Podcasts about American Red Cross

I always enjoy having the opportunity to speak with business professionals and leaders. Fidel Guzman not only is such a professional, but he also works in the corporate training arena teaching his company's employees and leaders about leadership and continuous improvement. Fidel comes by his talents honestly. He grew up in an environment where he needed to learn and grow. He secured a Bachelor's degree and an MBA both from Northeastern Illinois University where he graduated Summa Cum Laude. Fidel started out wanting to be a kindergarten teacher, but he ended up taking a different road. He went to work for a company where he helped people progress within various industries. The company he worked for was bought by ION Group in Chicago, IL. Fidel flourished and became the Manager of Internal Training for the company. Mr. Guzman is quite adaptable and can train people within the organization even though they may well have their own expertise in different industries. Fidel and I talk about everything from leadership, the future of corporate training and we even take time to explore how AI is and will become more a part of his work and the work we all do. When not working Fidel has various outside activities. His most loved efforts go, of course, into being part of a family. He also serves as Vice President of Education for Toastmasters International. He loves to be involved in Mixed Martial Arts. He keeps quite busy at a variety of activities and clearly loves the challenges he gets to address along the way. About the Guest: Fidel Guzman is a dynamic and enthusiastic Learning & Develoment professional with a proven track record in instructional design, project management, and training development. With a Master of Business Administration from Northeastern Illinois University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude, Fidel has consistently demonstrated his commitment to excellence and continuous improvement. His extensive experience spans various industries, including finance, telecommunications, and fitness, showcasing his versatility and adaptability. Currently serving as the Manager of Internal Training at ION Group in Chicago, IL. Fidel and his small but mighty team facilitate onboarding programs and training initiatives for over 13,000 employees globally. He has experience developing comprehensive new hire onboarding curricula and career progression pathways for multiple departments, ensuring effective and innovative learning solutions. Fidel's leadership extends beyond his professional role, as he actively participates in numerous company committees focused on community volunteer events, work-life balance education, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Fidel's passion for personal and professional development is evident in his certifications, including “Creating a Coaching Culture” from SHRM and “Coaching Skills for Leaders and Managers” from PMI. Fluent in both Spanish and English, he leverages his bilingual skills to connect with a diverse audience. Outside of his professional endeavors, Fidel enjoys podcasting, judo, triathlons, hiking, and poetry, reflecting his well-rounded and adventurous spirit. In addition to his professional achievements, Fidel has a strong commitment to volunteerism and community involvement. He is serving as the Vice President of Education for Toastmasters International and has been an MMA class instructor and coordinator at St. Bruno Elementary. His dedication to helping others is further demonstrated through his role as an academic tutor at Berwyn Public Library. Ways to connect with Fidel: (1) Fidel Guzman, MBA | LinkedIn New Podcast- The Hero in the Mirror on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/44xD76FcF5YFMNyuigFmBm?si=2so3OWJdQby6F91ZaY1AUg The Hero in the Mirror also on Youtube: (3) HerointheMirror - YouTube About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Greetings, everyone. I am Michael Hingson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and today we get to do the unexpected. And of course, what the unexpected is is anything that doesn't have anything to do with inclusion or diversity. So that's most things you know, in a lot of ways. Anyway, our guest today is Fidel, and am I pronouncing it right? Guzman, yes, you got it. Oh, my goodness. Comes from listening to Guzman's who play baseball. Okay, I'll take that. That's a way. So Fidel reached out to me some time ago. We're going to be doing some speaking to his company ion. But in the meanwhile, I also convinced him that he had to come on unstoppable mindset and talk with us, tell us about himself, tell us a lot about what he does and why he does it, and help to contribute to our general theme, which is that we're all more unstoppable than we think we are, and we usually underrate ourselves. So we we try to improve by discovering that more people are unstoppable than we think they are, and that we thought they were. So that works out. Well, Fidel has a degree in business. He has a Masters of Business Administration. You graduated sigma cum laude, which is pretty cool. And I did cum laude, but I didn't get to do sigma or Magna, but that's okay, but that's okay anyway. Fidel, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Fidel Guzman ** 02:56 Michael, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 03:00 Well, my pleasure, and I'm looking forward to to chatting and talking about some businessy things and anything else that you want to talk about. So let's start this way. It's always fun to do this. Why don't we start by you telling us kind of, maybe, about the early Fidel growing up and some of that stuff, and what got you started down the road of life as it were.   Fidel Guzman ** 03:20 Yeah, yeah, that's all right, yeah, let's let's go back. Let's go back to where it all started,   Michael Hingson ** 03:25 long time ago,   Fidel Guzman ** 03:30 definitely. So I'm born and raised in Los Angeles, Compton, Huntington Park area. I come from Mexican parents. They they they came here to the United States to give their their family a better future. Some first generation Mexican American, very proud. So actually, we do have a little diversity in here on this call. Oh, good. There we go. Yeah. So first generation Mexican American, my family traveled a lot when I was young. My dad's a truck driver, so wherever there was work, he would take us along. So we grew up and raised Los Angeles. I was seven or eight, then we ended up going to Mexico for a couple years, in Dallas, then St Louis, and then we ended up here in Chicago, here in the Midwest. Wow. Winter, the winters here were a bit surprising and tough. When I was in elementary school, I remember the first snow that I saw. It was, it was beautiful. After two weeks, I was like, All right, when is it? When is it gonna go away? And I was in for the the rude awakening that it's gonna it's gonna stick around for, for a few months or so, yeah, but I've had, you know, since then here, here in Chicago, we started to grow our roots. And I have five brothers and a sister. So I have a big family, a big Hispanic family, and I went to high school. My freshman year, I went to Lane Tech. Tech for all my folks who are familiar with the Chicagoland area. And then I ended up going to transferring over to Morton West in Berwyn. After I graduated high school, I went to Northeastern Illinois University, my alma mater, I got my undergrad in business management and marketing, and also got my Masters in Business Administration. So I am a proud double alumni from Northeastern Illinois University, and I really owe this, this community of Northeastern Illinois University, a lot with respect to the great teachers that they have there, the community that they try to build, and the friends and that I made along the way, as well as the education, of course, that helped, really helped me expand my career opportunities. After I graduated from Northeastern Illinois University with my undergrad, I started my first real corporate role inside of backstop solutions. And backstop solutions was a still, you know, it was a great company to be a part of lots of mentors. If I can, actually, I would like to give a quick shout out to a few mentors that I had along the way, such as Deanne Falk, Richard fu our CEO, our legacy CEO, Clint Coghill, Sarah Schroeder, and the current head of learning and development under ion. Alexander Lloyd and I really want to thank them for all their mentorship and leadership, because it's really helped me get and grow to the person that I am today. So with that, yeah, I am the manager of internal training at ion. We came I came in via an acquisition, when backstop was acquired, and throughout that period, like I was, I had some some free time, so to say, and ended up getting my Masters in Business Administration.   Michael Hingson ** 06:48 And so along the way, did you get yourself married and all that? Oh, my   Fidel Guzman ** 06:52 wife is going to kill me. Yes. Along the way, sorry about that. No, yeah, yeah, of course, yeah. Can't forget, can't forget about those significant others. But yes, I am married. My wife has a master's in occupational therapy, so she's in the medical field, and I'm in, like, the business learning and development side of things, so our conversations are pretty interesting, as well as our perspectives on things. I also have a daughter. She's 16, going on 17 people are usually very surprised when I tell them the age of my daughter, but had her early when I was in my early 20s, so young dad and she was a blessing. I wouldn't, wouldn't have it any other way.   Michael Hingson ** 07:33 That's that is great. Why did you decide to go into business and study business in college.   Fidel Guzman ** 07:42 So interestingly enough, when I got into college, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. I wanted to be cool Mr. Guzman, because I also really I love kids. I love working with kids. I was also a mixed martial arts program coordinator and instructor at an elementary school on the south side of Chicago for three years, and that was during my undergrad. And I taught all grades kindergarten through eighth grade, some of the basics in boxing, wrestling, jiu jitsu and kickboxing, so a bit of both. But as I was going through through my clinicals, as I was going through the the Yeah, the education aspect of it, I ended up wanting to switch majors. So I was like, I was like, hey, there's probably a lot more opportunity, a lot more opportunity for growth inside of the business segment. So I ended up switching my majors to business management, marketing, and somehow learning just found its way back into my life. So a lot of the stuff that I learned from some of those, those preliminary courses in in education. I mean, still, still resonate to this day, right? Understand your audience. Understand which students are visual learners, which ones are experiential learners. Which one need more repetitive exercise to to drill something in? So, yeah, the universe did not, did not lead me too far away from, from from teaching and being an instructor, and here I am. I know   Michael Hingson ** 09:08 that feeling well. So a couple things. First of all, I was born in Chicago, but we moved to California when I was five, but in Chicago, you start kindergarten at the age of four. So I went for a year to a special kindergarten class that my parents and others advocated for, for premature, blind kids, because there were a whole bunch in the Chicago area during the whole baby boomer area, a number of children were born prematurely and given a pure oxygen environment, which caused them to lose their eyesight. And so the bottom line is that happened to me among others. And so I went to the Perry school. I don't even know if it's around anymore. Somebody told me it wasn't around anymore, but that's where I went to school. And went there for a year of kindergarten, learned braille and other things. And then we moved to California. So I always wanted to be a teacher as well, and I came at teaching from a different standpoint, as you did. That is to say, Well, I wanted to be a teacher. My first job out of college wasn't directly teaching, except I ended up having to write training materials and do other things like that, and then I ended up going into sales, and what I learned is that the best sales people are really teachers. They're counselors. They guide and they help people, especially when you're dealing with major account sales, they help people look at products. They teach about what their product does and the really good sales people are brave enough to admit when their product might not be the best fit for someone, because it's also all about building trust. And good teachers are concerned about building trust as well. Of course.   Fidel Guzman ** 10:57 Yeah, one of my teachers when I was close to graduating, you know, one of the things that you know this teacher, Dr funk, if I remember correctly, he instilled in us, if you're able to synthesize what you learned and explain it to a five year old, you've done a good job. Like you, you you yourself understand that particular concept or that particular topic. And I really took that to heart. So now, you know, and a lot of these roles, if, from the the main instructor, I want and need to be able to explain it, you know, to my kid, to explain it in in simple terms. And, of course, you know, expand on it if needed. But, but   Michael Hingson ** 11:40 it ultimately comes down to you can provide all the information you want, but they have to teach themselves, really, and they're not going to do that, and they're not going to listen to you if they don't trust you. So trust is a vital part of what we do,   Fidel Guzman ** 11:56 exactly spot on,   Michael Hingson ** 11:58 and I have found that that developing that trust is so extremely important. I learned a lot about trust from working with guide dogs, right from the very first guide dog that I obtained back in 1964 when I was 14. It was all about building a team and I and although I didn't know how to really externally, say it necessarily, until many years later, internally, I understood that my job was to build a relationship and that I was going to be the team leader, and needed to be able to gain trust, as well as trust my teammate in in what we did. So worked out pretty well, though. So, you know, I was that was pretty cool. So what does ion do? What is ion?   Fidel Guzman ** 12:49 Yeah, I yeah for sure. So ion is a essentially, you can, you can think of it as a software company for the investment community. We provide a number of different platforms for them to streamline their processes and track information, or be end users of that of data.   Michael Hingson ** 13:07 So people buy your software and do what   Fidel Guzman ** 13:11 they can either leverage the data that's being provided to them, or they can include data within specific platforms.   Michael Hingson ** 13:20 Are you starting to see that this whole concept of so called AI is valuable in what you do, or, as I am working with that yet,   Fidel Guzman ** 13:30 yes, definitely, we are big on streamlining processes and making sure that we're maximizing the best use of everyone's time, and AI really has a really important component in that. So for for learning and development, one of the ways that we're using AI is for content creation, so whether it's just creating a simple outline for a course or starting to use that to create slides, but there, we're also taking a look at the way AI can be used on a regular basis to provide feedback for reps like let's say someone finishes a demo. If they want to do some self reflection, they can leverage AI to get some feedback on what worked well what didn't. Was there enough engagement? How was my use of technology, so on and so forth. So not only is AI being used from, you know, creating content, but also as, like a ad hoc instructor and and way to generate feedback,   Michael Hingson ** 14:31 well, and it offers so much versatility, you can really have it go many different ways. So it is very possible it can be an instructor, as you say, an ad hoc instructor, but it really can present its information in a good teaching way too. So you can have conversations with it. You can do the same sorts of things that you would do with a teacher. I think that AI clearly, is here to stay, but I think. Think over time, AI is going to evolve a lot. I am not of the opinion that AI will replace people for a variety of reasons, but I think that it's here and it's up to us to be smart as to how we use it.   Fidel Guzman ** 15:14 Definitely. I think one of the the tips that we always give people is AI does a really great job of a number of different things, but it's always going to need that human touch at the end of at the end of the day. So don't just take don't just take some content that AI has created and take it to heart. Make sure to review it. Make sure to put that personal touch on there and have it speak your language. Have it really resonate with the audience as well, especially that, oh, go ahead. Or also just on Super mechanical, super scripted,   Michael Hingson ** 15:49 well, and I think as AI grows, it's going to try to emulate, or we're going to use it to try to emulate people more and more, but it still isn't going to get to the point where it truly is me or you, and we do have to put our mark on it. I've used it to help create several articles, and what I've done when I do that is I'll tell it what I want it to write about, and let it do it, and it comes up with some pretty good ideas that I incorporate into the article, that I create, between what it provides and what I add to the mix. And it really should be that way. Exactly what I've really found interesting is the number of people like in classrooms, who say teachers, who say, you know, it's really harder and harder and harder to tell when a student uses AI to write a paper or if the student is doing it themselves. And the first time I heard that, immediately, my idea of what to do was something like this, let the student use AI if they want to, let the have ai do the whole paper. What you ought to do is to have one day after all the students turn their papers in, where you bring each student up to the front of the class and say, defend your paper. Now you have one minute if they don't really know, yeah. I mean, if they don't know what's going on, then they're not going to be able to do very well, and they fail.   Fidel Guzman ** 17:19 Yes, I am a big proponent of comprehensive exercises and also public speaking. How well? How well can you articulate the thought that you gave in that paper? Right? Some of those different talking points, right? Can you convey the same message in front of the classroom?   Michael Hingson ** 17:38 Yeah, and, and, you can tell if a person is just not necessarily a great public speaker, they're nervous, as opposed to whether they know the subject. And those, in a sense, are two different things. But you can use the fact that students are at the front of the classroom to help make them better speakers, too, which is a good thing.   Fidel Guzman ** 17:59 Yeah, no, yeah. I agree with you. If they are using AI, just, you know, turn around a paper, have them present in front of the classroom. Yeah, let's, let's talk a bit more about your paper, yeah, and, and really have it be an interactive exercise. I think that's really where the end goal is going to be, now that AI has really taken over the way the classroom dynamic has changed. So having more of those interactive exercises, really taking a look at comprehension, whether somebody really understands that topic, and giving giving students and an audience an opportunity to discuss, how do we how do we create a hive mind mentality around this particular topic, especially in a classroom, right whether, whether that's in a school setting, in academia, or whether that's in a corporate setting, inside of an office.   Michael Hingson ** 18:54 Several months ago, we had a guest on unstoppable mindset, who's an executive leadership coach in Northern California who was a major proponent of AI. And when he worked with companies, and especially with presidents and leaders who were stuck on how we evolve and how we grow, he would bring AI into all those meetings, and one day he was dealing with one such situation where he told the president, you got to use you ought to use AI to get some great ideas. The President took that to heart, called his senior leadership staff in and said, take the rest of this day and create ideas about how you think we ought to do things better, and so on, and use AI to do it. And when everyone came in the next day, they had a lot of innovative and creative ideas, and all loved the fact that he encouraged them to use AI. And that led to. Us having a discussion about, is AI going to really take over the jobs that people do? And both of us agreed, no, AI won't. Ai can't replace anyone. We can fire somebody and then put AI in their place, which doesn't really work well. But what is a better thing is let ai do what it does well. So example that he gave was say, you have autonomous vehicles. As autonomous vehicles become more and more prevalent, like trucks that are delivering supplies, like shipping vehicles and so on, let the autonomous vehicle drive, but the driver needs to still be in the cabin and needs to be behind the wheel, even though they're not doing anything, because they are going to let the autonomous vehicle do what it can do. But you can give those people other assignments to do for the company that will keep them busy and do things that otherwise might not be done quite as efficiently. So the bottom line is, you keep people busy, you use the autonomous vehicle, and it's a win win situation all the way around.   Fidel Guzman ** 21:08 Yeah, great. I I've heard something very similar to that, and maybe if I can, if I can synthesize this, it's going to be that we want to remove manual task out of people's times, and we want them to focus on more higher value add activities. Do   Michael Hingson ** 21:29 you think that's fair? I think that's true. Isaac Asimov, years ago, the science fiction writer, wrote a really wonderful science fiction story about a young man who lived in a society where everyone had a particular job to do, and you were matched with your talents. And so there you you're you take a test when you're, like, eight years old and or or even younger, and that starts you down the road of what it is you're supposed to do for the whole country. And then you take another test several years later, and that locks you into what you're trained to do. So you always do the same task, but you do it well, because that's what you're trained to do. Well, this kid was in the whole process taking his tests, and he just wasn't comfortable with what was going on. And eventually he ran away. And what, you know, he he took the last test, apparently they looked at him kind of funny when they looked at the results and he didn't like what was going on. And he just left. He said, I'm not going to do this. I don't, I don't. I don't want to be an engineer. I don't want to do whatever it is that they want. And they eventually caught up with him, and they caught him, and they said, Why'd you run away? And he told them, and then said, No, you don't understand what just happened. Some people in society are the people who create the tests, create the processes, and don't get trained to do a specific thing, because they're the innovators and the inventors that keep society going, and you're one of those kids, and this was like, what, 50 years ago that he wrote that? So it's, it is, it is really interesting, but, but very true and, and the reality is, we can be as creative as we choose to be, and some people are more creative than others, but there are always tasks that we can find for anyone to do, and that will make them very happy,   23:40 absolutely, definitely.   Michael Hingson ** 23:42 So it works out. You know, it does work out really well. Well, a question for you. You have a leadership philosophy, needless to say, and you lead a lot in instructional design, what, what are the core principles, or what are the things that kind of make up how you teach leadership, and what it is that you teach people to do, and how do you go about team development?   Fidel Guzman ** 24:13 Yeah, I think some of the core principles that I that I really focus on with learning and development and instructional design. Number one, it has to be collaboration. It really does take a community to put some some really good training sessions and training opportunities in place, and it's really leveraging all the expertise from different subject matter experts. Give them a chance to share their perspectives and their insights on certain things, but also, really, just to enhance, you know, the the use of these training programs, because people are more keen to listen to like, oh yeah, this guy's a subject matter he's an expert in this particular. Their space and for them to to hop on. So I think that collaboration aspect is, you know, getting the Lean In from managers like, hey, this training is important. Your employees are going to benefit from this training, whether it's just for to develop their their education, to develop their career, whatever that may look like. But I want to say one of the, the first guiding principles is going to have to be collaboration. The second one is going to have to be most likely continuous improvement. As we start to roll out a lot of these different training sessions, whether it's public speaking, whether it's product training, whether it's industry training, if we roll it out, we keep our ear to the ground and make sure that we're receptive to the feedback. We take a look at what works well, what doesn't work well, what needs to be tailored. How can we, how can we also manage this across different time zones? So ion is super global company, I want to say, over 13,000 employees in over 13 plus countries. So also managing what those training programs look like for everyone, for everyone, across the board. So besides the collaboration, besides the continuous improvements or the I like to also say that the Kaizen, the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, right, making those small improvements, the last one I want to say is going to be innovation. How can we incorporate, right? We were talking about AI. How can we incorporate some of these ladies, latest tech trends into what our training delivery looks like, whether it's something as simple as, how do we include more polls throughout a lecture to keep people engaged and participate? How do we include knowledge checks at the end of every session to make sure that people are walking away with some of the key takeaways. So, yeah, collaboration, continuous improvement and innovation. Yeah, how do we stay innovative and stay creative? I think having having some fun, staying creative along the way Definitely, definitely resonates with your audience as you're trying to do different things and trying to keep things as engaging and and fun as possible.   Michael Hingson ** 27:06 What do you say to someone who says, Look, I've really learned all I need to learn. I'm not really interested in learning anything new. That is, I know, isn't that? Yeah, but you hear it a lot, I'm sure, or too much. I   Fidel Guzman ** 27:22 think some people get comfortable right, like, Hey, I'm comfortable with what I know. And learning does require a certain level of mental energy, and it also requires a certain level of you being willing to take on a new challenge, to take on and learn something new. So to them, I would genuinely ask, what's your interest? How can we supplement what this interest looks like? You know, what are your interests in other avenues? And I think that will plant a seed to let them know that learning and development should be something learning, right? Just learning in general, it should be something that you should do throughout your life. I recently started a podcast called the hero in the mirror, and I wanted to take a moment and actually, thank you, Michael. I don't know if you remember our initial conversation. But we were talking, we were talking about, you had asked me, What ideas do you have? What are you working on? Are you working on, any books, any podcasts? And I had mentioned, I was like, Hey, I actually have an idea for a podcast. And you pause for a moment, and you were like, what's stopping it? Yeah, and it was, it was kind of like, it kind of took me back. I'm like, What? What is stopping me? Right? And sometimes, and in coaching, we call it interference, like you're you probably have a fear of failure. You have a fear that something's not going to go right, or this task seems enormous, that you don't know where to start. Yeah, so making small, small mental changes, making small steps, I think, definitely add up. Since then, Michael, I've had I've had three episodes. I've had some great guests hop on and share their story of resilience and triumph. And as I'm starting to do more episodes, I'm I'm hearing stories of people willing to have that, that mindset of, I want to continue to learn, I want to continue to expand on the person that I am and make myself well rounded in these different, different areas. So So, long story short, if somebody says I don't, I don't need to learn anything, there's always room for growth. There's always room for interest, what, what interests you, and how? And how can we follow that interest and and supplement it with some some training content.   Michael Hingson ** 29:49 I know, for me, I'm extremely comfortable with what I know, and I'm extremely comfortable with what I've learned, but I'm also very uncomfortable in knowing there's a lot of stuff I don't know and that i. Still need to learn. So I love to learn right from the very beginning, when I first discovered the internet, I regarded it and still do, no matter what there is with the dark web and everything else, I think the internet is a treasure trove of information, and it's so fun to discover new things online. And there's so many ways to go. We've got so many places where we can go get books that we never had access to before all of us. There's so many places where we can go to learn about organizations, about people. They're just so many wonderful things, and it's only one way, because I also think there is a lot to be said for real personal interactions, but I think the internet is a wonderful treasure trove that gives us the opportunity to learn a whole lot that we don't necessarily know about, subjects that we don't know anything about.   Fidel Guzman ** 30:55 The Internet is a double sided sword. It is. You can find information that will support right? Maybe you know an opinion that you have on the other side of that, you can find lots of information that does not support independent opinion that you have. And also it's a rabbit hole. Soon as you start going out that rabbit hole. But the one thing I do appreciate from the internet is the channels of communication that it's built. Yeah, and I'm appreciative of being able to have connected with you on LinkedIn, and that's turned out to us having this podcast here today.   Michael Hingson ** 31:34 I think that for me, I'm not as interested on going online and in finding something to change an opinion as much as I am finding something that will tell me about something that I didn't know as much about. Now I might change my opinion from what I thought it might be, but I I really love to try to really get as much as possible into dealing with facts or substance to teach me things, and then I'll form my own opinion from that. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Of course,   Fidel Guzman ** 32:11 gets a good grounding of all the all the materials, synthesize it yourself.   Michael Hingson ** 32:19 Yeah, I think we should do that. I think we have to be the one to synthesize whatever it is we're dealing with. That's That's our responsibility, and that should always be the way it is, which is, and I don't want to get political or anything, but which is one of the reasons that I say any politician who says, Trust me will be the first person I won't trust until I verify. I am a firm believer in trust, but verify. I don't care who it is. I think it's so important that we really take the time every single person needs to take the time to study what's going on, and and, and really look at all sides of something. I think that's important. I listen to newscasts regularly, and I like to listen to newscasts from all sides. Some I find why I don't want to listen to them very much, because of what they do or don't do, but I still think that it's important to really understand all sides of a subject.   Fidel Guzman ** 33:29 Absolutely, I totally agree with you.   Michael Hingson ** 33:32 So you know, I think it is kind of neat to to have that opportunity, and I think we learn so much when we take the time to really study. I'm amazed. I was at a restaurant once, and my wife and I were there. We were talking about newspapers and what we get from newspapers or online, and our waitress came up and Karen said, so do you read the newspaper? And this woman's 30 years old, and she says, No, I don't. I don't have time, you know. And how little she learns, because she doesn't really seek information, which is too bad.   Fidel Guzman ** 34:07 Yep, you people have to be receptive. People have to be receptive to to gaining new bits of information. And sometimes people are just happy knowing like you, like you mentioned earlier, just happy knowing what they're what they know, just comfortable in in their own space, until some more power to that, more more power to them, more power to them,   Michael Hingson ** 34:31 until something happens to disrupt the happiness and surprises them, because they really didn't learn enough to know that that was a possibility. Yep, I never thought I would be doing a podcast, but when the pandemic occurred, I started to learn about it, and learned all the value of it. Now, I had been at our campus radio station at UC Irvine for six years, and I was program director one year, so I understood radio, and when I started learning about podcasts. They went, this is really pretty cool, and I had never thought about it, and had never been interviewed on a podcast, but I realized I know what I can can do with this, and I know that I can sound intelligent on the air. And so I started to learn about it, and here we are now, just today, actually, we published online and in YouTube episode 324 of unstoppable mindset since August of 2021 Congratulations, Michael. Well, thank you. It's a lot of fun. We actually went to two episodes a week in August of 2022 Oh, wow, because we had such a huge backlog. Yeah, and I don't mind having a huge backlog, but it was growing way too much. So we went to two episodes a week, and and it's a lot of fun to to do it. And as and as I love to tell people, for me, the most important thing is I get to learn from every single person who comes on the podcast. It's so neat to be able to do that, of course. So it works out really well. Well for you, what kind of challenges have you faced? What have you done to overcome challenges, and what are some of the biggest challenges you faced, and how you did you deal with them?   Fidel Guzman ** 36:17 Okay, yeah, that's great. That's some of the questions I use on on my podcast, here in the mirror. So I'm on the I'm on the other side of that chair today. Yes, no, it's good. It's good. It's a good question. So I want to say, you know, there are, there are three main, three main challenges that really stand out for me. One I'm very vocal about, and that is my speech impediment, my stuttering problem. It was really bad when I was little kid. I had a speech pathologist. Even now, talking to you on this podcast, I have to be very conscious with what I'm saying. Some of the listeners might might have caught it in the beginning when I get too excited about a particular topic, or if I haven't formulated my thought yet, but the speech impediments is something that has really made public speaking a passion for me. It was hard for me to have a voice when I was a little kid, I used to try to raise my hand and answer a question when I was in elementary school, and the teacher would be like, All right, next one like you had, you had your turn. And so I, you know, I've struggled, you know, to have a voice. I struggled with just completing sentences, and the way that I overcame that is through a speech pathologist that really gave me the confidence to believe in myself. I remember one exercise she gave me one day is she grabbed me from my classroom. She would pick me up from my classroom every Tuesday and Thursday, and she picked me up one day, and I was kind of down in the dumps. I didn't really like going to the class. We weren't really advancing much. And she's like, Hey, we're going to try something different tonight. Different today. She's like, today I'm going to have the order of pizza. And I was still a little little fat kid, like fourth or fifth grade, so I was like, oh, yeah, I'm all for it. What's going on here? And she was like, but the catch is, you need to order this pizza without stuttering. And you know, right away, kind of my heart dropped. And she's like, okay, like, don't, don't worry, we're gonna practice exactly what you want to order. And she's like, What do you want? And I'm like, Well, I want a large pepperoni pizza with an RC, a two liter RC Cola delivered to McPherson Elementary. And she's like, okay. She's like, write it down. I'm like, Alright, great to like, write it down again. I must have written it like, 10 times. She's like, No, now practice it. So about 15 minutes of doing that, she was like, All right, I think you're ready. She hands me the phone and, you know, I pick it up. My heart's in my throat, and I'm just like, like, I'm like, hi, you know, I want to order a large pepperoni pizza with a two liter RC Cola delivered to McPherson elementary for Fidel Guzman, and I was just astonished. I hung up the phone. I was happy for two reasons. Number one, I was going to get some pizza. Number two, I was able to say it a complete, full sentence without stuttering. And she she really believed in me and instilled in me that confidence that I could overcome this. But it wasn't an overnight success. It still required me go going to the speech pathologist, you know, throughout my elementary school, throughout all those years, and even as an adult, continuing to practice and hone that in in high school, doing presentations, in college, doing presentations. So right now, I am the VP of education for our America's Toastmasters Club, and this is one story i i always tell people, and they're like, No, you don't stutter. I'm like, if I get too excited, I'll lower my words. But that was that was one challenge, that was one challenge, and it's. Is it's still something I have to be very conscious of. And I've caught myself a couple times earlier in this podcast where I kind of mumble a little bit or get caught up in a particular word. But besides that one, I want to say that the second one was more of my in college. In college, I struggled paying for school. I mentioned I'm first generation Mexican American, and I was one, one of the first, first of my brothers to attend college full time. And I did all I could to make ends meet, two, three jobs, just paying for tuition. Financial aid was great, you know, it really helped me with a portion of that, but a lot of it really ended up, you know, being due onto me. And then I had my daughter, and it was just a struggle. I was like, How can I be a dad? How can I be a student? How can I work on my career? And I had gone to a financial aid workshop, and the one thing that stood out in this workshop was when they were talking about scholarships granted in high school when you're about to graduate, they talk to you about it, but it doesn't. It doesn't really materialize until you're until you receive that bill. Yeah, you're just like, hey, here's, here's a $2,000 bill for this college class. And you're like, oh, man, this is, this is not, this is not cheap. It's pretty expensive. And the one thing you know that stood out was, you know, let the scholarships, and they started talking about scholarship applications, and I found that there were a couple common denominators with the scholarships. Number one, they wanted two letters of two letters of recommendation. Number two, they want an essay. What are you going to do with your degree? How are you going to make a positive impact in the community? And number three, sometimes, typically an interview. And so I ran with it. I was like, they want two letter, letters of recommendation. They want one essay. They want an interview. No problem. And I made that my part time job. On the weekends, I would just apply, apply, apply. And I started getting some small wins. I started getting a $250 scholarship here, a $500 scholarship there, $1,000 scholarship, you know, here, and all of it started to add up, and it started to gain momentum. And I was lucky enough to get, get, get accepted for a number of different scholarships and complete my my college education, and even, you know, be strong willed enough to go back and do it again and try to try to get my masters. So those were two, two big ones, but I'll pause here and see if you have any questions around those two challenges for me. Michael, no,   Michael Hingson ** 42:41 but I I really admire what you did. You You made a choice and you followed it through. And I think that's of course, the whole issue is that we have to make choices and we need to follow through. And if we find that, we need to refine our decisions. We do that. I know when I was a student and a program director at the university radio station, I wanted everyone to listen to themselves. I thought it was a great idea to have everyone listen to themselves on the air. And the way you do it is you record it and you give it to them. And I didn't anticipate how hard that was going to be, because for me, I was used to doing it for myself, yeah, but I I didn't realize how much resistance I was going to get from literally everyone at the radio station, they were not interested in and I'm thrilled about doing it at all. What I and the engineer at the station did eventually was to put a cassette recorder in a locked cupboard, and whenever the microphone was activated, the recorder would go on. So, you know, you didn't have to hear the music. You just wanted to hear yourself talk. And we, we really took a major step and said, You have to listen to these recordings. We gave each person a cassette. We expect you to listen to these recordings and improve accordingly. What I didn't say much was, I know what it's like. I'm my own worst critic, and I have to listen to it, so you guys do now. I've changed that, and I'll get to it in a second, but we pushed everyone to do it, and it wasn't long, not only before we started seeing improvement, but before the people themselves started recognizing that they were really getting comfortable listening to themselves and that they were taking this to heart, and by the end of the year, we had people who were loving it and wanting their cassette every day or every week, and also a. Some of them went into broadcasting. For me, what I learned, and it took many years before I learned it is I'm not my own worst critic. I shouldn't be negative, as I said earlier, I'm the only one who can really teach me. I'm my own best teacher. And I think when you make that mind shift from being your own worst critic to your own best teacher, it really puts things in a much more positive light. And I've said that before on the podcast, and I will continue to say it, because I think it's a very important   Fidel Guzman ** 45:29 concept. We actually have a similar exercise for our America's Toastmasters Club, where we'll we'll record some speeches, and we'll have people listen back to their recorded speech. And a lot of people say like, man, it's cringe to hear yourself on the on the other side, on the other side of those iPhones, but it is a very useful exercise. You get a better understanding of your your filler words, your eyes, your arms, your vocal variety, your body language. And if you're looking to be a great, I don't want to say public speaker, but if you're just looking just to speak better in general, even when it's an on a presentation, on a call, or if you have to give up a toast at a wedding or a quinceanera, for you to be able to, yeah, critique yourself and gather feedback from your from your own recording   Michael Hingson ** 46:23 well. And the reality is, the more of it you do, and the more you listen to it, having been up there in front giving the speech, you also see how people react. And if you continue to observe and listen to the recordings as you go forward, you will improve, yeah, for sure, which is which is really important. And one of the things that I try to do regularly now is to record talks. When I go and give a speech somewhere, I will record it so that I can listen to it and I enjoy it, because I discover Did I really say that I shouldn't have said it quite that way, but I'll do better next time. But listening to it helps such a tremendous amount,   Fidel Guzman ** 47:13 especially with those filler words. So when you really listen to the recording, you'll be like, Man, I use a lot of likes or SOS or ands or buts, and if you want to speak eloquently, it is, I mean, like anything, you just gotta practice it. You gotta practice it, and you have to be receptive to that, the feedback. And you have to also celebrate the small wins. One thing I am a big proponent on is celebrate the small wins. Yeah. So if you are able to do your your first speech at a Toastmasters clubs like we, we give you tons of accolades, because it is not an easy fit, an easy feat. If you're able to do the second one, even better. You're, you're progressing, and you're, you know, you're increasing your understanding of some of the fundamentals of public speaking. Yeah, so you're preaching to the choir here.   Michael Hingson ** 48:05 Yeah, no, I understand. Oh yeah, it's good, but it is really important to do, and it's fun to do. If you decide to make it fun, and if you decide that you want to become a better communicator there. There are lots of us and all that sort of stuff that people do. I've heard some people say that's really not such a bad thing. Well, I've got to say that I've never really been used to having a lot of us. And you know, there's a guy out here who I don't think he's alive anymore. He used to be a sports announcer out here. His name was Jim Healy, and you may have heard him when, well, out here in Los Angeles, anyway, he was on K lac, and he had somebody, well, he had a recording of somebody, one of the sports jocks, and he announced that he was going to play this recording, and what you're going to hear is this guy in 60 seconds say, you know, 48 times, that's and he did what's amazing, that   Fidel Guzman ** 49:17 when you when you get to Some of those, it's like, what do they say? Nails on a chalkboard? You're like, Oh, yeah. Like, what are you trying to say? Just, just say it. To say, to say the damn thing.   Michael Hingson ** 49:30 Yeah, talk a little bit slower and just say it.   Fidel Guzman ** 49:33 One thing that I'm trying to be conscious, more conscious of is pauses, like those deliberate pauses, those deliberate pauses to collect your thoughts, like I often need, just to collect myself, but also to build suspense the message and the message that you're trying to give, especially when you're in front of a group of people, in front of an audience, and you're pausing there, they're just like, oh, what? So what is he? What is he gonna say next? What's up? What's going on with this pause? So it's also you have this arsenal of tools when it comes to to public speaking and to engage with an audience and to keep them, to keep them interested in what your next thought is going to be. What What am I going to say next? How am I going to, you know, align this topic to something else that I want to discuss.   Michael Hingson ** 50:24 I love, yeah, I've discovered the value of pauses. You can make a pause last too long, and one of the things you learn is how long to make a pause. But I love pauses. They really do add a lot of value. There they get. Well, you talk a lot about continuous improvement, and clearly you you really love the whole concept. What's an example of a project where you instituted continuous improvement, and how do you make that happen? Thanks, Michael.   Fidel Guzman ** 50:56 Let's pause again. Yeah, right. I know. Yeah. All right. Michaels, Michaels, throw me. Well, not much of a curveball, but yeah, no, that's good. So I know continuous improvement. And one project that I worked on, I want to say one that comes to mind is last year I hosted a series of product boot camps. And what these product boot camps really were, were product training and networking opportunities within ion. I had just gone through the acquisition of backstop into the into the ion family, and I saw a need. I saw a need there for some product training. And what I did is I started to coordinate with subject matter experts, hence the collaboration and community principles that I have with learning and development. And started to piece together a boot camp. So a series of training sessions, and we discussed location, we discussed different components that we can include on there. We discussed remote hybrid in person, what some of those options were, and we had about, I want to say, five or six of these boot camps in 2024 and what I noticed is that for each of the boot camps we would tailor it a little bit, because each of these different products that were under specific umbrellas were for certain audiences, you know, for certain segments of the business. So we had to, I had a template, but we had to tweak that template a little bit. Who do we want to come in here? Who do we want to come in for this particular topic? When do we take breaks? If it's in person, you know? Do we take longer breaks if it's in person? How do we include some interactive components to it? How do we test people's knowledge, whether it's through live polls, whether it's using an LMS platform to do knowledge checks? How do we create a certificate based program around this? And for each of those, it was a learning experience. It was a learning experience because we, every subject matter expert, is different, right? You're building different relationships with different people, and even their style of talking or their style of teaching on a particular topic is going to be different. So those continuous improvements throughout each of those boot camps really started to to resonate and just to showcase themselves. And for each of those, we had a similar template for all of them, but we made minor tweaks to make sure that it was as engaging and and thoughtful as possible.   Michael Hingson ** 53:36 Wow. Well, that's pretty cool. Um, and I think that the very fact that you would make the tweaks and you recognize the need to do that was pretty insightful, of course, because for me, I know when I speak, some people early on told me you should write a talk and you should, you should just give that talk. I tried that once. I didn't like what I sounded like when I read a talk, and I haven't done it since. And I also realized that I do better, and sometimes it isn't necessarily a lot, but when I customize every talk so I love to go early and try to hear speakers who speak before me, or get a chance to meet people at an event, because I will learn things invariably that I will put into the talk. And sometimes I'm tweaking talks up to and including the start of the talk, and sometimes I will tweak a talk when I'm speaking and I'm getting the impression just from all the fidgeting, that maybe I'm not getting through to these people, or I'm not really doing this in the best way possible. And I will change until I get what I expect to be the audience. Reaction, because I know what an audience is like when they're fully engaged, and I also know that not every audience is the same, so I hear what you're saying. I think it's important to do that.   Fidel Guzman ** 55:13 Yeah, for you to be able to do that on the fly, kudos, kudos to that. But yeah, we you got to be able to understand that audience, understand that audience, understand what's what's going on, the dynamic of that, of that situation. So you're, you're a veteran at at this, so no surprise there.   Michael Hingson ** 55:31 Well, that's a lot of fun. Well, what do you do when you're not working you, I know you're involved in various activities and so on. So what do you do when you're, yeah, not an eye on writing, doing, training, stuff and all that.   Fidel Guzman ** 55:45 A number of different hobbies. My wife calls me the Energizer Bunny, because I'm always running around doing something, but some of my main things is right now judo. I did wrestling in high school, and I did mixed martial arts when I was getting my undergrad. And I love martial arts. I think iron sharpens iron. It's good to be around a good group of, good group of people, people who are who are like minded, people who are looking to continue to develop themselves. And yeah, if you're in a room full of tough guys, you have no other choice than to start to be a tough guy yourself. So I love martial arts. I did a couple Judo tournaments, judo and jujitsu tournaments last year, where I placed. And let's see, besides that, triathlons, I love to run, I love to bike, I love to swim. I did my first triathlon last year. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a phenomenal experience. I mean, it's two three hours of non stop movement, but it was, it was great just to be part of that, of a huge event like that, besides the martial arts and the constant running and swimming and biking, the last thing I want to say is writing and poetry. I have started to compile all all my poems. Hopefully, in the next year or so, I'll, I'll launch a small book of poems. And, yeah, I'll keep you, I'll keep you posted on that. But I do, I do like to write on the sign, you know, hopefully a book of poems. And, you know, since since having my daughter, I've always liked children's books. I would, I would love it if I could launch my my own series of children books, and I'm working on a couple templates with that. So, yeah, stay staying busy, staying busy, physically active, but also mentally   Michael Hingson ** 57:40 active. So you haven't written any books yet. I have a   Fidel Guzman ** 57:44 couple ideas, a couple ideas of what, what kids books want to do, but you don't have any books published yet? No, none yet. None yet. Well, we're anxious to see that happen. You got, you got it, you're gonna, you're gonna light that fire. You're gonna light that fire as well. No, and again, right? I do appreciate you for for really, really motivating me to start my own podcast, because you had really said, like, what's stopping you? Like, like me, I'm stopping myself, you know. But even yet, yeah, even like, you know, being an author, I know that you're an author, you know, I would love to have a conversation offline with you. You know what that publishing experience was like, because I think that's my biggest interference right now with that, is like, I don't know where to start with the publishing. I know I can self publish. I know I can go through publishers and like, the internet, like we said, a double sided sword, yeah, you have information that tells you you should just self publish, and then you have other bits of information. Was like, You should go through a publishing company and just like, where do I Where do I choose? But I think that's why having mentors, you know, and getting to network with people who are experienced, such as yourself, and these different avenues of public speaking and being a keynote speaker and having a podcast, being a podcast host and being an author. I think, I think it's great, and you are definitely an inspiration to me. Michael, well, thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 59:11 You're familiar with Jackson Hewitt, the accounting and tax company. You got it? Okay? So I can't remember whether it was night, whether it was 2016 or 2017 but I got invited to go speak at one of their events, and I did. And while I was there, I met a woman, and I didn't know what she did, and she she, she worked at a Jackson Hewitt, and I just happened to say, what do you own of a firm? Because most of the people there were supposed to be company owners. And she said, No, maybe someday. And I said, why not? You ought to own a company. You ought to you ought to become a company owner. You'll go further Anyway, last year, she sent me an email, and she said, I've never forgotten that, and I think it was like a year later, or two years later, she's. After I and she met, she said, I got my first company, and I now own 10 branches. Wow. Back, I said, that's pretty cool. Oh,   Fidel Guzman ** 1:00:09 Michael, Michael, you are just making ripples in the universe. Just ripples doing something. Yeah, that's good. I don't want to get too religious, but you're doing God's work, man, well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:18 I hope so. You know, expect Hill. Hill. Guy, guide, or she'll guide, yeah, but so what do you think is the future of work, of workplace training and learning?   Fidel Guzman ** 1:00:30 Yeah, I think we, we touched a little bit upon this. But you know, AI, you know, definitely, how can we leverage AI for content creation, creating outlines and also using it as feedback. But I also want to to bring back the the in person training. I know we've all gotten very comfortable with, you know, doing stuff remote, but similar to the example that we talked about earlier, where that teacher was like, oh, all these, all these kids are using AI for these papers, and how do I really test their comprehension? That's, that's something you know, that in person activity, yeah, I think definitely has a tremendous amount of value, not just for the instructor, but for the end learner. Yeah. So I think, I think a mixture of like, okay, great, you know, how can we use AI to create content? How can we use it to provide, you know, feedback for people to continue to improve on certain areas. But how can we bring back that in person component?   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:38 Well, see, oh, go ahead,   Fidel Guzman ** 1:01:39 yeah, to, to to unify. It was probably that pause, that to to unify, to unify a vision, you know, a vision of of continuous improvement. You know that to unify, that vision of what a team might be aiming for, yeah. So, yeah. So, I think, I think, you know, long story short, it's going to be, you know, leveraging a bit of AI and still bringing back that, that in person aspect. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:05 you know, I I've done virtual presentations as well as, of course, lots of in person presentations. I much prefer in person to virtual but my main reason for that is that I can tell what the audience is feeling. I get a lot more information if I'm doing an in person talk than I would get if I'm just doing a virtual talk. Now I've done it long enough that I mostly can do pretty well at a virtual talk, but it's still not the same, yeah, and I still don't get exactly the same information, but I can do virtual talks, and I do and it, and it's fun and and I can play games with it, because I can always turn my video off and really drive people crazy. But you know what? What advice would you give to an aspiring leader who wants to to evolve and make make changes to their organization or to themselves and so on.   Fidel Guzman ** 1:03:06 So advice I would give for aspiring leaders. I think the the main one that I really focus on is opportunities and challenges. Be ready to embrace any opportunities that come your way, but just know that each of those opportunities, it's going to come with its own set of challenges, and be prepared for both, and be okay with dealing both at the same time. And you know last, but you know not least, is that there are there are lots of stories of triumph, and to really curate yours. What does your story of triumph look like? What is your passion and how does, how does all of that connect?   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:53 And it may be evolving, and it may be different in five years than it is today, but both memories are important, yeah, which is cool. Well, Fidel, we've been doing Can you believe we've been doing   Fidel Guzman ** 1:04:08 this for over an hour? Time flies and you're having fun,   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:12 absolutely. And I really appreciate you being here and being a part of this, and I really appreciate all of you who have been listening to us and watching us. We're really excited that you're here. I hope that this has been valuable for you as well, and that you've learned something. Fidel, if people want to reach out to you, how can they do that? I   Fidel Guzman ** 1:04:31 want to say LinkedIn, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. What's your LinkedIn identifier? You can find me as Fidel Guzman, comma, MBA, and I'll also give you a link so you can, you can accompany it alongside this episode, yeah, but feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. That's going to be the easiest way to get in touch with me. And I'll also have some links if you want to check out my podcast. And hopefully I'll have, I'll have that book of poems out, yeah, soon.   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:59 Well, that will be. Good. Well, thank you again and again. Thank you, all of you. If you'd like to reach out to Fidel, I'm sure he would appreciate it. I would, and you're welcome to reach out to me.

Sometime ago I had the pleasure to have as a guest a gentleman named Rob Wentz. Rob appeared in episode 212 on March 8, 2024. Recently Rob introduced me to a man he described as amazing and definitely unstoppable. That introduction led to me having the opportunity to have today, Ken Kunken, the man Rob introduced me to. Ken's story is atypical to most. He had a pretty normal childhood until he went to Cornell. Rob was pretty short, but he loved all things sports and active. In his junior year he participated in a lightweight football game against Columbia University. On a kickoff he tackled an opponent but broke his neck in the process. Immediately he became a quadriplegic from the shoulders down. As he tells us, his days of physical activity and sports came to an abrupt end.   I asked Ken how he dealt with his injury. As he tells me, his family rallied around him and told him they were all there to help with whatever he needed to continue in school and to move on with his life. They were true to their word and Ken did continue to attend school after nine months of hospitalization. He secured a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering. He went on to get a Master's degree from Cornell in Industrial Engineering and then a second Master's degree this time from Columbia University in Psychology as he decided he really wanted to “help people especially those with serious disabilities” rather than continuing in the Civil Engineering arena. Ken then secured a job that led to him becoming a successful rehabilitation counselor in New York.   Ken wasn't done growing nor exploring. After two years working in the rehabilitation field through circumstances and advice from others, he went to Hofstra school of law where he obtained a Juris Doctor degree in 1982. He then went to work in the office of a district attorney where, over 40 years he progressed and grew in stature and rank.   Ken tells us how his life changed over time and through the many jobs and opportunities he decided to take. Twenty-two years ago, he married Anna. They ended up having triplet boys who now all are in school at the age of Twenty.   Ken is as unstoppable as it gets. He refused to back down from challenges. He is now retired and loving the opportunity to be with his family and help others by telling his story.     About the Guest:   In 1970, while a junior in Cornell University's College of Engineering, Ken Kunken broke his neck making a tackle on a kick-off in a lightweight football game against Columbia University. Ken sustained a spinal cord injury at the C 4-5 level, rendering him a quadriplegic, almost totally paralyzed from the shoulders down. Ken spent more than 9 months in various hospitals and rehabilitation facilities. While still a patient, Ken testified before a United States Senate Sub-Committee on Health Care, chaired by Senator Edward Kennedy. In 1971, almost 20 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act, Ken returned to the Cornell campus, where he completed his undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering. Ken estimates that he had to be pulled up or bounced down close to 100 steps just to attend his first day of classes.   Ken is the first quadriplegic to graduate from Cornell University. Upon graduation, Ken decided to change his career goal. He wanted to work with and help people, particularly those with disabilities. Ken went on to earn a Master of Arts degree at Cornell in education and a Master of Education degree at Columbia University in psychology. Ken is the first quadriplegic to earn a graduate degree from Cornell University. In 1977, Ken was hired by Abilities Inc. in Albertson, NY to be its College Work Orientation Program Coordinator. Ken coordinated a program which provided educationally related work experiences for severely disabled college students. He also maintained a vocational counseling caseload of more than 20 severely disabled individuals.   While working at the Center, Ken became a nationally certified rehabilitation counselor and made numerous public presentations on non-discrimination, affirmative action and employment of the disabled. In 1977, Ken was named the Long Island Rehabilitation Associations “Rehabilitant of the Year” and in 1979 Ken was the subject of one of the Reverend Norman Vincent Peale's nationally syndicated radio broadcasts “The American Character”. Wanting to accomplish still more, Ken enrolled in Hofstra University's School of Law, where he earned a Juris Doctor degree in 1982. Ken then went to work as an assistant district attorney in Nassau County, Long Island.   Ken was promoted a number of times during his more than 40 years with the District Attorney's Office, eventually becoming one of the Deputy Bureau Chiefs of the County Court Trial Bureau, where he helped supervise more than 20 other assistant district attorneys. In addition, over his years working in the Office, Ken supervised more than 50 student interns.   In 1996 Ken received the Honorable Thomas E. Ryan, Jr. Award presented by the Court Officers Benevolent Association of Nassau County for outstanding and dedicated service as an Assistant District Attorney. In 1999, Ken was awarded the George M. Estabrook Distinguished Service Award presented by the Hofstra Alumni Association, Inc. Beginning in 2005, for nine consecutive years, “The Ken Kunken Most Valuable Player Award” was presented annually by The Adirondack Trust Allegiance Bowl in Saratoga Springs, NY, in recognition of Ken's personal accomplishments, contributions to society and extraordinary courage.   In 2009, Ken became a member of the Board of Directors of Abilities Inc., and in 2017 he became a member of the Board of Directors for the parent company of Abilities Inc., the Viscardi Center.   In 2020, Ken was inducted into “The Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame,” as a member of the class of 2019.   In December 2023, “The Kenneth J. Kunken Award” was presented by the Nassau County District Attorney's Office, for the first time, to an outstanding Nassau County Assistant District Attorney who personifies Ken's unique spirit and love of trial work, as well as his commitment and dedication, loyalty to his colleagues and his devotion to doing justice. The Award will be presented annually.   In March 2024, Ken was named one of the Long Island Business News Influencers in Law. Ken retired from full-time employment in 2016, but continued to work with the District Attorney's Office for the next eight years in a part time capacity, providing continuing legal education lectures and litigation guidance.   For years, Ken has tried to inspire people to do more with their lives. In October 2023, Ken's memoir “I Dream of Things That Never Were: The Ken Kunken Story” was published. In 2003 Ken married Anna and in 2005 they became the proud parents of triplet boys: Joey, Jimmy and Timmy. On June 23, 2023 the triplets graduated from Oceanside High School, fifty-five years after Ken had graduated from the same school. Ways to connect with Ken:   https://www.facebook.com/ken.kunken https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61566473121422 https://www.instagram.com/ken.kunken/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenneth-j-kunken-b4b0a9a8/ https://www.youtube.com/@Ken.Kunken https://bsky.app/profile/kenkunken.bsky.social   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello once again, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host, Michael hingson, and today we have a fascinating guest, I believe. Anyway, his name is Ken. Kuan, kunken. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes, you are. Oh, good. And Ken, in 1970 underwent a problem when he was playing football and doing a tackle on a kickoff. Namely, he broke his neck and became a quadriplegic, basically from the shoulders down. I'm sort of familiar with the concept, because my wife, from birth was in a wheelchair. She was a paraplegic, paralyzed from the t3 vertebrae down, which was like right below the breast, so she was able to transfer and so on. So not quite the same, but a lot of the same issues, of course, and we're going to talk about that basically, because when you're in a wheelchair, like a lot of other kinds of disabilities, society doesn't tend to do all they should to accommodate. And I can, can make that case very well. Most people are light dependent, and we have provided reasonable accommodations for them by providing light bulbs and light on demand wherever they go, wherever they are, whatever they do, while at the same time for people who are blind, we don't get the same degree of access without pushing a lot harder. And people in wheelchairs, of course, have all sorts of physical issues as well, such as stairs and no ramps and other things like that. And I know that Ken's going to talk some about that from university days and my wife Karen face some of the same things. But anyway, we'll get to it all. Ken, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. And I think your wife, Anna is visiting with us also, right, right? Thank you. Michael, so Anna, welcome as well. Thank you so Ken. Why don't we start if we could by you telling us sort of about the early Ken, growing up and all that from being a child, and tell us a little bit about you.   Ken Kunken ** 03:40 Okay, well, if you're going back to my childhood area, Yeah, it sure is. It's quite a while ago, but I was born in 1950 and that happened to be in the midst of the polio epidemic, and unfortunately, my mother contracted polio and died when I was less than one month old. So I have an older brother, Steve, who's two years older than me, and my father brother and I ended up moving in with my grandparents for a few years before my father remarried when I was four years old. A long shot. But what's your birth date? Right? My birth date is July 15, 1950 on   Michael Hingson ** 04:23 February 24 1950 So, okay, was was just kind of hoping there was the possibility, right? Anyway, go ahead.   Ken Kunken ** 04:30 So, um, during my father's second marriage, that's when my sister Merrill was born. She's 10 years younger than I am, but unfortunately, that was not a happy marriage, and it ended in a divorce. And when I was 18, my father married for the third time. So you know, growing up in a household with a number of individuals seemingly coming and going was a little different than most people's   Michael Hingson ** 04:57 households when they were growing up. How. Was that for you?   Ken Kunken ** 05:01 Well, you know, it was nice in the sense that I got involved with a lot of different family members in my extended family. I'm very close, growing up with my grandparents, with aunts, uncles, cousins, as well as my sister and brother. And you know, I had the opportunity to interact with a lot of different people. It was difficult during my father's second marriage, because it was not a happy marriage, and, you know, it worked out in everybody's best interest when that ended in divorce. But I look back at my childhood, and I just basically call it as a very happy childhood?   Michael Hingson ** 05:42 Oh, good. Well, so no real major traumas, certainly differences, but no real harrowing kinds of things that just threw you into a complete topsy turvy at least as far as you're concerned, right? Yeah. Well, then you decided to go to Cornell, as I recall, and I know Cornell has a, I think it's a master's program, but an advanced program in hospitality. So did they feed you well at Cornell?   Ken Kunken ** 06:13 Yes, they had a very good system and fed us very well. And they have a program in hotel management, right, which I was not involved in, but there was a lot of good food at Cornell when we were there.   Michael Hingson ** 06:28 Well, that's that's always important, you know, you got to have good food at UC Irvine. We were okay. Food wise. I was on the food committee for the dorms, actually, and the food was all right, but when they had steak night that they always made a big deal about the steak was usually pretty tough, and so we we had sometimes that the food wasn't great, but they had a great soft serve ice cream machine, so lot of people took advantage of that. But anyway, so when you were at Cornell, you played football,   Ken Kunken ** 07:01 right? I was on their lightweight football team. It's for people that were smaller than the heavyweight team. When I was playing, you had to weigh 154 pounds or less two days before the game. So most of the people had played on their high school teams was too small to play on the varsity college team, but it was a varsity sport. Most of the people were very good athletes and very fast, and it was very competitive sport.   Michael Hingson ** 07:35 So tell us about that and what happened.   Ken Kunken ** 07:38 Well, during my junior year, I was injured making a tackle on a kickoff in a game against Columbia University, and when I tackled the ball carrier, I broke my neck and damaged my spinal cord, and as a result, I'm a quadriplegic. I'm almost totally paralyzed from the shoulders down,   Michael Hingson ** 08:01 and so, what kind of effect? Well, that clearly that that was pretty bad news and so on. So what kind of effect did that have on you, and how did that shape what you did going forward?   Ken Kunken ** 08:15 Oh, it totally changed my perspective on everything about myself. I mean, growing up, my life seemed to center around sports. In high school, I played on the varsity football team. I wrestled on the varsity wrestling team. I played on four different intramural softball teams. I worked on the summer as a lifeguard. Everything in my life revolved around athletics and being physically active. Now, suddenly, I couldn't be physically active at all. In fact, I am totally sedentary, sitting in a wheelchair, and I need assistance with all my activities of daily living now.   Michael Hingson ** 08:54 So what did you do when the injury happened and so on? So how did you deal with all of that?   Ken Kunken ** 09:01 Well, it was a really difficult adjustment to make. I mean, suddenly I became dependent on everybody around me, because there was not one thing I could do for myself. So it was very difficult knowing that now not only was I dependent on others, but I had to be more outgoing to be able to have asked for help when I needed it, which was difficult for me, because I had always considered myself a bit of shy person, a bit of an introvert, and now I needed to be more vocal with respect to all of my needs. So I swear, go ahead. Well, I spent the next nine months and 20 days in various hospitals and rehabilitation centers, and it was really, really difficult getting used to my new physical condition.   Michael Hingson ** 09:52 But at the same time, you could have taken the position that you just hated yourself and you just wanted to I. Make life end and so on. And it doesn't sound like that was the approach that you took.   Ken Kunken ** 10:04 Mike, I was so fortunate that I had a very supportive family who were with me and helped me every step of the way. In fact, they basically assured me that they would act as my arms and legs to make sure I could still do everything I wanted to do in my life   Michael Hingson ** 10:22 doesn't get much better than that, having a real supportive village, if you will.   Ken Kunken ** 10:27 Right? I was so fortunate, and you know, I think that helped me be able to do many things in my life that most people thought would not be possible for someone in my condition, and I was able to do it because of the help I received from my family.   Michael Hingson ** 10:44 So what did you major in at Cornell? Let's say, before the injury.   Ken Kunken ** 10:50 I before my injury, I was majoring in industrial engineering, okay? And you know, after my injury, I went back to school and continued my studies in industrial engineering and actually obtained my degree, a Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering.   Michael Hingson ** 11:08 Now, what primarily is industrial engineering?   Ken Kunken ** 11:12 Well, you know, it's kind of a technical aspect of dealing with men, material, machines, and, you know, most likely working at a business where there are a lot of different people working there, where you would try and find out what the best way of people to operate, whether it be in a factory or just in a large business setting, when you're dealing with technical aspects of the job. But I never actually worked as an engineer, because, following my degree, based on the recommendation of one of my psychology professors, I stayed at Cornell and pursued a career in counseling. And I find that a lot more suitable to not only my physical condition, but what I really wanted to do. Because, following my injury, I knew that what I really wanted to do was to devote my life and career to helping others.   Michael Hingson ** 12:08 So you very well could have made the same switch and made the same choices, even if you hadn't undergone the accident,   Ken Kunken ** 12:17 absolutely and hopefully, I would have, because I found it a lot more enjoyable, and I believe it taught me a lot about dealing with people, and it made me feel very good about myself to know that I was still in a position, despite my disability, where I could help others.   Michael Hingson ** 12:40 So you stayed at Cornell and got that master's degree in counseling, which, which really gave you that opportunity. What did you do after that?   Ken Kunken ** 12:50 Well, to increase my counseling credentials, I then went to Columbia University, where I obtained my second degree. This one was also in counseling. That degree was in psychological counseling and rehabilitation, and I decided to look for a job in the rehabilitation counseling field. And now that I had two degrees from Cornell and one from Columbia, three prestigious Ivy League degrees, two master's degrees, I didn't think I'd have much difficulty securing employment, but to my dismay, no one would hire me. This was in the mid 70s, and everyone seemed to feel I was just too disabled to work.   Michael Hingson ** 13:32 Now, why did you go to Columbia to get your second degree, your masters in rehabilitation,   Ken Kunken ** 13:39 you know? And incidentally, it that was the school I actually was injured against during the football   Michael Hingson ** 13:44 I know that's why I asked the enemy, right?   Ken Kunken ** 13:47 Yeah, but I actually applied there for my doctorate, doctorate in counseling psychology. And initially I didn't get into that program, but they invited me to participate in their master's program, and said that they would reconsider my application when I finished that degree. Now, I thought that was a special letter that I got from them because of my injury, and I thought they just wanted to see me that I could do graduate work. As it turned out, virtually everybody that applied for that program got a similar letter, and when I first met with my advisor there at Columbia, he said, you know, if you didn't get in the first time, you're probably not going to get in even when you graduate. So since I had nothing else to do at that point, I enrolled in the master's program, and I completed my second master's degree. And you know, at the time, even my advisor was pessimistic about my work prospects, wow, just because of my ability, because of my disability, and despite. Fact that here they were training people to be rehabilitation counselors and encouraging people to go into that field, they felt that due to my disability, I would still have a very difficult time gaining employment,   Michael Hingson ** 15:14 which is as ironic as it gets,   Ken Kunken ** 15:17 absolutely, absolutely and I was just very fortunate that there was a facility on Long Island called abilities Incorporated, which was part of what was then called the Human Resources Center. Is now called the Viscardi Center, after its founder, Dr Henry Viscardi, Jr, and they hired me to work as a vocational rehabilitation counselor for other individuals who had severe disabilities.   Michael Hingson ** 15:46 I'm a little bit familiar with the buscardi Center, and have found them to be very open minded in the way they operate.   Ken Kunken ** 15:54 They were terrific, absolutely terrific. And I was so fortunate to get involved with them, to be hired, to work for them, and, you know, to be associated with all the fine work they were doing it on behalf of helping other individuals with disabilities.   Michael Hingson ** 16:13 So was it primarily paraplegics and quadriplegics and so on, or did they do blind people and other disabilities as well.   Ken Kunken ** 16:21 They did a lot of different disabilities, but they did not work with people that were visually impaired. For that in New York state, there was a special agency called the commission for the visually handicapped that helped people with visual impairments, but we dealt with all different types of disabilities, whether people were hearing impaired or had not just spinal cord injuries, but other disabilities, either from birth or disabilities that they developed through diseases. And as it turned out, I was probably one of the most severely disabled of the people that I dealt with.   Michael Hingson ** 17:02 Well, but you were also, by any definition, a good role model.   Ken Kunken ** 17:06 Well, I was fortunate that I was able to help a lot of different people, and I felt that when they looked at me and saw that I was able to work despite my disability, I know it encouraged them to do their best to go out and get a job themselves.   Michael Hingson ** 17:24 And of course, it really ultimately comes down to attitude. And for you, having a positive attitude had to really help a great deal.   Ken Kunken ** 17:34 I think it made all the difference in the world. And I was very fortunate that it was my family that instilled that positive attitude in me, and they gave me so much help that after a while, I thought I'd be letting them down if I didn't do everything I could do to make something out of my life.   Michael Hingson ** 17:53 So what did you do? Well, not only   Ken Kunken ** 17:57 did I go back to school and complete my education, but I went to work and, you know, got up early every day, and with the aid of a personal care attendant, I was able to go to work and function as a vocational counselor and help others in trying to achieve their goals.   Michael Hingson ** 18:17 Now, were you going to school while you were doing some of this?   Ken Kunken ** 18:20 No, I finished my second okay, and now was able to work full time.   Michael Hingson ** 18:27 Okay, so you did that, and how long did you work there?   Ken Kunken ** 18:32 Well, I worked there for a little over two years, and you know, my duties and responsibilities kept expanding while I was there, and one of my duties was to speak at conferences before groups and organizations concerning affirmative action and non discrimination for people with disabilities. And often after my talks, I would be asked questions, and while I would do my best to respond appropriately, I was always careful to caution the question is that they should really consult with a lawyer about their concerns. And I guess it didn't take long before I started to think, you know, there's no reason why I couldn't become that lawyer. So after a little over two years, I decided to leave the job, and I went to Hofstra University School of Law.   Michael Hingson ** 19:20 So now what? What year was this?   Ken Kunken ** 19:24 I left the job. I started the job in 77 I left in 79 when I started law school.   Michael Hingson ** 19:32 Okay, so you went to Hofstra,   Ken Kunken ** 19:35 right? And while I was at Hofstra through my brother's suggestion. My brother was working as a public defender at the time, he suggested I do an internship at the district attorney's office. So after my second year of law school, I did an internship there during the summer, and I found a new way. I could help people and serve the community as a whole, and I really enjoyed that work. So when I was in my third year of law school, I applied for a full time position with the district attorney's office, and I was very fortunate that the district attorney was a very progressive, self confident individual who based his hiring decision on my abilities rather than my disability.   Michael Hingson ** 20:27 Wow, that had to be, especially back then, a fairly, as you said, progressive, but an amazing thing to do, because even today, there are so many times that we get challenges and too many things thrown in our way, but you had someone who really thought enough of you and obviously decided that your abilities were such on the job that you could do   Ken Kunken ** 20:51 it. I was very fortunate to have come in contact with the district attorney at the time. His name was Dennis Dillon, and he seemed to know that when I'd go to court, a jury was not going to base its verdict on my inability to walk, but rather on my skill and competence as an attorney. And thanks to the training and guidance I received in the office, I became a very confident and competent, skilled trial attorney   Michael Hingson ** 21:22 well, and it had to be the way you projected yourself that would convince a jury to decide cases in the right way. So again, kudos to you.   Ken Kunken ** 21:33 Thank you. Well, I certainly did my best to do that, and at the time that I applied for this job, I didn't know of any quadriplegics that were trial attorneys. May have been some, but I didn't know of any. Certainly there were none on Long Island, and certainly no assistant district attorneys at the time that I knew of who were quadriplegics.   Michael Hingson ** 21:59 Now, of course, the question that comes to mind is, so was the office accessible?   Ken Kunken ** 22:05 No question. And you know, let me just go further by telling you that my first day in court, I couldn't even fit through the swinging doorways in the courtroom. They were too narrow to let me get through to get to the prosecutor's table, because my electric wheelchair was too wide.   Michael Hingson ** 22:24 What did you do? Or what happened?   Ken Kunken ** 22:27 Well, eventually they had to take off the swinging doorways and the screws and bolts that kept them in place, but usually I had to go very roundabout on a long way to get to the back of each courtroom and go through the back, which was really difficult. And one of my assignments happened to be to our traffic court Bureau, which was in a neighboring building on the second floor, and unfortunately, there the elevator was broken. So after three days, I was actually received my first promotion, because they didn't know when it would be fixed. But eventually I was able to get into court, and I did a lot of litigation while I was   Michael Hingson ** 23:10 there. How did judges react to all of this?   Ken Kunken ** 23:15 You know, it was very new to them as well. And you know, there are times when you needed to approach the bench and talk very quietly, you know, to so the jury wouldn't hear you, and it was very difficult, because benches are elevated, yeah. And I had difficulty approaching the bench or even turning my head side enough to look up at the judges and then for them to hear me. And sometimes they would have to get off the bench, and, you know, meet me on the side of the courtroom to have conferences and but for the most part, I thought they were very supportive. I thought they appreciated the hard work that I was doing, and I think they tried to be accommodating when they could.   Michael Hingson ** 23:58 Did you ever encounter any that just were totally intolerant of all of it,   Ken Kunken ** 24:02 sure, you know, many of them were very impatient. Some of them had difficulty hearing and when I was trying to look up and talk to them without the jury hearing, some of them had trouble hearing me because, you know, they were much higher up than I was in my wheelchair. So it was very challenging.   Michael Hingson ** 24:23 I was involved in a lawsuit against an airline because they wouldn't allow me and my guide dog to sit where we wanted to sit on the airplane, which was in direct violation of even the rules of the airline. And when it went to court, the judge who was assigned it was a federal judge, and he was like 80, and he just couldn't hear anything at all. It was, it was really too bad. And of course, my and my wife was was with me, and of course, in her chair, so she wasn't sitting in a regular row. And he even grilled her, what are you doing? Why aren't you sitting in a row? And she said, I'm in a wheelchair. Oh, yeah, it's amazing that hopefully we are we have progressed a little bit from a lot of that the last thing. So, yeah, the lawsuit was 1985 so it was a long time ago, and hopefully we have progressed some. But still, there are way too many people who don't get it, and who don't understand nearly as much as they should, and don't internalize that maybe we're not all the same, and we can't necessarily do everything exactly the same every single time,   Ken Kunken ** 25:35 right? And you know, I had the added misfortune of having my injury 20 years before the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, and that made an enormous difference for not just people in wheelchairs, but people with all different types of disabilities.   Michael Hingson ** 25:53 So how did you, in general, learn to deal with people's perceptions of you, rather than the reality? Well, that is a lot. Yeah, there are lots of perceptions, right?   Ken Kunken ** 26:07 You know, many people think that because you have a physical disability, that you must also have an intellectual disability. And people would often come into my room and wherever I was, whether it was when I was first in the hospital or later at the office and speak to the person next to me and ask them questions about me, as if I couldn't speak for myself, yeah, even as if I wasn't even there. And it took a while for me to be more outgoing and convince people that, yes, they can deal with me. You know, I can still talk and think. And I think whenever a jury came into the courtroom for the first time, I think they were very surprised to see the prosecutor as somebody with a disability who was sitting in an electric wheelchair.   Michael Hingson ** 26:56 I know once we went to a restaurant, and of course, having a family with two people in two different disabilities, went to this restaurant, and we were waiting to be seated, and finally, Karen said the hostess is just staring at us. She doesn't know who to talk to, because I'm not making eye contact, necessarily. And Karen, sitting in her chair is way lower. And so Karen just said to me, Well, this lady doesn't know who to talk to. So I said, Well, maybe we can get her to just ask us what what we want and what help we need. Are carrying on the conversation. Got this, this nice lady to recognize. Oh, you know, I can talk with them. And so she said, Well, how can I help you? And we both kind of said we'd like to sit and have breakfast. Oh, okay, and it went well from there. But it is, it is a challenge, and people have crazy perceptions, I know, going down the stairs at the World Trade Center on September 11, when I encountered the firefighters coming up for a while, they blocked me from going because they decided that I needed help, and they would, they would ask me questions, like, we're going to help you. Is that okay? And I said, No, it's not. But they always talked loud, because if you're blind, you obviously can't hear either, right? And it was difficult to get them to deal with all of that. And finally, I had to just say, Look, I got my friend David over here, who can see we're working together. We're fine, and they let us go because I had a sighted person with me, not that I had the ability to go downstairs, even though I had to help keep David focused sometimes, and also, there's no magic for a blind person to go downstairs. You know, you go down the stairs, you hold the rail, you turn left there, in this case, and you go down the next batch of stairs. But people don't recognize that. Maybe there are techniques that we use to deal with the same things that they deal with, only in a different way.   Ken Kunken ** 29:03 Absolutely, and that applies to work as well. I mean, people assume that if you can't do a job the way most people seem to do it, who don't have a disability, they automatically assume you're not going to be able to function at all at the job. Yeah, and a lot of times, it takes a lot of convincing to show people that there are other ways of approaching a problem and handling a work situation.   Michael Hingson ** 29:27 One of the common things that we as blind people face, and it happens in schools and so on, is, Oh, you don't need to learn braille that's outmoded. You can listen to books that are computer generated or recorded and so on. And the reality is, no we need to learn braille for the same reason the sighted people learn to read print, and that is, it's all about learning to spell. It's learning about sentence structure and so on, and it's learning about having better ways to be able to truly enter. Interact with the text as I tell people, I don't care what anyone says, you will not learn physics as well from recordings as you can by truly having access to everything in a braille book, because you can refer back easier, and they've done some improvements in recording, but it's still not the same as what you get when you do Braille, which is the same thing for you reading print, or any other sighted person reading print. You read that print because there are various reasons why you need to do that, as opposed to learning how to just listen to books recorded anyway,   Ken Kunken ** 30:36 right? Well, I had the added misfortune of being injured well before they had laptop   Michael Hingson ** 30:41 computers. Yeah, me too. Well, I yeah, not. I wasn't injured, but yeah,   Ken Kunken ** 30:46 right. So trying to do my schoolwork or later work at a job, you know, it posed even more challenges. Now, of course, having ebooks and being able to use a computer, it's made a big difference, not just for me, but for many individuals.   Michael Hingson ** 31:04 Sure, do you use like programs like Dragon Naturally Speaking to interact with the computer?   Ken Kunken ** 31:10 You know, I tried that, and I had a lot of difficulty with it. I know you need to train it. And when I first tried it, which was in its infancy, it just wasn't responding well to my voice, so I don't use that. I've been fortunate with that with advancements in wheelchairs, my wheelchair now has a Bluetooth device connected to my joystick, and I could actually move my left arm a little bit where I could work the joystick and move the mouse on my computer, moving my joystick. You   Michael Hingson ** 31:45 really might want to look into dragon again. It is just so incredibly different than it was years ago. I remember when Dragon Dictate first came out, and all of the challenges of it, but they have done so much work in developing the language models that it's it's a whole lot better than it used to be, and, yeah, you have to train it. But training isn't all that hard nowadays, even by comparison to what it was, and it gives you a lot of flexibility. And I am absolutely certain it would recognize your voice without any difficulty?   Ken Kunken ** 32:22 Well, it's good to hear that they've made those advancements,   Michael Hingson ** 32:26 and it's not nearly as expensive as it used to be, either. Well, that's good   Ken Kunken ** 32:30 to hear. I know when I first tried it, it was incredibly frustrating, yeah, because it wasn't responding well to my voice, and   Michael Hingson ** 32:38 it was like $1,500 as I recall, it was pretty expensive right now, it's maybe two or $300 and there's also a legal version of it and other things like that. Yeah, you really ought to try it. You might find it makes a big difference. It's worth exploring Anyway, okay, but be that as it may, so you you dealt with people's perceptions, and how did you, as you continue to encounter how people behave towards you, how did you keep from allowing that to embitter you or driving you crazy?   Ken Kunken ** 33:15 Well, you know, certainly at work, I needed to go in a jacket and tie, and I found that when you're wearing a jacket and tie, many people treated you differently than when you're just wearing street clothes. So I think that certainly helped that work. But I later became a supervisor in the district attorney's office, and people saw that, you know, not only could they talk with me on an intellectual level, but they saw I was supervising other assistant district attorneys, and I think that convinced a lot of people pretty quickly that I knew what I was doing and that they should treat me no different than they would any other lawyer, Assistant District Attorney.   Michael Hingson ** 33:59 Yeah, well, and it is projecting that confidence in a in a positive way that does make such a big difference,   Ken Kunken ** 34:08 absolutely. And I think when people saw me at work, one of the things that I appreciated was I never even needed to mention again that somebody with a disability could work, and not just at an entry level position, that a very responsible position. I was convinced them, just by showing them, without ever having to mention that somebody with a disability could do this kind of work.   Michael Hingson ** 34:35 I never bring it up unless it comes up, and a lot of times, especially when talking on the phone and so on, it never comes up. I've had times when people eventually met me, and of course, were themselves, somewhat amazed. I'm a blind person and all that I said, nothing's changed here, folks. The reality is that the same guy I was when you were just talking to me on the phone. So let's move forward. Word. And mostly people got it and and dealt with it very well.   Ken Kunken ** 35:08 Well, I used to have a lot of people, when they meet me for the first time, were very surprised to see that I was in a wheelchair. I never would say, Boy, you didn't sound like you were disabled. Yeah, right. And I think they were very surprised when they met me.   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 I've had some people who've said that to me, Well, you didn't sound blind on the telephone. And so depending on how snarky I feel or not, I might say, Well, what does a blind person sound like? And that generally tends to stop them, because the reality is, what does a blind person sound like? It doesn't mean anything at all, and it's really their attitudes that need to change. And I know as a keynote speaker for the last 23 years, just by doing the things that I do, and talking and communicating with people, it is also all about helping to change attitudes, which is a lot of fun.   Ken Kunken ** 36:03 You know, Michael, when I first went back to college, I was approached by a student on campus, and when he asked if I was Ken kunken, and I responded that I was, he asked, aren't you supposed to be in the hospital? Now, you know, I was very tempted to say yes, but I escaped. Please don't tell anyone. But you know, it even took a while to just show people, somebody with a disability does not need to be permanently in a rehab facility or a hospital or staying at home with their families, that there's an awful lot somebody could do and to be seen out in public and show people that you can work, you can go to school, you can do basically what everybody else does once you're given the opportunity.   Michael Hingson ** 36:55 Of course, being spiteful, my response would have been, well, yeah, I should still be in the hospital doing brain surgery, but I decided that I didn't want to be a doctor because I didn't have any patients, so I decided to take a different career, right? Oh, people, yeah, what do you do? And we all face it, but the reality is, and I believe very firmly and have have thought this way for a long time, that like it or not, we're teachers, and we do need to teach people, and we need to take that role on, and it can be difficult sometimes, because you can lose patience, depending on what kind of questions people ask and so on. But the reality is, we are teachers, and our job is to teach, and we can make that a very fun thing to do as we move forward, too.   Ken Kunken ** 37:44 You know, Michael, I found most people really want to be helpful. Yeah, a lot of times they don't know how to be helpful or how to go about it, or what to say or what to do, but most people are really good people that want to help. And you know, the more they come in contact with somebody with a disability, the more comfortable they will feel   Michael Hingson ** 38:04 right, and they'll learn to ask if you want help, and they won't make the assumption, which is, of course, the whole point.   Ken Kunken ** 38:14 You know, Michael, when you leave the job the district attorney's office, you would go through what they call an exit interview, where they would ask you what you thought was the best part of the job, what you thought could be improved. And I'm so happy and proud to say that I was told that a number of assistant district attorneys said that one of the best parts of their job was meeting and getting to know and working with me. And the reason why I wanted to highlight that was I know they weren't talking about me being Ken kunken, but me being somebody with a disability. Because unless they had a close relative with a disability, people rarely came in daily contact with somebody with a disability, and for them, it was often a revelation that they found helped motivate and inspire them to work harder in their job, and they were very appreciative of that,   Michael Hingson ** 39:12 but they also learned that the disability wasn't what defined you. What defined you was you and your personality and what you did not necessarily exactly how you   Ken Kunken ** 39:24 did it, absolutely. And I think it was also a revelation that working with me did not involve additional work for them, right? I was able to carry my own weight, and often was more productive than many of the people I was working with. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 39:42 Well, and I think that's a very crucial point about the whole thing. When you became a lawyer, did that change your view of yourself? I mean, I know it was a kind of an evolution that got you to being a lawyer. But how did becoming a lawyer and when go. Answer, and getting the law degree and then working in a law office. How did that change your perceptions and your attitudes and outlook?   Ken Kunken ** 40:06 You know, it really changed it a great deal, because I had people look at me with a very different eye when they were looking at me. You know, I enjoyed my work as a vocational rehabilitation counselor very much. And I encourage people to do that work. But I felt that there were people that looked at me and thought, you know, he has a disability. Maybe he could only work with other people had disabilities. And I was very proud of the fact that when I became a lawyer, I was working with very few people that had disabilities. Most of them were able bodied. And I wanted to show people that you're not limited in any way with who you're going to work with and what you could do. And I think it's so important for people to keep their perceptions high, their expectations high when they're dealing with individuals, because just because somebody has a disability does not mean they cannot perform and do as much as virtually anybody else on the job   Michael Hingson ** 41:14 well, and you clearly continue to have high expectations of and for you, but also I would suspect that the result was you had high expectations for those around you as well. You helped them shape what they did, and by virtue of the way you functioned, you helped them become better people as well.   Ken Kunken ** 41:38 Well, I certainly tried to and from the feedback that I've gotten from many of the people I worked with, that seemed to be the case, and I'm very proud of that. In fact, I might add Michael that two years ago, the district attorney, now her name is Ann Donnelly, actually started an award in the district attorney's office that's given out annually that they named the Kenneth J kunken award. They named it for me because they wanted to recognize and honor the outstanding Assistant District Attorney each year who displayed the work ethic and the loyalty and devotion to the office as well the person in the wheelchair, right? And I'm very proud of that,   Michael Hingson ** 42:25 but I will bet, and I'm not trying to mitigate it, but I will bet that mostly that award came about because of the things that you did and your work ethic, and that the wheelchair aspect of it was really somewhat second nature. And far down the list,   Ken Kunken ** 42:41 I'm very proud of the fact that that seems to be the case and and one of the aspects of that award was they talked about the effect that I had on my colleagues, and the beneficial effect that that was Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:56 because the reality is, it ultimately comes down to who you are and what you do and and I'm not, and again, I'm not mitigating being in a wheelchair or having any kind of disability, but I really, truly believe ultimately the disability isn't what is not what defines us, it's how we are and what we do and how we behave in society that really will be what helps us make a mark on whatever we're involved with,   Ken Kunken ** 43:28 right? And I think for some, as I say, it was a revelation to see that somebody with a disability had the same needs, wants and desires as everybody else. We were certainly no different with respect to that right.   Michael Hingson ** 43:43 So how long did you work as a lawyer and in the district attorney's office?   Ken Kunken ** 43:49 Well, I worked there full time for more than 33 years, and then I worked there in a part time capacity for an additional eight years. So all told, more than 40 years I worked there, and in fact, I'm one of the longest serving Nassau County assistant district attorneys that they've ever had.   Michael Hingson ** 44:09 Now, why did you go back to part time after 33 years?   Ken Kunken ** 44:15 Well, there are a number of reasons. You know, I I thought that due to some health issues, I wanted to play it safe and make sure that I locked in my pension, because I thought there would be a bigger payout if I retired while I was still working than if I died while I was working on the job. As it turned out, my health issue seemed to resolve itself, but I decided that, you know, retiring, when I did, gave me some more time to spend at home with my family, and I really appreciated being able to do that.   Michael Hingson ** 44:53 That's a very admirable thing. Can't complain about that. So what keeps you going?   Ken Kunken ** 45:00 What keeps me going now is my family. Just so your listeners know, I'm married to the wonderful woman that's actually sitting to my right right now. My name is Anna, and we're actually the parents of triplet sons. We have three incredible boys, Joseph, James and Timothy. They're now 20 years old, and they're currently sophomores at three separate colleges in upstate New York, and they're the light of my life. I couldn't be more proud. And they're what keeps me going these days.   Michael Hingson ** 45:33 What colleges?   Ken Kunken ** 45:36 Well, James is going to the State University of New York at Morrisville, where he's studying renewable energy. Timothy is pursuing a dual major at the SI Newhouse School of Communications in the Maxwell School of Public Policy at Syracuse University. And my son Joseph is actually attending my alma mater, Cornell University, where he's majoring in mechanical engineering.   Michael Hingson ** 46:06 And do they all go watch football games on the weekend? I mean, given the fact that least a couple of those are at schools with good football   Ken Kunken ** 46:13 teams, right? But you know what? They never wanted anything to do with football. But they are all physically active, in great shape, and in fact, all of them have pursued the martial arts, and all three of them are second degree black belts in Taekwondo. And they've all even worked as instructors in the Taekwondo studio here in Long Island.   Michael Hingson ** 46:35 So dad has to be careful, though they'll take you out, huh?   Ken Kunken ** 46:39 You bet. In fact, I've got my own three personal bodyguards when   Michael Hingson ** 46:43 I got right, you can't do better than that. And and Anna, which I'll bet is more formidable than all of them   Ken Kunken ** 46:53 on, is incredible. I mean, she is just a force that is unstoppable. She's incredible.   Michael Hingson ** 47:01 Well, that's cool all the way around, and it's, it's great that you, you have a good neighborhood around you to support you, and I think we all need that. That's that's pretty important to to deal with. So with your job and all that, now that you are retired, I don't know whether you have much stress in your life, but how do you deal with stress? And how does stress affect you and or does it make any difference with a disability?   Ken Kunken ** 47:30 It sure does. It's an interesting question, because before my injury, one of the ways I would deal with stress would be out of the football field, yeah, you know, being physically active, running into an individual, you know, to tackle or block, that was a great way to relieve some of my stress. Once I had my injury, I no longer had that outlet, so I had to find different ways of dealing with it. One of my ways was, you know, trying to sit outside and sit in the garden or by water and, you know, just enjoy nature and try and relax and clear my mind. But now my best stress relievers are my three children. I'm spending time with them, watching all that they're doing. I find that the best way of me to be able to relax and relieve any anxieties that I have?   Michael Hingson ** 48:23 Well, I think there's a lot of value in doing things that keep you calm and focused. I think that is the best way to deal with stress. All too often, we don't think or be introspective about ourselves and our lives, and we don't really step back and get rid of that stress mentally, and that's where it really all comes from. I mean, I know people have physical manifestations of stress and so on, but I would submit that typically, stress is so much more an emotional thing because we haven't learned how to deal with it, and you clearly have   Ken Kunken ** 49:02 it took a while, but yeah, now I have my family to help every step of the way, and that includes relieving the stress that I've under.   Michael Hingson ** 49:10 Yeah, and stress is important to get rid of and not have around. It will help you live a whole lot longer not to have stress I just went through a week ago and op was, you know, an operation to change a heart valve. And people keep asking me, well, Weren't you worried? Weren't you stressed over that? And my answer was, No, I had no control over it really happening to my knowledge, I don't think that I've been a very poor eater, and all of my arteries and everything were good. And so no, I wasn't stressed, even when I first learned that there was an issue and wasn't an emergency room for over 24 hours, mostly sitting around, I chose not to be stressed, and it was a choice. And so I just listened to things around me and became quite entertained at some of the people. People who were in the emergency room with me, but being stressed wasn't going to do anything to help the process at all. So I refuse to get stressed.   Ken Kunken ** 50:09 That's great. And you know, I think this finally retiring has helped me deal with stress as well, because working as an assistant district attorney, there can be a lot of stressful situations in the office, and it's, it's nice to finally be retired and be able to enjoy all of my activities outside of the office.   Michael Hingson ** 50:33 What would you say is probably the most stressful thing that you had to endure as an attorney? You were, I mean, you did this for 40 years, or almost 40 years? So what? Well, actually, yeah, for 40 years. So what would you say is the most stressful thing that you ever had to deal with?   Ken Kunken ** 50:50 Well, I had to rely on, you know, my memory, because it was difficult for me even turning pages of a book or pulling, you know, pieces of paper out of a file, and there was a lot of paperwork that you get to be familiar with, whether they be grand jury testimony or prior witness statements. And I had to rely a lot of my memory and through the help of student interns or paralegals or secretaries, and it was very difficult. And I might add, you know, just to give you one anecdote, one day after I had convicted a defendant of, you know, felony, you know, he was a person with a lot of prior involvement with the criminal justice system, and I was about to go down for his sentencing, he jumped in the elevator with me, and now we're alone in the elevator riding down, and here I am with this person that I convicted of a serious case, and I'm about to recommend that he go to an upstate prison. And he approaches me and says, I have a proposition for you. If you don't send me to jail, I'll agree to work as your personal care attendant for a year, which really struck me as odd. I mean, he must have thought that working for me for a year would be the equivalent of going to prison for a few years. But fortunately, the elevator door opened and I politely turned down his request and went to court, and he was sentenced to two to four years in an upstate prison.   Michael Hingson ** 52:28 Still was creative,   52:30 right?   Michael Hingson ** 52:33 So in all of your life and all the things you've done, what are you most proud   Ken Kunken ** 52:36 of, well, but definitely most proud of my family life? I mean, as I indicated, I'm married now, married for more than 21 years now, my three boys are sophomores in college and doing absolutely great, and make me proud every single day. But I'm proud of the fact that I was able to go back to school, complete my education and work at a job and earn a living where I was able to support myself and able to purchase a house and live now with my wife and children and lead as just about as normal a life as any other family would lead.   Michael Hingson ** 53:18 Now being married to Ana is that your first marriage? It sure is. So there we go. Well, I hear you and but you guys met late, and I'm going to step out on a limb and say it proves something that I've always felt, which is, you'll get married when the right person comes along, especially if you're mature enough to recognize it,   Ken Kunken ** 53:41 you're right. And I was very fortunate that the right person came along in my life, and we have a very happy marriage that I cannot picture life without him right now,   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 my wife and I got married when I was 32 she was 33 but we knew what we wanted in a partner, and when we first met each other, it just sort of clicked right from the beginning. We met in January of 1982 and in July, I asked her to marry me, and we got married in November of 1982 and so we were married for 40 years before she passed. And you know, there are always challenges, but, but you deal with it. So it must have been really an interesting time and an interesting life, suddenly discovering you have three boy triplets.   Ken Kunken ** 54:31 You know, it really was well, you know, when I decided to get married, she told me that she wanted to have my baby, and not just any baby my baby, she said she wanted to see a little pumpkin running around our home. And this really seemed impossible at the time. I had been paralyzed for more than 30 years, and I was already in my 50s, but we looked into various options, including in vitro fertilization and. And we're very excited, excited to learn we could still, I could still father a child. So we pursued it. And you know, through good fortune, good luck, and I guess somebody smiling on us from above, Anna became pregnant with triplets, and I couldn't be happier to have these three wonderful boys in my life.   Michael Hingson ** 55:21 So did becoming a father change you? Or how did you evolve? When that all happened,   Ken Kunken ** 55:26 it sure did. I mean, you know, it went from me being number one in honors life to suddenly being number four after all, three boys got the attention they needed, but it was wonderful for me to be able to help shape their lives and guide them so that they would develop the right character and values and learn the importance of helping others throughout their lives, which they do, and It's I think it's made me a better person, being able to help and guide them. That's cool.   Michael Hingson ** 56:07 Well, the the other thing I would ask is, if you had a chance to go back and talk to a younger Ken, what would you say? What would you teach them so that they would maybe make mistakes that you made?   Ken Kunken ** 56:18 Well, I'd say there's an awful lot you could still do in life, even without your physical movement, and sometimes it takes a lot of patience and a lot of self reflection, but to realize there's an awful lot you can do and that they need to keep their expectations high for themselves as well as for others, and to realize that just because something has not been done before doesn't mean they cannot do it now. They've got to find different ways of approaching problems and handling it and developing some self confidence in themselves and their ability to deal with difficult situations.   Michael Hingson ** 57:03 How did the Americans with Disabilities Act improve all that you did and make your life, especially on the job, better?   Ken Kunken ** 57:12 Well, it, you know, made facilities so much more accessible. When I first went back to college, there was not one ramp or curb cut on the entire campus. On my first day back in school, I had to be either pulled up or bounced down close to 100 steps just to attend my classes, and as I indicated, in the DAs office, I couldn't even fit through the swinging doorways to get in the courtroom. So it made it tremendously easier to not have to deal with all the physical challenges, but it also made it better for dealing with other people and their attitudes about dealing with people with disabilities, because thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, you see more people with disabilities out in public. So people are more used to seeing, dealing, interacting with people, and seeing what they can do and that they're just like everybody else. And as a result, people's attitudes have been changing, and I think that's helped me as well, in many different ways.   Michael Hingson ** 58:20 Cool, well, you have written a book about all of this. Tell me about the book.   Ken Kunken ** 58:27 Okay, I actually started writing a book when I was still in the rehab facility. Not long after I was hurt, a friend of my aunt Lorraine's by the name of Albert meglan visited me in the hospital and thought that one it may help me deal with my depression by talking about what I was going through, but also inform other individuals what a spinal cord injury was like and what's involved with rehabilitation. So he used to visit me in the rehab facility one day a week for a number of weeks for me to start writing a book about my experiences. And then when I went back to school, I started working on it on my own, but I would pick it up and stop and start and stop again over the course of 50 years. And then once I retired, I had more time to sit down with my wife, and I would dictate to her, and she would type it on her laptop computer until we finally finished my memoir, which is called I dream of things that never were, the Ken kunken story, and it's published by a company called 12 tables Press, and they could learn more about my book by going on my website, which is kenkunkin.com and I might add that where I got the title of my book was six months after my injury. I was asked to testify before a United States Health subcommittee chaired by Senate. Senator Edward Kennedy. And eight days after my testimony, Senator Kennedy sent me a glass paperweight in the mail that had an inscription on it that the senator said his late brother Robert Kennedy liked very much. And the inscription read, some men see things as they are and say, Why I dream of things that never were. And say, why not? And that's where I got the title of my book. I dream of things that never were.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:28 Yeah, that's cool. And where can people get the book?   Ken Kunken ** 1:00:35 Well, it's available on Amazon. It's also available at the Cornell bookstore, and if they go on my website, Ken kunken.com spellkin For me, please. It's K U N, as in Nancy. K e n that tells of a number of ways that they could purchase the book, both the hardcover book, it's also available as a Kindle version as an e book, and just recently, we put it out as an audio book as well. And they could learn all about it by going to the website, but certainly it's available on Amazon. If they wanted to order in bulk, they could contact my publisher directly, and he could help them fulfill that type of order. Cool.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:22 That is great. So now the real question is, are there any more books in Ken to come out?   Ken Kunken ** 1:01:28 Well, this book took me 50 years to I know you got to go a little bit faster. So no, I think I wrote down everything that I wanted to convey to people in that book, and now I'm actively just promoting the book like you. I've spoken at a number of different events as a motivational speaker, and you know, the book has given me a way to get m

Amy Brown is co-host of the Bobby Bones show. The ACM and CMA award winning program and heard on 190 stations and the #1 Country morning show in the US reaching millions of listeners! Amy also co-host Country Top 30 with Bobby Bones, a 4-hour music program airing on more than 240 stations in the US and Canada and hosts Women of iHeart Country. A show devoted to supporting female artists and voices airing on more than 150 iHeart Country radio stations nationwide.  Additionally she hosts Feeling Things with Amy and Kat, an Outweigh Podcast and oversees and produces the Amy Brown Podcast Network. Which is dedicated to health and wellness programming. A two time Gracie Award winner and and one of radio inks influential women in radio. Amy also hosts iHeart radio Album release parties for some of Country music biggest stars and participates in the company's annual events like the iHeart Radio Music Awards, iHeart Music Festival and iHeart Country Festival.  Inside and outside of the studio, Amy is passionate about raising awareness and funds for numerous charitable organizations including St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and TJ Martell Foundation and the American Red Cross. . . . . .  Follow Amy Brown on Instagram Check out all the work she is doing at radioamy . . . . .  Owen Learns He Has What it Takes: A Lesson in Resilience Lucy Learns to Be Brave: A Lesson in Courage⁠ Grab your tickets today for the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Raising Capable Kids Conference⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with David Thomas, Sissy Goff and special guests! Sign up to receive the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠monthly newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to keep up to date with where David and Sissy are speaking, where they are taco'ing, PLUS conversation starters for you and your family to share! Connect with David, Sissy, and Melissa at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠raisingboysandgirls.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . . . . .  If you would like to partner with Raising Boys and Girls as a podcast sponsor, fill out our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Advertise with us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ form. A special thank you to our sponsors: LAGOON: Go to LagoonSleep.com/RBG and take their awesome 2 minute sleep quiz to find your match. Use the code RBG for 15% off your first purchase. QUINCE: Give your summer closet an upgrade—with Quince. Go to Quince.com/rbg for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty-five -day returns.  THRIVE MARKET: Skip the junk without overspending. Head over to ThriveMarket.com/rbg to get 30% off your first order and a FREE $60 gift.  NIV APPLICATION BIBLE: Save an additional 10% on any NIV Application Bible and NIV Application Commentary Resources by visiting FAITHGATEWAY.COM/NIVAB and using promo code RBG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sponsorships aren't just about slapping your logo on something anymore. If you want to make an impact, you need to think bigger, bolder—and know when to step into the driver's seat.That's the appeal of F1 sponsorships, where precision meets pageantry, and brand integration is as strategic as the race itself. In this episode, we tap into that high-speed energy with the help of our special guest, Ondar Tarlow, marketing consultant for action sports. Together, we explore what B2B marketers can learn from global sponsorships, smart storytelling, and knowing when to go all in—and when to walk away.About our guest, Ondar TarlowOndar Tarlow has over 20 years of experience in marketing and branding. He's known for engaging audiences through data-driven insights and witty, creative storytelling to achieve results. He has been leveraging AI to boost campaign performance results by 5x with propensity models and cutting production time by 75% using Generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Adobe Firefly, all while upholding IP standards.As Chief Marketing Officer at Kinecta Federal Credit Union and Pacific Premier Bank, he spearheaded award-winning campaigns that resulted in over $1.7 billion in product volume and tens of thousands of new customers. These successes earned him industry recognition, including Diamond Awards for brand awareness and a Top 100 Marketer award.Currently, Ondar serves as a marketing consultant for motorsports, financial, and lifestyle brands, partnering with organizations like Fast Lane Drive. His passion for motorsports, including attending 11 Formula 1 races worldwide, inspires his focus on high-performance teamwork and precision. Ondar's sponsorship expertise - demonstrated through collaborations with the LA Chargers, LA Galaxy, Anaheim Ducks, Luft 10 (Porsche), and BeachLife Music Festival - highlights his ability to connect brands with their ideal target audiences. Ondar holds a BA in Psychology from California State University, Northridge, and has earned digital marketing certifications from UCLA and trained with the American Red Cross in Crisis Communications and Media Relations. Ondar is also dedicated to community development, serving on the board of Junior Achievement, which provides youth with financial education and career readiness tools.What B2B Companies Can Learn From F1 Sponsorships:Don't just show up—integrate. It's not enough to slap your logo on something and call it a day. True brand partnerships go deeper. “Really any company that can afford it, can get a logo. But when you're doing a true brand integration like Oracle has done with Red Bull, that's really where things can pay off.” The ROI comes from relevance, not just visibility. Think about how your product can become part of the story.No plan, no payoff. As Ondar puts it: “Plan, plan. plan. And then data, data, and data.” B2B marketers must tie sponsorships to broader company strategy from the very beginning. That means aligning with your CEO and CFO, knowing what problem you're trying to solve, and figuring out how to measure impact—before you sign the dotted line.Go niche to go big. F1's PacSun collaboration proves you don't have to outspend Rolex to make an impact. You just need the right story. “They really thought about it... and what they've been able to create is an interest in F1 from this demographic.” By focusing on Gen Alpha and teenage girls, PacSun built a new fanbase and drove fashion sales—without buying trackside banners. In B2B, the same principle applies: niche audiences, well-served, can generate outsized returns.Quotes*“You have to test. There's going to be periods of time where you're gonna do something new, and you can't be afraid to fail…When you're finding out something that's working, then you need to double down and you need to take the risks. You need to take those risks and move forward with them. Things that aren't working, don't marry yourself to them. Figure out what you need to tweak and then continue to test. Marketing is not an exact science.”*“ Plan, plan, plan, and then data, data, and data. So first off, the plan is you have to make sure you're aware of what the strategy is of the company that you're with. And if you're a CMO, you're obviously responsible for the marketing strategy, and you should have a seat at the table as part of developing the strategy as far as the company, in a whole. So that's first off, and then understanding exactly what the challenge is, and then how are you going to be able to come up with a solution based on the decisions that you're making based on brand integration. And then from there is what data can you capture and how can you utilize that data so that you can drive metrics and those reporting metrics to show exactly what the benefit is of the partnership is that you're involved with.”*“ Brands can really leverage [figuring] out what the storyline is. To get the human aspect to it. And I think that that is a great opportunity for brands to look at is that if they're gonna invest in a driver or they're gonna invest in a team is what personalities are making up that team there.”Time Stamps[0:55] Meet Ondar Tarlow, marketing consultant for action sports. [01:07] Why F1 Sponsorships?[02:59] Ondar's Background[04:50] The Rise of F1 in the US[06:34] Understanding F1 Sponsorships[11:28] ROI on F1 Sponsorships[15:03] Drive to Survive: Impact on F1[18:08] Anatomy of an F1 Sponsorship Deal[24:47] The High Stakes of F1 Sponsorships[28:25] The Appeal of F1 Events[29:32] Strategic Brand Integration in F1 Sponsorships[36:34] The Importance of Planning and Data in Sponsorships[40:53] Leveraging F1 Storylines for Brand Success[45:06] Final Thoughts and TakeawaysLinksConnect with Ondar on LinkedInAbout Remarkable!Remarkable! is created by the team at Caspian Studios, the premier B2B Podcast-as-a-Service company. Caspian creates both nonfiction and fiction series for B2B companies. If you want a fiction series check out our new offering - The Business Thriller - Hollywood style storytelling for B2B. Learn more at CaspianStudios.com. In today's episode, you heard from Ian Faison (CEO of Caspian Studios) and Meredith Gooderham (Head of Production). Remarkable was produced this week by Jess Avellino, mixed by Scott Goodrich, and our theme song is “Solomon” by FALAK. Create something remarkable. Rise above the noise.

