of getting love. So that always surprised me. Like why, why? Because for a variety of reasons, but one of them is loving as we talked about earlier, it's so vulnerable, and everybody feels powerless because you kind of are. However, there is one way to take the seat of power in relationships. I don't mean of domination, obviously, of just feeling empowered, and that is as a lover. That's a very empowered place. I'm going to love, I'm going to be a lover. I'm going to give love." It doesn't mean to the exclusion of getting love, or I'm putting myself second, it just means my focus is going to be on "What can I give?". Susan Piver: And then also, "What can I get?", 'cause you don't wanna be stupid. But if you just even bring in the question, "What can I give?", it changes things because the predominant question for most of us, myself included, is "What can I get? What will I get if I do this?" But when you shift it to just at least also ask, "What can I give?", I find I have a rush of confidence and empowerment that I don't feel when I'm asking, "What can I get"? Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, and I think that you refer to this toward the end of the book in a question maybe from someone from your Facebook group. I think you took a bunch of questions and answered them and talked about that, like how one might discern when their giving is a little lopsided, and they're actually in an unhealthy situation, versus learning more about your own power to give, to be loving, to show up that way in life. And this might be a great time to talk about the power of mindfulness and meditation, 'cause there are some great practical things. This is something that, again, I love about your book, it's very readable for one thing, and you lay out the arguments, the relationships never stabilize, expecting them to be stable is the problem, meeting the instability together is what love is, and there's a path through to liberation. So we've covered all those things, but then at the core is a need to, I think, get clear and to be receptive and to be as open to this thing that we've mentioned several times over the course of this conversation, to what actually is, to being present, even if you're being present to the boredom, as you mentioned earlier. That seems like it would be impossible without learning mindfulness. Susan Piver: It would be for me. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Susan Piver: It would, but there are people for whom it's not impossible. But I'd say it's rare. But yeah, if you don't know how to work with your mind, then it's very, very confusing. Of course, I'm not saying you have to know how to do it perfectly, at least I hope not because I certainly don't. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Now we're gonna have to write "The Four Noble Truths of Meditation". [laughter] Susan Piver: Right, right, right. Meditation is actually about placement of attention. So if I say to you, I don't know, "Don't look at your foot, left foot, but place your attention on your left foot," something sort of goes to your left foot. And if I say, "Now, place your attention on your right earlobe," which you can't look at, "But just move that attention to your right earlobe and just notice it," that's all mindfulness is. Something moves between those two points between your ear and that something is your awareness, your attention. And all that happens in meditation is you are practicing working with that, placement of attention. In case of what I teach, and the most common object of attention is your breath. You're not practicing placing attention on breath so you can be great at placing attention on breath, because there's not much utility in that skill, but you're practicing with the breath so that when you talk to a human being you can place your attention on them, because you have learned how to place your attention on what is happening. Because the breath is always in the present, you can't breathe in the past or the future. So, if your attention is on the breath, you could make the argument that your attention is in the present. Susan Piver: And then when someone's talking to you or you're trying to make a decision about what job to take or who you are, you can actually place your attention on the thing that you want to contemplate. It sounds so simple, and it is, but it is not easy, and for most of us, our attention remains on what we hope and what we fear. So we don't actually... It's hard to hear the person who's talking to us outside of that lens of, "Will this be good for me or will this be bad for me?" And those are important questions, and you should not release those questions, but first, can you actually hear what's being said to you? And so as... If you train in mindfulness in some way, whatever way makes sense to you, the likelihood that you will be able to answer "yes" is greatly increased, I would say. Although my husband doesn't practice meditation, and never has, but he's good at paying attention. So he's one of those people. Neil Sattin: Maybe he is, and maybe he's gotten a little through osmosis. Susan Piver: No, no, no, no. [laughter] He's much better at this kind of thing than me. He's much better, he is. He's much better, much more relational than I am, and I've learned a lot from him. He's good at relationships. I have to write books about them 'cause I'm not good at them. [laughter] Neil Sattin: I'll get him on the show next time, I guess. Susan Piver: That would be awesome. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Well, Susan, again, I so appreciate your visiting us here on the podcast, and I think your book, 'The Four Noble Truths of Love', is a perfect... I don't know why the word antidote comes, I don't want it to be an antidote, but it goes really well, it's a good, it's a good... No, it's not a seasoning 'cause it stands on its own. All these metaphors are failing me right now, but when you hold it next to a book, like let's say, 'Getting the Love You Want', which is like a classic, and it came to mind immediately when you said so many books are about getting love, because this book is actually really helpful, and there's a lot in it about how to give, in particular, how to give your attention in how you communicate with your partner. And so, props to Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt. At the same time on the flip side of it, I think there's so much richness in what you're adding to the conversation about really expanding your view of what this whole relationship thing is all about, and how to find yourself in it so that you don't lose yourself there. Susan Piver: I really appreciate that, and yeah, learning how to get, receive love, and learning how to give love, seems that one without the other would be not so great. So it's good that there are ways to explore both. Neil Sattin: Well, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that at the end of your book there are some great... You talk about establishing a meditation practice, and we talked about that a little bit a moment ago with placing attention on the breath. And I like how you talk about just getting in the habit of it is so important. Five minutes a day is better than nothing, and better than 30 minutes once a month, so that you're developing that muscle, that habit. And then you also offer some other things. So when you pick up Susan's book, which I hope you will, there's a great addition to loving kindness meditation, that we've talked about a little bit on the show but you had some extra bonus ways to do that that I really love. And also a way to practice conversation, that's again really helpful and centering, and can bring some of this practice to how you relate with your partner. So, I love those practical additions at the end of your book. Susan Piver: Thank you. Neil Sattin: And I would love for you to let our listeners know how they can find out more about you and your work and what you're doing right now. And I know you have a lot of offerings for everyone. Susan Piver: I appreciate that. Yeah, my website's susanpiver.com, just my name, P-I-V-E-R, is a way to keep track of where I'm teaching, and it's also, if you're interested in learning meditation, a place for you to sign up for the open heart project, which is my online community. It's free and I send out a guided 10-minute meditation instructional video every week on Mondays. And if you wanna learn to meditate or re-establish your practice, I heartily invite you to check it out. But my website susanpiver.com is the best place to find these things. Neil Sattin: Great, and we will have links to all of that in the transcript for the show. And as a reminder, if you want to download the detailed transcripts just visit neilsattin.com/susan2, that's the number "2". Or you can text the word "passion" to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. Although I'm tempted to have them text the word "boredom". [laughter] Susan Piver: That's what it is. That's so funny. Neil Sattin: But don't do that, don't text. Well I don't know, maybe I'll see if that word's available, if it is, I'll make something cool, and if it's not I take no responsibility for whatever happens if you text the word "boredom" to that number. Susan Piver: That is so funny. Neil Sattin: And in the meantime, Susan, I hope to have you on again. I just so appreciate the depth and richness that you bring to the conversation about relationship, and taking one's seat in the middle of it. Susan Piver: Well, I appreciate that. It's a pleasure to talk with you, and congratulations on your podcast. It's really bringing great conversations to light, and I'm just happy that you're making these kinds of insights and view points available to others. Thank you for doing this. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm glad. I'm glad that I can be on this end, bringing everything to people, so it feels good. Thank you for saying that, I appreciate it.  

