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Play Episode Listen Later May 7, 2020 57:25

Dr. Sherr believes that Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) -- the administration of 100% oxygen at greater than atmospheric pressure -- is one of the most powerful ways to decreasing inflammation, accelerate wound healing, and optimise both physical and mental performance. He is one of the few HBOT providers in the USA that creates personalised treatment plans for patients that include cutting edge & dynamic HBOT protocols, adjunctive technologies, laboratory testing, and nutritional interventions. Dr. Sherr is the Director of Integrative Hyperbaric Medicine and Health Optimization at Hyperbaric Medical Solutions, in addition to operating his own independent hyperbaric consultation practice and performing in-person consultations in the San Francisco Bay Area (where he lives). Dr. Sherr aims to create access and educate all those who may benefit from HBOT through telemedicine consulting, advocacy, and education practice worldwide. I wanted to share this second episode with Dr Sherr (he was on back in episode 77) to go even deeper into the little known facts about hyperbaric oxygen therapy like making epigenetic shifts, angiogenesis, stem cell production, lymph drainage and how it influences around 8000 genes in the body. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy was a major component in my mother, Isobel's rehabilitation after a devastating brain injury over 4 years ago. Isobel was left with hardly any higher functioning, the brain damage was so severe she was unable to control her body in any meaningful fashion, had virtually no memory, no speech and was let in the . stage of a toddler at the age of 74. But after three months in hospital and after months studying hyperbaric oxygen therapy and searching for somewhere to get her access to it I was lucky enough to find a chamber to use. What followed was in my opinion nothing short of miraculous. and now after thousands of hours of training, combined with supplementation and diet changes and over 250 hyperbaric sessions later. Mum is completely normal again, can walk, read, write, do all her normal daily duties and is living a full life again, her doctor saying is a one in a million comeback story. This is why I was so excited to get one of the worlds leading experts on this therapy to speak on my podcast and to explain much clearer and better than I ever could, just what the mechanisms of HBOT are and the benefits, limitations and research going into this area of medicine. My book "Relentless" which is out now on my website and everywhere good books are sold shares our journey with hyperbaric among other adjunctive therapies. We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body. Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige... measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds... Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option. Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete. Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible] brought to you by lisatamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:12) Well hi everyone. Fantastic to have you back again on pushing the limits today. I have a fantastic interview with Dr. Scott Scheer, who is a physician out of the United States. Now Scott, Dr. Scott has been on my podcast previously and it was one of the most popular episodes, so I'm really, really privileged to have him back on. Yeah, Dr. Scott is a pioneer in health optimization medicine and in this episode we really going and doing a deep dive into one of my favorite therapies, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, but we're also going to be talking about meta below mix in the hollow biome. Yeah, Dr. Scott is a position certified in the health optimization medicine and in hyperbaric same time and he uses both of these protocols and adjunctive technologies. Uh, he's a father of four and he's an incredible, uh, really outside of the box thinker and I love his approach to his work. Speaker 2: (01:04) So I'm hope you enjoy this episode with Dr. Scott shoe. Just a reminder, my book [inaudible] is now out. And, uh, my story with my mom was all, uh, one of the cornerstone therapies was hyperbaric oxygen therapy and I was, it was wonderful to connect with Dr. Scott about that previously and to learn all about hyperbaric. So I hope you enjoy this interview and if you want to grab the book while you're at it, he don't have it to my website, lisatamati.com and there was a lengthier under the shop for the books, so check them all out. Thanks for listening and we'll see you again soon. And now over to Dr. Scott. Well, hi everyone. Lisa Tamati here and very excited to have you on board again today for an exciting episode. I have Dr. Scott Scheer with me who is a hyperbaric specialist, uh, from the States and he is, uh, had been on my show before and he is now coming back on here. It was one of the most popular episodes on the whole show. So I'm really, really excited to have Dr. Scott Beck and he's actually sitting in his own hyperbaric chamber right now and doing the interview from inside his own hyperbaric. So Dr. Scott, how are you doing? Speaker 3: (02:16) I'm doing well. Can you hear me okay, Lisa? Speaker 2: (02:18) Yeah, it's not too bad. We might have to ramp up the volume when we're doing the either thing, but we'll give it a go. See, here we go. Okay, Speaker 3: (02:26) sounds good. Speaker 2: (02:27) I'm sorry. Speaker 3: (02:31) Yes, I'm in my own chamber. I, um, I have my own mild hyperbaric units. Mild hyperbaric therapy is defined as hyperbaric therapy, less than or 1.3 atmospheres or more superficial than that. Um, and so these chambers go to about 15 feet of seawater equivalent. Um, and these chambers are approved for home use. Um, and I use them for a lot of different reasons, but personally I use it for just overall health and wellness, cognitive capacity enhancements, muscle recovery, jet lag, and a couple of other other indications. The chamber is nice because it's a triangular type of chamber, which means that you can actually sit up in it and not have to lie down completely. And I've been using it a lot these days, given pandemics and all those kinds of things and doing my best to stay healthy along with everybody else. At least a lot of other people that are not eating junk food all the time. Speaker 2: (03:32) Yeah. And we'll get into that a little bit later that year. Um, no amount of boy hacking all out to a good dog bed diet. So we definitely need to focus on that. But, so Dr. Scott, so I have my own hyperbaric chamber. I go in and every pretty much, you know, three or four times a week at least my one goes up to 1.5 atmospheres. And, but you also have a clinic that goes, uh, has, um, hyperbaric chambers that go, uh, too high up precious. Can you explain a little bit difference between the mild hyperbaric and the medical grade, if you like hyperbaric sort of things? Speaker 3: (04:09) Yeah, sure. So hyperbaric therapy in the United States is approved for 14 different conditions and all of those conditions have been studied at two atmospheres or greater. And so all the medical conditions for hyperbaric therapy cannot be treated in mild hyperbaric units. They can only be treated in, in units that are more medical grade. The medical grade chambers go down. Uh, there's different types of medical grade chambers. The most common, it's called a motto place or a single unit occupancy chamber. That chamber goes down to somewhere between 2.4 to three atmospheres of pressure. Three atmospheres of pressure is the equivalent of 66 feet of seawater. What's interesting about 66 feet of sea water equivalent is that when they, that's actually where they've done studies showing that at that level you no longer need red blood cells in circulation to get enough oxygen diffused into the plasma where the liquid of your blood at that level and maintain your physiologic functions. Speaker 3: (05:10) So it's a, it's a significant amount of oxygen that we can get into circulation. And so, um, what we're doing in a chamber is obviously driving more oxygen into circulation. And that's kind of like the quick and dirty of what's happening. When you go in there. The heart chambers are typically going down to deeper pressures, um, two atmospheres or above. Mmm. And then the soft chambers, um, depending on the type of chamber you have, it could go down to 1.3. Some of them go to 1.5. It depends on the country and the location. Well, I think what's more important for people is not that type of chamber really. But because some soft chambers can actually go to very deep pressures and heart chamber go to any pressure, they can go to superficial chamber pressures and they can go to deep pressure. What's most important, I think is knowing is treated or what the difference in treatments is depending on the pressure. Speaker 3: (06:03) Mmm. We think of neurologic pressure. So brain and spinal cord related pressures being somewhere between 1.3 and 2.0 and we think of things outside the central nervous system, soft tissue, um, and sort of overall hello. Outside of the central nervous system. A 2.0 and greater in general. No. From a like detoxification, lymphatic perspective, you can get benefits at both at 1.3 to 2.0 along with a 2.0 or greater. And from a STEM cell release perspective, the further down you go, the deeper you go, the more STEM cells that are released. So the indications fall into those two basic categories of neurologic versus non neurologic conditions. Although you can modulate the salt chambers to help you with some non neurologic conditions as well. You are getting more oxygen in circulation, right? So you are getting the ability to enhance your flow of oxygen to tissues regardless of the chamber and regardless of the pressure actually, although some pressure is needed. Mmm. And then you are helping with detoxification as well, no matter what pressures you're using, Speaker 2: (07:19) but it's more optimal at the, at the higher pressures. So, Speaker 3: (07:23) okay. Speaker 2: (07:24) So for neuro separate brain injury, like um, you know, not my story with my mum, um, 1.5 was what, you know, we were recommended is an ideal, uh, pressure for, for brain injury. So, so you're saying the neurological, the problems that people have actually better at the lower or the a then this oppression. So I should say, and for things like, um, Mmm diabetic wounds or um, healing injuries, uh, boons, that type of thing at a higher pressure would be more beneficial, but, or hyperbaric will help with detoxification. And was the limps and speeding up the healing hearing properties, the STEM cell release, is that higher when it's deeper, uh, pressure or high pressure? Speaker 3: (08:11) Yes. Yeah. The deeper you go, the more STEM cells are released because it's related to how much oxygen is being infused. The more oxygen infused, the more STEM cells get released. It's a, it's kind of a, it's kind of, it's a direct relationship. Speaker 2: (08:27) So do you know the, um, so I remember from the last podcast you're saying, you know, up to 12 times the amount of oxygen can be taken up into the body. Um, it is sad. So it says three atmospheres, there'll be 12 times in it at one and a half atmospheres. That would be, I don't know, somewhere in that for some six, seven times the amount of Mmm. Uh, oxygen that's diffusing. Now, the difference with a hyperbaric is actually, you know, like people will say, well, you know, I put an SPO two of my little thing on my finger and it says I'm 98%. I'm saturated with oxygen, right? How do I get more oxygen in? So what is the different mechanism between normal barracks, uh, pressure and hyperbaric pressure? Speaker 3: (09:16) Yeah, it's a question I get a lot, Lisa, and I'm sure you get it a lot too. So a pulse oximeter, it's something you put it on your finger and that measures the arterial oxygen saturation of your red blood cells. So you, red blood cells are what typically carry oxygen from your lungs. When you take a deep breath [inaudible] after going out of your lungs, as they go through the rest of your body and they to release oxygen so that you can make energy without oxygen, you cannot make ATP, which is the energy, energy currency of, of our body. And so you're right, our red blood cell carrying capacity for oxygen at sea level, he's actually quite good. That's when you put a pulsox machine on your finger. You get 97 to a hundred percent if you have normal lungs. So hyperbaric therapy is going to saturate any more sites on the red blood cells where they can carry oxygen. Speaker 3: (10:08) If there is like 97% sites, I already occupied those extra 3% will be occupied. But what's actually happening and the power of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in its ability to change this gaseous form of oxygen into a liquid form that actually diffuses directly into the plasma or the liquid of our blood and the liquid of our blood has very little oxygen in it at sea level. And we can diffuse up to 12 times or actually even more than that, a deeper pressures than three ATA, oxygen in circulation. And it's that extra oxygen you cannot get without having also been under pressure at the same time as getting more oxygen as well. Speaker 2: (10:49) So then this is really powerful when it comes to say injuries where uh, there's been a blockage to the blood supply to a certain area so that whether that's from a heart attack or a stroke or you know, Mmm. Or even as I presume with crush injuries and certain things like this we are not able to get, Lisa was a blocked in some way that you can actually perfuse the area around the injury with oxygen despite it not going through the blood vessels. Is that, is there a correct way of explaining it or Speaker 3: (11:25) know? The way I like to think about it is that you have all this oxygen that's now in circulation and it's kind of like oxygen, just like osmosis. We'll go to the area where there's less of it, so the more oxygen you have in a blood vessel, the more of that oxygen is going to get into the tissue around the blood vessel so you don't have to have as much vascular density potentially to get oxygen to that tissue because we've found a few, so much oxygen inside of that tissue bed itself that it could potentially factor as a way of saving tissue in the acute setting. So like you said, like the acute ischemia is the acute hypoxia is or low oxygen safe that happened with a heart attack. Well you have a lack of a blood flow in a coronary artery or a stroke. Speaker 3: (12:09) We have lack of blood flow, an artery in the brain or a spinal cord injury. When you have arteries that are actually broken you can actually get more oxygen to that tissue because you can diffuse more into the tissue bed around the injured blood vessel. It was also good is that when you have an acute injury there's also going to be a lot of swelling and actually injury too. The vessels that are going to cause leakage of that fluid and swelling. And actually in the chamber you actually constrict down blood vessels a little bit and that constriction actually helps you and prevents some of that fluid from releasing. And for some of that swelling to happen, even though you have this constriction of the blood vessel, you've also net had a significant delivery of oxygen to that tissue regardless because we've had all of that oxygen diffuse into the plasma. So Mmm, oxygen carrying capacity in normal settings without pressure is only dependent on how many red blood cells you have. But in a chamber we're pressurizing your body, pressurizing your breath or your whole body really. But when you take a deep breath, that pressurized oxygen is driven into the plasma or your liquid of the blood and that liquid of your, of your blood, it can go much further and diffuse much further into tissues outside of blood vessels as well. Speaker 2: (13:26) So for an example was, um, you know, my mom's story with the aneurysm. If I had managed, and of course at this stage I didn't know anything about Harbor about when this first happened, but if I'd been able to get her into a chamber immediately after the event occurred, uh, the cause the inflammation obviously with a broad love and Brian tissue mixing causes inflammation in the skull. Yeah. Um, that would have been hugely beneficial if I've managed to get her in a few times immediately after the event. So after she was stable, yes. Obviously, yeah, Speaker 3: (14:03) being stable. So I have some people, I just like to be very clear, you should go to a hospital. Did you have a stroke or you will have a heart attack and don't go to your local hyperbaric provider once you're stabilized. Yes. Um, there are some indications that the sooner that you can get treated in a chamber, the more oxygen you can get to your brain to a certain degree. I mean, not huge amounts. You don't want to go down to three atmospheres because that could be dangerous for your brain, but oxygen to your brain, oxygen to your heart after an acute event is going to save tissue in your brain and save tissue in your heart. [inaudible] they've even done studies looking at people that are getting bypass procedures, coronary bypass procedures. And if they're doing this, they get into a hyperbaric chamber right before, um, they save tissue in their heart so they, they have more harder to function, have better neurologic function after a coronary artery bypass grafting procedure. Speaker 2: (14:56) Wow. So, so Dr. Scott, like why is there any place in the world where this is offered in the ICU? You know, in the acute setting where people are coming in with major injuries or strokes or heart attacks or this type of thing where it's actually used as a part of the syrupy and if not, why not? Why is it not everywhere? Speaker 3: (15:17) Well to do acute care, hyperbaric therapy, it takes very specialized capability because if you're going to be in there with attendance or you have IVs going and you have others drugs you need to give, it's, it's definitely a specialized service. Um, in Japan, China and Russia, it's used much more in the acute setting than it is in the United States. The U S it has, and it still is used for acute trauma. So if you have like a traumatic ischemia, like we have a traumatic injury to one of your soft tissue areas, for example, it can be used. Um, but in general, um, it's not used as often in the trauma setting in the, in the U S as it is in other countries, especially China, Russia and Japan. Speaker 2: (16:05) Right. Okay. And it's not, it's not used here either and it's not even approved. Is it on the, in America, is it an approved treatment for, um, neurological events? Speaker 3: (16:18) There's no neurologic indication that's covered right now in the United States. Wow. Yeah. Speaker 2: (16:23) Even though it is right, Speaker 3: (16:24) I'm going to change that. And I mean the one that has the had the most, I think research behind it in the most interest is traumatic brain injury and concussion. There is definitely some good studies from across the world. M a U S showing how hyperbaric therapy can help people recover from concussion and traumatic brain injuries, which is another name for concussion really either in the short term and like from an acute concussion or even from hello term symptoms that may not go away. Speaker 2: (16:53) Yeah, absolutely. So we were talking about like there's different things here that are going on. You've got, it's detecting the inflammation is producing more STEM cells. It's a, it's Oh, sorry. Knocking off senescent cells isn't it? Which are your old cells that are not doing much of anything. Speaker 3: (17:15) Yeah, they're called the zombie cells. Right. So, um, can we, I like to think about hyperbaric therapy is, is relatively simply, there's four things that we do in the chamber. The first thing we do is we reverse hypoxia. We've been already talking about that. We reverse low oxygen States by getting more oxygen into circulation and over the longterm a protocol of hyperbaric therapy, create new blood vessels in those areas that have been injured. We're going to play games and then maintain the ability to get blood flow to that tissue over the long term. That's the first thing, reversing hypoxia. The second thing is decreasing inflammation. It does that immediately by constructing down the blood vessels like we talked about, but also over the longterm. It has the ability to shift our epigenetics, change how our body, our DNA expresses certain proteins that are responsible for inflammation. Speaker 3: (18:07) Things like TNF alpha, I'll one L six I'll eight and others. The third thing it does is releases a massive number of STEM cells. Those STEM cells all released throughout the body and they hone or they go to areas where there is more inflammation or there's more need for STEM cells to go to those areas and regenerate them. The next thing that happens is that there is, especially in higher oxygen environments, we have the ability to kill bugs, kill bacteria, fungus, and potentially even viruses. A deeper pressures in the chamber. So senescence cell populations look like they do get decreased or they do go down. We're not exactly sure how that's happening. We don't know if that's happening because those cells are being regenerated or if those cells are being killed off and either way is good for the body really. Because when they stick around and they're not replicating, and there we have a high association with cancer, with degenerative disease. Yeah. With aging overall. So senescent cells aren't cool in general. So we want those to go away. Uh, we don't know if that's because new STEM cells are coming and just the other ones are dying or if we're now getting more oxygen to the tissue. And so those cells are getting enough oxygen to regenerate their mitochondria and start making energy more effectively, which is where we make energy in ourselves. We're not sure. Speaker 2: (19:39) So the senescent cells are basically cells that have had past their use by date really. And they're not doing much of anything except causing trouble in the body, causing inflammation, causing changes, perhaps even, uh, in closing cancers and so on. Um, so it's really good to be getting rid of those. You mentioned the, um, I was six. Yeah. I are six from memory as one of the ones that they talking about in the Cobra, uh, scenario a that that's so interleukin six is, can you explain, um, I mean obviously we don't know whether it's good for coven Mmm. But is this potentially something that if someone has the Corona virus that they can potentially look at doing to stop the cytokine storm that's actually killing the people? Speaker 3: (20:30) Well, we're actually looking into it now. I have several colleagues around the United States that are starting with clinical studies to look at how hyperbaric therapy I can work on two fronts. It can work as a way to get more oxygen to the system as we've been describing it, because one of the things that's happening in covert is that they're getting very, very hypoxic. They're getting very low oxygen levels and we think this has something to do with destruction of the red blood cells or the inability of red blood cells to carry oxygen as effectively. So again, we can bypass that by being in a chamber like I am right now and pressurizing around you. And then as a result of that pressurization, I'm getting more oxygen in circulation regardless of how many red blood cells I have working or not, how many hemoglobin molecules I have working or not. Speaker 3: (21:16) So that's one area that we're looking at is how hyperbaric therapy can work. The other area that we're looking at is as, as as an anti-inflammatory. So it does have the ability to downregulate those inflammatory cytokines, one of them being IO six. So maybe helping with that cytokine storm at the same time. We also know for other studies over the years that hyperbaric therapy is and immuno modulator, it helps the immune system function better. Um, so we think in the early part of the process, maybe if coven 19 we don't know yet for sure, but it may help to support the immune system and allow it to sort of weather the storm better as opposed to not weathering it as well. So it's a lot of conjecture right now, Lisa, you know, we don't know for sure how it works or if it's going to work, but there are definitely some of my colleagues around the U S and around the world that are looking at how hyperbaric therapy might be a helpful adjunct to conventional care. Speaker 3: (22:16) Maybe prevent people from getting intubated or being on ventilators, which would be a great thing. And so they're looking at that as another having you, and they're also looking at pressurizing the hoods, the hoods that you were in a hyperbaric chamber as a way to get more oxygen into the system without being an hyperbaric chamber as well. So yeah, I've posted a little bit about this on my Instagram because I just find these really intriguing. There is actually one company that's looking to retrofit airplanes. Airplanes are usually pressurized at 8,000 feet above sea level, so they're actually hypoxic environments. There's lower oxygen on and off on an airplane. That's your breathing as opposed to being at sea level. Wow. But what they can do is that they can reverse their pressurization and actually pressurize it. Like a hyperbaric environment. No, you couldn't fly with a plane like this because it would be too heavy, but you can keep it on the ground and and make it a hyperbaric chamber. And you know those oxygen masks that come from the ceiling already, right? So they could use those oxygen masks as a way to get more oxygen into circulation. So this is just one of those sort of crazy ideas. But it's a really interesting idea where you can actually retrofit airplanes to be hyperbaric chambers. Wow. Speaker 2: (23:31) Because that's one of the reasons we get jet lag, isn't it? Because we're, we're, we're at this, um, you know, equivalent of 8,000 feet or 2,500 meters. Mmm. Right? So we're just, we were actually coming out with a bit of an altitude situation where you've actually not got enough oxygen and that's adding to the fact that you've been traveling for how many hours and sitting still and not oxygenating. Anyway, Speaker 3: (23:55) there's the circadian rhythm piece of it, but you are at low oxygen levels and you are at higher risk for jet lag and infection too, so that's why you have a higher risk for infection when you fly. Not so much because of the sanitation on the plane. Although yeah, the air itself on a plane isn't the cleanest. Yeah, and I'm hoping that one of the things that happens with this whole covert thing is that the air on planes becomes cleaner than it is now. That more is coming from the outside of the plane and be less being research related, but in in in essence the low oxygen environment is, is definitely not helping from your health perspective and like the Dreamliners. Some of the newer planes are pressurized to 6,000 feet above. See instead of the 8,000 you said it helps with jet lag and you add on circadian rhythm changes or helping urge on your circadian rhythms to be in the, the times when you're going on it's going to help significantly and that's what new plans are trying to do and that's a new health. Your hotel rooms are also trying to do as well, new hotel rooms with new lighting and things like that that are happening, which is super cool. But in essence, yes, the airplane itself is a hypo H Y P O Barrick environments. And we can make it and retrofit it to be a hyperbaric environment as well, which, so if you have any extra seven 30 sevens hanging around, let me know and we can work on it. Speaker 2: (25:14) There you go. We can got Richard put them together. That sounds really good because flying is one of a really big danger to our health and we've, we've seen the effects of covert going through airplanes, you know, all that sort of, um, um, I just wanted to, to touch on a couple of years, NGO Genesis. Can you explain what angiogenesis is and what is actually happening there in regards to Hochberg? Speaker 3: (25:42) Yeah. So angiogenesis is the creation of new blood vessels. And in a hyperbaric chamber, that acute infusion of, of oxygen, it's going to flood the body with more oxygen, but it's not going to create new blood vessels. What happens after a protocol call of hyperbaric therapy is that we have these epigenetic shifts, we have these shifts and expression of DNA and that DNA expression is shifted in a way that more blood vessels are created because of some of the various factors that are released under pressure and under a high oxygen conditions. Those are things like VEGF, which is a very common blood vascular growth factor and others. And we have these new blood vessels that form and they tend to form in areas where there is hypoxic tissue or there is low oxygen in tissue. They tend to form an areas where there have been injuries in the past. And so these new blood vessels which are created allow the sustainability of the results on the effects of hyperbaric therapy to be a longer term play. Speaker 2: (26:43) So if you have a heart problem, so you have to ha, you know, you've got a blockage in one of your, your arteries. Um, is this a possible way to get around that blockage without surgery in conjunction with surgery over the longer term enough stations here. Speaker 3: (27:01) So we're talking about collateralization of blood vessels, which which would, what I mean by that is that that's the medical term of you basically create collaterals around blockages and that's what a bypass is, right? A bypass procedure is creating ways to go around blockages. It's like, it's like going off the on ramp and taking the service road like around traffic, uh, that stopped and then going back on the service road back onto the freeway after the traffic is over kind of deal. That's a good way to describe it. What a collateral would be like a collateral road. And so hyperbaric therapy can help you create those. And we don't know about the heart specifically though because we haven't done the studies to know. But we do know from the studies that have been done that there is an increase in vascular density in the heart. There's an increase in vascular density in the brain after a protocol of therapy. And so as a result of that, you will have the ability to get more oxygen to tissue because you have more density of blood vessels. No, we haven't done the study looking at people with blocked blood vessels to see what happens under hyperbaric conditions. It just hasn't happened. But the conjecture that we have is that it would potentially help without collateralization. It goes off roads, service road kinds of ideas. Speaker 2: (28:18) Yeah. Going around, I heard, um, that DHEA is an interesting one for the main, at the uh, uh, erectile dysfunction can be helped with hyperbaric oxygen therapy, creating new new blood PA angiogenesis for that sort of a problem. Is that correct? Speaker 3: (28:35) Yeah, it's the same deal. I mean the, the physiology of hyperbaric therapy, it goes everywhere. Your, your full body is oxygenated. So decreasing inflammation, reversing hypoxia, the STEM cell release and killing bugs happens anywhere and that includes regenerating blood vessels in, in a penis or and uh, in areas around the heart or in areas that have degenerated otherwise. And so they did a study looking at erectile dysfunction in males that were relatively healthy and their erectile function improved after, I think it was 6,600 hyperbaric chamber treatments. And so that's new blood vessels that are getting created, a new blood vessel, low vascular flow and the penis. And so we have indications that happens in women as well with, with vaginal flow. But we don't have the studies to show that. Right. Often we'll get the, uh, the feedback from women and men that sex life is better in, in hyperbaric. There's people that have gotten hyperbaric therapy. Speaker 2: (29:38) That's a good reason. Speaker 3: (29:40) Yeah. Speaker 3: (29:41) Well, yeah, there are some studies on infertility already, uh, in helping with fertility because it helps getting it a deeper pressure helped, helps with the uterine lining. The uterine lining itself will, um, we'll get thicker under hyperbaric conditions we think. And then as a result of that, there's a higher chance for the embryo, the embryo to be implanted. And so if you have a thinner uterine lining, you can pick it up potentially in the chamber. So this is used already in Russia and in China as a fertility treatments actually quite commonly in the West and the U S it's not very common. Speaker 2: (30:19) No, I haven't come across the same one. You know, you the troubles with fertility for years. [inaudible] um, I'm going to get in there even more often now. That's not the reason. Speaker 3: (30:31) Just to be clear though, this is at the deeper pressures. Speaker 2: (30:34) Oh yeah. Speaker 3: (30:34) It's shown effect. So this is at like two atmospheres, 2.4. Speaker 2: (30:38) The 1.5 why won't quite cut it so that, that sort of a problem. It probably can't hurt Kenneth. Speaker 3: (30:44) I don't think it would hurt. No. I mean, but there are certain things that I don't recommend going at less pressure. Uh, and that I'm pretty emphatic about. So the things that I don't feel are likely well-treated at 1.3 are any open wounds. Any open wounds really need to be treated at deeper pressures. If you have any ongoing infections. I don't, I feel for the most part, that 1.3 atmosphere is enough. Really. I see a significant benefit unless it's an it, a bug that does not like oxygen environments. And then in that case maybe, but the deeper pressures would likely still be better. Yeah. If you have any chemical sensitivities, these chambers can sometimes make them worse because they're made out of a plastic material. And that plastic material, uh, does off gas to some degree. And I do find that some of my patients that are highly sensitive, so plastics and to chemicals, uh, will not feel good in these kinds of chambers either. Speaker 3: (31:46) If you have any of the FDA approved conditions in my country, I don't recommend using a soft chamber either. Those should be done in deep pressures. The only approved indication for these chambers, assault chambers, that's insurance coverage in the U S is acute mountain sickness. So you go up a mountain too fast, you get signs of altitude sickness, you can get into one of these chambers and you can feel better pretty quickly. And that's, you know, one of the reasons why I have some interests in, Oh, there has been interested in coven 19 specifically because they're thinking that some of the physiology is similar. Yeah. Altitude tickets, how people are, how responding to the virus. Speaker 2: (32:30) So, so, so most of those, um, so since only the only thing that, uh, Molotov America is approved for is mountain, even though there are, but, um, from, from, yep. Okay. Speaker 3: (32:45) There are studies to show that these pressures can be beneficial for brain related conditions. Yes, yes. Speaker 2: (32:52) Yep. Mmm. That's interesting. So, so oxygen oxidative stress was the next thing I wanted to touch on. So, so w when we think of oxidative stress, we think that that's a negative thing. Generally. You know, we should, we need to get rid of the oxidants in our body and we need antioxidants and we need to detox and so on. So why isn't this case oxidative stress? Not a bad thing. What is it [inaudible] is it an oxidative stress? Speaker 3: (33:19) Well, there's a lot of things in life that are good for us that are oxidative stress. One of the most common, hopefully his exercise exercise creates inflammation and oxidative stress. Body responds with the ability to produce antioxidants. And then as a result of those anti-oxidants being released, the body has a way of compensating and then growing stronger. And that's what's happening inside a hyperbaric chamber. Every single thing that's happening almost in a hyperbaric environment is because of oxidative stress. The only thing that's not as a result of oxidative stress is purely the oxygen infusion that's getting more oxygen to the cells and that's allowing more energy to be produced, but everything else, of course, that's very important, but everything else, the oxidative stress causes those epigenetic changes that are happening on the DNA. It causes is that STEM cell release, it causes that inflammatory downregulation. Speaker 3: (34:17) It causes those that vasoconstriction, that constriction of blood vessels that could be injured during an acute event, so it's oxidative stress that initially spurs the system to have a cataclysmic cataclysmic. Yup. Okay. That sounds almost like like a catastrophe. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Basically, you know, it's a huge catalyst for change. Cataclysmic and catalysts are not the same word, but I had a huge catalyst for change. But what happens is that the body, just like with exercise, has a significant ability to have a reactive antioxidant search and that antioxidant surge, it happens and equates or balances out all that oxidative stress or the oxidative stress that we gave the body initially. So it's important for me when I'm thinking about hyperbaric protocols, I think about the person in front of me, I think is this person, somebody that has the ability to have a re the reactive antioxidant surge to balance out that oxidative stress. Because if you're not healthy, if you are sick, if you're inflamed, if you have lots of chronic conditions you made, do be depleted in various things that could make it difficult for you to do this. And that's why I'm very emphatic when I can and when there's time to consider a foundational of cellular health, looking at vitamins, minerals, nutrients, antioxidant levels, looking at signs of gut dysbiosis and immune system function to understand how well somebody is going to do in the chamber before they get in. Speaker 2: (35:54) So that, that's a perfect segue because I wanted to go into, um, the whole foundational health, uh, and, and, and also adjunctive therapies too. Hyperbaric. Um, so it started with a couple of things like Mmm. You know, like taking things like vitamin C infusions before going into hyperbaric, uh, doing the keto diet or exogenous ketones in combination with hyperbaric. Mmm. And then looking as the next step and the conversation into the foundational things which really need to be addressed as well. Um, so they start with it junked of therapies that will benefit from a hyperbaric in combination. Speaker 3: (36:40) Sure. So yeah, that's a good segue I feel before getting into adjunctive, it's important I think to describe that I jumped in. Therapies can definitely synergize together, but it's really important I feel to have a good sense of your own foundational biology before you start stacking therapies on top of each other. Because synergistic tools that are both potentially oxydative, IB, vitamin C, and I can direct therapy, it can be very helpful. However, if you don't have the capacity to physiologically benefit from it or potentially have side effects as a result of the too much oxidative stress, it could be detrimental. So when I think about stacking therapies, I often try to take it a step back and say, okay, let's look at that foundation assessment first. Like your vitamins, your minerals, your nutrients, you're announcing the levels. That's the reprogram that I have that I, that I work with called health optimization medicine, which was founded by a colleague of mine named dr Ted Archer, COSO. Speaker 3: (37:43) And I work as the C Oh of our nonprofit that's educating doctors on how to do this. And I also have my own clinic concierge virtual clinic, really in the Bay area in San Francisco, working with clients across the U S across the world. So once I've done that, once I've looked at that foundational biology, then I think about therapies that can stack on top of hyperbarics or with it. One of the things that I think about is a low level light there. There'll be a low level light technologies because lights have the ability to get more oxygen to tissue by dilating the blood vessels in that area. And so if you're dilating various blood vessels in an area, you can then get more oxygen to that area. So that's one way for some specific spectrums of light to help. Um, infrared light is also really good for detoxification. Speaker 3: (38:33) So I often combine hyperbaric therapy with detox publication strategies and one of them being infrared light, I think about post electromagnetic field technologies. Wow. Those are micro circulatory pulses of electromagnetic fields that can help with circulation. And then increasing circulation is going to help you benefit in a hyperbaric chamber as well because you're getting more tissue oxygenated because there's more tissue that's dilated in blood vessels. And so we can help there. I also think about using various technologies inside of a hyperbaric chamber. If you're in a software like this one because then now you can bring in things that are portable and then you can do brain training like neurofeedback for example. And you can do other types of brain training and using computers or iPads or whatever, doing certain things to sort of work on your multitasking capabilities and, and the like. And you can do a lot of other different things. But those are some of the things that come to mind. Speaker 2: (39:31) Wow. This is what really getting into the whole, you know, optimizing in, in high performance and being able to, to stack the different biohacks if you like. And the different things on top of each other. I'm very interested in the infrared light therapy and um, have some of the products from vital light. Um, again, something that I've used in conjunction with, uh, for mums rehab. Mmm. And uh, very interested in the PME if I haven't had a chance to, to go down that route, but very keen cost prohibitive to have that at home unfortunately. Um, so there are so many amazing things in the biohacking world if you like, where we can actually, uh, sat to look with relatively low risk, um, the lights therapy. Um, it's an interesting one. Also the detrimental effects of blue light coming from our computer screens, stuff like that. Speaker 2: (40:28) Um, yeah and that's um, you know, probably a topic for another day. But what I did want to go into is as you work with dr Ted COSO who I would love to get on the show as well. He's amazing. Um, so dr Ted, uh, is from the Philippines and he has a um, uh, he has health optimization, Madison and so you are the CEO of that company. Can you tell us, well dr tin has created his own own hole. What would you call it, system of looking at so meter below mix the hollow biome. Can you explain what the heck those are? Cause I'm sure nobody listening to this podcast would have come across those terms yet. Sure, no problem. Speaker 3: (41:16) Yeah. So dr ten's an anti-aging doctor. He, uh, we specialize in antiaging medicine and then created his own practice that looks right. Two, I think take the best of conventional medicine. And then the best of what was under the radar in conventional medicine, which is called metabolomics, which is the field of study that we look at real time cellular metabolites. So the real time factors that are making ourselves work. And we can measure all of this. This is something that I didn't know when I was in medical school that you can actually do, but you can actually measure all of these various factors and understand how the body is making energy, how the body is processing your various foods into like from macronutrients all the way down to micronutrients, understanding how we can measure antioxidant levels. And so you can do all this. And so what Ted developed was a way to do this sort of like in the 80 20 framework, which is 80% of the benefit for 20% of the testing and focusing that testing on health and not focusing on any specific disease or condition and setting that aside for the moment and, and just doing, Mmm. Speaker 3: (42:25) More testing related to health and health focus. And so the program itself has seven pillars, but they all comprise what's called the hollow biomes. H, O, L, O, B, I, O, N, T. And this is the idea that we are not just an individual in a population, but we're actually up population of organisms or individuals together in ourselves, in it of ourselves. So we are made up of fungus, virus, bacteria, human. And then we're also made up of the, the metabolites or the production, the toxins and the other things that are in environment. That's all happening all on our cellular level that we can see. So the idea is to create a program for people that uses all of that data that we can measure and understanding where it's coming from and then how to optimize and balance. So the first pillar is metabolomics, which is looking at the cellular data. Speaker 3: (43:25) Another one is epigenetics or looking at how our environment and how are exposures overall change how our epigenetics are or express or how our DNA is expressed through epigenetics, looking at chronobiology or circadian rhythms and how light especially affects our circadian rhythms, looking at the gut immune system. So that's our gut microbiota and in detail how our gut is a very significant indicator of our overall health and our immune health and neurologic and psychologic health are all related to our gut, just on some level looking at evolutionary biology. So the idea is that we have trade offs in our evolution that some certain traits will help us when we're younger, but actually be a detriment to us when we're older. And also how our evolutionary biology is related to our ancestry. So where our ancestry as well also indicate where we should potentially best focus our diet and our and how we change it depending on seasons, et cetera. And there's also the bioenergetics pillar, which is related to energy production, other cellular level. And that's mostly our mitochondria as well, where we're making energy and exposomics, which is the study of toxins, the toxins in our environment. But in essence, this is what we call our whole bio. And we can use about 500 or so data, measure measures to look at measures of all of these things and then create programs for our clients using those metrics and these pillars. [inaudible] really optimize health over the longterm. That's the idea. Speaker 2: (45:09) Wow. So that's just, this is, this is unsigned and something that I'm hoping to study in that in the future. Once I get through the next lot of study, it's just seems to be one Speaker 3: (45:19) the chamber you can study. Speaker 2: (45:21) I do. I was yesterday sitting in there listening to all your lectures and preparing for today's podcast. It's a brilliant way to do it and it just seems so much to learn. Mmm. And I'm very interested in dr Tibbs work and um, you know, coming to grips with it. Um, you know, we, we, we do something in our company, you know, if the genetic testing was that dr Alberto Gralise work and we're finding that absolutely. Yeah. Fascinating. Now, adding in the functional genomics into that with document's or Mohammed's work, uh, it just gives another lens at another lens to be able to look through. And the microbiome is an, is an area anyways, you know, um, you can't have one without the other. I just wish there was more hours on a day to day to deep misinformation. Speaker 3: (46:08) It's a network, Lisa. I think that's what you're going at, right? It's a network effect. Our body doesn't work in silos. You don't just have a heart, you just don't have a brain. You don't just have a gut. They all work together. It's this beautiful symphony. Mmm. Bacteria, virus cells, humans, human cells, mitochondria, which can be classified potentially as bacteria cells as well. Probably back in the day became or came from bacteria that combined with another type of cell that didn't have oxygen capabilities. And that's our, so we have all these things working together. We have hormones working together. We have chemical factories called cytokines working together, um, from a distance. Nothing has to be right next to each other to get there. We have blood vessels, we have lymphatics, we have nerves and other different types of channels to get things. So where they need to go with neurotransmitters. Speaker 3: (47:00) And so it's very difficult to just boil it down. So just a couple of things. I think where the future is going, there's a great article that I loved. It was actually, I think published about six months ago. It was at, it was actually published at Stanford, they called it the narcissism like narcissistic, right? The idea that you'll know everything about yourself, you're no your jeans, you'll know you're genomics, your proteomics, which are the proteins get from genes, you'll know your epigenomics, you'll know you're metabolomics and you will be able to use all this data to create a personalized understanding of you, your risk factors, but also what's actually happening to you right now and getting ideas of what you need to do now so that you can optimize over the longterm. The problem with just looking at genomics is that yeah, it gives you risks of what you may have, but it doesn't tell you actually what's happening. Speaker 3: (47:56) That's what metabolomics does. And so the narcissism is the idea that you have access to all this information and access to the data that's being, I studied as a result of this information too. So anyway, I think we're all gonna have those in our pocket books at some point in the next two years. It's a fascinating to be able to have all of that and to be able to look through these different lenses and to look at the person as a whole. And I think that's where, um, you know, allopathic medicine has had its limitations and that every specialty is very siloed in, in not necessarily communicating with. Right. Hmm. It's still too siloed and the brain does a work independently of the knee and the, you know, whatever the case might be. Mmm. Is it interconnected, focused on, in the past I'm saying would that would be a fear? Speaker 3: (48:52) Well, because as human beings, we try to simplify things as much as possible. There's very good reasons for that. Um, and I'm not, I'm going to be against it, but I think it's important that you have certain people that specialized in organs and do the work that they do and be very, very good at it. But it's like not having a primary care doctor, I'm just going to see a specialist. If you're just in the conventional world, what's going to happen is that you just get opinions in the very singular lens of that particular organ system. So it doesn't look at the big picture. And then you look outside the conventional system and you have to think about this larger, this larger understanding to really get a good holistic, comprehensive plan I feel of of how to maintain your health over the longterm. Cause if you're just looking at, I want to optimize my heart function, I want optimize my, my brains function. Speaker 3: (49:48) It's like, well what about your gut? You know, what about your antioxidant levels? What about your, see, what about you're motion in your feet and how that's affecting your back. And there's all these other aspects of things that are important. So I tend to work with people that look at more of a holistic view of movement and holistic view of health with whatever capacity. And I do my best to help people across the world in not only hyperbaric therapy, but helping them understand the best ways to approach their goals from a holistic perspective. And so I do, I think you remember, I do virtual consultations, education, advocacy for hyperbaric across the world. And I love new challenges and ways to people. I mean, I often get the thing, it's the same things over and over again, but I love when new things kind of pop up and I go, Oh, that's super interesting. And then I get to harness the network that I've created across the world to really help people. And a lot of these things, things can be done remotely now, which is great, which is even even better given that most of us are stuck in our homes. No, anyway, at the moment, given the whole pandemic thing, I was talking to my hyperbaric chamber for a little while longer, which I'm not too sad about that. Speaker 2: (50:58) And, and you know, I find this just such a refreshing approach that you, you know, as a doctor, as a medical doctor, an internal doctor who's looked outside of the box you had on your website somewhere or some somewhere I read, you know, the box was broken a long ago. Um, you don't all to confine yourself to one way of thinking or one. Speaker 3: (51:18) There was never a box Speaker 2: (51:20) for me, Lisa. Speaker 3: (51:23) It was actually, I created a box after not having a box and then I broke it open again. I grew up because I'm the son of a chiropractor who didn't have a box. There was no such thing. And so aye created some sides of that box and some, you know, some stingy walls and pretty thin walls when I went to medical school. So I could learn what I needed to learn and then now use that information and work within that framework when necessary in the conventional framework, but also knowing that they're clumsy and that it's easy to get outside of those walls and we should, especially if there's time, if there's time to work unconventionally than work on unconventionally. If there isn't a time work eventually, but also do unconventional things if you can and you could do them side by side. And that's one of the things I specialize in too is understanding that most things in life are not mutually exclusive and you don't always have time to wait for one or the other. And sometimes you just kind of have to throw the bus at it in a very methodical way to help it. I know that's what you did with your mom. Speaker 2: (52:31) Yeah. By Sigma. Yeah. A multifaceted Chuck everything. It started them out at the wall and I'd hope some of it sticks. [inaudible] it has, Speaker 3: (52:41) yeah. Throw shit at the wall is like is the nice way of saying it for maybe the nonsense nice way of saying Speaker 2: (52:46) and, and Speaker 3: (52:47) you do that in a methodical way and that's the important, the thing that I try to emphasize is that there has to be a physiologic reason and they have to be done, at least if it's, yeah. If it's a recommendation for me, it's have to be done in a methodical way that you kind of understand what's happening. And w the factors that are playing and not just throwing shit at the wall without a plan of what shit is going at the wall. At what time Speaker 2: (53:10) and looking at the risk reward. Yeah. And then making sure that you're not, um, and you know, for someone like, so, you know, if my nature is, is very much a dive in and just have a crack and, um, you know, sometimes they have to pull myself back and go hang a minute. The risks too high here or yeah. Speaker 3: (53:29) Words. So Speaker 2: (53:31) yeah, it's really, it's, you know, it's one thing to do it on yourself. It's another thing with other people in being able to, Speaker 3: (53:40) yeah. What I was saying is that as a new Zealander, you're, you're known for your risk taking. So sometimes you gotta you gotta you gotta bring it back in a notch there. Speaker 2: (53:48) Exactly. Yup. Too much adrenaline. You can say it in my epigenetics, my ring finger is longer than my index finger. I've got too much to drink. Nice. Um, but you know, like doctor dr Cher, you know, we'll wrap up in a second, but I just wanted to thank you so much because the advocacy that you're doing, the work, the connections that you're boating, the network, you really are the worlds having age of, of, of Oh this new, whatever the says that sets happening with us as personalized health, uh, this new paradigm shifts. And um, I'm excited to get your message out there. So if any of the lessons sitting out there, we'd like to talk to Dr. Scott because obviously he's a super expert in everything from a hyperbaric right through to metabolomics and the holiday BYOD. Um, if you would like a bitch or a consultation with doctors, dr shear, where can they go doctor? Speaker 3: (54:43) So for my consultation work, my education and advocate, you can see work, I do it all through my, my website. It's integrative HBO t.com Speaker 2: (54:52) integrated kioti.com. Speaker 3: (54:54) Yeah. And then if you could also disconnect with me on Instagram to add Dr. Scott [inaudible], S C O T T S H E R R. And I also, we can set some things up through that as well if people have interest. I've been looking to post more and get more out there for people. And I know I've been doing podcasts for awhile but I feel like smaller little bits of information are helpful too given the attention deficits of our current state of affairs. So I have this like funny airplane pillow around my neck there. That's better. Okay. Um, so it was nice when I was in the other position. Um, but so those are the two major places that I do my education, advocacy and consultation. I also have a new Facebook group actually just set up called optimize H optimize HBO T with Dr. Scott Cher. Speaker 3: (55:43) And this is a really fun one. I'm looking to have a location where we all can kind of get along in the hyperbaric community. They have like the heart chamber advocates and the salt chamber advocates and you have to be able to know a lot about having barrier therapy in that, you know, very little. And my hope is to create a platform where we can kind of all come together and I'm going to be creating content and curating content with a team of people to hopefully bring, I think I hope the community together a little bit more and bring more information out there. So that's a new, that's a new one that I've just come out with. Speaker 2: (56:16) I'm definitely count me in, count me in. I'm definitely an advocate for all of us. And um, want to share, you know, um, I've just sent you actually a copy of my book. I don't know if it'll get through when the covert situation, but I really want the story to get out. Speaker 3: (56:32) Yeah. For sure. Speaker 2: (56:33) Yeah, Speaker 3: (56:34) we'll hear that story. Speaker 2: (56:35) Yeah. And that's like 250 and counting hyperbaric sessions so far. Speaker 3: (56:41) That's amazing what you and your mom has done. It's really beautiful. Speaker 2: (56:44) That is really beautiful. So Dr. Scott, thank you so much. I'll put all those links for everybody in the show notes today. I really appreciate your time. Um, it's very, very precious to me and I really, really grateful for you doing all this work. So thank you very much. Okay, Speaker 3: (57:00) and you, Lisa. Thanks for all your hard work and your advocacy and it's been my pleasure to be on your podcast, my first one in the hyperbaric chamber. Speaker 1: (57:09) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.

Michael Smith: Room Tone

She’s A Talker

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2020 25:06

BONUS EPISODE In this bonus live episode, artist Michael Smith talks about how to get creative with bad teaching evaluations. Season 3 coming soon! ABOUT THE GUEST Michael Smith’s recent solo exhibitions and performances include Museo Jumex, Mexico City; Yale Union, Portland, Oregon; Tate Modern, London; and Greene Naftali, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. His work is in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin; Inhotim Institute, Brumadinho; LWL Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich; Mumok, Vienna; Museion, Bolzano; Paley Center for Media, New York; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Andrew Litton Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NEIL GOLDBERG: Hello, I'm Neil Goldberg, and this is She's A Talker. We recently finished our second season, and we'll be launching Season Three very soon. In the meantime, we thought as a bonus we'd share a live episode that was recorded with artist Mike Smith way back in the good old days of February, 2020. The event happened at the New York headquarters of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Skowhegan's primary program is an intensive summer residency up in Maine for sixty-five emerging visual artists from all over the world. And in 2015, I had the good fortune of being faculty there, and it was actually there that I took the first steps for what would become this podcast. I was inspired by all the experimentation happening, and I decided to play around with this collection of thoughts I'd jotted down on index cards for the past twenty years as the basis for some sort of performance work. So here we are. My guest, Mike Smith, was also faculty at Skowhegan a couple of years before me and has been a favorite artist of mine for years. He's recently shown work at the Tate Modern in London, and his work is also in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Walker Center, the Georges Pompidou Centre in Paris, and many other places. Here it goes. NEIL: Hi everybody. Thank you so much for coming. So, the premise of the podcast is I typically start with some recent cards, uh, before I bring on a guest. And I thought, uh, this is a recent one: seeing an unflushed toilet at an art school. Now, um, I teach at Yale and, uh, I try to like use the bathroom as far away from where I teach as possible. And I also like to try and mix it up a little bit. So, you know, every now and then I'll go into the basement. Other times I'll go to the second floor. Uh, keep them guessing. And there was a while, very recently at Yale, where every time I walked into a bathroom stall, there was an unflushed toilet full of shit. And I started to think like, okay, is this like a student's like art project? Um, but then beyond that, I really was cognizant of the impact it had on the crits I did later in the day, which is like, I found myself sort of evaluating everything I was seeing in relationship to the impact that seeing a unflushed toilet unexpectedly will have on you. Because think about it, that moment where you're kind of like, you open the stall door and there is the unflushed toilet. That is, I think, what we're all going for as artists. Um. Anyhow. With all that in mind, I am so happy to have, as my guest, Michael Smith, who I have been a fan of for a very long time. I have actually had the experience, Michael, of going to your shows, and I will say that its impact on me was not unlike that of an unflushed toilet encountered by surprise. So, please welcome Michael Smith. NEIL: Hi, Michael, how are you? MICHAEL SMITH: I'm okay. I guess I, I don't know if I should be flattered or - what I'm following in terms of the conversation or - NEIL: when in doubt, be flattered. MICHAEL: Yeah. I have so much to say. I don't know if we'll be able to get to another card. NEIL: I know, right? Well, what's your elevator pitch for yourself when you? When you encounter someone who doesn't know what it is you do, how do you succinctly describe what it is? MICHAEL: Well, it's usually layered. I usually, I mean, if it's a total stranger, I'll say I'm an artist. And then they say, "Oh, are you a painter?" And I say, no. And then sometimes I'll just cut to the chase and say I'm a performance artist. And then it doesn't go any further. NEIL: Do you feel like that's accurate though? I mean, that doesn't feel to me like it encompasses the breadth of what you uh, do. MICHAEL: Well, when I first started performing or thinking about performing, I would tell people I was a comic. Because it was, I dunno, it was a little more interesting at parties or whatever. And also performance artist wasn't really part of the vocabulary then. Usually I'd say I'm a comic, and then they'd look at me and they said, "You haven't said anything funny." So, it was like, well, I didn't say I was funny, you know? So. NEIL: Um, are your parents alive? MICHAEL: No. NEIL: When, when they were alive, what would they say that you did? MICHAEL: My mother probably would say, Michael is Michael. And Michael - NEIL: That is a full-time job, isn't it? MICHAEL: Michael had such a sweet voice when he was a child. And my father said, I don't know what the hell he does, you know, he didn't know what it, yeah. NEIL: Right. I didn't know you were Jewish until quite recently. You're like one of those stealth Jews, you know, Smith. Okay. MICHAEL: I asked my father once what it was before Smith, and he, he said, Sutton. NEIL: Sutton? That's like a wall that's been painted multiple times, like, okay, and what was it before Sutton? That's where it gets into like Schmulowitz or whatever. MICHAEL: That got too deep. NEIL: Yeah, exactly. MICHAEL: It was, yeah. It's opaque. NEIL: And what's something on you - today, what's something you've found yourself thinking about? MICHAEL: Well, you know that card you first - NEIL: Oh yeah. MICHAEL: That card you first brought up. I actually, I've been in my studio for, since '99. And I actually cleaned the toilet in the public bathroom for the, the building because it was just getting a little gross, so I thought I'd clean it. NEIL: You just took that on yourself? MICHAEL: I took it on. NEIL: Wow. MICHAEL: Yeah. I should also say that when I first came to New York, I was a professional cleaner. NEIL: Really? MICHAEL: Yeah. I was very good. NEIL: I bet. MICHAEL: Mike the Wipe. I was originally I, I was, I originally was going to be a house - well, I was going to, I advertised in the New York Times, "Mr. Smith will cook and clean." And no one wanted me to cook, you know, just wanted me to clean. NEIL: So many follow-up questions, Mike. Um, shall we move on to the cards? You don't have a choice at this point. We're all in. Uh, this card says: There are no friendly reminders. You know, like, I feel like, is there anything more passive aggressive than someone's like, just a friendly reminder. MICHAEL: That's like, if they, if they preface what they're going to say with that, yeah. That would be horrible. NEIL: But they do all the time. MICHAEL: Really? NEIL: Yeah. Or in an email - friendly reminder. How many, I mean, haven't you? I've probably gotten a friendly reminder in the last week. MICHAEL: I guess FYI is not a friendly reminder, huh? NEIL: No, FYI can be pretty passive aggressive too, but I use it a lot MICHAEL: BTW? NEIL: That's fine. Yeah. I dunno. MICHAEL: So, I have a feeling I probably do it, but I'm not aware of it. NEIL: Of a friendly reminder? MICHAEL: Yeah. NEIL: Hmm. So you're not bothered by it? MICHAEL: Probably, yeah. NEIL: Probably not bothered by it? MICHAEL: Probably bothered by it. Yeah, I am. I get bothered by people easily. And I had something really good to say, but I've, I've already forgotten it. NEIL: I'm excited for the rest of this conversation, Mike. This is, um. MICHAEL: I'm still thinking about that dirty toilet. NEIL: We could go back to that anytime you want. NEIL: Uh, this card says: Things that are lost but you know will turn up. Talk to me. MICHAEL: Well, I, I was with a friend the other day, and, um, I, I said, Oh, I don't, I don't recognize that person. I said, I'm not good with faces. And then she mentioned the name and I said, no, I'm, I don't recognize the name. I'm not good with names. And she said. Mike, what else is there besides faces and names? So anyways, I just wait until it comes, you know, it just till, the name comes, I just wait and wait. And in the morning, I figure, after looking at all those places for the keys or whatever, I'll eventually find it. And then I'll look in the unlikely places and I find it. NEIL: What are the unlikely places in your life for keys? MICHAEL: You know where I've been to keeping them lately? On my front door. So I go outside and they're always there now, so yeah. That's where I seem to keep them. NEIL: That is really, why don't we all just keep them there? MICHAEL: Right. I trust my neighbors, evidently. NEIL: We just very recently got a knock on the door from our neighbor Arlene. A shout out to Arlene if you're listening, and I know you're not, but, um, bless Arlene who very aggressively knocked on our door. She kind of is like policing the hall in a very loving way, but authoritative. And I left the keys in the door. And um, you could tell Arlene lived for this moment. The keys, they're in the door! You know, it's like, and uh, and then of course I have to like reciprocate with like, um, thank you so much. Oh God. Wow. How did we do that? Thank you, Arlene. MICHAEL: I have - the person that polices our place, uh, has a Trump hat. NEIL: Oh no. I don't know if I could deal with that. MICHAEL: He is taking over the recycling, which is great, but he's got it under lock and key, literally under lock and key. So you go downstairs to get rid of your bottles and stuff. And it takes a lot longer. So then everybody just leaves it down there. NEIL: Every now and then, forgive me, is there like a, an immigrant child in there as well? MICHAEL: Oh, there's not an immigrant child, but there is something I think it, I realized it bothers him, that people pick through the garbage and it's mostly like, you know... NEIL: The people who shouldn't be here. From the shithole countries. MICHAEL: Yeah. So I thought about that later and then I just didn't want to think about it anymore cause I was getting all upset. NEIL: Um, have you had a political conversation with him or? MICHAEL: I don't go there. Yeah, he's on, he's a little unstable and he asked, one time he asked me if I wanted to take something outside. NEIL: Oh, he asked you if you want to, I thought, take something outside like garbage. MICHAEL: Right. NEIL: But no, he wanted to take a discussion outside. MICHAEL: Yeah. NEIL: Wow. I'm gay enough that I have never had that conversation, you know? Uh, or if it is, it's like, it's nasty and it's happened a long time ago and it wasn't a fight. Um, wow. Okay. I'm glad that worked out okay. Uh, this card says: Read my - MICHAEL: Can I be, can I, I had a hard time reading that, kind of, reading them. NEIL: Yeah. Well. MICHAEL: Your penmanship is like... NEIL: Well, I always say if my, if my handwriting were a font, it would be called Suicide Note, so I'm... MICHAEL: Not judging. I just said I had a hard time, you know, deciphering it at times. NEIL: Yeah. Read my course evaluations at my funeral. That's what that says. MICHAEL: Oh, well, I was thinking that when, when I do pass, I would like to get ahead of the thing and have people send out a, uh, an announcement saying, if you happen to be in the neighborhood, you know, come to my show, I'll be like, you know - NEIL: I'll be here for eternity. MICHAEL: Um, class evaluations. Yeah. I love my class evaluations and I save them and I, I find them very funny. One, I actually made a poster and it was, uh, it was, "I'm not sure if I agree with the way Professor Smith teaches this class. He called my work crap and he called us idiots. This is a waste of my time and money." I was very happy with that. NEIL: And you made that into a poster? MICHAEL: I made it into a poster. NEIL: Do you, do you have any other ones that come to mind? I bet you get great course evaluations. MICHAEL: Some are good. But like I, I forget them, you know, um, I get them, I still get them handwritten. You're supposed to, a lot of people just go online, but I always, I always hand them out and, and I, I have to leave the room and I always say to them, before, "My livelihood and my future is dependent on how you judge me. And I'm so sorry, I meant to bring the donuts. We'll get to that." NEIL: Huh? See, I try to be real coy about it. Like, you know, they make me do this and, you know, try and like keep it open to, um, other than positive feedback. But obviously it's a desperate wish for approval. MICHAEL: Yeah. I, I always tell them I care deeply for them too, when I'm, yeah. You know, I care deeply for all of you. NEIL: See, you can, MICHAEL: One thing - I, one of my students who I happen to, like, he- NEIL: Happen to like. Whatever. MICHAEL: He came up to me and he said, you know, Mike, even when we're watching videos in the dark, we always know what you're thinking. We can always read you. NEIL: Wow. That's a scary thought. MICHAEL: It is. Cause I'm, I have no filter with, you know, I, I just, it, it comes out, I just sort of convey it with my face. NEIL: See, I find you, because there is a kind of like genial neutrality, you know, like the, the idea of like quote unquote resting bitch face. You have kind of like resting, mm, bemused face. Um, I find it actually kind of opaque. I wish I knew what you were thinking. MICHAEL: You know what? A lot of times nothing. I get the feeling I'm not answering the, I'm not answering these cards very, uh. NEIL: Do you need me to take care of you a little bit right now in terms of - I think you're doing a phenomenal job. You know, this is a fucked up, um, project, by the way, because everyone, like I, I once was doing an iteration of it and this kind of high powered curator said to me, did I do okay, or did I do it right? And I wanted to say like, you did, there's no way of not doing this right, but let's talk about why you've never put me in a show. But that's a different story. The faces of spectators at art world performances. The dutifulness and absence of pleasure. We've all seen this like documentation of a performance at an art event and you see like the spectators, like- MICHAEL: I often say to my, uh, um, to myself and sometimes my students, where's the joy? Looking for the joy. You're talking about pleasure. I'm looking for the - all the time, I'm wondering about that. NEIL: Where's the joy? Yeah. I'm stealing the hell out of that for any teaching I do. And also, that would be my teaching evaluation for like 95% of the art I see. I mean, it can be art about, um, Auschwitz and you can still appropriately ask the question, where's the joy? Don't you think? Provocative question. MICHAEL: Um. NEIL: What was the question? MICHAEL: No, no, no. I thought I'd get some room tone. You know, we start with the toilet and then we put, where's the joy with Auschwitz. You know, this is- NEIL: This is like a balanced meal or something. I'll take the toilet, joy, and Auschwitz. Well, we'll have to talk about what constitutes dessert within that. NEIL: Uh, okay. Let's try this: The brutality of a memorial service having a duration. MICHAEL: All right. Are you, a duration, like a time limit or like, um, it doesn't end? NEIL: You answer it however you want. MICHAEL: Well, I, I, I think brevity can be good, you know, um, and I don't think I need to go to a durational memorial. I may have misunderstood the question or, not the question, the card. I have been in position where I've, I've helped organize them in a, you know, like emceed them. So you get a little nervous, you know, so you want to keep it like, it becomes like a fucking variety show. NEIL: Exactly. That is so true. Memorial services are a variety show. MICHAEL: I don't know if that's appropriate. You know? NEIL: What should it be instead? MICHAEL: Well, it can, I guess it, it should be kind of free-flowing and with me at the helm, it's not going to be free-flowing. NEIL: Because you keep it, you keep it moving? MICHAEL: I try to, yeah. NEIL: That's a lot of responsibility. I've never, I, I've done, I, I seem to be the person who you will call to do the slide show for your loved one's memorial. I've done a number of them. MICHAEL: That's a lot of work. NEIL: It is. And you can't complain about it. Uh, you know. MICHAEL: And also you have to be in touch with people to get that material. NEIL: That I - that I have subcontracted and, you know, but even so, it's a lot of work. And you do not want to fuck that one up. Um. But see, for me, I love the idea of durational, like for those of our listeners who don't know, there's a terminology within the art world of durational art, and to me that is like the height of decadence. Like we have such a surplus of time, you know, that we're going to make art from that surplus or something. You know what I mean? MICHAEL: I have a, getting back to my students, I have a, um, a three-hand rule. NEIL: Oh, let's hear it. MICHAEL: Um, well, if some of the, when I'm covering some work like early seventies, you know, and you kind of get the idea after like five minutes and it goes on. If, if one person, three people raised their hand, we'd go onto the next video. NEIL: I am learning so much today. MICHAEL: But I don't think you can do that in memorial service. I don't think that'll, I don't think that'll work, no. NEIL: Oh, that's funny. MICHAEL: How surprised would they be if you, you mentioned that in the beginning of the memorial? NEIL: Yeah, listen, not to create pressure, but it's kind of like the Apollo where you get the hook. MICHAEL: How am I doing, how am I doing? Yeah. Right. NEIL: Okay. A bad X you would take over a good Y. So, for me, perpetually, my example is I would take a bad episode of RuPaul's Drag Race over a good Godard movie. So, what's a bad X you would take over a good Y? MICHAEL: Well, I'm of the school that something bad can have lots of charm. There's something redeeming about it. Where there's something is overly so good, like a certain kind of Broadway kind of, um... NEIL: Careful. MICHAEL: Yeah. Well, you understand a certain kind of large delivery or something. A certain styling, a certain song-styling. Um, oh, I'm going to lose the whole audience on this reference. NEIL: Go for it. You have me. MICHAEL: Okay. The, the, the Bobby Short commercial singing Charlie. I would, I will always cringe at that one. And then I would much rather take a bad public access, uh, commercial than that. NEIL: There's a fragrance that's here to stay and they call it Charlie. NEIL: Um, so Mike, uh, what is it that keeps you going? MICHAEL: Uh. Hm. I don't know what's keeping me going right now. Um, that's a big one. Um, I, you know, when I was lot younger and doing my work, I, you know, and reinventing the wheel, you know, reinventing the wheel and stuff, I was very excited. But I don't, I wonder what, what keeps me going? No one knows. No one knows. Looking for the joy. NEIL: On that note, thank you to all of you for being here. Thank you, Mike, for coming to this live taping. Thank you to everyone at Skowhegan. Sarah, Katie, Kris, Carrie, Paige, everyone else. Um, now, this series is made possible with generous support - thank you Jesus - for Still Point Fund. Oh, Siri, something set Siri off. That's, that's my husband, Jeff. Um, oh, sorry. I know, you know, it's interesting. One of the cards I have is every time I stub my toe, I look for someone to blame. And it's often Jeff. And, um, so. Uh, the calls are coming from inside the house. The house being my subjectivity. Let's do that again cause this is important. This series is made possible with generous support from Still Point Fund. Devon Guinn is our producer. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, and Rachel Wang. Our card-flip beats come from Josh Graver. And my husband, Jeff, sings the theme song you're about to hear. And he's going to perform it live. He's a professional. JEFF HILLER: She's a talker with Neil Goldberg. She's A Talker at Skowhegan. She's A Talker, it's better than it sounds. NEIL: Thank you, everybody. Thanks everyone for listening to this bonus episode. Keep your eyes open for She's A Talker, Season Three, coming soon. And in the meantime, be well.