Today Ashley Rudolph is an executive coach working with high-achieving and executives who are at a “crossroad” as they look GREAT on paper, but tend to exhibit fears and have other problems that effect their confidence and performance. Ashley was not always a coach and, in fact, did not view herself as a coach during most of her career. She grew up in the Bronx in New York City. She attributes her high confidence level to the high bar her parents set for her as well as to the environment where she grew up.   After high school Ashley enrolled in Babson College where she quickly had to learn much about business and working as a team. She will tell us that story. After graduation she secured a job, but was layed off and then went back to Babson to secure her Master's degree.   Ashley began working and quickly rose through the corporate ranks of tech companies. She tells us how, while not really tech savy at first, she pushed herself to learn what she needed to know to work as part of a team and then eventually to lead high tech teams.   In 2023 her high tech employment world took a change which she will describe. Bottom line is that she was laid off from her vice presidential position and after pondering what to do she realized that she had actually been coaching her employees for some time and so she began hirering herself out as an executive coach. We will get the benefit of receiving a number of her insights on leadership, confidence building and how to become better mentally with anything life throughs at us. What Ashley says during our episode time makes a great deal of sense and I believe you will gain a lot from what she has to say. You can reach out to Ashley through the contact information in the show notes for this Unstoppable Mindset episode.     About the Guest:   Ashley Rudolph is an executive coach for high-achieving leaders and executives at a crossroads—those who have built success on paper but are ready to step into something greater. Her work is grounded in a bold belief: true transformation isn't about doing more—it's about leading differently.   A former tech executive, she scaled from IC to VP in just five years, leading $75M+ deals and teams of 250+ at high-growth companies. She knows what it takes to succeed in high-stakes environments—not just in execution, but in the deeper, often invisible work of leadership: making bold decisions, navigating uncertainty, and owning your impact.   Her signature methodology, The Three Dimensions of Transformation, helps leaders unlock their full potential by focusing on: mindset, strategy, and elite execution.   Whether guiding clients through reinvention, leadership evolution, or high-stakes career moves, Ashley helps them break free from outdated success metrics and create momentum that lasts. Her insights have been featured in Inc., U.S. News & World Report, The New York Post, Success Magazine, Apartment Therapy, and more. She also writes The Operator's Edge, a newsletter on the unseen shifts that drive real momentum in leadership and career growth. Because true leadership isn't about following a path. It's about defining your own. Ways to connect with Ashley:   My website which has details about me, my programs, and insights about high achievers in the workplace: www.workwithashleyr.com    My newsletter which gets published every single Monday morning with my expert advice for high achievers on how to succeed in the workplace. newsletter.workwithashleyr.com    My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashleyrudolph/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be today, I am Michael Hingson, and you are listening to or watching or both, unstoppable mindset today, our guest is Ashley Rudolph, who is a coach, and I like something Ashley put in her bio that I thought was really interesting, and that is that Ashley's work is grounded in the belief that true transportation is not really about doing more, but rather it's doing things differently. And I want, I'm going to want to learn about that. I think that's fascinating, and I also think it is correct, but we will, we will definitely get to that and talk about that. Ashley approached me a little while ago and said, I'd like to explore coming on your content, your podcast. And I said, Well, sure, except I told her the same thing that I tell everyone who comes on the podcast, there is one hard and fast rule you got to follow, and that is, you got to have fun, or you can't come on the podcast, so you got to have fun. Ashley, just   Ashley Rudolph ** 02:26 reminding you, I'm ready. I am ready. I'm coming into the podcast today with all of my best jokes, all of my best tricks. Oh, good.   Speaker 1 ** 02:35 Well, we want to hear them all. Well, thank you for being here, and it's a pleasure to have you on unstoppable mindset.   Ashley Rudolph ** 02:42 Yes, thank you so much for having me. I was just really taken by your entire background story, and I took a risk and sent you a message. So thank you so much for having me on the podcast.   Speaker 1 ** 02:55 Well, I have always been of the opinion that everyone has stories to tell, and a lot of people just don't believe they do, but that's because they don't think about it. And so what I tell people who say that to me when we talk about them coming on the podcast, my job is to help bring out the stories. Now, you didn't say that, and I'm not surprised, but still, a lot of people say that. And the reality is, I believe everyone is more unstoppable than they think they are, and that they undersell themselves, they underrate what they are and what they can do,   Ashley Rudolph ** 03:28 yeah, and honestly, I 100% agree with you, and that's why, and maybe I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but you triggered a thought. That's why I spend every single one of my first coaching meetings with a client, having them talk me through either their professional history or their wins from the past year. And in those conversations, my feedback is also is always Hey, you're not giving yourself enough credit for the things that you're doing. Like, these are amazing stories, or like, repeating things back to them a little bit differently than they would have phrased it, but that's 100% accurate. We don't sell ourselves enough,   Speaker 1 ** 04:08 even to ourselves. We don't sell ourselves enough, especially to ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, tell me a little about kind of the early Ashley growing up and all that, and you know where you came from, and all that sort of stuff,   Ashley Rudolph ** 04:23 yeah. So I grew up in New York. I'm from the Bronx. Oh and yeah, yeah. So, so is my   Michael Hingson ** 04:30 mom   Ashley Rudolph ** 04:31 Aqua? Oh my gosh, I had no idea. So I grew up in the Bronx and grew up with my mom. My dad was around too, and, oh, it's interesting, and I'm sure this will make sense, but I grew up going to Catholic schools from first grade to senior year of high school, and something about me, it was like I was always a very self assured. Determined person, and that carried through all the way through my adulthood. And maybe that comes from me being a New Yorker. Maybe that comes from my mom being a an immigrant. She's from the Caribbean. She's from the Bahamas, and she had a very high bar for what success looked like I don't know where it comes from, but yeah, yeah. So that's a little bit about me growing up and kind of who I was   Speaker 1 ** 05:28 as a kid. So now, where are you living? Now?   Ashley Rudolph ** 05:32 I am in New York again, so I moved back to New York in 2020,   Speaker 1 ** 05:38 okay, wow, just in time for the pandemic. Lucky you?   Ashley Rudolph ** 05:43 Yeah, I actually moved back to New York on election day in 2020 so I missed the early pandemic. But yeah, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 05:53 I was in New York speaking on March 5, and that night, I got back to the hotel, and my flight was supposed to go out at like, 415 in the afternoon, yeah. And I said, when I started hearing that they were talking about closing down the city, I think I better leave earlier. So I was on a 730 flight out the next day. Oh my gosh,   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:18 wow. So you just made it out and that yeah, and at the time, I was living in Boston, and I actually was went on a vacation with a friend, and we flew back the day before they shut down the airports in Boston. So   Speaker 1 ** 06:36 that was lucky. Yeah, did you live in Boston itself or a suburb?   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:42 Yeah, I lived in Boston for two years, I think, yeah, I lived in the city, yeah. I   Speaker 1 ** 06:50 lived in Winthrop for three years, and commuted across Boston to Cambridge every day,   Ashley Rudolph ** 06:55 yeah, oh, my god, yeah. So I worked in Cambridge and I lived in the West End, right above TD Garden.   Speaker 1 ** 07:03 Oh, okay, yeah, I hear that Durgan Park closed in, in near Faneuil Hall.   Ashley Rudolph ** 07:13 Oh, yeah, well, I have to admit, I didn't go there that much. Was living in Boston.   Speaker 1 ** 07:19 It was a fun place. It was a family style thing, and they had tables for four around the outer edges inside the restaurant. But you couldn't sit at one of those unless you had four people. And the serving staff was trained to be a little bit on the snotty side. And I went in fun. Oh, wait. Oh, absolutely. They made it fun. But I went in and the hostess, there were three of us, and my guide dog at the time, Holland, who was a wonderful, cute golden retriever, and she said, Oh, we're going to put you at one of the tables for four. And I said, Well, okay, we appreciate that. And Holland was under the table. This waitress comes up and she says, you're not supposed to be sitting here. This is a table for four, and there are only three of you. And I said, but they told us we could. No Nobody told you you could sit here. You got to go back over to the big tables. And I said, Look, we have a guide dog under the table, and he's really happy. And they told us we could be here because of the dog. And she's, I don't believe that at all. I'm, I'm gonna go check. I don't believe you. She goes away and she comes back a little bit later. No, you're not supposed to sit here. And I said, Look, lift up the tablecloth and look under the table. I'm not going to fall for that. Just do it. She finally did. And there's Holland staring out with these big brown eyes. And she just melted. She goes away and comes back. And one of the things about Durgan Park is they have big plates of prime rib. And she brought this plate of prime ribs somebody hadn't eaten at all, and she said, can I give this to the dog? And so, you know, normally, I would say no, but we were trying to make peace in our time, so I said, Oh, sure. And she and Holland had a great time. So it was fun.   Ashley Rudolph ** 08:59 Oh, and Holland got prime rib. Holland   Speaker 1 ** 09:03 got prime rib. What a treat. And so did and so did the rest of us, but, but we had to pay for ours. But I missed Durgin Park. It was a fun place to go, but I understand that it is closed, and I don't know whether it's oh, well, oh, that's unfortunate, but Quincy market's a wonderful place to go. It's not a lot of interesting things. So you, so you went through high school. So you went through high school in New York, went in in the Bronx tough neighborhood, and then what did you do? So   Ashley Rudolph ** 09:34 I then went to college. So I went to Babson College, which is, well, it's in Massachusetts, it's in Wellesley, and it's actually right next door to Wellesley College. Yeah, yeah. So I went there and I studied business, and that was basically where I learned how to be successful in the workplace, which is kind. Funny, because I found that over the years, a lot of people will say, you know, I went to college, but by the end of it, maybe I didn't know what my transferable skills were, or I studied something that isn't related to what I was doing or what I did as a professional, and I always felt the opposite, like in freshman year at Babson, they gave us $3,000 to, like, start a company as a as a students. So all of us just had to start this company. We had our business ideas. There was a CEO, a CMO, a CFO. We had like rules assigned. And that was my first experience of what a workplace could be like, although it was with 18 year olds, so maybe not totally reflective, but we had performance reviews, we had a head of HR, we had like, company meetings, so we were doing things within a framework, and they all kind of translated into the workplace, different players. So Babson basically kind of turned me into the business person that I am   Speaker 1 ** 11:09 today. Now, did each person get $3,000 and they started their own company?   Ashley Rudolph ** 11:14 Oh, no. So there were, there were maybe 30 of us, and we started a company with that with $3,000 Okay? Exactly with that investment, it was managed quite tightly. There's not a lot that you can do with $3,000 right? So you can probably guess that a lot of the businesses turned out to be the same. So there was always a T Shirt Company or a company the when the LIVESTRONG wristbands were popular, then we were like, oh, let's customize these wristbands. So yeah, yeah. The the company ideas basically ended up being the same, because there's not that much that you could do with that, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 11:56 yeah, yeah. So much you can do unless you start making a bunch of money,   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:00 yeah, yeah, yeah. And in today's landscape, I guess there's more that you can do with digital products and stuff like that. But yeah, yeah, we, we had to do physical so we were pretty limited, yeah, well, that's   Speaker 1 ** 12:13 okay, but still, if the company is successful, and was it successful? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:19 we, did turn a profit, and then for all of the businesses that did turn a profit, you had to donate the profits to a local charity. So we did. We donated ours to a local organization. We threw an event in partnership with the organization. It was just, it was nice. So, yeah, oh,   Speaker 1 ** 12:43 cool. So, how, how long did the company last? Essentially, was it all four years?   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:50 It was the first   Speaker 2 ** 12:52 year, just the first year, okay, yeah, okay, yeah, that's still, that's pretty cool.   Ashley Rudolph ** 12:58 Yeah, it is. I have to say that I learned a lot,   Speaker 1 ** 13:02 yeah, well, you're you're kind of forced to or you don't succeed. So I was going to ask you why you felt that you learned how to be successful. But now it's pretty clear, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Ashley Rudolph ** 13:13 So we started there in freshman year, and then sophomore, junior and senior year was kind of more of a deep dive on specific skills. So that you take our accounting classes, finance marketing, if you were into retail, there was like a retail management class at the core classes. So we had, you know, liberal arts courses, so art history, yeah, philosophy, things like that. But yeah, everything was mostly centered around business and cool, yeah, yeah. Well, that's   Speaker 1 ** 13:47 pretty exciting. Did you did you go do any graduate work anywhere?   Ashley Rudolph ** 13:52 It's funny, yes, I did. So I graduated from Babson, and my first job was in a creative agency, and I was doing media buying, and at the time it was 2008 and we were buying ads in school newspapers, which was dying like it was pretty much On on its last leg, and I just had this thought when I was doing it, and that I wasn't inspired by the work, because it wasn't growing, it was going away. And it was clear, yeah, and that. And actually my first job, I got laid off because it was a dying industry, and the team needed to be smaller, and at that point, it's my first job. So it was very devastating to me. I had never gone through anything like that before. So then I decided to go back to school. So I did my masters. I actually. Went back to Babson, but in an international program. So I spent my first semester in France, my second semester in China, and then my final semester at Babson. Ah,   Speaker 1 ** 15:13 so why was the newspaper industry going away? Just because everything was going online?   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:18 Exactly, yeah, things were shifting more digital. Yeah, it's exactly   Speaker 1 ** 15:23 that, so they didn't need as many people selling and doing other things as they did before. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:28 yeah, exactly. Or companies were figuring out different ways to reach college students that wasn't dependent on getting in the school newspaper.   15:39 Yeah? Yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 15:42 yeah. So you got your master's degree from Babson, and then what did you   Ashley Rudolph ** 15:47 do? I got my master's degree from Babson, and I'll fast forward a little bit, because what's funny is that after I graduated, I still didn't quite know what I wanted to do, but I figured it out. I ended up going back into marketing. But if you remember, what I described was, in that first job, I wasn't connected to the mission. I wasn't inspired by where the industry was going. So I ended up pivoting into nonprofits. And my first job after graduating from my masters was running digital media, so not physical media, so I shifted into social media and online marketing. Had a nonprofit, right? So I was connected to the mission. I felt like the work that I was doing was for a good cause, and it was an industry that was new and that was growing, and that was ever changing and exciting. So I did that for about three years, so first at a nonprofit, and then at an a charter school network that was in New York and New Jersey at the time, but has since expanded far beyond that. So, yeah, I went into mission driven work, and I went into digital marketing and digital media. And I think what I took away from that chapter of my career was that I want to be in an industry that is ever evolving. So, yeah, so after my experience in the nonprofit and education space, that's when I jumped into tech. So I jumped into tech after that, and spent a decade in the tech industry. And obviously, tech is ever changing. I had access to so many different opportunities. I grew really fast. I started at the first company, the first tech company that I worked for. I was a program manager, and five years later I was a vice president, right? So, like, I was able to seize opportunities and work really hard and get to the level that I wanted to get to I was very ambitious, so I think tech just kind of gave me everything I wanted. Career wise, how   Speaker 1 ** 18:09 did you progress so fast to go from being a program manager to the level of Vice President in what generally would be defined as a pretty short time? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 18:20 yeah, yeah. So some of it was hard work, and I think the other factor was luck, and the other factor was going after whatever it was that was in front of me. So taking risks. So I would say, with the hard work part, I worked a lot. See when I first, when I started that job, I was actually a Program Manager for Back End Web Development, which was Ruby on Rails, coding a coding language. And then I was also a program manager for data science. I had no experience in either I was not technical. I did not have the technical skills or technical aptitude to do this, but I did have the desire to learn. So my first month at that job, I worked seven days a week. I went to workshops on the weekend. I did coding workshops, I read through all of the documentation. I sat in all of the programs that I was managing. I just dug deep. And I think that first year of immersing myself in everything kind of set the foundation for me.   Speaker 1 ** 19:38 So you made yourself pretty technical by the time it was all said and done,   Ashley Rudolph ** 19:42 yeah, yes, yes, and not on the level of any of my instructors or the students that actually took the programs. But I cared about learning, and I cared about having a certain level of fluency in order to I had to hire instructors for the program so I couldn't fumble my. Words, right? So, yeah, yeah. So I taught myself, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 20:05 you learned. You learned enough. You You weren't trying to be the most technical person, but you learned enough to be able to interact with people and hold your own. Yeah, which, which is the important thing, I think. And for me, I know at one point, I had a job that was phased out when Xerox bought the company and I couldn't find another job. And it wasn't because of a lack of trying, and it wasn't because I didn't have the skills, but rather, as societal norms typically go, the belief is blind people can't work, as opposed to what we really can and can't do. So I eventually started my own company selling computer aided design systems, and for me, as a blind person, of course, I'm not going to sit in front of a CAD computer or even a PC based CAD system, which is what we sold. So I had to learn, however, all about how to operate the system. Learn about PCs. So I learned how to how to build PCs. I learned about CAD so I could actually walk someone through the process of drawing without actually having to do it, so I understand what, exactly what you're saying. Yeah, and it was important to do that. Yeah. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 21:21 it was important, and no one told me to do that, right? And I'm sure that no one told you to do that too, but there was just something in me that knew that I was excited about this work, or I wanted opportunities, and this was the best way that I knew how to go after it. Yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 21:43 Well, and, and it is the way you still have you do have to learn enough to be able to hold your own, but I Yeah, but I think it's also important in learning that that you're also not trying to threaten anyone else. You're just trying to be able to communicate with them   Ashley Rudolph ** 22:00 exactly, exactly, yes,   Speaker 1 ** 22:05 yeah. All too often, people view others as threats when they really shouldn't. But you know,   Speaker 2 ** 22:12 that's Yeah, another story gonna do Yeah, right, right.   Speaker 1 ** 22:16 Well, so for within five years, you became a vice president. What was the tech that y'all were really developing?   Ashley Rudolph ** 22:22 Yeah, great question. So what's interesting about this is that it wasn't so the first company I worked for wasn't a tech company, and that they were building tech it's actually a coding boot camp. So they were teaching people either how to code or how to become a UX designer, or how to become a product manager. So that was the product after a while. And I think long after I left the company, they did develop their own tech. So they developed an online an LMS learning management system, and there was digital content. But when I started, it was really about the boot camp era and teaching people how to code, because there were all these engineering jobs and web development jobs that were available and not enough, not enough talent, not   Speaker 2 ** 23:13 enough talent to go around. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Ashley Rudolph ** 23:17 Which is when you think about today's market and where we're, where we are, that was only 10 years ago, and it's a completely different story. Now, the market is flooded with too many web developers. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 23:29 it is, but I would say, from my standpoint of seeing what they produce in terms of making web content accessible, not nearly enough of them know how to do that, which is another story,   Ashley Rudolph ** 23:41 yeah, yeah, yeah, which is so interesting. And yeah, unacceptable, unfortunate, because there were always teams that were in charge of accessibility at the companies that I worked for, but then having someone be in charge of it, and then properly resourcing the accessibility team is a whole other story. And I think so many companies view it as just oh yeah, I checked the box. My website is accessible. But did you really build with your end users in mind, and the answer is probably no,   Speaker 1 ** 24:23 probably not, yeah, and all too often that ended up being the case. Well, so what did you do after you became vice president?   Ashley Rudolph ** 24:32 Yeah, so that was tough. You said it, and you said, I climbed really fast. And that's true, I did, and because I climbed fast, there were a lot of lessons to learn. So after I became vice president, I really had to own that leadership seat, or that executive leadership seat, and recognize that what had got me there. Here is was not what was going to keep me there. So the thing that I did after I became a vice president was really understanding how to be an effective executive. So that means really understanding the business side, which I already knew I had been doing that I've been thinking about that since college, so that wasn't something that I was concerned about, but the biggest thing was forming executive level relationships and really understanding how to form allies, and understanding that at that level, it's less of I have the right answer, and listen to me, because I'm a vice president and more of a okay. How am I influencing the people around me to listen to my idea, accept my idea, champion and support my idea. And it's not enough to just have something that's right on paper.   Speaker 1 ** 26:06 The others the other side of that, of course, could be that maybe you have an idea that may or may not be the right idea, which also means you need to learn to listen,   Ashley Rudolph ** 26:13 yes, exactly, exactly, and that was absolutely the other side of it. So me coming into things and being like, I understand what needs to happen, and not having all the context either way, right? So, yeah, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 26:31 but you must have done pretty well at doing all that.   Ashley Rudolph ** 26:34 I figured it out eventually. Yes, I did figure it out eventually, and it wasn't easy, but I was able to grow a team and scale a team, and I was able to move from maybe the business side of running operations to the product and technology side of it, so being able to see two different sides of the coin. And yeah, it did. It did work. Well, I was able to create my own department, which was a product project management office that oversaw all of the work of the entire product and design and technology teams, 250 people. I I'm not sure that I would have thought I was capable of doing something like that, and building something from the ground up, and hiring a team of, I think, 15 people, and leading that department. And, yeah, yeah, and it was great. I did learn a lot. And then 2023 happened. And that was the major turning point in Tech where I think the dominant story shifted from, or at least in education technology, which I think you know something a lot about, but the dominant story shifted from this is great. This is growing. Distance Learning is fueling growth. There's so much opportunity here to it's too big. We need to, you know, do layoffs. We need to find a way to right size the business. There's actually not a lot of growth happening. So 2023 happened, and I ended up getting laid off with my entire department that I built. And that was such a huge lesson, a huge leadership lesson for me, for sure. So I'll pause so that I'm not not talking at you, but hanger, yeah, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 28:46 well, so you got laid off. I've been there. I've had that happen. And, yeah, it isn't fun, but it's like anything else. You may not have been able to control it happening, but no, you are the one who has to deal with it. So you may not have control over it happening, but you always have control over how you deal with what happened.   Ashley Rudolph ** 29:09 Yes, yes,   29:11 yes. And what did you do?   Ashley Rudolph ** 29:14 And that's exactly what was so different about this time. So I will say I had two months notice. I had an amazing leader, such a technology officer. When the decision was made, he said, Okay, we can make this decision, but I have to tell Ashley immediately. So he told me, and it wasn't surprising, right? Because I saw how the business what direction the business was going in. So I can't say I was shocked, but the big question that I had was, Oh, my God, what am I going to do about my team? And I felt such immense responsibility because I had hired many of them I came to. Care about them and their careers and their livelihoods, and, yeah, I just felt responsible for it. So you said it, you said it beautifully, and that it was about what I decided to do. So from that moment, I shifted my focus, maybe, maybe to my own detriment, but whatever, I came out on the upside, but I shifted my focus to my team, and I thought the best thing that I could do in that moment was preparing them for their next chapters without going directly to the team and damaging the trust of the Chief Technology Officer and saying, in two months, we're all going to get laid off. That's also not reflective of the type of leader I wanted to be. So I figured out that, because we were a project management office and because there wasn't a lot of new work at the company, we had downtime. So I implemented a meeting on the calendar, which was a project review, and every single week, someone on my team had the opportunity to present their projects and talk about what they learned, what was challenging for them, and what their successes were, right, some combination of those things, and they all did it, and that was my way of helping to start prepare them for the interview process, because now you know your work, you know what your impact was, and you've gotten my feedback as someone who's a leader, who knows what hiring managers are looking for, you got my feedback on the best ways to present yourself, and they were able to ask questions. There were some people who approached me or the director on my team privately and asked us to review their resumes, because they kind of saw the writings on the wall without me ever having to say it, and I did. And what ended up happening is, at that two month mark, or whenever, when the layoffs did happen, no one on my team was shocked, and there were people who actually within a month after the layoff happened, they had found new jobs because they had that time to prepare and felt confident in their job search and the stories that they were telling about themselves. So I all that to say that I did exactly that. I chose the type of leader that I wanted to be, and the thing that felt important to me was preparing my team for their next chapter,   Michael Hingson ** 32:32 which I would say is the right thing to do,   Ashley Rudolph ** 32:34 yeah, yes, exactly, because it   Speaker 1 ** 32:37 isn't, no matter what a lot of people might think, it isn't about you, it's about the team. It's about you and the rest of the team, because you're all a team,   Ashley Rudolph ** 32:45 yeah? Except Yes, yes. And I very much viewed my team as an extension of myself, an extension of them. I you know, it wasn't just about them doing a job for me, quote, unquote, like that's not the type of leader that I am. We are a team,   Speaker 1 ** 33:04 right? So meanwhile, while you were doing that and helping the team, what were you also doing for you? And   Ashley Rudolph ** 33:12 that's why I said to my detriment, I didn't do a lot of thought. I put no thought into what I wanted to do. Okay? At all. I just And you know what? It's not to my detriment. I think what I needed at that time was a distraction, and this was a really good distraction for me, from sorting through what I wanted to do next, but also in navigating that with my team and supporting them through that, I think the answer became very clear once I was ready to ask my question, I just coached my team. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 33:51 And so you sort of, as you would say, pivoted to being a coach,   Ashley Rudolph ** 33:57 yes, yes. And I want to be clear that this wasn't a decision that was like, you know, that I just fell into coaching, you know, I I made the decision to so I took some time to think about what were the pieces of my work that I really loved when I was a VP at multi, you know, at multiple companies, and the answer was clear, and that I really loved coaching and helping people become better at their work, and I really loved mentorship. And those were the parts of the work that if I could just do that all day, that's what I would want to do. And I was like, Well, I have the I can make a decision to do that all day, every day now, because I'm not doing anything, I just got laid off. So I can choose to do this work. So that's exactly how I ended up being a coach.   Speaker 1 ** 34:58 Well, so you. Ever originally planned on being a coach. So was it that work with your team that really was the sort of pivotal decision for you, that although you never thought you were going to be a coach, that led you to coaching, or was there something else that really helped move you there? There was something else. Okay, yeah, more to the story.   Ashley Rudolph ** 35:21 There is always you're peeling all the layers so, so initially, what I thought I would do, because I was an operations person, I was like, I'll just be an operations consultant. I'll go out on my own, and people will hire me to be their ops person. So let me, you know, run with that as an idea. And I started having conversations with former colleagues. And what was funny in that so many of their conversations were kind of like, oh yeah, I want to support you. And that sounds nice. I understand why you would want to be an operations consultant. But there's something more interesting about you being a coach. Or I want to hire you to be a coach for my team. Or, Hey, you did really amazing things in your career. You should help other people do those things. And that was the theme that people kept telling me, so I finally decided, decided to listen. That's how I landed on coaching. And instead of it being like, oh my god, I'm trying to sell the value of myself as an operations consultant, once I just owned the coach title, people just started saying, okay, yep, Sign me up. Or I'll refer you to someone who needs a coach right now. Or, hey, you coach just one person on my team, and they're great. Here's more. So it just became easy, and it became less of a I'm trying to sell people, and I'm trying to, like, convince them that they need me in this role, it was just easy.   Speaker 1 ** 37:04 So do you think you talked about being ambitious when you were in college and starting that business at Babson and so on? Do you think you've always continued to try to be, if you will, ambitious, or did you sort of shift in terms of mindsets over time?   Ashley Rudolph ** 37:22 Yeah, that's a really good question. I do think I have always been ambitious, and when I visited my mom last year or the year before last for Thanksgiving, I found a fake report card that I wrote myself, that I wrote for myself in fourth grade. And there was a prompt that said, what would you want your teacher to write on your report card at the end of this year? And I wrote, Ashley is excelling at excellence. Well, there you go, fourth grade. So I think it's always been there.   Speaker 1 ** 38:02 So is it, but is it ambition? Is it ambition, or is it being industrious and being being confident? You know?   Ashley Rudolph ** 38:10 Yeah, yeah. Oh, that is such a good question, right? So there was a version of me when I was in the corporate world where I would have just said, yeah, it's ambition, right? Because I'm always motivated to, you know, go after the next level, and that's what's driving me. And now, now that you put that question out there, it is, it is that confidence, because I'm not chasing a thing or the next level right now, in this phase, I'm chasing quote, unquote impact like the thing that drives me is helping people, helping people probably achieve things for themselves that They also didn't think that they could in their careers, and I'm just helping them get there, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 39:06 and that's why I asked the question, because ambition, the way you normally would think of it, yeah, can be construed as being negative, but clearly what you're doing is is different than that. Yeah, you know, at this at the same time for you, now that you're coaching and so on, and you shifted to doing something different, yeah, did you have to let something go to allow you to be open to deciding to be a coach? Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 39:38 and the thing that I had to let go was exactly what you just pointed out. So you are very intuitive. The thing I had to let go was that the traditional construct of what success looks like. So it looks like, okay, I'm a VP, so I next need to be an SVP. And then after that I need to be at the sea level. And no, and I guess there could have always been questions about, was that what I really wanted, or was it just the next level that I was after? Yeah, yeah. And there was that, I think it was just the next level for quite some time, but now, like I said, the thing that I let go of was that and wanting to grasp for what the next level is. And now for me, it looks like, okay, well, I only have so many hours in the day, so I can't coach unlimited people, but I still want to impact many people. So what does that mean? Okay, well, I'm writing a newsletter, and I put out a newsletter every week with my thoughts, and that can reach many more people than I can one to one or podcast. I'm talking to you on this podcast, and maybe me sharing more of my story will inspire someone else, or I'll learn from you and your community, Michael, but yeah, I think the thing, the thing that determines what success looks like for me is my ability to impact   Speaker 1 ** 41:14 and and the result of that is what happens with the people that you're working with, and so you, you do get feedback because of that,   Ashley Rudolph ** 41:25 yes, yes, I do get, I get lots of feedback, and it is, it's transformational feedback. And I think one of the things that I love, and I do this for every client that I work with, is on day one, we established a baseline, which I don't necessarily have to always say that to them like we're establishing the baseline, it's understood. And then in our last session, I put a presentation together, and I talked to them about where they were when we started, and what they wanted for themselves, and over the course of us coaching together, what they were able to accomplish, so what their wins were, and then where they land, and just me taking them on that journey every single or when they work with me, is eye opening, because they don't even see the change as it's happening. And I'm like, Hey, you did this. You're not that person that you walked into this room as on day one, and maybe by the end, you have a new job, or you got promoted, or you feel more confident and assured in your role. But whatever it is, you've changed, and you should be proud of yourself for that.   Speaker 1 ** 42:43 Yeah, yeah. And it's, I am sure, pretty cool when you get to point that out to people and they realize it, they realize how far they've come.   Ashley Rudolph ** 42:55 Yeah, yeah, it is. It's, it's really awesome to be able to share that with people and to also be on the journey with them, and when they think that maybe they're not ready to do something just gently reminding them that they are. And sometimes I think about what, you know, what managers have done for me, because I've, I had the privilege of working with really great managers some in my career, and yeah, they did that to me, and that that's how I was able to accomplish the things that I did. So yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 43:34 well, it's great that you're able to carry those lessons forward and help other people. That's pretty cool.   Ashley Rudolph ** 43:38 Yeah, yeah. And honestly, I hope that my clients can do the same. So if there are things that they learn in coaching, any frameworks or things like that, if they're able to help people, then that's great. And the cycle continues, you know? So, yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 43:57 You know, a question that comes to mind is that when we talk about leadership, there are certainly times that leaders face uncertainty, especially when there are transitions going on and you've experienced a lot of transitions. What would you say is the unconventional truth about leadership in times of change and transition?   Ashley Rudolph ** 44:20 Yeah, yeah. So I think the thing that I see the most is that in times of transition, especially if it's a transition that maybe you have no control over, right? You're not choosing to leave your job, for example, the the inclination is to over control, right, and try to assert control over the situation in any way that you can, and in more cases than not, that backfires to some degree. So the thing that I try to focus on with my clients is getting to a point where you accept the fact that what is happening is happening. I'm kind of like my layoff, right? I didn't fight the decision or try to change the decision. I just had to accept it for what it was. And then the thing that we focus on is now that we know the thing is happening, whatever the transition or change is, it doesn't have to be as extreme as a layoff, but now that we know that it's happening, what can you control and what can you focus on? And that's what we need to spend our time on. And it can be anything, you know, sometimes people are put on performance improvement plan, and you kind of just if, if this is a situation where you're like, Oh yeah, I could see where this came from, and I wish that I was not in this situation. Okay, well, you kind of have to accept that you are, and what can you do about it now, it's really, yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 45:58 what's the hardest lesson you've learned about leadership and being a leader, not just being an executive, but coaching people.   Ashley Rudolph ** 46:10 Yeah, and I get this all the time as a coach too. It's it's in me, but the lesson that I've learned is I don't have to know everything. That's   Michael Hingson ** 46:21 a hard lesson. To learn, isn't   Ashley Rudolph ** 46:25 it? It is, especially when you feel like as a leader, like people are relying on you, or you think they are, they're relying on you to know the answers or to know what to do next, or as a coach, they're relying on you to ask the right questions or to guide them in the right direction, right? And sometimes you just don't know, and that's okay, and it's also okay to say that. And I was just going to say that, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It took me a long time to get comfortable with that, but now, now I am more comfortable with it, for sure. Do you feel like you struggled with that too? Or Yeah?   Speaker 1 ** 47:06 Well, I have, but I was blessed early on, when I was a student teacher in getting my secondary teaching credential, I was a student teacher in an algebra one class in high school, and one of the students came in one day, and he asked a question in the course of the day, and it should have been a question I knew the answer to, but I didn't. But when I when I realized I didn't, I also, and I guess this is my makeup, thought to myself, but I can't blow smoke about it, so I just said, you know, I don't know the answer, but I'm going to look it up and I will bring you the answer tomorrow. Is that okay? And he said, Yeah. And my master teacher after class cornered me, and he said, That was absolutely the best thing you could do, because if you try to psych out these kids and fake them out, they're going to see through you, and you're never going to get their trust. Yeah, and of course, he was absolutely right. So I did the right thing, but I also learned the value of doing the right thing. And Mr. Redman, my master teacher, certainly put it in perspective. And I think that's so important. We don't have to necessarily have all the right answers. And even if we do have the right answer, the question is, Is it our job to just say the right answer or try to guide people to get to the right answer?   Ashley Rudolph ** 48:41 Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's another leadership lesson, right? It's and it's so much more powerful when people do get to the answers themselves, yeah. And I think that kind of helps with them being less dependent on coming to you for the answers moving forward, right? If they're able to go on that path of discovery   Speaker 1 ** 49:04 well, and if they are able to do that and you encouraged it, they're going to sense it, and when they get the right answer, they're going to be as high as a kite, and they're going to come and tell you that they did it. So, yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 49:15 exactly. Yeah, yeah. What a good feeling.   Speaker 1 ** 49:19 Yeah, it is, what do you do? Or what are your thoughts about somebody who just comes to you and says, I'm stuck?   Ashley Rudolph ** 49:27 Ooh, that happens all the time. Michael, it happens all the time. And I'll tell you, there's two things. So if someone says I'm stuck, they either don't have the confidence to pursue the thing that they know they want to do, but they're just saying they're stuck, which is it is being stuck, right? If you can't take action, then you're stuck. But sometimes they frame that as I don't know where what I want to do or where I want to go, and then I ask. Couple of questions, and it's like, oh, well, you actually do know what you want to do and where you want to go. You just don't have the confidence yet to pursue that path. So part of the time, it's a confidence issue, or the other time, the thing that they're grappling with, or the other cases, what they're grappling with is, I haven't connected with like my values or the things that motivate me or my strengths even right? So maybe they're the ambitious person who was compelled to just chase the next level and the next level and the next level, but now they're asking, Is this really important to me, or do I really want this? As I spoke to another coach, and she ended up leaving what she thought was a dream job at Google, because every day she was kind of like, I still want to be here, and it wasn't her dream job, and she left to become a coach. So it's either one of those two things, most times, for the clients that I work with, and I ask a lot of questions, so I get to the answers, or I help them get to the answers by asking them the right questions. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 51:14 and that's the issue. And sometimes you may not know the right question right off the bat, but by the same token, you can search for it by asking other questions.   Ashley Rudolph ** 51:23 Exactly, exactly, exactly, yeah, yeah, that's it.   Speaker 1 ** 51:27 So what is, what is a transformation of a client that you experienced and kind of what really shifted, that changed everything to them, something that just really gave you chills, and was an AHA kind of thing. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 51:44 there are. There's so many one, okay, so one that I want to share is and basically the client went from, this isn't the job for me. I don't like the role I'm in. I don't think I can be successful, and I don't think my work is valued here. And I would say, over the course of eight months, she went from that to getting one of few perfect performance reviews in the company like it's a company that doesn't give a perfect performance review, right? So, right, going from that and being like, I need to find a new job. I've got to get out to I am excelling at this job, and it wasn't just anyone that gave her the perfect performance review. It was one of the co founders of the company. So like, top person is saying, Yeah, this is great. You're doing amazing work. There is value, and I think you're incredible. So in that transformation, the thing that she had to connect to, or reconnect to, was her values and understanding what are the things that she enjoys about her work and what are the things that she really didn't enjoy, and understanding the why behind that, and then the other two things for her, or developing her confidence, which sounds very fluffy, because it's like, How do you help someone do that? And I help people do that by helping them feel really good about their work product. So with her, with her, what we ended up doing was focusing on helping her prepare for some presentations. Me giving her feedback on her decks, or her talking to me about how she wanted to prepare for a meeting and the points that she wanted to make, and me helping her, you know, craft really compelling talking points, and having that feedback loop with me of being like, Okay, here's how the meeting went, and this was the feedback I got, and also being like, Oh, wow, the meeting went really well. And like feeling her confidence build over time by helping her get better at her work, and gradually over time, it just built to that amazing end point for her. But that's that's a transformation for me that will always stick out, because I just remember that first meeting and me just being like, okay, you know this, this might end up being a journey where we help her find a role that is better suited for her. And, you know, just kind of thinking about that, and it just didn't end up being that at all.   Speaker 1 ** 54:35 Well, the other thing that, in one way or another, probably plays into some of that is the people her bosses, the people who she worked for, probably sensed that something was going on, yeah, and she had to be honest enough to to deal with that. But as she progressed, they had to sense the improvement, and that. Had to help a lot.   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:01 Yes, for sure. And I think maybe there is confusion from her boss and in him thinking that she was ready to take on the work that he knew that she could take on, but she didn't quite feel ready yet. Yeah, so there was something she had to sort through, and she finally, not finally, that wasn't a lot of time at all, but she got there, and yeah, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 55:26 And I'll bet they were better. I'll bet they were better communicators with each other by the time it was all said and done, too   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:31 Exactly, yes, yeah, yeah. They developed a shorthand, you know? And, yeah, yep.   Speaker 1 ** 55:39 So there are a lot of leaders who look great on paper, but when it really comes down to it, they just aren't really doing all that they ought to be doing. They feel restless or whatever. What's the real reason that they need to deal with to find momentum and move forward?   Ashley Rudolph ** 55:58 Yeah, so I'm going to take a I'm going to take a different approach to answering this question. And because of the people that I work with, again, they're high achievers. Yeah, right. And sometimes I see that what happens is maybe people have described them as restless, or people have said, Why aren't you happy? You have this amazing career, you should be happy. And I think, like that projection, they end up taking that on and feeling guilty about the fact that they want more. But at the core of it, when I talk to them or get to the level of, you know, Hey, what is happening here? What's causing this sense of restlessness? Surprisingly, the answer is, yeah, I have this great job or this great title, but I feel like I could be doing so much more. So it's an impact. It's an impact thing that is driving the people that I work with. So what we end up doing is trying to figure out, to some degree, like I have no control over what happens at work, so I don't want to pretend that I do, but if it is an impact question, then what we get to the core of is, okay, well, how do you increase your impact? And that's what I work with them on?   Speaker 1 ** 57:24 Well, here's a question. So I have been in sales for a long time, and of course, as far as I'm concerned, I still am being a public speaker. I sell more life and philosophy than anything else. But one thing a lot of people face is rejection. A lot that was redundant, but a lot of people face rejection. How do you get people to understand that rejection isn't a bad thing, and that it actually is a sign of success more often than not? And I agree with it. And you had given me this question, I think it's a great question and relevant to answer.   Ashley Rudolph ** 57:58 Yeah, so I just try to flip the thinking. So I make it less about the person rejecting you, or you receiving a rejection. And to me, if you get rejected, it's a signal that you try, and that's what we focus on, right? So if you're not getting rejected and you're in the same place that you were, it's probably an indication that you're not trying, or you're not taking big enough swings, or you're not pushing yourself. So, yeah, I just try to help my clients. You know, think about the fact that, hey, you got rejected because you tried and you put yourself out there, and that's great. And then the other thing I like to think about with rejection is really just like rejection is someone placing a bet, and if you know about bets, you know that they're not 100% right, and sometimes the person just decided they weren't going to place their bet on you. And it's not that you're not capable, or it's not that it wasn't a great idea, maybe it wasn't the right time, maybe whatever, you don't know what the why is, but it's just a bet, and someone could take a different bet, and it can be on you, or you can bet on yourself even, right? So once you start to think about rejection as just the choice that someone made on a day, and that person isn't all people, and they're certainly not representative of, you know, the person who could decide to take a chance on you and your idea or your initiative, then I think the rejection stings a lot less.   Speaker 1 ** 59:31 Yeah, one of the expressions I've heard regularly is the selling really begins. And I and I think whether it's selling a product or whatever you're doing, but the selling really begins when the objections begin or the rejection. Yeah, and I think there's, there's so much truth to that one of the things, one of the things that I used to do when I was selling products, is I would play a game with myself. Is this person. Going to give me a new objection or a new reason for rejection that I haven't heard before, and I always loved it when somebody came up with something that truly I hadn't heard before, and that was absolutely relevant to bring up, because then it's my job to go off and deal with that, but it was fun to put my own mindset in that sort of framework, because it's all about it's it's not me, unless I really am screwing up, it's other things. And no matter whether it's me screwing up or not, it's my job to figure out how to deal with whatever the other person has on their mind. Yeah, and when the new things come up, those are so much fun to deal with. And I even praised people, you know, I've never heard that one before. That's really good. Let's talk about it.   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:00:50 So great, yeah, yeah. They were probably like, oh, okay, wow. Well, yeah, let's talk about it, yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:00 But I didn't show fear, and didn't need to, because I I went into a learning mode. I want to learn what's on their mind and what's going on,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:09 yeah, and that's what it's about. It's about understanding what's important to the other person, or understanding their concerns. And I think if you come at it like you did, from a place of really wanting to understand them and find common ground, then sometimes you can even shift the rejection right often.   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:27 If you do it right often you can. Yeah, you can. You can reverse it, because most rejections and objections are really based on perception and not necessarily reality   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:41 at all? Yes, exactly yes, yes, which is   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:45 important? Well, if you could go back and talk to a younger version of yourself, what moment would you choose and who? What would you say that they should learn? Oh,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:01:54 this is so this is such a   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:57 great fun question. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:02:03 if I could go back, I would probably tell myself that you you don't necessarily have to run away to find the things that you're looking for in your career, right? And I think in life too. Sometimes you think, Oh, I just have to move to a different city, or I just have to buy a new outfit, or I just have to, I have to, I have to, I have to change this thing. And sometimes you just don't have to. Sometimes you can have a conversation about thing that you want or the thing that you're not getting. So if this is a boss right, talking about the thing that you want or that you're not getting, and coming up with a solution together, and I think for quite some time, I was too afraid to do that, and if I wasn't getting what I needed or what I wanted, I just thought the best thing to do was to find it elsewhere, and I would just go back and tell myself to ask for what I wanted first, and then get the information and then leave if I had to. But leaving doesn't have to be the default.   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:21 Yeah. Cool. Well, Ashley, this has been a lot of fun. We've been doing this an hour. Can you believe   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:29 it? We have, we have the time flew by. Fun. Yeah, I could have kept going.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:36 Well, then we'll just have to do another one. Yeah,   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:39 we do. It, I will always come back. You are amazing. Michael,   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:43 well, this has been fun, and maybe one of the things that you could do to help spread the word about what you do and so on is do your own podcast.   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:03:50 Yes, something else to think about, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. And then if I do then I will invite you on there. I'd   Speaker 1 ** 1:04:00 love it, I'll come absolutely well. I want to thank you again, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching today. This has been very enjoyable and a lot of fun, and I appreciate you taking the time to be with us. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to email me at Michael H i@accessibe.com so accessibi is spelled A, C, C, E, S, S i, B, E, so Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i@accessibe.com or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and Michael hingson is m, I C H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s o n.com/podcast, love to hear from you, and certainly I hope that whenever you're listening or watching, give us a five star rating. We value your reviews, and we really want to know that we're doing good by you, so please give us good reviews, and if you have thoughts or things that you want us to know about, don't hesitate to reach out. It. And for all of you, and Ashley, including you, if you know of other people who ought to be guests on our podcast, it's so much fun to meet more people from those who have been on before. But for anyone, if you know someone who ought to be a guest, please let me know. Reach out, and we will honor your interest and we will bring them on, because I think everyone has, as I told Ashley earlier, stories to tell. So hope that you will do that and that we'll get to see you on our next episode. And again, Ashley, I just want to thank you for being here. This has been so much fun. All   Ashley Rudolph ** 1:05:37 right, thank you, Michael.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:05:42 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Today, June 27, 2025 is national PTSD Day in the United States. It is a timely day to release this episode as you will see.   As a result of my appearance on a podcast I had the honor to meet Kara Joubert and invited her to be a guest here on Unstoppable Mindset. She accepted. Little did I know at the time how unstoppable she was and how much she has faced in life even only at the age of 21. Kara tells us that she loved to draw and was even somewhat compulsive about it. At the age of seven she was diagnosed as being on the Autism spectrum. She speculates that her intense interest in drawing came partly from autism. However, fear not. She still draws a lot to this day. What we learn near the end of our time with Kara is that her father was a graphic artist. So, drawing comes, I think, quite honestly.   While Kara does not go into much detail, she tells us she experienced a severe trauma as a child which led to her having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She did not receive a diagnosis of PTSD until she was seventeen when she began seeing a therapist. By the time her condition was identified she had to leave school and went into home schooling.   As we learn, Kara did well in her exams after home schooling and went onto University in England where she was raised. After her first year studying journalism and unofficially studying film making Kara was selected as one of three students to take a year abroad of learning in Brisbane Australia. We caught up with Kara to do our podcast during her time in Brisbane.   Already as a student Kara has written three short films and directed two of them. Quite the unstoppable mindset by any standard.   Kara willingly shares much about her life and discusses in depth a great deal about PTSD. I know you will find her comments insightful and relevant.     About the Guest:   At 21 years old, Kara Joubert is a keen advocate for the power of storytelling. Based in the UK, she is a journalist and filmmaker who has written three short films and directed two of them. Her academic journey has taken her to Australia, and her enthusiasm for filmmaking has led her to Hollywood film sets.    Kara is drawn to the stories of others. She believes that everyone carries a “backstory” and values the strength it takes to overcome personal challenges. She thinks that a victory doesn't have to be dramatic, rather, it's any moment where someone chooses courage over comfort. Her own greatest victory has been learning to overcome anxiety.    Throughout her life, Kara has faced significant mental health challenges. She developed post-traumatic stress disorder at a young age, which went undiagnosed until she was 17. Later, she was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder and social anxiety disorder. Her teenage years were filled with fear and isolation, sometimes resulting in her being unable to leave the house.     Today, Kara lives with a renewed sense of freedom. After undergoing cognitive behavioural therapy, she now embraces life with a confidence and courage her younger self never could have imagined. She is now a successful university student who has travelled far beyond her comfort zone, with the intention of sharing hope and her enthusiasm for filmmaking.  Kara's mission is to inspire others through journalism, filmmaking, and podcasting. Ways to connect with Kara:   Website: karajoubert.com On social media: kara joubert media   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:16 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today, we get to have a conversation with a person who clearly, by any means and definition, is unstoppable in a lot of ways. Kara Juubert is 21 she says, so who's going to argue with that? And she has already written three films, directed to she's very much into film and journalism and other such things. She is from England, but she is now in Australia. She has faced major trauma and challenges in her life, and she has overcome them already, and I'm not going to say more until we get into a discussion about it, but we'll get there. So, Kara, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're   Kara Joubert ** 02:15 here. Thank you so happy to be here. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:19 it's our pleasure and our honor. So why don't you start by telling us a little bit about kind of the early car growing up. You know, you obviously were born somewhere and and all that sort of stuff. But tell us a little about the early Kara,   Kara Joubert ** 02:34 oh, the early days. Kara, season one. Kara, sure, you was in the beginning, yes, she was an interesting child, and I look back with a degree of fondness, she was quite a creative individual, and I enjoyed drawing obsessively and all things creative and expressive, even in my younger days, I was sort of brought up in around the London area, or I say London, which is more of a generalization, to be specific, which is a place not many have heard of. And within that space, I grew up in a loving family and had supportive parents. I've got two younger siblings as well. And yes, early days, Kara, she was someone who really loved her family. I still love my family, happy to say. And yeah, grew up in this supportive environment, but she had a few things to work through, as I'm sure what   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 we will get into. So when did you start? How old were you when you started drawing?   Kara Joubert ** 03:49 Oh, um, since I could pick up a pencil,   Michael Hingson ** 03:54 she could pick up a pencil. So pretty young, yeah,   Kara Joubert ** 03:57 very young. I can't, I can't give you the exact timestamp, but it was very early on, and it was very obsessive. And in part, the obsession here is what got me into my autism diagnosis. Funnily enough, it's not your standard obsession related to autism, but I was always occupied with drawing something somewhere, and in my very young days, that would have been the walls. Thankfully, my parents managed to move me to paper. And   Michael Hingson ** 04:33 yes, that's fair. So what did you draw?   Kara Joubert ** 04:37 What kind of pictures? Yeah, everything that I could see really, and I was a perfectionist from a very young age, and I'm sure there were several tantrums tied to the fact that I couldn't quite get something right. But yes, I thoroughly enjoyed drawing what I saw around. Me, and I would say, yes, with that obsessive mindset does definitely come a degree of perfectionism. And look, I love drawing to this day, certainly. And I wouldn't say I'm terrible at it, but it was something, yeah, that really, I think, liberated my younger self, because she did struggle that season one car with socializing and drawing was just this amazing escape.   Michael Hingson ** 05:25 Well, you had 19 or 20 years to practice drawing, so hopefully you would be pretty good.   Kara Joubert ** 05:32 Yeah, I should hope so have something to show for it.   Michael Hingson ** 05:36 So you kind of, to a degree, sort of hid behind or within your drawings, or around your drawings, and you let them kind of be your voice, definitely,   Kara Joubert ** 05:47 absolutely. And that did move on to writing further along the line, where poetry became a massive form of self expression. And at times that did get me into trouble, but again, it was that creative outlet that really does help, I think, someone understand their own feelings the world around them. There's a great joy in being able to do these things. So   Michael Hingson ** 06:19 what kind of trouble did it get you into or, how did it get you into trouble, just because you focused so much on it? Or,   Kara Joubert ** 06:27 um, well, there was, there's a specific example I'll give. When I was in secondary school, it wasn't a great time of my life, and the school itself was quite problematic. And I was told, you know, I need to create something for a showcase, which takes place, I think, every spring. And I was told I need to make a poem, because apparently I was reasonably good at that, and I did. But the thing is, I couldn't force any feelings of, I suppose, happiness or joy that I didn't feel because at the time, I was being bullied by both teachers and students, and I didn't have any friends and felt very isolated. So I created a poem, which is, you know, which discussed my feelings here, and I did throw a happy ending to that poem, because I think even then, I understood that there's always hope for a better day. So it was, however, the, I suppose, depiction of my negative feelings at the time, the fact that I was quite openly saying I don't fit in the school, and I feel unaccepted, in so many words that eventually I would say was a massive catalyst in getting me not kicked out of the school. Socially, kicked out of the school. I kicked myself out at a certain point because the teachers had said there was no hope I was going to need to be put into an special education stream. And my parents took me out. But part of the reason for them taking me out was this isolation, and the isolation did increase after I'd read this poem aloud. It was at that point where the community, I think, decided that I was and my family were not welcome.   Michael Hingson ** 08:28 How did your parents cope with all that?   Kara Joubert ** 08:31 My parents, they took it head on. And you know, I will say that Sure, there are two sides to every story here. And I don't know under what pressures the teachers were under, but certainly they did make life quite difficult, because it wasn't just me, it was my youngest siblings as well who were going into this school, and I think they tried to keep the peace for so long, but there was a point where they realized, actually, it would be better for all of us as a unit, as a family, to try other schools would go, you know, further outside of this community, and we couldn't get into the School, or I couldn't get into the school that I wanted, which led into homeschooling, so I was electively homeschooled.   Michael Hingson ** 09:30 Well, you talked a little bit about in our previous conversations and so on, the fact that you had some PTSD. What caused that?   Kara Joubert ** 09:41 So the PTSD was caused by a trauma in my youth. I was around 10 years old, and that led to, I suppose, even more anxiety than perhaps I'd felt in my younger days. And I was a very anxious kid from the onset. Yeah, but then this trauma occurred, which did involve the fear of dying. It involved a lot of things among that, and it was a lot for me to process. And I'll admit, it took a long time for me to be able to get to a point where I could say, All right, I need any therapy. And that was the best change I've ever made in my lifestyle. Was moving into therapy. But I think the PTSD did by the time I moved into therapy, it did have a negative impact in quite a few aspects of my life, and I think my schooling was one of them. Looking back, teachers saw someone who might have been a little distracted at times, who might have zoned out every once in a while, and seemed overall very anxious, and they could have read that as anti social. And I wanted to socialize. I really did. It's just there were things going on in my mind which I didn't realize as having such a strong hold over my life as it did.   Michael Hingson ** 11:13 And then the result was all that you were viewed as different,   Kara Joubert ** 11:19 yes, and the feeling of being different is something that stuck with me for I think, all of my life, even now, it's just when I was a child that was more of a negative thing, and in my teenagehood, I think every teenager feels different, but when I was a young kid, I can recall feeling with this autism like I'm living in a glass box, unsure of how to interact with people on the other side. And with the PTSD, that box felt like a cage. It was just an extra layer of fear put onto my I suppose, social anxiety, which made it even more difficult to connect.   Michael Hingson ** 12:00 So how did the PTSD manifest itself?   Kara Joubert ** 12:05 Right? So, PTSD has a lot of symptoms that can come with it, and it's different for every person. For me, this was a lot of nightmares. You know, it got to a point where I was actually afraid to fall asleep, but so tired that it was difficult to cope in any case. So nightmares was a big one, intrusive thoughts is another, and this accompanied a diagnosis of OCD. So with PTSD comes other sort of baggage, and that can be social anxiety, that can be OCD, a lot of people talk about this experience of reliving the trauma, or at least being in this overall sort of heightened sense of anxiety and fear, apprehension, I think is probably a good word, just being on edge, on the lower, I suppose, end of the spectrum, although dreadful though it is, and then on the higher end, feeling as though they are actually physically reliving whatever the trauma was that first occurred to them. And trauma can come through a variety of ways. I mean, one thing I would say to people about PTSD is never assume someone's trauma, because it can lead from physical abuse to emotional abuse, to sexual abuse, accidents, illness, and there are other things as well. You can get secondhand trauma from someone else, and that can develop PTSD as well. But in my case, yeah, it was a variety of symptoms, but the massive one, I would say, was extreme anxiety and fear.   Michael Hingson ** 13:55 What caused that?   Kara Joubert ** 13:57 What caused that? So PTSD is, and I can say this as someone who has,   Kara Joubert ** 14:06 and I believe being healed from PTSD, it no longer impacts me the way that it used to is it impacts the brain in very interesting ways. And once you start to look into the science of it and understand it, it makes sense. So within the brain, there are different sort of segments that deal with different aspects of life. And the part of the brain, the amygdala, I believe that deals with extreme, you know, fear, anxiety. It deals with sort of traumatic instances. It is perhaps not as I don't want to say developed. It takes these experiences and stores them, but it doesn't do much good for the timestamp. It doesn't understand. Of the fact that this has passed, it sort of holds on to this memory as if it's in the present, which is why you get these sort of reliving experiences as someone with PTSD, and why it can be quite difficult to move away from a trauma. Because in a sense, it feels like you're still reliving it.   Michael Hingson ** 15:20 Were you able to talk about it at all, like with your parents?   Kara Joubert ** 15:24 Yeah, absolutely. Um, I've already said, you know, had a very supportive family, and although they didn't quite understand it as I also didn't understand it. I mean, I was undiagnosed for a number of years. For a reason, they were always happy to support and offer hope, and it was that hope that I really had to cling on to for so many of my teenage years, because when you're stuck in that really dark place, it's difficult to fathom something that you can't see. Yeah, they took to the diagnosis very well. I think if anything, there was a sense of relief, because we understood what was going on at that point, and then it was a case of, okay, now, now we can work around this. And that's one thing that I think is so important when it comes to diagnosis, a diagnosis, is, is the start of something. There are cases where you can actually mitigate the effects of whatever that diagnosis is. And in such cases, it's great to be able to pursue that. You know, a diagnosis isn't the end. It's not a case of, I've got PTSD. Oh, well, I guess I'll live with that for the rest of my life. No, because there are ways to resolve this. There are ways to work through it.   Michael Hingson ** 16:50 So you mentioned earlier you were also diagnosed with autism. Did that contribute to all of the the PTSD and the obsessive compulsive behavior. Do you think I   Kara Joubert ** 17:03 think there might have been some crossover, and I don't know as to how much of an effect the autism had on my PTSD, because PTSD is born of a trauma response, and anyone can experience that and react adversely to it. It isn't dependent on autistic factors. I mean, I'm sure there is some research into this, and it'll be really interesting to look into, but I didn't, at least see it as a correlated sort of diagnosis, I think with OCD, though, there was definitely some crossover. And I do remember my therapist discussing this very briefly, that there is, you know, when you when you have one diagnosis, sometimes you get a few in there as well. And the full reaction was the OCD, social anxiety disorder and autism. So I almost had the full alphabet for a while.   Michael Hingson ** 18:03 Yeah, definitely, in a lot of ways, definitely. So how old were you when the autism was diagnosed or discovered? For sure,   Kara Joubert ** 18:15 I was seven years old, and that diagnosis was difficult to get. My mom had to fight for it, because a child who draws isn't your standard example of someone who was autistic, right? It was probably more obvious in how I handle social interactions, which was I handle social interactions I did have the tools, didn't understand sort of the almost unwritten rules of socializing, where I'm sort of expected to just know how to socialize, how to interact, and I think younger me would have benefited from a how to guide. But yeah, that's probably evident.   Michael Hingson ** 19:01 Unfortunately, a lot of these things exist, and nobody's written the manuals for them. So what do you do?   Kara Joubert ** 19:09 Yep, that's it. Get an autism guide.   Michael Hingson ** 19:12 An autism guide. Well, maybe AI nowadays can help with that. Who knows? Movie maybe. But   Kara Joubert ** 19:19 AI's got a few things to say about you, and I can't say they're all accurate. It says your first guide dog was Hell,   Michael Hingson ** 19:25 yeah. Well, it doesn't always get things exactly right. Roselle was number five. Squire was number one. So you know, hopefully, though, over time, it learns and it will not exhibit trauma and it will not be autistic, but we'll see   Kara Joubert ** 19:44 we shall. We shall destroy us all. That's the other hope. Well, there's   Michael Hingson ** 19:50 that too. So how old were you when you were PTSD was actually diagnosed.   Kara Joubert ** 19:56 I was 17.   Michael Hingson ** 20:00 So that was a long time after the the autism. So how did you finally decide to go see a therapist or or go down that road? I   Kara Joubert ** 20:14 think it just got bad enough, and we know a therapist through a family friend. And you know, I was having all of these symptoms. And I think it was my mum who reached out on my behalf and said, Look, is this is this normal at all for someone in her position, to which the therapist replied, Yes, actually. And you know what that first confirmation that I am, I want to say normal. Let's not overuse the word, because, I think, considered, it's probably the incorrect term to use. At least the symptoms were persistent with someone who had gone through what I had. And, yeah, I mean, all in good time. I think there will be a time where I can explain the trauma in greater detail. But today, at least, it's just a case of, you know, this is PTSD. This is what it feels like. And this, I am living proof that there is light on the other end of the tunnel. Because for a long time, I knew what that dark place looked like, and being able to live free of that, you know, just on a day to day basis, I can't help but be completely overwhelmed with gratitude.   Michael Hingson ** 21:44 So I think from what you've said, There was a time when you really felt that you were different from the people around you. When was that? At what point did you feel that way?   Kara Joubert ** 21:57 I do think this would have been i I can, I can recall two separate times. The first would have been when I was much younger, and I felt like I was living in that glass box. I didn't know how to cross the bridge. And it did feel like there was this barrier between myself and other people and that social, I suppose anxiety I knew was not normal, and I didn't feel as though, I suppose, had the tools. I didn't know how to use them, I think even if I was given them, and I for that reason, I did have to be taken out of school, because my anxiety got to a point where it was just completely overwhelming. And in my teenage years, I think it was probably standing among peers, seeing all these people interact, and I'm thinking, why aren't they afraid? Is there something so inherently different about me, that I'm constantly living in this state of fear.   Michael Hingson ** 23:08 Yeah, but at some point you realize that while there was a difference and it wasn't normal, you must have figured out that's something that you can address and hopefully resolve, I assume,   Kara Joubert ** 23:27 yeah, and it was that hope that carried me through. I would say I am a Christian, and within sort of the Christian sphere, you hear a lot about God's good plans, and although I didn't see it at the time, I had to put hope and faith that one day things were going to get better. I don't know where I would have been otherwise   Michael Hingson ** 23:57 So, but you must have at least also assume that things would get better, that that is, in part, comes from your faith, of course,   Kara Joubert ** 24:07 yeah, absolutely. And I didn't know when that was going to be, and I didn't know what that was going to look like. It looks a lot better than I thought it was going to be. And I'm happy to say that as far as fearing, anxiety is concerned, it's very rare I'd feel either these days that's I mean, people define miracles in all sorts of ways, but considering where I was, I do consider that a miracle.   Michael Hingson ** 24:42 Well, when you were diagnosed and so on, how did the people around you react? Or did you tell them? Or other than, obviously you your family knew, Did did you use that information to help you with others? Or how did all that go?   Kara Joubert ** 24:59 Yeah, I. Um, so I, I didn't have many friends in my teenage years, so there wasn't that many people to tell, to be honest. But certainly, as I have grown older and been able to be surrounded by more human beings and socialize with them and interact with them, I'm actually finding that this is this is a really beneficial experience two way, because I'm able to have the joy of interacting with others, and in certain cases, I will share the PTSD and the you know, corresponding perhaps experience with trauma, which had elements of both a fear of fear of dying and sexual trauma as well. So a lot of people undergo, unfortunately, these sorts of things at some point in their life. The current stat in the UK is one in 13 children have PTSD, and one in 10 adults will at some point experience PTSD. That is quite a high portion of the population. So, yeah. I mean, I have, yeah, absolutely. And it's something that I do wish people would talk about more because you get perhaps more attractive diagnoses. PTSD isn't one of them. It's quite ugly from at least that point of view. But look, I'm a firm believer in the potential that a human being has to overcome their trauma and to be liberated from the past. So I will share my experience with some people. It tends to be select audiences, because I understand that it's quite difficult for some people to hear and I look I always want to approach it with a point of view of uplifting someone in and imparting hope and support, because hope is good and all. But sometimes support is just as important, and being able to tell people to get help, find help, find therapeutic help, is very important,   Michael Hingson ** 27:24 since you come from a background of faith, which I think is extremely important. But can you absolutely really cure PTSD? Or is it something that will always be there, or because you have faith in the knowledge that you do, you can truly say I've cured it.   Kara Joubert ** 27:44 Well, I will say this, the faith kept me hoping for a good future. Therapy gave me the healing, and then to go full circle, faith also gave me peace. Closer to the end, it's as far as time loose ends, emotionally speaking and in therapy, you're taught to deal with the trauma as it is currently known, or at least I was, through a cognitive behavioral therapy, which is sort of a talking based therapy. And there are some triggers that might come through every once in a while, but it is completely possible to be healed, to be cured from PTSD, and this is generally through therapy,   Michael Hingson ** 28:32 as it was for me, right? And it's ultimately, although through therapy, it's a growth issue, and you've obviously grown a lot to be able to deal with this.   Kara Joubert ** 28:45 Yeah, absolutely. And I will say one thing about people with or who have overcome PTSD that I have seen is they have, I suppose, automatically been put through quite a lot, but then the growth journey is something that you know gives that person quite a lot more courage, perhaps, than someone else in their ears, just based on experience and life experience. I will say to people you know, it wasn't the trauma that made me strong, it was, it was the healing afterwards, because former itself can be pretty dire, but then on the other end of that, I'm able to take this experience and help others who have experienced something similar, and also go through life on a day to day basis, perhaps more aware of the hidden battles that people face, and that degree of empathy is quite important, I think, for someone of my position, who it loves to write, who loves to make films, it's all about telling the human story, and sometimes that means. Going down a layer or two,   Michael Hingson ** 30:04 yeah, well, but I think the ultimate thing is that you did it. You chose to do it however it happened. You eventually gave thought to this isn't the way it really should be looking at everyone else and you made a decision to find a way to go forward.   Kara Joubert ** 30:26 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, humans are amazing creatures at adapting, but I think sometimes that can be to our own detriment, where we adapt to what is a bad situation, and we live with that, thinking this is the norm. This is the standard that we've got to endure when actually, if things aren't good, it's well worth looking into a better future, a better alternative. Because, look, you can view this from a faith based point of view, or you can view this from a more therapeutic science back point of view, I think everyone is capable of healing with the right tools, and that's worth investing,   Michael Hingson ** 31:13 yeah, well, and the reality is that it should probably be some of both, because they're, they are, in a sense, related. The science is great, but ultimately you have to have the conviction. And as you point out, you you have it from faith, and there's, there's a lot of value in that, but ultimately it comes from the fact that you had the conviction that you could deal with it. And I think however you were brought to that place, and however you actually worked to make it happen, you ultimately are the one that made it happen   Kara Joubert ** 31:54 that's very well put. No, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's been quite an experience, but I know that it's one that has the potential to show others exactly that, that through hope, through therapy, no one is broken beyond repair. That's my belief, at least   Michael Hingson ** 32:24 well, so I assume you are not in therapy today.   Kara Joubert ** 32:29 No, I am not. Sometimes I'll catch up with my therapist, though he is such a decent guy and therapists, they're there to help you out. So automatically, I think they're quite invested, shall we say, in your life story. So I will occasionally catch up with him, but not necessarily, because I absolutely have to. Every once in a while, I might book a session, just because I say this to everyone I meet. I think everyone needs therapy to an extent, and it's good to check in every once in a while. But as far as necessity is concerned, no, I tend to be pretty okay these days.   Michael Hingson ** 33:11 Well, there you go. So what is your life like today?   Kara Joubert ** 33:15 Oh, today it is, can I say it's incredible, is that, all right, sure,   Kara Joubert ** 33:23 you get people, you ask them how they're going, they say, not bad. You know what? It's more than not bad. It's actually pretty good on this end. And I am, as you've said, I'm in Australia. I'm actually studying abroad, which is something I would never have imagined being able to do previously, as someone who was terrified to leave her house. And yeah, I've just finished my studies for my second year, and it's been a wonderful year, which has included a few lovely surprises along the way. So yeah, things are going pretty well.   Michael Hingson ** 33:55 Well is, is this the time to say that we're having this conversation. And for you down in Brisbane, it's 604, in the morning. So Good on you for being awake early. I mean, I know the feeling well,   Kara Joubert ** 34:12 Ah, man, it's all good. It's all good. I was saying to you before the podcast. Are no better reason to wake up bright and breezy than to be on your podcast here today,   Michael Hingson ** 34:21 listen to her spokes well. Thank you. Well, I, I get up early. My wife passed away in November of 2022, I was the morning person. She was more of an evening person. And we, we had a we worked all that out. So we, we all did well. But since she passed, and I do tend to do a lot of work with people on the East Coast looking for speaking engagements and so on. I get up at 430 in the morning, and I'm slow at it, at deliberately slow at getting up and getting dressed, feeding the dog, Alan. And feeding our kitty. Stitch, my kitty now stitch, and then I eat breakfast. So I spend a couple of hours doing all that. And it's neat not to have to rush, but it is nice to be up and look at the morning. And so when I open the door and let Alamo go outside, by that time, usually, at least in the summer, in the late spring, and in the fall, the autumn, the birds are chirping. So I'll go, Hi birds. What's going on, you know? And it's fun to do that sort of thing.   Kara Joubert ** 35:32 Yeah, it's nice to be up before the world is awake. I will say that I'm not normally a morning person, but I'm considering converting because this is actually lovely and quiet. It feels quite peaceful. I mean, yeah, the birds are Troy, but I will say this, Michael, I think the Australian birds sound quite different to your birds, because I'm sure saying, I don't think it's good morning. Well, that   Michael Hingson ** 35:57 or maybe we're doing something and you're disturbing us, but it's still still good to talk to them and tell them hello. No, they respond to that. I had a job working for a company once where I was the first into the office, and it was all selling to the east coast from the West Coast, so I got up at like four in the morning. And for six months, my wife Karen had to drive me 45 miles because we hadn't moved down to it yet, 45 miles to go from home to where I worked, to be there at six. And then she came back up and she did that, and it was great because we also read a lot of audio books as we were going down the freeway. That was relatively empty. But yeah, it is nice to be up in the morning, and that is what I tend to do, and I enjoy it. It's it's fun to be up playing with the puppy dog and and, and the kitty as well. But, you know, it's just part of what makes the day a good day. And they, they're definitely part of what brighten up my day. I have to say,   Kara Joubert ** 37:10 that's fantastic. How do they brighten up each other's day? A cat and a dog? Do they get along pretty   Michael Hingson ** 37:15 well. They get along well, but they, I don't know that they brighten each other's day. Other than that. They know each other exists, and they're happy about that. They rub noses occasionally. They talk to each other, okay, all right, I would never want a guide dog that had any animosity toward a cat, and I've always said that whenever I've had to to deal with getting a new guide dog album is going to be around for quite a while yet, but I've always said I do not want an animal that hasn't been raised around a cat. They have to do that because I just don't want to deal with that. I've seen some guide dogs that were absolute cat haters, and I would never want that.   Kara Joubert ** 37:57 No, of course. So to all animals, and also, I can imagine, from a practical point of view, he taking Alamo on a walk, and Alamo sees a cat and bolts off. That's going to be very inconvenient for all parties concerned.   Michael Hingson ** 38:11 Well, he could try to bolt off, he wouldn't succeed, but he but he doesn't, so it's okay. My fourth guide dog, Lenny, loved to chase rabbits and not to hurt them, but they're different. She wants to play with them. And you know, so this, it's cute. Well, so you You've talked a lot about having PTSD and so on, but what are some misconceptions that people typically have? You've talked about it being crazy and about it being misunderstood. Tell us a little bit more about how to understand and what, what are the misconceptions, and how do we deal with that?   Kara Joubert ** 38:48 Of course. So most of the times we see PTSD betrayed, it's on the television, and really only see two symptoms, at least from my viewing, which are flashbacks and nightmares. But PTSD can look different for different people. And although, yes, these are symptoms, and they are quite common symptoms, there are plenty of others. So anger, depression, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, OCD, these are all symptomatic of PTSD or an unresolved trauma. So I would recommend people doing some more research, perhaps into PTSD if they are curious about the full list of symptoms, certainly. But yeah, another misconception, I would say, lies in the assumption over what that trauma was. I would say assumption is the enemy of wisdom and the food of ignorance. And people can get PTSD for a variety of reasons. We've talked a little bit about those. You can even sort of get it from knowing someone who's experienced a trauma.   Michael Hingson ** 39:56 And I like that. You know, assumption is. Say that again,   Kara Joubert ** 40:02 assumption is the enemy of wisdom and the food of ignorance,   Michael Hingson ** 40:07 enemy of wisdom and food of ignorance. Yeah, there you   Kara Joubert ** 40:11 go. I won't even copyright it. It's all yours.   Michael Hingson ** 40:17 That's okay, yeah,   Kara Joubert ** 40:18 okay. Well, that's good to hear. No. The other thing is, PTSD can go away. It's not a lifelong mental health condition, or at least it doesn't have to be. And people who have PTSD, I think there's more awareness of this now, but sometimes long standing prejudices can can linger. And people who have PTSD, I mean, it seems obvious to say, but they're not weak. They are traumatized, but this is just one part of their story, and it's a part that can, through therapy, through the right sort of support systems, be healed. All humans are complex, and I don't think anyone should be solely defined on their diagnosis, because a diagnosis isn't an identity. It's a part of the identity. But sometimes this is a part, and in the case of PTSD, it's a part that can be healed. The last thing is, you know, it affects a massive number of the population. We've spoken a bit about the statistics before. PTSD, UK says that one in 10 people are expected to experience PTSD in their lifetime. That's 10% which is pretty high for something that, in my mind, at least, isn't spoken about as often as other conditions, such as autism, such as ADHD, that tend to get a lot of the talking points spotlight that we see in media. So those are a few of the misconceptions. I would say,   Michael Hingson ** 41:59 when you meet or encounter someone, how do you know whether they're dealing with PTSD or not? Or is that something that people can tell and kind of the reason for asking that is one of the questions that basically comes up is, what are some good and bad ways to deal with someone who has PTSD? But how do you even know in the first place?   Kara Joubert ** 42:21 That's a good question. I think sometimes it can be a little more obvious. Again, I would avoid any assumptions. Even if someone has experienced something traumatic, it doesn't mean that they will automatically get PTSD. This doesn't affect everyone who's gone through a trauma. It does show through in some physical ways. In my experience, someone who is quite perhaps disconnected and among the more obvious symptoms, perhaps panic attacks, relating to triggers and these are some of the ways you can see someone who has PTSD, but generally, the only way you will truly know is if that person says, or you're a therapist and you're able to do a diagnosis, there's that duration, but that would be quite A challenge, I think, for any therapist to undertake So certainly it can show through, but I do think the only way you'll really be able to know is if a person discloses that information with you.   Michael Hingson ** 43:35 So if there are people listening to us today who have or think they have PTSD. What would you say to them?   Kara Joubert ** 43:45 I would say you are not broken beyond repair. And it's so easy to take blame upon yourself for the trauma that we carry, and it's easy to think that this is just a part of yourself that you you need to hold on to, as in, internalize in such a way that hopelessness can sometimes be, unfortunately, a part of that. But maybe you are. You know, going back to it's easy to take blame upon yourself, it's undeserved, because maybe you were at the wrong plane place at the wrong time, or you trusted someone and they betrayed that trust. But the power of hindsight comes only after, not during. Is one thing I will people with PTSD, and then was a time of survival. You know, you did what you could to the best of your abilities at the time, but now is the time for healing, and it can be scary opening up, but in doing so, particularly through therapy, you realize just how normal you are, no matter how different, how ice. Related sort of these thoughts and feelings our emotions are, I mean, to go back to my story, I genuinely felt like my head was imploding every single day, and the only time of peace I really got was between waking up that split second after waking up and realizing I had another day to get through. That was the only time where I truly felt at ease. And you know, going back to you are not broken beyond repair, the brain is amazing. And I would say to people with PTSD, yes, your brain is amazing, but it's been holding on to the survival mechanism, and if it's been causing you pain and fear, then I, you know, implore you to consider that there is hope, and despite the lies that our heads can sometimes tell you, are capable of healing with the right tools. Now, I would say, if the symptoms of PTSD feel relevant to people listening, or even if they suspect something is wrong, regardless of whether they can identify a trauma or not, because sometimes these things are really hidden in the back of our heads, I would suggest looking into therapy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy did a world of good. For me. There are other forms of therapy, but for me, that was very effective, and although not everyone's healing journey is the same, I would recommend people to just get help. That is the bottom line. If I could summarize in two words, get help. And I say this as someone who got help and it has made a world of massive difference   Michael Hingson ** 46:40 in my life, how long were you in therapy?   Kara Joubert ** 46:43 Oh, good question. I would say, probably for about, let's see, for about two years. But then, as far as, like the actual PTSD is concerned, the most confronting part of therapy, because it isn't the most comfortable process tackling trauma, the more difficult parts of therapy probably lasted for about, I want to say, six months, but that was six months of improvement. That wasn't just six months of feeling nothing but sort of frustration and distress. No I saw in those six months, even within the first week, even I saw there was improvement, but yeah, as far as, like, the hardcore processing of the PTSD that probably lasted for about six months to a year, and then I still went to therapy for some time after that, but by that point, the symptoms had definitely diminished quite a bit.   Michael Hingson ** 47:49 Okay, well, if we're going to get real serious, so are you drawing still today?   Kara Joubert ** 47:55 Oh, that's most difficult question you've asked me on this. I still do. Yes, I I would show you a few of my drawings, but I think that would be a fruitless pursuit. Yes, well,   Michael Hingson ** 48:09 some people can see them on on YouTube. But what do you draw today?   Kara Joubert ** 48:13 Are you recording this visually as well for Okay, well, in that case, for the folks back home, but if   Michael Hingson ** 48:18 you're going to hold them up, you have to tell us what they are, for those of us who don't see them. Yeah,   Kara Joubert ** 48:22 see them, of course, of course. So I've definitely expanded my horizons since drawing. I also do watercolor and acrylic and oil anything sort of artsy I absolutely love. And I'm holding to the camera now, sort of a small, a, well, I say small, it's about an a Ford sized picture of a whale. But within that whale, I have drawn, not drawn, sorry, painted a watercolor galaxy. Oh, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 49:01 So the whale. So the whale is the the border of the galaxy,   Kara Joubert ** 49:05 exactly, and it's surrounded by white so this is one of my cheat paintings, because it's quite easy to do, but yeah, I have drawn quite a few other things. My dad was a graphic sorry. My dad was a graphic designer, so I've I'm going to blame that side of the genetic pool for interest.   Michael Hingson ** 49:28 Or you can say you came by it quite honestly, which is fair,   Kara Joubert ** 49:34 maybe a combination of both.   Michael Hingson ** 49:35 So you, you decided, so you, went through homeschooling, and did you get a diploma like people normally do in school? Or how does all that work with homeschooling?   Kara Joubert ** 49:49 Yeah, so homeschooling is probably another thing that has a few misconceptions attached to it, but truth be told, everyone's approach is different. So, yes, you will still get the homeschooled family who, you know, focus mostly on things such as sewing and cooking and doing all that. I would, I would recommend people don't assume automatically, that's what homeschooling looks like. I've been given that assumption before, that oh, I'm homeschooled. That must mean I'm, like, really good at cooking I am, but not because of the homeschooling. I did sit my GCSEs, which I'm not sure what the equivalent is in America, but it's the exams you sit when you're around 16. And I did reasonably okay, I would say I also sat them a bit early because I could so as to get that out of the way. And then, as for my A levels, which is the next set of exams, I chose sociology, politics and law as my three subjects, and I did pretty okay in those as well. I got 2b and a C, which, you know, I can't, I can't scoff at that. I was very close to getting two A's and a B, and that's, that's something I've I've since let go, because now, starting university, I am pretty much an A student. So going back to the teachers who said I couldn't, ha, ha,   Michael Hingson ** 51:31 yeah, you should go visit your your former teachers, and say, Hey, check this out.   Kara Joubert ** 51:36 The school might the school's been shut down since then. So   Michael Hingson ** 51:40 um, there you go see So, yeah, good decisions,   Kara Joubert ** 51:44 more than that, but yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 51:48 well, so what are you studying in university?   Kara Joubert ** 51:51 Yes, so I'm studying, I'd say mostly two things, one officially and one unofficially. Officially, I'm studying journalism. That is what my degree, and that has been so much fun. I mean, it's through the journalism course that we actually first met, because you were a guest on Alex left hooks podcast, and that's when first introduced. So I and I was on that podcast because of my journalism studies, at least that's how I met Alex myself, and it's been such a fun experience of being able to speak with a variety of people. And from going going from someone's social anxiety to going to a place where I actually love speaking to people is another massive change, and the journalism degree has been great in sort of pushing me out of my comfort zone from that point of view. And now I love talking to people, as you might or may not have already gathered, and unofficially, I'm studying filmmaking. So, oh, I've got the journalism side of things, but then I will. I can't use the word sneak, because the lecturers, the film lecturers, know I'm there, but I will go to certain film lectures and screenwriting seminars. And through sort of this extracurricular pursuit, I've been able to make a few short films, which has been another incredible experience that I would never have seen coming to be honest,   Michael Hingson ** 53:27 in this country, we wouldn't call it sneak we would call it auditing, your auditing, which is probably a polite way of saying sneaking, but that's okay.   Kara Joubert ** 53:37 I'm like, Yeah, I'll need to apply that. I have been called an adopted film student by one of the lecturers.   Michael Hingson ** 53:44 Well, I could be adopted. That's okay.   Kara Joubert ** 53:47 There you go. It's still a loving family. I feel very to hear, yeah, very supportive environment. Fantastic.   Michael Hingson ** 53:55 Well, if you could go back and talk to the younger Cara, what would you say?   Kara Joubert ** 54:01 Oh, gosh, it's going to be even better than Okay, without summarizing it like without putting it too bluntly as to say, okay, chill. Yeah, I understood why a lot of the things going through my mind were quite overwhelming. And I think I need to give that kid some credit, because she definitely was put through a lot, and she did manage to get through on the other end. So I would say, yeah, it's going to be even better than okay, you're more capable than you realize, you're stronger than you realize,   Michael Hingson ** 54:35 which is, of course, something that we talk about on unstoppable mindset all the time, which is that people are more unstoppable than they think. They are. They underrate themselves, and it's so important that more people recognize that they can do more than they think, and they shouldn't sell themselves short. Yeah,   Kara Joubert ** 54:53 absolutely. And I would say there's sorry you go and   Michael Hingson ** 54:59 it happens all. Often that they sell themselves short.   Kara Joubert ** 55:04 No, absolutely. I mean, I was just about to say it's almost like there's a the word pandemic has been overused, and perhaps, you know, relates to some unfortunate events in 2019 2020 but I would say there is a bit of a pandemic of negativity, and I have seen it among my peers, where people do sell themselves, sell themselves short, yeah, and I think there is a lot of power in the way we talk over ourselves, and a lot of power in the way we talk about others. And I've heard it all too often that a situation is hopeless. As someone who's come from what could have been a hopeless situation, I renounced that statement quite a bit, because it's very rare. I would say that a situation is truly hopeless. And even when it is hopeless, there is still some good to be had in the future, and that is so worth holding on to.   Michael Hingson ** 56:10 What what caused you to decide to do some traveling and studying abroad? How did all that work?   Kara Joubert ** 56:17 Yeah. So as I said, I used to be someone who was very scared to even leave the house. How did I make the jump from that to here? Well, the therapy definitely helped, because my therapist was aware of my autistic side of things and was able to give me some techniques to be able to feel more comfortable, at ease around people outside of my, I want to say, comfort zones, and yeah, I was able to apply that. The opportunity came around quite unexpectedly. There was a talk that we had as a as a year group, the first year, I think, of journalism. And very early on, you had to decide whether or not you are going to apply, because there was a deadline. And at the time that I applied, I will admit I didn't feel 100% ready, but I was putting hope. I was putting faith in there would be a future in which I will be ready, because that's what I want. I want to be able to get out of my comfort zone. Because one thing I found is outside of the comfort zone, there are amazing opportunities, amazing things happen. So I applied, and I didn't hear back for a while, and then there were some interviews, and it was at the interview stage where I really had to, you know, fight for my position as someone who was going to study abroad. And I did. And I think for this particular setup in Australia, 30 students applied, and only three were accepted. Thankfully, I was one of those.   Michael Hingson ** 57:53 And so you're spending the winter in Australia.   Kara Joubert ** 57:57 Yeah, I am, which a lot of people might think isn't too bad, in consideration to the UK, perhaps not too too bad. But it is getting quite cold here. It can get cold in Australia, maybe not quite cold enough to snow. But there have been days where it's been 11 degrees Celsius, which is quite chilly,   Michael Hingson ** 58:17 which is quite chilly, yeah. Well, right now it's, I think, where I am, about 36 Celsius,   Kara Joubert ** 58:27 beautiful, degrees Celsius. We're not working in   Michael Hingson ** 58:30 Fahrenheit. Thank you, Celsius.   Kara Joubert ** 58:33 I appreciate that. My British Self does appreciate it.   Michael Hingson ** 58:38 Actually, it is actually it's about 38 Celsius outside right now. So toasty.   Kara Joubert ** 58:49 Yeah, I can imagine that's probably a little too toasty. Surely, are you planning to into the great outdoors? Are you staying safe inside?   Michael Hingson ** 58:58 I'm staying mostly inside. I'll go out with Alamo a little bit, but it's pretty warm out there, so I'll stay in here. Well, this has been really fun, and clearly you've been very unstoppable, and intend to stay that way, which is as good as it could possibly get. And we really appreciate it, and I really appreciate your time being here with us today. So I want to thank you for that, and I want to thank you all for listening. I hope that Cara has given you some really insightful and interesting things to think about and to go away and ponder. We hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you did, I'd love to hear from you. You can reach me. Michael, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, wherever you're listening or watching, please give us a five star review. We value your reviews very highly. Cara, if people want to reach out to you, is there a way to do that? Of.   Kara Joubert ** 1:00:00 Course, yeah, I would love to hear from people I am accessible through variety of ways. I've got my website, which is just my name.com,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:08 um, so that's spelled all that for me, K, A R A,   Kara Joubert ** 1:00:11 K A R, A, J, o, u, B, E R t.com, and there people will find my project, and they'll also find a way to contact me and I am findable on social media as courage you bear media.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:32 Cool now, with you being in journalism, when are you going to write a book?   Kara Joubert ** 1:00:38 That's a very good question. I really might not have a few things going on the side. Yeah, what's the space?   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:47 Well, I want to thank you again, and I really appreciate you all being here with us today. And if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on the podcast, and Cara you as well. Please introduce us. Send us an email. Michael H i@accessibe.com there are lots of podcast episodes. We hope that you'll find them. You can always find them on my website, which is www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, so love to hear from you, and both car and I would really appreciate anything that you have to say. And once more, car, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely fun.   Kara Joubert ** 1:01:35 Thank you. I've had a completely fun time here myself. Thank you. It's been an absolute joy.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:47 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Pumping up attendance for upcoming blood drives around Coldwater.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The title fits, but not necessarily for the reasons you imagine. Barbara Leigh grew up in Wisconsin where she attended college and had a successful career. She tells us about her life and discusses getting married, having two children and over time watching her life choices basically and totally destroy her self esteem.   Barbara tells us how she, while growing up, was constantly described as a “smart girl”. She helped many figure out answers and learned along the way how to observe and research to learn whatever she needed to know. In 1995 when the internet was just coming into our sphere of experience, Barbara learned about it and created web pages and websites for the nonprofit for which she worked. Even with all the technical knowledge she amassed it took many years before she realized that even with all her smarts she was becoming a person who was being reshaped by a partner with his own low esteem and who constantly blamed her for everything that went wrong.   Eventually Barbara realized that something was wrong and began to look in ernest at her life and behavior. She realized that she had to make choices and regain her own self confidence and constructive view of herself. She changed her life and outlook and began growing again emotionally. Barbara tells us about her journey and even includes lessons she learned and wants to pass on to others.   In 2024 Barbara wrote and published her book, “Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again”. She is quick to point out that the book is not just for women. It is for anyone who may be facing a “bad relationship”. Barbara shares nine conclusions and thoughts from the book that illustrate why her writings can be so important for so many.   This episode is full of many great life lessons and observations. I do hope you not only enjoy it, but that you also gain some positive life choice ideas from it.     About the Guest:   Barbara Leigh grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin and was considered in school to be a smart girl. She was not the type to get in trouble or make bad decisions. She was involved in lots of activities and did well in school.   She went off to Ripon College where she majored in Speech Communication and worked in the library. After graduation, she got a job in a library at a nonprofit. While working toward a Masters in Library and Information Science at UW-Milwaukee in 1995, she was taking an online searching class and was recruited to build a web site for her employer, being one of only a few employees that had even heard of the World Wide Web.   From there, Barbara built a career as a web developer and eventually moved to online learning and LMS integrations. In each career step she moved toward content, but eventually was directed back to the technical.   In the midst of all that, Barbara got married and had two children. She entered and contributed to bad relationships in her marriage, career and family until one day she decided to just stop. She has spent the last twenty years figuring out what it means to stop, how to continue living, and how to do it better. In 2024, she published a book, Why Smart Girls Get Into Bad Relationships and How Not To Do It Again, and in 2025, she took early retirement to get fully into content and do more writing. She currently writes the Helpfulmess blog which posts weekly. Ways to connect with Barbara:   Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaraleighauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbaraleighauthor Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/barbaraleighauthor.bsky.social Website: https://www.barbaraleighauthor.com     About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be today, around the world or in space, whatever the case happens to be, we're all in space anyway, so I guess that counts for something. But I'm really glad that you are here, and we're really going to have, I think, an interesting conversation today, because we, we have a person who has written an interesting book, at least. I think it's an interesting book. The title of the book is, why do smart girls get into bad relationships, and how to and how not to do it again. I think that's an interesting title. Smart Girls, I gotta say, though, Barbara, who is our guest, Barbara Leigh, I don't know. I think they're more than smart girls that get into bad relationships or just do dumb things. I don't know. Why is it that most people do dumb things, but that's a different story, and probably not what we're really going to cover today. But anyway, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset, and we're glad you're   Barbara Leigh ** 02:19 here. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate   Michael Hingson ** 02:23 it. Yeah, well, it is probably true. Why do, why do so many people get into challenges? Ah, but we cope with what we have to right? Yes, we do. Well. Well, I'm glad you're here. Thanks for for being here and being on unstoppable mindset. Really looking forward to having a chance to really chat. Why don't we start? If we can by you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Barbara growing up and all that. Alright, well, I grew up. How's that for a great way to start.   Barbara Leigh ** 02:52 That's a great, great way to start. I grew up on a small dairy farm in Wisconsin. I had two brothers and a sister, mom and dad and, you know, cats and a dog and cows. I lived in a small community. Everybody knew each other. Nothing really exciting about my childhood. I was in 4h and I was in lots of activities in school. I did great in school, and I was wildly shy as a small child, but I managed to get comfortable enough with that by being a 4h officer and being in in leadership positions in the activities that I was in. I went to off to college in Ripon, and I been busy working on being me ever since,   Michael Hingson ** 03:56 well, so you, you, you don't sound like you're very shy today,   Barbara Leigh ** 04:06 like I said, I tried to get past that. I'm still wildly introverted, but I'm at least, you know, able to speak in public. That's a   Michael Hingson ** 04:15 start. Well, that's a good you know, I'm I've always been amazed, and I hear it so often that the top fear today is public speaking. And I've never really, I know it's me, but I've never understood why it is, because I've always been somewhat used to doing it, but I think that people approach public speaking oftentimes with kind of the wrong idea, because I find that if people fear it, what they're really saying is they're afraid of the audience and what the audience might do. But I find that audiences generally don't tend to really want to view a speaker as being bad. They want speaker. To succeed. So it's always been a puzzlement to be as to why people are afraid of public speaking.   Barbara Leigh ** 05:07 Yeah, that is true. I was a Speech Communication major in college, and had to take public speaking as a course, and we had a guy in there that was just shook. His whole body. Shook it when he started out, and he by the end of the course, he was the best speaker there. I think he just needed to practice doing it and find out it's not so bad.   Michael Hingson ** 05:34 Well, what did he do? What do you have any notion of what what really eliminated his fear?   Barbara Leigh ** 05:41 I think he just got better each time. I think it really was just just getting up in front of people and finding out, yeah, they aren't gonna do anything. They're trying to do the same thing as me. They're trying to learn public speaking, and they're fine.   Michael Hingson ** 05:56 That's cool. Well, I know when I was a program director at our campus radio station at UC Irvine, I wanted everyone to listen to their their own shows. So we we wanted them to record the shows which they wouldn't do. So the engineer and I arranged for that to get done, and we made people listen to their shows, take the cassettes home and listen to them. And as I think about it, I think that probably more often than not, some of these people were in radio because they didn't have to stand up in front of an audience, and they didn't think about being in front of an audience and speaking so much. And so they did what they did, but when they were compelled, if you will, to listen to themselves, they got better. And they got better because they then heard what everybody else is hearing, and they taught themselves that they could really do better than than they thought they were doing, and that they thought that they could do. And I think that really makes a lot of difference. And some of those people actually ended up going into broadcasting as a as a career,   Barbara Leigh ** 07:01 that's great. Yeah, it really is. It's just a matter of getting used to your own voice. I mean, some people just really got annoyed, I guess is the word at their own voice, and they were like, I don't sound like that. Well, you don't sound like yourself inside your head. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:27 yeah. I know that when I hear myself talk, I do know that I sound different than I think I sound. And so again, that's part of what I work on. When I listen to recorded speeches, and I listen to what I say and how I say it, because I know what audiences like when they hear a speaker, so it gives me something to work toward. And that's a good thing. Yeah. So it is kind of fun. So you went off to school, you were in high school and all that and and did what? What people do in high school, I assume,   Barbara Leigh ** 08:07 yep, lots of groups. I was in library club and let's see Spanish club and music, musical and choir and various things. Yeah, normal stuff, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 08:23 yeah. I did some of that. I was in the science club, and there was a math club. Wasn't in too many clubs, but I was in those two and and had a lot of fun with that. So it's, it's a good thing. And then, of course, as many of us do, then you went on to college. Where did you go to college? Ripping College. I've never heard of that college,   Barbara Leigh ** 08:49 very small liberal arts college,   Michael Hingson ** 08:52 which is all the better I am. I'm a fan of smaller colleges. I read in the book David and Goliath, the guy who invented the tipping point, wrote this book, and he talks about the fact that if more people would go to small colleges, they would discover that they could actually be kind of a larger fish in a small pond, rather than being a fish that isn't necessarily as large a fish in a very large pond. So the value of people going to to places that are smaller adds a lot of value, and you do get a lot more attention. And that's why, one of the reasons I think I went to UC Irvine, we had 2200 excuse me, 2700 students when I went there. Now there are 32,000 freshmen. My gosh, I can't believe how large it is. No, it's University California, Irvine UCI, which they always say lovingly, really, truly means under construction indefinitely. They're always building new things on the college. So.   Barbara Leigh ** 10:01 Yeah, ripen is, is under 1000 students total. And   Michael Hingson ** 10:07 what did you major in? I knew all my professors. It   10:09 was great. And   Michael Hingson ** 10:10 that's, that's cool. And I did as well. I and I got to know some of them very well. Actually, a couple, one of them even came to my wedding when my wife and I got married. Some, seven or eight, well, eight years after I graduated, or, well, six years after I graduated, but he, we invited him, and he came to the wedding. So that was kind of cool. What did you major in   Barbara Leigh ** 10:33 speech communication with a religion minor? All right.   Michael Hingson ** 10:37 Wow, that's an interesting combination. Why? Why a religion minor with with that religion   Barbara Leigh ** 10:43 has always intrigued me. I guess it's I am interested in people, and religion has such a strong effect on people, and so I really just wanted to learn more about various religions and and how they work.   Michael Hingson ** 11:01 So what do you what do you think about religion and our world today, and how much of an effect it it has?   Barbara Leigh ** 11:11 It's probably very big question. Yes, yes, I have that's like, one of the ideas for one of my next books is to dig into that I'm I have several ideas of things I want to cover, and that's one of them. But, yeah, it just it floors me that there can be so much variation in people who seem to believe the same things.   Michael Hingson ** 11:44 Yeah, yeah. It is. It is fascinating. I I've said ever since escaping from the World Trade Center on September 11, that what happened, no matter what those terrorists say, was not a reflection on the whole world of Islam and the Muslim faith, those were thugs who decided that they wanted to try to make the world bend to their will, if you will, and and they they did a pretty good job for a little while, but it wasn't a religious war, because I think most Muslims are not that way. That's true, and we shouldn't demonize that religion as such, especially since we could always go back and talk about the crusades in, you know what, 1066, and so on. And if we want to talk about Christianity and what it did, yeah, the reality is, everybody tries to do things in the name of religion, and it just doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't. But people try to justify anyway, which is, which is truly unfortunate. Well, so what did you do after you got a degree?   Barbara Leigh ** 12:47 Oh, let's see. I went off to Well, I got married. There you go, after graduation, and moved to the town where my my husband was living, and we I started working at K Mart, and from there, I went to outlet mall. I was the retail store manager, and then I got my job at a nonprofit, and I've been at that nonprofit for 34 years, until I retired, just not too long ago.   Michael Hingson ** 13:24 Wow. What's the nonprofit? Or can you say   Barbara Leigh ** 13:28 it's the international foundation of employee benefit plans? Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 13:33 well, that sounds pretty useful. You were there a long time, huh? I was wow.   Barbara Leigh ** 13:39 I moved around to multiple departments, but I was able to keep growing later, so I stayed   Michael Hingson ** 13:46 so you you were there 34 years. Wow, that is a long time. What? What did you What did you learn about life being there for so long? Wow, I was out for a general question, yeah.   Barbara Leigh ** 14:06 Well, I learned, boy, so many things I have. The foundation is an Educational Association. So I learned the actual benefits. Part of it, I have a Certified Employee Benefit Specialist designation, but also I learned a lot about people and work environments and and getting along with people, and I learned a lot about technology when I started at the foundation the the World Wide Web was not public yet, and while I was there, I was going to graduate school at UW Milwaukee. I. For library and information science. And while I was doing that, I was taking a an online searching course. And my boss, well, I worked in the library, so my boss asked me if I would create a website for the foundation, because nobody else in the building really had even heard of the World Wide Web yet. Yeah. So I learned all about web development and programming and all of that, just because I happened to be the only one that   Michael Hingson ** 15:40 knew, and using tools like Netscape, remember Netscape? Oh, yes, absolutely,   Barbara Leigh ** 15:50 yeah, wow. So yeah, I learned a lot of that, and then from from the library, I went to it, and was in a web developer for many years, and then from it, I went to educational programs where I was working with our learning management system and the integration with with our association management system. So I was, I was doing integrations, basically and but the things that I learned in technology careers that have helped me thus far have been I was doing a lot of troubleshooting. So I would, you know, a lot of times, you know, if you're in technology, no garbage in, garbage out. So when I get to a problem, I say, you know, there's this, there's garbage coming out, or there's nothing coming out at all. And I work back word through the process to get to the source data. And learning that you finding the source data and making sure that the source data is correct is really important. So I learned about a lot about working my way through systems to find that and also making sure that the systems work. So that has helped me a lot in in my life, because when I got into the situation where I needed to write this book about I managed to work my way back to the source of of the problem. And so the the source of the problem was my beliefs about me, about relationships, about other people. And so it was really helpful for me to have that process already in place in my brain, that I could just work my way back to that and Okay, now I can start from better data.   Michael Hingson ** 18:13 Yeah, do you think that working a lot in technology and perhaps some of the other areas where you worked. Do you think that that taught you more about how to observe and look at things and better be able to analyze them and and remembering them? I just find that so often people don't observe things. And I think learning to observe is extremely important to do   Barbara Leigh ** 18:45 absolutely yes, yes, when that's that's like all of my career was observing and and like you said, analyzing, being able to put what I've observed into what I want to happen, or what I would I need to communicate with other people. I think a lot of my career was, was connecting the right people to the right either technology or the or the other people, or just get making those connections.   Michael Hingson ** 19:30 But you had to learn how to observe people and draw conclusions and get that information to make that happen.   Barbara Leigh ** 19:38 Oh yes. And, you know, it's a process, just in growing up and watching people in general. Like I said, you know, religion was, was my thing, because people fascinate me. So I I've always been a people watcher, not like, go sit at the mall and watch people, but, I mean, yeah. I just really try to understand where people are coming from. And I think once I was in a technology career, it was even more important, because a lot of times in those careers people don't expect the technology person to be able to do that, and for me, that was the most important part with understanding the people, understanding what they wanted, what they were actually saying was not exactly what they wanted, and to try to get it get to what they wanted, and then to work with the system to be able to get what they wanted to come out correctly.   Michael Hingson ** 20:53 How did you discover that? How did you discover that people weren't necessarily saying what they really wanted, or that somehow it wasn't being articulated on it. And I understand that's a really tricky sort of thing. I know in asking myself that I just kind of respond by saying, it's just something you gain from a lot of experience, but you have to think about it. But you know, what do you think   Barbara Leigh ** 21:21 exactly? It's trial and error. You keep having people ask you for one thing and then expecting something else, until you figure out that you know what that's really not what they want, and to get them to verbalize, okay, what is it you want coming out of this? Is it? It's tricky.   Michael Hingson ** 21:47 Yeah, yeah, it is and, and it is something where you got to be pretty careful about how you do it and, and to whom you you focus your attentions to make that happen. Or if you've got some people who are difficult to deal with, and again, I guess that that helps you stretch and grow and you learn how to even deal with those people a little bit better, so that they're comfortable in interacting with you.   Barbara Leigh ** 22:14 Yeah, absolutely. But a big part of my job is making people feel comfortable enough to talk to me and, you know, and a lot of times when I would get a project, I would go to the person that that's using, whatever it is, and ask them, okay, you know, where are you getting this data? What do you want it to look like? And, you know, and ask them deeper questions. And, and these are often the people who are, you know, low man on the totem pole, and don't ever get asked, but those are the people that I needed to get to to find out what you know, where things were coming from, to actually give them what was going to work for them.   Michael Hingson ** 23:10 And that's interesting. You're saying, like, the low person on the totem pole doesn't get asked, and they're the ones that would love to be asked to be able to offer their opinions, so that that opens up whole new opportunities when you convey that you're you're willing to listen, and of course, that also then deals with the whole issue of trust. Because if they tell you something and say, Well, I want this incompetence, and you have to keep it that way. Yes, absolutely, trust is, is such a fleeting thing today, even though it's all around us, everywhere we go And everywhere we look. I mean, we trust that the roofs on our houses aren't going to collapse while we're doing this interview, this well, this conversation, and we trust that the internet is going to continue to work. It might, we'll see. But, but we trust in so many ways, but yet, unfortunately, we also confront, or are confronted by situations that try to teach us not to trust and to be close to trust, which is too bad. Yeah, one of the things that, that, that I talk about, actually, in my latest book, live like a guide dog, is trust. I talk about the fact that, in general, the difference between a dog and a person is while dogs love unconditionally, and I think that's true, although they can be taught not to, obviously, but while dogs love unconditionally, they don't trust unconditionally. But the difference between a dog and a person is that dogs are much more open to trust because we have just learned, or we've drawn the conclusion that we can't trust people, and so we lose that skill of being open to trust and trust. Truly learning how to determine whether we can trust any individual or not, rather than just saying we're not going to trust   Barbara Leigh ** 25:07 Right, absolutely, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:10 which is, you know, which is so unfortunate? Well, I'm sure you've, you've encountered that a lot.   Barbara Leigh ** 25:17 I have, indeed, and you know that's that was part of my process, was learning how to trust again. And that's a slow, slow, hard process.   Michael Hingson ** 25:31 What, what caused you to start to learn not to trust? What? What happened in your life?   Barbara Leigh ** 25:38 Okay? Well, I want to talk about it, but, well, I won't go into too deep a detail, but yeah, I I was in a relationship where, you know, I was with a very a person has low self esteem, and because of that, I would get told that things were my fault, or things were if I hadn't done this, or if anything That happened really was was somehow brought back to me and as a person with higher self esteem, I took that as my personal responsibility, rather than looking at it as no, that's really Your choice, not, not something that I could cause, and that just kept eroding away at my confidence, and it ended up with me having no self esteem whatsoever. Wow. And then we, you know, I hit a point where an event happened, and I, you know, my brain went, nope, I don't deserve that. And that's where the light switch flipped, and I was to, you know, then I started looking around and going, you know what? I didn't deserve that, either or that, and that was not about me. And so then I started to measure against that, and go, Okay, I can set up boundaries now, because this is behavior that I won't accept anymore. And I was able to start making boundaries, and I was able to start standing up for myself. And, you know, as as that process went on, I was able to, I guess, it was motivate myself just by connecting, reconnecting with that higher self esteem person that I had been earlier. And so I would, you know, it honestly took a very long time, because I was at nothing, and at that point, I made a conscious effort to be gentle with myself and to be patient with myself and to accept myself and so with those being kind to myself thoughts, that's how I was able to move forward. And like I said, moving forward started motivating me, and I was able to bring myself back up to a higher self confidence.   Michael Hingson ** 29:02 Did you get? Oh, go ahead. Oh,   Barbara Leigh ** 29:04 but yeah. The the trust being gone was a trust for not just the person I was in a relationship with, but for so many things around me because I didn't trust myself. I didn't trust what I was believing about myself.   Michael Hingson ** 29:28 Did you hate yourself?   Barbara Leigh ** 29:31 I would not say that. I would say I just didn't understand myself. I would like I said, when I got to the bottom, I was able to say, I don't deserve that, so I wouldn't say hated myself. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:48 that's why I asked the question, because that was my impression of what from what you were saying. It wasn't a hate or a dislike, it was a recognition of what should be and what. And then how to deal with it?   Barbara Leigh ** 30:02 Yep, I was, you know, because I got there and, you know, the light switch went on, and I was like, how did I get here? How did this even happen? You know, it just, I couldn't understand.   Michael Hingson ** 30:18 But as you, as you progressed and as you learned about yourself, and that, of course, was part of it, is that you were learning about yourself and bringing yourself back the person you had a relationship with you weren't able to to, I gather, make positive steps to get them to to be a lot better than they were.   Barbara Leigh ** 30:43 That was not my focus. My focus was no boundaries, so that they couldn't hurt me anymore,   Michael Hingson ** 30:52 right, right? It wasn't a matter of you're trying to heal them, but setting boundaries and it would have it would have been nice if they had recognized what was going on. But that was the difference, is that you recognized and they did not right.   Barbara Leigh ** 31:06 And honestly, once I got to a place where I was back to being who I felt like me, he was able to look at that and take some motivation from that, and he actually went and got help through therapy as well. So it actually turned out way better than than expected, but   Michael Hingson ** 31:41 yeah, so are you guys still married? Yes, we are. Well, there you go. Okay, and that was what I was curious about. So he he did. It wasn't you can't, you can't fix everything because people have to fix themselves. But he was able to recognize that which was, which is so cool,   Barbara Leigh ** 32:02 yeah, honestly, I moved out twice. So, I mean, like I said, I set boundaries, yeah, but we made it work. I mean, like, like I said, when I first made the change I did. I was not strong enough to move to be on my own. I just wasn't. And so, you know, I just tried to be as patient with myself as possible, and and I just kept, kept those boundaries and okay, you can't talk to me like that. That's just not going to work. And as I moved forward, he kind of came along with me   Michael Hingson ** 32:47 well, and it sounds like you're both the better for it today.   Barbara Leigh ** 32:54 Oh, absolutely, yes, we've come a long way. I wouldn't say we're perfect for sure, but   Michael Hingson ** 33:01 it's a it's a process. Yes, it is. So what does he do for work or for a living?   Barbara Leigh ** 33:08 He is a sales person for a home improvement company.   Michael Hingson ** 33:11 Ah, ah, Home Improvement. Tim, the tool man, Taylor, but that's another story. Oh, gosh. Well, that's pretty cool. And does he do well at selling?   Barbara Leigh ** 33:25 Yes, he does that. He had his own business for for many years, and so it just comes pretty naturally to him.   Michael Hingson ** 33:34 Well, at the same time, if you're going to be good at sales, you have to learn to observe and and not take things too personally sometimes as well. I learned a lot about sales when I was confronted by needing to go into sales or finding another job, and then I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and one of my favorite observations about sales is that the best salespeople are really counselors. They're teachers. They guide you in and help you make the right decision, rather than just trying to force something on you, which doesn't mean that they're not trying to make $1 and sell products, but you can also find that your product might not be what somebody wants, and if you push them into buying it, that's going to cost to cost you in the end anyway,   Barbara Leigh ** 34:24 right? And that's why he makes a good salesman, because he was he, he did the work for for 15 years, and at at his own company, and then he went, moved to sales, and just because his body was wearing out, and for because he knows how the product works, how it goes on the house or whatever, he can explain that to the customer, and that makes it so much easier for them to understand, you know, why they need what they need, and how it works.   Michael Hingson ** 34:59 Yeah. Yeah, and I have found that the better sales people really do understand how the product works, and they take the time to keep up with things, because that's going to make them better at what they do. Yes. So now you have children. How many children?   Barbara Leigh ** 35:16 Two, girl and a boy, and how old are they? 29 and 25   Michael Hingson ** 35:23 oh, they're just kids.   35:24 They're just kids   Michael Hingson ** 35:28 and and I know if they've gone into sales just checking no okay,   Barbara Leigh ** 35:36 and have no interest in doing that, what do they do? My daughter works in customer service, and my son is Air National Guard   Michael Hingson ** 35:47 member. Oh, okay, so it's hopefully it sounds like both of them have some really decent self esteem. Yes, they they learned that along the way from the two of you, which is good, which is a positive thing, which is, which is pretty cool, yeah. So you have retired from being with a nonprofit. You said you were there for 34 years, and what caused you to retire   Barbara Leigh ** 36:17 writing this book, I was, I'm looking at writing more and, you know, doing marketing and doing all the things book has been a lot to do and work full time, yeah, so I decided to give, give it my all.   Michael Hingson ** 36:35 Did you self publish or does the publisher publish it? Okay, yeah, which makes even more of a marketing responsibility for you. Although I think publishers are pushing more for most authors to do more to market their own books, rather than the publishers helping as much as perhaps they could. But nevertheless, well, tell us about the book. Then tell us, if you would tell us about that.   Barbara Leigh ** 37:01 Oh, it's why smart girls get into bad relationships, and how not to do it again. I started out with, well, basically the book is for people who want better relationships, not just women, but I. I started out with a smart girl title, because that is something I identify with. I think of it as an identity, because a lot of books on relationships are books written from the perspective of therapists or the perspective of people who have been abused or some kind of trauma or have addictions or something like that, and that's not, that's not who I am. And so I was trying to give a voice to, you know, average people have these problems too. So the smart girl identity is more about, really, like in high school, people would you know, who didn't know me? Well, what time I yearbook? You're so smart. Or people at work, thank you for fixing that. You're so smart, right? And I believed that. And what I believed was that reasonable humans make reasonable choices, and that's not always true, and so when I wrote the book here, or actually when I when I hit the bottom and I started looking back, I was like, I don't know how I got here. So how did I get here? I went through the process. I figured out that my beliefs weren't quite right, and they sounded good, but when I actually put them to action. They really didn't work. So the book is my process of of getting from bottom of the barrel self esteem back up to high self esteem, and looking at those beliefs and rewriting them.   Michael Hingson ** 39:23 So, um, how so like some of your beliefs that that didn't work. For example,   Barbara Leigh ** 39:28 I will read you a few of them if you don't mind. Okay, so, so you get the idea of where, where this goes. So Belief number there's nine of them. Belief number one, I can trust myself became, I can trust myself when I am being honest with myself, because I was lying to myself quite a bit of the time. It turns out, number two, I am a good helpful person became, I am a good helpful person, but that is not where I find my. Value, and that kind of blew me out of the water when I figured that one out. Number three, I'm smart, but I can't appear smarter than my partner. And that's where the focus on women comes in. It's kind of looks at the social oppression of women and how that affects your beliefs. You know, if you believe that stuff so, number three, became, I am smart and I don't have to hide it. Number four, I must guard my relationship, not only from outside, but from inside to became, I must guard my own boundaries to maintain my mental health and stay true to me. Number five, it is important to keep things steady and stable became keeping things steady and stable doesn't allow me to grow. Fear blocks my growth. Embracing the uncomfortable for a time helps me become better. That one was a hard one to learn how bad number six, self care is indulgent and not a priority. Became, self care is a high priority if I don't care take care of me, I can't be good at caring for anyone else. Numbers seven, I have emotional muscle, and I can muscle through anything became I have emotional muscle and I can use it to pull out of negative thoughts. I don't need to deny my emotions or wallow in them. Just recognize them, feel them, and continue to move all the way through them, and this one kind of hits home for my daughter. My daughter was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 20 months, and she used her emotional muscle to muscle through her pain, because she didn't want to see the reaction of people feeling sorry for her, and so she had a lot of of using that emotional muscle to just not show people her pain and and that has been something that we've had to work on for a long time.   Michael Hingson ** 42:33 What did she discover? What did she finally do?   Barbara Leigh ** 42:37 Well, it's been a process, but she's finally actually showing her pain. She because, like she's had a cyst that burst in it. It wrapped around some things, and she couldn't tell the doctor in charge that that she was having that much pain. She she didn't make it a 10 on the pain scale. So the doctor didn't think that she was that, that these complications had happened, because most people couldn't even walk with this pain, but she could, because she's super high pain tolerance. Yeah, and, you know, she learned that she doesn't need to hide her pain, which was, which was pretty life shaking for her, and she's learned that, you know, she can actually tell her doctors, yes, I'm, I'm actually having some pain, and I I really need to have you work on this or or give me medication for this, or whatever. But, yeah, she's she's really come a long way as far as being honest with herself and with other people. Yeah, let's see. Number eight, I can rely on my smartness to figure it out became I can rely on my smartness and problem solving ability. But life isn't always logical. Sometimes I'm starting starting from a faulty belief I don't have to be perfect. It's okay to ask for help when I don't understand and get stuck. And that one it, it seems very obvious, but that one was really ingrained and kept coming up in different ways. Number nine, partial is enough, I can and should fill in. The rest became I am a whole person with my own thoughts, emotions, talents, hopes, dreams and goals. So if I want to be in a relationship, my significant other should see me as a whole person and should be a whole person themselves.   Michael Hingson ** 45:10 Wow, some pretty deep concepts, needless to say, Yeah, but by the same but by the same token, you were willing to step back and observe and think about yourself, so you were able to to create these conclusions and make these changes, which is what it's really all about?   Barbara Leigh ** 45:36 Yeah, I think that's what's different about my book, is that it's not written by a therapist or somebody who's at the other side. It's somebody who's actually in it, um, digging through it and and feeling it and it makes the, you know, it. I pulled apart the process and was, you know, you have to hit all of the things that the you know, the mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, social, all, all of the things to hold those beliefs out of all of the different places in your life where they stuck.   Michael Hingson ** 46:23 You think that people really have to, how do I say this? Go to the bottom or hit rock bottom before they can really start to learn?   Barbara Leigh ** 46:33 I hope not.   Michael Hingson ** 46:38 You did and I but I hear it a lot you really don't know until you hit rock bottom. And I'm not sure I totally buy that. It really depends on what you're able to learn and what you're able what conclusions you're able to draw. But a lot of times hitting rock bottom, if you will, maybe emotionally at least, brings people to where they need to be. But I am with you. I hope that it isn't always that way, and it doesn't need to always be that way,   Barbara Leigh ** 47:06 right? I think there's, there's different rock bottoms, you know? It's I got to the point where I needed to learn, and I learned, and that may not be what you and I would view as rock bottom to someone else, you know, but it's, you know, I finally, I finally flip the switch. And that's, you know, somebody else may have a switch at a different level than   Michael Hingson ** 47:40 or they may not see that there's a switch to flip which is, which is all about choice, yep. So what got you started down the road of writing the book?   Barbara Leigh ** 47:54 To be honest, I never thought I would write a book that was never, you know, a big goal in life for me, and I think it's totally a God thing, because I was, you know, my my daughter's been telling me, you need to write a book. You need to write a book for, you know, years. And I was like, yeah, yeah, sure, no product. And then all of a sudden it was time to write the book. And I was like, I don't know why it's time to write the book, but it's time to write the book. And honestly, it it flowed. I mean, I had all these great ideas for a book, and they went poof out the window when I wanted to start writing. I I just kind of sketched out an outline that was terrible, and showed it to a few people, and they're like, sure, you go. And I threw it away and just started writing. And once I started writing, it, it flowed. It actually just came out. And once I was in it a little, you know, a few chapters in, then I was able to organize it and figure out what I wanted to say and make an outline. But I couldn't do any of that until I just started writing. So I don't know, it was odd. And then I gave it to my son. I gave, like, the first two, two chapters, probably, to my son, and he read it, and he pushed it back over the table at me, and said big words. And I was like, okay, so I took it and I took out all the big words, and I made it more conversational. And now everybody who who has read it and and talk to me is like, you know, it just feels like a conversation with a good friend over a cup of   Michael Hingson ** 49:57 coffee. There you go for   Barbara Leigh ** 49:59 a glass of. Wine. So that's where it   Michael Hingson ** 50:03 got, yeah, it's, it's about not preaching, but presenting and teaching in a in a non confrontive way, which is what it's really about, which is what sales is about, Yeah, but that was very observant on his part to say that, yeah,   Barbara Leigh ** 50:24 you made it so much better.   Michael Hingson ** 50:28 When I wrote thunder dog, my first book I was I wrote it with someone. We collaborated. I had worked on it for a long time, or at least worked on ideas. And then Susie Flory called one day and she wanted, she was writing her own book, and she said, Tell me your story. And after I did, she said, You should write your own book, and I'll help you do it. And she did, one of the things that we had was that the book is about being in the World Trade Center, but it's also a lot about my life. And when we got it to the editor, because her agent, who became my agent, Chip McGregor, was able to sell it to Thomas Nelson publishing, which is now part of HarperCollins. But the editor said, My problem with this book is the transitions. And kind of said, well, what do you mean? He said, Well, you talk at the beginning of each chapter about an event on September 11, and then you you go back in your life, but you don't transition between the two. And then when you come back, you don't transition. And I get lost. And when he described that, it just immediately clicked what he was saying. And I actually then spent a weekend putting transitions in every chapter at the right places. And when he read that, he said, this is perfect. This is exactly what I was talking about. And when one of the major reviewers of the book, Kirkus, which reviews books for publishers and libraries and so on, when they reviewed it, they said one of the most powerful parts about it were the transitions. And so I appreciate what your son said, because sometimes the unexpected thing that someone says is what sends you down a road to make it a much better thought process and a much better book or a much better whatever than it would have been otherwise.   Barbara Leigh ** 52:22 Yeah, absolutely. I had a friend from college read it from an author perspective. So she's, she's written five books, and she gave me just, you know, really, she wrote fiction books so they weren't the same, but she gave me just really good authoring advice. As far as you know, you were used this word too many times, you know, things like that. And that was really, really helpful too to just, oh, okay, I get it. That would make it much more smooth. And you know, that was really helpful for me too, and it's just just to get feedback in any capacity is so helpful, I think,   Michael Hingson ** 53:12 well, and all of those comments that people give you help teach you how to write better. Yeah, absolutely. How has writing the book changed your perspective?   Barbara Leigh ** 53:24 Wow. Well, first thing, I had no idea about writing books or publishing or marketing or any of that, so that's been a whole big learning curve. But as far as you know, even even writing through the book helped teach me some things about the process as well. Just as far as relationships go, and talking through it with I had about a dozen people reading it at chapter by chapter as I got them done and and having getting that feedback from them, as far as you know, how it how it affected them, and it was really just so, I guess, helpful for me to learn what other people were were thinking when they're reading it. Because, you know, some of the things had never occurred to me, some of the things were for from friends who had been through some kind of childhood trauma. And I was kind of looking at, okay, I get what you're saying, and I think this that what you're telling me is you. This part is coming from your childhood trauma, but this other part is definitely something that I could add to my book, and I didn't want to make my book about trauma, because it really in my mind, was for the person that was just an average person, living an average life, having average relationship. However, my friends who have had childhood trauma have actually been the most affected by my book, which I find fascinating.   Michael Hingson ** 55:42 That's that's interesting, but it does make sense, because clearly you're trying to help people be more open about themselves, to themselves. And the people that that do that are the people that have been in situations where maybe they haven't, and they maybe intellectually realize that they need to grow and change, but they hadn't totally emotionally adopted that stance, and so you help them with that, which is cool.   Barbara Leigh ** 56:11 Yep, that's something I was expecting for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 56:15 No, understand. Now you have a blog also right, called helpfulness. Why is why is it called helpfulness? And what is it about?   Barbara Leigh ** 56:24 It is called helpful mess because when I was writing this book, I was writing about helpfulness and how that kind of steered me in the wrong direction, because that's where I was finding my value, and I had a typo that made it helpful. Mess, mess. Yeah, I said related to that mess. Yeah, it's like, that messy part. That's me. I So related to that that I ground onto that word. I was like, Okay, this word is mine,   Michael Hingson ** 56:56 well, and it really goes right along with the book and everything we've talked about today. Needless to say, Have you thought about doing things like starting a coaching program? Or do you do any of that?   Barbara Leigh ** 57:12 I do not. My daughter is, she is a life coach, and she has started a holistic nutrition program. So she's kind of doing that, that thing and, and I've never really been interested in doing that kind of thing. So I like you go. I will help you.   Michael Hingson ** 57:33 Okay, well, that's fair. I think we, we all do what we we feel we're best at, and it may come to the time where you'll suddenly discover that you're really better at it than you think, and that you could, you could coach people, or maybe not, but that's really something to look at.   Barbara Leigh ** 57:55 Yeah, I do want to focus on my writing for a while, but you know, when she's done with her program, maybe we'll get something   Michael Hingson ** 58:01 together. Well, there you go, and she lives close to you. Yeah,   Barbara Leigh ** 58:08 she's a half hour early, all right, so   Michael Hingson ** 58:10 Wisconsin home to everywhere, which is pretty cool. Well, so what would you advise? What kind of advice would you give to someone who's going through a lot of the things that you've gone through and so on? What would be the first thing that you would say to them to hopefully get them started down a different path of of life, rather than thinking so little of themselves and not really wanting to move forward,   Barbara Leigh ** 58:39 I would tell them they have options. You can leave your your value is not in how helpful you are, and be gentle and be kind to yourself and accept that you may not be coming from a belief that is true. And look, you know, try to see when you feel something that right, kind of off. Kind of look at your beliefs and you know, where is this coming from? Because a lot of times you can find it if you look hard enough, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 59:31 it's about teaching people to truly develop the skill of self analysis, if you will. Yeah, which is something that we, we all ought to do more of we, we tend not to really look at ourselves. And it goes back to the same thing as the whole concept of the fear of public speaking, if we, if we step out of ourselves and look at what happened, we beat up on ourselves rather than recognize. Amazing. This is a teaching moment, and we can learn from it, rather than allowing it to just be something that beats us   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:07 up. Yes, absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:10 which makes a lot of sense. Well, I want to thank you for doing this. We've been we've been at this about an hour. Can you believe it? But I really enjoyed having you talk about it. Do you have any kind of last minute thoughts that you want to convey to people?   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:30 Well, let's see. I guess if you think reasonable humans make reasonable choices, maybe rethink that. If you want to find my book, you can find it at my website. Let's see   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:48 and what's your website?   Barbara Leigh ** 1:00:51 Barbara Lee, author.com and Lee is l, e, i, G, H,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:56 so it's Barbara Lee, author.com, yeah, cool. Well, I hope people will find it, and we'll, we'll read it. Is it's available? Is it a hard copy or ebook, or both, or both? Okay,   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:16 and available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble Ingram, Apple, Google, not all the places   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:24 they're they're an audible version or an audio version,   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:27 not yet something to work on asking, yeah, absolutely. I know I have two people that have been asking, and I well, I have to start making money before I can spend money on that.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:43 Yeah, I hear you well, unless you read it yourself, which cuts the cost way down.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:49 Yeah, try that. I have no idea how to do that either, so that, you know, has added to my my pile of things I need to learn.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:56 There you go. It's an adventure.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:01:57 Yes, absolutely, it's on the list. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:00 Barbara, thank you for being here. I really appreciate it, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope that this has been not only enjoyable, but educational and worth your time. Love to hear your thoughts. Love to get your your thoughts about this. So any of you who would we'd love to hear from you, please email me at Michael H, i@accessibe.com that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star review. We really appreciate those reviews, and especially we love five star reviews. We want positive reviews, but you give us your honest thoughts. We love that. We appreciate it, and we value your comments very highly. If you know anyone who you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, please let us know. And if, by the way, you aren't sure how to review or whatever, or you want to find another place to hear more podcasts in addition to wherever you're listening to it, today, you can go to Michael hingson.com/podcast that's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, and all of our episodes are there, but we really value your time. We value that you like what we're doing. We'll always love to hear from people, so please let us know and keep the emails coming and again. Barbara, I just want to thank you. We really appreciate your time and are so glad that you came and spent this time with us.   Barbara Leigh ** 1:03:32 Thank you, Michael, it's been great. I appreciate   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:40 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