Although I'm not personally a fan of using an automated trading system, I do understand the benefits. With that being said, finding success with one isn't as simple as plugging it in and letting it go. It takes just as much work as discretionary trading.  Please help me continue to grow this show by SHARING it on your favorite social media platform! Your Trading Coach - Akil

He says, like many Pastors, "African Americans are not Jews. 'There are no benefits in the flesh. 'Blacks are from Ham. 'African Americans being Hebrew Israelites is foolish. 'No one knows how Jesus looked. 'Getting people outside of Christ to become aware of who they are in the flesh makes them twice as wicked, etc.." These and more are the words of controversial Arkansas Bishop Robert E. Smith Sr., who believes this is what the Bible means about "New creatures in Christ" 2Corin 5:17, " and "the flesh profit nothing" John 6:63 among other scriptures. Meanwhile, others believe those passages but also believe the Father is doing something in the flesh great upon the earth as well. MAY 9th over 2,354 tuned into Five Smooth NTWK day after the 1st interview!!! of God of their life. Although I'm very impressed by this Bishop labor of love and many years of service to all people including African Americans, my spirit cannot rest with with these and other teachings/comments. Bishop Robert E Smith Sr. has accepted to come on our National Radio Blog show for what may the FINAL episode!!! JOIN THE BISHOP ROBERT E SMITH INTERVIEW SR. PART 3 TUESDAY MAY 22 8PM CST TO LISTEN/SPEAK (914) 205-5590 TO LISTEN/CHAT ONLINE http://tobtr.com/10787089 (OR TO LISTEN LATER) For the additional disturbing comments/doctrines please click here https://www.facebook.com/5smoothstones/posts/10156384179244948 **** Post show note: Due to the heavy response from  this show we will do a follow-up show 5-29-18 showing in details proof of African Americans being a lost tribe of Israelites. STAY TUNE!!   ****

The Controversial Bishop Robert E. Smith Sr. Interview P2  will be conducted May 15, 2018 8PM CST.  After listening to many powerful teachings of Arkansas Bishop Robert E Smith Sr. esp. "New creatures in Christ" that I endorse fully, I recognize I have no small disagreement with this man of God as well. Although I'm very impressed by his labor of love and many years of service to all people including African Americans, my spirit cannot rest with with other teachings/comments. Bishop Robert E Smith Sr. have accepted to come on our Nationwide Radio Blog Again.  {Attention:  Due to space limitation we cannot post full description Please click below for to see full list of teachings or comments of concern}         ****    https://www.facebook.com/5smoothstones/posts/10156384179244948   ****** Note: Like any guest on the show, he will be given the most time to talk and will be treated with dignity and the respect he deserves!! While it seems that 90% of what I heard is a part of the solution, I choose to clarify where we disagree. This will not only help us get to 100% agreement, but may salvage many who are wounded by the statements above, whom of which may abort great teaching of this servant of the Most High. While we can never judge a heart, TUESDAY'S May 15th show is about teachings/comments only. TO LISTEN/COMMENT CALL (914) 205-5590 TO LISTEN ONLINE  http://tobtr.com/10775503 (or to enjoy later)       

The Bishop Robert E. Smith Sr. Interview will be conducted May 08, 2018 8PM CST.Shalom human family my name is Seth Turner I am the Host for Five Smooth Stones Radio Blog Show. After listening to many great teachings of Arkansas Bishop Robert E Smith Sr. esp. "New creatures in Christ" that I endorse fully, I recognize I have no small disagreement with this man of God as well. Although I'm very impressed by his labor of love and many years of service to all people including African Americans, my spirit cannot rest with with other teachings/comments. Bishop Robert E Smith Sr. have accepted to come on our Nationwide Radio Blog show which includes all humanity and persuasion of beliefs.  {Attention:  Due to space limitation we cannot post full description Please click below for to see full list of teachings or comments of concern} ****    https://www.facebook.com/5smoothstones/posts/10156368545409948   ****** Note: Like any guest on the show, he will be given the most time to talk and will be treated with dignity and the respect he deserves!! While it seems that 90% of what I heard is a part of the solution, I choose to clarify where we disagree. This will not only help us get to 100% agreement, but may salvage many who are wounded by the statements above, whom of which may abort great teaching of this servant of the Most High. While we can never judge a heart, TUESDAY'S May 8th show is about teachings/comments only. TO LISTEN/COMMENT CALL (914) 205-5590 TO LISTEN/CHAT http://tobtr.com/s/10755775 (or listen later)

Also discussed: Black Panther (2018), Ready Player One (2018), 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991). Welcome to another exciting episode of Nic, Tys and Videotape. This week, we're looking at an absolute classic of genre cinema, a film that has inspired countless imitations and even a whole stack of its own sequels and spin-offs. It's 1979's ALIEN, and while we don't say anything that hasn't already been said better many times before, we do have an excellent time saying it. Although I'm not sure other podcasts say "vagina" as much as we do while doing so. We also tackle a few big cinema blockbusters in What Did You Watch This Week?, discuss a potential new gateway horror film for young people in Talkin' Trailers, and Tys plugs a new streaming service that has a lot of potential in Crossing The Streams.  As always here are the ways to get in touch with us if you would like to suggest a film for us to talk about, or to ask a question to be featured in our MAILBAG segment: Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/nictysvideotape Twitter - @nictysvideotape Email - nictysandvideotape@gmail.com and don't forget to RATE/REVIEW us on iTunes so we can get the word out and keep building this ace community of movie lovers all over the world!!! https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/nic-tys-and-videotape/id1204292008?mt=2 You can also subscribe to Nic, Tys and Videotape on YouTube by visiting the following link (if you're into that kind of thing):  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaus3hn3D8WfTxeOC_07zZA Thanks as always to Jac D for our artwork and Zac for our rockin' theme music. NEXT WEEK! We're turning to our main man Keanu Reeves for next week's episode, as we discuss the absolutely bonkers 90's thriller that may contain the exact moment Al Pacino lost his mind. That's right, it's The Devil's Advocate!! Don't miss it!  

This week, I talk about my continued adventures with anxiety. Although I'm much less anxious than I was before I had postpartum depression, I recently discovered some buried anxiety after I gave up my food addictions. So now I am physically and emotionally losing weight! As I work through this latest batch of anxiety, I have done a lot of thinking about the difference between stress and anxiety. I also share some tips about the things that have been helping me become a less anxious mama. I will be starting back up with interviews next week. If you would like to share your story on a future episode, email Courtney@PPDadventures.com. Head over to PPDadventures.com to sign up for the email list of follow me at IG @Courtney.Novak and facebook.com/ppdadventures/. If you want to hear me talking some more, check out the April episode of Natural Postpartum Support (available now on iTunes). The intro music is "Cute" by Bensound.com. Thanks for listening and I hope you have a lovely week.

