Podcasts about Carlsbad

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik, May 25 , 2025.

With Georgia Tech Baseball announced to be going to the Oxford regional in the NCAA Tournament as part of a pod with Ole Miss, Western Kentucky, and Murray State, the Scions boys analyze the strength of the regional, Tech's path to advancing to the super regional, and the probable starter Tech will face on Friday against the Hilltoppers.Plus, and update on GT Golf at NCAA Championships in Carlsbad.Hosts: Jack Purdy, Akshay Easwaran, Jake GrantProduction: Jack PurdyMusic: ⁠⁠Georgia Tech⁠⁠ Glee Club, Georgia Tech Marching Band

This episode we have military vet now turned artist Kaleb Knowles, based in the Chattanooga, TN. Area. He combines color, emotional depth with nature to create pieces that his audience clamors for. But it didn't start out like this at all, matter of fact this self-trained artist just started with art therapy classes offered by the military that jumpstarted his love for art and to where he is now. A great conversation on being courageous enough to learn something new and see where the quest takes you. I would love if you ranked this podcast, share a comment or share this episode out! AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew My new art book Worlds within Worlds available in digital form at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

On this Out of Bounds episode I bring back on brand strategist/designer/coach and lover of comics and sci-fi Ian McEwen. We talk about comics, brand identity, sci-fi, and sports. You can follow Ian McEwen on IG @thetruthquarry   SHARE, SUBSCRIBE, COMMENT AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS Video Episode at YouTube@quantallangford SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew Get my sci-fi conceptual book: Worlds within Worlds Art book available at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

North Clairemont Community Park is set to be renamed in honor of San Diego police officer Austin Machitar, who was killed in a fiery crash last August. The San Diego County unemployment rate dropped to 4% in April, down from a revised 4.2% in March. Today is the last day to see the Carlsbad Flower Fields.   What You Need To Know To Start Your Sunday. 

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik, May 18 , 2025.

Jack and Akshay roll through a very important week in Georgia Tech Athletics, highlighted by Baseball getting their first ACC regular ceason championship in 20 years and how they look to potentially host a regional in the NCAA Tournament. Then, Softball's weekend in Gainesville in the NCAA Tournament, news about Football scheduling, and how Golf lines up for the NCAA Championships in Carlsbad.Hosts: Jack Purdy, Akshay EaswaranProduction: Jack PurdyMusic: ⁠⁠Georgia Tech⁠⁠ Glee Club, Georgia Tech Marching Band

There are now 98 confirmed and probable cases of salmonella tied to an outbreak at Aladdin Mediterranean Cafe in Clairemont. Carlsbad police say they recently shut down a scam that defrauded seniors out of gold and 140-thousand dollars in cash. Three San Diego State triplets are all graduating on the same day, with the same majors, and same honors.

ICYMI: Hour Three of ‘Later, with Mo'Kelly' Presents – “What's Up” with regular guest contributor Nick Pagliochini delving into everything the Southland has to offer; from Disneyland Park's 70th Birthday/Anniversary Celebration, to all the 411 on Street Food Cinema, Lego Festival at the Legoland Resort in Carlsbad, Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival in San Diego, and the final weekend of Viva La Música at SeaWorld San Diego. Don't miss all of the fun by following @NickPagliochini and @ThisWeekendWithNick on social media…PLUS – It's ‘Dying Time' ‘When Animals Attack' with the death of a petting zoo worker that died after stepping into a kangaroo's pen to ‘roughhouse' with it AND thoughts on the trial of Sean ‘Diddy' Combs' - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app & YouTube @MrMoKelly

ICYMI: ‘Later, with Mo'Kelly' Presents – “What's Up” with regular guest contributor Nick Pagliochini delving into everything the Southland has to offer; from Disneyland Park's 70th Birthday/Anniversary Celebration, to all the 411 on Street Food Cinema, Lego Festival at the Legoland Resort in Carlsbad, Wonderfront Music & Arts Festival in San Diego, and the final weekend of Viva La Música at SeaWorld San Diego. Don't miss all of the fun by following @NickPagliochini and @ThisWeekendWithNick on social media - on KFI AM 640…Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app & YouTube @MrMoKelly

On this throwback Tuesday episode we share the journey of Emma Witz, the founder of Good Soil Theatre, based in Cleveland, TN. They are provide live theatre experiences in the city. Utilizing unactivated buildings and spaces they are using the arts to create unique interactive and dynamic experiences for audiences. She shares her love of theatre, the rigors of being a creative entrepreneur, and being resourceful. She talks about funding for theatre which can be tough to find and how she makes it work. Upcoming performances and more. Emma gives a valuable creative tip for aspiring creators that you need to hear, and what she would tell her younger self if she had the chance. For more info, upcoming performances, auditions, and ways to donate go to: https://goodsoiltheatreco.com You can follow Good Soil on IG @goodsoiltheatreco and FB @ Good Soil Theatre Company   SHARE, SUBSCRIBE, COMMENT AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS Video Episode at YouTube@quantallangford SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew My new art book Worlds within Worlds available in digital form at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

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

2:13 Track & Field breaks numerous school records @ Sun Belt Championships/Women's Golf heads to Carlsbad, CA for NCAA National Championships/Claxton participates as individual for Men's Golf @ NCAA Auburn Regional6:27 Men's Basketball head coach Charlie Henry takes a look at the offseason & some scheduling news for the 2025-26 season11:56 Former Eagle pitching great & assistant coach Brett Lewis tells stories of his time in Statesboro & watching his son Jax play for Rodney Hennon23:55 President Dr. Kyle Marrero wraps up the 2024-25 school year with the arrival of Commencement Week @ Georgia SouthernSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Local Catholics tell us what they think of the new Pope. Plus, we hear from members of local Native American tribes about plants they use to make tools and medicine. And, Carlsbad could see new drive-thrus after a longstanding ban.

After years of confusion for drivers at one intersection, a push to build a roundabout in University Heights. Plus, how you can have your voice heard on San Diego County's proposed budget. And, the Carlsbad Flower Fields have extended their season. We'll let you know how much longer it will stay open. NBC 7's Dana William has these stories and more as well as meteorologist Brooke Martell's forecast for Sunday, May 11, 2025.

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik, May 11 , 2025.

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik, May 4 , 2025.

This episode is inspired by my niece and nephew. To aspiring and young creators. As much as I continue to show them, I'm relearning just as much from them. Observing how they each perceive the world, how they create, how they formulate ideas. Not really caring about the end result, just being in the space to be immersed in the process of creating. Having the space to play and experiment within the capacity I have is something I encourage others to exercise in their creative practices. I would love if you ranked this podcast, share a comment or share this episode out! AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew My new art book Worlds within Worlds available in digital form at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

Ever wondered how the digital marketing landscape is transforming with the rise of AI? Or how video content is reshaping client engagement? In episode 154 of Carlsbad: People, Purpose, and Impact, I sit down with Gwen Beren, the brilliant mind behind Illuminus Marketing. This episode is a treasure trove of insights as Gwen shares her fascinating journey from corporate burnout to entrepreneurial success.Gwen, a Rancho Penasquitos native, takes us through her educational journey at the Savannah College of Art and Design and her early career in web design and SEO. She reveals how her experiences at United Webworks and Internet Matrix paved the way for the creation of Illuminus Marketing in 2013.We dive deep into the evolving world of SEO, exploring how AI tools like Perplexity are revolutionizing user search behaviors. Gwen's passion for video marketing shines through as she discusses its power in building trust and engagement. Plus, she shares an impressive case study where her agency achieved a whopping 927% ROI for a client!Join us as Gwen also highlights the importance of curiosity and creative problem-solving in crafting tailored marketing strategies.Gwen Beren BioGwen Beren is CEO & Founder of Illuminous Marketing, Inc, a digital marketing firm in Carlsbad, CA focused on helping purpose-driven businesses shine online with data-backed and results-driven marketing strategies.  Gwen founded the company in 2012 with a strong focus on SEO which continues to be a core offering of the agency. She is a knowledgeable and engaging speaker and has spoken at Surge 2020, several Hera Hub locations & many other marketing events around Southern California. Gwen holds a certification in AI for Business Applications from MIT and has been Google Analytics and Adwords certified.Connect with GwenWebsiteYouTubeInstagramLinkedIN Did this episode have a special impact on you? Share how it impacted youCarlsbad Podcast Social Links:LinkedInInstagramFacebookXYouTubeSponsor: This show is sponsored and produced by DifMix Productions. To learn more about starting your own podcast, visit www.DifMix.com/podcasting

This week's message is titled The Magic Bank Account - Your Life and the scripture reference is 1 Corinthians 15:51-55. If you would like to worship with us in person, we would love to have you.  Our address is:4103 W Texas St.Carlsbad, NM 88220 Sunday School starts at 9:30AMSunday Morning Service starts at 10:45.Wednesday Night Bible Study starts at 6:00PM. Additional Sermon podcasts can be downloaded by going to https://podcast.hvbcnm.org Thank you and God Bless!