The War Part 1

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2020 67:43

THE WAR PART 1: ATLANTIS THE WAR OVERTURE (inst) Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Andy - drums and percussion Ian - mastering MELTDOWN When the world started turning and it set to up and burning All the freedom of a megalopolis The United States was bleeding and the populace was pleading For a living breathing old sarcophagus Well she took to warring constantly for fossil fuels and Jesus And the lies of often civilated songs Turned the Middle East to glass and turned her back on her repast And said the Bill Of Rights is motherfucking wrong, bitch God bless America god bless America Land of the free and the home of the letdown In the meantime out in Asia got a market euthanasia Got it humming drumming economically Tried collecting all her debts the US wouldn't take the bet And said "fuck off" all rather pedantically For the world that was War Four 'cause III was knocking at the door And the history sputtered sporadically In the chaos that ensued after wars for god and crude The second coming happened despotically God bless the marketplace god bless the marketplace Buy that shit low and then sell off the countdown So it came to be the truth that Chinggis Khan would be the proof That if you want shit done you never wait around He was rising in the as the battle lines were drawn at least The history books would someday write all this shit down So Julius Caesar rose to fight him made an army just to spite him And a war machine that ran on human bones They were clashing every day in every place in every way With the plastics made from tissues of the clones yeah God bless the emperors god bless the emperors Though self ordained still they're willing to get down While the generations died the war was living with a tide Of surplus cannon fodder plucked off of the streets All the fossil fuels are zapped the land is ocean, deserts, crap Yes and the drums of war are shuffle/set/repeat If you're looking for a wasteland well you got it have a taste man What's it taste like fuck you cannot be the judge It's the west against the east it's set, man "shuffle/war/repeat" That's how it will be, is, and always fucking was God bless the atheists, deists, and theists In the land of debris at the edge of the meltdown Dave: guitars and vocals Brian: bass and mixing Sharon: drums Ian: mastering RIOT! I seen the sunshine only in my dreams 'cause it's never bright I spent a lifetime feeling my way through the darkest night I rode the airways I supped on lightening and drank the sky I been transcended back away, lord, by and by Riot! Riot now it's our last chance Seduce me with your sinful dance Breath my soul and set me free Everything will burn wait and see Where are the women? Where are the mommas, wives, and sisters? Where is my shotgun? Got it at the pawn shop and sawed it off, mister How is this platform? Hand to hand combat in the goddamned streets The cops are in on it They need money to survive just like you and me Riot! Everything will burn as you will see Burn it down! Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering BABY BLUE GUN I'm gonna join the army 'cause they're making me They took the best of rioters with them was me They fight their endless wars it don't mean shit to me I'm gonna join the army 'cause they're making me making me They punched me in the face and threw me in a truck We'[re packed in here like cigarettes, man, what the fuck They tell us that the plan is just for us to die They'll feed us to the factory and make their weapons with our flesh and pride And everything inside They asked me for my name I said "I'm Baby Blue I'm everything you hate and fear and cannot do." They kicked my ass again and said it's just for fun A tattoo on my shoulder says "I'm number one Baby Blue Gun" Baby blue gun Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering FUCKIN' JOB I hate my fucking job I hate my fucking job Fight or die First day of basic had us drinking human blood We're the only resource left ain't nothing up here, cuz They killed five the first day 'cause they would not fall in line I say "yes sir no sir" but I'm just biding my time chorus The sergeant tried to rape me so I slit his fucking throat Colonel said "Well goddamn, son, you're the kind of kid I can promote." Got my new stripes branded on the fingers of my fist Last thing that you'll see coming 'cause I never fucking miss chorus There ain't no mirrors here they don't want us to see There ain't no living here they don't want us to be Last night I dreamt that I was falling from the sky When I woke up I did not know that I could still cry and cry and cry chorus Dave - guitar and vocal Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering THE ROAR OF THE DRUNKEN GODS Seven months in the shit Turns out warring is legit Killed as many as I lost What a cost It's funny how I love my gun It's funny how they never run It's funny that I never sleep Never eat It's funny how they never beg It's funny how they get new legs It's funny how the night is day Fades away The roar of the drunken gods The worst of the lightening rods The drunken gods choose not to sip Let her rip Dave - guitar and vocal Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering ATLANTIS Got a side business booming Found the guy that makes the fucking drugs I know him as the malevolent colonel The one who coddles all us fucking thugs Got my buddies let me cruise right through the missiles Guess in other words they're called the enemy Give 'em drugs I give 'em cash and other goodies And all the largesse coming back to me get down Gotta keep this transport moving Can't believe my motherfucking eyes A secret entrance through the glass desert And an underworld that's better than surprise Got plants and art and poetry and women And everybody's coming up to me Got to thank the malevolent colonel For everything now that I fucking see get down They tell me that this place is called Atlantis The throbbing people mingle sing and fuck How'd this fucking place be kept a secret Eventually it's got to die to luck The mayor is a fucking sexy lady She keeps it so it's never up and gone I need to meet the woman with the power I hear her name is sunshine lit at Dawn get down Every time I pull into Atlantis Where the scientists make robot hookers purr I get out of the transport and I rare back 'Cause I'm pushing on my horse down through the spurs It's nirvana to the bohos and the artists Singing songs and dancing every single night Only law is that there is no re-religion 'Cause the intellectuals don't feel it's right Get down Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering KARMA WRECKER Well they killed the malevolent colonel I'll never see Atlantis again They shipped me back to the front Back to being just a grunt My karma done got wrecked New tattoo on my neck They keep their eye on me 'Cause I seen what could be I got to get back there I got to get back there Out of this karma wrecker While in Atlantis I found an ancient record It was made of vinyl Dawn she sat me down It was named after an early gun But the music was free and fun She burned a sacred plant She let the record chant The band was clearly free The band was clearly free In the corner laughed a man in white He was glowing like a tracer light He ain't no karma wrecker He said "Hello, son, my name just call me Elvis Dawn she gave my whole life back to me" Then Dawn began to sing More beautiful than anything I could see the notes she sung As if it were from my tongue I could taste her warming breath She made me not fear death She made me feel alright She said "You're a shining light You ain't no Karma Wrecker." In a trance I made it to the front lines Dawn and Elvis met with Caesar and Temujin I think I may have cried My heart grew dead inside The stink of millions dead The polar caps froze red Time to just survive Make it out alive To Atlantis where I believe To Atlantis where I believe There ain't no karma wrecker I don't know Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering KILL THE MOTHERFUCKER Kill the motherfucker Motherfucking other Motherfucking fucker Yeah Soldier motherfucker Motherfucking fucker Looky, motherfucker Wooooo I shot a motherfucker Stabbed a motherfucker Sliced a motherfucker Uh All these motherfuckers This here motherfucker Just a motherfucker Wooo Kill the motherfucker Now Dave - guitar and vocal Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering MONKEYTIME Blood rules the day Vested to pay In every way Factory made Yeah Monkeytime Wooo Dave - guitars and vocals Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering ENGULF Engulf Retreat and then attack and then Retreat and then attack I said... Dave - guitar, vocals, percussion Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Sharon - drums Ian - mastering

Episode 144: Breaking the CEO Code with Craig Johns

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2020 50:04

After being hospitalised three times with stress related heart problems and burnout, which included flat-lining in the emergency room, Craig Johns realised that he needed to be more than a leader of high performance and become a high performing leader. He has now transferred those strategies into working with CEO's, senior executives, coaches and leaders from some of the world's leading companies including Nestle, P&G, Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, AIG, Boyden and Nike. Born in New Zealand, Craig has 25 successful years of experience leading, managing, coaching and providing sport science around the globe. As an elite athlete he competed at the Hawaii Ironman, four World Triathlon Championships and continues to play competitive golf. A hip replacement and second pacemaker, at the age of 30, meant a full-time shift to focusing on being a high performance leader, CEO and National Head Coach. He has coached and managed 3x Olympians, 10x World Championship athletes, 21x national champions and a 3x Ironman Japan Champion. He has worked with world leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Mind and Life Institute, WTA Tennis, IRONMAN Triathlon, United World College and over 100 Olympians and World Champions. Living in 5 countries. In this interview Lisa and Craig do a deep dive into avoiding burnout and managing your perfromance over the long haul. About top leadership and how to manage your health and mental wellbeing in order to be the best you can be. You can find out more about Craig at www.nrg2perform.com and about Craigs speaking services at www.craigjohnsspeaker.com We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: www.vielight.com Makers of Photobiomodulation devices that stimulate the brains mitocondria, the power houses of your brains energy, through infrared light to optimise your brain function. To get 10% off your order use the code: TAMATI at https://www.vielight.com For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body. Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige... measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds... Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option. Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete. Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by LisaTamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:11) Hi everyone and welcome to pushing the limits today. I have a fantastic episode with the amazing Craig Johns now Craig Johns is originally from my hometown from Taranaki, but living now in Canberra, in Australia. Now. Craig is the CEO and founder of energy to perform. He's a CEO himself. Uh, he has a background in 25 years global experience working in the sport health, mind, education and hospitality industries and he loves to help him become high performing leaders. He's also coached at the elite level Olympians, triathletes, world champion athletes, um, across a number of areas. And he is really at the top of his game as far as, uh, human performance. And I was really privileged to be on his show last weekend. He's agreed to become, come onto my show this week. So you're in for a really interesting session. If you want to know about being a high performance leader. Speaker 2: (01:07) If you want to know about high performance and sport, then this is the man you need to listen to. Um, just before I hand over to Craig now, just want to remind you my book relentless is now available and still seeing now copies. So if you hop over to relentlessbook.lisatamati.com you can order there and you can order audio books, eBooks, Kindle, Amazon, you name it, all the options are there for you to see, uh, to, to purchase that book. Um, I had the privilege of having a wonderful online book launch just a couple of nights ago and we're going to be doing, uh, a weekly one of these. So if you want to join me on one of those sessions or live session with me talking about the book, of course my mum will also be there. Um, then please reach out to me and I'd love to let you know when the next one is happening. Um, you can reach out to me at Lisa, at lisatamati.com and if you enjoy the show, please don't forget to rate and review this podcast. It really, really helps us get more exposure and we have some brilliant people sharing their incredible knowledge. Right. Without further ado, over to Craig Johns . Speaker 2: (02:19) Well, how everyone Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you with me again. I hope you guys are all staying safe out there as best as you can in this crazy time. Yeah, I'm sitting today with the lovely Craig John's from Canberra and Craig is the CEO and founder of energy, uh, the energy to perform. So welcome to the show, Craig. Thanks for coming on board. No, Lisa, it's great to be on your show after we had a great interview the other day. Yeah, it was fantastic. So I had the privilege of being on Craig show as well. Um, active CEO, if anyone wants to go and check that out. Active CEO. Now, Craig, can you give us a little bit of background about your life and your story and what you do these Speaker 3: (03:00) days? Yeah, so I grew up in Taranaki as well. So from the same region, grew up on a farm, you know, a families were pretty simple. Yeah. And dad, you know, worked on a farm since he was 14 years old. He, it went through kind of the school of hard knocks and it was around our pretty rough crowd. And the teachers would say to him, look, you know, you're not going to make it in life. And when he was 14, him and his mate, they like to mess and like pee and light eating their lunch. And so they went to the principal and say, look, you know, we're wasting your time, us being here and you're wasting our time. So how about we build the furniture for your school? And so they're great to it. So they get access to the woodwork room and middleweight room and started building furniture. Speaker 3: (03:47) And then at the age of 14 he lifts school, went farming and retaught at 45. So I think the, uh, sort of prove them wrong in that sense. I'm a mum also came from a farming and hospitality background, her banana under a famous pub and pop Tia and you know, they, it's a lot of time spent on the farm and I think that grounding from both of them, very simple. I appreciate the small things. You work really hard and then the benefits will come and uh, from uh, an also from a sporting side. So I had a, had a fortunate too, both sides of the family have coaches, so dad's side where all around field hockey and my mom's side were all around cricket. So I had this great grounding from a sport point of view and also from coaching and leading people, which was just fantastic. Speaker 3: (04:42) I moved to Oakland to study, no sports science at university. I went on to do things around masters and biomechanics before hitting overseas. Uh, so my work in Auckland during that time was around sports science with some of the Olympic teams, some of the professional sports and was always coaching from the age of 15. So I love coaching swimming. So fly saving and triathlon in was working with some pretty amazing athletes during that time when I was 24 I got this call too. We've got a swimming coach opportunity for you in Taiwan. And that's kind, kinda like, well, I'm living at middle wide. I've got a beautiful view over the middle wide beach in Oakland and I've got these amazing opportunities. But I just thought, you know what, hi, I'm 24 years old, is this incredible world out there. I know nothing about Taiwan. All I think of as these, this big tall buildings. And my friend was like, no, it's really cool. There's like massive mountains. There's beautiful beaches. Amazing people. And so I thought, you know why not? So I packed up my bags at 24 and that started my worldwide adventure and have now lived in five places and wow. Currently based in Canberra. And you've done a of work in Speaker 2: (05:58) the triathalon space, is that correct? So tell us a little bit about some of the sort of work you've been involved with there. Speaker 3: (06:05) Okay. Yeah. So I've been a triathlon since I was nine years old, was my first triathlon. Wow. And so it was in my blood from quite an early space, and I naturally transitioned into triathlon where overseas I was coaching the Taiwan national team and went through to work at one of the Oh sort of most famous and beautiful splices and [inaudible] Peru kit called Tonya Perro, which is the only vice where they have, or mind how education, hospitality as an integrative approach. And so we're working with a lot of the world's top triathletes there. And then the last five and a half years I've been in Australia as a CEO of, the sport of triathlon in Canberra, and then working with the national team. So quite a, quite a big involvement. And it's just a beautiful sport with a great community. Speaker 2: (06:55) Yup. Okay. So what have you learned as a, as a person from being an athlete that you've taken over into your corporate world, if you like, into your business and you know what you're doing now? Speaker 3: (07:07) I think when you're very young and you're in sport, you learn some great basics for Speaker 2: (07:11) Mmm. Speaker 3: (07:12) Succeeding in life. So you have time management, discipline, hard work, um, overcoming adversity. You know, resilience. If we look at what's happening right now in the world around COVID-19 and coronavirus, Speaker 3: (07:25) it really sets you up to handle those situations well. You've experienced loss before, you've experienced hurt and pain before. You've experienced the unknown and I'm overwhelmed many times and you've always made a way out of it. Yeah. You just don't give up. You, yeah, it could be out on a, I know I bike ride and you're stuck three hours from home and you've run out of energy and battling a IDK in our headwind in it's five degrees in. You just don't want to go on any longer, but you stop playing mind games. You think positive thoughts and Speaker 3: (08:02) Nixon it and you just go from lampposts or lamppost or town to town. And then next minute you're like, Oh, I'm ready 20 minutes from home and you get home and it kind of feels a bit tiring and then you kind of wake up the next day and go, huh, what's next? Where's the big Nick's big talent? So I think those aspects are really good. And a sport like triathlon you, you wouldn't less than you loose. So you know, in a team sport you've got a 50% chance of winning every single time. And I was fortunate to be in a field hockey team where we never lost the game. The Stratford hockey team in the Taranaki league, they went something like 270 games straight without losing a game. So it's a record in New Zealand for any sport. And it was a phenomenal time to be part of that because I learned how to win end this awesome, great listens winning all the time. Speaker 3: (08:56) However, in triathlon there's also potentially a bit of side where you are learning so much because it is so difficult to win when you might have, you know, a couple of thousand people. On a start line or even if it's 50 on the start line, your chances of winning are not that high. No, you have to [inaudible] learn to deal with winning isn't everything, but what is the winning? So it may not be first across the line, but it might be okay, I've improved my swim or I was able to stay with that pack longer or I felt better on the run. So there's always ways that you can be winning, but it's might not just be that gold medal around your neck. Speaker 2: (09:36) Then Neva comes instantly. Th th that actually standing at the top of the podium as always a progression of years to get there. And many, many Speaker 3: (09:43) in the, in the, in the individual sports, Speaker 2: (09:45) um, you know, and lots of semifinalists and problems along the way and overcoming it. And then when you get to the top, you don't stay there either. So it's learning to manage that whole system and keep going. Um, so the biggest, listen, they would be, yeah, definitely. Keep, keep working towards your goals. Would that be right? Speaker 3: (10:03) Yeah, just small steps and appreciate the small things. I think in times like these where you need to have a bit of gratitude for yourself. Yes, you need a lot of gratitude for other people and acknowledge and sank and be kind to them. But a lot of people forget to do that with themselves. Worst predict. So it is so important to be, you know, looking everyday what is something I did really well today, well done. Yeah, that's great. Boy I'm off the couch this morning and I'm out running and no one else's. And, and there are lots of little things that you can just look after yourself a lot more effectively and you can do that in day to day life. And I think people, as much as this is going to be a very challenging time, I think people have the opportunity to learn, to appreciate the small things in life and be around their families and yeah, maybe Potter in the garden or whatever it may be and realize how important that is to success in life over a long period of time. Speaker 2: (11:01) Yeah. In taking the long view on this one now, Craig, and now you have a bit of a story yourself, um, a story of, of going home, you know, working so hard and burning out and um, coming into a bit of a drastic situation. Can you share that sort of background story, because you know, these are the stories that really teach us. Speaker 3: (11:20) Yeah, they are. I think from a very young age, I've always, you know, push the limits. For me it was, I'm trying to find that new space, um, where can I take my body? How much can it handle? And you know, I, it wasn't the most talented person out there, but I had, damn, I had some grit and hard work if they can be. And I think that comes from there from my mother. Yeah. I think we both the same there. And you know, a lot of people go, Whoa, you know, you did really well, you succeed into world champs. And I said, yeah, there was a lot of hard work in that. And you know, there are a lot more talented people, but I managed to get ahead of quite a few of them just because I was more determined and dominant approach to say, you know what, I'm going to prove people wrong. Speaker 3: (12:02) I'm going to prove science or medicine wrong and I want to see if I can get there. I love it. So I triggered hot problems and probably stress and burn out to a certain extent, not always burnout, but pushing that limit three key times in my life. So the first one was, who knows, uh, 15 and I'd come off a week long swim camp at Christmas time. I had done some things I've never done before. I had people stopping in the lines watching me do a set and which is absolutely flying and this felt amazing. And the next day was new year's day. I got out of bed at six o'clock in the morning when to go to the bathroom and find and went out for very long time. Um, my dad, who had just had a hip replacement was on crutches and sort of come along and tap me. Speaker 3: (12:54) And he thought I was, could have been dead because he, he couldn't been over at time and he said my eyes were in a state that he'd never seen before. And being knocked out for over five minutes is, um, yeah, fairly scary for a lot of people. Hmm. You know, that opportunity. I spent some time in intensive care, uh, and, and word was spreading around the community that I'd had heart attacks and all sorts of things that happened to me. Um, and it took a little while for, um, the cardiologist to try and make sense of what was going on at that time. And they initially, he said, look, you know, you have to give up sport. That's it. Your resting heart rate is too low. Um, it's, it's still 32 right now and I get down to 24 at night. My next spot right is still over 210. Wow. And I've always had an extremely low blood pressure of 90, over 60. Yeah. So all those things with their, and if I stressed too much, there was a recipe for disaster in a way. Speaker 3: (13:58) so they, but they couldn't find an actual reason to why I was having these heart problems at that time. And while I was really struggling. And so in the end, they just say, look, you can go back to sport, but you need to monitor and listen to yourselves. And I made two New Zealand teams within a year, um, and, and obviously had a very successful career after that. The second time I did it was I was working in Taiwan. I was qualified for world half iron man champ. So I was pushing the limit about six weeks out from the event. We had a big period of work where I'll be working around 60 hours a week plus those training 30 hours a week. Um, and just, I mean I was always some to try and find where is that balance on the high performance edge and I just pushed it too far. Speaker 3: (14:46) And so I had the same thing happen there, not to the, I wasn't feinting, uh, so much because I had a pacemaker and by then it was stopping me from doing that. Ah, so that was the second time. And then the third time I in Thailand, I was working, uh, 70 to 80 hours a week. Loved every single minute of what I was doing. I was worth 302 days straight. Yup. And woke up and did the big find to gain and um, you know, obviously this time I'm married and my wife's freaking out. She, I had never been in a hospital apart from being born pretty much. And you know, this took a big toll on her and I spent quite a bit of time in hospital again and Thailand and was during that time I realized that wasn't right about me anymore. And it was more too, you know what? Speaker 3: (15:37) Hey look, yeah, my heart's struggling a bit here and I'm not feeling well, but you know what, I'll, I've got the resilience, I'll bounce back from it. Right. You do it all the time and training, you know, you work hard, you smash yourself to bits it and you'd get a better recovery and your bounce back and away you go again pretty quick. But in this instance there was a lot more to it and I could see the effects on the staff. You know, we had 500 stops, so you could see how that affected them and especially my wife. And at that point I was like, you know what, I need to change. I'm, I put on 14kgs, I'd stopped exercising. Aye wasn't eating well even though I was at the healthiest place in the world. Mmm. And I was only getting four to five hours sleep a night. Speaker 3: (16:17) So I wasn't allowing my body to, to recover. Right. So I wasn't giving it a chance whatsoever. And what was really, and, and, and obviously at that time I decided the term breaking the CEO came up for me at that time, breaking the CEO code and [inaudible] that concept is now sort of really developed out in working with CEO's and executives around that and also building out programs for corporates. Exits are as well. So that's where that came from. But one of the real interesting things is when you're in athletes, you base everything. Everything's based around recovery. Yes. You've got the hard work. It's based around recovery because that's when the gains happen. That's when the high performance gains actually occur. And you have really strong trees. So when you push the limit in training or at a rice, your body tells you, you know, your times aren't as good. Speaker 3: (17:15) Your heart rate might be up, your sleep patterns go off. Um, appetite can change. And so there's a lot of really strong triggers that you're aware of. And generally you're recording a lot of data, so you, or you've got a coach that can see things as well when you're in the working world, [inaudible] have that. It's not a physical fatigue unless you're in certain [inaudible] industries. Yeah. So it's a real psychological fatigue. And unless there's a catastrophic event, yeah. Don't realize what's happening. So, excuse me to interrupt. But when you're an athlete, you only value breaking yourself physically. Speaker 2: (17:50) So you think any mental stress, it's just like, Oh, you know, grit. You haven't run 200 cases today. You know, like it's not that bad. You underestimate how much that they can put on the actual your system when your brain is stressed and when you're, when you're pushing the limits. Mean to me it takes a lot of energy. I mean, 20% of our energy goes just into our brain. 20% of our calories, for example. Yeah. Which is, you know, and part of it. So what's happening when you're in psychological fatigue or in your work spaces, the change in fatigue and energy levels is so gradual and our bodies so clever at adapting, you don't understand what's going on, you don't feel it. And it keeps dropping and dropping and dropping and dropping until it's too late. You don't realize it. And generally it's either you take a couple of days off or you go on a planned holiday and you get sick quite often. Speaker 2: (18:45) Well, you get to a point where I did where I had just worked at 302 days straight, full on 100% the whole time there was, it was go, go, you know, 24 seven never stopped thinking and the body does soon. You know what, okay, I'm going to have to put the brakes on here. I'm going to put the handbrake on it and we're going to hit real hard and you're probably going to hit a lamppost at the same time. And yeah, that's what happened. [inaudible] it a big lesson. The body is a very clever thing when it, you know, even in the, in the athletic world like, um, when you're running specific boat, you know, when I ran through New Zealand, my body was like shattering my body down in your mind is so strong that you pushed through the pain and you carry on and then my body actually pick up, carry on till the end of it run. Speaker 2: (19:32) But I paid the price for the next, but he is, well actually I'm still lost if I'm honest. I mean I think cause she pushed through those, you pushed through that, that survival limit. Okay. And you do do damage. It reminds me of a really funny story. Um, I was racing autumn in Austria back in 2005, so would have been my first right man. Oh uh, yeah. First Imam. So week before I had, um, Oh go, this is going in my head, uh, not boil. Um, and then fiction, uh, [inaudible] on my head anyway, so I had, I had a, had a medical problem and yeah. Um, so from that they said, Oh look, you know, you may not be able to race. And so during the rice, like I felt good beforehand and I said, okay, look, yep, you've got the clearance, go for it. And I felt amazing. I swam really well up with the front packs out onto the bike and feeling good. Got 50 K, and then I just started vomiting from 50 K right through to the a hundred into the 190 K ride. And I'm sitting here going, I don't know how I'm going to get through this rice if I can't get food. [inaudible] Speaker 3: (20:46) got onto the felt good, Speaker 3: (20:48) you know, I felt pretty crappy near the end of the bike and then got on the run and felt good for the first 10 K and going along nicely. And then I'm like sitting there going, I need to eat and I need to drink because I'm kidding. Anything down all day, you know, we're a six, seven hours into the rice by them. And I remember, I remember sitting down at the 21K Mark it was a loop, a double loop course. You come back past the finish line a couple of times and I could hear on the loudspeaker, a friend of mine ran out to sink being called out and saying, I went to our champion for today, ran out two sinks about to cross the line. And so I remember that and that's the last thing I remember. And, and I woke up in the medical tent [inaudible] I was like, how do I do? And they're like, what do you mean? I said, where did I finish? And they're like, Oh, we found you at the 22 K Mark or running down the wrong road and we were trying to stop you. And you're like, no, leave me. I'm about to catch the widow completely out of it. Just lost it. You know, body wanted to keep going. But I had, isn't it amazing how strong the mind is though, that you can push yourself to almost killing yourself? Yeah. Yup, yup. [inaudible] Speaker 3: (22:02) and like you, you know, through all this, these, you know, the cycle if you like, of of going had crashing, growing, had crashing, going hog crashing. It just started to learn something that you've actually like used today and you are in your world today. Okay. Yeah. So when, so when I was sitting there and I talked about, you know, being in that position, hospital, yeah. A couple of years ago and okay, I realized I needed to break the CEO code. And the big thing for me was I have all this amazing knowledge and lessons learned from the athlete world, from coaching, from being a sports science in that high performance space. And I was using none of it, none of it. And here's a lesson for everyone in life. There are four basic fundamentals to performance. Anyone, no matter what you do, it's exercise, nutrition, freeing your mind and recovering with purpose. Speaker 3: (22:57) Now all of those have effects on your ability to perform mentally, physically, emotionally. Okay. [inaudible] they have huge effects on things like your mood on your ability, your cognitive function, your ability to, to actually process information [inaudible] okay. Don't have those imbalance, then you will limit your performance potential. So I was, look at it this way, your talent sits, your minimum performance ceiling, your exercise, your nutrition, you're freeing your mind and you're covering with purpose determines how high you can lift the ceiling. All right? So that is what controls that your talent controls just your minimum height. So you could be the most talented person in the world, but if you don't look after yourself, you're not going to get anywhere near your potential. Hmm. And so obviously we say that quite often they get lazy and know everything's too easy for them when they're younger. And then finally, some people who actually really look after themselves come through and Sean above them, and that works in whatever space it is, whether it be a musician or a speaker, a coach, an athlete, a parents, whatever it may be, that will determine it. Speaker 3: (24:16) And then the second aspect is, uh, that are really thrived on and tested and tried many times is paradise nation and of the term that CEO paradise relation. Now puritization initially comes from cataloging in the library system and it was cataloging on periods of time. Then the sporting world took it, especially in endurance and used it to paradise. There they work in stress loads and balance it with recovery periods so that they can get jumps in performance over time. So as they recovered, their performance would go to a high level. I would stress it, they dropped down their performance, but then when they recovered it would go higher again. So I applied that to work. Um, and as we talked about before, you don't recognize the fatigue that's going on and you push and push and push. And because it's the stimulus is that the change is so small and it's a catastrophic event, then you don't, you, your body is adapting to it. [inaudible] Speaker 3: (25:12) so important to actually plan the recovery and, and that can be on a daily basis, weekly, monthly, yearly or career basis. Now, the Korea one is fascinating because I've only met two people so far who do this extremely well. One is Anne gripper, who used to be CEO of triathlon Australia and she's now working at new South Wales office of sport as their CEO. And she is into a fourth cycle of five years in a job, one year off, five years on, one year off. And she planned that, you know, uh, what are we looking at about seven, eight, nine years ago now? Nearly 20 years ago. Yeah. Each of her breaks, she's done something completely different. Yeah. And some might think of it as a sabbatical, but no, this is actually planned. It's not seven or more years. It's, it's every or five years on, one year off. Speaker 3: (26:03) And so she cycled the world for one of them. She set up a philanthropy, uh, in another one and the other one, she has gone off and done her masters at one of the prestigious Mmm postgraduate schools in Switzerland for school, the lighting. So I'm looking forward to what's next. I don't know. I haven't actually spoken to her. What's next? The other one is Del Beaumont. Del Bowman is a bit of a legend in the personal development and kind of marketing spice and has a huge following in Australia and around the world. And he's been working for 17 years and kind of that personal development space for the last 10 years. He works two months on, one month off. Wow. Three months on, one month off. And so during that one month off, he generally goes to a new country around the world. He takes his, his wife has young children and he's been, I think he's over a hundred countries now. Speaker 3: (26:58) He's been to, and so that's the approach he's taken now. He has a, he's built a team behind him. He's put trust in them. I'm sure he will really hard during the two months, but then he has a full one month off where it's completely off work. Yeah. Extremely good. Uh, if we took a look at it from a year point of view, most people will go, all right, I've got four weeks holiday. I'll take them off inside the Southern hemisphere. They'll take them off for Christmas and they'll spend time with the children. I've a summer, a Northern hemisphere would obviously be July, August period. So what they do is they work 11 months and then they just have this recovery there. So it's a long time to be staying on and performing at a high level. Exactly. Yeah. And so what's more effective is if, how do we look at, can we put things in every three months or every four months and actually scheduling those [inaudible] your diaries before the start of the year, like an athlete would. Speaker 3: (27:52) They plan the recovery periods at Welland avant, sometimes up to four years if they're into an Olympic cycle. [inaudible] and you sit there with your family and you plan that so that you're both offered the same time, if that's what you want to do. If you're married, if you're not, then obviously you just need to look after yourself. It's a bit easier. Um, but as you plan that time away from the work that you're doing away from the passion that you're in, get out in night, go see some new places, change your environment and allow that mind to refresh and the body to recover and that as well. Uh, and then obviously we can type that down to even into a WIC space where, how do we cycle those periods? What has been fascinating through the research with Don [inaudible] pretty much in, in endurance athletes and also in anything that's done in business, it works out to be about a three to one work to rest ratio. Speaker 3: (28:43) Yeah, three, two, one. So say an athlete will generally go three weeks on one week off, three weeks on, one week off. Now if sometimes they may do a longer period up to five or six weeks and then, but then they need a longer recovery period to balance that back. But it's still equal somewhere around three to one, unless they're doing something really extreme. And in the, it might need to be a lot more recovery in the working world. They do stuff, uh, say on a daily basis where they look at how long can a, a high performer achieve high levels of performance and productivity over period of time. Now there's some that say 52 minutes, um, of work at that level and before they start to lose the, the performance and lose the productivity and it takes about 70 minutes to get that back. Speaker 3: (29:33) There are others who say 45 minutes, 15 but most of the studies are still based around a three to one where it's risk ratio. So it's a great place to stop. Now if you go through what a lot of CEOs and a lot of businesses and a lot of families are going through right now, which is a massive stress load with dealing with [inaudible], you actually go into needs more recovery in there. Yup. Or a longer piece of recovery coming up. Now we're pretty much going to be forced to doing that because you're working from home. Yup. There might be some stresses, yes. But you're pretty much going to be forced to do that, which will be really good for you. Really good for you to take that time out to recover [inaudible] and we're using it to recover, right? Yeah. Yeah. And so the key message is here that it's all around proactively planning recovery so you can sustain high levels of performance and productivity all the time. Speaker 3: (30:27) And that's what I've been able to do since then. I don't drink coffee, I don't have sugar, I don't um, touch soft drinks. I don't have any caffeine whatsoever. I can't cause my heart anyway, but I have consistent energy all day. I don't get to a point where I fall over. I don't get to a point where I feel it declining. If that happens. It's extremely rare because I plan my recovery, I've got my exercise, nutrition, freeing my mind and recovering with purpose embedded every single day. And if I do need to do a period of how to work, then I will, I will plan a longer period of recovery in there. So I will look at it and go, okay, this project is going to take quite a bit of time. So I know I need to have some recovery in it. Yeah. At the moment, I am having to stop pretty early in the morning because of dealing with some stuff with covert 19 from a local, national, international level in multiple areas. Speaker 3: (31:21) So I have to start at five Oh six in the morning and I might not finish till nine at night, but I'll go out in the middle of the day and I go for a two three hour bike ride and have some recovery. So I'm in the middle of the dice. So I ensure that I can perform at a high level. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's, it's really about planning in doing the very basic things. Well, you sleep, you know, when you were doing in Taiwan and you hit that four to five hours a night's sleep, it's a disaster. Well, your hormones now, when do you put on my, you know, I don't order those sort of things. Uh, really those sort of things are really crucial. But their sleep, the hydration, the nutrition in the meantime breaks. If we all would agree on that and they exercise. Oh, absolutely. No, we are, we're singing from the same song shake Theo thing. Yeah. And it's certainly important. I like it. There's been a whole thing of the last sort of 10 years around that the hype before or that the people can go without slave and they'd be performing a massively. Now there's something trying to me what the statistic is. Speaker 3: (32:27) Oh yeah. I think it's something like 7%. It may even be less than that of people that can survive, that can function at the highest level off around five to six hours. Yeah, it's very few, Speaker 2: (32:40) but most people, it's around eight to nine hours. And every time you reduce that, like say if you reduce it by half an hour, you probably won't notice it too much because your body's adapting to it. But it does have quite a big effect [inaudible] on your IQ. Obviously your intelligence, your emotional intelligence, as you said, your hormones, which you fix, uh, things such as energy to fix, such as things as your mood. It affects your ability to cope under pressure. Alright. Really important things that you need to have firing in all cylinders. So the people that are thrived, Oh, sorry. Yeah. People that are thriving at the moment rather than just surviving the coven 19 and coronavirus people that actually [inaudible] sitting quite healthy and are able to make decisions rationally. I will too go through thought processes and um, ensure that they have the cognitive function, deal with things effectively. Speaker 2: (33:37) Those that have come into it a little tired that don't, don't have a healthy body are the ones that are struggling the most. Yeah, yup. Mean to the end physically and [inaudible] sleep deprivation one, um, that really over time leads to cognitive decline, you know, which I'm, you know, specialized in learning about brain rehabilitation and, and the correlation between Alzheimer's and dementia and lack of sleep over many years is it's a very strong one. Mmm. So for that reason alone, you know, you need to, if you want to have a brain that is performing into, you know, like the stats already in your thirties and your forties, you know, this is already a map to climb. Okay. And you, you know, optimizing every area of your life so that you can cope. What's the [inaudible] you know, I like, I've got a [inaudible] well it shouldn't be healthy fit. [inaudible] and I can face this courses with a beta lot of energy [inaudible] to focus on, you know, like I've got more to, to, to more resilience. Speaker 2: (34:47) And at the moment we're all going a little bit, well some of us are going and sign the hat, um, and we have to for this short period of time and that's okay. As long as we're the planning and as soon as this one's down that you've got some recovery in there somewhere. Otherwise you will. Hello. I mean, I know this, like with my mum, I'm having that aneurism and you know, the book that I've just [inaudible] for that relentless, the first three years were seven days a week, you know, operating two companies working with her all day and not a day off. Never a day off. Yeah. Oh, you know, in the first six months it was round the clock and there was hardly any time for sleep. It was, yeah, four to five hours of sleep. And you know, I paid, I paid a massive price, but I had to, to survive. And now I have to, my body isn't quite as as it should be. Speaker 3: (35:38) And I have to rebuild those resources again. And that is an extreme, you know, situations that you had to, you know, and we know as athletes how to do that for a period of time. The thing is [inaudible] don't, don't mistake mental toughness with, you know, you're, you're, you're still a human, you're not Bulletproof. I would like to think we are as athletes, we're not, and we will have limitations and we need to respect their bodies and gives them time to come back sooner or later and hopefully sooner. Mmm. So Craig, I now need to ramp up shortly and I know that you've got lots of things to get onward. So the periodization, the three two one is a really important factor adhering to the basics. Uh, got you. What else did you like? What would ask, would you like to leave as parting words for people to think about and we can they find you and reach out to you if they wanna work with you? Speaker 3: (36:36) Yeah. Brilliant. I think one of the best [inaudible] the most important things is here is it. It's about the basics. You know, if we look at the most effective sports teams in the world are most effective athletes, they focused a lot on the basics and getting them right. What we're seeing a lot now in say the sporting world as we're seeing a lot of people going for the shiny things, they want to mimic the plays that the all blacks do. They want to be trying to do the same sessions as and the Olympic. A runner. Yeah, Stitcher, and so they want to go for the shiny things first. It is or about the basics and that's the same thing when it comes to looking after your body. [inaudible] no matter whether you're a mum or your a CEO or you're someone going to work or you look after the [inaudible], the [inaudible], the community bridge club. Speaker 3: (37:23) It's about the bicycles. If you want to [inaudible] high performing person, I think that's really, really important. [inaudible] the second thing is that you need to obviously make sure that you're preparing to perform every day. If we look at athletes, singers, dances, songwriters, artists in what people would term is the performing areas. Um, and what they don't realize everything is performing. But I would consider those as performance ones. They spend over 95% of their time training, preparing, planning, and less than 5% of their time actually competing. Now when it comes to the business world, corporate world, it's the complete opposite. So they actually spend more than around 95% of their time actually competing. Yeah. And very little time planning, preparing training to be better, to improve their performance and to get the best out of their team. So I have the second phase of breaking the CEO code is performance is the three P's of leadership performance touched on CEO paradise [inaudible]. Speaker 3: (38:31) The second one is CUI prisons. Now CEO prisons is around, how do you turn up? Oh, sorry. How do you show up and turn it up? So it is how do you prepare for a meeting or an interaction or for a project? Cause most people just roll in. Yeah. We see quite often in the corporate world where people will go back to back to back meetings. Um, and even if they don't, they'll just rock into a meeting. They'll pull out their diary and go, Oh, we're talking about this today. Can someone brief me what's happening? Yeah, absolutely. Zero preparation. There's no preparation to right. Sometimes. Ah, yeah. And we all get caught in it sometimes, but wouldn't it be more effective if you actually plan for it? You thought about what you were going to say and what impact you are going to have on people. Uh, and, and you speak. So generally as a speaker, one of the key things you focus on before you get on stages, you visualize how you want the audience to react and feel afterwards. How do you want them to react and fill afterwards? So [inaudible] you've got to bring the performance, bring the energy, and you've got to evoke the emotions that are required. So that's in any meeting, in any discussion, any sales. Yeah. Any relationship that's so important. Evoke the new bright emotions, not any emotion. The right emotion. Speaker 3: (39:56) Okay. And then once you evoke the emotions, you then need to make sure that you leave them with a message and something to do next. So what, what is the action that is going to occur? So prisons is all about your nonverbal communication. It's around your communication as well. Content you are going to say. So go back to nonverbal. It's around your body language. It's the way you bring your energy to the room. Mmm. [inaudible] the most important aspect because people feed a lot more off the nonverbals than they do the verbals. So we actually react. And so 97% of the message comes from the nonverbals, not the actual verbal content. Well, not what you're saying. Yep. That's how you say it. Yep. And how you deliver it. Yeah. Yeah. So that prison is so important. So a lot of the time we start, we talk with our, with the say CEOs executives to go, alright, let's cut yours, schedule your meetings in half. Speaker 3: (40:53) And it freaks them out. And we know we have to get the pay on the to do it and it teaches him to delegate the low and medium priorities to other people to look after. And so they just focus on the high priorities. And this is so important right now during covert 19 and coronavirus. You need to identify what are the high priorities and then determine what is going to have the greatest impact with the least amount of effort. And you move the medium and low, um, priorities and delegate them and empower your staff to look after those and given some responsibility. Don't take all the responsibility yourself. Hmm. So that's a really powerful thing right now. Mmm [inaudible] then obviously once we've reduced the number of meetings, we, we then go, okay, we need to put some time in beforehand. So you plan not just understand the content and maybe your outcome, but how you're going to deliver. Speaker 3: (41:47) And then after the meeting you need to make sure you've got a debrief and some time to recover because we need to make sure that you're performing at three, two, one work to rest ratio throughout the day. [inaudible] come four or five o'clock when you might need to be making some really key decisions. You still have the energy, you still able to perform [inaudible] best to bring the best out of the people you've got. So powerful. The third phase is CEO performance and CEO performance is around developing high performing habits and high-performing habits. Uh, [inaudible] around making sure that you have your and your [inaudible] mental state that you're removing any obstacles, any, uh, things that are cluttering your mind, anything that is preventing you from being your best. So it does integrate. So that first one, that first phase of your foundations of exercise, nutrition fraying and modern recovery does include those. Speaker 3: (42:45) But there are also other things. It's around ensuring that you don't contaminate the home space with workspace. Yeah. This is really, really important right now I working at home. So maybe I think for this, uh, I would just go into what's really important right now for those that haven't worked at home before. You need to set some boundaries, create a space where you do work only and only work. Do we need to make sure that it's, you can keep the children away if possible, unless they're really young. You may need to adjust this, that drinks can't be spilled, etc. That distractions are put to the side. You need to make sure that when you step out of that room, you go from being in work. So now being in home life, yup. Or release life, you put the new hat on, you need to make sure when you get up in the morning, you keep your routine as consistent as possible to what you would do from a normal working day. Speaker 3: (43:41) Keep that routine because then your body's not reacting to stuff. Your body reacts when it's [inaudible] doesn't, it's unfamiliar. Yeah. It would be proactive. So get up, have a shower hugely out of your pajamas. Cause I'm sure there's a lot of you that are sitting in your pajamas and your boxer shorts, et cetera right now or your underwear doing your work at home. No, you've got to step out and get into the right mental state and you know, I have breakfast stopped the day as you would [inaudible] then you need to make sure that you've actually got planned time in there to step out and get some exercise, recharge the batteries, clear them on freedom mind, um, and, and have a break from things cause it's so easy to get caught up, especially when you're at home. And for those that are normally used to being in a really busy office with lots of calls and emails going on, now I'm going to find you actually probably not this week, but in the next couple of weeks you'll find you have a lot more time for yourself and you'd be able to get in the zone and standard zone a lot longer. Speaker 3: (44:42) So when you're in that space, it is still important because if you want great performance throughout the whole day, through the whole week, through over the next few months, [inaudible] got to proactively put in the recovery now otherwise you will struggle later on. Yup. Mmm. And that is so important. Now there might be some if you're like, um, let's see how, so if, if you've heard of the five love languages. No. So there are Gary Chapman, check it out. [inaudible] fascinating, fascinating stuff. And it talks about one of the five love languages and how if you can understand what your love languages and you understand what someone else's is and then you know how to work with them. So my love language is acts of service. So I like it when people do things and I do things, that's my love language. Whereas my wife is physical touch and quality time, so she likes to be close to me. Speaker 3: (45:33) We don't need to speak, don't need to talk much. And she dislikes to be close to me. So there might be an instance where say [inaudible] because they might be a bit more work to do right now is I might go out in the lounge, but we know clearly that I'm still working. We're, we're aware of that if we want to. And so it can be close to each other. If we want to have a discussion, I close the laptop, take it back, put it in the office, and then we sit down and have our discussion and talk through things or discuss whatever we want to. That's a good tip for me actually. Cause I'm, yeah. Tend to just be 24, seven hovering around the computer and sometimes the husband, it doesn't get detention in dates when he needs it. Yeah, because you were always, that delineation is really, really, yup. Speaker 3: (46:19) And relationships are absolutely number one priority. It's so easy for us to brush them off to the side and get busy with work in the end. The people that are always going to be there when things are struggling, uh, when, when times are tough, when overwhelmed sitting are your family and your friends. And so if you [inaudible] [inaudible] them right anytime of the year, you can do it for a little bit. But if you do it over a long period of time, that relationship will deteriorate. So make sure if you've got healthy relationships, you have a healthy life and you have healthy work, um, and productivity and performance. Excellent. All right. It gives it a nice wrap I think for that. Perfect. Wrap up. So Craig, we can people reach out to you. I know you have a whole bunch of things that you offer in courses and a work that you do with [inaudible] CEO isn't so on as a speaker is a drug. Speaker 3: (47:10) Can you just give us where they can find you and we can put that in the show notes? So, yeah. Brilliant. So we have WW dot [inaudible] uh, J, the number two, the form.com and that's where we have everything around coaching these details there. On the speaking that I do workshops, I have yet to see your on there. And also a range of videos that I'm doing at the moment. So at the moment I'm doing a daily video [inaudible]. It brings the breaking the CEO code principles and relates them directly to coven 19 and coronavirus. So there's a three to seven minute video coming out every day you can get on social media, YouTube, um, and also on the website and that's around leadership, wellbeing and performance in the business space and for home life in that as well. So there's some great opportunities there. I also have a brand new website, which is still in construction, but [inaudible] you can view it at the moment. Speaker 3: (48:05) And that is Craig, John, speaker.com. So Craig, John speaker.com and that just focuses more around speaking that I do an emceeing as well. Sorry. [inaudible] yeah, great. So you can grab me on LinkedIn. Ah, always got stuff happening every day on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram and Twitter sort of not so much do stuff there, but my main focus is around LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram. Fantastic. Craig, thank you so much for your insights, your wisdom, your knowledge today and sharing it in this difficult time. I know that some of these practical w tips and in life tips and help and support, um, well be well received and are going to help people during this crisis. And you know, right now more than anything, I think that the work that you do and what we do as well as is very passionate and very relevant to today's crisis and keeping people safe and healthy, uh, immediately healthy to get through this, this horrible crisis that we're all facing. [inaudible] Speaker 3: (49:04) Craig, thank you very much for your time and your energy today and thanks for having me on your show. I really appreciate that. Yeah, we'll be, um, anything else you want to say? We've got Lisa, thank you very much. It's absolute pleasure. A lot of speaking and connecting with you. Bring out some really interesting questions and some great, uh, topics to discuss and really there to help people, you know, it's pushing the boundaries to go, you know, what, let's do things better or even different to what we'd done before because it's so important that we have more people out there being high performing leaders and high performing people who are having are really positive and calming and effective influence on the people around them right now. So thank you very much. Thanks, Craig. Speaker 1: (49:48) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.

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204 The Link Up with Latesha : Working From Home + Maintaining Your Peace

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 28, 2020 16:15

On the twenty-third installment of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, talks about how to deal with your co-workers and bosses as you work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also stresses the importance of setting boundaries to help ensure you get your work done and maintain your peace. Listen to the full episode to find out why she's a big advocate for over-communication and a lot more!Learn more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials. LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBStop by LateshaByrd.com. Click here to check out Latesha's shop, and don't forget the 60% discount code GETTHECOINS!Check out Latesha's YouTube channel.BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBFind out how the CDC suggests you wash your hands by clicking here.Help food banks respond to COVID-19. Learn more at FeedingAmerica.org.Visit our website.TRANSCRIPTLatesha: Hey, hey, guys. Welcome to another episode of The Link Up with Latesha. How are you all doing? I really wish that I could hear your response right now. I know that this is a really difficult time. This is a challenging time for many of us because our world has been flipped upside down with the spread of--and I know y'all are even tired of hearing about it, seeing it, reading it... I'm just gonna say it one time and that's it--with the spread of coronavirus. It has literally impacted every single person in this country. We are being forced to work from home. For many, that may have not even have had experience working from home. And I'm in North Carolina. Well, I'm in Charlotte, and our mayor just put out a stay-at-home order for 14 days, and then today we were told that the governor has now put out a stay-at-home order for all of North Carolina for 30 days starting on Monday, so all we can do is go to the grocery store and go on walks. [laughs] When I tell you I have never lived in a more crazier time ever, and what I wanted to talk about today is with this new, you know, thing that everyone's doing right now, which is working from home and working remotely and working virtual, I want to talk about not just how to stay productive and get your work done, because that's all that I've been seeing around this whole, you know, working from home movement, is "Here's how to stay productive." I want to take a different spin on it today based on my experiences in corporate and also as an entrepreneur, but then also hearing and seeing my friends and what they're going through and what my coaching clients are going through now having to work from home where they may not have had to previously. So this is a different spin on working from home. It's about how to work from home and deal with your annoying, nagging co-workers and boss and how to set some boundaries so you can get your work done and maintain your peace. That's what we're talking about today. Our work from home experience is going to look different from some--definitely referring to people of color here, right? We are often micromanaged, underutilized, overworked, looked over for promotions and mentorship, and so our day-to-day in our careers look vastly different in terms of our communication, in terms of our relationships. Now, this is me making a general assumption here, but everyone has their own experiences. I do just want to put that disclaimer out there. But here's just a few tips on how to work from home and maintain some peace through it all. #1 is to give yourself some grace. Extend yourself some grace. I know that companies may be operating as business as usual, but this is not business as usual. Let's just be clear. This is not business as usual. We are going through a very difficult time for many. We have had family members that have gotten sick, we may have gotten family members or friends that have been laid off, right? So this is impacting all of us, our friends, our families, our communities, and so I want you all to know that it is okay if you don't have it all the way together 24/7 for work, and I want to make sure you are managing your energy. So first, you know, the first tip is to extend yourself some grace, but the second tip is to manage your energy, not just your time. Manage your energy, not just your time. Now that you may be working from home, you may have to do a lot more self-management, right? So no one is there saying, you know, "Go to this meeting. Do this. Do that," right? You might have to be managing your own priorities and deadlines a little bit more than usual. So with that being said, see if you can structure your workday around getting the things done that will take the most creative energy, the most brain power, so that you can focus that energy on things that will require to do a little bit more heavy lifting mentally. What I mean by that is I took a few days and I just kind of jotted down how I was feeling throughout the day. I'll be honest, I did not come up with that idea. My therapist told me to do that. [laughs] But what I got from that was I was realizing that there were certain times and dips in my days where I was feeling really pumped up and then when I was feeling low energy, so what I have done to structure my schedule is when I first wake up in the morning or when I first start my work day, I spend that time creating content. I spend that time creating ideas, you know? I spend that time really focusing on brainstorming strategies. At the times where I'm feeling a little lower-energy, I'll do more administrative. Sending emails, signing contracts, you know, reviewing something. [laughs] Not creating, but maybe reviewing something. That is when I will spend time doing that. So, you know, manage your energy, not just your time. Going along with managing energy is take breaks. Take breaks. I was talking to my friends the other day and they were telling me about their experience now having to work from home, and they said, "Man, I barely get up. Like, I go to the bathroom and I sit. I feel like I'm trapped at my computer. I feel like I'm trapped at my desk and I can't go anywhere, and when I was working in our office, you know, I was able to take walks and take breaks and--" Listen, you are not a machine. We are not machines. We are not programmed to work 12, 15, 16 hours straight, or even just honestly, like, four hours straight. We are not programmed and conditioned that way. We need constant breaks. So make sure that you are scheduling breaks in your day. I like to do an hour and a half of straight work, and then I'll take, like, a ten to fifteen minute break. And make sure too that you have a routine every day. Make sure that you have a routine every day, but understand that many of you may have children at home now since all the schools are canceled, so your work day at work may not look the same as it does now being at home. Maybe you have to take a break to get your kids set up for school, you know, take care of their lunch, their dinner. Once they go to bed you hop back on for a couple of hours, but you may lose a couple of hours during the day. Please, please, please think about what schedule works best for you and your family and have a conversation with leadership about that. Have a conversation with your boss or your manager. It's really unfair if companies are, like I said before, operating business as usual when there are so many other, you know, circumstances in place right now. So we're now moving into talking about boundaries. Let your manager know that you will be operating on an amended schedule just due to the things that you're having to take care of in the household. The other thing is that I'm sure you are all experiencing many more Zoom meetings and virtual meetings being scheduled. I want you to think about how you can be more proactive versus reactive in your work. What can you do within your power and your work day to make sure that those meetings don't become meetings? They can be done in email. Y'all know the memes that we see that's like, "Okay, this meeting could have been an email." That happens so much more, especially now that folks are like, "Ooh, let's get on Zoom and hop on a meeting." Like, we don't have time to sit in Zoom meetings all day. We just don't. So if you can, be more proactive with communicating your work, your deadlines, your progress, anything that may be holding you up. This is a great time to over-communicate. I'm a big advocate for over-communication. You never want your boss wondering what you're doing and what you're working on, so make sure you establish those touch-points where you can reach out. I'm not saying you need to email them every 5 minutes, but, you know, find out what works best for them and figure out what works best for you, and then start reaching out to them just saying, "Hey, I just want to give you an update here," you know? Being in the same office, it is so much easier to just walk up to someone and say, "Hey, how's this project going?" Or "Hey, you still working on so-and-so?" Right? We don't have that--you know, we just don't have that face-to-face contact anymore, so that is why it is important just to remember to communicate. Communicate, all right? Don't let anyone have to take a guess about the bomb work that you are doing. Other things. Setting boundaries. I want to talk about communication with coworkers. For some reason coworkers think, "Oh, well, because you're at home and you're not doing anything like me, like, you're available, and you'll text me back, and--" No. Mm-mm. Unless your co-workers are your friends, but they don't have to be your friends. I'm definitely an advocate for having good relationships with co-workers, but texting back and forth? No. Be careful about the things that you're accepting, new behaviors that you are accepting from your co-workers and from your boss at this time, and reel them back in to, you know, strictly business, and once you settle and once you kind of let them operate in a certain capacity that you're not comfortable with, they will continue to do that unless you say something, so it's best to go ahead and nip it in the bud when it happens. So if you realize that a co-worker is texting you after hours, don't respond, and let them know, "Hey, you know, you text me when it was pretty late. I typically turn off my work devices/stop checking email/I'm not taking care of work after this time because I'm with my family." "Yes, I'm--" You don't have to say all this, right? [laughs] 'Cause I'm about to go in. "Yes, I'm home, but that doesn't mean I have time to talk to you. I have my kids here. I have my spouse here. Or I just have myself here and I need to give myself a mental break and a little emotional recharge." [laughs] Don't say all that. Keep it short and sweet and say, "Hey, I don't respond to X after 5:00, 6:00, 7:00," right? So be mindful of that. The other thing I will say is remember that this is not just business as usual, and if you feel like you are getting slammed with work or you feel like you're being micromanaged, it all comes back to communication. If you see that you are having six Zoom meetings thrown on your schedule in one day, that takes up a lot of time, to prepare for the meeting, to sit in the meeting that could have been an email, right? If you feel that your workload is not feasible with all the new meetings going on, with the adjustments at home, have a conversation and let your boss know, "Look, this is everything that's going on right now. We're having all of these meetings. It's taking away from me actually being able to get work done," or "It's taking away from me being able to execute on X, Y and Z. If I continue to keep this same momentum of meetings on my calendars, I don't want to fall short of any deadlines here, so can you help me with prioritizing or figuring out how I can get some of these meetings pushed off of my plate so that I can spend more time dedicated to getting these projects done?" Now, that was a pretty straight-forward way of saying it. [laughs] So figure out the best way to say it to your boss, but all I want to make sure that I reiterate here is that it's communication. Communication. Being proactive. Not being afraid to set those boundaries and extending yourself some grace. So good luck, good luck with setting those boundaries. Please reach out to me with your experiences with working from home and your challenges, or maybe you will enjoy it. I love working from home. I don't love it under these, you know, precautions, but I have a home office, and I'll be honest, for me, when I first quit corporate over two years ago and I was working for myself, I actually was really struggling with staying productive and, you know, being effective, and so I ended up getting a co-working space, and because I realized for me I needed somewhere to go--of course we don't have that luxury right now, but I needed a separate workspace to go because my apartment was very small so that I could be productive. So okay, I guess this is, like, a bonus tip, but making sure that you do have a separate workspace in your home other than your bed, right, or other than your couch. If your couch has to be it, I mean, I really don't want it to be, but maybe you could do, like, the dining table. Maybe if you have a bar in your kitchen. [laughs] Somewhere other than a place where you're super comfortable, but saying all that to say it was actually a hard struggle for me, and I had to find the routine, I had to find a method and a schedule that worked with me. So you will find it. You will find your stride, and I wish you all the best of luck. All right.