How does it feel like to completely eliminate plastic from your life? Is that even possible in the 21st century?Well, I tried. For 30 days at the end of 2017, I refused to buy or use any single-use plastic, and looked out for alternatives. In this episode, I speak openly about the struggles, experience and learnings of that month. What's the matter with plastic?Also, I share some facts about plastic, so you understand the background why anyone would ever be so crazy to eliminate it from their life. Today, there are already 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic on the planet, and the numbers are growing steadily. If we don't change anything, there will be as much as 34 billion tons in 2050.500 times more plastic than starsPlastic harms the environment, damages human health and impacts wildlife in many forms. And it's so omnipresent that you can find plastic particles on the most untouched places on earth already. Scientists warn of the toxic characteristics of plastics, and yet they are the base of most of the products we use every day.We all got three choicesWhen we hear all these stats and facts, there are three things we can do: Ignore the problem, put the blame corporations, governments and organisations or look at our own lifestyle and start with small changes. I've decided to go for the latter, and live that decision to the extreme for these 30 days. Bulk food, festivals and shampoo experimentsThe first things I looked for were all food-related: Am I gonna be able to eat anything besides bananas in this month? Oh yes! Needless to say you have the whole variety of fruits and veggies available, if you just skip the unnecessary produce bag and put the sticker directly on the fruit after weighting it. And even though my diet got pretty clean without potato chips and processed foods, I still got to live on the whole awesomeness of pastas, grains, legumes, nuts, dried fruit, flours and even cornflakes and chocolate I found at the bulk store. Seriously, these are total game changers, and I keep going back with my jars aaaall the time. Google it, or check here, if there are any stores available in your city! Next stop, bathroom: How can I replace shampoo, shower gel, disposable razor blades, toothpaste and co? The magic solution is DIY: I found amazing recipes for making my own toothpaste, deodorant and co, and shared them all on my instagram page, check them out! Then, I experimented around with all sorts of shampoo alternatives like baking soda, apple cider vinegar, medicinal clay, rye flour. Listen and hear how it went... ;) The easiest change of all? Soap bars instead of liquid dispensers! One more thing I can recommend is switching to safety razors (much cheaper anyways!), wooden toothbrushes and, to all ladies out here, the lunar cup! All of these changes have literally zero effect on your daily life and make you feel better and healthier, too.What about the household, darling? Home, that was a tough one. I read online about washing nuts to clean your clothes and recipes for own detergents, but somehow wasn't really happy with the stuff I made (please, if you have any recipes, send them to me). I went and asked around, and finally found a store that sells ecological clothes, dishwasher and cleaning detergents in bulk, you just bring your own containers, add a scent of your choice and that's it. Super cool, cheap, healthy and good for the planet. Around the city. My friends always make fun of the amount of things that I plan in one day, and I do indeed have a very active lifestyle. From sports over parties and organising all sorts of events, to this podcast, art exhibitions and uni life, there's a lot I do and I spend quite a lot of time on the streets. So how to mix that with the plastic challenge? One thing I learned is to be creative and adaptable: For the lack of a reusable coffee cup, I was carrying around an old mason jar to fill up with fresh hot coffee, or just had my cup to stay whenever I was craving it. My water bottle still is an old tomato sauce bottle, and works perfectly for me like that. Food-wise, I sometimes took bags or my own containers when I wanted to get bread or takeaways, and consequently said no to chocolate bars or other guilty pleasures. And of course, I learned quickly to order any drink without straw. I even went to a four day music festival, and with a bit of preparation, smart drink choices and my reusable cup, plate and cutlery didn't have any problem either - anything is possible if you just want it enough.Would I do it again?I am super grateful for the experience, it really opened my eyes towards the incredible amounts of plastic that usually is in our daily life. At some point I went into a normal supermarket and suddenly felt like I was walking on a landfill. Our world has become super disposable, and I'm very happy about all the changes that I've learned about! Although I'm not 100% plastic free anymore, I still haven't bought a single plastic bottle, bag or straw and kept most of the habits I learned during those 30 days. If you want a summary of all the changes, here it is. Feel free to share the picture, just please tag me for the credit.Thank you for your support and for writing me a review on Facebook or iTunes!! Folge direkt herunterladen