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

Join us for our very first "Versus Edition" podcast where ASB takes on a coach or athlete in their sport. This video was filmed at the Riverside Country Club in Carlsbad, New Mexico. We get insight on the CHS Golf Team and much more from Head Coach Brian Jones while battling each other in 3 holes of match play. Presented by CNB Bank Filmed by Isaiah Galindo Produced by All Sports Best & Isaiah Galindo

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik April 27, 2025. Music Credit: HolyName "Creed (Rev Gang)"

This episode we bring on Kelli King, the owner of Goblin Shark Emporium, Oceanside's Weirdest Gift Shop, a world of vintage clothes, art and merchandise from a variety of local vendors and brands. Monthly art exhibitions, sip and craft events. Kelli shares her story from being continually let go of employment to opening up the shop. She shares why bringing out what makes you weird will lead you where you need to go. She talks about their 3rd anniversary event Starting May 1st and will run through May 3rd with an opening reception of Shaping the Void: All Sculptural Gallery. This was recorded at Camp Coffee in Oceanside, California. My coffee to pick is a hot or iced Camp Mocha. Swing by for a coffee, food or merch. Follow them on IG @wearecampcoffee Follow the weirdness on IG @goblinsharkemporium I would love if you ranked this podcast, share a comment or share this episode out! AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew My new art book Worlds within Worlds available in digital form at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

