Podcasts about around christmas

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【欢迎订阅】每天早上5:30，准时更新。【阅读原文】标题:Why Are Elite MBA Graduates Struggling to Find Jobs? Is the Degree Still Worth It?正文：In business, nothing quite says “in trouble” like a company delaying the release of its financial results. That seems to be true of business schools, too. Around Christmas, most of America's top business schools released their equivalent of annual reports, containing data on the employment of graduates from their two-year master of business administration (MBA) programmes, later than usual. We have analyzed the data. Among the top 15 business schools, the share of students who found and accepted job offers within three months of graduating in 2024 fell by six percentage points, to 84%, a standard metric for measuring employment outcomes. That is eight percentage points lower than the average over the past five years.知识点：equivalent /ɪˈkwɪvələnt/Five kilometers is approximately equivalent to three miles.5公⾥⼤约相当于3英⾥。获取外刊的完整原文以及精讲笔记，请关注微信公众号「早安英文」，回复“外刊”即可。更多有意思的英语干货等着你！【节目介绍】《早安英文-每日外刊精读》，带你精读最新外刊，了解国际最热事件：分析语法结构，拆解长难句，最接地气的翻译，还有重点词汇讲解。所有选题均来自于《经济学人》《纽约时报》《华尔街日报》《华盛顿邮报》《大西洋月刊》《科学杂志》《国家地理》等国际一线外刊。【适合谁听】1、关注时事热点新闻，想要学习最新最潮流英文表达的英文学习者2、任何想通过地道英文提高听、说、读、写能力的英文学习者3、想快速掌握表达，有出国学习和旅游计划的英语爱好者4、参加各类英语考试的应试者（如大学英语四六级、托福雅思、考研等）【你将获得】1、超过1000篇外刊精读课程，拓展丰富语言表达和文化背景2、逐词、逐句精确讲解，系统掌握英语词汇、听力、阅读和语法3、每期内附学习笔记，包含全文注释、长难句解析、疑难语法点等，帮助扫除阅读障碍。

Wrestling Around is BACK, enter an alternative WresAroundiverse as we follow Terry Peters, Bill Goldberg and more for a Christmas special like no other. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Around Christmas time, we hear and see the words—For to us a child is born everywhere. And we know the verse is talking about Jesus. But for most of us, that's all we know about it. Join us as Pastor J.D. dives into the context behind this familiar Christmas passage. It's a message from our series, Foretold.

Around Christmas time, we hear and see the words—For to us a child is born everywhere. And we know the verse is talking about Jesus. But for most of us, that's all we know about it. Join us as Pastor J.D. dives into the context behind this familiar Christmas passage. It's a message from our series, Foretold. To support this ministry financially, visit: https://www.oneplace.com/donate/1518/29

Now's your chance to prove you love the holiday's... With Riffin' Around: Christmas Edition!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Send us a textSingles Going Around- Christmas 2024Chuck Berry- Run Run RudolphElvis Presley- Santa Claus Is Back In TownLightnin Hopkins- Merry Christmas BabyBrenda Lee- Rockin Around The Christmas TreeBobby Helms- Jingle Bell RockBB King- Christmas CelebrationDarlene Love- Christmas Baby Please Come HomeHarry Fontenot- Jingle BellsBilly May- Rudolph The Red Nosed ReindeerLouis Armstrong- Zat You, Santa ClausBeach Boys- Little Saint NickLoretta Lynn- To Heck With Old Santa ClausLloyd Glenn- Sleigh RideWillie Nelson- Pretty PaperJimi Hendrix- Little Drummer Boy/ Auld Lang SyneBing Crosby- White ChristmasChuck Berry- ChristmasElla Fitzgerald- Sleigh RideThe Ronettes- Frost The SnowmanLowell Fulsom- Wanna Spend Christmas With YouElvis Presley- Blue ChristmasJoe Bonsall- Here Comes Santa ClausLionel Hampton- Boogie Woogie Santa ClausBeach Boys- Merry Christmas BabyCharles Brown- Merry Christmas BabyLightnin Hopkins- Happy New Year

This week Steve taught out of Mark chapters 15 and 16, and the bigger Kingdom of God story that Christmas is part of and the “astonishment” that comes when we seek it first. 

This week Steve taught out of Mark chapters 15 and 16, and the bigger Kingdom of God story that Christmas is part of and the “astonishment” that comes when we seek it first. 

With singer Daniel O'Donnell issuing a warning over people impersonating him for money - there are scams going around this year that you should look out for.Sinead Ryan, Journalist with the Irish Independent and host of the Home Show on Newstalk joins Kieran to give her top tips.

At this time of year, we are rushing around saying yes to everyone, but is it time to actually take a step back and just say “No, I can't do it”?The public have been saying yes to answering Henry McKean's questions, and he joins Seán to share what he's heard.

At this time of year, we are rushing around saying yes to everyone, but is it time to actually take a step back and just say “No, I can't do it”?The public have been saying yes to answering Henry McKean's questions, and he joins Seán to share what he's heard.

Around Christmas time there's lots of talk of hope, peace, joy and love. But why? What's the connection with Jesus' arrival? In this message Matt talks about peace!

Around Christmas time there's lots of talk of hope, peace, joy and love. But why? What's the connection with Jesus' arrival? In this message Michelle helps us to see that hope connected with Jesus is more than wishful thinking, it's far, far more and has power to bring change!

Around Christmas, we often hear the list of names in Isaiah 9 that will be given to the promised savior: Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and, as Pastor Cheryl invites us to reflect on today: Prince of Peace. As she shares about the full picture of peace, or shalom, we consider what it means for Jesus to be the one who brings that kind of peace both to us and through us today.

This is a special episode just for this time of year. Around Christmas time volunteers all over the country go out and count all the birds they can find in their local area. This is the second episode I made for to help with the Christmas Bird Count (CBC). I talk about three common birds most people will see on their own CBC the Mallard (1:43) the Canada Goose (3:48) and the Cedar Waxwing (6:39). Then I talk about three not so common species most of us will only get the chance to see in the winter months our winter specialties. This time the winter specialties are Longspurs starting at (9:38).    You can find me on Facebook at birdingbyearpodcast or send me an email at birdingbyearpodcast@gmail.com Thanks for listening.   

Caller Questions & More: Dr. Alice shares the true sign of relational health is how quickly repair occurs after a rupture.  How do I work with my husband if we disagree on giving our kids medication? My daughter struggles with suicidal ideation.  Around Christmas when I was 11yo, my mom went into my bedroom and […]

In this episode of the Karma Stories podcast, Rob shares a compelling tale from the Entitled Parents subreddit where a user recounts their lifelong struggle with their birthday being overshadowed by Christmas. Despite planning efforts to celebrate separately, the protagonist's family consistently dismisses their wishes, leading to years of frustration and disappointment. Tune in to hear the full story and the protagonist's plans to reclaim their special day.Submit your own stories to KarmaStoriesPod@gmail.com.Karma Stories is available on all major Podcasting Platforms and on YouTube under the @KarmaStoriesPodcast handle. We cover stories from popular Reddit Subreddits like Entitled Parents, Tales From Tech Support, Pro Revenge and Malicious Compliance. You can find new uploads here every single day of the week!Rob's 3D Printing Site: https://Dangly3D.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/karma-stories--5098578/support.

Dave Perry Interview with Dave Perry: Dave and Tony continue discussing how candidates should prepare for interviews during the Christmas holiday.

Dave Perry Interview with Dave Perry: Dave discusses how candidates should prepare for interviews during the Christmas holiday.

Songs are impactful. Around Christmas each year, we sing familiar choruses and songs that are memorable and meaningful. Christmas Carols or Hymns are important as they present a biblical message.

Join us as we bring the year to an end with a discussion of The Monkees’ Christmas Party and then look back at our favorite MONKEEING AROUND memories of 2023! Monkeeing Around is a part of the ESO Podcast Network The post Monkeeing Around – Christmas Party and 2023 Memories – Episode 43 appeared first on The ESO Network.

Join us as we bring the year to an end with a discussion of The Monkees' Christmas Party and then look back at our favorite MONKEEING AROUND memories of 2023! Monkeeing Around is a part of the ESO Podcast Network, Executive Producer Mike Faber.

Around Christmas time it's not uncommon for us to do everything we can to ignore the darkness in this world in the hopes of enjoying the holidays. Of course we often find that trying to ignore the darkness leaves us feeling a little bit alone. But the truth is that Christmas has never been about ignoring the darkness or pretending that everything is OK. No, Christmas has always been about a light that shines so brightly in the darkness that the darkness cannot overcome it. In this message we will learn more about who this light is and how he came to save us.

Around Christmas, we hear all about a baby Jesus, mangers, donkeys, stars, and shepherds. Yet there is way more to learn from the same old story. The Bible is the Living Word of God, and this year we are looking at Jesus from a whole different angle. Revelation abounds!

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Now's your chance to prove you love the holiday's... With Riffin' Around: Christmas Edition!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Georgie has a lot to say if you're feeling not so great about Christmas, whether it's bringing up grief or disappointment, family conflict or social pressure. You'll hear special insights into understanding what might be happening on the subconscious level if you experience PMS, irregular cycles or painful periods. She also has a beautiful, inspiring story to share about releasing her own powerlessness, journeying through her subconscious mind and exploring ancestral healing.   The book referenced in this episode is called "Hormonal" by Eleanor Morgan.   Need more anxiety support? Browse the Hypnotherapy Audio Library here: https://georgiecollinson.com/hypnosislibrary Watch my FREE Masterclass for women with high-functioning anxiety: https://anxiety-reset.mykajabi.com/free-masterclass Australia & NZ - order The Anxiety Reset Method book here: booktopia.kh4ffx.net/3Pbokn US & North America - order The Anxiety Reset Method book here: https://amzn.to/46OpjvH DM me the word "DONE" on Instagram @georgiethenaturopath if you're ready to invest in becoming your calmest, most confident self.