Episode 9 of The Teaching Space podcast is an interview with ADHD expert Soli Lazarus.  Martine: Hello, it's Martine here. Welcome to the Teaching Space Podcast. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Soli Lazarus. Now, rather than tell you all about Soli, I'm going to ask her to introduce herself. Soli, welcome to the show. Soli: Hello, Martine. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's lovely to be here today. Martine: It's great to have you here. Why don't you tell us a bit about yourself? Who are you and what do you do? Soli: Right. Yes, my name is Soli. I'm, at the moment, an assistant SENCO in a large primary school in London. I do that part-time. The rest of my time, I run my own consultancy, Yellow Sun. I support families with children with autism and ADHD. I support them on a one-to-one basis within a support group. We have a great Facebook group. I have an online training course and I've got so many other things in the pipeline. My head's buzzing with ideas. But I'm super, super passionate about particularly ADHD. Soli: My son has ADHD. He's nearly 30. As a parent, I really struggled to get support and help and it's very, very isolating as a parent with a child with any kind of difficulties. It's not the life you signed up for. It's sad. It can be lonely. You feel really isolated and don't know where to turn. This was my may name of Yellow Sun, is just really to empower parents and give support to parents and just give simple tweaks that can really change how a child feels about themselves. One of my plans, also, is to go into schools. Soli: We just need to get the word out there that if we change a little bit of a child with ADHD, change a bit of their environment and our reaction to a child, it can just make all the difference. I'm super passionate, super fired up. Yeah, that's me. Martine: That's fantastic. Actually, I think one of the best ways to make a difference in these types of areas is through education, isn't it? Ultimately, by educating people about what ADHD actually is and those small changes that you mentioned, then you can really make a difference. In the simplest of terms, what exactly is ADHD? Can you tell me? Soli: Yep. First of all, what it's not is bad parenting. It's a real condition. It's a biologically proven condition that is a chemical imbalance in the brain. It's real. That's not to say good parenting can make a difference. Similarly, bad parenting can make the situation worse. But it certainly does not cause ADHD. In a nutshell, we all know these children in our class because they're the one who is constantly fidgeting and on the move. Or they might be incredibly impulsive. They just do not have those brakes for them to stop before they think. They can be very inattentive unless it's something highly, highly motivating. The three aspects are inattention, impulsive, and hyperactive. Martine: Excellent. That really explains it well. Like you say, so many of us can relate to having these kids in our class or these kids in our lives generally. Personally, I teach adults. I can connect with that slightly less. Nevertheless, I do understand that ADHD is a very real thing in adults, as well. We'll touch on that in a minute. But even with children, I come into contact with through my family and things like that, it's quite easy to spot. Is it that a child will usually get a diagnosis of ADHD? What happens when a parent or a teacher suspects that a child might have ADHD? What, generally, is the process there? Soli: Well, that's a good question because it's quite a sticky point. There's no blood test. There are no scans, at the moment, to show this discrepancy in brain function. It's really just by observation and reports, reports from parents. Yes, it's all these behaviours that I've spoken about. Generally, I would say to parents, "If your child is behaving in that same way in whatever environment they're at, if when they're at Granny or if they're in an afterschool club or if you're shopping or at the cinema or a birthday party and at school and at home, if in all those different environments they're still more or less showing that same kind of behavior, then it's almost certainly something like ADHD." Soli: There are lots of other conditions that go alongside ADHD, such as dyslexia, sensory processing disorders. Sometimes there are other things going alongside. I'm of the mindset, though, I'm not really that bothered about a diagnosis. I'm more bothered about how we react to a behaviour. However, we label that behaviour, we have to do something about it. We have to change something up or react differently. Although I'm not saying don't get a diagnosis because that does help. It helps frame how we react. That child might even need medication. Some children really react very well being on a medication. Soli: My son, personally, was diagnosed by a great consultant. I think the way forward, if you really suspect or school really suspect that it could be ADHD, you do need to get some consultant to actually do the diagnosis. You need to go down the route of going to the GP and get referred to a consultant. Some children, yes, as I said, do react very well to being on medication. My son was diagnosed when he was eight and he was put on Ritalin. It was amazing. Ritalin is a very short-acting medication. It stays in the system for about three hours. He would take it and he would go from almost climbing the walls to then being very, I would say, subdued. Soli: But he actually said to me, and I will never, ever forget, he said, "My eyes are keeping still and I can now see the words." It meant that, at eight years old, he couldn't read. He started to read. He was able to focus on his work. But he hated the feeling. When he was 16, and it was actually the day before his first GCSE, he said, "I'm not taking it anymore." Soli: Obviously, there was nothing I could do about it 'cause he really hated it. But for some children and adults, I know medication really, really works. Actually, my son is 30 now and I do keep saying to him, "Please pop back to the doctor and just see if there's anything else. There might be other things now that all those years ago were not available." But it's not his thing. But I'm not saying it's not for everybody because there are some people, adults and children, who work really well with medication. But it goes alongside. Medication is not the answer. The most important thing is for us to change our reaction to a child and an adult and help them and support them so that their lives can be much calmer and happier. Martine: That's so interesting. What you're saying, from a teacher perspective, is that regardless of whether there is a diagnosis or not, if you spot these behaviors in your learners, regardless of the label that that child has been given, you can implement changes to make things better for them and generally make things better for the whole class. Soli: 100%. We'll probably talk about it a little later, the actual specifics of things that a teacher can do, but I can guarantee you do some of these strategies and it will help this child with ADHD, but it will also those other children who've got undiagnosed things or other learning difficulties or English is an additional language or a child who's had just a really bad, chaotic home life and can't focus. We've got all sorts of learners from all sorts of backgrounds, all sorts of things going on at home, that at any one time some children just need that extra little bit of something different just to help them. Martine: Brilliant. We hear a lot about ADHD in kids and, obviously, that's when if there is a diagnosis, that's when it will tend to happen. But what does ADHD look like in adults? You said your son is 30. If you want to use him as an example, you can. Personally, I teach mainly adults. Very rare I teach children. Selfishly, I'm quite interested in it from my own perspective. But hopefully, listeners will be interested in it, too. Soli: ADHD doesn't go away. Let me say, as well, it's not a life sentence. It's just a different type of behaviour. There are all sorts of very famous, successful people with ADHD. Rory Bremner is one who goes very popular with his condition. Martine: I did not know that. That's really interesting. Soli: Oh, yeah. There's a really incredible documentary. I think you can get it on Catch Up on BBC. You can hear how his brain is working. It's firing from all different angles. Oh, I think will.i.am, as well. Soli: Adults and children are amazingly creative. They've got a zillion thoughts wandering around their head, which it shows up more in our school system because our school system is so rubbish that we expect children just to sit quietly, line up, sit on the carpet, be passive. Whereas, our people with ADHD, that's the complete opposite of what they need to be. Soli: Going again back to your question, an adult with ADHD will put themselves into a situation where their natural abilities and their natural skills and their natural way of behaving won't be a conflict. You're not gonna get somebody going working in a very quiet atmosphere of an office. They will do something a little bit louder and zanier. My son is a hairdresser. Soli: It's because he is creative. He can wander around. He can chat when he wants. He can more or less go and eat when he wants. There's loud music, which helps him concentrate. As an adult, you'll put yourself into the environment that suits you. The other thing is they're very disorganized. Again, as an adult, you can find those ways. You'll write yourself lists, have Post-It notes, do things on your phone to remind you, have alarms. You'll create a world around the things that you find difficult. It does affect adults, too, and adults do need help and support with organisation with going for lots of movement breaks and doing things in very short, sharp chunks and changing things up so they don't get bored very easily. Yes, we do have to still be considerate of adults with ADHD because it still exists. Martine: That's super interesting. I think a lot of teachers could really up their teaching game just generally by ensuring that they chunk things up into really small, attention-grabbing sections and supporting learners of all ages with their organization skills. There's a lesson in that, regardless of whether any of your learners have ADHD or not. We could learn a lot from just implementing those strategies as standard. Soli: Yes, yes. Some people just need help. "There's too much content here. I can't read it all." It needs to be in chunks. We need to realize what people's learning styles are. I'm an incredible visual learner and I need things being very, very clear with pictures and underline and bold. Those strategies really help our children with concentration difficulties. They can't just have a whole great, big chunk of writing or seven instructions or a page of 20 sums. It's too much. We have to chunk it up. Cut up a piece of paper so they only see one little part of an instruction or just give five sums. Soli: We use something called "red cup, green cup" in primary school. It's literally having two cups on your table, stacked, and if the green cup is showing, "I'm okay, that's fine, I don't need any help." If the red cup is showing, you stack it the other way, it just signals to an adult. It saves somebody having to put their hand up for 20 minutes. It's great. Something we haven't spoken about, which is the number one thing and, really, I should have said it right at the top, is our children with ADHD, their self-esteem is on the floor. Unless you get an amazing teacher who understands them, their life at school, they'll be labelled as naughty. They'll be the ones in the staffroom that everybody says, "Oh, watch out for this one. He'll cause trouble." Soli: Already, teachers have very negative expectations. The other children will see them as the one who is always being told off. Classically, they're the ones who do something just for that extra little bit of time. They'll get noticed. But the smart, clever ones will stop before the adult comes in. The child with ADHD will be the one always in trouble. Social relationships are nonexistent, really. My son has very, very limited friendships even now. New Year's Eve, he had to go out with his little sister because he didn't have friends. Birthdays, he never got invited to birthday parties. Never invited to play dates. The self-esteem of our children with ADHD is horrendous. We need to do everything we can just to build them up. Soli: Just going back to that red cup, green cup, that is such a subtle way of saying, "I need help." Nobody even needs to notice. The teacher then just goes over quietly and then just supports and helps the child. Martine: In terms of supporting learners with ADHD, clearly working with them on their self-esteem is really important. Through the discussions that we've had, I suspect that teachers getting to know their learners really well and anticipating issues is important, too. I would expect that. Soli: Yes. Yes. It's vital, really, because a lot of our children with ADHD want to learn. They're very creative. They've got great ideas. But they just probably need to learn in a different way. As we've said before, they really need help with organization. Visuals are great to use. Visual timetables, visual schedules, so they know the order of a day or an order of a session and they don't get overwhelmed. They might have real difficulty keeping still. There are some great resources that you can use. There are some wobble cushions, which sounds bizarre, but they're inflatable cushions that sit on the chair and it keeps children still. I don't know what the magic is behind it, but it's to do with their sensory equilibrium being balanced. Soli: You know the yoga bands, the stretchy yoga bands? You put those on the chair legs and the bottom and then a child can just keep kicking them and pressing their feet against them. All these things are aiding concentration because instead of them fiddling and squirming and disrupting and disturbing other people, these other little strategies can actually help them focus and concentrate. But saying that, if a child works better by kicking off their shoes and laying on the floor on a cushion to do their writing, I would say, "Why not?" If it suits your classroom, if it suits the environment, and he or she is going to be focused, not disturbing everybody else, might not be able to sit on a chair for 20 minutes. Might be able to do it for 10 and then as long as he's asking permission and just, "Would you mind if I just go and finish the rest on the floor?" Fine, if he gets the work done. Soli: Also, fiddle toys. A lot of our children do need to fiddle. I know we had the fidget spinners, which were banned. I think it was such a shame 'cause they're so great for our ADHD children. But I do understand why they were banned, 'cause they were a little bit dangerous. But it was great for our self-esteem of our children because, all of a sudden, they had a gadget that everybody else wanted and it made them feel really special. That was, for me, a win-win. But there are some great fiddle toys. There's one that's lots of little colored blocks on an elastic string. They're £1.50 and children can fiddle with those and they're silent. They don't disrupt or disturb anybody else. Soli: I say to my children, "If it disturbs you and makes you lose focus, you're not having it. If it disrupts anybody else around you, you're not having it." If they can quietly fiddle, or Blu Tack is also very good if it makes them concentrate then fine. Let them have it. It's really not a problem. The other thing, our children are very impulsive. Quite often, it's very hard for them if the teacher is saying something and they just are desperate to call it out, they'll call it out because they don't have the brakes to, "Do you know what? I'll just wait my turn." If you give a child a whiteboard or pen and paper so that they can write their answer and then almost show it up to the teacher so that she can see and just do a silent thumbs up and a smile, quite often that's enough. Soli: I keep saying "he" because a lot of our children with ADHD are boys, or more boys are diagnosed. Girls tend to not have the hyperactive element, so are quiet. They're ADD without the hyperactive. But most of them are boys. All they want to do is know that they've been seen and they've been heard. If you do this whiteboard thing and hold up their answer and smile and thumbs up, quite often that sort of thing is enough. You could try recording in different ways. If they find writing difficult, then maybe a laptop or speech to text software or using a little sound button. Sound buttons are great, actually. I don't know if you've come across them, Martine. Soli: They come in all different guises, but basically it's little recording device. It could either be something that looks like a giant Smartie and then you press it and you can record a message for, say, 30 seconds. What an assistant could do, what the teacher could do, could record the instructions. "Do five sums and then come and see me," or "Do five sums and show me your red cup." The child then just keeps listening to the instruction or they could use it for if a child forgets what their sentences they need to write, or forgets a plan that they need to do, or needs to use it to remind themselves of a job that they need to do. They're also really great. If you Google "sound buttons," they're really good. They're in the SEN bit of catalogues. They're really, really good. I recommend them, as well. Soli: Yeah, there's just so many. Visuals, visuals are always great just to remind our children what to do and to keep on track. As I said before with a lot of these things, so many of the other children in the class can also benefit. Who wouldn't want to kick off their shoes if it makes them feel comfortable or sit on a wobble cushion if it helps them or have their work chunked up or use visuals? Also, who wouldn't want to be made to feel special? These techniques really work for our children with ADHD, but other children, as well. I think the underlying things is that as adults, we must just look and understand the behaviour and change our reaction to a behaviour and don't always be so quick to tell off or to say, "Why did you do that? Weren't you thinking?" Soli: Quite often, our children are not thinking. That's part of the difficulty. Try to really understand the behaviour and react to it differently and just make our little children just feel special and valued and listen to their opinions. Martine: There are some great strategies there, Soli. As an adult learner, who doesn't want to feel valued? You're absolutely right. I think, ultimately, as teachers, it's our jobs to facilitate an environment where everybody has an equal opportunity to learn. By employing these strategies, we are really going to create a fantastic environment for our children, for our adults, for our learners, whoever it is you have responsibility for. Thank you for sharing those strategies. I think they've been really helpful. I hope that everyone listening has taken away all sorts from your wise words. Soli: Yeah, well, thank you. I'm so super passionate about changing things up. It's so simple. As teachers, we've got these little people's worlds in our hands, their futures, without being too dramatic. We can change the way these children feel about themselves. It's so easy to do. We can make them feel successful and valued. No child gets up in the morning and just thinks, "I really hope I'm shouted at today. I really hope I'm kept in at playtime. I really hope nobody plays with me." Everybody gets up in the morning and wants to have a good day. I think it's up to us educators to make all our little people have a good day. Martine: Definitely. I quite agree with that. Well, thank you, Soli. I have one final question for you and it's an important one. Where can people find you online? Soli: Well, go to my website, which is Soli-Lazarus.com. That is a lovely hub for all my other bits and bobs that I do. As I say, I've got some training online videos that are free to watch. One is how to stop the rudeness. One is how to build up self-esteem. One is blowing wide open the myths surrounding ADHD. Those are free to watch. Also, there are links to my mentoring program and my blog. I write a regular blog and I've got a fabulous Facebook group, which is just full of lovely, lovely parents who are just trying to get some answers to some questions and we give each other support. I offer some great free resources. Pop along to that website and you'll find my links there. Martine: That's brilliant. Thanks, Soli, and thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure speaking with you.