How To Communicate Better In Marriage - Biblical Answers To Your Questions

Why Is There a Hot Wheel Where the Butter Should Be?

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 53:42

This Q and A topic is all about communication in marriage. Which we mention often in almost every episode because it is such a vital component of marriage. You have to talk to each other! We answer several questions that were submitted by our listeners. Please enjoy. Read Transcript[Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna answer your questions about communication in marriage. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe the Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Marriage After God. It's actually the last episode of season three. So if you've been following along, we're gonna be taking a break, we're about to have a baby. If you've been listening to the last few episodes, you know that. And so, we're gonna have a little break. And then we're gonna come back in another season, in season four. We don't have a date for that yet, which is fine. [Jennifer] We'll let you guys know on social media. [Aaron] Yeah. And then, we'll do some new episodes. And so, just as a side note, if you have topic ideas for the new season, go ahead and shoot those in a message to us on Instagram at @marriageaftergod. But, today we're gonna be answering some questions from the audience, but before we get to the questions we like to talk about some things in life, but really, this first thing I wanna talk about is, I wanna encourage everyone listening today, because I know that there's a lot of fears, there's a lot of anxiety going around with the coronavirus, with things that are happening in the world, and I think some of them are legitimate things to be thinking about and considering. We wanna be wise people, that's what the Bible talks about. We don't wanna just pretend that none of this stuff's gonna affect us. But, my encouragement is to remind everyone listening that our trust is not in this world. Our trust is not in the vaccine that they might come out with. Our trust is not in the government. Our trust is not in the healthcare system. Our trust is not even our bodies. [Jennifer] Or money. [Aaron] Or money. The Bible is very clear where are trust lies, and that when we trust in anything other than God, other than His son Jesus, that trust is faulty, that hope is false, and we're actually insecure in those hopes. So I just wanted to point our hearts and our minds back to the Giver of Life. To the One that we look forward to, the One where our hope should lie, which is in Jesus Christ. Guys, one day we're gonna be with Him forever, and we're gonna have new bodies, we're gonna be healthy, He's gonna make the world right. All these things that are in the world, the destruction, the death, the injustices, the sickness, the pestilence, all those things are going to be made right. And so, once this thing passes, and whatever the damage is going to be, we don't know. But there's always gonna be something else. That's why our eyes need to be on Christ. And so I just hope that if you're having anxieties about this, the Bible tells us how to deal with our anxieties, it's to lift up our request to the Lord with thanksgiving, and to pray to Him. And He says He'll give us a peace that surpasses all understanding. And what I love about that is that our peace in God is completely standalone from everything in our life. That it doesn't matter what's going on in the world, it doesn't matter what's going on in our life, it doesn't matter about our circumstances. You could be like Paul, in prison and be praising God. You can be like Peter in prison, writing letters to the church. You could be in the midst of whatever it is that this world and that the enemy, or whatever it is, wants to throw at you, and you can have complete and perfect peace in Jesus. And so, I just wanted to quickly encourage everyone with that. [Jennifer] No, it was really good. I think that there is just a lot of attention specifically on the coronavirus. What I would say is, it is important to pay attention to what's going on in the world, current events and things like that, but-- [Aaron] Wisdom is good. [Jennifer] When we get those thoughts of fear, or anxiety, or frustration even, we need to remember that even in those times we need to submit those feelings to the Lord, and ask Him to guide us, to lead us, to give us wisdom on how to approach the situation and deal with it. And then remember that our bodies are gonna fail us. Our bodies are gonna get sick. There's gonna be, if it's not this thing, it's another thing, and so we just need to be able to trust the Lord that He knows what's gonna happen to us. He knows everything. [Aaron] He's knows all, He's omniscient. [Jennifer] So we can trust that. [Aaron] We can totally trust Him. And again, this isn't to say do not be wise, like we be wise, if we can make that take measures we do, but we have to remember that we could take every perfect measure, we could take every precaution, we can totally stock up what on whatever, just imagine it, whatever you think you could do to prepare, and your trust in that would still be faulty. Because none of that is actually secure. So, our trust is only good when it's in Christ. So, be prepared to the level that you can, and let the Lord have your fears and rest in Him. That's our encouragement. [Jennifer] Another thing that we wanted to share with you guys is just how incredibly blessed we feel for our relationship with Hobby Lobby. And, I don't know if you guys all know but they carry our books. [Aaron] Which was a total God thing, because there was no way that we were connected with them. I wasn't reaching out. We didn't reach out to them. They actually reached out to us and asked if they could carry our books, and I think it's so awesome. It's one of the cheapest places you can get our books. [Aaron] The cheapest place. [Jennifer] And, who doesn't love Hobby Lobby? I mean, just to be able to go there and peruse, and look at everything. [Aaron] People who've never been to one. [Jennifer] Well, if you haven't been to one, you should go check one out. I'm sure there's one near you. If you're near one, yeah. [Jennifer] But I just wanted to first give a shout out to Hobby Lobby and say thank you. Thank you for being someone who advocates for books like ours, and resources that point people back to God. And I also just wanna thank everyone who has been picking them up and buying them from Hobby Lobby, 'cause that keeps our relationship with them good. [Aaron] That reminds me, I love when people go into Hobby Lobby and they take a picture. And they #hobbylobbyfinds. So if you ever do that, we love to re-share those. So if you are in a Hobby Lobby and you pick up a copy of our books, please take a picture of it, and we'll probably re-share it on our Instagram. [Jennifer] Just make sure you tag us @marriageaftergod so that we see it. [Aaron] Exactly, 'cause if you don't tag us, we don't know. But yeah, so that's just a couple of things, just encouragement on the chaos in the world that had our peace. And then just, we're incredibly blessed and honored by Hobby Lobby and their partnership with us. That, to be honest, I don't think we deserve. I don't think we've, it's a God thing, that He set this up and we just wanna give Him the glory for that. [Jennifer] And if you're like me and you have been wanting to order our books, and you want it today, you can go pick one up today. You don't have to order it online and then wait for it. They have them in stock. And they're in every Hobby Lobby, which is amazing. So, it doesn't matter which one, unless they're out of stock. But they carry them everywhere. [Jennifer] Once I know what I want, it's so hard to wait when I do online shopping and stuff. I just wanna go get everything. [Aaron] But now Amazon has one day shipping, which is crazy. [Jennifer] I don't know how they do it. [Aaron] I don't either. But it gets here. Okay, so, one last thing, we have a another prayer challenge. I don't know if you've taken the marriage prayer challenge yet. Over 50,000 people have taken the marriage prayer challenge, which is incredible. So, we have this new challenge called the parenting prayer challenge, and it's a prayer challenge for you to pray for your son or your daughter, or both. Or all of them. Or all of them. Depending on how many kids you have. Yeah, all your kids. And it's completely free. Just got to parentingprayerchallenge.com and fill out the form and choose who you wanna pray for, and we'll start sending emails every day. [Jennifer] You guys might be wondering how it's set up because, obviously, they're not individualized prayers for you and your child, but they're prompts. So, it'll suggest pray for this specific thing, and then, as you're praying, you're making it personal because you know your family best. [Aaron] And it's a scheduled daily reminder. So you get this email, it says hey, you're gonna pray for your son right now, and here's what you should pray for. And it's not to replace your prayer life, it's to encourage it, inspire it, and give you a new outlook on your prayer life, and maybe expand upon it. One more time, it's parentingprayerchallenge.com to go sign up for the parenting prayer challenge. [Jennifer] All right so, this last episode of the season is a Q&A. We polled the community, the Marriage After God community, and Unveiled Wife and Husband Revolution, and we asked you guys to submit your questions, specifically about communication in marriage. And so, first of all, we just wanna thank everyone who sent us your questions. It's been cool to be able to poll the questions from the audience from Instagram, from you guys, and to answer them here. It makes me feel more connected and I love it. [Aaron] They often ask things that I'm not even thinking about. I'm like oh, that's a good question. So, it's really fun that we ask you guys. It also makes us feel like we're connected with you on another level. So, if you follow us on Instagram, that's usually where we poll our audience. You could follow @marriageaftergod, or @unveiledwife, or @husbandrevolution. We're gonna be doing Q&A's often, so if you see us pop a question and ask you to give us your questions, just submit them there, and we store them and we pick from them, and we try and answer them on here. [Jennifer] Yeah, and just let you guys know because of timing, we don't always get through every question, and so if you're listening and you're like, "I know I submitted a question "for communication in marriage," and we didn't answer it, please reach back out to us and just let us know, and maybe we can just answer it on Instagram for you. [Aaron] Or on the next time. [Jennifer] Or on the next Q&A. [Aaron] Cool. So, before we jump into the questions, why don't we just talk about some of the scriptures that, when I think about communication, these scriptures aren't just, they're not necessarily communication between a spouse. But it's-- [Jennifer] With each other. [Aaron] Yeah, it's with [Both] people. With one anothers in the church. [Jennifer] Very applicable to marriage. [Aaron] So I'm just gonna read through a handful of scriptures. [Jennifer] I'll read the first one 'cause it's shorter. You read the second one. [Aaron] All right. [Jennifer] Psalm 141:3 says, "Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; "keep watch over the door of my lips." [Aaron] Yeah, and I pulled some of these scriptures to just show what a biblical perspective over our mouth is. And the things that we say. In Matthew 12:33 Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, and He says this, "Either make a tree good and its fruit good, "or make a tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit." [Jennifer] Like we know a peach tree is a peach tree because it has peaches. [Aaron] Or it's one of those fruit salad trees. [Jennifer] Well, that would be confusing. [Aaron] Which totally ruins the analogy. But anyways, "You brood of Vipers, "how can you speak good when you are evil? "For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. "The good person out of his good treasure "brings forth good, and the evil person of the evil treasure "brings forth evil. "I tell you, on the day of judgment, "people will give account "for every careless word they speak. "For by your words you will be justified, "and by your words you will be condemned." [Jennifer] So what you're saying is words are powerful? [Aaron] They matter, yeah. We need to know that, we can't, like this specifically, and we just talked about this, actually, the other day, we say something and then we say I'm just venting, or I'm just kidding. But in reality if, it's coming from somewhere, those words that we just conjured up out of our mouth. They came from somewhere, and so we need to be careful and aware, like wait, so I said this thing and I wanted to make it sound like it wasn't that bog of a deal, but why did I say that? Why did I say that about so and so? [Jennifer] If someone has self control of their tongue, and they think, they're about to say something, but they decide not to, which is good, I would say they still need to evaluate their heart and question why was that even on the tip of my tongue? [Aaron] Why did it come out so quickly? And often, I would imagine this is about people in our life, and then if we say something so quickly, even if it's to someone in confidence, and we think, wait, am I actually angry at this person, or am I actually annoyed by this person, or bothered, or judgmental or whatever? And we have to think about that 'cause sometimes that comes out of our mouth and it's not from a pure heart. [Jennifer] And I'll say this, words cut deep, and when, especially in marriage, you see that person, you just see their face and you're reminded of what they've said, either recently or years ago. And you can hear them saying it in your mind, over and over again. And so, I think we just need to be reminded that we have a huge responsibility with our words. [Aaron] The next verse is from James, but there's another verse in James that we didn't write down here, that talks about having control of your tongue, and how the tongue is a, it's a small member of a body, but it's actually like a flame that can start a fire. And you're in the members of your body. It's also talked about as a rudder, something that, you have a large ship that is controlled by such a little thing. The things we say actually matter to a point of it directing our lives. But it starts off with saying, if someone has complete control over their tongue, they're a perfect man. So, we all know that we don't have complete control over our tongue 'cause we're not Jesus. Jesus was perfect. And everything He said was controlled. [Jennifer] So, when we're not perfect, and we're not controlled, what's our response should be? [Aaron] Repentance. At least recognizing it and saying, whoa, what I said was off. [Jennifer] Apology, reconciliation. [Aaron] I know I can't put those words back. It's like toothpaste, it comes out, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. So James 1:19-20 says, "Know this my beloved brothers, "let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, "slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce "the righteousness of God." So this is more a practical tip of, hey, to save yourself from saying something you don't mean, [Jennifer] Be slow. [Aaron] Be slower to say it, probably stop yourself. [Jennifer] I just wanna say, it also says be quick to hear. And I think, sometimes we wanna justify the things that we say. [Aaron] What? [Jennifer] We're not actually listening to how our words are affecting the other person, and so I think, I know you said this is practical, a really practical tip is just questioning, evaluating, making sure that you're being a good listener in your marriage. [Aaron] Listening to yourself, and listening to the person talking to you. [Jennifer] And to the Holy Spirit. [Aaron] Yeah, and to the Holy Spirit. [Jennifer] Okay, next one Proverbs 12:18, "There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, "but the tongue of the wise brings healing." [Aaron] Again, showing the power of our words towards others. [Jennifer] Such vivid imagery there. [Aaron] Here's one, Proverbs 18:2, "A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, "but only expresses his own opinion." So, we have to be careful about this, this is something I've struggled with in the past, my foolishness of just only interested in sharing my opinion. Like, oh, well let me tell you what I think, let me tell you what I think, rather than listening, rather than being thoughtful, rather than actually considering the other person. I've dealt with that for sure. [Jennifer] Another one is Proverbs 18:13, "If one gives an answer before He hears," again, going back to be a good listener. [Aaron] This ever happens to me, I don't do this. I do all the time. [Jennifer] "If one gives an answer before he hears, "it is his folly and shame." [Aaron] So, the next one, and the last one, which is by far not the last verse, 'cause there's tons of scripture that talks about how we communicate and the way we communicate. Proverbs 18:21, "Death and life "are in the power of the tongue, "and those who love it will eat its fruits." So, understanding that our tongues are powerful. If we love the power of our tongue, we're going to eat the fruits of it. Meaning, if we want to share our thoughts, and we're totally fine with just speaking things, we need to be able to be aware that those words are ours, and we have to own them. [Jennifer] All right, so that was just a little foundational prep for communication in marriage, just looking at a biblical way to communicate with your spouse. [Aaron] And get a perspective on how we use our words. [Jennifer] 'Cause honestly, no matter what question we answer, that was probably the most important that you hear today. [Aaron] Yeah, the scripture. Not our words, the Bible's words. Always. So, question one from the community says, how do you two come together and talk about your dreams as a couple and as a family? [Jennifer] Oh cool, I like that it's as a couple and as a family. Which we do talk about, dreaming together, in "Marriage After God", and I just love that chapter. Just because it's something that Aaron and I have found a lot of joy in. [Aaron] It's fun. [Jennifer] It's fun. And what we do is, we look at our life and we say, okay God, what do you wanna do with us? And we get to talk about it. [Aaron] How would you say, how have we been doing it over the last few years? [Jennifer] So, our biggest, probably dreaming session, as a couple happens at the end of the year, and we take time to go over what did that last year look like? What's still on our plate? And what things do we wanna try and accomplish in that next year? And it takes a good three hours or more to get through. [Aaron] But they're fun. [Jennifer] Just because it's a lot, but it's so fun, and we do it over dinner. And then we have checkups throughout the year, when things change, circumstances change, or goals change, or we accomplish things sooner than later. So, we just check in with each other throughout the year. [Aaron] Or we're in the middle of a goal, accomplishing a goal, and we evaluate, is this what we really want? Now that we're in the middle of this thing, which we've done. [Jennifer] I will say this, our dreams don't come from nowhere. Well, for one thing, there's seeds planted by God that we feel really strongly about that God gives us these desires that we have. But we also, what we call the tool belt, our marriage tool belt, we look at what we have, and we go from there. [Aaron] Yeah, and it's not like, we talk about this in the book a lot more, the practical side of it. We're not just throwing out, and casting a line out as far as possibly, and trying to see what we can grab. We look at what God is doing in our life, what we've already accomplished, in Christ, of course. [Jennifer] It's like we take that next step. [Aaron] And we say okay, if we have any money, we say okay, how do You want us to use this money? Our home, our cars, our business? And then we even talk about things that we would love to explore and pursue. And we hold all of it loosely, pretty much usually, right? [Jennifer] Yeah. 'Cause there's nothing we can guarantee. [Jennifer] Another fun way to do this is, on those smaller check ins or smaller dreaming sessions, when we like to talk about it, we like to go on a drive, let's say like a 40 minute drive. It's super fun. We're both buckled in. Can't leave the conversation. And we just talk about it there. But, I love doing this and I think that, over the years, Aaron, wouldn't you agree, that it's something that's been cultivated in our marriage because of our intentionality? It's not really something that is just gonna happen on its own, but it's also something that, I don't know, we put the time in to do it. [Aaron] Well, I'll say this, and this would be my one tip in this section, is yes, it needs to be scheduled. So, you and your spouse need to say, we are going to do this, and we're gonna do it on this date. So it's on the calendar. And then the other part is, setting actual goals, writing them down. So, for us, you may not be us, you're goals are gonna look different. Maybe they'll be the same, but, we'll say we want to have this book self published, or traditionally published next year or this year. Or, usually, the traditionally published is a little bit more out of our control. But, self publishing, we wanna have this book published by this date. And then that one goal gives us a whole list of tasks that need to be accomplished before, for that goal to happen. And so, setting that goal and giving it a realistic time frame, and writing it down on paper, and verbalizing it out loud. [Jennifer] The success rate is so much higher. [Aaron] Oh yeah. [Jennifer] Let's use finances. If we had a goal for finances and we just talked about it-- [Aaron] We wanna save $1000. [Jennifer] By next week, we would have forgotten what the plan was. So it's like, oh yeah, we talked about that, I think. So, when you go to write something down, I feel like it's super helpful. [Aaron] The finances is actually a good one. I would imagine almost everyone has some sort of financial goals. Maybe getting out of debt, or saving for a vacation, or pay for college, or who knows what it is? And so, setting the goal, a realistic goal, the thing that you know you can attain, and you can come up with those strategies of, we're going to save $10 a month, or $100 a month, or we're not going to buy this thing every week. When you do that, and you say it out loud, there's now accountability as well. So, something comes up and you could spend the money on it, and you both look at each other and be like, are we willing to cast out that goal we set four months ago? No? Then we have to say no to this. Even though it's difficult. And so now you both are on the same page. And man, that actually feels like victorious. You're like wow, we just said no to something that we really wanted, because there's this better thing down the road that we're saving for. So, I would say set those goals, put them on paper, say them out loud, put them on the refrigerator, put them on a chalkboard, make them visible. And it's true, your success rate exponentially grows. [Jennifer] Again, I really like the second part of this question 'cause they also wanna know how do you do it as a family? So, you have kids involved. I'd say, as our family, Aaron, you are really good about leading our kids through these things, and prompting their hearts, and preparing their hearts. [Aaron] Well, thank you. [Jennifer] And just asking them really good questions. Our children are still pretty young, so we don't download every dream or goal to them. We don't feel the need to explain everything, but as we talk about dreaming together, and as we set goals we do keep the impact it will have on our family in mind. [Aaron] Well, always, yeah. [Jennifer] And so, we share it with our kids, and we'll talk about it, and we'll invite them to participate in the ways that they can. [Aaron] And I would say, because we have this pattern of setting goals and dreaming together, we teach our kids how to do it. So, I'll tell my son, and he's drawing, and he might get to a point of not wanting to complete the thing he's creating. And then I'll tell him, I'll be like, hey, do you wanna be a really good artist one day? And he'll be like, "Yeah." I'll be like well, the way people become really good artists is a lot of practice. I said, so I know that it's difficult to finish this, or you wanna move on to the next thing, and I totally get that because you're excited but, there's a lot of value in you sitting and finishing this and coloring it, and you'll see a completed work. So, that's a little way of teaching my son on how to set a goal. [Jennifer] And that's really good, what I would call that is casting vision, 'cause you're showing him what the future would look like, but what it requires, and I think the same exact thing is important for marriage that both the husband and wife are reminding each other constantly. Because this whole episode is about communication, our words matter. We need to be encouraging each other. We need to be reminding each other, hey, remember we set this goal, hey, remember, this was our strategy, hey, this is what's gonna happen once we meet it, and encourage each other and stimulate each others hearts toward those those goals in that way. [Aaron] I totally agree. That's good. Let's move on to the second question, how do you gracefully bring up subjects that have been touchy in the past? You don't, you just skip over them, you just ignore it. I'm just kidding. No, this is a hard one 'cause sometimes you can't avoid the sensitivity of it, in some scenarios. [Jennifer] I think it's good to be sensitive to it. [Aaron] What I'm saying is not that we be just harsh, or cold about it. I'm just saying you could come, I would imagine that there's some conversations that you can come perfectly gentle, with the best intentions, with the best words, and it will still be a hard conversation. That your spouse still may take it very personally. So I would say you come cautiously, you come patiently. And I would say the number one thing is make sure your heart's right. Is your intention because you're just bothered and you want this thing to change and there they go again? Is that your heart, or is your heart that you actually care that they're growing, they're changing, they're following through with their own words, because of their integrity, 'cause you love them, and you wanna see the mature? So, if your heart is a selfish one, like, I'm gonna go deal with this because I'm offended, which doesn't mean you're not allowed to have offenses. We have to deal with our offenses. But, if it's a conversation from the past, we have a lot of these, about specific things in our life, and some things are little, and some things are big things. I would say, don't avoid them, but make sure that our hearts are right, and make sure that the intention is for actual growth and maturity in your spouse, or for healing. Do you have any tips on that? [Jennifer] Yeah, I was just gonna say that, when I go into conversations like this, I genuinely desire a good conversation about it. And, I think the most important thing that we could do, knowing that it's been touchy in the past, is pray for each other before we even get to the conversation. So, praying that I have the right heart, bringing it to the table, if I'm the one bringing it, and praying that I share in a respectful way, with the right words, words that will bring you understanding, but I also pray for your heart that, if there is sensitivity or anything like that, that you would be able to respond in an understanding way as well. That we're able to come together and have a good conversation about it. And I think that doing it with God at the center is the most important thing that we could do. [Aaron] The tip for the person having the topic brought up to is humbleness. And also, being aware of defensiveness. I do this. I get defensive, we just had a conversation and I was defensive. And you called me, and you're like, "Why are you being defensive about this?" Often, defensiveness is self preservation. It's selfish, often. And so, if we're defending ourselves, then we're not in unity, and we're also not being humble. [Jennifer] You're also not being quick to hear. [Aaron] And I'm also not being quick to hear. Thank you for reminding me of that. [Jennifer] I don't know if this helps practically but, when we go into conversations like this, I'll usually say something to Aaron like, hey, I really wanna share something with you, but, just so you know, my intention's not to upset you, or point the finger at you. It's just something that I've realized or recognized recently that I wanna talk about. Is that okay? Making sure that there's a place and a space for that conversation. You don't wanna just bring it up when you're at the dinner table, or you're walking into-- [Aaron] Right here on the podcast. Actually, I've been wanting to bring up to-- [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] Not on the podcast. [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] And then, one last note on this. I think we can get in a pattern sometimes. Some relationships are special in this way, but I think a lot of us can, in some way, have this pattern of bringing up everything. And not overlooking certain things. There's this one thing that we actually, it's not that big of a deal, but I just have to bring it up every single time 'cause I don't wanna have to deal with it ever again. And so I think, truly internally evaluating, is the thing I wanna bring up, is it a thing that needs to be brought up? Or is it something that I can actually just let go? The Bible tells us that love covers a multitude of sins. So not that we overlook sin and pretend sin doesn't exist, but if I said something one time, we're talking and I said something and you're like, "Well that was rude." But you know I didn't mean it, it doesn't need to be brought up, in that one scenario. Now, if it's a pattern, like I'm always rude, that's one thing, but if I said something, and you think, "He must've not meant that." Or, the way they are with something. Sometimes it just needs to be let go. [Jennifer] And I wanna speak to the other side, if your spouse is coming to you with something, I was gonna say something of importance, but, no matter when your spouse comes to you, how would you answer this question, does your spouse feel like they're walking on eggshells around you? Does it feel like you're here, there's a layer of eggshell around you, and they can't come that close to you? Does that make sense? [Aaron] Yeah. So I think it's important for both sides that people listening can evaluate, okay, am I being aware of what I'm bringing up, and is it necessary? And then, how are my responses towards my spouse? Am I someone who gets defensive? Am I being selfish? [Aaron] Am I being critical? Like I'm just over-critiquing my spouse. [Jennifer] Yeah, and so I think that's it's important to think about are we setting ourselves up for putting eggshells down to where no one wants to come close to us and ask us those hard things. [Aaron] And I think a good remedy for this, specifically, 'cause we're not tryna say, don't have conversations that need to happen. What we're talking about is evaluation and discernment. Is the thing that I want to bring up something that should be brought up? So my solution to that is, when you wanna bring something up, first evaluate in yourself if the thing that you're seeing or wanting to talk about in your spouse, is something that you deal with, but maybe in a different way. Because often, we're very keen to sin or issues in other people's lives that we ourselves deal with. Someone's always late to something for you and it bothers you. And then you realize that you're always late for something else. But you don't think about it. So, ask yourself, is this something that I deal with? And truly ask yourself, because if you care about it in them, you should care about it in yourself 'cause want to. So, just a little tip. [Jennifer] It's good. All right, question number three is, how do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? Can we just skip this one? Just kidding. [Aaron] Again, I never do this. [Jennifer] Okay, repeat that for everyone to just take a minute and hear. [Aaron] How do you talk to your spouse when they are distracted by their phone? You can't. [Jennifer] We have struggled with this so much you guys. [Aaron] Before there was phones, there was TV. If you're ever sitting next to me and I'm looking at a TV, I'm not even watching what's on the TV, everything's shut off in my brain. Which is why we don't have a TV 'cause I would just sit there and I'd be gone for hours. [Jennifer] This is true, but, what I was gonna say is, before phones there was an iPod. And I remember when the first iPod came out and we were dating. [Aaron] And it only did one thing. [Jennifer] I know, one thing. And I'm sitting at a restaurant, next to you, and you've got the wire from the cord in your ear, both ears, and you're scrolling through music on your iPod. [Aaron] Now, to my defense, I had just got it. [Jennifer] You were so excited about it. [Aaron] Yeah, I was excited about it. [Jennifer] But here's the point, we do get distracted, and it's a real thing, and I think it's important to talk about. [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, and Jennifer, you've gotten good at this, Aaron, I'm tryna talk to you, can you put your phone down please? Because I didn't even know you were talking to me, and you've been talking to me. And I'm on my phone. Which we have whole episode on phones and boundaries, which is something we're constantly working on. But being free to say that, say hey, can you put your phone away? I wanna chat with you. And you've also gotten good at voicing to me how it makes you feel. You're talking to me and I-- [Jennifer] Mid-sentence you'll pull it out. [Aaron] And then I'm on my phone. Maybe it buzzed or something, and I'm on it. Or, we're talking about something, and it's something that I need to do, and so I go to do it while you're talking to me. [Jennifer] Yeah, oh gosh. [Aaron] You're like, can you-- [Jennifer] Can you wait 'til I'm done? [Aaron] Do that after we're done? I know that you're excited to do that. Yes, it's mostly on my side, sorry. I would say yeah, just get really good at voicing it, hey, can you put your phone away so we can have a chat? I know that's distracting. You're gonna get on it afterwards, but, so we're not distracted, let's put our phones away. But, be willing to receive it on both sides. 'Cause we're cellphone generation. [Jennifer] I was gonna say, I think it's important to have patience with each other because, yes, we are a part of a generation that uses technology on a daily basis. This is such a hard one because it's not just you, Aaron, it happens to both of us. But being aware and allowing your spouse to help you be aware, so not getting defensive when they say something about you being distracted on your phone. I don't know. [Aaron] A little side note about cellphones, something fun that we've done in our community for a long time, I don't know if I started it or someone else did, someone must've started it, but if see someone on their phone and they're spending time with you, just lean over and be like, hey, who you hanging out with? [Jennifer] It's kinda mean and sarcastic but. [Aaron] What's powerful about it is, oh, I'm hanging out with people on my phone, not the people that I'm actually hanging out with. But that's has nothing to do with someone distracted by their phone. If you're distracted, you just gotta ask, hey, this is an important conversation, or I wanna tell you something, can you put your phone away for just a second so we can chat? [Jennifer] I will say this, Aaron, you have been making it a point this last year to leave your phone in the car, especially-- [Aaron] On Sundays. [Jennifer] On Sundays, so that we are not distracted during fellowship time. You leave it out in the living room at bedtime, so you're not constantly scrolling in the bed. On date nights, you tend to leave it in the car. [Aaron] What I'm tryna to do is just, because I know how prone I am to just pick it up when it's near me, I'm tryna find ways of getting it away from me. Which I wish that I could do more. [Jennifer] We've also had some pretty deep encounters with our kids, where they recognize that we're on our phones in front of them, and I think we've shared this on the podcast before, but just realizing how it impacts our relationship with them as well. [Aaron] I think that's an adequate answer for now. [Jennifer] Which is, what is the solution here? [Aaron] Tell them. [Jennifer] Tell them. [Aaron] Can you please put it down so we can chat? [Jennifer] Hey, just so you know, it hurts my feelings when I'm talking to you and you're looking at your phone. Oh also, I gotta mention this, if you're in the middle of a really heavy conversation, and there's no resolve yet, but there's been silence for a while, don't just jump on the phone, that hurts so bad. Just-- [Aaron] Remain in the situation. [Jennifer] Remain in the situation, remain in the silence until it gets figured out. And if it doesn't get figured out, communicate that with each other say, hey, we're just gonna put this on pause until we can figure it out, and then move on. But don't do it without that communication. [Aaron] That's a very good point. [Jennifer] Okay, number four. [Aaron] As a wife, how do you teach yourself to respond, ask, speak respectfully to your husband? [Jennifer] So I guess I have to answer that? [Aaron] Well, it's not for me. [Jennifer] Okay, so first you have to know what respect is. I remember back when we were first going to a marriage ministry, probably in third, fourth year of our marriage, and there was a group of young wives that I was friends with, and we're hanging out one night, and I remember asking them how would you define respect? I don't remember really growing up understanding. I kinda knew it what respect was, and I could get by with a makeshift definition, but I didn't actually know what it looked like in marriage. And they didn't either. It was like they looked at me like why would you even ask that question? [Aaron] Why're you even bringing that word up in our midst? [Jennifer] And I'm just sharing that because I do think it's important to know what respect is. So Google says respect is a feeling of deep admiration for someone. So, if you want to teach yourself to respond respectfully, you should know why you respect your spouse, right? [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You should know why you deeply admire them. 'Cause that's what's gonna fuel you or propel you to respond that way. [Aaron] Do you think a wife can respond respectfully to husband who is not respectable. [Jennifer] That's a really hard question, and I don't feel comfortable answering it for every single person, 'cause I don't know every single situation, but I would say this as an encouragement, that there are some things that you can find to admire about a person. [Aaron] The thought I had, and I was thinking about, not a spouse, how should we respond to a stranger that we know nothing about? With honor, with respect, with kindness, right? So my point was, I think, that in pretty much most situations, on the individual level of a person who loves the Lord, we can find, even if it's not for the husband's sake, or the spouse's sake, out of my respect and love for the Lord, I'm going to speak to this person the way Christ speaks to me. [Jennifer] That's a better answer than I gave. [Aaron] I think you were being careful. I don't think your answer was bad. That's what I was thinking about is, regardless if they find something respectable, 'cause a lot of people might struggle with that, I don't respect my husband, therefore I'm gonna talk-- [Jennifer] I'm not gonna, and then that becomes a justification. [Aaron] And on both sides, I don't respect my wife because of this, this and this, therefore I'm going to, rather than treating them the way Christ wants you to treat them. [Jennifer] That's good. Well, I think that we can, just as you're talking about we can be respectful, and it's not contingent on other people. We can be respectful in our communication towards others, towards our spouse, and like you said, out of that love and admiration for the Lord. I love that. And that that will influence our relationship. My admiration for you has grown over the years. [Aaron] Totally, and vice versa. And I would say also, none of this subtracts from the kinds of things we get to say. If you need to tell someone, which you told me before about my sin in my life, what it was doing to God, what the reality of it was, but you said it so respectfully, so honoringly. And the Bible says to speak the truth in love. It doesn't say don't speak the truth because you want them to not feel bad. You can still say really difficult things to someone in a loving, respectful way. So that's just a thought I had. [Jennifer] Just to clarify too, the question was how do you teach yourself to respond, and ask, and speak respectfully? I would say the one word that comes to mind is practice. That's probably what I should have just started with. But practice. As you practice this, and as you walk in it, it will become more natural for you to respond respectfully. [Aaron] That's good. And remember who you're doing it for. It's not necessarily your spouse, it's for God, because you love the Lord. Yeah, that's good. And it goes for the husbands too. The answer is the same. Okay, so number five says, what do you do when one spouse gets tired of talking and stops listening, and refuses to respond, or to keep the conversation going? This is like that situation, we're having, it's a difficult conversation, maybe it's a frustrating conversation, maybe it's just another one of those conversations that we've had 20 times. Well, first of all, you can't control your spouse, just, I think, the quick answer is that you can't control me-- [Jennifer] You can't force them to give you an answer or or to-- [Aaron] You can lovingly say hey, it's really hurting me that you're refusing to finish this. Is there a better way we can finish it later maybe? Or can we finish it now? I would say also, being understanding in the situation of how the conversation's going. Often, these kinds of conversations are the ones that are, both spouses are at each other, both spouses are annoyed, both spouses are selfish. [Jennifer] Both probably need some humility. [Aaron] Yeah. I would say just, sometimes maybe you just need to step back and pray for your spouse and say hey, I get that you probably aren't interested right now, but we need to have this conversation. Can we do it another time? [Jennifer] I know some things that I like to do with you is, hey, I get that were not in agreement on this, can we just pray about it and close with prayer, and ask God to reveal things to you over the course of however many days, or until you talk about it again. [Aaron] And I would also say, for the one who's wanting to continue in the conversation, so one's checking out, and the one's like hey, we're not done. Maybe ask yourself, are you elongating because you haven't gotten retribution yet, or are you wanting this to keep going because you haven't convinced them yet of your side? Are you wanting to, discern and spiritually evaluate if you're wanting the right thing? Are you wanting reconciliation or you wanting to be right? Are you wanting unity or you waiting for them to yield? And this goes for the husband or the wife. And so, ask yourself, are they checking out because they're not getting to where I want them to be? And that's why I keep going. Rather than hey, are we gonna find a solution, a unifying solution? Are we gonna find reconciliation, are we gonna find a place that we're back in the right relationship with each other? Rather than I'm getting my way and they've come to my side? [Jennifer] That's good. I know I keep going back to prayer, but if your spouse is getting tired of the conversation and refusing to continue it, pray for their heart. Pray that the Lord would minister to them, and transform them, and bring resolve through them, because ultimately, it's the Holy Spirit, right, that does it. Mm hmm, amen. [Jennifer] Okay, moving on to number six. How do you overcome the fear of vulnerability? That's a really big question, but it can be simplified. [Aaron] I think it has to be. Well, first of all, most people are afraid of being vulnerable. [Jennifer] I would say everybody is. Vulnerability isn't something that's like, yeah, let's be vulnerable. It's hard. [Aaron] It's spiritual nakedness. It's showing what's on the inside, and often we don't like what's on the inside. And so I would say, you said earlier, practice. But really, asking the Spirit of God. Say God, transform me in this because, it was other people's vulnerability with us that freed us to be more vulnerable. [Jennifer] It gave us the courage. [Aaron] So yeah, if you're struggling with this, just pray and say Lord-First of all, regardless if you never reveal anything about yourself, we all know who we are. We are wretched. We are sinners who need a Savior, who need His righteousness, who need His power to transform us. And so, just recognizing that and say, okay Lord, humble me, and help me be open so that you can A, change me, the things that I'm afraid of, the things that I don't like, the ickiness, the grossness inside me, but also use that vulnerableness, use that transparency to free others, to heal others. Not because of me, but because of You, Lord. I don't know, that's my idea. [Jennifer] I think a big thing that I learned through being vulnerable in marriage, is having this resolve to understand that love requires risk in making yourself known. So, what I mean by that is, in order for me to know that my husband loves me, like actual me, not someone who's pretending over here is-- [Aaron] Not what you show me. [Jennifer] You have to know me, so I have to reveal it to you, and that requires risk. Because that means I'm gonna share something with you, and then you get to respond. So there's a risk involved, and that's what makes it hard. But I'd say, like you said, practice is really good, and then I was just gonna plug the Unveiled Wife here, because if you wanna get to know someone who wasn't vulnerable, and then was extremely vulnerable, not just with you, Aaron, but with the whole world by writing a book about it. [Aaron] It was a big deal for us. [Jennifer] The Unveiled Wife is my journey of learning vulnerability in marriage and with God. [Aaron] That was good. So, question number seven, we have been married over a decade and feel like we lost things to talk about. [Jennifer] Aah. So, I would say, Find things to talk about. [Jennifer] I would say start learning again. So, Aaron has this really great quality about him where, when he gets excited about something, he just starts learning about it, I don't know. [Aaron] I research. [Jennifer] Yeah, you have this research brain where you just, you get hooked on something. Even with the kids, like when it comes to Legos, it's like, oh Elliot, I figured out this new thing. You're even learning the Rubik's Cube, okay. You been researching. I have been. [Jennifer] Watching YouTube videos, and you been sharing it with me. So you'll sit down on the couch with me and be like, "Babe, look at this," what do you call it? Algorithm. Algorithm. And you do this twist thing and I'm not following, but I'm just smiling 'cause my husband loves to share this with me. [Aaron] And then you see it working and you're like, "How'd you do that?" [Jennifer] Yeah, it's pretty awesome. So start learning something again that you can share with them. It could be anything. And then talk about it with them. [Aaron] And to be honest, if you've lost things to talk about, I don't know this person. I don't know their life. But if you guys are in a place, if you're in a place that you have nothing to talk about, first of all, that's not true. There's never nothing to talk about. There's never nothing to explore with each other, and to walk with in each other. There's, at minimum, there's tons of challenges in life to have to navigate. [Jennifer] So you're saying they're choosing not to share things? [Aaron] Yeah, I would say, I don't think it's possible to have nothing to talk about. [Jennifer] Especially if you have children. If you have children, you have a lot to talk about. [Aaron] Well, and the other thing is, is if we're pursuing God together, if we're looking to what He's doing, He's going to reveal to you sin in your life, He's gonna give you jobs to do, like this idea of He's got work for us to do, good works that He's prepared for us since the foundations of the world, those things are remarkable, meaning that they are able to be remarked about. There's something to be talked about. And so, I think that if there's nothing to talk about, there's potentially, maybe your minds aren't on heavenly things. Maybe your minds are an earthly things, and worry, and things that you're not looking up. [Jennifer] Or maybe there's sin your guys's life that you've been avoiding confronting because-- [Aaron] Mm hmm, sin keeps us in darkness. So I would just challenge you, if you think there's nothing to talk about, I would start praying and say Lord, what's in my life, what's in our life that is keeping us from each other? Keeping us silent, keeping us in the darkness, keeping us from moving forward and being excited about life? Guys, if you're believers, we have the greatest hope, everyone in the world, the greatest hope is for the believer. That's remarkable. That's something to talk about, forever. We're going to do it in Heaven. We're gonna be worshiping the Lord, forever in Heaven. So, if we've lost that excitement now, we gotta ask ourselves why? What's taking it away? Where have we misplaced that? [Jennifer] Now simply, if you're just bored, and you've forgotten how to communicate with each other, and ask each other good questions, I have to let that we have a freebie for you called Date Night Conversation Starters, and you can take these out on your next date, or just hanging out in the house, and use one of those to prompt a question and get started talking. [Aaron] Start asking questions to each other. You can go to datenightconversations.com. Was that prompted, was that planned? [Jennifer] I just thought about it. [Aaron] These are some good things to think about. [Jennifer] Okay, we're gonna get through these next ones fairly quickly, just for times sake, but, how do you get an introvert to communicate? Here, let me change it, Aaron, how did you get me to communicate in marriage? 'Cause I'm an introvert. Keep asking you questions. Never give up. Do it gently with love. The goal is not to ever change someone, the goal's to engage, and the goal is to encourage, and exhort, and to lift up, and to love, and to strengthen. Remember, you're one, and God's given you unique characteristics for a reason. So, they're not things to be bothered by or hated, they might be things that need to be grown in. Just because, quote unquote, I'm an introvert, doesn't mean that quote unquote, you need to stay an introvert. [Jennifer] Don't label yourself that way. [Aaron] You can grow. You never know, what God wants to grow you into, and transform you into. So don't just say well, this is what I am, and therefore that's what I am. [Jennifer] I'll say this, over the years, Aaron, your affirmation and encouragement has really gone a long way in that, you ask me a question, and maybe I'll answer it very quickly or short, or maybe not at all. And you say, just so you know, I want to hear from you. That affirmation, hearing that over and over again, reminds my heart, my mind, he really does just wanna know. [Aaron] And then, one last little thing I would say, recognizing and cultivating the differences in your spouse will make them feel loved and makes your spouse more able to communicate in those times that they can't-So, if they're introverted, recognize that in your spouse in saying, hey, why don't you get some time alone, when you go be with the Lord, I'll take care of the family, I'll take care of the kids, or whatever. And that let's them know that you appreciate them, and their differences, their uniqueness, and you're excited about it. You're like, how can you use that in a good way, so that in those times that it's necessary, you're not allowed to just retreat into your title, into your whatever. They they know that you love them, and that you're saying hey, I know this is hard for you, but we do need to deal with this. [Jennifer] Yeah, that's really good. Okay, so the next one says, how do you stay in touch with your spouse when your husband works two jobs and you're a stay at home mom? I'm just gonna answer this one really quickly for what comes to my mind is get creative, text them, send love letters, make a journal where you guys can pass it back and forth, putting things on the schedule and protecting that time, even if you're super tired or there's other circumstances going on. I would say that those are some practical ways that I would answer that. And I'm sorry, that's such a hard question to try and answer, but the communication is still a priority. [Aaron] I would say if it's a priority, we'll do it. And we have a brother in our church that leaves real early in the morning, comes back real late, and he just he works a long job, and he records videos of him reading the Bible, and asking questions and sends them to his kids. So even though he can't be home, when he has the break, when he has the time, he make sure to, everyday, send them something to lead them and disciple them. So, father's who have these jobs, if you're listening to this, and maybe you're on the road right now, don't use your absence as an excuse to not disciple and lead your children and family. There's ways to do it, especially in this day and age, man, we have technology. You could FaceTime every day, there's ways to do it. So I just wanna encourage you that, get creative like my wife said, find ways of connecting with your spouse and your children regularly, to show them that you're there. Because even though you can't physically be there, you can spiritually. [Jennifer] Cool. Okay, we got two questions left. The next one is, how do you handle conflict when you are very irritated? Which happens to all of us, right? No one's immune to irritability or irritation. But the verse that I thought of was Psalm 4:4, it says, "Be angry and do not sin. "Ponder in your own hearts, on your beds and be silent." [Aaron] And that's a good point is, when you're frustrated, make sure that, again, you're coming with the right heart. So, you've dealt with your frustrations with the Lord first. Doesn't mean you don't say something about it, and you don't address it. [Jennifer] It's that being slow to speak. [Aaron] And then also, maybe wait. Wait for when you've cooled down. That's always a good posture to take. Right, so the last question we got for you guys is, what are important questions you need to ask your spouse every week? Aah. [Jennifer] Okay, so we don't ask each other the same questions every week, but, we do have a standard of questions that we lean on when we want to know each other more, Aaron. And it's stuff like hey, how's your heart? Or hey, what are you thinking about? Or hey, what's God been teaching you? What are you gonna be working on today? Or what do you need help? [Aaron] Or what are you reading in the Bible? These are interesting questions that help, if the other person maybe hasn't been, they say oh, well nothing. I'm gonna get into the Word, right? So they're encouraging. And if they are, you can start a conversation with them about what they're learning for the purpose of growth. And we have some friends, really good friends, Jeremy and Audrey Roloff, they actually have a resource called the Marriage Journal. And it's an awesome resource. They actually have, it's a weekly check up for your marriage. [Jennifer] There're actually specific questions that you ask every week. [Aaron] And they draw you closer to your spouse, they help you get to know each other. It also helps you stay on track with each other. So, if you're asking this question, if you're out there thinking yeah, what should we be asking ourselves? It's called the Marriage Journal by Jeremy and Audrey Roloff. You should go check that out, it's an awesome resource, we totally support them, we totally love them. And it can totally help you in growing in your marriage. So, we love you all, and we thank you for joining us on this last episode of the season. If you haven't checked out the other episodes from this season, please go do that while we're on this little break. And also, check out last episode because we have a giveaway going right now. And it goes only until April 10th, so go check out our last episode and find out how that giveaway is gonna work. But, as usual, we pray before we sign out. [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of marriage. We pray we would be husbands and wives who are willing to communicate with each other in a respectful way. We pray we would have the courage to say the hard things in love. We pray we would be good listeners, and truly hear what our spouse is sharing with us. We pray to share our heart with one another, always. We pray that your Holy Spirit would infuse our speech and open our ears, so that we can hear. Help our minds to understand each other, and to extend grace to each other. We pray the posture of our hearts would be humble. We pray we would strive to make marriage a safe place to communicate, and not a scary one. Help us to work through our marriage issues, and the things that we're experiencing to gain knowledge of each other and of You. Help us to grow in how we walk, and may it be in a worthy manner as we navigate life together. In Jesus Name. [Aaron] Amen. We love you all. And we'll see you next season. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

We're On the Road!

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2020 25:27

Things don't always go as planned. I had fully planned to have a few ladies join me in my first group recording but as you will see, life went and got hectic so that will have to be postponed. Instead, you get to see a new side of me. Well sort of. Cause I'm out and about driving and dealing with life and showing that I'm just as much of a space case while driving. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hotwheelsinthefridge/support

188 : The Complexity of Inequity (w/ Dr. Oni Blackstock)

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 25, 2020 30:41

Zach welcomes Dr. Oni Blackstock, the assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control for the NYC Health Department, to the podcast to discuss a wide variety of topics, ranging from her unique career journey to dismantling white supremacist constructs, and she graciously offers a couple points of recommendation regarding how to get started when it comes to advocating for yourself to get the health-related help that you may need at work.Connect with Dr. Blackstock on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram!Visit Living-Corporate.com.TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and look, man, you know what we do. It's 2020. You know, fresh vision. You know, we're out here making moves, having conversations with movers and shakers, influencers, educators, public servants... what else? Who else? Executives, recruiters, entertainers. You know what I'm saying? Anybody who's willing to have an authentic conversation centering and amplifying underrepresented voices at work, and today, you know, I'm really excited about this particular interview. And I say that every time, but, like, I mean it every single time, even though I say it, like, over and over, but I really do mean it. And so I'm really excited. This particular episode we have Dr. Oni Blackstock. Dr. Blackstock, how are you doing? What's going on? Oni: I'm good. Thanks so much for having me.Zach: Thank you so much for joining us. Now, look, what I would like to do--'cause see, what I sometimes do, in the past I would give this, like, kind of, like, generic--I don't want to say generic, but I would, like, read off an intro, almost like a late-night show, and then I'd go in and I'd ask people to introduce themselves again. It seems kind of redundant, so what I want to do this time is just give you space and, for those of us who don't know you, just give you some space to talk a little bit about yourself.Oni: Okay, great. So again, I'm Oni Blackstock. I'm a primary care physician and HIV specialist. I also spent about the past 10 years conducting HIV research, but I now lead the Bureau of HIV at the New York City Health Department, meaning I oversee our city's response to ending the HIV epidemic. I'm originally from Brooklyn, New York. Parents, my dad is an immigrant from Jamaica, and my mom is Brooklyn-born and bred. And I have a twin sister, Dr. Uche Blackstock, and, you know, we're very much inspired by our parents to really meld medicine and public health with activism and advocacy, and so I get to do that in my current role leading the Bureau of HIV here in New York City.Zach: Okay. So first of all, incredible background, incredible legacy, and shout-out to the Blackstocks, the family, and shout-out to your sister of course as well. So I know, you know, the background being Jamaican--now, you know we do air horns. Now, let me ask you this. I've asked past Jamaican guests, but it is offensive or culturally appropriative that we also use air horns on our podcast?Oni: No, not at all. It's great. It's about the diaspora. Zach: Okay, cool, 'cause I gotta let 'em fly for you. Let me just drop 'em right here. [air horns sfx] Okay, 'cause I'm just very excited and thankful that you're here. Now, let's talk a little bit more about your background, right? So you talk about your focus being HIV and that particular illness. What was it about that work that drew you in particularly?Oni: Yeah. So I was in medical school when I feel like I quote-unquote first discovered HIV, and that was actually when I was doing global health work. So I had traveled to Ghana and West Africa, as well as South Africa, to do HIV-related research, and when I came back I did a rotation as a medical student back in New York City and saw that we had black people, Latino people, dealing with many of the same sort of medical-related issues, and even just sort of socio-structural issues, as I did when I was in Ghana and South Africa, and became very interested in our domestic HIV epidemic, and so I ended up doing my residency, which is the training that you do after medical school, in the Bronx at Montefiore Medical Center, where again I was seeing young black and brown people dying of, like, advanced AIDS, which was something I was really surprised and I think maybe people didn't realize was stlil happening in New York City. And I think what I in particular--what draws me to HIV is that it's really--it's not just an interesting bio-medical condition, but it's also, like, a social condition, and it's really an epidemic of not behavior, but an epidemic of inequality. So it's a confluence of lots of isms and lots of phobias, and you put all of those together and you sort of get HIV and you see the communities that are most impacted.Zach: And, you know, it's really interesting, this conversation particularly, because you're in a position where you're providing awareness and research and thought leadership and care for underrepresented, underserved populations--and often times stigmatized and just oppressed populations--while also being an intersectional member of a variety of underrepresented and oppressed populations and identity groups. Can you talk about, like, what that experience, that compounded experience, is like for you? Like, being in this space, being who you are?Oni: Right. Yeah, so I think what has driven me to do this work is because I'm from many of the different communities that are impacted by HIV. So I think sometimes for people who do this work it's maybe about careerism or they find it intellectually interesting, but for me it's really about helping my people and my community. So yeah, I mean, I think having the different identities, being a cisgender black woman, being someone who's queer and being at the intersection at these different marginalized identities gives me a different appreciation and understanding of what the factors are that folks are dealing with out in the community, and also the position. You know, even when we're designing, for instance, social marketing campaigns, like, I can say--you know, I'm able to give my input and--you know, we had a campaign, for instance, that was focused on pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. It's a once-a-day pill that people who are HIV-negative can take to stay HIV-negative. We did one for a focus on cisgender and transgender women, women of all different backgrounds, but what I did notice that I think most other people didn't notice is that all of the women were very, like, fem-presenting, and so, you know, I was like, "In the future when we do this work, we might want to have folks who may be non-conforming in their appearance." You know, just have different folks who may identify as women but have a different gender expression. And so I think, like, just sort of that awareness of understanding the different needs that may be out there of having these different perspectives is something that I think I can bring to this role and I think is, you know, really important, because the reality is that in many cities we don't have people who are leading this type of work who are reflective of the communities that are most impacted.Zach: You know, that's just a really good point. It's interesting because, you know, even as we talk about, like, representation and diversity in our marketing and, like, presentation, it's interesting how colorism and patriarchy still, like, sneak in to those spaces too, right? So, like, if you have--like, if you're presenting as a woman, often times it is going to be someone who is, like, traditionally fem or lighter-skinned or with hair that is a certain texture. Like, there's still, like, this template, right? That individuals are going to--that we either consciously or subconsciously seek to, like, place people in. Even when you see, like, people in positions of authority or any type of subject matter expertise in the space, you end up--I don't know. Again, they fit certain templates to me, and that leads me to another question though. Kind of starting at the top. So your lived experience brings a certain level of empathy along with your actual academic expertise. May I ask, are there ever moments or times where you believe that sometimes your lived experience or the passion that comes with that lived experience is almost counted against you because you lack a certain level of [laughs] intellectual objectivity that maybe white individuals or just folks who are not necessarily identifying these particular identity groups, that they can relate to?Oni: Well, I think--right, so that idea of, like, objectivity... I mean, it's, like, a construct. It's, like, a white supremacist construct, because we all come with our own perspectives and backgrounds. So it's sort of, like, a fallacy, I think, but yeah, I think that might happen. I think I am also fortunate, or maybe some might say unfortunate, but, you know, I did get my college degree at Harvard undergrad. I was a computer science major and I was pre-med. I went to Harvard Medical School. I got my Master's in Health Sciences from Yale's School of Medicine. So I have, like, sort of these bonafides that are sort of respected more by white culture, the dominant culture, which I feel like gives me quote-unquote credibility among some of these folks, if that makes any sense. So I feel like that somehow, like, helps to open doors in a different way, and then obviously having--you know, and sometimes just even having an MD, people make assumptions, and sometimes you can use those to your benefit, which is helpful. But, you know, at the same time, it does feel--it's kind of cringe-worthy and kind of not the best feeling to be benefitting from these same systems which also act to, like, oppress us as well, so... [?]Zach: Well, it's complex and nuanced. I'm just curious about that, because as I continue to get into just this work, any time you talk about, like, underserved folks or, like, doing work that seeks to push for equity in certain spaces, there seems to be, like, this underlying kind of attitude sometimes, so I was just curious about that. You know, you just spoke about--you used one of the buzzwords that triggers a lot of fragility in today's society, white supremacy. I'm curious, you know, on Living Corporate we've discussed the concept of decolonization, and one of the ways that we've seen colonization demonstrated is in language. Can we talk a little bit about medical terms that, intentionally or unintentionally, undermine the reality and complexity of systemic racism and other isms and various forms of oppression?Oni: Sure. Okay, so I think any term that, like, focuses the issue on the individual as opposed to, like, the structures and systems that drive risk and disease and poor health and poor well-being, so--I mean, for me, I mean, there's [?]--I actually tweeted about this recently. So, you know, terms like someone being a "medically-complex patient" or someone being high-risk or non-compliant really is about--you know, white supremacist culture puts the onus and responsibility on the individual and doesn't--you know, it ignores, like, completely, the context in which people are making decisions and choices. And so, you know, these are--you know, we're trying to, like, move away, at least at the Health Department, my bureau, from some of these terms, which are victim-blaming and lack recognition for these broader systems that increase risk for individuals.Zach: And I'm curious about that. Like, what does it look like to drive those conversations and to have folks say, like, "Stop. Let's take a step back and actually look at the systems that are impacting these individuals." Like, what does that look like? How do you broach those topics?Oni: Yeah. So I think one of the cool things here, at least the New York City Health Department, is the former health commissioner--her name is Dr. Mary Bassett. She's a black woman, and she started a whole initiative called Race to Justice, which was sort of an effort to understand and recognize the impact on racism on public health and health outcomes, and so by someone in her position sort of normalizing the conversations around racism really sort of opened the door for a lot of the work that I'm doing in my bureau with the staff here. So for instance, we received millions of dollars in funding from the federal government and from the city government that we then bid out in a competitive process to clinics and other community-based organizations to provide HIV prevention treatment services, and we were looking at this process and, you know, seeing that the same sort of large organizations that are typically not run by folks who look like the folks who are impacted tended to get a lot of the contracts. And so the great thing about being able to lead a bureau, lead an organization, is that we made sure that--we started looking at the process and figuring out "What are the ways that we could make this process more equitable?" But what we also did is in our request for a proposal we called out these different systems of oppression. You know, many times--before I came here, like, a lot of the requests for proposals would say things like "poverty" and "food insecurity," and it's like, "But what are the things that drive those things?" Right? Like, we need to call them out, and if we call them out, the organizations that we fund will know that these are issues that we are thinking about, and we're thinking explicitly about equity in this work, and so I made sure that in our request for a proposal that we use this language, that we don't just say people of color, that we say specifically the groups that are impacted. We say black and Latinx people. Like, you know, it's just calling it out and being really explicit and really putting it out there so that it becomes normalized and really part of the work that we do.Zach: And it's interesting, because I've noticed over the past--I would say since, I don't know, since... so over the past, like, decade or so. 'Cause I'm 30, so I've been working for about 9 or 10 years, right? So as I just kind of come into adulthood, just looking around, looking at the language that people use when it comes to just, like, systems of injustice or inequity, it's almost like they just--we use language that is... like things just happened. It's like we don't talk about how things are connected at all. I think I was reading some story about a young man who had a mistaken identity, and it said "A teen was hospitalized after being mis-identified by police." Well, no. He wasn't hospitalized because he was mis-identified by police. He was hospitalized because he was beaten by the police because he mis-identified him. It's almost like we take out the action or the accountability in the language and framing that we place. So let's do this. As you know, since the publication of Healthy People 2020, it's been confirmed that stress is one of the primary drivers of racial and socio-economic health disparities. Can we talk a little bit about the practical impacts of chronic stress for black and brown folks and how it shows up when it's under-treated? And then, you know, as you talk through a bit about what that looks like, I guess my Part B to that question is what are things that black and brown folks should be looking out for regarding their own stress and what ways can they advocate for themselves as patients?Oni: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so obviously these are, like, very weighty, big issues. You know, I think stress has, you know, wide-ranging impacts on our overall health and well-being. You know, when we are exposed to stress, or just the stress of being a black or brown person in this country--you know, I don't know if folks realize this, but it leads to, obviously, an elevation in [stress?] hormones like cortisol and nor-epinephrine and epinephrine, and those have, like, very harmful effects on the body. And so we can think about mental health, so, you know, depression and anxiety, and I have to--full disclosure, I myself am dealing with depression and anxiety, and I think a lot of it is attributed to really the chronic stress that we face, I think particularly in some of these professional work environments where we are held to very different standards than other people, and so having, you know, a support network and having a spiritual practice--which is something that I really want to develop more--are ways to really I think counteract these--you know, and the impact on the quality of sleep that we have, our metabolism, cardiovascular risk. You know, chronic stress predisposes us to a wide range of medical conditions, so yeah. So I think when we see--you know, a lot of the disparities or inequities that we see, you know, are driven by, you know, the impact of, you know, racism, and then it sometimes has direct, you know, effects on us, in terms of, like, the violence that, you know, is committed against us by police, but then also some of these indirect effects of dealing with chronic stress and the impact that it has on our bodies and minds.Zach: And I think--so I'll speak for myself in this example. I'm an example of this, right? Like, just kind of, like, moving and shaking in these spaces, finally taking a second to breathe and I'm looking back and I'm like, "Wait, I can't sleep. I'm having, like, auditory hallucinations. I'm, like, crying for no reason. Like, I feel sick." You know, there's all these different issues that have, like, you know, over time just been so untreated, and like, so, finally just now starting to get help for that. I'm curious though, what points of recommendation would you have for folks who are at the very beginning of this? Like, and how--what would you say to them who are just kind of looking to get started and kind of advocating for themselves to get the help that they need?Oni: Right. So I think, you know, obviously having a support network obviously is key, and so that people who are close to you, who you can speak to about, you know, the various stressors that you may have at work, in particular if you may be one of a few black people, or even if you aren't one of a few black or brown people. You know, our experiences in the workplace are very different from other people's. So definitely having a support network, and I think also not waiting for people to check in on you, but also to the extent that you can sharing with, like, your family and loved ones, particularly those who will be helpful, like, how you are feeling, 'cause I think sometimes, for many of us, we are very high-functioning, and so when you--you may be depressed, feeling depression and anxiety, but you are, like, highly productive. You're getting things done. You have a family. You have a great job. But, you know, you still need support, and it may not be, like, overtly obvious to your family. So I think, to the extent that we can, reaching out when we can. Obviously, you know, for instance, depression can sometimes impact people's ability to motivate and to be able to reach out to people, so obviously then we have to check on each other. I think also something that I have been increasingly learning is having some sort of, like, spiritual practice or some way of, like, grounding yourself, whether it's yoga or meditation or prayer. Whatever it is or whoever you pray to, having that be a regular part of your day and of your practice is I think incredibly important, because, like, you know, it's very hard to change these systems, and for the most part we have ourselves and we have our support networks. And so those are some of the recommendations that I would have. And I think also mentorship. If folks have mentors who, you know, have been in similar fields, or maybe even in a different field but can provide guidance and support, that makes a huge, huge difference. And also peer mentors as well, having folks who may be going through similar experiences as you where you can kind of commune and, like, come together and commiserate and also be helpful.Zach: You know, it's interesting. So you talked a little bit about your twin sister Dr. Uche Blackstock, and recently she published an article titled "Why Black Doctors Like Me Are Leaving Faculty Positions In Academic Medical Centers," and in the piece, towards the end of it, she says, "Academic medical centers must begin to recognize and rectify the historical and current impact of racism on the health care workforce. Their leaders should listen actively and respond accordingly to the concerns of black faculty members and students, adopt an anti-racist philosophy, and, through a lens of racial equity, intentionally commit the time, effort and resources required to dismantle the structural racism and white supremacy embedded in their current institutional cultures." Now, your work--again, we've been talking about it this entire conversation--is to combat the attitudes and white supremacist institutions that not only create but thrive off of inequity. I'm curious, in your mind, what incentives do these institutions have to actually make substantive, long-standing institutional changes?Oni: Yeah, that's a really tough question. You know, I think what we see motivates folks in society tends to be financial incentives, so I think if there is something in it, like, sort of profit-wise for these institutions, like, that can be helpful. I really don't know, because I think, you know, for many of these institutions--you know, I work at a government agency. The government has played a role for more than a century or two, probably several centuries, in perpetuating, you know, racist policies, and I think--you know, nowadays obviously we want to do the right thing and rectify things, but there's still--you know, the workplace here reflects what we see outside. Like, the public health department isn't immune from the inequities that we see outside, and I think that it requires really visionary leadership and commitment to change, but what it also requires is, like, white people to step to the side and there to be more leadership opportunities for black and brown people, and I think that's really a struggle. I think people support the idea of equity in theory, but then in practice it looks really different. I think, even just from conversations I had today with some of my staff, you know, in practice it can feel very uncomfortable. I think there's that saying, like, "When you're used to privilege, equity feels like oppression," or something like that. Yeah, so it's like, you know, when the going gets rough and you're really wanting to institute these changes, I mean, there's gonna be--there's tremendous pushback and resistance, and they're the reason why things have stayed the way that they are. So I have to be honest, I don't have, like, an answer. I would be curious to know about institutions that have had transformations and have done this well. It's a process. I know here at the agency, at the health department in New York City, you know, since Dr. Bassett came in 2014, and then the initiative started I believe in 2015, you know, it's slow-going, because these are, like, processes and structures that have been in place for centuries that we're now trying to undo. So I think--there's this organization that we work with called Race Forward, and they talk about equity being both a process and an outcome, and so we try to emphasize the process part, because people often want to see, you know, concrete change, and where there's an opportunity to show concrete change we try to, but we realize that this work takes a long time.Zach: So, you know, out of respect to the time, you know, I haven't been putting a lot of sound effects in, but let me just tell you, you've been casually dropping crazy Flex bombs this entire interview. So I just want to react to that. [Flex bomb sfx] You was also lighting 'em up like [blatblatblat sfx], you know what I'm saying? [both laugh]Oni: Wow, that's impressive.Zach: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. That was also Cardi B, ladies and gentlemen.Oni: Oh, I love her.Zach: [Cardi B "ow" sfx] All right, so let's do this. Before we let you go, we typically give folks space, shout-outs, parting words. What you got for us?Oni: Wow. Okay, so I would say that I'm sure many of your listeners or people who have been quite successful by this society's standards, and I think often, like, we use, you know, degrees and job titles and stuff to, you know, say how successful we've been, but what I realized, you know, with the different leadership opportunities I've had, the different degrees I've gotten, it's really about finding happiness. I know it sounds really hackneyed and trite, but really doing the internal work to be happy regardless of whether you have, like, these accolades or not, because, like, my leadership job here and my degrees aren't gonna keep me, like--you know, happy at night, you know? Like, it's really believing in myself and that, you know, regardless of whether I'm working in a clinic, whether I'm leading the Bureau of HIV in the health department, I still--you know, I am really the work of, like, all of my ancestors who came before me. I, like, represent everything that they have been through, so to then think about success in, like, this white supremacist framework would not be something that they would be happy about. So I just try to, like, think about, you know, the family members and [?] that got me here and really about my own self-worth and happiness and not to measure that by these different accolades and positions and degrees.Zach: Wow. You know what? Just shout-out to you. Like, this is incredible. You know, there are people--I will say this as we wrap up--you know, there are people that I--that Living Corporate and myself individually, but also, like, our team, will, like, look for to get on the platform, and we'll look at their social media and we'll be like, "Dang, they look like they're real spicy on social media," then they get on the podcast and they're not as spicy. It's kind of like, "Come on, what are you doing?" But, like, I feel like you have matched, if not exceeded, your spiciness. Like, if I was to rate it, like, it is higher. Like, three curry goats, like, [?]. Anyway, it's great. All right, now, look, y'all. This has been dope. Y'all know what we do. We're having these conversations every single week, coming to y'all with dope conversations. This has been Zach. You have been talking to Dr. Blackstock, okay? Dr. Blackstock is the assistant commissioner of the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, focusing on HIV prevention and research and study, doing all the amazing things up in New York. Let's see here. What else? You know, check us out on Instagram @LivingCorporate, Twitter @LivingCorp_Pod, and check us out on our website www.living-corporate.com--please say the dash. We do livingcorporate.co, livingcorporate.tv, livingcorporate.org, .net. We have all of the livingcorporates. 'Cause, see, people hit me up, Dr. Blackstock, and they'll be like, "What's the website?" And I'm like, "Look, it's livingcorporate.co or living-corporate.com," but people go livingcorporate.com, and then it pops up some Australian website, and I'm like, "Look, we don't have that domain. We have all the other domains." So you gotta make sure--you know, you gotta keep with us. You know, don't slow down. Keep up. You might get left behind. So my biggest thing right now is I want y'all to make sure y'all check the show notes, y'all look at the research and the work that Dr. Blackstock is doing. Make sure that you educate for yourself, advocate for yourself, shoot, and stay courageous out here. Did y'all hear all the stuff she was saying? Casually. She works for the government and she's talking about white supremacy. What you talking about? She's not scared, you know what I mean? Ain't nobody coming up here talking about [Law and Order sfx], you know? She's not afraid, okay? She's ready.Oni: And Zach, can I just say really quickly just as--I don't know if I'm an OG now 'cause I'm over 40, but I just want to say that I'm incredibly proud of you and this effort that you have and your Living Corporate podcast. It's really wonderful to see young people just thriving, so congratulations.Zach: Oh, my goodness. Well, look, we're both thriving, and I'm just over here like [look at us sfx]. You know? That's a Paul Rudd reference, everybody. Okay. All right, y'all. 'Til next time. This has been Zach. Again, you've been listening to me chop it up with Dr. Blackstock. 'Til next time. Peace.