Around Christmas, do you start to feel sad or lonely? Do you feel you might have seasonal depression? This episode digs deep into the PEAs personal experiences through the holidays and how to work through those feelings. They talk about being single through the holidays and how to heal through the holidays.

Join T, Fortenberry, Gary, and Marty with Special Guest Buddy "The Buddog" Nash as they provide life from the Patio.What's something you always wanted for Christmas but never received?Things that aren't around anymore but wish they were!UPenn Professor in Hot waterNIL and College football portal!lifefromthepatio.comWatch us on YouTubeFollow us on TikTokCheck out our Merch Store

Speaker 1:This media has been made available by Mosaic Boston Church. If you'd like to check out more resources, learn about Mosaic Boston or donate to this ministry, please visit Mosaicboston.com.Speaker 2:O Holy God, we thank you that you are our heavenly Father. Jesus, we thank you for teaching us to pray to God as our Heavenly Father to remind us every time we pray that you are God who loves to provide. We thank you Lord that you know our needs even before we bring them to you, and therefore we want to focus on thanking you for meeting our needs. Thank you for meeting our greatest need, and that was the sacrifice of your son Jesus Christ on the cross. Jesus, we thank you that your body was broken and your blood was shed in order to provide healing for our souls and cleansing of our consciences. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you save us and along with saving us, you send us the Holy Spirit to sanctify us and on a daily basis, you sustain us and above all else, grace upon grace, you satisfy us. What a great God that you are.Lord, we thank you that you offer your son Jesus Christ, the mighty Word of God, and you offer us the Holy Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit, the Word of God, to satiate our famish souls. Lord, we confess that we are often malnourished in our souls and we seek out satiety and things that never satisfy. We repent of that Lord, of our idolatry and our lack of trust in you. Lord, we come to you today relying wholly on you, relying wholly on your provision. We are completely dependent upon you. And today satisfy us from the Holy Scriptures and satisfy us with your holy presence. Holy Spirit, we welcome you into this place. Lord, if there's anyone in this place who doesn't even know what it means to be satisfied by you, I pray today, reveal that. I pray wet the appetites of their souls, the hunger of their soul. Lord, we ask for you to deepen it and take the taste buds anywhere that we have sought satiety apart from you and recalibrate them Lord, so that we hunger and thirst for you.And Lord Jesus, we thank you that you, the bread of life was broken in order for us to be satisfied. Lord, if there's anyone who's not yet a believer, not yet a child of God, I pray, give them the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, the gift of your grace, and save them, welcome them into your flock, welcome them into your family. And Lord, as we look at the mission that you have given to us to go and make disciples of all nations, we understand our inadequacy. We cannot do this. So we take our inadequacy, we take our weakness, and we give it to you. And we ask, Lord, multiply our efforts as you multiplied the five loaves and the two fish and you fed thousands. I pray that you feed thousands through the efforts of this church, through the efforts of the members of this church, through our work.And above all else, Lord, glorify your name, magnify your name, the name that is above all names, the name that we worship, the name of Jesus Christ. Lord, bless our time in the Holy Scriptures today. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. We're continuing our sermon series through the incredible Gospel of Mark. We've entitled the series Kingdom Come. And the idea is that Jesus has come to establish the kingdom, inaugurate the kingdom. He says, "I am the king. I have brought the kingdom," but Jesus also teaches us to pray, our Father who art in heaven, howled be thy name. Thy kingdom come. The kingdom has come, but he says to pray for more of the kingdom to come into our lives. And the title of the sermon today is The King Satisfies. Have you ever noticed that God's Commandments are often impossible to fulfill, like the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself? Lord Jesus, have you met my neighbors? Or love your enemies? How am I to love my enemies? Or go and sin no more, or love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind.Many heretical theologians have built upon on this presupposition that if God commands something, we have the natural ability to fulfill that commandment. For example, Erasmus in the 16th century, he said, "If it is not in the power of every man to keep what is commanded, all the exhortations of scripture are of necessity useless." And Martin Luther responds to this in the bondage of the will. He says, "When you are finished with all your commands and exhortations, I'll write Romans 3:20 over the top of it. Through the law comes knowledge of sin. The commands are not given inappropriately or pointlessly, but in order that through them, the proud blind man may learn the plague of his impotence should he try to do as he is commanded." Yes, God does often command us to do that which is absolutely impossible in our own strength. And he does that to stop us dead in our tracks, to get us to fall to our knees and say, "Lord, send us a building." Are we going to rapper mic? Rapper mic it is.The sermon is on personal inadequacy. I don't know if you've noticed. We are inadequate, :ord, send us grace. That's the point. He commands that which is impossible apart from Him. Lord, you're commanding the impossible. But with you, all things are possible, even keeping all your commands and your commandments. Matthew 5:48, "You therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Will we attain perfection in this life? No, of course not. Should we strive to attain perfection? Yes, by His grace and for His glory. Today we are on Mark 6:30-44. Would you look at the text with me? "The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, 'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.' For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.' But he answered them, 'You give them something to eat.' And they said to him, 'Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?' And he said to them, 'How many loaves do you have? Go and see.' And when they had found out, they said, 'Five and two fish.' Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people.And he divided the two fish among them all and they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish, and those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men." This is the reading of God's holy, inert, infallible, authoritative Word. May He write these eternal truths upon our hearts. Three points to frame up our time. First, Serve the King, then Rest in Him. Second, The Compassionate King Shepherds by Teaching, and Seek First the Kingdom of God and be Satisfied. First, Serve the King, then Rest in Him. Verse 30, "The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught." Jesus is their rabbi. He said, "Follow me and I'll make you fishers of men." And then he sends them out to the villages and towns of Israel to go and proclaim the gospel. The king has come, therefore repent of sin and turn to him and follow the king.And along with preaching the message, he gave them authority over the demons so they exercised them and they healed many by anointing them with oil. This is the only text in the Gospel of Mark where the disciples are called apostles and apostle is from the Greek word apostloy, which means to be sent out, sent out as a representative. So they didn't just preach their own message, they preached his message and they embodied his presence along with his authority. Jesus has called them to do incredible work, spiritual work. And did everyone believe? Of course not. And there were probably many places where people flat out rejected them, rejected the gospel, however many did hear and many were intrigued and they wanted to hear more about Jesus and they wanted to hear from Jesus himself. Jesus' name had become renowned, not the name of the disciples. They were doing the work of Christ in the name of Christ.So they're back and Jesus receives their report and he also recognizes that they are exhausted, they're bone tired, both physically and spiritually and Jesus, who is God in human form, he knew all too well about the importance of rest. He often took time away from his own busy ministry seasons to go and spend time in the Lord and the presence of God the Father. And he calls the disciples to do the same in verse 31. And he said to them, "'Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.' For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat." They served, and then now Jesus wants them to be replenished in their stores. I once had a coach who said, "Athletes do not diet and exercise, athletes train and they eat." And I like that principle as it applies to the spiritual walk. The apostle Paul compares our spiritual walk, he said to boxing, fight the good fight, to running as endurance sport.And then Jesus also says that we are soldiers. The apostle Paul says we're soldiers of the king. So we are called to strenuous service and then we're called to serious rest and replenishment. If you are going to grow as a believer, you can't just take and take and take and consume. You have to take what you have consumed, the energy, and then use that in order to serve the Lord. If we're going to grow as believers in faith and effectiveness for the kingdom, we have to take both seriously, exhausting service and invigorating rest. Some of you need to take the service part more seriously. Do you ever get to the point where you are spiritually exhausted? Do you do things for the Lord that drain your energy stores spiritually, emotionally, physically? You should, and some of you should take that rest part seriously. You are not a machine, though in Boston, many of us think we are. We're not. You're not a machine. You are not more spiritual than the disciples here. You do need rest and you need recovery time.It's like when you're driving, if you have a gas powered vehicle, and the low gas light comes on, how quickly do you find a gas station to refuel? I like to take my chances. I drive by faith, not by sight. I've learned about 50 miles you get, about, but you're not a car and you're not a truck, you're a human being and you might not run out of gas, but you might hit a wall, you might crash and get to the point of burnout. And this is what Jesus, the gracious king sees. He wants his servants healthy and effective, thus he calls them to service and to commensurate rest. And we have to take both seriously. Mark 6:32, "And they went away in the boat to a desolate place." They've been overwhelmed by the crowds that Jesus has attracted, so he takes them on a private retreat to a desolate place, a desert location. Jesus wants them to care for their own souls, to care for themselves and out of the fullness with which he fills them, there's a care for others.If we are to love our neighbor as our ourself, we need to love ourselves, care for ourselves, if we are to love our neighbor well. But it's not just the vacation, it's time away with the Lord. So if we are to find true rest, it's not just a time of leisure, it's a time of resting in the Lord in order to restore their spiritual strength. There's incredible wisdom here. Our Lord knows that if we are to serve at our best, we need to take care of ourselves as well. Why the desolate place? It almost seems like a contradiction in terms. Why would you take a vacation in a desert? Well, it's not just a vacation in a desert, it's time with the Lord and even in the wilderness, even in a desolate location, if we are alone with the Lord, have solitude with the Lord, our stores of energy can be restored. And also in the Old Testament, we read that God provides rest for His people in the wilderness.We see this in Isaiah and we see this in Jeremiah. For example, Isaiah 63:14, "Like livestock that go down into the valley, the spirit of the Lord gave them rest. So you led your people, to make for yourself a glorious name." Or Jeremiah 31:2, "Thus says the Lord, 'The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, when Israel sought for rest.'" So they're on their way. And then Mark 6:33 it says, "Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them." There are seasons in life when you are intentional about rest, you make plans to rest and you're on your way to rest and then ministry finds you. There are seasons in life where you can't get away from the ministry that God has called you to. For example, if you have a small child, you have the rhythm of rest in place and then you have a baby.And then you can't tell the baby, "Today's my Sabbath. Okay? Feed yourself." You can't do that. That's not how that works. And in those seasons, this is the lesson that the Lord is writing indelibly on their hearts. In those seasons where ministry continues to follow you, you have to learn to rest in Christ even in the midst of unplanned ministry. Remember, Jesus promises us rest, but it's rest under a yoke. There are seasons when rest needs to be prolonged and your strength is waning and you need to rely on the supernatural energy of the Holy Spirit. I look at Matthew 11:28, Jesus says, "Come to me, all who labor in our heavy laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."We don't know how long Jesus and his disciples spent in the hill country near Nazareth, but as soon as they start coming back into the area, the crowds all of a sudden find them. They run ahead of them. And this is important for our lesson where we find ourselves in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus is going to entrust his disciples with more and more and more ministry, and they must learn to rely on God's power to do the work even when energy stores are long depleted. Point two is The Compassionate King Shepherds by Teaching. Verse 34, "When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things." Jesus had compassion on the crowds. The reaction of what the disciples had for the crowds is not mentioned.Most likely they were not happy to see the crowds. They probably groaned in despair. Jesus, you promised us a respite, you promised us a retreat. And now, there's more work. And sometimes ministry is like that. Ministry finds you even when you try to take a break from ministry. I remember a few years ago, my wife Tanya and I, we took a vacation to not a desolate place, a resort, much better. And in the evening, there was a couple that sat next to us in the restaurant and all of a sudden we got to talk. And they're from Great Britain. I remember the gentleman was a mailman. He was a postman from Great Britain. And we got into the conversation like what do you do? And I was like, "Oh no, not that conversation." And then he's like, "What do you do?" I was like, "Oh, I'm a pastor."And he's like, "Tell me more. Tell me more about this Jesus. I am intrigued. I want to hear the whole gospel right now." And he had all these questions and I remember I was irritated, and I remember because my wife called me out on it. She's like, "That's your job." I was like, "Not for this week it's not." But sometimes we don't get a vacation from being Christians. We don't get a vacation from Jesus and from the ministry he has for us. And we see Jesus, he has compassion on the crowd, tender mercy, sympathetic emotion. He sees the crowd as shepherdless sheep, defenseless, lost, unable to spiritually feed themselves. Around Christmas time, what do we celebrate? We celebrate the incredible miracle that God would so humble Himself to take on human flesh. And He does that in order to represent us on the cross, but He also does that in order to sympathize with us.Hebrews 4:14. "Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence drawn near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." The sheep without a shepherd, that's a proverbial metaphor in the Old Testament for people who are lacking spiritual leadership. For example, in Numbers 27, Moses knows that he's going to die soon and he prays to God, "God send these people a shepherd." And God sends them a military figure in Joshua, Numbers 27:15, "Moses spoke to the Lord saying, 'Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.'So the Lord said to Moses, "Take Joshua the son of Nun, the man in whom is the Spirit, and lay your hand on him. Make him stand before Eleazar the priest and all the congregation and you shall commission him in their sight. You shall invest him with some of your authority that all of the congregation of the people of Israel may obey.'" So God appoints Joshua and Joshua, in the Septuagint, in the Greek is “Ἰησοῦς”, and that's Jesus' name. Jesus. Jesus is the second Joshua with a greater Joshua who's come as a shepherd to gather the sheep and to empower them and send them out. Ezekiel 34, we get the same metaphor, "And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them, he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them, I am the Lord. I have spoken."The shepherd of the sheep is technical language for Israel's Great King, the Great Messiah, and that's who Jesus is. And Jesus displays his compassion by doing what? Well, what he came to do. He said, this is for the purpose that I have come. The purpose for which I have come is to teach, is to teach these people God's Word. The sheep need a shepherd that guides them to feed on God's Word. He taught them at great length. He teaches them who God is. He teaches them their need for salvation, their need for truth. And once they come to know the truth, the truth will set you free and they'll be set captive from the nets of the evil one. John 10:10, "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that you may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep."We all long for the good life, the abundant life, and the abundant life is found in following Jesus Christ. He is the good shepherd. How do we know he's the good shepherd? How's he proven that he's the good shepherd? Well, he's given his life. He laid down his life for the sheep. What kind of shepherd would do that? Well, only the best shepherd, the good shepherd. So he teaches them and he awakens in them a spiritual hunger. Therefore, they listen for hours on end. They've never heard sermons like this. They've never heard someone teach the Word of God with such authority. And what's he doing? He's feeding their souls. And this is what Jesus said in John 6:35, "I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." And this is how we are to think about our spiritual walk, that we have appetites, we have a hunger, and we are to feed that hunger.And the more we feed that hunger on God's Word, on God's glory, on God's person, the more we are satisfied in Him. And this text follows last week's text in which King Herod was leading a debaucherous lifestyle. And in that text, there was a feast and there was much food and there was much wine and there was much sin. And what that showed us is the king who was supposed to be the shepherd of Israel, he was supposed to be that military figure teaching people the ways of God, he himself was feeding on the junk food of the world. And Jesus here comes to satisfy his people. That brings us to point three, Seek First the Kingdom of God and be Satisfied. Verse 35, "And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, 'This is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.'"And what they're saying is, Jesus, the service is too long. The sermons, way too long, Jesus. Wrap it up. It's time. Jesus didn't have a timer like I do. Jesus, it's time. They see that Jesus is the compassionate teacher and they're like, "Okay, let's be compassionate. Jesus, send them home to eat. Send them away. They're hungry, Jesus." And obviously, the disciples themselves are starving. The beginning of the text says that they themselves didn't have time to eat. They're hungry or hangry, and they're saying, "Jesus, it's time to end this." And Jesus was ministering and he was ministering for hours on end. Most likely this was springtime in Palestine when the sun would set around 6:00 PM. And so we're guessing around 4:30, the people are getting hungry and the satisfaction of people's spiritual hunger still leaves them physically hungry. So verse 37, Jesus answers them, the disciples, "'You give them something to eat.' And they said to him, 'Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them?'" And you can hear the irritation in their voice.They're like, "Jesus, this is absurd. 