In this week's episode, Ryan Bell shares his compelling story of deconversion. Ryan also talks about what he's been up to since joining the Secular Student Alliance as National Organizer Manager. I've been looking forward to meeting Ryan for a while, so it was wonderful to finally speak with him. Although I'm familiar with Ryan's story, I learned some fascinating new details during our conversation. He explains what convinced him to stop pursuing Pre-Med in college and become a pastor. He also shares what motivated him to live in Nicaragua for 6 weeks. Finally, it was fun to hear the story of how his "Year Without God" blog went viral, resulting in breakfast with Penn Jillette.  Ryan spent nearly 20 years in congregational pastoral ministry. His very public deconversion in 2014 is documented in his blog, “Year Without God”. Since that time, Ryan has been a writer and speaker on the subjects of religion, humanism and justice. In 2015, he founded the Life After God community and is the host of the Life After God podcast. His writing can be found at The Humanist, CNN, and The Guardian. https://secularstudents.org ryan.bell@secularstudents.org http://www.lifeaftergod.org https://www.facebook.com/ourlifeaftergod/ https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/life-after-god @ryanjbell @ourlifeaftergod http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yearwithoutgod/      

Pastor Wilson Wang continues our Matthew Sermon series talking about one of the most social media centric holidays ever "Friendsgiving". Although I'm not complaining Thanksgiving food is great so having it multiple times is not bad at all.