Author and liver of life absolutely describes our guest this episode, Pat Backley. As Pat says, she was an English woman until the age of 59 when she decided to become a Kiwi and moved full time to New Zealand. Pat grew up in a poor household, but she will tell you that she never regrets not having as much money as many of the people around her. However it happened, Pat grew up with a various curious oriented mind and a desire to explore the world.   During her life which today spans 73 years, Pat has held a number of jobs. She also has been married twice, but clearly really is not bitter over being divorced from both husbands, although the 2nd one simply wasn't ready to be as adventurous as Pat and live in New Zealand.   Pat wrote her first book at the age of 70. Over the past three years she has written eight books and has a number of future books inside her. As with other authors I have met over the years, Pat's characters essentially write their stories. Pat has plans and ideas, but the characters take over and create the stories.   I find Pat to be extremely articulate and personable to converse with. I think you too will enjoy her and what she has to say. So, sit back, or walk or do whatever you are doing, but get ready to hear a most enjoyable and thought-provoking conversation.       About the Guest:   Pat Backley is an English woman who, at the age of 59 , decided to become a Kiwi and she now lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Passionate about people and travelling the world, she has spent the last 73 years living a colourful and interesting life and her books reflect these passions.   She published her first book DAISY in late 2020, just before her 70th birthday, and now says that she intends to write till she dies!   She has published eight books and contributed to several anthologies, as well as writing articles and short stories for various magazines and has several more books in the pipeline.   Ways to connect Pat:   www.patbackley.com I am on Facebook and Instagram @patbackleyauthor. Also on X (Twitter) @Pat Backley Books. And LinkedIn @Pat Backley   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/   https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   ichael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:20 Well, hi everyone, and I want to welcome you to another edition of unstoppable mindset. And today we are going to chat with Pat Backley. Pat is a British woman, as she will tell you, but at the age of 59 which has now been some what, 1314, years ago, 13 years ago, she decided to become a kiwi and moved to New Zealand. We'll have to find out what brought that about. I've been to New Zealand. It's a fun place. I'd love to go back. But anyway, and of late, certainly much later in her life, Pat decided to become an author. She wrote her first book at the age of 70, and that is another fascinating story, I am sure. So we will delve into all of that, and we're going to grill Pat until she's tired of us. Pat, welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Pat Backley ** 02:20 Thank you so much, Michael, I can assure you, I won't be tired of being grilled by you. I'm I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 02:29 we're really glad that you're here. What time is it in New Zealand right now? It's 10 o'clock   02:33 in the morning. Yeah, it's about what I thought.   Michael Hingson ** 02:38 So you're 21 hours ahead of us. Yeah, yes.   Pat Backley ** 02:42 And I have to say, I have to say that tomorrow is looking very good. You'll be glad to know, Oh, good.   Michael Hingson ** 02:49 Should be good. It Well, I'm glad to hear that it's going to look good, and it's actually going to warm up a little bit. Here. We're only getting up to about 65 Fahrenheit, so that's what about 17 Celsius or so. But tomorrow it's supposed to start getting a little bit warmer. We're approaching our winter as you approach your summer, which is kind of interesting.   Pat Backley ** 03:14 Yes, very interesting. When I first moved to New Zealand, that was one of the things I found very strange to have Christmas in the sunshine, because obviously I was, I was born with Christmas in the cook.   Michael Hingson ** 03:29 Yeah. Well, and you could have moved to Australia, where they use kangaroos to pull Santa slay.   Pat Backley ** 03:38 I could have done. I could have done. But Australia didn't have the same appeal for me as No, I   Michael Hingson ** 03:43 like New Zealand. I haven't been to Australia. I'd like to go, but I really enjoyed being in New Zealand. I've been to both the North and the South Island. I spent almost three weeks there, back in 2003 and gave something like 17 or 18 speaking opportunities in 15 days. And I only had one day that I had mostly off and that we spent. What is the the town on the South Island, the the tourist town, oh, Queenstown. Queenstown. Yeah, and so but that only lasted until about six that evening, and then I had to go off and speak again. But it was a lot of fun.   Pat Backley ** 04:28 You must have been exhausted because it's quite a lot of distance. I was I'm what I'm about to say is going to sound ridiculous now, because I've just been to America, and I know about your distances I was going to say, because you have a lot of driving distance between the towns you would have had to speak at. But then, as I was about to verbalize it, I thought, Pat, that's stupid. In America, the distances are far greater   Michael Hingson ** 04:51 well, and also a number of airplane flights between the North and the South Island to make it go faster as well.   Pat Backley ** 04:57 Yes, absolutely, yes. So. It was fun. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 05:01 why don't we start by you telling us a little bit kind of about the early Pat growing up and all that. We'll start with that. Okay,   Pat Backley ** 05:08 well, I, I was born in 1951 so it was just after the war, and England was still suffering from the effects of the war. You know, there was a lot of it was a bit of a gray place, so my parents couldn't afford to buy their own home, so I lived with my parent, my paternal grandparents, for the first three and a half years of my life. And of course, I had a lovely time because I had four adults doting on me. Then we moved out to the country. We were given a council house, which is like a state house. I'm not sure what they called in in the in America, you know, where the government provides them, right? Which, at that time was very acceptable, because there wasn't much housing, because it had all been bombed out, because we lived in London. So, so I grew up in the country. I didn't realize we were poor until I was 11, and went to secondary school, and suddenly I was the because I was quite bright, I was put in a grammar stream class, so I was suddenly with all these rich kids. One girl was driven to school in a chauffeur driven rolls, Royce and I lived in the little government house opposite the school, so everyone knew I was poor. So yeah, it was, it was tough. I would say it was tough my teenage years, but I   Michael Hingson ** 06:26 did, they teach you a lot about that. Oh, yeah,   Pat Backley ** 06:28 I got, I got, I mean, these days they would call it bullying, bullying. I just, I just, it was just, what my luck you know that I remember one time, and I actually did write about this in my memoirs, because it's still in my head after 60 odd years, one time I was the only kid in the class that went home for school lunches, and one because mum couldn't afford to pay for school lunches, so I used to go home because we lived just opposite. And I remember one day I came back to school and it was raining, so all the kids were back in the classroom early, and the teacher wasn't there yet. And there was this one girl whose name will live in my memory forever. She's etched on my soul, Angela Barrett. And she was standing at the front of the class, pretending to be the teacher, writing on the blackboard, and then wiping it off with this black cloth. And then she said, this is all this rag is fit for. And it was actually my school raincoat, which until then I'd been very proud of, but it was second hand, it'd be my cousins. And I can remember that afternoon thinking, I don't want to be here anymore. I hate it here. Everyone hates me. And I went home and I told mom, and I cried, and she said, Look, love, just because they've got more money than you doesn't make them any better people. And at 11, I could not see that at all like that. I just thought, why don't you just get more money? Why don't you buy me a nicer and go blah, blah, blah. But now in hindsight, I just think she that was the wisest thing she could say, because the time I rebelled, it made me realize that actually it's not an equal playing field in the world. You know, you're going to have people that are on this side and down at the bottom and up at the top, and you just have to grit your teeth and fight your way through it,   Michael Hingson ** 08:13 yeah, and, and the reality is, there are only so many things that you can truly control, and what you what you can control is how you dealt with that situation and situations like that. Yes, that's   Pat Backley ** 08:25 right. Um, and then I think I was a, I was definitely a product of the 60s. You know, we had all the lovely pop music and the short skirts and burning out bras and all that sort of stuff. But when I was just two weeks after my 20th birthday, I got married for the first time, which was ridiculous in hindsight, but at the time, you think you know everything when you're that age, don't you? My parents begged me not to marry him, but of course, I knew best, so that marriage lasted 14 years, and he wasn't always very kind. So then I left, then I was on my own for a beer. Then I had a living boyfriend, and I was desperate to have a child, Michael, but I'm not. I'm I'm old fashioned. I only would have a child if I had a husband. And so I didn't. I got married again when I was 41 and we had a child. I had a child when I was 43 my daughter, and that was that I thought life was going to be great. And then 26 years later, he decided he didn't love me anymore, didn't want to live in New Zealand anymore, and that was that so. So I kind of found myself living in New Zealand on my own, having we emigrated here together just before my 59th birthday. But anyway, I've picked up the pieces. It's been six years now, and because of COVID and because of him leaving me, that's how my life changed, really. And your daughter, my and my beloved daughter, my only child, yes, she's 30 now, and she is the love of my life. Yes, and I'm sorry. I've just realized I probably. Probably haven't answered your question very well. You must always pull me back, because I tend to get very excited and passionate and you know, don't necessarily toe the line with question answering. So forgive me, not   Michael Hingson ** 10:11 a problem. That's why this is a conversation and not a big deal. So is your daughter in New Zealand? She   Pat Backley ** 10:20 is now. When her dad she she was 16 when we came to New Zealand, so she did her last bit of school here, then she went to university in Auckland, and then she decided she wanted to do her master's degree back in London. So she went back to London, and then she got a job there, and she was away for five and a half years, which nearly broke my heart, but she's home now. She's been back four years, and she's got a lovely Kiwi boyfriend, and she's here to stay, so I'm   Michael Hingson ** 10:49 thrilled. What did she get? Her degree in art history. Ah, now, do you? Did you go to college? No, sadly,   Pat Backley ** 10:57 I because we were poor, I just had to leave school at 16, and so now I never went to college. I would have loved to, I would have liked to have been a teacher, but, you know, it wasn't to be and and I've had a great life, regardless of that.   Michael Hingson ** 11:13 So did you during all your married life and then the time in between and so on. What kind of work did you   Pat Backley ** 11:20 do? Well, I started work. I started work in the bank when I was 16. Barclays Bank was a really good place to work, so I spent 10 years working there. Then I lived for two years in the Fiji Islands and just did voluntary work back to the UK. My first husband and I started a furniture business, and then when I left him. Obviously I needed a job, because I didn't claim anything in the divorce. And so I got a job with bernardo's, the children's charity, as a general fundraiser. And that was great, because I just traveled all around the south of England supporting all the fundraising groups and things which I loved. And then I moved on to after a few years, I moved on to cancer research, um, again, as a fundraiser, but this time, setting up all their charity shops in the south, and that was a wonderful thing as well, because during the course of both those jobs, I met so many interesting people. You know, now that I'm an old gray haired lady, well, not actually Gray, because I color it, but now that I'm an old gray head lady. I feel very bad that the 35 year old me went to my new job with with Barnardos and sat there looking at these hundreds of gray head old ladies. And I thought, Oh, I'm too young to deal with all these old people. What on earth am I going to talk to them about? And of course, within a couple of days, I've realized that all these gray head old people were fabulous, that most of them had had really interesting, fascinating lives, and that I could learn an awful lot from them. So now the old gray head me looks back and feels very guilty at how I was at that age. But I guess that's what happens when you're young. You just think anyone over the age of 50 is is past it, don't you really well, but   Michael Hingson ** 13:03 you did learn a lot, I bet, from them, which is, oh, wow,   Pat Backley ** 13:07 oh, I learned so much, and I had so much fun, so much fun. Yeah, in fact, when I got married for the second time, a whole bunch of those ladies and a few of the men came to my, like, hen party the night before I got married, we went to the local, very smart hotel and had cocktails, and I just smiled to myself, thinking, oh, and I thought you were all so boring at the beginning, and actually, you're fabulous. So, yeah. So then, then my then I, then I stopped working, had my daughter, and I desperately didn't want to go back to my well paid job with cancer research. I wanted to be home with my baby because I was 43 I'd lost two children in the year before, with miscarriages, and so I stayed at home for four months, and then my husband said, oh, we need more money. You need to get a job. So I ended up doing having other people's children at my house, looking after them so doing like child minding. And that was when I look back. I don't know how I managed, because sometimes I had five under four year olds running around the house, which was quite a challenge. But we survived. I did that, I think, for seven years altogether, and oh, and in between that time, we came and lived in New Zealand for a year because my husband was a teacher, and he got a year's teaching exchange. So we basically swapped lives with a New Zealand teacher. He and his family moved into our house in England, and we moved into their house here in New Zealand. So for a whole year, we lived like a proper Kiwi family, which was wonderful. Lucy was only two, so it was the ideal time to do it. And I just, I just fell in love with New Zealand and desperately wanted to emigrate there. And then it took me 14 years to persuade him to get back here eventually. And in hindsight, I've probably pushed it too much, because. After he left, he said, I didn't like living in New Zealand. I didn't ever really settle there. So I have to hold up my hand and say, probably I persuaded him to do something that he really didn't want to do. But anyway, it's easy to be wise in hindsight, isn't it, as always, yeah. And then so we went back after our year here, we went back to the UK and we set up a business training and assessing construction workers, because the government realized, the UK government realized that, because they'd stopped formal apprenticeships some 20 odd years earlier, that there were now hundreds of 1000s of men working on construction sites who had all the necessary skills, but no paper qualifications. And so they wanted to redress that, but they realized that these men would not be willing to go back to college for three years to learn, learn their trade that they could already do. So they started this fast track program, and we used to go onto sites. We obviously, I had to get lots of qualifications and things to do it, trainers and assessors, qualifications. But then we used to go on two sites and watch the men working ask them loads of questions. We obviously had trade specific instructor assessors, and they could get that qualification that they would have taken three years to get going to college, they could then get in in a matter of six months or so, just by being observed doing their job. So it was a really, really good system, and it was very rewarding for me personally, because I used to go onto the sites and do the initial talks and whatever. And I've always liked men. I've always enjoyed their company, so I could cope with all the banter, you know, all the right, darling, what you're going to do after work, that kind of thing. I enjoyed all that. The bit I hated was wearing a hard hat, because they're very unflattering and they squash your hair do. But the most rewarding thing for me, we did that, that business for 20 years. The most rewarding thing was when a guy who I'd met on site who didn't even want to do it because he felt inadequate, which I later discovered was because he couldn't read or write, but he'd hidden it from all his colleagues. The most satisfying thing was once he'd passed, which obviously he sailed through. I sent him his certificate in the post, and the next day he phoned me, and he said, Pat. Thank you so much for that certificate. He said, it's the only thing I've ever had in my whole life that says I'm good at anything. He said, My wife is framing it and putting it on the living room wall. And that just made me cry, because I thought, this is, this is a man who's 45 who's gone through his whole life thinking he's stupid, and suddenly, just that one action can give him something to be proud of. So that was, I loved doing that, and we made that's how we made our money. For a few years, it was incredibly successful, and then it tailed off, and that's when we immigrated to New Zealand, and since I've been here, I've just basically been having a lovely time, doing a bit of voluntary work, lots of socializing and becoming an author. So   Michael Hingson ** 18:10 what, what attracted you to New Zealand? Why did you fall in love so much with New Zealand? Do you think   Pat Backley ** 18:19 it's a it's a hard question to answer. Michael, it was something deep inside me after I'd been here for a year, or when I'd been here probably only for a few weeks, I got this real feeling deep inside, inside me that I needed to be here. I just think sometimes places in the world draw you in for whatever reason. Who knows? You don't know if it's because perhaps you've got some association with it through an ancestor or I don't know, but I felt very, very drawn to New Zealand, and once we went back to the UK, we were back there for 14 years. Whenever I spoke to friends from New Zealand, whenever they'd phone me, I would end up in tears for hours. I want to go back to New Zealand. So it was a need rather than a desire, almost. And it's not something I've ever regretted. Even after he even after he abandoned me, we were back in England when he announced he didn't want to be married anymore, and he never came back to New Zealand. I just had to come back alone. Even then my friends in England were saying to me, oh, Pat, just stay in England. You know, we're all here. We'll, you know, we'll all be here for you. And I said, No, no, home is just New Zealand, even though I knew I was coming back all alone because Lucy was still living in London, I had, I've got no family here, so, but there was something that pulled me back.   Michael Hingson ** 19:45 I understand that I really enjoyed New Zealand a lot. And if there's when people ask me a place in the world that I regard as my favorite place to visit, New Zealand always comes out first, but I enjoy. Way wherever I go. I actually took my first trip to London in late October of this year. I was only there for a couple of days, but it was to do a speech. And, you know, it was pretty similar to being here. It just wasn't the same feeling as as being in New Zealand, which I had the opportunity to do, as I said before, for a little over three weeks. So it was really a lot of fun and and the the environment is just so different.   