How Therapists Can Responsibly Support Disaster Mental Health: An Interview with Dr. Shannon Goodhue, LCSW, PhD Curt and Katie chat with Dr. Shannon Goodhue about how therapists can ethically support disaster-impacted communities. We explore how disaster mental health differs from traditional therapy, why most people don't need long-term services, and how trained professionals can provide stabilization and support in both local and national crises. Shannon outlines the American Red Cross training process, the structure of deployments, and the importance of understanding when to step in—and when not to. About Our Guest:Shannon Goodhue is the Senior Program Manager, Disaster Mental Health at the American Red Cross, overseeing the nationwide DMH team. With a PhD in International Psychology, a background in trauma and grief therapy, and past roles in D.C. disaster planning, Shannon brings deep experience in crisis response and ethical care. She's also a former volunteer firefighter/EMT and currently lives in Virginia with her family. Key Takeaways: Disaster mental health is not the same as therapy Most survivors recover without mental health services Therapists must be trained and vetted before entering shelters Prevention and resilience-building are critical parts of crisis care Red Cross deployments can be virtual, local, or national More information and transcripts: mtsgpodcast.com Join the Modern Therapist Community:https://linktr.ee/therapyreimagined Creative Credits:Hosted by Curt Widhalm and Katie VernoyMusic by Crystal Grooms Mangano – https://groomsymusic.comVoice Over by DW McCann – https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW

True grit? Not the movie or book, but a real live individual. I met Laura Bratton about a month ago and realized that she was a very unique individual. Laura was referred to me by a gentleman who is helping both Laura and me find speaking venue leads through his company. Laura is just ramping up her public speaking career and our mutual colleague, Sam Richter, thought I could be of help. Little did I know at the outset that not only would I gain an excellent podcast guest, but that I would find someone whose life parallelled mine in many ways.   Laura Bratton began losing her eyesight at the age of nine years. Like me, she was one of the lucky ones who had parents who made the choice to encourage their daughter and help her live her life to the fullest. And live it she does. Laura attended public school in South Carolina and then went to Arizona State University to secure her bachelor's degree in Psychology. Why ASU? Wait until you hear Laura tell that story.   After securing her degree in Psychology she moved to the Princeton School of Divinity where she secured a Master's degree in Divinity. She followed up her Master's work by serving in a chaplaincy program in Ohio for a year.   Then, if all that wasn't enough, she became a pastor in the United Methodist Church and took a position in South Carolina. She still works part time as a pastor, but she also has taken some other exciting and positive life turns. As I mentioned earlier, she is now working to build a public speaking career. She also does one-on-one coaching. In 2016 she wrote her first book.   Laura shares many poignant and relevant life lessons she has learned over the years. We talk about courage, gratitude and grit. I asked her to define grit which she does. A very interesting and good definition indeed.   I often get the opportunity to have guests on this podcast who share life and other lessons with all of us. To me, Laura's insights are as relevant as any I have encountered. I hope you will feel the same after listening to our conversation. Please let me know what you think. You can email me at michaelhi@accessibe.com.       About the Guest:   At the age of nine, Laura was diagnosed with an eye disease and faced the difficult reality that she would become blind. Over the next ten years she experienced the traumatic transition of adjusting to life without sight.  Laura adjusted to her new normal and was able to move forward in life as she graduated from Arizona State University with a BA in psychology. She then was the first blind student to receive her Masters of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary.  She is the author of the book, Harnessing Courage. Laura founded Ubi Global, which is an organization that provides speaking and coaching to empower all people to overcome challenges and obstacles with grit and gratitude. Ways to connect with Dr. Laura:   Link for LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/laura-bratton-speaking   Website https://www.laurabratton.com/   Link for coaching page on website https://www.laurabratton.com/coaching  Link for book on website https://www.laurabratton.com/book   Link for speaking page on website https://www.laurabratton.com/speaking   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well and a gracious hello to you, wherever you happen to be on our planet today, I am your host, Michael Hinkson, and you are listening to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and we sort of get to tie several of those together today, because my guest, Laura Bratton happens to be blind, so that brings inclusion into it, and we could talk about diversity all day. The experts really tend to make that a challenge, but we can talk about it ourselves, but Laura is blind, and she's going to tell us about that, and I don't know what else, because that's the unexpected part of this, but we're going to have ourselves a lot of fun for the next hour. She knows that the only rule of the podcast is you got to have fun, and you can't do better than that. So Laura, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Laura Bratton ** 02:12 Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm excited.   Michael Hingson ** 02:15 Well, this will be some fun, I'm sure, which is, of course, what it's all about. Well, why don't we start by you telling us kind of about the early Laura, growing up and all that, and anything about that that you think we ought to know that'll help us as we go forward.   Laura Bratton ** 02:31 So the early Laura was,   Michael Hingson ** 02:34 you know, that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But yeah,   Laura Bratton ** 02:38 was was fearless. Was involved in so many different activities, and I didn't have any health concerns or vision problems. And then around the age of nine, after the summer, after my second grade school year, my parents started noticing she's just holding books a little bit closer. She's just sitting a little bit closer to the TV than normal, than usually. So my they decided we'll just make a regular pediatric ophthalmology appointment, take her to the doctor, get the doctor to check her out. You know, if you need glasses, that's fine, and we'll just move on with our our summer and prepare for a new school year. So that June, when I had that doctor's appointment, my eyes were dilated. I'd read the the letters on the chart in the room. The doctors had looked in my eyes, and then the doctor just rolled back in his chair and looked at my mom and said, there's a major problem going on, and we need to address this, and I'm going to send you to a retina specialist. There's something major going on with her retinas. So from that appointment that started the rest of the summer and into the fall of just having doctors, different doctors appointments, meeting with specialists, trying to figure out why this 910, year old was all of a sudden having vision problems.   Michael Hingson ** 04:20 So yeah, go ahead that,   Laura Bratton ** 04:22 yeah. So that started the whole vision loss journey,   Michael Hingson ** 04:27 and what was the diagnosis that they finally came up with?   Laura Bratton ** 04:31 So they finally came up with a diagnosis of rare retinal onset disease. So it's not genetic. It wasn't like another accident, physical accident that calls the blindness. It's most similar to macular. So what I was losing first was my central vision. I still had all my peripheral vision, so it's very similar to macular, but not. Not quite macular or star guards. What's happens in children? So that's the diagnosis, just rare retinal disease.   Michael Hingson ** 05:11 Interesting, and they they didn't have any idea that what caused it. Do they have any better idea today? Or is it just so rare that they don't tend to pay a whole lot of attention. Great   Laura Bratton ** 05:23 question, yes and yes. So I've done a lot of genetic testing over the years, and the gene has not been discovered. That is obviously what they are predicting, is that there had to be some kind of gene mutation. But that gene hasn't been discovered. So far, the genes that are identified with vision problems, those have not been the problem for me so far. So the gene, Gene hasn't been discovered. So testing continues, but not exactly sure yet.   Michael Hingson ** 05:59 Yeah. So do you have any eyesight left, or is it all gone?   Laura Bratton ** 06:04 I don't, so to continue kind of that process of of the the early childhood. So I was diagnosed around nine, but I didn't lose any major vision until I was in middle school. So the end of middle school is when I started to lose a significant part of sight. So I went from very quickly from roller print, large print, to braille, and that was a very quick transition. So basically it was normal print to learning Braille and using Braille and textbooks and Braille and audio books and all that. Then through high school, I will throw more a significant amount of vision. So what I have currently is just very limited light perception, no, what I consider no usable vision, just light perception,   Michael Hingson ** 06:55 so you learn braille. So you learn braille in middle school. Then, yes, okay, absolutely. What did you think about that? Because that was certainly a life change for you. How did you deal with all of that?   Laura Bratton ** 07:10 How did I do with the process of learning braille or the emotional process?   07:14 Both,   Laura Bratton ** 07:16 they're kind of related, so both, they're very much related. So learning Braille was incredibly difficult because I was trying to learn it at the same time. Use it with textbooks in middle school level material rather than normal development. Of you learn braille and start out, you know, with with simple books, and slowly move up. I try, you know, I had to make that adjustment from learning Braille and then algebra in Braille or Spanish and Braille. So using the Braille was very difficult, but I was because I was forced to to learn it, because I had to, just to stay in school. You didn't really have a choice. As far as the emotional perspective. My first thoughts was just the denial, oh, it's not that bad, oh, it won't be forever. Oh, it's not going to get much worse than this. Just that denial of the reality. And then I can say more, if it just kind of that whole how that whole process unfolded, that's kind of the whole emotional process. It   Michael Hingson ** 08:34 certainly was a major change for you, yes, but it sounds like by the time all was said and done, and you did have to immerse yourself, like in learning Braille and so on. So it was an immersive kind of thing. You, You did come through it, and you, you seem to be functioning pretty well today, I would gather   Laura Bratton ** 08:55 Yes, because of focusing on the emotional mindset piece. So once that I've sort of began to move out of denial. It was that, okay, well, I can't this is just too hard. And then what I eventually realized and accepted was, yes, it's hard and I can move forward. So just a practical example, is what you were saying about having to be fully immersed in the Braille. Yes, is really hard to jump from learning braille to knowing Braille and algebra. But also choose to move forward. As you said, I choose to immerse myself in this so that I can continue life, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:42 and you you have done it. Well, how? How do you view blindness today?   Laura Bratton ** 09:49 That is a great question. So today is the balance of acknowledging. Yes, they're difficult moments. Yes, their stressful moments. Moments, and I have the resources to process that. So now, rather than just being a denial or being stuck in that I can't do this, I can say, okay, yes, this is hard. Yes, I am frustrated. Yes, I am overwhelmed in this moment, but also I can move forward with the gifts and purposes that I have in this world and using that as a strength. So for me, it's that acknowledging the rap the reality, but also moving forward with that belief in myself, trust in myself.   Michael Hingson ** 10:39 So how long did you at the beginning really grieve and view all this in a negative way? Because it sounds like you've evolved from that today.   Laura Bratton ** 10:53 Absolutely. So in my experience, the so I'm going to break the grief and the negative apart, because for me, it was two different experiences. So for me in those middle school, high school days, it was more than negative, and the grief just came along with that. Now even, you know, through college and even now, yes, there are moments that I grieve, but that negativity has turned into the mindset of strength, the mindset of trust, the mindset of okay, I can continue forward Again, living out those purposes, my purpose with those gifts as a source of strength, the source of courage. It's a source of just belief in myself. So my experience now is the mindset of holding both intention, holding space for both when I have those moments that I need to grieve, absolutely, giving myself those space and then at the same time, choosing to move forward with that courage, rather than being stuck in what I was in middle school of that negativity. Does that difference? Does that make us make sense of what I'm trying to separate the two?   Michael Hingson ** 12:19 Well, yeah, they overlap, but I understand what you're saying, Where, where and how were your parents in all of this?   Laura Bratton ** 12:28 So that was the incredible gift, that that was a deep source of strength, that as that middle school child who was in that negative place of denial and I can't, I can't. That was the source of strength. So immediately, when I was diagnosed, even though I didn't have major vision loss, I was diagnosed in elementary school, they wanted to send me to school for the deaf and blind, and so my parents had to fight to keep me in regular school. Again, I wasn't experiencing major vision loss, but just having minor vision loss, the school said, Okay, you're at a public school and going to a different school. So my parents were a source of strength, because they knowledge what was happening, what was going to happen, but also held me to the same standards.   Michael Hingson ** 13:25 And there are some schools, I don't know how much today, but in the past, there were some schools for the blind, and I'm not sure about schools for the deaf and blind, but we'll put them in the same category. But there were some schools that really did have very high standards, and and did do a great job. The Perkins School was one. Tom Sullivan, the actor, went through Perkins and and I know other people who did, but in general, the standards weren't the same, and I had the same issue. I remember my parents. We were in the office of the school principal of Yucca school where I went kindergarten through third grade here in California, okay, and I remember a shouting match between my father and my mother on one side, and Mr. Thompson, the principal on the other. And by the time all was said and done, he decided that it was he was going to acquiesce, because they were not going to let me go to the school for the blind, which would have been like, 400 miles away.   Laura Bratton ** 14:38 Okay, okay, so, so you can relate to that experience.   Michael Hingson ** 14:42 I can absolutely relate to that experience, and I think that it's for kids one of the most important things to hope comes along that parents deal with blindness in a in a positive way. Yes, and don't view it as something that's going to hold you back. I. 100% Yeah, because if they do, then that creates a much more difficult situation. Yes. So it's it's great that you had some parents who really stood up for you and helped as you went   Laura Bratton ** 15:15 Yes, and I was also deeply grateful that they all they held those standards at school, and they also held those standards at home. So they didn't just say, oh, you know, our expectations are lower for you at home, you don't have any more chores. You just kind of do whatever you want, get away with whatever you want. They kept those things standards. I still had chores we just made, you know, the accommodations are adapted if we needed to adapt anything. Yeah, a story that I always, always remember, just like you talking about you vividly remember being in that principal's office. I remember one day my the specific tour was unloading the dishwasher, and I remember thinking, well, oh, I'm not really, I don't really want to unload the dishwasher today. So I just kind of thought, Oh, the blindness will get me out of the situation. So I was like, Mom, I can't unload the dishwasher. I can't see exactly where to put all the silverware in the silverware of her door. And I still, I can still see this in my mind's eye. She was standing in the doorway the kitchen and the hallway, and she just turned around and just said, Laura, unload the dishwasher, put the silverware in the drawer, and just walked away. And that told me she was still holding me to the exact standards. She wasn't saying, Oh, honey, that's okay because of your blindness. Yeah, you don't have to do it. That was such a huge teaching moment for me, because it pulled me I can't use my blindness as an excuse. That was incredible experience and I always think back on and remember,   Michael Hingson ** 17:04 yeah, and I remember growing up, there were chores I did, there were chores My brother did, and there were things that we had to do, but we had, and my brother was cited two years older than I, but okay, but we had very supportive parents for both of us. And one of the things that the doctors told my parents when they discovered that I was blind, was that I was going to take all the love that the family had, even for my older sibling. Oh, my parent and my parents said that is just not so, and they worked really hard to make sure that my brother got all the things that that he needed and all the support that he needed as well. Wow. When he was still in high school, I remember they got him a car, and I don't remember when he got it. Maybe, I don't know whether he was already a senior in high school, but he got a car. And, you know, I didn't want a car. I right. I didn't want that, but, you know, that was okay. I would have driven it around if I got one, but, you know, that's okay, but, but parents are such an important part of the process, yes, and they have to be ready to take the leap, yes, that blindness isn't the problem. It's attitudes. That's really, that tend to really be the problem, right? 100%   Laura Bratton ** 18:24 and thankfully, thankfully, I had that. I had that experience another, another example that I always think of all the time, still such a vivid memory, is as as a family. We were a big sports family, and loved to go to different sporting events, and so we would always go to high school and college football games. And as I was in those middle school, high school years, those first, early days of experiencing difficult vision loss, where obviously I'm sitting in the sands and can't see the field clearly, rather than my parents saying, Oh, you're just going to stay home. Oh, you're not going with us. To be part of this, my dad are really, literally. Remember my dad saying, Here's a radio. I just put new batteries in. Let's go. So I would just sit there and, you know, with with my family, listening to the game on the radio. And that was such a gift, because, again, they didn't say, is what you're saying about the leap. They didn't say, okay, you can do this anymore. They just figured out a way to adapt so that I was still part.   Michael Hingson ** 19:34 Yeah, I've been to a number of baseball games, and the same thing, I've never been I've been to a high school football game, but I've never been to a pro football game, and I've never been to a basketball game, and while I think it would have been fun, I'm a little bit spoiled, and I think that the announcers today aren't as good as the announcers that we used to have, like Dick Enberg doing sports out here, who did. Football chick, Hearn, who did basketball, who could talk as fast as, I mean, he was, he was he taught me how to listen fast. That's great. He he talked as fast as many times books I read talk. He was just incredible. But that's okay. But still, I've been to games, and it is a lot of fun to be able to go and listen. It's even if you're listening on the radio, the point of being at the game is just the sounds and the experience of being at the game and hearing and interacting with all the sounds, because you're not hearing that as much through the radio as you are listening to the fans as they yell, or as the Yes, as the foul balls coming at you. You know, yes 100%   Laura Bratton ** 20:50 and just to feel the energy, you know, and your team's doing well, your team's not doing well, just to feel that energy, and there's to also to be there and have that, that fun experience with your family or friends, or you know, whoever you're with, that is such a fun experience. So yes,   Michael Hingson ** 21:08 so when you went into high school, did, what did you study? Or what did you do there?   Laura Bratton ** 21:15 What were your interests? So in college, when I   Michael Hingson ** 21:18 was thinking high school, but you can do college. So   Laura Bratton ** 21:21 High School, honestly, I didn't have specific professional interests, because it was just so much focused on the blind surviving and all the surviving, just the New Black, because the blindness was literally happening during high school, right? So my only focus was just survival passing because it was all of my energy was focused on the the learning Braille and just completing the assignments. Fast forward to college. My focus was definitely. My major was psychology. My focus was on psychology. A lot because of my personal experience, because of that experience in high school, and just that that not only that desire from my personal experience, but just using that experience to then help and support others from the mindset of of again, moving through that, that negativity to that, that foundation of grit. So it was definitely focused on psychology to be able to support others from a mindset perspective.   Michael Hingson ** 22:36 So how did you bring that into play in college?   Laura Bratton ** 22:40 So that was my focus. My My major was psychology, and then I I spent that, those years in college, figuring out specifically what area of psychology I wanted to focus on, which what, what facet of psychology I wanted my focus to be so that was, that was the purpose of the like psychology and taking different classes within psychology to try to figure out where my strengths within that Major   Michael Hingson ** 23:16 and what did you discover?   Laura Bratton ** 23:20 So what I discovered was I wanted the psychology to the mindset, to support people with to be that holistic perspective of, yes, the psychology, but also the spiritual connection and just our physical well being all connected together, so supporting our healthy mindsets and emotional health was not just psychology. It was the psychology, physical taking care of ourselves and the spiritual taking care of ourselves, all connected, combined together. So that's that's what led me to doing a master of divinity to be able to focus on and learn the spiritual part   Michael Hingson ** 24:15 of the mindset. So what part of psychology Did you eventually settle on   Laura Bratton ** 24:22 the holistic approach. So rather than just focus on specifically the mindset, focusing on us as a whole, being, supporting us through that mental, physical, spiritual connection that the healing, the empowerment came through, through all of that. So in that masters, what I focus on specifically was chaplaincy, so supporting people specifically I was a hospital chaplain, so focusing on helping people within the hospital setting, when they're there for different physical reasons and. Being able to be that spiritual presence focusing on both the spiritual and the emotional.   Michael Hingson ** 25:07 And where did you do your undergraduate study?   Laura Bratton ** 25:11 So I did my undergrad at Arizona State, and I was going to say a large reason, but not just a large reason, pretty much the whole reason I chose ASU was for their disability resources. So a major focus that that they emphasize is their disability resources is not a separate part of the university, but it's completely integrated into the university. So what I mean by that example of that is being a psychology major. I still had all the same classes. I was still in all the same classes as all the other psychology students on campus. I just had the accommodations that I needed. So that would be double time all testing or note takers, if I needed note takers in a class. So they did an incredible job, like they had a whole Braille lab that would print Braille books and provide books in PDF format. So the accommodations that I needed as a person who was blind were integrated in to the whole college experience. So that was incredibly powerful for me as a person who had just become blind and didn't know what resources were available.   Michael Hingson ** 26:37 Did you have any major challenges and major issues in terms of dealing with blindness and so on, while you're at ASU,   Laura Bratton ** 26:44 not at all. I am so grateful for that, because I wasn't the only person on campus who was blind. I wasn't the first blind person. I certainly wasn't the last so because they had so much experience, it was, it was an incredible, again, empowerment for me, because on the emotional perspective, it taught me, and literally practically showed me, yes, I give me a person with a disability and be integrated into the world, because They they showed me the resources that were available. So I was deeply, deeply grateful for what they taught me. Now, where did you grow up? So I grew up in South Carolina,   Michael Hingson ** 27:31 so that is and that's why I wanted to ask that, because we hadn't mentioned that you were from South Carolina before, but that was a major undertaking. Then to go all the way across country to go to ASU, yes. On the other hand, they do have a pretty good football team.   Laura Bratton ** 27:49 Just say Right, right, right   Michael Hingson ** 27:52 now, my I went to University California, Irvine. I don't even know. I'm sure they must have some sort of a football team today, but they do have a pretty good basketball team, and I haven't heard whether they won the Big West, but I haven't Yeah, but I haven't heard that they did. So I'm afraid that that they may not have until going to march madness. Yeah, but whatever,   Laura Bratton ** 28:21 team for March Madness spell your bracket in a different way.   Michael Hingson ** 28:25 Well, they've been in the big dance before they got to the Sweet 16 once, which was pretty cool. Wow, that's impressive. Yeah, that was pretty cool. That's so cool. What did your parents think of you going across country   Laura Bratton ** 28:42 again? Just like you talked about your parents being that taking that leap, they were incredibly supportive, because they knew ASU would provide the resources that I needed. Because again, in those years as I'm losing a major part of my sight, we didn't know other people who are blind. We didn't know what resources were available. Obviously, my parents reach out to people around us, you know, to connect with people who are blind, to learn about that, but we didn't have a lot of experience with that. So what we knew, and what my parents were excited about was ASU would be a place that I can not only have that college experience, but be taught the resources. And one of the major resources was my disability coordinator, so my disability coordinator, who was in charge of of creating all my accommodations, she was also blind, and that was such a healing experience for me, because she became a mentor. She was blind since birth. She. And so obviously we had different experiences, where I was just newly blind. She had been blind, but still, she was an incredibly powerful resource and mentor of just telling me, teaching me, not just telling me through her words, but living through her actions, you still have a full life like you're you're still a few a full human like you. This life still goes on. So she just modeled that in the way that she lived. So she she was, I'm so grateful for her mentorship, because she was very real. She had minimized blindness. But also she told me and taught me and showed me there's still a full, great life ahead,   Michael Hingson ** 30:53 which is really what all of us are trying to get the world to understand. Blindness isn't the end of the world. It's not the problem   Laura Bratton ** 31:02 exactly, exactly, she literally modeled that,   Michael Hingson ** 31:06 yeah, which was pretty cool. Well, then where did you go to get your Masters of divinity?   Laura Bratton ** 31:11 So then I went to get my masters at Princeton Theological Seminary, and that was a completely different experience, because, where as you, was completely set up for people with disabilities in the master's program, they had not had someone come through their program who was blind. So in that experience, I had to advocate and be very, very clear on what my needs were, meaning what the accommodations were that I needed, and then advocate that to the administration, which that wasn't a gift, because ASU had given me the foundation of knowing what I needed, what the accommodations Were then available. And then Princeton gave me the opportunity to become my own advocate, to force me to speak up and say, These are my needs, and these are accommodations I have. With these accommodations, I can be an equal student, so I'm not asking, Hey, give me good grades because I'm blind, but make the accommodation so that I have my books and PDF so I have double time on the test. So that was just as healing and just as powerful, because it gave me the opportunity to advocate and become clear on my needs so that I could communicate those needs. So   Michael Hingson ** 32:38 this is part of Princeton in New Jersey. Yes, so you were were in Jersey for a while, huh? Yes,   Laura Bratton ** 32:45 I went from sunny weather to   Michael Hingson ** 32:50 snowy weather. Well, you had some of that in South Carolina too, though,   Laura Bratton ** 32:53 yes, true, but from undergrad, it was quite the change.   Michael Hingson ** 32:58 Ah. But the real question is, when you were in New Jersey. Did you get to meet any members of the family? You know what I'm saying, the mob, Oh yes, absolutely being bada. Boom. Come on now,   Laura Bratton ** 33:11 definitely, definitely, definitely, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, lot of local restaurants and Oh yes,   Michael Hingson ** 33:21 oh yes. When we were building our home in New Jersey, my wife was in a wheelchair her whole life, and we decided that when we went to New Jersey, because I was going to be working in the city New York, we wanted to build a house, because it's cheaper to build an accessible home for somebody in a wheelchair. My wife then it is to buy a house and modify it so we wanted to build. And it turns out that the person who financed the building, we got a mortgage and all that without any difficulty, but we had to get somebody to build the house. And the realtors had people they worked with, the financier. Part of that was from a guy, well, let's just say his main business was, he was in the garbage business, and his last name was, was Pinto. So, you know, let's just say we know where he got his money. You know,   Laura Bratton ** 34:18 yes, yes. I had several those experiences too. Yeah, the garbage business seems to be big in Jersey. It   Michael Hingson ** 34:25 is big in Jersey, but, but, you know, but they were all, they were all very nice to us good. And so it really worked out well. It did. It all worked out. We had a wonderful home. The only difference between our house and the others around us is we had to include an elevator in the house, okay? Because we couldn't have a ranch style home. There wasn't room, and so we had to have and all the other homes in the development were two story homes, okay, but we had to have an elevator. So that was essentially about a $15,000 An uplift over what the House would have cost otherwise. But right again, you build it in so it's not that huge of a deal,   Laura Bratton ** 35:06 right? That's perfect. So all your neighbors are jealous.   Michael Hingson ** 35:10 Well, they didn't have the elevator. They didn't come and ride it much. So they didn't ask for their their their bigger challenges were, who's giving the biggest party at Christmas or Halloween? So we didn't participate in that, so we weren't we weren't a problem.   35:28 That's great,   Michael Hingson ** 35:30 yeah, so you've talked about grit a couple times, so tell me about grit, because clearly that's important to you,   Laura Bratton ** 35:39 yeah? So it's so important to me, because that was a main source of empowerment. So just as I talked about that negativity in the middle school high school, what grit helped me to do is take the overwhelming future that I was so fearful, I was extremely anxious as I looked at the whole picture everything ahead of me. So the grit came in and taught me. Grit is taking it day by day, moment by moment, step by step. So rather than looking at the whole picture and getting overwhelmed, the power of grit taught me all I need to do is trust myself for this next hour. All I need to do is trust in the support that my parents are giving me this next day. So breaking it down into manageable goals was the strength of the grit. So to break it down, rather than the whole future,   Michael Hingson ** 36:49 I didn't ask, do you did you have any siblings? Do you have any siblings?   Laura Bratton ** 36:53 Yeah, so I have one older brother. Okay, so   Michael Hingson ** 36:57 how was he with you being that you were blind. Was he a good older protective brother who never let anybody near his sister?   Laura Bratton ** 37:06 He was a good older protective brother in that he did exactly what my parents did in not having different expectations. Yeah, he so he's five years older. So when I'm 14, losing a significant amount of vision, or 15, losing a certain amount of division. He, you know, was 1920 doing great in college. So a perfect example of this connects with the grit he, he taught me, and again, not in word, not so much in words, but again, in those actions of we will figure this out. We don't know the resources that are available. We don't know exactly what the future looks like, but we as a family will figure this out. Me, as your older brother, our parents being our parents, we will figure it out day by day, step by step. And I remember a lot of people would ask my parents, what's her future, and then even ask my brother, what's her future? What's she gonna do? And they would honestly answer, we don't know, but as a family, we'll figure it out, and we'll provide the strength that she needs, and that's what I mean by the grit. So it wasn't, this is her future, and they just, you know, named it for being home with us, right? But it was, I don't know, but day by day, we'll have the grit to figure it out. So I'm glad you asked about my siblings, because that's a perfect example of how that grit came into play and was such a powerful source of strength.   Michael Hingson ** 38:54 So what did you do after you got your master's degree?   Laura Bratton ** 38:58 So after I got my master's degree, I then did a residency, just like I was talking about the chaplaincy. I did a residency specifically in chaplaincy to to complete that process of being a chaplain. So in that that was a year long process, and in that process, that was an incredible experience, because, again, it taught me, you are a complete human with gifts and talents. You just happen to be blind and need specific accommodations because of the blindness. So what I mean by that is, just as ASU gave me the resources regarding blindness, and just as Princeton gave me the gift to advocate for those resources, the experience in the chaplaincy taught me when I walked into a high. Hospital room and introduced myself as the chaplain on the unit. The patient didn't know, or didn't care how long I had been blind, or how did I make it on the unit? Or how did I know they wanted chaplain? They didn't care. They were just thankful and glad that I was there to serve them and be in that Chaplain role. So it was that's why it was empowering of healing to me, because it taught me not to focus so much on the blindness, but to view myself as that whole person, especially in that professional experience, so I can give endless examples of specifically how that, how, just the patient reaction taught me so much.   Michael Hingson ** 40:49 Where did you do your chaplaincy?   Laura Bratton ** 40:52 I did it at the Clinton clinic in Ohio. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 40:56 my goodness, you did move around. Now. What got you there? Speaking of snow in the winter, yeah,   Laura Bratton ** 41:02 literally, I Yes, I can talk about that. And a lot of experiences there with snow, like effect snow is real. So they were very strong in their chaplaincy program and developing Kaplan's and also their Kaplan Z training was a focus that I wanted that holistic mind, body, spirit. It wasn't just spiritual or wasn't just psychological, it was the holistic experience of a whole person. So how wanting that to be my focus moving forward, that's where I chose to go to be able to focus on that. So again, it was such an incredible source of of healing through just through those patient interactions.   Michael Hingson ** 41:58 Well, one of the things that is clear about you is you're not bitter about any of the things that have happened, and that, in reality, you are a person who appreciates and understands the concept of gratitude.   Laura Bratton ** 42:11 Yes, yes. And specifically, let me go back to those high school days, and then I'll come back to the chaplain days, the way of the gratitude my focus started was not because I wanted gratitude, not because I chose to woke up, wake up one day and say, Oh, I'm so grateful for this blindness. But it all came through a mentor who said to me in those high school days, Laura, I want you to start writing down three things that you are grateful for each day and every day, I want you to write down three things that you're grateful for. So in my mind, my immediate reaction as a teenager, high schooler, was that's not good advice. I'm not sure you're a good mentor. I'm experiencing a major change in life, permanent life event. I don't know that there's a lot to be grateful for. So in my stubbornness, I said, Okay, I'm going to prove her wrong. So I started to think of the three things each day I was grateful for. And over the weeks that I did this, I then realized what she was teaching me, she was showing me. She wasn't asking me to be grateful for the blindness. She was asking me to recognize the gifts that the support that I had within the blindness. So, for example, the supportive parents, the older brother, who didn't make accommodations, or I mean, did make accommodations. Didn't lower expectations because of the blindness. So fast forward to the chaplaincy. I was incredibly grateful for all those patient experiences, because, again, it taught me to view myself as the whole person, not so hyper focused on the blindness. So one specific example that sticks out and was so clear to me is one day I had a patient request that one to see a chaplain, and I went in to this specific unit, and the so I walked in, my walked into the room, the patient took a look at my guide dog and me, and said, You're blind, like completely with this question or voice. And my thought was, well, I think so. I mean, that was this morning when I woke up, and so I said, Yes. And she said, Okay, then I'll, I'll share honestly with you how I'm doing and what I had learned, what I learned after my visit with her is she would not open up to the doctors, the nurses, the social workers, anyone who walked in the room. When I walked in the room and she didn't feel like she was being judged on her physical appearance, she was willing to open up and honestly share how she was feeling emotionally with her physical diagnosis. So that led that one conversation led to multiple visits where she could move forward in her healing emotionally because she was willing to open up and share and be honest with me as the chaplain. So that was an incredible situation of gratitude, because it taught me, yes, this is hard, yes, this is stressful. Yes, there are moments of being overwhelmed, and also their deep, deep moments that I am incredibly grateful for, that other people who are side sighted don't have that opportunity.   Michael Hingson ** 46:36 One of the things that I talk about and think about as life goes on, is we've talked about all the accommodations and the things that you needed to get in order to be able to function. What we and most everyone, takes for granted is it's the same for sighted people. You know, we invented the electric light bulb for sighted people. We invented windows so they can look out. Yes, we invent so many things, and we provide them so that sighted people can function right. And that's why I say, in large part, blindness isn't the problem, because the reality is, we can make accommodations. We can create and do create alternatives to what people who can see right choose, and that's important for, I think, everyone to learn. So what did you do after your year of chaplaincy?   Laura Bratton ** 47:39 So after my year of chaplaincy, after that incredible experience of just offering the patient care, I completed the part of the well after assorted in the master's program. But then after that, also completed my ordination in the Methodist Church. So I was appointed. I went to the process the ordination process, and then I was appointed to a local church back here in South Carolina. And again, with my focus on chaplaincy, my focus on patient care, I was appointed to that church for because what they needed most in the pastor the leader, was that emphasis on the pastoral care the mind, body, spirit connection. So as I became pastor, I was able to continue that role of what I was doing in the Kaplan see, of using both my professional experience as well as my personal experience of providing spiritual care to the members. So that was an incredible way. And again, that gratitude, it just I was so grateful that I could use those gifts of pastoral care, of chaplaincy to benefit others, to be a strength to others. Again, is that that whole person that that we   Michael Hingson ** 49:13 are now? Are you still doing that today? Or what are you doing   Laura Bratton ** 49:16 now? So I'm still I'm still there part time, okay,   Michael Hingson ** 49:21 and when you're not there, what are you doing?   Laura Bratton ** 49:23 I'm doing professional speaking, and it's all centered around my passion for that again, came when I was at Princeton, when I was doing the focus on chaplaincy, I became so passionate about the speaking to share my personal experience of the change I experienced, and also to empower others as they experience change, so not to be stuck in that. Negativity like we talked about in those middle school, high school days, but rather that everybody, regardless of the situation, could experience change, acknowledge it, and move forward with that balance of grit and gratitude. So that's my deep passion for and the reason for the speaking is to share that grit gratitude, as we all experience change.   Michael Hingson ** 50:26 So what made you decide to begin to do public speaking that what? What was the sort of the moment or the the inspiration that brought that about,   Laura Bratton ** 50:40 just that deep desire to share the resource that I'd experienced. So as I received so much support from family and community, is I had received that support of learning how to use the grit in the change, and then as I received the sport support of how to use the gratitude in the change, the reason for this, speaking and what made me so passionate, was to be able to empower others to also use this resource. So I didn't just want to say, okay, it worked for me, and so I'll just keep this to myself, but rather to use that as a source and empowerment and say, Hey, this has been really, really difficult, and here's how I can use the difficulty to empower others to support others.   Michael Hingson ** 51:31 So how's that working for you?   Laura Bratton ** 51:34 Great. I love, love, love supporting others as they go through that change. Because again, it comes back to the blindness. Is not not all we focus on, it's not all we think about, it's not all we talk about, it's not all we do, but being able to use that as a shrink to empower others. So just speaking to different organizations as they're going through change, and working with them speaking on that. How can they specifically apply the grit, the gratitude? How does that? What does that look like, practically, in their organization, in their situation? So I love it, because it takes the most difficult thing that I've been through, and turns it around to empower others.   Michael Hingson ** 52:24 What do you think about the concept that so many people talk about regarding public speaking, that, Oh, I couldn't be a public speaker. I don't want to be up in front of people. I'm afraid of it, and it's one of the top fears that we constantly hear people in society have that is being a public speaker. What do you think about that?   Laura Bratton ** 52:47 So two, two perspectives have helped me to process that fault, because you're right. People literally say that to me every day. How do you do that? I could never do that. I hear that every single day, all day, and what I've learned is when I focus on, yes, maybe it is the large audience, but focusing on I'm speaking to each person individually, and I'm speaking. I'm not just speaking to them, but I was speaking to serve them, to help again, that empowerment, to provide empowerment. So what I think about that is I don't focus on, oh my gosh. What are they going to think of me? I'm scared up here. Rather to have that mindset of, I'm here to share my life experiences so that they can be served and empowered to continue forward. So just shifting the mindset from fear to support fear to strength, that's that's how I view that concept of I could never do that, or that's my worst fear.   Michael Hingson ** 54:01 So a lot of people would say it takes a lot of courage to do what you do, what? How do you define courageous or being courageous?   Laura Bratton ** 54:08 Great question. That's a working, work in progress. So far, what I've learned over the years and again, this is a process. Not there wasn't just one moment where I said, Okay, now I'm courageous, and I'm courageous forever, or this is the moment that made me courageous, but how I understand it and how I process it now is for me and my experience courage is accepting and acknowledging the reality and then choosing to move forward with the grit, choosing to move forward with the gratitude. So holding both intention, both can be true, both I can acknowledge. Okay, this is difficult. Cult, and also I can also believe and know. I can have the grit moment by moment by moment. I can have the gratitude moment by moment by moment. So for me, courage is holding both intention the reality and what I mean by both is the reality of the blindness and reality of the frustration of people's faults, judgments. You know all that you can't do this. How can you do that without sight holding all of that at the same time as I have the support I need to move forward? So for me, Courage looks like acknowledging why I'm overwhelmed and then choosing at that same time to move forward with the support that I have. Mm, hmm. So again, that's what I mean by it's not just like one moment that, oh yeah, I'm gonna be courageous now forever, there's certainly a moment so I don't feel courageous, and that's okay. That's part of garbage. Just acknowledging that frustration and also choosing to move forward. So it's doing both it at the same time.   Michael Hingson ** 56:10 We live in a world today where there is a lot of change going on, yes, and some for the good, some not for the good, and and all sorts of things. Actually, I was reading an article this morning about Michael Connolly, the mystery writer who, for four decades, has written mystery books. He's lived in Los Angeles. He had a wonderful house, and everything changed when the fires hit and he lost his home and all that. But he continues to to move forward. But what advice would you give? What kinds of things do you say to people who are undergoing change or experiencing change?   Laura Bratton ** 56:52 I'm so glad you asked that, because I I didn't mention this in the grit so much of the grit that I experienced. So the advice I would give, or practically, what I do with someone that just what I did right before our we connected, was being being that grit for someone going through change. So in that, for example, in that speaking when I'm speaking to a group about the change they're experiencing, acknowledging, for them to acknowledge, let me be your grit. You might be overwhelmed. You might be incredibly fearful and overwhelmed by the future, by the task in front of you. So let me be the example of grit to to show you that there is support, there is courage, there is that foundation to be able to move forward. So that's my first advice, is just allowing others to be your grit when you don't feel like you had it, because, again, in those high school days and and even now days when I don't feel like I have any grit, any courage, and yet, I'll lean on the courage, the strength, the grit, of those around me so once they acknowledge and allow me to be their grit, and they their support through that change, then allowing them to slowly have that grit for themselves, and again reminding them, it's not an instant process. It's not an instant do these three steps and you'll have grit forever. But it's a continual process of grit and gratitude that leads us through the change, through the difficulty.   Michael Hingson ** 58:46 Have you used the technique that that person that you talked about earlier in high school used when she asked you to write down every day three things that you were grateful for?   Laura Bratton ** 58:56 Yes, absolutely, and the the funny part of that, what that makes me laugh is a lot of people have the exact same reaction I had when I present it to them. They immediately say, I'm not going to do that. That's no Why would I do that? They immediately think that is a horrible piece of advice. And how can I recommend? And I just, I don't say, Oh, well, just try it anyway. I just say, Well, okay, just try it and see. Just, just prove me wrong. And just like my experience, they try it and then a week or two days like, oh, that actually worked. I didn't think that would so, yeah, I'm so glad you said that, because that happens a lot. People said that is that doesn't make sense. Why are you telling me to be grateful in the midst of this overwhelming situation? So yes, great, great perspective that happens all the time.   Michael Hingson ** 59:55 Well, we've been doing this now for about an hour, but before we wrap up, do you. Have any other advice that you want to pass on for people who are dealing with change or fearing change in their lives right now,   Laura Bratton ** 1:00:08 the advice would be, take it step by step, moment by moment, rather than trying to navigate through the whole change at one time that's overwhelming, and that that's not the process that is most healing. So to trust in yourself, to trust that grit around you, and then just like, like you were saying, and ask me, and it doesn't seem like it'll work, but try the gratitude, try that three things every day you're grateful for, and just see what happens as you navigate through the change. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:52 And it really does work, which is the point?   Laura Bratton ** 1:00:54 Which is the point? Right? Right? We don't think it's going to but it, it totally does   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:59 well. Laura, I want to thank you for being with us. This has been absolutely wonderful and fun, and I hope that people who listen got and who watch it got a lot out of it. And you, you provided a lot of good expectation setting for people. And you, you've certainly lived a full life. We didn't mention we got us before you we we sign off. You're also an author,   Laura Bratton ** 1:01:24 yes. So I wrote harnessing courage again, just like the reason I speak, I was so passionate about taking the grit and the gratitude that I use that was such a source of Empower for me, I wanted to tell my story and tell it through the perspective of grit and gratitude so that other people could also use it as a resource. So the book tells my story of becoming blind and adapting and moving forward, but through the complete expected perspective of the gratitude, how I didn't believe the gratitude would work, how I struggled with thinking, Oh, the gratitude is ridiculous. That's never going to be source of empowerment. Yet it was so. The purpose of the book, my hope, my goal for the book, is that people can read it and take away those resources as they face their own change their own challenges.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:30 And when did you write it? So I wrote   Laura Bratton ** 1:02:33 it in it was published in 2016 Okay, so it that that definitely was, was my goal and passion, and that just writing the book was incredibly healing. Was like a great source of strength. Cool,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:50 well, I hope people will get it. Do you do any coaching today or   Laura Bratton ** 1:02:54 Yes, so I do coaching as well as the speaking so the the one on one coaching, as people are experiencing difficult, difficult or just navigating through change, I do the one on one coaching as well as the speaking,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:11 which is certainly a good thing that chaplaincy taught you. Yes, 100% Well, thank you again for being here, and I want to thank all of you for being with us today, wherever you are. We would appreciate it. I would definitely appreciate it. If when you can, you go to wherever you're listening to or watching the podcast and give us a five star review. We absolutely value your reviews. I'd love to hear your thoughts about this, and I'm sure Laura would. So you're welcome to email me at Michael, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, i, b, e.com, love to hear your thoughts. And also, of course, as I said, we'd love your your five star reviews, wherever you're listening. Also, if any of you, Laura, including you, have any thoughts of others who we ought to have on this podcast, we're always looking for more guests, and we really would appreciate it if you'd let anyone know who might be a good guest in your mind, that they can reach out or email me, and I'll reach out, but we really would appreciate that. But again, Laura, I just want to thank you one more time for being here and for taking all this time with us today.   Laura Bratton ** 1:04:27 Thank you for the opportunity, and thank you for hosting this podcast. Incredibly powerful and we all need to be reminded   **Michael Hingson ** 1:04:37 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