200 denari and one laborer's wages for one day was one denarii. So this is working 200 workdays. Are we really going to do that, Jesus?" And what they're showing is they're exhausted and they're overwhelmed with all the needs. They're overwhelmed with the immensity of the task before them. They feel inadequate and they're like, "Jesus, this is absurd. How in the world are we supposed to feed all of these people?" 2 Corinthians 2:16 says, "Who is sufficient for these things?" And that's kind of what they're saying. "Jesus, what are you talking about? We've run the numbers, we've calculated, and we don't have the money." And the calculations are correct except they have omitted the most important factor in the calculation. The incalculable factor, the Christ factor, and what Jesus is calling them to on the surface seems unreasonable.Unreasonable in their own natural limitations and resources. Verse 38, "And he said to them, 'How many loaves do you have? Go and see.' And when they had found out, they said, 'Five and two fish.'" Jesus, what are we doing here? How many loaves? Not enough. Can we go home? That's kind of their sentiment. But they do. They obey the Lord even though they understand that they don't understand. And the disciples are concentrating on what they lack. And Jesus draws their attention to what they have. How many loaves? How many fish do we have? And the Lord uses what we have to accomplish what we cannot because he always adds grace. And here you're going to pause and say, "Why did Jesus use the five loaves and the two fish?" Scripture says that Jesus could have turned the stones into loaves. He could have said, "Okay, 5,000 men, everyone grab a stone. Okay, in Jesus' name, everyone's got a loaf."He doesn't do that. He could have had manna come down from heaven as we saw he did with Israel. He could have brought down angels, which would've been a lot more impressive. Angels showing up out of nowhere and feeding everybody. He could have healed all the people of their hunger, "In Jesus' name. No one's hungry." Boom. He doesn't do any of that. And the method of the miracle is significant. They don't have what the people need, he does, and they can't give the people what they need, but Jesus can. And Jesus chooses to use the disciples in the miracle. The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle, other than the resurrection, that's reported in all four gospels. And it is to teach us that in life when we are overmatched, when the mission in front of us is so much bigger than the resources that we do have, we have the Lord.We always have the Lord. Indeed, the Lord does call us to do more than we're capable of by ourselves. He asks too much, sometimes it feels like that, and we have too little. But this is how the faith works. Augustine said the following, "Lord, command what you will." He's saying, "Lord, tell me to do whatever you want to tell me to do, but give me what you command. Command me whatever you will, but give me what you command." And then again, he's not asking us to do anything by ourselves, by our own devices and our own strength. He's telling us what He will do with the little that we have if we continue trusting in Him. Bread and fish were staples of most Galileans. God uses this example over and over and over, the fish and the loaves. Why five loaves? Some commentaries say that they may be related to the law of Moses, the Pentateuch.In Deuteronomy 8:3 for example, it says, "He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." God does sustain us through His physical gifts. But even those gifts are always a sign, they always point to something greater, is that we need satiety of our souls from the Word of God. So Mark 6:39, "He commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass." As I was meditating on this text, someone asked me, "How about the water?" We got the bread, we got the carbs, we got the fish, probably dried fish, salty fish. It makes you thirsty. You got the protein. Most likely there was a water source, that's why the little detail of the green grass, they're in a desolate place, but there is green grass, most likely naturally irrigated perhaps by springs nearby.And God's people always find rest in God's presence, even in a desolate place. The Psalm 23 is a great example that the Lord causes His people, His weary people to recline in green pastures. So verse 40, "They sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties." So he has the disciples who kind of don't really believe that Jesus is going to do what he's going to do. He has the disciples direct these people to sit down in groups of 50, groups of a hundred. And perhaps the people who are asking, "Why are we sitting? What's about to happen?" And the disciples have to believe that something is going to happen if Jesus told them to do it. They are to obey. Why the groups of 50 and a hundred? Well, because God is a God of order, one who at the dawn of time brought order out of chaos and who loves order even in worship. One Corinthians 14:40, "But all things should be done decently and in order."So the disciples here, they are risking looking foolish. "Jesus, you told us to do this. We guess you're going to do something." The risking embarrassment but no risk, no faith. And verse 41, "And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people, and he divided the two fish among them all." This is a good reminder that we are to bless the Lord as we bless meals, pray over meals. You should pray over meals. How about out in public, in restaurants? Should we pray over meals? Yes. I don't close my eyes though. It's always awkward because when the waiter all of a sudden is just there and they're like, "What are you doing?" And I pray like Jesus prayed. How did Jesus pray? He didn't close his eyes. He looked up to heaven. He's like, "Lord, bless you for this delicious meal that I'm about to make." So that's how I pray over meals in public, really loud, in Jesus' name, hallelujah, looking up to heaven. I think it's more emphatic.And then if it's a really good meal, you just continue blessing the Lord the whole time and then conclude with extra blessing. So Jesus blesses the meal. And this is important because without the Lord's blessing, everything we do is a waste of time. Actually in John 15, the Lord says, "Apart from me, you can do nothing." Psalm 1:27, "Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain." And to have God's blessing is to expect a result that is much more than we could do on our own. It's much more than just our talents, our labor. It's in proportion to God's abundance. We must expect God to work beyond all that we can achieve or conceive even. Without the Lord's blessings, there's only five loaves and two fish, woefully inadequate. With his blessing, with his blessing that multiplies, it's always more than enough.And he divides the loaves, he divides the fish. And here the Word is that he broke it. He broke the loaves and he divided the fish. And in scripture, this is usually the pattern. When we ask for the Lord's blessing, just know that the greatest blessings come with brokenness, blessing and brokenness, they go together. You won't find God's blessing apart from God's breaking. If you want great anointing upon your life, just know that anointing with oil always starts with breaking. Olives need to be broken for olive oil to anoint. If you want the choices of wine, grapes have to be broken. There's no anointing without crushing. And we see this all throughout scripture. Abraham and Sarah were crushed years, crushed past their ability to produce a child before the child of the promise finally comes. Or Jacob had to be crippled in his hip before he prevailed with God, or Moses before God used him so powerfully, Moses failed in his own strength, spending 40 years tending sheep.Vance Havner says, "God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume. It is Peter weeping bitterly who returns to greater power than ever." Most of us aren't too weak to serve the Lord, we are too strong or we think we're too strong. Lord doesn't want our adequacy. He wants our inadequacy so that He supplies the adequacy and He gets all the glory. The impression seems to be that every time the disciples came back to the Lord for more, there was more to give. And this is a perfect picture of the manner in which the Lord calls us to serve Him. The Lord could have even now just made a mountain of bread and a mountain of fish and say, "Everybody come feed yourselves."No, he chooses the disciples to take the bread. He's breaking it. As he's breaking it, it's multiplying in his hands. He deposits into the empty hands of his disciples who then carry it to group after group. They run out, they come back to the Lord, he's got more. They take it to the people. They're satisfied, they run out, they come back for more. And every time the disciples came back to Jesus, there was more, but not until then. And this is an incredible lesson. How many trips did they take back and forth? This must have taken hours, dozens and dozens of trips. Jesus blesses, he breaks, he gives, they give. They're empty. They come back for more. And this shows us that our need for the Lord, our reliance, our dependence on Him, it's never done. We're never in a position where we graduate from needing the Lord, graduate from dependence on the Lord.And this is offensive in a sense, to our pride, to our self-sufficiency. You think that you walk with the Lord for a decade or a couple of decades. You think that you've graduated. You think you've studied the word and self-sufficient, no. We never get to a place in life where we do not need to rely on the Lord. We must always be depending on Him every day. We are to take what little we have to Him and say, "Lord, bless it. Lord, break it. Lord, multiply it and Lord use me." And then when we come back to Him at the end of the day for a fresh supply of grace. He breaks the loaves and he gives it to the disciples to set before the people. Despite their perhaps exhaustion, their thickheadedness, their disparaging sarcasm, the Lord chooses to use the disciples and chooses to teach them about His work.And God delights to include us in His work. 2 Corinthians 3:5, "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God." Or 2 Corinthians 4:7, "But we have this treasure and jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us." In 2 Corinthians 5:20, "Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making His appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made him to be sin who you know sin so that we might become the righteousness of God." Christ will give us His adequacy to meet the needs of people if we yield our inadequacy to Him. And when the Lord calls you to follow Him, He calls you to do something that's impossible, you start where you are with what you've got.If you're single or if you're married or raising children or you think about managing money or getting along with people at work or mortifying sin, or you look at the world and they're surmounting fears and you say, "Lord, this is impossible. Lord, help me." And what the Lord says is do the impossible, but do it with me because with God there's nothing that is impossible. And whom does God use here? Jesus uses tired, emotionally drained disciples who lack resources, who are bone tired. And the Lord satisfies them. Mark 6:42, "And they all ate and were satisfied." And the word satisfied shows it's not just a snack, something more substantial happened here. These people feasted, there was more than enough to go around for everybody. And this miracle is a miracle of one of the frequent biblical images of the bliss of the age to come, is a banquet, that in the new heavens and new earth, we will enjoy a banquet with the Lord and it's going to be a sumptuous banquet.Isaiah 25:6 says, "On this mountain, the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, of feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever and the Lord will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for Him that He might save us. This is the Lord, we have waited for Him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. God here guarantees to supply our needs, but not necessarily all our desires. It was a very simple meal of bread and fish. And the Lord often meets our needs, and His grace meets our needs, but not necessarily our greeds.In verse 43, "They took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish and those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men." 12 baskets. Why 12? One for each of the disciples. You guys were hungry, you couldn't find time to eat. You guys doubted, you were a little irritated, a little hangry. The Lord's like, "Here's a basket, here's your carbs and protein for the next leg of the journey." And it shows us that the Lord loves to provide more than enough. This is the way I like to order food. I ask my wife how many pizzas and whatever number she says, I multiply by two. Two pizzas? Okay, we'll take four. And for some reason, crust is tremendous, especially the next day.First day you're like, "I'm not even crust. I'm watching my carbs." Second day like, "Oh, really good." And the Lord here provides more than enough. And it shows us that God wants to be good stewards of the resources that He provides us with. I teach my girls, it's against my religion to throw any food away. If they're like, "I'm full, I can't do any more." I was like, "The Lord has already provided your next meal. You're having just the broccoli." The Lord here teaches us many a lesson. 5,000 men, and it's the word Andres men. So most likely apart from women and children. With women and children, you're talking about thousands of people that the Lord has fed. And what was the point of this whole lesson? He taught, he taught, he taught all day. What did he teach about? He taught about salvation. He taught about our greatest need. Our greatest need is to repent of our sin because we've transgressed the commandments of the Lord.And then he does this miracle to do what? To attest to everything that he has just taught. He has taught, "I have come to pay for your sins. I have come, my body to be broken, my blood to be shed for your sins to be forgiven, for remission of your sins, as a substitutionary atone, I am the one. I'm the bread of life." And Hebrews 2, 3, and 4 says, "How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord and it was attested to us by those who heard, while God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will." He said the whole point of these miracles was to attest to the fact that this message about our salvation is truth.Salvation's greater than the signs and the signs were supposed to point to the salvation. But most of the people here who ate and were satisfied, most of them missed the point. They missed the whole point of the miracle and the parallel passage of John 6, these people then after Jesus fed them, Jesus and the disciples leave, and then the people find Jesus again. And Jesus tells them this. Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." Jesus calls out their seeker mindset, their consumeristic mindset. They don't want salvation of their sins. They don't want condemnation removed from them. They don't want to be saved from the condemnation that they deserve for their sins. They just want more reprieve from hunger. And John 6:30, "And they asked him, 'Then what sign do you do that we may see and believe you, what work do you perform?'"Jesus said, you fed them. They show up again. They're like, "We're here for some more." And then Jesus is like, "You're not here for salvation. You're not even here for the sign. You're here for food." And they're like, "What sign will you do for us?" Showing they missed the point completely. And the point was that we all need salvation. 1 Corinthians 1:22, "for Jews demand signs, and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God." People gawked to the miracles, but they weren't convicted of their sin. They didn't come to Jesus for salvation and the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Last Supper, he uses the same exact phrases, taking, thanking, breaking, giving. Same exact four words in the same exact order.Luke 22:19, "And he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, 'This is my body which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, 'This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.'" Jesus is the Messiah who provides for God's people, who will host God's great banquet. And if you today are not sure where you stand before God, if you're not sure that you are saved, that your sins are forgiven, we appeal to you, look to the cross of Jesus Christ. That's the God man, Jesus Christ, God who took on flesh, came lived the perfect life that we are supposed to live, but we did not, refuse to. He didn't break one commandment, loved God with all his heart, soul, strength and mind, love neighbor as himself.And then he offers himself as a sacrifice, as a substitutionary atonement on our behalf. So that whosoever believes in him, looks to the cross, asks for forgiveness, repent of sin, and turns from it and turns to him, he will heal. The world tells us that God helps those who help themselves. Well, no, God rescues men and women dead in their trespasses, who cannot help themselves, who will not help themselves, dead sinners. And when we turn to Him, He offers healing, salvation, satisfaction, and sustenance, and He does that with Himself. So dear sheep today, come to the good Shepherd. Hear His voice. He laid His life down for you, to save you, to satisfy you, to sanctify you, and to empower you for service to the King. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for the sumptuous meal from the holy scriptures. We thank you for the reminder that only in you can we find true satisfaction for our souls.And every time, Lord, we have a meal, let us be mindful of the fact that you have provided it and let it be a sign to the greatest provision that you have given, is the provision of salvation, that anyone that would cry out to you and ask for forgiveness, you forgive. And anyone who comes to you and says, "Jesus, I need a shepherd." You are the good shepherd. And Jesus, thank you for laying down your life for each one of us sheep who in many ways are foolish. I pray that you continue to guide us to green pastures and still waters, recognizing that it's your presence that we need above all. Holy Spirit, I pray right now, bless our time of worship. We worship not to get something from you. We worship you because you deserve to be worshiped. And as we do, Lord satisfy us and we pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