Pat Backley ** 20:28 Yes, I think New Zealand, I think one of the, I mean, obviously it's an incredibly beautiful country, but I think one of the main differences is that we, we've got a land mass pretty similar to the UK, but we we've only got like 5 million people, and the UK has got more than 70 million. And I think that's the thing. You know, the more people you try to cram into a small space, the more the social problems are, are enlarged, don't they? You know, we have exactly the same social problems here that are anywhere else in the world, but because our population is relatively small, it's not such a such such a huge feature of life, I think, yeah. Mm,   Michael Hingson ** 21:10 well, I haven't explained to everyone listening that Pat and I met through the RV Book Festival, virtual book festival, which both of us being authors, we spoke at and participated in, gosh, a little over a month ago now. Mm,   Pat Backley ** 21:28 yes, time flies, doesn't it does. It does.   Michael Hingson ** 21:32 And one of the things that I said, as I usually do when I get a chance to meet with people, is we'd love to have you all come on the podcast. And Pat is the second of the three people who were there. And so I'm glad that that that we got to do this. But let's talk about you being an author. So you started being an author. What, just three years ago or four years ago? Yes, yes. What? Yeah. Go ahead. Oh,   22:01 no, sorry, you carry on. Well, so   Michael Hingson ** 22:03 what just caused you to decide that you're going to try to write a book?   Pat Backley ** 22:09 Okay? Well, when I was a little girl, I had a massive list of things I wanted to be when I was growing up, I wanted to be a nurse, a missionary, a writer, a teacher, a ballerina. They were all my that was my list. So when I was about eight, I edited my first magazine. Is I have one limited copy of it. It was a limited, very limited edition. It only lasted one, one time. But so I guess probably I've always had that desire deep inside me, but because of circumstances, and not coming from, you know, a very privileged background, it meant that I didn't have the opportunity. But in the days when we used to write letters, I always love to write long, long letters to all my friends, my family. And when I lived in Fiji for two years, I wrote, there was no other way of communicating with my parents. They had no telephone. So for two years, I wrote them letters and when my when, when they died, and I had to clear out their house, I found this enormous pile of blue Air Mail, letters that I'd written to my parents over a two year period. They'd kept every single one. So I think I'd always loved writing, but it never occurred to me that I would ever have the chance to write a book. And then we get to COVID, and we, here in New Zealand, went into lockdown on the day of my 69th birthday. It was a beautifully sunny day, and I was all alone because Lucy was in England, and I made myself chocolate brownies, stuck a candle in it, sat in the garden and cried because my marriage was over. My daughter was gone. We had COVID. There were, you know, there were lots of things to cry about. And I then spent the next three weeks lying on my sofa watching rubbish on Netflix, eating too much chocolate, drinking too much red wine. And then I thought to myself, Pat, this is ridiculous. This could go on for a few more weeks, because at the time, we thought COVID was going to be quite short lived, didn't we, and I thought, why don't you do something practical? Why don't you write a book? So I just got out some paper and pen and started writing, and stayed up, probably mostly day and night, for two weeks, and then within two weeks, my first book, Daisy was done, and that was that really the rest is history. Since then I have so I published it self. Published it just before my 70th birthday, and in the three years since then, I've written and published eight more. Contributed to five anthologies, written a little Yes, so yeah, written articles for magazines and been interviewed by lovely people like you, and the rest is history. Are you alright? Have I sent you to sleep? Talking?   Michael Hingson ** 24:58 No, I. Well, I'm just listening. I didn't know whether you were done. You know, it's, it's fascinating to to listen to the story and to hear you talk about what, what brought you to it, what made you decide what kind of books to write. I   Pat Backley ** 25:18 don't think I really did decide, um, my daughter for my birth, for the previous Christmas, had sent me a very dry little textbook, which she knew I love, called, I can't think exactly what it's called, something like the history of architecture, of council houses in the UK, something very boring like that. And it was, it was basically a textbook, because I love architecture as well. It was basically a textbook with just a few pictures in so I'd kind of put it on my coffee table, but not but ignored it. You know how you do when there's books? You know, you should, you kind of don't get around to it. So at the beginning of COVID, I picked it up one day, or a couple of days before I started writing, I picked it up, and within five minutes, I was enthralled. I got out post it notes. I'd stuck those all over little bits and written quotes, and I think that was kind of an inspiration. So I expected the book to be more about, have more of a theme of architecture. And in fact, the book doesn't. There is one guy who becomes an architect in it towards the end. But I think that kind of just just pushed something in my head into gear, because I firmly believe Michael. I mean, they always say that everyone has a book inside them, and I, when I do my talks now, I'm often photographed at a very funny stage where I'm going like this, because I'm just saying how somebody's it feels as though somebody's taken off the top of my head, and 70 years worth of words are just flying out. Because I find writing incredibly easy. The first book Daisy wrote itself pretty much, you know, I just kind of had an idea and and I wrote down a few things about possible people, and then they just wrote their own story, really, which I'm, you know, I know, as an author, you will understand that. And I would say, for all my other books, I've had an idea, but they've kind of, they've kind of written themselves, themselves   Michael Hingson ** 27:17 as well. Yeah. Well, you know, you talk about textbooks. I've been an advocate for some time about the concept that people should rewrite textbooks or make textbooks different than they are, and technical manuals, the same way, as you said, they're very boring and and they don't need to be in textbooks could draw people in a lot more than they than they do. For example, my master's degree is in physics, and when you're looking at a physics textbook, there are lots of mathematical equations and so on, and that's fine, but think of how much more interesting the book might be, and think of how much more you might draw the interest of people to the science by including in the book some stories about the the author. Their their, I don't want to necessarily say adventures, but their experience is why they became a physicist, why they do what they do, and bringing some humanity to the textbook, I think would make a significant difference to textbooks in general, but we don't see that, because people just want to get the facts out there.   Pat Backley ** 28:32 I couldn't agree more. I absolutely, totally agree. When I was at school, I hated doing research because it was boring. You had to learn the names of all the kings of England, and King, you know, Henry, the eighth wives, and when their heads got chopped off and all that stuff. And apart from the really scandalous bits, I wasn't really interested. But now I absolutely adore research. I discovered that my first book, Daisy is is a historical fiction, and so I had to do lots of research to make sure it was accurate, because you you know, if you write something in a book and it's not right, people are going to pick holes in it. I mean, they're going to pick holes in your work anyway, so you don't want to give them extra ammunition, right? But I discovered that I absolutely loved doing research. And of course, these days it's so easy because you just click a button on your computer and you can find out what cold scuttles were used in 1871 whereas in my youth, we had to trudge to the library get out all the encyclopedias. And so because of I've discovered that love of research, all my all my novels, are now historical because it's almost it gives me an excuse to go researching and finding out stuff. So it's opened up a whole new world to me, Michael and I just realized now that that expression education is wasted on the young is so true, because now in my seven. Is I am so open to learning new things, whereas in my teens, I was bored to death and just wanted to go home and play.   Michael Hingson ** 30:09 So what was Daisy about? Oh, well,   Pat Backley ** 30:11 Daisy, I'll just, I'll just read you a little bit on the back to give you an idea. Um, Daisy is a gentle family saga spanning almost 100 years, from 1887 to 1974 It is set in Alabama, Harlem and London, and incorporate some of the evils of society, poverty, racism and snobbery, as well as some of the greatest that life has to offer, family, friendship and love and a couple of quotes, being born poor was a scar that never faded, and she had never experienced racial hatred first hand, so had no real idea of how it could erode a person's whole life. So basically, it's just a story of a young woman born in the slums of London and a young man born into an affluent lifestyle on an Alabama plantation in 1871 and how their lives interwove, they never got together, but, you know, or all their extended people did, so it's right, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:14 right. Well, the thing about about that kind of a story is, again, it draws you in. I I would would say something slightly different. Being poor is a scar that that never fades. On the other hand, being poor also gave you, or would give Daisy the life that she had, which was, was so I would suspect so very invaluable to her overall life experiences.   Pat Backley ** 31:50 Yes, absolutely yes. And her life changes quite dramatically midway because of the people she meets. Yeah, it's I, it was in, it's interesting, because sometimes I reread it and I just think, Wow, this is quite a good story. And I then I feel bad for thinking that about my own writing, but I've written the second Daisy, which is obviously the follow up. And then I thought, actually I and then I wrote a little travel book and my life story and whatever. And then I thought, Oh, I really miss doing research. Perhaps I could write about my own family, my own ancestors. So I then wrote the ancestors series. I've done three in it, and wrote about my paternal grandparents, my maternal grandparents and my own parents. I've just published that book about them that was glorious, but very emotive, because obviously I knew certain bits about them. But delving back further and further into the family histories, you discover lots of things and very emotional to write, yeah, particularly one about my parents, because your parents are just your mom and dad, aren't they? You kind of don't think of them really, as people in their own right, but when you start writing their life story, you're living life through their shoes and and it, yeah, it made me very emotional. I cried every day writing my parents story, but now I'm really glad I did it, because it's kind of honored, honored their lives, and also it means they'll never die their even their photographs are on the cover. And my daughter said that she cried all the way reading it, and she said, Mom, it was wonderful, because I hardly knew them. You know, they died when she was quite young. Yeah, she's but now I understand, yeah, so because she's had, you know, she's had a reasonably nice upbringing. She hasn't had the upbringing that they had, or even I had. So, yeah, I think I try. I've become a bit I've become a bit of a pain now, because everyone I meet, I say, like last week, I did a talk at the local genealogy society, and I said to them, please write your story down or record it some way. Because once you die, your story dies with you, no one knows your life as well as you do. So, yeah, yeah. But I just love research. So now I'm thinking, oh, what else can I write about and do some research? I write about people. Michael, people are my passion. I love people and and ordinary people. I don't need to write about, you know, worthy things people, right?   Michael Hingson ** 34:24 But the other part about it is that you got, as you write about your parents, I'll bet you got to know them better, too, and it helps you understand the kind of life you had and they had. And I still bet overall, you could talk about wealth and all that, but you wouldn't trade your life for anything because it made you who you are today. Abs,   Pat Backley ** 34:49 you're absolutely right, and yes, you're right. Writing about their stories and all that they went through, it was Yeah. Just made me really, really realize that they were even. Special people than I knew they were. But no, I wouldn't trade anything. I mean, I had a wonderfully happy childhood, if you put aside that silly bit of bully in that, you know, I tend to know for the years. But, yeah, we I, I because I didn't know, really, that I got snippets of there being other kind of lives like, you know, I had rich friends who had lots of clothes, traveling all the time and stuff, but basically, my life was just my little nuclear family. In our little we had a little two bedroom house for six of us, and that was my life. We were very happy. There were very rarely raised voices, and that's why I didn't cope very well in my first marriage, when my husband, my first husband, suddenly showed me that he had a rather violent temper because I didn't know how to handle it, because I had never experienced that before in my whole life. So I in that way, I wasn't prepared. But yeah, I will always be grateful to my parents, because with very little, they gave us all a very happy childhood.   Michael Hingson ** 36:05 Well, so you started writing at the age of 70. Do you wish that you had started writing earlier? Or did you think about that? I   Pat Backley ** 36:17 think about it. I don't really, because I think I had to live through everything I've lived through get to the point now of being able to write in the way I do. And also, yeah, no, I don't really. I mean, the only thing I think is, oh, I hope I don't die before I before I get everything written, I want to write. That's my only thing. But no, I I've learned, Michael, not to regret anything in life, because if you do, the only person it hurts is yourself. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 36:47 because you are who you are, because of your life   Pat Backley ** 36:51 exactly, and you would understand that better than most. I mean, you cope so well with with being blind, which is absolutely remarkable, because most of us, if we suddenly can't see and need to wear a stronger pair of glasses, we just go down, you know, go down into a depressive state. So you're a wonderful beacon of hope. I think for an awful lot of people, of course,   Michael Hingson ** 37:15 the issue, and using that as an example, the issue is that you don't know anything about being blind or blindness, and people generally don't, and they make a lot of assumptions that are not necessarily true, but it is again, the lives that they live, and the reality is there's nothing wrong with being blind. We live in a world where most people are light dependent, that is, they can see. But the reality is, of course, in the perspective I try to oftentimes nowadays, to convey to people, is light dependence is just as much a disability as being light independent or blind, because as soon as the lights go out, you lose power, and if you don't have an immediate light source. You're in a world of hurt. And we really should think of disability as a characteristic that everyone has, except it manifests itself differently for different people. But unfortunately, people aren't ready to do that. And the reasons for bringing up the concept in that way is that I think that because disability is really a characteristic everyone has, it is also a way to help level the playing field. And that's something that is so hard to get people to do, because they really think, well, you're blind, you're not as good as I   Pat Backley ** 38:37 Oh, wow. Very profound. I love talking to you. Michael, this is fascinating stuff. Fascinating. I had, I had a little niece. Sadly, she died when she was 14. She had a dreadful genetic disease called battens, but she went blind for the last couple of years. It broke my heart. It broke my heart, but she seemed to just deal with it somehow. You know, it's, I guess we all get the strengths we need at the times we need them. Do you think   Michael Hingson ** 39:04 I think, I think that's true, or we can if, long as we accept it. But the reality is that, of course, she lost her her eyesight, but if she developed an attitude that I have other things that are available to me, so I'm going to be fine, then she would be fine. Yes,   Pat Backley ** 39:23 yeah, yeah. I mean, sadly, she lost all her faculties. She couldn't talk. She so everything went but, but it was when her eyes went and she was still able to understand, that was the hardest thing. So I remember years ago when I worked in Barclays Bank, when I was quite in my 20s, and we were, I worked in a big branch at the time, and we had a blind telephonist, because in those days, back in the 60s, I think it was kind of what they did. It was when there were all those great big telephonic boards, you know, press all the buttons. And we had a guy called Peter, and he had. His dog was called penny, and our branch was on the corner of this huge, wide road in a place called Kingston, just outside London. And to cross the road, there were like six lanes of traffic, and it was really, really dangerous. And we would come out of work in the afternoon, and we'd all be standing there hesitant to cross the road, and Peter would suddenly just march across the road with Penny, and we'd all be standing there in awe. And one day I crossed with I've got brave, and I crossed over with him, and we got to the other side, and I said, Peter, how can you do that? He said, Oh, well. He said, It's always useful being blind, because traffic feels sorry for you, so they all kind of slow down anyway. He said, But, but. He said, But Penny leads me. He said, she just, she just, she just knows it's fine, so she just the dog just, just takes me over. I was fascinated, but he had just recently married about two years earlier he'd been, he'd been fully sighted till he was 11, and then he and some friends were messing about on the railway lines, and he fell over and bashed his head, and he went blind. So he had been sighted and but now he he was married, he had a little baby, and I said, Oh, Peter, can you actually see your baby, or do you just kind of have to feel the outline? He said, Oh no. He said, I got a tiny, tiny bit of vision. He said, so I can see the shape of the baby. And I just always remember thinking you're so brave. That was, that was what I thought. I just felt he was so brave. Well, just remember   Michael Hingson ** 41:27 the dictionary, you know? Well, just remember the dictionary defines to see is to perceive. It doesn't necessarily need to be with the eyes and and there's so many other senses that give us this a lot of information as well. For me, I don't want my dog to decide when we cross the street in general, unless the dog refuses to go because there's a hybrid car or something coming that I don't hear. But it's my job to know when to go and and I know how to do that, and so I can listen for the traffic flow and and, and go accordingly. And at the same time, if I then tell the dog to go forward and the dog won't go my immediate assumption is there's a reason for that, and and, and usually there is because the dog and I have developed that kind of a relationship where the dog knows it's my job to tell the dog where to go, and it's the dog's job to make sure that we get there safely. It's a very close knit team. It's as close knit of a team as you can imagine, and it's what it's really all about. So the dog and I each do our jobs, and when we do them correctly together, what