Episode 199 #HowtoLovePromotingYourWork

#AmWriting

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 20, 2020 45:42

Our guest today, Dan Blank, sure seems like a man who loves his work. On his own podcast, the Creative Shift, he’s a warm and engaged interviewer. In his emails, he’s genuine and engaged. Is he selling his book and his services as an advisor to authors developing their platform and launching their work into the world? Sure, but it never feels like he’s selling. It feels like he’s sharing.Wouldn’t we all like to feel like that, and have our readers see us that way? We were hoping Dan would share his magic sauce and we’d all go skipping off towards easy street down a rainbow path, but it turns out there’s some work involved here. So instead, we talked about process, from the way you manage your personal trolls to the way you manage your emails, and then we talked—buzzword alert—authenticity, and finding the things you genuinely want to share with the people who are a match for your work. (You can download Dan’s free guide, 5 Ways to Immediately Connect with Readers, here.)Episode links and a transcript follow, and that’s it for shownotes, because man has it been a couple of weeks. It’s been February for at least a year, right? And I thought January felt long. A few things you can do to help us out or get more #AmWriting:Review us in your podcast app.Join the #AmWriting Facebook GroupSupport us with a little cash, and get periodic #SupporterMini episodes (next week: #OutlineShortcut) and weekly #WritersTopFives every Monday that isn’t an unexpected school holiday that kicks my ass. FanFaves include Top Five Details to Flag in Your Publishing Contract and Top Five Ways to Win at Newsletter Subject Lines. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)KJ: Such a Fun Age, Kiley ReidHow Could She: A Novel, Lauren MechlingRed, White, & Royal Blue: A Novel, Casey McQuistonSarina: The Starless Sea: A Novel, Erin MorgensternDan: Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew RobertsBonus: Clementine, The Life of Mrs. Winston ChurchillOur guest for this episode is Dan Blank, and you can find more about him at We Grow Media.This episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwriting for details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.Transcript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ (00:00):Hey listeners, KJ here, if you're in with us every week, you're what I like to call people of the book. And some of us book people discover somewhere along the way that not only are we writers, we're people with a gift for encouraging other writers. Maybe that comes out in small ways for you, but for some of you, it's a calling and an opportunity to build a career doing work you love. Our sponsor, Author Accelerator provides book coaching to authors (like me) but also needs and trains book coaches. And if that's got your ears perked up, head to authoraccelerator.com and click on become a book coach. Is it recording?Jess (00:41):Now it's recording.KJ (00:43):Yay.Jess (00:43):Go ahead.KJ (00:44):This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess (00:48):Alright, let's start over.KJ (00:48):Awkward pause. I'm going to rustle some papers. Now, one, two, three. I'm KJ Dell'Antonia and this is #AmWriting. #AmWriting is our podcast about writing all the things - fiction, nonfiction, essays, book proposals, all the things that I list every week because this is the podcast about sitting down and getting your writing work, whatever that is, done.Sarina (01:20):And I'm Sarina Bowen. I'm the author of 30-odd romance novels and my new one is called Heartland. You can find more about me at sarinabowen.com.KJ (01:31):I'm excited for Heartland. I was just crawling all over your website today for no apparent reason. Anyway, I am KJ Dell'Antonia. I am the author of The Chicken Sisters, a novel coming out in June of 2020, as well as How To Be a Happier Parent, which is out in hardback now and in paperback this summer. And I am excited to say that we have a guest today. So let me just introduce him. Our guest is Dan Blank. He's so many things that I don't know what to put first, so don't judge me by how I rank these. But he is the host of The Creative Shift podcast, the author of Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience, the creator and wunderkind behind the We Grow Media Organization, and a man with a true passion for what he likes to call a human centered approach to reaching your audience. And I would have to say that Dan has a human centered approach to everything. So, welcome Dan.Dan (02:32):Thank you for the lovely introduction. I appreciate that.KJ (02:36):You're welcome. A couple of weeks to go. We recorded an episode on what we do all day and you don't have to convince either of us that the most important thing that we do is create. But we both struggle to put that first sometimes because of all the other stuff that feels pressing. And all that other stuff is mostly about marketing, and promoting ourselves and our work, and getting it out in the world and communicating with our editors or agents or audio book recorders or cover designers - just so much stuff. So we are hoping to have kind of a two-part conversation with you: if getting the work out in the world is the second most important thing, how do we do that better and smarter instead of just chasing shiny new opportunities and how can we get it done? And full disclosure here, before I stop talking, I think that you love connecting your work with people or at least it feels that way to me. And Sarina and I both would like to feel that way. So I have dubbed this #HowToLovePromotingYourWork. And that's not a challenge or anything. I did not ask you a question. How can we start? What should be my first question?Dan (03:59):To me, it always starts with clarity. And I totally agree with you, that for a writer it begins with their craft. It begins with what they create, why they create it, and of course their ability to do so. And then from that, it's about the idea of connecting it with people. I find that a lot of people absolutely do what you say, they struggle to create because of all the other important things in life. And sometimes it is distracting. Like going on a co-host website for no reason and just spending time there, which I do all the time. But a lot of times it's critically important things like kids, and job, and to feeding your family, and that sort of thing. So when I think of the idea of productivity and getting writing done, a lot of what I think about is that battle for clarity. Of knowing what is the most important thing, and knowing it in your bones, and having made decisions around it. And I think if you don't have that first, then it's very difficult to start weighing things in your day. Of like, well I should volunteer for that, I should do this, maybe let me just check that out, and someone told me about that book let me check that out, or let me get back to email. So the place I like to start is talking about clarity, but I'm not sure if that's starting too far back for you.Sarina (05:23):I would love to jump in and tell you that you're already saying some things to me that really resonate. Because my relationship to productivity and to my clarity of purpose has changed so much over the last five years and not in a healthy way. And I'm sort of struggling to go back to where I was. Well, I started writing romance novels out of frustration about five years ago, because the things that I had been working on were not working, not finding a market. And so I wrote the first couple just out of joy and just for fun. And I accidentally became a romance novelist because the moment that my first romance came out, then I found success. So everything started to work for me. But the problem is now that my relationship to that work has changed so much because of reader expectations. And now my inbox is full of people who want things from me. Whereas, when I first started writing these stories, they were just for me. I mean, I had the hope that somebody would read them, but now I literally get messages every day from people who are demanding that I do a particular thing next. And it's really messed me up a little bit. You know, when I sit down in front of my computer in the morning now, I have all those voices in my head and they want certain things to happen in my fictional worlds and they want certain books next. But I'm on deadline on this other one. And you know, cry me a river, right? Because I have an engaged audience, but sometimes it's too loud.Dan (07:19):Yeah. I mean, KJ knows this about me. I work in a small studio here in New Jersey and on one of the walls is nothing but photos of artists, and writers, and musicians who inspire me. And I pick photos of them when they are either very young, before they've had success, or when they're sort of in that moment of risk. And I stare at them all day. And you talking about that thing that a lot of people have, which is I don't want to write to an audience, but I want to feel that my life is filled with an audience. And how to navigate that is a tricky thing. And as I look at that wall right now, I think of how all of these other creators had to deal with that, too. You come out with a successful album, or painting, or show, or performance, or book and you're immediately thrilled at the success and then saddled with that success. And you're also talking about not just in your head, you're talking about, it's like infiltrating your day through email, and probably through private messages, and things like that.Sarina (08:20):Yeah.Dan (08:24):Now we will get to the crying. I mean the first thing I think about that, is the ability to compartmentalize it. And sometimes that is a system you create. So you have a virtual assistant who is actually in your inbox and moves things to different places so that you're not always confronting them at a bad moment. That's one way to do it. Another way to do it is to sort of reframe feedback from readers almost in a community marketing role. So you're expecting this. And the way I like to think about that is to have a process. Because if we think about anyone, JK Rowling, anyone who has a big fan base, and all day long fans come up and tell them about their life there's a real emotional baggage to that. Let alone if they're saying, why don't you do this, why don't you do that? If it's reframed as this is a marketing role, this is a reader connection role, this is a me being there for people role. In a background way that might be a way to compartmentalize it in your mind, but then the service that you're doing of engaging with them, it's a whole different thing. You have a process by which to process that. And again, I think KJ knows this from from my work, but I have this little thing I call creativity cave trolls and it's basically anything that distracts you, takes you off of your clarity. And I imagine that this is one of those cave trolls for you. And the whole concept behind it is not that you want to kill the troll, the troll will always be there. It's sort of this dumb, lumbering thing that will always be a part of your life. And the way that you manage that is that you build a system to manage it. You're always going to get these emails so let's plan for those emails and let's find a way to process them. Again, it could be hiring someone, it could be flagging them in your inbox, and you deal with them only on Mondays from 4:00 to 8:00 PM. Or you have a script that you use, something where if you know they're going to come and take you off track, we find a way to process them. And then hopefully that would give you more mind space to create and then fewer things to take you way off the rails.KJ (10:40):And I think that we all struggle with that inbox full of demand. Whether it's reader demand, like Sarina gets, or editor demand, or school volunteer demand, or just all the things. My inbox right now is full of direct messages from social media and many of them there were, 'Yeah, I sure I would love to be on your podcast, actually.' But they all require sort of a processing time that is very real and that's so annoying. Why can I not just process them in the amount of time that it takes to read them? That's a little crazy, but it's just like, why does it take me 40 minutes to crank through three emails?Dan (11:35):Can I really dig into email? Is that okay? Cause I'm so passionate about this. Okay, so I know this is another thing KJ and I've talked about in the past, which is my philosophy that your inbox is not a to do list. And the problem I think a lot of people have with email is they ask for it to do too many things. And it's one channel. So a number of ways to even think about what you just said. And that's to: one, turn off the notifications. If they're going to go to Instagram, or going to go to Twitter, let them go to Instagram and Twitter. Don't also have them pop into email because then that's a bottleneck for everything. Another way to kind of lighten the load is to think about having different inboxes for different purposes. So one thing that I do is I have almost every newsletter that I get (and I get a ton of newsletters cause I kind of study them) I have an email inbox (a Gmail account) just for newsletters. So the email that I use every day gets almost no newsletters. And I unsubscribe from everything. You know, if I buy something from Guitar Center and they accidentally put me on their newsletter list, I actively unsubscribe from things, I actively route things to different inboxes. And the idea is the fewer things I have to even look at and sort through, the more clarity I have to manage the things that are there. So that's sort of the first thing I would say with email and the second thing is, again to sort of have a process to process the inbox. So I'm one of those really, really, really annoying people who's basically always at inbox zero. And that's because I'm always offloading things from email. So the super quick version of what I do is I don't consider my inbox my inbox. I use Apple mail and they have like a flag folder and Gmail has a star folder. So right then and there when I open up email and they all pop in in the morning, I don't really read them, I flag emails that I have to look at. So everything I don't flag just goes into the endless archive. I don't worry about deleting them, I don't move them into folders and pretend that I'm like a librarian of my inbox cause that takes a lot of time and decision making power. Then I just go to my flagged folder and there are just the 16 emails I flagged let's say that day. And from what I do then is I try to process what I can quickly. Like if I can just do a one word or a one line reply back, I do that. And for anything more, if it's client saying, 'Oh, can we do it out here and I'm gonna add this to our agenda', I move it out of email, I put it in the folder I have for that client. I move it into another working process, I don't keep it in the inbox. And for things I can't process right away either I leave it in there until later in the day or I email that person and say, 'Thanks, I'm going to get back to you within 48 hours on this.' So I always take action on it and where I can't take action, I at least set an expectation that I see you and you will hear back from me at a certain time. And that sort of has worked wonders for my inbox. It's been a very long time since I've ever worried about email because that system works for me. So I typically end the day with a totally empty flags folder.Sarina (15:05):Huh. I love how analytical that is because it seems like maybe I could manage that as I'm analytical about most everything, but I also hear you sort of saying that I should just get over my anger at some of the things that people email me.Dan (15:24):Yeah, I mean I think that there's such a power, there's such an energy that it takes and I like the idea of how do we flip that? How do we have a script that we can send to these people? How do we have a thing in your website that says how you deal with it?Sarina (15:39):Oh, I have the thing, it's just that people don't pay attention. It says in beautiful pink letters right above my contact form. Like, 'Due to the volume of questions Sarina cannot respond to questions about publication plans, audio plans, paperback dates, et cetera. Between the newsletter and upcoming releases we have you covered. Thank you for understanding.' And every day I get an email that just says, when is the audio book coming out? Or something like that. But it's partly this, I've had to cross this little personal rubicon where pretty much before last year I really believed that everyone who reached out to me with a question deserved an answer, and promptly. Because that person's about to throw down $15 for my audio book. And then I just had to come to a place of, 'Well, I won't ever produce another thing again if I'm always answering that question.'KJ (16:38):It's not a bad problem to have.Sarina (16:41):I saw it as a problem.KJ (16:42):I know you do.Sarina (16:44):Well, I actually don't respond anymore to that particular question and I definitely do not respond anymore to, 'Is there ever going to be another book about so-and-so?' Because, like I've said, I've reached this place where I can't actually reply to everything or I won't finish the writing goal of the day, but it feels bad not to tell that invested person that I can't answer your email. Except it says right over the contact form basically click here to see all the public plans. Like, if you're curious about a thing, here is the page for that. So yeah, I'm a little stuck.KJ (17:38):I know you have a virtual assistant, they could just weed those for you and have a canned response that says what the pink letters say, only friendly, not that pink letters aren't friendly. And then you would know like, okay those people all got an answer that basically said nothing, but I didn't have to do it. When I was getting my New York Times emails, I had somebody do that for some of the years, depending on the years, just, you know, volume of submissions, blah blah blah. Because I did feel like everyone deserved at least a basically automated response. It's hard, cause arguably everyone doesn't deserve a response. It's sort of like the social media direct messages for me. And that's an interesting one, Dan. Cause I don't actually ever go on this particular platform, but I have such a large following there that I don't want to shut it down. That's why the Twitter dm's come and my assistant handles most of them, but these were all things she couldn't handle. Somebody who was cleaning it out, but I don't know. I mean you've probably thought of that and there may be reasons that you haven't done it, or haven't done it yet.Sarina (18:55):Well, I have somebody on some of these platforms. But of course Facebook makes it difficult.KJ (19:04):Yeah, Facebook won't let you.Sarina (19:05):Yeah. Like if I share with my Canadian assistant, my login, then Facebook will flag me as not a real human.KJ (19:16):Really, Facebook messages are like the bane of my...that should have an audit. You should be able to have an automated response that basically says, 'I don't do Facebook messages.' or you should be able to turn it off.Sarina (19:28):Well, Instagram is actually even worse because they pile all of the actual messages in with so-and-so reacted to your story or whatever.KJ (19:38):Yes, that's a new thing that people can like make a little clapping sound under your story, which is fine. That's delightful, clap for my story. But now it's in my dm's and yeah.Sarina (19:49):Well, at the risk that I've just spent the last 10 minutes sounding like a horrible human who doesn't like having invested readers, I did listen to your podcast, Dan, when you were helping someone who was a nonfiction author, develop a more authentic relationship with her Facebook following and she was, I believe, a client of yours. And her topic was something very accessible, but also sort of serious, which was divorced, I believe. And you said the word authentic enough times when I was listening to it that I thought, 'Okay, okay.' So this is another lesson I need to take from you. And basically after I listened to that episode, I cut out a bunch of the things I was doing on social media that didn't feel authentic to me. And I basically came home and I wrote a list of when do I feel the most authentic in my social media communication. And then I just hammer that list lately. Like those are the things we're doing now because I feel the best about them. And I was left wanting to hear how that might change when you're dealing with people who write fiction though, because obviously somebody who counsels others who are going through a divorce has a very one-to-one relationship with helping that person. And since all marketing is sort of problem solving, but the problem I'm solving for you is just that you have something to read this weekend and you didn't before, so it's a more tenuous relationship with that follower. And I just wondered - you must have thought of this and I was curious about it.Dan (21:46):Yeah, I was thinking of this and I think it was maybe in Jennie Nash's newsletter this morning. She referenced like a Harry Potter podcast whose tagline was something like, 'We don't read for escape, we read to become more human or to more fully, you know, be a part of life.' And whenever I think of like a novelist, or even a memoir writer, I think of that. Which is, to me, it's not just about escape, it's about connecting to something within someone, a worldview, part of their identity, a theme, a possibility in life. And I think about how for a novelist that can be a part of what they share. And I also think a lot about the duality here, which is the author is not the work. You know, the work is the work and the person behind it is the person. Yet as a fan of a book, or a fan of a theme, or a story, or something like that, we can get engaged with the person behind it. And that's why we love seeing cat photos or dog photos of an author who doesn't write about cats or dogs. And we have little in jokes that aren't part of the book, they're a part of that. And I think about sometimes there's a crossover. There are things that novelists can share that is about the identity and about the worldview. So if you pick just big obvious themes about love, or friendship, or duality, or commitments, or whatever, you can think of lots of little things that one can share that they align with, the reader aligns with, and also kind of fits with stories. But I also think it is about being what you want to see in the world. The word authentic I think is a very challenging one, cause we like to think it's just what we want to do. It's like who we are. But authentic, you've got to be careful with that, too. Like what is authentic? If we were being authentic, we'd all be wearing pajamas right now. You know, we'd be in big comfy chairs, there'd be ice cream surrounding us, that's very authentic to how we'd like to be. But we're all probably wearing more regular clothing, we're sitting in a desk chair, we're sitting up cause we're on a podcast. And I think that we get to filter how we're authentic online. And I think that with this question or what you're sharing here and I'm thinking about, and even your other one, I think a lot about Bruce Springsteen. Partly because I'm from New Jersey and partly because the few times I've been actually right next to him, I'm surrounded by mobs of fans, and behind them are fans, behind them are fans, behind them are fans. And here's someone like you, who doesn't have enough time to get to everyone and he's had to find a way to be okay with that. And he is (to me) the great construct of an image of authenticity. He has an authenticity he's showing you that is true, but it's also a filter of what's authentic.Sarina (24:52):Yeah, well sometimes my readers help figure out these themes for me.Dan (24:59):Oh wow.Sarina (25:01):So well, yeah. So, of course I write in series and my series tend to have certain themes running through them. One of them is hockey, one of them is Vermont. So people will post in my Facebook group, news stories all the time that remind them of little things that have happened in those books. Like this past weekend, a goalie made a goal for his team by basically flipping the puck all the way down the entire length of the ice and scoring. So, when things happen that are newsy, those things will turn up in my reader group. And so people help me identify what are those external, internal. Like the blend of what people take away from fiction and put there. And for example, I had a book three books ago where a character's avatar was Lobster Shorts because of his picture. And he was known as Lobster Shorts for the entire book and people have been posting lobster printed clothing items since the day that book came out. So sometimes I get a leg up on what it is that people are charmed by or taking away from the stories, but sometimes it's mysterious to me and I have to sort of blunder my way through the conversation to figure out what's resonating and what's not.KJ (26:38):Well, I was looking at some notes from our interview with Marika Flatt a couple of weeks ago. And she had had this thing on her website about finding the theme of your work. Like the huge theme, not the individual theme for books. And I had was writing down sort of samples for me and samples for you. And I had written something like that your theme is romance can be hard but fun or something like that. Like, you know, it's complicated, but there's a joy in it and a humor in it. And to me, that's what comes across in your social media and that's what's authentic about your writing and your connection - is that there is always the humor. I mean, joy may not be the right word, cause sometimes it's kind of a snarky humor. But yeah, finding the funny in tough situations, to me, that's part of your brand.Sarina (27:38):Well that's the thing is it's great when people help you figure out what your brand is. But from where I sit, I'm looking at other romance authors and I see so much that's really not me. Like some romance authors, they're part of their brand or their family is part of their brand. And I'm more private than that, I don't share that much. It's possibly because I'm older and more circumspective, didn't grow up in a sharing culture, but I do struggle with that, too.KJ (28:13):What, with what you're not?Sarina (28:15):Well, just that I'm reluctant to share things that other people might share.Dan (28:19):One thing I look at a lot online is people that seem to be sharing so much as I really try to see, well where are their boundaries? And I'll notice things where someone has a big following and they're sharing their family, sharing their home, and their spouse, and their kids. And on that, well where are their boundaries? And if I look for them, I often see them where it's like, oh, they do share their kids, but it's never more than once a week. It's not always, but often a profile view, or it's at home and they never mention where they live, or the school, they mention them by nickname, they share their home, but it's only in a certain way. It's one thing I like to think a lot about is the agency that everyone needs to choose what and how they share online. Because I agree with you. Everyone needs to have their own boundary and it's a different place for everyone. And I like to think of it as an opportunity to define - you know, I'm going to share this interesting part of myself, whether people care about it or not, because who I am. And I'll share a little bit of this other thing, but only so far. And I think of that even in the offline world with polite conversation with how people talk and introduce themselves and how they're open and they're open to a certain degree so that they can get along and feel human, but then they protect the things that they feel should not be for public consumption either.KJ (29:43):So Dan, one of the things that I have done because of you and that I respect about you, is that you are really big on finding pretty much exactly what it is that we're talking about here. That authentic thing that we want to share or sort of the flip side of that is the audience that we want to reach. And by that you don't mean, you know women aged 18 to 35 living in big cities. You know, you mean who are we and who are we trying to reach? And you have some sort of ways to help people get at that. Can you talk about how we can figure out what our theme and our audience is if we're struggling with it?Dan (30:35):Yeah, there's a lot to take into there. I think in general, you wanna allow your audience to surprise you in a positive way. And I think sometimes we put up these rules about what we're not, and that closes us off to what we are or what we can be. So, one easy place to begin with this, and I'm not sure if this is too simple, but a lot of writers I speak to, they don't know where they fit in the marketplace. They don't know who their comparable books or comparable authors are. And they feel disconnected from social media because they feel they started too late. Is a conversation there a little too far back or is that okay?KJ (31:17):No, that's a good place to start. And let me just say that everyone feels like they started too late on social media.Sarina (31:25):That's true.Dan (31:25):Yeah. It's funny, this is something that I'm working into my next book and it was a part of the mastermind I run. Which is a couple of weeks in, I used to do a little video saying, 'Oh you're not behind.' And I noticed everyone loved that and I started moving it up and now I actually share that video the day before we start the mastermind. Because I found that even on day one, hour one, people now come in feeling behind from a lot of things in life and it already sort of makes their experience of things so much more difficult cause it's like showing up to a beautiful retreat and on day one you walk in and you already think everyone else knows what they're doing. They're dressed better than I am. They know where to go. Like it's sort of casts a shadow on the whole thing. So in terms of what you're about, I guess there's two main ways I think about it. One is internal and one is external. The internal way is I have a lot of different exercises I go through with people to get real clarity about what do you care about, what would you fight for, what would you rather spend time on more than anything else. So I have a process called clarity cards and it's really this idea of looking at not just what you create, but your whole life and thinking what matters to me. And some of that is task-driven. It's you know, your family, your health. But some of it is I've had so many people go through this and there's a lot on there that is about their fiction, and about their memoir, and about their nonfiction work. And what they're doing is getting really clear of this is who I am, this is what I believe, this is what I write about, but this is also why I spend my time there.KJ (33:02):Can you give us an example, without sort of calling out a person? Like what would be one of those themes that might pop up on these cards?Dan (33:12):I'll use myself as an example, cause it's the easiest thing to do with no preparation. You know, for myself, I am an introverted germaphobe who is scared of going out and doesn't travel cause I'm scared to fly. Yet I have this business where I work with writers and it's typically more in the marketing end of things. So, what that means when I look at that (and I tried to describe that really pathetically) so when you look at the themes that I care about, well because I genuinely care about people who create, it's writers and it's not just writers, it's people who create. Because I feel like if you're doing that, you are advancing our culture and you are taking a risk that other people are not. So you are my people. So one, I'm already defining it there. It's not just I help writers with marketing. It's the deeper why of why do I spend all my time? Why is my wife an artist? Why have all my friends growing up been artists and writers, photographers and performers all day now? I'm at 10 years of this company and all I do is talk to writers and creators. So it's that drive part of it. It's not just I help writers market things. It's the deeper why there. Then, I look at how you started this conversation, which is if we're not creating, nothing else can happen. So what I think a lot about is the creative process and like the photos on the wall here, I meditate on this idea of having clarity of what you create and embracing, of going all in. And when I look at stories of writers, or performers, or creators, I look at the ways where they did have to isolate themselves. They had to sacrifice, they had to have the world laugh at them, laugh at their idea, and persist anyway, and only later did they see what the genius was. Also because I believe in the creative process, I mean I'm working a few blocks from where I live. I have a very small life geographically and other things I kind of said tongue in cheek before (Oh, I don't like to fly. I don't like to go out.) well that's allowed me to embrace this idea of having a life that's dedicated to my family. I'm either with them or I'm here working with writers. So in a way that's a very small life. And what it means is that I've had to say no to a lot of things because I want to embrace those two things as fully as I can. So to summarize, if you look at my Instagram, or my newsletter, or my podcast, you see those themes coming up. It's who I am and that gives me a lot of latitude to not just say, 'This is the marketing for writers podcast where we teach you how to sell, sell, sell.' Which, sure, it's part of what I do, but it's maybe paper thin when you think about all the things holding that up and all the things that I love talking to writers about. And that's what I think gives me, you said this very generously earlier, which is like you seem to love what you do. And I do. And that's why I love what I do, because I've just explored - if I don't like to go out, and I don't like to fly, and I do this job marketing with writers, like how is that the thing that fuels me? And I wake up super excited to do this work.KJ (36:31):It is so hard to take the time to work through that thought process. But it's really, I think, important and rewarding and also a great thing to think about at the start of a new year and a new decade. Going back and revisiting if we feel like we've already done it, to go back and try to find those themes and find that clarity. I'm loving this as a general thought. So to bring it all back home to this question of, okay, how can we love marketing our work? I can answer that for you, but I want you to answer it.Dan (37:13):If you know why you create, if you make creating a priority in your life, which does mean a lot of decision making and turning down other potential obligations, and you believe that the work that you are creating has a purpose and that can be a lower case P, it can be an uppercase P for you, that this work can and will connect with someone, and you care about this for all whatever deep reasons you have, sharing that work is your ability to just communicate that, to just say, this is what I believe and why, and I'm sharing it with good intentions and not shoving it down your throat. As the idea of wanting to fill your life, not just with, I wrote these books and they're on a shelf at a store, but living the life of a writer is someone who fills their life with moments, and experiences, and other people who care about these themes, or these types of work, or the conversations you have. And I think that does look different for everyone. But in general, it's not just about how do we get it done. It's how do we build a life that feels fulfilling in what we create, how we share that with other people, how we connect with them, and how that comes back around. And I firmly believe that creative work is complete when someone else experiences it. Because half of that work is what you intended and half of that work is what the reader brings to it. And I think that that is utterly, totally, completely magical.KJ (38:50):I love that. And magic is my word of the year. So, now I'm especially delighted that we're sort of wrapping up on that note. So, to shift gears, I forgot to warn you, but I hope you remember that we ask everyone what they've been reading and loving of late and to give you a moment to regroup, Sarina will start. Ha ha, you're on the hotspot.Sarina (39:22):I am digging into The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.KJ (39:27):Oh, I have that! Is it good?Sarina (39:28):You know, the beginning is great.KJ (39:31):I just finished Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid and I am currently reading a book called How Could She and I forget who the author is. And I'm having this really interesting experience that maybe even gets down to what we've been talking about, which is that I don't like the people in either of these books. I don't think you're meant to, if I'm not enjoying a book on some level, if I'm not getting something out of it, and if it's not well done, if it's not fulfilling, I don't finish. And I 100% finished Such a Fun Age and I'm gonna finish the one that I'm reading right now, but in both of them, they both really center around people with what I would call kind of a sour view of life.KJ (40:40):And in a lot of cases, a sour view of pretty good lives. Now Such a Fun Age has a lot of characters that are hugely demographically different. It's got themes of race, and class, and money. So not every character is sour about their privilege, but none of the people in these books feel very hopeful. And so I'm not having very much fun with them, even though I'm reading them. And I don't quite know what to make of that. They are more challenging than reading, you know Red, White, and Royal Blue, which is so, so totally on my bedside table and I'm super looking forward to. So I guess there's that, there's different themes. But yeah, it is this question of do you spend more time reading about characters that you would actually like to spend time with or characters that you maybe have a different life outlook and maybe you want to know more about? Maybe that's where I am with those. It isn't that I don't recommend, I wouldn't mention the book if I didn't like it. It's just, it's a different kind of liking. It's a weird kind of liking. Your turn.Dan (41:57):My turn. I'm 200 pages into the thousand page biography on Churchill called Churchill: Walking with Destiny by Andrew Roberts.KJ (42:08):And do we like this? Do we want to spend more time with Churchill?Dan (42:14):It's interesting really, for probably the reasons you just said, a very complex character, very complex era. And this is a newer biography and it seemed to be the one that balanced (by all the reviews I could read) a lot of different thoughts, recent things that have come out, new archives that were not available earlier. So it seemed to be a very recent, modern take on a very complex subject.KJ (42:46):I just heard about a book that was about Churchill's wife and it's new and I am trying to find it, but I am stymied by the fact that there are actual human beings named Anna Churchill, and I think her name was Ana. Just throwing that out there and I'll find it for the show notes that there's apparently an interesting - I actually don't even know if it's sort of a fictionalized version or if it's a biography, but that she was apparently a really, really interesting character. So you can follow up, if you need more Churchill. Alright. Well, this was great. We really appreciate it. Before we sign off, tell people where they can find you and what you've got going on right now.Dan (43:40):You can find me on my blog at wegrowmedia.com. The podcast is called The Creative Shift with Dan Blank. Social media @Danblank and I have a little Facebook group called The Reader Connection Project that I've been doing a lot of teachings recently on social media for writers. We have a thousand writers in there, you're welcome to join. And I do a lot of different programs on the idea of how to connect with your readers and all the different facets around that from marketing, to book launches, social media websites, and then even what we've talked about a lot here, which is productivity for writers. So you can check all that out. Thank you.KJ (44:26):I'm going to give a co-sign to the idea of signing up for your weekly email because it is really good, and really heartfelt, and an excellent example of the genre, which I guess wouldn't be surprising since you read a lot of them. Sarina, you want to take us out?Sarina (44:45):I will, right after I sign up for Dan Blank's weekly email. I would like to remind you all to keep your butt in the chair and your head in the game. This episode of #AmWriting with Jess and KJ was produced by Andrew Parilla. Our music, aptly titled unemployed Monday was written and performed by Max Cohen. Andrew and Max were paid for their services because everyone, even creatives should be paid. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at amwriting.substack.com/subscribe

181 : Black History Month (w/ Ade & Zach)

Best of The Steve Harvey Morning Show

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 8, 2020 39:35

Ade and Zach sit down and have an entertaining discussion geared around Black History Month, and they both share their experiences in being frustrated by an employer's mismanagement of the celebration. Ade also talks a little bit about the body butter company she started, and she and Zach spend some time reflecting on how far Living Corporate has come since its launch in early 2018. Thank you all so much for your support! We owe it to you.Ade's body butter company soft-launches soon, so make sure to follow them on Twitter and Instagram. Congratulations, Ade!Visit our website!TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. And it's not just Zach. Ade: Ayyyye. It's Ade.Zach: It's Ade alsooo, yo, and we here, man. Look, it's Black History Month. It's 2020. You know, January was big trash, so we're just gonna start over. We're gonna count February as January--nah, just... 2020 is gonna have 11 months, that's all.Ade: Yeah, let's do that. I like that idea.Zach: Yeah, we're just gonna start over. So yeah, you know, it's Black History Month. Whole fresh new decade, and, you know, a few episodes have dropped. Downloads are popping, by the way. Like, they're really good, Ade. The numbers look good.Ade: Yay, that's awesome.Zach: Yeah, pretty good. So we both have a lot of stuff going on. What's up in your world?Ade: God, what isn't up? No, [laughs] I'm just really enjoying the ride. I got--you know, my first bit of code at my job was deployed successfully, went really well. I panicked a little bit near the end of the sprint there, but I got it all the way through, so I'm excited about that. I started my butter company, and my soft launch is February 10th, so I'm also really excited about that, just getting the opportunity--Zach: Hold on. Butter company? Like, what's up? Like, you making animal butter? Or, like, cooking butter? Or--Ade: [laughs] No, although somebody gave me the idea to do that. You know I love cooking and I love experimenting in the kitchen, so that was an idea that hadn't occurred to me. But this is the year of action, so I took action. [laughs] So now I have a company--obviously besides, like, this one--but I'm really excited. I've been connected with a bunch of really great folks within the, like, creative community, and I'm excited to see where this goes. What about you, Zach?Zach: Well, first of all, hold on. We don't have to rush over to my stuff. Excited for you, congratulations on moving in action, moving in intentionality, you know what I'm saying? [air horns sfx] That's great, you know? But anyway, you asked me about myself. Yeah, so look, things are going great. Really focused on getting ready for my wife and I's first child coming in, like... I mean, if she doesn't come early--if she doesn't come early it will be in, like, 6 weeks.Ade: Whoo!Zach: Right?Ade: Oh, my gosh. You're so close to the finish line. And I would like to reiterate here that Ade makes a fantastic first time. I'm just saying.Zach: It's great. I love that, 'cause I'd like to reiterate... [haha sfx] You know? [both laughing] Ade: You are so wildly disrespectful.Zach: Not at all, not at all. I just stay ready, you know? I just stay ready. I think for me it's, like, focusing on, like, the radical change that's about to happen in our family, in our lives, then, like, just doing, like, a reassessment of just everything else around me, right? Because, like, I think initially--and I'm sure most people who are preparing for children, they go through this too--you're kind of like, "Oh," you know, they'll just kind of fit into your plans, and I'm like--as I, like, kind of pause and think about all of the things I have going on, I'm like, "Dang, wait. Certain things are gonna have to shift and change." Like, it's not gonna just be like, "Oh, I'm picking up a new hobby," or starting a new podcast, like, this is a whole new person, a whole person that's about to be, like, active, actively involved and will have active present needs from myself and my partner for at least the next 18 years, right? If not the rest of their lives. So it's like, what does it look like? So y'all, this is not me alluding to the fact that the podcast is about to stop or anything like that, it's just more about life. Like, you know, talking to other fathers who had to make career decisions and think about, like, what did it look like for them to make adjustments, how do you communicate with your teams about being a dad and, like, the new responsibilities as a parent? Those are things I'm really excited to, like, explore and, like, really discover over the next few--you know, over the next months and stuff like that as I get ready for paternity leave and all that kind of stuff. Like, really just, like, being really clear with, like, what does it look like to, like, live in this new world? 'Cause, like, I don't know. Like, I'm 30 years old, so it's not like I'm--I'm not old, so I still have things--Ade: [whispering] Yes, you are.Zach: That's jacked up.Ade: [laughs] I too got shots in my pocket.Zach: That's crazy. I see you. But the thing about it is, like, I still have a few decades more of career to have, and so it's like I don't want to just, like, kind of sit on my laurels because I have kids. Like, what does it look like to still progress and have a career and, like, develop and do all these things while at the same time being a very present and attentive and engaged father? So normal stuff. Like, I think it's a challenge. It's a good problem to have. It's something that is--it's a problem created by growth, so to me that's a--I count that as a good problem. So that's, like, the main--the big, big thing, then the second thing is just, like, continuing to slow down and focus on, like, mental health. Like, my own personal mental health and, like, my mental wellness, right? I think the more and more people I--especially black men--that I talk to who are transitioning out of their twenties, you know, it's like--I've talked to more and more folks who are, black men, who, like, this is the time when they go to counseling, right? Like, if you haven't gone already. And I've gone at certain points in time. We did pre-martial counseling. I've done, like, personal counseling as I got ready to get married, but I haven't really ever gone to, like, see someone, like, a true therapist, right? Like, a true, like, psychiatrist. I think that there's a certain stigma around mental health, right, for black people, and I would say particularly for black men, and so it's, like, getting comfortable with talking to people and, like, really getting help and just talking through things. Like, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think, like, the road of life has all of these different bumps and potholes. You're gonna have mileage and just damage and disalignment that you just need help with just because of the reality of life and the trauma that life brings, especially in the context of white supremacy and patriarchy. So shoot... and then the last thing, y'all, I think I'm just really excited about, again, like, Living Corporate. Like, yo, we got featured on Forbes, man.Ade: Oh, my God. I just--Zach: What is it? So be honest. When you saw it, what did you--Ade: Okay, I just want to put some context. I am not--I don't scream very often.Zach: Did you scream for real?Ade: At the top of my lungs.Zach: Did you really?Ade: I really did. [Zach laughs] And here's why. Like, it genuinely is a life goal for me to make it on Forbes' 30 Under 30, so when you sent that link to me, I was like, "Surely he is just sharing a link of podcasts that we should emulate or, you know, link up with these people and get a sense of what they do, how they do it, how well they're do--" Nope, there's our name. I was like, "Holy--" I was on top of the Moon. It was a moment for me, okay, personally.Zach: I was curious. Well, 'cause I texted you and we didn't, like--'cause we didn't, like, really react in the moment. Like, I reacted. I texted you. I was happy. But you were in the middle of your work day and, like, I had some time in my day, so I was able to step away and, like, actually hit you, right? And so when you--[laughs] But you didn't, like, react, so I was like, "I wonder if she really cared about that." Like, not that you didn't care, but did it do anything for you. But for me I was like, "Oh, my gosh." Like, I was shocked. Ade: Absolutely. No, I need you to--I just want to, again, reiterate the fact that I don't scream on a regular basis. It's not my personality type to just be out here in these streets wildin'--at least in that way, 'cause I do be wildin'. I'ma just be honest.Zach: Right, you do. That's true.Ade: [laughs] You didn't need to agree with me. I was just--Zach: You know, you put it out there. It's on Twitter.Ade: Okay. All right, this is fine. But really, it was such an honor, and it was something that I would not in the--I mean, if we, like, rewind a year and a half or whatever--it was actually about this time two years ago. Are we two years [?]? Wait a minute.Zach: Yeah, it's been, like, two years.Ade: Holy [bleep?]Zach: Right? It's been nuts.Ade: [laughs] I really need you to understand that I'm literally just coming to the realization that Living Corporate is almost two years old. That's wild. That's so wild to me. We need sweatshirts and hoodies.Zach: We need merch, man. We need merch. We should really drop, like, little collections. Like Popeye's.Ade: We should. We should, like, go through and figure out what our favorites from our guests and from our hosts are and then, like, make some sweatshirts, 'cause I would wear my sayings. That's all I'm saying.Zach: You would wear your own sayings?Ade: Absolutely. What? Absolutely.Zach: Nah, that's the definition of a narcissist. You'd put your own quotes on clothing and walk around in them?Ade: Uh-huh, I would.Zach: Wow.Ade: I would. You know why? Because I have some fire, fire sayings. Zach: [laughs] That's crazy. You do, but it's like... you can't say that though. Like, that's crazy.Ade: What? No. 2020 is the year of big upping yourself.Zach: Wow. You know what though? I respect it, 'cause, you know what I'm saying, if no one else is gonna wear your sayings, you may as well.Ade: Exactly. Precisely. Kobe was a fan of big upping myself, and so am I.Zach: He was. That's true though. You know what? That's a good point.Ade: And the way that I do see it is, like--being a little bit more serious about the subject, 'cause I was kind of making fun of the entire concept, but sincerely, like, we preach that you have to be your own best advocate, right? And we preach that you have to kind of take stock and make sure that you are keeping records of your good deeds when you do them so that you can be able to speak to your managers, your peers and your supervisors, all of these things, but when you are an entrepreneur or you are an individual contributor or anything of the sort, you have to do the same, right? Like, you have to be too, and this was something that I had to get comfortable with. And I'm still not comfortable with it, to be frank. Like, I handed people an 8-ounce jar of my product, and they were like, "Well, how much is this?" And I'm, like, waffling around, like, "I kind of don't want to ask anybody for money for this," but it's a product, right? But being able to, like, stand on your two feet and be like, "No, this is a thing that I've done, and I'm worth the time and the investment that you're going to make in my product or in me as a person." It's all a part of being confident in all of the work that you've done. You're not asking people to buy into a single thing. You're asking them to buy into you as an idea, and if you're not willing to, you know, kind of say it with your chest, as Africans will say. [laughs] If you're not willing to say it with your chest, then who's supposed to be willing to stand behind you and say it with their chest? You see what I'm saying?Zach: Yeah, straight up. Like, you have to be willing to advocate for yourself and, like, promote yourself, because--I mean, the Internet is such a big and busy place and, like, the world is so big and busy that, like, yeah, there--and I was just having a conversation with a guest that I will not reveal yet because I like guests being a surprise week-to-week, but a guest I was having a conversation with, we were talking about networking and how, like, the world is connected, but it's connected via a series of, like, closed loops. So it's not like you can just, like--the world is connected, but you still have to, like, be in certain circles for things to even get started, right? And so, like, the idea of like, "Oh, I'ma just do this thing over here in this corner, and then if it's good it will eventually get seen." It's like that's not really true. Like, you have to really actively promote whatever it is that you got going on. Like, period. That's just the way it is. But yeah, to your earlier point about, you know, it being two years and Living Corporate being around almost two years, right? So, like, April will make two years--or is it June? Golly, I can't remember. Anyway, some time--Ade: I think it was April, but we definitely had, like, our inaugural Skype or, what was it, Google chat in February.Zach: There it is. You're right, we did. We did have our inaugural Google chat in February just to talk about things, and then, you know, we kicked everything off a couple months later, but it's crazy 'cause, like--and shout-out to Dr. Gassam, who wrote the piece for us, the article for us, and shouted us out and, like, you know, put us up as #1. I don't know what those little numbers mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, 'cause I really--what I was really shocked about was everybody else on that list, everybody on that list are huge. Like, shout-out to Side Hustle Pro. Shout-out to Code Switch, dawg. Shout-out to Myleik. I was like, "Yo, we're up here with Code Switch? Myleik?"Ade: Code Switch.Zach: Code Switch! And yo, shout-out to NPR and Code Switch, because I remember when we first started thinking about, like, Living Corporate, like, as a podcast, we were like, "What are the ones that really inspire us?" And me and at least one other person was like, "Code Switch," 'cause, like, the format is so fire. Like, shout-out to y'all, man. So, like, even if anybody--for anybody to think about us in the same vein as them, like, I feel like that's a win on its own, 'cause that lets me know--that affirms me that, like, we're achieving [against?] the vision that we had initially set out, but it's crazy 'cause there's been, like, a lot of ups and downs and, like, a lot of stuff going on, but, you know, [Paul Rudd look at us sfx, Ade laughs].Ade: I'm just over here, like, giddy and over the Moon. Yeah, no, and it's funny because you're not the only person who sent me that link, and that's, like, the other thing that [?].Zach: Oh, you didn't tell me that.Ade: No, like, sincerely, you weren't the only one that sent me that link. My friend sent me that link, and I actually encountered someone--shout-out to you, you know who you are--who I literally had just, like, been talking to him. He's transitioning into tech. I just, like, try to make sure I'm giving people advice and help and checking in with people that I know are making the same transition, and I reached out to him, and he was like, "Wait, are you Ade from Living Corporate?" Zach: What?Ade: 'Cause he literally met me from an entirely separate context. And so to be able to encounter someone who, you know, knows of us and knows me in my best light, not, you know--clears throat--anyway. Zach: Dawg, I'ma tell you something. One day--one day, y'all... hey, listen, y'all. Some of y'all are, like, listening to this with a confused face. Trust me, I'm confused too, but one day we're gonna come on this podcast and we're gonna have a real conversation about the crazy life that Ade lives, 'cause why would you come on here and say, "Yeah, this Forbes article, and someone who knew me, and not in my best--" And then this awkward pause. I hear you audibly gulp in the mic. Like, what? [laughs] Y'all, y'all understand the type of work--like, y'all understand the team I have, right? Like, that's crazy. Y'all, don't treat me like--yeah, now y'all know what I'm doing with. What kind of weirdness is that? Go ahead. This person who hasn't seen you at your best and sent you the Forbes link. What?Ade: [sighs] I'ma just move forward. [Zach laughs] No, no, no.Zach: I wonder, is Ade the Mal of this podcast? 'Cause I'm certainly Joe Budden. I realize that. But Ade might--Ade might be the Mal. She might be the Mal of this podcast. She's, like, a little too cool to pod, but then she'll say [?] things.Ade: I demand we move forward. [both laugh]Zach: Goodness, gracious. Go ahead. Keep going.Ade: Anyway, so I'm just really grateful for, you know, where we are, and--first of all I want to give Zach and our writing team and our production team and our social team all the props, like, every single prop that exists, because you have been put in blood, sweat, tears, money, effort, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseum into this, and it shows in the quality of our partners, our work, our podcast, our newsletters. Like, everything. Like, you've been really intentional about the direction that Living Corporate would take, and I really respect that, and you are by far one of the most aggressive--but you're not gonna beat me up though--type energies [?].Zach: [laughs] It's true though. It's true. [both laughing]Ade: And Living Corporate has enjoyed that energy, enjoyed the fruits of that energy.Zach: I do have "but you're not gonna beat me up though" type energy, and I've come to peace with that. It's true.Ade: It's my favorite thing about you, and also, like, simultaneously your worst quality when you turn it on me, [both laugh] but--[to this day sfx]Zach: [laughing] Oh, my gosh. It's true. But this is the thing, you gotta have "you ain't gonna beat me up though" energy, because boy, the world will beat you up, boy. The world out here tryna come--it coming for your neck, dude. I mean, every day I'm over here like [Cardi B blatblat sfx] with these haters, man. I'm trying to, like, stay alive out here. I gotta fight every day. Every day. All my life, literally trying to fight and then at the same time avoid--[Law and Order sfx]--like, at the same time. [both laugh] I be so aggravated, man. Do you know the fine line you have to walk as a black man? Man, I'm telling you, being black is so exhausting. Being black and conscious, like--James Baldwin, man. He was not lying, dawg. Not lying at all, because you are in a rage all of the time, and you're over here trying to, like, stand up and just speak to the fact that you're worth something. Listen... eugh. You're over here trying to literally raise your voice loud enough to be heard and respected, but not too loud, right?Ade: 'Cause [?], and here y'all come.Zach: Here y'all come, without at the same time going to jail. So it's, like, this fine line that you have to walk. It's just nuts. Anyway, nah, I appreciate that, Ade. And, you know, I appreciate you as well. You know, you're here. The biggest--Ade: Finally.Zach: Finally, that's true. But look, you was gone for a little minute, but you back in town. You know? It's okay. I think the biggest thing--what do they say, "the biggest ability is availability?" It's corny. It's kind of a coach's--coaches say that, but it's a true statement. Like, just be present, you know? I know one thing, and shout-out to Rod from The Black Guy Who Tips and Karen, his lovely co-host and partner, but one of the things he said, like, from the jump--like, he jumped on our podcast early. He was like, "Yo, being consistent--" He's like, "'Cause people come and leave, like, jump on these podcasts and leave all of the time." He's like, "So having some longevity is hard over time," and if it wasn't for our team - Aaron, Sheneisha, Amy, Latesha, Tristan... like, we have a great, great team, and we put out a lot of content. Like, we're posting three episodes a week every single week, and, like, that doesn't happen without a huge team--or, I'm sorry, relatively huge and a consistently dedicated team. So, like, really proud of them, really proud of, like, just what we've been able to do, and just, like, really thankful for Dr. Gassam, 'cause, like, there's plenty of other platforms that are trying to make content. I really still stay that, like, it's us, Trill MBA and, like... that's kind of it right now that's out here really talking about other in majority-white spaces. Anyway, so look, it's Black History Month. Have you seen any--I'm just gonna ask the question. I don't know why I'm trying to, like, play it safe. Have you been on a job where your employer has annoyed you by how they've handled Black History Month?Ade: Let me count the ways. I--[laughs] Whoo, let me take a breath. All right. I have been aggravated by several firms, actually, simply because--Zach: [laughs] Yes, shout-out "firms." Consulting, we're talking about y'all. [laughs]Ade: Looking right at you, friends. Zach: Looking right at y'all, professional services. Yes. [laughing]Ade: No, I just--there's nothing I hate more than double-talk, and by that I mean firms, corporations, whatever it is that y'all would like to call yourselves--active participants in capitalism--who pay lip service, either through, like, their mission statements, their values, their creed, or even their stated employee resource groups that they care about diversity and somehow consistently fail to make a statement or support or do anything of value, particularly during Black History Month. I noticed this during my employment at a firm I will not name in the past where, you know, July 4th came around, Veteran's Day came around. You know, all of those things were celebrated or commemorated by words from the leadership of the firm going out, but when Black History Month came and went there was nary a bleep, and it was so noticeable because, you know, the firm had something to say on MLK Day, but, you know, when ostensibly there would be time for--and to their credit, the employee resource group put on one... ONE program for the entire month of February. I understand that, you know, funding is a thing. It's difficult to organize sometimes around different people's schedules, but, you know, one event over the course of the entire Black History Month? I cannot tell you how deeply bothersome I found that, simply because you have a body of people who are, whether they consciously or not notice these things, are essentially being utilized as resources by this firm. I mean, you are essentially selling our time to all of these contracts, you're making millions off of us, and you can't take the time during Black History Month to care about Black History, but you can, on July 4th, take time to commemorate these things? Or you can during Veteran's Day or Memorial Day or Labor Day and all of these other things. So it feels like a very intentional slight, because, I mean, I know that your calendar functions the same way that my calendar does, and I know that your Google functions the same way that my Google functions, so it's not like you're missing out on the reminders that these things exist. So when there's an intentional exclusion, or what feels like an intentional exclusion, of black people from, you know, your commemorative messages, it's like, "Heard you. We see where your priorities are." And an even further extension of that logic is that when--you know, during these programming sessions there are no, like, leadership in the room to attend these programs or there's no support, you know? People have to come out of pocket for things, to pay for things. It just feels very ugly. I'ma use that word, ugly. Dusty. Musty.Zach: Raggly.Ade: Raggedy.Zach: And there's a difference now, and this is where--so, you know, you and I, I love the diversity just in our pairing, right? But, like, you know, you're an East Coast black and I'm a Southern black, right?Ade: Precisely.Zach: It's interesting, 'cause you said raggedy, and see, what I said was raggly.Ade: Raggley, mm-hmm.Zach: Raggly. Not raggley, raggly. Now, look, I want--'cause every now and then I teach--and if you're listening to this you know who you are, but for the white folks that I trust, the Buckys out there, the allies, or the aspirational allies, that I trust, every now and then I'll teach y'all a phrase called "fifty-'leven," right? You know who you are. If you're listening to this and you actually, you know, rock with me and you listen to this, I've taught you this. [both laughing] I've taught you all these phrases, and this is another one for y'all to take in. So look, it's not raggedy, nor is it raggley. It's raggly. It's two syllables, and that is often times a descriptor for how companies manage Black History Month.Ade: I will make an amendment to that statement, 'cause I don't necessarily agree. There are, uh, regional differences to dialects, you see. [Zach laughing] So while Zach is correct for his particular region of the Souf--notice I said Souf--Zach: That's true. Souf. That's true. That's fair, 'cause Southern is--'cause we live in America. Southern is a huge region. That's true. That's fair.Ade: Take his advice lightly, you know? Do with that what you will. Zach: [laughs] Be careful.Ade: And, uh, if you get run up on, please don't quote us.Zach: Don't quote me.Ade: 'Cause we will not be popping up [?].Zach: Uh-uh, uh-uh. Don't. And honestly, maybe don't say fifty-'leven around everybody. They'll be like, "Who taught you that?" And don't tell 'em it was me. [laughs] Nah, but no, I'm right there with you when it comes to, like--I've been in situations where, you know, either we don't celebrate Black History Month at all, we don't recognize it in any way, or employee resource groups will get, like, the black people to huddle together and they'll go do something, right? It's like, "Um..." Black history is American history. This should be something company-wide. And I'm not saying we gotta do something every single day, but can we do at least one thing? Can we recognize some of the black pioneers in our own firm, in our own companies? Like, we have our own historical marks that we've made, but I think--I don't know. It's tough, it's tough because--and honestly, like, even I say this, like, I get--like, I'm hearing... 'cause there's some executive leaders and folks who listen to Living Corporate, right? And they listen to it for different points of insight or whatever, and so there's a part of me who--and they're like, "Well, dang, I can't even win for losing," 'cause, like, the other part of me is gonna say, "And even if you are doing something for Black History Month, what are you doing for the rest of the year?" Right? 'Cause it can just be, like, an acknowledgement. Like, what are you doing? What are you doing to, like, actually advance having a more equitable and inclusive culture that drives belonging in your place of work? But I do think, like, at just the--I mean, I'm talking, like, floor level, if we could just start with some acknowledgement, you know? Like, you don't have to always quote Martin Luther King. You could actually, like, integrate and be intersectional with your Black History Month if you wanted. [Ade laughs] You can! Like, you can actually, like, quote trans rights, trans activists who happen to be black, and you can tie that in with, like, your LGBTQ ERGs. You could quote, like, Afro-Latinx civil rights activists and, like, historical people, and, like, integrate them. Like, there's all types of ways. You know there's ways that you can actually--you could use Black History Month to drive intersectional conversations and activities for your whole firm, 'cause black people are not just black. Black people are black and gay, black and Latinx. They're black and straight. They're black and female. They're black and disabled. Like, it could actually be something that could be--you know, you could use Black History Month similarly to how you use black and brown people anyway, which is really kind of like just the glue that holds everybody together. You could just use us if you want. You could use the month how you use black and brown people. Like, let me just be super cynical, right? You could actually--like, from a programming perspective, from, like, a networking and engagement perspective, from, like, even leveraging--like, getting more thought leadership, like, you could do all types of things with that month. You have a whole month, and this month you have a whole extra day. So it's like--Ade: No excuses.Zach: No excuses, right? Like, you could do something. And, like, if you need any help with ideas, then, I mean, you could talk to your own leadership. You could talk to--I don't know. There's just so much out there now. There's just so much--maybe we just need to drop an article on ideas for your Black History Month. Maybe that's what we do, 'cause, like, I don't--Ade: You know what? That's a good idea.Zach: I mean, maybe that's what we do, 'cause, like, I'm over here just thinking about it more and more. It's like, "I don't know if I've been a part of any company that I have walked away and felt like, "Wow, I really feel seen this Black History Month." I don't think that's ever happened to me. In fact, I remember last year I tried to quote a--like, I was on a project and there was a quote board, okay? So you put a little quote up there, and I was like, "Oh, it's Black History Month," and I tried to quote--I think I quoted, like, Oprah Winfrey or something like that, and, like, they literally erased it and put up some white man's quote and they were like, "This is more relevant." I said, "But I thought it was a quote board." Ade: Right?Zach: Like, what? What are you talking about? What do you mean it's more relev--okay... and again, that's where I had to make a choice between, like, okay, am I about to die on this hill? Am I gonna go to jail? Like, what am I gonna do? 'Cause, like, I just--I don't--nope. So I had to make a decision, but anyway. So okay, what else do we have going on? So what's the name of the company though? The body butter company. I'm jumping all around now. What's--'cause we didn't talk about that before.Ade: [laughs] Right. So my company is called Solari, S-O-L-A-R-I. It is a portmanteau of my name, or a part of my name, and my mom's name. And on Instagram and on Twitter I'm pretty sure our handle is @SolariBody, so it's S-O-L-A-R-I-B-O-D-Y. And yeah, I'm really excited. I'm kind of blushing right now. [laughs] I'm really excited about just getting started and just being able to expand my reach. So I've been doing a lot of kind of, like, self-care stuff for a very long time, like making my own body butters and making my own, like, lip balm, conditioner, and all these other things--and scrubs--and just the idea of being able to... and this is another thing that happened, but I'll finish my sentence. Just the idea of being able to utilize all of the things that I put into practice because I want to take care of myself and take better care of myself. So, for example, I would, like, make my own hair oils, but when I realized that other people wanted these things and don't necessarily want to go through the process of experimentation to figure out all of the ideal things--and I've already been doing these things for over a decade--I was just kind of like, "You know what? I'm gonna do this, and it's gonna be fun," and the reception has been fantastic.Zach: Well, I'm really proud of you. I'm happy for you, you know? I think--you talked about this a little bit on the last, when we did our season kickoff episode, but it's easy to, like, get in your own way and to like, you know what I'm saying, just let anxieties and different challenges, like, just hamper you or kind of put you in a stalemate, but it's really exciting, like to see you continue forward and build something. Ade: Thank you.Zach: You're absolutely welcome. Man, so, you know, my cadence as I was pausing there, it reminded me of my own Barack Obama impression that I do at the house for fun with Candis just to get on her nerves, 'cause I was almost like... [impersonating Barack] "Uh, Ade, it is, uh... impressive how you have taken the time," you know what I mean? I almost--and then I go into, [continuing] "Every day, there are Americans who get up, they have their challenges--" [Ade sighs, Zach laughs] "If there was any doubt, uh, that you could not do what it is that you're doing today, uh, you have nowhere else to look but in the mirror. Uh, you get up. You put that butter on your dry skin. Uh, you hydrate yourself, and you face a world that is not ready for someone like you."Ade: I'm about to hang up on you, sir. [both laugh] I am so done.Zach: [laughs] Goodness, gracious. So all right, y'all. Well, look, this was just a fun episode, you know, letting you know what we've got going on. Thank you so much. Shout-out to everyone who listens to this podcast. Shout-out to--shoot, I ain't gonna get into all the shout-outs, but just shout-out to y'all. Make sure that you share this with your people. Continue to share it. The numbers are showing that y'all are sharing it, and I look at our stats every single day 'cause that's just kind of the person I am, the obsessive person that I am, but [laughs] we're really appreciative. And then, shoot, I guess we'll see y'all next time. Make sure you follow--Ade: Wait, one last thing before we go. We kind of vaguely talked about it, but I do want to insert a moment of silence here for Kobe Bryant and his daughter and all of the passengers of the helicopter that went down. We actually weren't able to get on this podcast to discuss it because we were just so emotional. I tried, and it's about 7 minutes worth of just sobs and sniffles on that, but I think this is a pretty good time to do it. So if everyone listening could just join us in a moment of silence. [a moment of silence] Thank you. Zach: Nah, for sure. Yeah, we could talk about--we're gonna have to have an episode about trauma and, like, the ways that trauma impacts black and brown people at work every day, and how we're still expected to just, like, show up and perform two or three times better than our counterparts just so that we can keep our jobs. So... but yeah.Ade: And I just also actually--I think we should have a black heroes episode.Zach: I love that.Ade: I think that in an episode coming up soon we're gonna discuss, you know, some of our heroes, and Kobe's one of mine. People who have just shown you how to get through life with dignity and with grit, and that's a term that I didn't used to use so frequently and so intensely until now. But again, it's a topic that we'll be covering later, but suffice to say that was a shock to my system, and I didn't expect that it would be so shocking. I didn't expect just how strongly I would react, and I suspect that so many others found themselves reeling in the aftermath of that news. Our prayers and our thoughts of those affected. And another topic I think we should also explore is, you know, how to disconnect in times of trauma and to kind of reassess and to find your balance in those times as well. That's it for me.Zach: Nah, I love that, and I super agree. And y'all, on that super, you know, emotional, heavy note, we're gonna catch y'all next time, okay?Ade: For sure.Zach: Now, look, you make sure you check us out. We're @LivingCorporate on Instagram, @LivingCorp_Pod on Twitter. We have all the different domains. One day, man, we're gonna get that livingcorporate.com domain, man. Right now we have all the livingcorporate dot everything but com, and then we got living-corporate.com, but shoot, until next time. This has been Zach.Ade: This is Ade.Zach: Peace, y'all.Ade: Peace.