By nature, I'd define myself as an "intense" person because I'm passionate about topics and my love towards certain conversations isn't forced. This trait naturally translates into my personal life because my relationships with people carry a lot of weight since allowing someone into my space isn't the easiest task. Although I'm fascinated by human beings and the complexity of our emotional and mental state, who I spend my free time is a different story. I don't have a lot of free time, therefore, where it's allocated and how it's dispersed is strategically calculated. I used to think that everyone in our life had to occupy the place of "BFF." However, life and time have taught me that individuals vary for a reason and therefore, it's normal that our dynamic with people vary as well. Everyone isn't meant to be our best friend or love of our life. In fact, many people are here for the sole purpose of teaching us lessons and exposing us to new ways of thinking. Some people are here to open our hearts, even after they've been broken. The point is, everyone has a place in your life. The reason some people only stay for a season remains a mystery, but always has a purpose, which is why we should be grateful for the experiences we're a part of with these people. In this episode of Words of Wisdom Wednesday, I talk about how I've learned to accept the different types of relationships into my life. Looking back on my friendships, they were what I needed at the time even though some of them may have transformed into something different that now feels foreign. As people, we're constantly changing, so it's only normal that the relationships in our life evolve as well. When a relationship ends, look for the lessons because they're always there, waiting to be discovered. Often time, there's shame associated with the end of a relationship or friendship because we're afraid that others may think we're not worthy or flawed in some way. In order to embrace the lessons that arise from these situations, we must first let go of the need to please other people and accept that regardless of circumstances, people will always have an opinion about situations unrelated to them. By releasing the shame, we open ourselves to the possibility of self-awareness, enlightenment, fresh perspectives, and a yearning for personal development. LINKS: Be Notified of “10 Lessons My Exes Left Behind” Book Launch “FEMALE is my greatest asset” Graphic Tee “My hustle will make you say WOWW” Graphic Tee Listen to More Words of Wisdom Wednesday Episodes WOWW Campaign Instagram Page {{LISTEN TO THE WOWW CAMPAIGN PODCAST ON ITUNES}}

Today's podcast involves us speaking about fashion, an almost entirely ludicrous sentence with or without context. It also involves a discussion of facial piercings, gambling, really bad fetes, and why Stew smells of hundreds of steaks. Also Party of Five was a really good show and Desperately Seeking Susan was awesome. Although I'm not into gambling, as demonstrated in today's podcast, it's a safe bet that Stew never reads the show notes.

This video reveals the core cashflow component from my 'Pure Hustle Business Plan' that details how to make money starting with $0 This Marketing Arbitrage business model is a great way to build a marketing agency fast and I lay it all out for you here in even greater detail. If you missed the original video that covered the full pure hustle business plan, go here and watch it next: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8JEFNMOg5Q If you want the next video in the series with the full Marketing Arbitrage course... Go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAaVTFvxQHg What makes this business model so powerful is the fact that you are doing B2B sales, or selling to businesses that generate tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in revenue. They also have marketing budgets and usually need help adapting to the constant changes of digital marketing, social media marketing and mobile friendly web design. This video explains how you can become their trusted advisor and independent contractor who takes care of their digital marketing needs, without 'doing all the work' If you want to see step-by-step how to build a wordpress site and a sales funnel for clients, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsUNFZhqkEA This is the one business model that created all the difference for me on my path of paying off my student loans and building a full time income online. First off, it allowed me to get out of the cubicle and commute lifestyle which free'd up over 3 hours per day extra that I was able to sell digital marketing services and to work on my WordPress sites. Second, it put me in control of how much money I was able to make per hour. I went from a $25 per hour customer support job to doing $25 per hour WordPress development work, overnight. Then, once I solidified my team and got my skills up to where I could do the same work in half the time, I was earning $50 - $75/hour and more. All the while, I was able to offer my local businesses a great marketing service for much cheaper than US based designers and developers could. Plus building them a wordpress site focused on content marketing and SEO allowed their sites to outrank the more expensive sites that classically trained designers were selling for $10,000+ After helping them get their 'home on the web' built on WordPress, the next step was to offer additional marketing services, because it is easier to sell more to your current customers than it is to go find new customers. This is where you can build on a continuity component, also. Getting clients in at $500 - $1000 per month for 4 - 8 blog posts per month and social media management puts you at 10 - 20 clients away from earning $10,000 per month! For me, I was investing back in my business and putting every extra dollar I had into my student loans because getting out from under that debt fast was a huge emotional need for me. I felt suffocated by the nearly $50,000 in debt and this pushed me to work long hours, through the nights some nights, selling services I had never done before, but figuring it out along the way. The key to this kind of a model is to get good at 1) talking to business owners and asking the right kinds of questions that get them to admit/realize that their businesses need marketing help to step into the 'new age' of internet/digital marketing. 2) You need to get good ad outsourcing the small tasks to developers and designers in order to keep your time free'd up to do more of #1 Finally, the quality of what you deliver is 100% on you... You always have to go through everything you deliver with a fine-toothed comb to make sure that you are over-delivering to your customers. I also share exactly how I 'outsourced' the WordPress development as someone who had no experience with code at all... My hack for creating mock-ups and 'showing' the developers what I wanted was simple and effective. Although I'm not working this business model anymore, because my information product and affiliate marketing business are doing well enough at this point... I will always look back at this phase in my life fondly. This was my 'short cut' out of the rat race, but it still only created a 'self employed' situation... Which is only step 2 (of 4) on the cashflow quadrants. Learn more about the cashflow quadrants in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YqEt4HsNyk