a wonderful world. It becomes   Pat Backley ** 42:47 fabulous. And it obviously works because you're still standing, you're still here,   Michael Hingson ** 42:54 and my and my dog is over here, breathing very deeply, asleep. Oh, so you you stick with historical fiction. Have you ever thought of writing other kinds of books, like adventures or novels or that are not historic in nature, fantasy or any of those? I   Pat Backley ** 43:17 don't think I've got the right brain set to do fantasy or horror or crime. I, I I'm writing historical because I've discovered a great love for it, but I've also, I also have a great love for travel. So I wrote a little travel book, and I've just done a big trip, so I'm going to write another travel book, because that's another great love I wrote. I wrote my memoirs, which was very satisfying, you know, to write my own story down so it's there forever, if you like. And I also wrote a little book called The abandoned wives handbook, which I didn't want to write. I just kept putting it off. And then one day, I woke up at three in the morning and this voice saying to me, Pat, you have to write this book to help other people. So I just wrote this. I cried all the time. Writing it, as you've probably deduced, I'm a great crier. I think crying is is the best way of getting stress out of your system, out of my system. So I wrote this book. It's just a tiny little book that you can pop into a handbag called the abandoned wives handbook. And I've just made it like a little dictionary. I call it a dictionary of distress, and it's just to I'll just just briefly read you the backseat and understand the pain of abandonment is huge. The partner you loved and cherished for so many years has decided you are no longer required past your sell by date of no use to them anymore, so tossed out like a piece of garbage, abandoned with barely a backward glance, in an attempt to keep this a gentle, light hearted read, each chapter is divided into letters of the alphabet, rather like a dictionary of distress, something you can dip into at any time. I am not an expert, merely someone who has survived one of life's great traumas and has come through. Is a stronger, more resilient person, so I didn't want to write it. I hated doing it. I've, I published it, and it's, ironically, one of my best selling books people buy   Michael Hingson ** 45:13 all the time. Do you publish your own books, or do you have a publisher? I   Pat Backley ** 45:17 have, I have done till this point, Michael, but simply because I'm feeling I'm too old to hang around waiting to get noticed. But I have just written, I have just finished another book, which I I just feel might be slightly more commercial, so I may try seeing if I can get an agent for that. But I will probably only try one or two, and then if they say no, I'll just give up and self publish. The only thing against self publishing for me now is that it because I want to do it properly. You know, I pay an editor, I pay a cover designer, I pay a formatter. It becomes quite expensive to pay people. So that's my that's my only downside. But I do like to be totally in control. You know, I can choose my own covers. I can choose when it's published. I can choose what the content is. And if you go with a traditional publisher, you often lose the ability to have the same control   Michael Hingson ** 46:11 well, or you you negotiate, but, but, yeah, I understand what you're saying. I also have to say I understand fully this whole concept of abandonment. When my seventh guide dog Africa retired, and she retired because she wasn't seeing well and she was slowing down, so I knew it was time to get a new guide dog. So it was February 9 of 2018, and we lived here, and her puppy raiser, the people who raised her, they call them, I think, in New Zealand, puppy walkers, but they live about 140 miles south, or about 120 miles in a town called Carlsbad. And they came and I, and I said that they could have Africa, and the only reason I gave her up was because we already had my wife's service dog and a cat, and I was going to get another dog, and Karen wasn't really going to be able to handle taking care of two dogs and a cat when I traveled to speak, so we agreed that Africa could go live with the bill And Peggy, and they came and picked her up, and she walked out the door without a backward glance. I was abandoned.   47:26 Oh, that's awful,   Michael Hingson ** 47:28 yeah. Well, we actually, we went. We went down and visited her several times. She was just excited. No, she's, she was a great dog. And, yes, yeah, you know. And they got to have her for two years before she passed. But she was, she was a good dog and and she had a good life. And I can't complain a bit, but it's fun to tease about how obviously we have abandoning issues here. Yes, yeah.   Pat Backley ** 47:53 And I think that's the secret in life, Michael, to always find something to be happy about and smile about, because life can be very tough, can't it? I mean, you know, it's, yeah, life is tough. And so I think if we don't find, try and seek a little joy, we might as well all give up, you know, yeah, yeah. And   Michael Hingson ** 48:14 there's no need to do that. I mean, God put us on this earth to live an adventure. And life is an adventure,   48:21 absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 48:22 no matter what we do. Yes,   48:25 absolutely. Well, how do you   Michael Hingson ** 48:26 develop your characters? I mean, you're writing historical fiction, so you're you're using history and and periods of time as the the setting for your books, but you're creating your own characters primarily, I gather,   Pat Backley ** 48:39 yes, yes. To be honest, in my head, when I start writing, I almost have an exact picture of my characters. I know exactly what they look like. I mean, if I was to, if I was to suddenly get a film offer, I could easily say how these people should look, because I they're real for for example, a few months after I oh no, maybe a year or so after I published Daisy, I was talking to my daughter one day, and I just said, Oh, do you remember when Theo did whatever? And she looked me straight in the eye, and she said, Mum, I don't know your characters as well as you do. And I just, we both burst out laughing, because to me, they're real people. You know, I I can picture them. I know exactly what they look like. And I think even when I start a new book in my head, I already know what my characters look like. They may not as the plot goes on, behave in the way I want them to, but I know how I know who they are. I know how they how they look. Yeah, they're going   Michael Hingson ** 49:43 to write the book and they're going to tell you what you need to do. Yeah, totally. But you use, but you use, I assume, real places in your books. I always   Pat Backley ** 49:51 use real places, always Yeah, and always places I know, because I think you can write more authentically then, like in days. I wrote about Harlem and Alabama and New York and London, or not New York in that one, but London and because I know all those places, I've been there and you know, they're, they're familiar to me, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 50:13 yeah. So you, you, you let them do what they do, and out comes the book.   Pat Backley ** 50:21 Absolutely, that's right, yes, yeah, have you   Michael Hingson ** 50:25 written any yet in New Zealand?   Pat Backley ** 50:29 You mean, based in New Zealand? The funny thing is, Michael, being an immigrant is and I have spoken to lots of other immigrants about this. In fact, I co authored a book in lockdown called the warrior women project, a sisterhood of immigrant women, which is based in the States. And all the other women are are living in the States, except me, and I caught up with them when I came over to the states. Couple of months ago, we had a reunion, met for the first time, which was wonderful, but we all said, once you are an immigrant, you never truly belong anywhere. You know, when I go, I always feel a little bit of an outsider here. I've been here 14 years now, and that's nobody's that's nothing anybody does. That's just my feeling deep inside. I go back to England, and I feel like an outsider. I used to live in Fiji when I was in my 20s, and then I had a house there. Until my divorce, I go back there, and I've got a lot of extended friend family there, I go back there, and I always feel like an a bit of an outsider. So I think that's the price you pay for wanting a life less ordinary. You know, you somehow become like a little bit of a floating person. And I don't to answer your question, I don't really feel qualified to write about New Zealand. Obviously, I talk about it in my travel book and I talk about different places, but to base the whole story here, I don't feel qualified. There are enough fabulous New Zealand authors who are doing that already, who've been born here, who understand the country, who, you know, who, yeah, they're   Michael Hingson ** 52:07 just at the same time you wrote Daisy, which took place in part in Alabama. How much time did you spend, you know? So it may be, it may be something in the future where a character will pop out and say, I want to be in New Zealand, but that's something to look at.   Pat Backley ** 52:23 Yes, I love it when somebody like you calls me out on my own, my own things, because you're absolutely right. I That's That was a silly argument to say. I don't know it enough. So thank you for that. You've made me rethink. That's good.   Michael Hingson ** 52:37 Well, so I gather that when you're writing, you think you have the plot planned out, or you you try to have the plot planned out, but it doesn't necessarily go the way you plan it. Does it?   Pat Backley ** 52:49 No, not at all. I mean, I know roughly what I want to say. I think what I'm definitely, definitely know what I want to do is get certain little messages across. And that doesn't matter what my characters do, because I can weave that in, like in Daisy. I wanted to get across that slavery was dreadful, and racism is dreadful, and the way black people were treated when they went to England in the 1950s was dreadful. So I managed to we, and that's and that's snobbishness and stuff is dreadful. So I managed to always weave those kind of themes into my books. And apparently, it has been said by reviewers that I do it so well that people it just makes people think about what that how they think how Yeah, so, so those main themes, if you like, I managed to weave into my stories, regardless of how badly my characters behave.   Michael Hingson ** 53:45 So when you're writing, are you pretty disciplined? Do you have certain times that you write, or do you just sit down and write till you're ready to stop for the day? Or what I   Pat Backley ** 53:56 am very non disciplined, undisciplined, whatever the term is supposed to be. I have great intentions. I think, right, I'm going to spend tomorrow writing. I'll be at my desk by eight o'clock, and I'll sit little five. And then at nine o'clock, I get up to go make a cup of coffee. And at 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, I'm out weeding the garden, and then I might come back in and do a little bit, and then I go off and do something else. So I am dreadfully undisciplined, but I work really well to deadlines. Just before I went away on my big trip in September, I was part way through a book, probably a third way through writing a new book, and I woke up one day and I thought, right, I'm going to get that book finished before I go. I had three weeks left. In that three weeks, I had masses of appointments. I had to sort out my wardrobe, which, as a woman, is a huge problem, one that you've probably never had, but you know, you have to decide what goes with what and how many dresses you should take, and it's a huge issue for a lot of women. So I had a lot of jobs to do in that three. Weeks instead of which, I decided to set myself as self imposed time to get the book finished. Crazy. Just, I mean, why? Why? Why crazy?   Michael Hingson ** 55:09 And did you the day   Pat Backley ** 55:11 before? There you are. I was so proud of myself because I just that was it. I decided I and what I did to make myself accountable, I actually put a post on Facebook and Instagram saying, why, and all these little yellow post it notes, and I'd written on their pack suitcase, Do this, do this, do this. And so I just said to everyone that I'd given myself this self pointed deadline so I had made myself publicly accountable. If I hadn't done that, I probably wouldn't have finished it, but I find, for me, that's the best way of disciplining myself is to have a deadline with everything in life, really, yeah. But the   Michael Hingson ** 55:49 other part about it is, even when you're as you would put it, being undisciplined, your brain is still working on the book, and the characters are are mulling things over, so it does pop out. Oh, totally,   Pat Backley ** 56:00 totally. And I end up with lots of little scrappy notes all over the house, you know, where I've just grabbed a piece of paper and written down something. And then, of course, I have to gather them all together. And when I was in the States recently, I spent two months, and I've got scrap I was doing a lot of research, and I've got scrappy notes everywhere. So I've now got to try and pull those all together while my brain still remembers what they were meant to be, you know, like lady in red dress in New Orleans. Well, what does that really mean? So, right? I'm, I'm my own worst enemy in many ways, but,   Michael Hingson ** 56:37 but she thought, and so you went through it exactly, exactly, yeah, that's okay. Where did you travel in September?   Pat Backley ** 56:45 I went to Atlanta first to meet up with these warrior women, which was truly fabulous. Then I went to New Orleans, and my friend who lives in Alabama, picked me up, and we went to New Orleans, and then we drove back to Alabama. She lives in Huntsville. So I was there for a week and was doing lots of research, because Daisy is partly based right and then we then she drove me back to Nashville, and I flew to New York, where I was meeting some friends from New Zealand who lived there six months of the year. So I spent six days there and went to Harlem for more research and stuff like that, and then flew to Canada, to Toronto, where two friends, a lady I'd met when we had our daughters together, and her daughter, they now live in France. They flew from France, met me in Toronto, we hired the biggest SUV I've ever seen in my life, and we drove across Canada for three weeks, which was such fun, such fun. And then I came home. So I've got millions of scrappy notes that I need to pull together to write a travel book and to use as inspiration for my novels.   Michael Hingson ** 58:01 So you so you're going to write another travel book? I   58:05 am going to write another travel book. Yeah, yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 58:09 And the the abandoned wives handbook, that's kind of a self help book. That's a self help book, yes, yeah. Just you think you'll write another one of   Pat Backley ** 58:17 those? No, no, I'm done with that one's enough of those, huh? Yeah, that's right. I'm not an expert, Michael and the I just, I just, but the funny thing is, when I do talks, I always talk about all my books. And a few weeks ago, I was talking at this very smart meeting of ex business people, both ladies and gentlemen, and they were all over 60. Um, so quite a conservative audience. And at the end, or towards the end, I just mentioned this abandoned Wise Book, I tend to skim over it. I don't really, I don't really talk about it too much unless the audience is particularly relevant. But I just said to them, oh, and this is my little book. And someone said, Oh, could you read us an excerpt from it? So I said, Okay, I'll just open the book at random. And I opened the book and the title, what you won't be able to see here, the title of that chapter was K for kill. And I thought, no, no, I don't want to read about kill front of this audience. So I just made a joke of it and and I'll just read it to you, because it will make you laugh, as I have said previously under Section indecisive. You may, in your darkest moments, think about hurting him. This is not really a great idea, as you would undoubtedly be caught and end up in prison. Yeah, you so, you know, I and then I went on a bit more, but, you know, it's some yeah and no, I'm done with that book. I've, I've done my bit for humanity with that. It seems to be helping a lot of people. So that's that's enough.   Michael Hingson ** 59:45 Yeah, I would never make a good criminal, because I know I'd be caught and and I don't know how to keep from getting caught, and frankly, don't care about trying to get worry about getting caught or not getting caught. It's easier just not to be a criminal. So it works out fine. So. Yes,   1:00:00 exactly. Yeah, me too. Me too. So much   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:02 easier. So much easier. Absolutely, absolutely yes. Well, if people want to reach out to you and maybe learn a little bit more about you or meet you, how do they do that? Okay,   Pat Backley ** 1:00:12 well, my website is just patch back league com, so it's very easy. Um, I'm Can you spell that please? Yes, yes, of course, P, A, T, B, A, C, K, L, E, y.com.com, yeah, and I'm on all the channels, as you know, Facebook and Instagram and x and LinkedIn and stuff as Pat Backley author or pat Backley books. And my books are all available from Amazon, all the online retailers, Barnes and Noble stuff like that, as ebooks or paperbacks, or if someone desperately wanted a signed copy, I'm very happy to send them a signed copy, and you can get them from you can request them from libraries.   Michael Hingson ** 1:00:59 Have you? Have you thought about making any of them an audio format?   Pat Backley ** 1:01:05 I have someone's. A few people have suggested that this year, when I've been doing talks, they've come up to me afterwards, and yes, I think I'm going to, as long as it's not too costly, because at the moment, my budget is extremely limited, but I'm going to do them myself, because everyone feels that my books will be come come across better in my own voice so well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:25 and you read well. So I think that makes a lot of sense to consider.   Pat Backley ** 1:01:29 Thank you, Michael, that's very kind of you. Well, Pat,   Michael Hingson ** 1:01:33 this has been fun, and I've enjoyed it. I've learned a lot of things as well, and I'm and I'm glad that we've had this chance. We need to do it again. When are you going to start a podcast?   Pat Backley ** 1:01:47 Well, funny, you should say that I've decided I'm going to I'm going to just dip my toes in very gently. I'm going to start it in the new year, and I'm going to call it and this makes everyone who knows me laugh. I'm going to call it just 10 minutes with Pat Backley. And everyone has said, Oh, don't be ridiculous. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:05 I agree, 10   Pat Backley ** 1:02:06 minutes, but I thought it's a way of just gently edging in. And then if people enjoy listening to me, they might want to listen for longer after a while. But I thought initially, just 10 minutes, little snippets, if they like what they hear, they might come back.   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:21 They'll come back. Oh, I don't think there would be a problem. Well, if you, if you ever need a guest to come and spend at least 10 minutes, just let me know. I   Pat Backley ** 1:02:30 certainly shall. I have absolutely loved talking to you. Michael, thank you so much for inviting me as well. This is a very joyful morning. I've really loved it. Thank you. Well,   Michael Hingson ** 1:02:39 this has been fun, and I want to thank all of you for listening. I hope you've enjoyed it and reach out to Pat. I'm sure she would love to communicate with you, and maybe in some way, you'll end up in a book, which is always a nice, good thing to think about as well. I'd love to hear what you think about our podcast today. So please feel free to email me. Michael, h, i, m, I, C H, A, E, L, H i at accessibe, A, C, C, E, S, S, I b, e.com, or go to our podcast page, which is at w, w, w, dot Michael hingson.com/podcast, and Michael hingson is spelled M, I, C, H, A, E, L, H, I N, G, S O n.com/podcast, wherever You're listening. We would really appreciate it if you would give us a five star rating. And we we value that. We value your thoughts and input. Pat for you and all of you listening. If you know an