I have mentioned before a program I attend entitled Podapalooza. This quarterly event brings together podcasters, would-be podcasters and people interested in being interviewed by podcasters. This all-day program is quite fun. Each time I go I request interview opportunities to bring people onto Unstoppable Mindset. I never really have a great idea of who I will meet, but everyone I have encountered has proven interesting and intriguing.   This episode we get to meet Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett who I met at Podapalooza 12. I began our episode by asking Laura to tell me a bit about her growing up. We hadn't talked about this before the episode. The first thing she told me was that she was kind of an afterthought child born some 12.5 years after her nearest sibling. Laura grew up curious about many things. She went to University in Calgary. After obtaining her Master's degree she worked for some corporations for a time, but then went back to get her Doctorate in Organization Psychology.   After discussing her life a bit, Dr. Laura and I discussed many subjects including fear, toxic bosses and even something she worked on since around 2005, working remotely. What a visionary Laura was. I like the insights and thoughts Dr. Lovett discusses and I think you will find her thoughts worth hearing.   On top of everything else, Laura is a podcaster. She began her podcast career in 2020. I get to be a guest on her podcast, _Where Work Meets Life_TM, in May of 2025. Be sure to check out her podcast and listen in May to see what we discuss.   Laura is also an author as you will learn. She is working on a book about toxic bosses. This book will be published in January of 2026. She also has written two fiction books that will soon be featured in a television series. She tells us about what is coming.       About the Guest:   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett is an Organizational Psychologist, Keynote Speaker, Business Leader, Author, and Podcast Host. She is a sought-after thought leader on workplace psychology and career development internationally, with 25 years of experience. Dr. Laura is a thought leader on the future of work and understands the intersection of business and people.     Dr. Laura's areas of expertise include leadership, team, and culture development in organizations, remote/hybrid workplace success, toxic leadership, career development, and mental health/burnout. She holds a Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of Calgary, where she is currently an Adjunct Professor.     As a passionate entrepreneur, Dr. Laura has founded several psychology practices in Canada since 2009, including Canada Career Counselling, Synthesis Psychology, and Work EvOHlution™ which was acquired in 2021.  She runs the widely followed podcast _Where Work Meets Life_TM, which began in 2020.  She speaks with global experts on a variety of topics around thriving humans and organizations, and career fulfillment.     In addition to her businesses, she has published two psychological thrillers, Losing Cadence and Finding Sophie. She hopes to both captivate readers and raise awareness on important topics around mental health and domestic violence.  These books are currently being adapted for a television series.  Dr. Laura received a Canadian Women of Inspiration Award as a Global Influencer in 2018. Ways to connect with Dr. Laura:   Email: Connect@drlaura.live   Website: https://drlaura.live/    LinkedIn: @drlaurahambley/    Keynotes: Keynotes & Speaking Engagements   Podcast: Where Work Meets Life™ Podcast   Author: Books   Newsletter: Subscribe to Newsletter   Youtube: @dr.laurawhereworkmeetslife   Facebook: @Dr.Laura.whereworkmeetslife   Instagram: @dr.laura__   Tik Tok: @drlaura__   X: @DrLaura_   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:     Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.     Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi everyone, wherever you happen to be, I want to welcome you to another episode of unstoppable mindset. I am your host, Mike hingson, and we have, I think, an interesting guest today. She's an organizational psychologist. She is a keynote speaker, and she even does a podcast I met Dr Laura through a function that we've talked about before on this podcast, Pata palooza. We met at pollooza 12. So that goes back to January. I think Dr Laura is an organizational psychologist. As I said, she's a keynote speaker. She runs a podcast. She's written books, and I think you've, if I'm not mistaken, have written two fiction books, among other things, but we'll get to all that. But Laura, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. And thank you very much for being here.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 02:12 Well, thank you for having me, Michael. I really think the world of you and admire your spirit, and I'm just honored to be here speaking with you today. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:22 as I tell people when they come on the podcast, we do have one hard and fast rule, and that is, you're supposed to have fun. So if you can't have fun, forget about   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 02:30 it. Okay, alright, I'm willing to There   Michael Hingson ** 02:34 you go see you gotta have a little bit of fun. Well, why don't we start as I love to do with a lot of folks tell us kind of about the early Laura, growing up and all that, and kind of how you got where you are, if you will. Oh, my goodness, I know that opens up a lot of options.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 02:52 I was an afterthought child. I was the sixth child of a Catholic mother who had five children in a row, and had me 12 years later, unplanned, same parents, but all my siblings are 12 to 19 years older than me, so I was caught between generations. I always wanted to be older than I was, and I felt, you know, I was almost missing out on the things that were going on before me. But then I had all these nieces and nephews that came into the world where I was the leader of the pack. So my niece, who's next in line to me, is only three years younger, so it just it makes for an interesting dynamic growing up where you're the baby but you're also the leader. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 03:39 lot of advantages there, though I would think,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 03:42 Oh yeah, it taught me a lot about leadership. It taught me about followership. It taught me about life and learning the lessons from my older siblings of what you know, they were going through and what I wanted to be like when I grew up.   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 So, so what kind of things did you learn from all of that? And you know, what did, what did they teach you, and what did they think of you, all of your older siblings? Oh, they loved me. I was, I bet they were. Yeah, you were the baby sister.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 04:13 But I should add my mom was mentally ill, so her mental illness got worse after having me, I think, and I know this about postpartum, as you get older and postpartum hits, it can get worse later on and and she suffered with a lot of mental health challenges, and I would say that that was the most challenging part of growing up for me.   Michael Hingson ** 04:42 Did she ever get over that? Or?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 04:45 No, we just, I mean, it had its ups and downs. So when times were good, she was great, she was generous, she was loving. She was a provider, a caretaker. She had stayed at home her whole life, so she was the stay at home mom, where you'd come home from school. And there'd be hot, baked cookies and stuff, you know, she would really nurture that way. But then when she had her lows, because it was almost a bipolar situation, I would, I would say it was undiagnosed. I mean, we never got a formal diagnosis, but she had more than one psychotic break that ended her in the hospital. But I would say when she was down, she would, you know, run away for a few days and stay in another city, or have a complete meltdown and become really angry and aggressive. And, I mean, it was really unpredictable. And my father was just like a rock, just really stable and a loving influence and an entrepreneur like I am, so that, you know, he really helped balance things out, but it was hard on him as well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:48 I'll bet. Yeah, that's never easy. Is she still with us, or is she passed?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 05:53 No, she got dementia and she passed. The dementia was about 12 years of, you know, turning into a baby. It's so sad that over 12 years, we just she lost her mind completely, and she died in 2021 and it was hard. I mean, I felt like, oh, man, you know, that was hard. I you know, as much as it was difficult with her and the dementia was difficult. I mean, she was my mother, and, yeah, it was a big loss for me. And I lost my father at age 21 and that was really hard. It was a very sudden with an aneurysm. And so that was in 1997 so I've been a long time without parents in my life.   Michael Hingson ** 06:30 Wow. Well, I know what you mean. My father, in this is his opinion, contracted some sort of a spore in Africa during World War Two, and it manifested itself by him losing, I think it was white blood cells later in his life, and had to have regular transfusions. And eventually he passed in 1984 and my belief is, although they classified it as congestive heart failure, he had enough other diseases or things that happened to him in the couple of years before he passed. I think it was actually HIV that he died from, because at that time, they still didn't understand about tainted blood, right? And so he got transfusions that probably were blood that that was a problem, although, you know, I can't prove that, and don't know it, but that's just kind of my opinion.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 07:34 Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, Michael, that is so, so sad.   Michael Hingson ** 07:38 Yeah. And then my mom was a smoker most of her life, and she fell in 1987 and broke her hip, and they discovered that she also had some some cancer. But anyway, while she was in the hospital recovering from the broken hip, they were going to do some surgery to deal with the cancer, but she ended up having a stroke and a heart attack, and she passed away. So Oh, my God. I lost my mom in 1987   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 08:04 and you know, you were young. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 08:08 I was, I was 37 when she died. So still, I missed them both, even today, but I I had them for a while, and then my brother, I had until 2015 and then he passed from cancer. So it happens, and I got married in 1982 to my wife, Karen, who was in a wheelchair her whole life, and she passed in 2022 so we were married 40 years. So lots of memories. And as I love to tell people all the time, I got to continue to be a good kid, because I'm being monitored from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I know I'm going to hear about it. So,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 08:49 you know, well, that's a beautiful, long marriage that the two of you had   Michael Hingson ** 08:55 was and lots of memories, which is the important things. And I was blessed that with September 11 and so on, and having written thunder dog, the original book that I wrote about the World Trade Center and my life, it was published in 2011 and I was even reading part of it again today, because I spoke at a book club this morning, it just brings back lots of wonderful memories with Karen, and I just can't in any way argue with the fact that we did have a great 40 years. So no regrets.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 09:26 Wow, 40 years.   Michael Hingson ** 09:30 Yeah. So, you know, it worked out well and so very happy. And I know that, as I said, I'm being monitored, so I I don't even chase the girls. I'm a good kid. Chris, I would point out none of them have chased me either. So, you know,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 09:49 I love your humor. It's so awesome. So we gotta laugh, Mark, because the world's really tricky right now. Oh gosh, isn't it? It's very tricky. And I'd love to talk. About that today a bit, because I'm just having a lot of thoughts about it and a lot of messages I want to get across being well, you are well psychologist and a thought leader and very spiritual and just trying to make a difference, because it's very tricky.   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 So how did you get into psychology and all that. So you grew up, obviously, you went to college and tell me about that and how you ended up getting into the whole issue of psychology and the things that you do. Well,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 10:30 I think being the youngest, I was always curious about human dynamics in my family and the siblings and all the dynamics that were going on, and I was an observer of all of that. And then with my mother and just trying to understand the human psyche and the human condition. And I was a natural born helper. I always wanted to help people, empathetic, very sensitive kid, highly sensitive person. So then when I went into psycho to university. We University. We call it up here for an undergrad degree, I actually didn't know what I wanted to do. I was a musician as well. I was teaching music throughout high school, flute and piano. I had a studio and a lot of students. And thought, well, maybe do I want to do a music degree? Or, Oh, maybe I should go into the family business of water treatment and water filtration that my father started for cities, and go in and do that and get a chemical engineering degree. Not really interested in that, though, no. And then just kind of stumbled my way through first year. And then I was really lost. And then I came across career counseling. And I thought, Okay, this is going to help me. And it did. And psychology lit up like a light bulb. I had taken the intro to psych course, which is more of a hodgepodge mix of topics. I'm like, yeah, and then, but when I looked at the second year courses in the third year and personality and abnormal psych and clinical psych and all of that. I thought, Oh, I found my place. This is juicy. This is interesting. And I want to help people. Is   Michael Hingson ** 12:09 this to say you fit right in when you were studying Abnormal Psychology? Just checking,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 12:14 yeah, probably okay. I actually didn't go down the clinical psych route, which is where it's the clinical psych and the psychiatrists that tackle more of the personality disorders. So I went into counseling psych, which is the worried well. We call it the worried well. So people like you and I who are going through life, experiencing the various curve balls that life has to offer, and I know you've been through more than your fair share, but it's helping people get through the curve balls. And I specialized in career, I ended up saying people spend most of their waking lives, you know, working or thinking about work as part of their identity. So I specialized in career development psychology in my master's degree.   Michael Hingson ** 13:01 Yeah, well, that's, that's certainly, probably was easier than flute and piano. You couldn't do both of those at the same time.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 13:07 I ended up having to, yeah, it became too much. I tried to for a while.   Michael Hingson ** 13:13 Yeah, you can play the flute or the piano, but kind of hard to do both at the same time. Oh,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 13:18 at the same time, yeah, unless you play with your toes, which I've seen people actually people do that, yeah, do Yeah. There's this one speaker in our national speakers group, and he he does a lot with his toes, like I remember him playing the drums with his toes at his last keynote. So I was just amazed. So horn with no arms and does everything with his feet. So I bet he could do some piano too. There you go.   Michael Hingson ** 13:49 But then, of course, having no arms and he would also have a problem doing piano at the same time. But, you know, that's okay, but still, so you went into to psychology, which I find is a is a fascinating subject. Anyway, my interest was always in the physical sciences, so I got my master's degree in physics, although I did take a couple of psychology courses, and I enjoyed it. I remember the basic intro to psych, which was a lot of fun, and she's had a real hodgepodge, but still it was fascinating. Because I always was interested in why people behave the way they do, and how people behave the way they do, which is probably why I didn't go into theoretical physics, in a sense. But still it was and is very interesting to see how people behave, but you went off and got your masters, and then you also got a PhD along the line, huh?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 14:47 Yeah, that was interesting. I did the Masters, and then I always did things a little differently. Michael, so all of my peers went on to become registered psychologists, which, which means you have. To go through a registration process, and instead, I got pulled into a.com company. We called them dot coms at the time, because in 1999 when I started with a.com It was a big thing. I mean, it was exciting, right? It was and it was a career development related.com that had a head office in New York City, and I ended up leading a team here in Calgary, and we were creating these technologies around helping people assess their passions, their interests, their skills, and then link to careers. We had about 900 careers in our database, and then linking people to educational programs to get them towards those careers. So I remember coming up a lot of times to Rutgers University and places like that, and going to New York City and dealing with that whole arena. So I was, you know, from a young age, I'd say I was too young to rent a car when I flew there, but I had a team of about 15 people that I oversaw, and it was great experience for me at an early age of, okay, you know, there's a lot I'm learning a lot here, because I really wasn't trained in Business and Management at that time, right?   Michael Hingson ** 16:17 But you But you did it.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 16:20 I did it, yeah, I did it. And then I ended up working for another consulting firm that brought me into a whole bunch of organizations working on their competency models. So I did a lot of time in the Silicon Valley, working in different companies like Cisco, and I was just in this whole elaborate web of Okay. Organizations are quite interesting. They're almost like families, because they have a lot of dynamics there. It's interesting. And you can make a difference, and you can help the organization, the people in the workplace, you know, grow and thrive and develop. And I'm okay, you know, this is interesting, too. I like this. And then at that time, I knew I wanted to do a doctorate, and I discovered that organizational Psych was what I wanted to do, because it's the perfect blend of business and psychology. Because I'm a serial entrepreneur, by the way, so entrepreneurship, psychology, business, kind of the best of both worlds. Okay, I'm going to do that, so that's what I did.   Michael Hingson ** 17:24 That certainly is kind of cool. So when did you end up getting your doctorate?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 17:28 I finished that in 2005   Michael Hingson ** 17:31 okay, were you working while you were doing that? Or did you just go back to school full   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 17:36 time? I had to go back to school because the program was very heavy. It was a program where you could not work full time during it. I still worked part time during it. I was working hard because I was registering as a psychologist at the same time, I knew I wanted to register and become a psychologist, and I knew I wanted to get that doctorate, and there were times when I almost stepped away, especially at the beginning of it, because when you're out in the real world, and then you go back into academia, it's just such a narrow How do I explain this? How does this, how is this relevant? You know, all these journal articles and this really esoteric, granular research on some little itty, itty bitty thing. And I just really struggled. But then I said, So I met with someone I remember, and she she said, Laura, it's like a car. When you buy a car, you can choose your own car seats and color, and you know, the bells and whistles of your car, and you can do that for the doctorate. And I said, Okay, I'm going to make the doctorate mine, and I'm going to specialize in a topic that I can see being a topic that the world of work will face in the future. So I specialized in remote leadership, and how you lead a team when they're not working in the same office, and how you lead and inspire people who are working from home. And that whole notion of distributed work, which ended up becoming a hot topic in the pandemic. I was, I was 20 years, 15 years ahead of the game. Yeah. Well, that,   Michael Hingson ** 19:09 of course, brings up the question of the whole issue of remote work and stuff during the pandemic and afterward. What do you what do you think has been the benefit of the whole concept of remote work. What did people learn because of the pandemic, and are they forgetting it, or are they still remembering it and allowing people to to work at home? And I ask that because I know in this country, our illustrious president is demanding that everybody go back to work, and a lot of companies are buying into that as well. And my thought has always been, why should we worry about where a person works, whether it's remote or in an actual office, so long as they get the work? Done, but that seems to, politically not be the way what people want to think of it today.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 20:06 Yeah, it's, I mean, I have a lot to say on it, and I have years and years of data and research that supports the notion that it's not a one size fits all, and a blend tends to be the best answer. So if you want to preserve the culture and the collaboration, but yet you want to have people have the flexibility and autonomy and such, which is the best of both worlds. Because you're running a workplace, you're not running a daycare where you need to babysit people, and if you need to babysit people, you're hiring the wrong people. So I would say I'm a biggest fan of hybrid. I think remote works in some context, I think bringing everyone back full time to an office is very, very old school command and control, leadership, old school command and control will not work. You know, when you're trying to retain talent, when it's an employer's market, yes, you'll get away with it. But when it goes back to an employee's market. Watch out, because your generation Z's are going to be leaving in droves to the companies that offer flexibility and autonomy, same with some of your millennials, for sure, and even my generation X. I mean, we really value, you know, a lot of us want to have hybrids and want to be trusted and not be in a car for 10 to 20 hours a week commuting? Yeah? So,   Michael Hingson ** 21:27 yeah, I know I hear you, and from the baby boomer era, you know, I I think there's value in being in an office that is, I think that having time to interact and know colleagues and so on is important. But that doesn't mean that you have to do it every day, all day. I know many times well. I worked for a company for eight years. The last year was in New York because they wanted me to go to New York City and open an office for them, but I went to the office every day, and I was actually the first person in the office, because I was selling to the east coast from the west coast. So I opened the office and was on the phone by 6am in the morning, Pacific Time, and I know that I got so much more done in the first two to three hours, while everyone else was slowly filtering in, and then we got diverted by one thing or another, and people would gossip and so on. Although I still tried to do a lot of work, nevertheless, it got to be a little bit more of a challenge to get as much done, because now everybody was in and they wanted to visit, or whatever the case happens to be, and I think there's value in visiting, but I think from a working standpoint, if I'd been able to do that at home, at least part of the time, probably even more would have been accomplished. But I think there's value also in spending some time in the office, because people do need to learn to interact and know and trust each other, and you're not going to learn to trust if you don't get to know the other people.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 23:08 Yeah, totally. I agree with you 100% and I know from it. I on my own podcast I had the founder of four day work week global, the four day work movement. I did four episodes on that topic, and yeah, people are not productive eight hours a day. I'll tell you that. Yeah, yeah. So just because you're bringing them into an office and forcing them to come in, you're not gonna it doesn't necessarily mean more productivity. There's so much that goes into productivity, apart from presenteeism, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 23:45 yeah, I hear what you're saying, and I think there's, there's merit in that. I think that even when you're working at home, there are rules, and there you're still expected to do work, but there's, I think, room for both. And I think that the pandemic taught us that, but I'm wondering if we're forgetting it.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 24:06 Oh yeah, that's the human condition. We forget, right? We, we forget. We it's almost I envision an icy ski slope. I'm a skier, you know, being up here in Canada and the Rocky Mountains, but it's a ski slope, and you walk up a few steps, and then you slide back so easily, because it's icy, right? Like you gotta just be aware that we slide back easily. We need to be intentional and stay on top of the why behind certain decisions, because the pendulum swings back so far so easily. And I mean, women's issues are one of those things we can slide back so quickly. After like, 100 years of women fighting for their rights, we can end up losing that very, very quickly in society. That's just one of many examples I know all the D, E and I stuff that's going on, and I. I mean, it's just heartbreaking, the extent of that pendulum slapping back the other way, so hard when we need to have a balance, and you know, the right balance, because the answer is never black and white, black or white, the answer is always some shade of gray.   Michael Hingson ** 25:20 How do we get people to not backslide? And I know that's a really tough question, and maybe there's no there, there very well may not really be an easy answer to that, but I'm just curious what your thoughts are.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 25:37 That's a great question. Michael, I would envision almost ski poles or hiking poles. It's being grounded into the earth. It's being grounded into what are the roots of my values? What are my the values that we hold dear as human beings and as society, and sticking to those values, and, you know, pushing in to the earth to hold those values and stand up for those values, which I know is easier said than done in certain climates and certain contexts. And I mean, but I think it's really important to stand strong for what our values   Michael Hingson ** 26:20 are, yeah, I think that's really it. It comes down to values and principles. I know the late president, Jimmy Carter once said that we must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And it seems to me you were talking about this being a tricky world. I thought that was an interesting way to express it. But I'm wondering if we're seeing all too many people not even holding to the unwavering principles, the sacrificing principles for political expediency and other things, yeah,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 26:53 yes, exactly. And we know about values that sometimes values clash, right? So you might have a value that you want to have a lot of money and be financially, you know, successful, yet you have the value of work life balance and you want a lot of time off and and sometimes those values can clash, and sometimes we need to make decisions in our lives about what value takes precedence at this time in our life. But I think what you're right is that there's a lot of fear out there right now, and when the fear happens, you can lose sight of why those values are important to you for more of a shorter term, quick gain to get rid of the fear, because fear is uncertain and painful for humans.   Michael Hingson ** 27:44 Well, I wrote live like a guide dog, which is the latest book that was, that was published in August of last year, and it's all about learning to control fear, really. And the reality is, and what I say in the book, essentially is, look, fear is with us. I'm not going to say you shouldn't be afraid and that you can live without fear, but what you can do is learn to control fear, and you have the choice of learning how you deal with fear and what you allow fear to do to you. And so, for example, in my case, on September 11, that fear was a very powerful tool to help keep me focused going down the stairs and dealing with the whole day. And I think that's really the the issue is that fear is is something that that all too many people just have, and they let it overwhelm them, or, as I put it, blind them, and the result of that is that they can't make decisions, they can't move on. And so many things are happening in our world today that are fomenting that fear, and we're not learning how to deal with it, which is so unfortunate.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 29:02 Yeah, you're right. And I back to your World Trade Center. So you were on, was it 778? 78 oh, my god, yeah. So to me, that must have been the scariest moment of your life.   Michael Hingson ** 29:17 I'm missing in a in a sense, no only until later, because none of us knew what was happening when the plane hit the building, which it did on the other side of the building from me and 1000s of others, and it hit above where we were. So going down the stairs, none of us knew what happened, because nobody saw it. And as I point out, Superman and X ray vision are fiction. So the reality is, it had nothing to do with blindness. The fact is, none of us knew going down the stairs. We figured out a plane hit the building because we smelled something that I eventually identified as burning jet fuel fumes, because I smell it every time I went to an airport. But we didn't know what happened. And. And and in a sense, that probably was a good thing for most people. Frankly, I would rather have known, and I can, I can say this, thinking about it a lot as I do, I would rather have known what happened, because it would have affected perhaps some of the decisions that I made later. If I had known that the buildings had been struck and there was a likelihood that they would collapse. I also know that I wouldn't have panicked, but I like information, and it's something that I use as a tool. But the fact is that we didn't know that. And so in a sense, although we were certainly worried about what was going on, and we knew that there was fire above us, we didn't know what it was all about.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 30:41 Wow. And I would say, so glad you got out of there. I Yeah, what a horrific experience. I was up there the year before it happened. And I think being up there, you can just sense the the height of it and the extent of it, and then seeing ground zero after and then going there with my son last June and seeing the new world trade, it was just really, I really resonate with your or not resonate, but admire your experience that you got out of there the way you did, and thank goodness you're still in this world. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 31:17 it's a weird experience having been back, also now, going through the museum and being up in the new tower, trying to equate where I was on September 11 and where things were with what it became when it was all rebuilt. There's no easy reference point, although I did some of the traveling around the area with someone who knew what the World Trade Center was like before September 11. And so they were able to say, Okay, you're standing in such and such a place, so you're standing right below where Tower One was. And then I could kind of put some reference points to it, but it was totally different. Needless to say,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 32:05 Yeah, no kidding, but I think the fear that you go through during a disaster, right, is immediate like so the fight flight response is activated immediately, and you're, you're put into this almost state of flow. I call it a state where you time just is irrelevant. You're just putting one foot ahead of the other, right, right, right? Whereas the fear that society is going through right now, I think, is a projecting out into the future fear. It's not surviving this moment. It's more about I want to make sure I have enough money in the future, and I want to make sure I have safety in the future, or whatever it is, and you're projecting out, and you're living in the future, and you're worrying about the future, you're not living in the present, and it makes people kind of go crazy in the end, with anxiety, because we're not meant to be constantly worried about the Future. The only thing we can control is today and what we put into place for a better tomorrow, but fearing tomorrow and living in anxiety is so unhealthy for the human spirit,   Michael Hingson ** 33:13 and yet that's what people do, and it's one of the things we talk about and live like a guide dog. Worry about what you can control and don't worry about the rest. And you know, we spend so much time dealing with what if, what if this happens? What if that happens? And all that does, really is create fear in us, rather than us learning, okay, I don't really have control over that. I can be worried about the amount of money I have, but the real question is, what am I going to do about it today? And I know one of the lessons I really learned from my wife, Karen, we had some times when when we had significant debt for a variety of reasons, but like over the last few years of her life, we had enough of an income from speaking and the other things that I was doing that she worked really hard to pay down credit card bills that we had. And when she passed, most all of that was accomplished, and I was, I don't know whether she thought about it. She probably did, although she never got to the point of being able to deal with it, but one of the things that I quickly did was set up with every credit card company that we use paying off each bill each month, so we don't accrue credit, and so every credit card gets paid off, because now the expenses are pretty predictable, and so we won't be in that situation as long as I continue to allow things to get paid off every month and things like that. But she was the one that that put all that in motion, and it was something she took very, very seriously, trying to make sure. It. She brought everything down. She didn't really worry so much about the future. Is, what can I do today? And what is it that my goal is? Well, my goal is to get the cards paid off. I can do this much today and the next month. I can do this much today, which, which I thought was a great way and a very positive way to look at it. She was very methodical, but she wasn't panicky.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 35:24 Mm, hmm. No, I like that, because panic gets us nowhere. It just It ruins today and it doesn't help tomorrow, right? Same with regret, regret you can't undo yesterday, and living in regret, guilt, living in the past is just an unhealthy place to be as well, unless we're just taking the learnings and the nuggets from the past. That's the only reason we need the past is to learn from it. You   Michael Hingson ** 35:52 have to learn from it and then let it go, because it's not going to do any good to continue to dwell on it.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 35:57 Yeah, exactly.   Michael Hingson ** 36:00 Well, so you, you, you see so many things happening in this world. How do we deal with all of it, with all the trickiness and things that you're talking about?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 36:10 Do you like that word, tricky? I like it. That's a weird word.   Michael Hingson ** 36:14 Well, I think it's, it's a different word, but I like it, it, it's a word that I think, personally, becomes non confrontive, but accurate in its descriptions. It is tricky, but, you know, we can, we can describe things in so many ways, but it's better to do it in a way that isn't judgmental, because that evokes attitudes that we don't need to have.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 36:38 Yeah, if I use the word scary or terrible, or, I think those words are, yeah, just more anxiety provoking. Tricky can be tricky. Can be bad, tricky can be a challenge,   Michael Hingson ** 36:52 right? Like a puppy, unpredictable, or, you know, so many things, but it isn't, it isn't such a bad thing. I like that.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 37:03 How do we navigate a tricky world? Well, we we need to focus on today. We need to focus on the things that we can control today, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially and spiritually, the five different arenas of our life and on any given day, we need to be paying attention to those arenas of our life and how are they doing. Are we healthy physically? Are we getting around and moving our bodies? Are we listening to our bodies and our bodies needs? Are we putting food into our bodies, and are we watching what we drink and consume that could be harming our bodies, and how does it make us feel? And are we getting enough sleep? I think sleep is a huge issue for a lot of people in these anxiety provoking times.   Michael Hingson ** 37:56 Well, I think, I think that's very accurate. The question is, how do we learn to do that? How do we teach ourselves?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 38:07 How do we learn to do all that   Michael Hingson ** 38:09 stuff? How do we how do we learn to deal with the things that come up, rather than letting them all threaten us and scare us?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 38:20 Oh, that's a big question. I think that well, the whole the five spheres, right? So if you're taking care of your physical health and you're making that a priority, and some people really struggle with that, and they need a buddy system, or they need professional helpers, right, like a coach or a trainer or a psychologist like me, or whatever it is that they need the extra supports in place, but the physical super important, the making sure that we are socially healthy and connectedness is more important than ever. Feeling connected to our tribe, whatever that is, our close friends. You know, whether we have family that we would consider friends, right? Who in our team is helpful to us and trusted allies, and if we can have the fingers of one hand with close people that we trust in our lives, that's that's great, right? It doesn't have to be 100 people, right? It can be a handful, over your lifetime of true allies to walk through this world together.   Michael Hingson ** 39:26 One of the things that I've talked about it a bit on this podcast, but I I love the the concept that I think I've come up with is I used to always say I'm my own worst critic, and I said that because I love to record, and I learned the value of recording speeches, even going back to when I worked at campus radio station at kuci in Irvine campus radio station, I would listen to my show, and I kind of forced all the On Air personalities. 90s to listen to their own shows by arranging for their shows to be recorded, because they wouldn't do it themselves. And then I sent recordings home with them and said, You've got to listen to this. You will be better for it. And they resisted it and resisted it, but when they did it, it was amazing how much they improved. But I as I recorded my talks, becoming a public speaker, and working through it, I kept saying, I record them because I'm my own worst critic. I'm going to pick on me harder than anyone else can. And it was only in the last couple of years because I heard a comment in something that I that I read actually, that said the only person who can really teach you anything is you. Other people can present information, they can give you data, but you are really the only one who can truly teach you. And I realized that it was better to say I'm my own best teacher than my own worst critic, because it changes the whole direction of my thought, but it also drops a lot of the fear of listening or doing the thing that I was my own worst critic   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 41:10 about. I love that, Michael. I think that's genius. I'm my own best teacher, not my own worst critic,   Michael Hingson ** 41:19 right? It's it's positive, it's also true, and it puts a whole different spin on it, because one of the things that we talk about and live like a guide dog a lot is that ultimately, and all the things that you say are very true, but ultimately, each of us has to take the time to synthesize and think about the challenges that we face, the problems that we faced. What happened today that didn't work well, and I don't use the word fail, because I think that also doesn't help the process. But rather, we expected something to happen. It didn't. It didn't go well. What do we do about it? And that ultimately, taking time at the end of every day, for example, to do self analysis helps a lot, and the result of that is that we learn, and we learn to listen to our own inner mind to help us with that   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 42:17 exactly, I think that self insight is missing in a lot of us, we're not taking the time to be still and to listen to the voice within and to listen to what we are thinking and feeling internally, because we're go, go, go, go, go, and then when we're sitting still, you know what we're doing, we're on our phones,   Michael Hingson ** 42:41 and That's why I say at the end of the day, when you're getting ready, you're in bed, you're falling asleep. Take the time. It doesn't take a long time to get your mind going down that road. And then, of course, a lot happens when you're asleep, because you think about it   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 43:01 exactly. And you know, I've got to say, however spirituality is defined, I think that that is a key element in conquering this level of anxiety in society. The anxiety in society needs to be conquered by a feeling of greater meaning and purpose and connectedness in the human race, because we're all one race, the human race, in the end of the day, and all these divisions and silos and what's happening with our great you know, next door neighbors to each other, the US and Canada. It's the way that Canada is being treated is not not good. It's not the way you would treat a neighbor and a beloved neighbor that's there for you. In the end of the day, there's fires in California. We're sending our best fire crews over. You know, World War One, where my grandpa thought and Vimy Ridge, Americans were struggling. British could not take Vimy. It was the Canadians that came and, you know, got Vimy and conquered the horrific situation there. But in the end, we're all allies, and we're all in it together. And it's a tricky, tricky world,   Michael Hingson ** 44:11 yeah, and it goes both ways. I mean, there's so many ways the United States has also helped. So you're not, yeah, you're not really in favor of Canada being the 51st state, huh?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 44:26 You know, no, yeah, I love America. I mean, I have a lot of great friends in America and people I adore, but I think Canada is its own unique entity, and the US has been a great ally in a lot of ways, and we're in it together, right, right? I mean, really in it together, and we need to stay as allies. And as soon as you start putting up a fence and throwing rocks over the fence to each other, it just creates such a feud and an unnecessary feud, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 44:55 Well, very much so. And it is so unfortunate to see. It happening. And as you said, I think you put it very well. It's all about we're friends and friends. Don't treat friends in this way. But that is, that is, unfortunately, what we're seeing. I know I've been looking, and I constantly look for speaking opportunities, home, and I've sent emails to some places in Canada, and a few people have been honest enough to say, you know, we love what you do. We love your story. But right now, with what's going on between the United States and Canada, we wouldn't dare bring you to Canada, and while perhaps I could help by speaking and easing some of that a little bit. I also appreciate what they're saying, and I've said that to them and say, I understand, but this too shall pass. And so please, let's stay in touch, but I understand. And you know, that's all one can do.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 46:01 Yeah, and it, it too shall pass. I mean, it's just all and then anxiety takes over and it gets in the way of logic. Michael Hingston would, hingson would be our best speaker for this option, but the optics of it might get us into trouble, and they just get all wound up about it. And I you know, in the end of the day this, this will pass, but it's very difficult time, and we need to say, Okay, we can't control what's going to happen with tariffs or next month or whatever, but we can control today. And, yeah, I just went on a walk by the river. It was beautiful, and it was just so fulfilling to my soul to be outside. And that's what I could control the day   Michael Hingson ** 46:41 that's right? And that walk by the river and that being outside and having a little bit of time to reflect has to help reduce fear and stress.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 46:54 It does it very much, does   Michael Hingson ** 46:58 and and isn't that something that that more people should do, even if you're working in the office all day, it would seem like it would be helpful for people to take at least some time to step away mentally and relax, which would help drop some of the fear and the stress that they face. Anyway,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 47:20 100% and I am at my office downtown today, and I can see the river right now from my window. And there's research evidence that when you can see water flowing and you can see trees, it really makes a difference to your mental health. So this office is very intentional for me, having the windows having the bright light very intentional.   Michael Hingson ** 47:44 I have a recording that I listen to every day for about 15 minutes, and it includes ocean sounds, and that is so soothing and just helps put so many things in perspective. Now it's not quite the same as sitting at the ocean and hearing the ocean sounds, but it's close enough that it works.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 48:06 That's beautiful. And you're going to come on to my podcast and we're going to talk a lot more about your story, and that'll be really great.   Michael Hingson ** 48:14 We're doing that in May.   48:16 Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:17 absolutely, and I'm looking forward to it. Well, how did you get involved in doing a podcast? What got you started down that road? Oh, your tricky podcast. Yeah.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 48:32 So I was running my company. So I have a company of psychologists in Canada, and we operate across the country, and we do two things really, really well. One is helping people navigate their careers at all ages and stages and make find fulfilling career directions. And then our other thing we do well is helping organizations, helping be healthier places to work, so building better leaders, helping create better cultures in organizations. So that's what we do, and we have. I've been running that for 16 years so my own firm, and at the same time, I always wanted a podcast, and it was 2020, and I said, Okay, I'm turning 45 years old. For my birthday gift to myself, I'm going to start a podcast. And I said, Does anyone else on the team want to co host, and we'll share the responsibilities of it, and we could even alternate hosting. No, no, no, no, no, no one else was interested, which is fine, I was interested. So I said, this is going to be, Dr Laura, then this podcast, I'm going to call it. Dr Laura, where work meets life. So the podcast is where work meets life, and then I'm Dr Laura, Canada's. Dr Laura,   Michael Hingson ** 49:41 yeah, I was gonna say there we've got lots of dr, Laura's at least two not to be   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 49:44 mixed up with your radio. One not to be mixed up completely different, right, in approach and style and values. And so I took on that started the podcast as the labor of love, and said, I'm going to talk about three. Three things, helping people thrive in their careers, helping people thrive in their lives, and helping organizations to thrive. And then, oh yeah, I'll throw in some episodes around advocating for a better world. And then the feedback I got was that's a lot of lanes to be in, Laura, right? That is a lot of lanes. And I said, Yeah, but the commonality is the intersection of work and life, and I want to have enough variety that it's stuff that I'm genuinely curious to learn, and it's guests that I'm curious to learn from, as well as my own musings on certain topics. And so that's what's happened. So it's it's 111 episodes in I just recorded 111 that's cool, yeah. So it's every two weeks, so it's not as often as some podcasts, but every episode is full of golden nuggets and wisdom, and it's been a journey and a labor of love. And I do it for the joy of it. I don't do it as a, you know, it's not really a business thing. It's led to great connections. But I don't do it to make money, and, in fact, it costs me money, but I do it to make a difference in the tricky world,   Michael Hingson ** 51:11 right? Well, but at the same time, you get to learn a lot. You get to meet people, and that's really what it's all about anyway.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 51:21 Oh, I've met some incredible people like you through doing it, Michael and like my mentor, Sy Wakeman, who wrote the book no ego that's behind me in my office, and who's just a prolific speaker and researcher on drama and ego in the workplace. And you know, I've, I've met gurus from around the world on different topics. It's been fabulous,   Michael Hingson ** 51:47 and that is so cool. Well, and you, you've written some books. Tell us about your books, and by the way, by the way, I would appreciate it if you would email me photos of book covers, because I want to put those in the show notes.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 52:03 Oh, okay, I'm going to start with my current book that it actually, I just submitted my manuscript the other day, and it's, it's about toxic bosses, and how we can navigate and exit and recover from a toxic boss. And I saw this as a huge problem in the last couple of years, across different workplaces, across different people, almost everyone I met either had experienced it or had a loved one experience a toxic boss. And so I said, What is a toxic boss? First of all, how is this defined, and what does the research say? Because I'm always looking at, well, what the research says? And wait a minute, there's not a lot of research in North America. I'm an adjunct professor of psychology. I have a team of students. I can do research on this. I'm going to get to the bottom of toxic bosses post pandemic. What? What are toxic bosses? What are the damage they're inflicting on people, how do they come across, and what do we do about it? And then, how do we heal and recover? Because it's a form of trauma. So that's what I've been heavily immersed in, heavily immersed in. And the book is going to really help a lot of humans. It really is. So that's my passion right now is that book and getting it out into the world in January 2026, it's going to be   Michael Hingson ** 53:27 published. What's it called? Do you have a title   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 53:30 yet? I do, but I'm not really okay title officially yet, because it's just being with my publisher and editor, and I just don't want to say it until actually, Michael, I have the cover so it's going through cover design. I have a US publisher, and it's going through cover design, and that's so important to me, the visual of this, and then I'll share the I'll do a cover reveal. Good for you, yeah, and this is important to me, and I think it's timely, and I really differentiate what's a difficult boss versus a toxic boss, because there's a lot of difficult bosses, but I don't want to mix up difficult from toxic, because I think we need to understand the difference, and we need to help difficult bosses become better. We need to help toxic bosses not to do their damage and organizations to deal with them. And it's just there's so many different legs to this project. I'll be doing it for years.   Michael Hingson ** 54:24 So what's the difference between difficult and toxic? Or can you talk about that?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 54:29 Yeah, I can talk about, I mean, some of the differences difficult bosses are frustrating, annoying. They can be poor communicators, bad delegators. They can even micromanage sometimes, and micromanagement is a common thing in new leaders, common issue. But the difference is that they the difficult boss doesn't cause psychological harm to you. They don't cause psychological and physical harm to you. They're not. Malicious in their intent. They're just kind of bumbling, right? They're just bumbling unintentionally. It's unintentional. The toxic boss is manipulative, dishonest, narcissistic. They can gaslight, they can abuse, they can harass, all these things that are intentional. Negative energy that inflicts psychological and or physical harm.   Michael Hingson ** 55:27 And I suspect you would say their actions are deliberate for the most part, for the most part, at   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 55:35 least, yeah. And that's a whole Yeah, yeah. I would say whether they're deliberate or not, it's the impact that matters. And the impact is deep psychological hurt and pain, which is, and we know the Psych and the body are related, and it often turns into physical. So my research participants, you know, lots of issues. There's there's research. Cardiovascular is impacted by toxic bosses. Your mental health is your your heart rate, your your digestion, your gut. I mean, all of it's connected. When you have a toxic Boss,   Michael Hingson ** 56:09 what usually creates a toxic boss? It has to come from somewhere   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 56:18 that stems back to childhood. Typically got it. And we get into a whole you know about childhood trauma, right? Big T trauma and little T trauma. Little T trauma are almost death by 1000 paper cuts. It's all the little traumas that you know you you went through, if they're unaddressed, if they're unaddressed, big T trauma is you were sexually assaulted, or you were physically abused, or you went through a war and you had to escape the war torn country, or those sorts of things I call big T and I've learned this from other researchers. Little Ts are like this. You know, maybe microaggressions, maybe being teased, maybe being you know, these things that add up over time and affect your self confidence. And if you don't deal with the little Ts, they can cause harm in adulthood as well. And so that's what, depending on what went on earlier, whether you dealt with that or not, can make you come across into adulthood as a narcissist, for example,   Michael Hingson ** 57:21 right? Well, you've written some other books also, haven't   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 57:25 you? Oh, yeah, so let's cheer this conversation up. I wrote two psychological thrillers. I am mad. I have an active imagination. I thought, what if someone got kidnapped by a billionaire, multi billionaire ex boyfriend who was your high school sweetheart, but it was 10 years later, and they created a perfect life for you, a perfect life for you, in a perfect world for you. What would that be like? So it's all about navigating that situation. So I have a strong female protagonist, so it's called losing cadence. And then I wrote a sequel, because my readers loved it so much, and it ended on a Hollywood cliffhanger. So then I wrote the sequel that takes place 12 years later, and I have a producing partner in in Hollywood, and we're pitching it for a TV series filmed as a three season, three seasons of episodes, and potentially more, because it's a really interesting story that has you at the edge of your seat at every episode.   Michael Hingson ** 58:28 Have those books been converted to audio? Also?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 58:33 No, no, I never converted them to audio. But I should. I should.   Michael Hingson ** 58:37 You should, you should. Did you publish them? Or did you have a publisher? I   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 58:41 published these ones. Yeah, a decade ago, a decade ago,   Michael Hingson ** 58:45 it has gotten easier, apparently, to make books available on Audible, whether you read them or you get somebody else to do it, the process isn't what it used to be. So might be something to look at. That'd be kind of fun.   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 59:00 I think so. And I'll be doing that for my toxic boss book. Anyway, Michael, so I'm going to learn the ropes, and then I could do it for losing cadence and finding Sophie,   Michael Hingson ** 59:09 you'd find probably a lot of interested people who would love to have them in audio, because people running around, jogging and all that, love to listen to things, and they listen to podcasts, yours and mine. But I think also audio books are one way that people get entertained when they're doing other things. So yeah, I advocate for it. And of course, all of us who are blind would love it as well. Of   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 59:34 course, of course, I just it's on my mind. It's and I'm going to manifest doing that at some point.   Michael Hingson ** 59:41 Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been absolutely a heck of a lot of fun, and we'll have to do it again. We'll do it in May, and we may just have to have a second episode going forward. We'll see how it goes. But I'm looking forward to being on the your podcast in May, and definitely send me a. The book covers for the the two books that you have out, because I'd like to make sure that we put those in the show notes for the podcast. But if people want to reach out to you, learn more about you, maybe learn what you do and see how you can work with them. How do they do that?   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 1:00:14 Sure, that's a great question. So triple w.dr, Laura all is one word, D R, L, A, u, r, a, dot live. So Dr, Laura dot live is my website, and then you'll find where work meets life on all the podcast platforms. You'll find me a lot on LinkedIn as Dr Laura Hambley, love it, so I love LinkedIn, but I'm also on all the platforms, and I just love connecting with people. I share a lot of videos and audio and articles, and I'm always producing things that I think will help people and help organizations.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:52 Well, cool. Well, I hope people will reach out. And speaking of reaching out, I'd love to hear what you all think of our episode today. So please feel free to email me at Michael H I M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast and Michael hingson is m, I C H, A, E, L, H i N, G, s o n.com/podcast, wherever you're listening, please give us a five star rating. We value that. If you don't give us a five star rating, I won't tell Alamo, my guy dog, and so you'll be safe. But we really do appreciate you giving us great ratings. We'd love to hear your thoughts. If any of you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest on our podcast, or if you want to be a guest, and of course, Laura, if you know some folks, we are always looking for more people to come on unstoppable mindset. So please feel free to let me know about that. Introduce us. We're always looking for more people and more interesting stories to tell. So we hope that that you'll do that. But I want to thank but I want to thank you again for coming on today. This has been fun,   Dr. Laura Hambley Lovett ** 1:02:07 definitely, and I really admire you, Michael, and I can't wait to have you on where work meets life.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:02:18 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Coming up on this episode of Flirtations, we welcome Dr. Shanté Holley to the show! Dr. Shanté is a certified life coach, writer, professor, and host of the podcast The Whole In Your Heart podcast on YouTube. Specializing in guiding individuals through the complexities of healing, wellness, and personal development, today we have a conversation for you about the art of surrender. We explore how to trust the timing of your life, the difference between surrender and submission, and how to accept what you cannot change while still believing deeply in yourself and what is possible. We'll go into how to process anger and hurt when you've been wronged, how to stop living in the past, and how the very act of trying to control outcomes is often where we lose our power.  Dr. Shanté offers insights into why force is the opposite of surrender, how to recognize the subtle ways we abandon ourselves, and why surrender is not weakness, but strength. If you've been holding on too tightly to old beliefs, are having a hard time letting go, feeling stuck, or if your strength has started to look more like struggle, this episode is for you! Let's do the Flirties, and meet Dr. Shanté! Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review Flirtations on your favorite podcast platform, and share this episode to spread BFE - big flirt energy- all over the world! Enjoying the show and want to support my work? Buy the Flirt Coach a coffee! About our guest:  Dr. Shanté Holley is a certified, trauma-informed mental health coach with over 20 years of experience as a college professor. She is a respected voice in the mental wellness community, with a passionate following of more than 270K on social media, a ranked publication on Substack, and viral content that has reached millions.  Known for her accessible, and impactful approach to mental health, she has been featured on both local and national news outlets, using her platform to share practical insights and advocate for mental wellness. A sought-after speaker, Dr. Shanté delivers high-value content on a variety of topics related to emotional resilience, trauma recovery, and self-care, with engagements across the country. Her expertise has led to partnerships with major organizations such as the Immigrant Justice Corps, American Red Cross, SAMHSA, and the Ad Council, where she collaborates on campaigns aimed at promoting mental health awareness and community support. In addition to her work in mental health coaching, Dr. Shanté is a prolific podcaster with three successful shows that collectively boast hundreds of thousands of downloads. Her podcasts serve as valuable resources for individuals seeking guidance on personal growth, mindset, healing, and navigating life's challenges. Dr. Shanté also serves on the Board for Belonging Through Art, an organization dedicated to reducing loneliness and fostering positive social connections through art. Her commitment to improving mental wellness extends to her academic work, where she was a Fulbright Scholarship Finalist for her research on Blaxit: The Interconnectedness of Racial Trauma, Healing, and Black Immigration to Portugal, a groundbreaking project that explored the intersections of cultural identity, trauma, and healing. With her extensive background in mental health, education, and media Dr. Shanté Holley is a trailblazer in the field, committed to helping individuals heal, grow, and thrive. You can connect with Dr. Shanté on Substack, listen to the "Whole in Your Heart" podcast on YouTube, learn more on her website, and @drshantesays on Instagram. About your host:  Benjamin is a flirt and dating coach sharing his love of flirting and BFE - big flirt energy - with the world! A lifelong introvert and socially anxious member of society, Benjamin now helps singles and daters alike flirt with more confidence, clarity, and fun! As the flirt is all about connection, Benjamin helps the flirt community (the Flirties!) date from a place that allows the value of connection in all forms - platonic, romantic, and with the self - to take center stage. Ultimately, this practice of connection helps flirters and daters alike create stronger relationships, transcend limiting beliefs, and develop an unwavering love for the self. His work has been featured in Fortune, NBC News, The Huffington Post, and Yoga Journal. You can connect with Benjamin on Instagram, TikTok, stream the Flirtations Flirtcast everywhere you listen to podcasts (like right here!), and find out more about working together 1:1 here.

Anna's guest is Paige Zulandt, Regional Communications Director of the American Red Cross of Tennessee. She shares some easy-to-remember tips to be ready for the extreme heat we have in Tennessee summers. They include preparing NOW in case you lose electricity or air conditioning in the heat and how to find places to cool down. She also discusses learning CPR. Summertime also means more injuries and fewer blood donor appointments, so she urges you to give blood, and talks about keeping families and pets safe on the water. Read more at www.redcross.org, and www.redcrossblood.org Find all the app information HERE .See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I have known Skip Vaccarello for more than 12 years. When we first met both Skip and I lived in Northern California. Neither of us seem to remember the event at which we met, but we both discovered that we were people of faith. Over the years we lost touch until early January 2025 when I received a bulk email from Skip and reached out to see if we could get him to come on Unstoppable Mindset. He accepted and today's episode is the result.   Skip has over 40 years of experience leading Silicon Valley high tech companies. One of his first efforts was leading VisiCorp, the creator of the industry's first pc-based spreadsheet VisiCalc. What? You never heard of VisiCalc? Look it up. VisiCalc was one of those products that revolutionized so many endeavors.   In addition to leading and working with many Silicon Valley ventures Skip is a man of faith with a deep belief in Christianity. We talk about Skip's fait journey and why he believes faith makes a big difference in the lives of so many people especially in the high-tech world of Silicon Valley.   We talk a bit about Skip's retirement years and what he would advise anyone when they ask him about retirement. His answer may well surprise you, but his response is spot on and quite thought provoking.   I believe you will find Skip's insights fascinating and well worth the listen.       About the Guest:   Skip offers podcasts on faith and business topics at SkipVaccarello.com, and is a Partner with 1Flourish Capital, a venture firm investing in technology-based start-up companies led by entrepreneurs of character who understand that corporate culture is vital to success. He is also the author of Finding God in Silicon Valley:  Spiritual Journeys in a High-Tech World. From 2005 through 2021, Skip led  Connect Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization offering speaking events featuring high-profile leaders encouraging conversations about faith and life. In addition, he has served on corporate and non-profit boards and speaks at various organizations on leadership and organizational health.   Skip has over 40 years of experience in leadership positions for Silicon Valley technology companies, including VisiCorp, the provider of VisiCalc, the industry's first spreadsheet. In addition, he served as President and CEO of Applied Weather Technology, a global company providing software and services to the maritime industry. His other experience includes CEO of Communications Solutions, Inc., a communications software company; division general manager of 3Com, a networking product and solutions company; and co-founder and CEO of The Saratoga Group, an Internet-based training company. In addition, Skip has served as an executive coach, a merger and acquisition consultant, and for three years, taught a course on Principled Leadership and Ethics as an Adjunct Professor in the MBA program at William Jessup University.   He earned an A.B. with honors in economics from Harvard College and an MBA with honors from the Boston University School of Management. Skip has been married for over 44 years and has two daughters and six grandchildren. Skip and his wife reside in Bristol, NH and have a home in Chapel Hill, NC. Ways to connect Skip:   Website, Skip Vaccarello -- https://skipvaccarello.com/ Podcasts -- https://skipvaccarello.com/podcasts/ Podcasts on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@skipvaccarello Podcasts on Apple:  https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/who-do-you-want-to-become/id1737471615 LinkedIn -- https://www.linkedin.com/in/skip-vaccarello-50114/ Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/skipvaccarello Book (Amazon) -- https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Silicon-Valley-Spiritual-Journeys-High-Tech/dp/0996371923/ref=sr_1_1?crid=CYTLPJWTA4EA&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.XlOGN69ci4cxDNHGjoi-JuD6ISwr4bFCY65xSabhw59got9YrjbPWyBlSgWLjuFi6IlTA5ZOM3PI6YIg7LMkVFA3-yicQ-VXc1rBHHgDi3xyo7FeIiH80ZEm9FOEUglAwOtKx3OhnXkJc3uSq4YGINJzgGTpHsoyAA1-awAGK0-BdSo8l8c9KgO7rkwwqftSaRDi9H2bQjMrgMvEHYQcjq7cHTZn0cthcSjrexplqk4.IyefTEA2Au7cl-nPpjb6_CBqiRn5kgQnZ-eUCT4qJWE&dib_tag=se&keywords=finding+god+in+silicon+valley&qid=1737478219&sprefix=finding+God+in+sil%2Caps%2C104&sr=8-1   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Today is a fun day for me, because I get to talk with a gentleman who I met many years ago. His name is Skip, Vaccarello and Skip and I we were just trying to remember where we met. It was at some event in San Francisco, and I am now not remembering what it was, but anyway, we met and got to know each other pretty well, and we've talked over the years about faith in God and a variety of things like that. Skip wrote a book entitled finding God in Silicon Valley. We'll have to talk about that. Skip, because Ray Kurzweil keeps talking about the fact that at some point the singularity is going to hit and we're going to marry computer chips in people's brains. I'm not convinced about that. I'm not sure, but Skip, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. Well,   Skip Vaccarello ** 02:16 Michael, it's such a pleasure to be with you, and I'm glad that we were able to make the acquaintance again after many years. Thank you. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 02:24 And now you're not in California anymore. You're back in New Hampshire.   Skip Vaccarello ** 02:28 No. Oh, well, I split my time between New Hampshire and North Carolina. Yeah, yeah. So I'm in North Carolina now. We were in I lived in Silicon Valley for 42 years, I think, is what it was, and but we moved grandchildren left, or my daughters and grandchildren left, one to the state of Washington and one to North Carolina. So we decided to go to go to North Carolina. So we live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and and a lake in New Hampshire. What lake? It's called newfound lake. It's close to Lake Winnipesaukee. It's less lesser known than some of those. Yeah, we've had a house there for many years, and love it.   Michael Hingson ** 03:06 I spent time in and around Lake wind and Pesach. That was a lot of fun.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:10 Oh, yeah, yeah, the lakes are just beautiful, crystal clear water and and it's a real, real nice area. I had   Michael Hingson ** 03:17 a friend who had a summer home on an island out in the middle of Lake Winnipesaukee. And I remember that when we first went there, you had to go out to the to the home by boat. And it was so nice, because at night time there was absolutely no sound. It was so quiet. I loved it. Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:35 yeah. In the sky was you probably could see all the stars in the sky too. I would imagine,   Michael Hingson ** 03:39 oh yeah, I'm sure, yeah.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:43 But beautiful, beautiful place, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 03:46 I'd love to get back there. At some point, we'll have to do that and and go visit it. Well, tell us, tell us a little bit about the early skip, growing up and all that sort of stuff, if you would, sure.   Skip Vaccarello ** 03:57 Well, I grew up in the in the Boston area. You probably, people will probably detect a little bit of my Boston accents, a little bit. So I grew up there. I grew up, grew up just outside of Boston. And where did you grow up? I grew up in Waltham. Was the time in Waltham, okay, grew up in Waltham, and I went to school there. I went to undergraduate school at Harvard and graduate school at Boston University and, and you love, love the area. So that's, anyway, that's where I grew up. I was, we have family of there are four of us. I was the first boy, and pretty involved in sports and, you know, as a reasonable student. But enjoy the area. And it's, it's nice, you know, coming back when I have the chance, you know, going to New Hampshire, I still enjoy the city of Boston. It's a wonderful   Michael Hingson ** 04:42 city. Do you ever go by and visit the Harvard coop?   Skip Vaccarello ** 04:47 Oh yeah, oh yeah. And especially if I'm at a reunion, I'll go there and pick up some paraphernalia, that's for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 04:57 Well, I there was another place in. Are there that I like to go to, because I collect old records, cheapo records, and so I went there to got a lot of vinyl records and and things like that. I'm not sure if it's still around or not. I heard somewhere it wasn't, but then somebody else said it was still around.   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:13 Interesting. Your vinyl records? I mean, there are collectors item now,   Michael Hingson ** 05:16 oh yeah, well, I have a whole bunch here. So they're, they're fun.   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:23 Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I remember collecting some as a kid, but if you have some, you're probably worth a lot of money. Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 05:30 I do. I even have a few. I bought duplicates of and they're still sealed. So they're probably worth, they probably are. They're definitely worth something, absolutely well, so you went to Harvard and all that. And then what did you do?   Skip Vaccarello ** 05:44 Well for my career? Yeah, I went, I went to Harvard. I was there in the in the late 60s and early 70s. And your listeners may recall from history that was a time of real turmoil. Oh, yeah, yeah. The war in Vietnam was going on. 1968 was sort of a pivotal year that there was a war in Vietnam. There were racial riots in the city. There was the rise of feminism. You know, drugs were rampant on the college campuses, so I went to school in the midst of that, and I'll have to say it really was not a fun time to be in school, although I made good friends, and we've maintained the friendship for for quite a long time, but, but anyway, so I was there, and when I graduated, I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do. And it was, it was interesting, because there had been a study done of my class at Harvard, and many people, you know, didn't know what to do. Some immediately went on to medical school or law school or something. But then there were a group of us that were, you know, just kind of wandering around and did various things. But anyway, I finally got my my first job. Well, one thing I should say is that I always felt an inclination for business, but business and capitalism at that time was, was kind of on the outs. It was bad words, bad word, bad word. But I kind of I enjoyed business anyway, I took a job. My first job was in a nonprofit organization helping mentally handicapped adults, and I was doing the sort of the business activities. And so I was doing what I want and doing something that I felt was socially useful. And I ended up staying in that that area for around seven years one of them was with a sort of a bigger organization. I ended up being the Assistant Executive Director. Then I was asked to start one, and I refer to her as my very first startup. We had taken over an old school building and renovated it and and began a program for these for the mentally handicapped people. It was a lot of fun to do that. So I did that. And then what happened is we would get contract work to help employ people. And one of the pieces of work we got was from a software companies. This was in 1978 1979 and personal computers were just cut out then. I mean, there are games and nothing much very useful. But anyway, we got a little job to package some games. And some of your listeners may not, may not remember this. Michael, you probably do. But software then on personal computers came on audio cassettes. Hard to believe you'd have to load this cassette into the computer and run it so that. So we, we had the job of kind of packaging these with the manual. And the night is I got to know the founder of the company and one of the founders of the company. He showed something that was in the works, which was a spreadsheet that eventually became known as VisiCalc, the very first spreadsheet in the industry. And then he asked me to join him and the other co founder, who was from the Toronto area, and we moved to Silicon Valley. And during that time I was I was really ready to make a change. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I was fascinated with personal computers. So went to Silicon Valley, and it was an amazing place. During the whole personal computer revolution, small industry, traveled around the country, you know, giving out, you know, demonstrating what a spreadsheet could do. And people were fascinated with that we had, I remember one day we had this sort of nerdy kid came into the office. It was Bill Gates. We had about five employees, and the whole industry was really small then, so it's fun to be part of that. And then for from there is sort of the what happens in in Silicon Valley and technology business, visit Corp was a really hot commodity, and then competition came in. They made some mistakes. They bought a company that specialized in network and communications, and I went over as the as the CEO and president of that we eventually spun it out as visit Corp eventually went out of business, but this little company we had, and we were successful and grew it, and in fact, sold that three different times, and, you know, continue to grow the company. And then I left that to have what I'd call my second startup, and this was to do computer based training to try to teach people. Of technical subjects on a computer, and that ended up morphing into one of the first e learning companies. So we did that, and that was that was a lot of fun, eventually sold that I did a little bit of executive coaching and mentoring. And one of the CEOs that I was mentoring asked me to join his organization, which was called applied weather technology. And I should say, I knew, in most cases, I really knew very little about the domain that I was going into, but I think pretty good business sense. So in this case, the company had software and services for the maritime industry, so we would help captains have the safest, most fuel efficient route to take around the world. So it was, it was really an interesting business. So I did that. I said I'd do it for a year. We ended up doing it for four years, and it was exciting and fun to be part of that. And they had a chance to travel around the world. We had offices around the world. So enjoyed that experience. And then then I left and to write the book that you mentioned finding God in Silicon Valley and and so anyway, that's what I ended up leaving that eventually got involved to help start a venture capital firm, a faith based venture capital firm called one flourish capital. So anyway, so that's a little bit of the background. There's a lot more I could talk about that, but that but that kind of gives your audience a little bit of an overview. I hadn't   Michael Hingson ** 11:26 thought about it for a while, but you mentioned the software back in 1979 80 and so on, all being put on audio cassettes. I remember the original Kurzweil Reading Machine for the blind used a Data General Nova three, so a small micro computer, well, kind of more like a mini computer, but it had a cassette recorder in the front of it, and every time you turn the reading machine on, you had to run the cassette to reload the Software, because there was no disk storage or anything available yet, right? And, okay, continue. I'm just saying so it was, it was kind of fun. It didn't take too long, and it and it really did work. I think once or twice there was some sort of a load error, and you had to start it over again. But really that didn't happen very often. It was, it was pretty good. Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 12:22 it was really interesting. I just threw one sort of funny story we had. Remember, we had a product that was returned to us and we couldn't figure out what was wrong. I forget what it was. Was probably one of the games we had, the best selling game, which was called micro chest anyway, decided to just put it into a an audio player. So he put the cassette in, and what we heard was a sermon by, I think it was a Baptist preacher, and so, and it was labeled, I think it was labeled micro chess. So anyway, the duplicator had, had messed it up. And so this, this pastor probably got our little beeps and beeps instead of his instead of his sermon. So it was kind of it was kind of   Michael Hingson ** 13:07 comical. I remember once I took one of the program cassettes and put it in my cassette recorder because I was really curious to to hear what it sounded like. And I had heard military teletypes and so on in the past. And when I heard this, I went, Ah, those teletypes are really slow compared to the code speed on these cassettes. But it was, it was a lot of fun,   Skip Vaccarello ** 13:31 yeah. Well, it's fun for me to be involved in all the changes. Their changes was so rapid in Silicon Valley. So I really appreciated my opportunity to be involved in all of that for the 40 some odd years that I was,   Michael Hingson ** 13:46 well, yeah, and, and it, and it certainly was rewarding. You were pretty successful at it, and it all worked really, really worked out well. And so, you know, can't complain about that. What, what got you into the whole idea of doing more faith based things? Was that going back to childhood? Or how did all that come? Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 14:10 I'll give you maybe a little bit of my my faith and story. So I grew up in a Christian home. We were I was raised as a Catholic, and as I said, when I went to college, though, there was all sorts of turmoil, and many of us rejected all sorts of things, including in faith. So it became and I can't say that I rejected it, but it just didn't. Wasn't very meaningful to me. I didn't think about it, I didn't pray, I didn't read the Bible. But if you were to ask me, I would have called myself a Christian, but certainly wasn't, wasn't practicing any of that. And then I when I was, I'm, this is maybe so that was that went on for about 15 years, or then I remember there was, we had, then children, a couple of children. And I remember I was in a business trip. I was in Paris, and I called home and I asked. My wife, Jackie, I said, Well, what did you do for the weekend? And she said, Well, I went to church. I said, You did what? That wasn't even in our conversation, and I was just so surprised that that's what she did. She said, Yeah, and she found it really helpful. And so anyway, when I came back, I followed her along and went to church. And I also found the messages really, meaningful. And anyway, I started to go, and then I decided this, I have to figure out if this stuff is really true or not. So I spent a fair amount of time, you know, listening to the sermons, but also looking at the evidence for Christian faith. And I became convinced that that Jesus is who He says He is. And so that at that point, I committed my, you know, my life to Him, and it became the most important thing in my life. And really, God, put two things on my heart once I made that and this was mid 80s by 1985 1986 two things on my heart. One was to do the best job I could, to try to live out my faith in business. And the second thing was to help people know who Jesus is. I was convinced that was this sort of the key to life, and so I enjoyed getting involved in in one on one conversations. And anyway, that ended up leading to starting with a group of people, what we eventually called the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, and now it's called Connect Silicon Valley, feeling that, especially in Silicon Valley, you know, people may not go to go to a church. They may for a variety of reasons, you know, not want to even consider faith. But if there were a speaking event in which there was some celebrity, especially celebrities from the computer industry talking about their business, but also about their faith that might attract people. So that was the sort of the premise with which we started the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, specifically for people who not were not necessarily your faith, but maybe curious about it. So we had series of great, great speakers. And it grew from, I think our first event was about 150 people, and in the last event, which I and then I the pandemic came, and we had about 1000 people at the at the last event. So it really grew. In fact, the people at there was one, it was at the Santa Clara Convention Center. They said it was the biggest event that they had at that time of the morning would start the event at 730 in the morning. So anyway, that's that was really helpful. And we and we just did that help open up conversations about faith and and it was, is, I think it was pretty successful doing that. So anyway, that was a little bit of of my background. And maybe one thing I didn't say, but I had this sense, you know, as I grew up, my family, we didn't have very much money, and but as I began to achieve some success and some financial success, I realized that it seemed like there was something missing in my life, and and later on, I learned, and I didn't know this at the time, Blaise Pascal called that a God shaped vacuum, or void that's in each one of us, and most people try to fill it with success or money or whatever else. But as Pascal says, and I agree, the only thing that can adequately fill that void is God. And I didn't know it, but that was ended up being, being true for me. I felt that there was that there was something missing, and life wasn't all about, you know, success and finances and and anyway, I'm glad that I took that journey. I'm glad for the people that helped me along in that journey to become a follower of Jesus. I   Michael Hingson ** 18:39 hear you. I know for me, I've, I've always had, I think, a pretty strong faith. My father and I talked a lot about God and religion and so on as I was growing up, and he read things to me, so I was, was pretty used to the whole concept right from the outset and and one of the things that I learned along the way, and I think it fits in fits into what you just said, is, as you said, people try to fill that, that void with so many different things. And the thing we never do is we never listen. And the thing that frustrates me most about prayer is that people are so busy praying to God about what they want that they forget God already knows. The issue is, are we really willing and and are we? Are we ready to take the time to listen, to get the answers?   Skip Vaccarello ** 19:38 And that is such a good point. Michael, I absolutely no, that's the issue. Go ahead. No, as I say, I agree with you that, you know that a lot of us and I do this time to time, I just pray, okay, that's it, but taking the time to then listen, and then, if you really are aware of it, you know, you'll see various things along the way where God is is communicating. Creating with you, either through other people and things that your opportunities, you're presented with, and so on. So it's that whole idea, I think in the Bible, it talks about praying continually, and in my own myself, I kind of have an ongoing, just a dialog in my head. Well, God, what do I do in this situation or or thank him for something I see, or whatever, but, but, yeah, that whole idea of just being aware and listening is a very important one. Yes, very good point. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 20:29 Well, and one of the things that we talked a lot about as I was growing up was the fact that, yes, we believe in God, we believe in Jesus and so on. But there are other religions that really, when you analyze them, come essentially to the same place. They're peaceful, they're loving. And unfortunately, we have all too many people who say there's only one religion that works, and that just isn't so either. Well, I I think that there, there there are issues, but the fact is that there are a lot of people who believe in God, and come at it from a different point of view, but still believe in God.   Skip Vaccarello ** 21:10 When I agree, I think that there is there the lot of there's a lot of commonality among all the world religions, and there's a most of them all have a moral code to them. In fact, the Golden Rule, do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, is common to all religions, but at the same time, there are also some real differences. And you know, it's interesting where you know what you said, and many other people say that, that there are many different paths to God. But typically, if you were to ask anyone in any one of those religions, they would say, know that if it's a Muslim, I think that we have the path or Jewish person, right? You know, you know, and so on. And so I would encourage people to, I mean, you may not like this idea, but, you know, I would, I would, I believe that really, I mean, I'm covering this in an upcoming podcast, that that Jesus is, is, is the way. I mean, he's the only, the only one in a in any of these world religions, most, or most world religions, you know, say that, that we have to sort of earn our way. You know, to salvation. Am I a good enough person to earn eternal life? Whereas with Jesus, the other way around, he wants us. He's very, very inclusive and and offers his love and His forgiveness to everyone. And you know, he says, you know, in John 14 six, I am the I Am the Truth or way in the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. So it's a that is an exclusive statement, but it also Christian faith is inclusive anyone who wants to come. It's not, you know, is is ready to come. So we probably don't want to get into that too much. But, no,   Michael Hingson ** 23:01 I don't, not too much. But by the same token, I take it in a little bit different slant. Not I don't I agree with what you said, but I also know that I am goes beyond what we're talking about. God in in Exodus And Moses said, Who do I say? Is Sending me? Says I am, that I am, thou shalt say I am, has sent me to you. And I think we I think a lot of people miss that, and they miss the fact that I am is, is God,   Skip Vaccarello ** 23:33 yeah. However, where is your way? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 23:38 yeah. And I think that that's the thing, and I think that that was what Jesus was saying as well. Because Jesus also said, I am my father. Are One. And all the works that I do, greater works you can do as well. I think we, what we, what we really need to do is to recognize that, in fact, from a mindset standpoint, it's ultimately believing in God. And if you're an atheist, that's fine. Sorry if we're offending you, but that, that's a different story. But I but I do know that that in reality, we all need to recognize that if we listen, if we really work at it. We can be better people than than we probably think we are.   Skip Vaccarello ** 24:24 Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, that that is the you know. The point of it is, is, you know, to be, you know, the, you know, the message of Jesus is one of love. I mean, he loves everyone, and we're called, you know, to love everyone. That that means not just fellow Christians, but no matter what faith you're part of, or whatever you know you may have done or do or whatever. Yeah, we're called to love everyone. You think how different the world would be if we all really acted that way?   Michael Hingson ** 24:53 Gee, wouldn't that be something, especially today, right? And it's absolutely, yeah. Yeah, absolutely crazy. So the prayer breakfast and so on, kind of, I assume, ended when the pandemic began. Well,   Skip Vaccarello ** 25:08 it did for a while, yeah, but there is a group that that's that's restarted it, and we, by the way, we changed the name from Silicon Valley prayer breakfast, and a few years ago, we changed to connect Silicon Valley, and we did that because we really wanted to be open to people. It's not an event just for Christians, but for anybody that was interested in in attending. So it is active, and in fact, it's, it's now had a I'm only minimally involved, and they've made me Chairman Emeritus, but, but there's, there's a new group that's running it, and they've had several different events. So it is, is going on, if any of your listeners are in and around Silicon Valley, it's called Connect Silicon Valley, and I'd encourage them to go. I think they have a speaker that we had earlier. It's coming up in March. I think it's promote. Hawk. Promote is a one of the top venture capitalists in the world. He's with Norwest ventures, and I think he's, he's a speaker at an event that's coming up in a few weeks.   Michael Hingson ** 26:10 I may end up being in San Francisco, but not till May. I'll have to find out when they meet and see if there's a way to get down there. Be kind of fun.   26:17 Yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 26:19 But it's, I think faith in and having beliefs as extremely important to do. And one of the things that I always quote when I am giving speeches is something Jimmy Carter once said, which is, we must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And I think that all too often we we miss the principles part.   Skip Vaccarello ** 26:45 Yeah, that's right, I agree, Yep, yeah, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 26:51 It is something that we need to do. Well, I'm glad that connect Silicon Valley is is still continuing to function. That's really a pretty important thing to do. Well, when did your   Skip Vaccarello ** 27:04 I think it is especially in, you know, in Silicon Valley, which is a pretty secular place, yeah, you know. And I think it's a secular place because, you know, it's, it attracts a lot of people with Type A personalities, people that are feeling very self sufficient. And why do I need, why do I need God? But, but it's been interesting. I really feel that there's a movement of God going on in Silicon Valley, and it has been for a while. And you know, what's kind of motivated us, our vision with Connect Silicon Valley was that if Silicon Valley ever could be known as a place not just of technology and innovation and wealth creation, but a place of God, the world would take notice, and to me, there's lots of evidence that that's beginning to happen.   Michael Hingson ** 27:48 Yeah, well, I think that's true. And sometimes we're not necessarily hearing a loud voice, but the voice is still there, and more and more people are going to get drawn to it, I'm sure.   Skip Vaccarello ** 28:01 Well, I think so. I mean, ultimately, as we said earlier, I think each one of us has a sense of a need for something beyond ourselves, and people might call it a force or a god or whatever else, and, and so I think there is that need and and, and hopefully, I would encourage your listeners, you know, to explore the evidence for faith to, you know, take a risk. And, you know, people might have been turned off by religious people, and I can understand that. But, you know, take look at it. And I would specifically say, Look at what, what Jesus has to say. And take, take the time to look at the evidence, because there's plenty of evidence out there for Christian faith.   Michael Hingson ** 28:41 I participated in a number of programs. It's a Methodist program, but it's ecumenical, called the walk to Emmaus. And have you heard of that? No, I haven't. It's It's actually called a short course in Christianity. It's not intended to convince people what they should believe, but rather it's to develop leadership within the church. Whatever church it doesn't, it doesn't, although it was started by the Methodist. Actually, that's an outgrowth of a Catholic program called crusio, but it's the same thing. And when I was lay director of one of the walks to Emmaus, and we could talk about the history, but walk to Emmaus is basically based on after Jesus was crucified and Rose. That day, there were people walking to a town called Emmaus, and he joined them, and they didn't know who he was, and they talked, and they all went to to Emmaus, and they sat down and they had dinner. And it was a dinner that He revealed Himself to them, and then he disappeared. But the whole idea is, it's a way to bring a little bit more enlightenment to leaders. But one of the things that, as the lay director, I had to do was to give a talk on perseverance and so on. And of course. Thought that has always struck with me, and I think it goes beyond Christianity, Christianity, but Tolstoy once said The biggest problem with Christianity is a lot of people don't practice it. There's truth to that. And what you you know you said earlier that so many people and are not necessarily the best Christians, and there's so much of that we really need to go back to basics and everything that we do.   Skip Vaccarello ** 30:28 Yeah, I think that a lot of people get turned off to faith, or in Christian faith, because they look at the some of the behavior of people who claim to be Christians. And the fact is that every one of us is flawed in some ways, in one way or another. What I like to do is, is look at people who what was their life before they you know, they had Jesus in their life, and what's their life after that? And, and you can often see the difference. But people are we're all. We all make mistakes. We're all imperfect people, and, and, and in faith, the church is not for it's not for perfect people. It's for sinners, people that are imperfect. And that's that's really why, why? You know why Jesus came to us? So to why would you add encourage your listeners to try not to get turned off by some of the behavior of Christians, because some of it is, is certainly not good, but to really look at what Jesus says, and, you know, engage people who who are believers, and I think they admit that what's what's right and what's at fault and so on, the basic principles are the basic principles,   Michael Hingson ** 31:35 and they hold no matter where you come from and what you do. And it's important to really deal with that. Although I'm with Mark Twain, I wonder if God had written man because he was disappointed in the monkeys, but that's another story   31:49 I had heard that crook.   Michael Hingson ** 31:52 So, so you wrote the book finding God in Silicon Valley. When did you write that?   Skip Vaccarello ** 31:56 It was, it was published in 2015   Michael Hingson ** 32:00 Okay, and   Skip Vaccarello ** 32:02 it's been, yeah, it really was an outgrowth of some of the talks people gave at the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast. And I felt that it really the reason for writing. It was to encourage people to to consider faith, because in the book, they'd read about Silicon Valley leaders who in their faith story, how they came to faith, what they went through. Some, you know, some stories were a little bit like mine, where they found the evidence, but others, you know, went through personal tragedy and found faith that way. And then the stories are also about how they're trying to live out their faith, day to day, and whatever, whatever business they're involved with. So they're a variety of people. There are nonprofit leaders, companies, CEOs, venture capitalists and so on. And you know, it's, I think we all like to hear stories, and that was what was attractive about the Silicon Valley prayer breakfast. I know that sometimes when I'm sitting in church on a Sunday morning, and I may not quite remember what the pastor said, but I usually remember the stories that he tells. And so I think stories are an effective way to communicate things. In fact, I'd call Jesus the Greatest storyteller of all time. He told his stories often in parables. And those are things that we, you know, that we that we remember. So yeah, the the book was I what I enjoyed it. I just enjoyed is I just enjoyed sitting down with people and hearing their stories and interviewing them, and I did the best I could to compile those stories. There were 26 of them in the book, and yeah, it's it's available on on Amazon, so I encourage people to to pick it up and take a look. And you can go through with a person you know, or one story, or, you know, that seemed to attract your attention. So it was a, it was quite a, quite a project to undertake, but I'm glad that I did it. And let me just maybe the I'll tell you the way I got the idea is I went back to a Harvard reunion. This might have been in the mid 1990s and there was, they had a little sometimes at these reunions, they have little groups that get together. And there was one that I was as part of a Christian cohort, and even though I wasn't a Christian in college anyway, as part of this group. And we're all, we're given a book called Finding God at Harvard. And you know, although Harvard was founded as a, you know, as a, as a Christian college, it's certainly not thought of that these days. And so the writer Kelly Monroe, and she's now, her name is Kelly Monroe Kohlberg, had put together stories of Harvard graduates in how they came to faith and what they were doing. So I thought was a great book, and I so that's what planted the idea in my mind. I said, well, people don't think of Harvard as a place of of faith. They certainly don't think of Silicon Valley as that. So I had the idea, and this was in the mid 1990s but as I said, it wasn't published until 2015 because I found it was really difficult for me to work full time and write the book. So after I left my last full time position is when I had the time to write the book.   Michael Hingson ** 34:59 Well. Well, and I assume it's been pretty successful.   Skip Vaccarello ** 35:03 That's beyond, I think. So it's, I mean, I get some, you know, to me, successful is, if people have read it and they say, Yeah, you know, and you know, I'm considering faith. And to me, that's, that's the success of it. So it's, anyway, it was a, it was really quite an experience. And and happy to do it. And I'm still in the process. I'm looking at a couple of other books now, maybe following up with and writing.   Michael Hingson ** 35:30 Writing is fun, as you know, I've written, yeah, now three books, and I haven't figured out what to write next, but I'm sure something is going to come along. I haven't written fiction yet, and I haven't really come up with a a hot idea yet, but we'll see. It's kind of fun to think about,   Skip Vaccarello ** 35:50 sure, absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 35:52 but, but, you know, we we we do what we can, and we keep moving forward, and that's what it's really about. But it is a lot of fun. And meanwhile, I do get to travel and speak, and I'm working with accessibe and helping to make internet websites more usable and inclusive. That's something that VisiCalc never did, was to make an accessible version of the product. But that's okay. That's okay. It took it took Excel and and other products a while before they became accessible, too. So not a problem. We, we, we all grow, which is what it's really about. But so what? What is your Well, let me ask it this way. So you wrote the book. You've retired and so on. What kind of projects do you have coming up, other than thinking about other books?   Skip Vaccarello ** 36:46 Well, a few things you know that I'm doing right now. As I mentioned, I was part of a startup venture capital coming company called one flourish capital, and I'm still a little bit involved, but not as involved as I was there on a second fund. And I was very involved in the first fund, so I spent a little bit of time with that, but I'm more engaged with things like, I love mentoring. I mentor some students, and mentor some entrepreneurs and and enjoy those those opportunities I've and as I said, I'm putting together a series of podcasts, not as active as you are in it, but I did a series last year, and I titled it, who do you want to become, encouraging people to put together a personal strategic plan. You know, when we're involved in business, is often the company does a strategic plan. Of you know, what's our vision, our mission, our values, our goals and so on. And something that I've practiced for many years is putting together a personal strategic plan. So some of that podcast series is just encouraging people to consider doing that, which again, give a clearer direction for where, where you want your life to go, where God wants your life life to go. So anyway, that was a podcast series, and right now I'm in the midst of of putting together series that I'm calling why I believe, exploring the critical questions about Christian faith. And so I'm going around interviewing experts on, you know, some of the tougher questions you know, you've we talked about one earlier, is Jesus the only way? Other questions, you know, what about what about heaven? How? Another question is, how could a loving God, you know, allow innocent people to suffer? So question, questions like that, that that are often stumbling blocks for people. And I know, question answering, questions like that was very helpful for me in my faith journey. So anyway, I'm in the process of of putting that podcast series, which I expect will be ready in April, and if your listeners are are interested, it'll be on, it's on skip, vacarello.com, so that's where you can find the first podcast series. The last name is V, A, C, C, A, R, E, L, L, O. So anyway, it's there. It's also it'll be on Spotify and Apple and YouTube. So anyway, so I'm involved in that, but I should also say that one of the important things that I do is we moved here to be close to her daughter and grandchildren. So I love spending the time, you know, with my grandchildren. And we just traveled out to Spokane, Washington to see the other family and and that's just, that's just so enjoyable. So while I'm actively involved in in doing things like that, I I, you know, love, you know, spending time with the grandchildren, and also I try to stay, you know, physically active. Still play some tennis and golf and pickleball, and, you know, it's so, you know it's and anyway, I'm involved in a lot of different things, and enjoy them. You   Michael Hingson ** 39:53 know, it's interesting. You were talking about the issue of, how could a loving God let any. And suffer. My reaction to that question, and I've heard it a lot, my reaction to that has always been, how could God not it's really an issue of we listen to God, and what did we miss along the way that would have prevented us from suffering, but God gave us free will and free choice.   Skip Vaccarello ** 40:18 That's exactly right. And so that is the crux of the issue. We have free choice. And you know, when some of those choices aren't good ones that we make, and grad doesn't force anything on any of us, and that was probably one of the things he gave us, was that we're free, free to choose, and we can choose bad or we can choose good,   Michael Hingson ** 40:37 yeah. And the question is, it's always the question, do we learn from mistakes that we made? And, you know, I have rejected the concept of failure. I think that failure is such a horrible thing to say. I think that there are things that don't work out. But did we fail that means we can't ever deal with it or do anything about it? Or can we take the time to analyze what didn't work right? And even when we did something and it worked out, could we do it better? That's one of the basic cruxes of live like a guide dog. My latest book, which is all about teaching people how to control fear, and the whole idea is that we don't take nearly enough time at the end of the day, or at some point in the day, to do more introspection and self analysis to understand why whatever happens to us happens to us, and what could we have done to make it have a better outcome, or even a or did we come up with The best outcome possible?   Skip Vaccarello ** 41:41 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I absolutely agree. What did we learn from it? I mean, you would see that time and time again. Some of the most successful people had many failures along the way, and you know, hopefully you're going to learn from that failure, and you're going to try something else, you're going to fail, and you're going to try something else and, and that's, I think that's just what goes on in life   Michael Hingson ** 42:02 well, and that's why I say that it isn't really a failure. It is a mistake, perhaps, right? We didn't intend for it to be a mistake, but, but if it, if it was a mistake, and we acknowledge that, why and what do we do about it? And I think that's one of the important things that so many of us could do a better job of thinking about was, why did this happen? What was I afraid of, or what could I have done differently? And the fact is that if we open our minds to those questions, we'll get the answers, yep, yep, I agree, which is, I think, really important.   Skip Vaccarello ** 42:41 I was listening to, I don't remember the I wish I could remember it, but I was watching something on television the other night, and there was a quote that kind of stuck with me, and it's in the quote we're doing something like this, is it was an encouragement of, I think it was a mother to a son. He said, Don't, don't think of what life has done to you. Think of what life has done for you. What we're talking about is you might have run into some difficulty, some okay, but maybe that's an opportunity to learn from it, and to go on and to do something else and and, you know, I think life, life is like that. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 43:15 you know, people talk to me a lot about the World Trade Center, and don't you have guilt of surviving while other people didn't, right? And and I tell people, no, I don't have any guilt about that, because the fact is, I did survive. Why others did not is is really, in part, possibly an issue of what choices they made. But the bottom line is, it isn't whether I feel guilty or not about surviving because I had no control over the World Trade Center happening. What I do have control over the though is how I deal with it and how I move forward, and that's the choice that I get to make.   Skip Vaccarello ** 43:56 Yeah, very good point,   Michael Hingson ** 43:59 which I think is really important. And someone asked me that just the other day, and then that was in this is the response that I gave, is, the reality is, it's we have no control over a lot of things that that may happen to us, but we do have total control over how we deal with it, no matter what it is, yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 44:19 and you think of it, the, you know, I'm sure, the lives that you've changed, you know, writing about that and talking about that with your speaking appearances, and it was such a tragedy that, you know, the 1000s of what was 1700 or 18, I don't remember the number, the number of people that died in that, and they're all 200 Yeah, 3200. Was all the people that were affected by it. You know, on the other hand, I mean stories like yours came out of that, and you've been an encouragement to many, many other people so that you know, you've, you know, taken advantage of that opportunity, and you've affected the lives of many, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 44:56 tell me more about what you're doing today with mentoring students and so on. More. How do you do that? Or how do they find you? How does that all work?   Skip Vaccarello ** 45:03 Well, I one of the things is I mentioned earlier that there's a whole bunch of things that have gone on in Silicon Valley where I where I really feel that that God is at work. And there was a guy that I got to know that I actually mentored him a little bit, and he founded an organization called scholars of finance. And it started in a and it's not a quote a Christian base, but it's a, it's sort of an ethics based organization. And his idea was to to go to college campuses and encourage people who were in finance, accounting, finance of some sort or another, to look at the ethical side of business. So he put together this thing called scholars of finance, and then they were started on maybe a couple of universities in the Bay Area. I think they now want maybe 70 campuses around the US and and he's so I've had the opportunity to speak at a number of those campuses, some in person, most of them virtually. And the idea is that they have people like me that come and speak and try to, you know, we tell stories, encourage people about, maybe the ethical issues that we ran across and, and how you can kind of navigate some of those issues and, and, and part of that whole program is, if you want to put yourself up to mentoring, you know you can have the opportunity to mentor some students. So I have, and I've had the opportunity, and I have the opportunity to mentor some students and and I really, I really love it. And what are the differences I find? I think that, you know, sometimes there are negative things that people say about college students these days, but one of the things that I find encouraging is that they're really open to to mentoring, to getting advice from an from an older generation. I remember when I was in school was what was the mantra that you don't trust anyone over 30, you know they don't know what they're talking about, but, but I find students these days are really looking for that for that advice and guidance and and so I enjoy when I have those opportunities to speak to people. And I would say also that a lot of these students are incredibly motivated and driven. And it's, it's just, it's interesting to see. It was, I think it was even different than than when I was in when I was in college. But anyway, that's that's kind of a fun thing to do. And then I also have entrepreneurs, people that either find me or, you know, that may be a company that we've invested in, that have an opportunity to help those, those entrepreneurs, with their business plans. And one of the, one of the areas I like to focus on is helping them develop the right culture. I think, to have a successful business, you have a successful business is you need a culture, you know, a positive culture that's encouraging to people. So, you know, I do that. I try to encourage them to start out and build the right culture. You know, in your organization, doesn't mean that business will succeed, you know, but that's one of the things I like to to help entrepreneurs consider as they're building a business. So it's not just about the product. Certainly, you need a product, and you need to market that product, and often you need technology to make a success. But ultimately, it's the people in that organization and how you deal with them, and how you deal with your customers, and how you deal with your vendors and so on that can can help make or break a business. So anyway, those are the the mentoring opportunities that I have, and as I say and do, enjoy   Michael Hingson ** 48:31 them. What are some of the typical questions that students ask that you find to be sort of common among a lot of students?   Skip Vaccarello ** 48:40 Well, they'll, they'll, you know, they'll sometimes ask me about, you know, ethical situations that I've come across. Often, they'll ask, since I've been involved in the in the venture capital business, is, you know, what is it? What is, what does a venture capitalist look like? You know, how can I get, get get funded? And that, that's sort of an ongoing topic of of conversation, and it's in that environment, you know, it certainly changes a lot over time, but that's a that's a common, a common side of it. You know, occasionally there'll be discussions on technology, and I'm not, even though I've been involved in Silicon Valley for a long time, not a technologist, and they're real, usually, typically very far advanced in that, in that side of things. But, you know, get questions on, you know, what's a go to market strategy? How do I, if I have this product, what do I, what do I do with it? And often, you know, just, you know, I get presented a business plan, what do you think about this, and you know, where can I make changes? And sometimes, you know, often they're very well done, but sometimes there might be some, some blind spots, things that they don't, that they don't see. And interestingly enough, and this is not, you know, something that that I push for, but some of the students then they, you know, they pick me up. Ask because they they've seen my bio, and I've had a number of students who were weren't brought up with any faith background, that asked me about faith and what was my story, and in what should I do to consider faith? So I, you know, I find that very interesting, and I'm very happy to answer any questions that they may have. So that's that's enjoyable when those opportunities come.   Michael Hingson ** 50:22 Yeah, it's kind of cool to be able to enter into those discussions and just talk a little bit about faith and what what they're looking for, and what you're looking for and so on. And getting a chance to in a in a non confrontive way, help people understand the value of faith, whatever that may end up being for them, I think is important to do, yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 50:50 and often, you know, I end up, well, I, well, I, you know, I'll offer things if they ask. But I usually what I like to do is just ask lots of questions to them. And I think it's very helpful, you know, where are they coming from? What are they considered? What are their experiences been? You know, especially if it's in the, in the faith environment. And I think it really helps open up conversations, when, when, when you end up not just being there as the, you know, as the advisor that knows everything, because certainly I don't, but it's very helpful, I think, as a method, as a mentor, is to ask lots of questions.   Michael Hingson ** 51:29 I love to have question time when I speak, because I find every so often I'll get a new question. It doesn't happen as often as it used to, but every so often, something new comes along and and or people ask questions in a different way. And what I really love about it is it helps me learn, because it makes me think, and I think that's as important as anything else. And as I tell people when I'm talking about speaking or doing these podcasts, if I'm not learning at least as much as anyone else on the podcast, or when I'm speaking, I'm not doing my job, right, right? Yeah,   Skip Vaccarello ** 52:05 I agree with you. Yeah. I think I learned more. You know, occasionally I'm asked to give a sermon at a church or a speak at a at a public place, and I think that I learned when you're I think I learned more than anything else when I'm when I'm gonna have to prepare for these, these opportunities, isn't it fun? Oh, it is. It certainly is.   Michael Hingson ** 52:26 Well, so you've been retired for a while. What kind of advice would you give to somebody who may be thinking about retiring?   Skip Vaccarello ** 52:34 Good question, you know, and it's funny sometimes people ask me that question, and I think that, well, I'm retired from making money, but I'm still pretty busy doing things. And that would be my encouragement to people, is to, you know, don't, don't just think you're going to go sit on a beach or or whatever else. I mean, I think that that can get boring pretty quickly. But, you know, and if I would say, continue to do what you're doing if you love it, you know. But consider what your maybe your spouse has to say, your children or grandchildren have to say, and and, you know, make sure you spend, spend time with with them. But my encouragement would be just is to keep busy, find activities. If it's in your case, or my case, has been doing some writing or podcasts, or, you know, whatever it is that you're passionate about, just just you have an opportunity now to do it, but also to take time for relationships. And one thing I didn't mention that is one thing I encouraged students to think about, it's really a question of life. Is life is about relationships. And you know, you want to hopefully along the way, people haven't sacrificed relationships. So you see that sometimes in business, where they sacrifice, you know, their family or other relationships for success in business. But you know, when you're retired is a time to eat, to deepen those those relationships, to really spend some time, you know, with with other people, so and and, as I say, to do things that you love. The other thing I'd say is, is to keep moving. You might I had a chance to visit my mom about a few weeks ago. She's in she's in Cape Cod, in Massachusetts, and she's 103 103 and a half. And three and a half and and people ask her, What's your key to longevity? And she says, Just keep moving. And although she's not physically as active, she tries to get up and keep moving. And she's also one that's and always keeps alert. She volunteered she's not, she hasn't, doesn't have the capacity to do that now, but up till about 9998 she was, she had volunteer activities going on. So, you know, stay engaged, keep keep moving, keep doing things and and anyway, that's my encouragement. Don't, you know, don't just think that it's going to be, you know, time at the beach, or certainly not time in front of the. Television, you know, keep moving, if you can, and keep keep mentally stimulated.   Michael Hingson ** 55:06 That's the real key. Is mental stimulation, I think is extremely important. Just I think retirement is, is overrated in terms of what it really or what people think it is. And I think mental stimulation is is an important thing. And when you're stopped working at a job full time, because it's time to not do that anymore, you should have more time to be able to develop the relationships stimulate your brain, keep your brain thinking, and maybe go off and look at doing things in a different direction. That always is a great challenge. Absolutely,   Skip Vaccarello ** 55:40 yeah, absolutely. It's a, it's a very, it's a neat time of life now. I mean, I enjoyed the time that I had while I was working, but, you know, when you retire, you have a little bit more freedom you had before. So, you know, but use it wisely. It's really true with anything we all, we all are given, you know, resources of various sorts, and time is one of the most valuable resources that we have. And you know, we're, you know, invested. Invest it wisely. Because, you know, life is life is short, and as I get older, realize how short life is, so invest that time wisely and and invest in relationships, as I say, is probably the most important   Michael Hingson ** 56:24 thing. Yeah, I think that's extremely crucial, and makes a lot of sense. And you'll meet people and find things that you never knew before, and you continue to learn, which is what it's all about. Yep, absolutely. Well, I want to thank you for spending an hour with us today, and in doing this, we'll have to do it again, and I think it'll be a lot of fun, but I really enjoy you being here and appreciate you taking the time   Skip Vaccarello ** 56:48 Well, Michael, thank you so much. I've enjoyed it. It's fun for us to to reappoint, yeah, yeah. And it's a it's a great conversation, and hopefully listeners will get some benefit from it, but I've enjoyed the time that I've that I've spent with you today again. Thanks. Thank you so much for having me.   Michael Hingson ** 57:06 Well, I hope all of you have enjoyed listening and watching us, and that you'll give us a five star rating wherever you're watching or hearing the podcast. We really appreciate five star ratings a lot. And just your thoughts. So if you have any thoughts about today's episode, please email me. I'm easy to reach. It's Michael H I M, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, and if you want to subscribe to the podcast, do it wherever you're listening, or you can always go to Michael hingson, M, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, o n.com/podcast, and I, and I hope you'll do that, but also skip for you and all, all people out there who are encountering our episode today, if you know of someone, including yourself, who might want to be or you think ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, I'd love you to reach out to me. We're always looking for more people to have on and talk about various things, and like I said, for me, in part, I get to learn what we do that. So we really appreciate you finding other guests for us. So don't ever hesitate to reach out and let us know if people we ought to interact with. But again, skip. I just want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun, and we really appreciate your time.   Skip Vaccarello ** 58:24 Michael, thank you again. Enjoy the rest of the day. Appreciate it.   Michael Hingson ** 58:32 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Bryan Barrett sits down with John Mitchell, Executive Director of the Heart of Tennessee Chapter of the American Red Cross. Mitchell discusses their ongoing community partners

We began the program with four interesting guests on topics we think you should know more about!In this episode we chatted with: Dr. Dan Suiter, Orkin Distinguished Professor of Urban Entomology, Dept. of Entomology, Univ. of Georgia - A new insect is spreading across the U.S., joining the Joro Spider, Asian long-horned beetle, and the spotted lanternfly! The difference? This one could be fatal! Jonathan Lane with Revolution 250 checked in, discussing The 250th Anniversary of The Battle of Bunker Hill - A Commemorative Event.Kelly Isenor, Spokesperson for the American Red Cross of MA - The Atlantic Hurricane season is underway, and that means the increased threat of severe storms. The American Red Cross needs blood donations now to stay ahead of the curve. Find out where you can donate!Rosangela Teodoro, owner of Teodora's Boucherie Gourmande in Cohasset, MA - Female Butcher Rosangela Teodoro is looking to inspire more women to become butchers! There aren't many female butchers out there but Teodoro knows her stuff. Now you can leave feedback as you listen to WBZ NewsRadio on the FREE iHeart Radio app! Just click on the microphone icon in the app, and be sure to set WBZ NewsRadio as your #1 preset!

From breakthrough treatments to life-saving transfusions, hope is no longer just a dream for people with sickle cell disease. Discover how the University of Maryland Medical System and the American Red Cross are working side-by-side to fight sickle cell disease - with cutting-edge care and compassion in every drop, featuring Dr. Jennie Law from the UM Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center and Sherman Roy from the American Red Cross and a special guest, Dazja Marshall, who is a sickle cell patient and advocate.

In this episode, we sit down with Pat Labez, a dynamic and multifaceted individual who has embraced life's many transitions, from a young realtor to a passionate advocate for seniors and mental health. Born in the Philippines, raised in Hawaii, and having lived from coast to coast in the U.S., Pat's journey has been anything but conventional, but it's a testament to the power of reinvention and purpose.Pat is the founder of Third Act Encore Publishing and curator of the book Third Act Encore, where I had the honor of contributing a chapter. This book is a creative celebration of the later years in life, offering inspiration and empowerment for seniors. Through her work, Pat has also pioneered creative programs that provide enrichment for the senior community, combining her deep compassion for others with her love for the arts.She's a lifelong advocate for seniors and mental health, co-founding the International Mental Health Foundation, a non-profit that brings awareness to mental health and disabilities through the arts. Her advocacy is rooted in her personal experiences, which led her to pivot from a career in real estate to working in long-term care services.Pat's journey is expansive—starting as a realtor at the age of 22 in Hawaii, she eventually became a director for several non-profit organizations, including Elder Care Alliance and American Red Cross. She has volunteered for AARP, Alzheimer's Association, Council on Aging, Hospice, and many others, always putting seniors and mental health at the forefront of her efforts.In her late 60s, Pat returned to the creative arts and entertainment world, where she became an actor, producer, and international bestselling author. Her career highlights include roles in shows like Blue Bloods and New Amsterdam, and she is known for her work in feature films such as Baby Ruby and Howard.Now a Seniors Real Estate Specialist in New Jersey, Pat continues her journey of reinvention. Her story is a shining example of embracing the third act of life with joy, purpose, and passion.Join us as we discuss how Pat's diverse career, advocacy, and creative pursuits have shaped her life, and how we can all live fully and authentically in our later years.Her favorite quotes are: “Life is a gift that keeps on giving” - Voltaire“Don't die with the music still in you” - Wayne Dyer