Boosie Badazz Controversy

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 10, 2020 6:01

The rapper from Baton Rouge is catching some heat for wearing a Kappa Alpha Psi shirt. Our resident Kappa Tommy gives us his thoughts on the Boosie situation. 'Cause I'm on (wipe me down) Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

baton rouge boosie kappa alpha psi cause i'm

Episode 132: Run and Become - Interview with Film Maker/Runner Sanjay Rawal

BiOptimizers - Awesome Health Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 2, 2020 63:05

Sanjay Rawal worked in the human rights and international development sectors for 15 years in over 40 countries before focusing his love for photography and storytelling onto filmmaking. His first feature, Food Chains (2014), premiered at the 2014 Berlinale and screened at Tribeca before securing domestic distribution from Screen Media. The film was produced by Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and narrated by Forest Whitaker. It went on to screen in 1,100 more theaters during its theatrical, semi-theatrical & community screening tour. A lifelong runner, Sanjay was happy to lose the pounds he gained eating Mexican food in farmworker towns and take on a project about running. His latest film, 3100: Run and Become, opened in theaters in fall 2018 and comes to New Zealand in February 2020. Sanjay learned under spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy and studies in this film the power of running to connect humans to powers beyond themselves. The film follows the incredibly long and brutal 3100-mile race held every year in New York City as well as diving into the long human history of long-distance running visiting The Mt Heiei Monks in Japan to the Navajo Indians to the Kalahari Bushmen. A film not to be missed and an interview to open the mind to new possibilities. We would like to thank our sponsors: Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7-day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners. All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more. www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalized health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness, and potential at https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa [inaudible], brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:13) You're listening to pushing the limits with Lisa Tamati. Welcome back everybody. Today I have a very, very special podcast, but before we get underway, I just want to remind you, if you want to reach out to me, you can do that at lisatamati.com Find me on Instagram. I'm very active on Instagram at least to [inaudible] the same on Facebook. And I'd love you to come and check out our website and our flagship programs. We have three programs. We mainly do our work and we have the epigenetic program, we have the run online run trading system running hot, and we also have mindset you, which is all about mental toughness, resilience, and being the best version of yourself that you can be. So make sure you go and check those lisatamati.com Right now. Today we have a very special guest all the way from New York city. Speaker 2: (01:05) His name is Sanjay revile. Have you haven't heard of? Sanjay? He is an internationally renowned filmmaker. He was in the human rights and international development sector for 15 years and worked in over 15 so over 40 countries before he tuned his love for photography and storytelling into his new career, which is filmmaking. He's done a number of films. I'm most well known as his feature film, his first feature film called food chains. This was produced with Eva Longoria and Eric Schlosser and was an over 1100 theaters worldwide. And his latest film is what we're going to be talking about today. Now Sanjay is a lifelong runner. He's dedicated to doing just this running. And he was also a follower of the late Sri chum NOI, who many of you runners may know of. He was a Indian spiritual leader who died in 2007, but he was very much into unifying religions and to meditation and the power of a sport and athleticism to help you reach spiritual realms, which I find really, really fascinating subject. Speaker 2: (02:25) And the film that Sanjay has just produced is called 3,100 run and become, and it's based around the fact that human beings are meant to do this long, long distance running that we talk about that we're born to run. And it's particularly seen it on the race in New York city. 3000, 100 miles. This has been going for over 27 years, I believe around half mile block in New York city. And every year about 14 to 16 runners come to test the metal against horrifically long brutal arduous race. And the distances that they cover in that time is over 52 days. Is 3,100 miles set is over with just up, no, sorry, just over 5,000 kilometers. That's like going right across the United States, but in a half mile blocks. So you can imagine how hard this is. It's absolutely brutal. It's not something I would've ever tackled. It's too big. But he talks in chosen this foam, one of the characters, the main characters is the Norwegian runner who has done this over 15 times. And as really the world's best at the super, super, super long distances. So we get into a really deep conversation around philosophy and spirituality. The power of running to train, seeing yourself the healing abilities of running, how it can connect you with mother nature and you know, soul, a lot of our modern day woes. So without further ado, here's Sanjay. Speaker 3: (04:01) Well, hi everybody and welcome to pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you guys back again. We're nearly at the end of 2019 and I can't believe it. And today I have a special special guest with me who is sitting in New York city at the moment. Sanjay Rowe. Wow. Welcome to the show. Sanjay. Speaker 4: (04:20) Thank you so much. It's a, it's a winter here, so I'm just trying to keep it together while you guys enjoy mother nature in a different way than I am right now. Speaker 3: (04:28) Yes, I've been, yeah. Well you're welcome to come over here anytime. We'd love to have you ever New Zealand. You can come and visit way. That'd be fantastic. So have you ever been to New Zealand? Speaker 4: (04:38) I have, I haven't been there in almost 20 years, but I am coming for about 10 to 12 days at the end of February. The screen, the movie that we're going to talk about. Speaker 3: (04:48) Oh wow. Okay. I've got to make sure I get to that somehow. So we'll talk about that afterwards. So everybody listening who doesn't know sanjay you will soon. So he has produced a number of films over his career. But recently won a film that we are going to be talking about mostly today is a film called 3,100. Sanjay, can you tell us a little bit about this amazing though? Speaker 4: (05:15) Yeah, I'd be happy to. So the movie's 3,100 running become and it follows a pretty diminutive relatively unheard of. Finished man named Ashbery. Hannah Alto is a paper boy by trade. At the same time, he is an underground, multi-day distance running legend. The film follows him trying to complete the 3,100 mile race and the year 2016 this race is the world's longest certified road race. It's almost 5,000 kilometers. It's just a few case short of five K 5,000 but it takes place all around a half mile, close to a kilometer along a loop. In the heart of New York city runners have to try to complete at least a hundred K a day for 52 days in order to finish the race. Under that window. It's grueling, but at the same time, although it sounds like an absolute misery Fest, a suffer Fest, people don't come out of it physically devastated. In fact, the only way you can actually tell the line for this type of mores is to have a deep understanding of the spirituality of long distance running. Speaker 4: (06:31) So in the film, not only do we follow Ash Briana, El Alto, but to kind of show how and why this race is even possible, we'd go back into time. We follow three other runners on their own quests, but runners who come from very deep traditional cultures of running a, we follow an ultra marathoner on the Navajo nation. In Arizona, we go to the Kalahari desert and Botswana at hunt with Bushman hunters who chase down game across two to three day law tracks. And we follow an aspirant in the Highlands of Japan who was doing a thousand day Trek of about 31,000 miles in the mountains outside of Kyoto. This shows the spirituality that's inherent to running that really fuels the runners in the 3,100 mile race. Speaker 3: (07:20) Wow. Well you preaching to the converted here and a lot of my audience, of course Evan runners. And what really surprises me, I mean I have to, I have to tell you a little bit of a story. I actually tried to get a documentary series done for discovery channel called run the planet and we actually uncovered, so the Kalahari, the Navajo, the, the Mount Tia amongst the, and a number of other tribes, people with stories and legends of doing long distance running. I didn't manage to pull it off. We did the the pilot for the series a in Australia reenacting an Aboriginal men story who ran 250 kilometers to save a friend of hers across the desert. And that was the end of the project unfortunately. But you actually manage the Paul was off which a huge amazing seat too though because I know what these sort of things take. Speaker 3: (08:17) But we, we came from the same premise that running is an inherently, we are born to run and stuff. The famous book is from Chris Google. We have born to run and we are made for this sort of long distance stuff and that we've done that throughout history. And you have uncovered these amazing people doing these incredible things. What's interesting for me is you've come from a very spiritual background and I've actually not come from that same background as a runner come more from the sporting and the, you know and I, I think I lived a lot of untapped potential sort of on the table looking back cause I didn't tap into the more spiritual side. I think I did to a certain degree without really understanding it. But you know, let's talk a little bit about Sri chum noise and what the races that he set up all around the world actually have to do with a 3,100 mile race. And, and your, your what, what your beliefs are around, she treats your NOI and has had a trick to long distance running. Speaker 4: (09:25) First of all. I so wish you'd completed that series. It sounds like it would have been awesome and I probably wouldn't have had to do this movie. Speaker 3: (09:33) It would have been complimentary, would've been awesome. Yeah. We didn't manage to pull it off. As, you know, there are lots of hurdles to jump through when you're totally, yeah. Speaker 4: (09:44) So, you know, to your question, I, I ran track in high school and I, I, I grew up in the United States and you know, the state that I grew up in, California has 35 million people. So a lot of people ran track, you know, but kind of got disillusioned from everything at university and ended up after graduation moving from the West coast of the U S to New York city where an Indian spiritual teacher named Sri Chinmoy lived his path really intrigued me because no harm, no foul, like there's no superiority or inferiority. But he really advocated a a pretty unified philosophy of not just making your heart strong and, and trying to develop the kind of beautiful qualities that we have inside, like love and peace and joy. But he also felt that physical fitness was a paramount importance to achieving that sense of inner peace. And so he came at running an exercise from a totally different vantage point than I did for me. Speaker 4: (10:45) You know, it was all about competition. And you know, when I was in high school, I would win a lot of races, but by the time I got to college, you know, I was no longer in that kind of top echelon. And you know how it is. It's like once you realize you're never going to be like at the very, very top, you know or, or you're not going to win every single race. I know you want a lot of races, you start really losing, you know, a sense of purpose. But when I came across region wise philosophy, it was totally different. You know, and, and this is reflective in all the cultures that we explore in 3,101 and become that there's something unique about running and we just have to take it on faith that unlike any other activity, however wonderful, whether it's tennis or swimming or biking, that running connects us to mother nature in a completely unique way. Speaker 4: (11:41) And when I, when you know, when I spent time with the Navajo and people will see in the film are our main Navajo character. Sean Martin says, when you run your feet are praying to mother earth, you're breathing in father sky. You're showing them, you're praying to them, you're showing them that you're willing to work for the blessings of mother earth. And that's a philosophy that I've seen reflected in traditional cultures all over the world. And that was in Sri Chinmoy. His philosophy, even though we don't actually, nobody really consider as Eastern philosophy as something that really revolves around an act of, of, of physical fitness, like running. Yeah. But in a sense, you know, it was men and women, humanity's first religion, that idea of connecting to nature and the energies both within and without through our feet. So when, when, when he kind of presented that to me and to others, that blew my mind, but I wasn't really ready for the philosophy. You know, I ran 800 meters and the 1500 meters, but when I moved to New York to study with them in 1997 that was the summer that the 3,100 mile race was launched and I hadn't, I hadn't even done a marathon. So the idea of doing 60 miles a day or 52 days just blew my mind. Speaker 3: (13:03) Yeah, absolutely. How does the human body, I mean I've, I've done, you know, the longest I've run is like through New Zealand, like 3000, 250 Ks in 42 days, which is not as much money per day is what they were doing. Given we were on the road and doing book tours and things at the same time. But the, the amount of pain in the suffering that you do go through and people have often said to me, did you reach this flow state? And then you became a, and I know that a lot of people experience that. And I, and I have to say I had had times or flow state when I was in a flow state, but unfortunately I couldn't leave a hole myself in that flow state. And the, the suffer face did, you know, it was about, you know, overcoming a lot of pain amazing levels of fatigue with a lot of willpower which we know as limited, you know, we will have a limited amount of willpower. Speaker 3: (14:09) And, and I was always hoping to reach that state of self transcendence really. And, and Neveah, but I hadn't been a catered myself to meditation and to the other sides of all that. Probably enough looking back which I'm much more into these days. But back then it was all about, you know, the physical, mental, the mental strength and the physical strength to actually prepare your body for this battle going in. And this is a completely different approach to what Sri, Jim NOI head and what these people that are doing the 3,100 have really it's, and I wonder how do they actually get to that, you know, as someone who's don't done a hell of a lot of running and not really achieved that flow state for long periods of time, at least how the heck do they do it. Speaker 4: (15:00) So there, there, there are two types of runners in the race and you know, again, no superiority or inferiority, but there are very few people on earth like you that have the mental fortitude to like will themselves through 40, 45, 50 days, you know, of of doing, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, a hundred Ks per day. Like, you know, that willpower will only take you so far. And, and in your darkest moments, you know, in the run, willpower is not going to offer you any light. If it's gone, then it's just Sufferfest. So a lot of people who come to the 3,100, whether they, there, they come from a background of faith or not, they realize either in their first attempt or beforehand that if they don't kind of develop access to a place within themselves where they can be happy, simply just happy in the worst moments. Speaker 4: (15:58) If they can't be in that flow state at will, then it's going to be a long 52 days. And you know, a lot of people, I would say probably at least a third to a half of people who do it the first time, you know, it's, it's it's a mixture of pleasure and pain and those moments like you experienced in, in your, in your cross-country run, those moments are enough to get you up the next day. But they're not necessarily gonna fuel every single mind mile. That said, it's like the people that come back and do it over and over and over, either through the race or outside the race, they really develop the power of meditation and at the same time, like unlike your race, and I think you'll appreciate this more than most, the reason why they do the race on a half mile loop is so that you have access to your aid every half a mile. Speaker 4: (16:53) You have access to a bathroom every half a mile. There's no traffic. There's foot traffic on this loop from just the public, but it's a pretty isolated area of New York and you don't have to worry about cars or anything. So in that sense your mind can like stop forgetting about the surroundings and, and it's, it's a lot easier that way. So that said, it's like this race, like the people that get the most out of it come at it the way you would now that come at it, knowing that you need to have access to that meditative side of you and you need to train with that in mind. It's like you have to find a way to find joy or happiness in those moments of exertion. And that doesn't come spontaneously out in the suffer Fest. You have to build that in your training. Speaker 3: (17:38) Yeah. And you have to develop that skill and the years and years of meditation, I should imagine to be able to reach that state. And that's something that fascinates me now. And I'm in, I'm developing, you know, those skills of late, but it's something that I wish on head back then instead of just the will and mindset. And I'm doing this no matter what. And, and it surprises me that how many people can override all of the the pain and the, you know, we do have an amazing ability to deal with things. But I cannot, I cannot, in all honesty, say to you, I enjoy it or I was happy in doing a lot of those races. There was a lot of, you know, I want to achieve this. It's a challenge. It's an opportunity to find out who I am. And I think when we, when we connect to nature and we do find out so much about ourselves and so even though I didn't approach it from a spiritual point of view, I think the stuff that I learned from it has been so, so powerful to helping me in, in everyday life. Speaker 3: (18:51) In, in getting through obstacles, other people that are doing these types of things, in your opinion just more, are they tapping into a higher power? Are they able to actually leave the the, the suffering behind in some way? Speaker 4: (19:12) That's a great question. So like going to the time that we spent with the Bushman and the Kalahari, these cultures that have been running for literally 125,000 years, they say you cannot separate running from God. Of course, if you want to run to become a better looking person running, we'll give that to you. If you want to run to become healthy running, we'll do that for you. But if you run with the intention, I mean this is wild, but if you run with the intention of getting closer to the divine part of yourself, to the divine part of the universe, whatever you, you label that as running, we'll get you there. I mean, just like if you meditate for just power of concentration, it'll do it. If you meditate to feel a little bit of peace, it'll do it. But if you meditate for a self discovery to discover the oneness you have with the divine, that's everywhere. Speaker 4: (20:07) Meditation will do that. And so when it, when it comes to running this particular race, people come into it as a pilgrimage. You know, you can either come into it what the mental attitude of like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to achieve this. But there was a runner on an Israeli multi-day champion and Coby Orrin who did the race, I think in 2017 and across the first thousand miles he was pushing. And he actually sat in Israeli national record for the fastest time to a thousand miles in the midst of this 3,100 mile race. But he realized that the true meaning of this race wouldn't reveal itself unless he moved into a completely different state of mind. And he realized that he had to take the race as a pilgrimage. And what that meant was not thinking about your splits, not thinking about how many miles you're doing each day, but really finding a way to focus on the meaning of each action of each step. Speaker 4: (21:06) And when he got into that sense of, or lack of expectation, and when he got into that sense of focus, he realized that there was, there was joy, there was actually happiness by looking at the moments, by looking at the specific actions and the steps and that happiness wasn't going to come. Looking at your watch or looking at your daily mile totals, that happiness kind of existed in the middle of all that. But again, it's like, it all sounds like fun and games, but unless we had that kind of intention, we don't actually find where happiness really exists. Speaker 3: (21:40) Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, overcoming changing perspective. I mean, I never went into races with the, the thought of winning, to be honest, most of the time it was all about, you know, survival getting through to the other in some which way. And I've had some very spiritual type experiences underway. Perhaps induced by, you know, fatigue, sleep deprivation, those types of things, hallucinations. And the things that you actually discover about yourself are just absolutely mind blowing, even without the spiritual aspect. But I do wish now that I had gone more into that side of things to be able to overcome the limitations. You know, what worries me nowadays as a, as a running coach and we train $700 sleets all around the world is, is the danger that is involved with ultra marathon running. Because there is, you know, you can do permanent damage. Speaker 3: (22:44) I've done some damage to my body. Why do these guys not have physical damage from doing these extreme races or do they? I've had, you know, big problems with things like rhabdomyolysis kidneys, you know, not functioning properly from repeatedly breaking down too much muscle. Things like that, fibroid problems, adrenal problems, adrenal burnout. Do these guys ever suffer from those sort of normal physical breakdowns? Of course, muscle tears and in those sorts of things as well. And if not, why not? Why do they not have that limitation, those very human limitations on them Speaker 4: (23:26) That, that, that, that's a great question. You know, as, as opposed to most ultra distance running, I mean this is more akin to your, your, your 42 days across New Zealand where you can't push it. You know, you can't win the 3,100 mile race in a day, but you can lose it in a day and it's not wanting a 24 hour race where you can say like, I can push myself past the limit because I can sleep for two weeks and I can take care of like the damage I do across the next six months or a year with the 3,100. Imagine doing a hundred K then waking up again and doing it again and then waking up again and doing it again. And the, the, the leaders are, are, are at about 120 K per day. So it's a totally different mindset. I mean, you know, they can't, they Canyon say that when you run long distances, whether they're 10 Ks or marathons, you have to run dumb. Speaker 4: (24:20) The UMB like in the 3,100 you have to have like a real sense of softness between your ears. You know, even physiologically, it's like if your, if your mind is thinking and thinking and thinking, your face muscles get tense, which tenses up, you know, your upper cervical vertebra, which have ramifications all the way down your body and you start getting repeated. Use injuries. Your, your knees aren't aligned, your tabs aren't aligned. But frankly it all starts in the mind. And so if you can find a way not to be in your mind, to cultivate, you know, your heart, your spiritual heart, that things that you focused on in meditation and bring those feelings and emotions and sense of self, sense of peace, sense of joy into your one, then it becomes an entirely different experience physiologically. You know, you're much more in tune with what's going on. Speaker 4: (25:14) You're much more in tune with the sense of balance. You have more patients. But in that patience, when you're not pushing, you can also experience a sense of happiness that you, you, you typically don't get in shorter races. And when I mean shorter like, you know, 24 hours and less, where are you going? Like, I've got to get there. I've got to get there. I can't stop. I can't stop. You know, when you've got that type of an attitude in a race, you, you rarely dissociate from your mind. I mean, the trick for those of us wanting shorter races is finding ways in training like the Kenyans to completely get rid of expectation and to find a way to get into that flow state in the first couple of miles. Speaker 3: (25:53) Yup. Yeah. And it does association. I mean, I definitely use it to some degree, obviously not to the degree that I would like to have used it and being able to take your mind away from the pain and the suffering in the body. And that's one of the tools that I, you know, teach about a little bit. And I do find like when you get into a rhythm, a rhythm is something that that is meditative. And I'm often, if I'm running behind, someone will use their feet as a little flicker of they fry, they fried and they, it's almost a trance like state that you can get into. But I can't keep it in the forever. That's a, that's the key point I think. And that's the difference between these guys. So they are tapping into things that we as, you know, average not so spiritual human beings, if you like, for the ones who have a bit of expression and you know, can't tap into. Speaker 3: (26:52) And that's what I find absolutely fascinating because I know what it takes to run 70 Ks a day. I cannot imagine the amount of pain that it would take to run 120 days beyond. It's certainly beyond my physical limitations. And the, the amount of pain that you'd have to overcome us is, is phenomenal. But what you were saying there about stress and stress is I listened to an interview with dr Chatterjee that you were talking about stress and how, why can't AIDS epidemic in our world. And it's one of the killers and it's one of the most problematic things. And we are living in a cult stunt state of alertness and fight or flight sort of state because of the society that we live. And we're no longer being chased by lions, but we seem to be living in that constant state is meditation and using even this, running this self transcendent, running a way of calming the body and stopping those stress responses. Speaker 4: (27:59) So the curious thing is that running is humanity's oldest physical practice, maybe dance as well. That movement through your feet and there is something electric when you're aware of it, between the connection between mother earth and our feet, our lungs breathing in oxygen and air, there's something deeply nourishing and effecting that way. At the same time, meditation is humanity's oldest practice of contemplation. Not just getting rid of stress, but understanding who we are, why we're here, what we're meant to do in any given moment. And meditation gives us access to different parts of our body and our, or of our being, I should say. It's like we've got a tool belt on and we've got 15 sets of tools, but we're using a hammer 24 hours a day. You know, it's like we might not even know all the other tools that we've got, but meditation is a very simple, very natural way for people to go, wow, when I'm stressed, I don't have to like think about it. Speaker 4: (29:05) I don't have to like, you know, just become obsessed with what's going on. There's another part of me that will allow me to feel something different, to allow time, for example, to take its course at the same time. If, if this dress requires something hyper-focused, you know, we can pull that tool out and apply it to the moment and get rid of that stress in a very constructive, you know, analytical way. Some meditation and running, you know, are really the two oldest tools that we have. But it's a question of, of coming back to that as, as a civilization, as a species. And you know, obviously as individuals we can come back to that just, you know, we just have to, we just have to take those first steps. Speaker 3: (29:45) Well, I actually had to an argument or not an argument, but a discussion with reduce your, of the, the portal, which is a new movie that's come out. Tom Cronin, who was on the podcast a few weeks ago and he was, he's, it's all about meditation and the power of meditation to heal the whole world. And I'm a very, very interesting man. And I said to him, I believe meditation running is a meditation. And he said to me, no, it's not a meditation. It's running. And I said, I know, and I had this discussion with an amazing no, because running you are in a sympathetic nervous system state and you're not in a parasympathetic state. Speaker 4: (30:23) It's that if for four, I would say for most people not myself included. That was true up until a few years ago. But I F I was trying to understand why the people who do the 3,100 mile race, most of them come back and do it a second time, a third time. The main character in the movie, Ashby Hunnel, you know, did it again last summer for get this a grand total of 15 times he's completed that race 15 times when when you understand that running and meditation can actually go together, you know, and you've explore what that truly means. I mean, again, it's, it's not simply the fact and I, I get where he's coming from. It's not simply saying like, my running is my meditation. The way that chopping onions is my meditation. It's like, you know, I, I get the kind of like, you know, hyperbole that that comes with that. But if you get into a state in running where you're completely beyond your mind, where you're completely in that flow state and, and you know, it's like the definition or the flow state is not an absence of pain, but it's finding happiness in the, in that exertion. And there there was a Hopi elder. Hopi is there. There are tribes in central Arizona, some of the best runners anywhere Speaker 3: (31:46) We uncover the swipe for that with a series. Yeah. Speaker 4: (31:50) Yes. W a Hopi elder had told us when I was on a prayer run with a bunch of native kids in Arizona, he told us as, as we headed off for monument Valley, he said, find joy through exertion. And that was mind blowing to me because how many of us, when, when we're really working hard, number one, feel joy, number one or number two, even know that we can feel joy in those moments of intense effort. And he said, not only do you need to realize that joy exists in the most extreme forms of exertion, but you can find it. You just have to be aware of it and find a way to, to tap into it. I mean, that totally changed the way I race that only that changed the way I run. It's like in those moments when you're really pushing to learn that joy actually exists there. Speaker 4: (32:43) That you can go beyond that pain by tapping into joy. I mean that that's how to get into flow. That's literally step one and to getting into flow. And when you're in that flow state as, as you know, it's like you can have experiences or you can tap into those same places within your being that you try to get to in your highest form of meditation. That said, learning and knowing how to meditate is going to help you get into that state a lot easier. And if you get into that state and running, you're going to be able to get into that state when you're meditating. So I completely disagree based on experiences that I've had personally, but more importantly, seeing these cultures that have understood the connection between prayer running and the spirit for tens of thousands of years. Speaker 3: (33:33) Oh, I'm so glad you've said that because I've, you know, had a debate with myself over the last few weeks because I took him on what he said, and I thought, well, that's probably got an element of truth about, you know, we're looking at the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system, and you, when you are in the meditative state, you have to be in the sympathetic state. But I have that, I've had that experience of being in a meditative state, running granted I can't do it on demand, but I have been there. So I, I was having trouble with that sort of like autonomy, if you like. They, they're sort of opposites. And that gives me permission to go back to the thought. And yes, actually there's a type of meditation and it is a powerful one and it's something that I've missed like the last four years. Speaker 3: (34:19) Sandra, you you wanna know, but I had a mom who had a mess of aneurysm and my listeners know the story and was in a vegetative state, basically would have any high function at the age of 74. And obviously the last four years I just stopped doing the long distance running because I had to completely focus on her rehab and that, you know, they're trying to make a living was all there was 24 hours in a day basically. And now four years later, I've just written her book. It comes out in March this year. It's called relentless and tells the story of, of bringing her back and she's now completely normal again. At the age of 78 against all odds. And I created, I created this comeback journey that I've been on with her, on to the fact that I've done this running. Speaker 3: (35:06) If I had not have had the mental skillset that I developed through running, I wouldn't have been able to, to do the things that I did with here to look outside the square to, to push through boundaries that most people would have, you know, quit long, long time ago. And to go up against some medical system and say, no, this is the, she will come back. And this the story is very powerful because it's in why I'm so passionate about getting this book out there is because it taps into these types of tools that we discover when we are doing these extreme things like you know, running long distance races and we learned stuff about ourselves and then how the body works and how that we are capable of so much more than what your average local doctor will tell you. What capable of, I mean, have you ever been to a local doctor and they've said, look, you can't run anymore. You've got a sore knee. Yeah, Speaker 4: (35:59) Yeah. I mean, I mean th th th the thing to understand is that we physiologically evolved as runners. You know, from, from an evolutionary biology standpoint and all your, all your listeners will know that the humanities first advantage as bipedal beings was number one, unlike Quadra peds, we could step without having to breathe. Many people can imagine what a dog looks like or a horse looks like in full sprint when their legs are extended, you know, splayed out on the, on the an extension. Their lungs, inhale air. When the legs come together as they all do, they all come together in the middle of the, of the center of gravity. It's like that's when the lungs are forced to expel air. So they're incredible anaerobic beings, but we're the only animals by virtue of standing on two feet that can like trot and not have to breathe every single time we take a step. Speaker 4: (36:56) And so that's given us a tremendous sense of endurance. You know, we can breathe, you know, multiple times per step, which Quadro peds can't do. And you know, we can, we can breathe every three or four steps, which also keeps our Arabic level kind of pretty low. So it's like, if you, if you look at that, you know, human beings are meant to move on our feet. The things that take us away from that state of being are all the, all the afflictions of modern day life. But I would say weirdly enough, like I, I'm on the medical team at the 3,100 mile race too, and 95% of the day to day trauma that the runners face. The pain, you know, we can take away through a deep tissue, we can take away through Raul thing, but it tends to come back day in and day out. And when that starts happening to runners, I tell them like, look, your problems are mental. Speaker 4: (37:50) Like there's no reason why if these problems are taken away through through some sort of therapy that they, that they should come back the next day. I find that 90% of injuries that people have through, you know, basically through a non-traumatic running racing is totally different. But when you're just in training and you're just doing like low stress low intensity type of stuff, you know, maybe heavy miles, the injuries that are repeated use injuries are really due to bad form, which really comes from a state of mental unrest from a state of anxiety and not allowing the mind to release. And then the body subsequently to release. Speaker 3: (38:31) There's not so much rinks in the core strength and you know, like we teach about, you know, you've got to have a strong core and strong had some things to be able to be upright. You were saying it's more of a mental stimulus. That's, that's the problem that we are because of the stress that we're all under or that we are thinking we are under we're actually inflicting that on our bodies as, as much as anything else. Speaker 4: (38:56) I mean of course is since most of us don't spend day to day, you know, I spend, spend our day to day kind of inner body the way we might've as hunters and gatherers. Yeah. Yeah. We need to do all the range of motion, all the core activities that we don't get from our, our, our standard nine to five jobs. Yeah. But still like you have plenty of students that do all of that and that still gets Phantom injuries. Yep. And then I'll take it Speaker 3: (39:22) Good. You know, I can do everything and I'll still be struggling with one or two injuries Speaker 4: (39:27) And that come that that comes entirely from the mind. Like the 3,100 mile race is a great Petri dish for it. Because like I said, like, you know, like LA last summer, Ashby hunt all did it and I was, his handler. It, I would kind of take care of his afflictions, you know, every break he had every six or eight hours. And after a few days of of him having calf pain and taking it away through simple, you know, deep tissue or, or Rolfing or, or, or you know, active release stuff. And I just told them like, I can take care of this every single day. But the reason why you're having these problems is somehow you're, you're not running fluidly, you know? And that comes in that race from overthinking, from stressing out, for thinking about stuff that you shouldn't be thinking about. Mainly from, from thinking at all. Speaker 4: (40:18) Yeah. And so I go, I go back to the time I go back to the time we spent with Sean Martin on the Navajo reservation. We're all you're supposed to do when you run is listen to the sound of your feet. Breathe in the universe through your lungs. And when you do that, you begin to feel the importance of the connection of your feet and mother earth and your breath and father sky. And that nourishes you. And that gives you the sense of happiness that you need from running. But most of us, myself included when I go for a run and looking at my watch, I'm looking at my pace, I'm thinking about my workout. I might think about like, you know what I'm going to eat afterwards, what I'm going to do afterwards. My, my, my, my experience of running is already done, you know, and I'm getting nothing out of each moment. I'm only just checking off a workout. And that's the difference. It's like unplugging from our playlist, you know, you can run with a GPS watch. We all do. But not worrying about what your watch says to you, but listening to yourself, listening to your thoughts, listening to your heart, and taking, running as a spiritual discipline rather than as an escape. I mean, that's when the fruits of running really, really coming to the fore. Speaker 3: (41:34) Yeah. And I'm just going back briefly to that story with mum. The difficulty if I haven't been able to do the long distance running in the, in the last, you know, three and a half, four years and I've missed the clarity of mind that came with it. You know, when you, when you spend hours a day running is indulgence as that sounds. It actually, you know, I had time to work through the problems that I was facing in my life and to get them out, it's very cathartic, sort of a, a thing to do. And when you don't have that, you can be missing that piece quite badly. And then, you know, so they, I think running is a physical release and a spiritual release in a, in a mental release. It's a, it's all rolled into one and the connection that you say to, to mother earth. Speaker 3: (42:28) And I think this is one of the major, major problems that especially our young generation are facing because we so on devices and we so connected all of the time that we have no time to just be in our own thoughts or just being with ourselves and to just be in movement. We just constantly wanting entertainment or connection. And, and not being connected to mother Ruth not being outside in the burning sun, the freezing rain, the, all of those things that really make us feel good. You know, when you go for a run in a storm, you can't come back, you know, if anything but invigorated and like alive, you know. And it might've been hard and it might've been cold and it might've been this, but you're alive. You're, you're feeling you're alive. And I think that they, in their very artificial world where everything's air conditioned and we jumped from Avalon to a garage, into the car and off to the mall and you know, all of these things is just disconnecting us so completely from, from the way that we are meant to be living generally, like outside of just running, but just not being connected to nature is, is killing us, I think. Speaker 3: (43:44) Do you agree? Speaker 4: (43:46) I'm, I'm totally with you now. You know, imagine that 3,100 mile race on a city block. It's sidewalk. Almost a K it's, but it's a square. So it's like you're going around right angles. It takes place in New York city summer, you know, for for almost eight weeks where the temperature last summer climbed above 41 42 seas. For a day or two. But much of the time in, in the heat of the day, you know, you're talking between 32 and 36 Celsius. Again, it's like unrelenting. You're pretty close to some major roads. There's buildings all around and it's not like you're running through the grand Canyon, but that, but that said, it's like if you're, you know, on the South Island or if you're in the grand Canyon, it's really easy to feel the power of mother nature. But our, our Navajo character's father is a, is a as a medicine man. Speaker 4: (44:39) And he told me mother earth is under the sidewalk to no mother earth is under the asphalt. That is mother earth. So on this course, you know, people are, are desperately, desperately struggling to maintain their connection to nature despite being in an urban setting. And you know, when you've got that type of intense focus on what you need when it comes to you, it's, it's in a much higher dosage than you can imagine. So like, yeah, in the 3,100, that connection to mother earth, even though they're running around in circles on a sidewalk, it's absolutely essential. Speaker 3: (45:16) Absolutely. And that you don't need, you know, people often say, well we don't lock them did on these rices and the Sahara and the Gobi desert and Dave belly and Australia and all like Himalayas. To be honest, actually it wasn't about, Speaker 4: (45:33) Yeah, Speaker 3: (45:33) The views, it wasn't about what you were seeing, keeping you going. In fact, most of the time, unfortunately, you know, your heat is usually down on the ground trying not to fall over the next thing or you're so, so tired. You can have the enjoy your surroundings very often. And, and of course it is more inspiring to at least go to these places and you know, in the before and the after and the cultural exchange that you have. But actually during the race, it's not about the beauty, you know, it's and running around and ran a block or running through a desert. They're both connected the both outside and nature. Like you say, they both are. Speaker 4: (46:15) And w one of the great things about this race happening in New York is that whatever you need, whether it's a new pair of shoes, whether it's a very specific type of medicine you're in New York city, someone will be able to get a volunteer. We'll be able to get it for you within a couple of hours. And as you know, it's like when you travel for these like international ultras, very often if you don't have something with you is stuffed, you are not going to get it. Yeah. It's not going to be a good experience for you. Speaker 3: (46:44) No, it must be. Yeah, it definitely has a be a great advantage to have all of the things around you and that half-mile block, although it's, you know, mind numbing and people think, Oh gosh, going around in a circle. I mean I've only done like 24 hour races, but they are easier than running across the desert per se, where you don't have access to anything. And if you've forgotten something, you're in deep, deep trouble, physically in trouble. But it does become about the mind and what you are, what you were doing. The so this, this movie is coming to New Zealand. This phone was [inaudible]. Speaker 4: (47:23) Yeah. Yeah. So from February 10th through, we'll be traveling from, I think we're going to be an Oakland, Wellington, Christchurch maybe a few other places in between doing single nights screenings. The information is going to be up on our Facebook page, which I think is facebook.com forward slash 3,100 film and afterwards, after the 20th, that you can't make, one of those screenings will be up on all the online platforms. But Lisa, I would love to have to be able to, to, to ask you questions at one of our screenings. You know, I'm not sure what city you're in, but Speaker 3: (48:02) It would be fun. It would be really, really fun. I think we can make that happen. I live in a little place called new Plymouth, so you probably not coming here, although that would be awesome. But I can travel to, you know, walking into Wellington or something to make sure that I get to see this and I've seen the movie. But to actually meet you would be of course just, you know. Awesome. and you know, people out there, how do they get tickets so they can just go onto Facebook and find out where the screenings are. Get me tickets via that way. Speaker 4: (48:30) Yeah. The, the, the, the movie screenings are going to be in proper theaters and all of those cities. And so, you know, on our Facebook page there's links to the times and dates and we're going to be adding a few more things here and there. But yeah, all the tickets can be purchased online. Speaker 3: (48:45) Fabulous. And we will put all the links in the, in the show notes and stuff and all that. I do want to ask you a couple more questions about you and your background because you've had a fascinating life. This isn't the first movie you've done. Tell us about how did you get into filmmaking? Cause I'm very fascinated by filmmaking. I made a couple of, well eight documentaries, but on a very, very low budget documentaries. And I know I want to know, you know, how did you fall into this area and do the amazing things that you've done. So tell us a little bit about your life. Speaker 4: (49:19) I, I'm, I'm a Jack of all trades, master of none. Know I, I moved from California to New York to basically, you know, S to just study what's rich and white and spend a few years even with a good university degree, you know, just spend a few years working in health food stores and just, you know, getting to understand who I was and what I really wanted to do in life before launching into a career or whatnot. But switch in my head a lot of friends from other Theresa to Desmond Tutu and Mikhail Gorbachev and Mandela. And as I got more interested in kind of humanity specifically in, in like international development, humanitarian aid, human rights, I began having opportunities to work with some most rich and moist friends. So I got a chance to, to work with Desmond Tutu and you know, a ton of other people and gradually kind of like made my way into the world of humanitarian aid and human rights. Speaker 4: (50:18) So I kind of worked in that, in that sphere for about 15 years till around 2010, 2011. And you know, realize that a lot of the projects that I really, really enjoyed were ones that required me to take photos or to make little small documentaries, just being the only person with a camera for hundreds of miles. And I began making some short films, like my first one that most of them have been on sports, weirdly enough. My, my first one was called ocean monk and it was like an, a personal exploration of the connection between meditation and surfing in the winter in New York city. Of all things. I mean there is surfing like you know, in New York city in the winter here, you know, you might walk through, you know, half a meter of snow or a meter of snow to get to the water. But you can imagine like when the city's going like 24 hours a day to be out in the water was no one else around is probably the only experience of real nature we can get in New York city. Speaker 4: (51:21) But my, my second film explored, you know, kind of a curious aspect of streets and noise life. You know, after he stopped being able to do distance running, he took up weightlifting and he left, he lifted astronomical pounds, you know, in fact, when I was in New Zealand in 2002 and 2003 I was actually on a three month trip with him and one of, one of the cutest things he did was he went to a farm, you know, not too far away from Topo. A sheep farm and sheep are put into little cages and put onto this contraption that's reaching. Mike could sit under and he would like push up, you know, a cage with a sheep on each hand and you know, lifted a thousand sheep. It was just, it was really, really cute and childlike but also kind of mind boggling. And the physicality. Speaker 4: (52:11) I made a film called challenging and possibility, but then kind of went back to my human rights roots and made a film about the exploitation of farm workers in the United States. And that was, that actually achieved some success. You know, we had some famous people that were involved, Forrest Whitaker and then this movie 3,100 run and become was my second, you know, big feature length project. Wow. Oh, I should add as well. Just jumping back to the last topic that there have been two Kiwis that have done that 3,100 mile race, a man named Jade Lynn who did it I think in 2006 but there is a three time female finisher of the race. Hurry to Davey's. She lives in the States, but she's actually gonna be in New Zealand with us for all these screenings. They, cause she's doing a series of events during that time called the peace run. It just basically, it's like a, an Olympic torch style relay where they're going to be running from Oakland all the way down. You know, obviously what the ferry all the way down to Christchurch and stopping in a zillion schools. So she'll be at all though. She'll be at all the screenings too. I'll get to make a hopefully. Speaker 3: (53:27) And we also have another very famous lady. He used to do the 2000 kilometer race in New York city. Sandy Barwick. Oh yeah. Cause she's [inaudible] who was my role model. I feel like as a little girl growing up and who, who came with me to the family when I ran through death Valley, an incredible woman fates that again, just defy I think she had nine world records. I think some of them still stand. So we've got a, you know, great tradition in New Zealand of incredible runners and, and she was certainly way above where it, anywhere I ever got to. So we've got some amazing people. And on the note of shirt tree, Jim, he wanted to tell you just a little cute story. I was in the nationals. We have the streets of NOI, 24 hour race in Oakland every year. Speaker 3: (54:17) And it was, she was actually very, very sad while we were doing it was, it was in 2007 and we were doing the 24 hour race and a day before the race. [inaudible] He died as you would. Well, and, and so the people were devastated who were organizing. Right. And so they all just dropped everything and flew to New York basically. And I didn't really understand the whole street and rowing movement at that stage. I just, just was a runner turning up to the race to run and all of a sudden the rice was no longer happening. So one of the other runners and I, we decided we're doing it anyway, so we just, we ran around the track for hours. Well, I need actually made it to 20 hours that they ended. It was a absolutely torrential rain. The poor people in the street show me the way that were just so devastated. Speaker 3: (55:16) I just had to go, you know, they just had to be there to say goodbye to the master. And it was just a really for us back home running around in the rain, me and one other guy. And it was one of those special memories because it wasn't an official race. It wasn't going to be the official national race. And I'd been trying for years to qualify for the New Zealand team to go to the world champs. So I had to wait another year before I qualified, but we did get there in the end. But yeah, just the dedication to him was, was really moving and that they all just, they just dropped tolls and all just flow to, to New York overnight. It was really they were so, they were so devastated, obviously. Because he was such a great man and, and it was a man who, who really unified the religions rather than, you know, things are, don't matter. From what I understand. He was a very unifying figure. And yeah, for sure. I mean, his philosophy was, was, was love of God. Again, from an Eastern tradition, we don't really have the singular Speaker 4: (56:24) Concept of, of God being just, just, you know, a masculine energy, you know, it can be anything and everything. And, you know, we, we worship many different forms of, of the divine. But you know, his was about, you know, kind of an ancient path that way. But at the same time it was very accepting of people no matter what their backgrounds were. And, you know, he felt that you could live in the outer world and still achieve the highest. You didn't necessarily need to become a monk and renounce everything. And I know he loved New Zealand, you know, he, he had a, he's had a long friendship with a number of Kiwi runners like Alison Rowe, who he, I think he first met during the the New York city marathons. And you know, just to my great benefit, when we opened the movie in theaters in New York city and in November of 2018, it was during the week of the New York city marathon. And Alison was there to be inducted in the New York city marathon hall of fame, and she came to one of our screenings and did a panel. So I got to meet a lifelong hero of mine. And yeah. It's like, it's interesting because all the people that I've met through each and Moy still have, you know, you know, some sort of a connection with activities that his followers still kind of hold around the world. Speaker 3: (57:41) Yeah. Yeah. And even, you know, even my life. So through that we connected in some weird, weird, bizarre way, you know, and that's fantastic. And, and th the, the one that you did was the on the food food chain. Tell us a little bit about the food chain movie. And that was all about the, the site of conditions for workers migrant workers. Speaker 4: (58:04) Yeah. So most countries require some sort of foreign labor to pick their food. And especially when you're looking at like industrialized countries. I mean even England, you know, has had pre-Brexit you know, had a lot of, a big requirement for Polish workers, for Chinese workers, for Thai workers to come seasonally to pick food. You know, we know these are the hardest, most labor intensive jobs anywhere in the world and most people in developed countries don't want to do that kind of work no matter how much it pays. But in as we know it, those types of jobs don't pay much at all. I guess the big corollary in the South Pacific are the, the fishing fleets with a lot of indenture Thai workers, Filipino workers, Burmese workers working in essentially some in some cases like realistically slave like conditions. But the movie really delves not just interpersonal stories but looks at the kind of economic system behind it. Speaker 4: (59:05) Most of us, most places in the world kind of follow a food system that America set up. And that's like a supermarket grocery system where we expect to buy the cheapest possible food, good quality, but like very low prices. And w you know, Walmart in the U S a big chain kind of started that. And from their standpoint, they insisted on buying it ultra low prices from farmers and from meat producers and dairies, but buying in very, very high volume. And that created a set of conditions that not only had made it really hard to be a farmer in the us, but has made farm work essentially, you know, extremely low wage. Now we've see, we see these supermarkets all over the world and this is really a model that was created in the U S and exported to other countries. Even though you know, obviously there's, there's chains that are completely, you know, owned by people in their country. Speaker 4: (01:00:04) But when that supermarket system, that idea of convenience and being able to have the same types of food, you know, 365 days a year, that's made us in the U S rely on a lot of like New Zealand blueberries. But at the same time, you know, you guys get a lot of stuff into your country that are, that are not seasonal, that aren't grown in New Zealand, but that you still expected very low prices and we don't necessarily know the ripple down the food chain that it's causing farmers to really, really make very little at the same time. It creates this reliance on labor that's very colonial, that's very almost kind of feudal as well. And that's what the, the movie food chains kind of looks into. Speaker 3: (01:00:47) Well thank you for bringing it to light because it is a worldwide problem and that, you know, we have migrant workers here as well from the islands. You know, I, when I was the young girl I used to work on, on fruit, on, you know, Apple picking and kiwifruit cracking, I can tell you it's bloody hard work and very little money. Speaker 4: (01:01:07) Yeah. So yeah, so you, you, you, you, you absolutely know that it's, it's not something you would ever want to do the rest of your life. Speaker 3: (01:01:15) Oh my, no, definitely not. I'd rather run the 3,100 actually. There you go. There you go. Look st I would have taken up so much of your time today and I just really wanted to thank you for all the work you do, all the goodness that you put out into the world because it's very, very powerful what you are sharing and you're making people think and you're making people aware of some of these humanitarian stuff that you've done earlier. And also with this new wonderful movie that you bought out, everybody, you have to go and see this movie. It is, if you're into running, obviously you have to go. But if you are into just finding out about what the human body is capable of, what the human mind is capable of, and you want to see very average. And I put that into, you know, a quotation marks, average looking, average appearing, people doing incredible things. Speaker 3: (01:02:06) And that's the beautiful thing about ultra marathon running. We don't all look like Hussein bolt or Paula Radcliffe or or some, you know, elite specimen. We just normal people, but with very, very strong minds and strong willpower to do things. And in this case, it's all about the spiritual side as well. So thank you very much for doing this movie, for putting it out there. And I can't wait to see it and I hope we can connect and not, I can get to one of those screenings that would be absolutely fabulous. Meet you. It'll make my entire trip worthwhile. Right. We've got to make that happen. Thanks for not Sanjay. Thanks so much, Lisa. Speaker 1: (01:02:48) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at Lisatamati.com.

new york health australia new zealand japan oakland mindset chinese california thai america free highlands meditation running apple sahara ultramarathon indian god filipino new york city sri brexit valley west england polish u s phantom aids run fest kyoto united states norwegian fitness nutrition states arizona trek plymouth arabic trail navajo gps wouldn walmart davey mexican olympic aboriginal yup canyon mandela israeli speaker botswana avalon athletes absolutely himalayas concept berlinale quadro wellington south pacific gobi hopi finished forest whitaker ashby burmese breathe tribeca christchurch noi topo petri transcript chatterjee sanjay fabulous kiwi sufferfest hurry ks ultrarunning bushman moy mikhail gorbachev celsius that'd eric schlosser sean martin hussein forrest whitaker food chains master of none kiwis desmond tutu eva longoria navajo indians kalahari paula radcliffe screen media south island running club cause i'm kenyans tom cronin el alto rolfing ashbery sanjay rawal in arizona umb kalahari bushmen quadra lisa tamati sri chinmoy

Episode #4: The High-Ticket Highway

Simplified Integration

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2019 13:22

Show Notes: Speaker 1: (00:00) Hey, what's up Doc? Welcome back to the simplified integration podcast. My name is Dr. Andrew Wells and this is episode four a high ticket highway. Speaker 2: (00:13) Leonardo da Vinci once said that simplicity is the ultimate sophistication and I agree. You see the problem with the way that most consulting groups approach medical integration is anything but simple. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's expensive, it's complicated and quite frankly it's exhausting. Enough is enough. There are far too many amazing integrated clinics that are struggling. Well, I'm on a mission to change that. What I've come to find from over five years working with integrative practices is that simplicity really is the secret. The old saying of less is more is true. Through a streamlined approach, I was able to create multiple successful seven figure integrated clinics and now I'm going to show you how you can do the same. Join me as I share with you the secrets to successful medical integration and practice growth. Join me on a journey to greater sophistication through innovation. I'm Dr. Andrew Wells and welcome to the simplified integration podcast. Speaker 1: (01:09) All right doc. So it's great to have you on this episode. Now this is, this is really fun topic. I want to share a story with you to kind of explain this concept of the high ticket highway. When we first introduced, um, uh, regenerative medicine to our office, what we do, who we launch it to, our existing patient base. So we, we like sent out emails and talked about in the office and we said, Hey, we've got this amazing new therapy called regenerative medicine. It can help you with your knees and hips and back, that kind of stuff. And so we held an internal seminar in her office. I don't want to say we had like maybe 30 to 40 people. I don't remember signed up for the seminar. And, um, we knew it was a, it was actually a packed house. It was the, it was the biggest S uh, show up for an event that we ever did in our office to our existing patients. Speaker 1: (01:53) We had a couple of guests as well. And so we did the, uh, we did the seminar and then we booked consultations right after that. And I remember the first patient I met with, we went back to the consultation room and she's like, wow. She's like, this is amazing. I didn't know this was even possible to use regenerative medicine. And she goes, and I already kind of knew her health history and she said, I really want this for uh, both of my knees and my shoulder. And she goes, how much is that going to cost? And I, we had like a special promotion and stuff. I did the math on my calculator and I said, well, it's about 9,600 bucks. And she goes, can I put that in a credit card? And I said, yeah. And I say, she's like, okay, let's do it. When can I have it done? Speaker 1: (02:32) And I said, well, Hey, tomorrow. So I remember walking out of the room on what was probably a 15 minute consultation and the same day I did this seminar, I remember walking back to the front desk thinking like, I almost felt like something was wrong. Like, Oh my gosh, like we just collected 9,600 bucks for a therapy. That was like a one time therapy patient was super excited about it. And I remember thinking like, wow, like I sometimes like you get in your own head about like what, like what the patient will value for a certain thing, right? Like are they really gonna pay 300 bucks for chiropractic care or 10,000 bucks for regenerative medicine care. And really the value is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak. And this lady was, and her husband was extremely happy to pay 9,600 bucks for a real solution, for a joint pain. Speaker 1: (03:23) And I remember walking to the front desk and I'm like, wow, look, we have, this is so cool. It's so cool for the patient. And it was really excited that we collected 9,600 bucks in 15 minutes. And then I remember, uh, another doc working in my office came up to me and he had done the same day, did another consultation with another patient and she's, he said, yeah, she's doing two joints. So that was 7,000 bucks. So within the scope of like 20 minutes we had collected, what is that like 16,000 bucks. And as a, you know, the course of the week went on. I think we in our first seminar we collected, you know, it was like 60, 70,000 bucks I think with our first, our first seminar that we launched to our existing patients with no ad budget. So this was the first time I really tasted that concept of selling high ticket therapies to our patients in our office. Speaker 1: (04:08) And it was a huge revelation for me. I'm not just the the revenue collection but also um, especially I talked about this on the last, uh, the last episode was how much effort you really have to put into regenerative medicine. Cause remember it's a one time injection. So, um, that really changed my perspective on how I viewed introducing new therapies to the office. The alternative to that would be, so if it's not a high ticket highway, the other thing or high ticket therapy is, well, you know, what else can you offer? You know, you have nutrition plans and you have weight loss options in decompression. And functional medicine, like it takes a, it takes a lot of tickets, so to speak, or smaller tickets to equal one regenerative medicine ticket. So this saves, saves you so much time in. So ma, so many headaches in so many different ways. Speaker 1: (04:57) So for example, when you're, when you're running a, uh, an ad campaign, let's say you do a Facebook ad campaign, like how many ads would you have to put out and how many phone calls would you have to answer for a typical chiropractic patient? Right? It's a lot, right? You have to collect a lot of leads and, and get on a lot of calls and take care of a lot of patients to equal the amount of one regenerative medicine patient. Whereas with regenerative medicine, because it's a small niche therapy and it's a smaller demographic, you don't have to handle as many patients, right? A busy clinic may see five to 10 regenerative medicine patients per month. So let's, let me give you an example of that conservative month. Let's say you're, let's say you see five regenerative medicine patients and let's say on the low end, their case average, you're collect $4,000 per patient. Speaker 1: (05:47) That's $20,000 you made in one month just seeing five patients. That's the beauty of high ticket sales. It's less patients, it's less demand on you, it's less demand on your staff, it's less demand on everything and you benefit the patient benefits. So this is why, uh, I'm really, really passionate about high tickets. You know, high ticket items, and this is the response I get from a lot of doctors is they're, they're very uncomfortable with that. Uh, they don't know if they can sell high ticket therapies. They don't know if there are enough people in their town to make that work. Um, lots of different like, um, objections or kind of hangups people have in their, in their mind. And what I'll tell you is this, like the demand is out there. If you don't believe me, uh, walk into an orthopedic, a surgical clinic, like show up on a Monday morning or Tuesday morning at nine o'clock and, and just look around and see how busy their waiting room is. Speaker 1: (06:42) Like these are, there are, there are, there is an endless supply of patients in your town who are, who have joint pain or back pain and they're looking for solutions other than drugs and surgery. And that's where regenerative medicine fits in, right? Your main demographic is going to be your patient 55 years and older. They have a bad joint. They've already been to the orthopedic surgeon. They're looking at, they're staring down the barrel of surgery. They don't want to do that. They want other options and uh, they will pay for nonsurgical solutions to join pain because what are they getting in return? Right? You're like, well, why would someone pay that much money for one injection? Because what you're giving them in return is their life back. So many times we think of it as, well, it's a little Viola stuff. It's not worth 5,000, 10,000 bucks. Speaker 1: (07:28) Well it is for the patient because now they can, they can, uh, they can garden again. They can play with their grandkids again. They can travel. We had a patient one time, her whole goal was she wanted to be out of pain so she could go to Europe and she wanted to travel for like three months. And then she said, she goes after that. If you can get me out of pain for three months after that, like I'm, I'm good to go. My husband's passed away. I don't like, I don't have any other reason to be on earth anymore. I'll be happy if you can, if you can provide that for me. Um, and we were able to do that. So, um, that was like, she, she would've paid anything to have that experience in her life. I'll give you another example. We had a patient, um, this was a really severe case. Speaker 1: (08:07) It was a lady who came in on a motorized wheelchair and she was overweight. She was diabetic and she had severe, severe knee pain. And I remember this lady because she was like, she was desperate. She was out of options and, um, and she was so unhealthy that her surgeon refused to do a knee replacement on her because they were afraid that she wasn't gonna survive the surgery. And so I said, listen, like you're likely not a candidate, right? Cause you came into, you're not even, you're not, you're not, you're not walking on your own. You're using this motorized wheelchair. And she goes, what? Just if you can get me some relief, I just want some relief. And we x-rayed her knees and her knees look really awful. And I said, listen, regenerative medicine is not, is not going to help you the way that, um, I would like it to. Speaker 1: (08:52) And I said, you're really not a good candidate for this. She said, well, what, what type of relief could I get from this? And I said, you'd be lucky to get 5% relief. And she goes, that's worth it to me. And I said, well, what do you mean by that? She goes, I'm in severe pain. I don't want to live anymore. I can't do surgery. I can't be on these drugs anymore, but I just need to be out of pain. And she was in tears and I was, I was half until like I was tearing up listening to the story and she said, if you can provide me with a 5% relief, I want to do this because that's my only option. And this was like 7,400 bucks I think for both of her knees. And I said, listen, it's 7,400 bucks. Is that a lot of money to you? Speaker 1: (09:30) Like is this going to cut, like keep you from eating and paying your bills? Cause if that's the case that it's not going to be worth it. And she said, listen, we'll find a way to pay our bills. We'll find a way to keep food on the table. Uh, and, and her husband looked at me and said, listen, if you can provide her with some pain relief, we will find a way to make it work. And it was, it was like a lot of money for them to spend. And for me, I'm like, ah, like I had this kind of like moral dilemma, but I was very upfront with her and said, this is not, it's not going to fix your knees, but it may potentially help you get out of pain. So she ended up doing the injection and she came back, um, uh, three months later for like a checkup and she's still in her motorized wheelchair. Speaker 1: (10:09) And I'm like, eh, I was kind of dreading walking into the consultation room cause I, my fear was I kind of slid, let's lay, it didn't get any relief. Like she spent 7,400 bucks. I don't want to like, I don't want to have that conversation. I'd feel really bad if that were the case. And I came in the room and, and I said, you know, I asked her how you doing? And she started crying and I'm like, God, this is not good. And she goes, she goes, you have no idea how much he helped me and I will, what, what do you mean by that? I see you're still in the chair. And she goes, I said, how are you feeling better? She goes, yeah, I feel better. I said, how much? Cause I'm probably 10% better. And I'm like, well that's not a lot. Speaker 1: (10:45) And she said, yeah, but you have no idea. She goes, now I can actually stand up long enough to cook dinner for my husband and I can, I can, it's tough, but I can do dishes again. I can do laundry again, I can help her help out around the house. She goes, those little things have given me my life back. I feel like there's a reason to live. I can, I can take care of my husband, I can even go to the grocery store again. So like in my mind I'm like, Oh, this is not going to be worth it for her. But all she wanted to do was do these little things around the house that gave her value, that was valuable to her. And she and her husband like thanked me profusely because she felt so much better because of the injections. And I'm like, wow. Speaker 1: (11:24) Like I've, I've felt really, really good about that. And she was so happy and less left us a great review on our, on our website. And so like that, like that, that's worth it. Right? And so when you're, when you're thinking about like, will people pay for it? Are there people in my town that want to have this done? They're out there. They're looking for solutions. They're just looking for the right office and the right doctor to provide this therapy for them. So, um, if that's your thought, like you need to like get out of your head, like you put people barriers in, in their, in their brain that aren't really there, this is a real solution. People are looking for these types of results and you just need to connect with these people in your community. So, um, so this is the value of high ticket, the high ticket sales and high ticket highway. Speaker 1: (12:07) Um, I can't say enough about how much value this provides to your community and your office when you don't have to see a thousand patients a week to be profitable in your office. So listen, dog, I hope you found this valuable. This was part four of, uh, of the seven figure shortcut. And make sure to jump on the next podcast, which is, uh, episode number five and we'll cover that on the, um, on the next podcast. So thanks for joining me. I hope you have a great day, doc. Hope you found this valuable and I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Bye. Speaker 2: (12:40) Hey, innovators. Thanks for listening to the simplified integration podcast. Fact that you're listening tells me that you're like me, someone who loves simplicity, and the truth is those who embrace Implicity are some of the greatest innovators. So hope you got a ton of value from what we covered on today's episode. Be sure to subscribe and share with other docs that you feel could benefit from greater sophistication through simplification and innovation. If you've got specific questions that you'd like answered on this podcast, or you've got specific topics that you'd like me to discuss, just shoot me an email.