This week's message is titled The Sure Foundation and the scripture reference is Isaiah 28:16. If you would like to worship with us in person, we would love to have you.  Our address is:4103 W Texas St.Carlsbad, NM 88220 Sunday School starts at 9:30AMSunday Morning Service starts at 10:45.Wednesday Night Bible Study starts at 6:00PM. Additional Sermon podcasts can be downloaded by going to https://podcast.hvbcnm.org Thank you and God Bless!

The Live recording of the 10 am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik April 20, 2025.

Ever wondered how a career in industrial engineering can lead to a thriving podcast empire? Or how breaking into Apple's supply chain can take over two years of relentless dedication? Join me, Bret Schanzenbach, as I chat with Jim Miller, the mastermind behind Bold Leadership Stories Media. From his roots at Cal Poly to navigating the world of technical sales with giants like 3M and Hewlett Packard, Jim's journey is a rollercoaster of perseverance and innovation.Discover how the pandemic catalyzed Jim's transformation into a health enthusiast, shedding 50 pounds and launching the Wealthy Healthy Life Show. We dive into his passion for storytelling, the power of networking, and the lessons he's learned from startups to personal wellness. Tune in for an episode brimming with insights for entrepreneurs and anyone eager to make a meaningful impact in their community. Don't miss it!Find Bold Leadership Stories on YouTube and explore Jim's journey today!Jim Miller's BioI have a marketing and sales background in high tech. My customers were Apple, Microsoft, HP and Google. I'm a dad of two beautiful daughters and PapaJim to my grand daughter. I'm currently working on building an audience for my girlfriend, Lisa Loree and am a video podcast host. My focus in life right now is learning and applying strategies for longevity health and generational wealth.Connect with JimYouTube: @boldleadershipstoriesLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jimcmiller1 Did this episode have a special impact on you? Share how it impacted youCarlsbad Podcast Social Links:LinkedInInstagramFacebookXYouTubeSponsor: This show is sponsored and produced by DifMix Productions. To learn more about starting your own podcast, visit www.DifMix.com/podcasting