In this episode, we have the joy of chatting with Olivia and Will, parents to sweet 7-week-old baby Audrey. Olivia and Will share the story of their journey to choosing home birth, planning for it, and then discovering at 37 weeks pregnant that it was no longer a viable option for them. Olivia is a neonatal nurse in the NICU - so she sees all the things that can go wrong. This was part of the reason why she and Will didn’t want to be a hospital for Audrey’s birth. She’s also very transparent about not being 100% confident in the decision and having reservations about sharing their plans with others for fear of judgement and less than powerful conversation. It’s also wild to hear the difference in healthcare costs and options in different countries (see show notes on our website for an email from Olivia all about it). Olivia and Will live in Australia and while planning their home birth they only spent about $60 for a general practitioner visit and the cost of a birthing pool. Whether they chose to birth at home or in the hospital, it would be free! After they learned they could no longer have a home birth, they worked on finding peace with the situation and preparing themselves for having an amazing birth experience despite the change in plans. Olivia still labored most of the time at home, before traveling to the birthing center where they had their daughter Audrey. Olivia and Will are such a beautiful couple and we’re so happy to have connected with them to share their inspiring story on the podcast!    Notes: Why Not Home Unhindered Childbirth   Sponsors  Check out www.momsneedsleep.com/home to learn about Reverie and their amazing power bed that helps pregnant moms and new moms get the best sleep possible.   A special post interview email from Olivia: After we finished the call I realized we never even spoke about the differences in our healthcare system - i.e. everything being free! Also about how we weren't able (didn't feel like) we could share our home birth choice with people, especially at work, for fear of judgment. Although I'm sure that's quite a common issue surrounding home birth. I would have liked to share a few things, but completely forgot/got side tracked! During pregnancy I had lots of severe SIJ pain, which really impacted negatively on exercise - I wasn't able run or do much cardio. So I walked everyday for about an hour at the beach with the dogs & listened to amazing empowering podcasts like yours! And I also went swimming, 3 times a week while I was working & then when I went on maternity leave at 34 weeks, I swam 5 times a week. I just loved the freedom! And I wanted to make sure baby was in a good position, I wanted to avoid a breech or posterior baby & swimming is great for that! I saw a chiropractor regularly for my hip pain which also really helped. But it was so bad at times that I couldn't work (one night I had to crawl to the bathroom because I couldn't walk!). I floated every single week up til 37 weeks in a float tank! I think it was the best thing I could have done. The relaxation was an absolute blessing & it helped with aching legs towards the end too. It was also really lovely because baby moved a lot in the tank, so I felt really connected (maybe I just noticed it more - my placenta was at the front, so I struggled to feel lots of movement). I think the most important message to pass on to women preparing for home birth - or just birth in general - is just to surround yourself with positive birth stories. Don't let the negative vibes in! Things didn't go to plan, but I'm so glad I didn't go into birth & delivery being scared of it - i was excited! I love our birth story & I'm so grateful to have had the opportunity to plan & prepare for a home birth, even if it didn't work out that way. We have a beautiful baby girl, & that's really all that matters! Lots of love

Welcome to Episode 73! In this fabulous conversation, I speak with Chef Bill Smith of Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Both Bill and the restaurant are beloved fixtures in this great town of advocates, artists, musicians, and other creative types. Sound familiar? Yes, Chapel Hill is very similar in size and energy to Charlottesville and is going through some of the same growing pains. So this talk hit close to home for me and was a great chance to catch up with someone I consider a dear friend. I first met Bill, in an extremely "meet cute" way while sitting on a bus during the Southern Foodways Alliance Summer Symposium. He was so friendly and put this podcaster at ease during her first solo foray into the world of professional food conferences where small talk is king and networking important. We had talked for a good half hour before I realized he was a chef and a noteworthy one at that! Chef Bill took over Crook's from founding owner Bill Neal back in the 1990's. Bill was a beloved chef who passed way too young and is credited with bringing shrimp and grits to the masses for better or worse. Needless to say, Neal's version is still the best in my opinion and a must-order. Chapel Hill's music subculture is well known, and Bill has been a part of that for decades as part owner of The Cat's Cradle which opened way back in 1973. In fact, Bill's collection of concert tee shirts which he has worn in the kitchen since he began, is part of a museum collection profiled in an episode of the Southern Foodways Alliance Gravy podcast. Musicians were a huge part of Bill's kitchen for many years because they have what he calls, "...a loose point of view," an enthusiasm, as well as a need for flexible hours. These days, his kitchen looks very different, comprised mostly of immigrants, some of whom have worked for Bill 15 years or more. He considers them family. How are they coping in this new political climate? How has Bill attempted to ease their way forward? His efforts are beyond admirable and make me so glad to know him. A true Southern gentleman, scholar, and outspoken advocate. "I trust them completely...they are family...I'm a Godfather...honorary grandfather. I've been to weddings, you name it...I love them to death...I'm almost 70 years old...having them in the kitchen helps a lot." Having such a dedicated kitchen staff from elsewhere has not only influenced the restaurant's recipes but has made a sometimes reluctant Southern clientele able to embrace more complex spicier dishes. In fact, he travels to Mexico City quite a bit on the regular. "When I first came to work here people would complain about things being too spicy. Now that never ever happens. Ever...so the public has come along...they've learned...I don't know if they're just more adventurous...or been exposed to different stuff...but they've become much more receptive." Bill grew up in New Bern, North Carolina surrounded by grandmothers and other relatives who were great cooks. His great-grandmother cooked lunch every single day until she was in her 90's. Folks would leave school and work to eat and enjoy a full mid-day dinner for an hour. With china, silverware, veggies, meats, the whole shebang. This kind of leisurely eating and fellowship is definitely present at Crook's today where the minute you walk in the door, you feel at home. Bill has appeared on Vivian Howard's A Chef's Life several times, has written many books, and is hard at work on a new one, a second volume of Seasoned in the South. The recipe tester is Sheri Castle of Rhubarb fame, so you can trust every recipe to come out the way it's supposed to. Can't wait until it's published! And yes it will have the recipe for "That Stupid Pie." What's that a reference to? The Atlantic Beach Pie, of course, a creation of Bill's grandmother and a beloved dessert at Crook's. A variation on lemon meringue pie with a saltine crust. In fact, if you don't order it, you're an idiot. Although I'm partial to his banana pudding, I never leave without taking a slice home. It's that good. This was recorded back in February, so it was interesting to hear how the frantic nature of our political sphere was just as anxious back then. Back then meaning 3 months ago! A time capsule for what was to come. Little did we know it would only get worse! What's the solution? We brainstorm some ideas. "I think it's our duty just to keep raising hell. I used to be a polite Southern boy but nuh-uh, not anymore...I get in somebody's face...lord help if somebody evangelical gets all over me...it's easy to make them cry...just challenging what they just told you...it's sort of funny, but it's sort of sad...I don't listen to crap anymore...I'm one of the troublemakers...but I come from a family of them...I'm spoiling for a fight." His definition of success? Rent and beer money. Awards and recognitions? Not that important. Despite numerous James Beard nominations and other awards, just having a nice cold can of PBR at the ready is reward enough. Sounds damn good to me. As does this episode. Enjoy.