Who knows the meaning of the term “Business Continuity management” without looking it up? Our guest this week, Alex Fullick, is intimately familiar with the term and its ramifications. I first met Alex when we were connected as participants in a conference in London this past October sponsored by Business Continuity International. The people involved with “Business Continuity management” were described to me as the “what if people”. They are the people no one pays attention to, but who plan for emergency and unexpected situations and events that especially can cause interruptions with the flow or continuity of business. Of course, everyone wants the services of the business continuity experts once something unforeseen or horrific occurs. Alex was assigned to introduce me at the conference. Since the conference I have even had the pleasure to appear on his podcast and now, he agreed to reciprocate.   Our conversation covers many topics related to emergencies, business continuity and the mindsets people really have concerning business flow and even fear. Needless to say, this topic interests me since I directly participated in the greatest business interruption event we have faced in the world, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.   Alex freely discusses fear, emergency planning and how we all can improve our chances of dealing with any kind of emergency, personal or business related, by developing the proper mindset. He points out how so often people may well plan for emergencies at work and sometimes they even take the step of developing their own business continuity mindset, but they rarely do the same for their personal lives.   Alex is the author of eight books on the subject and he now is working on book 9. You can learn more about them in our podcast show notes. I think you will gain a lot of insight from what Alex has to say and I hope his thoughts and comments will help you as you think more now about the whole idea of business continuity.       About the Guest:   Alex Fullick has been working in the Business Continuity Management, Disaster Recovery, and Operational Resilience industries as a consultant/contractor for just over 28 years. Alex is also the founder and Managing Director of StoneRoad, a consulting and training firm specializing in BCM and Resilience and is the author of eight books…and working on number nine.   He has numerous industry certifications and has presented at prestigious conferences around the globe including Manila, Seoul, Bucharest, Brisbane, Toronto, and London (to name a few). In July of 2017 he created the highly successful and top-rated podcast focusing on Business Continuity and Resilience ‘Preparing for the Unexpected'. The show aims to touch on any subject that directly or indirectly touches on the world of disasters, crises, well-being, continuity management, and resilience. The first of its kind in the BCM and Resilience world and is still going strong after thirty plus seasons, reaching an audience around the globe. Alex was born in England but now calls the city of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, his home. Ways to connect Alex:   www.linkedin.com/in/alex-fullick-826a694   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello, everyone, wherever you happen to be, welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet and unexpected is anything that has nothing to do with inclusion or diversity. As I've said many times today, our guest is someone I got to meet last year, and we'll talk about that. His name is Alex Bullock, and Alex and I met because we both attended a conference in London in October about business continuity. And I'm going to let Alex define that and describe what that is all about. But Alex introduced me at the conference, and among other things, I convinced him that he had to come on unstoppable mindset. And so we get to do that today. He says he's nervous. So you know, all I gotta say is just keep staring at your screens and your speakers and and just keep him nervous. Keep him on edge. Alex, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're   Alex Fullick ** 02:19 here. Thanks, Michael. I really appreciate the invite, and I'm glad to be here today. And yeah, a little nervous, because usually it's me on the other side of the microphone interviewing people. So I don't fit in this chair too often   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 I've been there and done that as I recall, yes,   Alex Fullick ** 02:37 yes, you were a guest of mine. Oh, I guess when did we do that show? A month and a half, two months ago? Or something, at least,   Michael Hingson ** 02:45 I forget, yeah. And I said the only charge for me coming on your podcast was you had to come on this one. So there you go. Here I am. Yeah, several people ask me, Is there a charge for coming on your podcast? And I have just never done that. I've never felt that I should charge somebody to come on the podcast, other than we do have the one rule, which is, you gotta have fun. If you can't have fun, then there's no sense being on the podcast. So, you know, that works out. Well, tell us about the early Alex, growing up and, you know, all that sort of stuff, so that people get to know you a little bit.   Alex Fullick ** 03:16 Oh, the early Alex, sure. The early Alex, okay, well, a lot of people don't know I was actually born in England myself, uh, Farnam Surrey, southwest of London, so until I was about eight, and then we came to Canada. Grew up in Thunder Bay, Northwestern Ontario, and then moved to the Greater Toronto Area, and I've lived all around here, north of the city, right downtown in the city, and now I live an hour west of it, in a city called Guelph. So that's how I got here. Younger me was typical, I guess, nothing   Michael Hingson ** 03:56 special. Went to school, high school and all that sort of stuff. Yeah, yeah, no.   Alex Fullick ** 04:02 Brainiac. I was working my first job was in hospitality, and I thought that's where I was going to be for a long time, because I worked my way up to I did all the positions, kitchen manager, Assistant Manager, cooks, bartender, server, did everything in there was even a company trainer at one point for a restaurant chain, and then did some general managing. But I got to a point where computers were going to start coming in to the industry, and I thought, well, I guess I should learn how to use these things, shouldn't I? And I went to school, learned how to use them, basic using, I'm not talking about building computers and networks and things like that, just the user side of things. And that was, did that for six months, and then I thought I was going back into the industry. And no fate had. Something different for me. What happened? Well, my best friend, who is still my best friend, 30 years later, he was working for a large financial institution, and he said, Hey, we need some help on this big program to build some call trees. When you're finished, he goes, get your foot in the door, and you could find something else within the bank. So I went, Okay, fine. Well, they called the position business recovery planner, and I knew absolutely nothing about business recovery or business continuity. Not a single thing. I'd never even heard the term yeah and but for some reason, I just took to it. I don't know what it was at the time, but I just went, this is kind of neat. And I think it was the fact that I was learning something different, you know, I wasn't memorizing a recipe for Alfredo sauce or something like that, you know, it was completely different. And I was meeting and working with people at every level, sitting in meetings with senior vice presidents and CEOs and giving them updates, and, you know, a data analyst, data entry clerk, and just talking. And I went, This is so much fun, you know, and that's I've been doing that now for over 28 years.   Michael Hingson ** 06:14 Well, I I had not really heard much of the term business continuity, although I understand emergency preparedness and such things, because I did that, of course, going into the World Trade Center, and I did it for, well, partly to be prepared for an emergency, but also partly because I was a leader of an office, and I felt that I needed to know What to do if there were ever an emergency, and how to behave, because I couldn't necessarily rely on other people, and also, in reality, I might even be the only person in the office. So it was a survival issue to a degree, but I learned what to do. And of course, we know the history of September 11 and me and all that, but the reality is that what I realized many years later was that the knowledge that I learned and gained that helped me on September 11 really created a mindset that allowed me to be able to function and not be as I Put it to people blinded or paralyzed by fear, the fear was there. I would be dumb to say I wasn't concerned, but the fear helped me focus, as opposed to being something that overwhelmed and completely blocked me from being capable and being able to function. So I know what you're saying. Well, what exactly is business continuity?   Alex Fullick ** 07:44 You know, there are people who are going to watch this and listen and they're going to want me to give a really perfect definition, but depending on the organization, depending on leadership, depending on the guiding industry organization out there, business continuity, Institute, Disaster Recovery Institute, ISO NIST and so many other groups out there. I'm not going to quote any of them as a definition, because if I if I say one the others, are going to be mad at me, yell at you, yeah, yeah. Or if I quote it wrong, they'll get mad at me. So I'm going to explain it the way I usually do it to people when I'm talking in the dog park, yeah, when they ask what I'm doing, I'll say Business Continuity Management is, how do you keep your business going? What do you need? Who do you need the resources when you've been hit by an event and and with the least impact to your customers and your delivery of services, yeah, and it's simple, they all get it. They all understand it. So if anyone doesn't like that, please feel free send me an email. I can hit the delete key just as fast as you can write it. So you know, but that's what a lot of people understand, and that's really what business continuity management is, right from the very beginning when you identify something, all the way to why we made it through, we're done. The incident's over.   Michael Hingson ** 09:16 Both worked with at the Business Continuity international hybrid convention in October was Sergio Garcia, who kind of coordinated things. And I think it was he who I asked, what, what is it that you do? What's the purpose of all of the people getting together and having this conference? And he said, I think it was he who said it not you, that the the best way to think about it is that the people who go to this conference are the what if people, they're the ones who have to think about having an event, and what happens if there's an event, and how do you deal with it? But so the what if people, they're the people that nobody ever pays any attention to until such time as there is something that. Happens, and then they're in high demand.   Alex Fullick ** 10:03 Yeah, that that's especially that being ignored part until something happened. Yeah, yeah. Well, well, the nice thing, one of the things I love about this position, and I've been doing it like I said, for 28 years, written books, podcasts, you've been on my show, YouTube channel, etc, etc, is that I do get to learn and from so many people and show the value of what we do, and I'm in a position to reach out and talk to so many different people, like I mentioned earlier. You know, CEOs. I can sit in front of the CEO and tell them you're not ready. If something happens, you're not ready because you haven't attended any training, or your team hasn't attended training, or nobody's contributing to crisis management or the business continuity or whatever you want to talk about. And I find that empowering, and it's amazing to sit there and not tell a CEO to their face, you know you're screwed. Not. You know, you don't say those kinds of things. No, but being able to sit there and just have a moment with them to to say that, however you term it, you might have a good relationship with them where you can't say that for all I know, but it being able to sit in front of a CEO or a vice president and say, hey, you know, this is where things are. This is where I need your help. You know, I don't think a lot of people get that luxury to be able to do it. And I'm lucky enough that I've worked with a lot of clients where I can't. This is where I need your help. You know. What's your expectation? Let's make it happen, you know, and having that behind you is it's kind of empowering,   Michael Hingson ** 11:47 yeah, well, one of the things that I have start talking a little bit about with people when talk about emergency preparedness is, if you're really going to talk about being prepared for an emergency. One of the things that you need to do is recognize that probably the biggest part of emergency preparedness, or business continuity, however you want to term, it, isn't physical it's the mental preparation that you need to make that people generally don't make. You know, I've been watching for the last now, five or six weeks, all the flyers and things down here in California, which have been so horrible, and people talk about being prepared physically. You should have a go bag so that you can grab it and go. You should do this. You should do that. But the problem is nobody ever talks about or or helps people really deal with the mental preparation for something unexpected. And I'm going to, I'm going to put it that way, as opposed to saying something negative, because it could be a positive thing. But the bottom line is, we don't really learn to prepare ourselves for unexpected things that happen in our lives and how to react to them, and so especially when it's a negative thing, the fear just completely overwhelms us.   Alex Fullick ** 13:09 Yeah, I agree with you. You know, fear can be what's that to fight, flight or freeze? Yeah, and a lot of people don't know how to respond when an event happens. And I think I'm going to take a step back, and I think that goes back to when we're young as well, because we have our parents, our grandparents, our teachers, our principals. You know, you can go achieve your goals, like everything is positive. You can go do that. Go do that. They don't teach you that, yeah, to achieve those goals, you're going to hit some roadblocks, and you need to understand how to deal with that when things occur. And use your example with the fires in California. If you don't know how to prepare for some of those small things, then when a big fire like that occurs, you're even less prepared. I have no idea how to deal with that, and it is. It's a really change in mindset and understanding that not everything is rosy. And unfortunately, a lot of people get told, or they get told, Oh, don't worry about it. It'll never happen. So great when it does happen. Well, then was that advice?   Michael Hingson ** 14:25 Yeah, I remember after September 11, a couple of months after, I called somebody who had expressed an interest in purchasing some tape backup products for from us at Quantum. And I hadn't heard from them, and so I reached out, and I said, So what's going on? How would you guys like to proceed? And this was an IT guy, and he said, Oh, well, the president of the company said September 11 happened, and so since they did, we're not going to have to worry about that anymore. So we're not going to go forward. Or worth doing anything to back up our data, and I'm sitting there going, you missed the whole point of what backup is all about. I didn't dare say that to him, but it isn't just about an emergency, but it's also about, what if you accidentally delete a file? Do you have a way to go back and get it? I mean, there's so many other parts to it, but this guy's boss just basically said, Well, it happened, so it's not going to happen now we don't have to worry about it. Yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 15:27 like you hear on the news. Well, it feels like daily, oh, once in 100 year storm, once in 100 year event, once in 100 year this. Well, take a look at the news. It's happening weekly, daily, yeah, yeah. One in 100   Michael Hingson ** 15:44 years thing, yeah. Nowadays, absolutely, there's so many things that are happening. California is going through a couple of major atmospheric rivers right now, as they're now calling it. And so Southern California is getting a lot of rain because of of one of the rivers, and of course, it has all the burn areas from the fires. So I don't know what we'll see in the way of mudslides, but the rain is picking up. Even here, where I live, we're going to get an inch or more of rain, and usually we don't get the rain that a lot of other places get. The clouds have to go over a lot of mountains to get to us, and they lose their moisture before they do that. Yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 16:23 yeah. We just had a whole pile of snow here. So we had a snowstorm yesterday. So we've got about 20 centimeters of snow out there that hasn't been plowed yet. So bit of   Michael Hingson ** 16:36 a mess. There you go. Well, you know, go out and play on the snow. Well,   Alex Fullick ** 16:41 the dog loves it, that's for sure. Like troubling it, but, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 16:46 I don't think my cat would like it, but the animal would like it. He'd go out and play in it. If it were here, we don't get much snow here, but Yeah, he'd play it. But, but it is. It is so interesting to really talk about this whole issue of of business continuity, emergency preparedness, whatever you want to consider it, because it's it's more than anything. It's a mindset, and it is something that people should learn to do in their lives in general, because it would help people be a lot more prepared. If people really created a mindset in themselves about dealing with unexpected things, probably they'd be a little bit more prepared physically for an emergency, but they would certainly be in a lot better shape to deal with something as like the fires are approaching, but they don't, but we don't do that. We don't teach that.   Alex Fullick ** 17:43 No, we it's interesting too, that a lot of those people, they'll work on projects in their organization, you know, and they will look at things well, what can go wrong, you know, and try to mitigate it and fix, you know, whatever issues are in the way or remove roadblocks. They're actually doing that as part of their project. But when it comes to themselves, and they have to think about fires or something like that, is now that won't happen, you know. And wait a minute, how come you've got the right mindset when it comes to your projects at work, but you don't have that same mindset when it comes to your own well being, or your families, or whatever the case may be. How come it's different? You go from one side to the other and it I've noticed that a few times with people and like, I don't get it. Why? Why are you so you have the right mindset under one circumstance and the other circumstance, you completely ignore it and don't have the mindset,   Michael Hingson ** 18:45 yeah, which, which makes you wonder, how much of a mindset Do you really have when it comes to work in all aspects of it? And so one of the things that I remember after September 11, people constantly asked me is, who helped you down the stairs, or was there somebody who was responsible for coming to get you, to take you downstairs and and the reality is, as I said, I was the leader. I was helping other people go downstairs. But by the same token, I'm of the opinion that in buildings like the World Trade Center towers, there is people talk about the buddy system. So if somebody is is in the building, you should have a buddy. And it doesn't even need to be necessarily, in the same office, but there should be an arrangement so that there is somebody looking out for each each other person. So everybody should have a buddy. I'm of the opinion it isn't a buddy. There should be two buddies, and at least one of them has to be outside of the office, so that you have three people who have to communicate and develop those lines of communications and work through it. And by that way, you you have a. Better chance of making sure that more people get whatever communications are necessary.   Alex Fullick ** 20:06 Yeah, you create your like a support network, absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 20:10 and I think at least a triumvirate makes a lot more sense than just a buddy. Yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 20:14 you you might be freaked out, you know, nervous shaking, but with a couple of people standing there, you know, talking to you, you're going to come right back hopefully. You know, with that, the calmer, you know, stop shaking when a couple of people are there. Yeah, you a lot of times when you have the same one person doing it, usually, oh, you're just saying that because you have to. But when you two people doing it, it's like, okay, thank thanks team. You know, like you're really helping. You know, this is much better.   Michael Hingson ** 20:48 Yeah, I think it makes a lot more sense, and especially if one of them isn't necessarily a person who's normally in your work pattern that brings somebody in from someone with the outside who approaches things differently because they don't necessarily know you or as well or in the same way as your buddy who's maybe next door to you in the office, right across the hall or next door, or whatever. Yeah, yeah. I agree. I think it makes sense well, the conference that we were at a lot to well, to a large degree, and at least for my presentation, was all about resilience. What is resilience to you? How's that for a general question that   Alex Fullick ** 21:31 has become such a buzzword, I know it   Michael Hingson ** 21:35 really is, and it's unfortunate, because when, when we start hearing, you know, resilience, or I hear all the time amazing and so many times we get all these buzzwords, and they they really lose a lot of their value when that happens. But still, that's a fair question. I   Alex Fullick ** 21:53 do think the word resilience is overused, and it's losing its meaning. You know, dictionary meaning, because it's just used for everything these days. Yeah, you know, my neighbor left her keys. Sorry. Her daughter took her house keys this morning by accident. She couldn't get into her house when she got him back, and she had a comment where she said, you know, oh, well, I'm resilient, but really, you just went and got some Keith, how was that so? So I'm, I'm starting to get to the point now, when people ask me, you know, what's resilience to you? What's it mean to you? I just, I start to say, Now, does it matter? Yeah, my definition is fine for me, if you have a definition of it for yourself that you understand you you know what it means, or your organization has a definition, we'll take it and run. Yeah, you know what it means. You're all behind that. Meaning. We don't need a vendor or some other guiding industry organization to say this is, this must be your definition of resilience. It's like, well, no, you're just wordsmithing and making it sound fancy. You know, do it means what it means to you? You know, how, how do you define it? If that's how you define it, that's what it means, and that's all that matters. My definition doesn't matter. Nobody else's definition matters, you know, because, and it's become that way because the term used, you know, for everything these days. Yeah, I   Michael Hingson ** 23:30 think that there's a lot of value in if a person is, if we use the dictionary definition, resilient, they they Well, again, from my definition, it gets back to the mindset you establish. You establish a mindset where you can be flexible, where you can adapt, and where you can sometimes think outside the box that you would normally think out of, but you don't panic to do that. You've learned how to address different things and be able to focus, to develop what you need to do to accomplish, whatever you need to accomplish at any unexpected time.   Alex Fullick ** 24:06 Yeah, and you're calm, level headed, you know, you've got that right mindset. You don't freak out over the small things, you know, you see the bigger picture. You understand it. You know, I'm here. That's where I need to go, and that's where you focus and, you know, sweat all those little things, you know. And I think, I think it's, it's kind of reminds me that the definitions that are being thrown out there now reminds me of some of those mission and vision statements that leadership comes up with in their organizations, with all this, oh, that, you know, you read the sentence and it makes no sense whatsoever, yeah, you know, like, what?   Michael Hingson ** 24:45 What's so, what's the wackiest definition of resilience that you can think of that you've heard?   Alex Fullick ** 24:51 Um, I don't know if there's a wacky one or an unusual one. Um, oh, geez. I. I know I've heard definitions of bounce forward, bounce back, you know, agility, adaptability. Well, your   Michael Hingson ** 25:07 car keys, lady this morning, your house key, your house key, lady this morning, the same thing, yeah, yeah. I don't resilient just because she got her keys back. Yeah, really, yeah. Well,   Alex Fullick ** 25:17 that's kind of a wacky example. Yeah, of one, but I don't think there's, I've heard any weird definitions yet. I'm sure that's probably some out there coming. Yeah, we'll get to the point where, how the heck did are you defining resilience with that? Yeah? And if you're looking at from that way, then yeah, my neighbor with the keys that would fit in right there. That's not resilient. You just went and picked up some keys.   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Yeah. Where's the resilience? How did you adapt? You the resilience might be if you didn't, the resilience might be if you didn't panic, although I'm sure that didn't happen. But that would, that would lean toward the concept of resilience. If you didn't panic and just went, Well, I I'll go get them. Everything will be fine, but that's not what people do,   Alex Fullick ** 26:08 yeah? Well, that that is what she did, actually. She just as I was shoveling snow this morning, she goes, Oh, well, I'll just go get her, get them, okay, yeah. Does that really mean resilience, or Does that just mean you went to pick up the keys that your daughter accidentally took   Michael Hingson ** 26:24 and and you stayed reasonably level headed about it,   Alex Fullick ** 26:28 you know, you know. So, you know, I don't know, yeah, if, if I would count that as a definition of resilience, but, or even I agree resilience, it's more of okay, yeah, yeah. If, if it's something like that, then that must mean I'm resilient when I forget to pull the laundry out after the buzzer. Oh yeah, I gotta pull the laundry out. Did that make me resilient? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 26:52 absolutely, once you pulled it out, you weren't resilient, not until then,   Alex Fullick ** 26:57 you know. So, so I guess it's you know, how people but then it comes down to how people want to define it too. Yeah, if they're happy with that definition, well, if it makes you happy, I'm not going to tell you to change   Michael Hingson ** 27:11 it. Yeah, has but, but I think ultimately there are some some basic standards that get back to what we talked about earlier, which is establishing a mindset and being able to deal with things that come out of the ordinary well, and you're in an industry that, by and large, is probably viewed as pretty negative, you're always anticipating the emergencies and and all the unexpected horrible things that can happen, the what if people again, but that's that's got to be, from a mindset standpoint, a little bit tough to deal with it. You're always dealing with this negative industry. How do you do that? You're resilient, I know. But anyway, yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 27:56 really, I just look at it from a risk perspective. Oh, could that happen to us? You know, no, it wouldn't, you know, we're we're in the middle of a Canadian Shield, or at least where I am. We're in the middle of Canadian Shield. There's not going to be two plates rubbing against each other and having an earthquake. So I just look at it from risk where we are, snowstorms, yep, that could hit us and has. What do we do? Okay, well, we close our facility, we have everyone work from home, you know, etc, etc. So I don't look at it from the perspective of doom and gloom. I look at it more of opportunity to make us better at what we do and how we prepare and how we respond and how we overcome, you know, situations that happen out there, and I don't look at it from the oh, here comes, you know, the disaster guy you know, always pointing out everything that's wrong. You know, I'd rather point out opportunities that we have to become as a team, organization or a person stronger. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:01 I guess it's not necessarily a disaster. And as I said earlier, it could very well be that some unexpected thing will happen that could be a very positive thing. But again, if we don't have the mindset to deal with that, then we don't and the reality is, the more that we work to develop a mindset to deal with unexpected things, the more quickly we can make a correct analysis of whatever is going on and move forward from it, as opposed to letting fear again overwhelm us, we can if we practice creating This mindset that says we really understand how to deal with unexpected situations, then we are in a position to be able to the more we practice it, deal with it, and move forward in a positive way. So it doesn't need to be a disaster. September 11 was a disaster by any standard, but as I tell people. People. While I am still convinced that no matter what anyone might think, we couldn't figure out that September 11 was going to happen, I'm not convinced that even if all the agencies communicated, they would have gotten it because and I talk about trust and teamwork a lot, as I point out, a team of 19 people kept their mouth shut, or a few more who were helping in the planning of it, and they pulled off something that basically brought the world to its knees. So I'm not convinced that we could have stopped September 11 from happening. At least I haven't heard something that convinces me of that yet. But what each of us has the ability to do is to determine how we deal with September 11. So we couldn't prevent it, but we can certainly all deal with or address the issue of, how do we deal with it going forward? Yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 30:52 I agree. I I was actually in a conversation with my niece a couple of months ago. We were up at the cottage, and she was talking about school, and, you know, some of the people that she goes to school with, and I said, Well, you're never going to be able to change other people. You know, what they think or what they do. I said, what you can control is your response. You know, if, if they're always picking on you, the reason they're picking on you is because they know they can get a rise out of you. They know they it. Whatever they're saying or doing is getting to you, so they're going to keep doing it because it's empowering for them. But you can take away that empowerment if you make the right choices on how you respond, if you just shrug and walk away. I'm simplifying it, of course, yeah, if you just shrug and walk away. Well, after a while, they're going to realize nothing I'm saying is getting through, and they'll move away from you. They'll they won't bug you anymore, because they can't get a rise out. They can't get a rise out of you. So the only thing you can control is how you respond, you know. And as you keep saying, it's the mindset. Change your mindset from response to, you know, I'm prepared for what this person's going to say, and I'm not going to let it bother me. Yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 32:08 Well, bullying is really all about that. Yeah, people can't bully if you don't let yourself be bullied. Yep, and whether it's social media and so many other things, you can't be bullied if you don't allow it and if you ignore it or move on or get help to deal with the issue if it gets serious enough, but you don't need to approach it from a shame or fear standpoint, or you or you shouldn't anyway, but that's unfortunately, again, all too often. What happens when we see a lot of teenage suicides and so on, because people are letting the bullies get a rise out of them, and the bullies win.   Alex Fullick ** 32:51 Yep, yep. And as I told her, I said, you just mentioned it too. If it gets out of hand or becomes physical, I said, then you have to take action. I don't mean turning around and swinging back. I said, No, step up. Go get someone who is has authority and can do something about it. Yeah, don't, don't run away. Just deal with it differently, you know. And don't, don't start the fight, because then you're just confirming that I'm the bully. I can do this again. Yeah, you're, you're giving them license to do what they want. Yeah, but stand up to them, or tell, depending on the situation, tell someone higher up in authority that can do something and make make a change, but you have to be calm when you do it.   Michael Hingson ** 33:39 I remember when I was at UC Irvine, when I was going to college, my had my first guide dog, Squire. He was a golden retriever, 64 pounds, the most gentle, wonderful dog you could ever imagine. And unfortunately, other students on campus would bring their dogs. It was a very big campus, pretty, in a sense, rural, and there were only about 2700 students. And a bunch of students would bring their dogs to school, and they would just turn the dogs loose, and they go off to class, and then they find their dogs at the end of the day. Unfortunately, some of the dogs developed into a pack, and one day, they decided they were going to come after my guide dog. I think I've told this story a couple times on on this podcast, but what happened was we were walking down a sidewalk, and the dogs were coming up from behind, and they were growling and so on. And squire, my guide dog, jerked away from me. I still held his leash, but he jerked out of his harness, out of my hand, and literally jumped up in the air, turned around and came down on all fours, hunkered down and growled at these dogs all in this the well, about a two second time frame, totally shocked the dogs. They just slunked away. Somebody was describing it to me later, and you know, the dog was very deliberate about what he did. Of course, after they left, he comes over and He's wagging his tail. Did I do good or what? But, but he was very deliberate, and it's a lesson to to deal with things. And he never attacked any of the dogs, but he wasn't going to let anything happen to him or me, and that's what loyalty is really all about. But if something had happened and that hadn't worked out the way expected, then I would have had to have gone off and and I, in fact, I did talk to school officials about the fact that these dogs were doing that. And I don't even remember whether anybody did anything, but I know I was also a day or so later going into one of the the buildings. Before he got inside, there was a guy I knew who was in a wheelchair, and another dog did come up and started to try to attack squire, this guy with in the wheelchair, pulled one of the arms off his chair and just lambasted the dog right across the head, made him back up. Yeah, you know. But it was that people shouldn't be doing what they allowed their dog. You know, shouldn't be doing that, but. But the bottom line is, it's still a lesson that you don't let yourself be bullied. Yeah, yep, and there's no need to do that, but it is a it's a pretty fascinating thing to to see and to deal with, but it's all about preparation. And again, if we teach ourselves to think strategically and develop that skill, it becomes just second nature to do it, which is, unfortunately, what we don't learn.   Alex Fullick ** 36:48 Yeah, I didn't know that as a kid, because when I was a little kid and first came to Canada, especially, I was bullied because, well, I had a funny voice.   Michael Hingson ** 36:57 You did? You don't have that anymore, by the way, no,   Alex Fullick ** 37:01 if I, if I'm with my mom or relatives, especially when I'm back in England, words will start coming back. Yeah, there are words that I do say differently, garage or garage, yeah. You know, I hate garage, but garage, yeah, I still say some words like that,   Michael Hingson ** 37:18 or process, as opposed to process.   Alex Fullick ** 37:21 Yeah, so, you know, there's something like that, but as a kid, I was bullied and I there was, was no talk of mindset or how to deal with it. It's either put up with it or, you know, you really couldn't turn to anybody back then, because nobody really knew themselves how to deal with it. Yeah, bullies had always been around. They were always in the playground. So the the mechanisms to deal with it weren't there either. It wasn't till much later that I'm able to to deal with that if someone said some of the things now, right away, I can turn around because I've trained myself to have a different mindset and say that, no, that's unacceptable. You can't talk to that person, or you can't talk to me that way. Yeah, you know, if you say it again, I will, you know, call the police or whatever. Never anything where I'm going to punch you in the chin, you know, or something like that. Never. That doesn't solve anything. No, stand up saying, you know, no, I'm not going to accept that. You know, which is easier now, and maybe that just comes with age or something, I don't know, but back then, no, it was, you know, that that kind of mechanism to deal with it, or finding that inner strength and mindset to do that wasn't there,   Michael Hingson ** 38:43 right? But when you started to work on developing that mindset, the more you worked on it, the easier it became to make it happen. Yep, agreed. And so now it's a way of life, and it's something that I think we all really could learn and should learn. And my book live like a guide dog is really all about that developing that mindset to control fear. And I just think it's so important that we really deal with it. And you know, in this country right now, we've got a government administration that's all about chaos and fear, and unfortunately, not nearly enough people have learned how to deal with that, which is too bad, yep, although,   Alex Fullick ** 39:30 go ahead, I was going to say it's a shame that, you know, some a lot of people haven't learned how to deal with that. Part of it, again, is we don't teach that as well. So sometimes the only thing some people know is fear and bullying, because that's all they've experienced, yeah, either as the bully or being bullied. So they they don't see anything different. So when it happens on a scale, what we see right now it. It's, well, that's normal, yeah, it's not normal, actually. You know, it's not something we should be doing. You know, you should be able to stand up to your bully, or stand up when you see something wrong, you know, and help because it's human nature to want to help other people. You know, there's been so many accidents people falling, or you'll need their snow removed, where I am, and people jump in and help, yeah? You know, without sometimes, a lot of times, they don't even ask. It's like, oh, let me give you a hand,   Michael Hingson ** 40:33 yeah. And we had that when we lived in New Jersey, like snow removal. We had a Boy Scout who started a business, and every year he'd come around and clear everybody's snow. He cleared our snow. He said, I am absolutely happy to do it. We we wanted to pay him for it, but he was, he was great, and we always had a nice, clean driveway. But you know, the other side of this whole issue with the mindset is if we take it in a more positive direction, look at people like Sully Sullenberger, the pilot and the airplane on the Hudson, how he stayed focused. He had developed the mindset and stayed focused so that he could deal with that airplane. That doesn't mean that he wasn't afraid and had concerns, but he was able to do something that was was definitely pretty fantastic, because he kept his cool, yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 41:23 I think he knew, and others in other situations know that if you're freaking out yourself, you're not going to fix the issue, you're going to make it worse. We see that in Hollywood tends to do that a lot. In their movies, there's always a character who's flipping out, you know, panicking, going crazy and making everything worse. Well, that does happen, you know, if you act that way, you're not going to resolve your situation, whatever you find yourself in, you know. And I tell people that in business continuity when we're having meetings, well, we'll figure it out when it happens. No, you don't know how you'll behave. You don't know how you'll respond when, oh, I don't know an active shooter or something. You have no idea when you hear that someone you know just got shot down in the lobby. Are you going to tell me you're going to be calm? You sorry? You know you're going to be calm and just okay, yeah, we can deal with it. No, you're going to get a wave of panic, yeah, or other emotions coming over you, you know. And you have to have that mindset. You can still be panicked and upset and freaked out, or however you want to describe that, but you know, I have to stay in control. I can't let that fear take over, or I'm going to get myself in that situation as well. Yeah, I have to be able to manage it. Okay, what do I have to do? I gotta go hide. You know, I'm not saying you're not sweating, you know, with nervousness like that, but you understand, gotta think beyond this if I want to get out of this situation. You know, I'm going to take these people that are sitting with me, we're going to go lock ourselves in the storage closet, or, you know, whatever, right? But have that wherewithal to be able to understand that and, you know, be be safe, you know, but freaking out, you're only contributing to the situation, and then you end up freaking out other people and getting them panicked. Course, you do. They're not, you know, they don't have the right mindset to deal with issues. And then you've got everyone going in every direction, nobody's helping each other. And then you're creating, you know, bigger issues, and   Michael Hingson ** 43:37 you lose more lives, and you create more catastrophes all the way around. I remember when I was going down the stairs at the World Trade Center, I kept telling Roselle what a good job she was doing, good girl. And I did that for a couple of reasons. The main reason was I wanted her to know that I was okay and I'm not going to be influenced by fear. But I wanted her to feel comfortable what what happened, though, as a result of that, and was a lesson for me. I got contacted several years later one time, specifically when I went to Kansas City to do a speech, and a woman said she wanted to come and hear me because she had come into the stairwell just after, or as we were passing her floor, which was, I think, the 54th floor. Then she said, I heard you just praising your dog and being very calm. And she said, I and other people just decided we're going to follow you down the stairs. And it was, it was a great lesson to understand that staying focused, no matter what the fear level was, really otherwise, staying focused and encouraging was a much more positive thing to do, and today, people still don't imagine how, in a sense, comet was going down the stairs, which doesn't mean that people weren't afraid. But several of us worked to really keep panic out of the stairwell as we were going down. My friend David did he panicked, but then he. He walked a floor below me and started shouting up to me whatever he saw on the stairwell, and that was really for his benefit. He said to have something to do other than thinking about what was going on, because he was getting pretty scared about it. But what David did by shouting up to me was he acted as a focal point for anyone on the stairs who could hear him, and they would hear him say things like, Hey, Mike, I'm at the 43rd floor. All's good here. Everyone who could hear him had someone on the stairs who was focused, sounded calm, and that they could listen to to know that everybody was okay, which was so cool, and   Alex Fullick ** 45:38 that that probably helped them realize, okay, we're in the right direction. We're going the right way. Someone is, you know, sending a positive comments. So if, if we've got, you know, three, if he's three floors below us, we know at least on the next three floors, everything is okay.   Michael Hingson ** 45:56 Well, even if they didn't know where he wasn't right, but even if he they didn't know where he was in relation to them, the fact is, they heard somebody on the stairs saying, I'm okay, yeah, whether he felt it, he did sound it all the way down the stairs. Yeah, and I know that he was panicking, because he did it originally, but he got over that. I snapped at him. I just said, Stop it, David, if Rosell and I can go down these stairs, so can you. And then he did. He focused, and I'm sure that he had to have helped 1000s of people going down the stairs, and helped with his words, keeping them calm.   Alex Fullick ** 46:32 Yeah, yeah. It makes a difference, you know. Like I said earlier, you doesn't mean you're still not afraid. Doesn't mean that, you know, you're not aware of the negative situation around you. It's and you can't change it, but you can change, like I said earlier, you can change how you respond to it. You can be in control that way, right? And that's eventually what, what he did, and you you were, you know, you were controlled going downstairs, you know, with with your guide dog, and with all these people following you, and because of the way you were, like, then they were following you, yeah, and they remained calm. It's like there's someone calling up from below who's safe. I can hear that. I'm listening to Michael. He'll tell his dog how well behaved they are. And he's going down calmly. Okay, you know, I can do this. And they start calming down,   Michael Hingson ** 47:28 yeah, what's the riskiest thing you've ever done? Oh, word. Must have taken a risk somewhere in the world, other than public speaking. Oh, yeah, public speaking.   Alex Fullick ** 47:40 I still get nervous the first minute. I'm still nervous when I go up, but you get used to it after a while. But that first minute, yeah, I'm nervous. Oh, that there's, I have a fear of heights and the so the the two, two things that still surprised me that I did is I climbed the Sydney bridge, Harbor Bridge, and, oh, there's another bridge. Where is it? Is it a Brisbane? They're both in Australia. Anyway. Climb them both and have a fear of heights. But I thought, no, I gotta, I gotta do this. You know, I can't be afraid of this my entire life. And I kept seeing all these people go up there in groups, you know, on tours. And so I said, Okay, I'm going to do this. And I was shaking nervous like crazy, and went, What if I fall off, you know, and there's so many different measures in place for to keep you safe. But that that was risky, you know, for me, it felt risky. I was exhilarated when I did it. Though, would you do it again? Oh, yeah, in a heartbeat. Now, there you go. I'm still afraid of heights, but I would do that again because I just felt fantastic. The other I guess going out and being self employed years ago was another risky thing. I had no idea, you know about incorporating myself, and, you know, submitting taxes, you know, business taxes, and, you know, government documents and all this and that, and invoicing and things like that. I had no idea about that. So that was kind of risky, because I had no idea how long I'd be doing it. Well, I started in what 2007, 2007, I think so, 18 years, yeah, so now it's like, I can't imagine myself not doing it, you know, so I'm but I'm always willing to try something new these days. You know, even starting the podcast seven and a half years ago was risky, right? I had no idea. Nobody was talking about my industry or resilience or business continuity or anything back then, I was the first one doing it, and I'm the longest one doing it. Um, I've outlived a lot of people who thought they could do it. I'm still going. So that started out risky, but now I. Imagine not doing it, yeah, you know. And you know, it's, you know, I guess it's, it's just fun to keep trying new things. You know, I keep growing and, you know, I've got other plans in the works. I can't give anything away, but, you know, I've got other plans to try. And they'll, they'll be risky as well. But it's like,   Michael Hingson ** 50:21 no, let's go for it. Have you ever done skydiving or anything like that? No, I haven't done that. I haven't either. I know some blind people who have, but I just, I've never done that. I wouldn't   Alex Fullick ** 50:32 mind it. It's that might be one of those lines where should I? I'm not sure about this one, you know, but it is something that I I think I wouldn't do it on my own. I think I would have to be one of those people who's connected with someone else, with someone   Michael Hingson ** 50:51 else, and that's usually the way blind people do it, needless to say, but, and that's fine, I just have never done it. I haven't ever had a need to do it, but I know I can sit here and say, I'm not afraid to do it. That is, I could do it if it came along, if there was a need to do it, but I don't. I don't have a great need to make that happen. But you know, I've had enough challenges in my life. As I tell people, I think I learned how to deal with surprises pretty early, because I've been to a lot of cities and like, like Boston used to have a rep of being a very accident prone city. Just the way people drive, I could start to cross the street and suddenly I hear a car coming around the corner, and I have to move one way or the other and draw a conclusion very quickly. Do I back up or do I go forward? Because the car is not doing what it's supposed to do, which is to stop, and I have to deal with that. So I think those kinds of experiences have helped me learn to deal with surprise a little bit too.   Alex Fullick ** 51:52 Yeah, well, with the skydiving, I don't think I'd go out of my way to do it, but exactly came along, I think I would, you know, just for the thrill of saying, I did it,   Michael Hingson ** 52:03 I did it, yeah, I went ice skating once, and I sprained my ankle as we were coming off the ice after being on the ice for three hours. And I haven't gone ice skating again since. I'm not really afraid to, but I don't need to do it. I've done it. I understand what it feels like. Yeah, yeah. So it's okay. Have you had any really significant aha moments in your life, things that just suddenly, something happened and went, Ah, that's that's what that is, or whatever.   Alex Fullick ** 52:30 Well, it does happen at work a lot, dealing with clients and people provide different perspectives, and you just, Oh, that's interesting, though, that happens all the time. Aha moments. Sometimes they're not always good. Aha moments, yeah, like the one I always remember that the most is when I wrote my first book, heads in the sand. I was so proud of it, and, you know, excited and sent off all these letters and marketing material to all the chambers of commerce across Canada, you know, thinking that, you know, everyone's going to want me to speak or present or buy my book. Well, ah, it doesn't happen that way. You know, I got no responses. But that didn't stop me from writing seven more books and working on nine. Now, there you go, but it was that was kind of a negative aha moment so, but I just learned, okay, that's not the way I should be doing that.   Michael Hingson ** 53:34 Put you in your place, but that's fair. I kind   Alex Fullick ** 53:37 of, I laugh at it now, a joke, but you know, aha, things you know, I You never know when they're going to happen.   Michael Hingson ** 53:47 No, that's why they're Aha, yeah.   Alex Fullick ** 53:51 And one of one, I guess another one would have been when I worked out first went out on my own. I had a manager who kept pushing me like, go, go work for yourself. You know this better than a lot of other people. Go, go do this. And I was too nervous. And then I got a phone call from a recruiting agency who was offering me a role to do where I wanted to take this company, but that I was working for full time for that weren't ready to go. They weren't ready yet. And it was kind of an aha moment of, do I stay where I am and maybe not be happy? Or have I just been given an opportunity to go forward? So when I looked at it that way, it did become an aha moment, like, Ah, here's my path forward. Yeah, so, you know. And that was way back in 2007 or or so somewhere around there, you know. So the aha moments can be good. They can be bad, and, you know, but as long as you learn from them, that's exactly   Michael Hingson ** 54:57 right. The that's the neat thing about. Aha moments. You don't expect them, but they're some of the best learning opportunities that you'll ever get.   Alex Fullick ** 55:06 Yeah, yeah, I agree completely, because you never know that. That's the nice thing, and I think that's also part of what I do when I'm working with so many different people of different levels is they all have different experiences. They all have different backgrounds. You they can all be CEOs, but they all come from a different direction and different backgrounds. So they're all going to be offering something new that's going to make you sit there and go, Oh, yeah. And thought of that before,   Michael Hingson ** 55:38 yeah. So that's, that's so cool, yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 55:42 but you have to, you know, be able to listen and pick up on those kind of things.   Michael Hingson ** 55:46 But you've been very successful. What are some of the secrets of success that that that you've discovered, or that you put to use?   Alex Fullick ** 55:55 For me, I'll put it bluntly, shut up and listen.   Michael Hingson ** 55:59 There you are. Yeah. Well, that is so true. That's true. Yeah.   Alex Fullick ** 56:03 I think I've learned more by just using my two ears rather than my one mouth, instead of telling people everything they you should be doing. And you know, this is what I think you should do. And like talking at people, it's so much better just talk with people, and then they'll, even if you're trying to, you know, really, really, really, get them to see your side, they will come onto your side easier and probably better if you let them realize it themselves. So you just listen, and you ask the odd probing question, and eventually comes around, goes, Oh, yeah, I get it. What you mean now by doing this and going, Yeah, that's where I was going. I guess I just wasn't saying it right, you know. And have being humble enough to, you know, even though I, I know I did say it right, maybe I just wasn't saying it right to that person, to that person, yeah, right way. So listening to them, and, you know, I think, is one of the big keys to success for me, it has, you know, and I've learned twice as much that way. And maybe that's why I enjoy answering people on the podcast, is because I ask a couple of questions and then just let people talk,   Michael Hingson ** 57:18 which is what makes it fun. Yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 57:21 yeah. It's sometimes it's fun to just sit there, not say anything, just let someone else do all the talking.   Michael Hingson ** 57:29 What you know your industry is, I would assume, evolved and changed over the years. What are some of the major changes, some of the ways that the industry has evolved. You've been in it a long time, and certainly, business continuity, disaster recovery, whatever you want to call it, has, in some sense, has become a little bit more of a visible thing, although I think people, as both said earlier, ignore it a lot. But how's the industry changed over time?   Alex Fullick ** 57:54 Well, when I started, it was before y 2k, yes, 96 and back then, when I first started, everything was it focused. If your mainframe went down, your computer broke. That's the direction everyone came from. And then it was you added business continuity on top of that. Okay, now, what do we do with our business operations. You know, other things we can do manually while they fix the computer or rebuild the mainframe. And then it went to, okay, well, let's bring in, you know, our help desk. You know, who people call I've got a problem with a computer, and here's our priority and severity. Okay, so we'll get, we'll respond to your query in 12 hours, because it's only one person, but if there's 10 people who have the issue, now it becomes six hours and bringing in those different aspects. So we went from it disaster recovery to business continuity to then bringing in other disciplines and linking to them, like emergency management, crisis management, business continuity, incident management, cyber, information security. Now we've got business continuity management, you know, bringing all these different teams together and now, or at least on some level, not really integrating very well with each other, but just having an awareness of each other, then we've moved to operational resilience, and again, that buzzword where all these teams do have to work together and understand what each other is delivering and the value of each of them. And so it just keeps growing in that direction where it started off with rebuild a mainframe to getting everybody working together to keep your operations going, to keep your partners happy, to keep your customers happy. You know, ensuring life safety is priority number one. When, when I started, life safety was, wasn't really thrown into the business continuity realm that much. It was always the focus on the business. So the these. The sky, the size and scope has gotten a lot bigger and more encompassing of other areas. And I wouldn't necessarily all call that business continuity, you know it, but it is. I see business continuity as a the hub and a wheel, rather than a spoke, to bring all the different teams together to help them understand, you know, hey, here's, here's how you've Incident Management, you know, help desk, service desk, here's how you help the Disaster Recovery Team. Here's how you can help the cyber team. Cyber, here's how you can actually help this team, you know, and being able to understand. And that's where the biggest change of things is going is now, more and more people are understanding how they really need to work together, rather than a silo, which you know, a lot of organizations still do, but it's those walls are starting to come down, because they can understand no One can do it alone. You have to work together with your internal departments, leadership, data analysts, who have to be able to figure out how to rebuild data, or your third parties. We need to talk with them. We have to have a relationship with them our supply chain, and understand where they're going, what they have in place, if we or they experience something. So it's definitely grown in size and scope   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:27 well, and we're seeing enough challenges that I think some people are catching on to the fact that they have to learn to work together, and they have to think in a broader base than they have in the past, and that's probably a good thing. Yeah, well, if, if you had the opportunity, what would you tell the younger Alex?   Alex Fullick ** 1:01:50 Run, run for the hills. Yeah, really, no, seriously, I kind of mentioned a couple of them already. Don't sweat the small things. You know, sometimes, yeah, and I think that comes down to our mindset thing as well. You know, understand your priorities and what's important. If it's not a priority or important, don't sweat it. Don't be afraid to take risks if you if you do your planning, whether it be jumping out of a plane or whatever, you know the first thing you want to do is what safety measures are in place to ensure that my jump will be successful. You know, those kind of things. Once you understand that, then you can make knowledgeable decisions. Don't be afraid to take those risks. And it's one of the big things. It's it's okay to fail, like I said about the book thing where you all those that marketing material I sent out, it's okay to fail. Learn from it. Move on. I can laugh at those kind of things now. You know, for years, I couldn't I was really like, oh my god, what I do wrong? It's like, No, I didn't do anything wrong. It just wasn't the right time. Didn't do it the right way. Okay, fine, move on. You know, you know, don't be afraid to fail. If, if you, if you fail and get up, well then is it really a failure? You learned, you got back up and you kept going. And that's the part of resilience too, right? Yeah, if you trip and fall, you get up and keep going. But if you trip and fall and stay down, well then maybe you are   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:30 failing. That's the failure. I mean, the reality is that it isn't failure if you learn from it and move on. It was something that set you back, but that's okay, yeah,   Alex Fullick ** 1:03:41 my my favorite band, Marillion, has a line in one of their songs rich. Failure isn't about falling down. Failure is staying down. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:50 I would agree with that. Completely agree   Alex Fullick ** 1:03:53 with it. He'll stand by it. W

Jeffrey Madoff is, as you will discover, quite a fascinating and engaging person. Jeff is quite the creative entrepreneur as this episode's title says. But he really is so much more.   He tells us that he came by his entrepreneurial spirit and mindset honestly. His parents were both entrepreneurs and passed their attitude onto him and his older sister. Even Jeffrey's children have their own businesses.   There is, however, so much more to Jeffrey Madoff. He has written a book and is working on another one. He also has created a play based on the life of Lloyd Price. Who is Lloyd Price? Listen and find out. Clue, the name of the play is “Personality”. Jeff's next book, “Casting Not Hiring”, with Dan Sullivan, is about the transformational power of theater and how you can build a company based on the principles of theater. It will be published by Hay House and available in November of this year.   My conversation with Jeff is a far ranging as you can imagine. We talk about everything from the meaning of Creativity to Imposture's Syndrome. I always tell my guests that Unstoppable Mindset is not a podcast to interview people, but instead I want to have real conversations. I really got my wish with Jeff Madoff. I hope you like listening to this episode as much as I liked being involved in it.       About the Guest:   Jeffrey Madoff's career straddles the creative and business side of the arts. He has been a successful entrepreneur in fashion design and film, and as an author, playwright, producer, and adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design. He created and taught a course for sixteen years called “Creative Careers Making A Living With Your Ideas”, which led to a bestselling book of the same name . Madoff has been a keynote speaker at Princeton, Wharton, NYU and Yale where he curated and moderated a series of panels entitled "Reframing The Arts As Entrepreneurship”. His play “Personality” was a critical and audience success in it's commercial runs at People's Light Theater in Pennsylvania and in Chicago and currently waiting for a theater on The West End in London.   Madoff's next book, “Casting Not Hiring”, with Dan Sullivan, is about the transformational power of theater and how you can build a company based on the principles of theater. It will be published by Hay House and available in November of this year. Ways to connect Jeffrey:   company website: www.madoffproductions.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-jeffrey-madoff-5baa8074/ www.acreativecareer.com Instagram: @acreativecareer   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well, hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're glad to have you on board with us, wherever you happen to be. Hope the day is going well for you. Our guest today is Jeffrey Madoff, who is an a very creative kind of person. He has done a number of things in the entrepreneurial world. He has dealt with a lot of things regarding the creative side of the arts. He's written plays. He taught a course for 16 years, and he'll tell us about that. He's been a speaker in a variety of places. And I'm not going to go into all of that, because I think it'll be more fun if Jeffrey does it. So welcome to unstoppable mindset. We are really glad you're here and looking forward to having an hour of fun. And you know, as I mentioned to you once before, the only rule on the podcast is we both have to have fun, or it's not worth doing, right? So here   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:13 we are. Well, thanks for having me on. Michael, well, we're really glad   Michael Hingson ** 02:17 you're here. Why don't we start as I love to do tell us kind of about the early Jeffrey growing up, and you know how you got where you are, a little bit or whatever.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:28 Well, I was born in Akron, Ohio, which at that time was the rubber capital of the world. Ah, so that might explain some of my bounce and resilience. There   Michael Hingson ** 02:40 you go. I was in Sandusky, Ohio last weekend, nice and cold, or last week,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 02:44 yeah, I remember you were, you were going to be heading there. And, you know, Ohio, Akron, which is in northern Ohio, was a great place to grow up and then leave, you know, so my my childhood. I have many, many friends from my childhood, some who still live there. So it's actually I always enjoy going back, which doesn't happen all that often anymore, you know, because certain chapters in one's life close, like you know, when my when my parents died, there wasn't as much reason to go back, and because the friends that I had there preferred to come to New York rather than me go to Akron. But, you know, Akron was a great place to live, and I'm very fortunate. I think what makes a great place a great place is the people you meet, the experiences you have. Mm, hmm, and I met a lot of really good people, and I was very close with my parents, who were entrepreneurs. My mom and dad both were so I come by that aspect of my life very honestly, because they modeled the behavior. And I have an older sister, and she's also an entrepreneur, so I think that's part of the genetic code of our family is doing that. And actually, both of my kids have their own business, and my wife was entrepreneurial. So some of those things just carry forward, because it's kind of what, you know, what did your parents do? My parents were independent retailers, and so they started by working in other stores, and then gradually, both of them, who were also very independent people, you know, started, started their own store, and then when they got married, they opened one together, and it was Women's and Children's retail clothing. And so I learned, I learned a lot from my folks, mainly from the. Behavior that I saw growing up. I don't think you can really lecture kids and teach them anything, yeah, but you can be a very powerful teacher through example, both bad and good. Fortunately, my parents were good examples. I think   Michael Hingson ** 05:14 that kids really are a whole lot more perceptive than than people think sometimes, and you're absolutely right, lecturing them and telling them things, especially when you go off and do something different than you tell them to do, never works. They're going to see right through it.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 05:31 That's right. That's right. And you know, my kids are very bright, and there was never anything we couldn't talk about. And I had that same thing with my parents, you know, particularly my dad. But I had the same thing with both my parents. There was just this kind of understanding that community, open communication is the best communication and dealing with things as they came up was the best way to deal with things. And so it was, it was, it was really good, because my kids are the same way. You know, there was always discussions and questioning. And to this day, and I have twins, I have a boy and girl that are 31 years old and very I'm very proud of them and the people that they have become, and are still becoming,   Michael Hingson ** 06:31 well and still becoming is really the operative part of that. I think we all should constantly be learning, and we should, should never decide we've learned all there is to learn, because that won't happen. There's always something new,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 06:44 and that's really what's fun. I think that you know for creativity and life at large, that constant curiosity and learning is fuel that keeps things moving forward, and can kindle the flame that lights up into inspiration, whether you're writing a book or a song or whatever it is, whatever expression one may have, I think that's where it originates. Is curiosity. You're trying to answer a question or solve a problem or something. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 07:20 and sometimes you're not, and it's just a matter of doing. And it doesn't always have to be some agenda somewhere, but it's good to just be able to continue to grow. And all too often, we get so locked into agendas that we don't look at the rest of the world around us.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 07:41 I Well, I would say the the agenda in and of itself, staying curious, I guess an overarching part of my agenda, but it's not to try to get something from somebody else, right, other than knowledge, right? And so I guess I do have an agenda in that. That's what I find interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 08:02 I can accept that that makes sense.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 08:06 Well, maybe one of the few things I say that does so thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 08:10 I wasn't even thinking of that as an agenda, but just a way of life. But I hear what you're saying. It makes sense. Oh, there are   Jeffrey Madoff ** 08:17 people that I've certainly met you may have, and your listeners may have, also that there always is some kind of, I wouldn't call it agenda, a transactional aspect to what they're doing. And that transactional aspect one could call an agenda, which isn't about mutual interest, it's more what I can get and or what I can sell you, or what I can convince you of, or whatever. And I to me, it's the the process is what's so interesting, the process of questioning, the process of learning, the process of expressing, all of those things I think are very powerful, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:03 yeah, I hear what you're saying. So for you, you were an Akron did you go to college there? Or what did you do after high school? So   Jeffrey Madoff ** 09:11 after high school, I went to the University of Wisconsin, ah, Madison, which is a fantastic place. That's right, badgers, that's right. And, and what really cinched the deal was when I went to visit the school. I mean, it was so different when I was a kid, because, you know, nowadays, the kids that my kids grew up with, you know, the parents would visit 18 schools, and they would, you know, they would, they would file for admission to 15 schools. And I did one in my parents. I said to them, can I take the car? I want to go check out the University. I was actually looking at Northwestern and the University of Wisconsin. And. And I was in Evanston, where Northwestern is located. I didn't see any kids around, and, you know, I had my parents car, and I finally saw a group of kids, and I said, where is everybody? I said, Well, it's exam week. Everybody's in studying. Oh, I rolled up the window, and without getting out of the car, continued on to Madison. And when I got to Madison, I was meeting somebody behind the Student Union. And my favorite band at that time, which was the Paul Butterfield blues band, was giving a free concert. So I went behind the Student Union, and it's a beautiful, idyllic place, lakes and sailboats and just really gorgeous. And my favorite band is giving a free concert. So decision made, I'm going University of Wisconsin, and it was a great place.   Michael Hingson ** 10:51 I remember when I was looking at colleges. We got several letters. Got I wanted to major in physics. I was always science oriented. Got a letter from Dartmouth saying you ought to consider applying, and got some other letters. We looked at some catalogs, and I don't even remember how the subject came up, but we discovered this University California campus, University California at Irvine, and it was a new campus, and that attracted me, because although physically, it was very large, there were only a few buildings on it. The total population of undergraduates was 2700 students, not that way today, but it was back when I went there, and that attracted me. So we reached out to the chair of the physics department, whose name we got out of the catalog, and asked Dr Ford if we could come and meet with him and see if he thought it would be a good fit. And it was over the summer between my junior and senior year, and we went down, and we chatted with him for about an hour, and he he talked a little physics to me and asked a few questions, and I answered them, and he said, you know, you would do great here. You should apply. And I did, and I was accepted, and that was it, and I've never regretted that. And I actually went all the way through and got my master's degree staying at UC Irvine, because it was a great campus. There were some professors who weren't overly teaching oriented, because they were so you research oriented, but mostly the teachers were pretty good, and we had a lot of fun, and there were a lot of good other activities, like I worked with the campus radio station and so on. So I hear what you're saying, and it's the things that attract you to a campus. Those count. Oh,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 12:35 yeah. I mean, because what can you really do on a visit? You know, it's like kicking the tires of a car, right? You know? Does it feel right? Is there something that I mean, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you do meet a faculty member or someone that you really connect with, and that causes you to really like the place, but you don't really know until you're kind of there, right? And Madison ended up being a wonderful choice. I loved it. I had a double major in philosophy and psychology. You know, my my reasoning being, what two things do I find really interesting that there is no path to making a good income from Oh, philosophy and psychology. That works   Michael Hingson ** 13:22 well you possibly can from psychology, but philosophy, not hardly   Jeffrey Madoff ** 13:26 No, no. But, you know, the thing that was so great about it, going back to the term we used earlier, curiosity in the fuel, what I loved about both, you know, philosophy and psychology used to be cross listed. They were this under the same heading. It was in 1932 when the Encyclopedia Britannica approached Sigmund Freud to write a separate entry for psychology, and that was the first time the two disciplines, philosophy and psychology, were split apart, and Freud wrote that entry, and forever since, it became its own discipline, but the questions that one asks, or the questions that are posed in Both philosophy and psychology, I still, to this day, find fascinating. And, you know, thinking about thinking and how you think about things, I always find very, very interesting.   Michael Hingson ** 14:33 Yeah, and the whole, the whole process, how do you get from here to there? How do you deal with anything that comes up, whether it's a challenge or just fulfilling the life choices that you make and so on. And philosophy and psychology, in a sense, I think, really are significantly different, but they're both very much thinking oriented.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 14:57 Oh, absolutely, it. And you know, philosophy means study of life, right? What psychology is, yeah, so I understand why they were bonded, and now, you know, understand why they also separated. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:15 I'll have to go look up what Freud said. I have never read that, but I will go find it. I'm curious. Yeah,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 15:23 it's it's so interesting. It's so interesting to me, because whether you believe in Freud or not, you if you are knowledgeable at all, the impact that he had on the world to this day is staggeringly significant. Yeah, because nobody was at posing those questions before, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:46 yeah. And there's, there's no doubt that that he has had a major contribution to a lot of things regarding life, and you're right, whether you buy into the view that he had of a lot of things isn't, isn't really the issue, but it still is that he had a lot of relevant and interesting things to say, and he helps people think that's right, that's right. Well, so what did you do? So you had a double major? Did you go on and do any advanced degree work? No,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 16:17 you know it was interesting because I had thought about it because I liked philosophy so much. And I approached this professor who was very noted, Ivan Saul, who was one of the world Hegelian scholars, and I approached him to be my advisor. And he said, Why do you want me to be your advisor? And I said, because you're one of the most published and respected authors on that subject. And if I'm going to have an advisor, I might as well go for the person that might help me the most and mean the most if I apply to graduate schools. So I did in that case certainly had an agenda. Yeah, and, and he said, you know, Jeff, I just got back from the world Hegelian conference in Munich, and I found it very depressing as and he just paused, and I said, why'd you find it depressing? And he said, Well, there's only one or two other people in the world that I can speak to about Hegel. And I said, Well, maybe you want to choose a different topic so you can make more friends. That depressing. That doesn't sound like it's a mix, you know, good fit for life, right? But so I didn't continue to graduate studies. I took graduate courses. I started graduate courses the second semester of my sophomore year. But I thought, I don't know. I don't want to, I don't want to gain this knowledge that the only thing I can do is pass it on to others. It's kind of like breathing stale air or leaving the windows shut. I wanted to be in a world where there was an idea exchange, which I thought would be a lot more interesting. Yeah. And so there was a brief period where I thought I would get a doctorate and do that, and I love teaching, but I never wanted to. That's not what I wanted to pursue for those reasons.   Michael Hingson ** 18:35 So what did you end up doing then, once you got   Jeffrey Madoff ** 18:37 out of college? Well, there was a must have done something I did. And there's a little boutique, and in Madison that I did the buying for. And it was this very hip little clothing store. And Madison, because it was a big campus, you know, in the major rock bands would tour, they would come into the store because we had unusual things that I would find in New York, you know, when I was doing the buying for it, and I get a phone call from a friend of mine, a kid that I grew up with, and he was a year older, he had graduated school a year before me, and he said, Can you think of a gig that would earn more than bank interest? You know, I've saved up this money. Can you think of anything? And I said, Well, I see what we design. I mean, I see what we sell, and I could always draw. So I felt like I could design. I said, I'll start a clothing company. And Michael, I had not a clue in terms of what I was committing myself to. I was very naive, but not stupid. You know, was ignorant, but not stupid. And different. The difference between being ignorant and being stupid is ignorant. You can. Learn stupids forever, yeah, and that started me on this learning lesson, an entrepreneurial learning lesson, and there was, you know, quite formative for me. And the company was doubling in size every four months, every three months, and it was getting pretty big pretty quick. And you know, I was flying by the seat of my pants. I didn't really know what I was doing, but what I discovered is I had, you know, saleable taste. And I mean, when I was working in this store, I got some of the sewers who did the alterations to make some of my drawings, and I cut apart a shirt that I liked the way it fit, so I could see what the pieces are, and kind of figure out how this all worked. So but when I would go to a store and I would see fabric on the bolt, meaning it hadn't been made into anything, I was so naive. I thought that was wholesale, you know, which it wasn't and but I learned quickly, because it was like you learn quickly, or you go off the edge of a cliff, you go out of business. So it taught me a lot of things. And you know the title of your podcast, the unstoppable, that's part of what you learn in business. If you're going to survive, you've gotta be resilient enough to get up, because you're going to get knocked down. You have to persevere, because there are people that are going to that you're competing with, and there are things that are things that are going to happen that are going to make you want to give up, but that perseverance, that resilience, I think probably creativity, is third. I think it's a close call between perseverance and resilience, because those are really important criteria for a personality profile to have if you're going to succeed in business as an entrepreneur.   Michael Hingson ** 22:05 You know, Einstein once said, or at least he's credited with saying, that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, right and and the reality is that good, resilient. People will look at things that didn't go right, and if they really look at them, they'll go, I didn't fail. Yeah, maybe I didn't go right. I may have made a mistake, or something wasn't quite right. What do I do to fix it so that the next time, we won't have the same problem? And I think that's so important. I wrote my book last year, live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. And it's all about learning to control fear, but it's also all about learning from dogs. I've had eight guide dogs, and my wife had a service dog, and it's all about learning from dogs and seeing why they live in an environment where we are and they feed off of us, if you will. But at the same time, what they don't do is fear like we do. They're open to trust, and we tend not to be because we worry about so many things, rather than just looking at the world and just dealing with our part of it. So it is, it is interesting to to hear you talk about resilience. I think you're absolutely right that resilience is extremely important. Perseverance is important, and they do go together, but you you have to analyze what it is that makes you resilient, or what it is that you need to do to keep being resilient.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 23:48 Well, you're right. And one of the questions that you alluded to the course that I taught for 16 years at Parsons School of Design, which was my course, was called creative careers, making a living with your ideas. And I would ask the students, how many of you are afraid of failing? And probably more than three quarters of the class, their hands went up, and I said to them, you know, if that fear stops you, you'll never do anything interesting, because creativity, true creativity, by necessity, takes you up to and beyond the boundaries. And so it's not going to be always embraced. And you know, failure, I think everyone has to define it for themselves. But I think failure, to me, is and you hear that, you know, failure is a great way to learn. I mean, it's a way. To learn, but it's never not painful, you know, and it, but it is a way to learn if you're paying attention and if you are open to that notion, which I am and was, because, you know, that kind of risk is a necessary part of creativity, going where you hadn't gone before, to try to find solutions that you hadn't done before, and seeing what works. And of course, there's going to be things that don't, but it's only failure if you stop doing what is important to you. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 25:39 well, I think you're absolutely right. And one of the things that I used to do and still do, but it started when I was working as program director of our radio station at UC Irvine, was I wanted people to hear what they sounded like on the radio, because I always listened to what I said, and I know it helped me, but getting the other radio personalities to listen to themselves was was well, like herding cats, it just wasn't doable. And what we finally did is we set up, I and the engineer of the radio station, set up a recorder in a locked cabinet, and whenever the board went on in the main studio, the microphone went on, it recorded. So we didn't need to worry about the music. All we wanted was what the people said, and then we would give people the cassettes. And one of the things that I started saying then, and I said it until, like about a year ago, was, you know, you're your own worst critic, if you can learn to grow from it, or if you can learn to see what's a problem and go on, then that's great. What I learned over the last year and thought about is I'm really not my own worst critic. I'm my own best teacher, because I'm the only one who can really teach me anything, and it's better to shape it in a positive way. So I am my own best teacher. And so I think you're right. If you really want to talk about the concept of failure, failure is when you won't get back up. Failure is when you won't do anything to learn and grow from whatever happens to you, even the good stuff. Could I have done it better? Those are all very important things to do.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 27:19 No, I agree. So why did you think it was important for them to hear their voice?   Michael Hingson ** 27:25 Because I wanted them to hear what everyone else heard. I wanted them to hear what they sounded like to their listeners. And the reality is, when we got them to do that, it was, I say it was incredible, but it wasn't a surprise to me how much better they got. And some of those people ended up going into radio broadcasting, going into other kinds of things, but they really learned to hear what everyone else heard. And they they learned how to talk better. They learn what they really needed to improve upon, or they learn what wasn't sounding very good to everyone else, and they changed their habits.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:13 Interesting, interesting. So, so part of that also helps them establish a certain on air identity. I would imagine finding their own voice, so to speak, right,   Michael Hingson ** 28:30 or finding a better voice than they than they had, and certainly a better voice than they thought they had. Well, they thought they had a good voice, and they realized maybe it could be better. And the ones who learned, and most of them really did learn from it, came out the better for it.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:49 So let me ask you a personal question. You have been sightless since birth? Is that correct?   Michael Hingson ** 28:56 Yeah, I've been blind since birth. And   Jeffrey Madoff ** 28:59 so on a certain level, I was trying to think about this the other night, and how can I phrase this? On a certain level, you don't know what you look like,   Michael Hingson ** 29:15 and from the standpoint of how you look at it, yeah, yeah.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 29:19 And so, so two, that's two questions. One is so many of us for good and bad, our identity has to do with visual first, how do you assess that new person?   Michael Hingson ** 29:39 I don't look at it from a visual standpoint as such. I look at it from all the other senses that I have and use, but I also listen to the person and see how we interact and react to. Each other, and from that, I can draw pretty good conclusions about what an individual is like, so that I can decide if that's a a lovely person, male or female, because I'm using lovely in the sense of it's the kind of person I want to know or not, and so I don't obviously look at it from a visual standpoint. And although I know Helen Keller did it some, I'm not into feeling faces. When I was in college, I tried to convince girls that they should let me teach them Braille, but they had no interest in me showing them Braille, so we didn't do that. I actually a friend of mine and I once went to a girls dorm, and we put up a sign. Wanted young female assistant to aid in scientific Braille research, but that didn't go anywhere either. So we didn't do it. But so Braille pickup. Oh, Braille pickup. On the other hand, I had my guide dog who was in in my current guide dog is just the same chick magnet right from the get go, but, but the the reality is that visual is, I think there's a lot to be said for beauty is only skin deep in a lot of ways. And I think that it's important that we go far beyond just what one person looks like. People ask me all the time, well, if you could see again, would you? Or if you could see, would you? And my response is, I don't need to. I think there's value in it. It is a sense. I think it would be a great adventure, but I'm not going to spend my life worrying about that. Blindness isn't what defines me, and what defines me is how I behave, how I am, how I learn and grow, and what I do to be a part of society and and hopefully help society. I think that's more important.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 31:53 You know, I agree with you, and it's it's also having been blind since birth. It's not like you had a you had an aspect that you lost for some reason, right?   Michael Hingson ** 32:04 But I know some people who became blind later in life, who attended centers where they could learn about what it was like to be blind and learn to be a blind person and and really adapted to that philosophy and continue to do what they did even before they lost their their eyesight, and were just as successful as they ever were, because it wasn't so much about having eyesight, although that is a challenge when you lose it, but it was more important to learn that you could find alternatives to do the same things that you did before. So   Jeffrey Madoff ** 32:41 if you ever have read Marvel Comics, and you know Daredevil has a heightened sense of a vision, or you know that certain things turn into a different advantage, is there that kind of in real life, compensatory heightened awareness of other senses.   Michael Hingson ** 33:08 And the answer is not directly. The answer is, if you choose to heighten those senses and learn to use them, then they can be a help. It's like SEAL Team Six, or Rangers, or whatever, they learn how to observe. And for them, observing goes far beyond just using their eyesight to be able to spot things, although they they certainly use that, but they have heightened all of their other senses because they've trained them and they've taught themselves how to use those senses. It's not an automatic process by any definition at all. It's not automatic. You have to learn to do it. There are some blind people who have, have learned to do that, and there are a number that have not. People have said, well, you know, could any blind person get out of the World Trade Center, and like you did, and my response is, it depends on the individual, not necessarily, because there's so many factors that go into it. If you are so afraid when something like the World Trade Center events happen that you become blinded by fear, then you're going to have a much harder time getting out than if you let fear be a guide and use it to heighten the senses that you have during the time that you need that to occur. And that's one of the things that live like a guide dog is all about, is teaching people to learn to control fear, so that in reality, they find they're much more effective, because when something happens, they don't expect they adopt and adapt to having a mindset that says, I can get through this, and fear is going to help.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 34:53 That's fascinating. So one I could go on in this direction, I'll ask you, one, one other. Question is, how would you describe your dreams?   Michael Hingson ** 35:08 Probably the same way you would, except for me, dreaming is primarily in audio and other interactions and not using eyesight. But at the same time, I understand what eyesight is about, because I've thought about it a lot, and I appreciate that the process is not something that I have, but I understand it, and I can talk about light and eyesight all day. I can I when I was when it was discovered that I was blind for the first several years, I did have some light perception. I never as such, really even could see shadows, but I had some light perception. But if I were to be asked, How would you describe what it's like to see light? I'm not sure how I would do that. It's like asking you tell me what it's like to see put it into words so that it makes me feel what you feel when you see. And it's not the excitement of seeing, but it's the sensation. How do you describe that sensation? Or how do you describe the sensation of hearing their their senses? But I've yet to really encounter someone who can put those into words that will draw you in. And I say that from the standpoint of having done literally hundreds or 1000s of speeches telling my story about being in the World Trade Center, and what I tell people today is we have a whole generation of people who have never experienced or had no memory of the World Trade Center, and we have another generation that saw it mainly from TV and pictures. So they their, their view of it was extremely small. And my job, when I speak is to literally bring them in the building and describe what is occurring to me in such a way that they're with me as we're going down the stairs. And I've learned how to do that, but describing to someone what it's like to see or to hear, I haven't found words that can truly do that yet. Oh,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 37:15 fascinating. Thank you.   Michael Hingson ** 37:20 Well, tell me about creativity. I mean, you do a lot of of things, obviously, with with creativity. So what is creativity?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 37:29 I think that creativity is the compelling need to express, and that can manifest in many, many, many different ways. You have that, you know, just it was fascinating here you talk about you, describing what happened in Twin Towers, you know. And so, I think, you know, you had a compelling need to process what was a historic and extraordinary event through that unique perception that you have, and taking the person, as you said, along with you on that journey, you know, down the stairs and out of the Building. I think it was what 78 stories or something, right? And so I think that creativity, in terms of a trait, is that it's a personality trait that has a compelling need to express in some way. And I think that there is no such thing as the lightning bolt that hits and all of a sudden you come up with the idea for the great novel, The great painting, the great dance, the great piece of music. We are taking in influences all the time and percolating those influences, and they may come out, in my case, hopefully they've come out in the play that I wrote, personality and because if it doesn't relate to anybody else, and you're only talking to yourself, that's you know, not, not. The goal, right? The play is to have an audience. The goal of your book is to have readers. And by the way, did your book come out in Braille?   Michael Hingson ** 39:31 Um, yeah, it, it is available in Braille. It's a bit. Actually, all three of my books are available in with their on demand. They can be produced in braille, and they're also available in audio formats as well. Great.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 39:43 That's great. So, yeah, I think that person, I think that creativity is it is a fascinating topic, because I think that when you're a kid, oftentimes you're told more often not. To do certain things than to do certain things. And I think that you know, when you're creative and you put your ideas out there at a very young age, you can learn shame. You know, people don't like what you do, or make fun of what you do, or they may like it, and it may be great, but if there's, you know, you're opened up to that risk of other people's judgment. And I think that people start retreating from that at a very young age. Could because of parents, could because of teachers, could because of their peer group, but they learn maybe in terms of what they think is emotional survival, although would never be articulated that way, at putting their stuff out there, they can be judged, and they don't like being judged, and that's a very uncomfortable place to be. So I think creativity is both an expression and a process.   Michael Hingson ** 40:59 Well, I'll and I think, I think you're right, and I think that it is, it is unfortunate all too often, as you said, how children are told don't do this or just do that, but don't do this, and no, very few people take the next logical step, which is to really help the child understand why they said that it isn't just don't. It should be. Why not? One of my favorite stories is about a student in school once and was taking a philosophy class. You'll probably have heard this, but he and his classmates went in for the final exam, and the instructor wrote one word on the board, which was why? And then everybody started to write. And they were writing furiously this. This student sat there for a couple of minutes, wrote something on a paper, took it up, handed it in, and left. And when the grades came out, he was the only one who got an A. And the reason is, is because what he put on his paper was, why not, you know, and, and that's very, very valid question to ask. But the reality is, if we really would do more to help people understand, we would be so much better off. But rather than just telling somebody what to do, it's important to understand why?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 42:22 Yeah, I remember when I was in I used to draw all the time, and my parents would bring home craft paper from the store that was used to wrap packets. And so they would bring me home big sheets I could do whatever I wanted on it, you know, and I would draw. And in school I would draw. And when art period happened once or twice a week, and the teacher would come in with her cart and I was drawing, that was when this was in, like, the middle 50s, and Davy Crockett was really a big deal, and I was drawing quite an intricate picture of the battle at the Alamo. And the teacher came over to me and said she wanted us to do crayon resist, which is, you know, they the watercolors won't go over the the crayon part because of the wax and the crayon. And so you would get a different thing that never looked good, no matter who did it, right? And so the teacher said to me, what are you doing? And I said, Well, I'm drawing. It's and she said, Why are you drawing? I said, Well, it's art class, isn't it? She said, No, I told you what to do. And I said, Yeah, but I wanted to do this. And she said, Well, you do what I tell you, where you sit there with your hands folded, and I sat there with my hands folded. You know I wasn't going to be cowed by her. And I've thought back on that story so often, because so often you get shut down. And when you get shut down in a strong way, and you're a kid, you don't want to tread on that land again. Yeah, you're afraid,   Michael Hingson ** 44:20 yeah. Yeah. And maybe there was a good reason that she wanted you to do what she wanted, but she should have taken the time to explain that right, right now, of course, my question is, since you did that drawing with the Alamo and so on, I'm presuming that Davy Crockett looked like Fess Parker, right? Just checking,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 44:42 yeah, yep, yeah. And my parents even got me a coon   Michael Hingson ** 44:47 skin hat. There you go, Daniel Boone and David Crockett and   Jeffrey Madoff ** 44:51 Davy Crockett and so there were two out there. Mine was actually a full coon skin cap with the tail. And other kids had it where the top of it was vinyl, and it had the Disney logo and a picture of Fess Parker. And I said, Now I don't want something, you know, and you are correct, you are correct. It was based on fess Barker. I think   Michael Hingson ** 45:17 I have, I had a coons kid cap, and I think I still do somewhere. I'm not quite sure where it is, but it was a real coonskin cap with a cake with a tail.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 45:26 And does your tail snap off? Um, no, yeah, mine. Mine did the worst thing about the coonskin cap, which I thought was pretty cool initially, when it rained, it was, you know, like you had some wet animal on your Well, yes, yeah, as you did, she did, yeah, animal on your head, right? Wasn't the most aromatic of the hub. No,   Michael Hingson ** 45:54 no, it's but Huh, you got to live with it. That's right. So what is the key to having great creative collaborations? I love collaborating when I wrote my original book, Thunder dog, and then running with Roselle, and then finally, live like a guide dog. I love the idea of collaborating, and I think it made all three of the books better than if it had just been me, or if I had just let someone else do it, because we're bringing two personalities into it and making the process meld our ideas together to create a stronger process.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 46:34 I completely agree with you, and collaboration, for instance, in my play personality, the director Sheldon apps is a fantastic collaborator, and as a result, has helped me to be a better writer, because he would issue other challenges, like, you know, what if we looked at it this way instead of that way? What if you gave that power, that that character, the power in that scene, rather than the Lloyd character? And I loved those kinds of challenges. And the key to a good collaboration is pretty simple, but it doesn't happen often enough. Number one is listening. You aren't going to have a good collaboration if you don't listen. If you just want to interrupt and shut the other person down and get your opinion out there and not listen, that's not going to be good. That's not going to bode well. And it's being open. So people need to know that they're heard. You can do that a number of ways. You can sort of repeat part of what they said, just so I want to understand. So you were saying that the Alamo situation, did you have Davy Crockett up there swinging the rifle, you know? So the collaboration, listening, respect for opinions that aren't yours. And you know, don't try to just defeat everything out of hand, because it's not your idea. And trust developing a trust with your collaborators, so that you have a clearly defined mission from the get go, to make whatever it is better, not just the expression of one person's will over another. And I think if you share that mission, share that goal, that the other person has earned your trust and vice versa, that you listen and acknowledge, then I think you can have great collaboration. And I've had a number of great collaborators. I think I'm a good collaborator because I sort of instinctively knew those things, and then working with Sheldon over these last few years made it even more so. And so that's what I think makes a really great collaboration.   Michael Hingson ** 49:03 So tell me about the play personality. What's it about? Or what can you tell us about it without giving the whole thing away?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 49:10 So have you ever heard of Lloyd Price?   Michael Hingson ** 49:14 The name is familiar. So that's   Jeffrey Madoff ** 49:16 the answer that I usually get is, I'm not really sure. Yeah, it's kind of familiar. And I said, Well, you don't, probably don't know his name, but I'll bet you know his music. And I then apologize in advance for my singing, you know, cause you've got walk, personality, talk, personality, smile, oh yeah, yeah. I love that song, you know. Yeah. Do you know that song once I did that, yes, yeah. So Lloyd was black. He grew up in Kenner, Louisiana. It was he was in a place where blacks were expected to know their place. And. And if it was raining and a white man passed, you'd have to step into a mud puddle to let them pass, rather than just working by each other. And he was it was a tough situation. This is back in the late 1930s and what Lloyd knew is that he wanted to get out of Kenner, and music could be his ticket. And the first thing that the Lloyd character says in the play is there's a big dance opening number, and first thing that his character says is, my mama wasn't a whore. My dad didn't leave us. I didn't learn how to sing in church, and I never did drugs. I want to get that out of the way up front. And I wanted to just blow up all the tropes, because that's who Lloyd was, yeah, and he didn't drink, he didn't learn how to sing in church. And, you know, there's sort of this baked in narrative, you know, then then drug abuse, and you then have redeemed yourself. Well, he wasn't like that. He was entrepreneurial. He was the first. He was the it was really interesting at the time of his first record, 1952 when he recorded Lottie, Miss Claudia, which has been covered by Elvis and the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen and on and on. There's like 370 covers of it. If you wanted to buy a record by a black artist, you had to go to a black owned record store. His records couldn't get on a jukebox if it was owned by a white person. But what happened was that was the first song by a teenager that sold over a million copies. And nobody was prejudiced against green, which is money. And so Lloyd's career took off, and it The story tells about the the trajectory of his career, the obstacles he had to overcome, the triumphs that he experienced, and he was an amazing guy. I had been hired to direct, produce and direct a short documentary about Lloyd, which I did, and part of the research was interviewing him, and we became very good friends. And when I didn't know anything about him, but I knew I liked his music, and when I learned more about him, I said, Lloyd, you've got an amazing story. Your story needs to be told. And I wrote the first few scenes. He loved what I wrote. And he said, Jeff, I want you to do this. And I said, thank you. I want to do it, but there's one other thing you need to know. And he said, What's that? And I said, You're the vessel. You're the messenger, but your story is bigger than you are. And he said, Jeff, I've been waiting for years for somebody to say that to me, rather than just blowing more smoke up my ass. Yeah. And that started our our collaboration together and the story. And it was a great relationship. Lloyd died in May of 21 and we had become very close, and the fact that he trusted me to tell his story is of huge significance to me. And the fact that we have gotten such great response, we've had two commercial runs. We're moving the show to London, is is is really exciting. And the fact that Lloyd, as a result of his talent and creativity, shattered that wall that was called Race music in race records, once everybody understood on the other side that they could profit from it. So there's a lot of story in there that's got a lot of meat, and his great music   Michael Hingson ** 54:04 that's so cool and and so is it? Is it performing now anywhere, or is it? No, we're   Jeffrey Madoff ** 54:12 in between. We're looking actually, I have a meeting this this week. Today is February 11. I have a meeting on I think it's Friday 14th, with my management in London, because we're trying to get a theater there. We did there in October, and got great response, and now we're looking to find a theater there.   Michael Hingson ** 54:37 So what are the chance we're going to see it on Broadway?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 54:41 I hope a very good chance Broadway is a very at this point in Broadway's history. It's it's almost prohibitively expensive to produce on Broadway, the West End has the same cache and. Yeah, because, you know, you think of there's that obscure British writer who wrote plays called William Shakespeare. You may have heard of   Michael Hingson ** 55:07 him, yeah, heard of the guy somewhere, like, like, I've heard of Lloyd Price, yeah, that's   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:15 it. And so I think that Broadway is certainly on the radar. The first step for us, the first the big step before Broadway is the West End in London. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 55:30 that's a great place to go. It is.   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:32 I love it, and I speak the language, so it's good. Well, there you   Michael Hingson ** 55:35 are. That helps. Yes, well, you're a very creative kind of individual by any standard. Do you ever get involved with or have you ever faced the whole concept of imposter syndrome?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 55:48 Interesting, you mentioned that the answer is no, and I'll tell you why it's no. And you know, I do a fair amount of speaking engagements and that sort of thing, and that comes up particularly with women, by the way, imposter syndrome, and my point of view on it is, you know, we're not imposters. If you're not trying to con somebody and lying about what you do, you're a work in progress, and you're moving towards whatever it is that your goals are. So when my play became a produced commercial piece of theater and I was notarized as a playwright, why was that same person the day before that performance happened? And so I think that rather than looking at it as imposter, I look at it as a part of the process, and a part of the process is gaining that credibility, and you have to give yourself permission to keep moving forward. And I think it's very powerful that if you declare yourself and define yourself rather than letting people define you. So I think that that imposter syndrome comes from that fear, and to me, instead of fear, just realize you're involved in the process and so you are, whatever that process is. And again, it's different if somebody's trying to con you and lie to you, but in terms of the creativity, and whether you call yourself a painter or a musician or a playwright or whatever, if you're working towards doing that, that's what you do. And nobody starts off full blown as a hit, so to speak. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 57:44 well, I think you're absolutely right, and I think that it's all about not trying to con someone. And when you are doing what you do, and other people are involved, they also deserve credit, and people like you probably have no problem with making sure that others who deserve credit get the credit. Oh, absolutely, yeah, I'm the same way. I am absolutely of the opinion that it goes back to collaboration. When we're collaborating, I'm I'm very happy to talk about the fact that although I started the whole concept of live like a guide dog, carry Wyatt Kent and I worked on it together, and the two of us work on it together. It's both our books. So each of us can call it our book, but it is a collaborative effort, and I think that's so important to be able to do,   Jeffrey Madoff ** 58:30 oh, absolutely, absolutely, you know, the stuff that I was telling you about Sheldon, the director, you know, and that he has helped me to become a better writer, you know, and and when, as as obviously, you have experienced too, when you have a fruitful collaboration, it's fabulous, because you're both working together to create the best possible result, as opposed to self aggrandizement, right?   Michael Hingson ** 59:03 Yeah, it is. It is for the things that I do. It's not about me and I and I say it all the time when I'm talking to people who I'd like to have hire me to be a speaker. It's not about me, it's about their event. And I believe I can add value, and here's why I think I can add value, but it's not about me, it's about you and your event, right? And it's so important if, if you were to give some advice to somebody starting out, or who wants to be creative, or more creative and so on, what kind of advice would you give them?   Jeffrey Madoff ** 59:38 I would say it's more life advice, which is, don't be afraid of creative risk, because the only thing that you have that nobody else has is who you are. So how you express who you are in the most unique way of who you are? So that is going to be what defines your work. And so I think that it's really important to also realize that things are hard and always take more time than you think they should, and that's just part of the process. So it's not easy. There's all these things out there in social media now that are bull that how people talk about the growth of their business and all of this stuff, there's no recipe for success. There are best practices, but there's no recipes for it. So however you achieve that, and however you achieve making your work better and gaining the attention of others, just understand it's a lot of hard work. It's going to take longer than you thought, and it's can be incredibly satisfying when you hit certain milestones, and don't forget to celebrate those milestones, because that's what's going to give you the strength to keep going forward.   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:07 Absolutely, it is really about celebrating the milestones and celebrating every success you have along the way, because the successes will build to a bigger success. That's right, which is so cool. Well, this has been a lot of fun. We've been doing this for an hour. Can you believe it? That's been great. It has been and I really appreciate you being here, and I I want to thank all of you who are listening, but please tell your friends to get into this episode as well. And we really value your comments, so please feel free to write me. I would love to know what you thought about today. I'm easy to reach. It's Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i b, e.com, or you can always go to our podcast page, which is Michael hingson, M, I C H, A, E, L, H i N, G, s o n.com/podcast, where you can listen to or access all the of our podcasts, but they're also available, as most likely you've discovered, wherever you can find podcasts, so you can get them on Apple and all those places and wherever you're listening. We do hope you'll give us a five star review. We really value your reviews, and Jeff has really given us a lot of great insights today, and I hope that you all value that as well. So we really would appreciate a five star rating wherever you're listening to us, and that you'll come back and hear some more episodes with us. If you know of anyone who ought to be a guest, Jeff, you as well. Love You to refer people to me. I'm always looking for more people to have on because I do believe that everyone in the world is unstoppable if you learn how to accept that and move forward. And that gets back to our whole discussion earlier about failure or whatever, you can be unstoppable. That doesn't mean you're not going to have challenges along the way, but that's okay. So we hope that if you do know people who ought to be on the podcast, or if you want to be on the podcast and you've been listening, step up won't hurt you. But again, Jeff, I want to thank you for being here. This has been a lot of fun, and we really appreciate your time. Thank   Jeffrey Madoff ** 1:03:16 you, Michael, for having you on. It was fun. You   **Michael Hingson ** 1:03:23 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Aimee Gilbreath is the President of PetSmart Charities®, the leading funder of animal welfare in the U.S. and Canada with a $50M annual grantmaking portfolio and 4x Shorty Award winner last month including for Large Non-Profit of the Year. Aimee drives the nonprofit's strategy with focus on increasing access to affordable veterinary care, supporting pets and their families and animal welfare organizations during natural disasters, addressing pet hunger and connecting people and pets through adoption. Under her leadership, the organization has grown thriving partnerships with national social service nonprofits including American Red Cross, Feeding America and Meals on Wheels America to recognize and integrate the needs of pets as important family members. Prior to her current role, Aimee served as executive director of the Found Animals Foundation, Inc., a non-profit dedicated to saving pets and enriching lives, and as a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group, developing and implementing strategic and operational improvements for Fortune 500 clients. Aimee is a seasoned leader in both non-profit and private-sector organizations with extensive experience in a range of industries spanning biotech, consumer goods and philanthropy.  In addition to her role at PetSmart Charities, Aimee serves as Vice Chair of the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI)Board of Trustees and Secretary/Treasurer of the Veterinary Innovation Council Board of Directors. An Arizona native and lifelong animal lover, Aimee holds an MBA from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Arizona.

CarneyShow 06.06.25 Taylor Blake, Skyman Bob Berman, American Red Cross, Allie Pecorin, Paul Kopsky by

Each year, more than 350,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the U.S. That's why there's a lot of focus on saving lives through CPR and AED training. We spoke with Jocelyn Hillard of the American Red Cross during National CPR + AED Awareness Week. Visit redcross.org/takeaclass for online and in-person courses   Image Credit: Getty Images

I have been anticipating having the opportunity to speak with Carl Amari on an episode of Unstoppable Mindset for several months. Carl and I share a passion for vintage radio programs sometimes called “old time radio shows”. Carl heard his first broadcast in 1975 when he heard Cary Grant staring in a program from the 20-year long series entitled “Suspense”. That program left the air in 1962, but like other shows, some radio stations kept it alive later.   Carl's interest in vintage programs goes far beyond the over 100,000 transcription master's he has amassed. He has also created some programs of his own. For example, in 2002 Carl asked for and received the rights to recreate the television show, “The Twilight Zone” for a radio audience. He used many famous actors while recreating the series. He talks about what he did and how he brought “The Twilight Zone” to life on the radio.   He also has dramatized five versions of the bible. His most well-known work is “The Word Of Promise Bible”. When I first purchased that bible from Audible, I had no idea that Carl was its creator.   Carl Amari is quite a creative guy making movies, collecting and producing radio programs and he even hosts podcasts.   I hope you have as much fun listening to this episode as I did in creating it with Carl. We definitely will have him back as he has many more stories to tell.       About the Guest:   Carl Amari has been licensing classic radio shows from the owners and estates since 1990.  He has amassed a library of 100,000+ master recordings.  Amari broadcasts these golden-age of radio shows on his 5-hour radio series, Hollywood 360, heard on 100+ radio stations coast-to-coast each week.  Amari is also the Host/Producer of The WGN Radio Theatre heard each weekend on legendary Chicago radio station, WGN AM 720. Amari is the founder and curator of The Classic Radio Club.  Each month Amari selects the best-of-the-best from his classic radio library to send to members.   Amari is also a published author.  In 1996, he began writing a series of books about classic radio for The Smithsonian Institute.  More recently, he teamed with fellow classic radio expert, Martin Grams, to co-write the best-selling coffee-table cook “The Top 100 Classic Radio Shows” (available at Amazon).  Each bi-monthly, Amari writes a classic radio-themed column titled “Good Old Days on the Radio” for the nostalgia publication Good Old Days Magazine.   In 2002, Amari licensed the intellectual property, The Twilight Zone, from CBS and The Rod Serling estate to create and produce The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas, which are fully dramatized audio adaptations based on Rod Serling's Emmy-Award winning TV series.  Hosted by prolific actor Stacy Keach, each hour-long radio drama features a Hollywood celebrity in the title role.  The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas has won numerous awards of excellence including The Audie Award, AFTRA's American Scene Award and the XM Nation Award for Best Radio Drama on XM.  The Twilight Zone Radio Dramas are broadcast coast-to-coast each week on nearly 100 radio stations.    In 2007, Amari parlayed his experience and passion for radio theatre and love for the Bible into the creation of the award-winning Word of Promise celebrity-voiced, dramatized audio Bible published by Christian giant Thomas Nelson, Inc.  The New Testament won 2008's highest Evangelical award, The Christian Book of the Year.  The Word of Promise stars Jim Caviezel (“The Passion of the Christ”) reprising his film role as Jesus, with Michael York, Terence Stamp, Lou Gossett, Jr., Marisa Tomei, Lou Diamond Phillips, Ernie Hudson, Kimberly-Williams Paisley and many other celebrities voicing roles of the New Testament.  In 2008, Amari produced The Word of Promise Old Testament featuring more than 400 actors including: Jon Voight, Gary Sinise, Richard Dreyfuss, Max von Sydow, Malcolm McDowell, Joan Allen, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Astin, Marcia Gay Harden and Jesse McCartney. The Old Testament was combined with the New Testament and released as The Word of Promise Complete audio Bible in 2009 and has won numerous awards, including three Audie awards.  The Word of Promise has become the #1 selling audio Bible of all time.  In 2009, Amari produced The Truth & Life Dramatized Audio Bible: New Testament, a Catholic Bible featuring Neal McDonough, John Rhys-Davies, Malcolm McDowell, Kristen Bell, Blair Underwood, Julia Ormond, Brian Cox, Sean Astin and other celebrities.  It was released by Zondervan Corporation, the largest religious publisher in the world.  Amari secured an Imprimatur from The Vatican and a foreword by Pope Benedict XVI for The Truth & Life Dramatized Audio Bible: New Testament, which has become the #1 selling Catholic audio Bible in the world.  In 2016, Amari produced The Breathe Audio Bible for Christian Publisher Tyndale House.  Celebrities voicing roles include Ashley Judd, Josh Lucas, Kevin Sorbo, Hill Harper, John Rhys-Davies and Corbin Bleu.  Amari currently produces a weekly radio series based on this audio Bible called The Breathe Radio Theatre hosted by Kevin Sorbo, heard on Christian radio stations coast-to-coast.    In 2000, Amari produced the feature film Madison starring Jim Caviezel, Bruce Dern, Jake Lloyd, Mary McCormack and John Mellencamp.  In 2001, Madison was invited by Robert Redford to be the opening film at Redford's prestigious Sundance Film Festival.  Madison was later released worldwide by MGM.  Amari also spends his time creating television series for Warner Brothers and Gulfstream Pictures.  Amari's latest film projects include producing, Wireman, starring Scott Eastwood and Andy Garcia, a true-story set in 1978 Chicago and Crossed, a Zombie Post-Apocalyptic story by The Boys creator Garth Ennis.  Both films will be released in 2025.   Amari's company was twice named to the INC. 500 list of fastest growing privately-held companies.  He was selected as one of Chicago's Very Own by Tribune Broadcasting and his business accomplishments have been highlighted in The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Sun-Times, The Chicago Tribune, Variety, INC. 500, The Associated Press, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The New York Post. Ways to connect Carl:   https://www.hollywood360radio.com/   https://classicradioclub.com/   https://ultimateclassicradio.com/   You can also provide my email address: Carl@ClassicRadioClub.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hello to you all, wherever you may be, welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. Oh, it's always good to have an unstoppable mindset. I am really very joy today. I'm really happy because I get to have an hour to chat with someone who I've admired for a while, although I haven't told him that but he, I first heard him on a show. Well, he did a show called Yeah, on a program called yesterday USA, which is a program that plays old radio shows on now two different networks. They have a red network and a blue network, so they have emulated NBC, and they're on 24 hours a day, doing a lot of old radio stuff. And I've been collecting radio shows for a long time, although our guest, Carl has has done, in a broad sense, a lot more than I have. But anyway, he collects shows. He does a lot with master copies of radio shows, and I don't, don't have that many masters, but he's also done some other things. For example, in 2002 he acquired the rights from CBS and the Rod Serling estate to create Twilight Zone radio, and he is created versions for radio of all of the Twilight Zone broadcasts. The other thing that he did that I didn't realize until I got his bio, is that he created something else that I purchased from Audible, probably in 2008 or 2009 the Word of Promise Bible, where he got a number of entertainers and and special people and Celebrities like Michael York and others to create the Bible, and it's only 98 hours long. So you know, it takes a little while to read, but still, it's worth doing. So I would like to introduce you all to Carl Amari and Carl, welcome to unstoppable mindset. Michael,   Carl Amari ** 03:14 thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor. Thanks so much.   Michael Hingson ** 03:19 Well, the honor is, is mine as well. I really am glad that that you're here and we do get to talk about radio and all sorts of whatever comes along. Well, I want to start this way. Tell me about kind of the early Carl, growing up and all that well for an opening, yeah. Gosh,   Carl Amari ** 03:35 that was a long time ago, but when I was 12 years old in 1975 I heard my first classic radio show. It was an episode of suspense, and it starred Cary Grant in a show called on a country road. Yeah, and I was at a sleepover at my friend's house, and we were kind of rowdy, as as 12 year olds will be. And his father had this show, I think it was on an eight track tape or a cassette tape, and he played it, and it was the first time I ever experienced theater of the mind. And I, you know, grew up watching Batman and the Twilight Zone and Wild Wild West, and I had never had anything, you know, that that really, really just blew me away, like hearing a radio drama where you hear the the actors performing, and you see the, you know, they have the sound effects and the music, and it creates this movie in your mind. And I was at a 12 as 12 years old. I was just completely just, you know, flabbergasted, and I wanted to learn all I could about classic radio and and so I spent, really my entire career, the last 40 plus years, licensing and putting out these radio shows, licensing from. The estates and putting them out on radio and on CD and digital download and so forth.   Michael Hingson ** 05:06 Cool. Yeah, I remember on a country road the first show. Well, I remember a few times my parents were listening to radio in the early 50s, and I think one of the first ones I heard was Dick Tracy, but I don't even remember that, but I think it was 1957 in October or so. I was listening to the radio, and all of a sudden I heard, and one of my maybe it was 58 but anyway, one of my favorite songs at the time was Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio, and this announcement came up that on suspense this Sunday would be the story of Tom Dooley. And I went, Oh, that's Oh, right, right. Listen to that. And I did, and I was hooked for the very same reasons that you were radio really presents you the opportunity to picture things in in your own mind, in a sense, the way you want. And what they do in the radio production is get actors who can draw you in, but the whole idea is for you to picture it in your own mind. So I did it with Tom Dooley, and I got hooked. And I was listening to suspense and yours truly Johnny dollar ever since that day. And then also Gun Smoke and Have Gun Will Travel came along, and then that was fun.   Carl Amari ** 06:23 Yeah, those were those shows that you just mentioned. They were on still in the 50s. Because when you think of the golden age of radio, it was really the 30, late 30s all the way to the very early 50s, golden age of radio. But there were hangers on. There was Johnny dollar, and, like you said, suspense. And you know, some of these programs that were still on fiber, McGee and Molly, even, you know, Jack Benny, were still on during the 50s. And then, of course, most of the shows made the transition to the visual medium of television. But the eyes, I still say, you know, today, listening to these radio shows is more fun, and I think they're more impactful than the television versions. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 07:07 I think so by any standard. I think that's true. And gun Well, let's see. Suspense went into, I think 1962 Johnny dollar did, and suspense and Gunsmoke and Have Gun Will Travel. Started on television, actually, but then transitioned to radio. There were a few shows, a few of the plots that actually were on both, yes, but John Danner played Paladin on the radio, and that was fun. And then, of course, Gunsmoke as well. So they, they, they all went into the 60s, which was kind of kind of cool, yeah.   Carl Amari ** 07:43 And usually they had, you know, sometimes they had the same cast, and other times a completely different cast, like with Gunsmoke, you know, William Conrad was Marshall Matt Dillon on on radio. And, of course, people remember him as canon on television, also Nero Wolf on television. But William Conrad, who was probably in more radio shows than anyone I can think of. Yeah, was, was Marshall, Matt Dillon, and then on on television, of course, James Arness, so yeah, and but then, you know, the Jack Benny Program, there was the same cast, you know, the very same people that were on radio, moved to television, same with Red Skelton and many of the shows, but other times, completely different cast.   Michael Hingson ** 08:22 I was watching this morning when I woke up, me too. Let's see, was it me too? Yeah, was me TV? They're great and and they had Jack Benny on at 430 in the morning. I just happened to wake up and I turned it on. There's Benny season five, where he took the beavers to county fair. Of course, the Beavers are fun. And I've actually, I've actually had the opportunity to meet Beverly Washburn, which was, oh, sure,   Carl Amari ** 08:52 sure. Oh man, Jack Benny, probably the high water mark of comedy. You know, when you talk about, you know, a guy that was on, he started in vaudeville, you know, and then he had his own radio show, his own TV show was in movies, and probably the most successful. And when you think about Seinfeld, right, when you think about the series, the television series Seinfeld, there's so many correlations between Seinfeld and the Jack Benny Program, you know Seinfeld. It was, was a comedian, you know Jerry Seinfeld, playing himself. He had this cast of Looney characters all around him. Same thing with the Jack Benny show. It was Jack Benny with a cast of Looney characters. And so it's probably was an homage, you know, to to Jack Benny. And   Michael Hingson ** 09:39 I, I'm, think you're right. I think in a lot of ways, that probably absolutely was the case. And you know, there are so many radio shows that that, in one way or another, have have influenced TV. And I think people don't necessarily recognize that, but it's true, how much, yeah, radio really set the stage for so many things. Yeah, I think the later suspenses, in a sense, were a lot better than some of the earlier ones, because they really were more poignant. Some were more science fiction, but they really were more suspenseful than than some of the early ones, but they were all fun.   Carl Amari ** 10:13 Oh gosh, suspense that's now you're talking about, I think the best series of all time, you know, because it was about almost 1000 episodes. It lasted from 42 to, I believe, 62 or 63 and and it had, for a time, there was a lot of true stories on suspense when Elliot Lewis took over. But yeah, you're right. It had the best actors, the best writers, the best production values. So suspense to this day. You know, I think is, of all the shows was, was one of the best, if not the best.   Michael Hingson ** 10:45 Oh, I agree. I can't argue with that at all. And did so many things. And then for at least a summer, they had hour long suspenses, but mostly it was a half hour or Yes, later was 25 minutes plus a newscast, right,   Carl Amari ** 10:59 right, right? It didn't seem to work in the hour long format. They only did a handful of those, and they went back right back to the half hour once a week, you know. But, yeah, no suspense, one of my favorites for sure.   Michael Hingson ** 11:13 Oh, yeah. Well, and it's hard to argue with that. It's so much fun to do all of these. And you know, on other shows in radio, in a sense, tried to emulate it. I mean, escape did it for seven years, but it still wasn't suspense, right,   Carl Amari ** 11:27 right. Closest thing to suspense was escape, but it was never and I think because you know, as as you know Michael, but maybe some of your listeners don't realize this, these actors, these big actors, Humphrey Bogard and chair, you know, James Stewart and Cary Grant, they were, they were studio, they were under a studio contract. So they weren't like today, where they were freelance. So when, like, let's say, Jimmy Stewart was being paid, I'll just make up a number $5,000 a week to be under contract to make movies when he wasn't making a movie, they wanted to make money on this actor, so they would loan him out to radio. And these actors were on suspense, like on a routine basis, you had movie stars every week appearing on suspense, the biggest movie stars on the planet. So and you would think, well, how could they afford these movie stars? Well, because the studios wanted to make money when their actors weren't working, right?   Michael Hingson ** 12:23 And and did, and people really appreciate it. I mean, Jess Stewart, yeah, even some of the actors from radio, like fiber began, Molly, yeah, on a suspense. And they were, that was a great that was a great show. But, oh yeah,   Carl Amari ** 12:38 back, I think it was back, right? Yeah, yeah, which   Michael Hingson ** 12:41 was really cool. Well, you license a lot of shows from, from people tell me more about that. That must be interesting and fascinating to try to negotiate and actually work out. Well,   Carl Amari ** 12:52 early on, when I was in college, you know, as a communications major, and I learned very early on that these show, a lot of these shows are, copyrighted so and because I was actually sent a cease and desist letter on a college station just playing a show. And so that was, and it was from Mel blanks company, man of 1000 voices. And he his son, Noel, helped me learn, you know, taught me that, hey, you know, these shows are were created by, you know, the the estates, you know, the that were still around Jack Benny and, you know, CBS owns a ton of stuff and different, you know, entities that own these shows and and he helped, and he introduced me to a lot of people, including Jerry Lewis and Milton Burrell and and so I spent My early career in my 20s, flying back and forth to LA and New York and licensing these shows from like Irving Brecher, who created the life of Riley and the Jack Benny estate. And, you know, golden books at the time, owned the Lone Ranger and so licensing that and Warner Brothers, you know, DC for Batman and so, and Superman, I mean, which had Batman on it, but Superman, I licensed those. And, you know, MCA universal for dragnet and the six shooter and so on and on and on and and I spent, as I say, my early career licensing. I now have over 100,000 shows under license, and mostly from Master transcriptions, because I only like to collect from the master source, because we put them out through a club, the classic Radio Club, and I air them on my I have a national radio show called Hollywood 360 we air them every week, five shows every week on the network. There's over 100 stations, including Armed Forces Radio and and so I want the quality to be impeccable. I don't want dubs of dubs or, you know, cracks and pops. And I really want to give people what it sounded like back then when they aired   Michael Hingson ** 14:54 and well. And you you can sort of do that, but the sound is probably even better today. With the audio equipment that people have access to, yeah, the sound is even better than it was. But I hear what you're saying, and it's cool to listen to those, and they're not stereo. Oh, that would be interesting to to try to reprocess and make that happen, but the audio is incredible. Yeah,   Carl Amari ** 15:16 yeah, that's kind of what our, you know, our trademark is, Michael is, you know, if you're listening to Hollywood 360 which, as I say, is on a lot of stations across the country, when you listen to that show, and in every hour, we play a we play a show, you know you're going to get something that sounds just, is like we're talking right now. You know that's that's important to me. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 15:37 well, and I can appreciate that, and it makes perfect sense that it is because we should really preserve the the programs, and we should do what we can to make them sound as good as we can, and we should really get that high quality. And the high quality is there, yes, just not always what people find, and people are willing to, well, accept less than what they should, yeah,   Carl Amari ** 16:01 well, I, you know, I grew up collecting from where I wherever I could. But then, when I started licensing them, I would get the masters from the, you know, whoever owned them. And then I also have about a half a dozen collectors that only collect on 16 inch disc, which is kind of great. And so if I have, let's say, you know, suspense and and I'll, you know, let's say, you know, because we license that from CBS. But if CBS doesn't have a certain show, but a collector on disc has it, I'll get that from the collector and still pay the royalty the CBS because they own it. But I'll get that, that disc from a collector. And, you know, we, and it's a cost of doing business, but we'll get it transferred and and put it out to the public that way.   Michael Hingson ** 16:46 Typically, what are the discs made of? So   Carl Amari ** 16:49 they're, they're like, uh, they're like a shellac. I mean, they're, they're like, a glass. Some of them are actually glass,   Michael Hingson ** 16:55 yeah, you know, some of the Jack Benny shows were glass, yeah,   Carl Amari ** 16:59 and acetate and things like that. And so I there's one gentleman that's in in Redding, California, Doug Hopkinson, who is just an expert on this, and he does most of the transfers. We recently licensed 41 different series from Frederick zivs estate. And you know, we're talking the entire collection of Boston Blackie bold venture with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Philo Vance, with Jackson Beck, Mr. District Attorney, and I was a communist for the FBI. And Doug is actually doing they're all on they're all zivs Personal discs. Frederick Ziv, he had them. There's 10,000 more than 10,000 discs in a controlled warehouse in Cincinnati, and we are slowly but surely working our way through 10,000 shows. And Doug is doing all those transfers. So he's a busy guy. Does he go there to do it? No, we have him sent. So you do cardboard boxes. Yeah, yeah. To California. And then Doug has two, you know, it's special equipment that you have to use. I mean, it's very, very it's not just a turntable, and it's a special equipment. And then, you know, we get the raw file, you know, we get the, he uses the special needles based on that album, you know, or that disc he has, you know, a whole plethora of needles, and then he tests it, whichever gets the best sound out of there. So, yeah, he's really, he's tops at this. And so we're doing those Troy, we just transferred all the, I was a communist for the FBI with Dana Andrews, yeah, and all the Boston blackies, which is one of my favorites   Michael Hingson ** 18:40 and bold venture. And, yeah, I have those, good man, so I know that it's interesting. You mentioned the needles. So for people who don't know, in order to get a program on one disc, the transcriptions were literally 16 inches. I mean, we're all used to LPS or 12 inch disc, but the radio transcriptions were 16 inch discs, right?   Carl Amari ** 19:05 And that held 15 minutes. And now you needed two discs, yeah? So generally, you needed two discs to give you one show, unless it was one on one side and one on the other side. But a lot of times it was, it was, it was two discs for one show, yeah, and then, and then, on the opposite side, you'd have another show. One   Michael Hingson ** 19:24 of the things that I got the opportunity to do was to collect my dad knew somebody when he worked at Edwards Air Force Base that had a number of 16 inch transcriptions, and I had a turntable. Wasn't great, but it served the purpose for a college kid. And one of the things I discovered was that there were a few recordings that, rather than putting the needle on the outside and the record spins and plays in, you actually start from the inside and go out.   Carl Amari ** 19:56 Yes, I've seen that, yeah, and I'm told we're that way. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:00 I'm told that they did that because the the audio quality was actually better. Doing it that way, really? Yeah, I didn't know that. I didn't know, but that's what I was told, was that the audio quality was even better. Wow,   Carl Amari ** 20:11 yeah. I mean, it's a skill, you know, because with we really have one shot to get these 10, you know, these, these discs and and and we were getting them from, from literally, Frederick zivs Personal. They were, I told, like the first one off the duplication line. When he would, he would bicycle the discs all around the country. We're not using discs that were ever touched by radio stations. In fact, a lot of them, we have to drill out the holes in the middle because they've closed up a little bit. So these have never been played. They're unplayed. His master discs that are unplayed and and if you have the bold venture, you know what we were able to pull off those masters, it's like high fidelity. Mon Oro,   Michael Hingson ** 20:56 yeah. They're as good as it can get. And they do, they sound really great. Well, even the Boston blackies are good. Yeah,   Carl Amari ** 21:02 oh yeah, yeah. I'm excited about that, because that, that's one of my favorite shows Boston.   Michael Hingson ** 21:07 I like Boston Blackie and yeah, and I like, I was a communist for the FBI, and I haven't gotten those yet, but I'm waiting to get Dana Andrews that whole   Carl Amari ** 21:15 they just shipped. So there you should be getting them, Michael. So thank you for that. They'll   Michael Hingson ** 21:20 be they'll be coming, yes, which is pretty cool, but it is so fun to have the opportunity to listen to all these and I really urge people, the easy way is you can go to places like yesterday usa.net, online and listen to a lot of radio programs, but you can go to Carl's website, or when he can tell us how to do it, and you can actually purchase the opportunity to get copies of some of these shows, and they're absolutely fun and worth doing.   Carl Amari ** 21:54 Yeah, thank you, Michael. We are. We have, you know, our radio show has a website. You can learn about our radio show that's that's easy. It's Hollywood. And then 360 so Hollywood, 360 radio.com, that's like my and you can reach me, but there's ways to contact me through there. And then we, I think I mentioned we offer these through a club, which is pretty cool, because what I do every month is I'll comb the library of we have over 100,000 shows, and I'll take, I'll pick 10 shows every month and put them either on five CDs with a booklet, historical booklet, and it's in a nice case. And you get about every 30 days, CD members get a new 10 C 10 show five CD set in the mail, or you can get those same shows via digital download. So if you don't want the CDs, you just want a link sent to you there, they're done that way too. And that's classic radio club.com and all of the information is there at Classic radio club.com and as I say that that we put out only the best quality there, like, the best quality you could possibly get, which,   Michael Hingson ** 23:04 which is so cool, because I have heard some of those programs as you say that they're dubbed or people, for some reason, have the wrong speed. They're not great quality, right? So frustrating. Yeah, there's no need for any of that. And some people, of course, cut out the commercials, not being visionary enough to understand the value of leaving the commercials in, right? And again, they didn't do a very good job of cutting them out.   Carl Amari ** 23:31 No, we leave everything in. Even, you know, it's so interesting to hear cigarette commercials, or, you know, all you know, vitamin commercials, like, you know, you know, ironized yeast presents, lights out. You know, it's fun. It's fun to hear, you know, these commercials. And sometimes, like on the dragnets, when they're talking about Chesterfield, they're like, oh, doctor recommended, you know, and all this.   Michael Hingson ** 23:55 Well, even better than that, I was just thinking the Fatima cigarettes commercials on dragnet. Yeah, research shows, yeah, I wonder where they got that research,   Carl Amari ** 24:07 yeah. Oh my gosh. They were, they were, it was crazy how they would do that. I mean, they got away with it. They did. They did. They did. And, you know, we, even when we air radio shows, we don't cut the commercials unless it's cigarette commercials, because there's an FCC rule that you can't hear cigarette commercials. But like, you know, when we play Jack Benny and there's and there's, you know, Grape Nuts flakes commercials, we leave it in. We want people to hear the Fun, fun of those commercials and things well,   Michael Hingson ** 24:36 and sometimes, of course, like with great nuts flakes commercials, the commercial is part of the program. Yes, it's integrated. Break away. It's all integrated in which makes it so fun. I didn't know that there was an FCC rule that said you can't air any cigarette commercials even for educational purposes.   Carl Amari ** 24:55 Well, it might be for educational purposes. It may be non commercial, but I know on commercial stage. Stations, I can imagine that. Yeah, yeah. And Hollywood, 360 is commercial, you know, we have sponsors like, you know, we have Prevagen is one of our big sponsors, cats, pride, kitty litter, and, you know, they've been with me forever. And, you know, whatever, the Home Depot, Geico, you know, my pillow, these are some of our sponsors. And, and so we're on commercial stations across the country.   Michael Hingson ** 25:21 Yeah, so it makes sense that that you you do it that way, which, yeah, you know, is understandable. But, boy, some of those commercials are the Chesterfield commercials. Accu Ray on Gunsmoke. Yeah?   Carl Amari ** 25:37 A gimmick to get you to buy their cigarettes.   Michael Hingson ** 25:39 Yeah, I bet there was no accuray machine, but, oh, probably not, probably not. It is so funny. Well, you did the Twilight Zone radio programs. What got you started on doing that?   Carl Amari ** 25:53 Well, you know, growing up, I think I mentioned earlier, it was one of my favorite shows, yeah, always mine too, you know. And just watching that I was so blown away by twilight zone as a kid. So then when I got into the licensing of these classic radio shows, and I I was, I guess I was just always really envious of these producers that got to do these radio shows. And I always thought, man, I was. I was born in the wrong decades. You know, I was, I wish I was around back in the 40s and was able to produce suspense or escape or one of these shows. And I thought the show that would work the best, you know, that was on television, that that would work great in the theater of the mind realm, would be twilight zone, because growing up watching, you know, the makeup wasn't that great and the costumes weren't that great. You could see the zippers on the Martians sometimes. And I thought, you know, the writing was so amazing, right? And the stories were so vivid, and it worked for your theater of the mind that you didn't really need the visual with Twilight Zone, especially if you, you know, you have to write them in a way for radio. There's a special technique for writing for radio, obviously. So I, I reached out to to CBS and the rod Sterling estate, and they thought it was cool. And they said, you know, what do one, we'll let, we'll let, we'll take a listen to one, you know. And they sent me the television script for monsters are due on Maple Street. That was the one they sent me. And at the time, I was trying to get Robert Wagner to be the host. I always liked to take the thief and and, and he thought it was interesting, but he passed on it ultimately. And, and then at the same time, I was working with Stacy Keach, senior, Stacy keach's Dad, who had created Tales from the tales of the Texas range Rangers, right? And, and, and so I was at, actually at Jane Seymour's house, because Jane Seymour was married at that time to Stacy's brother, James Keach, and I got invited to a party there. And I got to meet Stacy Keach and and I heard his voice up close, you know, standing next to him, and I was like, this is the guy I gotta get to be the host. And so I started telling him about what I was doing, and he's like, I'd love to be the host of that. And so that was the beginning of a lifelong friendship with Stacy, and he was just incredible on it. And we did one, we did a pilot, monsters are doing Maple Street. And they loved it. And said, go ahead. And that was it. And it was like, in 2002   Michael Hingson ** 28:29 the first one I heard was, if I remember the title, right, a different kind of stopwatch, okay, the one with Blue Diamond Phillips, Blue Diamond Phillips, that was the first one. I think you. You offered that as a, as a sample. Yeah, yes, when I got that was pretty cool. But you   Carl Amari ** 28:43 wouldn't believe Michael, how many whenever I would reach out to an actor like Jason Alexander, I mean, Jay, I remember Jason, when I reached out to him and I said, Hey, I'd like to you to do these. And he was like, Oh, I'd love it. And then he did it, and then he'd call me and say, You got any more of those? Love doing it, you know, because they never get to do this. They, you know, these actors don't get to do radio. And so people like, you know, Lou Diamond Phillips and Luke Perry God rest his soul, and and Michael York and Malcolm McDowell and, you know, Don Johnson and Lou and Luke Luke Gossett Jr, so many of these people that I reached out to, Jane Seymour, another one, they were just they were they couldn't say yes fast enough. They just loved doing radio drama. It was so easy to book these stars. I've   Michael Hingson ** 29:38 been talking with Walden Hughes, who, you know, is the guy who now runs yesterday USA, we've been talking about and we've been doing recreations of a number of shows. The problem is that the people who are involved, oftentimes have never really gone back and listened to the shows they're recreating and their voice. And what they do are so different than the kinds of things that you actually would hear on the shows, they just don't do it very well. And we've actually thought about the idea of trying to get a grant to try to teach people how to be radio actors and really learn to do the kinds of things that would make the shows a lot more meaningful. We'll see what happens. We're really working on it. We're going to be doing some recreations in Washington for enthusiasm. Puget Sound, yes, and one of my favorite radio shows has always been Richard diamond private detective. I thought such a wise guy, and so I am actually going to be Richard diamond in Nice,   Carl Amari ** 30:46 oh my gosh, yeah, wow. Well, you know, there's a real, there's a real special magic to doing these radio shows, as I know, you know, you understand, you know, there's, there's, and that was that really boils down to having great actors and also great writing like so CBS would send us. He would, they would send me the our the Rod Serling scripts, you know, we really, we'd get them, but they, of course, would not work on radio because it was written for a visual medium. So I had, I had a two time sci fi fantasy winning writer Dennis echeson, who is no longer with us, unfortunately, but he, he, he was an expert on Twilight Zone and also how to write for radio. And it's all about that it's taking that he would take the TV scripts and and redo them so that they would work without the visual, and that you start with that. And then you can, you know, then you can create, when you have a grin, you have a great group of actors. And I hired only the best Chicago supporting cast here, you know, the the Goodman theater and, and, you know actors and, and, you know people like that. And then, of course, the star, we'd fly the star in, yeah, and they, they knock out two shows. I bring in lunch in the middle of the day, we'd knock out two shows. And it was a wonderful experience doing like, I don't know, I think I did, oh gosh, close to 200 episodes.   Michael Hingson ** 32:13 Now, were some of the episodes, shows that never were on the the TV series, or they, yeah, when   Carl Amari ** 32:19 we got through the original 156 shows, because that's how many were in the original Rod Serling run. So we did them all. We actually one of them I never released because I wasn't happy with it. I think it was called come wander with me. So that one I never released, we did it. I wasn't happy with it, because it was a musical one, you know, I think it had Bob Crosby on it, or somebody like that, and on the TV show, and so it was a lot of singing, and I just wasn't happy with it. But after that, there was no no more. I could have gone into the later series, but I just, I said to them, can I hire writers to write new ones, you know? And they said, Sure, but we have to approve it and all that. And so a lot of them got approved, and a lot of them didn't. And then we, we, I think we produced maybe close to 4030, or 40 originals,   Michael Hingson ** 33:13 right? Yeah, did you ever meet Rod Serling? No, never   Carl Amari ** 33:18 did. He was gone before I got into this. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 33:22 he came to UC Irvine to lecture once when I was still on campus. I was actually Program Director of the radio station, and so several of us from kuci got to interview him. And one of our, the people who was involved with that, actually had one of the ape costumes from Planet of the Apes. So he came dressed up as one of the Apes. Was Wow, but great. But the thing about rod Sterling his voice is it's hot. How do I describe this? No matter what his voice sounded like on television, it wasn't nearly as deep as his natural voice, and microphones couldn't get the same level with his real voice, and so we interviewed him. His voice was very deep, and then we did then we went out and listened to the lecture at the gym, and he sounded like Rod Serling, but he didn't sound like Rod Serling when we were talking with him, yeah, and when we could hear him with our ears, when it came out on on the show that we did the interview, it again, sounded like Rod Serling, but just the microphone. Couldn't really get the full breath of his voice, which was sure,   Carl Amari ** 34:35 yeah. I mean, what a talent, right? I mean, and then he had that show, Zero Hour, zero hour, right? Yeah, radio. And that was an interesting series, too. He tried to bring back the and he didn't. It was a, I think it was a fine job. You know, good job. Yeah. There were others, you know, CBS Radio, mystery theater, of course, diamond Brown. And there were some other ones. But I. I'm real proud, really, really proud of The Twilight Zone. I think they're, they're, they're, I mean, they're not nothing is as good as the way they did these the shows in the golden age. I mean, I don't think anyone can get to that point, but they're, I think they're pretty close, and I'm very proud of them.   Michael Hingson ** 35:15 Oh, yeah. And, but it still is with the Twilight Zone. It's really hard to compete with that, my favorite Twilight Zone, and for me, it was tough because I never knew the titles of the shows, because they would show you the title, but I could never, never really hear them. But when I started collecting and got access to, like your your radio Twilight zones and so on. I started to learn titles, and so my favorite has always been valley of the shadow. Oh, great one. Yeah. I just always thought that was the best of the it was an hour long instead of a half hour. But I Yeah, on TV. But I always thought that was just so innovative. I   Carl Amari ** 35:57 think Ernie Hudson did that one for me. I'm trying to think, but yeah, there was, we had, we had so many incredible actors on it. I mean, it was, it was a real fun, you know, four or five years that I was doing those, lot of fun doing them. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 36:12 you had several with Stan Freeberg. And, of course, yes, who don't know Stan Freeberg was definitely very much involved in radio, especially in the 50s, late 40s, with, that's rich, but mostly in the 50s, a satirist and incredible humorist and entertainer. But he did several Twilight zones.   Carl Amari ** 36:31 He did, you know, yeah, I was working with him on, you know, I created the show when radio was, which is still out there today, and and when radio was I ever initially had art Fleming as the host, you know, the original host of original Jeopardy guy, yeah. And then when art passed away, I hired Stan Freeberg, and Stan was the host of that show for many years. And then, then, when I started doing Twilight Zone, I said, Hey, would you like to do some of these? And he's like, Yeah, I'd like to do them all, yeah. Let me have all the scripts. But the one that he did that I think, is just off the charts amazing, is called Four o'clock ever, yeah, one, yeah, yeah. That is just the most interesting show, The Twilight Zone episode that we did where he plays this kind of a loony, a loony guy, who is that? What you describe him as, narking on everybody doesn't like anything, like anybody or anything, no, and it's so and he calls people and harasses them and oh my gosh, and he says, I'm gonna shrink everybody to four inches tall at four o'clock. Four o'clock, right? Yeah, and it's just, oh my gosh, what a what a great episode. It's one of my favorites.   Michael Hingson ** 37:48 And of course, if you think about it, listening people out there who got shrunk at four o'clock,   Carl Amari ** 37:56 well, let's not give it away, but yes, I think you can figure it out.   Michael Hingson ** 37:59 I think it's pretty,   Carl Amari ** 37:59 easy to figure out, but, and I actually played, I actually played a role in that episode. I played the bird. I did all the bird sounds on that episode. And so I feel like I had a co starring role, because, yeah, he had a parrot. You know, that was every time you would say something. And I played that, that part on there. But   Michael Hingson ** 38:22 yeah, all the Twilight zones were, were so clever, yeah, and, and I love listening to them. I I have a an mp three player that I carry on airplanes, and I have audio copies of all the Twilight zones. So every so often as I'm flying somewhere or two on and listen there, Michael,   Carl Amari ** 38:43 I'm so glad to hear that. Oh, man, you make me so happy to hear that. So   Michael Hingson ** 38:47 fun. And you know, another one of my favorites was, will the real Martian please stand up now? Yeah, that was cute, and I won't give it. Oh,   Carl Amari ** 38:57 great. So great. Yeah, I sent trying to think who the actor was in that one, but it's been a while, but that's a great one, yeah. And I remember, you know, watching it on TV and and thinking, Oh, this would work on radio. So great, you know, so love doing them. Yeah, I'd love to do more. I might consider coming back and doing more. I mean, originals, you know, might be a lot of fun to do those again, I was   Michael Hingson ** 39:21 going to ask you if you've got any plans for doing anything future. You know, in the future might be interesting, and there's a lot of leeway, of course, to take it in different directions. Do x minus one, but you don't have to do the same stories, even, although, yeah, a lot of good stories in in the original x minus ones on for those who don't know x minus one is a science fiction series. It was on from what 1955 through 1957 I   Carl Amari ** 39:49 believe, yeah, it was a great series. Sci Fi really lends itself really, very well to radio drama. You know, in theater of the mind, it's great because you can, you can go in. Anywhere you land on any planet. And you know, it's very easy to do on radio, where it's tough to do on TV. You know, you have to spend a lot of money to do that. So, I mean, Stan Freeburg proved that with his with his giant ice cream Sunday.   Michael Hingson ** 40:15 All right, go with the marasino Cherry. For those who don't know, is that he said, we're going to empty Lake Michigan now. We're going to fill it up with whipped cream. We're going to drop a maraschino cherry into it and other things. He said, You can't do that on TV.   Carl Amari ** 40:31 Try doing that on television. Yeah, he was something. He was so much fun to wear. Of all the people that I've met over the years, you know so many of these radio stars, and I've interviewed so many hundreds of them, really, over the years, I'd have to say I have a special place in my heart for Stan the most, because I got to work with him for so many years, and we used to just go to lunch together all the time, and and he had a, he had a, he had a, what was it again? Now? Oh, oh, I'm trying to think of the car that he drove, a jaguar. It was a jaguar, and it was a and we used to drive around in his, his big Jaguar all around LA, and just have so much fun together. And I just loved working with Stan. He was such a great man. I   Michael Hingson ** 41:17 never got to meet what would have loved to Yeah, Jack Benny and Jimmy Durante, oh my gosh, yeah. And, of course, Stan Freeberg, but yeah, you know, I wasn't in that circle, so I didn't write that. But what, what wonderful people they were. And, yeah,   Carl Amari ** 41:32 George Burns, George Burns used to, yeah, George used to take me to the Hillcrest Country Club, and we would just have the best time. He just thought it was the most interesting thing that a young guy in his 20s was so passionate about, you know, those days. And he we would just talk for hours. And I used to go to his office in Hollywood and in his and we would just sit and talk. And I have pictures of of those, those times I have them in my office, you know, he and I together. He was like a mentor to me. He and Stan were both mentors.   Michael Hingson ** 42:05 Did you get recordings of many of those conversations? Yes, I do.   Carl Amari ** 42:08 I do have quite a few with with George and Stan. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 42:12 it was great, you know, yes, nothing like talking to God, that's   Carl Amari ** 42:16 right. And he had a coffee cup in his office. It's it was a white coffee cup, and it had God on it, and black to drink out of that coffee cup. And he had, I was to say, when I first, my first time, I went to his office in Hollywood, you know, he was a real long office, narrow with is all paneling, and there was all these beautiful pictures, like photos of all the people he and Gracie had worked with. And then there was this beautiful painting of Gracie above him, you know, where he was sitting at his desk. And I remember walking in. I said, Hi, George, because I had talked to him on the phone a lot of times. And he said, Ah, come on in, you know. And I said, Oh, man, George, these photos are amazing on the walls, looking as I was walking towards his desk. And he says, You like those pictures? I said, Yeah. He goes, everyone in those pictures is dead except for me. I knew him the last about four years of his life. From that, from he was 96 to 100 I knew George, and we'd, we'd go   Michael Hingson ** 43:16 to the Hillcrest together. It was fun. Did you meet or get to know Bob Hope, never   Carl Amari ** 43:21 met Bob Hope No, because he lived, what, two, yeah. He lived 100 Yeah. Never met Bob Hope No.   Michael Hingson ** 43:27 And Irving Berlin got to 100 Yeah, yeah. But so   Carl Amari ** 43:30 many, I mean, Jerry Lewis, and so many others that that, I mean, Jerry was so great. I mean, you know, probably one of the most talented people to ever live, you know, and he could even sing, and he could, he could do it all. I mean, he was something. I mean, I was in such awe of that man. And we, he was very kind to me, licensed me to Martin Lewis and all that. So, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 43:52 we saw one of my favorite musicals. I originally saw it as a movie out here on K Shea was the million dollar movie. It was Damn Yankees,   Carl Amari ** 44:03 damn Yeah, he was on Broadway. Did that on Broadway, and he did it on Broadway,   Michael Hingson ** 44:07 and we read about it. And his father, he had how his father said, You'll really know you've arrived when you get to do something on Broadway. And that was the only thing he ever got to do on Broadway. And we did get to go see it. We saw, Oh, wow, yeah,   Carl Amari ** 44:20 Broadway, amazing, yeah, amazing, yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 44:24 I'm so sad that there was so much acrimony for so many years between him and Dean Martin, yeah, which was really probably brought on more by all the people they worked with that, yes, that cost a whole lot more than them. But yeah, near the end they, they did deal with it a little Yeah?   Carl Amari ** 44:42 They, they got back together a little bit. Yeah, yeah. He was an interesting guy, Boy, I'll tell you. You know, just talking to him, I learned so much, learned so much over the years.   Michael Hingson ** 44:53 Yeah, yeah. It's so much fun to to be able to do that. Well, I really do hope you do get. To do another show, to do something else. And you're right, there's nothing like science fiction in terms of what you can do, and maybe even doing a series, yeah, yeah, as opposed to individual shows. One of my favorite science fiction books by Robert Heinlein is called the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and I would love to see somebody dramatize that. I think it would take, probably, to do it right? It's going to take about 15 hours to do but, oh, wow. What a great what a great thing. If you've never read it, read the book, it's really, oh, I   Carl Amari ** 45:30 haven't, so I'm not familiar with it, so I'll give it a read. The Moon is a Harsh, missus,   Michael Hingson ** 45:34 yeah, yeah. Pretty clever. A computer helps organize a revolution on the moon, which was being colonized and run from the lunar authority on earth. Here's what gives it away in 2075 subtract 300 years. Yeah, it's all about the same thing, like the revolution here, but a computer, Mycroft wakes up and helps organize the revolution. It's really pretty clever. Oh, wow,   Carl Amari ** 46:04 that would be fun to do in a series. Yeah, it   Michael Hingson ** 46:08 would be worth doing. But, but, yeah, I've always enjoyed the book. Robert Donnelly read it as a talking book for blind people. Oh, okay, okay, yeah. So I actually have it. I'll have it, I'll have to find it. I could actually send you the recording. You could listen to it. Oh, please do. I'd love that. We won't tell the Library of Congress, so we will know much trouble.   Carl Amari ** 46:33 But you know, then I kind of, you know, my other passion is the Bible. Yeah, I was gonna get to that. Tell me, yeah. I was just gonna, you know, and so a lot of these same actors that did, you know, Twilight zones and things for for me, I just, I met, like Jason Alexander and so many of these people, Lou Gossett Jr, when I decided to do the to dramatize the entire Bible on audio. A lot of these same actors and many, many, many more, were really, were really great to be in that too. It was a lot of fun.   Michael Hingson ** 47:06 Yeah, well, very recognizable voices, to a large degree, like Michael York,   Carl Amari ** 47:12 yes, yes, he was the narrator. So he did the most. He worked the longest. What a great man. Just an amazing actor. He was the narrator. And then you know Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, played Jesus in it, right? And then you know Richard Dreyfus was Moses John Voigt was Abraham. Max von Saito played Noah John Rees Davies was in it. I mean, we had, we had, I mean, Marissa Tomei was Mary Magdalene. I had many, many Academy Award winners in it, and so many people, you know, was in it. That was a four year deal that took me four years to do the full Bible. Yeah, 98 hours on audio, fully scored the whole thing.   Michael Hingson ** 48:01 Well, you had a great publisher put it out. Thomas Nelson, Yes, yep. They also did my first book, Thunder dog. So can't complain about that too much. No,   Carl Amari ** 48:10 they know how to market. It Was it, was it, I think, I think today it's still the number one selling dramatized Audio Bible in the world. I believe, you know, so it's, it's been a big success for Thomas Nelson, yeah, that was, that was, that was quite, I mean, you should have seen what my passport looked like when I did that. I mean, it was stamped for every country all over that I was going and, you know, and having to produce, because a lot of the actors, like, you know, John Reese Davies. He lives in, he lives in the Isle of Man, and, you know, and then, you know, Max von Saito was nice France, and we scored it in Bulgaria. And, I mean, you know, it was just crazy and traveling all over the world to make that audio. But you've done some other Bibles in addition to that. I have, yeah, yeah, I have. I've done, think I did. Now it's like five different ones, because I like doing different translations, you know, because it's different. I mean, even though it's the same story, the translations people people have translations that they love, you know, whether it's the RSV or it's the New Living Translation or the Nkj or, you know, and so I, I've enjoyed doing them in different translations. That's   Michael Hingson ** 49:25 pretty cool. Do you have any, any additional, additional ones coming out?   Carl Amari ** 49:29 No, no, I've done, I've done done, like, five and, and so I'm more doing, you know, more concentrating now on my radio show, Hollywood, 360, and, and some movie production stuff that I've been working on. And then I'm one of the owners of a podcast company. So we're, we're always putting out, you know, different podcasts and things. And so my plate is very full, although I would love, I think I would love to do some. Thing, like, what you're saying, like, either more Twilight zones, or maybe something like that. It might be, you know, I'd love to do something in the theater or the mind, you know, arena again, too, because I love doing that. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 50:11 I think it'd be a lot of fun to do. Tell me about the podcast,   Carl Amari ** 50:15 yeah. So, um, so we have a podcast company called Gulfstream studios, and we have our main, our main podcast is a is, is. So we're, we, we do a show called, well, there's, there's several podcasts that we're doing, but, but it's the spout is the is the one that's a music oriented we have all the biggest music artists on there. It's really great. So spout is the name of that podcast. And then we're working on, we're working on a Bible podcast. We're going to come out with some a Bible podcast pretty soon. I'm real excited about that more soon. Hopefully you'll have me back when we launch that. Well, yeah, and then, you know, we have, we're always looking for any so I'm ready to, I'm ready to take your podcast onto our platform. Whatever you say. Michael, oh, we'll have to,   Michael Hingson ** 51:10 we'll have to look at that and work it out. But in the meanwhile, I said earlier, I'd love to come on any of the podcasts that you want. And if, yeah, have you read thunder dog,   Carl Amari ** 51:19 no, I didn't know. I didn't have not read it. No. So thunderdog   Michael Hingson ** 51:23 was my story of being in the World Trade Center and getting out and so on. But you should read it, because there are also some, some really poignant parts, like, just to briefly tell that part of the story, I'll send you a video where of a speech I've given, but one of the parts of it is that, as I was running away from tower two, as it was collapsing, because we were at Vesey Street and Broadway, so we were like 100 yards away from tower two when it came down, I turned and ran back the way I came. And as I started to run, I started, I said to myself, and I stayed focused pretty much. But I said to myself at that point, God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. Right? I heard a voice as clearly as we are hearing each other now in my head that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle and the rest will take care of itself. Wow. And I had this absolute sense of certainty that if we just continue to work together, we would be fine. We did, and we were but I am very much a a person who believes in the whole concept of God. And for those who who may disagree with me, you're welcome to do that. You'll you'll just have to take that up with God or whatever at some point. But I would love to really explore anytime you you need a guest to come on and be a part of it, and who knows, maybe I'll be good enough to act in a radio show you do.   Carl Amari ** 52:49 I'm sure you would be, sure you would be Michael, but it would be, yeah, but it would   Michael Hingson ** 52:54 be fun to do. But I really enjoy doing all this stuff, and radio, of course, has become such a part of my life for so long, it has helped me become a better speaker. Was I travel and speak all over the world?   Carl Amari ** 53:10 Yeah, wow. Well, I'm a big fan of yours, and, and, but I'd love to read the book, so I'll order it. Can I get it off of Amazon or something like that? You can get   Michael Hingson ** 53:19 it off of Amazon. You can get it from Audible, okay, or wherever. And then I wrote, then we wrote two others. One's called running with Roselle, which was really intended more for kids talking about me growing up, and Roselle my guide dog at the World Trade Center growing up. But more adults buy it than kids. And then last year, we published live like a guide dog. True Stories from a blind man and his dogs about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith, and that one is really about people need to and can learn how to control fear and not let fear overwhelm or, as I put it, blind them. And you can actually learn to use fear as a very powerful tool to help you function, especially in emergencies and unexpected situations. And so live like a guide dog uses lessons I've learned from all of my guide dogs and my wife's service dogs, Fantasia that have taught me so much about learning to control fear. And I realized at the beginning of the pandemic, I've talked about being calm and focused getting out, but I've never taught anyone else how to do it, so live like a guide dog is my solution for that, which is kind of that, that,   Carl Amari ** 54:26 that I'm sure helps a lot of people, you know, that's because fear is, is, it's, it's debilitating, you know? So, yeah, well, that's, but it doesn't need doesn't need to be, that's right, that doesn't need to be, yeah, it's one of the reasons why I wanted to do the Bible stuff, because I learned at a very early age that these theater, these radio shows you under, you listen and you actually interpret them and understand them deeper with the theater of the mind than watching them on television or reading them like, like. I think even reading a book as great as that is, if you heard it dramatized on radio, it's even more powerful. I and so I knew that if I took the Bible, which is the greatest book of all time, and it was dramatized in a way, in a kind of a movie quality way, with sound effects and music and wonderful actors that I thought people would get a deeper meaning of the word. And I think we it. We were successful with that, because so many people have written about it on Amazon and things and saying like I, you know, when I heard the Word of Promise, and when I heard this audio, I had to go and get my Bible and see, does it really say that? You know? So here's people that had read the Bible many, many times, and then they heard the dramatization of it, and were like, wow, I didn't even realize that, you know, that was that happened in the Bible. So it's, it's, it's pretty cool, you know, to read those you know how it's helped people, and it's helped save souls, and it's just been a great you know, it's been a very rewarding experience. Have you   Michael Hingson ** 56:09 ever taken it and divided it up and put it on the radio? Well, that's   Carl Amari ** 56:12 one of the not in the radio, but we're going to do some podcast with, we're going to, we're going to be doing something really, really unique with, with one of my later ones that I did not the Word of Promise, but a different one. And, and it's going to, it's going to be really, really special. I can't wait to talk about it on your show. Looking   Michael Hingson ** 56:30 forward to it, yeah, well, we have had a lot of fun doing this, and I'm going to have to sneak away. So I guess we'll have to stop, darn but we do have to continue this. And, and I'd love to find ways to work together on projects and be a part of your world and love you to be more a part of mine. I'm really glad that we finally had a chance to get together and do all this. It's been a lot of fun. Me   Carl Amari ** 56:53 too, Michael, me too. It's really, I said it was an honor, and it really was an honor. And thank you so much. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 56:59 for all of you listening, we hope you've enjoyed this episode of unstoppable mindset. Love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me at Michael H I M, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our web page where we host the where we have the podcast, w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, Michael hingson is m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, love to get your thoughts wherever you're listening. Please give us a five star rating. We value that very highly. We really appreciate you giving u