034: How to Get Your Best Sleep with Matt Gallant

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 20, 2019 57:29

Sleep is absolutely critical to being healthy. But do you know how to get your best sleep? Answering that question and SO much more is my dear friend and business partner, Matt Gallant. We start the show by talking about how he got interested in the topic of sleep. When he was in his mid-20s he wanted to do it all: he wanted to record an album, learn all about marketing, work out at the gym and he had a full-time job. So he decided he would cut back on sleep. And he took the resistance training approach by doing it in small increments. He shaved off 15 minutes at a time and thought his body would adjust if he did this gradually. He eventually got down to 5 hours of sleep and experienced some side effects when he did: he had to be pristine with the food he was eating and keeping himself hydrated or his body would completely crash. Matt also shares another story about his experiences with sleep that showed him it's the quality of sleep we get more so than the quantity. We explore that story, plus Matt’s best sleep hacks. At night, Matt recommends wearing glasses from True Dark or Swannies about 2 hours before bed to help your body block out any type of light that might keep you awake. He also recommends using a program called f.lux on your computer, which lessens the amount of blue light emitted by your computer. Iris is a similar program that Matt likes best. As far as actual sleep, you want to keep your bedroom cool at night (16-18 degrees C or 60-64 degrees Fahrenheit). But you also want to keep your mattress cool because otherwise your body heat gets trapped underneath you and you will sweat. The sweat will dehydrate you which leads to poorer sleep and waking up tired. Matt gives us his specific tech recommendations for greater sleep on today’s show before we dive into which supplements can enhance your sleep, and how they work plus the reason 15 minutes of meditation before bed can help you fall asleep faster. You’re going to hear those fascinating topics, and you’ll hear Matt explain why he’s not a fan of melatonin. Join us for this illuminating discussion on sleep. Resources: True Dark glasses Swannies glasses f.lux Iris chili pad Tim Ferriss The Ooler sleep pad EMF shielding tech Faraday cage Oura ring Dreem headband Delta sleeper EarthPulse Dream Tea from Anima Mundi Magnesium Breakthrough Read the Episode Transcript : Wade Lightheart: Good afternoon. Good morning and good evening. It's Wade T Lightheart at the Awesome Health Podcast and I got my good friend, buddy, business partner and co experimenter Matty G. How's it going today at the biOptimizers extreme lab? Matt Gallant: It's going great man. Always, you know, I always love talking about health with you and I think we're going to be sharing some more deep gold today. Wade Lightheart: So I'm excited about today's podcast because we're going to talk about something that we've been in I think a circuitous conversation for I think almost the entire time that we've known each other for around 20 years, certainly 15 very deep. And that is sleep. And for those who don't know the statistics and what's happening, sleep issues is one of the biggest issues in America today and is expanding worldwide. And there's a variety of reasons for that, why that is. We're gonna dive into that. If you're struggling for sleep, you definitely want to listen to this podcast because of all the people I've met in the health industry, I don't know anybody that has gone as deep in sleep is Matty G and we've had a lot of discussions about it's, I'm a guy that wants to sleep the the, you know, for years I was like, if I could just throw sleep away, I'd be, I'd be happy. Wade Lightheart: When we started out, Matt was like, no, you need us. Like he wanted to get as much sleep as possible. But now we've both come for circle on this where we're kind of in what is the optimal sleep amount? How do you get there? Why are we in trouble for sleeping? How important is sleep and where does sleep play as far as hormone optimization, brain functioning, recovery from training. What are the hacks? What are the tricks? What are the tips? And Matty G, if he doesn't know all of them, he knows everybody who does know all of them and he's probably tried more of them than anybody on the planet. So Matty G, Mr sleep, where are we going? What are we doing? How are we, what, what's happening today? Matt Gallant: I will start with the story of how I really started to understand the need for sleep and the importance of it. So at the time I was 25 years old, maybe 24, I was living in Moncton were Wade and I are from, and you know, I had the same mentality that you have. I'm like, you know what, I, I want to work like a hundred hours a week. I want to record an album, I want to learn marketing, I want to work, you know, literally 80 hours in the gym. I don't really have time for sleep. So, so again, like little, I was working 80 hours at the gym at a four 40 hour job, plus 40 hours of personal training clients. I'm recording a hard rock album in the studio and then I'm spending about 15 to 20 hours learning about marketing. So I did the math. It was like a hundred to 105 hours plus I was training twice a day. Matt Gallant: So in order to do all of that, I'm like, okay, I got it. I started cutting sleep. At the time I was probably sleeping, you know, normal seven hours. I'm like, okay, here's the plan. I'm going to start cutting my sleep by the 15 minutes slices and keep going down. My body will adapt. I was thinking like like resistance training and all adapt to the, to the stress, so you know things were going decently. When I got to about five hours, there's an interesting oxide effects that started happening. One of them was my hypersensitivity to water and food, so literally that's how I really got into water because if I was dehydrated like a micro amount, like I had to literally like be drinking water all the time. If I dehydrated even like a little bit, I immediately just kind of crash. Right? Same thing with food, it's like any food that my body wasn't really happy with. Matt Gallant: I would crash so I had to eat like flawlessly and be drinking water all the time. It otherwise it just crash. Then I kept going and then I finally crashed and burned at around like I think four hours or three hours and 45 minutes. You know, I, I just pulled the plug on the experiment and then I read a book called power sleep, which, you know, started educating myself about the need of it and the power of it and then kind of went the other way. It took me about two months to recover, you know, it was like nervous. It was pretty deep nervous system burnout and I was sleeping eight, nine hours now. So for the longest of time I was the kinda guy that, you know, needed eight, nine hours and whatnot and I didn't understand the quality of sleep is really what matters, which is what we're going to be talking about today. Matt Gallant: Not, you know, everybody's heard you gotta sleep eight in a seven to nine hours, which may be true for some of you, but I think in my opinion, the quality's really the key. So another story four and a half years ago, I, I crashed in a different way. I went on a big European tour for business, came back my testosterone at crashed an all time low and my body fat was at the highest that I've recorded it on a DEXA. And I realized right then that my S and I, and I've got an oura ring. So it was kind of like this, this convergence of all these events. And on the oura ring I was getting zero to 15 minutes of deep sleep at night. Like I was basically having no deep sleep. So that's when I realized that my sleep was garbage. Matt Gallant: You know, typically I would wake up at that time in the morning, I'd be really tired and you know, dehydrated. And even though was sleeping like eight and a half, nine hours, I felt like I've slept for, and of course the oura ring validated the, the the data, the experience. So that was the turning point and I realized, you know what, in terms of up leveling me as a human being, probably the number one thing, like the one thing that would improve my body fat composition, improve my brain, improved my ability as a, as a businessman improve myself in relationships was sleep. Like I realized right then it was a huge kind of revelation that if I slept better like every part of my life would improve and it has. So for me sleep is, you know, very close. It's hard to say which one is number one, a number two, but I'm going to make this bold statement. The top two things in my opinion you can do to buy, to biologically optimize yourself as a human being is high quality sleep and resistance training. I think those two, you know, in terms of improving across the board are the top two things. I'm just a lot of other things you can do, but if you sleep well, do resistance training, I think your quality of life, your health span and probably your lifespan will, will have a big impact. Wade Lightheart: You know that you make a couple of interesting observations with that conclusion. If you look with the advent of electricity and the advent of technology, particularly computers, digital screens, television and blue light, and the shifting of circadian rhythms, which is plays a big point in that this is the one area of humanity where we've have, I'd say civilization has throttled the endocrine system or the normal patterns. It's not normal for all this light to be present at night and over, you know, literally billions of years. Every creature is, is running on a circadian rhythm that is related to a light cycle, which there's a hormone cascade, there's an energy cascade, there's an awareness cap, there's this, there's just so many things that are tied to that. And so all of a sudden with the civilization, we've accelerated that curve. And then the other part of that is over the last, particularly the last hundred years and even more so, maybe the last 50 with, I would say with the beginning of the remote control in cars, we really don't push our physicalities that much. I mean, if you'll think back to the great statues in history, the Greeks and the Romans have these, you know, really idealistic bodybuilder type bodies. It's obvious that people were walking around looking like that to be the Wade Lightheart: Inspiration for those artists to develop those Herculean like qualities. And if you look at the population today, Herculean qualities is something that's only reserved for Olympic athletes, for professional athletes and the general population is anything but so based on all that what have you learned? What are the big, what are the things that mess people up first? Let's start there. What are the big don'ts or the things that people might not think of that are really affecting their quality of sleep and their quality of their life? Matt Gallant: I'm going to get into that, but I just want to answer the why first. It was really quick. No, why is sleep so critical? So first of all, let's look at it from a physical level. So your growth hormone, all you're, you're this, there's a whole prolactin cycle. That's where your GH gets released. Thus when most of your testosterone gets produced prolactin. Matt Gallant: Yeah. So it's this whole cascade that starts with the melatonin and then it triggers your prolactin is another hormone in the body. So, but what matters is the healing hormones though, the fat burning hormones, the muscle building hormones all getting released in that cycle. So if you're having no deep sleep or not enough, you're basically not producing these really powerful anabolic healing, anti aging hormones that you know we want. It's critical. So that's the first piece. The second thing, which gets produced typically during REM sleep, which is the end of your sleep cycle, the bulk of it is your neurotransmitters. So that's what allows you to feel good, to be happy for your brain, to function, for you to think that's when that happens. Then there's also memory consolidation. You know, when you're moving things from short term memory to long term memory, a lot of that also happens during the, the light sleep cycles as well as during your REM. Matt Gallant: So basically, and then let's talk about weight gain. You know, let's and grill in, all of these things get thrown out. So if you have a bad night's sleep, your hunger is going to be typically out of control. So the odds that you're going to snack and cheat, you know, your blood glucose is going to go up. So like literally if you, if you want to gain fat, like if your goal is to gain fat as easily as possible, if you have bad sleep, that's the formula. So, and I really feel that, you know, the weight gain, the fat gain epidemic that we have in around the world, a lot of it is being driven by poor sleep. And, and that's just again, just, it's just a physiological reality. So if we just look at all of these and pretty much every part of your body gets negatively affected, even your DNA. Matt Gallant: I read some recent research like a month ago where one night of bad sleep like four hours, you know, affected all of these epigenetics. So, eh, the, the consequences are extreme. Now let's the shift over to the fundamentals of how to maximize sleep quality. And it's really about eliminating the five sleep disturbances. If, if you just eliminate these disturbances, your sleep quality is going to transform. So the first one is light. You mentioned light. So let's just explain a little bit why light is so critical and there's so many components to light. We'll get deeper into it. But the big picture is as, as you said, that we're not programmed. Like I've got this massive light shining in my eye right now. Plus I've got two computer screens, plus I've got this other light. So I've got like four sources of blue light that are completely unnatural hitting my eyes. Matt Gallant: It's, and it's hitting my brain. So, and this is fine at this time of the day, but if I, let's say I had all of these things on and it's 11:00 PM, I'm going to be wired. And like I know I think a lot of night hours, you know, and, and I'm one of them right in the chronotype call them, call us wolves. We are hypersensitive I think to blue light more than other people cause I used to be able to like, you know, work on the computer till three, 4:00 AM and it's like I just wouldn't get tired. And I think this, the light is just stimulating my brain. So that is telling my brain that it's still daytime. Right. And like you were saying back in the day where it was candles or no, you know, just no light. As soon as it would get dark, our brains, it's like okay let's start shutting things down. Matt Gallant: Let's start priming the melatonin and then you'd get tired and go to bed, prolactin cycle, all of these things. So light is probably one of the biggest disturbances. Now let's talk about the basics, which is managing light during sleep. So you want your room like pitch, pitch black, dark as possible, you know, and if you're living in a city, it's even more important now for those of us. And I used to wear a sleep mask and then I found out that your skin has these photo receptors. In other words, when you're, when the light hits your skin, it will disrupt your melatonin production. So even having a mask, even those protecting your eyes and it does help, it's not going to be as good as a pitch black room. So that's light. Now that's not enough. We'll get back to light in a second and just want to cover the other four. Matt Gallant: So second is heat and this is very well researched. I mean I read that in power sleep back a long time ago. We sleep best in a cold room, especially our, it's important that our heads get. And then there can be heat disturbances where your is touching the mattress. And I'll talk about that in a second. The third one is blood flow restriction. That's another one. This is where a bad mattress comes to play because if you're lying on your side, like I'm a side sleeper. If you're a back sleeper, this is not as critical. But if you're a slide size sleeper and you have let's say wide shoulders and you don't have a good mattress, the blood flow gets trapped in your shoulder, in your arms, and then your body's going to toss and turn because your body knows, okay, there's not enough blood flow, it's time to move and you're going to move. Matt Gallant: So, and you can track that with a lot of these apps that'll tell you how many times you've tossed and turned. Fourth is noise, noise will disrupt your sleep. And you know, of course there's ways to mitigate that. And fifth is electrical magnetic disturbances. So wifi signal, cell phone signals, Bluetooth, all of these waves that are flying all over the place as we speak will disrupt your sleep. So what our goal is to, to use technology and tools to minimize the disturbances of those five things. The more we can do that, the better sleep gets. Wade Lightheart: You bring up something really important there about, I mean, there was really no way out of the technological advancement that's going in. Of course there's a lot of concerns with things like 5g being rolled out across the world and how that's going to have profound effects perhaps on our, on our biology. And there's a lot of people in the area that are concerned about it. Some people say it's unwarranted, some people say it's the worst thing for humanity coming. What are some of the things that you do specifically to mitigate these areas of your life? Like what, or like, okay, we've got the five main things. What can a person today go out and do in regards to that? And then we'll kind of get into some of the more advanced tax after that. So what are, what are the go-tos for, for Matty G. Matt Gallant: All right, so let's start with each one and I'll give you kind of my list of hacks. So let's start with light. Wade Lightheart: Get a pen and paper. Folks are gonna want it. You're going to want to write fast and furious cause Matt, by the way, Mat, how much money have you spent in total on your sleep systems? Matt Gallant: It's, it's around 30 grand. I mean, and I could add a couple of more devices on top of that movie, which would take people over 40 so, and you think it's one of the more valuable things that you've spent money on for sure. Right? Yeah. Like I, you know, if again, the way I look at it is if I'm 10% more effective, which, which I feel a more than 10%, but if I was 10% more effective, it's an incredible ROI. If my health span improves 10% or my lifespan improves. Like if I look at it from any of those three perspectives, it's a no brainer ROI. You know, people spend so much money on cars and these, these deep dish, the right appreciating assets where I think in this case it's like it's a compound health benefits. So your number one asset is health. Matt Gallant: And again, to me this and resistance training on the top two things. So speaking of lights, the first thing is let's talk when you wake up. Okay. So our bodies had these circadian rhythms. And one of the things that surprised me how effective it is is when you wake up, and this is a really huge travel tip to this, so we'll talk about how to reset your circadian rhythm when you travel. But this is the first thing that you do. So you wake up, you want to blast your eyes with blue light. Now you have two options. One, you can go outside and you know, go stare at the sun but get sun hitting your eyes. That's the natural organic way. And for those of us that live in, you know, one day or it's winter time and you don't want to do that. Matt Gallant: There's a device called re timer. It's not Australian company and he's these, it's kind of like these white glasses that literally blast your eyeballs with blue light. There's also the human charger, which are these EarPods like earbuds that blasts your brain with light. So the best time to use that is in the morning. Like, as soon as you wake up and let's say you want to start waking up earlier, if you wake up and okay, the first time's going to be tough, but if you wake up and blast yourself with light, like it's amazing how tired you get around, you know, 16 hours later. It's like, it tells your body this is the beginning of the day. So in terms of hacking your circadian rhythm, whether you're traveling or you want to just kind of start shifting your, your, your wake up time, I think it's incredible. It's very, very impactful. Matt Gallant: Now let's shift to the end of the night. So before you go to bed, probably around two hours is probably optimal. So as you want to go to bed until 11 was around 9:00 PM, you would put on blue light blockers. I'm a fan of the, the probably the most intense ones. The best ones is true dark. The, the red ones. This is a company that Dave Asprey's invested in great glasses. I mean, they're the most intense. The only thing is you're going to watch TV. It's like if they're so intense, it's hard to read. The more stylish ones, I would probably start the Swannies from James, my friend James Swanwick. And those are really good for like going out and you know, the block most of the pool. So that makes a big difference. That is, especially if you're using technology like TV or computers or your phone or your iPad, those will have an impact. Matt Gallant: Now if you're using your phone or your computer, you know, I use something called the, it's called, there's flux, which is really good, but I use a nuts by the way, is a, is a computer program that will actually change the screen color so you're not getting as much blue light. Yep. Now there's another one called Iris, which I think is better. It's a little more, a little more control and a little more aggressive. He's got all, all kinds of options. So I use that. So either flux or Iris and, and on your phone there's also built in like it'll start shifting and you can hack your phone where I'll show you what it looks like. So you see my phone, if I triple click, it becomes red. So this is more aggressive and, and you know, you can search on how to create tense in your phone and then you can control it with the home button. Matt Gallant: So those are all the things I do to, to manage, mitigate light in my room. I had double blackout curtains cause one was still literally the light coming here and there. I just put two layers of 'em and it solved the problem. So that's the light equation. Second is heat. You know, obviously if you're living in, if it's winter time in Canada, you don't need to worry too much, you know, it's going to be pretty chilly. But for those of us that are in summer or in hot climates, I live in Panama. You know, AC is mandatory, but that's not enough because going back to when I used to wake up tired, I was, I was sleeping in AC, I was losing around four to five pounds of water from going to bed to wake up. Like I would weigh myself for bed and wake myself. That's a lot. Wade Lightheart: I think a lot of people don't realize how dehydrated they can become sleeping. It's not, I mean, I watched that fluctuation as a way to monitor my own health to see how much water I lose in a particular leaving. For me, it's somewhere between two and three pounds is generally where I'm at from breathing. But if you go beyond that, I know that I've got some, there's some, there's some challenges. Matt Gallant: Well, you're going to wake up dehydrated if you're dehydrated, you're tired. Right? I mean, you know, you know any top water experts in the planet, he knows, he knows. He knows this as much or more than anyone else. I mean, you know, your brain, everything drops. You're dehydrated. So the answer is the chilly pad and you know, God blessed Tim Ferriss for talking about this on think it was you know, eight or tools of Titans is in that book. Matt Gallant: You gotta love Timmy. Yeah. Tim. Tim delivers the chilly pad is this machine and then they got a new version called the OOLER that they just released. So it's this machine that you put distilled water in it and it cools the water and then pushes the water in this thin layer, a thin mattress that you put underneath your bed sheets. So all that heat that would typically get trapped because again, the room can be 16 degrees Celsius, which this is pretty much what I sleep in. But you're still sweating where your body's touching the mattress, your body's trapping the heat, the chilly pad or the OOLER solves that issue cause it's getting, you know, you can control the temperature, you put it where you're comfortable and it'll prevent the sweat from happening. So now I'm losing like one to one and a half pounds of water while I'm sleeping. So that's a big reason why I'm not as dehydrate. Wade Lightheart: Quick, quick question on the chilling effect and it's power. Cause I, I grew up in as we both did in freezing cold new Brunswick. And when I was a kid, there used to be frost on my bed sheets on certain mornings and, and, and, and I, I can recall that the total label being frozen, going to the bathroom. So extreme cold. Is there an optimal level of cold? Like have they done research on, on how cold is optimal? Like is there a point where there's a benefit and a point where there's a liability? Do we know what that is? Are people doing Wim Hof sleeping? What's the, what's the deal? Matt Gallant: Um yeah, it's between you want your room to be between 16 and 18 degrees Celsius. That's, that's optimal. Cause your head needs to be above one degree core than the rest of your body. Matt Gallant: And it'll, it'll do that. So here's a trick too. Like I go in my room, I turn on my AC about four hours before I go to bed. So I walk in my bedroom, it's just super cold. Cause if, you know, if I go to bed and I turn on my AC at that point, I mean it, you know what I mean? It's gotta be still warm for about another hour. So if you want to fall asleep faster, that's one of the things now and another, does that change? Wade Lightheart: Just a quick question on that, cause that's the thing is important, but you live in Panama, which your base temperature on any given day is in the, in the high 20s or you know, low 25 celcius here with, with, yeah. With high humidity though as well on top of that. So if you're living in a colder climate, does that variance differ for people? Do we know, uh, is there any cause, is it the, is it the absolute temperature that's important? Or is it the variance from kind of your waking state energy? Matt Gallant: It's the absolute temperature. Now the difference is your metabolic rate, you know, and I'll give you an example. So I do a massive reef eat on Sundays, on Sundays. My body temperature is one to one and a half degrees hotter than if I'm fasting. Fasting like my second day of fasting. Like my body's dropped one degree. So second, you know, at that point probably go like more like 17 degrees or 18 degrees and I'll adjust chilly pad versus on spike day it's 16 degrees and I dropped my chilly pad down to like 14 cause otherwise to counteract that thermic effect. Correct. And you know, like men typically run a little hotter. You know, if you have a really fast metabolism, the more food you eat, women tend to run a little cooler. Matt Gallant: So there, there is those adjustments and that's the cool thing with the chilly pad. You know, if you're, if you're a couple you can get a couple versions so you can control her side and your side so you can adjust the temperature accordingly. But as far as what the research has shown, it's 16 to 18 degrees in the room regardless of where you're at is optimal temperature. Got it. One more thing too that I experimented with. It was kind of an accident. So I had these, these ice best, okay. There's these cool fat burning vests. You know, we'd be, we do a whole episode on, you know, we're in fat loss hack, so I was using it for fat loss. And, and you know, this is a well researched thing where you lose body heat with, you know, eater cryo or ice baths, but use these vests that you could wear that have you put them in the freezer and you put them on and it's really cold. Matt Gallant: So you know, you lose some body temperature. So when I use those, and I have even this cryo helmet that you also put in the freezer and it was recommended by our friend Katrine and you put these on. So when I was wearing these my deep sleep went up a pretty significant amount. So when I do that, I don't do it every night just cause you know, it's a little bit of a hassle. But when I do do it, my deep sleep goes up. It's almost like it's priming my body. It's like the, the, the temperature drop before bed would probably kicked start the prolactin cycle again. I don't know the exact science. All I can tell you is that the ring the data said, yeah, it's improving your deep sleep. Wade Lightheart: So, so what a cheap hack would be to take some bags of frozen peas and strap them together, a duct tape and kind of create a little helmet. Would that be the cheap, would that be the cheap, the cheap pack versus the cryo helmet Matt Gallant: And then the cool vest? Yeah, and I've seen what's interesting too, I've seen recently they did a research where like a hot bath also improved. So it seems that you're kind of, and that's more of a relaxation thing. So I think it's hitting different mechanisms like the heat. It's probably relaxing your nervous system. Wade Lightheart: Well also if you're doing a hot bath with magnesium as a big fashion term, we'll get into magnesium in an upcoming podcast. Cause I know we're going to go deep on that. But maybe the most important mineral to mankind is magnesium. So let's, but anyways, I'm diverting of course. Matt Gallant: So yeah, so that's the heat components. Next is the blood flow restriction. So that's really the mattress. Now I, I spent like months doing research on mattresses and the conclusion is you want up, especially if you're a side sleeper, you really want a memory foam because you want even weight distribution. Let me explain. If you have a hard mattress and you're a side sleeper and like let's say you have like wide shoulders or you're a woman wide hips, what's going to happen first of all is you're going to sleep like this, right? Cause I'm not going to sink in enough and it's going to tilt my body. So you're gonna have a spine curve which you don't want. And second of all, it's gonna really trap the blood in my shoulder. So it's a multitude of issues. Plus some people say that Springs are creating other sets of problems because of the waves and it's hitting this praying. Matt Gallant: So anyways, I'm not going to get too deep in the spring problems, but the point is you want to kind of sink in and how perfect with distribution. Now the rule of thumb is if you're, if you're really tall and you're light, then you don't need to sink in that much. If the heavier you are the diff, the softer you want your phone, right? So there's a company called Essentia, Canadian company. They're available in the States as well and they make a memory foam mattress out of a tree sap. Now you know there's other mattress companies like Tempur-Pedic but they're using oil based materials to make the mattress. And there's pretty significant offgassing that happens for petroleum based products is what you're meaning is petroleum base oil base. So for the first six to 12 months there's a pretty significant offgassing that happens, which you know, I wasn't interested in. Matt Gallant: Plus they tend to trap heat a little more. So that's why I went with Essentia. Now send you has all these different grades of softness or you can get a custom made mattress, which I did cost about 10 grand. And what's cool with the custom made is, you know, my wife got her side optimized for her shape and weight and I got mine optimized. So you know, personally, certainly improved and minded as well. So that's the blood flow component. Next is noise. Now you kind of have two options here. Either you go with white noise, which is what I do, which is not the best, but you know, if you're sleeping in a city, for example, I'm in Panama, you know, we'd notice how noisy you can get here. You know, it's the only alternative. So I had the AC running, I have an air purifier running and I had the chilly pad running. Matt Gallant: So it kind of creates this ocean of white noise, you know, cause all three of them, I mean kind of produce level of white noise and there's white noise machines that you can buy as well. And they do a good job of kind of hiding background noise, I think optimal. And when I go back to my parents' house, it's like there's no noise. And I think that makes a big difference. Right? Does ignore cars, there's no nothing, no technology earplugs can help a lot. I think your plugs have another set of benefits where you're hearing your breath and when you hear your breath, it has this calming, hypnotizing, a brain swelling effect. And we know that from meditation, just, you know, classic meditation, just focus on your breath and we have earplugs like you're hearing yourself breathe. And I think that that has a big impact on latency, which is how fast you fall asleep as well as cutting off the noise. Matt Gallant: So when I travel and I don't have all my gadgets, I, I'll, I'll use earplugs. And by the way, as far as the earplugs, my favorite ones, they're like almost like a wax based thing. So you don't put it inside the canal. Yeah, put, it's like a put that you put on top and you just smash it in again. That was another Tim Ferris. Not with a hammer by the way. You just, with your thumb, your thumb, you just kind of press it in and it does the same effect without kind of, sometimes you'll push the wax in or whatever and I don't like those, those old school cheap foam ones. So yeah, those, that's the noise component. Now electromagnetic disturbances is the last one. That your only option if you're living in technology is a fair day cage, which I, which I have one. So there's a website called less emf.com and they sell EMF shielding materials. Matt Gallant: So they have one that looks like a mosquito net. It looks pretty cool. It was a little worried when I bought it. I'm like, is this going to look really bad? But it looks like those, you know, African mosquito nets and it blocks, you know, all the waves from hitting, you know, hitting your body cause they're gonna I'm in a penthouse, you know, if I pull up my phone I think there's like 15 wifi I can find on my phone. So all of these are hitting me, you know, plus all the other waves that you know, self waves. And that said you got 5g coming. So sleeping in a Faraday cage cage, probably a smart move. Now for those of you that live out in the countryside and you can shut all your technology down in your house, I mean that would be the ultimate, you know, or if you're building a house from scratch. And when I, when I do build, you know, my next house or build the house, you, you can actually put all the shielding in the walls so you can actually build like a Faraday cage, you know, in the walls themselves. It's just absorbing all of the waves. Uwhich would probably be the, the ultimate. Wade Lightheart: That's great. I think that's really important of course. If you're living in a city and so for example, I spent a few months last year in Venice, California, which is like just an electromagnetic crazy zone. I think the leveraging technology yeah. Is really, really important. Or if you're, you're in a city, I think also there's just a subjecting to light light and noise is usually pretty significant. So putting in some of these little even little things is, is really key. So one of the things I think is important to reveal to people is what are the key components, cause I know you're a real data component. I think one of your stains is data shapes destinies. And you've literally tested all of the sleep technology. What are you using for data collection? What do you think of the best data collection devices about monitoring your sleep so that you get out of the realm of out of the realm of opinions and theories as you like to say? And where does someone get that or what should they look for for S for these types of things? Matt Gallant: Yeah, so probably the most popular one is the oura ring, which I'm wearing right now. So it's, it's a, you know, three to 400 bucks depending on which model you get. That's the one I started this journey with around four years ago. I bought it as soon as it came out. And you know, it's really, it was really good data. Now, about a year ago I bought was called dream D R E M and we'll get all this stuff in the show notes. Yeah. It's a headband that is measuring the EEG. So I used to wear the zeal. Kendra was a predecessor, like a great product way back in the day, right? Even in a business or whatever. Right. So the dream is kind of new version of it. And the thing is with sleep, like the oura ring, and I think they've done as good a job as you can using what I would call secondary metrics. So the primary metric would sleep is your brain waves, right? That's how you directly measure your, your sleep. Now the oura is using heart rate, heart rate variability, motion, body temperature. So those, what I mean by secondary metrics, the primary metric is your brainwaves. The dream measures all of the secondary plus the primary. So you, you know the oura. As much as I like it, it cannot match the accuracy of a dream in terms of the precise sleep cycles. Here's what I can tell you. The oura. And I, and I've talked to other people that have compared the data and actually look at sleep labs as well. Matt Gallant: The oura ring will actually be accurate at tracking the overall deep and REM. So let's say your overall combination of the two is four hours. Now the, the oral might say, okay, you had two and a half hours of REM and 90 minutes of deep. Okay. Now on the dream is going to also give you a say four hours of the two, but typically the oura is under measuring deep sleep and over measuring rep versus the dream. It will be more accurate on, on the, on the deep sleep. Now the one thing I love about the aura that you don't get from the dream is your readiness score. So your readiness score is basically how fried you are, is giving you a really good, accurate measurement of your nervous system. And you know, it's really powerful. I'll give you an example. Like recently my heart rate went up like 10 to 15 beats. Matt Gallant: My heart rate variability crashed and I knew there was something going on. So, you know, I, I hired Katrine who's one of the people we've worked with for health. And you know, I, I had had an infection, so I had had an issue that I had to deal with. So it's really good for that. It's good for measuring. If you're over-trained, you know, and you know, classically the two measure over training, if your heart rate goes up 10 beats per minute over three days you're over-trained that was the classic tool. But now with their, where the oura ring, we can really see, you know, a lot faster when that happens. And you can adjust your training accordingly. You know, just maybe take it easy. It doesn't mean you don't train, but you might not go do squats and dead lifts and sprints that day. Matt Gallant: You'll, you'll do more of an active recovery type of workout. So those are the tools to, to measure sleep. And you know, all the things that I've done have improved. Now don't forget things compounds. So you might do one thing and improves your deep sleep like 20%. You do another thing that's another 20%. No, you had 44%, you do another 20%. Now you know, you're, you're at 70 ish percent. So keeps compounding. And that's how, you know, an average now went from like zero to 15 minutes of deep to probably like 75 to 90 minutes. And then my REM is usually like two to three hours. So that's what I've found. Now I'd like to shift over and talk about other techs to improve and, and hack your sleep. So the first one is the nano V. The nano V is a machine that you put distilled water in it and hits the water with a very precise signal. Matt Gallant: You breathe that water in and it starts repairing your DNA. Okay. It's improving, scald the protein folding in your body. Now for sleep, what I've noticed is if I use it for like 90 minutes, my HRV will will go up significantly. It'll actually improve it by, you know, 15, 10 to 20 measurements on the HRV, which is pretty significant. So in terms of of restfulness and quality of sleep, it definitely makes an impact. Then I use what's called the Delta sleeper every night. You put this on your carotid artery, you can actually put it on your forehead as well, and it's sending the Delta pulse for like 20 minutes and it shuts off. So in terms of falling asleep or shifting you into Delta faster, it's a great little, you know, one else thing. And if you wake up during the night, you just hit the button and then you'll fall asleep faster. Matt Gallant: So I'm a big fan of the Delta sleeper. The next one is the earth pulse. So it's another PEMF device and you put these under your bed and you can control the, the frequency. So you gotta be careful. This thing is really potent, is very powerful. You know, when I first got it, like has like four built in programs and a level one program one and two completely wreck my sleep program. Three and four were great. So four is like just pure Delta and you know, three kind of brings you down and brings you back up and you gotta you know, you gotta control, you can control the, the strength of it, you know, for me, you know, I'm kind of a maximalist in nature and extremists. I started really high, but I found that, you know, dropping it to like 30 to 50% work better than like 80 to a hundred are going. Matt Gallant: It's a really strong, it creates a pretty strong field. So I like that. The vice, it's a good one. Then. what else do I use tech wise? That's pretty much it on the tech side. We can shift over to supplements unless you have any other thoughts. Let's, let's talk about supplements because I think you've kind of cracked the code on some powerful integrations around that. Okay. So first, you know, it's all about controlling brainwaves and your transmitters for the most part. So lavender oil pills are really powerful to increase alpha. So lavender oil and L-Theanine have been scientifically shown to increase alpha, which means that you're going to slow your brain waves down for those and listen to our other podcasts that when I just did around your nervous system. We talk a lot about this stuff and the issue is a lot of people are kind of stuck in beta and for the people that had a hard time falling asleep, that's what's going on. Your brain is just stuck in beta, which is a high fast brain wave and then it takes you a long time to shift it down. Wade Lightheart: For people are listening. That's like if you're the type of person that can't shut the brain off at night, the thoughts are still into this and that and the other thing, chances are that means you're, you're in a, in a, in a high beta state. Matt Gallant: Yeah. Your brain is kind of stuck there. Yeah. It's kind of like the beach ball of death that comes up on your computer just keeps spinning and spinning and you know, you can't get that, you know, that conversation in your head or that, that deadline that you have or that that conversation or relationship issue. Matt Gallant: Now you can hack that with meditation. I mean, which is a great pre bed ritual is you know, meditate for like 15-20 minutes, which slows your brain waves down. Then you go to bed. So that, that's a really good, good tip. But as far as supplements go, the lavender oil and the L-Theanine will both hack that and L-Theanine is probably one of my favorite supplements for sleep dosage wise. I would start at 200 milligrams and if, you know, I'll go up to like 600 sometimes. If I want a plane, I'll tell you about my plane stack. Right now it's 800 milligrams of L-Theanine and about 50 to a hundred milligrams of CBD. If it's legal where I am, I'll pass out like, you know, and you can dose a little bit of melatonin with that. I'll talk about melts on a second cause I'm not a huge fan of melatonin but that, you know, and I don't sleep easily on planes. Matt Gallant: I usually just pass out with that dose. Now typically though, it's more like two to 400 milligrams of both evening and around one or two Lavela oils. So if you're GABA deficient, GABA supplementation can be powerful. You can use, you know, GABA doesn't absorb that well, but it's an option. There is a Philippian route which also hits the GABA pathways. That is another option. And you know, I want to try injectable GABA so I'm, I'm the stream and the extreme optimizer here at BiOptimizers and I haven't tried it yet, but it is on my agenda to, to experiment with actually injecting GABA straight in. Cause when you take it orally, the absorption rate is really low. Wade Lightheart: I think for people just as a commentary,uif you're a coffee drinker, caffeine drinker, I think theming is a great, you're probably going to get even more benefits. It seems to be really works counter counter counter balances. The caffeine like L-Theanine is present in a lot of teas and not so much things like coffees or some of the more darker caffeinated and I'm a big tea fan. I'm going to get a topic about that one day. Umhe other thing is I think holy basil, if you're GABA deficient the L-Theanine, holy basil. Umhe Athenian holy basil combo is, is great to, to throw in there with, with your CBD. And a lot of people get a lot of power out of that. Matt Gallant: Yeah. yeah, I have not tried to obey as well. I'll, I'll add that to my experimentalists. Now. CBD works well the, for most people will disrupt your sleep. So, you know, personally Wade Lightheart: It'll make you dopey in a lot of cases, but not improve your sleep. And there's a difference there. It's kind of like if you're, and that, I think that's a difference between pharmaceutical sleeping, pharmaceutically enhanced sleeping, which you pass out and go out. But the quality of that sleep is often countering. And of course we w in on the extreme cases, I think it's Roseanne Barr, and when she kind of went on that crazy street, she was on a heavy tranquilizer called Ambien, which a lot of people use for sleeping, which has all sorts of serious negative consequences about what happens when you don't sleep properly. So I think that's the difference between chemicalized nation asleep, which is just looking at the sleep as an overall result as opposed to optimization sleep, which is what you're into by using elements that are natural and indigenous to our bodies and using those in a constructive optimized way. Matt Gallant: Yeah. Now I'm really excited about CBG and CBN. I actually ordered some, and this should be arriving any day cause for sleep. They're supposed to be even way more effective than CBD. So you know, we'll, we'll talk about in a future podcast. Haven't tried it, read the research. I'm excited we're come back. Some other things ashwagandha, a gram of that can work really well. One to two grams of reishi can work really well, but one of my favorites and you know, we are really excited and pumped to be releasing this product is two to four caps of Magnesium Breakthrough. So one to two grams of a blend of magnesium. So like the glycinate is a great one to help trigger sleep and improve sleep. The L-Threonate will actually be really good for your brain. So we have this seven magnesium blend that releasing very, very soon in the next couple of weeks. And you know, we've been experimenting with it. So two to four caps of that should move the needle on your sleep. Wade Lightheart: Especially well, especially if you're deficient. So you know, it's the most common mineral deficiency in the world and magnesium's responsible for 350 different known chemical reactions and it's one of the things that they put Epson salts for example, or actually magnesium salts in are used to calm and tone and magnesium is essential for relaxing muscle tissue both stride at muscle and smooth muscle has a very powerful effect. And if you're deficient in it and almost every North American is because it's a ratio between calcium and magnesium, magnesium is the control on a two to one ratio. You have two parts, calcium, one part magnesium. And we have a very high calcium, a component in her diet. And it's interesting, it's like when you have high calcium in your diet, it actually creates bone loss. It creates muscle cramping. It creates dis balances in the chemical processes. Wade Lightheart: And I've seen literally dozens and dozens of my clients who had trouble sleeping. We just add magnesium to their diet and that's it. All of a sudden, or people who suffer from cramping. And that's other big issues, particularly people get older in combination with dehydration. They cramp at night time. They wake up, they're very stiff because they're not only dehydrated but their D, magnesium and magnesium. And I used to use the word, so you want to not just, you don't want to be de magged, you want to be defragged. So the bottom line is, is a magnesium is super, super powerful for people. It's one of the reasons we've done so much research on. I mean, there's like 30 different types of magnesiums. We found the seven best, which we'll talk about in another podcast as you said. So I carry on with this Matt Gallant: Yes, we're ready. We're here the last 90 seconds. I'm gonna go rapid fire. There's a great tea called Dream Tea from a company called Anima Mundi. It's a blend of herbs, really big fan of that. Put your pajamas on. Ah, let me talk about melatonin really fast. Melatonin is a hormone folks like to me, I look at melatonin as seriously as I do testosterone, you know, and like in Canada for an example, like you can't, you can't buy that. And, and that's true for a lot of countries. So melatonin, I only use it when I travel. If I want to reset my circadian rhythm, that's the only time. And when you do you want to microdose like people will wreck their melatonin production by just going to crazy dosages. And what we found is that microdosing melatonin, if you go to use melatonin, like 0.3 milligrams is all you need is kinda like a little kickstart. Matt Gallant: And again, I'm not a fan of it. I only use it when I travel or when I want to reset my circadian rhythm. Otherwise I strongly recommend you stay away from it. Next thing is five HTP that hits the serotonin pathway that can have a positive impact on sleep. Some people. And the last thing I will share is a human growth hormone product or secretagogue you want to use before sleep. I have not experimented with these yet, but a lot of people report much improved deep sleep. I am planning on experimenting with a growth hormone, secretagogue very soon. Wade and I at BiOptimizers several years ago we did have a growth hormone releasing supplement. And I mean the, the dream, like it was affecting sleep. I didn't have the tools to measure it back then. But man, the visibility boost is a great product. It's insane. They shut the labs down. Unfortunately we couldn't find the sources of the, of the ingredients, so we had to stop it. But that, that was powerful. It was very interesting, very interesting product. So anyways, so I think that summarizes all the sleep things and again, you know, he, brain physiology is very unique and you need to experiment and find what works for you. And that's where the data comes in with the dream or the aura. So you know, you've got to try things one at a time and see what works. Wade Lightheart: So what we're going to do, folks is we're going to actually put this all together in a little book for you at the BiOptimizers sleep optimization handbook, which will be put together with all of these components, these hacks, we will be upgrading it, but you're going to be able to get a copy of that in the very near future. If we don't have it right here on the show notes, you'll be able to go to the BiOptimizers site. Check that out, download it as part of your biological optimization program. I want to thank you for joining us. Check out the show notes. Come back to the podcast, hit your comments, hit the likes. We love to hear that it helps us get the message out about biological optimization. I want to thank our guest today, the radical edge biological optimization maximization experimenter himself, fresh in the labs and Panama, Matty G. Thanks for being here and I'm delighted that you're coming onto the show more often because you're very knowledgeable in a course. A, if it's bleeding and it's the edge, you're there Matt Gallant: Awesome. A great, great fun. We'll be back soon talking about some more great stuff. So have a great day. Everybody.