On this episode, I'll be answering these questions plus weighing in on the impact of social media in ways you may not have considered. Listen in for those topics and more on this special solo edition of Grow My Revenue. Listen to this episode and discover: · Should you use a script in sales calls? · What active listening really means, and how to apply it to your sales team. · How do you learn the most about your potential client? · When are questions powerful, and when are they not? · And so much more… Episode Overview Have you ever received a phone call from someone selling something, and you could tell they were reading from a script? That is the number one reason I dislike the use of scripts. Although I'm a proponent of having a process, I discourage anyone from reading scripts verbatim. Instead, I suggest a particular formula and sequence you can follow to uncover the real information when dealing with a potential client. In fact, you can use a script, but be sure you understand why you are asking each question in that script. Here's what I suggest you do if you want to successfully utilize scripts: Before you write out the script, lay out exactly what you are hoping to learn with each question. So, if you are asking the client how long their problem has been going on, it's because you want to know if this has been an ongoing issue, a long-term problem, or none of the above. And if you ask what else they have tried, you are doing so because you want to know what alternatives they have pursued, and if this is important enough that they've invested in solutions in the past. When you ask what happens if they don't solve this problem, you are finding out if the problem is important enough to the person to warrant their investment. Then you'll know if you are dealing with the right person, and/or if the problem is something they are willing to spend money to fix. Now that you know your goal for these questions, you can outline the potential responses and the likely conclusions that you can draw based on their responses. Once you draw out those conclusions, you can then move on to the next step, which is creating a decision tree for these conversations. I explain exactly how to do so on today's show. Also on today's show, I cover the topic of social media and two points worth considering when you are interacting with others in that space. The first is: where has our civility gone? After the US presidential elections, I have been seeing a lot of people respond and make comments to their social media "friends" in caustic and nasty tones. They aren't having debates or discussions, but have resorted to name calling. And it is not from just one political party; it's both sides. Rather than indiscriminate name calling and venting our frustrations at others who disagree with us, it's our duty to respect other opinions. And if we want to be understood, we must take the time to understand them. The second point I discuss is to consider who your friends are online. It's easy for us to forget who we have invited as friends and who we have accepted on any of our social media platforms. A simple solution is to respond as if you were at a cocktail party with friends. Would you be rude and offensive there? If not, then don't be rude and offensive on social media. You'll also hear how to avoid alienating potential clients with social media, and what active listening really means on this edition of Grow My Revenue. For full show notes and other resources, please visit: http://www.ianaltman.com/podcast/ian-altman-sales-scripts-active-listening/

Born and raised in Chicago's northwest suburbs, Edward Kim attended New York University, earning a B.A. in political science with the intention of becoming an attorney. Choosing, however, to go in a much different direction, he enrolled in Pasadena's Le Cordon Bleu, where he rekindled his passion for food and cooking, and eventually graduated with a culinary degree. After culinary school, he honed his skills in various New York and Los Angeles kitchens under a number of acclaimed chefs. Starting out with a caterer in Pasadena, he moved on to an externship at Per Se, then the job of Garde Manger at Meson G in Los Angeles. In 2011 he opened his first restaurant, Ruxbin, in Chicago's Wicker Park neighborhood. Two years later, Kim and his partners opened their second concept, Mott Street, a more casual restaurant that showcases family-style Asian street food in a relaxed environment. His restaurants have been honored with awards and accolades from Michelin, Bon Appetit and The New York Times. Edward Kim accepted our Ingredient Challenge this week, using noodles as the main ingredient. Although I'm not sure which type he's selected - dried, fresh... egg, rice or wheat... it's up to him. He and Rick attempt to come up with a weeknight meal using the noodles of our choice, plus five extra ingredients. The challenge is, both have to finish our dishes in 15 minutes or less.

Welcome back to another episode of Frankly Speaking! With all the noise surrounding the internet these days, it's difficult to find a good financial research platform. And as some listeners have noticed, Yahoo Finance is not what it was 5 years ago. To start off today's episode, I give listeners a list of my favorite online financial sites... Sites I generally use for my own research. Some come with a cost and some are free, however, each of these sites have their own strength. Remember, this podcast is about you, not me. I highly recommend you check them out. Then, my next question covers a stock I am getting tons of feedback on - KKR & Co. LP (KKR). I recommended this stock just two weeks ago on my educational segment. And since then, it appears many subscribers are hesitant or concerned. Today, I'll be jumping back into the numbers - and will explain why there's still massive upside potential. Also... I can't win them all. A couple months ago I made a mistake. I recommended a retailer just as the holiday season was picking up. And since then, the brick & mortar sector has been crushed. I'll admit my losses. However, I still believe this particular company is in way better shape than its competitors. Although I'm expecting a little more "pain" in the short-term, I still love their long-term position. Switching gears, I then dive into the uranium sector. Prices have finally reached over $20/lb. In fact, uranium is trading at prices not seen since 2004. What does this mean going forward? To end the episode, I revisit a few more stocks on my radar. This includes Delta Airlines (DAL), Amazon (AMZN), and Northern Dynasty (NAK). Special thanks to Kurt, Scott, Christopher, Kris, Daniel, and John. Other stocks mentioned: Cameco (CCJ), Uranium Energy Corp (UEC), Skyharbour Resources (SYH.V), Uranium Resources (URRE), Stratasys (SSYS) Good Investing, Frank Curzio

Are you ready for this?!? I'm going to give you an action plan to help you clean out one of the most dreaded areas of your home. Your closet! For most of the country, we're right now in the middle of Fall. The weather is changing, and therefore, so is your wardrobe. It's getting colder and wetter outside. Goodbye sunshine, hello rain clouds! Although I'm really resistant to it, it's time to put away our capri pants, tank tops, and those white leather wedges. While the temperature lowers, I'm sure those warm snuggly sweaters and cute high boots are starting to call you name.  You might even be drooling over the clothing catalogs that have somehow found their way into your mailbox, showcasing the newest winter trends. But before you go shopping for some new digs, take the time to clean out your closet! Cause, no matter where you live in the country - or world - and no matter what time of year it is, the changing of the season is the PERFECT time to clean out and update your closet. Unfortunately, for some people, especially those who haven't done it for awhile, it can be VERY overwhelming. Now, I can honestly talk for hours on this subject, but I don't have that kinda time. So today, I briefly give you a few ideas that can help inspire and motivate you to tackle that dreaded closet. In this episode, I give you a closet overhaul action plan that will help make your closet organizing simple and easy.   Links Mentioned in this Show:   Free Download: "5 Steps to Organizing Your Home"   Or send a text to 44222 with the word ORGANIZE   Free Guide:  "9 Ways to Simplify Your Life"  Or send a text to 44222 with the word 9SIMPLIFY   Share this Episode: CarlaRaeArneson.com/episode21 Share this Podcast: LifeMadeSimplePodcast.com   Website: CarlaRaeArneson.com Facebook: Facebook.com/CarlaRaeArneson   Submit Questions: CarlaRaeArneson.com/AskCarlaRae Full Transcript of this Episode: CarlaRaeArneson.com/transcript21  

Although I'm sitting here in my big, comfortable, black leather pappa chair, I think it's stand up time. An Email just came in from one of my favorite Proud Podcast Participants. I'll just call her, "Lady B." It says, in part, "I have to walk kind of slouched over, because if I stand up straight, people accuse me of trying to 'work my thing." Proud Podcast Participant, "Lady B" is a beautiful, well built, Louie-Louie Generation lady. And she's walking slouched over because she's letting some simple Pimple People make her uncomfortable. Big Louie, his own bad self, immediately sent her a return Email that said..."You have the right to stand up straight. Do You."