Pastor Mike Summers

Songs are impactful. Around Christmas each year, we sing familiar choruses and songs that are memorable and meaningful. Christmas Carols or Hymns are important as they present a biblical message.

Songs are impactful. Around Christmas each year, we sing familiar choruses and songs that are memorable and meaningful. Christmas Carols or Hymns are important as they present a biblical message.

Hey Sister! *Trigger warning- this is a very sensitive episode around the topic of miscarriage, if you feel it may be difficult for you emotionally please use your discretion. I know, I KNOW how Christmas can really make you think more frequently and deeply about your baby in heaven. The holidays have a way of making us reflect and reminisce over the baby we had prayed and hoped for.  In today's episode, I'm authentically sharing how I find the balance between blocking out the pain and memory, and re-opening the wound. Finding this balance is what ultimately will bring us healing from God. I pray this blesses you and brings you into a closer walk with the Lord. Please share with a friend who needs to hear this too. Bekah   Get on the waitlist for the course!! Join our free online community here to ask all your cycle questions! Take The Hormone Imbalance Quiz!

In this episode author life-coach l, author, speaker, leadership and wellness educator Yvette Ratshikhopha also known as Yvette Aloe on digital platforms talks about setting boundaries over the festive season with family, friends and self. Covers budgeting and expectations from family and how to have boundaries with toxic family. Follow @yvette_aloe on digital platforms. www.yvettealoe.co.za

Songs are impactful. Around Christmas each year, we sing familiar choruses and songs that are memorable and meaningful. Christmas Carols or Hymns are important as they present a biblical message.

Songs are impactful. Around Christmas each year, we sing familiar choruses and songs that are memorable and meaningful. Christmas Carols or Hymns are important as they present a biblical message.

Last Year's Christmas Destination Episode: Episode # New York, NYBranson, MO: https://www.explorebranson.com/https://www.instagram.com/explorebranson/Asheville, NChttps://www.facebook.com/AshevilleCVB/ 12 DAYS OF GINGERBREADhttps://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/asheville-grove-park/things-to-do/gingerbread/national-gingerbread-competitionEVENT: MT. WASHINGTON VALLEY, NH  - The Annual Inn to Inn Cookie Tourhttps://www.countryinnsinthewhitemountains.com/annual-holiday-inn-to-inn-cookie-tour/GRAPEVINE, TX EVENT: Ice! And Lone Star Christmashttps://www.grapevinetexasusa.com/christmas-capital-of-texas/gaylord-texans-lone-star-christmas/ice/https://www.instagram.com/visitgrapevine/Santa FE, NM : EVENThttps://www.farolitowalk.com/Freeport, Maine https://www.visitfreeport.com/ https://www.instagram.com/visitfreeport/Leavenworth, WA https://leavenworth.org/https://www.instagram.com/visitleavenworthwa/Frankenmuth, Michigan iSavannah, GAhttps://visitsavannah.com/https://www.instagram.com/visitsavannah/PENNSYLVANIA: Bethlehem, PAhttps://www.christmascity.org/visit-bethlehem/https://bethlehempa.org/https://www.instagram.com/bethlehemchamber/Jim Thorpe, PA https://www.poconomountains.com/jim-thorpe/https://www.instagram.com/visitjimthorpepa/Wellsboro, PA https://www.visitpa.com/region/pennsylvania-wilds/wellsboroThanks for your ongoing support!Alexa and RoryThe ROAMiesPlease subscribe, rate and share our podcast! Follow us at:http://www.TheROAMies.comThe ROAMies: Facebook and Instagram YouTube and Twitter.GET YOUR TCHIBO coffee and machine HERE!

Gene and Alyssa answer a few listener questions, but mostly say thank you over and over: How does she elect her inherited Roth IRA distributions by the deadline? Should he use part of his $1.4 million IRA while waiting to take Social Security at age 70? Her daughter and her fiancé have tons of student debt.  Can they still meet with a financial advisor? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Lots more . . . Free Second Opinion Meetings Do you have questions about your financial situation? Are you on track to reach your financial goals – particularly your retirement goals? What should you be doing right now? Are you taking too much risk with your investments? Is your 401(k) or 403(b) being actively managed for you? Schedule a free second opinion meeting with a More than Money advisor? Call today (610-746-7007) or email (Gene@AskMtM.com) to schedule your time with us.

Money is tight for most Canadians right now, but with Christmas approaching, what do you do if your kids do not fully appreciate that? Lana MacLean is a mother of a 13-year-old girl and a social worker in Halifax, and she spoke with Mainstreet's Alex Mason about appreciating what you have and tempering children's expectations around the holidays.

Gene and Alyssa answer tons of listener questions: They have $90,000 in a 529 plan for their son. Should they add more? He is retiring with $360,000 in his 401(k). Should he invest in annuities? A young man wants to take over the company 401(k), but he only has an annuity license – what does that mean? How can you tell if an advisor really is a fiduciary or is just blowing smoke? Lots more . . . Free Second Opinion Meetings Do you have questions about your financial situation? Are you on track to reach your financial goals – particularly your retirement goals? What should you be doing right now? Are you taking too much risk with your investments? Is your 401(k) or 403(b) being actively managed for you? Schedule a free second opinion meeting with a More than Money advisor? Call today (610-746-7007) or email (Gene@AskMtM.com) to schedule your time with us.

Gene and Alyssa answer tons of listener questions: Are money markets the same as bank accounts? How does a reverse mortgage work if the owner goes into a nursing home? Has her bond fund really lost 20% in three years? He loaned $10 to his college roommate 50 years ago – can he still get that back with interest? Lots more . . . Free Second Opinion Meetings Do you have questions about your financial situation? Are you on track to reach your financial goals – particularly your retirement goals? What should you be doing right now? Are you taking too much risk with your investments? Is your 401(k) or 403(b) being actively managed for you? Schedule a free second opinion meeting with a More than Money advisor? Call today (610-746-7007) or email (Gene@AskMtM.com) to schedule your time with us.