Doug chats with Tom McCann, organizer of the upcoming Nantucket VFW Blood Drive, happening Tuesday, June 10th and Wednesday, June 11th. Tom shares why giving blood is so critical—how just one pint can save up to five lives—and clears up common misconceptions about donating, especially when it comes to concerns like tick-borne illnesses on the island. With a goal of collecting 300 pints, Tom still needs about 60 more donors to sign up and help make a lifesaving difference.To schedule your appointment, visit redcross.org and enter Nantucket's zip code: 02554.

John Marvin grew up in Kansas as a member of a family with significant medical experience. John's father, for example, was a family physician in a small Western Kansas town. John describes some about his life and how his thoughts and attitudes were greatly influenced by his father. Late in his high school career John told his dad that he did not want to grow up to be a doctor because, as he put it, he didn't want to work as hard as his father worked. John will explain that to us. As he also put it, his comment came from a young naïve boy.   In college John settled on securing a marketing degree. After college he ended up going deeply into marketing and eventually he entered the optical industry specializing in optometry.   John and I have some wonderful discussions about self growth, leadership and how to help people and companies grow. I got, and I think you will get, many great ideas from John's experiences and that we all will be the better for what John has to say and teach us.       About the Guest:   John D. Marvin is an entrepreneur and dynamic leader with a proven track record of success in healthcare, wellness, and the eyecare industry. As President and CEO of Texas State Optical (TSO), he has transformed the organization into one of the largest and most respected networks of independent optometrists in the United States, generating upwards of $110 million in annual revenue. With over two decades of experience at TSO, John has cultivated a member-owned cooperative that empowers optometrists to operate independently while benefiting from robust centralized support. His leadership has been pivotal in fostering a culture of innovation, professional growth, and exceptional patient care. John's career spans over 40 years, during which he has held executive roles across various industries, including marketing, consulting, and healthcare. His entrepreneurial spirit is evident in his strategic leadership during TSO's transition from a retail chain to a cooperative network in 2001. Under his guidance, TSO shifted its focus from product-driven services to comprehensive medical eyecare, reinforcing its reputation as a patient-centered organization. Beyond TSO, John serves as President of Texas Eyecare Partners and Health and Wellness Consulting. As a lifelong advocate of personal growth, John has studied the transformative power of mindset and the “inner game” of success. His insights into leadership, achievement, and business management have made him a sought-after speaker and certified John Maxwell Professional Coach. John passionately shares his experiences to inspire others to unlock their potential, offering actionable strategies to overcome challenges and drive meaningful change. John's dedication to education and collaboration is evident in his efforts to support emerging professionals in the field of optometry. He has fostered strong relationships with the University of Houston's College of Optometry and the Texas Optometric Association, contributing to scholarships, professional development programs, and initiatives that promote medical optometry. Through his vision and unwavering commitment to excellence, John D. Marvin exemplifies the principles of leadership, empowerment, and innovation, making a lasting impact on the eyecare industry and beyond. Ways to connect John:   https://www.facebook.com/jdmarvin  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdmarvin/  https://www.instagram.com/jdmarvin/ https://tso.com/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello, everyone. Once again, wherever you happen to be, I'm your host on unstoppable mindset, Mike Hingson, or you can call me Mike, whichever you prefer. And our guest today is John D Marvin. John is an entrepreneur. Has been an entrepreneur for quite a while, and he has been involved in a number of different kind of endeavors over his life. And he's worked, worked in the eye care industry a bunch, and is now in charge of Texas State Optical. We're going to learn more about that and and all the other things I don't know whether I care, does me a whole lot of good directly, but it's fun to talk about anyway. No, no doubt. So John, I want to really welcome you. I'm glad we finally made this work. I'm glad we got a chance to connect. So welcome to unstoppable mindset.   John D Marvin ** 02:13 Well, thank you, Mike. It's a real pleasure to be here.   Michael Hingson ** 02:15 Well, I'm glad that we we get a chance to really talk. We haven't really done too many podcasts on eye care and optical stuff, so I'm glad to be able to do it. But I'd like to start, as I'd love to do so often, tell us about kind of the early John growing up, and go from there.   John D Marvin ** 02:33 Okay, I was born and raised in Kansas. I that that's northern Texas, right? That's northern Texas. That's right, yeah, I actually grew up in western Kansas. I was born in Kansas City, but I grew up in western Kansas, and my father is a family physician, and had the kind of stereotypical country doctor practice small town, 2000 people, and my mother was his office manager for a number of years. And so it was a kind of a family business. And I have three siblings, sisters, and so we grew up in a small Mayberry type town, and it was great riding bicycles till the street lights came on at night, and catching fireflies and all that kind of good stuff. And then I decided to go to school. I chose to go to school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated, it's an emphasis in marketing and marketing and business administration, and ended up in the ad agency business for a little bit of a time, and just kind of really decided that wasn't for me, and ended up from there going into pharmaceutical sales. And really enjoyed that, and enjoyed the the outside sales aspects of it and calling on doctors. And my territory was western Kansas, so I used to say, and still refer to it as my territory looked like my high school football schedule. So we would go to these small towns. And of course, most everyone out there knew my father, and so the typical problem of trying to get past the front desk was made a little easier because people knew my family, and from that, I ended up taking an administrative, marketing administrators position with a group of surgeons in in Wichita, and that led to introduction and eating some ophthalmologists in Houston. Them and followed a job opportunity I had with them and came to Houston in 1989 I've been here ever since, but it was after four years of working with them, I ended up going out on my own and started my own business, which was Marketing Management Group, which did consumer research, and then we would develop marketing strategies based on that. And one of my clients, early clients, was Texas State Optical. And because of my background in eye care, both in Wichita, Kansas and in Houston, I had a better I got some insight into the consumer. And so the work I did with Texas State Optical was a lot we did a lot of work, and did several studies with them, and that kind of introduced me to the whole group of franchisees that made up the Texas State Optical organization. Subsequently, I helped them organize, the franchisees organize, and in the late 90s, 1999 I was hired by the franchisees to put together a Franchise Association, and through that, ultimately help them acquire the company, purchase it, and from that during that process, was asked if I would be willing to come on board as the new president of the company once they purchased it. And that was in 2001 and I've been president ever since. So here you go. It kind of takes you from Small Town Living to big city operations and a network of about 100 optometry offices.   Michael Hingson ** 06:47 So what exactly is Texas State Optical? Or maybe first, what was it and how is it morphed over time?   John D Marvin ** 06:56 Well, originally it was founded by four brothers in 1936 in Southeast Texas, little town called Beaumont, and famous for a lot of things in that part of the state. One of them is Janis Joplin, the others, Big Bopper and George Jones and but it also was the birthplace of Texas State Optical. And they grew a network of privately owned they owned them all over 300 locations throughout Texas, Mexico, Oklahoma and Arkansas, Louisiana and and then in the early 70s, they sold it to a pharmaceutical company, ironically, the same one that I had worked for when I was calling on western Kansas. But when they sold it, it got converted to a traditional franchise model, and it stayed that way until the franchisees purchased it in 2001 when we I was involved, and we turned it into a brand license business, taking that iconic license that had been around Texas optical since the 30s, 1930s and and then turning around and licensing the use of that brand to young optometrist who wanted to own their own practice, but saw the use of that brand as kind of instant credibility, because a lot of people were familiar with that brand.   Michael Hingson ** 08:40 So what does it provide? What did one of the organization provide under the brand? Well,   John D Marvin ** 08:46 we use the use of the brand, and so you got immediate notoriety in terms of just people's awareness of it, but also we put together kind of a la carte menu of optional services and support and resources that licensees could either take advantage of or not, and it was a really hands off model. We didn't have any, and still don't have any operational control over the way business was done. We We influenced that through best practices and sharing of information, but certainly we didn't require have any requirements of the way that they would operate. Reality is most private practice optometrists operate pretty well, and so we were there to kind of coach and help, but mainly it was them using our brand name, which had a really strong consumer value to it.   Michael Hingson ** 09:44 And so what kind of changes when the franchisees all joined together and bought the company and so on? How have you and they changed it over the years.   John D Marvin ** 09:59 I. I think the biggest change from 1999 to 2001 when they bought it, and to this day, has been the culture of the company. And that is, you know, it's something of a franchise opportunity, yeah, and a lot of your listeners probably either own franchises. Thought about franchises, and you know, it might you and I spent the next year trying to decide we were going to own a franchise. And we'd go out and do all sorts of research, and we'd look into this one and that one, and what kind of industry we want, and we'd finally select one that we were really impressed with. Thought about for great opportunity. We'd pay our $50,000 franchise fee, and about the second or third day of owning that franchise, we would decide that these people don't know anything about this business that we're in, and there's just this inherent adversarial relationship that exists between a franchisee and a franchisor. Some for good reason, some just because of the independent, entrepreneurial nature of a franchisee. Well, when the franchisees owned the company, they owned the franchise, or that adversarial dynamic kind of left. And so now there's nobody to kind of blame except yourself, and people are inclined not to do that as much. And so there was a greater tendency to kind of work together, work through things, come up with solutions to problems or resources that were needed. And it just created a much more homogeneous type of culture, and to the point where our annual meeting we host every year is referred to as our family reunion. And so we gather everyone together. It's really an atmosphere of all of us being as one family, sharing the same kind of core values, and all out to do the same thing, and that is just provide great quality eye care for our communities. And so that, that is a big change. Of course, there's always the things like collective purchasing, education and training. The main difference in those areas are engagement. When you are asked by a franchisor to engage in certain activities, there's that inherent reluctance to do that in our organization. There's an inherent acceptance of it because it comes from a colleague, it comes from others and doctors are more leading doctors than they are being led by some set of suits someplace in the Northeast.   Michael Hingson ** 12:50 Yeah, and that is such an extremely important thing to be able to really make it a family, a disciplined family, but still a family nevertheless, which is kind of cool. I'm curious about something being blind, and having been blind my whole life, and involved with blindness consumer organizations, one of the things that we have found often is that most people in the eye care industry, primarily in the ophthalmological industry, which is kind of a little bit more relevant to us, but tend not to really have a lot of knowledge about blindness and blind people. And so, for example, there are so many stories of a person going into the office of an ophthalmologist, for example, maybe they're losing their eyesight, but the ophthalmologist examines them and for whatever reason, will say things like, you're going blind. I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do, and walk out and never provide any other kinds of resources or knowledge to help the person who's losing eyesight. I don't know whether you see that, given where you are or what your thoughts are on that, but I'd be interested to get your thoughts because it seems to me that there's a lot of opportunity to do significant education about blindness and low vision to recognize that the reality is, blindness isn't the problem. It's people's attitudes traditionally that are the problem.   John D Marvin ** 14:28 That's an excellent point. Mike, I you know my first thoughts are the profession of optometry is really involved in preventing right blindness, and so it's kind of one of the few areas of healthcare that is more prevention oriented than other areas. Most areas are treatment oriented. In other words, you become sick. And then we treat you right, and the profession of optometry is all about we talk to people all the time about protecting your vision and preventing problems from happening. Now, as we see patients that end up either through glaucoma or some form of pathology, retinal issues, start to lose their vision. There comes a point early in that process where they are, frankly, they are outside of the scope of care that an optometrist can provide. So they end up being referred to an ophthalmologist. That being said, there are several optometrists across the country that have decided to devote themselves to low vision, and that's kind of a form of blind and what I would call blindness care, and where it's not complete, there is some level of vision there, but it needs a lot of enhancement, either through equipment or through other types of therapeutics practices. And there are optometrists who say, I'm not going to sell glasses. I'm not going to focus on contacts. I'm going to just provide a low vision clinic. And they're not not there's not a large number of them, but there are some, and what I've experienced in that is it does take a particular type of practitioner to be successful with that. And when I say successful, I mean, to be able to establish the type of patient doctor relationship that actually produces some really positive outcomes and helps people better manage their loss of vision, either whether that's progressive and eventually will become complete, or whether It's stalled at a point where they just cannot function without special aid, like I said, equipment, or some type of therapeutics. And there's just not a lot of people go into Optometry for the refractive side of things, and and so there's, there's not that motivation, really, to learn much about it. We do as an organization. We're very involved with prevent blindness as a national organization, and we'd also have some involvement with low vision clinics that are in the Houston Medical Center. But outside of that, you're right. There's not a whole lot of folks that understand it, probably, or maybe it's just they don't have the patience for it, because it does require a different kind of patient care approach, even   Michael Hingson ** 17:55 so what I wonder is, if there is an opportunity, maybe to provide additional education, so that if your your franchisees, for example, encounter a person who's losing eyesight and they and they realize that that they can help refer them to sources or resources that can assist because part of the problem is that, typically in society, blindness is viewed as such a horrible, devastating thing. And I understand that eyesight is a very wonderful thing, and people want to have it, but the reality is for a variety of reasons that doesn't work for everyone. The problem is that we have so much fear of blindness that we don't tend to deal with and I just wonder if there might be a way to provide some sort of a system or program that would help teach your people that blindness isn't really the end of the world, which is not to say, don't try to prevent it if you can, but when you can't, you can also be an additional source. To say, here are places where you can go, or here are some things that you can learn.   John D Marvin ** 19:16 Well, I do think that it's important, and I'm aware of many, keeping in mind that our members who own locations that use our brand are independent, we have provided them local organizations, clinics, things like that, which help them in referring people that need that kind of help and in education, I think also an important factor is that it's not just the patient that can use that it's the patient's family, because it, while it's perceived as something that you know you. I know that people value their sight, and the thought of losing it and becoming blind is is frightening the individual, but it also is frightening and disruptive to family, who father, mother, wife, husband, son or daughter, to deal with the changes in lifestyle that are required to accommodate that. Loss of vision is significant. You mentioned you've been blind since birth, and that's certainly one group of people, but there's an awful lot of people that end up experiencing blindness when they're in their 30s or 40s, after they've had a large portion of their life with vision. And it's, I don't want to say it's easier by any means. I first of all, I have no right in even suggesting that, but it's a different experience, for sure, not ever having had vision, versus having had it for a number of years and then losing it. And sometimes it might be as scary and frightening for the family around that person as it is the patient themselves. And so we do place a high value on getting people the kind of help and resources they need to better adjust to those changes.   Michael Hingson ** 21:28 Well, when I was born, I actually became blind because of what we now call retinopathy or prematurity, which originally was retro enterofibroplasia, which is harder to spell, but I love the term anyway. At about four months of age, it was discovered that I was blind, and the doctors told my parents they ought to just send me off to a home, because no blind child could ever grow up to be a contributor to society, and all I would do would be a drain on the family and then later on society. And my parents were very unusual in taking the stand that, no, you're wrong. He can grow up to do whatever he wants, and we're going to give him that opportunity. And that was, and really to a very large degree today, still is, a very unusual attitude to take, because we fear blindness so much, and while I appreciate the reality of eyesight is very important for most people, what I would love to see are ways to create more of an understanding so that People understand that blindness isn't the end of the world, and that's what what we see all too often in society in general, which is unfortunate, and you're right. I don't know whether it's easier if you're blind from the outset or become blind later in life. I know any number of people who became blind later in life, who went to programs where philosophically, they were taught blindness was not a problem, and they learned that they could continue to be contributors to society, and they tend to intend to Do that, as opposed to many others from both camps and from birth or not who never understand. Blindness isn't going to be the end of the road if people let it be. So it's it's just one of those conundrums that we end up having to deal with on a regular basis.   John D Marvin ** 23:38 The name of your podcast dealing with mindset, right? A lot of it is exactly that. And if you're find yourself in a you know, the child who's born blind can either have a support system and family and parents that impact his his or her mindset in a way that creates the expectation and understanding that it it doesn't have to be limiting. And same goes with someone who's blind later in life, right? It's a matter of how you look at and decide for yourself. I mean, we all know people that, whether it's a loss of a one of the most five senses, the important senses, sight or hearing, so forth, there is a natural mind. There's one set of mind people that have a mindset that, oh, poor you. Now you've got insurmountable challenges in your life, and this is going to be difficult the rest of your life. And then the other mindset that many parents have recognizing their opportunity they have with their child is to say, yes, that's you. But that doesn't have to define you, that doesn't limit you. You can overcome those things and and I think that that is even in our business, where you have someone who comes into the office and through some type of diagnostic testing, it's determined that they are losing their sight, and that the natural outcome of this progression of pathology will be the total loss of sight. We have the opportunity there, at that point, to affect their mindset, yeah, and to either tell them this is a circumstance that will not limit you or define you, and here are some resources and education materials and opportunities in that area that can help you better understand what you're living with and how that you can overcome that, just from the census standpoint, because It doesn't have to be something you have to overcome in life, per se. It just has to be an accommodation you make, because you can't see when other people can right. And it is all about mindset.   Michael Hingson ** 26:13 It is all about mindset. No doubt about it, you're absolutely correct in that regard. And it is, it is something that we'll all be dealing with for a while, but hopefully over time, the mindset of people will change to recognize that there are always alternatives. Being a Star Trek fan, I love Spock and Kirk who are always talking about there are always options, and there are always ways to get around doing things or to accomplish things that you might not think about, but you have to be multi dimensional in your thought process.   John D Marvin ** 26:52 Well, the other exciting aspect of all of this is the the fact that those with growth mindsets are working diligently on technologies that can actually supplant the deficiency and come up with ways to correct blindness. And so there we may even, in our lifetime, live to a point where the pathological condition that you were born with doesn't have to be permanent. It can be reversed using technology that provides you with as good, if not better, vision than people who weren't born in that same situation.   Michael Hingson ** 27:33 Yeah, the only people who never will come out of it are politicians, because they take dumb pills when they become politicians. So we can pick up them.   John D Marvin ** 27:40 Well, listen, just you could be blind and still be able to see, right? Yeah, that   Michael Hingson ** 27:47 leaves them out. Yeah. No, I understand. I understand they're fun to pick on. But you what? What really made you decide to go into the eye care industry, into that, that whole environment, what, what attracted you to it, or was it just sort of so natural? Well, obviously, that's a mindset. Yeah,   John D Marvin ** 28:10 there's a couple of things. Think the thing that attracted me to kind of eye care in general, and put ophthalmology and Optometry in the same bucket for this. What attracted me to was this whole area of health care that I kind of grew up in with my father and family practice in a small town. Because, you know, my family practice in the 60s and 70s was a whole different discipline than it is today. Oh, I know, you know, especially in a small town where the closest specialist, if you would, is 90 miles away. And so my father had to be what we call today, functionally, you know, a functional medicine, meaning that he had to be able to kind of treat the whole person. I mean, he used to be very proud of the fact that a large percentage of the kids that were in the school that I grew up in, he delivered and so, you know, there was no obstetrician in this small town. So if a woman became pregnant, then he provided her prenatal care. He gave, he delivered the child, and then he gave the provided the pediatric care afterwards. And so having that sense of kind of the global care of of someone kind of gave me a real appreciation for the kind of the system, the the systemic aspects of health. And when I was given an opportunity to get into the eye care business. Because I saw it more as getting into the healthcare business, and even though it was very narrow, defined in eye care, it gave me a connection. And I I'm a big believer that you start down a path and you follow it. And what maybe forest and trees and gardens, they may turn into desert or mountains or valleys or otherwise. So when I started, I really didn't know necessarily where it would go. And I guess you could even back it up and say that my whole entry into the pharmaceutical industry kind of started me down that path and and then that led to being in the practitioner side, which ultimately led to going from ophthalmology into Optometry. I frankly think that all of that background best prepared me to do what I'm doing today, and understanding the whole system of eye care, not just refractions and glasses and contacts, right?   Michael Hingson ** 31:11 Well, you know, and you started out in in the whole marketing world, as opposed to going off and becoming a doctor directly, which which gave you a different perspective. So it really makes sense as to what you're saying and it but you've had exposure to both sides, and that has to really help you in terms of doing the job that you've chosen to do.   John D Marvin ** 31:38 Yeah, I think you're right. I remember having the discussion with my father because as I was like a junior in high school and, and as most juniors you know, you start thinking about what you're going to do when you graduate high school and, and I was graduating high school at a time that I had a draft number given to me, there was a war over in Vietnam that was still going on, and so I, you know, there for a period of time, I didn't know whether I would even have a choice. Yeah, it turns out by the time I actually that last year between junior and senior, the war had really started to wind down. And while I got a draft number, it was very high, and the likelihood of me actually being drafted into service was very low. And so I made some decisions about what I was going to do post high school, and I remember having the discussion with my father about would he be disappointed if I decided I didn't want to be a physician? And he assured me that he wouldn't be disappointed, but he was curious as to why I was not interested in doing that, and I told him, I said, just to be candid, I don't know if I want to work as hard as you do, because at that time, I had spent many Christmases with him, not at home, even though, our town, I mean, you could almost walk to the hospital. Our Town was small enough that, but he was taking care of people in the hospital on Christmas Day or delivering a baby on Christmas Day, and he just, you know, it was clear that in that profession, the way he practiced it in those days was that the patients came first, and the family understood that. And we were all in the doctor business to in that respect, and this whole concept of work life balance was, you know, no one looked at things like that. I mean, everyone understood that this was a commitment that had been made, and it involved the entire family. So I told him, I said, I don't know if I'm willing to do that or not. And so I thought at that time, I decided that I was going to pursue a career in theology, and so that determined where I went to school. And about after my first year in school, I the university I had chosen, their whole theological department was more pastoral, and I wasn't interested in that. I was more evangelical. I was more interested in being an evangelist and and so I not having that in front of me. I decided that it switched to a marketing degree. And it turns out that to be a pretty good evangelist, you got to be a little bit of a marketing person yourself. Anyway, true. So, so I ended up going down that path.   Michael Hingson ** 34:53 Well, I would say if you had chosen the pastoral approach, you would have been working just. Just hard as a doctor. Oh, very much. So, yeah, but I guess I would also ask this whole issue of not working as hard given what you do today, how's that working out for you? Well,   John D Marvin ** 35:14 those were words of a very naive young guy. Yeah, because I didn't take I didn't understand the fact that if you're going to accomplish anything, it's going to require hard work, and you need a family that understands what your what your passion is, and what you've decided to do, and because it is, I mean, no one builds a career by themselves. They they build a career with the involvement and support of other people, and if, if they, if those beliefs aren't aligned, then you're going to end up in conflict and be constantly be torn between what it is you believe you're wanting to do with your life, versus your obligations, your other obligations. And put it   Michael Hingson ** 36:04 that way, well, you've been involved in the whole mindset and activity of being a business leader for a long time. What kind of key lessons have you learned along the way about personal growth?   John D Marvin ** 36:21 I think the thank you for that question. I think the one thing that I have learned, that I've tried to pass on to people is start, begin we I think that we naturally have this reluctance to take risk, because we don't want to fail at anything and and so we kind of take the approach that, well, if I want to pursue something, whether it be personal development or growth or even some profession, I need to know everything there is to know about it before I start it. And that is just not true. The only way you learn is by starting I have a friend and acquaintance who his career and his profession is leading people on climbs of Mount Everest. So that's his job. If you want to climb Mount Everest, I can hook you up with a guy that will help you do it. And it's a fascinating profession that he's in. And I asked him one time, how do you learn how to climb mountains. You know, how do you learn this? He said the only way to learn how to climb mountains is by climbing   Michael Hingson ** 37:46 mountains. I was gonna say, to do it, yes. And   John D Marvin ** 37:49 so I think the number one thing is to start. And if you're committed to it and you start, you'll figure it out. The rest of it, because there are no failures, there's maybe a setback or two, but as long as you keep focused on where you want to be and moving forward and getting better and learning, you'll figure things out. And I think so personal growth is really a decision and a commitment to continual learning, continual improvement and and you're never too late to get started. It's never too late, even if you're at 80 some years of age and maybe limited health wise, you can still start because there's so much, there's so many different resources today that are available to people. I mean, I got an iPad Mike, that's, I bet you I've got three 400 books on it. And, you know, used to be you couldn't have three or 400 books without a library in your house. Now you can have one iPad on a memory card. And I was just, I had a doctor's appointment earlier today, and while I was waiting in the reception, I pulled out my phone and I started reading a book that I'm reading, you know, and I had, didn't have to carry the book The lot of people do, lot of people have, but I was able to do that. And then there's what's available in terms of resources, of books to read are just unlimited. So I think that there's, there's all sorts of opportunities, just a matter of getting started and doing it. Second is consistency. Everybody can start. Few people can be consistent, or few people are consistent. We all know the classic, never if you're if you're someone who goes to a gym and works out, you know. Avoid that gem the first month of the year in January, because it is overrun with people who are starting their new year, and then by February, you also know that you're back to normal, because most people don't stay consistent. So starting and then becoming consistent are the two things that are probably most important, that I've learned   Michael Hingson ** 40:25 well, and that kind of leads to something I was thinking about, and that is the connection between mindset and long term achievement. Because it would seem to me that, as you point out with the gym, the people who create the mindset that I'm going to do this and really decide that that's what they're going to do, are more likely to have analyzed it and made that decision intelligently and then we'll stick with it, than people who just go off and say, I'm going to do it, but really haven't established A mindset, right?   John D Marvin ** 40:59 That's exactly true. And you know, people tend to focus on volume as opposed to continuity. And what I mean by that is people go to the gym and they they put all this intensity into the first day they haven't worked out in weeks or months, or even maybe a few years, and then the next day they're so sore they can't get out of bed and they can't so they decide they're going to take the next day off rest, and then that turns into a week off. And I'm a student of John Maxwell, the author, and he talks about what he calls the rule of five, and he illustrates it by saying that if you have a tree in your backyard that you're wanting to take out, you can take an ax and you can go out there and you can swing that Ax five times, and put down the ax and come back tomorrow morning, hit it five times. Come back tomorrow morning, hit it five times. And over a period of time, that tree will come down, or you can go out there and just try to chop and chop and chop, and that tree will defeat you, because you will run out of energy and you'll be too tired to finish it, but if you'll just be consistent over a time with the rule of five, and he talks about it in any profession, if you want to get good at it, figure out what are the five things you need to do every single day to grow in that direction and to accomplish what you need to accomplish. And so I think that you're right that over a period of time, long term success is not done through intensity. It's done through consistency. And he also says, you know, you're never going to change anything in your life until you change what you do daily? And that is very, very true.   Michael Hingson ** 43:09 I know I haven't really been the greatest at doing a lot of exercising and so on, and a lot of walking, and especially here in the winter, it gets really cold, and so I tend not to do it. But what I figured out, actually, a couple of years ago was we have a wonderful, great room with an island in the middle of it, and I will just put on a book and listen to it and do laps around the bar, and I'll get up to 10 and 15,000 steps a day just walking around the bar. Now it's not going uphill and downhill, but still a lot of good exercise. And I find that not only does that work, but I enjoy it, because I get to read at the same time or do other things. Of course, my dog probably thinks I'm nuts, and my cat, my cat avoids me. But by the same token, you know, it is exercise, and I found that I have no problem really doing that every day, absolutely.   John D Marvin ** 44:12 And you know, we we live in a gym, yeah, and whether it's your room, your great room with an island, or whether it's a backyard or your neighborhood, we lived in a gym. I think that was illustrated in one of the Rocky movies really well when he was held up in northern Russia and just worked out using the materials that were with him. And so there really is no excuse to doing something, and doing something is better than doing nothing at all, and doing something every day will deliver unbelievable results over time.   Michael Hingson ** 44:59 It's a. All about establishing the mindset. Yes, it is. Well, you know, you've done this work for a long time. What kind of advice would you give to people starting out to help them get the mindset and achieve what they want to do with their goals?   John D Marvin ** 45:19 Well, first of all, I think developing and writing a personal growth plan, and I mean writing, setting down and starting, for instance, I made a decision several years ago that I wanted to get better at communication. So that was a decision. And the side of all the things that I wanted to try to commit to developing or growing in or learning, I picked communication. Why did you want as one of it? Because I felt like it was extremely important that you never accomplish, or I didn't believe that I was going to accomplish what I wanted to in life without the ability to communicate well with others, whether that be my spouse or whether it be the people I work with the customers I serve. I wanted to be good at communicating. I wanted to become good at that. I also had a friend tell me one time said, you know, if you will read five books on any subject, you'll know more about that subject than 99% of the people. And so I decided, Okay, I'm going to find five books on communication, and I'm going to commit myself to reading those over the course of the next year. And I just, you know, went out and started trying to determine what are really good books about communication. Some of them I kind of knew, like How to Win Friends and Influence People. That was one that I knew. Okay, I'm going to put that one on the list. Now I need four more, and one of them I knew that John Maxwell had written. So I you know, everybody communicates, but few people connect, and I said, Okay, I'm going to be another one. So I just kind of put together my little library of five books, and I started so I had developed very narrow and limited, but I had developed my own personal growth plan as relates to communication. So as I would tell my grandson, or I would tell a friend, if you want to start on developing a mindset and developing personal growth, sit down and make a plan for what you're going to do. And it's interesting, because if you'll ask people, tell me about your and I do this with people who work for me, and when I'm hiring, tell me about your personal growth plan. What is your personal growth plan? And you know, most people don't even know what I'm talking about, so they start making stuff up, and it becomes real obvious that they don't have one. From my employees, I require that as a part of their job and their annual performance review, we go over their personal growth plan. I want them to become more valuable over the course of this next year, because to themselves, because if they do, then they become more valuable to the company, right? And so I would instruct somebody to sit down and start and make a plan and identify something you want to be better at and and start growing in those areas that that described as starting with communication, has grown now to seven different areas in my life, and I've got at least five, in some cases, more books in each of those areas. And so I've got a very busy personal growth plan that I I work on each year.   Michael Hingson ** 49:12 Do you find that, as you read books on these subjects, as you're dealing with your personal growth, that in reality, you know a lot of the stuff already, at least to a degree. But by the same token, reading what others have written tends to drive the point home a whole lot more. And I ask that from the standpoint of common sense.   John D Marvin ** 49:40 Well, I think so. I mean how to win, which   Michael Hingson ** 49:42 doesn't mean that you don't learn things from the books, but, but a lot of it is, is stuff that you Intuit   John D Marvin ** 49:50 Yeah, I think that you know, a great example that comes to mind is How to Win Friends And yes, people that book, if you read it, it's like, well, yeah, naturally. Of course, but if you read it and you focus, you know, if you read it with the attitude, I want to learn something from this, then you begin to internalize what you're reading. And as you internalize it, you develop more cognitive, a cognitive awareness of it. And what I find super interesting is that book is on my list every year, so I commit myself to read that book every year. So now you know, this year will be probably my 15th, 16th time reading it. What I find fascinating is, I'll read the same chapter I've read, and I'll learn something new, something new, yeah, each time. Because, much like the saying about you can't step in the same stream twice, because it's not the same stream and you're not the same person. Same goes with reading material. You can read that book a second time, and you'll get something out of it, because you're not the same person that you were the first time you read it. And as you mature in your understanding, you get more knowledge out of the reading. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 51:17 Which? Which makes perfect sense, which also says a lot about the quality of the author. But you're right. You will always, if you look for new things to learn, you'll find new things to learn absolutely, which is what makes it so cool. And I I tell people all the time, and I'm not sure they always understand it. If I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else by being involved in this podcast, then I'm not doing my job. Because I believe every episode gives me as much, if not more, of an opportunity to learn as guests or all the people who listen, which is why I think it's so much fun, because I think that learning is as fun as it gets.   John D Marvin ** 52:05 It is, I mean, you're absolutely right, you know, they also, there's a you never learn anything quite as well as when you have to teach it, yeah, you know. And in a way, by hosting a podcast, your your preparation for it, you're setting down, your concentration on it forces you to absorb from every interview that you do, and you can't help but walk away with being different than it was when you sat down to start it. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 52:42 one of my favorite books is a science fiction book written by Robert Heinlein. It's called the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And I don't know whether you read my science fiction. I   John D Marvin ** 52:52 don't, but that sounds interesting. So   Michael Hingson ** 52:54 the basic premise is, it takes place in 2075 there's a hint, and it's all about the moon, which is being controlled by the lunar authority on earth. And it really parallels the American Revolution. The difference is that a computer on the moon, as they put it, wakes up and helps in doing the revolution that eventually gets Moon free from the earth, but one of the major characters is Professor Bernardo dela Paz, who is a teacher. And one of the things that the that the storyteller describes on a regular basis is how Professor dela Paz can teach on basically any subject, as long as he stays at least one lesson ahead of the people who he's teaching, which often does. So he teaches so many different things, but all he does is works to stay just a little bit ahead of the people that he's teaching, so that he can go back and teach it, and of course, as as you and I would say when he's teaching it, he also learns a whole lot more. But I think it's such a clever book.   John D Marvin ** 54:11 It sounds like it science fiction, but if I if that, when that strikes me that'll be one I put down to read.   Michael Hingson ** 54:23 I think it's the I believe it's high lines better. His best book. A lot of people talk about another one called Stranger in a Strange Land, which is about Mars and the earth. But I think that the Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Was his best book, most imaginative book, which is kind of fun, yeah, but you know, it's, it's, it's just one of those things that I've just it's always stuck with me that dela Paz did that well. So over the time, being the president and CEO of Texas State Optical, i. Uhm, how has that shaped or changed your your views on leadership? Because I'm sure you've, you've had lots to do and lots to think about. I'm sure it's had an effect on you.   John D Marvin ** 55:12 Yeah, I, I think the biggest impact has been it's, it's of what it's required of me in in developing my leadership abilities and deep and making those abilities effective towards an outcome. And let me try to shed on that I mentioned earlier. I'm a student of Maxwell, and Maxwell has a definition of leadership is influence, and and he said leadership is is influence. It's nothing more than that. And, and so at first I didn't know what that meant. And then, as he goes on to explain, and it makes sense, oftentimes, you will, the leadership is not a matter of title. It's not a matter of position. Leadership is influence and the ability to influence. And you can walk into a room and you will observe the group, and in one corner, maybe somebody that is obviously the focus of the attention of the others, and that person is exerting leadership influence. They may not be the may not have title, and they may not be in any position of authority over the others, but the others will follow that person, because that person has influence on them. And so I've in my understanding of that, and then trying to live that I've seen that develop in my own ability. And then I have to sit down and say, okay, if I'm going to be a leader of my team, my executives that will report to me, how am I going to provide that influence. And so you begin to break that down and try to figure out because everyone's different. I mean, I I have four people that report to me, each one of them, I will have to affect and influence those people differently. And it starts with understanding them. And so what it's done is it's helped me to really understand that principle that offered by Maxwell, and then how to incorporate that into my life, so that I feel now confident in my ability to be a leader of any group or situation I find myself in, and I've just agreed to accept a new responsibility in a trade association, and I have confidence that I can provide a strong level of leadership, not because I'm the smartest person in the room, but because I have the ability of providing influence over that organization or in that group through better understanding of others that I Have a position over, so to speak. But you know, it's like the best arenas to develop leadership is a volunteer organization, because that's the only way you're going to get anything done, is to have influence, because these people don't have to do anything that you say. And so oftentimes, if you have the authority, you misuse it, and you provide nothing in the way of leadership to a group. That happens all the time.   Michael Hingson ** 59:13 I think that too many, and I use the term in quotes, leaders, think that the whole idea is that they're the boss. Well, bosses are not necessarily leaders, and you're right. Leaders are not necessarily bosses. Directly. It is all about influence. And unfortunately, all too often, the people who have influence may not be the designated leader, but then the leaders or bosses get jealous of those people, which is also extremely unfortunate they don't get it.   John D Marvin ** 59:45 It's a it can be threatening if you're a boss and you've got people that are supposed to report to you and they're listening or being influenced by someone else who may not be. Intentionally trying to subvert the boss. It's just they, they're more effective in that and so that's threatening. And so oftentimes, given that authority, they misuse it. And   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:15 the good leaders, however, when they see that happening, will try to go and understand from in part, the person who's the real influencer, what it is that they need to improve on to be able to be more effective. But that happens so rarely, by comparison to the number of people who are out there.   John D Marvin ** 1:00:38 Yeah, it's too often politics, and I don't mean that in the government sense, but corporate politics determines positions of authority, and you end up with a bunch of very ill equipped people with an awful lot of leadership responsibilities, but lacking in any kind of real leadership skill,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:02 yeah, which is something that we need to devote more time to teaching, but people also need to be willing to learn it, and that gets to be a challenge. Well, I have to tell you, this has been fun, and I know you have other things to do in the course of the day and enjoying the weather down there, so I want to let you go, but I really have enjoyed having you on and I've enjoyed all the different insights that you've brought. So I really appreciate you being here to do all of that. So maybe we'll have it again. That would be kind of fun.   John D Marvin ** 1:01:41 Well, my I've thoroughly enjoyed this as I mean, you make it so easy to visit. You're You're a tremendous host and good interviewer, good questions. You threw a couple at me there that I had to really stop and think about. And so anytime you'd be willing to have me back. I'd love to join you again sometime.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:02 Well, I want to thank you, and I want to thank all of you for listening and watching us today. We really appreciate you being here. I'd love to hear your thoughts on today and what we've talked about. You're welcome to email me. It's easy. It's Michael, M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I, at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I V, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is at www dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S O, n.com/podcast, if you know anyone else who you think ought to be a guest on our podcast, love to hear from you. We're always looking for more people to chat with. And in part, my motivation is I want to learn too. But the more people who come on, the more people we get to learn about who themselves are unstoppable. So please don't hesitate to refer people to it. And you know, John, you as well. We really value that wherever you listening, give us a five star rating. We value that. We appreciate your ratings and and love them. But once again, John, I want to thank you. This has been absolutely fun, and I'm glad you came   John D Marvin ** 1:03:13 well. Thank you. Thank you very much.   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:20 you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

Erie County celebrates its designation as a HEARTSafe Community full 1954 Thu, 29 May 2025 17:00:00 +0000 ylsd4Q5shHb3AYFwqazmg8fMZfj2LHIP buffalo bills,damar hamlin,news,cardiac arrest,wben,mark poloncarz,erie county,cpr,american red cross,american heart association,aeds,dr. gale burstein WBEN Extras buffalo bills,damar hamlin,news,cardiac arrest,wben,mark poloncarz,erie county,cpr,american red cross,american heart association,aeds,dr. gale burstein Erie County celebrates its designation as a HEARTSafe Community Archive of various reports and news events 2024 © 2021 Audacy, Inc. News False https://player.amperwavepodca

This is Derek Miller, Speaking on Business. For over 140 years, the American Red Cross has been delivering vital services — from providing relief and support to those in crisis, to helping individuals prepare for emergencies. Regional CEO of Utah and Nevada, Heidi Ruster, joins us with more. Heidi Ruster: Turn your compassion into action when you volunteer with the American Red Cross. Every day, communities across the country rely on the Red Cross during moments of crisis. From helping those displaced by disasters like fires and floods to supporting lifesaving blood collections, volunteers are at the heart of what we do. With 90 percent of the workforce made up of dedicated volunteers, your efforts can make a lasting impact. Find the role that's right for you and help turn tragedy into hope. We can't do it without you or your organization. Visit RedCross.org/volunteer to get started. You can also support our mission by donating blood. The need is constant, and sometimes critical. Hospital patients — from accident victims to cancer patients and premature babies — count on generous donors like you. One blood donation can save multiple lives. Schedule your appointment today at redcrossblood.org. Together, we can create hope and save lives. Derek Miller: The American Red Cross is creating lasting change by bringing hope and support to communities in need. Their commitment strengthens lives every day — and you can help carry it forward. I'm Derek Miller, with the Salt Lake Chamber, Speaking on Business. Originally aired: 5/28/25

Foster Garrett, the host and Director of Marketing and Events for the Bedford Area Chamber of Commerce, highlights the chamber's role in supporting local businesses and upcoming events, including the Excellence in Business Awards. The Regional Preparedness Manager for the Blue Ridge Chapter of the American Red Cross shares insights on emergency preparedness, emphasizing the importance of being ready for various types of emergencies.

I have had the honor and pleasure to have on the Unstoppable Mindset podcast many healers, thought leaders and practical intelligent people who have generously given their time and insights to all of you and me during this podcast. This episode, our guest Kay Hutchinson adds a great deal to the knowledge base we all have gained from our other guests. Kay's childhood was interesting in that she is half Japanese and half African American. This race mixture provided Kay with many life challenges. However, her parents taught her much about life and understanding so she was able to work through the many times where people treated her in less than an equal manner. Also, Kay being the child of a military father had the opportunity to live in both the United States and Japan. She gained from this experience a great deal of knowledge and experience about life that she willingly shares with us.   After college Kay went into teaching. Just wait until you hear what class she first had to teach, but she persevered. Through all her life she has felt she could assist people in healing others as you will hear. After teaching for a few years, she decided to make energy healing a full-time profession.   Along the way she fell in love and married. Unfortunately, as she will tell us, she discovered that her husband exhibited extreme narcissistic behaviors which eventually lead to a divorce. I leave it to Kay to tell the story.   Kay offers some pretty great insights and lessons we all can use to center ourselves. I very much hope you like what she has to say.       About the Guest:   Imagine the exhaustion, anxiety and utter soul depletion that results when you are in a narcissistic relationship.  Then, imagine being told that you have to go through years of counseling and perhaps even take anti-depressants to begin reclaiming your identity, health, emotional and financial stability, and restore your ability to experience God' joyousness. That's the journey that Kay Hutchinson was on in 2019 when she divorced a narcissist who dragged her through a nearly year-long court battle that almost destroyed her 15-year energy medicine practice where she specialized in helping empathic women make their sensitivities their super powers and left her with relentless shingles outbreaks and collapsed immunity. Through the journey of rebuilding her health and life, she discovered  the one thing that no one was talking about in terms of the recovery from narcissistic abuse…that narcissists damage the five energy tanks that rule our physical, emotional, financial and soul health. Yet no one was showing women how to repair themselves energetically.  But,  without repairing those tanks, women suffer for years with anxiety, depression, exhaustion and a multitude of debilitating physical health challenges. So, Kay created the first medical qi gong recovery program for narcissistic abuse survivors that use 5 minute energy resets to help women effortlessly re-ignite their body, mind and soul potential. For example, Kay's client Donna, whose health was devastated by the stress of a narcissistic marriage, was able to use the resets to reverse stage 5 kidney damage in only 90 days, preventing Donna from going on dialysis and empowering her to reclaim her life. With newfound health, Donna was able to rebuild her realty business and remarry. Her pastor husband and her are now building a successful ministry helping others. Kay is here today to share more inspirational stories like this and delve into the topic of energy vampirism –how we lose energy to toxic people and more importantly—what we can to stop the drain and become unstoppable in reclaiming our body, mind and soul potential when our energy has been decimated by a narcissist.  Ways to connect Kay:   Get Your Mojo Back Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/get-your-mojo-back-quick-resets-to-help-empathic-women/id1699115489 Website: https://www.aikihealing.com/ Free Healing Session: https://www.aikihealing.com/free-healing-for-narcissistic-abuse-priority-list Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aikihealingresets/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AikiHealingResets/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aikihealing   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And as I've explained, the reason we word it that way is that diversity typically doesn't tend to involve disabilities, so inclusion comes first, because we don't allow people to be inclusive unless they're going to make sure that they include disabilities in the conversation, but mostly on the on the unstoppable mindset podcast, we don't deal as much with inclusion or diversity. We get to deal with the unexpected, which is anything that doesn't have to do directly with inclusion or diversity. And so today, in talking to Kay Hutchinson, we have a situation where we are going to talk about unexpected kinds of things, and that's what we're really all about. So Kay Hutchinson is our guest today. She has quite a story about, well, I'm not going to tell you all about it, other than just to say it's going to involve narcissism and it's going to involve a whole bunch of things. Kay is a podcaster. She's a coach, and she does a number of things that I think are really well worth talking about. So without further ado, Kay, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Kay Hutchinson ** 02:40 Oh, Michael, every cell in my body is happy to be here today. I'm so thrilled. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 02:47 good. I just want to make sure all the cells are communicating with you, and they're all saying good things they   Kay Hutchinson ** 02:52 are. Oh, good, absolutely.   Michael Hingson ** 02:56 Sell by cell. Let's, let's do a roll call and see how long that takes. But there we go. Well, I'm really glad that you are here. I'd like to start by kind of learning about the early K, growing up and all that sort of stuff. It's always fun to start that way, sort of like Lewis Carroll, you know, you start at the beginning. But anyway, tell us about the early k, if you would.   Kay Hutchinson ** 03:19 Oh my gosh, I'd love to and Michael, what's exciting to me about that, you know, with your show really focusing on diversity, when I look back to my childhood and I think about the various experiences that I had growing up as a biracial child in the 1960s I am half Japanese and half African American, against the backdrop of Malcolm X and at the time Martin Luther King, and all of this different flow of change was happening as I came into the world, and I was born on the island of Honolulu, Hawaii, feeling very much connected to the vibrancy of that space and those islands and that war of the power of the volcanoes, and I found myself just this really hyper sensitive young child where the world came in at me through all of my five senses, to the point where often I was very overwhelmed, but I was really blessed to have parents that understood this child's going to have a lot coming at her in the world, being what the world is at the time, and coming from different two different cultures that I was really well nourished and really was taught by parents who had embraced meditation and mindfulness as a way of really helping me calm my nervous system when I was little. So I really had this beautiful childhood of being able to bounce between different cultures, the US culture, and also living in Asia, but also coming face to face with things like racism face. Things like messages on a very large societal level that I did not belong anywhere, that I didn't fit, and so often I felt that the world outside of the safe space of my immediate family was a world that was very much overwhelming, and felt as if it was not for me, that it was not very nourishing. So very early on, I had to learn how to kind of begin regulating and begin navigating a world that wasn't necessarily set up for someone like myself. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:35 yeah, it's it's interesting when you and you certainly have an interesting combination of parents, half African American and half Japanese, definitely, two different cultures in a lot of ways, but at the same time, they both recognize the whole concept of mindfulness. They recognize the value of meditation and finding a calming center, I gather is what you're saying.   Kay Hutchinson ** 06:00 Absolutely, my father was one of the soldiers that right after he came into the service in the 1950s that got assigned to Japan and was in one of the first all African American military police units. It had never existed before. And so through his journey there, he actually ended up studying a lot of different forms of martial arts, as well as some of the healing arts like acupressure. So a lot of times people say, Okay, you practice Chinese energy medicine. Oh, that must have come from your mother's side of the heritage. But actually, the first exposure to healing and energy came from my dad, because he taught us martial arts, and he taught us actually some of the flows of energy on how to heal the body, because it's that idea that if you spar with a person, you're responsible for having to heal them if you injure them through the sparring. So that was like my first exposure to really learning the system of energy medicine. And then on my mom's side, it's interesting, she grew up with parents that were Buddhist and Taoist in their philosophy as well. So but at a very young age, in her late teens and early 20s, she was very curious about Christianity, and began attending churches that were of a Christian nature, and that's how she ended up meeting my father. And so this beautiful path of spirituality, learning about energy and understanding how to navigate through a world that wasn't necessarily built for me, was really at core of how we moved as a family, and I think that really formed the basis for developing a certain type of sensitivity to the nuances of differences and making those differences into superpowers. And that's really at the heart of what I do, not only as a healer, but and in my early career as a special education teacher, that really was one of the things that allowed me to recognize the value and power of children and help them to optimize their growth and   Michael Hingson ** 08:11 development. So where did you grow up? Where did you live? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 08:15 I lived in both countries. My father was Army, so we would spend some time in the US, primarily Texas, but we also lived part time in California, and then we would bounce back over, over the pond to Okinawa, Japan. So I had a lot of fond memories of both countries growing up.   Michael Hingson ** 08:33 That's, that's pretty cool. And it's, you know, I find that people who come on this podcast, who have had the joy of having the ability to live or having lived in different kinds of environments, do bring some very interesting perspectives on, on each of those countries and just on, on life in general. And they tend to, I think, have a overall better perspective on what life is all about, because they've seen more of it. And if they take the time to really think about life and all the things that they've seen, they come to value all of that a lot more   Kay Hutchinson ** 09:18 Absolutely it is that process of being able to really delve deep into the subtle uniqueness of life through different lenses. And when you travel, and when you get that opportunity to experience cultures directly, and you also have, you know, a heritage that's very rich on an ethnic level, you know, it really does allow the brain to see the world through many different facets. And I think that that really is what's needed in a world where, when we look at what's happening globally, there's rapid, rapid change. So those of us who have that experience of being able to bounce through all of these different experiences and take multiple facets. Because we end up being able to digest and are able to move through those experiences without becoming so overwhelmed, as so many people are experiencing today, with all of the quantum leap changes that are happening, changes happening so rapidly in our world.   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 Oh, we are, and we're we're exhibiting, of course, in this country, with a new president or a new old President, we're seeing a lot of changes, and I think history is going to, at some point, decide whether those changes or the things that that he's bringing about are good or not. And I think it's you can take a lot of different viewpoints on it. Oh, it's bad because he's doing this and he's doing that, and it's good because he's doing this and he's doing that, but I think ultimately, we're going to see, and I'm I think he's made some choices that are interesting, and we and we'll see how it all goes. But I wish that he had had more of a worldview. I think that's the one thing that I see, that he has not had as much of a true worldview as would probably be valuable,   Kay Hutchinson ** 11:11 absolutely, and that's, excuse me, that's really a concern in leadership, right? And how do we support when someone hasn't had that vastness, right? It then comes to us to really bring to the table the perspectives that hopefully will trickle over into influencing and supporting energetically. And here's that thing, because sometimes we can think, Oh, well, you know, the President's way up here, and what can I as an ordinary person, do to help bring more balance to that leadership. Well, I truly believe that energetically, we're all connected, so that when each of us is embracing this more multifaceted perspective, and we're not just embracing it in our brains, but actually living that, integrating that into how we move. We create a energy that ripples out, that absolutely touches every other person on the planet. And why would it not also touch, you know, people in positions of political leadership. So I believe that when we band together in that way, we do create change.   Michael Hingson ** 12:15 Well, I think we all are connected, and I think that is something that most people haven't recognized, and the more they don't and the more they decide they're an entity in of themselves, and there isn't that kind of interconnectionalism, the more it's going to hurt them more than anything else. But hopefully, over time, people will realize that we are all interrelated. Gandhi once said that interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man, I guess, and woman, we should say. But, you know, he was, he was quoting back in the day, much as much the ideal of man as a self sufficiency. And I think that interdependence is all around us, and interdependence is something that we truly do need to recognize. And embrace, because no one really is an island into themselves,   Kay Hutchinson ** 13:08 and that's true, and this is where the challenge is. When we begin to start looking at energy, vampirism and narcissism, we're dealing with individuals who do not have that capacity to really embrace the fact that they are energetically and importantly connected to other people. They're disconnected from that. So how they're moving through life becomes very centered, focused on only their perspectives and their experiences. And that's where it can be really dangerous, because when we're in the midst of people that are moving like that, we may not realize that we're actually losing energy to them. And so it's really important to take a look more than ever, who is in your world? Are you surrounded by people that have an understanding of the value of connecting in with one another and truly having a fair exchange of energy. Or are you amid people that may be pulling energy from you in a one sided way because they have wounds that are preventing them from really being full in their own perspectives and in their own energy fields.   Michael Hingson ** 14:24 Well, and when you mentioned people who don't have the capacity, I wonder if it's true that they don't have the capacity, or they've chosen to reject it.   Kay Hutchinson ** 14:35 Well, I think that's the difference, right there. Michael, when they've chosen to reject it. That's not pathological in terms of the clinical definition of narcissism, that could apply to anyone that has simply made that choice. But part of the clinical definition of narcissism is it is a person who doesn't have the choice they're not capable because of early trauma in their life. During the period of time when they were attaching and beginning energetically to form bonds with other people, as well as psychologically and cognitively, disruption happened or is no longer a choice for them. They're no longer able to say, I want to be connected or not connected. There is a disruption on a trauma level that prevents them from being connected.   Michael Hingson ** 15:21 Is there a cure for that? Though, can people reverse that process?   Kay Hutchinson ** 15:26 So as far as I know, in Searching the Literature and working with colleagues, and I also have background in psychotherapy too, there is not, quote, unquote, a cure for that, but the damage is fairly deep. It's a matter of helping those individuals to manage the facets of their narcissism to minimize the damage. But are they ever disconnected from the intimacy that we have energetically with other human beings that tends to still be pervasive, even with long term therapy, psychotherapy, yeah, well,   Michael Hingson ** 16:03 you, I know, and we'll get to it. Have had some direct exposure and involvement with narcissism, but let's go back a little bit talking about you. Where did you go to college? I assume you did go to college.   Kay Hutchinson ** 16:17 Yeah, absolutely. I went to the University of Texas, at Austin, okay. And then later, for graduate school, I went to the California Institute of integral studies for counseling, psychotherapy, but also longevity Institute for all the energy medicine training. And I loved, I loved that they were the only program at the time in energy medicine, medical Qigong. They had a relationship with the head of the school. Was the head of Stanford's Integrative Medicine Department, and they were doing lots of things with looking at how energy healing impacts cancer and also how it affects the role of fertility. There was a famous Stanford IVF program, and what they were looking at was the idea that when women partook of Qigong and mindfulness techniques, they were able to successfully get pregnant at a higher level than if they did not. So it was a school that really embraced not only the science of energy, but also the spirituality of it as well. How do we develop and grow as beings that are souls in the world   Michael Hingson ** 17:27 and dealing with the practical application of it? Absolutely,   Kay Hutchinson ** 17:30 absolutely. So I often say that it was the place where shamanism met hardcore science and together, and that's kind of a little bit of what people experience, Michael, when they work with me, because I'm one of the few holistic practitioners that says, come in the door and bring me your actual medical data. I want to see the scans. I want to see your blood work data before we ever do an herbal formula, before I ever prescribe a set of medical Qigong resets. I really kind of want to see what we're looking at and what's happening with you on a quantifiable level, so that we can measure changes as we go along and process a few Sure   Michael Hingson ** 18:08 well. So you mentioned earlier Special Education song. What did you do after college?   Kay Hutchinson ** 18:14 So, in college, you know, I was studying cognitive science as well as special education. I was fascinated by how people learn, and so my career began as a special education teacher. The first assignment I had, though as a teacher, was teaching third grade math because I began working for a district mid season, and they didn't have a lot of different openings, and they said, well, Kay, we would love to have you in the school, but the special ed position will not be available till later. Would you come aboard teaching math? Now, little did anyone know, Michael, that I was actually math phobic. I was that kid that when I had to take math and calculus and things in college, had my head in my lap. Oh, I can't do this. This is just not my thing. And so to be asked to teach third grade, it was horrifying to me on one level, but then I said, you know, everything happens for a reason to start my teaching career, and the thing that I'm most fearful of could be a really good learning opportunity for me. What   Michael Hingson ** 19:14 did you learn from that? Oh my gosh, I learned that   Kay Hutchinson ** 19:17 the most important thing is creativity, because I had to say, okay, where, where am I starting? These kids were behind. They were third graders. They were behind in learning multiplication. And so I said, You know what? There's a method to teach multiplication with cubes and blocks and manipulatives that actually leads them to being able to do algebra. So I'm going to be creative and use these different tools to not only teach basic multiplication, but my goal for them is, when they leave me, they will have the basis for being able to do simple algebra problems in third grade. And the fact, Michael, that these kids, when we talk about diversity, inclusion, we. In a community where they were drive by shootings were in a community where other teachers did not believe that just because these children were children of color, that they did not have the same abilities and capabilities and potential to be able to go on to school at Harvard or Yale. It made me even more determined to say, I'm going to teach them a really higher level skill that everybody else will say is beyond their developmental level to prove that these children are just as capable as anybody else. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 20:31 and, and the reality is, they are. They have the capability, and it is something that just has to be encouraged. I know that when I was doing my student teaching. I was getting a master's degree in physics, so I did a little bit with math now and then, needless to say, and I was in the class one day, I was teaching eighth graders. I'm sorry, I was actually teaching high school freshman, but there was an eighth grader in the class, and he asked a question. It wasn't, I don't even remember what the question was, but it wasn't a hard question. But for some reason, I blanked out and didn't know what the answer was. But what I said to him was, I don't know the answer. I should, but I don't. I'm going to look it up and I'll come back tomorrow and tell you what the answer is. Is that okay? And he said, Yeah. When the class was over, my master teacher, who was the football coach, also came up, and he said, that was the most wonderful thing you could do. He said, kids will always know it if you're blowing smoke, if you're honest with them, and if you tell them the truth, you're going to gain a lot more respect. He said, That was the best thing that you could have possibly done with Marty's question. Well, the next day, I came back in with the answer. I went and looked it up, and it was as easy as it should have been, and I should have known. But I came in and I and when the class was all seated, I said, All right, Marty, I got the answer, and he said, so do i Mr. Hinkson? I said, well, then come up here and write it on the board. One of the things that I did not being a good writer, being blind. I just have never learned to have that great of handwriting. I would always have a student write on the board. And everyone competed for that job every day. So that day Marty got to do the job, Kenny came up and described it and said the answer. And I said, that's the same answer I got. And does everybody understand it? But it was so great to be able to interact with him. And it all started with being honest. And I think that's one of the best life lessons I ever learned, not only from being a student teacher, but just in general, that people know it when you're not being dishonest, they can sense it, whether they can articulate it, whether they know it consciously, they'll at least know it subconsciously. If you're not being honest and direct with them, and so it's important if you're going to truly earn trust, to have an honest relationship and and as I, as I put it, don't blow smoke at people.   Kay Hutchinson ** 23:12 That's so true. I mean authenticity as an energy is so very transformative, you know. And I love your story, Michael, because it reminds me too. When I was teaching, you know, I too, was honest with my kids. I just said, you guys feel scared of these problems that we have on our page. Your teacher was scared this morning and had her head in her lap crying like, how am I going to teach this to you? All you know, when they when we can be human with each other. When we are able to really just say what is real and in our hearts, it completely transforms the journey, because suddenly we recognize that we're all in the same space, and then we can lock arms to really move through it together. But if the energy is not even, there's not a fairness there, and part of the fairness is transparency, then it creates a completely different flow. It isn't necessarily transformative, and it can create obstacles and blocks versus being that wonderful thing where your student got to bloom, you got to bloom, and I'm sure the entire class benefited from the authenticity of both of you bouncing off of each other saying, this is the problem that I found, and this is Mike says, here's how I solved it. And together, you guys were able to really get that information across, I'm sure, in a way, that got everybody inspired to think about, how can they come about solving the problems too   Michael Hingson ** 24:35 well, something like 15 years later, we were at the Orange County Fair in July, and this guy with a deep voice comes up to me and he says, Hey, Mr. Hinkson, do you know recognize my voice? Well, there was no way. He says, I'm Marty, the guy from your algebra class 15 years later. And you know it was, it was really cool, yeah, and it was, it was so. To have that opportunity to, you know, to talk with him again. And, you know, we both, of course, had that, that same memory. But it's, it is so true in general, that honesty and connectionalism are so important, it's all about building trust. In my new book, live like a guide dog. We talk a lot about trust as one of the things that you can use to help learn to control fear, and specifically I talk about in the book lessons I've learned from all of my dogs, my guide dogs, and so on. And one of the lessons that we talk about is that dogs may very well, love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally, and you do still have to earn their trust. They may love you, but they won't necessarily trust you until they get to know you. And so with every guide dog, I have to start all over and develop a new relationship and learn their quirks. But the reality is they're learning mind quirks as well, and what we do is we figure out how to interact and work together, and when we are both open to trust, and that's the other part of it, I have to be as much open to trust as the dog, because the way a previous guide dog worked and the things that a previous guide dog did don't necessarily apply with a new dog, and so it's important to really be open to developing that trusting relationship, but it takes a while to develop, but when the relationship develops, it is second to none, and and I wish it were more true with people, but we're always worried about so many things, and we think about what's this person's hidden agenda? We tend not to be open to trust. And the reality is, we can be just as much open to trust as we ever would need to be. That doesn't mean that we're always going to trust, because the other person has to earn our trust too, but we can be open to it absolutely.   Kay Hutchinson ** 27:01 And you know, animals are such an amazing teacher to that process of developing trust. I love what you said that they love unconditionally, but that not necessarily trust unconditionally. To me that is such balance, because I often notice in my work, there's a tendency, especially with empathic women, to over trust, to trust too soon, to not require that others earn that trust. And so I think it's really an important piece to find that balance in being able and being open to trust, but not rushing the process to the point where we lose our boundaries in that and when you interact with animals, you really learn how to do that. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 27:47 why do you think so many women are too eager to trust and do trust too quickly?   Kay Hutchinson ** 27:55 I think in the population of women that I work with in my groups, that they refer to themselves often as women empaths or empathic women. I think some of that can come from the over care taking syndrome that some of them may be exhibiting as a way of working through old wounds, that idea that it's my job to kind of just be this wide open radar and take care of others and be open, and they don't understand that it is absolutely part of self care to regulate that openness, to have a filter and to be able to give that piece of time to really see who people are, because narcissists oftentimes are wearing a facade. May not necessarily see who they are in the early stages of an engagement. So by being open, but still having boundaries, which kind of when your boundaries are respected over time, I think that's where trust really blooms. And by taking that time, then we are able to really make sure that we're in relationship with people where there is a fair exchange of trust, because that's part of the fair energy exchange, as I often say, is trust has to go both ways, and in a narcissistic relationship, it's usually just one way. It's the person you know who's non narcissistic, trusting fully and the narcissist withholding trust. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 29:17 and you think that men are much more not open to the whole concept of trust, than than women? Not   Kay Hutchinson ** 29:29 at all. I think men are beautiful in their heart spaces, just as open too. So I see men in paths exactly in that same space as well, men that are natural givers who want to connect. They can often also get in that space of trusting too soon. So when my practicing encompassed working with both men and women, that would be something that I would often kind of give guidance to in the dating process of Give it time. And allow somebody to earn that beautiful jewel of trust that is your heart, and allow yourself to also be discovered by the other person as someone who's trustworthy. Give it the space, because I've had beautiful men that were clients that absolutely got their hearts trampled, and also got their energy siphoned by energy vampires, just because they jumped in, just so wholeheartedly, so soon, so having that balance being aware of the pacing of a relationship, and then again, going back to animals, because that was part of the thing that I did. Michael straight out of energy school, I worked with animals first and human second. And I think that dance that we do with animals is really can be a framework or a model for how to move with humans too, because animals don't rush it. You know, they're going to take their time and trusting you. They're going to check you out and notice what your Kirks are and notice how you respond to them. It's not something to give right away. And so when you do earn the trust of an animal, whether it's a cat or dog or in my case, I also worked with wild animals, it is really such a treasure, and it's cherished when it happens.   Michael Hingson ** 31:15 Yeah, but then even wild animals are open to trust there. There are a lot of other things that you have to work through, but still, the the the opportunity to develop a trusting relationship is certainly there. Now I think that cats are more cautious than dogs about a lot of things, but they're but they're open to trust. I know that that stitch my cat does trust me, but she is much more cautious and tends to react to noises and other things a lot more than Alamo the guide dog does. So they're there. There are issues, but there's a lot of love there, and there is a lot of trust, and that is as it should be. But again, I've had to earn that trust, which is the real important part about it. Yeah, that's definitely   Kay Hutchinson ** 32:07 and, you know, you speak about, like, the differences of dogs and cats too. There's a difference in the neurological sensitivity, of course, with dogs too, it depends on the breed. You know, like, for example, chihuahuas can be very neurologically sensitive, so they react to many things, versus, say, like Labradors or other larger breeds of dogs, shepherds and so forth, they tend to have a more steady neurological response to the world. So they make wonderful emotional support and other helper roles in our lives. But cats, they tend to, across the board, be pretty high strung neurologically, which means that's why they would be a little bit more skittish about why   Michael Hingson ** 32:47 they're cats. Yeah, absolutely, it works. Well, how long? How long did you teach?   Kay Hutchinson ** 32:55 Well, I taught in public school. I think it was three years. I'm still a teacher. I never I just left the forum from a public school into I became a writer for textbook publishers. So I created Teacher Guides. There was a lot of teaching in that. And then I also ran the only medical Qigong professional certification certification program that is a one on one apprenticeship program, and I ran that program up until the pandemic, from 2008 or nine until the pandemic, before I slowly shifted into just this really super niche of working with women on the journey of recovering from narcissistic abuse, and really putting my full energy into that, I still get calls for people who want to certify with me, and so I'm I'm still thinking about reopening the school, but it's been such a pleasure going down this road and journey of developing virtual journeys for women online and watching them bloom and seeing the transformation. So I always say that I'm ever the teacher. I never really left the profession. Everything that I do involves education and really helping people to optimize the way they learn as souls and as whole beings in the world   Michael Hingson ** 34:17 well, and I think in reality, and I wish more people understood it. But I think we're all teachers, and I know one of the things that I learned when I first was put in a position where I had to start selling professionally, I took a Dale Carnegie sales course, and one of the things that they talked about in that course was sales people. The best sales people are counselors, they guide, they teach, because you'll get a better understanding of your prospects and your customers, but that's what you really should be doing. And again, there's a whole level of honesty that goes with that. But the reality is, I think that all of us teach. I know a lot of. Blind People say I don't I'm blind. I am the way I am. I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to have to educate people. Well, the reality is, we all do that in one way or another. We're all teaching someone, or bunches of someone's from time to time. And the reality is, teaching is so fun,   Kay Hutchinson ** 35:21 it is, and I love that you said that, because we're always teaching people how to engage ourselves just on that level alone, or engage with ourselves. Yes, absolutely. And when we know that and we bring joyousness to the process, right, it can be so transformative, because when we're enjoying that process, we're going to go into those uncomfortable areas, right that may be challenging or difficult, and often engaging with other people, you come up with new facets and perspectives that you otherwise would not have. So I, I love, I love the dance of learning and also in sharing too.   Michael Hingson ** 36:06 My wife was a teacher for 10 years, and always loved it when she she did do special ed and so on. She was in a wheelchair her whole life, so she was sort of bent that way, but she loved teaching third grade. She thought that third grade was the best, because when you start to get older than that, kids get more set in their ways, and when they're younger than that, they're they're just not there. Yet. She loved third grade, so I'm glad you started with third grade math.   Kay Hutchinson ** 36:35 Third grade was really sweet. I went from there to early childhood so, and then later I was tutoring at the university level, I had an opportunity to work as a tutor to actually doctoral foreign students who needed help with writing skills and things like that. So I really have enjoyed that full spectrum, just as I enjoy working with clients that come from vast differences in their backgrounds, and taking the journey into to learning more about holistic ways and moving so a lot of fun. Oh,   Michael Hingson ** 37:09 it is, you know, and I think life in general is a lot of fun if we would just approach things the right way and not let everything upset us, we we have a much better life in our own world,   Kay Hutchinson ** 37:21 definitely, absolutely. Well, you,   Michael Hingson ** 37:25 you've talked a lot about this whole idea of narcissism and so on, and I know you've had involvement in your life with that. You want to talk about some of that and tell us how you really got into really doing a lot with it, and what motivates you and so on. Or how much of that do you want to talk about? Oh,   Kay Hutchinson ** 37:42 definitely. Well, you know, I would have to go all the way back to, you know, experiences with racism that I experienced as a narcissism. I'm not saying that every person who has racist thoughts or beliefs or or patterns are narcissists, but many narcissists are racist, and so I think the early exposure to what I would call someone that is an energy vampire bent on manipulating or creating a flow that isn't a fair exchange of energy happened to me at a very young age. So I gained a lot of insight into how do you move through that? So it made sense that when I was beginning my career as an energy healer, as a practitioner, and I started noticing the different physical and emotional issues people would come in the door with, they'd come in with, say, like autoimmune issues, thyroid issues, cancer and different things like that. But when we began to really look at the root of all of those conditions, we began to realize that there was a pattern of having been in some sort of prolonged engagement with another person, where there was not a fair energy exchange. And that's when I began to realize, oh, all of my clients have had experiences with narcissism and of having had their energy siphoned in a way that was not beneficial for the entire body, mind and soul, and so in creating these resets for clients for nearly, I think it was about 15 years I was into that career. I never realized, because I'd never encountered it directly in a personal relationship. What it was like to be in a relationship with a covert narcissist, and I fell in love with a person who was very, very clever as far as really hiding those aspects of his personality. And I've come to understand that the reason that I walked that journey was so that I could have first hand lived experience. I knew what overt narcissism was about, but I had never really experienced the covert variety that hidden, that more subtle type. And by being in this marriage and relationship with a person that was exactly that, it gave me a lot of insight. To the subtle ways that we lose energy to people, and what the impact is on that physical level. For me, it left my immunity completely tanked, and I was having reoccurring shingles all over my face. I was having high anxiety, which was not a part of my emotional walk. Previously, I was also very fatigued. I had resolved many years prior to that severe fibromyalgia, and suddenly that came out of remission, and I was in constant pain every day. So you know, in seeing how dramatically my own health changed, it also changed the way that I was showing up on a business level, how available I was on an energy level, to really serve clients. And it also showed up in terms of my spiritual path, where I slowly began to get disconnected from source and not rely on that as my critical way of moving through life, where previously I have so it was a just a journey of really, truly recognizing what it feels like across every level imaginable to get decimated by the person that You love because they are wounded and are narcissistic.   Michael Hingson ** 41:22 What finally happened that made you realize what was occurring and caused you to decide to deal with the whole issue.   Kay Hutchinson ** 41:31 Well, you know, it wasn't just one thing Michael, because if he was a subtle narcissist, my understandings of what was happening came about gradually. But the thing that really stood out in my mind, that made me say, You know what, I absolutely need to get out of this relationship was when I went to caretake an aunt that had stage five stomach cancer, and I had previously was in the role of caretaking his mom, when she had metastatic blood level cancer. It was a form of leukemia, and also his aunt, who had a form of bone cancer. So when his family members were ill, I was there. I dropped everything, not only just as a healer, but as a family member, as someone who loved these Dear ladies, was by their sides and really helped them to transition. But when it came time for me to be at the side of my relative, my husband was completely lacking in empathy, and I'd spend the entire day with her, just helping her to quell nausea, get more comfortable, feel more peaceful. I completely had not eaten the whole day because my whole attention was on her and also on my father. Her brother, wanted to make sure that my dad was okay in being with her, because he was also approaching soon the final days of his life. He had a lot of weakness going on and things. And I returned home, and I was just exhausted, and I said, Honey, let's go out for dinner, and let's go out and do something kind of fun, because that's what I am, and I give a lot on that heavy level, I like to shift over to something light. And I was met with, I don't want to go anywhere. Why do you always want to go out to dinner, and he just started kind of yelling at me, and I realized, oh, wow, just even on a pure nourishment level, I need food because I haven't eaten all day. This is somehow becoming a challenge. And I ended up going out to dinner by myself at a time when I was really super vulnerable about ready to lose my last living aunt in the States, and thinking, what am I doing in a relationship where merely asking to be fed, not even emotionally, is a challenge? And I said, Ah, he can't even literally feed me. And I knew there was no fixing that. Even though we had gone through counseling, it's like, no, no, this is just not going to continue. I have to leave, right? So that was a critical moment in my life of just and that's what I would say to everybody in the audience. Ask yourself, are you being felt fed well? Are you being well nourished by the person that you're in that relationship with? Because narcissists are not capable of nourishing   Michael Hingson ** 44:29 you. Yeah. So what happened? I mean, you made you, you realize what was occurring. What did you do? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 44:35 at that point, we had been in counseling, so I got on the phone with our counselor, and I said, I really need your safe space the next time we come in, because I need to have a conversation about divorcing, and I really need to make sure that I'm moving through this safely and with the proper support around me. And that's really, really important, because if your audience. Are in relationships with narcissists who have never been abusive, they need to understand that there's a high likelihood of them becoming physically abusive when they decide to leave. Mm, hmm. And so it's really important to make sure that that conversation is happening in a safe space and that there's enough support around to keep violence from escalating, even if you've never seen that person in that more physically abusive space, it needs to be considered.   Michael Hingson ** 45:33 So you, you talk to your counselor about that, and then you, you, I assume, had a session where you, you, you dealt with some of those issues, absolutely,   Kay Hutchinson ** 45:44 with the safety of of the counselor there, we were able to map out a strategy. But Silly me, Michael, I thought, well, you know, we have an agreement that we need to go our separate ways. We're two adults. We can do this peacefully. It's not complicated. We lived in the state of Texas. It's not hard to do. And so we said we'll just go to a mediator, and everything will be fine. They'll do up the paperwork, legally, we'll sign we'll go our different ways. Wish each other well, take what we each learn from this and move on with our lives. So it seemed a simple thing, but at the very last moment when we were scheduled to see the mediator, mediator attorney gets a call from a lawyer that I didn't know he even had saying, oh my, my client can't come into this mediation without me being present, because he's represented. And it was a bulldog attorney that was known for just rolling over the other person. And I went, ah, and so I got dragged to nearly a year and a half legal battle that really didn't need to be there, but I was very blessed in connecting with an attorney who specialized in helping people divorce from narcissist, and she was able to say to me, Kay, I know you have important healing to do for yourself, but also for the clients that you serve, let me take this over and you go, do you, and I'll just ting you whenever you need to sign something. And she just completely took it over for me so that I could move on with my life and decide, you know, what did I want to create in the new phase of my life? But not everybody has that ability to kind of really lock arms with attorneys that are highly skilled in dealing with narcissists, because the narcissist will weaponize the legal system if they're allowed to do that, and it can drive up costs. It can be exhausting on many different levels. So it's really important, if you can't afford to have an attorney that has that experience, there are many blogs and many places where you can connect to get that support, even if you're working with an attorney who is less experienced, right? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 47:55 but eventually you you were able to to deal with it, and I'm sure that it was incredibly traumatic. How long ago did all this occur?   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:06 Oh, this was occurring. 2018 2019 Okay,   Michael Hingson ** 48:10 so it's not been all that been six years. Yeah, six years,   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:15 absolutely. And you know, I often say that when you're going through an experience, after having been around someone that second guessed your reality, that we will tend to second guess our own reality too. And so one of the things I think that really helped me on a mindset level, was continuing to ask myself, well, what do I really feel? What do I really think? Exactly   Michael Hingson ** 48:40 right, exactly right. Yeah,   Kay Hutchinson ** 48:43 and reconnecting with that because I had been separated or disconnected from things that were really vital and important to me, because he had said that they were not important, or perhaps I was overreacting or being too sensitive that I began to discount those things within myself. So it's really this journey of really allowing myself to truly come back into valuing all of the things that were really important to me   Michael Hingson ** 49:10 to you. Yes, what you know narcissism is an interesting subject. What is maybe one thing that so not Well, let me go back. Narcissism certainly deals a lot with emotional issues, and there can be physical issues and so on. But what's maybe the one thing that you've seen in your work that most people wouldn't associate with a narcissistic person or narcissistic behavior,   Kay Hutchinson ** 49:41 I think the one thing that people don't really put enough of a spotlight on is that they are energy vampires. They create an energetic disruption across the five areas of ourselves that are absolutely critical for our physical health. For. For our emotional stability and our soul growth. So we're talking body, mind and soul disruption. You know, often times the talk is on the psychological or the emotional disruptions, or if there's a physical abuse component, it might be on that level. But it's really very rare that we are really associating that idea of energy, vampirism, of energy, of being a predator on an energetic level, with narcissists and so that is really core. Because until we start to heal the energetic damage that has occurred, we end up staying in a state of struggling for years with emotions that may be all over the place. I see felt it in myself. I see it in my clients, anxiety, depression, that feeling of being on an emotion, emotional roller coaster, and then all of the physical health issues that go along with it, whether someone experienced physical abuse or not, and then that soul disconnect. You know, energetically, we have to have, I often say, Energy Tanks. We need to have all five of our energy tanks full in order to have a relationship with source that is evolving that allows us to transform and elevate ourselves on that spiritual level. And so if we're damaged across our five Energy Tanks, we will find it difficult to really connect in with the power that is higher than ourselves. Tell me a little more   Michael Hingson ** 51:27 about this concept of the five Energy Tanks, if you would. Absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 51:31 that's my own wording, but really it's the language of Chinese energy medicine that's over 2000 years old, built on the idea of the five elements, whether you're an acupuncturist, an acupressurist, whether you are a martial artist, everything flows along the five elements, in terms of Chinese energy, medicine and the five elements are a system that helps to explain the relationship between our emotions, the different states of our emotions, our physical selves, and the way that we grow in souls. So I often say, you know that there's five tanks. John Gray made that comparison back I think it was in the 80s when he wrote about the different tanks that people need to have filled in their lives, like relationship tanks and the self care tank and all of these different things. It's kind of similar to that idea, but each one of these areas has a very critical role in our development. So like, say, the water element, this is essence, and then DNA level. So often times when we've been in traumatic situations, we may start to see some DNA level disruptions, and often that will appear as cellular abnormalities. Cancer would be a very good example of that, that when we're under immense stress, on a trauma level, the water element, which rules our DNA, on an element level becomes disrupted. So I see that a lot in my practice, where women have metastatic breast cancer and other forms of cancer as a result of the long term chronic stress of being in a narcissistic relationship, or their nervous systems, like my nervous system was completely damaged and I was hyper vigilant all the time. Had insomnia, had difficulty processing information. My natural dyslexia and learning disabilities that I came into the world with became exacerbated when I was in that narcissistic relationship. That's the wood energy tank that rules our nervous systems. So there's a take for each aspect of ourselves that gets impacted by the experience of being in a relationship where the energy exchange is not mutual and fair.   Michael Hingson ** 53:50 When you're talking about this whole concept of energy vampires and and the whole issue of having to face or deal with a narcissist. One of the things that seems to me happens is that your ability to have creative thinking and to be creative in your thinking goes down, and the result is that you, you you're again, you're you're sucked into something that you really shouldn't be sucked into, but you've lost some of the clearer thinking that you would normally have. How do you deal with that, and how do you get that back absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 54:34 but when we start to look again at the elements and how that shows up for creativity, our metal element has to do with our ability to feel safe and shielded. We can't be creative and stretch into areas that are unknown if we're not feeling safe. So beginning to do resets, where we begin to visualize the shielding around ourselves being restored, can be very helpful to begin to settle that. Sense of, oh, I'm not safe. And so there's specific breath work and energy resets that we do to really help to get that foundation of safety before we even begin to restore other aspects that affect creativity. The next thing that we have to do, Michael is really, once we're feeling safe, we need to be able to center ourselves, because if our thoughts are scattered all over the place, our energy is all over the place, it's hard to get centered, to bring the focus that is also a part of being creative. So the earth element is what allows us to begin to ground and calm ourselves, begin to focus and collect all of these different thoughts that we may be having and feeling so that we can harness them in a creative way to go forward. Similarly, we have to calm our nervous system so that our brains are able to create the rhythms on a brain wave frequency level that is conducive to creativity again, if our brain waves, if we were to look at an EEG right before hitting a moment of creativity, there might be a lot of bouncing activity going on, and it's only when that activity begins to settle and calm that we then are able to implement and bring forth something that is creative. So being able to regulate that becomes very important, as well as getting into the space of reconnecting with a fire element, which is joy. Because I often say creativity is just the expression of joy, right when we are in that joyous state, it's amazing how many different ways our brains can move to come up with something that is unusual, innovative out of the box. And so the restoration of the fire element, take passion, joy, all of that feeds in to the creative cycle. And then last on that water element, that essence level, right? Creativity comes from a deep well that we have as humans. When we're able to tap into that, we not only tap into a level of creativity that is not only unique to us as individuals, but we tap into the collective of the human creativity and consciousness, and so that allows us to ignite what we're doing in many creative ways. And this is why, as women heal these areas. Michael, they go out and do incredible things. They're able to go out and start new businesses. They start new careers at the age of 50 in their passion areas that they never thought that they would have done. They're able to take trips and go and pursue things that once they were fearful of, but now they are excited to open up themselves, up to trying new things in new ways. And so, you know, the restoration of creativity is very much a part of core of recovering from narcissistic abuse, because that's the one area that most people don't think about too going back to your earlier question, that truly gets impacted when we go through a narcissistic relationship, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 58:13 well, you have obviously been through a whole lot. What allowed you, or how were you able to keep I guess, what we would call an unstoppable mindset, through all of the things that that you went through, what, what drove you, if you will, to be able to succeed. I   Kay Hutchinson ** 58:33 think it's exactly what we've been talking about, having the practices that allowed me to refuel those five takes allow the highest level of energy to kind of flow through my brain, to keep that mindset in that positive area, to keep me motivated and passionate when you're working energetically, to restore yourself the mind comes along. It's not the thing you know. A lot of people say, Well, you got to change your mindset first, and I believe there's value in that. But guess what? When you change your energy first, there is no possibility of the mind flowing into negative spaces to hold you back, because your energy is creating this vibration that then fuels the thoughts that keeps you moving, and that's really the life that I've led. And when I find in moments that I may be falling into a place that is challenged on that mental thought level, I do my energetic practices, and boom, immediately, there's a shift from either a sad state to a state of feeling resilient, from a fearful state to being brave and courageous, to say, Hey, I just jump into this deep end of the pool because that's what I'm afraid of, and that's what I need to do, and trusting going back to trust that there's going to be tremendous growth and benefit. So. The more it's not that hard,   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:01 no. But the other part of it is, the more of that that you do, the more you do the introspection, the more you analyze yourself, you think about what we're talking about here, the more that you actually go through the process, in a sense, the more you do, the easier it becomes, or the more efficient you are at doing it. And the result of that is that you become better at it, and so you're able to gain that control. It's it. The whole issue of resilience is is something to practice, but, but it is something that you have to work at I made a video recently where I talked about emergency preparedness, and I said most all of us don't prepare for emergencies, because what we don't do is we don't prepare our minds. Oh, we can create a plan so that there's a fire, we can grab a go bag or whatever. But how do we really prepare our minds? And that is something that we need to do a lot more of than we do today.   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:01:03 Absolutely. And the idea, Michael, that it doesn't take like long stretches of meditation, people have that myth in their minds to prepare yourself and be mindful when there are circumstances unfolding that maybe crisis by taking bite sized moments, I teach five minute resets to reset the brain and reset the mind, and you do enough of those over time, then when crisis hits, you have a whole well of cultivation to draw from and that that really ends up carrying you through whatever that crisis is. And I love that it's not enough just to prepare our minds cognitively for things, we must prepare ourselves from that deeper space energetically, so that when we're in the middle of things, we're not pulled so far off of our center that we forget that beautiful plan that we made,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:57 right, exactly right. And the reality is, it all does work together. Well, what's the one thing? Maybe that would surprise people if they knew it about you? Oh, gosh, how's that for a good question.   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:02:14 I think the one thing that that most people don't realize about me is that I am a martial artist, because most people think of me as just that healer that brings that comfort in and that level of soothing that I'm known for, and most people don't realize that there's a really strong warrior inside of K and I think we need to be able to embrace the warrior within ourselves and marry that to our peaceful, meditative selves. That the joining of both of them, I think, is really what makes me one of the strongest beings on this planet,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:55 and that is as good as it gets. So have you written any books? So   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:03:02 my book, the five elements healing, a practical guide for reclaiming your essential power, is currently being reworked. So you will not find it on Amazon at this time, but watch for it in a few months, because we're completely redoing that. And then also, I've contributed to redesign your nine to five advice and strategies from 50 of the world's most ambitious business owners and entrepreneurs. It was compiled by Bridget McGowan, and that one you can find on Amazon, and I was so blessed to create the chapter on how to create a soul based business, one that really allows you to develop what Michael and I are talking about, the unstoppable mindset as a critical way of moving through what you put out into the world. As a business owner,   Michael Hingson ** 1:03:51 well, I definitely want to hear about the new book when it nor the reworked book when it comes out. So you have to let us know. Oh, absolutely. How do people reach out and get in touch with you, if they'd like to to learn from you, use your services and so on. How does that work?   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:04:07 Absolutely on your show notes, people can get in touch with me through the website that's listed in the link, and they can find out about the latest healing journeys, which I'm so excited Michael, because we have a live, free healing session coming up on February the ninth, at noon, Central Standard Time. I do these regularly to allow people that opportunity to begin to experience healing, the five Energy Tanks that narcissist destroying through a soothing distance healing to see if they are ready to take other journeys with me. So that's probably the best way, is to visit the website. And I know it's right here   Michael Hingson ** 1:04:48 on your show. It is in the notes, but go ahead and say the website, if you would absolutely   Kay Hutchinson ** 1:04:52 and the website is a, I K I healing.com Easy to remember, A, I K I healing.com   Michael Hingson ** 1:05:00 Um,

Sharon Watson with the American Red Cross joins Megan Lynch to provide an update after the storms that came through just over a week ago.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, Rewatching The Magic will be going on hiatus for the foreseeable future. We will attempt to release shorts/reels and episodes on a sporadic basis until we are able to bring the show back full time. Thank you to all of our listeners for joining us on our podcast journey so far. We will return. We just don't know when. Keep subscribed to our podcast feed and our social media outlets for future updates. Music: Channel Intro 5 by Sascha Ende Link: https://filmmusic.io/en/song/12411-channel-intro-5 All our social media links:  https://linktr.ee/rewatchingthemagic If you're able, please give blood. The American Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/ Immigrant Legal Resource Center: http://www.ilrc.org Trans Life: http:/www.translife.org Reproductive rights are human rights. LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.