Ep 122: Dr Sam Shay - The ten pillars of health

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 24, 2019 65:43

In this episode Lisa talks to Functional Neurologist, Functional Health Practitioner Dr Sam Shay of Colorado about his "Ten Pillars Of Health" model - an integrative approach to personalised health using the latest in research. Dr Shay talks in-depth on topics like adrenal fatigue, hormone balance, and the effects of different types of exercise, inflammation in the body and brain and more You can find out more about Dr Shay at these links: Website links: Free 15-minute discovery call to see how functional medicine and functional testing is the fast way for your to reach your health and performance goals: http://drsamshay.com/work-with-me/online/ Free ebook on the 10 Pillars of Health & Biohacking & functional testing: http://drsamshay.com/biohacker/ How to genetically determine your optimal diet: www.drsamshay.com/carbchoice Online Courses: Fatigue: www.EndAdrenalFatigue.com Addiction: www.FlourishOutOfAddiction.com Stress: www.TheWorkOnlineCourse.com Facebook: www.Facebook.com/sam.shay.792 Youtube: www.Youtube.com/tenpointwellness Dr. Shay walked his own health journey from being chronically unwell from age 6-18 and overcoming sugar and video game addiction. He dedicated his life to natural medicine get himself and others well, which led him to functional medicine and functional testing. Dr. Shay helps his clients with custom nutrition and lifestyle plans with his “10 Pillars of Health" framework, the TAME the BEAST of addiction framework, health coaching, and functional testing. We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners. All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more. www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tama T brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:14) Well, hi everybody. Lisa Tamati here at "pushing the limits". It's fantastic to have you back again. I'm really excited for today's guest. This is somebody that I've actually stumbled across in my search to help my mum and I'm going to be working hopefully with Dr Sam Shay in the future in that regard. But this man is a very special doctor. He is a functional medicine practitioner. He's a chiropracter, he's an acupuncturist and he's going to, she has some mind blowing stuff with you guys today that I really want you to pay attention to. So welcome to the show. Dr Sam is fantastic. Speaker 3: (00:49) Thank you so much for having me. I really, really enjoy sharing this information through podcasts. I love, Iteaching more than almost anything and this is such a great medium Speaker 2: (01:00) To help just to help people and such a scalable way. It's, it's fantastic. And, and everything that you've been talking to me about, I'm just like absolutely mind blowing. And, and the stuff that you have on your website and dr Shay is actually in Colorado in America, has previously been in New Zealand and been practicing in New Zealand is over in the States again where you come from looking after a sick relative unfortunately. But he's taken a bit of time out today. He's going to share some of his insights around the 10 pillars of health which is going to go now, dr Sam has such a wide array of knowledge that we're only going to be able to touch the surface on a couple of areas today. But I do hope to get the same back to dive deeper into some of the areas once we've covered them. Speaker 2: (01:51) So dr Sam, as you want to share it, you've got a PowerPoint there. Now I know that people are listening on podcasts as well as on YouTube, but for those of you who do want to see this presentation that not the same is going to share with us right now. You can hop over to dr Sam's website, which is docked the same shade. It is H a y.com forward slash bio hacker and you can actually see the slide. So if you are with us on the podcast and not on YouTube, you can put over there and we'll put that in the show notes. Of course, right over to you, dr Sam, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you've got there. Speaker 3: (02:29) Thank you. So the, the, the context behind all of this is Speaker 2: (02:35) I'm, my background Speaker 3: (02:39) Is that I had a really, really rough go as a kid in terms of of being very chronically unwell core health, lots of high stress from extremely Speaker 2: (02:50) A F Speaker 3: (02:51) Contentious divorce. I had severe insomnia, severe got issues of fatigue. I had developed a sugar addiction. I was dealing, I didn't know it was gluten and dairy at the time, but I was on a high gluten high dairy diet, which was not working with my system as part of my severe gut issues. But no one, no one really understood why I was unwell. It's kind of this mystery mystery stuff going on. And both of my parents and being medical doctors, they, their particular training was not in looking at lifestyle in a holistic manner. It was more a, it's in your head or you're missing some sort of drug or there's something or you're just making it up. And the, the, the reality is, is that it was, it was far more complex than a psychological diagnosis. There was real physiological problems that were not taken seriously. Speaker 3: (03:48) So I, I was dealing with so much stuff, I was like a war zone at school with a physical and psychological bullying. I mean, just as something for people listening here I'm going to issue a kind of an uncomfortable question, but it's an important question. It's like what is the difference between a physical assault and physical bullying in school? And the answer is there's two things. One is what the two things are. You're, if you're over 18 and you're out of school, it's called assault. But if you're under 18 and still in school, it's called bullying. And you should just get over it, quit whining. You know? And the verbal billing as well. Like if people, if people, if they're over 18 and outside of school, and we're told the things with the level of vitriol and venom that I was told in grade school, the people who would say such things would have a restraining order put against them. Speaker 3: (04:40) Yeah. But in school it's just like, Oh, he's just, it's just tough enough. You know, it's fine, you know, whatever. But it's not, these things were extremely damaging was physically and emotionally. And what compounded from that was an onslaught of severe physiological reactions, a sugar addiction, video game addiction over eating constant postural torsion of being in a defensive mode that affected my spine as a chronic back pain, which I thought was normal for over a decade. I thought having pain was normal, a severe, debilitating insomnia and all sorts of other things. And my, my, my journey, basically, I snap to it when I was in high school and realized that natural medicine was my only way out. So I had, I had to work through all sorts of stuff from like a coffee habit starting at age six. Wow. All sorts of stuff was happening and I, I recovered from addiction and burnout by figuring out multiple, multiple modalities, not because I went out and said, Oh, I have to figure out multiple things. Speaker 3: (05:46) It was, I went through the typical journey I've seen most of my clients go through was I'm unwell with this thing, whether it's got issues or fatigue or I had a head injury or some sort of neurological degeneration or a really bad accident or a brain fog or foreman dysregulation or gut issues or all these things. And I, someone told me about a product, a personality or a protocol and I'm going to try it. Yup. And so I went and just did whatever people I trusted at the moment said to do, go see this person and go try this product. Go try this protocol, go learn this, go do that. And I call it magic bullet therapy. Yeah. I was chased F yeah. Looking for that magic, that little thing that will fix you. And there is no thing there. Well there's a can where actually figured out how magic bullet therapy can work for certain people. Speaker 3: (06:41) The model also explains magic bullet therapy that the, the, what happened was a, for people like me who had multiple things, a crumbling in there using the pillar, the motif of a pillar of health and in my model is 10 pillars of health. If you have multiple pillars crumbling, and if like what I observed in my clinical practice was that people with chronic issues, like I said, like fatigue or chronic pain or hormone dysregulation or chronic gut issues or brain fog or what anything else that's going on, they had a minimum seven out of 10 pillars crumbling. Wow. Okay. Now what that means practically is that if a protocol, personality or product at most helps up to three pillars. Yup. So if you're good, most clinicians, if they're honest or really, really good at one to three pillars, maybe five or so like, but if you've got seven plus that are crumbling, you're gonna like get unpredictable or temporary results or the plateau or whatever it's going to be. Speaker 3: (07:47) Now, I had all 10 out of 10 pillars when I actually reflected back on my own life with the model. And that's why it was took so long to figure out what was going on. And more importantly, what I had to do because there was no unified model at the time when I was struggling, but I was going through some, what I found is that if we assess these 10 pillars, if we assess these 10 pillars correctly and most importantly just understand them, then we can start to really, really chart a path forward. Instead of doing the magic bullet therapy where we hope it's this one thing that's going to work and then it doesn't, and then we feel bad and I'm like, Oh my God, I'm never going to get well. Or this person you know, was hyping me up and like it's on like they were just blowing smoke or whatever. And the reality is is that if someone has nine pillars that are like 70% okay, and there's one that's at 30% and they just happened to find the goji Berry juice to squirt up their nose or whatever, you know, and their Speaker 3: (08:56) Bionutrient pillar happened to be the one that was deficient in whatever goji Berry juice has. Speaker 2: (09:02) Okay. Speaker 3: (09:02) Then they feel a hundred times better than they're going to be the ones walking around telling everyone to buy their goji Berry juice. Speaker 2: (09:08) Exactly. Yup. Speaker 3: (09:10) Whereas if you're at, you flip it and you've got one pillar that's a 70% and nine that are 30% goji berries, you's ain't going to do Speaker 2: (09:17) Jack. Yeah. And then, Speaker 3: (09:19) But the goji person who sold you the goji juice will say, Oh, you're not feeling better. Just take more. Speaker 2: (09:26) Okay. Speaker 3: (09:26) Like that's the answer. It's always more of the magic bullet as opposed to stepping back and looking at Speaker 2: (09:33) At the pillars as a whole. So, and this is really the case. Does that kind of architecture makes sense? Yeah. Because like we not simplistic beings, we have very complicated structures. We have, we have so many different areas. And this is what I find too. Like my, my list is Noah story with my mum is the you. And it was very much a multipronged approach. I mean, I didn't know about the team pillars at the time and we started working with mum yet in regards to the team pillows. But we, but I took a very multipronged approach to the way I treated her. And when somebody asked me what was the one thing, there was no one, there was no, there were things that were definitely helpful in that I would, you know get people to, to look into. But we aren't simplistic beings that can take a little white pill and everything's going to go away. And we all want that because it's easy. But taking holistic look at your whole health as totally agreed as I'm a very, very important thing. So you had adrenal exhaustion basically in fatigue and all of these things happening as a young person and you've used this experience that you went through to actually go and work out how to get yourself right and now help, you know, hundreds of other people with us knowledge. So let's go through some of the pillars and, and how that works. Speaker 3: (11:03) Sure. So just, just a quick caveat in terms of the reference to the little white pill. Just for context. Look, both my parents are medical doctors and so as my grandfather, in fact, my father and grandfather are quite famous in the medical world. And just, I'm not anti Western medicine. What I see is that it's about application. So Western medicine was developed from military medicine, which is emergency care where you don't have missing eye syndrome or bleeding arm or like bleeding ice syndrome or missing arm disease. Those are actual emergencies that need to be stabilized. So Western medicine is genius and should be celebrated for stabilization of emergency situations. And that's really the gift of Western medicine. That's really what the primary use of the, the, it's, it's Western medicine is predicated on stable is stabilizing. The problem was when that philosophy is as applied to non-emergency issues, chronic States, chronic pain, like in, that's where natural medicine is really thrives in looking at the chronic underlying things that are not emergencies but are crippling. Speaker 3: (12:18) As well as the thing with natural medicine is looking at bringing people up to not just mere normal or mere absence of symptoms, but actually to optimal. So when emergency medicine, if misapplied is at best masks, the debilitating symptoms to set of symptoms to give you a less debilitating set of symptoms. Little white pills are a radical sledgehammer to your physiology and you rebuild the pieces in a slightly different orientation. It's shifting the symptomatology. You can't add a poisonous substance to a system and expect it to get healthier. What you can do in the best case scenario is shift what you're experiencing. And I'm not being inflammatory. When I say adding a poisonous substance, when I talk about a medication, there's a term called an LD 50 illegal lethal dose, 50%. A medication cannot be classified as a medication unless it kills her 30% of a rat population controlled study. Speaker 3: (13:17) So I'm not being inflammatory, I'm being technical. When I say medications are poisons, but they can be extremely useful to help stabilize a critical situation or by time if your symptoms are so debilitating that you need to shift your symptoms to something more tolerable so that you can then do what? Look at the 10 pillars of health to figure out what's wrong underneath it. So we need to really contextualize the little white pill in a collaborative manner where there is a place for it. I'm not trained in the little white pill. Yup. I'm trained in the natural side of things. I feel like what's what's really happening, what can happen is that there can be a rejoinder of this collaboration at of of natural medicine in Western medicine and in fact functional medicine is that meaning point functional medicine, which is what I practice that is using the best of Western medical diagnostics. Yes. With the best of natural medicine lifestyle intervention and the best of functional nutrition as one of the tools to help bring people back to balance. Speaker 2: (14:29) This is just so, so important. I am, you know, I, Speaker 3: (14:33) Okay Speaker 2: (14:34) As a light person who's not got a medical background at all, I've come to the Zech same conclusion that there are benefits on both things and there's, there's no such thing as a free biological lunch. If you, if you are taking pills, it's, it's going to help maybe with one or two symptoms, but it's going to be having other consequences generally speaking. And this is where we're just taking one pill to cover up that symptom, which causes another problem. So you take another pill and product cover up that system. And that's the sort of thing that's happening with chronic disease and in our society. And this different approach. And I, you know, there's differently a massive movement at the moment. Thank goodness of people like yourselves. And other areas where this new science coming online and this new approach has been taken. And this combined approach I think is very exciting time for, for us. Unfortunately when you usually go to your local doctor, they're 20 years behind this stuff that we're talking about often. Yeah. Speaker 3: (15:39) And it's changing. I mean, the younger generation of, of Western trained doctors, they're, they're witnessing what's happening to their parents and grandparents, perhaps themselves or their siblings or even their children. And there's a whole new perspective that's happening where they are starting to look more holistically. And it's really people, you know, [inaudible] people such as myself who really wants to create the bridge that we create these frameworks. And what the 10 pillars of health does is that it will prevent fanaticism. Even amongst the natural health world, there's some people think it's all about dealing with the infection or it's all about dealing with toxin of choice, whether it's mercury or you know, sprays or whatever it may be, or no, it's all about getting the right nutrients or whatever. And the reality is is that the 10 pillars, we'll balance it out. And it also explains the entire cycle of chronic disease. Speaker 3: (16:34) So when we look here, we've got bad lifestyle choices or bad circumstances. So, so bad circumstances, like I'm a six year old boy and I'm being fed high gluten, high dairy, we know sleep being bullied and assaulted at school, dealing with the stress of divorce at home. How did it picked up an infection from swimming in a Lake at summer camp, chronic pain, poor posture, you know all these, you know, all of these things mixed into one. Lots of toxic exposure. That's not a choice. That's a circumstance we didn't have. So absolutely. So you got choices and circumstances which are interpreted through one's individual genetics. You get one or more of the four adaptive responses so people can respond to bad choices and bad circumstances. The body responds with the combination of inflammation, blood sugar dysregulation, free radical damage or tissue breakdown. So for example, if it's the gut, you can get in Flint, inflammation in the gut, your blood sugar can get dysregulated. Speaker 3: (17:30) So your, your appetite and your, your, your craving cycles get all messed up. Tissue breakdowns where the gut lining breaks down and free radical damage from all just just creating destruction all around chronic adaptation interpreted through one's genetics, leads to damage of one of the three, one or more of the three main body systems. That's the liver detox system, the gut GI system, or the neuroendocrine hormone system. So if you have chronic damage to your liver, your gut and or your foreman system, you then get an expression of symptoms, whether it's fatigue or lower mood or digestion, weight gain cravings and Somnia pain, burnout, hot flushes, whatever it may be. And if you have lots of symptoms than people cope with bad lifestyle choices, which then leads to more adaptation, more damage, more symptoms, more coping, more adaptation and round and round a ghost. I mean this is basically explaining 20 years of my clinical, you know, education in one slide in one a couple of sentences. Speaker 3: (18:30) And it's, it's really important to understand this cycle because then what the symptoms people are experiencing with are the expressions of their body trying to adapt. They make sense. It's not like a some sort of unique conspiracy of the universe due to bad germs, bad genes, bad luck or bad timing. And what we do is that we assess the 10 pillars of health and detail, then use functional testing, like taking the adrenals, checking the liver, checking genetics, checking gut, checking for parasites, checking or checking the mitochondria, checking thyroid. We use these functional tests to clarify how the body is adapting and what systems have been damaged and then customize a nutrition diet, lifestyle plan while correcting the 10 pillars lifestyles in parallel. Then you can reverse the whole process in a truly meaningful, sustainable way. So this slide, I mean as I'm describing it for just our listeners, and again, you can get it, you know, you can get this entire ebook from my website. Speaker 3: (19:38) It's if you understand this cycle, then you have the knowledge to know that you can't reverse the cycle and a meaningful longterm way. And that's what functional medicine does. So with the 10 pillars, I mean we, we'll go through each of the 10 pillars. The first one is called brain, it's called brain. Each of the pillars begins with a B. Cause I'm a teacher, I like mnemonics and elevation and all that stuff. Brain is brain and hormones. So we're looking at the adrenal system, the thyroid system, the sex hormone system. And in regards to the sex hormone system, we look primarily to estrogen dominance, toxic exposure to outside estrogens or from microwave plastics or soy products or a question, you know, questionable cosmetics and body lotions and or all the chemicals, vegetables that have been sprayed or meats that are pumped with hormones depending on the country of origin and things like that. Like with the adrenal system, like I had severe what's called colloquially quote unquote adrenal fatigue. But in reality it's renamed hypo cortisol ism hypo meaning low cortisol, meaning low cortisol. Cortisol is the one of the hormones, the adrenals release that regulates blood sugar, helps drop inflammation and helps you handle stress. So if you are unable to, and I have, I have all my my, I have four labs that I showed on on my stress system, like the before and afters over the years going from flat, literally flat line to Tet near textbook normal. Speaker 2: (21:12) I'm the opposite. I had a Dutch tastes done, you know, dried urine test done. And because you know, I've had a listeners know, I've had a very, very stressful last four years. My, my, so adrenal, what did you call it hyper cortisol? Cortisol ism? Yes. Hypercortisolism I've got no cortisol basically. Right. Flatline from, from the beginning to the end. And all the hormones are out of whack. So low testosterone, low progesterone, low estrogen and of course coming into menopause as well. And why case? So mine was even below that. That bottom line. Speaker 3: (21:52) Yeah. Yeah. I'm showing, I'm showing right now. I skipped ahead to the labs on the, on the ebook. So that show too, Speaker 2: (21:58) This is fascinating for me because I mean obviously I'm, I'm dealing with this myself. And I know a lot of our athletes are as well that we train literal burnout. Yeah. Yeah. Then we hopefully we'll get into a bit of a discussion about marathon training and what Speaker 3: (22:14) Actually if there's a good connection right here because I wrote an article which I a quote unquote diplomatically entitled why marathon runners look like cancer patients. So I know a lot of people listening here are long distance runners and I make zero apologies for that title. Yeah. And I'll tell you why, because I grew up literally on T-bone street next to heartbreak Hill. Now if you do long distance running, heartbreak Hill for the Boston marathon is like Mecca. Like it's, it is, it is the, it is a thing all runners know about. And I was literally up my street growing up and I remember six years old and, and I knew I was going to be a doctor at age six I didn't realize it'd be a natural doctor. I just knew I was gonna be a doctor. And I'll give you an example. I'm standing there with my mother who's also a medical doctor, and I look at her looking at the Boston marathon and people going by, I said, mommy, why do they look sick? And she said, no, no, they're healthy. They're doing marathon. I'm like, mommy, they look sick. Like, no, no, it's good for their heart. They're doing cardio. I was like, mommy, they look sick. All right, Speaker 2: (23:21) Have a marathon when they are fatigued. Well, Speaker 3: (23:24) No, it's actually, it's not. We weren't like really at the end end of, of the of it was looking at their bodies. It wasn't looking at the fatigue, it was looking at the ratios, their muscle mass ratios relative to their height and they looked like cancer. I didn't know that term at the time, but they look too skinny. Something was wrong. And the relationship is to cortisol. Now I, I learned this from Dr. Mark J. Smith PhD who, who wrote these brilliant primer explaining the physiology in detail. But I'll give you just a super brief summary and if you want more elaborate summary, you can go to my website and read the article and there's a link there. You can also look up the primer from Dr. Smith. But here's what happens is that cortisol as a hormone is designed to keep you alive under under extreme eye threatening situations. Speaker 3: (24:13) So cortisol is to basically tell your body to release as much quick to burn fuel as possible sugar in order to burn in your muscles as quickly as possible or to get away from the tiger or the Wolf pack or the bear or whatever your predator choices. So it will, including cortisol will that you wrote muscle tissue to convert muscle protein into sugar in order to keep you alive from the proverbial life threatening predator. Yep. So the problem with long distance marathoning is that what, what's happening is that you don't actually shut off the cortisol response. Jogging actually perpetuates this constant high secretion of cortisol for ending. Even when you stop jogging continues. Whereas with high intensity interval training, you get a spike of cortisol, which you get a concomitant spike of growth hormone and testosterone, which then heals the body, rebuilds the muscles and all the rest of it. Speaker 3: (25:14) Assuming you don't overdo high intensity interval training. So that's why I don't teach H I T I teach S H I T safe high intensity interval training or I call shine deploy your podcast off the put a flag on there but say five intensity and we'll train cause people can over do high intensity interval training and the, yeah, because that's something that I went from doing ultra marathons and extreme string on business for 25 years. They know and doing a high intensity short staff, which for a while as well. But both have actually smashed the adrenal, correct? Yes, correct. And that is, that is so typical. And the reason, and here's why. Here's the S safe, high intensity interval training is not an exercise. It's a principle in which you fit exercise into it. The principle has to apply to like my first practice in New Zealand was in the Bay of plenty. Speaker 3: (26:09) I had, you know, you know [inaudible] was like [inaudible]. It's basically the Florida of new Zealand's the retirement community for New Zealand and then North on it I have to give instructions to an 80 year old osteoporotic grandmother of how did you save high intensity interval training? If I tell him to do wind sprints, she's going to snap in half. Right? So the principal has to be translated across all ages. Otherwise it's not a principle. So okay, so the principle, again, the details are on on the the blog, on the blog and website, but in short form it's you do a exercise that brings you to a deep muscle burn within a minute or less followed by full recovery. The full recovery bit is what most people miss or they overdid it. Go beyond a minute with the deep muscle burn mostly it's the full recovery bit and you don't do high intensity interval training. Speaker 3: (27:11) You do at least one day of rest in between. Most people, what most people, what they do is they do this ridiculous 30 seconds on, 10 seconds off, 30 seconds on 10 seconds of whatever arbitrary number and that is not unique to you. So for me, when I started doing high intensity interval training, I have a specialized stepper and I had no weights that I was doing flies with or whatever. So I got on the stepper minute or less deep muscle burn took me over 40 minutes to recover. Terribly embarrassing terms, really embarrassing, you know, whatever. Fine. I just swallowed my pride and I just kept to that principle of a minute or less to get into a deep muscle burn followed by full recovery. Fast forward a couple months, I am doing the same stepper with 10 kg weights in each arm doing flies and my recovery time is less than five minutes. Speaker 3: (28:08) Okay. So what improved? My recovery time went from 40 plus. I just stopped counting after 40 I was too embarrassed the first time to keep looking. You don't get your heart rate going back down to your not heart rate. I wasn't, I wasn't looking at heart rate. It was burn rate and breath rate. Heart rate is fine to monitor, but it's uncomfortable to wear those. Back then it was you, now you have these fancy watches and stuff that make it easy. But back then it was those awful chest straps and yeah, it was terrible. So I, so I look for where the burn rate is gone and the breath rate is normal. If you don't have access to an easy heart rate, even then, I wouldn't even do it if I was still have muscles burning. If I was panting. What happened was my recovery rate improved and my, the intensity I required to get to the same deep muscle burn in the same minute or less improved. Speaker 3: (28:57) That's the measure of progress, not how much longer I, I can go and not how much and, and not if I can keep going more for multiple days in a row. That's what makes it safe. Safety is about honoring your own biochemistry. And the reason why it's the minute or less is it cause you watch any David Attenborough special. Okay. And you look at biochemistry, you ha you are an anaerobic glycolysis, which is geek speed for quickly sprinting away, using burning sugar quickly without using your mitochondria, meaning the very efficient longterm energy producing organelle in the cells to generate your energy from the longterm growth repair. I don't know if your life's on the line and Wolf pack is not chasing you down. You're not interested in long term growth. Repair your shouldn't getting away as quickly as you can. Yup. You have a minute or less to get away and that is mapped into the biochemistry of your cells because anaerobic glycolysis is under a minute long. You'll watch any David Attenborough special. How long are those animal chases? How long are they? Less than a minute. But what about the hope Speaker 2: (30:04) Since hunting? You know like I mean I did a TV series on we are born to run that we born for long distance persistent type hunting that we always used to do on average around 20 kilometers a day in sisterly speaking from one village to the next or one tribe to the next week. We were doing long distance walking mostly. Speaker 3: (30:26) That's it. That's, that's the whole that, that's the key word walking. Yes, I did. I did an, I did an entire presentation on, on walking once. It's about 12 major theories for the emergence of by pugilism. Yep. Okay. There's multiple, multiple converging theories. One of which is the ability to walk down, pray versus sprint them down. And so that's mitochondrial, not an aerobic. Hmm. Okay. And the issue with, when we fear by Peatal, you only have two points of impact on your skeletal system versus four, which is more exhausting for a, a Quadro pet, you know, a horse or a deer or an antelope or a wildebeest or whatever. Additionally, we have less surface or exposure to the sun if we're by pedal. So when the sun's bearing down a quadrupedal, which has their entire back and their neck and their have fur, they're going to get, they're going to basically get cooked. Speaker 3: (31:23) They're going to burn up by the sun. Whereas humans, we have way less surface area to get roasted by the sun. In fact, one of the theories, we have an extra hour of hunting per day because of that, that siesta period where the sun is the hottest. We have an extra hour to literally just like walk up and poke a prey. Well it couldn't move it so hot because we, we invent, we can sweat. We've got like there's, there's 12 major theories we can also I mean you can look at Wikipedia is a wonderful article on bipedalism. It's, if people are really want to nerd out on this, I encourage them, go to Wikipedia, look this up. But things like we stand up, you know, a couple animals do stand or temporarily stand, but we like Stan, Stan, Stan, yup. And that also gives us a horizon view. Speaker 3: (32:08) Like we can see higher up, we can see farther, we can look down. It also gives us an advantage for watching for snakes, which are a real, real problem for for tree drilling chimps that became land walking, you know, by petals. In fact, you want to get some really kind of mythological here. What is a dragon? A dragon is a Firebrick is a combination of all the things that threatened treat drone chimps over millions of years. Forest fires and lightning strikes, tree climbing, snakes, predatory birds and tree climbing felines. So what's a dragon? It's got the wings of a predatory bird. It's got the tail and head of this tree climbing snake of a tree dwelling snake and it's got the paws and the jaws and the legs of a tree climbing feline and a police fire like the forest fires and the lightning strikes. So that's the dragons and like nearly every culture and like some of these kind of, these motifs are like genetically burned into us and we evolved as a way to compensate for all these major threats. Speaker 3: (33:20) When, so with the, with the hunting, going back to hunting you answered it with the walking that that walking is the most single, most sustainable, yet stable, yet strong motion in the entire human nervous system. And there's multiple, like you, you relax and contract basically every muscle. So you have this kind of, it's like respiration. You breathe in, breathe out. So you can do this for long, long periods of time and not [inaudible] get fatigued. So why is jogging, you know like when you're doing ultra marathons, obviously it's very short. It's as a slow, as a slow moving running. Why is that not the same? Because when you're jogging, you're in this kind of purgatory between walking and running. When sprinting rather running's a vague term. I prefer jogging and sprinting and walking. To be clear, to be clear, because when you sprint, you go into anaerobic glycolysis and you create this factually five mechanisms by which you secrete growth hormone as as a consequence when you sprint, you create the hormone physiology to repair and build up your system. Speaker 3: (34:30) And this makes total sense. If you're sprinting away from a tiger on Tuesday, you need a hormone mechanism to build you quicker, stronger, leaner, faster. Is that tiger on Tuesday is probably still there on Thursday. Yup. So you're free to run away from jogging, jogging, you, you go faster than walking, but you don't get the growth hormone release. You do. So you erode [inaudible]. It's just because jogging does exist, it doesn't mean it's the healthiest thing to do. Like because we have this intermediate thing between walking and sprinting, it doesn't mean it's healthy. It can be tactically useful, but it doesn't always mean that it's the healthy thing to do. And that's the confusion. Like people think that on training for my sport, well, training for your sport is almost never training for your health. No. Yes, I'd agree with it. And that's the same thing with jogging. Speaker 3: (35:23) Is it useful to jog in order to get food to bring back to your tribe? So you sacrifice a little bit of yourself in order so that you and your tribe can survive longterm. Absolutely. Is it, is it safe to run up, run up and try to poke a thing with a stick that has fangs hose or a clause is that, you know, it's, it's but, but there's the sacrifices that are involved and, and there's these intermediate, you know, phenomenon like jogging between walking and sprinting that have found utility even though they are dangerous long term for the individual. Speaker 2: (36:02) So, okay. So, you know, I'm coming from an ultra marathon background and I've run into a number of brick walls because of stuff that I have done. I haven't run into problems like, you know, I'm still a very muscular build and I know a lot of my ultra marathon colleagues if you like, and not the skinny marathon runner that's portrayed in the media or is actually a bit of a miss no more if you like. Nowadays it's all sorts of people that they do. And that we [inaudible] change towards the sport in which you are suited as well. So if you, you're saying a sprinter looks healthy and strong and fed up and, and more muscular, but he's chosen that sport because he is that way inclined. I kept Chuggy marathon runner is also, you know, a healthy individual and, but has a different just see the Jane's to Usain bolt. Speaker 3: (37:02) So genetics, there is a reality with genetics, okay. That that is a reality. But there's, there's the people that show up to win the Boston marathon. This is where bell curve statistics matter. It's, it's the far, far, far edge of the bell curve that is glamorized and talked about and try to emulate and runner's magazine or whatever, and that's just simply a, an extreme of it all and the reality is is that most of us people are going to do marathon running marathon. Running as a whole is in terms of the cortisol system is extremely unhealthy because it erodes away your muscle tissue. The way you tell the difference between a marathon or an a cancer patient is you look at their thighs. Marathoners still has some thighs, but it has a thighs because that's the only muscle group. It's actually getting real any type of exercise in terms of muscle building, muscle engagement, whereas cancer that everything's eroded equally because you with, the thing with marathon is a cortisol is secreted for such a long period of time so consistently that it erodes the muscle tissue and if people in benefits to doing jogging and marathoning in different senses like they get outside, they get sunlight, they join a huge supportive community. Speaker 3: (38:30) There's an entire ecosystem of community support, language, a jargon, a clothing on meetup groups. Food groups, food, like you plug into a tribe. And that has meaning. Like I worked with someone in [inaudible] who was a depressive and he loved his marathoning and the clinical call that I made was keep marathoning because that's where he is with people. He doesn't isolate himself. He's in the sun, he's moving. And I said, we're just going to work on your other nine pillars. But it is, it is more clinically appropriate that you keep marathon because it fits the higher imperative, which is, which is mood. So I'm not an absolutist, a real clinician as a pragmatist, not a perfectionist. Speaker 2: (39:23) Yeah. And, and for me, like running and for a lot of my community, a running safe, they're there. They saw, you know, the psychological stuff. For me, it's like my life. I don't think I'd be alive if I didn't have running because of runnings. A power to get you out of the, the, the shit that you run in, in the psychological saints and the depression and the and give you a sense of, of doing something positive. And of course the endorphin high, the runner's high, that you get all of that good side of it. So I'd agree with, with all of that Speaker 3: (39:55) And people say what you said, what are this about Brazilian jujitsu or dancing or like, or it's, and the thing is what people confuse is the tactic, whether it's marathoning or jujitsu for the one true way. Sure. And that's where the fanaticism comes in and that's where it gets dangerous. Where people think, Oh my God, you were questioning my running, how Jerry Wade completely change my life. It's like, no, I'm not. I'm not, I don't deny the life changing things that it's done for you. But my job as someone who's in natural medicine is to not ignore the consequences of people going too deep into whatever thing they're doing it with marathoning or something else. And that's why the 10 pillars is a rounded out picture. And what I tell, I'll tell you what I told this gentleman that I helped up in Oakland. Okay. I said, okay, do your marathon, but, but do this for me. I want you to do walk, sprint, walk, sprint a couple of times during it. And then when you get to the finish line, I want you to sprint to the end, into a deep muscle burn and finish there because the anaerobic bursts will help you chew up the cortisol so it doesn't perpetuate after you're done. So it's so you can adapt even marathoning to make it less damaging but still enjoy the other peripherals of enjoying the marathon Speaker 2: (41:24) W and we, with our run trading system that we have, we are very holistic in our approach. So we get a lot of birds out, runners coming to us who have done high monitor training. So we, for example, don't do what I call junk miles. And we do the minimum effective dose basically, and we build and mobility work can be Boden. So daily mobility work and, and strength training runs specific strength training so that we can maintain our muscle mass so that we go, yep, it's, it's it's a new approach to the running way of life, if you like. And it's building and some of the stuff that you saying and this is why I love these sort of conversations and being able to openly discuss these instead of going, Oh, well that's not true. And I don't agree with that. It's to say, well, yes, there's there's some different things. Speaker 2: (42:14) And what you were saying here is, is I've seen it on my own body. I've seen I've made the mistakes on my own body. And I've, we've, we've worked at a system where people can still do their passion without killing themselves. And that is by building in going anabolic, going strength training, growing by having the right nutrition looking for, you know, the signs of that your body is losing muscle mass. The adrenal whole Dremel sides. Obviously I haven't done too well on that with myself, but it more as from the stress of the last few years I think. Yup. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. You know, one of your things was having a loved one who's sick and it's differently what's caused my problems or some of them as well as pushing my body too hard because we do from a personality type, in my case, very extremist. So have in the past gone to the absolute, you know, limits of crazy. And that in itself I'm having to moon to it has its benefits because you achieve amazing things, exceptional things, but it also has its price. And as you get older, you start to realize that the extremes like you seed in some way, sometimes it's better to be in the curve in the middle somewhere and not always be on the, the absolute limits. So this is a really interesting conversation and I'm fascinated with the whole adrenal side. Speaker 3: (43:43) I'll also, I'll show you a bit more about my particular adrenal journey. So at first I'll describe it for those who are just listening what I'm showing my March, 2015 results and I'm flat lined on my adrenal testing adrenal. This is a four spot adrenal test. There's an upgraded version where there's a six five it's called the cortisol awakening response. We don't have time to go into that, but I'm just going to show you the four spot. Basically, your cortisol has a rhythm where it's highest in the morning, Speaker 2: (44:06) Okay? Speaker 3: (44:06) Because you need high cortisol to keep sugar in your blood, to keep your brain alive while you sleep because you don't eat while you sleep and then it goes down through the day and eventually it's lowest at night so you can sleep and then arises during your sleep so you can keep your brain alive. I was flatlined and then it got slightly better in March, 2000 when I retested it in March, 2017 I was still super low when I woke up, but my other results were in the normal [inaudible]. Then I bought a year later in February, 2018 I had approximately the exempt, the same results as the March, 2017 despite a much better lifestyle, I had a massive amount of stress. I had the death of my mentor, the, the neurodegeneration of my father with dementia, which is why I came back to the States. And so like, despite much better lifestyle, my, my adrenals basically did not improve. And then I have January, 2019 11 months later, it's now near textbook normal. Wow. Because a, just so much stress of have recovered from so much of the stress in my lifestyle. So continue to improve. So you can see that stress, stress is stress is one of the four of the 10 pillars that can be sledgehammered. Yeah. Okay. So most, so let's, I think it'd be prudent just to cover the 10 pillars and brief. Yup. And then I can speak more. Speaker 3: (45:28) I can speak more about there's hope. Yeah. So basically the four, the 10 pillars and briefly brain and hormone system. Second pillar is bowel and digestion. You know, prioritize your poop, do your number twos. So how well do you chew? How well do you poop? You know, common mistakes. People rush eating or they have bad bowel movements or they skip pooping or they ignore gut problems they've got testing. Can check for hidden infections and how well you digest food. Pillar number three is a physical body, which includes old injuries, a bad dental work, which is rife in New Zealand. Fortunately all you know, rugby accident, it was rugby found it was in when I was in New Zealand. I saw demographically for men, the primary source of untreated injuries were car accidents Speaker 3: (46:19) A car accidents, rugby injuries and violence between men and for women. It was car accidents via a horse falls and violence from men. Yeah, those are the three. The three main things I saw based on the gender, demographic, gender, demographics for physical injury and body pillar is also genetics. So I run a lot of genetics testing through you know, all these for people, like for people in New Zealand or around the world listening to this. Like I do, I do telemedicine. So like all the test kits or drop ship nutrients or drop ship discussions are had through, you know, phone. I mean it's so far. So like I can help people wherever they are and the test kits can be sent to wherever. And the great company fit jeans that's actually in Australia, but there's a provider through New Zealand and there's, I talk mostly about inflammation. Speaker 3: (47:14) The antiinflammatory genes are really important for your runners because people who do who over-exercise this is something really interesting. People who act, the more they exercise, the fatter they get. Yeah. You come across some of these people. Okay. So that's a genetic issue where they over initiate inflammation, they over propagate and they have problems quenching it. So when you exercise, you do trigger inflammation. That's normal. But if you over initiate it and it over propagates and you can't put it out, like instead of a fire hose, you have a squirt gun. Yep. This is where you get inflammatory, get weight gain, inflammatory water, weight gain, like your muscles wash up Speaker 2: (47:52) Story. If I'm idea, I ran through Zeeland for charity. So the 2,250 K's and 42 days. Oh my gosh, yes. And I put on weight. I was, and I, that was a turning point for me where I went, what the hell? I'm, I'm, you know, 70 kilometers a day Speaker 3: (48:09) And from inflammatory bodyweight loop, that's it. That's what happened is the inflamma it's inflammatory weight gain. It's not caloric inflammatory weight gain. Speaker 2: (48:17) Exactly. And that, and I couldn't understand why the hell I thought I would be, you know, really, really skinny by the end of it. And I wasn't and I hadn't even lost a lot of muscle mass, but I had lost, I had, I did gain fat and I was just like, what the hell? This calorie in calorie out businesses are absolute rubbish. Speaker 3: (48:36) So you talked about genetics before, is it from the genetics testing you can really help people individualize what type of exercise is best for them. I've completely changed people's exercise routines based on their genetics. I had one, there was an 18 year old in Wellington who was doing bodybuilding and she was addicted to these damn gym bunnies on YouTube. And the more she exercise, the more her muscle tone got washed out and her eczema flared up for psoriasis rather flared up. We ran our genetics. I said, you need to exercise less and rest more because you over inflame, you over propagate and you under clear. Now she was addicted to exercise, which I called her out on as a former addict myself as an act to sugar and video games. Call her out on it and she, it was an uncomfortable conversation but she acquiesced. So she finally cut back on the overexercise and suddenly her muscle tone showed up. And along with the nutrition, the other things I worked with, their 10 pillars, the Sara psoriatic rashes on her arms went away. Now what she didn't do was follow my instruction, is to keep following up with me every month and instead she fell off the wagon because she got hypnotized by those damn gym. Bonnie's on YouTube and it all came back cause she started over-exercising again. And so then we just repeated the process and the, you know, Speaker 2: (49:55) Yeah. And we do something called IPI IPI genetics. So pH three 60 with an hour run coaching. And so when I, when I did that run for New Zealand and I realized that there's something wrong here, and we ended up later on getting into epigenetics and I changed, I found that my genes I'm should be doing, you know, boost training, high intensity interval training and dominantly combined with something like yoga and stuff to, to calm the adrenals. We not changed to that. Which I did for a little while religiously. I had, I lost all the way that I was carrying, which wasn't a huge amount that it was for me, you know, annoying. I got Federer. I felt better, I felt stronger. Now the only problem with that was in that I went too much into the extreme intensity. And then, you know, like once again, because I, because of the addiction that I have to over to exercise. And that is a constant battle that I still obviously face. So it's, it's, it's fascinating what you're saying. So the genes, your genes are, every person's genes are different, is what you're saying. And Speaker 3: (50:57) The combination, the combination of the gene variance is different. Speaker 2: (51:01) And, and, and so not everybody is going to react the same. And as coaches, we find that too that you can give two people the same exercise, the same food, the same thing and one will have the results and the other one won't because their genes are very much a difference. Speaker 3: (51:17) Correct. Yeah. So there's, there's not all weight. Not all weight is caloric weight. A lot of it can be inflammatory weight based on lifestyle, based on your genetic combination. So, and then if you've got these other things that can combine, like for example, if men, the more they exercise, the fatter they get and they start developing gynecomastia or colloquially man boobs. When I run genetics tests on that, not only did they have the same inflammation initiation over propagation and poor under clearing of inflammation, they also had issues in their liver and their inability to clear estrogen. So what happens when you combined inflammatory weight gain with hormonal redistribution from excessive estrogen? You get man. Yep. So put, put these gentlemen on an anti inflammatory anti Zino estrogen diet and lifestyle and nutritional program and then they can wait and inflammation. And pain the man boobs go away like it. Speaker 3: (52:15) We have to check the genetics to really get clear on what the required lifestyle and what the dosages you might need people, but like some people have a multiples higher need for certain nutrients because of the genetic issues. Like nutrition is not about like I'm going to take this thing as it says on the label. No, if you're genetically, so if you're genetically have a, you know, very unfavorable variants, you may need multiples more, which is why you need a clinician to actually help you interpret this because not just like not everyone responds the same way to exercise. Not everyone responds the same way to nutrition the exact exact same mission. Speaker 2: (52:54) So true. So true. And yeah, but that's, that's really fascinating and we are exposed to so many Xeno estrogens now that Speaker 3: (53:01) Yeah, that's part of the toxins. Yeah. That's part pillar number five is biotoxins and this isn't, this pill is unfortunately just growing day by day with the amount of exposure and volume of toxins. And it can be, it can be everything from cigarette smoke to heavy metals. As you know, estrogens to Petros to sprays to offgassing of carpets, paints, you know, rugs, new cars or or old cars or whatever it is, preservatives in the foods and wherever you can imagine this one's really tough and the real, the thing that people need to do is not go on a detox. That's not what they need to do because you don't have your other nine pillars in place. Detox can hurt you. It's, I've heard myself doing cleanses prematurely. That's very difficult for the body to cleanse. It's requires a lot working your guts gotta work, your adrenals gotta work. Speaker 3: (53:48) You've got to have the right nutrition, you've got to be able to sleep like this. All these other things that have to be put in place. And like the number one things that people can do is like just start eating real food. Just avoid toxic exposure and start eating real food. There are functional tests out there like a mitochondria tests that I run that has checks for six of the liver pathways and, and you want to make sure your pathways are working before you start detoxing. Cause if you don't then you create backlogs and then the toxins get re circulated and get into the organ systems and con all sorts of problems. Same thing with heavy metals. Like a lot of people freak out over heavy metals and really premature. They should focus on helping the other 10 pillars of health first. Well there are nine pillars, then focus on detox, then you've got pillar number six is bionutrients. Speaker 3: (54:38) This is all of nutrition. Again, very controversial subject. Everything you put in your body that you need. Fatty acids, amino acids you know, proteins, vitamins, minerals and I also put oxygen and sunlight, which is one of the real benefits of getting out there to jogging or sprinting or walking is that you do get some line in oxygen and that's real. And it's like I said, like if people are so committed to their marathon addiction, there's ways to mitigate the damage. You know, by doing the walk, sprint, walk, sprint. And they can also focus into the nine pillars. Talk around stuff out, like what you described as balancing out with muscle building. Like, that's, that's what I teach people who will not let go of marathoning when it's clearly gone through far. Yeah. And you just, it's a reality. Like people will do what they do. Speaker 3: (55:26) So it's like, okay, let's just mitigate this, you know, let's, let's adapt this to your situation. There's lots of stuff that you can do to check for diet. Like you can actually do a genetic test to check to see what your carb tolerance is. Are you suited for Quito, paleo Mediterranean or high carb? You can actually genetically test this like it's called carb choice again by fishing's. Like I lecture on this at the [inaudible] conferences like this is, this is one of my absolute favorite functional tests out there. Completely changed my, I've been teaching diet for 15 years and, and this thing utterly changed my diet for the better. I wish I'd found this out 20 years ago. So all these, this controversy over diet again, you can just do a cheek swab and figure it out. This other technology, again, functional medicine, the best of Western medical diagnostics, this is one of them. Speaker 3: (56:16) Genetic testing is one of those diagnostics. And then you use the natural medicine lifestyle interventions to actually change your life for the better. For the longterm seventh pillar is breakfast, which is really about breakfast and routines and habits. Cause I found the majority of my chronically unwell clients and patients, they had crap breakfasts. And so that was my first ebook, which people can still get for free off my website. It's, they had bad breakfast and I found the fastest way to get people to feel better was to fix their breakfast. And I also realized it was about routines, like when some of the sickest people I've ever worked with in my life where shift work nurses, shift work nurses, the single most unwell class of people I've ever met in the broad population of sure like coal miners that are diving into like the depths of like those of course that they're extreme. Speaker 3: (57:10) I'm talking about like in the global population, there's so many nurses or five of this shift work. Yeah, just it throws them all off like their cortisol system. We talked about my cortisol tests here. You do general tests for rhythms. The bothers is as a pillar for stress. All forms, whether that's dealing with a sick relative or it's you know, cluttered like Marie Kondo and her life changing magic of tidying up book like that, that's hitting gangbusters cause clutter is a stress, financial stress, emotional stress, relationship, stress, spiritual stress, societal stress and too much news is a stressor. Overwhelmed. Just all these things that this is one of the four pillars that can be sledgehammered bugs or hidden infections. And mold is another one of the pillars that can be sludge and massive food poisoning or a massive tropical inflection. That's, that's your pillar. Speaker 3: (58:04) Being sledgehammer can take you down a massive stressor like losing a loved one or losing a job or divorce or a move or something significant. Or like your house, you know, your house having a collapse or a storm that destroys something that's a sledgehammer to your pillar. The other sledgehammers are the biotoxins. You get massively exposed to something acute that can sledgehammer you. The other one is the third pillar of the body pill. You've a massive accident. The car accident or violence or whatever it is, or horse fall, that's a Slack. That can be a sledgehammer. So the four pillars can be sledgehammer, infections, stress, toxins and physical accident. All the rest almost always are crumble. Like you don't get chronically and well from mission. One night of sleep you do. A few of the other nine pillars have been crumbling chronically for the long term. Speaker 3: (58:58) And that was the proverbial straw on the camel's back. Yup. So you got them in the 10th pillar is bedtime, which is sleep. So these, these are the 10 pillars and the 10 pillars are, they're designed to they're designed to help round out people's learning and implement. More importantly, the implementation of natural health. Most people get really fixated on one, two, three pillars, and they think that that's health. And that is simply untrue. It's partial and it's all about exercise. No, it's all about diet. No, it's all about the mind. I'm like, yes. And there's seven other things. You've got to look at it. And, and people are chronically unwell or they, they don't understand what's happening. They have to look, get to the rest of the pillars. There's something missing if you're talking about brain rehab, how do you rehab a brain 10 pillars. Speaker 3: (59:57) That's how you rehab a brain. And some pillars are usually more important than others in certain certain respects. Like for brain rehabs, sleep is super important, like it's important for everybody, but sleep is real important. A deep sleep, particularly looking at putting them on, usually like intermittent fasting or ketogenic diet is a really useful therapeutic tool. Even if it's temporary to help put rebuild mitochondria basically focusing on mitochondrial regrowth high intensity, it's safe, high intensity interval training would really help, you know, cause if there's growth hormone involved, the two best ways you get growth hormone naturally as high intensity interval training and deep sleep. Okay. There's brain-based nutrients like getting like the, the mitochondria profiles all help with that. Understanding genetics and quenching inflammation is really important. This, this is where things get really nuanced, seen individual. But Speaker 2: (01:00:55) Yeah, this is an area that obviously I'm super interested in with mum and trying to get the optimum out of her brain. Antibody. Obviously, Speaker 3: (01:01:04) Yeah. And then there's brain-based exercises, like there's specific, that's where things like a functional neurologist comes in. Yup. There are functional neurologists in New Zealand, there's three last time I checked, but there's, there are people who are trained to actually help assess what type of exercises you need to help activate certain regions of the brain that need activation. Because in order to rebuild the brain you need to provide and the nutrition and the background physiology like of, of the hormone system and growth hormone and all this other stuff, then you need to activate the part of the brain that needs activating. More importantly, the part of the brain that proceeds the area of the part of the brain that needs activating. So you have like it, it builds it up. In fact, one way, one way to Speaker 2: (01:01:54) Sorry about that guys. It's typical isn't it? It would just keep going. I'm sure that got away in a minute. So maybe it's a calling show, maybe that's [inaudible] give a call and podcasts chain it off on the internet and stuff. So Speaker 3: (01:02:14) If people want to understand the brain in very simplistically, but very accurately, the develops from the back forward, from the bottom up, from the middle out. So where's the most primitive part of the brain? The brain STEM. It's the farthest down. It's the farthest back and it's the most midline. What's the most advanced parts of the human brain? The far side of the frontal. Like the front, outer, upper part, like speech. Okay. So if you're going to rehab a brain, you do the exercises from the bottom up, from the middle out, from the back to the front because then you build the foundational because the, the up, the frontal lobes are very fragile. They need to have a stable platform of all the other structures of the brain beneath it and behind it and below it in order to sustain the plastic changes. Yes. Speaker 2: (01:03:05) The first part that goes isn't it? Whenever you have a stress response or when you're, you know, like I've noticed with mum whenever anything like heat you can't tolerate heat. Cause their temperature regulation is mucked up and frontal lobes shut down for the ones who have been to description cause she can't function as well as soon as she eithe

MNRCHY Guest Mix 080 // E MADONNA

MNRCHY

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 3, 2019 28:20

" I think im just tryna figure it all out so i put together somethin i thought i needed at the time. this is one of those mixes u can listen to on ur own in ur room or on a late night drive. theres rnb, a little hip hop, and alternative in there. its a straight forward listen. no bells and whistles." e madonna is a New York City based DJ living out of KidSuper's creative house. He grew up playing the trumpet until he went on to study hospitality. Following graduation he worked in New York City at one of the top fine dining restaurants in the country. After two years he changed his career which was jump started by his co-curated event under the name Manhattan Wreck featuring artists such as Sheck Wes, Lolo Zouaï, and Powers Pleasant. e is currently on tour as Kota the Friend's DJ in the U.S. and Europe. Track List: Im Fine - Che Ecru You Make Me Wanna Talk 2 U (Kempeh Mashup) - Brent Faiyaz x Usher Exchange x So Sick - Bryson Tiller x Neyo silent rideslowed + reverb - Boogie Birdie - Kota the Friend ft Hello Oshay twoAM - SZA Miguel 'Come Thru' (Vandalized Edit) - Jarreau Vandal Love Of My Life (Kaytranada Remix) - Erykah Badu 6lack - PRBLMS (Remix) - 6lack ft. Childish Major & Jace Talking In Your Sleep - MUS (unreleased) Prosecco - Croosh Molly Water - Samuel Limata (unreleased) Cause I'm a Man (Slowed) - Tame Impala Boredom (slowed + reverb) - Tyler, the Creator Follow E MADONNA: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emadonna_/ Visit our website: www.mnrchy.com

Episode 177 #AudioWriter

#AmWriting

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2019 51:12

Joshilyn Jackson doesn't just write best-selling thrillers. She narrates them, too. Should we?Episode links and a transcript follow—but first, a preview of the #WritersTopFive that will be dropping into #AmWriting supporter inboxes on Monday, September 23, 2019: Top Five Steps to Burn Chart Success (a How-to). Not joined that club yet? You’ll want to get on that. Support the podcast you love AND get weekly #WriterTopFives with actionable advice you can use for just $7 a month. As always, this episode (and every episode) will appear for all subscribers in your usual podcast listening places, totally free as the #AmWriting Podcast has always been. This shownotes email is free, too, so please—forward it to a friend, and if you haven’t already, join our email list and be on top of it with the shownotes and a transcript every time there’s a new episode. To support the podcast and help it stay free, subscribe to our weekly #WritersTopFive email.LINKS FROM THE PODCAST#AmReading (Watching, Listening)Jess: I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, Emily NussbaumKJ: Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, David EpsteinJoshilyn:Gretchen, Shannon KirkThe Better Liar: A Novel, Tanen Jones Lady in the Lake, Laura Lippman#FaveIndieBookstoreLittle Shop of Stories, Decatur, GAOur guest for this episode is Joshilyn Jackson. She is the author of:Never Have I Ever The Almost SistersThe Opposite of EveryoneSomeone Else’s Love StoryA Grown-Up Kind of PrettyBackseat SaintsThe Girl Who Stopped SwimmingBetween, Georgia, Gods in AlabamaMy Own MiraculousDon’t Quit Your Day JobWedding Cake for BreakfastThis episode was sponsored by Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps you get your work DONE. Visit https://www.authoraccelerator.com/amwritingfor details, special offers and Jennie Nash’s Inside-Outline template.Find more about Jess here, Sarina here and about KJ here.If you enjoyed this episode, we suggest you check out Marginally, a podcast about writing, work and friendship.The image in our podcast illustration is by TKTranscript (We use an AI service for transcription, and while we do clean it up a bit, some errors are the price of admission here. We hope it’s still helpful.)KJ: 00:01 Hey all. As you likely know, the one and only sponsor of the #AmWriting podcast is Author Accelerator, the book coaching program that helps writers all the way through their projects to the very end. Usually Author Accelerator offers only longterm coaching and they're great at it, but they've just launched something new inside outline coaching, a four week long program for novelists and memoir writers that can help you find just the right amount of structure so that you can plot or pants your way to an actual draft. I love the inside outline and I think you will too. I come back to mine again and again, whether I'm writing or revising. Working through it with someone else helps keep you honest and helps you deliver a story structure that works. Find out more at www.authoraccelerator.com/insideoutline.Jess: 00:57 Go ahead.KJ: 00:57 This is the part where I stare blankly at the microphone like I don't remember what I was supposed to be doing.Jess: 00:57 All right, let's start over.KJ: 00:57 Awkward pause, I'm going to rustle some papers.Jess: 00:57 Okay.KJ: 00:57 Now one, two, three.KJ: 00:57 Hey, I'm KJ Dell'Antonia,Jess: 00:57 and I'm Jess Lahey.KJ: 00:57 And this is #AmWriting,Jess: 00:57 with Jess and KJ.KJ: 00:57 #AmWriting is our podcast about all things writing. Long things, short things, book proposals, entire books, short articles, blog posts, YA, pitches, whatever we can think of. And as I think most of you know, #AmWriting is really the podcast about sitting down and getting the work done.Jess: 01:43 I'm Jess Lahey, I'm the author of the Gift of Failure and an upcoming book about preventing substance abuse in kids. And I write for the Washington Post and the New York Times and various other outlets.KJ: 01:53 And I am KJ Dell'Antonia, author of a novel forthcoming next year and also a parent-y type book How to Be a Happier Parent, former lead editor and writer for the New York Times Motherlode blog But I saw someone in one of our reviews accusing us of having a nonfiction focus on parenting writing. To which I was like, 'What?' I mean that has certainly been our professional writing, I guess our guests probably see it that way. But not today.Jess: 02:27 Not today. I'm so excited. Can I introduce? Cause I'm super excited. Today our guest is Joshilyn Jackson. She is a New York Times and USA Today best selling author of nine novels, including one that I am (spoiler) not finished with, so be careful - called Never Have I Ever, it is so good. But one of the big reasons we wanted to have Joshilyn on today is that she does something that almost no one really does, which is narrate. She narrates her own fiction audio. And we know a lot of people, including ourselves who narrated our own nonfiction, but fiction is a whole other game. Not only does she narrate her own fiction, she's really, really good at it. She's won a bunch of awards. She was nominated for an Audi award, she was on Audio File Magazine's best of the year list, she was an Audible All Star for the highest listener ranks and reviews. I mean that's huge. And then I also have to add, because near and dear to my heart, she also works with an organization called Reforming Arts. And she has taught writing and literature inside Georgia's maximum security facility for women. So we have that in common as well. Welcome so much to the show, Joshilyn. We're so excited to talk to you.Joshilyn: 03:56 Oh, thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.Jess: 03:59 We love talking to authors, but one of the topics that has come up a lot for us is narrating audio books. Not only because Sarina Bowen (one of our frequent guests and sort of almost another host) has a podcast about audio books. Specifically, I'm a huge audio book fan and we've been talking a lot lately about people who choose to narrate their own fiction cause it's really hard. So we would love to talk to you about that today, but we'd love to start with sort of just how you got started with writing. What's your story?Joshilyn: 04:40 Oh, I've always wanted to be a writer. When I was three, I published my first novel using the Crayola stapler method. My mom helped, and to be fair, it wasn't a very good book. Yeah, I'm dating myself, but when Walden Books came out with Blank Books, I was in middle school and I would buy a Blank Book and write a novel into it and the novel would be just however many pages the Blank Book was. And I was a huge Stephen King fan. I would write these books, I remember one was called Don't Go Into the Woods and all these girls who looked a lot like girls who were kind of mean to me in middle school, one by one went into the woods and never came back. It's terrible, but really derivative Stephen King novel.Jess: 06:54 Alright, so let's skip ahead to your adult life. How does writing become a part of your adult life?Joshilyn: 07:02 I mean it's my job, is that what you mean?Jess: 07:08 Yeah, exactly. In terms of your professional work. I know one little thing about you that I would love to interject here, a bit of trivia. You got plucked out of a slush pile. How did that go down?Joshilyn: 07:22 Yeah, I didn't know any better. So what I did was I loaded up 160-something query letters into a shotgun, pointed it at New York, which is of course insane, don't do that. If you're getting ready to query a book query 10 - 15 agents, if you don't get a 20% return of agents saying let me see a partial or your manuscript, your query is not good enough and it doesn't matter how good the book is. So to shoot off that many at once is just to burn all your lottery tickets when you don't know if your query is good enough and is representing your book to a point where somebody is going to take you seriously. Out of the 160-something queries I got one request to look at the work and that was my agent.Jess: 08:12 Wow. And that was the one that got pulled out of the slush pile?Joshilyn: 08:31 There's thousands of those they get everyday. And it wasn't the best query, but he was interested in the idea. So he asked me to send the manuscript, and I did, and we ended up working together.Jess: 08:42 And how did that first that first book deal go for you? How did that all come about?Joshilyn: 08:47 Oh, it was a long time coming. So, he was my agent and he was interested in me. We had a couple of phone conversations, I sent him some short stories I'd had published. And he shopped two nonfiction book proposals, a children's book series, and two novels for me. At that point I was pretty ground down about it. That's a lot of rejection, and a lot of years, and a lot of work. So I just quietly said to myself, 'You know, I'm not gonna break up with my agent. I'm not going to have this big dramatic thing. I'm just going to stop sending him stuff, I'm gonna stop calling him, I'm gonna stop bothering him because I've done nothing but cost this guy money. So, you know, I'll just let it go and New York can suck it. I'm going to write cause I can't imagine not writing, but I'm done trying to be published. I was butt hurt, I picked up my toys and went home. And that Christmas he sent me a present, and a letter, and it was like his family Christmas letter. And at the bottom, he had written a little note just to me and he said, 'When am I gonna see something from you again? You really are one of my favorite writers.'. You don't say that to somebody who's never been published. You say you're so talented. You say you have so much potential. You say, I think we can sell this. You don't call an unpublished person, one of your favorite writers. So I sent him the manuscript I'd been working on and he sent it out, he said this is going to auction. And he sent it out to I think eight places like saying, this is an auction, you have two weeks. And we had a preempt in two days and he made me turn the preempts down. I was not going to turn that preempt down, I was so excited. It was an offer of actual like folding for a book I'd written. And he was like, no, we're turning this down. And I was like, okay, technically I'm the boss of you and we're not turning it down. He said, 'It's cute that you think that, but I'm the one who understands this industry and we're turning it down. We turned it down and he sent word out to the other houses that we had turned down a preempt. And everybody had 48 hours to get their best offer in and five of them showed up to bid.Jess: 11:27 That's fantastic. I emailed with shaking fingers in return when I heard that we had a preempt that was for an amount of money that I was like, 'Whoa.' I remember typing back. 'Oh, okay. I trust you.' But in my head I was like, I totally don't trust you, we should accept this. I saw that you were part of a book called Don't Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors in the Day Jobs They Quit. So what was the day job you quit?Joshilyn: 12:07 It's a job that I called tote monkey. I'm dating myself again, but there was a car parts place that had these dot matrix printers and when the stuff was all down on the floor from the printer, I would take a huge stack and peel those rinds off and then separate it like white, blue, pink, goldenrod, white, blue, pink, goldenrod. And then I'd file each of those colors where they had to be filed. And by then the dot matrix printers would have other huge stacks lined up and I'd just take them and peel them is all I did.Jess: 12:43 Were you so sad to have to quit that job to become a professional writer?Joshilyn: 12:48 I had dropped out of college to be an actor and eventually was starving and had to take this day job. I called my father and I said, 'I want to go back to college.' And he said, 'You can go back to college until you get a B, I'll pay for it until you get a B.' So I went back to college and I never got a B, that job taught me that I didn't want to be doing that job.Jess: 13:18 So the acting stuff leads us to the big questions that I'm dying to ask you about how you got started narrating your own audio work. And did that start from the beginning? Was that something that you specifically trained to do? Please tell us all about it. Because, and I have to sort of spoiler here is that some of the conversations we've had is about like, Ooh, that's kind of interesting. I wonder what it would take to be able to narrate our own fictions. So what does it take, Joshilyn?Joshilyn: 13:48 I don't think it's necessarily a good thing most of the time when authors read their own books, to be honest. Because it is a really specific skill set. And I did go to school in theater and I did live off the grid for awhile as an actor and a playwright. And most of the time when I made money, it was doing voice acting and I got some pretty good gigs. I've done voice acting for local commercials and radio spots. But I've also done stuff for a documentary that PBS was doing, stuff like that. So I had a theatrical background and when my first novel came out, while the narrator of that novel is a wildly, promiscuous murderess and people always think that your first novel is autobiographical, which of course my first novel was, but as you know from earlier, it did not sell. This was my third novel, so it wasn't autobiographical. I am not a wildly, promiscuous murderess, for the record. And I wasn't sure how much I wanted to be associated with her anymore than I was. You know, with a debut, that's the first question you get - so how much of this is your life? And so, I didn't really want to do it. My second novel, I figured I had that distance. Plus I also thought Arlene should sound really young and I don't think I've ever sounded particularly young. She has to sound young for you to forgive her. But my second book, I really thought I could do it. So I went to my editor and I said, 'You know, I used to be an actor and I've done a lot of voice acting, do you think I could read the audio book?' And she said, 'Oh, no, don't do that.' And I said, 'Okay, but I really have done it before.' And she was like, 'You know, I was with Warner Books and they were the most theatrical of the audio books. Some audio book companies want a real straight read with just very light differentiations between the voices and some of them want it to be really theatrical.' This was a very theatrical one that wanted big differences in the voices and they put musical tracks in and stuff. So I said, 'Well, can I audition?' And my editor said, 'Yes, you can audition, but you're not going to get hired. But, sure.' So, I had a friend named Darren Wong, he's actually an author, too. He wrote The Hidden Light of Northern Fires, which is a great book. And he used to run an audio book magazine called Verb, it was an all audio magazine. So he had a home studio and an edit board and professional grade equipment and he helped me edit it and set levels. So it was a really good recording and I did a fight scene with five different men having a fight. And I did a comedic scene so they would know my timing and I did straight narration with energy so they knew I could get them through the landscape descriptions or whatever. And then after I turned that in, like two weeks later, my editor called and she was like, 'Oh yes, you can read your audio book.' So I started reading my own and the first one did well. And so after that, the next time we got a book contract, they had a little clause in there that said, I had to read the audio book, it was already in the contract and I thought that was really flattering. And now I read for other people who aren't me, too.Jess: 17:32 I had heard that actually because as I said, our frequent guest, Sarina Bowen, has a podcast called Story Bites with Tanya Eby. Tanya has her own studio and they tend to really pick apart narration. Especially since Sarina picks the narrators for her books and she's very picky about that and they raved about your narration. So they were one of the reasons we found out about you.KJ: 18:03 You were episode three of their Story Bites Podcast. You'll want the rest, but if you want to taste it for free that's one way to do it.Jess: 18:22 Well, and Sarina also raved about The Almost Sisters. That was a book that she really enjoyed and we trust her judgement. What I meant was you guys have read The Almost Sisters, I have not yet. I'm going to now though because the first of Joshilyn's books that I have read is Never Have I Ever, and I am so deep in and what I wanted to say is I'm listening to the audio and I also have the hard cover of the book, as well. And one of the things I wanted to say about your narration there is you have two very different women in particular that are sort of at the heart of this book. And I have to say that what I was struck by from the very beginning is your depiction of Rue, one of the two sort of main-ish characters. And you do such a brilliant job with her because I'm not even sure what it is you're doing because I don't have the technical words to describe it, but there's something in her voice that renders her a completely different human being than your protagonist who has such... I've heard for various audio book narrators that they'll often have recordings of their characters or are you able to do that just sort of as you go through?Joshilyn: 19:56 I don't use recordings, I do use my husband. I met him doing black box theater. We were working at a regional repertory theater together. The first time I ever saw him, he was learning to stage sword fight - that is hot. So we've known each other since we were teenagers. I was 18, I think he was 19. And he is a theater guy, his masters degrees is in stage management. So when I'm getting ready to do an audio book, I go through and set voices with him and he says, 'No, that's not right.' Or, 'Oh, that sounds just like her, but can you take it just a little deeper? Drop your register just a little bit.' So he works with me on the characters and it's good to have that because my voice sounds different in my head. So he's sort of my feedback loop. And then I'm an outside enactor like I was never method, where you go inside, and try to find some memory, and attach it. I've always been like, if you put your body and face into the shape, you'll feel the thing that your body is in the shape of. So the way I set characters is with a stance and a facial expression. So if I get into a certain position and hold my face a certain way, that voice just comes out because that's what I have the character attached to. So I'm sure it looks bizarre to my sound editor and director when I'm in there doing a scene with a bunch of different people talking as I fold myself into different shapes and make these weird facial expressions, but it works.Jess: 21:30 That's really interesting. What that reminds me of - I was lucky enough to see Bradley Cooper play The Elephant Man. And at the very, very beginning, he walks out to the middle of the stage to center stage as just a guy, as Bradley Cooper. But he becomes the character by changing his body shape, that's how he does it. And he does it right in front of you so that you can see it happen. And it's a really cool thing. I think you should totally set up some videos so we can see what it looks like. .Joshilyn: 22:00 I would rather not see it myself. I don't want to feel self conscious about it because it works and maybe I don't want to see that.Jess: 22:10 Well, so the next question I have then is now that you do all this narration, do you hear your characters as you write them?Joshilyn: 22:19 I guess, but I always have. And I mean, the kind of stuff I'm talking about with setting voices, that takes a lot longer for a book I didn't write. For a book I did write, I know what these people sound like in my head and I just try to approximate that with the voice and the range that I have. Which you know, is getting harder as I get older. In another 10 years I probably won't have the vocal elasticity to do my side gig anymore. So I'm trying to do a few more because I love it. I'm doing a few more a year than I used to, just to be able to do it while I can. Because you really do need some good elasticity and I'm not willing to give up drinking or fried food entirely and coddle my vocal chords to try and get another five years out of them.Jess: 23:11 Can you tell ahead of time when a line is not going to work? KJ and I talked about this because we were lucky enough to be able to record our nonfiction books. And other friends and advisors have done the same - where you hit a line (and I used to be a speech writer as well) and I remember specifically I wrote a speech for a governor and we got to rehearsal with the prompter and there was just a line and he was like, 'This is never gonna come out right.' It's just not coming out of my mouth right. Do you ever hear that when you're writing or do you just not worry about that?Joshilyn: 23:44 I definitely it when I'm writing because I read aloud to myself as a writer. Like especially dialogue, I'll read it out loud while I'm writing. I mutter and talk while I'm writing. And if a paragraph doesn't sound right or I'm having trouble with it, I'll read it aloud and sometimes I edit aloud. I'll just change it mid-sentence to make it sound better and then just write down what I heard myself say.Jess: 24:12 I will say, over my 20 years as an English teacher, I have told my students over and over and over again, if you want really good editing, if you would like to really get your paper clean, you've got to read it out loud.Joshilyn: 24:24 So smart. And just speaking as an audio book reader, as a person who reads them aloud, and I listen to them obsessively. You can tell the people who don't read their work aloud from the people who do. Not that it's that huge of a difference where now the book's not good or anything like that. But like people who read them aloud have so much less unintentional, internal rhyme. When you're just looking at words, you can write a sentence like Mike took the bike down the street with his friend Rike and they ate a pipe. You don't hear it cause it's visual and you don't see it. But then when you were listening to an audio book, I'll hear a string of rhymes and I'll be like, 'That person did not read their book out loud.'Jess: 25:07 Well, and actually when we interviewed Steven Strogatz about his book that just came out recently about calculus that's just beautiful. He said that he dictates when he writes and he found his last line of his book because of the rhythm, cause he was walking at the time. And so that rhythm then made it into his writing because it was spoken in the first place and not because it was just his fingers dancing across the keyboard. So I find it fascinating. And Sarina Bowen also uses dictation software as well and our guest Karen Kolpe that we interviewed just recently also uses dictation software. So, I'm always curious about the difference between dictation and just writing with your hands and being able to hear those things and how that changes your work. So that is fascinating to me. It had never occurred to me that maybe I would be writing in rhymes unintentionally.Joshilyn: 26:02 Yeah, I've never tried to use dictation software, but maybe I should because I listen so much. It's weird; I tried to be a playwright for a while and I'm not a very good playwright to be honest, because I'm not willing to leave that room. Like a play should be a framework where a director can come in and do things and then there's room for actors to come in and do things so that it's a different play every time. And I'm just obsessively (and I'm not saying I have control issues, but I have control issues) and writing a play, I've just always felt I was trying to lock stuff down and make it be the way it is in my head. And it felt like the whole front of my head would heat up. Whereas when I'm acting or when I'm writing a novel and I am in control of what I do, even though of course you're being reactive, I feel like it's coming from the occipital lobe. It feels like it comes from a different place in my brain.Jess: 27:08 That's so interesting. There was an interview a long time ago that I heard with Michael Ondaatje and he said he does not hear his work at all, he only sees it. And it's very difficult for me, I don't hear my work either. I do nonfiction though, so maybe it's different. But for me it's very visual and not sound related. So it's always fascinating to get into the head of someone who writes differently. Like I just don't hear it.Joshilyn: 27:34 Yeah, that's interesting. If I'm engaging it just in the terms of the visual, it's not going to get where I need it to be.Jess: 27:45 One of the things you did for for this most recent book (a central thing in this book is scuba diving) and this was something you had never done before, right?Joshilyn: 27:56 No, never.Jess: 27:59 So how did you even, not having had the experience, I just assumed when I listened to the book that Oh, that's something she does and isn't that cool? She knows what the words are, but how did you even know that was going to be a thing if you had never done it before?Joshilyn: 28:15 Amy was always a scuba diver, I wanted the metaphor. The ocean was so perfect for what I was doing in terms of like, (if you've ever dropped your sunglasses off a boat, you know the ocean can hide anything) you're never getting those back. In terms of being like this massive place where you can put things that you are just gone forever and also being kind of an entity with its own breath, so that your secrets are sort of housed in this living system. There were lots of metaphors that I wanted that scuba diving gave me and so I watched YouTube videos and did some interviews and I was like, I'm not getting this. I went to my husband and I said, 'Hey baby, it's about time for my midlife crisis and I need to learn to scuba dive for this book. I think my midlife crisis is going to be scuba diving. Would you like to have it with me?' He'd already had his midlife crisis - he learned to play the bass and joined a band. But he was like, 'Yeah, I'll do yours with you. That sounds really fun. If the other choice is an oiled cabana boy, I say scuba diving.' So we started diving and it really changed the book. I knew that Amy (Amy's my narrator, the protagonist, the scuba diving instructor), she's the one who has sort of the dark past and she's entirely reinvented herself. And you know, I wanted that baptismal imagery - go into the water, come up a different person. She's very self-destructive after she does this kind of terrible thing, she almost doesn't survive it. she has so much guilt. And then she sort of navigates her own understanding of grace and she reinvents herself and finds a life she can sustain. But I needed something to be the pivot that she uses to save herself. And I tried a bunch of different things and scuba diving was also in there. And then after I was diving, I was like, I don't need anything else. This is what saves her. Because it's so, it's like yoga plus plus - it is meditation, it is prayer, you cannot project into the future, you cannot worry about the past, it grounds you entirely in the present. You actually use your own breath. Like once you have a good technical ability to dive, once you've practiced enough and you're not fussing with your equipment all the time and you really understand how to get neutrally buoyant in the water, you actually change levels in the water and aim yourself just using your own breath. So it's your breath inside the ocean's breath. It is, it's also like super fun.Jess: 31:02 I loved the idea of someone finding freedom in an activity that many people would find completely claustrophobic and closed in. So there was something really interesting about scuba diving as a metaphor. (as I also scuba dive) Something that a lot of people wouldn't be able to bear because it would feel too close. For her, it's exactly that that gives her the freedom. I really loved that metaphor. Well, one of the things I wanted to say about this book - so KJ and I talk all the time about people's ability to a) stick the landing on books, and b) surprise us. Well, the surprise thing I can attest to because I was listening to it as I was before I went to sleep last night and I had headphones on and my husband was reading something else and I got really upset and I said, 'Oh, well, duh. I figured that out a while ago.' And then you totally tricked me, you completely messed with my head. I thought I was ahead of you and you were so ahead of me. And I love that. I mean, the ability to be surprised is huge, it's especially huge for me because there's so many books (KJ can attest to this) that I have thrown. I've joked about throwing books across the room because I get so angry at formulas that make me feel dumb as a reader. And you made me feel like - you had me.Joshilyn: 34:45 Oh good. I'm glad I enjoy a plot twist.KJ: 34:49 How much of that do you set up ahead of time and how has that evolved over the course of nine books?Joshilyn: 34:59 So this was my first book that is really leaning hard into domestic noir.KJ: 35:05 I would agree that this is twistier, and I can actually only go back to The Almost Sisters, but that one's pretty twisty, too.Joshilyn: 35:15 Yeah. I always use the engine of a murder mystery or a thriller (sometimes to greater degrees than others) plot twists because I enjoy it. But, really the only thing that's changed in terms of genre is the stakes and the pacing. The stakes are super high, I don't know how to explain it, it really is just about stakes raising. It's still my voice, my kinds of fierce, female characters who act instead of reacting, my thematic things I'm always interested in, you know, I'm always writing about redemption and motherhood. So, I would agree with you. But for me, the plot is the thing that comes last. The plot is the cookie. I understand what I want to address thematically very, very well. I understand these characters down to their bones. Sometimes I think about characters for years before I write them. I've been thinking about Rue and for a vehicle to write Rue for more than seven years and she was a hard person to place because she's difficult. You wouldn't want a place in your life. She's a nightmare, but she's a very interesting nightmare. So, I know the characters, I know the stakes, I know the themes, and the plot is the cookie. I try to play fair, too. Like something will happen and it'll really surprise me and then I go back and edit and put in clues and foreshadowing and I'm good at it. I have a facility for this. I think as writers, we all have things that we're good at and things that we really struggle with. I'm good at crafting those kind of plot twists. That's the thing that comes easily to me, because it's fun and I'm surprising myself, too. And I try to play fair so that at least some readers will catch onto what I'm doing. Or if you go back and read it a second time, you're like, 'Oh, right there. She practically tells me right there.' But you slide it into these little moments where you're describing a car and nobody's paying attention or you know, there's all kinds of tricks you can do to misdirect. It's like a magician's sleight of hand with coins. They do everything, they just got you looking at the wrong place when they do the thing.KJ: 37:35 I'm at the stage of a revision where I have a list of about six things that I just need to go back and make sure are properly set up. And it doesn't take that much, you know? I did read something recently where a character very suddenly took a turn that I really was like, 'What, what?' There was like one warning of this and none of the warning came from the character. So it yanked me, and you have to find that line where you've given people enough preparation that they aren't pulled out of the story by wait a minute, is this consistent with what happened before?Joshilyn: 38:22 Flannery O'Connor says you have to get to an end that feels inevitable, yet surprising. And I love her.Jess: 38:36 It's so funny you guys are saying that about fiction because that's what I'm working on right now. Even in nonfiction where I have two chapters and they're sort of two chapters that really go together and one was submitted with my proposal, so I wrote that a long time ago. And then the other one I just finished. So I have them now side by side because I need to plant seeds for one in the other, in order for the reader to be led a bit down a path and for things to at least feel like I've prepared them a little bit for what's coming next. And I love that part of the process. I love it. You know, with nonfiction it's not really about hints, but it is, it is anyway, it's narrative hinting, even though it's nonfiction. I love that.Joshilyn: 39:23 Yeah. I think that's really actually cool that that translates into nonfiction. That's really interesting.KJ: 39:33 If there aren't a bunch of through lines, then you just get a bunch of different stories.Jess: 39:47 Well, and it's funny that you were talking about hearing and I said I don't hear my work, but that's actually not true because I always try to end on a major chord. You know, there's that sort of resolution to a major chord at the end where your reader can go, 'Ah, okay. Yeah, it feels good.' And so I do hear that little bit. I try to come back to a major chord at the end of a chapter so that I leave my reader feeling at least not like they're, you know, hanging there on a dissonant note and that I've just dumped them off the edge. So there is a little bit of sound there.KJ: 40:20 Let's hope we've left our listeners on a major chord at this point. It's think it's time to shift gears and talk about what we've been reading.Jess: 40:32 Please share with us - you first.Joshilyn: 40:35 I always have a book and an audio book going. And can I do a little commercial for Libro FM? So the way I get my audio books is through a service called Libro FM, which it's just like any other subscription service. You know, you get a credit every month, and your credits never expire, and it costs exactly the same, but it benefits your local independent book seller. You choose the store you want to shop through. So of course I'm all over that. So I was listening to Gretchen by Shannon Kirk and this is some next level WTF. Like I loved this book. It is so smart. Like I don't even know if it's a thriller, it verges on horror. But, then I loved the character so much and the character of Gretchen - I dream about, it's really good. It's about a young woman who's on the run with her mother and they have hidden identities and they move into this little shack. And then they have to leave and they're on the run again. And the girl next door is named Gretchen and she finds herself involved in this (puzzles are a big metaphor) game with Gretchen that has these very far reaching consequences.Jess: 42:02 I'm on their website right now getting this book, I'm so excited.Joshilyn: 42:08 And then the book I just finished reading with my eyes is called The Better Liar by Tanen Jones. It doesn't come out till January. Here's what I liked about it - it's a thriller, it's suspense, which I really like, but it's fun. Like the plot is fun and twisty and sinister, but she's doing something so smart and so emotionally resonant just under the surface. I went to it for like a fun, twisty read and it is - I got that. But at the end I was not just like, 'Whoa, what the twists.' I was like, 'Whoa, Holy crap.' There was an emotional surprise. It's about a woman who has to appear with her, estranged sister to claim her inheritance and she has reasons for needing the money. And when she goes to find her sister (who's a troubled person) she finds her body, but she meets somebody else who looks like her sister, but who has secrets of her own, and they go to try and claim this inheritance. It is great.Jess: 43:26 Oh, that is a great premise. I'm going to have to buy that one, too.Joshilyn: 43:32 I just finished both of those and I just started Lady in the Lake by Laura Lippman and it's great so far, which is completely unsurprising because I've never read a Laura Lippman book and gone, 'Oh well that was disappointing.' She's so good and I'm loving it so far.Jess: 43:49 Okay. KJ, you're up. What have you been reading?KJ: 43:52 I have not been reading anything, to be honest. I'm in the middle of something that I like, but I'll wait until we finish it. I'm in the middle of Range by David Epstein, which we've talked about before. I'm rereading, I'm doing a lot of rereading right now. I have a list of like fresh books I read this year and I was thinking I should make a list of books I actually reread, too.Jess: 44:17 I have been joking around on our text trio that I have been (because my brain is so occupied right now with getting to my deadline and this book) that I've been doing a lot of re-listening. And my re-listening choices have been Sarina Bowen books. And so every once in awhile I'll text Sarina with some observation about some characters she wrote like eight years ago. And it's just really comforting.KJ: 44:46 It occurs to me that I did forget to mention that I might have just read a book called Never Have I Ever by Joshilyn Jackson.Jess: 44:57 I was just about to say that exact thing.KJ: 44:59 So, I did just read an entire novel. Which normally would've been what I put on #AmReading. And it is great, and it is twisty, and it is turny, and it is satisfying, it's really satisfying.Jess: 45:16 I really, really love it. And while I have you, I do have to ask you one quick question, Joshilyn, did the title come first or did the premise come first?Joshilyn: 45:25 The premise came first. In fact, I had almost finished the book with a completely different title that I don't remember, it wasn't a great title. And my friend Sarah Gruin was like, 'Why aren't you calling this Never Have I Ever? I was like, 'Oh, I don't know. You're so right. That's obviously the title. Nevermind.'Jess: 45:48 I love that because ever since I started the book that was kind of one of my first questions. I wrote it on the inside flap - which came first, the cover or the title or the premise - because it's great. Both of them are great. I also have been listening to Emily Nussbaum, who's the television critic at the New Yorker. She has a book called I Like To Watch and it's all about being a television critic, which is something I don't think I would do, but I'm fascinated by the job. I'm fascinated that the job exists and I'm a huge fan of Emily Nussbaum to begin with. So I'm loving this and this is a book that you can read in chunks because it's sorta like essay, more essay format. And it's really lovely, which is not surprising because Emily Nussbaum is a lovely writer, so I recommend that so far, I'm not done with it either. Alright. An independent bookseller?Joshilyn: 46:42 I live in Decatur, Georgia and we have so many Indies. They're my favorite things to visit when I travel. I live like four blocks from EagleEye, so that's my walk up and get a book independent. And then down on the square there's a store called Little Shop of Stories, which is a kid's shop. It's like an independent that just sells children books and a lot of YA, but they have