Clarence talks then plays some music (removed). MawMaw said they had the music on all day and tried to get the Take This Job And Shove It song but it never came on. PawPaw didn't get MawMaw any Valentine and she didn't need anything. Just fattening anyway. Aunt Yvonne went on a diet on Monday then everyone brought her a bunch of candy. Carolyn taking Craig to nose doctor then going to a show. Told Wendy she'd keep her little boy. No use to take that poor little boy out and get him sick again. PawPaw out planting fig trees he got from Vernon. Gail gave her two records of the "Strutter Brothers." Have to pay about $2100 in taxes by April 15. Sucks to pay that much in taxes. MawMaw says if D.D. is going to make fun of her tapes then she wont' talk anymore and like D.D. says, "nothing to talk about." Talk to Aunt Beulah and that Uncle Jim had to go back in the hospital. Otha was going back in the hospital for pain. Uncle Carroll and Aunt Ima were supposed to go see him and call MawMaw collect but never did. Ernie "Pompy" Scarabin gives an update with Lillian in the background. Said James wrecked his truck; it's totaled. Have to talk to Brian to get things cleared up. Lil is fat as ever and he is too. Visiting Helen Mae and she had made some kind of apple cake. Clifff and he have been catching some fish. Johnny came back down. Lillian said she heard everything Pompy said was a lie and everything hangs over. He's a big ol' baby and weighs 236 lbs. She's been drinking all day. Gail Portie said she'll be sending something for Kessie. Eddie and she didn't have too much fun at Mardi Gras for all the money they spent. Just sit there and Eddie won't dance fast with her and she likes to dance fast. Job is getting the best of her. Brent says he misses her and wants to stay home. She doesn't know how to handle Brent. Blake gets bad too. Blake got a haircut and got pictures in their cowboy outfits. Blake wouldn't let the man take pictures. Gail is so tired and sounds like Carolyn always complaining. Blake talks more than Brent. Sometimes they can be so nice and sweet and play together nicely. Hopefully, she'll have three days off for Washington's Birthday. Carolyn "Sister" might come clean but prefers Wendy do it because Wendy could use the money more. Helen Mae talking about someone who didn't stop to see them. Uncle and Port Sulphur High School Coach Bill Evans on the radio. JV team is 5-1 in the district and future is bright. Mr. Yuratich appeared to interview him. Helen Mae February 17, 1978, woke up dizzy but feeling better and will "live over it." Called Aunt Beulah and Uncle Otha at Baptist Hospital in Beaumont and still sick as can be. Hadn't heard from Uncle Jim. Someone will call her, she's hoping. Wendy wouldn't talk last night. Wendy Guidry came over for the first time in months. Around Christmas, Mrs. Wally said Guidry's had their jukebox so loud. Hadn't heard from Sister (Carolyn). Gail stopped by and she did hear from Wendy. Gail didn't bring any "dadburn" mail. Rocky and his girl are still getting along well and Clarence fixed their oven. Josh can't go visit MawMaw now that his bike is broken (got run over by Rudy Harsono by accident). They were sick because they don't know Kessie's size. If they'd sent her "footprint" or something. D.D. might get another chance to make fun of MawMaw on the tape. Helen Mae says Clarence went to Buras to see if B&G had glass to replace windows that kids shot out. Gail made requests and still won't play Paycheck song. Feeling less dizzy than day before. Supposed to keep little Davy while Bill and Jerolyn go to a basketball game at church. Uncle Ernest brought Clarence a peach tree. If they come back, Helen Mae figures she'll lay down and die and it's painful missing everyone. Expecting all us kids to stomp, yell and curse so we don't go back and tell parents to come back and they have job over in the good ol' USA. MawMaw laying down the law and we the kids must plan a mutiny. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/jason-scarabin/message

Around Christmas of 1980, my family took a trip to Los Angeles. As we drove along a street, I noticed a man driving a Rolls Royce, waving to all the people honking. He drove slowly. He looked graceful.Long story short, we drove up alongside him in our little rental car (seriously) and asked for a photo. He pointed to a side street. And posed for photos with us with the utmost of patience.Muhammad Ali taught me so much about humility that day. And that the strongest can be the kindest.I write about this meeting and many more lessons in my new book The Everyday Hero Manifesto. And I promise you that The Everyday Manifesto (EHM) will be life-changing for you [if you practice the teachings in it step by tiny step until you generate a revolution of splendid results]. Order your copy here so you can start benefiting from it now.FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA:InstagramFacebookTwitterYouTube

Around Christmas 1989, a series of pipe bombs sent through the mail killed two of its intended targets: Judge Robert Vance and attorney Robbie Robinson. Federal investigators set out to capture a serial bomber. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, Courtney talks with Nick Buchanan, one of the founders of the Tri-State Events Hiking Group in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. They talk about why Nick chose hiking as a way to improve his physical health, the surprising hiking challenges that can be found in the tri state area, how “outdoor people” tend to be so friendly and Nick answers the question - “How did you find hiking buddies?” More about Nick: “I am a divorced father of one son that loves to spend time with his son. I am a mechanical engineer by trade but explorer by hobby. I hiked as a kid with my grandparents but as life got busy busy I lost this hobby. Late 2019 I was the most out of shape ever at 245 lbs. I found myself with high blood pressure and I decided I needed to make some changes to my life if I wanted to live a long healthy life. Around Christmas time 2019 I started hiking. I hiked mostly by myself early 2020 but I did find a few friends to hike with time to time. When Covid hit I was sent to work at home. I really started walking, hiking, and working out daily. It kind of became an obsession and I at one time was averaging 25k steps a day. I also got myself down to 190 lbs. One thing i decided was I would like others to hike with when my friends were not available. I tried some hiking groups on Facebook and it didn't seem I could get anyone together the first couple times. Then I finally found a group of 4 to hike with for Fathers Day 2019. This led to a couple hikes and to a Facebook messenger chat where we could plan future hikes. This chat was getting crazy and it was mentioned why don't you make it a group. I had no idea what that entailed so Holly now my fellow admin help put it together. Within a few days we grew to a few hundred members This was the beginning of an amazing adventure. I have had a chance to explore many amazing places and met so many great people that are like my family now. This has also led to me meeting to the most amazing person to share my life with. This has led me and my girlfriend to many great adventures together too. The outdoor world is amazing and I have been so pleasantly surprised the amazing people I have met there in the last 3 years. I am feel so lucky to have an amazing group to hike and enjoy the outdoor world with now. We have now grown to over 20k members.” Follow Nick: https://instagram.com/tristate_in_oh_ky_hiking_event?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y= https://www.facebook.com/groups/738968110186085/?ref=share_group_link https://www.linkedin.com/in/nick-buchanan-4ab42218 Remember, I'd love to hear from you on any topic that comes up in the show or if you know someone that would be a great guest for the show. Email me at hikingunfiltered@gmail.com. Enjoying the show? Leave us a review wherever you listen to the podcast. It really helps the show! You can also leave a voicemail for me on through the website. I may even share it on the show! Click here: https://www.hikingradionetwork.com/show/hiking-unfiltered/ You can join the Unfiltered community on Facebook to share your questions and show ideas. https://www.facebook.com/HikingUnfiltered You also find me on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hikingunfiltered/ Check out the other shows on the Hiking Radio Network https://www.hikingradionetwork.com/ Stuff I love! Show the love with t-shirts and goodies from the Hiking Radio Network Trading Post https://hrntradingpost.com/ Get your Myaderm CBD pain relief products here: https://www.myaderm.com/ Use the code HIKING at checkout to get 20% off your first order! Start your own Riverside Podcast here: https://riverside.fm/?utm_campaign=cam