I have had the pleasure of conversing with many people on Unstoppable Mindset who clearly are unstoppable by any standard. However, few measure up to the standard set by our guest this time, Katrin J. Yuan. Katrin grew up in Switzerland where, at an early age, she developed a deep curiosity for technology and, in fact, life in general. Katrin has a Masters degree in Business Administration and studies in IT and finance.   As you will see by reading her biography, Katrin speaks six languages. She also has accomplished many feats in the business world including being the founder and CEO of the Swiss Future Institute.   Our conversation ranges far and wide with many insights from Katrin about how we all should live life and learn to be better than we are. For example, I asked her questions such as “what is the worst piece of advice you ever have received?”. Answer, “stay as you are, don't grow”. There are several more such questions we discuss. I think you will find our conversation satisfying and well worth your time.   As a final note, this episode is being released around the same time Katrin's latest book is being published. I am anxious to hear what you think about our conversation and Katrin's new book.       About the Guest:   Katrin J. Yuan Boardmember | CEO Swiss Future Institute | Chair AI Future Council Katrin J. Yuan is an award-winning executive with a background in technology and transformation. With a Master of Business Administration and studies in IT and finance, Katrin is fluent in six languages. She is a six-time Board Member, Chair of the AI Future Council, lectures at three universities, and serves as a Jury Member for ETH and Digital Shapers. With a background of leading eight divisions in the top management, Katrin is an influential executive, investor, speaker and a "Young Global Leader" at the St. Gallen Symposium. Her expertise extends to AI, future megatrends, enforcing AI and a diverse data-driven approach.  Ways to connect Katrin:   Swiss Future Institute https://www.linkedin.com/company/swiss-future-institute LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrin-j-yuan/ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/katrinjyuan/ Youtube https://www.youtube.com/@katrinjyuan   Speaker Topics: AI Future Tech Trends | Boards | NextGen Languages: EN | DE | FR | Mandarin | Shanghainese | Turkish | Latinum Menu card overview https://www.futureinstitute.ch   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 00:15 Hi. I'm Michael Hinkson, Chief vision Officer for accessibe and the author of the number one New York Times best selling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast. As we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion, unacceptance and our resistance to change, we will discover the idea that no matter the situation or the people we encounter, our own fears and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The Unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessibe. THAT'S A, C, C, E, S, S, I, capital, B, E, visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities and to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025 glad you dropped by. We're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone. Welcome to another edition of unstoppable mindset. Our podcast has been doing really well. We've been having a lot of fun with it ever since August of 2021 and I really thank you all for listening and for being part of our family. And as I always tell people, if you know of anyone who you think ought to be a guest, let us know, and we'll get to that later on. Today, our guest is from Switzerland, Katrin J Yuan. And Katrin is a person who, among other things, is the CEO of the Swiss future Institute, and I'm going to leave it to her to tell us about that when we get to it. She is a executive. She's an executive with a with a pretty deep background, and again, I don't want to give anything away. I want her to be able to talk about all that, so we'll get to it. But Katrin, I want to thank you for being here and for finding us and for coming on unstoppable mindset.   Katrin J Yuan ** 02:20 Warm Welcome Michael and Dear audience, thank you so much for having me on unstoppable mindset. I'm excited to be here with you a bit about myself.   Michael Hingson ** 02:32 Yes, please, you and growing up and all all the scandalous things you that you don't want anyone to know. No, go ahead. We we're here to hear what you have to say.   Katrin J Yuan ** 02:43 My cultural background is, I'm looking Asian, grown up in Europe and Germany, and then later for my studies in Switzerland, in the French part of Switzerland. And now I'm being in here in Zurich. My background is Mba, it finance. I started with a corporate then in tech consulting. I was heading eight departments in my lab. Last corporate position there of head it head data. Now to keep it simple and short, I consider myself as an edutainer, community builder and a connector, connecting the dots between data, tech and people. I do it on a strategic level as a six time board member, and I do it on an operational level for the Swiss future Institute for four universities, being a lecturer and sharing knowledge fun and connecting with people in various ways.   Michael Hingson ** 03:44 Well, what? What got you started down the road of being very deeply involved with tech? I mean, I assume that that wasn't a decision that just happened overnight, that growing up, something must have led you to decide that you wanted to go that way.   Katrin J Yuan ** 03:58 It's a mixture curiosity, excitement, I want to know, and that started with me as a kid, how things work, what's the functionality? And I like to test do things differently and do it myself before reading how it should be done. What's the way it should be done.   Michael Hingson ** 04:21 So, yeah, yeah, I find reading is is a very helpful thing. Reading instruction manuals and all that is very helpful. But at the same time, there isn't necessarily all the information that a curious mind wants, so I appreciate what you're saying.   Katrin J Yuan ** 04:36 Yeah, totally. There are so many more things. Once you start, it's like one layer after the other. I like to take the layers, lip by layer, to go to a core, and I'm I don't avoid asking questions, because I really like to understand how things work.   Michael Hingson ** 04:55 Yeah, yeah. It's a lot more fun. And. And hopefully you get answers. I think a lot of times, people who are very technically involved in one thing or another, when you ask them questions, all too often, they assume, well, this person doesn't have the technical expertise that I do, so I don't want to give a very complicated answer, and that's all lovely, except that it doesn't answer the question that people like you, and frankly I have, which is, how do things work? Why do they work? Much less? Where do we take them from here? Right?   Katrin J Yuan ** 05:31 Absolutely, and breaking down complexity rather simplifying things, and tell us in an easy way you would maybe tell kids, your neighbors and non tech persons, and at the end of the day, it's the question, What's in for you? What is this for? And what's the value and how you can apply it in your everyday life? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 05:57 I grew up, of course, being blind, and encountered a lot of people who were and are curious about blind people. The problem is I usually have an assumption also, that if you're blind, you can't do the same things that sighted people can do, and that's usually the biggest barrier that I find we have to break through, that I have to break through, because, in reality, blindness isn't the issue, it's people's perceptions. And so that's why I mentioned the whole idea that people often underrate people who ask a lot of questions, and the result is that that it takes a while to get them comfortable enough to understand we really do want to know when we really do want you to give us good technical information that we can process and move forward with   Katrin J Yuan ** 06:47 exactly normally, in a room full of board members, managers, you call it, you name it, CEOs, investors, usually someone or even the majority, is very thankful that finally somebody asks also, dare to ask the simple questions to find a solution. And it's not only the what, but I find it interesting also the how you solve it, and to see and do things in a different way, from a different, diverse perspective. This is very valuable for those seeing and for those seeing in a different way or not seeing and solving it in your own very unique way, and   Michael Hingson ** 07:33 and that's part of the real issue, of course, is that looking at things from different points of view is always so valuable, isn't it? Absolutely,   Katrin J Yuan ** 07:42 this is why I also go for diversity in tech leadership boards. Yeah, because for me, I like to say it's no charity case, but business case,   Michael Hingson ** 07:57 yeah. Well, so you, you've, in a sense, always been interested in tech, and that I can appreciate, and that makes a lot of sense, because that's where a lot of growth and a lot of things are happening. What? So you went to school, you went to college, you got a master's degree, right?   Katrin J Yuan ** 08:17 Yes, correct.   Michael Hingson ** 08:20 And so what was then your first job that you ended up having in the tech world? I   Katrin J Yuan ** 08:27 was in the IT ICT for Vodafone in a country this last station was with Northern Cyprus. For me, very exciting. Yeah, to jump in different roles, also in different areas, seeing the world sponsored by a large company here in Europe. And that was very exciting for me to jump into white, into it and learn quickly. I wanted to have this knowledge accelerated and very pragmatic to see many countries, cultures, and also diverse people in many, many means, from language to culture to age to many, many different backgrounds.   Michael Hingson ** 09:09 So from a technology standpoint, how is Vodafone doing today? I know you've moved on from that, but you know, how is it? How is it doing today? Or is it I haven't I've heard of Vodafone, but I haven't kept up with it. That   Katrin J Yuan ** 09:22 was my very first chapter. So yes, indeed, I moved on, staying in the tech sector, but now I am completely here in Switzerland for another chapter,   Michael Hingson ** 09:35 and Vodafone is still a very sizable and ongoing company. It   Katrin J Yuan ** 09:39 is not in Switzerland, but yes, still in Europe, with headquarter, UK, in Germany and so on. Definitely. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:47 I'm, I'm familiar with it. And I was thinking Germany, although I hadn't thought about the UK, but that makes, makes some sense. So you, you obviously worked to. Learn a lot and absorb a lot of information. And I like the things that that you're talking about. I think people who are really curious, and who work at being curious aren't just curious about one thing and you talked about, you're curious about the technology and all the things that you could learn, but you are also very interested in the cultures, and I think that that is and the whole environment, and I think that is so important to be able to do what, what kinds of things, if you if you will, did you find interesting about the different cultures, or what kind of commonalities Did you find across different cultures? Because you, you had the experience to to be able to be involved with several so that must have been a pretty fascinating journey.   Katrin J Yuan ** 10:45 Yeah, CEO of a Swiss future Institute, and as university lecturer of four universities in Germany, as well as in Switzerland, mostly about AI data analytics. And also as board member, I have several demanding roles started already in young years. So one of the questions I hear often is, how did you make it, and how is the combination? And here my answer is, start early discipline focus. I'm highly self motivated curiosity, as mentioned earlier in the combination, and I did not expect success to come early. I expected to endure pain, hard work and to go forward and a mixture of discipline, hard work, step by step, and also to overcome challenges.   Michael Hingson ** 11:42 Did you find it to be a challenge with any of the cultures that you worked within, to to be able to be curious and to be able to move forward? Or were you pretty much welcomed across the board?   Katrin J Yuan ** 11:57 It's a mixture. It started with the obvious, the language. So when I was, for instance, on Northern Cyprus, that's the Turkish speaking part, not the Greek part, which is in the EU I accepted the opportunity given by the company at that time to learn Turkish. That was amazing for me. Yeah, as I felt like, if I'm the guest, the least I can do is adapt and giving, showing my respect and openness towards a new culture. And for me, culture starts with a language. With language you reach not only the people, but you really understand as there are so many, and those of you who speak more than one language, you might have find it especially comparing different expressions emotions. Typical expressions in different languages is not only translating, it's really understanding those people. Yeah, and that for me, definitely super exciting. It was a challenge, but a very welcome one, embracing that challenge, and for me, it was like, Hey, let's do an experiment. Being an adult, learning a complete new language, not like English, German, French, and both usually relatively close to each other, so related ones, but a completely new such as Turkish. So nobody spoke Turkish in my friend's neighborhood, closer family as we are, we are not. But I thought that, hey, let's simply start. And I started by learning eight, eight hours per week, so really intense, including the Saturday. So it was only doable that way, to give it a serious try to bridge and be open towards different cultures.   Michael Hingson ** 13:53 Well, the other part about it is, in a sense, it sounds like you adopted the premise or the idea that you didn't really have a choice because you lived there, or at least, that's a great way to motivate and so you you spent the time to learn the language. Did you become pretty fluent in Turkish? Then I   Katrin J Yuan ** 14:13 was there like five months, the first three months, it was rather a doing pain and hard work without having any success. So I didn't, didn't get it. I didn't understand anything, though I had every week the eight hours of Turkish, and it took three months, and that's super interesting for me to perceive like I love experiments, and I love experimenting, also with myself included, that is, it's not, it seems to be not linear, but rather jumping. So you have all the investments in the first where you don't see any immediate effect. Well, after the first three months, there was a jump. Um, and I remember clearly the first moment where I got it, where I understood something, and later on learning intensely, even understood some sort of jokes and etc. And there the meetings were all in Turkish. So it really helped to adapt to that one and get what they say,   Michael Hingson ** 15:20 so until you got to the point where you could sort of understand the language, how did, how did you function? Did you have somebody who interpreted or how did that work?   Katrin J Yuan ** 15:30 Well, they speak English as well, and of course, they adapted to me, such as to the other experts being there as well.   Michael Hingson ** 15:39 Yeah. Did? Did you find, though, that once you started having some effective communication in the language that that they liked that and that that made you more accepted? They   Katrin J Yuan ** 15:52 were surprised, because at that time, I was the only one from from the experts manager sent there and really accepted the whole education package for like, okay, it's free, it's education. Let's definitely accept it and give it a serious try, having the eight hours per week. So several were quite surprised that I did it and that I'm interested in learning a new language as a as an adult, where you could have said, No, that's, that's enough. Let's, let's all stay in our usual, the simple, the simplest way, which is, let's keep it and do it all in English, what we already can speak.   Michael Hingson ** 16:38 But they had to feel more at home when you started speaking their language a little bit. I remember in college, I took a year of Japanese. It just seemed fascinating, and I like to listen to short wave. I'm a ham radio operator, so I oftentimes would tune across stations, and I would find radio Japan and listen to broadcasts, and then I took a year, and I've been to Japan twice as a speaker, talking about the World Trade Center and so on. And although I didn't become in any way fluent with the language, I was able to pick up enough words, especially after having been there for a few days, that I could at least know was what's going on. So I appreciate exactly what you're saying. It makes it a whole lot more fun when people do relate to you. Which is, which is so cool. So, you know, I think that's that's a good thing. Where did you go after Cyprus?   Katrin J Yuan ** 17:34 I went back to Switzerland. Ah, familiar language, yeah, from the French and to the German speaking part in Switzerland, also with French, it's more or less the same. I learned a large part, also per University, and frankly, per TV. Watching television, if you first started, didn't get any of those jokes, yeah, I felt quite stupid. And then one day, you really break the wall, and then it's going all the way up, and you simply get it. You live it. You are widened, and you understand the culture and those people, and they will feel that you are bracing it, that you are not only polite or only there for a temporary of time, and then you're you're gone. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 18:22 you you demonstrate that you are really interested in them and curious about them, as I said, and that tends to definitely make you more relatable and make you more appreciated by the places where you are. So I'd like to go ahead and continue in, you know, obviously learning about you and so on. And I know we talked a little bit about other places where you've been and so on, but you've got, you've got a lot that you have done. So you work a lot with CEOs. You work a lot with investors and board members, and a lot of these people have a lot of different kinds of personalities. So what is your perception of people? What was your perception of working with all those people? And how do you deal with all of that going forward? Because everybody's got their own thoughts,   Katrin J Yuan ** 19:21 indeed, and in that context, what is normal? How do you perceive and how are you perceived by others? That was a question which raised my curiosity. Yeah, by time, it was not clear from the beginning, and for me, I found my answer in what is normal. It's super relative for only what you perceive and know. Got to know taught by your parents as a kid. And for me, looking looking Asian, yeah, looking different, yeah, as. A woman young, you're looking different. And that combination in Switzerland, it's yeah, it weighs some questions, and got me reflecting upon that question, yes, and this all how you deal and see and apply that difference and make that difference to be a value for yourself and for others. You bring   Michael Hingson ** 20:25 up an interesting point, though. You talk about what is normal, and so what is normal? How do you deal with that?   Katrin J Yuan ** 20:33 Normal is what you think is normal. There's no real normal, the so called norms. Does it fit to you, or you will make them fit to you, and you are unique in that setup you know, like what is normal considering beauty standards, it is what you use to know, based on culture, based on your direct environment, by based by your family, what you see is what you get, yeah. And based on some scientific stuff, like relatively high symmetric in in your face, but not too much asymmetric, yeah, just the right mixture, yeah. And so I learned to define, instead of being defined all the time, to define myself what is normal to me, to me, and to be very aware that the normal is quite relative my perception. Did   Michael Hingson ** 21:33 you find that there were times that you had to sort of change your view of what was normal because of circumstances, does that make sense?   Katrin J Yuan ** 21:43 Yeah, totally, and I respect it so much. Also, with your fantastic story yourself, Michael, where I can only say, Chapo, how, how you make your way all the way up. And it's, it's more than respectful. I have you have my admiration for that one for me, it was definitely food traveling, seeing myself, not so much as a small kid, I perceived like, Hey, we are all normal. Yeah, there was no difference as a small kid. But latest for me, when you got a bit older as a kid, between, in between kid and becoming adult, also from the environment, raising questions of how you appear, whether you appear differently from kids and so on. Yeah, the question was brought to me, so I had to deal with it in the one or other way. And I learned it's, it is interesting if you are finding yourself. It's not a point that you know in black, white, okay, that's me, but it's rather walking the whole path with all the stones, Hicks and up and downs, becoming you in all its essence and normal it was defines you, and I like to challenge myself wherever, and all these bias everyone has naturally, it makes us humans. That's the way that I, at least challenge myself to open that quick few seconds box again, after the very first impression, which is built unconsciously, and and, and some, some good moments and valuable relationships appeared not from the first moment, but because I challenge it, and even if we didn't like, for example, each other from the first moment, but then we gave it another opportunity, and even friendships were built with a second and third glance. And this is why I invite you to think about your own normal and to find and define yourself, not letting it be a standard defined by others.   Michael Hingson ** 24:07 I have ever since September 11, I always hear people saying and I read and I reacted to it internally. We got to get back to normal. People hate getting out of their comfort zone oftentimes, and that's, in a sense, so very frustrating. But I kept hearing people say, after September 11, we got to get back to normal. And I finally realized that the reason that I didn't like that statement was, normal will never be the same again. We can't get back to normal because normal is going to be different, and if we try to get back to where we were, then the same thing is going to happen again. So we do need to analyze, investigate, explore and recognize when it's need to move on and find, if you will, for the moment, at least a new normal.   Katrin J Yuan ** 24:58 Absolutely, I'm. With you. What's normal for you? Michael,   Michael Hingson ** 25:04 yeah, what's normal for me isn't normal for you. I think what's normal for me today isn't what it used to be. So for me today, normal is I do get to travel and speak, but when I'm home, I have a dog and a cat. Normal change for me a couple of years ago when my wife passed away. So it was a matter of shifting and recognizing that I needed to shift, that the mindset couldn't be the same as it was pre November 12 of 2022 and so it is important to be able to adapt and move on. So I guess for me, normal, in one sense, is be open to change.   Katrin J Yuan ** 25:50 That's beautifully said. Be open to change.   Michael Hingson ** 25:55 Yeah, I think it's really important that we shouldn't get so locked in to something that we miss potential opportunities, that that change, or that adapting to different environments will bring us   Katrin J Yuan ** 26:10 totally and you yourself, give yourself all the opportunities you have to evolve over time you will not be Exactly and that's good the way it is the same person, yeah? Because environment change, all the factors change, and we humans are highly adaptive, yeah, this is underestimated by ourselves many times. Yeah, but we are, and we make the best out of the situation, and especially with regard to hard moments where really, really, really hard, and nobody likes them, while being in that moment, but looking back and being overcoming it afterwards looking back, I like to say, when do you really grow? It's in the hard times when you grow this is where you endure pain, but you'll be become better, bigger, more resilient afterwards, right?   Michael Hingson ** 27:13 Very, very much. So Well, in your case, growing up, working, being in all the different environments that that you have. Have you ever had an unexpected moment, a hard moment that you had to deal with? And what was that? And how did you? How did you deal with it?   Katrin J Yuan ** 27:29 Sure, just sharing one earlier moment. I had an accident. I was on my way to dancing course and all chilly fun made myself pretty on the day, thinking only on superficial, beautiful moments, partying and so on. And then it crashed on the road, and in a matter of seconds, life can be over. So I woke up in the hospital and the intensive care, that unit, where you only find the hard cases, was, yeah, were really not beautiful to look at. Yeah, I find myself. And I was like, that was definitely a very hard lessons I learned in early years. So I had to relearn everything, and had to look two weeks long at a white wall with an ugly picture on it, and I had plenty plenty of time to think about myself and the world and what, what the heck I should do with the remaining time, and also my perception of normal, of wishes, of expectations, of different perspectives, and my my expectation on life. Yeah. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 28:56 what was an ugly picture? Did you ever come to appreciate the picture?   Katrin J Yuan ** 28:59 It was still ugly after two weeks, just checking.   Michael Hingson ** 29:05 So though you, you chose not to let that become part of your normal, which is fine. I hear you well, you, but you, you adapted. And you, you move forward from that, and obviously you you learned more about yourself, which is really so cool that you chose to use that as a learning experience. And all too often, people tend not to do that. Again, we don't do a lot of self analysis, and tend to try to move on from those things. But, but you did which is, which is admirable by any standard. Well, one of the things that I'm curious about is that you have a fairly good social media followings, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would ask this, what would you advise for people. Who want to build their brand. What did you learn along the way, and what would you advise people to do if they want to build their own brand and and grow? I've   Katrin J Yuan ** 30:07 over 60,000 views, which is not bad for a non celebrity and a simple officer, worker, academic worker, here in Switzerland, and I like to invite people to think, imagine you were a product. What are you standing for? And don't try to cover your weaknesses. It's a unique you as a combination of all of your science, I like to speak about the 360 degree you and starting, and I know statistically that a bit more women are a bit concerned about, hey, how much should I really give and and get over visibility, and is it still in a professional way, and I don't want to waste My time and so on. Somebody told me, and I find this idea very simple and good people talk about you either way. Also, if you leave a room, either you let it the way, in a passive way, so accepting it, or you decide one day, and this is what I did, actively influence it. So I like to, rather if I may have a choice, actively influence and have some take on my life, my decisions, my normal the doings, the happenings and the starts with a perception in our world. Allow me it is very simple. What you see is what you get. Yeah, so the visibility, if you can use it, especially here, now with all the social media channels, from LinkedIn to Insta to YouTube, what you have in place, use it systematically for your business, not as a I don't want to waste my time, and you don't need to open up to everything your private life. If you want to keep that, that's all good. You can just open up enough to build up your brand for business. Yeah, and for me, it's really, really going, definitely, we monetize and open up for business, and so that our clients in Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany and Austria, and the dark region we call it, find us in, yeah, and thankful for that   Michael Hingson ** 32:37 interesting and I like something that that you say, which is, you don't need to open up your private lives, we get too nosy, and we get too many people who put too many pieces of information about their private lives, and unfortunately, that's just not a productive thing to do, Although so many people do it in this country now. We're, we're seeing a number of athletes whose homes are being broken into. And you can trace the reason that it's even possible back to a lot of social media. They're, they're saying they're not going to be there, or in some cases, they can't necessarily avoid it. Doesn't need to be social media when you've got sports figures who are playing in games and all that, but we focus too much on private lives rather than real substance. And unfortunately, too many people, also, who are celebrities, want to talk about their private lives. And I, you know, I don't tend to think that is overly productive, but everybody has their own choices to make, right? So   Katrin J Yuan ** 33:45 everybody has their own choices to make. Yeah, I recommend, if you like, stay with them consistently so you feel comfortable. How much you open the door is starting ultimately with you. I like to say in that context, you are ultimately responsible for all the things you do, but also with all the things you don't do. Yeah, and that's totally fine, as long as it's it's very much and that it's something you will feel that's, that's about you, yeah, and social media and visibility, and the business side, the professional side of using your whether Employer Branding, your personal branding, all the stuff, this is controlled by you, how much you give. Of course, you can sense how much, depending on how much you give, how much will come back. And if you don't feel like posting all the time, also with 40 degree fever out of a bat. Don't do it. It might be not sensible in your case, and not giving you back the outcome, the impact, the real consequence and effects it has. Yes, totally.   Michael Hingson ** 34:55 Well, social media hasn't been with us all that long, and I think we're still. So really learning how to best be involved with social media. And of course, that's an individual choice that everyone has to make. But what Facebook is only 20 years old, for example. And so we're going to be learning about this, and we're going to be learning about the impact of social media for a long time to come, I suspect,   Katrin J Yuan ** 35:20 absolutely and nowadays, fusion. Everything merged on the next level with AI, the perception what you get is what you see really fake news is only the beginning in text, in visual speaking of pictures and in videos, which is nothing else than a row of visual pictures in moving so our generation and the next and the next, from alpha to Gen Z, X, Y over and bridging generations, we will have to learn how to deal with it responsibly, both being potentially one of the actors in So, being a creator, creating your own content, and on the other side, accepting seeing, resonating, interacting with other content. What is real, what is fake? How do you deal with it, critically and responsibly for business, for society, yeah? Because whenever you do something, somebody else will see it. And that's that sense every one of us is a role model. So your behavior is not ultimately only what you say, but also what you do. Yeah, measure me and what I do, not what I say, and yeah, and others will see you and observe and that will have an effect, if you want or not. And therefore I am for a responsible way, behaving, reflecting and carry that on, spreading that information. Yeah. It all starts with you, I   Michael Hingson ** 37:01 believe is all too important to recognize it's due and judged by what I do, not by what I say. I think that is so important and one of the biggest lessons that we can learn from social media or anything. And it's nothing new. It's just that now it is such more a visible kind of lesson that we need to learn, because it's all about actions, and they do speak a lot louder than words, whether we like to think so or not. Yeah,   Katrin J Yuan ** 37:30 totally. And you said it, Michael, it's nothing new. Yeah, it's not reinvented, but, yeah, it's all transparent, too much information flooded by all channels, all these voices and people, experts are not commenting, resonating, multiplied, copied, bringing to other dimensions, and it's so easy, yeah, the real ones and the other ones. Yeah, so it's upon you to deal with it responsibly, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 38:00 well, you have been associated with a number of boards. You've dealt with lots of board members. You're the CEO of a company and so on. So I'm curious to get your thoughts on the whole concept of, how do we work to make boards and board members more inclusive and more diverse? Or how do we open boards up to perhaps different things that they haven't experienced before?   Katrin J Yuan ** 38:31 That's a very good one, which means a lot to me personally. I like to say it's not a charity case, but a fact matters, numbers, business case so simple. That is, if you have, let's say, 10 people, high personalities in one room, a decision is very, very easily made. If you all think, look, behave the same, with the same skills, background, experiences and cultural wise, definitely, you will come to one decision quickly. But is this ultimately the best decision of a company and for your future? And have you shared all these thoughts from a different perspective, from a different angle. This implies a certain way, also with efforts with some time are not only easy peasy, but once you challenge yourself, you really grow. You really grow and come to an ultimately better decision, worthwhile, a more valuable perspective, yeah, and thinking of something you have never fought yourself, but another fraction does, and ultimately, the other voice is not only one minority speaking of an easy example of one to nine makes 10. Yeah, but scientifically, we speak here about the 33% and more, so more than three four people in a room, it would make sense to really have a strong voice here, and not only the one exceptional voice, but really a discussion among diverse peers reaching to the ultimate outcome in the best interest of a company.   Michael Hingson ** 40:26 How do we get people to adopt that kind of mindset and expand boards though to make that happen? Because all too often, people are locked into their own way. Well, we want board members and we want people who think as we do, and we don't want to really change, which is getting back to what we talked about before, with normal   Katrin J Yuan ** 40:45 I'm definitely with you, Michael, and if we had one short sentence answer on that one, I would be the first to raise the hand give me that solution. It's very hard to force externally. It's it's, ultimately, the best way is if you really come to that and you you get convinced yourself by your own experience, by seeing observing, by being open minded enough to learn from others. Yeah, that is not with age, with success, with power, with hierarchy, you name it, with title, with salary, package that you find one day, okay, I learned enough. I'm successful enough, I'm rich enough, I can afford and do what I what I wish, means, and I I'm not interested, consciously or unconsciously, and having another, maybe challenging other view which threatens or challenges myself, or which makes it a little bit more uncomfortable, but for the ultimate sake of getting to a better result. So there's a science dimension, there's a psychological cultural dimension, and definitely that's an individual one, but I learned the greatest people, men and women, like the really successful ones, they are quite on the steep learning curve, wherever they stand. And the really good ones, they want to become even better. Now this is for knowledge, learning never ends, and this is also for openness, looking the ball is wound from the 360 degree perspective. And this is ultimately also, as I said at the beginning, the business case to know from science. Okay, if I go alone, I might get the point quite quickly. Or if everybody is a little copy of you, it makes it so easy, isn't it, but if you really challenge, go through this is where you bring yourself and the others and the whole team, and again, the value of your company and listed company, your innovation, your value of the ultimate company, much, much further than it was yesterday, and this is where maybe, how much can we afford, looking at business as competition, looking at the latest technology, all these and also over culture and over borders, yeah, how much can we afford to stay the way we Are because we were that successful and maybe also privileged the last 20 years. I doubt so. So this is, again, plenty of real facts, numbers, arguments. Look at the statistics. It's a clear business case where we go and the smartest one goes first and state an example by yourself. Go through it and then you experience it yourself, the value out of difference and diverse and true means by living it and allowing it in your own circle.   Michael Hingson ** 43:54 The question that sort of comes to mind, and it's hard one to really answer, I think, but if you're on a board with a very strong leader or very strong persons, and you see that they're not necessarily willing to deal with diversity or real inclusion. How do you help them understand the value of doing that and becoming more diverse or becoming more inclusive in the way they think, by   Katrin J Yuan ** 44:21 raising questions in a polite, respectful way, you can do a lot. Everything you do is better than doing nothing, simply accepting on and in a passive way. I think everything else is definitely worth to try, fail, try, do better and try in a row. Repetition is also something which is psychologically therefore we have all these repetition jingles and advertising to some, to some extent, very useful, effective. So if you again, may hear it, not maybe only from one person, but for more than the 33% and. And you might hear it from your best buddy, you might hear it from peers, but you one day come and accept at least question it yourself, yeah, raising that question and you really want to get better, as we said at the beginning. Michael beautifully said, accept change or change. What is normal, yeah. And we are highly adaptive, again, as humans. So allow yourself to grow. There are two ways, either or if, if you should ever meet somebody who is rather not that open to it. So there are two ways and which will show by time. Yeah. But one is, your people only like to change when change becomes necessary, versus where an event happens, yeah, a very hard event, and where you will have face tremendous consequences, so you must have a change, yeah, and it's painful, and the others before, out of being convinced, touching the question before, how much can we afford to stay the way we are like forever, just because it has been like this in the Last 20 years? And I rather invite change doesn't happen overnight. Yes, that's true, but continues and little ones rather the hard cut at the end and and rather from yourself, interior and and intrinsically motivated, rather than being forced only by outside. That's way better. And smart people, yeah, are open, listening, learning, and therefore, do some effort. Make some effort yourself. Normally, it pays back 10 times.   Michael Hingson ** 46:51 You know, one of the best quotes I've ever heard that I really like, and I think it really ties in here, comes from the person who was our 35th president, who's now passed away, Jimmy Carter. He once said we must adjust to changing times while holding to unwavering principles. And my point in bringing that up is that change doesn't need to be that you have to sacrifice Basic Life Principle. I think so all too often, we don't necessarily learn some of those life principles as well as we should, but change is a good thing, and we do need to adjust to change any times, and it doesn't mean that we have to sacrifice the basics of life that we've grown up with and that we Experience   Katrin J Yuan ** 47:37 beautifully said exactly, I totally agree and to every new year, the new year resolution, stop smoking, becoming more sportive, all of sudden, all these long lists of changes and wishes, potential achievement and potential failures. Scientifically, I'm a bit nerdy. From the person, yeah, for me, no, it is positive. Is it shows that, rather than going for the big, hard cut change, use all these small steps and allow yourself to make these small steps towards change and habits, this is also shown and proven. Habits do not come overnight. They are not accepted. Whether, yeah, it's getting early bird, becoming all of a sudden Early Bird, because, yeah, you want to belong to that 5am breakfast club or something, whatever it is, yeah, make a combination over time in small steps, and reward yourself also, if you make a small step towards change. Now that's that's where magic happens. So you keep it over 234, months, and there become a good habit over time. But   Michael Hingson ** 48:49 also keep in mind why you want to make the change. That is what you don't change just to change. You change because there's a reason, and it's important to understand whatever it is the reason for wanting to change   Katrin J Yuan ** 49:04 having a goal and visualize it as much as you can. It's a strong one. And ultimately, do it for yourself, not for your partner, not because of somebody else, expecting do it for yourself. Yeah, becoming healthier working with a certain amount of discipline towards your marathon, or whatever it is in your life situation, yeah, definitely. Because if you don't have a goal, don't expect to ever learn that would be a pure accident, and that's rather impossible, yeah. But having a goal, you dramatically enhance your probability to reaching that one step by step.   Michael Hingson ** 49:45 Yep, absolutely. So you know what? Let's take a minute and play a game, just for fun. If you were a song, which one would it be?   Katrin J Yuan ** 49:55 A classic one, up to a certain moment, I will be. Surprise and a mixture, rather to the more modern, maybe new, classic one and a Big Bang to the end,   Michael Hingson ** 50:11 you have a particular one in mind. As   Katrin J Yuan ** 50:13 I love playing piano myself. I have two pianos at home, and I like to play from notes, sheets. But also come, come make my own compositions. I have one in mind, which is rather my own composition, starting from the classic, from a known one, such as Chopin, but going into a rather the individual one the end, yeah, it's a mixture.   Michael Hingson ** 50:40 Well, you've you've obviously been around a lot and so on. What's the worst advice you ever received? Stay   Katrin J Yuan ** 50:47 the way you are and come back in five years. You're not ready yet. Well, I simply didn't accept it. I think you're ready when once you feel ready, and that's not you're too young for it, or you are not ready because these things are lacking. And get the first reference, and get the first ones who trust yourself, and start trusting yourself going the first part, whether it's the first leadership role, but it's the first investment role, whether it's a first board membership role, whether it's becoming you, following your dreams, making your own company become reality all these I am convinced, at the end of the day, you are the ultimate producer of your life. So what are you waiting for? For me, it was the accident. Wake wake up. Call for me, where I fought like, Okay, two weeks staring at that ugly wall with that picture that made me somehow aware of my time. So I somehow subjectively really accelerate. I always think like, Hey, I don't have enough time. Let's make and really use the time given. And so, yeah, it's all about you define yourself, rather than letting others to define I   Michael Hingson ** 52:06 think that's really the operative part. Define yourself. You're the only one who can really do that, and you're the only one who can know how well you're doing it. So I think you're absolutely right, and   Katrin J Yuan ** 52:18 nobody knows you better. Nobody should know you better than yourself, because you spend all your time you know all these ugly, weak and really strong, really beautiful sides of yourself. You spend all the time, your whole life, if you like it or not, with you. So some people, however passive or with regard to responsibility, yeah, I would like to, but somehow I'm waiting somebody else who pushes me, who will give me before me that ball in my way, who tell me or who give me this one recommendation I was waiting a long time for. No, it should be you. You know yourself the best way start making use out of it. Yeah, and   Michael Hingson ** 52:59 you should really work to make sure you know yourself better than other people do. It's it makes your life a whole lot better. If you can do that. Let me ask this, if you could go back in time, what would you do?   Katrin J Yuan ** 53:09 I started quite early, and I've had some thoughts about skills, about what I could do, what I what I'm good at, and what I wish. Yeah, all that, and at some point I didn't dare to speak out. I accepted a lot, and I was actually quite silent for a long time. And in private life, I'm rather introvert. When they see me on stage as a speaker, as a lecturer at universities and so on, people tend to think I'm extrovert, but in private life, I'm quite introvert, looking back, maybe starting even earlier in a stronger pace than a faster pace, being more aware and not covering and myself in silence, in good moments, whether it's a meeting or in a lesson, if you know a Good answer, speak out. If you know a good question, speak out. Dare to speak out for yourself and for others. This took me some time to find my voice, many years, but now I somehow finally found it for myself, and I dare to speak out for myself and for others to make a little bit of change and to make dare to make things differently. So it has ultimately your individual impact, your outcome, your own responsible line. So this, this is something I would have wished for me and also for others. Believe in yourself, trust in yourself, speak out earlier, whenever you see and there are plenty opportunities. I'd like to finish on that one. It's like a muscle. It's not born, but rather, you can train it also, but leadership skills, or that entrepreneurial skills or to the skills to deal with difficult situation as you overcame dramatically, wonderfully. My. Yeah, everyone might face over a lifetime, individually with his and hers. Face it, grow with it, become better and share it with others. So you push, pull and get good people on your side. And it's not only you suffering, but the ultimate outcome is so much more than the one moment which was hard. So believe in yourself.   Michael Hingson ** 55:28 What's one thing that you really wish people would see that maybe they don't beauty   Katrin J Yuan ** 55:33 and difference? Yeah, think about it in all its means a bit deeper, and I dearly invite you. It starts with the looks, yeah, with the automatic, subconsciously quickly done, judging others. It's so easy. And yes, we know it's only human, but knowing about yourself, it's about freedom, and with freedom comes responsibility, and also knowing about your limitations and knowing about your weak spots helps you really a lot to grow over time. Knowing you is not only knowing you how to do the small talk when the sunny weather everybody can be a leader or do something in a good means, yeah. It's very, very easy, but I talk about what stormy weather when it comes to really tough situations, when it comes to darkness and different means, then observe yourself. How do you behave? And many, even adults, they don't know, they can't say, or they totally freak out or give up, or some, some, some ways, challenge yourself. Where are your limits? Have you never tried your limits before? Because you didn't swim out into the sea and see how much you can really swim well, better try out. You will find out and get to know yourself in all your dimension. This is definitely something, the beauty and difference accepting. And this is not only finger pointing to others. It starts with you. Yeah, because you are different. I bet you are in some ways, if it's not looking Yeah, being too old, too young, too man, too woman, too beautiful, too ugly, yeah, too fat, too skinny, and all these are, it's maybe your language, your culture, your skills, your different background, maybe you're never the new one, and maybe you are different in all beautiful ways. It is possible to be different. So allowing difference, seeing even inviting it to your circle, is something of tremendous value once you open the door and you nurture it over time, I wish more people could see it and use it on positive impact in this world.   Michael Hingson ** 58:04 I have been a firm believer pretty much my whole life, that life's an adventure, and we have to embrace it. We have to live it to the fullest, and when we do, we're much better for it. One of the things that it does for us is it makes us, by the definition of this podcast, more unstoppable. What makes you unstoppable?   Katrin J Yuan ** 58:26 Life is an adventure. I completely agree with that sentence. I like to say, for me, it's also one day I saw it's like one big game, either you don't play, or I play and want to win it, war, whereas I think there can be several who be the winners, not only one. It's not a one man, one woman show, yeah, it's the team, it's the community, it's the effort. What makes you unstoppable? It starts for me, definitely with your mind, unstoppable mind in every means, not with your body, because the body, the physics is limited, yeah, but our mind, spirit, brain, and what you feel here in your heart and what you hear have in your head is this, ultimately, you, changing, evolving Over time, becoming you, and this makes me unstoppable, knowing and I'm on the way. It's not a point, but rather a long, long path from our phone, knowing me, the skills, knowing what you have overcome, Michael, over time, everything. Why shouldn't you achieve and do and get, ultimately, to your next goal, because you, looking back, have achieved so much already becoming stronger and stronger. If we go back to the simplified game, if it was a video game, you get to the next level. Not only getting to the next level, you're becoming more stronger. Yeah, this is becoming you and. Yeah, I believe that you are the ultimate producer. It starts in knowing, trusting, believing in you, speaking out and helping, not only yourself, but ultimately pulling, pushing others. As a community, we share many things which, when shared, becomes multiplied much, much more worth, such as visibility, value, knowledge, trust and community and connections, all these wonderful things different than a cake, if you share, it becomes more so I don't see you are alone. I see you're not an island. You're not alone. Come with us. Follow and grow with us on the journey becoming, ultimately you and you will be unstoppable   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:49 your way. And I think that's a great way to end this conversation, because I think that you cited it and said it so well and eloquently that reality is, people can be more unstoppable, but they they need to take the responsibility to make that happen, and if they do, they'll be better for it. So Katrin, I want to thank you again for being here, and I want to thank everyone who listens to this for being with us today. This has been a fun podcast. It's been a great adventure, and I really appreciate having the opportunity to keep Catrin busy for my gosh, over an hour now, and just getting to be bedtime over in Switzerland. So thank you for being here, but for all of you, hope you've enjoyed this. I hope that you will give us a five star review wherever you are listening to this podcast or watching it, and also, if you know of anyone else who ought to be a guest, we certainly like you to let us know. Love to get your thoughts about the podcast, feel free to email me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S i, b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast. Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, Katrin, if people want to reach out to you, how would they be able to do that?   Katrin J Yuan ** 1:02:20 LinkedIn, Insta, YouTube, you find me. Google me, what's   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:25 your what's your LinkedIn, ID, your handle on LinkedIn.   Katrin J Yuan ** 1:02:29 Katrin J Yuen, Swiss, future Institute. Opportunities don't happen. We create them. Stay, follow and grow with us. Thank you.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:02:41   You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

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Our guest this time, Dario Valenza, is all that and more. Dario hales from Australia where he grew up and went to high school. He then attended two years of college but then left academia to work on working on designing yachts for, among events, the America's Cup races. Eventually he did return to college to finish his degree. He does tell us that he has a passion for design thinking and designing. As you will discover he has designed yachts, aircraft including innovative drones and even automobiles.   We talk about how his over-arching passion for design thinking also helps him design functioning and successful teams. Dario is a team leader by any standard.   He founded and owns a successful design and implementation company, Carbonix. Much of the work in which he is involved today is around having designed and now manufacturing long-range drones that can stay aloft and travel up to 800 Kilometers before needing refuelling. His products can and are being used for major surveying jobs and other projects that take advantage of the economic enhancements his products bring to the table.   Dario and I discuss leadership and how his design-oriented mindset has helped him be a strong and effective leader. I will leave it to him to describe how he works and how he helps bring out the best in people with whom he works.       About the Guest:   I have a passion for design and design thinking. This is the common thread that has led me to build yachts, planes, and cars - as well as create the teams and company structures to turn visions into reality.   I believe that beautiful design, as well as enabling and inspiring, is inherently valuable. Testing a new design it in the real world, particularly in competition, is a way to interrogate nature and understand the world.   I spent the first decade of my career working on racing yachts as a boatbuilder, designer, construction manager, and campaign manager. My treasured achievements include being part of several America's Cup teams and pioneering full hydrofoiling for World Championship winning boats.   I applied the lessons learned to other fields. This trajectory diversified into aerospace applications including drones.   I work to create products that bring joy by being desirable, aesthetically pleasing, and ergonomically correct, while always adding value through effective and efficient performance. I'm always keen to share my experiences and tackle new challenges with like-minded teams.   Ways to connect Dario:   Main point of contact is LI: https://au.linkedin.com/in/dario-valenza-a7380a23 Carbonix URL: www.carbonix.com.au Personal website: www.dariovalenza.com   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Hi everyone. This is your host, Michael hingson, and you are listening to another episode of unstoppable mindset. And today our guest is Dario, if I'm pronouncing that right, Valenza, how do i pronounce it? Oh, good. Oh, good. I can sometimes speak the King's English really well. Dario is a person who has a great passion for design, and he's going to tell us about that. He has been involved in designing many things, from yachts to aircraft to other kinds of things, as well as teams in companies, which I think is very fascinating, that make products and bring things about. So we're going to get to all of that. Daro is in Australia, so it's early in the morning. There for you right now. But welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Yeah, my pleasure. Glad to be here. So what time is it over there right now? About 11am Yeah, and it's little after three here. So, yep, you're 20 hours ahead   Dario Valenza ** 02:27 of us. No, here, it's Saturday, I assume. There it's Friday. It is to the confusion.   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 So, so, as it's always fun to do, can you tell us about the future over the next 20 hours?   02:40 So, so far so good. Yeah, there you are. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:43 thank you for being here and for being a part of unstoppable mindset. Let's start, if you would, by maybe you telling us a little bit about kind of the early Dario, growing up and some of those kinds of things, so that people listening and watching can get to know you a little bit better.   Dario Valenza ** 03:01 Yeah, absolutely. I think the interest in how things worked was there as long as anyone can remember being exposed early on to different mechanical things and from household appliances to looking at trains and busses and cars outside. I think that all piqued my curiosity. But I remember the first time I came across the concept of a sailboat. Something clicked, or something about the way an aerofoil works, the way it can generate motion out of wind, the balance of forces, the structures, the things that all need to work for a sailboat to work. That sort of got me hooked, and then I spent every waking moment I could reading about it, doing research, making models that I'd sail across the pool, getting involved at the local sailing club, and just being hands on. And I think that's really where the passion started. So certainly, there's a general wanting to see how things work, and there's a specific aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, structures, just, I find it endlessly fascinating. And you're always learning, and   Michael Hingson ** 04:10 should always be learning. I think that's one, of course, the real keys is always learning, which some people think they don't do, but and some people try very much not to do, but that's not the way to really progress in the world. So I'm glad that you do that. You've always lived in Australia.   Dario Valenza ** 04:27 No, actually, born in Italy, moved here probably 10 years old, went to high school and uni here.   Michael Hingson ** 04:37 Yeah, you do seem to have a little bit more of an Australian accent than an Italian one?   Dario Valenza ** 04:41 Yeah, I think I was young enough when I moved that I learned the language pretty quickly. I did spend few years in New Zealand and a few years in Europe, so I think my accent is probably a little bit of a hybrid, but mostly Australian. I'd say, do you speak Italian? Yes. Funny, you get rusty at it, though, like when I go back, it probably takes me a few days to get used to speaking it, yeah, but it is in there   Michael Hingson ** 05:08 which, which makes some sense. Well, so you went to high school, and did you go on to college?   Dario Valenza ** 05:15 Did the first couple of years of an engineering degree, dropped out to go and do the America's Cup. Eventually went back and finished it. But really haven't spent more time working than started. Putting it that way, the things I was interested in, particularly the the advent of carbon fiber in in racing yachts, hadn't found its way into any curriculum yet. It was it was happening on the frontier in that environment. And so my judgment was you could learn more by doing it and by going to uni. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:49 yeah, on the one hand, with school, to a large degree, it's theory, and putting it into practice is something that always brings you closer to it, which which makes sense. Well, so you, when you went to your first America's Cup, what did you were you just an observer? Were you involved in designing a yacht, or what?   Dario Valenza ** 06:10 I was a boat builder. I was hands on, on the manufacturing, and that was the way in that was the the opportunity I had to actually be part of a team and prove myself over the course of the campaign, I obviously showed an interest in design, and I became more de facto part of the design team. But I really always like to sit at that interface between the designing and the building, so that there's a practical element to yes, there's a theory, yes, there's a design, there's a bunch of analysis you can do having that practical mindset of, is it easy to build? Is it practical? Is it possible to then tune it and modify it and improve it? And that actually led me to a lot of the logistical challenges of, how do you plan a build? How do you allocate time towards the things that make the biggest difference towards performance. So the journey was really from hands on boat builder to sort of logistics, to design   Michael Hingson ** 07:08 well, and design is clearly been your passion overall. So that makes some sense. When did you do your first America's cut?   Dario Valenza ** 07:17 So I was involved in the 2000 event in Auckland, which was the first time the Kiwis defended after winning in 95 right? Then I did 2003 also in Auckland, 2007 in Valencia. And then there was a bit of a hiatus after Valencia, because of the deed of gift match. And I was involved in a couple of teams as that transition happened. And eventually 2012 I peeled off to start my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 07:44 So let's see the New Zealand won in 2000 right?   Dario Valenza ** 07:48 They defended successfully in 2000 so they they won in 95 in San Diego against Dennis Connor, and it took them five years to basically set up a defense. So from 95 to 2000 and then they won, and they rolled straight into 2003 they lost in 2003   Michael Hingson ** 08:05 that was to Italy. Was it to the Swiss or to the Swiss? Right? Okay,   Dario Valenza ** 08:11 even though the core of the sailing team was the former New Zealand team, the basically flag of allegiance, but yeah, the lingua team. Now, Were you successful challenger, which is amazing. Were you   Michael Hingson ** 08:25 living in New Zealand in 2003   Dario Valenza ** 08:29 Yes, yeah. So when you become involved in a team, basically the whole operation camps out at a at a base in the lead up to the event. At the time, the yacht still had to be constructed in country. So in 2003 for example, I was with a Swedish team. I actually spent a little bit of time in Sweden during the construction of the yacht, and then traveled with a yacht to New Zealand, and stayed there for the duration. I asked,   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 because I went to New Zealand in May of 2003 the Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind, or of the blind, asked me to come and do some speaking. It was, of course, after September 11, and I was pretty visible, so I went down and actually helped them raise something like close to $300,000 by giving a bunch of speeches around New Zealand, but I remember listening to the radio and hearing all the irate people because New Zealand lost. The government didn't put enough money into it, and we shouldn't have lost it was pretty fascinating to to to hear all of that.   Dario Valenza ** 09:38 There was a campaign called the loyal campaign, just basically trying to reprimand the Kiwi sailors that affected at the end of the day. It's a professional sport. There were nationality rules, but it was really residency, so as long as they signed on with the Swiss team within a certain time. Period, it was like two years or something, and basically set up a residence in Switzerland, and they were eligible to compete. And I think there's been a history of that since the New Zealand government having Lisa supported in New Zealand, because it's certainly an investment in the national industry and tourism, everything that comes with it. And I think they did walk that back, particularly for the last event. And the latest result of that is the Kiwis defended in Spain last time around, which is again, unusual.   Michael Hingson ** 10:35 Well, it was, it was fascinating to watch the races, and we watched them was before I went to New Zealand. But that's why my wife and I watched, because we knew I was going there, and it was, it was all being defended in New Zealand. And of course, they were using sails, and the yachts were just going at normal sailboat type speeds. But I know then later, so much redesign took place, and the boats started traveling significantly faster, right?   Dario Valenza ** 11:08 Yeah, absolutely, there's been a change in that respect, just on the atmosphere in Auckland again, with my perspective, having, as I said, obsessed over sailing, worked my way up, got involved in campaigns, helped to put sponsors together with skippers, to get funding to build boats, and arriving in Auckland with the prospect of trialing with a team, you walk out of the airport and there's the actual boat that won the copy, 95 was sitting in The car park. There are posters. You can really see, like they called it the city of sales. And as I arrived the round the world race was stopping by in Auckland, so there was a sort of festive atmosphere around that. And you could really see people were getting behind it and getting involved. And it felt, you know, they had parades at the beginning of the event. So it was really special to be there at a time when there was maybe 12 teams. It was a big event. And to your point, they were symmetrical ballasted monohulls. So they were fairly conservative, you know, long, narrow, heavy boats. And the competition was really to eke out a one or 2% gain to have better maneuverability for match racing. And it was really down to that kind of refinement. And what happened after 2007 I mentioned a sort of hiatus, basically, two teams took each other to court, and they went back to what they call a deed of gift matches, which is the default terms that they have to abide by if they can't agree to a mutually agreeable protocol. And that deed of gift match ended up being in multi holes. So there was a catamaran and trimaran, and they were big and fast. And I think then, when the Americans won out of that, they they sort of got seduced by, let's make this about the fastest sailors and the faster boat in the fastest boats. So they went to multi holes. The next evolution was hydrofoiling Multi holes. And then once the boats are out of the water, the drag drops dramatically, and now they can go really fast. They ended up narrowly the Kiwis ended up narrowly losing in San Francisco. The Americans then defended Bermuda. The Kiwis eventually won in Bermuda. And then they in in sort of consultation with the challenge of record. That was Italians. They wanted to go back to monohulls, but they wanted them to be fast monohulls, and so they came up with this concept of a hydrofoiling monohull. So the boats now are certainly the fastest they've ever been, and the nature of the racing has changed, where it's more of a drag race than a sort of tactical match race. But it's still fascinating, because it's all about that last bit of technology, and it's all about resource management. You have so much time, you have so much budget, how do you get to the highest performance within that time that you can access, that the Sailors can get the best out of? So it's all a balance of many variables, and it's certainly tactical and strategic and very fascinating, but   Michael Hingson ** 14:18 hasn't a lot of the the tactics, in a sense, gone out of it, because it's now so much, as you put it, a drag race or a speed race, that a lot of the strategies of outmaneuvering your opponents isn't the same as it used to be.   Dario Valenza ** 14:37 Yeah. So if you imagine, the way you think about it is, it's a multi dimensional space. You've got all sorts of values that you can dial in, and the weighting of the values changes depending on the boat and the racing format and the weather so on a traditional monohull maneuvers are relatively cheap because the boat carries momentum. So when you tack you go. Through the eye of the wind, you lose drive for, you know, a second, three seconds, but your speed doesn't drop that much because a boat's heavy and it just powers along. And so if you have a three degree shift in the direction of the wind, it's worth tacking on that, because you'll then get the advantage of having a better angle. Similarly, if you're interacting with another boat, tacking to get out of their dirty air, or tacking to sit on top of them, is worthwhile, and so you get that the incentive is, I can spend some energy on a maneuver, because I'm going to get a gain when you have boats that are extremely fast, and we're talking three, four times faster than the wind, if the wind direction changes by three degrees, it's almost immaterial. And so it's not worth tacking on it. If you go through the dirty air of another boat, you get through it really quickly. And on the other hand, when you maneuver, you're effectively, you go from flying on the hydro force to gliding. You only have, like, a few boat lengths that you can do that for before the hull touches the water, and then you virtually stop. And so basically, the aim is you minimize maneuvers. You roll with the wind shifts. You roll with your opponent. And hence they've had to put boundaries around the course to force the boats back together, because otherwise I'd go out to a corner, do one tack and then go to the top mark. And so it's a different racing. It's still there are tactics involved, but the trade offs are different, that the cost versus reward of different tactical choices is very different.   Michael Hingson ** 16:31 But the race obviously goes with the newer designs, goes a lot faster, and it isn't hours and many hours of racing as it used to be, is that right?   Dario Valenza ** 16:42 It's also shorter course, so the format is kind of optimized for television, really, for, yeah, broadcast. So you have many short races, and it's it does mean that if you have a big disparity, like if one boat makes a mistake and falls a long way behind, it's over pretty quickly, because it did happen in the past where you get a boat that was outmatched or did something wrong and just spend three hours following the leader with no chance of catching up. So there's certainly a merit to having short, sharp races, but I think it's probably more physical and less cerebral, like, if you look at, yeah, the way the old boats worked, you had 17 people on there providing all the mechanical power, maneuvering, putting spinnakers up and down, dip ball driving, moving their weight around the boat. He had a tactician. They would have conversations about what's happening and react, you know, in a matter of seconds, not in a matter of milliseconds. Now you have eight people on the boat, four of them are just pedaling bikes, basically to put pressure into an accumulator to run the hydraulics. You have a helmsman on each side, and you have a trimmer on each side, and they don't cross the boat, because the boats are so fast that it's actually dangerous to get out of the cockpit. So it's very much more, I guess, closer to sort of Formula One in terms of it, you've got you've got speeds, you've got the reaction times are shorter. Everything happens more quickly, and there's certainly less interaction between the boats. Do you have   Michael Hingson ** 18:19 a preference of whether you like more the old way or the newer way of doing the races and the way the boats are designed.   Dario Valenza ** 18:28 If pressed, I would say I'd prefer the old way. But that's probably the bias, because I was involved more back then. Yeah. I think it's equally fascinating. And that sort of brings me to Yeah. So even you know, we'll get into how it applies to business and things like that, and it's the same problem, just with different variables. So my view with the cup was, whatever the rules are, you've got to try and win within them. And so they will change, the boat will change, the venue will change, the weather will change, budget limitations, all these things play into this multi variant problem, and your job is to balance all those variables to get the best   Michael Hingson ** 19:10 outcome right in the rules. Exactly.   Dario Valenza ** 19:12 Yeah. I mean, the teams do have a say. So I was, for example, in the committee that designed the rule for the catamarans that went to San Francisco, having said that what we thought we were encouraging by the rules, and what actually happened was nothing to do with each other, because once you set the rules, then the fascinating thing is how people interpret them, and they'll interpret them in ways that you can't possibly imagine, hence unintended consequences. But yeah, you have a say, but ultimately they are what they are, and the point of competing is to do well within those rules. Having said that, if they get to the point where you're just not interested anymore, then don't compete. But it is what it is. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 19:54 So how long did you do yacht design and so on, dealing. With the cup,   Dario Valenza ** 20:02 probably 15 years altogether, was 12 or so in the actual America's Cup, and a few years before that, working up to it, doing various different projects, and that's sort of in a professional capacity, getting paid before that as a passion. It's pretty much my whole settling my teens, maybe a few years before that as well.   Michael Hingson ** 20:21 So what did you do after that?   20:25 I started my own business.   Michael Hingson ** 20:26 There you go. Well, tell us about the business and what you what you started with.   Dario Valenza ** 20:36 Yeah. So it the the aim was what we call long range aerial data capture. So fancy way of saying drones with a long range that can carry out surveys effectively. So whether it's taking photographs, video, LIDAR scans or combinations thereof, the sort of underlying motivation was the importance of data. So having come out of the America's Cup and seeing the way you develop is you interrogate what's happening with the boat and the boat and the crew and the conditions, and the more channels of information you have, the more informed decisions you can make about improving now, applying that to real world problems, to things like linear infrastructure, to mining to land management. It seemed like to me there's a gap where if you could have better aerial data, you could make better decisions. And I happened to have a tool in the design and manufacturing processes that came out of the America's Cup that would allow me to create a lightweight airframe that would have that efficiency and be able to give that range. And this was at a time when, you know, people were already starting to think of drones as a solution, though there was a lot of hype around them, but it was really all around the electronics, around multi rotors, around things that you could effectively buy and put up in the air and do a short mission wave and then land. The idea of a long range drone, other than in the military, was pretty much unexplored, and I think largely because to make it work commercially financially, you needed the range you need to be able to cover in the order of hundreds of kilometers in one flight, so that you're not having a ground crew, effectively driving the line relocating from point to point as the surveys carried out. So initially it was fairly conservative in the sense that the main focus was to set up that manufacturing capability. So basically, copy or transfer those process out of the America's Cup into a commercial setting. So making molds, curing carbon, the way you document or the way you go about it, that design process, and I was open to doing custom work to subsidize it, basically. So doing stuff again, for for sailboats, for racing, cars, for architecture, just with that composite manufacturing capability as a way to prove it and refine it. And whatever money was coming out of that was going into developing a drone airframe. And then I was fortunate enough to have a collaboration with a former colleague of mine in the cup who set up a business in Spain doing computational fluid dynamics, and he alerted me to a contract over there for a military surveillance research drone. We, by then, had an airframe that more or less we could demonstrate, and we could show that it was lighter and was more efficient, and then fly further and it had a more stable flying path and all of that. So we won that contract, we supplied that, and then out of that came the commercial offering, and it basically grew from there.   Michael Hingson ** 23:50 But when did you start dealing with the drone design, the airframe and so on,   23:57 probably to 2015   Michael Hingson ** 24:00 Okay, yeah, I think I had started hearing about drones by then, and in fact, I know I had by that time, but yeah, they they were still fairly new. So how far would your drone travel?   Dario Valenza ** 24:16 So we have two versions, the old electric one will do a couple of 100 kilometers, the petro hybrid one will do up to 800 and so we're really squarely in the territory of crude helicopter, smaller, small fixed wing planes like Cessnas, and we're really going into that same way of operating. So we're not so much selling the drone to a utility to do their scans. We are providing the data that comes out of the scan, and we're using the drone as our tool to get that data. And by effectively mirroring the model of the traditional sort of legacy aviation, we can offer, obviously, a lower cost, but also better data. Because we fly lower and slower, so we can get a higher resolution and more accuracy, and there's a obviously carbon footprint reduction, because we're burning about 2% of the fuel, and it's quieter and it's safer and all of that stuff. So it's really doing that close in aerial survey work over large distances the way it's currently being done, but with a better tool,   Michael Hingson ** 25:21 the electric drone, you said, only goes a couple 100 kilometers, is that basically because of battery issues,   Dario Valenza ** 25:27 absolutely, especially power density. So not so much energy density, but power density really how much energy you can store in the battery in terms of mass, and obviously the fact that you're not burning it off, so you're carrying the empty battery around with you. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 25:45 Any interest in, or has there been any exploration of making solar powered drones?   Dario Valenza ** 25:52 We've certainly looked into it, and we've developed relationships with suppliers that are developing specialized, conformal, curvy solar panels that form part of the structure of the wing. There are a couple of considerations. Most prominent is the trade off that you're making. Like if you take add solar panels to a wing, even if they're integrated in the structure, and you minimize the structural weight, they will have a mass. So call it an extra kilo. Yeah. Right now, if I were to take that extra kilo and put it in battery or in fuel, I would be better off, so I'd have more energy by doing that than by having the solar panel   Michael Hingson ** 26:36 dealing on efficiency yet, yeah,   Dario Valenza ** 26:37 yeah. So obviously, on a hot day, when you're flying with the sun directly above, you probably would be better. But over the course of the day, different locations, banking, etc, it's just not there yet. Net, net, particularly considering that there'll be a degradation and there'll be a maintenance that's required as the panels deteriorate and the various connections breakdown, etc. So it's not something you'd rule out. Then the secondary consideration is, when you look at our aircraft, it's fairly skinny, long, skinny wings. When you look at the area from above, there's not a lot of projected area, particularly the wings being thin and very high aspect ratio, you wouldn't really be able to fit that much area right when it comes to and then you've got to remember also that if you're generating while you're flying, your electronics have to be very different, because you have to have some way to manage that power, balance it off against the battery itself. The battery is multi cells, 12 S system, so you then have to balance that charging. So there's some complexity involved. There's a weight penalty, potentially a drag penalty. There is a Net Advantage in a very narrow range of conditions. And overall, we're just not there yet in terms of the advantage. And even if it could extend the range by a few minutes, because we have an aircraft that can fly for eight hours, doesn't really matter, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 28:04 So dealing with an electric drone again, have you ever looked into things like fuel cells as opposed to batteries? Or does it not make we have,   Dario Valenza ** 28:14 and there's a company in France that we've been collaborating with, it's developing a hydrogen fuel cell, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 28:21 So I was wondering, yeah. And   Dario Valenza ** 28:23 again, this is about, sort of, maybe sounds a bit conservative, but you know, during these lessons from the Americas capitals, talking about being seduced by the latest shiny thing can come at the detriment of achieving what you need to achieve today. So we're very conscious in the business in carbonics, of having this roadmap where there's a lot of nice to haves, there's a lot of capability that we want going forward, and that's everything from the remote one to many operations, detect and avoid fail safes, additional comms, all stuff that will enable us to do what we're doing today, plus x, y, z, but we need to be able to do what we can do what we have to do today. And most of the missions that we're doing, they're over a power line in the middle of nowhere. They're in relatively non congested airspace. The coordination is relatively simple. We have the ability to go beyond visual line of sight. We have the range, so it's really let's use what we have today and put all the other stuff in time and space. As the business grows, the mission grows, the customers get more comfortable, and that's a way to then maintain the advantage. But it's very easy to get sucked into doing cool R and D at the expense of delivering today.   Michael Hingson ** 29:42 Yeah, it's R and D is great, but you still gotta pay the bills. Yeah, so you have worked across several industries. What's kind of the common thread for you, working across and designing in several industries? Yeah. So   Dario Valenza ** 30:00 I think it's a high level problem solving is having an outcome that's very clearly defined and a rule set and a set of constraints. And the challenge is, how do you balance all those elements to deliver the best value? So whether it's, how do you design a boat within a rule to go as fast as possible? How do you develop a drone to fly as long as possible, given a certain time and budget availability? You're always looking at variables that will each have their own pros and cons, and how do you combine them so things like, you know, team size versus burn rate versus how aggressively you go to market, how do you select your missions? How do you decide whether to say yes or no to a customer based on the overall strategy? I see that as you have all these variables that you can tweak, you're trying to get an outcome. How do you balance and weigh them all to get that outcome?   Michael Hingson ** 30:58 Yeah, well, you've I'm sorry, go ahead.   Dario Valenza ** 31:01 I was gonna say, I mean, I have also, like, an interesting motorsport and when you look at a formula, one strategy, same thing, right? Did you carry a fuel load? Do you change tires? Do you optimize your arrow for this? It's a similar type of problem you're saying, I this is my aim. I've got all these variables. How do I set them all in a way that it gives me the best outcome? Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:23 and in your design and and as you construct and look at what you're doing, you decide exactly what the parameters are, and you know when you're going to change the tires, or, you know when it's time to put in more fuel or whatever. And then, see, you've got to really know the product very well,   Dario Valenza ** 31:42 absolutely. And again, in the case of salvo racing, it's almost exemplary, because the rules are spelled out, and you have, it's a very artificial set of constraints, and you have a race day, you'll have your budget, and obviously you can work to increase that, but the time is what it is. And then in the rules, you actually get to trade off length versus width, versus mass versus sail area. Do I make my boat more powerful so it goes faster in strong winds, or do I make it skinnier so it goes better in light winds? You look at the history of the weather in the venue, and the teams that win are the ones that get all those mostly, right? So it's not necessarily the latest, fastest, more, most extreme solution, it's the one that best balances all these variables. Yeah, you transfer that into business, and it's a similar thing. You've got, you've got funding, you've got burn rate, you've got people, you've got customers, probably more variables, and it's a little bit more fuzzy in some cases. So you need to work harder to nail these things down. And it's a longer term. It's an open ended prospect. It's not I've just got to race on Sunday, then I can have a break for six months. It's you do it today and tomorrow and tomorrow. So it's going to be sustainable. But I the way you think about it in the abstract, it's the same,   Michael Hingson ** 33:00 and you also have to keep evolving as technology grows, as as the industry grows, as demands change, or maybe better than saying as demands change, as you foresee demands changing, you have to be able to keep up with it. And there's a lot to all that. There's a lot of challenge that that someone like you has to really keep up with. It's   Dario Valenza ** 33:23 a balance between leading and listening. So there's a classic Henry Ford line that if I'd asked the customer what he wanted, he would have told me a faster horse. We've fallen into the trap sometimes of talking to a customer, and they're very set about, you know, we want to use this camera to take these this resolution, at this distance, because that's what we use on a helicopter, because that's what used on a multi rotor. And you have to unpack that and say, Hang on, what data do you actually like? Because we have a different payload. We fly in a different way. So let us tell you how we can give you that solution if you tell us what we want, and I think that applies across various sort of aspects of the business. But to your point about the continuous evolution, one of the most fascinating things out of this experience of almost 10 years of sort of pioneering the drone industry is just how much the ecosystem has evolved. So when we started out, the naive assumption was we're good at making airframes. We can make really good, lightweight, efficient aircraft. We don't necessarily want to be an electronics manufacturer. It's a whole other challenge. Let's buy what we can off the shelf, put it in the aircraft for the command and control and go fly. And we very quickly realized that for the standard that we wanted in terms of being able to satisfy a regulator, that the reliability is at a certain point, having fail safes, having programmability. There was nothing out there when we had to go and design. Avionics, because you could either buy hobby stuff that was inconsistent and of dubious quality, or you had to spend millions of dollars on something out of the military, and then it didn't work commercially. And so we went and looked at cars, and we said, okay, can seems like control area network seems like a good protocol. Let's adopt that. Although some of the peripherals that we buy, like the servos, they don't speak, can so then we have to make a peripheral node that can translate from can to Rs, 232, or whatever. And we went through that process. But over the years, these suppliers that came out of hobby, came out of consumer electronics, came out of the military, very quickly saw the opportunity, and we were one of the companies driving it that hang on. I can make an autopilot module that is ISO certified and has a certain quality assurance that comes with it, and I can make it in a form factor under the price where a commercial drone company can use it. And so it really accelerated the last maybe three, four years. There's a lot of stuff available that's been developed for commercial drones that now gives us a lot more options in terms of what we buy rather than what we make.   Michael Hingson ** 36:13 Well, now I have to ask, since you brought it up, does anybody use Rs 232, anymore? I had to ask. I mean, you know,   Dario Valenza ** 36:21 less and less, yeah, at one point, like we use it for GPS parks, because we didn't have anything that ran on can right slowly we're replacing. So the latest version of the aircraft now is all cap, but it took a while to get there. That's   Michael Hingson ** 36:37 gonna say that's a very long Rs 232, cable you have if you're going to communicate with the aircraft, that'd be I still have here some Rs 232 cables that I remember using them back in the 1980s and into the 1990s but yeah, Rs 232   Dario Valenza ** 36:57 horrendous ones was, there was a, I think it was a light LIDAR altimeter. Someone will correct me, it ran on I squared C, oh, which is the most inappropriate possible thing. And it is what it is. So all we, all we could do is shorten the wire length as much as possible and live with it until we found something better, and   Michael Hingson ** 37:18 then we also had parallel cables. Yes, of course, one connected printers,   Dario Valenza ** 37:26 and we have ethernet on the aircraft for the comms. Well, yeah, there's a lot of translating that we need to do. And again, I'm not an electronic engineer, but I understand enough of it to know what's good and what's not. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 37:38 yeah. The days have gone by with all of the RS, 232, and parallel ports and all that. Now it's all USB and Ethernet and cams and other things like that which making kind of fun. Well, what other industries have you been involved in besides the drone and the boat or yacht world?   Dario Valenza ** 37:56 So I've done a little bit in cinemable Things which was kind of pituitous. The last of the Star Wars prequels was filmed in Sydney, and I happened to be here for a few months between America's Cup campaigns. And there's a few boat builders that were asked to go and do fiberglass work on the set, and they recommended me to do some of the structural design work for some of the sets. I don't think I was credited, but it was fun. Again, not something I planned to do long term. It just happened to come up, and I did it for about three months. As I said, a little bit in motor sport, more as a hobby, but as an interest. But we've made in the early days of carbonics, we made spoilers and wings and bits and pieces for cars when we were getting going, but mainly the sailing of the drones, really, because I've been in the drones now for 10 years. So right?   Michael Hingson ** 38:51 What? Why did you switch? Or maybe, why is it the wrong answer? But what made you switch from doing yachts to drones, and how did the drone story come about?   Dario Valenza ** 39:05 Yeah, so I mentioned the angle of the importance of data, looking for a real world problem where data was going to make a difference, and having the right so that not a solution in search of a problem, but the right solution for this problem, saying, if we can design an airframe that can do this, there's an obvious advantage and an obvious saving that that would make a difference to the world that has a big market. Now that's the theory, then to take the plunge. It was a bit of a combination of things. It was being beholden to the unpredictable movements of the cup, where your career depends on who wins and where it goes, and as a young single man, that's fantastic once you're trying to get married and have a family, becomes a little bit more of a problem. So again, starting your own business doesn't exactly give you stability. Cheap but more stable, I guess. And really that combination of an opportunity, being able to say I can actually see if I can make this work, and see what happens, wanting to be located in one place, I guess, looking for variety as well, and knowing that, you know, I still could have contact with the Americas Cup World, because I said I was doing custom work, and we had people from the cup working in carbonics. But it's really that point where you say, Do I want to keep following the circus around the world, or do you want to try and do my own thing and see how that goes? And I can always go back. And the aim is, you know, once you're committed, then you sort of tend to try and make it work no matter what, and it becomes the new aim, and that's what you put your energy into.   Michael Hingson ** 40:52 I had a guest on unstoppable mindset named Dre Baldwin, and Dre was a professional basketball player for nine years. He went to high school, was on the bench the whole time, went to college, played in college pretty well, but wasn't really noticed until he went to a camp where people could try out and be scouted by professionals who wouldn't come and see you because you weren't famous enough to be seen just by them coming to look for you. But he got a video, and he got some good suggestions, and anyway, he eventually made that into a nine year career. And I asked him, when we talked, why did you end the career? Why did you leave and start a business? And the business he started was up your game LLC, and it's all about helping people up their game in business and so on. And of course, he does it all in the sports environment. But I asked him why he left, and one of the things that he said was it, what people don't know is it's not just the games themselves and the basketball that you play. It's all the other stuff. It's all the fact that if you're going to really do it and be reasonably well, you need to go to the gym a lot, not just when they tell you to practice, but you got to take the initiative and do it on your own. You have to do other things. And he said, I just got to the point where I didn't want to do that, all that invisible part of it anymore. And so he left and started his own business, and has been very successful, but it was an interesting answer. And in a sense, I hear, you know what you're saying. It's really where you're going to go, and what is, what's really going to interest you, which is what has to be part of whatever you do?   Dario Valenza ** 42:34 Yeah, that all makes sense. I think, in my experience, I've never not had an obsession, so to speak. So yeah, with the sailing absolutely like, if you want to be in the America's Cup, it can't be a day job. You have to be committed. You have to be able to concentrate, innovate again, if you're I wasn't an athlete on the boat, so it wasn't necessarily about going to the gym, but certainly doing research, doing testing, working on the boat overnight before I went out the next day. It is a competition, so that the longer, the harder you work, assuming you still keep your performance up, the better you're going to do. So it was an obsession. I accepted that I never it never occurred to me that I don't want to keep doing it right. It was really the logistics. It was thinking, because of the cup had gone to court, we'd had the deed of gift match. Everything had been on hold for a while. It got going again, and the rules changed and there were fewer teams. I'd actually spent a bit of time fundraising for the team that had come out of Valencia to keep it going until the eventual San Francisco cup. So that was interesting as well, saying that, you know, is it getting the reception that I hoped it would, in terms of people investing in it and seeing the value, and kind of looking at it and saying, Okay, now I've got to move to San Francisco the next one, who knows where it's going to be, the format and all those things, you just sort of trade it off and say, Well, if I can make a go of something where I can do it in my hometown, it can be just as interesting, because the technical challenges is just as fascinating. And it's really about, can I create this little environment that I control, where I can do the same fun stuff that I was doing in the cup in terms of tech development, but also make it a business and make a difference to the world and make it commercially viable. And that was really the challenge. And saying that, that was the motivation, to say, if I can take the thing that interests me from the cup and apply it to a commercial technological challenge, then I'll have the best of the best of both worlds.   Michael Hingson ** 44:44 What? What made you really go into doing drones after the yacht stuff?   Dario Valenza ** 44:52 So yeah, certainly that aerial data capture piece, but also the it's very announced. I guess. So most of the work that I was doing in the cup was around aeroelastic optimization, lightweight structures, which really dynamics, yeah. And so, you know, a yacht is a plane with one wing in the water and one wing in the air. It's all fluids. The maths is the same, the physics is the same, the materials are the same. If you do it well in the cup, you win. If you do it well in drones, you win also. But you win by going further and being more efficient and economical at doing these missions. And so it's sort of like having this superpower where you can say, I can make this tool really good that's going to give me an advantage. Let's go and see if that actually makes a difference in the market.   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 Well, I mean, as we know, the only difference really, between water and air is that the molecules are further apart in air than they are in water. So why? It really isn't that much different? He said, being a physicist and picking on chemists, but you know, I do understand what you're saying. So when did you actually start carbonics? Was that when you went into the Drone   Dario Valenza ** 46:05 World? So the business itself early 2012 and as I said, those are a few years there where we're doing custom work. And as it happened, I ended up supplying to New Zealand because we built an A class catamaran, which is effectively a little America's Cup boat for the punters, kind of thing that did well in some regattas. It caught the attention of the team New Zealand guys. They decided to use them as a training platform. We did a world championship where they were skipping the boats the carbonics built did really well in that sort of top five spots got a bunch of commercial orders off the back of that, which then brought some money into subsidize the drones, etc, etc. So by the time we were properly so the first time we flew our airframe would have been, you know, 2015   Michael Hingson ** 46:55 but nobody has created an America's Cup for drones yet. So there's a project for you.   Dario Valenza ** 47:01 They're all sort of drone racing, so I'm not surprised. Yeah, and I think again, it's really interesting. So when you look at motorsport and yacht racing in the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s it really was a test bet, because you had to build something, go compete with it, learn from it, repeat. And you'd get, you know, the case of motorsport, traction control, ABS, all that stuff. In the case of sailing, that the use of, you know, modern fiber materials for ropes and structures, that was really sort of the cauldron where the development happened. And I think that was sort of the result of an analog world, so to speak, where you had to build things to know. I think now, with better compute and a more sophisticated role that simulations can play, it's still there is value in competition, but I think it's done in a different way. You're doing it. The key is to iterate virtually as much as possible before you build something, rather than building as many things as possible and doing the development that way.   Michael Hingson ** 48:13 Well, here's an interesting Oh, go ahead, yeah.   Dario Valenza ** 48:16 So I think that affects, certainly, how sport is seen in terms of there's probably more emphasis on the actual athletic competition, on the technology, because there are just other areas now where that development is happening, and SpaceX drones, there are more commercial places where control systems, electronic structures are really being pushed well before it was mainly in sport.   Michael Hingson ** 48:45 Well, here's a business question for you. How do you identify value that is something that you uniquely can do, that other people can't, and that here's the big part, people will pay for it,   Dario Valenza ** 49:01 cost per kilometer of scan is really my answer in the case of carbonics, saying you want to get a digital twin of a power transmission line over 800 kilometers. You can do that with a helicopter, and it's going to cost 1000s of dollars, and you're going to burn tons of fuel, and you can only get so close, etc. So you can only do it in visual conditions, and that's sort of the current best practice. That's how it's done. You can do it with satellites, but you can't really get in close enough yet in terms of resolution and independent on orbits and weather. You can do it by having someone drive or walk along the line, and that's stupendously inefficient. You can do it with multi rotor drones, and then, yeah, you might be able to do five kilometers at a time, but then you got to land and relocate and launch again, and you end up with this big sort of disparity of data sets that go stitch together by the time you add that all up. It's actually more expensive than a helicopter. Or you could do it with a drone like. Fly for 800 kilometers, which is making it Yes, and making a drone that can fly for 800 kilometers is not trivial, and that's where the unique value sits. And it's not just the airframe that the airframe holds it all up, but you have to have the redundancies to command and control, the engineering certifications, the comms, the stability, the payload triggering and geo tagging. So all of that stuff has to work. And the value of carbonics is, yes, the carbon fiber in the airframe, but also the the team ethos, which, again, comes out of that competition world, to really grab the low hanging fruit, make it all work, get it out there and be flexible, like we've had missions with stuff hasn't gone to plan, and we've fixed it, and we've still delivered the data. So the value is really being able to do something that no one else can do.   Michael Hingson ** 50:54 So I assume that you're still having fun as a founder and the owner of a company,   51:02 sometimes,   Michael Hingson ** 51:05 more often than not, one would hope,   Dario Valenza ** 51:07 Oh, absolutely, yeah. I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of pride in seeing now we're 22 people, some of certainly leaders in the field, some of the best in the world, the fact that they have chosen to back the vision, to spend years of their professional life making it happen, according to the thing that I started, I mean that that's flattering and humbling. There's always a challenge. It's always interesting. Again, having investors and all that you're not it's not all on my shoulders. People that are also invested, literally, who have the same interests and we support each other. But at the same time, it's not exactly certain. In terms of you're always working through prices and looking at what's going to happen in a day a year, six months, but you sort of get used to it and say, Well, I've done this willingly. I know there's a risk, but it's fun and it's worth it, and we'll get there. And so you do it   Michael Hingson ** 52:10 well, you're the you're the visionary, and that that brings excitement to it all. And as long as you can have fun and you can reward yourself by what you're doing. It doesn't get any better than that.   Dario Valenza ** 52:26 So they tell me, yeah, how do you absolutely, how do you   Michael Hingson ** 52:31 create a good, cohesive team?   Dario Valenza ** 52:36 Values, I think, are the base of them would be very clear about what we are and what we aren't. It's really interesting because I've never really spent any time in a corporate environment, nor do I want to. So keeping that informal fun element, where it's fairly egalitarian, it's fairly focused, we're not too worried about saying things how they are and offending people. We know we're all in it together. It's very much that focus and common goal, I think, creates the bond and then communication like being absolutely clear about what are we trying to do? What are the priorities? What are the constraints? And constantly updating each other when, when one department is having an issue and it's going to hold something up, we support each other and we adjust accordingly, and we move resources around. But yeah, I think the short answer is culture you have to have when someone walks in, there's a certain quality to the atmosphere that tells you what this team is about, right? And everyone is on their page, and it's not for everyone. Again, we don't demand that people put in their heart and soul into 24/7 but if you don't, you probably don't want   Michael Hingson ** 53:56 to be there. Yeah, makes sense. So what kind of advice would you give to someone who's starting out in a career or considering what they want to do with their lives?   Dario Valenza ** 54:08 Where do I start? Certainly take, take the risks while you're young and independent, you don't have a lot to lose. Give it a go and be humble. So getting my experience going into the cup like my approach was, I'll clean the floors, I'll be the Gopher, I'll work for free, until you guys see some value, like I'm it's not about what am I going to get out of this? It's how do I get involved, and how do I prove myself? And so being open and learning, being willing to put in the hours. And I think at one point there was a comment during the trial that he doesn't know what he's doing, but he's really keen, and his attitude is good. And I think that's that's how you want to be, because you can learn the thing you. That you need to have the attitude to be involved and have have a go.   Michael Hingson ** 55:05 Have fun. Yeah, you have to decide to have fun.   Dario Valenza ** 55:14 Yeah, absolutely. You have to be interested in what you're doing, because if you're doing it for the money, yes, it's nice when you get the paycheck, but you don't have that passion to really be motivated and put in the time. So right by this is that the Venn diagram right, find something you're interested in, that someone is willing to pay you for, and that you're good at, not easy, but having that openness and the humble and saying, Well, I'm don't try and get to the top straightaway, like get in, prove yourself. Learn, improve, gain skills, and probably, in my case, the value of cross pollination. So rather than sort of going into one discipline and just learning how it's done and only seeing that, look at the analogous stuff out there and see how you can apply it. Yeah. So again, from from boats to drones, from cars to boats, from really racing to business, abstract the problem into what are we trying to solve? What are the variables? How's it been done elsewhere, and really knowing when to think by analogy and when to think from first principles,   Michael Hingson ** 56:23 that makes sense. And with that, I'm going to thank you. We've been doing this for an hour. My gosh, is life fun or what? But I really appreciate it. Well, there you go. I appreciate you being here, and this has been a lot of fun. I hope that all of you out there watching and listening have liked our podcast episode. Please let us know. I'd appreciate it if you'd email me. Michael h i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I B, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is w, w, w, dot Michael hingson, that's m, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, n.com/podcast, and I would ask you how, how can people reach out to you? If they'd like to reach out to you and maybe learn more about what you do, maybe join the team?   Dario Valenza ** 57:09 Yeah, probably the easiest way would be LinkedIn, just Dario Valencia. Otherwise, my email is just Dario D, A, R, I, o@carbonics.com.au.au,   Michael Hingson ** 57:21 being Australian, and Valenc spelled V, A,   Dario Valenza ** 57:25 l e n z, A, but the email is just dario@carbonics.com.au You don't need to know how to spell my last name, right? Yeah, sorry for the LinkedIn. It'll be Dario Valencia, V A, l e n z A, or look at the carbonics profile on LinkedIn, and I'll be one of the people who works. There you   Michael Hingson ** 57:43 go. Well again, this has been fun, and we appreciate you, and hope that people will reach out and want to learn more. If you know of anybody who might make a good guest, or if any of you watching or listening out there might know of anyone who would be a good guest for unstoppable mindset, I sure would appreciate it if you'd let us know, we really value your help with that. We're always looking for more people to be on the podcast, so please don't hesitate. And also, wherever you're listening or watching, we sure would appreciate it if you give us a five star rating. We really appreciate your views, especially when they're positive, but we like all the comments, so however you're listening and so on, please give us a five star rating and let us know how we can even do better next time. But Dario, again, I want to thank you. Really appreciate you being here with us today. This has been a lot of fun, and I'm glad I learned a lot today. So thank you very much.   58:37 My pleasure. You   **Michael Hingson ** 58:43 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.