This week's message is titled Them O Dry Bones and the scripture reference is Ezekiel 37:1-14. If you would like to worship with us in person, we would love to have you.  Our address is:4103 W Texas St.Carlsbad, NM 88220 Sunday School starts at 9:30AMSunday Morning Service starts at 10:45.Wednesday Night Bible Study starts at 6:00PM. Additional Sermon podcasts can be downloaded by going to https://podcast.hvbcnm.org Thank you and God Bless!

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

Normally I say Yes you are in.  This one is a tough lift.  This one is dedicated to you going through a really tough time and asking Why...here you go...Thank you Chris Brown, guest speaking at SW Church, Indian Wells CA.  You can find that one on YouTube.  A Heart of Surrender, published on April 6, 2025.  You can find the link in the show description if so desired.1 Sam 4https://youtu.be/gHmHLCidCCA?si=XjdVK2pSh_2xGkYIChris Brown, guest speaking at SW Church, Indian Wells CAYou can find more of Chris Brown at North Coast Church in Carlsbad and multiple areas mainly in San Diego area, CAhttps://www.northcoastchurch.com/locations/Minute 9:20?, 1 Sam 4 reading, why?12:49, why?13:20 mic drop23:30 reading and summary25:20, have you ever wanted your money back?26:00, it gets worseMinute, 27:00 yep, go!  Sunday School never taught this oneAs some of you are going into Easter weekend or if listening later.  This quote happened during that Holy Week... Father, why have you forsaken me?  Matthew 27:46 and Mark 15:34So if you asked Why.  The Lord and Savior Jesus Christ even asked why.  Chris Brown is correct.  They don't teach that enough in Sunday School or any day for that matter for kids or adults.  Sometimes life is simply really, really hard...and it doesn't get better fast.  Yet what I respect about the Word is it doesn't sugar coat.  We humans can sugar coat it.  That is a mistake.  God doesn't sugar coat.  Jesus Christ does not sugar coat it.  We are told there will be times to mourn Ecc 3:4.  We are told we will be mocked and hated, Matt 5:11.  That we will ALL get sick and die, Rom 6:23.  So why are we suprised?  I'm not saying you should like it.  Versed ones, why are we suprised?  Why are you expecting perfection?Here is where you can expect perfection, Rev 21:4.  When we get away from this broken, brutal planet, for those that 'choose' John 3:16 and Rom 8:1 and Rom 10: 9-10, we get...Revelation 21:4 NLT, Bible.comHe will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.”   

St. Michael's by-the-Sea is an Episcopal Church located in the coastal Village of Carlsbad, California. As far as churches go, it's kind of a beachy version of the ancient Christian Faith, and is rooted in the Anglo-Catholic tradition. Whether you're in town for a week at the beach or a local pilgrim on a spiritual journey, you are welcome here! www.stmichaelsbythesea.org

The Live recording of the 10am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik April 13, 2025.

This week's message is titled From A Seed To A Tree and the scripture reference is Psalm 1:3. If you would like to worship with us in person, we would love to have you.  Our address is:4103 W Texas St.Carlsbad, NM 88220 Sunday School starts at 9:30AMSunday Morning Service starts at 10:45.Wednesday Night Bible Study starts at 6:00PM. Additional Sermon podcasts can be downloaded by going to https://podcast.hvbcnm.org Thank you and God Bless!

On this Out of Bounds episode I bring back on brand strategist/designer/coach and lover of comics and sci-fi Ian McEwen. We talk about comics, brand identity, sci-fi, and sports. You can follow Ian McEwen on IG @thetruthquarry   SHARE, SUBSCRIBE, COMMENT AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS Video Episode at YouTube@quantallangford SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew Get my sci-fi conceptual book: Worlds within Worlds Art book available at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

The Live recording of the 10am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik April 6, 2025.