Show Resources Here were the resources we covered in the episode: Covid19's Effect on LinkedIn Ads Bidding and Budgeting NEW LinkedIn Learning course about LinkedIn Ads by AJ Wilcox Youtube Channel Contact us at Podcast@B2Linked.com with ideas for what you'd like AJ to cover. A great no-cost way to support us: Rate/Review! Follower Ads (Red call-out boxes) Follower Ads impressions were decimated on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Since these are only served on Desktop, it shows how few people were on LinkedIn on their desktops. The other ad formats didn't see such large decreases, telling us that members largely switched over to mobile during the holidays. Follower Ads costs skyrocketed on holidays. An indication of what happens to prices when to the audience vacates the platform while advertisers are still bidding. Single Image Sponsored Content (Purple call-out boxes) Single Image Sponsored Content impressions were above average the day before Thanksgiving but dropped to 80% and 68% during and after. Signals many people taking time off work and not spending as much time on LinkedIn. The day before and day of Christmas was interesting to see an increase in impressions, although these were weekend days which are traditionally lower anyway and wouldn't be hard to beat. The day after New Years (January 2 nd ) saw 17% higher-than-average usage, which is what we expect to see. Costs around Thanksgiving skyrocketed to 35%, 52%, and 69% above average, making for very expensive traffic. Around Christmas, costs were elevated 3-16%, which is up, but not egregious. New Years costs were really surprising though. They actually dropped from 1-33% of average, which is what we usually see after the New Year, but to see the diminished costs during the holiday was interesting. We would guess this is due to advertisers pulling back; although I don't understand why advertisers would pull back en masse for New Years but not at Christmas just a week before, unless it had something to do with running out of budgets by the end of the month and needing to pull back. Video Ads (Blue call-out boxes) The day before Thanksgiving was pretty much business as usual, but we definitely saw fewer impressions the day of and the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas Eve was up 6% but the day of and the day after were down to 81% and 54% of average. New Years Eve had lower impressions which we'd expect given the holiday, but similar to Sponsored Content (since they share the same inventory) were up 11% and 7% respectively. Thanksgiving CPMs were elevated 3-31%, but Christmas did not follow suit, strangely. Christmas CPMs actually dropped 11-32%, which I don't have an explanation for. New Years CPMs also dropped significantly, but we expect that for the same reasons we see decreased costs around New Years every year. But a drop between 50%-71% is huge! After New Years Analysis Unsurprisingly, impressions and clicks increased after the New Year (1/3-1/5) since we're back to work and all rested up from time off for the holidays.  What is surprising is that costs on Follower Ads were still elevated by 11% even after the holidays.   Show Transcript What happens to your LinkedIn Ads on holidays and vacation? Well, it's a total pain to calculate. So I went ahead and did it. I can do hard things. We're talking a holiday ad performance on this week's episode of the LinkedIn Ads Show. Welcome to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Here's your host, AJ Wilcox. Hey there, LinkedIn Ads fanatics, I'm sure you've wondered if you should pause your ads on holidays, or just let them ride? Well, I'm a total data junkie so I took it upon myself to crunch the data and find out and it gets juicy. We're gonna walk through it and analysis that I did over a lot of data to tell you conclusively whether or not you should be advertising on LinkedIn over holidays. And make sure to stick around until the end for an extra bonus analysis that I did about ad performance after the new year. All right, let's hit it. If you've been listening for a while, you may remember Episode 32, where I did a whole analysis of what happened to LinkedIn Ads availability, and pricing during the COVID 19 pandemic. And I really enjoyed doing that study. It was a ton of data crunching, but a lot of fun. Well, and we get asked all the time by clients whether or not we should be pausing over the holidays, especially in November and December here in the US, where we have Thanksgiving and Christmas, followed closely by New Years. In the past, we've oftentimes given the advice to pause entirely over those holidays. And there are a lot of reasons why. The first is that it's towards the end of a quarter and a month so these larger companies are bidding more aggressively to try to finish strong. And this is going to lead to increased competition, which means you're going to pay more at these times. It also happens to be the end of a year. So budgets that are use it or lose it, they have to be spent. So advertisers are again bidding up and this is leading to increased competition and costs. And meanwhile, people are traveling and taking more time off due to the holidays. This leads to less time spent on LinkedIn, which means fewer impressions to go around. And so more advertisers fighting over those. It's really important to understand that what you pay on LinkedIn, it's all an auction. And the auction is driven by supply and demand. The supply is the people on LinkedIn that are logged in and ready to receive ad impressions. The demand is our demand as marketers trying to get in front of them. And we're bidding in order to do so. So what we pay right now is this interplay of people being on LinkedIn, and US advertisers trying to get in front of them. So when the supply of LinkedIn visitors decreases, all else held equal, our costs are gonna go up. But in this case, where your visitors decrease, and competition increases, it means your overall advertiser costs are going to skyrocket, which is obviously not great if you're trying to be efficient with your advertising. If you're using manual bidding during these times, you kind of have a hedge, or a bit of insurance when costs are going up. Because when costs rise, you're naturally just going to lose more auctions. And so when those costs get over your bids, you just naturally leave the auction. And then of course, when costs come back down, you'll be back to receiving traffic the way that you were. If you're using LinkedIn's maximum delivery of bidding, though, you're just going to ride that wave of high costs all the way up, and then back down, and you'll be subjected to whatever is happening on the platform. Costs can spike with no warning whatsoever. And those high costs are especially a problem since the platform doesn't allow you to do any sort of timing of your ads. So if you want to pause your campaigns or pause certain ads, it has to be done manually. Or in our case, we ended up building an internal de partying and ad scheduling tool. So that that wouldn't be a downside for us. But we realize most people aren't going to have something like that at their disposal. And we've talked a lot about costs increasing, which is totally a huge factor in whether you should be advertising over the holidays. But there's something else to keep in mind. It's lead quality, we found something that is the same every single year. And that is any demo or call scheduled, 95% of time it's going to get pushed back to after the new year. Just think about it. How many calls have you said, hey, let's push this into the new year. Well, now you've pushed a meeting forward potentially several weeks. So by the time you actually go to do that meeting, you've most likely forgotten entirely who this person was and why you wanted to talk to them. So over the holidays, if you're paying more for those leads, just to leave them cooling over the holidays. Obviously, it's not a great combination. And this is what we've seen in past years. But my question was, does it still hold up today? I always like to test my assumptions and see what platform changes have happened. I was actually spurred on to do this because I had six different LinkedIn reps, all pushing really hard, saying that we should be advertising over the holidays. Some even went as far to say that costs drop over the holidays. This wasn't the case from what I've experienced in the past so I really want to do this analysis. And I'm ashamed to say that this analysis took 31 hours of my life, I started and it was pretty straightforward. And then I kept coming across cool data points that I wanted to study and dive deeper into, I had to restart three times. And I'm certain that if I were really really insanely good at Excel, this probably wouldn't have taken this long. But let's jump into the methodology. I had some requirements. First of all, we needed these accounts to be decent spending. But they also had to be spending similarly. So we hand picked accounts that were spending between about $15,000 to $20,000 a month. They also had to be really similar in brand strength so we picked very well known companies in their space. And all of these accounts happened to be in the Fortune 1,000. We also wanted to make sure that the ads were similar in focus, and they were using similar ad types. We didn't want to combine one account that was running text ads, and another one running sponsored messaging, and then another one running sponsored content. We pretty much scored the jackpot, because we had five accounts that match this criteria. They were good spenders, but they were also similar. They were all Fortune 1000. So they're gonna be really well known across the board. They were all running the same ad formats, we really couldn't pass this opportunity on. As we dove in, though, we realized that there were several variables that had to be controlled for. The first was whether or not this was a weekend or a weekday. For example, Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve, and New Year's Day, we're all on weekends this year. We didn't want to compare a holiday to a normal weekday, or even a combined average of weekdays and weekends, since weekends and weekdays both act very differently on LinkedIn. Plus, the days after each of these holidays were a weekday. It was Monday. And of course, we needed to be able to tease out the difference between a holiday Monday and a normal Monday. Thanksgiving was really kind to us, it made sure that the holiday itself as well as the days before and after were all weekdays, which made it much easier to analyze. Oh boy, I wish I could have just thrown out weekends and weekdays differences, it would have saved me a lot of time. The next variable we had to control for was ad type. If you were to calculate the click through rate across multiple ad formats, let's say for instance, sponsored content and text ads, the average would be absolutely meaningless. You can't average sponsored content and text ads together. Sponsored content has like a .44% average click through rate, while text ads have a .025%. So text ads have a click through rate that's like 1/12 of the average sponsored content. Plus text ads show way more impressions because there's not much of a frequency cap. And so if you're showing both of those ad formats to the same size of audience, your text ads are going to show a lot more impressions. And that would totally sway your click through rate to a much lower number that really wouldn't make sense. So all this to say that in this analysis, I had to break out the different ad formats so that cost per click and cost per impression would actually be meaningful. For metrics to track I knew costs, were going to be the one that was my main concern. And I started out by using cost per click. And then I realized occasionally there were days with no clicks, and then I'd have a zero in a denominator. And nobody likes seeing error divided by zero in their Excel. So I ended up adding in CPM as well. And it was nice to show them alongside. And then CPM never has a problem with a zero and a denominator. And the final variable to control for was account changes. These had to be accounts that couldn't make any major changes to adds to bidding and budgets. And in cases in these accounts where there was a major change, we just threw out any day where those changes were made. The result of all of this was over 121,000 rows of data to be crunched, and a 60 megabyte Excel file. So the sample sizes were pretty robust, and the findings were strong as well. Okay, we're gonna jump to a quick sponsor break and then we'll get to dive into the actual results of the analysis. The LinkedIn Ads Show is proudly brought to you by B2Linked.com, the LinkedIn Ads experts. 