From time to time I am contacted by someone who says they have an interesting and thought provoking guest who would be perfect for Unstoppable Mindset. Such was the case when I was contacted about our guest this time, Dre Baldwin. Dre and I had an initial conversation and I invited him to appear as a guest. I must say that he more than exceeded my expectations. And now he is back for a second time with us with more stories and insights.   You may recall from my first episode with him that Dre grew up in Philadelphia. He wanted to do something with sports and tried out various options until he discovered Basketball in high school. While he wasn't considered overly exceptional and only played one year in high school he realized that Basketball was the sport for him.   Dre went to Penn State and played all four of his college years. Again, while he played consistently and reasonably well, he was not noticed and after college he was not signed to a professional team. He worked at a couple of jobs for a time and then decided to try to get noticed for basketball by going to a camp where he could be seen by scouts and where he could prove he had the talent to make basketball a profession. As he will tell us, eventually he did get a contract to play professionally. Other things happened along the way as you will hear. Dre discovered Youtube and the internet and began posting basketball tips which became popular.   In this episode we continue to discuss with Dre the lessons he wishes to convey as well as his life philosophy. Dre discuss more about the value and need for personal initiative. He tells us the value of having a personal initiative mindset and how that can lead to high performance.   I asked Dre about how playing basketball prepared him for his work in business. His answer will surprise you. It did me. As he points out, his business preparation came earlier and in different ways than playing basketball.   I also asked Dre why he left playing professional basketball. Again, his answer is fascinating. I will leave that for Dre to tell you.   I hope you enjoy my talk with Dre as much as I. Dre Baldwin provided many lessons we all can use. Who knows? Dre, you and I may talk again. Stay tuned.       About the Guest:   As CEO and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc., Dre Baldwin has given 4 TEDxTalks on Discipline, Confidence, Mental Toughness & Personal Initiative and has authored 35 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick, Wilson Sports, STASH Investments and DIME magazine.    Dre has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000+ subscribers, his content being consumed over 103 million times.    Dre's daily Work On Your Game MasterClass has amassed over 2,900 episodes and more than 7.3 million downloads.    In just 5 years, Dre went from the end of his high school team's bench to a 9-year professional basketball career. He played in 8 countries including Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia and Germany.    Dre invented his Work On Your Game framework as a "roadmap in reverse" to help professionals with High Performance, Consistency and Results.    A Philadelphia native, Dre lives in Miami.   Ways to connect Dre:   http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin http://YouTube.com/Dreupt https://www.facebook.com/WorkOnYourGameUniversity http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay http://X.com/DreAllDay http://TikTok.com/WorkOnYourGame   Kindly use this link for our Free book, The Third Day

https://www.amazon.com/Against-Tide-H-Bedford-Jones-ebook/dp/B0DZHSFHDAgainst the Tide is a true story that captures the fear and hardships faced by African Americans during a disturbing time in American history the post-Reconstruction period that led to the introduction of Jim Crow laws.Through hard work and determination, Hansford C. Bayton would rise from humble beginnings to become the captain and owner of five excursion and mail delivery steamboats that plied the Rappahannock River during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Unusually for an African American, he would acquire wealth and the respect of both blacks and whites. Nevertheless, his boats were burned one by one. But with each malicious burning, and with lynching on the rise, he would build again.This book illuminates a time in American history when the surge of progress made by freedmen was sharply curtailed through the enactment of segregation laws and the activities of the Ku Klux Klan. As a result Hansford C. Bayton died poor, but his story is one of dignified courage and determination when faced with overwhelming odds. Truly, he was a man who swam against the tide.---

Tabatha Jones spent 20 years in the corporate world which she joined right out of high school. Soon after beginning work in a call center she began to discover her own leadership skills and began forging her own path in the corporate environment. Tabatha found that she could empower others to be better than they thought by providing a natural, honest and positive leadership style.   As Tabatha describes, she learned how to communicate and help connect the C Suite leaders in companies to those they lead. She learned to be a positive conduit to help all parts of companies where she served to learn and grow. She tells us stories about how she thrived as a leader and how she created positive change wherever she worked. She provides us with some really good leadership tips.   While Tabatha says her programs today are mainly to help women who more often do not have the confidence to lead, she states emphatically that her teachings do help men as well and she has male clients to prove it.   As Tabatha says, while she was a corporate leader for many years, she also used that time to coach and help others to learn leadership skills. Seven years ago Tabatha decided to leave working for others to form her own coaching firm, Empowered Leadership Coaching, LLC. She helps people learn how they can positively grow and advance in their own careers.   I very much enjoyed this episode and found that Tabatha and I have a lot of leadership views in common. For example, we discuss trust and the need for real trust in work environments. She tells a story about a mistake she made as a leader and how she dealt with it to keep the trust of all persons involved. I think you have a lot to gain from Tabatha. At the end of this episode she tells us how to get a free eBook that provides invaluable lessons to help you in your own efforts to rise in the work world.       About the Guest:   Tabatha Jones is the CEO of Empowered Leadership Coaching, LLC, a Career Advancement & Leadership Coach, author, and keynote speaker based in the SF Bay Area, working with clients nationwide. With over 20 years of experience leading high-performing technical teams in Corporate America, she transitioned into coaching at the age of 50, driven by her passion for helping women break through career barriers and achieve leadership success. Tabatha specializes in working with ambitious Gen-X women who are ready to stop playing small and make the next years the most impactful of their careers. Through her personalized coaching programs, she empowers her clients to develop strategic career plans, build unshakable confidence, elevate their visibility, and secure significant promotions. Her clients, including leaders at companies like Comcast, Cisco, Abbvie, PG&E, and Tyson, have successfully climbed the corporate ladder, developed standout leadership skills, and positioned themselves as top candidates for advancement. As a sought-after keynote speaker, Tabatha inspires audiences with actionable insights on leadership, career advancement, and empowerment. She is also the author of Promotion Ready in 3 Months: The Women's Guide to Career Advancement, available on Amazon.   Ways to connect Tabatha:   Website: https://www.empowered-leader.com/   Connect with me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tabatha-jones-4485854/   Grab a Free Resource: GenX Promotion Planning Assessment: https://www.empowered-leader.com/promotionassessment   Purchase a copy of my book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/gpoqjNw   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and welcome to another edition, an exciting edition of unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet, and the unexpected is everything that doesn't have anything to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most things, according to my diversity friends, but that's okay, our guest today. How do I do this? Okay, I'll just be up front. As many of you know, I use a screen reader, which is a piece of software to verbalize whatever comes across the screen. And when my screen reader finds my guest today's name, it pronounces it Tabatha. Don't you like that? Of course, it's Tabitha, but Tabata, so, so Tabitha. Tabatha Jones, welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here.   Tabatha Jones ** 02:09 Oh, thank you so much for having me here. And Tabatha sounds fairly International, and maybe I'll take it, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 02:16 well, you can have it. It's yours. I don't think that the screen reader will mind a whole lot. But But what we're glad you're here now. I met Tabitha, as I have mentioned in the past with others, through an event that I attend, pada palooza. And Tabitha and I were both at the most recent pot of palooza. So what took you there? Are you starting a podcast, or are you just wanting to be interviewed by podcasters, or do you already have a podcast and you've done 1000s of episodes already?   Tabatha Jones ** 02:46 Well, I haven't done 1000s of episodes. I'm a fairly new podcaster. I've launched my own it's called the Gen X, free mix life, laughs and next acts. I think we're at about Episode 11. I was actually really interested in joining pada palusa to meet other podcasters. Here's some success stories and learn some great tips and tricks as I'm continuing to build mine out and and engage my audience well. So if there's   Michael Hingson ** 03:11 any way I can help, you, just need to shout out and glad to do it. And if you ever need a guest, and if I can fit the mold, I'm also glad to do that. It's always fun to to be a guest. When people want to come on unstoppable mindset, and I discover that they have a podcast, I always tell them, Well, you know, and many of them say, Well, do you charge for guests? And I say, Yes, I do. The charges you have to let me be a guest on your podcast, or if I go on to their podcast. I say I charge for that, and the charges that you have to come on my cop podcast to be a guest. So it works out.   Tabatha Jones ** 03:47 It's a fantastic tip. I'm taking that down and definitely having you on the podcast. Oh my gosh, yeah, that'd be fun.   Michael Hingson ** 03:53 Well, it it is cute. Actually, last week of a couple in Australia, a couple people emailed me and they they want to come on unstoppable mindset. And I was glad to do that. And they said, you know, but, but what's your charge? And I said, Well, I know you have a podcast. I have to be on yours. They said, Oh, we can, we can pay that. So it's fine. It is. You know, podcasting is so, so much fun. I did radio for years at the University of California at Irvine, and I like radio. Radio is a wonderful thing, but you're more structured because you have a limited amount of time. You've got to do certain things, you've got commercials you got to do, and sponsors that you have to satisfy, and some of that can happen with the podcast, but it's still not nearly as rigid, which makes it a lot of fun.   Tabatha Jones ** 04:45 Yeah, absolutely. And there's so much variety out there. One of the coolest things for me about starting a podcast is it's led me to so many other podcast shows that I had never listened to before, yours included. So now I think I'm following maybe. 30 to 40 different shows that I hadn't heard of until very recently, I'd say, probably the last six to eight months, and I'm loving it. I learned something new every single day. I learned something about someone's experience that leads me to check more into what they've shared. And it's really been fun. It's been a much more fun adventure for me than the social media that I was kind of, kind of dabbling in a little bit, but podcasts, it's just so much more personal and fun. It   Michael Hingson ** 05:27 is. It's much more connectional. And social media is just so impersonal, and people spend so much time doing it, and I'm amazed at some of the people who spend so many hours on it. I could, I don't do a lot of stuff on social media. I will post things occasionally, and I'm amazed at how fast some people, as soon as they as soon as I post, within minutes, they're responding to it. And I'm going, how do you do that? But anyway, it's people focus on that. But it's so impersonal compared to doing things like podcasting, because you do get to know people. You get to learn about people. And as I tell people constantly, if I'm not learning at least as much as anybody else who listens to this podcast, then I'm not doing my job well, which is kind of the way I look at it. And I always like to learn things from everyone who comes on and who I get to interact with because of the podcast.   Tabatha Jones ** 06:21 Yeah, so much fun. It is. You know, one of the things when we met that really connected me to you was just your story and sharing your author journey on top of it. So, yeah, you're kind of stuck with me in your fan club for a little bit following   Michael Hingson ** 06:40 you Well, thank you. And it is, it is fun to do that and following you back. It's, it's a lot of fun. And as I said, I enjoy getting to know people and connecting and learning which is cool, and to introduce you a little bit more to people, and I'll get to letting you do some of that too. But Tabitha is the CEO of empowered leadership coaching LLC, which is obviously a coaching organization, and you started doing that when you were 50. Of course I could, I could, circuitously get to and and how long ago was that, which would then tell us your age, but I won't that's   Tabatha Jones ** 07:25 all right. As a career advancement coach, I tell people all the time, don't put those long dates on your resume. People will start guessing your age, and then we've got another whole situation. I think the good thing with coaching is age and experience go together, and people see that a little bit differently, which has been fun. Yeah, I left it, you know, corporate at 50, and started my own business. I had been doing it on the side, but now I get to do it every day, and it's so   Michael Hingson ** 07:50 much fun. Well, seriously, how long have you been doing it?   Tabatha Jones ** 07:54 You know, for officially. Oh, I gotta do math. 2017. Is when I started. So,   Michael Hingson ** 08:01 oh, okay, well, there you go. So, 10 years, okay, yeah, and then   Tabatha Jones ** 08:04 I had been doing it as part of my job for more than 20 years. So as a leader in corporate, more than 20 years of coaching experience came from that sure   Michael Hingson ** 08:13 when you've got seven years of official long term, real life, constant experience, which is, which is great too. Well, tell us about the early Tabitha growing up and some of those kinds of things that would get us to know you better.   Tabatha Jones ** 08:28 Well, I grew up in a little town called Livermore. It's not so little anymore out here in California, in the East Bay, I am the oldest of four, and you   Michael Hingson ** 08:37 were never irradiated by the the accelerators, or any of the things that Livermore Labs.   Tabatha Jones ** 08:41 No, there was so much Hush, hush, secret stuff going on out there. But, you know, it was always very cool. They had a swimming pool you could go swim at. I think it was 75 cents to go swim for the whole day at the pool. And, you know, as a grown up, I'm all, should we really have been swimming there? I don't   Michael Hingson ** 08:58 know. Oh, it was safe. Well, it was absolutely Were you ever there after dark? No, so you don't know whether anything glowed in the dark or not. So you didn't probably you were safe.   Tabatha Jones ** 09:07 Probably safe. Yeah, nope. Genetics kids, when the street lights came on, we went home.   Michael Hingson ** 09:11 There you go. But anyway, so Livermore, yeah,   Tabatha Jones ** 09:15 Livermore, and then let's see. So I finished high school. Didn't really know what I was going to do. I stuck a little toe in the telecommunications industry at AT and T and got a job there right out of high school, answering phones and learning all kinds of great things. Did a lot of growing up in that space. Gosh, it was a it was an interesting journey. I actually was sitting in a call center taking phone calls during the 1989 earthquake, which, oh, boy, you may remember, right? I know I was training somebody, and I just looked at the person. I said, we're gonna hang up and go under the desk. That's what we're doing. And that was the day before my birthday. So I got my birthday off that year, which. You know, as they planned   10:00 out very well,   Tabatha Jones ** 10:02 yeah. But terrible, terrible, tragic earthquake, unfortunately. But, you know, I do just kind of try to make a little lighter of it with that. You know, the birthday off, but it is. It was an interesting time, for sure. I lived   Michael Hingson ** 10:16 in Vista, California at the time. Well, actually, I take it back. I lived in Mission Viejo. We hadn't moved to VISTA yet, although I had a job in Carlsbad, and I remember coming out to get on a bus to go from Carlsbad back up to Mission Viejo. And I was going to listen to the World Series, and it wasn't on, and it took me about 15 minutes before, I finally found a radio station that announced that there had been an earthquake. And then we got home, and then we started. We just Karen was was at home, and we just started watching it on TV, and they had all the the live shots and all that, and the freeway collapse and so on. It was, needless to say, quite the event. Karen and I survived. We were in, not married yet in, well, 19, whatever that would have been, 69 or 70 or 71 the Sylmar quake. I don't think it was in 74 I think it was earlier than that. But there was a big earthquake up in Sylmar, and we felt it at UC Irvine, and then we had the Whittier Narrows and Northridge quakes, so we felt those as well. But yeah, that had to be pretty rough in 89 for all of you up there.   Tabatha Jones ** 11:38 Yeah, it was pretty, pretty interesting. You know, from that point, you know, I just was training somebody as I as I mentioned, and, you know, we, we took that next day and couple of days kind of getting things together, working through the call center, handling a lot of emergency calls and things that were going on. And I'd say that's probably the first time I felt that call to leadership, you know, and realized I wanted to do more than being a call center, answering phones. There's nothing wrong with that, but for me, it wasn't the end all. And I started working on mapping out, how am I going to build my career here? Managed to advance a couple of times, and then went through a major layoff. So AT and T we all know, went through a lot of change over the years, but in the 80s and early 90s, there was a lot. So I did a couple of different things in between, and then one day, I walked into what was the Viacom cable office and decided I'm going to apply for a job here. It's just six months for experience, and we'll see where it goes. I fell in love with the cable industry. As weird as it sounds, I loved it, so I worked up really quickly into a lead role, and then started shifting into technology, which is where I spent most of my career, leading those technical teams and just really loving it. But yeah, yeah, that's kind of the journey from the early life into the career side of things. But   Michael Hingson ** 13:05 what kind of things did you do in as a leader for Viacom?   Tabatha Jones ** 13:09 So Viacom was where you in, went through. So I was in the call center. Initially became a lead there, moved into credit and collections and learned everything there was to learn there. It wasn't really my jam, but it was a great place to be. And then I moved into the Information Services Department, and you probably remember this back in the day of punching down phone lines in the little box, in different I don't know if you ever did that, but yeah, soldering cat five lines, crawling under desk, climbing up ladders, doing all those things. So that was early. It days before the internet. Still, I think crazy to say,   Michael Hingson ** 13:48 so did you do that? Or did you lead people who did that? So I   Tabatha Jones ** 13:52 did that early on. I learned everything I could in that department. I learned how to print reports. I knew learned how to compile data. I learned how to code the billing system, moved into project management from there, still on the information services side, and led some really huge projects through that time. We went through three companies. We landed at Comcast. That was where I was for the longest, but never really left, you know, my role, and just fell in love with the technology, because it changes all the time. It's never the same day twice. I loved working with technical people, and learned really quickly that one of my gifts was being able to translate between the Technical Suite and the C suite. So taking those great ideas and going and securing the budget or coming in with here's what the leadership team is thinking. Here's how I think we can do it. What are your thoughts and being able to translate and move things forward really fast. That's where I joined the leadership team and stayed, and I loved it. Climbing the ladder at Comcast was a lot of fun for me. Yeah. Do   Michael Hingson ** 15:00 you think that really taking the time to get that technical knowledge and learn those various jobs, even though you necessarily didn't do them all the time, but learning how to do those jobs? Do you think that was a valuable thing for you, looking back on it now,   Tabatha Jones ** 15:19 yeah, I do in some ways. And I spoke at a women in telecom sorry, it's women in tech and telecom seminar a few years back. And one of the things that we know is women don't advance as quickly into technical leadership roles, and being able to say in that room, leadership is not a technical skill. Just let the light bulbs off for people, because we hold ourselves back. And it's not just women, but it definitely happens in the female space, where we will hold ourselves back. Oh, I'm not technical enough, oh, I don't know enough. Oh, I can't code Python. It. It doesn't always matter for me, having the basis helped because I understood the work the team was doing. I understood quicker ways to do things. I had done them myself the hard way, but it gave me a little bit more, I'd say, street cred with the team, not that they ever expected me to code a macro or build an automation program, but because I could come and speak to them in a language that made sense, then they could go build the thing and do their jobs. So I do think it helped. It helped give me really great insight to what could be and let us really drive innovation quickly, which was super fun. I   Michael Hingson ** 16:41 agree with you on that I felt in everything that I did as a as a leader, working in a variety of different kinds of roles, I felt it necessary to learn the things that the people who worked for me and with me did because at least I could then articulate them. I could talk about them. I didn't necessarily have to do them all the time, and there were some things that I wasn't going to be able to do, for example, for four years or three and a half years, four I owned a company that sold PC based CAD systems to architects, computer aided design systems, for those who don't know, to architects and engineers and so on. And they were some of the early PC based CAD systems. We started in 1985 doing that. And needless to say, that was and and still is very much a highly graphic environment. And that isn't something that I'm going to be able to sit down in front of a computer terminal and do, because the technology, even today, doesn't exist to describe all of that information for me, so that I have access to it as quickly and as efficiently as a person who can see but even though I wouldn't be able to run a CAD system, I knew how to do it. So I could then sit down with an architect in front of a machine and ask them what they wanted to do, and then described them what they needed to do to make it happen. So I actually made them part of the process of showing themselves how the cast system worked by them actually working it. Now I also have people who work for me, but I did know how to do that, and I think that was extremely important. And I've always felt that having that knowledge is is helpful. I do tend to be very technical. I've got a master's degree in physics and so on. And I I think that having that technical knowledge is kind of part of the way I operate, which is fine, but still, I think that having that technical knowledge, really, even if it's only to be able to talk about it at the right times, was a very helpful thing and made me a better leader.   Tabatha Jones ** 18:59 Yeah, absolutely would agree with that, and understanding just the basics of what can and can't be done, or, you know, what my limitations were, and being vulnerable with going back to my team and saying, This is as far as I know how to take it. I need you to walk me through what the next steps are, or what your ideas are, or what your thoughts are. And I had a wonderful team. I'd say one of the benefits of not being the most technical person on the team is then I'm not seen as someone who's micromanaging. I'm not seen as someone who has all the answers. And for my teams, that worked out great because they loved showing their innovation. They loved showing ideas and bringing new technology, tools and things to the forefront, which made it a lot more fun for them, too. And I'd say one of the coolest things I did with my team was I was given, you know, in corporate world, you're sometimes gifted new responsibilities, and one of the new responsibilities. I was gifted with, was creating a quality control team, and this team was going to validate all of the data that the Information Services coding team was developing in the billing system. And it was needed the error rate, I mean, the accuracy rate, rather, was only about 70 ish percent. Wow. So it needed to change. It was impacting our frontline, impacting our techs. It was causing revenue gaps, right, customer experience problems. The vision that was given to me is we want you to hire three people, and they're going to manually validate this data all day long, and me being a hybrid technical people person said, Hold the phone. We're not doing that. So I went and hired someone who was an expert at SQL and Tableau. We then hired someone who was an expert at Quality Assurance, because that's what she had been doing in the call center, was validating orders and making sure the billing their statements were going out correct. So she had the manual aspect. And then we hired a third person who wasn't quite as technical as the first, but definitely a really good balance between the two and between the three of them and their ideas and their skills, and then my abilities as a leader to guide them through. You know, this is what we need. This is the vision. This is the budget, this is the the outcome that we want to get to. We were able to build something that was automated, that drove accuracy up to 98.1% Wow, and it's probably better today, but it's just because that the ability to see people who can bring in the best parts of their knowledge and then work together to build something. That's what helps technology advance so much faster.   Michael Hingson ** 21:44 Yeah, but it's but it's important to be able to do that. And you you learn to have the vision, or innately, you have the vision to to bring that about. And it sounds to me like all of the people that that you were leading really respected you, because you were, first of all, you were not a threat to them, and you clearly showed an interest in what they did, and you loved to hear them talk about it, because that taught you things that you didn't know   Tabatha Jones ** 22:17 exactly, oh my gosh, and they were great about what I'd say is dumbing things down. I'd sit there sometimes and would be listening to somebody, an analyst, who was excited and explaining all these great things they were doing. And finally, my face would say, okay, hold the phone. We need to step back just a teeny bit. I needed to bring it down, maybe just a little bit more. And once I got it, then everybody would be just jazzed and so excited and out to share, and, you know, made sure that they were getting to do part of the presenting when it went to higher levels, so that they could get credit and feel that value, which is so, so critical to help, you know, just boost that morale and keep inspiring people.   Michael Hingson ** 22:53 The other part of that, though, is you are also teaching them some probably sorely needed communication skills, because they're used to just talking very technical, and they're used to just talking to each other, and everybody gets it right away. But the reality is that I would think that they came to realize, well, maybe we need to present it in a little bit different way, because not everybody looks at it the way we do   Tabatha Jones ** 23:21 exactly that's where a lot of coaching came in and helping people work together better in the communication space, and then bringing it forward in a way that people understood. We did a really cool program. It was called insights. It exists out there, and there are people who are certified to administer it, but it basically is a personality assessment based on colors. So red, yellow, blue, green, and blue is generally your very technical, more introverted detail specific people. The Office of that is yellow, and I am very high yellow, which is your, include me. Bring me in. Let's have a party. Let's talk about it. So it was good for me, because it caused me to bring that yellow energy down a bit, which kept the, you know, the conversations going and the conversations open, and they learned to elevate that yellow energy a little bit so we could meet in the middle really well. And some of them had different, you know, red or green in there. But it was really interesting to be leading a team with such opposite energy. From that perspective,   Michael Hingson ** 24:27 did you ever find people who just resisted learning to meet in the middle or learning to do some of the things that you really wanted them to do, and they just didn't want to do that at all?   Tabatha Jones ** 24:41 Oh yes, yes, there were a couple, and that required more coaching, right? So one who had been used to working in a very specific way before we were reorganized and he was moved under me, it took multiple times and finally, a mild threat to. Get him to come forward and come on board with the new process, because sometimes it's really easy to stick in doing things the old way. He had been doing it for 1520, years. And I joke when I say threats. I don't threaten people, but you know, it was kind of a I need you to come up with the rest of the team. Here's what you're doing and how it's impacting the team, and even though it feels like it's making your customer happy in the long run, it's not because they're going to have to work with other people, and we need to make sure that they understand that this has changed, and then another who was more my way or the highway, and that took, you know, again, a bit of coaching. So his leader worked for me, and so his leader and I would come up with different plans and different strategies to put him in positions where he had to stay a little bit more quiet and let the team members bring forward their ideas. And rather than him jumping to a no, it was, we want you to start asking these three questions, and, you know, whatever the questions were to get the conversation going, and then the light bulb started going off for him. Like, wow. Some of these individuals have definitely had different training on, you know, whatever type of technology it is that makes perfect sense. What if we combine this so he was able to actually help us bring out the best in everyone, once he took that step back and really started listening and getting a bit more curious.   Michael Hingson ** 26:30 Well, that that's, you know, of course, a wonderful skill to have, because people need to recognize that not everybody is where they are   Tabatha Jones ** 26:42 exactly. It's true. And you know, I kind of think back when we were talking about the leadership aspect and leading technical teams, I coach a lot of people on interview skills and helping them present their best selves for the job that they're interviewing for. And one thing that seems to be a habit for people who are very technical and are also leaders is deferring so much their technical skills, and it's good, but you've got to have that balance. When you're applying for a leadership role, what happens that is very disappointing, is they'll be told, Well, we're not really seeing your leadership skills or your leadership qualities or not feeling like you're a good fit with this team. Usually, when a company is hiring a technical people leader, they want to know you can lead people, because not everybody can do both,   Michael Hingson ** 27:40 right, or they haven't learned how to   Tabatha Jones ** 27:43 right. It's true. Not everybody wants to. Sometimes they think they do because it's the next logical step, but sometimes people are just really happy being hands on others. To your point, you can learn. You can step into maybe a lead role, and start learning how to let go of some things and and get more comfortable with not being the smartest person in the room, because once you're the leader, you've got to have that balance and, and it's a learning a learning curve, for sure,   Michael Hingson ** 28:09 yeah. And unfortunately, there are way too many people, certainly, a lot of them are technical who think they're the smartest person in the room, whether they are not, and then some of them are. But still, that's not always the solution to making things work, especially if you're working in a team.   Tabatha Jones ** 28:29 Absolutely, yeah, it's all about the team. And it can't be. They always say there's no me and team. But technically, if you rearrange the letters there, kind of is that's maybe snow i Maybe it's No, I in team. No, I in team.   Michael Hingson ** 28:43 Yeah, there's no i That's true. But you know, one of my favorite books I enjoy reading it often, is actually the Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Have you ever read that?   Tabatha Jones ** 28:55 I have not read that. I am aware of it. I have not bought it yet. It's a   Michael Hingson ** 29:00 short book, relatively speaking, but it's great because it really puts teamwork in perspective, and it really defines what should happen in a well functioning team, including the fact that members of the team can hold each other accountable when the team is comfortable with each other. And then, of course, it's all the team leader who has to really bring people together and meld the team into a cohesive working group. But the good team leaders can do that and understand what their role has to be in getting everybody to operate at peak performance.   Tabatha Jones ** 29:39 Love that. I will get that back on my list. Radical candor is kind of similar, as far as you know, being able to say what needs to be said and feeling like you're in a safe space to say it. Yeah, that's one of the things that I always found a little, I guess, frightening as a leader, is when I would talk to another leader and say, What feedback have you given this person? Well. Feedback is so negative, like no feedback given with love is there with the intention of helping the person grow and do better and understand what they're doing really well so they can keep doing that. So yeah, being able to let the team members or ask the team members hold each other accountable, be honest with each other, this isn't about feelings. This is about respect, and sometimes it's a hard conversation. It's really crunchy and uncomfortable. But once it happens, the trust that is built is it's unstoppable, well,   Michael Hingson ** 30:30 but feedback can also be a very positive thing. And it can be that you're doing a great job. Here's what you're doing. It isn't necessarily but you're not doing this right? It, it can be exactly a very positive thing. And there, there are certainly times that we all like to get that as well.   Tabatha Jones ** 30:47 Absolutely feedback is my favorite F word. I always say it is just, it's so important. And I've worked with people who have said, you know, I can't get feedback from my boss. I said, Well, what do you mean? And they said, Well, he All he says is just, you're doing a good job. Keep doing that. Yeah. Well, what specifically am i doing that's a good job. So feedback in itself is a skill, both giving it in a positive way and giving it in a constructive way. But all feedback is good when it's given with the right intention and it's given with, you know, just honesty and love. And   Michael Hingson ** 31:20 there's a skill in receiving feedback too and recognizing if you trust the feedback, the feeder backer, if you trust the person giving you the feedback, then you know that they're not out to get you. Yeah. And that's part of it is breaking through the usual shell that most of us probably a build up. Well, that person has some sort of alternative agenda they're out to get me. And that isn't always the case. And, oh, absolutely, unfortunately, sometimes it is, but it doesn't necessarily mean it always is. Yeah, I agree.   Tabatha Jones ** 31:54 You know, if you think back to feedback that you've been given throughout your life, is there a piece of feedback that you were given that really changed the way you do things. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 32:06 I can think of some, and I think that most of us can, because the people giving us the feedback were concerned about trying to help and concerned to try to get us to hear what others in the world are are saying or thinking. And if we take that to heart, that can be a very positive thing.   Tabatha Jones ** 32:32 Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest foundations for me as a leader is trust and trust with my team, both going both directions to them, from me and from them to to from me to them, and from them to me. So complete trust. It's so important. And you know, knowing that I've had employees come and give me feedback, and it doesn't matter what level I was at or what level they were at, once, I knew that they were comfortable giving me feedback. I knew our relationship was strong, yeah, and, you know, I've had people come and say, I didn't really like the way that you said that. It would have been more impactful if you had done this. I've had clients come and say, you know, when you said that, I really reflected on it. And maybe we're not in the same spot. So let me say this again and see if you can, you can address it a different way. Great. If we don't have trust, we're not going to go anywhere. So it's such an important piece of of building trust. In   Michael Hingson ** 33:26 my new book, live like a guide dog, true stories from a blind man and his dog about being brave, overcoming adversity and moving forward in faith. Long title, well at the end, the subtitle, but one of the things that I talk about is that I've learned a lot of lessons about dealing with fear and dealing with people from my dogs, because dogs do things differently than we do and don't have any near, anywhere near the stress that We do. For example, dogs are, I think, creatures that do love unconditionally, but they don't trust unconditionally. What dogs do, however, is that they tend to be less something is really hurt a dog. They tend to be more open to trust, and they want to build a trusting relationship with us if we're open to it, because they are, and when we recognize that and we truly build the trusting relationship, it's second to none. So then you've got the love part that is there, but the trusting part, it's a whole different story. And I know that when I start working with every guide dog and people say, Oh, how long does it take to really get used to a dog? My response is, it takes roughly a year. Because it takes a long time for both sides of the team to truly recognize and have enough confidence in the other that they have that trust that they need to have.   Tabatha Jones ** 34:59 Yeah. Dogs are so much better than people. I will tell you their behavior is so much better, but I get that and you know someone who adopted my last two dogs. One was three years old when I got her from the pound, and she lived to be 15, and my other one is she's eight. I got her when she was three from someone that was re homing her. But they do. They they teach you that I can love you, but I don't know that I trust you yet. I've got to build this up like I will lick you and throw a party when you come home, but don't be trying to pick me up yet. We're not there. Yeah. So, you know, I can imagine, with a guide dog, it's even more elevated, and I can't write to read your that book, because I just finished underdog. I did. I don't know why the name just went blank. I posted it on my Facebook and Instagram. I was so excited, but yeah, oh my gosh. I can't wait to read the new one. If you   Michael Hingson ** 35:48 get a chance with both of them, go review them at Amazon. So lovely. Get a we always appreciate reviews. So Amazon and Goodreads are the best places to go to go do reviews, and they're very helpful. But when you read, live like a guide dog, love to get your thoughts, and you're welcome to email me and love to chat about it as well. But you're right that there are so many things about dogs that really teach us a lot. One of my favorite things that I talk about a lot, and we deal with it and live like a guide dog is we, as people tend to what if everything to death. We What if everything well, what if this? What if that? And the reality is, most of the things that we're dealing with, what if about are things over which we have absolutely no control, and all we're doing is building up our own internal Sears, and we need to learn to get away from that. If we could just learn to focus on the things that we have control over and not worry about the rest. And of course, people will say, Well, but, but all this stuff is going on we gotta worry about. No, you don't. You can be aware of it without worrying about it. You can be aware of it without it interfering with your life. But you have control over that, but there are so many things in your life that you don't have control over. And my, my premier example of that, of course, is the World Trade Center. I am not convinced that all of the government departments working together would have been able to figure out what was happening and stop the attacks from half from occurring. But the result of that is, of course, that we had no control over the events occurring. What we absolutely have total control over is how we individually choose to deal with those events and how we choose to move forward.   Tabatha Jones ** 37:36 Yeah, absolutely, oh my gosh, it's so powerful and so true. And I'd say too with dogs is they don't let that little thing that bothered them four hours ago eat them up, or four days ago or four months ago. They don't generally hold a grudge unless something was pretty atrocious, where we will ruminate on a story or a conversation over and over and over again, sometimes it's just solved by a simple Hey, what did you mean when you said that? Or we'll just go and keep thinking about it and keep thinking about it. Dogs moved on. They're like, I've already had my snack in my walk, like we're good again. There's no grudge, there's no past concern, or I made a mistake this day. I'm never gonna cross that line again, because, you know, I did this thing, but humans are so are just wired so differently, just from, I'm sure, our life lessons and all the things that we've been through. But if we could live a little more like a dog, that would be kind of amazing. That guide dogs specifically,   Michael Hingson ** 38:35 I agree. And you know, the reality is that dogs do make mistakes, and one of the things that we learned to put it in terms of what we're talking about today, one of the things that we learn as guide dog handlers is how to give appropriate feedback, and that process has changed over the years, so now it's a much more positive process. We don't tend to yell at dogs, we don't tend to try to give sharp leash corrections, but rather, when they do it right, that's the time to truly reinforce it and say, what a good job you did it. And if you're training a dog to do a new thing or give them a new skill, reinforcing the time that they succeed is so much more powerful than ever saying you didn't do that right? And I think that's as true for humans as it is for dogs, but humans just don't tend to for all the reasons that you said, Trust like, like, maybe they should, but we always think that everybody has a hidden agenda, which is unfortunate, because we don't always necessarily have a hidden agenda. And even if we do, and if you feel like you can't trust me because you think I have a hidden agenda, you can always ask me about it, or you should, and that's something we just tend not to feel that much that we can do, because those aren't skills that we're taught when we're growing up.   Tabatha Jones ** 39:56 Yeah, it's very true, and you. Know when you mentioned the mistakes even thinking about that from a leadership perspective. When I first started leading in my last team, we had reorganized into a corporate structure, so I had new employees sitting across 40 some odd states. It was a big a big reorg, and I would be talking to people about different things. And I said, Well, why did you, you know, why did you do it this way? Oh, well, I realized I made a mistake, so I didn't want to get in trouble. So I thought if I went and I did this, then that would I'm like, wait a minute, stop. Let's let's pause, let's go back to get in trouble. Tell me about that. And I would hear, and I heard it from multiple people across the team that there was such a level of fear over making a mistake. And I said, you know, you're not coming to work with somebody's heart transplant in an ice chest, like, if you make a mistake, nobody's gonna die. Yeah, somebody's gonna get a little maybe mad because we're gonna hit a little bit of a revenue hiccup, or maybe have to send an apology notice to some customers that have a mistake on their bill. But nothing's that big that we can't learn from it, fix it correctly and make sure it doesn't happen again. And that was a huge shift, and that's something you know, where a dog will make a mistake they get through the correction to your point, positive reinforcement. We've got jerky treats, kind of redirect. If people only could take a jerky treat, that'd be great, but they don't. But you know, when a mistake happens, teaching people, teaching our kids, like it's okay to make a mistake, but let's talk about what we learned from it. Make a plan to do better, and figure out how we just don't let that happen again, and then if it happens again, okay, let's have a different conversation. What? What did you notice? Did we miss something in the process? Less last time? Let's fix that, and then let's take the next steps forward, and let's go back and present to the team how we can improve this process and what we've learned from this mistake, like we can make it positive and as leaders, we can help our employees go faster. We can help our dogs learn faster. Can help our kids learn faster by just being a leader and managing mistakes correctly.   Michael Hingson ** 42:06 How do we get that process kind of more into the mainstream of society? How do we get people to recognize that it's okay when you make a mistake, we'll fix it and really give them and teach people to give the positive reinforcement that we need to do. Because I think it's, it's very true. We don't teach it.   Tabatha Jones ** 42:27 We don't teach it. I feel like younger parents that I'm seeing, in some ways, are getting there, you know, I remember back in the day when we would accidentally break something, or, you know, be roughhousing a little, and the glass would get knocked off the counter, and it was a huge thing, right? You're going to clean it up. You're going to go to your room. You're going to stop playing around in the house. And, you know, with my son, I know when He would break something and be like, Hey, let's clean this up. I need you to be more careful. You know, it's not you need to go sit in your room. You made a mistake. It's okay. And I see the difference in myself. Still, when I make a mistake, I beat myself up when he makes a mistake, he cleans it up and moves forward. So it's definitely happening through parenting and the way that we handle it as parents. We have that great opportunity as leaders once adults are full grown and in the workforce and still have those tendencies of fear and oh my gosh, I need to cover it up, teaching them, I had a situation where I made a mistake, shocking. I know I made a mistake, just kidding. I do it all the time, but I had made a mistake with some data that I collected from my team, I'd had individual skip level meetings, and decided kept all the notes in a spreadsheet, and I had told the team as I spoke with them. Whatever you tell me, it's in confidence. I'm taking themes of the conversation and I'll present it back to your leaders. They're not going to have names. We're not going to know who said what. That's not what this is about. It's about me helping drive improvements through my leadership team so that it's better for you. And they were really open, and it was amazing. It was such a gift to have that trust from the team. Well, I went and took my compilations, put all my notes together on a spreadsheet, sent it to my leadership team, and never took off the original notes. And I was like, shoot, now, what do I do? So I asked a peer. I said, Hey, this is what I did. What would you do? And she said, Well, I would tell my leaders, they need to be leaders, and they need to keep it confidential. And I was like, oh, not good enough. I'm not doing that. So I thought about it, yeah. And I said, You know what? This is a teachable moment. This is the opportunity I've been given to practice what I preach. So I pulled my entire team, 50 some odd people on the phone, on a teams call. So we were on camera, and I said, I need to talk to you about something. And I said, I made a mistake, and because of that mistake, I have let you down, and I've broken my word. And I explained what I did. I explained, you know, I got really excited by the information, because I saw things we could do, which then led me to moving way too fast, and I completely sent your comment. Comments with your names to your leaders, and I apologize. And going forward, when I take data and information from you, I will be learning from this mistake. I will keep two separate spreadsheets. I will not be, you know, just adding to the individual spreadsheet, I will quality control, check it before I send it out, and I will make sure that I do better. And I just ask that you forget me. On this one, I got so many texts and emails and instant messages that just said, Thank you so much, and someone that said, thank you, it helps to see that a leader owned up to a mistake, and I'm like, that's that was a teachable moment so nobody died. I didn't lose a heart. I broke a little confidence and a little trust. But we can fix things, and that's how,   Michael Hingson ** 45:46 yeah, and, and that makes a lot of sense, and we, we just tend to, oftentimes do knee jerk reactions. I was sitting here thinking about sometime after we moved to New Jersey in 1996 my wife and I were in our living room, and I don't remember what was going on. We were having a great time, and we each had, each had a glass of champagne, and my fourth guide dog, Lenny, was with us. And Lenny, like any good lab has a tail that never stops. And Karen, I think it was Karen, I don't even remember, sure. I think it was. Had put her glass down on the coffee table, and tail hit glass, glass, which was crystal, went all over floor, hardwood floor, you know, and I can think of so many people who would blame the dog. And actually, I think Lenny blamed herself for a little while, and we kept saying it wasn't your fault we screwed up. And eventually, you know, she well within, within an hour, she was mostly Okay, but, but the bottom line is that she, she, she knew that something happened, but it wasn't her fault, and it is important to own up to to things and and as I said, I think it was Karen, because I think Karen said I should never have put my glass down, or I should have put it back further away from her tail, because she was So excited. You know those   Tabatha Jones ** 47:21 tails, lab tails are crazy things, yeah, oh my gosh, right, but Lenny didn't stop wagging her tail because of that little mistake, right? It's something that Karen was able to own up to. You two were able to clean it up, and then Lenny was able to go on and keep wagging her tail. Everyone's being more careful. Now,   Michael Hingson ** 47:39 what's really funny is that, because it was a hardwood floor and crystal, there were her pieces that we found days later, but   Tabatha Jones ** 47:47 really years later, oh my gosh. But   Michael Hingson ** 47:50 you know what Lenny was? Was, was a cutie, and Lenny was the, probably the most empathetic dog that I've ever had. We had a pastor, and we had who we had come to know, and we were at a party, and she was at this party, and she came up to us and she said, we let Lenny visit everybody, but we just let her loose. Um, Lenny is the most empathetic dog I've ever seen, because you let her loose. And she went to the person who was feeling the most pain first, and then she worked the rest of the room, and we're talking emotional pain, but Lenny could sense that and and she did. She went to the person who was hurting the most for whatever reason. And then after she felt she had done all she could with that person, then she went around to the rest of the room. Oh, what a wonderful experience that was. Yeah, I know, and we hadn't noticed it, but sharee told it to us, and we we realized it from then on, yeah, she's right. I   Tabatha Jones ** 48:52 always think that the companies that allow people to bring their dogs to work are probably the companies that have the highest performance and productivity. I can't prove this yet, but there is something about having a warm, fuzzy little Snuggler with a cold nose right next to you that makes such a difference. Yeah, like I said, you know, mine's by me all the time, but they're just so intuitive. They pick up on your moods. They pick up on what's going on when you've had a bad day, you know, when you're feeling unconfident. I've worked with people a lot on helping them build confidence. And she'll even come around like, Hey, why you down? Like, what's going on? Let's go play. Go play. And then, you know, they're always so excited when you just do the smallest things. It's like, you know what? All right, I am making somebody, somebody happy today. It's just not that, maybe that other person, or whatever it is. But, yeah, oh my gosh. What made   Michael Hingson ** 49:40 you decide? What Madeline just caused you to decide to go from working for other companies in the corporate world to starting your own coaching career full time.   Tabatha Jones ** 49:52 You know, I just love the coaching aspect, helping people who struggle to speak up for themselves or who. Struggle to recognize the value that they bring to the workplace or to the world in general, just really lights my fire. I work mostly with women in their 50s, mostly with women who are already leaders but feel a bit stuck, and help them just remember who they are. Help them remember you know you are a leader. This is how you can set yourself apart, and this is how we can start preparing for your next promotion. I wrote my book promotion ready in three months, the Women's Guide to career advancement, which was released in August. Just because the concerns were so similar, I thought, you know, I'm going to put these specific the specific framework together in a book so that women who maybe don't have time for coaching right now, or they don't have the means, for whatever reason, they can get that framework in this book and get started on setting themselves apart and rebuilding that confidence. And I just love it. I feel like we tend to play really small, especially after a simple mistake or a simple breach of trust or a simple someone said something, and it just really stuck in our head for whatever reason. So I want women to stop. I want them to start feeling more empowered and start going after those things that they want. Because I don't know if you've seen the movie The longest game. But one of the quotes is the, you know, the field isn't the golfing green. The field is the five inches between your ears. And that's life. It is a fact. It is whatever is going on in that space between your ears is what's going to tell you you can and it's going to tell you what you can't do. So we want to only five inches. They say five inches. I haven't actually measured mine either. I say it and I touch it every time, because I'm like, I don't know if it's really five inches. Maybe it's, maybe it's four and a half. I don't know. I've always prided myself on having, you know, a skinny forehead.   Michael Hingson ** 51:57 Well, you know, but, but it's interesting and and, of course, sort of on principle, just for fun. I'll ask, do you ever find that that men read it or that that you coach men as well? Do you find that there are men that will benefit, or choose to benefit from the same things that you're talking about with most women? Absolutely,   Tabatha Jones ** 52:15 I say I work mostly with women and a few lucky men, because there are men who don't feel as confident or who might be a little bit more of that quieter later, and the strategies in there are obvious. Is probably not the right word. But there are things that are really simple and easy to do, but so often overlooked. So for anyone who finds themselves really kind of hiding behind the keyboard, not getting out and about and working on their visibility and relationship building. There are a lot of great strategies for that. The worst thing to do is wait until the promotion opportunity posts to start getting out there and building your brand. It doesn't serve anyone, and it's going to keep you behind. So, yeah, absolutely, that's a great question. If you   Michael Hingson ** 53:05 want to be noticed, then you have to work at what you need to do to be noticed. And that is a an important skill to learn. And it is all about brand, which doesn't mean you're trying to be so calculating that you're trying to do in other people, it is all about doing the things that you need to do, both to learn and to be able to advance in a positive way.   Tabatha Jones ** 53:30 Yeah, exactly. And there are strategies just for even man, even managing your time, because that's so obvious to some of us who have been there, but to others, they'll allow their calendar to be blocked from 7am to 7pm with everyone else's priorities, and it's important to make yourself a priority so that you can start standing out before the job posts. And that's kind of the secret sauce. A lot of people, like I said, they wait until the job posts and they've just been working hard and then can't figure out why they're not getting ahead. So we want to start doing things, taking action every day before that position posts, one   Michael Hingson ** 54:09 of the things that that I do is on my calendar page, I have time blocked out every day and and people will say, Well, I want to schedule something, but this time isn't available, and this is the only time that I can do it. And what I tell people is I have the time blocked out so that I can do the things that I need to do or that I might want to do. And one of them is responding positively to the fact that you need a certain time to meet, and that time is in one of my block times, but I block times so that I have free time to do what needs to be done. So let's schedule it, and, you know, and I, and I find that that works really well, because it gives me the time to make choices and do the things that I want to do. And I think it's so important to be able to do that. So.   Tabatha Jones ** 55:00 Yeah, the calendar is key. I always say your calendar equals clarity equals confidence. I mean, it just it builds that confidence. What I see happen a lot in the corporate space is the calendar gets booked for again, everybody else's priorities, 7am to 7pm I will see someone sitting in a meeting, totally disengaged. And when I would say, What are you doing? And I ask clients now too, so how do you prepare for this meeting? Because almost always the answer is, oh, I have a big meeting coming up in a couple of hours, and I'm not ready yet. Like, well, why are you in this meeting? If that meeting matters so much, why are you here? Because you're hurting your brand here, looking disengaged, asking, Can you repeat that 72 times where you could have just sent a delegate, or you could have blocked that time to think and prepare, which is so important, the calendar blocks. I don't think I could live without them. They're critical, right? That's how we get things done. That's how we make sure we're focused on the right things. That's how I prepare for clients. I don't just get on and wing it, because that's not going to go well, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 56:02 and that's why on, on unstoppable mindset. I asked people to send me some things because I want to appropriately prepare, because if, if I'm doing my job right, I learn all I can to be able to be involved in an intelligent conversation, and people have so many skills that I haven't learned or don't have, I get to use the information that they send to prepare and learn about some of those skills, which is part of why I say if I'm not learning at least as much as anyone else who is listening To the podcast, and I'm not doing my job right? Because it's so much fun to be able to explore and talk with people, and it's and it is so much fun. So I I appreciate exactly what you're saying. Well,   Tabatha Jones ** 56:53 thank you. Yeah, it's, it's a, I mean, tooting my own horn a little bit. It's a great book full of strategy. And if you just took it, take it and start implementing those small changes, you'll see a huge difference. And I say that you'll see it, but not only you, your leader will see and your team will see that you're making changes and and making a difference. So yeah, it's just that calendar is so helpful.   Michael Hingson ** 57:16 Life is is an adventure, as far as I'm concerned. And if we're not always learning we're not doing our job right exactly which is so important? Well, do you have any kind of last thoughts of things that you want people to to think about, as far as leadership or as far as moving forward in the corporate world, or or any of those kinds of things? Yeah,   Tabatha Jones ** 57:40 absolutely. And thank you so much for asking. I do want to tie it back to unstoppable mindset, because you are absolutely unstoppable. It's a matter of clearing those blocks, the things that are in your way, the things that are in that five inches, or whatever it really is between your ears that is getting in the way and telling you you can't do something. And I encourage you if you're struggling, if you want to get ahead, if you've had some bad experiences when trying to get ahead, connect with me on LinkedIn. You can find me at Tabitha Jones and D, H, A Jones, thank you. Yes, all A's, Tabata, Tabatha. You can call me what you want. Just spell it right so you can find me. But absolutely connect with me there, and let's talk about what's going on and see how we can help you start moving forward again. Absolutely, we'll share strategies to give at least a little bit of a boost and kind of start relieving some of the discomfort that may be going on, but kind of back to that point you are completely unstoppable. It's just about investing in yourself, and that may look like time, energy or financially, just to get yourself out of, out of where you're at and into that next thing.   Michael Hingson ** 58:52 What's your website? You must I assume you have a website. I   Tabatha Jones ** 58:55 do have a website. It is empowered. Dash leader.com, and if you go out there, I actually have a free gift. I've recently published an ebook which is a career confidence playbook for women over 50, and that also has some great strategies, as well as workbook and journaling pages to help you really flesh out those goals and start taking those small action steps,   Michael Hingson ** 59:21 and guys, the concepts are the same. So don't think it's just for women. Otherwise, learn nearly as much on this podcast as you   Tabatha Jones ** 59:29 should. That is true. That's very true. The color is a little purple and black. Don't let that send you anywhere. Just it's perfect. Come on in. Let's talk   Michael Hingson ** 59:39 colors. Don't bother me.   59:42 Outstanding.   Michael Hingson ** 59:44 Well, I want to thank you for being here. This has been really fun. I knew it was going to be, and it was every bit as fun and and informative as as I thought it would be. So I hope people will reach out to you on LinkedIn and go off and. Uh, go to the website as well. Get your free ebook. I'm going to go get it and and I really think that you've offered a lot of good insights that will be helpful for people. I hope all of you listening and watching out there agree. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please email me. Let me know what you think of our episode today. You can email me at Michael M, I C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S,

We've had a lot of episodes underground, and none of them have been underwhelming. In fact, if you're not fans of claustrophobia, choking, burning, or being trampled, today's episode may be a little overwhelming.On today's episode: we will discuss how some of the richest men in America created a boiling, black mountain of crap as powerful as a small nuclear blast; we will – for only the second time in the show's history, describe a disaster made worse by a liberal and unexpected application of barbed wire; and we'll find out why sometimes, mass graves are just better.And if you were listening to this as a Patreon supporter, you'd get to enjoy an additional 8 minutes where: you would learn how people who forget to patent their inventions die; we discuss the three most popular maiming injuries among child labour in the 1800s – number three will really surprise you; and we learn how people in the gentle age of this episode used water, electricity, cream and beef broth to unscramble your nervous system. This episode came by overwhelming request, and because I wanted to spend some time in every town destroyed during today's events, this became our longest episode ever. It's not all bad though. We'll get to watch the creation of the American Red Cross before our eyes. It is mostly bad though. Today's disaster sits easily in the top five worst things we've ever seen, and the bodycount would remain intact for the next 112 years – until the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in NYC. All older episodes can be found on any of your favorite channelsApple : https://tinyurl.com/5fnbumdw Spotify : https://tinyurl.com/73tb3uuw IHeartRadio : https://tinyurl.com/vwczpv5j Podchaser : https://tinyurl.com/263kda6w Stitcher : https://tinyurl.com/mcyxt6vw Google : https://tinyurl.com/3fjfxatt Spreaker : https://tinyurl.com/fm5y22su Podchaser : https://tinyurl.com/263kda6w RadioPublic : https://tinyurl.com/w67b4kec PocketCasts. : https://pca.st/ef1165v3 CastBox : https://tinyurl.com/4xjpptdr Breaker. : https://tinyurl.com/4cbpfayt Deezer. : https://tinyurl.com/5nmexvwt Follow us on the socials for moreFacebook : www.facebook.com/doomsdaypodcast Instagram : www.instagram.com/doomsdaypodcast Twitter : www.twitter.com/doomsdaypodcast TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@doomsday.the.podcast If you like the idea of your podcast hosts wearing more than duct tape and bits of old Halloween costumes for clothes and can spare a buck or two, you can now buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/doomsday or join the patreon at www.funeralkazoo.com/doomsday

From tornadoes to floods to fires, Kentuckiana has been hit hard by emergencies in recent months. On this episode, we talk about how to be prepared when disaster strikes—what to pack, where to go, and how to stay informed. We also talk about how you can help your community bounce back after disaster strikes. Guests: Jody Meiman, Executive Director of Louisville Metro Emergency Services Amber Youngblood, the Regional Director of Communications for the American Red Cross in Kentucky

We see London. We see France. At two tales, we take a glance. Two adaptations of classic literature starring Mickey Mouse and friends.  The Prince and The Pauper (1990) Mickey, Donald, Goofy: The Three Musketeers (2004) Music from https://filmmusic.io "Glitter Blast" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com) License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) All our social media links:  https://linktr.ee/rewatchingthemagic If you're able, please give blood. The American Red Cross: https://www.redcross.org/ Immigrant Legal Resource Center: http://www.ilrc.org Trans Life: http:/www.translife.org Reproductive rights are human rights. LGBTQ+ rights are human rights.

Have you or do you feel stress? What is stress and how can we deal with it? Our guest this time is Rachelle Stone who discusses those very questions with us. Rachelle grew up in a very small town in Massachusetts. After attending community college, she had an opportunity to study and work at Disney World in Florida and has never looked back.   Rachelle loved her Disney work and entered the hospitality industry spending much of 27 years working for or running her own destination management company. She will describe how one day after a successful career, at the age of 48, she suffered what today we know as burnout. She didn't know how to describe her feelings at the time, but she will tell us how she eventually discovered what was going on with her.   She began to explore and then study the profession of coaching. Rachelle will tell us about coaches and clients and how what coaches do can help change lives in so many ways.   This episode is full of the kind of thoughts and ideas we all experience as well as insights on how we can move forward when our mindsets are keeping us from moving forward. Rachelle has a down-to-Earth way of explaining what she wants to say that we all can appreciate.       About the Guest:   “As your leadership consultant, I will help you hone your leadership, so you are ready for your next career move. As your executive coach, I will partner with you to overcome challenges and obstacles so you can execute your goals.”     Hi, I'm Rachelle. I spent over 25 years as an entrepreneur and leader in the Special Event industry in Miami, building, flipping, and selling Destination Management Companies (DMCs).  While I loved and thrived in the excitement and chaos of the industry, I still managed to hit a level of burnout that was wholly unexpected and unacceptable to me, resulting in early retirement at 48.   Now, as a trained Leadership Consultant and Executive Coach, I've made it my mission to combine this hard-won wisdom and experience to crack the code on burnout and balance for others so they can continue to thrive in careers they love. I am Brené Brown Dare to Lead ™ trained, a Certified Positive Intelligence ® Mental Fitness coach, and an accredited Professional Certified Coach by the ICF (International Coaching Federation, the most recognized global accreditation body in the coaching industry).   I continue to grow my expertise and show my commitment to the next generation of coaches by serving on the ICF-Central Florida chapter board of directors. I am serving as President-Elect and Chapter Liaison to the global organization. I also support those new to the coaching industry by mentoring other coaches to obtain advanced coaching credentials.   I maintain my well-being by practicing Pilates & Pvolve ® a few days a week, taking daily walks, loving on my Pug, Max, and making time for beach walks when possible.   Ways to connect Rachel:   www.rstoneconsulting.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/rstoneconsulting/ Instagram: @even_wonderwoman_gets_tired   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us. Well, hi and welcome to unstoppable mindset where inclusion diversity and the unexpected meet. But you know, the more fun thing about it is the unexpected. Unexpected is always a good thing, and unexpected is really anything that doesn't have anything directly to do with inclusion or diversity, which is most of what we get to deal with in the course of the podcast, including with our guest today, Rachelle Stone, who worked in the hospitality industry in a variety of ways during a lot of her life, and then switched to being a coach and a leadership expert. And I am fascinated to learn about that and what what brought her to that? And we'll get to that at some point in the course of the day. But Rachelle, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're glad you're here. Thank   Rachelle Stone ** 02:08 you, Michael. I'm honored to be here. Excited to be talking to you today.   Michael Hingson ** 02:12 Well, it's a lot of fun now. You're in Florida. I am. I'm in the Clearwater   Rachelle Stone ** 02:16 Dunedin area. I like to say I live in Dunedin, Florida without the zip code.   Michael Hingson ** 02:22 Yeah. Well, I hear you, you know, then makes it harder to find you that way, right?   Rachelle Stone ** 02:28 Physically. Yeah, right, exactly. Danita, without the zip code, we'll stick with that. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 02:33 yeah, that works. Well, I'm really glad you're here. Why don't we start by maybe you talking to us a little bit about the early Rachelle growing up and some of that stuff.   Rachelle Stone ** 02:43 Yeah, I was lucky. I grew up in rural Western Massachusetts, little po doc town called Greenfield, Massachusetts. We were 18 miles from the Vermont border, which was literally a mile and a half from the New Hampshire border. So I grew up in this very interesting area where it was like a tri state area, and our idea of fun growing up, well, it was, we were always outdoors, playing very much outdoors. I had three siblings, and I was the youngest, and it was one of those childhoods where you came home from school, and mom would say, go outside, don't come back in the house until you hear the whistle. And every house on the street, every mother had a whistle. There were only seven houses because there was a Boy Scout camp at the end of the road. So as the sun was setting and the street lights would come on, you would hear different whistles, and different family kids would be going home the stone kids up, that's your mom. Go home, see you next time that was it was great. And you know, as I got older and more adventurous, it was cow tipping and keg parties and behind and all sorts of things that we probably shouldn't have been doing in our later teen years, but it was fun. Behind   Michael Hingson ** 04:04 is it's four wheeling,   Rachelle Stone ** 04:08 going up rough terrain. We had these. It was very, very hilly, where I was lot of lot of small mountains that you could conquer.   Michael Hingson ** 04:17 So in the winter, does that mean you got to do some fun things, like sledding in the snow. Yeah, yeah.   Rachelle Stone ** 04:24 We had a great hill in the back of our yard, so I learned to ski in my own backyard, and we had three acres of woods, so we would go snowshoeing. We were also close to a private school called Northfield Mount Hermon, which had beautiful, beautiful grounds, and in the winter, we would go cross country skiing there. So again, year round, we were, we were outdoors a lot.   Michael Hingson ** 04:52 Well, my time in Massachusetts was three years living in Winthrop so I was basically East Boston. Yeah. Yes and and very much enjoyed it. Loved the environment. I've been all over Massachusetts in one way or another, so I'm familiar with where you were. I am, and I will admit, although the winters were were cold, that wasn't as much a bother as it was when the snow turned to ice or started to melt, and then that night it froze. That got to be pretty slippery,   05:25 very dangerous, very dangerous.   Michael Hingson ** 05:29 I then experienced it again later, when we lived in New Jersey and and I actually our house to take the dogs out. We had no fenced yards, so I had to take them out on leash, and I would go down to our basement and go out and walk out basement onto a small deck or patio, actually, and then I had to go down a hill to take the dogs where they could go do their business. And I remember the last year we were in New Jersey, it snowed in May, and the snow started to melt the next day, and then that night, it froze, and it and it stayed that way for like about a day and a half. And so it was as slick as glass is. Glass could be. So eventually I couldn't I could go down a hill, it was very dangerous, but going back up a hill to come back in the house was not safe. So eventually, I just used a very long flex leash that was like 20 feet long, and I sent the dogs down the hill. I stayed at the top.   Rachelle Stone ** 06:33 Was smart, wow. And they didn't mind. They just wanted to go do their business, and they wanted to get back in the house too. It's cold, yeah?   Michael Hingson ** 06:41 They didn't seem to be always in an incredible hurry to come back into the house. But they had no problem coming up the hill. That's the the advantage of having claws,   Rachelle Stone ** 06:51 yes. Pause, yeah, four of them to boot, right? Yeah, which   Michael Hingson ** 06:54 really helped a great deal. But, you know, I remember it. I love it. I loved it. Then now I live in in a place in California where we're on what's called the high desert, so it doesn't get as cold, and we get hardly any of the precipitation that even some of the surrounding areas do, from Los Angeles and Long Beach and so on to on the one side, up in the mountains where the Snow is for the ski resorts on the other so Los Angeles can have, or parts of La can have three or four inches of rain, and we might get a half inch.   Rachelle Stone ** 07:28 Wow. So it stays relatively dry. Do you? Do you ever have to deal like down here, we have something called black ice, which we get on the road when it rains after it hasn't rained in a long time? Do you get that there in California,   Michael Hingson ** 07:41 there are places, yeah, not here where I live, because it generally doesn't get cold enough. It can. It's already this well, in 2023 late 2023 we got down to 24 degrees one night, and it can get a little bit colder, but generally we're above freezing. So, no, we don't get the black ice here that other places around us can and do. Got it. Got it. So you had I obviously a fun, what you regard as a fun childhood.   Rachelle Stone ** 08:14 Yeah, I remember the first day I walked into I went to a community college, and I it was a very last minute, impulsive, spontaneous decision. Wow, that kind of plays into the rest of my life too. I make very quick decisions, and I decided I wanted to go to college, and it was open enrollment. I went down to the school, and they asked me, What do you want to study? I'm like, I don't know. I just know I want to have fun. So they said, you might want to explore Recreation and Leisure Services. So that's what I wound up going to school for. And I like to say I have a degree in fun and games.   Michael Hingson ** 08:47 There you go. Yeah. Did you go beyond community college or community college enough?   Rachelle Stone ** 08:53 Yeah, that was so I transferred. It took me four years to get a two year degree. And the reason was, I was working full time, I moved out. I just at 17, I wanted to be on my own, and just moved into an apartment with three other people and went to college and worked. It was a fabulous way to live. It was wonderful. But then when I transferred to the University, I felt like I was a bit bored, because I think the other students were, I was dealing with a lot of students coming in for the first time, where I had already been in school for four years, in college for four years, so the experience wasn't what I was looking for. I wanted the education. And I saw a poster, and it was Mickey Mouse on the poster, and it was Walt Disney World College program now accepting applications. So I wrote down the phone number, email, whatever it was, and and I applied. I got an interview again. Remember Michael? I was really bored. I was going to school. It was my first semester in my four year program, and I just anyway. I got a call back and. And I was accepted into the Disney College Program. So, um, they at that time, they only took about 800 students a year. So it was back in 1989 long time ago. And I was thrilled. I left Massachusetts on january 31 1989 in the blizzard of 89 Yeah, and I drove down to Orlando, Florida, and I never left. I'm still here in Florida. That was the beginning of my entire career. Was applying for the Disney College Program.   Michael Hingson ** 10:36 So what was that like, being there at the Disney College, pro nominal, phenomenal. I have to ask one thing, did you have to go through some sort of operation to get rid of your Massachusetts accent? Does   Rachelle Stone ** 10:50 it sound like it worked? No, I didn't have well, it was funny, because I was hoping I would be cast as Minnie Mouse. I'm four foot 10. I have learned that to be Mini or Mickey Mouse, you have to be four, eight or shorter. So I missed many by two inches. My second choice was being a lifeguard, and I wound up what I they offered me was Epcot parking lot, and I loved it, believe it or not, helping to park cars at Epcot Center. I still remember my spiel to the letter that I used to give because there was a live person on the back of the tram speaking and then another one at the front of the tram driving it to get you from the parking lot to the front entrance of the gate. But the whole experience was amazing. It was I attended classes, I earned my Master's degree. I picked up a second and third job because I wanted to get into hotels, and so I worked one day a week at the Disney Inn, which is now their military resorts. And then I took that third job, was as a contractor for a recreation management company. So I was working in the field that I had my associates in. I was working at a hotel one day a week, just because I wanted to learn about hotels. I thought that was the industry I wanted to go into. And I was I was driving the tram and spieling on the back of the tram five days a week. I loved it was phenomenal.   Michael Hingson ** 12:20 I have a friend who is blind who just retired from, I don't know, 20 or 25 years at Disneyland, working a lot in the reservation centers and and so on. And speaks very highly of, of course, all the experiences of being involved with Disney.   Rachelle Stone ** 12:38 Yeah, it's really, I'm It was a wonderful experience. I think it gave me a great foundation for the work in hospitality that I did following. It was a great i i think it made me a better leader, better hospitality person for it well,   Michael Hingson ** 12:57 and there is an art to doing it. It isn't just something where you can arbitrarily decide, I'm going to be a successful and great hospitality person, and then do it if you don't learn how to relate to people, if you don't learn how to talk to people, and if you're not having fun doing it   Rachelle Stone ** 13:14 exactly. Yes, Fun. Fun is everything. It's   Michael Hingson ** 13:18 sort of like this podcast I love to tell people now that the only hard and fast rule about the podcast is we both have to have fun, or it's not worth doing.   Rachelle Stone ** 13:25 That's right. I'm right there with you. Gotta Have fun,   Michael Hingson ** 13:30 yeah? Well, so you So, how long were you with Disney? What made you switched? Oh, so   Rachelle Stone ** 13:36 Disney College Program. It was, at that time, it was called the Magic Kingdom college program, MK, CP, and it's grown quite significantly. I think they have five or 7000 students from around the world now, but at that time it was just a one semester program. I think for international students, it's a one year program. So when my three and a half months were up. My semester, I could either go back. I was supposed to go back to school back in Massachusetts, but the recreation management company I was working for offered me a full time position, so I wound up staying. I stayed in Orlando for almost three and a half years, and ultimately I wound up moving to South Florida and getting a role, a new role, with a different sort of company called a destination management company. And that was that was really the onset destination management was my career for 27 years. 26   Michael Hingson ** 14:38 years. So what is a destination management company. So   Rachelle Stone ** 14:41 a destination management company is, they are the company that receives a group into a destination, meetings, conventions, events. So for instance, let's say, let's say Fathom note taker. Wants to have an in person meeting, and they're going to hold it at the Lowe's Miami Beach, and they're bringing in 400 of their top clients, and and and sales people and operations people. They need someone on the receiving end to pick everybody up at the airport, to put together the theme parties, provide the private tours and excursions. Do the exciting restaurant, Dine Around the entertainment, the amenities. So I did all the fun. And again, sticking with the fun theme here, yeah, I did all of the auxiliary meeting fun add ons in the destination that what you would do. And I would say I did about 175 to 225, meetings a year.   Michael Hingson ** 15:44 So you didn't actually book the meetings, or go out and solicit to book the meetings. You were the person who took over. Once a meeting was arranged,   Rachelle Stone ** 15:53 once a meeting was booked in the destination, right? If they needed a company like mine, then it would be then I would work with them. If I would be the company. There were several companies I did what I do, especially in Miami, because Miami was a top tier destination, so a client may book the lows Miami Beach and then reach out to two to three different DMCs to learn how can they partner with them to make the meeting the most successful. So it was always a competitive situation. And it was always, you know, needing to do our best and give our best and be creative and out of the box. And, yeah, it was, it was an exciting industry. So what makes   Michael Hingson ** 16:41 the best destination management company, or what makes you very successful? Why would people view you as successful at at what you do, and why they would want to choose you to be the company to work with? Because obviously, as you said, it's competitive.   Rachelle Stone ** 16:59 Everybody well, and there's choice. Everybody has choice. I always believed there was enough business to go around for everybody. Very good friends with some of my my hardiest competitors. Interestingly, you know, although we're competing, it's a very friendly industry. We all network together. We all dance in the same network. You know, if we're going to an industry network, we're all together. What? Why would somebody choose me over somebody else? Was really always a decision. It was sometimes it was creativity. Sometimes it was just a feeling for them. They felt the relationship just felt more authentic. Other times it was they they just really needed a cut and dry service. It just every client was always different. There were never two programs the same. I might have somebody just wanting to book a flamenco guitarist for three hours, and that's all they need. And another group may need. The transportation, the tours, the entertainment, the theme parties, the amenities, the whole ball of Fox, every group was different, which is, I think, what made it so exciting, it's that relationship building, I think, more than anything. Because these companies are doing meetings all over the country, sometimes some of them all over the world. So relationships were really, really important to them to be able to go into a destination and say to their partner in that destination, hey, I'm going to be there next May. This is what I need. Are you available? Can you help? So I think on the initial front end, it is, when it's a competitive bid, you're starting from scratch to build a relationship. Once that's relationship is established, it is easier to build on that relationship when things go wrong. Let's talk about what worked, what didn't, and how we can do better next time, instead of throwing the entire relationship out with the bathwater and starting from scratch again. So it was a great industry. I loved it, and   Michael Hingson ** 19:00 obviously you must have been pretty successful at it.   Rachelle Stone ** 19:04 I was, I was lucky. Well, luck and skill, I have to give myself credit there too. I worked for other DMCs. I worked for event companies that wanted to expand into the DMC industry. And I helped, I helped them build that corporate division, or that DMC division. I owned my own agency for, I think, 14 years, still alive and thriving. And then I worked for angel investors, helping them flip and underperforming. It was actually a franchise. It was an office franchise of a global DMC at the time. So I've had success in different areas of Destination Management, and I was lucky in that I believe in accreditation and certification. That's important to me. Credibility matters. And so I. Involved in the association called the association of Destination Management executives international admei I know it's a mouthful, but I wound up serving on their board of directors and their certification and accreditation board for 14 years, throughout my career, and on the cab their certification accreditation board, my company was one of the first companies in the country to become a certified company, admc certified. I was so proud of that, and I had all of my staff. I paid for all of them to earn their certification, which was a destination management Certified Professional. That's the designation. I loved, that we could be a part of it. And I helped write a course, a university level course, and it was only nine weeks, so half a semester in teaching students what destination management is that took me three years. It was a passion project with a couple of other board members on the cab that we put together, and really glad to be a part of that and contributing to writing the book best practices in destination management, first and second edition. So I feel lucky that I was in this field at a time where it was really growing deeper roots. It had been transport the industry. When I went into it was maybe 20 years young, and when I left it, it been around for 40 plus years. So it's kind of exciting. So you so you   Michael Hingson ** 21:41 said that you started a company and you were with it for 4014 years, or you ran it for 14 years, and you said, it's still around. Are you involved with it at all? Now, I   Rachelle Stone ** 21:51 am not. I did a buyout with the I had two partners at the time. And without going into too much detail, there were some things going on that I felt were I could not align with. I felt it was unethical. I felt it was immoral, and I struggled for a year to make the decision. I spoke to a therapist, and I ultimately consulted an attorney, and I did a buyout, and I walked away from my this was my legacy. This was my baby. I built it from scratch. I was the face of the company. So to give that up my legacy, it was a really tough decision, but it really did come full circle, because late last year, something happened which brought me back to that decision, and I can, with 100% certainty, say it was a values driven decision for me, and I'm so happy I made that decision. So I am today. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 22:57 and, and let's, let's get to that a little bit so you at some point, you said that you had burnout and you left the industry. Why did you do that?   Rachelle Stone ** 23:08 So after I did, sold my my business, I worked for angel investors for about three and a half years. They brought me in. This was an underperforming office that the franchisee, because they had owned it for 10 years, had done a buyout themselves and sold it back to the angel investors or the private equity so they brought me in to run the office and bring it from surviving to thriving again. And it took me about 18 months, and I brought it from under a million to over 5.3 million in 18 months. So it's quite successful. And I had said to the owners, as they're thanking me and rewarding me, and it was a great first two years, I had said to them, please don't expect this again. This was a fluke. People were following me. There was a lot of curiosity in the industry, because this was a really big move for me to sell my company and then go work for this one. It was big news. So it was a great time. But the expectation for me to repeat, rinse and repeat, that kind of productivity was not realistic. It just wasn't realistic. And about a year and a half later, I just, I was driving from the Lowe's Miami Beach. It's funny, because I used that as an example before, to the breakers in Palm Beach. And if you know South Florida at all, it's, it's, you're taking your life in your hands every time you get on 95 it's a nightmare. Anyway, so I'm driving from the lows to the breakers, and I just left a kind of a rough meeting. I don't even remember what it was anymore, because that was back in 2014 and I'm driving to another meeting at the breakers, and I hang up the phone with somebody my. Son calls about something, Mom, this is going on for graduation. Can you be there? And I'm realizing I'm going to be out of town yet again for work, and I'm driving to the breakers, and I'm having this I just had this vision of myself in the middle of 95 slamming the brakes on in my car, coming to a full stop in the middle of the highway. I did not do this this, and I don't recommend you do this. And I opened up my car door, and I literally just walked away from my car. That was the image in my mind. And in that moment, I knew it was time for me to leave. I had gone as high as I could go. I'd done as much as I could do. I'd served on boards, contributed to books, spoken on panels. I wanted to go back to being an entrepreneur. I didn't want to work for angel investors anymore. I wanted to work for myself. I wanted to build something new, and I didn't want to do it in the DMC world. So I went home that night thinking I was going to just resign. Instead, I wrote a letter of retirement, and I retired from the industry, I walked away two and a half weeks later, and I said I was never going to return.   Michael Hingson ** 26:09 And so I burnt out, though at the time, what? What eventually made you realize that it was all burnt out, or a lot of it was burnt out. So I   Rachelle Stone ** 26:17 didn't know anything about burnout at that time. I just knew I was incredibly frustrated. I was bored. I was over in competence, and I just wanted out. Was just done. I had done well enough in my industry that I could take a little time. I had a lot of people asking me to take on consulting projects. So I did. I started doing some consulting in hospitality. And while I was doing that, I was kind of peeling away the layers of the onion, saying, What do I want to do next? I did not want to do DMC. That's all I knew. So I started this exploration, and what came out of it was an interest in exploring the field of coaching. So I did some research. I went to the coachingfederation.org which is the ICF International coaching Federation, is the leading accreditation body for coaches in the world. And through them, I researched Who were some of the accredited schools. I narrowed it down. I finally settled on one, and I said, I'm going to sign up for one course. I just want to see what this coaching is all about. So I signed up for a foundations course with the with the school out of Pennsylvania, and probably about three weeks into the course, the professor said something which was like a light bulb moment for me, and that I realized like, oh my   Speaker 1 ** 27:40 god, I burnt out. And I was literally, at this   Rachelle Stone ** 27:46 time, we're in school, we're on the phone. It was not zoom. We didn't have all this yet. It was you were on the phone, and then you were pulling up documents on your computer so the teacher couldn't see me crying. I was just sobbing, knowing that this is i i was so I was I was stunned. I didn't say anything. I sat on this for a while. In fact, I sat on it. I started researching it, but I didn't tell anybody for two years. It took me two years before I finally admitted to somebody that I had burnt out. I was so ashamed, embarrassed, humiliated, I was this successful, high over achiever. How could I have possibly burnt out?   Michael Hingson ** 28:34 What? What did the teacher say   Rachelle Stone ** 28:37 it was? I don't even remember what it was, but I remember that shock of realization of wellness, of it was, you know what it was that question, is this all? There is a lot of times when we were they were talking about, I believe, what they were talking about, midlife crisis and what really brings them on. And it is that pivotal question, is this really all there is, is this what I'm meant to be doing? And then in their conversation, I don't even remember the full conversation, it was that recognition of that's what's happened to me. And as I started researching it, this isn't now. This is in 2015 as I'm researching it and learning there's not a lot on it. I mean, there's some, mostly people's experiences that are being shared. Then in 2019 the World Health Organization officially, officially recognizes burnout as a phenomenon, an occupational phenomenon.   Michael Hingson ** 29:38 And how would you define burnout? Burnout is,   Rachelle Stone ** 29:43 is generally defined in three areas. It is. It's the the, oh, I always struggle with it. It's that disconnect, the disconnect, or disassociation from. Um, wanting to succeed, from your commitment to the work. It is the knowing, the belief that no one can do it well or right. It is there. There's that. It's an emotional disconnect from from from caring about what you're doing and how you're showing up, and it shows up in your personal life too, which is the horrible thing, because it your it impacts your family so negatively, it's horrible.   Michael Hingson ** 30:39 And it it, it does take a toll. And it takes, did it take any kind of a physical toll on you?   Rachelle Stone ** 30:45 Well, what I didn't realize when I when I took this time, I was about 25 pounds overweight. I was on about 18 different medications, including all my vitamins. I was taking a lot of vitamins at that time too. Um, I chronic sciatica, insomnia. I was self medicating. I was also going out, eating rich dinners and drinking, um, because you're because of the work I was doing. I had to entertain. That was part of that was part of of my job. So as I was looking at myself, Yes, physically, it turns out that this weight gain, the insomnia, the self medication, are also taught signs of of risk of burnout. It's how we manage our stress, and that's really what it comes down to, that we didn't even know. We don't even know. People don't no one teaches us how to process our stress, and that that's really probably one of the biggest things that I've through, everything that I've studied, and then the pandemic hitting it. No one teaches us how to manage our stress. No one tells us that if we process stress, then the tough stuff isn't as hard anymore. It's more manageable. No one teaches us about how to shift our mindsets so we can look at changing our perspective at things, or only seeing things through our lizard brain instead of our curious brain. These are all things that I had no idea were keeping me I didn't know how to do, and that were part of contributing to my burnout. Right?   Michael Hingson ** 32:43 Is stress more self created, or is it? Is it an actual thing? In other words, when, when there is stress in the world? Is it something that, really, you create out of a fear or cause to happen in some way, and in reality, there are ways to not necessarily be stressful, and maybe that's what you're talking about, as far as learning to control it and process it, well,   Rachelle Stone ** 33:09 there's actually there's stresses. Stressors are external. Stress is internal. So a stressor could be the nagging boss. It could be your kid has a fever and you're going to be late for work, or you're going to miss a meeting because you have to take them to the doctor. That's an external stressor, right? So that external stressor goes away, you know, the traffic breaks up, or your your husband takes the kid to the doctor so you can get to your meeting. Whatever that external stress, or is gone, you still have to deal with the stress that's in your body. Your that stress, that stress builds up. It's it's cortisol, and that's what starts with the physical impact. So those physical symptoms that I was telling you about, that I had, that I didn't know, were part of my burnout. It was unprocessed stress. Now at that time, I couldn't even touch my toes. I wasn't doing any sort of exercise for my body. I wasn't and that is one of the best ways you can process stress. Stress actually has to cycle out of your body. No one tells us that. No one teaches us that. So how do you learn how to do that?   Michael Hingson ** 34:21 Well, of course, that's Go ahead. Go ahead. Well, I was gonna   Rachelle Stone ** 34:24 say it's learning. It's being willing to look internally, what's going on in your body. How are you really getting in touch with your emotions and feelings and and processing them well?   Michael Hingson ** 34:37 And you talk about stressors being external, but you have control. You may not have control directly over the stressor happening, but don't you have control over how you decide to deal with the external stress? Creator,   Rachelle Stone ** 34:55 yes, and that external stress will always. Go away. The deadline will come and go. The sun will still rise tomorrow in set tomorrow night. Stressors always go away, but they're also constantly there. So you've got, for instance, the nagging boss is always going to bring you stress. It's how you process the stress inside. You can choose to ignore the stressor, but then you're setting yourself up for maybe not following through on your job, or doing   Michael Hingson ** 35:29 right. And I wouldn't suggest ignoring the stressor, but you it's processing that   Rachelle Stone ** 35:34 stress in your body. It's not so let's say, at the end of the rough day, the stressors gone. You still, whether you choose to go for a walk or you choose to go home and say, Honey, I just need a really like I need a 62nd full on contact, bear hug from you, because I'm holding a lot of stress in my body right now, and I've got to let it out So that physical contact will move stress through your body. This isn't this is they that? You can see this in MRI studies. You see the decrease in the stress. Neuroscience now shows this to be true. You've got to move it through your body. Now before I wanted to kind of give you the formal definition of burnout, it is, it is they call it a occupational phenomenal, okay, it by that they're not calling it a disease. It is not classified as a disease, but it is noted in the International Classification of Diseases, and it has a code now it is they do tie it directly to chronic workplace stress, and this is where I have a problem with the World Health Organization, because when they added this to the International Classification of diseases in 2019 they didn't have COVID. 19 hybrid or work from home environments in mind, and it is totally changed. Stress and burnout are following people around. It's very difficult for them to escape. So besides that, that disconnect that I was talking about, it's really complete exhaustion, depletion of your energy just drained from all of the stressors. And again, it's that reduced efficiency in your work that you're producing because you don't care as much. It's that disconnect so and then the physical symptoms do build up. And burnout isn't like this. It's not an overnight thing. It's a build up, just like gaining 25 pounds, just like getting sick enough that I need a little bit more medication for different issues, that stuff builds up on you and when you when you're recovering from burnout, you didn't get there overnight. You're not going to get out of it overnight either. It's I worked with a personal trainer until I could touch my toes, and then she's pushed me out to go join a gym. But again, it's step by step, and learning to eat healthy, and then ultimately, the third piece that really changed the game for me was learning about the muscles in my brain and getting mentally fit. That was really the third leg of getting my health back.   Michael Hingson ** 38:33 So how does all of that help you deal with stress and the potential of burnout today? Yeah,   Rachelle Stone ** 38:43 more than anything, I know how to prevent it. That is my, my the number one thing I know when I'm sensing a stressor that is impacting me, I can quickly get rid of it. Now, for instance, I'll give you a good example. I was on my the board of directors for my Homeowners Association, and that's always   Michael Hingson ** 39:03 stressful. I've been there, right? Well, I   Rachelle Stone ** 39:06 was up for an hour and a half one night ruminating, and I I realized, because I coach a lot of people around burnout and symptoms, so when I was ruminating, I recognized, oh my gosh, that HOA does not deserve that much oxygen in my brain. And what did I do the next day? I resigned. Resigned, yeah, so removing the stressors so I can process the stress. I process my stress. I always make sure I schedule a beach walk for low tide. I will block my calendar for that so I can make sure I'm there, because that fills my tank. That's self care for me. I make sure I'm exercising, I'm eating good food. I actually worked with a health coach last year because I felt like my eating was getting a little off kilter again. So I just hired a coach for a few months to help me get back on track. Of getting support where I need it. That support circle is really important to maintain and process your stress and prevent burnout.   Michael Hingson ** 40:10 So we've talked a lot about stress and dealing with it and so on. And like to get back to the idea of you went, you explored working with the international coaching Federation, and you went to a school. So what did you then do? What really made you attracted to the idea of coaching, and what do you get out of it?   Rachelle Stone ** 40:35 Oh, great question. Thanks for that. So for me, once I I was in this foundations course, I recognized or realized what had happened to me. I i again, kept my mouth shut, and I just continued with the course. By the end of the course, I really, really enjoyed it, and I saw I decided I wanted to continue on to become a coach. So I just continued in my training. By the end of 2015 early 2016 I was a coach. I went and joined the international coaching Federation, and they offer accreditation. So I wanted to get accredited, because, as I said, from my first industry, a big proponent for credit accreditation. I think it's very important, especially in an unregulated industry like coaching. So we're not bound by HIPAA laws. We are not doctors, we are coaches. It's very different lane, and we do self regulate. So getting accredited is important to me. And I thought my ACC, which my associate a certified coach in 2016 when I moved to the area I'm living in now, in 2017 and I joined the local chapter here, I just continued on. I continued with education. I knew my lane is, is, is burnout. I started to own it. I started to bring it forward a little bit and talk about my experiences with with other coaches and clients to help them through the years and and it felt natural. So with the ICF, I wanted to make sure I stayed in a path that would allow me to hang my shingle proudly, and everything I did in the destination management world I'm now doing in the coaching world. I wound up on the board of directors for our local chapter as a programming director, which was so perfect for me because I'm coming from meetings and events, so as a perfect person to do their programming, and now I am their chapter liaison, and I am President Elect, so I'm taking the same sort of leadership I had in destination management and wrapping my arms around it in the coaching industry,   Michael Hingson ** 42:56 you talk about People honing their leadership skills to help prepare them for a career move or their next career. It isn't always that way, though, right? It isn't always necessarily that they're going to be going to a different career. Yep,   Rachelle Stone ** 43:11 correct. Yeah. I mean, not everybody's looking for trans transition. Some people are looking for that to break through the glass ceiling. I have other clients that are just wanting to maybe move laterally. Others are just trying to figure it out every client is different. While I specialize in hospitality and burnout, I probably have more clients in the leadership lane, Senior VP level, that are trying to figure out their next step, if they want to go higher, or if they're content where they are, and a lot of that comes from that ability to find the right balance for you in between your career and your personal life. I think there comes a point when we're in our younger careers, we are fully identified by what we do. I don't think that's true for upcoming generations, but for our generation, and maybe Jen, maybe some millennials, very identified by what they do, there comes a point in your career, and I'm going to say somewhere between 35 and 50, where you recognize that those two Things need to be separate,   Michael Hingson ** 44:20 and the two things being   Rachelle Stone ** 44:23 your identity, who you are from what you do, got it two different things. And a lot of leaders on their journey get so wrapped up in what they do, they lose who they are.   Michael Hingson ** 44:39 What really makes a good leader,   Rachelle Stone ** 44:42 authenticity. I'm a big proponent of heart based leadership. Brene Brown, I'm Brene Brown trained. I am not a facilitator, but I love her work, and I introduce all my clients to it, especially my newer leaders. I think it's that. Authenticity that you know the command and control leadership no longer works. And I can tell you, I do work with some leaders that are trying to improve their human skills, and by that I mean their emotional intelligence, their social skills, their ability to interact on a human level with others, because when they have that high command and control directive type of leadership, they're not connecting with their people. And we now have five generations in the workforce that all need to be interacted with differently. So command and control is a tough kind of leadership style that I actually unless they're willing to unless they're open to exploring other ways of leading, I won't work with them. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 45:44 and the reality is, I'm not sure command and control as such ever really worked. Yeah, maybe you control people. But did it really get you and the other person and the company? What what you needed.   Rachelle Stone ** 46:01 Generally, that's what we now call a toxic environment. Yes, yes. But that, you know, this has been, we've been on a path of, you know, this work ethic was supposed to, was supposed to become a leisure ethic in the 70s, you know, we went to 40 hour work weeks. Where are we now? We're back up to 6070, hour work week. Yeah, we're trying to lower the age that so kids can start working this is not a leisure ethic that we were headed towards. And now with AI, okay, let's change this conversation. Yeah, toxic environments are not going to work. Moving forward that command and control leadership. There's not a lot of it left, but there's, it's lingering, and some of the old guard, you know, there it's, it's slowly changing.   Michael Hingson ** 46:49 It is, I think, high time that we learn a lot more about the whole concept of teamwork and true, real team building. And there's a lot to be said for there's no I in team, that's right, and it's an extremely important thing to learn. And I think there are way to, still, way too many people who don't recognize that, but it is something that I agree with you. Over time, it's it's starting to evolve to a different world, and the pandemic actually was one, and is one of the things that helps it, because we introduced the hybrid environment, for example, and people are starting to realize that they can still get things done, and they don't necessarily have to do it the way they did before, and they're better off for it.   Rachelle Stone ** 47:38 That's right. Innovation is beautiful. I actually, I mean, as horrible as the pandemic was it, there was a lot of good that came out of it, to your point. And it's interesting, because I've watched this in coaching people. I remember early in the pandemic, I had a new client, and they came to the they came to their first call on Zoom, really slumped down in the chair like I could barely see their nose and up and, you know, as we're kind of talking, getting to know each other. One of the things they said to me, because they were working from home, they were working like 1011, hours a day. Had two kids, a husband, and they also had yet they're, they're, they're like, I one of the things they said to me, which blew my mind, was, I don't have time to put on a load of laundry. They're working from home. Yeah? It's that mindset that you own my time because you're paying me, yeah, versus I'm productive and I'm doing good work for you. Is why you're paying for paying me? Yeah? So it's that perception and trying to shift one person at a time, shifting that perspective   Michael Hingson ** 48:54 you talked before about you're a coach, you're not a doctor, which I absolutely appreciate and understand and in studying coaching and so on, one of the things that I read a great deal about is the whole concept of coaches are not therapists. A therapist provides a decision or a position or a decision, and they are more the one that provides a lot of the answers, because they have the expertise. And a coach is a guide who, if they're doing their job right, leads you to you figuring out the answer. That's   Rachelle Stone ** 49:34 a great way to put it, and it's pretty clear. That's, that's, that's pretty, pretty close the I like to say therapy is a doctor patient relationship. It's hierarchy so and the doctor is diagnosing, it's about repair and recovery, and it's rooted in the past, diagnosing, prescribing, and then the patient following orders and recovering. Hmm, in coaching, it's a peer to peer relationship. So it's, we're co creators, and we're equal. And it's, it's based on future goals only. It's only based on behavior change and future goals. So when I have clients and they dabble backwards, I will that's crossing the line. I can't support you there. I will refer clients to therapy. And actually, what I'm doing right now, I'm taking a mental health literacy course through Harvard Medical Center and McLean University. And the reason I'm doing this is because so many of my clients, I would say 80% of my clients are also in therapy, and it's very common. We have a lot of mental health issues in the world right now as a result of the pandemic, and we have a lot of awareness coming forward. So I want to make sure I'm doing the best for my clients in recognizing when they're at need or at risk and being able to properly refer them.   Michael Hingson ** 51:04 Do you think, though, that even in a doctor patient relationship, that more doctors are recognizing that they accomplish more when they create more of a teaming environment? Yes,   51:18 oh, I'm so glad you   Rachelle Stone ** 51:20 brought that up, okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Love that. I have clients who are in therapy, and I ask them to ask their therapist so that if they're comfortable with this trio. And it works beautifully. Yes,   Michael Hingson ** 51:36 it is. It just seems to me that, again, there's so much more to be said for the whole concept of teaming and teamwork, and patients do better when doctors or therapists and so on explain and bring them into the process, which almost makes them not a coach as you are, but an adjunct to what you do, which is what I think it's all about. Or are we the adjunct to what they do? Or use the adjunct to what they do? Yeah, it's a team, which is what it should be.   52:11 Yeah, it's, I always it's like the Oreo cookie, right?   Michael Hingson ** 52:16 Yeah, and the frosting is in the middle, yeah, crying   Rachelle Stone ** 52:19 in the middle. But it's true, like a therapist can work both in the past and in the future, but that partnership and that team mentality and supporting a client, it helps them move faster and further in their in their desired goals. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 52:37 it's beautiful, yeah, yeah. And I think it's extremely important, tell me about this whole idea of mental fitness. I know you're studying that. Tell me more about that. Is it real? Is it okay? Or what? You know, a lot of people talk about it and they say it's who cares. They all roll   Rachelle Stone ** 52:56 their eyes mental fitness. What are you talking about? Yeah, um, I like to say mental fitness is the third leg of our is what keeps us healthy. I like to look at humans as a three legged stool, and that mental fitness, that mental wellness, is that third piece. So you have your spiritual and community wellness, you have your physical wellness, and then you have your mental wellness. And that mental wellness encompasses your mental health, your mental fitness. Now, mental fitness, by definition, is your ability to respond to life's challenges from a positive rather than a negative mindset. And there's a new science out there called positive it was actually not a new science. It's based on four sciences, Positive Intelligence, it's a cognitive behavioral science, or psychology, positive psychology, performance psychology, and drawing a bank anyway, four sciences and this body of work determined that there's actually a tipping point we live in our amygdala, mostly, and there's a reason, when we were cavemen, we needed to know what was coming that outside stressor was going to eat us, or if we could eat it. Yeah, but we have language now. We don't need that, not as much as we did, not in the same way, not in the same way, exactly. We do need to be aware of threats, but not every piece of information that comes into the brain. When that information comes in our brains, amplify it by a factor of three to one. So with that amplification, it makes that little, little tiny Ember into a burning, raging fire in our brain. And then we get stuck in stress. So it's recognizing, and there's actually you are building. If you do yoga, meditation, tai chi, gratitude journaling, any sort of those practices, you're flexing that muscle. You talk to somebody who does gratitude journaling who just started a month in, they're going to tell. You, they're happier. They're going to tell you they're not having as many ruminating thoughts, and they're going to say, I'm I'm smiling more. I started a new journal this year, and I said, I'm singing more. I'm singing songs that I haven't thought of in years. Yeah, out of the blue, popping into my head. Yeah. And I'm happier. So the the concept of mental fitness is really practicing flexing this muscle every day. We take care of our bodies by eating good food, we exercise or walk. We do that to take care of our physical body. We do nothing to take care of our brain other than scroll social media and get anxiety because everybody's life looks so perfect,   Michael Hingson ** 55:38 yeah, and all we're doing is using social media as a stressor.   Rachelle Stone ** 55:42 That's right, I'm actually not on social media on LinkedIn. That's it.   Michael Hingson ** 55:48 I have accounts, but I don't go to it exactly. My excuse is it takes way too long with a screen reader, and I don't have the time to do it. I don't mind posting occasionally, but I just don't see the need to be on social media for hours every day.   Rachelle Stone ** 56:05 No, no, I do, like, like a lot of businesses, especially local small businesses, are they advertise. They only have they don't have websites. They're only on Facebook. So I do need to go to social media for things like that. But the most part, no, I'm not there. Not at all. It's   Michael Hingson ** 56:20 it's way too much work. I am amazed sometimes when I'll post something, and I'm amazed at how quickly sometimes people respond. And I'm wondering to myself, how do you have the time to just be there to see this? It can't all be coincidence. You've got to be constantly on active social media to see it. Yeah,   Rachelle Stone ** 56:39 yeah, yeah. Which is and this, this whole concept of mental fitness is really about building a practice, a habit. It's a new habit, just like going to the gym, and it's so important for all of us. We are our behaviors are based on how we interpret these messages as they come in, yeah, so learning to reframe or recognize the message and give a different answer is imperative in order to have better communication, to be more productive and and less chaos. How   Michael Hingson ** 57:12 do we teach people to recognize that they have a whole lot more control over fear than they think they do, and that that really fear can be a very positive guide in our lives. And I say that because I talked about not being afraid of escaping from the World Trade Center over a 22 year period, what I realized I never did was to teach people how to do that. And so now I wrote a book that will be out later in the year. It's called Live like a guide dog, stories of from a blind man and his dogs, about being brave, overcoming adversity and walking in faith. And the point of it is to say that you can control your fear. I'm not saying don't be afraid, but you have control over how you let that fear affect you and what you deal with and how you deal it's all choice. It is all choice. But how do we teach people to to deal with that better, rather than just letting fear build up   Rachelle Stone ** 58:12 it? Michael, I think these conversations are so important. Number one is that learner's mind, that willingness, that openness to be interested in finding a better way to live. I always say that's a really hard way to live when you're living in fear. Yeah, so step number one is an openness, or a willingness or a curiosity about wanting to live life better,   Michael Hingson ** 58:40 and we have to instill that in people and get them to realize that they all that we all have the ability to be more curious if we choose to do it.   Rachelle Stone ** 58:49 But again, choice and that, that's the big thing so many and then there's also, you know, Michael, I can't wait to read your book. I'm looking forward to this. I'm also know that you speak. I can't wait to see you speak. The thing is, when we speak or write and share this information, we give them insight. It's what they do with it that matters, which is why, when I with the whole with the mental fitness training that I do, it's seven weeks, yeah, I want them to start to build that habit, and I give them three extra months so they can continue to work on that habit, because it's that important for them to start. It's foundational your spirit. When you talk about your experience in the World Trade Center, and you say you weren't fearful, your spiritual practice is such a big part of that, and that's part of mental fitness too. That's on that layers on top of your ability to flex those mental muscles and lean into your spirituality and not be afraid.   Michael Hingson ** 59:55 Well, I'd love to come down and speak. If you know anybody that needs a speaker down there. I. I'm always looking for speaking opportunities, so love your help, and   1:00:03 my ears open for sure and live like   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:06 a guide dog. Will be out later this year. It's, it's, I've already gotten a couple of Google Alerts. The the publisher has been putting out some things, which is great. So we're really excited about it.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:00:16 Wonderful. I can't wait to see it. So what's   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:19 up for you in 2024   Rachelle Stone ** 1:00:22 so I actually have a couple of things coming up this year that are pretty big. I have a partner. Her name's vimari Roman. She's down in Miami, and I'm up here in the Dunedin Clearwater area. But we're both hospitality professionals that went into coaching, and we're both professional certified coaches, and we're both certified mental fitness coaches. When the pandemic hit, she's also a Career Strategist. She went she started coaching at conferences because the hospitality industry was hit so hard, she reached out to me and brought me in too. So in 2024 we've been coaching at so many conferences, we can't do it. We can't do it. It's just too much, but we also know that we can provide a great service. So we've started a new company. It's called coaches for conferences, and it's going to be like a I'll call it a clearing house for securing pro bono coaches for your conferences. So that means, let's say you're having a conference in in LA and they'd like to offer coaching, pro bono coaching to their attendees as an added value. I'll we'll make the arrangements for the coaches, local in your area to to come coach. You just have to provide them with a room and food and beverage and a place to coach on your conference floor and a breakout. So we're excited for that that's getting ready to launch. And I think 2024 is going to be the year for me to dip my toe in start writing my own story. I think it's time   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:02 writing a book. You can say it. I'm gonna do it.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:02:05 I'm gonna write a book Good. I've said it out loud. I've started to pull together some thoughts around I mean, I've been thinking about it for years. But yeah, if the timing feels right,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:21 then it probably is, yep, which makes sense. Well, this has been fun. It's been wonderful. Can you believe we've already been at this for more than an hour? So clearly we   1:02:33 this went so fast. Clearly we   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:35 did have fun. We followed the rule, this was fun. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I want to thank you for being here, and I want to thank you all for listening and for watching, if you're on YouTube watching, and all I can ask is that, wherever you are, please give us a five star rating for the podcast. We appreciate it. And anything that you want to say, we would love it. And I would appreciate you feeling free to email me and let me know your thoughts. You can reach me at Michael H, I m, I C, H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I, B, e.com, would love to hear from you. You can also go to our podcast page, www, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and it's m, I C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, s, O, N, and as I said to Rochelle just a minute ago, if any of you need a speaker, we'd love to talk with you about that. You can also email me at speaker@michaelhingson.com love to hear from you and love to talk about speaking. So however you you reach out and for whatever reason, love to hear from you, and for all of you and Rochelle, you, if you know anyone else who ought to be a guest on unstoppable mindset, let us know we're always looking for people who want to come on the podcast. Doesn't cost anything other than your time and putting up with me for a while, but we appreciate it, and hope that you'll decide to to introduce us to other people. So with that, I again want to say, Rochelle, thank you to you. We really appreciate you being here and taking the time to chat with us today.   Rachelle Stone ** 1:04:13 It's been the fastest hour of my life. I'm gonna have to watch the replay. Thank you so much for having me. It's been my pleasure to join you.   **Michael Hingson ** 1:04:24 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com . AccessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet fully inclusive by 2025. Thanks again for Listening. Please come back and visit us again next week.