Ever wondered how a life-threatening wildfire could inspire a thriving business? In episode 152 of the Carlsbad: People, Purpose, and Impact podcast, I sit down with Rachel Arbuckle, the remarkable owner of 2000 Paces Photo Organizing. From her childhood as a Navy brat, through her service as a neuropsychiatric technician, to her entrepreneurial journey, Rachel shares her fascinating story and the pivotal moment that led to the creation of her company.Join us as we explore how Rachel transformed the anxiety of nearly losing precious photo memories during the 2014 Cocos Fire into a mission to help others preserve their cherished moments. Discover the innovative services 2000 Paces offers, from digitizing and organizing photos to creating personalized photo books that reconnect clients with their memories in meaningful ways.Rachel also sheds light on the emotional power of photos, sharing heartwarming stories of clients finding solace in their organized collections. Plus, learn about the cutting-edge technology her company employs to streamline the organization process, making it easier than ever to create keepsakes for the future.Tune in to uncover how Rachel's passion for preserving memories can help you focus on what truly matters, even during life's most challenging times.Rachel's BioRachel Arbuckle is the Founder and CEO of 2000 Paces Photo Organizing—a company born from a personal crisis turned into a passion for preserving memories. In 2014, when a series of fierce fires roared through San Diego County—with the largest igniting on the mountain behind her home—Rachel's instinct to protect her family's cherished photos was put to the test. Amid the chaos of scattered boxes, picture frames, and albums, she realized that her precious memories were vulnerable. This pivotal moment not only solidified her commitment to safeguarding her family's legacy but also inspired her to establish a service that would help others secure their own irreplaceable moments.At 2000 Paces Photo Organizing, Rachel and her dedicated, experienced team understand that many of us have at least a few shoeboxes or legal boxes filled with treasured yet disorganized family photos, memorabilia, and home videos stored on outdated media. Their approach is simple yet effective: they listen carefully to each client's unique photo organizing goals and provide personalized suggestions and solutions that transform overwhelming piles into beautifully organized archives.With print and digital photo organizing services designed to help you easily locate and enjoy your memories, along with digitization services that convert physical items into digital files for long-term preservation and accessibility, Rachel and her team are passionate about reconnecting people with their memories and history. The commitment to protecting and sharing your stories drives every project, ensuring that each memory is treasured for years to come.Connect with RachelWebsiteYoutubeFacebookInstagramLinkedIn Did this episode have a special impact on you? Share how it impacted youCarlsbad Podcast Social Links:LinkedInInstagramFacebookXYouTubeSponsor: This show is sponsored and produced by DifMix Productions. To learn more about starting your own podcast, visit www.DifMix.com/podcasting

This week's message is titled Coronation Day and the scripture reference is 1 Peter 5:4. If you would like to worship with us in person, we would love to have you.  Our address is:4103 W Texas St.Carlsbad, NM 88220 Sunday School starts at 9:30AMSunday Morning Service starts at 10:45.Wednesday Night Bible Study starts at 6:00PM. Additional Sermon podcasts can be downloaded by going to https://podcast.hvbcnm.org Thank you and God Bless!

At least five international students at UC San Diego face an uncertain future after their F-1 visas were unexpectedly revoked. We're learning that two San Diego based US Customs and Border Protection officers are facing federal charges for allegedly taking bribes to let vehicles with undocumented migrants into the US. Carlsbad police had to rescue a seas lion from a bike lane on Carlsbad Boulevard.   What You Need To Know To Start Your Sunday. 

The Live recording of the 10am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik March 30, 2025.

The context of this episode was taken from a talk after one of my team practices. For my creatives, athletes and entrepreneurs we have to become friends with hard things. The things necessary for us to show up fully everyday in whatever capacity you're currently in. Become friends with the things most people wouldn't do and you'll become the most creative and powerful version of you. I would love if you ranked this podcast, share a comment or share this episode out! AVAILABLE ON SPOTIFY, SOUNDCLOUD, APPLE PODCASTS SUPPORT THE SHOW: BEHIND THE SCENES CONTENT + SPECIAL DEALS + BONUS EPISODES www.buymeacoffee.com/TheCreativeBrew My new art book Worlds within Worlds available in digital form at: https://books.apple.com/us/book/worlds-within-worlds/id6502226996 Or get the physical book at: www.langfordesign.com/ebooks/ or locally at Studio Ace Artshop in Oceanside, CA. Oceanside Comic Stronghold, Oceanside, CA. Mystic Ritual Shop, Oceanside, CA. SPONSORS Baba Coffee Baba roasts their coffee beans each week and offer only the freshest coffee. Have an espresso, latte, cappuccino, pour over or drip coffee. Try cold brew coffee, nitro cold brew or a bulletproof coffee. We serve hot tea, cold brew teas, and boba milk teas.  They also have an assortment of delicious food (try their Avocado Toast), mimosas, wine or beer. Open: Sun-Thurs. 6am-6pm + Fri 6am-9pm + Sat. 6am-7pm

In the first two months of the Trump administration, the political and regulatory environment have shifted considerably. Since the inauguration, we've fielded dozens of questions about the slew of executive orders, cuts to research funding, HHS layoffs, tariffs, and an unstable economic outlook. All of that is coupled with the potential for major payment cuts to government-funded healthcare and rising scrutiny over public health and the healthcare industry writ large. The sheer pace of change leaves many healthcare leaders wondering where they need to focus their attention and energy. This week, we're here to clarify some of the chaos and help leaders focus their efforts on what is most pressing and most actionable. To do that, host Rachel (Rae) Woods invites Advisory Board experts Natalie Trebes and Max Hakanson to break down the operating conditions as the second Trump term takes shape. We're here to help: If there are specific policy areas or issues that you want to hear more about, or you are interested in talking to our research team (or getting access to our working documents), let us know by leaving us a voice message or emailing us. Links: Ep. 230: Elections results are in: What healthcare leaders need to know How could Trump's new tariffs impact healthcare? Thousands laid off at HHS: What you need to know RFK Jr. wants to change how Medicare pays doctors Health policy roundup: The latest on measles, abortion, and gender-affirming care Health policy roundup: Trump signs executive order on price transparency Learn more about the origins of Ozempic Learn more about the Advisory Board Summit in Carlsbad, CA. A transcript of this episode as well as more information and resources can be found on RadioAdvisory.advisory.com.

Michael and Tim are joined by Barry Shreiar of the Army and Navy Academy in Carlsbad, CA to talk about raising virtuous boys. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Glen Van Peski, ultralight backpacking pioneer and founder of Gossamer Gear, joins me to talk about his philosophy of “take less, do more.” We'll explore how simplifying your approach to life can free up time, energy, and focus for what truly matters.Glen shares lessons from decades of hiking and leadership, including the surprising connection between generosity and happiness, the power of gratitude, and why spending time in nature is essential for mental and physical health.Plus, if you've ever wanted to try backpacking but felt intimidated, Glen offers practical tips to help you get started—without lugging 50 pounds of gear.Whether you're curious about ultralight backpacking or want to live with greater intention, Glen's wisdom will inspire you to embrace the journey and lighten your load.Glen Van Peski is widely recognized by the trail name “Legend” for his legendary contributions to the backpacking community. A native Californian with a childhood rooted in the western outdoors, Glen's journey into backpacking began when his oldest son joined Scouts, and he led the Troop's backpacking program.Through those experiences, he became intrigued by lightweight backpacking and started sewing his gear. In 1998, he founded Gossamer Gear, a company dedicated to manufacturing ultralight backpacking equipment. Over the years, Glen and his company have been featured in Backpacker, Outside, and National Geographic Adventure magazines, and The New York Times.Beyond his passion for backpacking and entrepreneurial success, Glen had an extended career in civil engineering. Most recently, he served as the Community and Economic Development Director for the City of Carlsbad, California. Prior to spending nearly adecade in various roles with the city, he served as an engineering consultant. Before that role, Glen held the role of President of Pacific Rim Engineering.Glen is a sought-after speaker known for his inspiring, humorous, information-packed presentations. His extensive backpacking experiences include hiking most of thePacific Crest Trail, exploring the backcountry in Japan and Europe, and bikepacking along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR). Glen lives in Bend, Oregon, with wife of over 40 years Francie, and is the father of two grown sons.To read more fun facts, interests and companies Glen is involved in visit glenvanpeski.com/about/Buy a copy of Glen's award-winning book, Take Less, Do More: https://a.co/d/0Y3I7LuTune in each week for practical, relatable advice that helps you feel your best and unlock your full potential. If you're ready to prioritize your health and level up every area of your life, you'll find the tools, insights, and inspiration right here. Buy Esther's Book: To Your Health - https://a.co/d/iDG68qUFollow Esther on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@estheravantFollow Esther on IG - https://www.instagram.com/esther.avantLearn more about booking Esther to speak: https://www.estheravant.comLearn more about working with Esther: https://www.madebymecoaching.com/services

The Live recording of the 10am Service at Steadfast Church in Carlsbad, California with Pastor Chris Fik March 23, 2025.

Ever wanted to talk to who's behind your Titleist clubs? Here's your chance. Chris and Tony are sitting down with Stephanie Luttrell and JJ Van Wezenbeeck straight from the design studio and behind the ropes of TOUR fittings. We've got a big check list today from Carlsbad, CA. Let's get it! Special thanks to @titleist for hosting

The Carlsbad City Council approved to ban people sleeping in vehicles in public spaces. 16 people were arrested in Escondido and are accused of being part of a major drug traffic operation. 10 women were honored for their contributions to San Diego in the 4th annual 'Women of Distinction.'