9:38 If you're a B2B company and care about getting more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, then chances are LinkedIn Ads are for you. But the platform isn't easy to use and can be painfully expensive on the front end. At B2Linked, we've cracked the code to maximizing ROI while minimizing costs. Our methodology includes building and executing LinkedIn Ads strategies, customized to your unique needs, and tailored to the way that B2B consumers buy today. Over the last 11 years, we've worked with some of LinkedIn's largest advertisers in the world, we've spent over $150 million on the platform, and we're official LinkedIn partners. If you want to generate more sales opportunities with your ideal prospects, book a discovery call at B2Linked.com/apply. We'd absolutely love the opportunity to get to work with you. 10:31 All right, let's jump into the results of the holiday analysis. And don't forget to stick around until the end for that bonus analysis that I know you'll love. If you go to the show notes page, you'll see a paste of all of the data that I'm going to be talking about. So I'm just going to describe to you what it is that you're seeing. The first column is the holiday that we're talking about. So you'll see Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's There, you'll also see a column for ad type. Underneath ad type, you'll see the acronyms FA, which is a follower ad, which is one of the dynamic ad formats. You'll see SC, which is short for sponsored content. And it's specifically single image sponsored content. Because we also have VI for video ads, which is also technically sponsored content, it uses the same inventory. Then you'll see a column called Day. And what that is, is we tracked the day before the holiday, the day of the holiday and the day after. So we could paint the whole story of what's happening as the week progresses on holiday week. Then you'll see all the data, the data are all percentages have an average day of its kind. So if you see the column of impressions, we're showing you how many impressions Christmas Day got, as opposed to a normal Sunday. Because these are a percentage of benchmark, if you see anything that's under 100%, it indicates that there were less of that that day than there are on a normal benchmark day. So impressions, for instance, if you say less than 100%, on impressions, that indicates that there were fewer impressions served that day than average. Clicks is the same way. If you see less than 100% clicks, that means that there were fewer clicks that happened. But I think what's even more interesting is that when you see the clicks percentage is higher than the impressions percentage, that tells us that people were more active that day at clicking. Our CTRs went up that day, which is pretty cool. You'll see a column for spend and this is just the ability to tell our campaigns on average, able to spend more or less or about the same. It's the spend ability of campaigns on that day. The next column is CPC or cost per click. And again, seeing less than 100% indicates that campaigns have lower average costs per click than average. If it's over 100%. That means average costs per click were higher than average. Makes sense, right? You will see some blanks under the cost per click heading. And that's because there were some days where follower ads didn't get any clicks and so rather than having a really ugly divide by zero error, I just deleted them out. But the next column is for CPM or cost per 1000 impressions. This is likely a better way of gauging costs than CPC, just because this was how we were getting charged regardless of if people were clicking or not. And again, less than 100% indicates that campaigns were spending less than average, over 100% means that we're getting gouged a little bit. Alright, let's start specifically with follower ads, because they were really interesting. In the graphic, these are the red call out boxes. So anytime that you see a red box around data that was dealing with follower ads. What was interesting is that follower ads impressions were decimated on both Thanksgiving and Christmas. Literally impressions were around 10%. But since these are only served on desktop, that shows us how few people were actually on LinkedIn on their desktop machines. Since the other ad formats show on mobile, and we didn't see such large decreases, that tells us that members largely switched over to mobile devices during those holidays. Then when we look at costs, follower ads costs skyrocketed across all holidays. And to me, this is a perfect example of supply versus demand. The supply of advertisers stayed constant because LinkedIn doesn't allow us to do ad scheduling and leave the auction. Meanwhile, the demand of advertisers stayed constant because LinkedIn doesn't allow us to pause our ads certain times and take ourselves out of the auction. And at the same time the supply of members on the platform because they weren't there on desktop devices they left and that causes costs to shoot through the roof. For example, on the Thanksgiving holiday costs tripled, on Christmas, they almost doubled and on New Year's Day about doubled. Okay, so that's follower ads a little bit interesting. 14:56 Now let's move on to single image sponsored content. These were the ones in the purple call out boxes. So sponsored content impressions were above average the day before Thanksgiving, but then dropped to 80% and 68%. On the day during the holiday and after, this totally signals to me that people were working right up until the day before, and that during the holiday and after they went ahead and took time off, and weren't spending as much time on LinkedIn. The day before and the day of Christmas were really interesting to see an increase in impressions. And I didn't really have a great explanation as to why this was, although both of these were weekend days, which are traditionally lower anyway, and so it wouldn't be too hard to beat the average. The day after New Year's, this is January 2, we saw 17% higher than average usage, which is what we expect to see after the new year. And we'll tell you all about that data here soon. The costs around Thanksgiving skyrocketed to 35% to 69% above average, making it a really expensive holiday to be advertising. Around Christmas costs jumped 3% to 16%, which is certainly up, but it's not egregious. New Year's costs were really surprising though, they actually dropped one to 33% of average, which is what we usually see after the new year. But to see the diminished costs during the holiday was interesting, usually we see them after, we would guess that this is due to advertisers pulling back. Although I don't understand why advertisers would pull back on mass for New Years, but not Christmas that was just a week before. Unless, of course it had something to do with running out of budgets by the end of the month, and needing to pull back. Now let's analyze video ad. There were the blue call out boxes on the image that you see on the show notes page. If we look at the day before Thanksgiving, it was pretty much business as usual. But then we saw a huge dive in impressions on the day of and the day after Thanksgiving. The costs on Thanksgiving, though they jumped 3% to 31%. But strangely, Christmas didn't follow suit. Christmases CPMs actually dropped between 11% to 32%, which I don't really have an explanation for. New Year's Eve definitely had lower impressions, which we'd expect given the holiday. But similar to the other sponsored content that we've already talked about, since they do share the same inventory, the impressions were actually up 11% and 7%, respectively. And as you'd expect, New Year's CPMs dropped significantly, which we do expect usually, but it was a huge drop between 50% to 71% drops in price. 17:32 So my takeaways here are that generally costs go up over holidays. So I recommend pausing your ads over those times. And even in cases where costs will drop over the holidays like for Christmas and New Year's, I still recommend pausing your ads due to the lead quality drop. I would not suggest pausing your retargeting ads though. I think your retargeting ads are good to keep going. And remember how we talked about supply and demand, how it affects our pricing on LinkedIn. Let's talk about something that makes our pricing even worse. Rising costs are totally exacerbated by advertisers who are bidding by the impression rather than by the click. The reason this is the case is because when someone is bidding by click, they're only paying when someone actually takes action. And then the advertiser with the highest click through rates, ends up getting the best relevancy scores and that drives everyone to be better. If you're bidding by the impression though, it really doesn't matter how you're performing. Any advertiser willing to pay enough, LinkedIn is going to bypass the auction and start showing ads. LinkedIn has caused rising costs smartly on their part, but I think it's terrible, by making maximum delivery the default bidding method because it's the default, the less experienced advertisers just end up going with it. We talked about in episode six about when maximum delivery should be used. But it's effectively bidding by the impression but letting LinkedIn bid as high as they need to, to make sure that it can spend your entire budget every day. So if your daily budget is like $10 for a campaign, it may only need to bid like a $60 CPM to spend it all. But if your daily budget is high, let's say something like $1,000, and you have a relatively small audience, you might find that the platform has to bid $400 CPMs, in order to show your ads enough to spend your money. Just as a reminder, if your click through rates are two to three times the benchmark CTR for that ad format, then it's actually in your best interest to bid CPM as it saves you money. 90% of the time, though, you're not going to be beating your benchmarks by two to three times. And maximum delivery is the most expensive way to pay for your traffic. If you're bidding maximum delivery just because it's easier to spend your budget. You're just pushing yours and everyone else's costs up on the platform. And the only winner here is LinkedIn Corporate, who's watching their revenue climb quarter over quarter. So we as advertisers, what can we do about out this? I would encourage you don't bid max delivery unless you have really high CTRs. I would also encourage you to pause over holidays. And please don't bid really aggressively at the end of a year or a quarter or a month, if you don't have to. Because if we as advertisers stop pushing the costs up, then prices come down for all of us, then, who knows, maybe there are some advertisers out there who need to be bidding on holidays, and they end up getting lower costs to do so. Okay, I mentioned that if you're going to stick around to the end, I would share a bonus analysis with you. What we generally see is after the New Year, holiday performance tends to look really good on the platform. Costs come down, it becomes a lot easier to spend your full budget. So I wanted to do this analysis and to actually quantify this. First off, looking over three different ad formats, follower ads, single image sponsored content, and video ads, we average the 20% increase in impressions. And we saw clicks increased by 14%, which is pretty similar. It shows there's more people on LinkedIn spending time after the new year, and they're about as engaged as usual in clicking. When we look at costs, though, we see that follower ads have an 11% higher CPM, but cost per click is about the same. So that shows the difference made up of people actually clicking. Single image sponsored content, though, the costs actually dropped by 22% afterwards. And video costs actually dropped by 49% to the CPM, not bad. All of this goes to show that performance after the new year really is good. Takeaways from the New Year are advertise strong for the New Year. Traffic is up and costs are down and lead quality tends to be really high, too. Anecdotally, what we see is that now that people are back in the office, they're pretty rested from having a nice long break, they're a lot more likely to be agreeable towards having a meeting. There's not a whole lot of other stuff clouding up their schedule. Plus, they tend to have budgets again for the year which were depleted just the previous month. It's the beginning of a month and a quarter, so people don't feel like they have to bid super aggressively to try to finish things up strong. I absolutely love the first week of January every year. All right, I've got the episode resources for you coming right up, so stick around. Thank you for listening to the LinkedIn Ads Show. Hungry for more AJ Wilcox, take it away. 22:38 First off, the tables that I was reading off of, they're gonna be in the shownotes. So go visit the show notes page, if you want to see specifically what I was talking about there. Also, check out the link to Episode 32, all About COVID-19's effect on LinkedIn ads. Feel free to compare those and see this COVID-19 act more like a holiday or is it totally different. Check out Episode Six, all about bidding and budgeting to dive deeper into maximum delivery, and manual bidding and all of that. If you are one of your colleagues or looking to learn more about LinkedIn Ads, check out the link to the course that I made on LinkedInLearning.com, right within the show notes. It's by far the most detailed and lowest cost course out there and it's by LinkedIn Learning, so you know, the production is awesome. If this is the first time you're listening to us, make sure to hit that subscribe button, because you obviously care about LinkedIn Ads. If this is not the first time you're hearing this, though, can I ask a special favor? Can you go and rate and review this podcast in whatever podcast player you listen in? It would go a long way to say thanks for the 31 hours that I've sunk into this report. With any questions, suggestions, corrections, reach out to us at Podcast@B2Linked.com. And with that being said, we'll see you back here next week. Cheering you on in your LinkedIn Ads initiatives.    

Around Christmas, Texas Republican Rep. Roger Williams' wife suffered a medical emergency. This week, as she underwent treatment, her husband was eager to be by her side.  Instead, he has been stuck in Washington taking failed vote after failed vote in Kevin McCarthy's quest to become speaker. “This is killing him,” one of Williams' GOP lawmaker friends told us late Thursday night. “I've never seen Roger as down as he was yesterday.”  Williams isn't alone. On Thursday, Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) felt ill; his colleagues had to convince him it was OK to duck out of the speakership drama and go home for rest. Rep.-elect Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) is eager to return to Texas after his wife gave birth this week. Rep. Kevin Hern's (R-Okla.) mother died this week; he wants to attend her funeral on Saturday. “There's a lot more at stake than whether Kevin McCarthy's going to be able to get the gavel,” the aforementioned GOP lawmaker told us. “We've got lives that are being impacted right now, and this is tough for people.” There's been wall-to-wall coverage of the 20 anti-McCarthy rebels. But as the GOP leader faces down what will likely be his 12th failed bid for the gavel today, the story is about to shift to McCarthy's increasingly tenuous support network.  Subscribe to the POLITICO Playbook newsletter Raghu Manavalan is the host and senior editor of POLITICO's Playbook Daily Briefing. Jenny Ament is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.

Dear Steve and Shirley, I'm a 42 year old woman and I've been in a relationship with a 45 year old man for 3 years. For the past two years, he's been living with me because he needed some house repairs done. Around Christmas time last year, I caught him at his own house one Saturday when he was supposed to be visiting his parents in South Carolina. I pulled up in his driveway and he met me at the door and told me that it was a dusty mess inside like a construction site and I didn't need to come in...................................... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.