Intercepted Imperial Transmissions: S2:E18

Intercepted Imperial Transmissions

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 19, 2019 69:52

Some people call me the Dark Knight yeah Some call me the Terror of the Night Some people call me Bruce 'Cause I speak of the pompitous of love People talk about me baby Say I'm doin' Joker wrong, doin' Harvey wrong Well don't you worry baby, don't worry 'Cause I'm right here at home 'Cause I'm a Playboy I'm a Gansta I'm a lover And I'm a sinner Playin' with my goofy ward in the sun I know a Joker I know a Freezer I know a Penguin, he’s a smoothy Gets his lovin' on the run Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh!

star wars terror batman joker penguin scientist ooh dark knight say i'm cause i'm playin

3.2 - Life Lessons from the FIREMAN - Mr. Wind Hoffstedder

Brad Johnson Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2019 24:12

You know I'm a professional when I can SAVE an episode like this that started off like it sounded like it was going to be really lame and then it WASN'T!!! Wind Hoffstedder - the FIREMAN (and no, not THAT kind of fireman, the COOL kind of fireman!) has some life lessons to teach you. Are you ready to learn? Get ready! Cause I'm pulling gold nuggets out of this guys head like they're going out of style. Which they're not. Because gold never goes out of style. Just like paying for QUALITY email via AOL. BIG NEWS - the Brad Johnson Show COURSE IS HAPPENING! Be the first to hear about it by signing up for the pre-launch list HERE! Do it now - spaces are limited. Plus you just might get something special;) Get in touch - Book your Face @bradjohnsonshow Tweet your Tweets @bradjohnsonshow and Insta your Grams @bradjohnsonshow Bradjohnsonshow.website --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/brad-johnson-show/support

book tweet aol tweets big news fireman cause i'm

Understanding and Buying Holiday Travel Insurance

Adventure Travel Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 12, 2019 52:37

Understanding and Buying Holiday Travel Insurance Learn the nuances of buying travel insurance so you're actually covered for unforeseen accidents, delays, sickness, theft and more. Many claims are denied because people don't understand their policy. Don't make that mistake and learn what to buy. Why Buy Travel Insurance? You buy holiday insurance to help mitigate some of the lossesyou face when your holiday doesn’t go as planned, especially through no fault of your own. Without insurance, you can be out a significant amount of cash for bookings you are no longer able to use. Americans now spend close to $3 billion a year on travel insurance, and that’s up almost 20%! I buy holiday travel insurance for every trip I take. To me, it’s a small price to pay for piece of mind in case something goes wrong, plus I have 24 hour assistancewhen something does go wrong. It's super important to UNDERSTAND what travel insurance is and the types of things it can cover. It doesn't cover 'stupid' or negligence like being under the influence. And it's only to try to make you 'whole' not compensate you for your loss. So in an approved claim, you in effect, get back the money it cost you had the unfortunate event not taken place. In this podcast episode, I get to better understand travel insurance in my interview with Phil Sylvester of World Nomads. Links Mentioned: Active Travel Adventures podcast World Nomads Insurance quote Costa Rica podcast episode Tanzania safari podcast(Mickey faceplant!) The Best Travel insurance can cover things: Before your trip: You or an immediate family member gets sick or dies Your tour or cruise gets cancelled (in fact this just happened to me after I already bought my expensive plane tickets and some non-refundable Airbnb’s before and after my tour) Your flight gets delayed During Your trip: Your bags get lost, damaged or stolen You miss your connections due to other delays Something you booked gets cancelled You get sick or injured (or worse) Your destination experiences a natural disaster or terrorist attack HOW TO FILE A TRAVEL INSURANCE CLAIM Before you go: Put in the cloud a copy of your travel insurance policy. Make sure you know the 24 hour Assistance Contact number and your policy number. READ YOUR POLICYduring the grace periodto make sure that it will cover the risks you don't want to assume. Please don't ignore this! Something happened...What Do I Do? You will need to call the Assistance Hotline and have this information available: Your current contact phone number Your policy number Be able to describe the problem Be able to tell them your location World Nomads is my 'Go To' insurance company when I travel for an adventure because they "GET" adventure! Virtually every adventure I cover on our companion Active Travel Adventures podcast is automatically included in their standard policy - unlike many travel insurance policies! If you use my links you'll be helping to support the show - at NO additional cost to you -Thanks! Kit Not all companies cover all problems that can happen before and after your trip. Before purchasing any travel insurance policy, you should understand how the policy will help you if these events occur: MEDICAL NEEDS What if I get sick or hurt BEFORE my trip? If you or an immediate family member gets seriously sick or dies and you need to cancel or delay your trip, your travel insurance can kick in. Note that if these same loved ones get sick or dies while you’re traveling, you are also usually covered to get back home where you are needed. For you, you would need a doctor’s certification that you are unfit to travel or you, your travel buddy or immediate family member be hospitalized , or God forbid, dies. What about dental? If you have sudden dental emergencies, like an infection or an accident that breaks your jaw, these are the kinds of things most policies will cover. But they will deny getting that crown you wanted. It covers sudden changes to what were healthy teeth for things that can’t wait until you get home. What if I get sick or hurt ON my trip? Travel insurance is NOT health insurance, so most policies do not cover pre-existing conditions. If you have a pre-existing condition, then be doubly sure to read your policy. Some policies will allow for pre-existing conditions if purchased far enough in advance. But if you get hit by a tuk tuk in Bangkok or get Dengue Fever in Brazil, this is when you’ll be glad to have travel medical coverage. This kind of coverage takes care of in and out patient medical care, prescriptions, ambulances, etc. It won’t however cover you for stupidity like getting drunk and passing out on the street to then get hit by said tuk tuk. It will get you healthy enough to travel so that you can either finish your trip or get back home to where your regular medical insurance will kick in. Also super important: make sure that the activities that you are planning to do are covered under your policy. Many travel insurance policies do not cover adventures. That is one reason I recommend my affiliate partner World Nomads. They understand adventure and virtually everything I cover on the Active Travel Adventures podcast is automatically included with their policies. If you get sick or hurt and are in such bad shape that you need to get home NOW, then you will be glad you have: Emergency Medical Repatriation If you get so sick or injured that you cannot continue with your trip, you may require emergency medical evacuation, which can cost over $300,000 -- Ouch! But if you’re in a country that doesn’t have shall we say, the most advanced medical care and hospital system, you want to buy travel insurance from a company that will get you out of there and into the hands of quality doctors and facilities pronto. You want a company whose medical team can decide whether to help rearrange your trip to accommodate fixing your problem or figure out the best way to get you out of there, whether by ground ambulance, air ambulance, sea level aircraft, helicopter evacuation, flight changes and upgrades with medical staff if need be. But what happens in a truly worst case scenario: What if I die on my trip? Look over your policy to see if it will cover bringing your body home. Some will pay for the local burial or cremation. Some will pay for the cremains to come home, some with some without a loved one as escort. Choose your policy based on what you want covered here. Note also that suicide or deaths caused by alcohol or drug abuse will not be covered. Most policies will also exclude pre-existing conditions. If one of your immediate family members dies while you’re on your trip, this is usually covered. PERSONAL BELONGINGS What about my stuff? How does travel insurance cover my belongings? Baggage: Delays: Most policies cover getting some necessary items if your bags are delayed for a certain period of time. This will include things like necessary toiletries, perhaps a jacket. Lost: The carrier has lost your bags. Most policies cover a specific amount of loss. If you have fancy electronics, jewelry or cameras, you may need a special rider. Also check with your homeowner’s insurance policy as you may have coverage there already. Likewise, some credit cards are now offering some travel insurance that can cover several of the items we are talking about today. Review your credit cards to see which offers the most comprehensive plan and then consider booking your trip with that card. Damaged by carrier. If the airline, for example, busts your bag roughly throwing it onto the carousel, this is usually covered. Stolen. Assuming you weren’t careless and forgot to get your bag off the bus, or you didn’t go to the restroom and leave your bag in the lounge, if your bags get stolen and you’ve taken reasonable precautions, stolen bags are usually covered. You must file a police report to file a claim. And before you buy a policy, make sure that the country you are living in AND the country you are traveling to are covered under your policy. I see that some do not cover Brazil, for example. OTHER PERSONAL BELONGINGS: Note also that most prescription drugsare covered if stolen. Stolen Passportsare often NOT covered, so check with your policy. I think it’s a good idea to take a photo of your passport and visa, and then email it to yourself and a loved one. I also keep a photocopy in my purse and suitcase. I’ve never had need to use them, but I’m sure if I do, I’ll be grateful for this foresite. If someone uses my passport fraudulently, my travel insurance company can also help me here. Credit Cards. If your credit card gets stolen, it’s not usually covered by your travel insurance policy, but your company’s hotline may be of some assistance. They MAY cover getting the new card to you. On the copy of your passport, write the last four digits of your credit card number and the toll free international or national number to reach customer service if you need their help. This is what you take a picture of and email to yourself. If your credit card gets stolen and you then don’t have another to continue your trip, this is not considered a trip interruption because you can devise a backup plan. There are limits for the total claim and for an individual item. Say $1000 total and maximum $500 for an item. So if only my $750 camera got stolen, I could only claim the $500. If you’ve got fancy stuff, consider getting a rider unless you are willing to absorb the excess loss. Motor Vehicle Accidents Your travel insurance policy probably WON'T cover the damage to your vehicle so MAKE SURE if you rent or drive a vehicle that either your normal auto insurance policy covers you WHERE you will be driving. Otherwise, you will need to purchase the very expensive optional insurance that the lender will offer. CHECK BEFORE YOU LEAVE SO YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO! So the bottom line is, your travel insurance should cover the medical costs of the accident, but not the physical damage to the car. CAVEAT: You MUST be driving with a valid license for that country (which may mean an international license) AND not be under the influence or otherwise breaking any laws. COUNTRY ISSUES What if there’s a natural disaster? In April 2015, there was a massive earthquake in Nepal, killing over 9000 people. Most travel insurance policies will kick in to get you home after a disaster, but you need to examine your policy before you buy it, or during the free cancellation grace period afterwards. If you get hurt in the disaster, then the medical issues we already discussed kick in. If the airports or other transportation systems are shut down, or your accommodations get destroyed or your tour company cancels, this is where you’ll be glad that you have travel insurance coverage. A natural disaster is likely to kick in several components of your travel insurance policy from trip interruptions, delays and cancellations, to possibly some of the medical coverages. A good travel insurance company will have a 24 Hour Hotline to assist you in making arrangements to help solve your crisis. Note that if a major typhoon is forecasted to hit the Phillipines next week, and you decide to book a trip there during this time, that clause would be excluded because the natural disaster was a known entity. However, if you booked your trip three months earlier, they could not forecast that particular typhoon. Your policy will usually cover you if you follow the advice of authorities. So that could mean cancel the trip if they are advising evacuation, but no insurance kick in if they do not. Also, if the authorities advise evacuating , but you decide to watch the storm and then get hurt, you’re going to get denied. In a similar vein, let’s talk about terrorism. Terrorism There are limits to the terrorism clauses, but if the even is unforeseen, as most terrorist attacks are, then whatever medical or interruption clauses that might be triggered provided you did not book your trip AFTER the terrorist event. You can’t utilize this clause if you simply get nervous about traveling some place and want to back out of the trip. Authorities would have to recommend that people no longer advise visiting a place for the trip cancellation or interruption to kick in. I had assumed, wrongfully, that when I purchased my travel insurance for my upcoming Middle East trip, that if the terrorist threat increased, that my insurance would kick in. NOT! There would have to be a serious incident in the places that I am going for me to utilize this clause. Bottom line is you need to really READ YOUR POLICY during the grace period. Bottom line is you need to really READ YOUR POLICY during the grace period. Lots of claims get deniedbecause people are not following the policy guidelines or terms. For example, again on my Mid East trip, my trip expanded from my original tour. My policy requires me to be covered from door to door from my house. So the first policy I paid for is null and void because I am now traveling both before and after. So I learned my lesson. Completely plan my trip BEFORE i buy a policy. Certain companies have guidelines as to WHEN a policy must be purchasedrelative to the date of the first deposit. If you have an expensive trip in mind, it doesn’t hurt to poke around the insurance website ahead of time to see what the purchasing time windows are. Then one you’ve planned your trip, add up the NON-REFUNDABLE PORTIONS. Some things like many hotel rooms you can cancel, right? So don’t include those. Tally up how much you would be out of pocket if you have to cancel your trip. That’s how much to get the quote for. Travel Insurance companies calculate rates based on the following: Total cost of the non-refundable parts of the trip Your country of home residence Your destination or destinations. If you are going several places, generally they want you to list the furthest, but double check so that you are following the rules. It is worth the call to find out. On my upcoming trip, even though I will be spending the most time in the US, the furthest country is Jordan, so I was instructed to input Jordan. I noticed my rate quote was the same, however, I didn’t want them to have any loophole to squiggle out of if I have a claim. Your age. The older you are the higher the cost. Your pre-existing conditions, especially if you want to cover them. If you have pre-existing conditions, it pays to shop around. Some will allow coverage if bought far enough in advance. How comprehensive you want your policy to be. Are you adding pre-existing conditions, a jewelry or electronics rider? If you are going on an adventure, is your activity covered or do you need a special rider? What about other insurances? Credit Cards. As mentioned, some offer a skeleton coverage of certain items listed above. It doesn’t hurt to use a credit card that offers some travel insurance, but I don’t think it’s a good substitute for a comprehensive policy. Travel Agent or Airline coverage: When you check out, often you’ll be asked to get travel insurance to cover your purchase. This will only cover the ticket you just purchased. If I am traveling domestically and think that it will be pricey if I have to go home unexpectedly because of Mom, I might buy it, but I usually still prefer the comprehensive policy. Also keep in mind that some agents will sell you a cruise cancellation policy. This technically is NOT an insurance policy. I still say, stick with a comprehensive policy. How to Choose Which Travel Insurance and Get a Travel Insurance Quote I recommend World Nomadsbecause they understand adventure and they have a real person review all claims, instead of a machine. Their policy basically, as it should, requires that you use common sense and don’t be stupid or do stupid things. And if you’re head is on straight, they are there to help you out when something goes wrong. Your goal is not to make a profit off of your claim, just to not be out of pocket. I find them affordable and are usually my go to. They do have policy limits that mean I can’t always use them (like my really long and expensive Mid-East trip), but they are my general ‘go to’ insurance company. If you use my link, you can get a quick travel insurance quote and at no additional cost to you, you’ll be helping to support the show. If I can’t use them, then I use: InsureMyTrip.com I like this website because I can easily compare travel insurance policies and then pick the right policy for a particular trip and my risk tolerance for that trip. They also have a third person advocate, so if you get denied a claim you feel should have been honored, they can step in and take a look and possibly help. Whichever method you use, I find it easiest to buy my travel insurance online. CAUTIONS: Cheap travel insurance may not be good travel insurance. READ THE POLICY. You get a grace period for several days up to two weeks. During that time, you can review the policy to see if it is the right fit for you. If you see that you missed something, you can cancel and get your money back so you can find a better policy. You are most likely going to have to upfront a lot of the expensesand then get reimbursed. I would recommend bringing a credit card with a high limit in case of an emergency. Otherwise come up with a back up plan (ie, a family friend or relative that may be able to front you some cash). Complete Transcript Note: This is a machine trasncript bound to be full of boo boo's. I provide it (unedited) so that those taht prefer to read rather than listen to the show have the means to do so. I apologize for any errors:) Kit: (00:00) Okay. Kit: (00:02) Six months before my husband passed away. Kit: (00:06) Okay. Kit: (00:06) We were sitting in our office and our desperate right next to each other and bill was in remission and somebody had called me to ask me do something. This is in November, asked me if I wanted to do something the following June. And I said, no, I couldn't really plan cause I didn't know what bill's health had been like because his cancer had come back twice already. And so I was just kind of keeping things in limbo. When I hung up, he said, listen kid, I'm feeling good right now. Why don't you go take a trip? All I'm feeling good. And after a couple of years of medical and the stress of bills, cancer and just all the drama and the rentals weren't doing that well. And so anyway, I said, that sounds really sweet. I said, I have always wanted to go to Africa. I knew that would be some place but with never want to go. Kit: (00:47) He said, well go if you can find somebody to go with you. So I emailed my girlfriend Mickey. I said, Hey Mickey, do you want to go to Africa and go to safari within 15 minutes? She emails back. Yeah, let's go. So here we are November and we decided we're going to go on a safari in January. So we ended up driving to Washington d C to get our visa because we didn't trust mailing our passport there and getting it back in time in case there's a snafu because at the time was so short, had another story for another day about the Snafu that happened on the way to the DC. But anyway, so we finally, we go off on our adventure. We head to Turkey for a few days to kind of recoup a little bit of the jet lag before we head into Tanzania. We land at like two o'clock in the morning as all the flights seem to, or picked up by a tour company who takes us to this nice little eco lodge that we're supposed to sleep for a couple of hours, get up, have breakfast and go out in the safari. Kit: (01:38) Everything's great. We've got this cute little room. It's got the mosquito netting. It's kind of cute. Nothing fancy, but it's nice. We sleep maybe two or three hours, get cleaned up. We're walking down this dirt path on the way to where the restaurant area was in the lodge and single file path and all of a sudden I hear Mickey Stumble and I turn around and she does a face plant and just smooshes her face in. So we are in this backwoods area and she's just bleeding and her nose is smooshed and we can't even use the water from the faucet cause it's not sterile enough. So we had to use bottled water, try to clean it and the people at the lodge couldn't have been any nicer, but we just, they just didn't have the, the medical facilities there. Finally we get the doctor and the doctor actually recommended that she be flown to Kenya for treatment and she's like, no, no, no. Kit: (02:32) I just want the stitches and the doctor does it. Everything's fine, no infection. But he doesn't let her go out into the Bush on the safari because of the risk of infection. She'd be too far away from medical care. So she ends up having to spend the entire five day safari time at that lodge, which in hindsight turned out to be a good thing for her because a, she ends up making friends and family members out of everybody she meets and she still keeps up with all those folks this many years later. But B, turns out also that she gets car sick and 70 something years old needs to use the restroom a lot. Not a good combination when you're in a jeep and a safari bumbling around on, on rocky rutted roads. So anyway, end up being a blessing and thank God that she bought the travel insurance even though it took a while to get all the paperwork and all that. Eventually she was reimbursed for the expenses. So today we're going to be talking about travel insurance and I've got an expert on travel insurance and travel safety with us from world nomads and we're going to learn all the ins and outs of travel insurance, what to look out for, what you should be looking for. And without further ado, let's get started. Kit: (03:43) Welcome to the adventure travel show podcast. I'm your host kid parks. Today we're chatting with Phil Sir Vester from world nomads, the company I now buy my travel insurance from. And in full disclosure is also an affiliate of active travel adventures and the adventure travel show. So Phil is a travel safety expert for world nomads out of Australia and he's here today to answer all of our questions about travel insurance. Bill, welcome to the program. Phil: (04:08) Thanks very much for having me. Kit: (04:10) I know people are gonna think travel insurance sounds kind of dry, so let's get people off with a good start and let's tell them some fun stories to show them. This is going to be a fun show. Tell me your favorite happy ending travel insurance story. Phil: (04:23) Oh, we have so many. Oh, okay. Here's one. There was a Florida guy and he was doing base jumping in Switzerland, would you believe? And ended up hanging on a rock ledge quite a way off the ground and was quite badly injured. He got rescued and we got him back home to Florida and because of his head injury it had to be a low altitude flight. You can't just put them on a regular commercial plane, but we got him home and he made a full recovery. So, you know, that was very expensive for us, but it was a great outcome for him. The downside of it is we don't have a base jumping anymore. Kit: (05:01) And one reason I, I should note, the reason I switched to world nomads from my previous carrier is because I cover adventure travel and I didn't realize a lot of the things I was doing wasn't covered under regular policies. Phil: (05:13) Yeah, yeah. Look, we've got, ah, you know, I think it's about of, uh, over a hundred, nearly 200 adventure activities that we will cover. And generally they're ones that are not covered by other people as well. But you know, there are certain things that we don't cover. You know, like if you wingsuit flying or as we'd like to call it plummeting, uh, you know, it's not going to be covered. Kit: (05:37) Oh, I've seen video of that. Yeah. Now that's pretty cool. It was crazy. We don't cover anything that the bar is set, so I've got to be able to do it. And I'm 58 years old and I'm only in reasonable shape. I'm not like a super athlete, so for the most part we just do hiking, biking, paddling, nothing too crazy or too adrenaline kind of stuff. Yeah, so I bet you you also have some pretty interesting, weird stories Phil: (05:58) of just like freaky things. Can you tell us one of those and then we'll get into some of the nitty gritty? Okay. We've had three broken penises. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I'll explain this. All right. Just stick with me. Okay. Where are your tone joins the bottom of your mouth? There's that little bit of skin there that sort of, you know, little, yeah, that's a frenulum. All right. Men have got to, yes, the other ones down there, if you tear that it plays a lot and there is an operation that you need to reattach it. It's called [inaudible] to me. I see. And we've had that come up with three times. People that have been away on holiday and they've been having some, you know, some wee time with their partner and something's happened and it's got torn. Kit: (06:46) That's a different kind of adventure than what we cover on this show. However. Phil: (06:50) Yeah. Okay. Uh, okay. Yeah, let's hear it. Few years ago there was a, a customer traveling in India and noticed he had an insect bite and it was getting, you know, kind of itchy and whatever. And then he noticed that it was actually moving underneath there and something that laid its eggs under his skin. So he went to the doctor and the doctor said, go buy a piece of mate and strap it to your lake because the lava inside the maggots inside will be attracted to the role made on the outside, not the inside. And they did, they all lift his leg and went into the meat and he threw it away. We paid for the doctor's appointment, but he had to buy the piece of meat himself. Kit: (07:29) Well that one seems like you came out pretty good on that one. Phil: (07:32) [inaudible] Kit: (07:34) so let's, let's, let's talk a little bit about why should people buy travel insurance? Just to like a, a brief thing. Cause I'm gonna ask you some more detailed questions, but just kind of give us a synopsis of what should be going through our heads when we say, oh, we've got this great trip. Why should we cough up a little extra money? Phil: (07:48) Because there are always unexpected things that happen that mean that you're not able to go on the trip or continue the trip or I have to end it early and these are things that people are just not planning for. I mean who would know a volcano would go off in Iceland and ground or flights in Europe who would know that you know you're going to get hit by a BMO when you're crossing the road in Indonesia, who would know if a close family member is going to be suddenly very ill, which means you have to stay home. These things you can't plan for it. You don't know they are unforeseen. And this is what travel insurance is there for, to make sure that you don't end up out of pocket and don't forget. And travel insurance, it's insurance, it's not compensation. So it's going to make sure that you end up financially where you were if that thing had not happened, but it's not going to compensate you for a bad experience. Kit: (08:42) Right, right. And actually the reason that you just brought up about the a loved one or something, that's the main reason that I started buying travel insurance is I have elderly parents now, it's just an elderly mother. But at 93 and a half years old I that I might get the call one day. I travel so much that I need to go home instantly and they stick it to you at the airfares. And some of them, the tours I do are extraordinarily expensive and I just don't want to be out that much cash. Phil: (09:07) Yep. Yep. Well every sensible willed out. Kit: (09:10) So let's, let's talk about, that's one of the key things that most policies covered and that's trip cancellation. So I'm going to ask you about a couple of different things that I know of about trip cancellation. You can tell me a little bit about what are the kinds of things we need to be looking at. One of which is like natural disasters. You talked about the Iceland and weather things like who decides how bad is a disaster and how does all that work? Phil: (09:32) Well it varies a little bit. I mean it's pretty obvious with the volcano cause when it goes bang, that's it. You know an earthquake, same thing but a a natural disaster. If you, if you check out like the State Department's travel section, they will put up warnings about when things, you know, when they advise you not to travel to a destination. That's a big key factor. The British Foreign Office also do those warnings as does the Australian Foreign Office defect. So we kind of take that is you know the Bible basic. If they say to their citizens, don't go here, then you are not, you can't travel against the adviser. View of the old covenant h case is judged on its merits as well. We have underwriting teams everywhere and they will look at events and they'll go, well this has happened. How has that kind of impact our travelers? And so they will, you know, we're, we're constantly monitoring things that happen around the world. Phil: (10:27) But basically if it works this way, if the, if there's been, you know, some sort of incident in the place that you're going, if the planes are still flying there, if the hotel still open and you know, the roads are still open, you're going. But if any of those things are not happening, you know, like you can't get to it. The roads blocked. The hotel has been forced to close. The tour has had to be canceled because of this incident or you know, there's no, no flights going in and out of the destination, then that's the taste. Kit: (11:00) All right, let's, let's take that a step further with terrorism, which is unfortunately something we have to deal with these days at the State Department, let's say, uh, I'm actually this fall going to several places that are a level two, which it's advise a little bit more caution than the level one. If the State Department moves at two a level three does that kick in the insurance because now it's more advisedly not to go what is level three? So I think it's four levels. So level three is saying, Eh, not a good idea. Like Nicaragua right now is a level three and that they're almost in civil war. Phil: (11:33) Yeah, no you're good for level three but you know, don't go near any of the protests in the streets of Managua. But you know, if there's no advice, no level four advice, then you, yeah, you can use the travel insurance has not yet been cut off. Kit: (11:48) And then now on the the death or a serious illness of a loved one, what are the parameters? Who defines loved one? Phil: (11:55) Look, it is actually defined in the policy wording in the PDS. So yet somebody asked us, we did get a question, somebody said my dog died. Does that count as a close family member? We're really sorry and we understand how you feel about your dog. But no. Yeah, it's generally siblings, parents in laws, but it probably wouldn't extend to cousins. But again, every case is judged on its merits. I mean, if you're sharing your life and you're living in the same house as a cousin and it's a cousin that dies, then we'll, we'll say to that, Kit: (12:31) okay, that actually sounds pretty fair at fair than I would've thought. Um, how about, and then sometimes there's coverage for layoffs if you get laid off and now all of a sudden cash could be a problem. Is that typical or is that something you need to look for? Phil: (12:43) Okay. It does happen. The amend, the one of the other providers as we've got [inaudible] policies for US citizens is if you get called up for military service or you get called up for jury duty or if the business that you work for goes into liquidation, you know, it goes bankrupt and you're required to be there to help clean up and things like that. So there's a lot of reasons why you can cancel around those sorts of areas. Kit: (13:08) Yeah. It sounds like you're actually using some judgment calls, which is nice cause it sounds like it's some of the things that are above and beyond what, what you read in the actual policy. Cause I've looked at the website kind of extensively. So you've talked about the weather and then also if you miss a flight or a connection through no fault of your own. How's all that work? Phil: (13:27) Okay. This is complicated. If you, which lots of us do because you know we'd like to book our own trips and our own flights. If you book a flight from destination to destination B, stop over it with the intention of going to destination C and you book airline number one for a and B, but you book airline number two for B and c and you miss the connection. That's your fault. That's your problem. You didn't allow enough time to be able to make the connection. Whereas if you had booked from a to B to c with airline one the whole way through, it's their responsibility to get you to see. So if you're held up or delayed or your missy connection in destination B, they will sort it out for you and they will put you on the next flight. But in the first scenario where you've got two different airlines as far as airline two's concerned, when you just don't show up, they don't know where you've come from, they don't know you've got a connecting flight, you just haven't showed up. And airline one has, when they eventually get you to destination B, they fulfilled their commitment to you. So it's your fault for not allowing enough time to make the connection in between. So don't leave it a couple of hours if it's really important that do it. Stop over, have a day in the, in destination B. Yeah, Kit: (14:43) that, that's actually happened to me and d was not covered. So I get that one. Now Phil: (14:48) we will book our own cheap flights and we like to make it up ourselves. Right. I get that. But just have to be aware that you leave enough time. Right. Right. Now what about the lost or delayed luggage? How's all that work? You obviously have got to report it as soon as you can at the airport. Always keep those baggage tickets. They stick on the back of your boarding pass varies from, cause I'll take it, you've got not just Americans listening and maybe it's some British people this, no, no actually we are. We're international and we have over a hundred countries. We've got like 13 different policies that cover people from around the world and the wording unfortunately slightly different in the mall. So generally though, if your luggage is delayed for more than 12 hours, in some cases it's only six hours, but you know it's like say 12 hours, check the policy wording, you can then go and spend and get some essentials to make it up. Phil: (15:41) That might mean that you need to go and get some new underwear. You need some toothpaste, you need, you know, some pajamas a you, it may be in a cold climate and you need a new jacket or something like that. You're entitled to go and get those up to a certain amount, which I think is around about $250 a day. And you can claim that back now if it's gone for more than 24 hours, I think there's 24 24 hours. If it's that and then it's considered completely lost, then it's basically as if it's been stolen and we'll pay out the maximum benefit that we've got for your luggage. Now let's switch gears to something that's, that can be really, really expensive and that's medical. So let's, let's talk a little bit about if somebody's got a preexisting condition. For example, a lot of our listeners are over, let's say over a certain age, over 60 a lot of people that we interview here, and they may have diabetes or they may have some heart conditions. Phil: (16:34) How does all that work? Again, with like I said, 13 different policies and different wordings and what have you said, check the policy in the world nomads policy for your country of residence. But there are some of those conditions which we do cover. But if it's not on the list of things we do cover, then we don't. And if you are traveling and something happens that is related to that condition, it won't be covered. So we are not necessarily the right policy for you cause not all policies are everything to everyone. So the reason you should read the policy wording is to make sure that it's right for your circumstances. So you, if you have a preexisting medical condition, you may need to go and choose a different provider who does on their own providers who have screening processes and they will say, yeah we'll cover you for that for an extra premium or no we're not going to cover you for that but we'll cover you for this whatever. We're not one of those because that just adds a layer of complication and slows things down. We are a different type of travel insurance and we might not be right for you. Okay. Now would that be something, do you know of going to like ensure my trip back calm would be a good resource to do that? Sure, Yep. I know of the brand in Australia that has a screening process, but I'm not aware of, I don't know. Kit: (17:49) I used them before I switched to you, but I don't remember them ever asking me about any preexisting conditions. So I guess the bottom line is to read your policy in check while you still have the grace period. That's going to be the only time you can get your money back. If it turns out you inadvertently bought a policy that's not suitable for you. Uh, how about if you have an accident or sudden illness or you eat something? Oh boy, you got sick. What do you do then and what kinds of things are covered there? Phil: (18:15) You have medical bills, so if you're overseas and new VOR, ill look, if it's a minor complaint, find an near clinic and get the medicines that you need and what have you and keep the bill that you get from the clinic and then submit that and you'll be reimbursed if it's a major incident and you're admitted to a hospital. Sadly, when you're admitted to the emergency department, as soon as they've stabilized you to make sure you're not going to die and they've stemmed the bleeding, one of the next people you will see will be somebody from the front office with a clipboard and they're going to be asking you how you're going to pay for this treatment. I'm serious. The person with the clipboard turns up and that's when you go, here's my world nomads policy number, give them a call and they will call our emergency assistance teams and we will swing into action there. Now our in house medical teams will liaise with the people treating you to make sure you're getting the best possible treatment. We will assess the hospital that you're in and decide if there's actually a better one nearby and if it's possible medically advised to move you to get the better quality care and we will pay the bills up front so you can concentrate on getting well rather than having to find your credit card in your wallet. Kit: (19:33) Right now when my girlfriend Mickey, we were in Tanzania and she had a really bad fall and they wanted to fly her to Kenya. She chose not to. Would that have been something when the locals are even saying you shouldn't get that treated here, you better go into the next country, you get better treatment. Is she a doctor? She's not. The doctors were saying exactly she adult number cause she's stubborn. The start ended well but if everybody's saying Eh, you know cause a lot of places we go to our go to may be a little dicey when it comes to the medical scene there. So Phil: (20:07) yeah call, call our emergency assistance team and no it shouldn't be called in emergency. It's like customer assistance team and traveler assistance team. Really like give them a call and say look this has happened. I've had a fall. The locals here and saying don't get this treated here. Go to Kenya. What do you advise we will, you know, you'll probably end up speaking to our in house nurse or our in house doctor who will make the best assessment they can over the phone. And then if it's decided that, yeah, okay, we can't tell from here, whatever, and you do need better treatments so it will get arranged and we'll get you somewhere where you're going to get quality care. And I got to say, if the locals are saying don't do it, I would whoa, Kit: (20:49) you hear that Mickey? Uh, it just, it's, it's so hard cause you know, you, you're so excited to go on your trip and we are walking to breakfast the morning of our safari and she just does this face plant and just smushed her face in and she's just, and she's also, you know, be fuddled and you know, just, it just wasn't what you're expecting that day and you know, surprises happen. And she was just being shook up and stubborn. She's like, no, I'll just go ahead and stitch me up here. So whatever. Like I said, it ended up working out fine, but it was a little traumatic morning. She's pretty tough then, right? Yeah, she's very tough. She's very tough lady, so she's pretty cool. Yeah. All right. So now let's say what, is there any kind of coverage amounts we should ask for or is this something that you have a choice on or how does all that work and any recommendations there? Okay. Phil: (21:41) In Australia, the United Kingdom, we're kind of used to travel insurance being the way it is through world nomad. But Americans are kind of used to a different type of insurance won't see you. This is the value, this is the cost of my trip, this is a value of my trip. And then you get charged and certain percentage of that of the cost as your premium at doesn't work that way. With world nomads, what determines the cost of your premium here is the maximum benefits payable. So you know there was a limit of say $1,500 on lost luggage. So that's the maximum benefit that you can claim and given. And then you go across all the other benefits against which you can claim that determines what the premium will be. So if you are going on a $500,000 trip to tens and year, your insurance premium determined by the, the better maximum benefit of Alpha will be saved. I don't know what it is. I'm making this up. Maybe you know a $150 if you're going on a $50,000 trip to Tanzania, it will still be $150 because of the maximum defined benefit that's payable. So you won't pay any more if you're going on a luxury trip as if you going backpacking somewhere. It's the same because it's defined by the maximum benefit possible. Kit: (22:59) Okay, so so it's so it looks like we need to look at the policy to see what the coverage limits are and if we see that there's a huge gap between what the coverage limits are versus our trip. And most of our trips aren't anywhere near those kinds of things. I've looked at your policies, everything that I've covered so far for the most part outside of maybe Kelly would fall within those ranges. But if you're doing some extraordinary luxury trip, you need to check that closely before you buy. Did I get that right? Phil: (23:26) January. The thing that happens most often is people have got really super duper expensive camera equipment and the maximum benefit for the leading camera is not going to replace it. You know, you might have a $5,000 camera and it's not going to be covered by our benefit limit, but in that case, people who've got big cameras that generally are a part of some sort of professional association or Semiprofessional Association and you know, or photography club or something like that. And those clubs generally will have insurance policies for their members to cover their equipment. So you make sure that your camera equipment is covered in some other way. The world nomads policy has got that equipment benefit level and if that's not sufficient, then you know, you should look at getting additional insurance to cover a specific item Kit: (24:14) and US citizens at Leisha check their homeowners policy because sometimes in particularly we have a rider, you may have coverage there. Phil: (24:20) Oh totally. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. A lot of home policies will cover it. Things like laptops and cameras when you take them out of that out of the house. Yeah. And they often have higher benefit limits than we do at world nomads. So you know, so you walk into breakfast in Tanzania and you fall and split your face open, but also smash your camera. We will do the medical stuff, but don't claim the camera from a, the camera damage without his claim. The camera damage with your other insurance Kit: (24:47) and when you buy something expensive, make a copy of the receipt because a lot of times your credit card company will offer some insurance because they figured we're going to forget all about it. So that's another little hidden insurance benefit that you may have and not even realize you have now also gets a little bit confusing with the insurance with the Schengen travel insurance in Europe. Can you explain a little bit about that? That whole thing was kind of new to me anyway. Phil: (25:10) You know, the USTA that you need to get into America, which is you have to apply for clearance for these at free entry. It's kind of like a visa to say you don't need a visa. Right. That's what's going to happen in Europe as well. You're gonna need to apply so that they can screen you beforehand to say that you're eligible for visa free entry. That's all that is. Kit: (25:32) I thought there's a requirement for travel insurance with that now too. Uh, Phil: (25:36) probably a requirement for medical insurance. So your travel insurance will cover that. Kit: (25:40) Oh, okay. That's probably what they're going after. Okay. All right. Yeah. So yeah, cause I understood that you had to show some kind of proof of insurance. Phil: (25:47) You've already got travel insurance, which includes medical, you see if you've only taken out trip insurance, so you have any cupboard, you know the flight that doesn't include medical, which is why travel insurance is as an all encompassing trip insurance, medical insurance, evacuation insurance as a combined product. That's why that's better to have because as you say, and you know you're going to have travel insurance anyway. Kit: (26:12) Right, right. And then also I read too that sometimes some travel agencies and cruise lines and all that, they'll push travel protection, which is quite different from travel insurance. Can you talk about that a little bit? Phil: (26:25) Yeah, that, that's like the trip detection. So what they are doing there is they are selling a product and you can buy it at a kiosk at airports in the United States you are offering insurance against the cost of that travel ticket so it doesn't cover anything else. It doesn't cover your medical costs. It probably doesn't cover loss of your baggage and what have you. But if the flight is delayed or the flight is canceled, then you can make a claim for insurance compensation thing that to cover your costs that you've lost. So it only covers one thing and they are making around about, I would suggest, I don't know for sure, but I reckon they're making about 50% commission on that insurance that they sell you. Kit: (27:07) Yeah, that's about what I read too. So, yeah, so it's not necessarily a good value. And, and people are getting confused between protection and insurance or what they have in their mind, what they're buying. Phil: (27:18) Correct. And they're using the word protection for that reason. Kit: (27:22) Is there any tips you can give us about how to not only just evaluate insurance policy, but also the company behind it? Because there's, you know, everybody's heard of the nightmares, oh, I bought insurance and they didn't pay anything and Blah, blah, blah. How we evaluate looking at a company Phil: (27:40) such a major, it's really great for that. Go onto the company's website, find their Facebook site, find that, see what people are saying, go on other travel forums, see what people are saying it as well. Because you know, read it is a great place to find information like that as well. It is such a heavily regulated industry worldwide that there are no dodgy operators. You're not going to buy insurance and it's not properly bad. It just doesn't happen. So you're pretty safe with going who maybe you choose with the product that they are offering, which is right for your circumstances. It's very, very, you're not, you're just not going to fond an insurance company that goes bankrupt. But their processes for handling claims about whether they are good at that or not, we'll be very, very clear on social media. But don't forget as well, lots of people get very upset on social media of like, oh, I paid all this money and they won't pay my claim. Phil: (28:34) There's not an entitlement to be paid for something. You actually have to play by the rules. And in lots of cases, people you know, have done things which are not covered. We had a case recently where a customer was upset, they got altitude sickness was, they were in Nepal and they were at 4,900 meters, but they had purchased a policy that only covers up to 4,600 meters and now it's only 300 meters and can, yeah, but you know, that's what the policy wording said. You know, that's the one you chose, but then you've done something different. You've just, so maybe you originally plan not to go above that altitude, but then suddenly you found a reason to, he could've called us up an upground new policy to get covered, but you didn't. So now you're saying, oh, it's not fair that you've rejected my claim. We ended up paying by the way, because you know, yeah, it is only 300 meters or so, but a lot of the complaints that you get, Oh God, they won't pay my claim. It's, yeah, it's because you don't qualify to get it paid. Kit: (29:37) Okay, and then that brings up the other thing too is a lot of times are mad because they might've done something negligent or they might have been under the influence or can you talk a little bit about that and maybe give some stories about that? Phil: (29:49) Yeah, sure. Here's an example for you. For Australian customers who go to Bali a lot, it's very great destination. We go there a lot. It's very close by. It's like our Cancun place. 60% of the claims that are made related to motorcycle injuries out of Bali, we reject because they are not licensed to ride. They're not wearing a helmet or that under the influence or what we call the unhappy Trifecta. All three drunk, no license, no helmet. And they crash and fall off like a client, sorry, not happening. So we reject 60% of those, uh, those, those requests. Kit: (30:28) I like beer. So if I have one beer and something happens to me, I'm not covered. Or do you have to have a certain limit or, or, or is there a, a formula that you use? Phil: (30:38) Yeah, every case is judged on its merit. Somebody will assess your claim and they will make investigations and they will get the toxicology report from the hospital where you're admitted and we'll find out how much alcohol was in your system. And then they will make a person, a person will make a decision on whether your state of intoxication may have contributed to what happened to you. So there's no hard and fast rule because common sense prevails. And I know people will find this hard to believe. But it is true if we get somebody and you know, these are people that we care about, these are our customers, these are our, you know, these are nomads. We want them to travel. We will look and go, well under this part of the policy, we wouldn't pay that claim. But, uh, there's a contradictory part of the policy over here that says we are able to, to pay it. Phil: (31:29) You know what, let's use that one and pay the claim. And as long as you can justify that, I mean then we can, we can look after you and we're gonna we don't, we don't want to strand people in hospitals with huge bills. If there's some way that we can find that is going to pay it, then we will do that. So some a person is making that assessment on your claim. So, you know, we try and put as much humanity into that as we possibly can. But if you're over 0.05 or 0.08 or whatever the legal blood alcohol limit it is in the place where you have the accident, then it's very likely that it's going to be, you know, a contributing factor. But look, if you've had one drink and your sensibly walking back to your accommodation rather than riding a motor scooter and a vehicle Koreans off the road and hits you, you could be as drunk as a skunk, but as long as you know, because that was somebody else's fault, you did not contribute to what happened to you. Phil: (32:24) So it's interesting as well by the way, because we were looking at this now that they've legalized cannabis in Canada and it's like how do we treat that? And there is such a, you know, people do go to destinations because cannabis legal or at least dispensed in places in the United States and the same thing applies. But the, in Canada, the government has said if you are intoxicated, if you are under the influence and you have a traffic accident, then you will be judged. So the Canadian government advisers don't smoke and drive at all. And we would be kind of following that advice as well. So that's the rural set up there. But I mean it's really easy to determine what your blood alcohol level is, but not quite sure how it is to determine how intoxicated you are by cannabis. So go easy. Kit: (33:13) And then also if somebody is, we do a lot of hiking on this program. If so many clients at the top of the mountain, they're just too tired to come down. You don't send a helicopter for them, do you? Nope. Nope. That's their problem. Right? Have people tried? Phil: (33:28) Sure. We've got a massive problem with that in Nepal at the moment because there are lots of helicopters operating there and a lot of very tired and grumpy and saw people at the tops of Trex who can't face another four days trekking back. And it is a problem. And, and if they are claiming to have symptoms of altitude, mountain sickness, altitude sickness, then first priority is to look after their welfare. So, you know, they will get medically evacuated and yeah, and it's, it's a problem if you are at the top of mountain and you haven't planned well on up, what will happen is night will fall, a blizzard will come, the local Alpine rescue team will be throwing in an action and they will come and get you off the mountain and put you in a hospital. Then that's where your travel insurance takes over and we start paying your medical bills and we are canceled and miss trips and all that sort of stuff. So No, there is no helicopter with the world nomads, you know, our little symbol Sanchez, the little sort of in command, there's no helicopter with cheers plays and on it that will come and get you. Sorry, Kit: (34:42) I definitely get that. You've got so many people that are hidden to Nepal, they're not doing their training, they have no altitude prep at all. And then they just wanna be able to show an Instagram that they did this or they did that. So now I totally get that you shouldn't have to pay for somebody arriving woefully unprepared. Phil: (34:57) Why would you put yourself in that position in the first place? I mean, it's like airbags in cars, right? So people go, I've got their bags so they stopped wearing their seatbelt. You know? Why would you put yourself in the position where you haven't planned appropriately, where you may find yourself too tired to get back down where you've gone? Why would you do that to yourself? Kit: (35:14) Well, they may not have the experience to know. Yeah, maybe. I think with Instagram and, Oh, I've got another question coming up about that. You know, they, they see people doing all these things and they want to do it and they may, you know, I heard of somebody thought she was going to the Appalachian trail, pushing a shopping cart, you know, I was like, has she done any homework whatsoever before she started out? Phil: (35:35) Well, here is another about travel insurance. All right. We don't cover the stupidity. Seriously. You're doing a really dumb thing. We don't cover that. Kit: (35:43) Got It. Got It. All right. What about people that are not traveling so specific with specific dates? And this is a very personal question because I got a really complicated project this fall that I'm going to multiple destinations over the course of several months with time in between that I haven't really, I haven't booked the flight yet. I book the tours, booked the conferences, so combined it's too much. So do I do an individual policy or do I do chunks of policies or how, how do I do something like that? And what do you do with people that are just traveling nomadically and don't really know where they're going to be? Is there annual policy or chunk policies or what do we do? Phil: (36:22) Well, you can get a policy that covers you for the world worldwide. So let me get this straight. So you're going away and then you're coming back at an indeterminate time. At the end of all of this, you're not coming back home in between. Correct. By a policy right now because you've already outlaid money on tools and what have you. Get a policy now that covers the dates that you're going to go. And if you don't think you're ever going to come back, then get worldwide for up to six months. Now. Federal regulations when you can't do more than six months at a time, but you can renew your will nomez policy while you're on the road. So you just get online and extend it. And if you've got worldwide then you can go anywhere that you like. But if you know you're going to a specific region, you can get a policy for Asia, you can get a policy for South America out of world nomads. So it doesn't really matter where you go within that region. Kit: (37:12) How about some credit cards bragged that they offer travel insurance? Can you talk about that? Phil: (37:17) Yeah, sure. And they do. And the policies are generally underwritten by the same people that are underwriting, you know, specific providers. But you again have to read the policy wording to see what they cover. They often have a higher deductible than a it standalone travel insurance provider. And there may be criteria around how it's activated. Do you have to tell them beforehand? Do you have to have paid all of your trip portion of your trip or pay for on the credit card. So make sure you know how it's activated. Then check who the emergency assistance company is that they are using. Cause it's not, you know, somebody in your bank who's going to help you and you're in trouble. They've, they've got service provider, find out who they are and you know you can make an assessment of those as well. And the other thing is what is the emergency assistance number that comes with your credit card insurance? Phil: (38:12) You have to dig around pretty hard to find that sort of information. And the other thing is you don't know exactly how much you pay for that. They go, it's complimentary, it's included in your credit card. But they don't tell you how much that travel insurance policy is actually costing you. You've got a willed nomads, you know you're paying, you know, $109 for that policy, but you get this complimentary, not free, but complimentary travel insurance and they're stinging you for it. It's all the charges that you're paying for that. So it's actually not very good value either. And just on a personal level, if you're, you know, if you've just face planted in Tanzania, are you really going to call your bank to look after you? Why wouldn't you know like let's get a, you know, let's get a specialized travel insurance provider to run it for you. I don't know, like it's there and if it suits you again, you know, like I said, we'll know him as policies. I'm not going to be perfect for everybody. Maybe the one that comes with your credit card is perfect for you, then go for it. Kit: (39:16) What about to a, sometimes our car insurance here in the states covers, at least in the United States, I've never, I can't remember overseas if I rent a car, I'm covered on that. Does that translate in travel insurance when you're traveling outside of the area or can you talk about that a lot? Phil: (39:35) Well, you'll so unsure about it. I'm pretty sure everybody else's does. My American car insurance cover me for that excess damage waiver. I think they call it, Kit: (39:45) does my car coverage? If it says it does, does that cover a scooter in Vietnam for example? I have no clue. Phil and I went back and forth on this auto insurance and what's covered and what's not covered, and I edit out all that junk because the bottom line is, is you need to check with your auto policy here at home first and see what is covered there. And if it doesn't cover you where you're going, you're going to need to buy whatever the insurance is at the place that you're going with whatever the vehicle is, whether it's a scooter or a car, whatever. And the key thing is, is you've got to make sure that you have a valid driver's license for the location that you're going to be in. And that might require having an international driver's license. You have to wear the hell about or follow whatever the rules of the roads are in that country. Kit: (40:30) And you can't be breaking any rules, which means you can't be under the influence and you gotta be following the law. So your travel insurance basically will cover the medical problems if you have an accident and assuming that you are following the rules but it will not cover the auto vehicle damages. That's what your auto policy needs to cover. And if you don't have an auto policy, you need to buy one from the company you're renting from. So that's the bottom line. And some policies may cover your deductible on auto accident but not the actual accident. So I can not emphasize more clearly you need to read the policy, you get a grace period after you buy the policy, you download the policy, you actually read it and see is this a suitable policy for you and are you willing to take the risks that are not covered. Your policy will spell out in black and white what is and what is not covered. And you cannot expect them to make exceptions. That's just the way it is. Okay, so let's switch gears and let's talk about stolen baggage. Phil: (41:37) The biggest problem we have, and it's a little unfair, is what's what's considered to be unaccompanied baggage. If you are not paying proper attention to your belongings and they get stolen, the loss may not be covered. And sometimes that gets down to, oh I just put it on the table now turned around for one second. And it's like, yeah, well that was unattended baggage as opposed to, you know, I, I left it over there and walked away to another shop and came back, which is quite obvious. So sometimes it can sound really unfair about the way it is treated. So please look after your belongings. Don't put your cell phone down on a table and turn around just for a second. Cause in some places that we traveled to, they are or can be solid on the black market for like, you know, a month with wages for somebody local. So look after your belongings, don't leave them unattended. And don't be surprised if you do and your claim is questioned. Kit: (42:40) Let's, so let's talk about theft. You're walking through the markets and somebody snatches your purse. Phil: (42:46) So you had it on under your arm. They still grabbed or they cut, they cut the strap and ran off with that. Yep. Is that covered? Yeah, it happens all the time. Hatton. Just recently, actually a friend of mine works for a big international airline and they have had two or three of the cabin stuff, have had the handbags snatched by motorcycle thieves. You know, they ride by and just pull them off. There's an Australia woman who died because of that, about three or four years ago. So yeah, look, if you're injured in that, yes. If the bag has got valuables in it and it will often have things like your passport in it, yeah. Then the cost of replacing those items will be covered. That is absolutely. They left lots of baggage. Yes. It's covered. Plus you may have been injured as well, so we'd cover your medical bills Kit: (43:34) and so what kind of proof do we have to present to you? It's something like that. I mean, I don't take a picture of what's in my purse. How do we have to show you that we've actually had a loss? Phil: (43:42) Well, it's pretty obvious with a passport. I don't have it. I can't leave the country. I need to go and get a new one. If it's something like a camera or something like that, and you should do this with all of your positions that you take away. Nobody keeps the receipts when they bought stuff. You know, maybe you've had your camera for five years and you don't know where that receipts gone and what have you. But to prevent fraud, we're going to need some sort of proof that you owned it in the first place and some sort of proof that I actually was stolen from you. So the proof that you had it in the first place, if you've got the receipt, great, nobody does. But if you tape, you're the one person that does,

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26. It Doesn't Matter

Naturally Surviving

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2019 19:44

Hello, welcome to office hours with Dr Lacy. Glad you can come back for another week. I'm going to make this week's episode as fast as possible because I am about to go outta town and I'm supposed to be packing and preparing for my trip. But I also needed to record this and I live in an apartment with the AC. It doesn't have central AC. And so we have one unit in the living room and my room, it's all the way in the back of the apartment, but I needed to close my doors that you didn't hear it and I'm burning up. So I'm going to try to make his as quick as possible. So this week's topic is titled "It doesn't matter". And first I want to talk about myself as a fellow procrastinator. I like to say I'm a recovering procrastinator, um, because I used to look at my procrastination as a way of life and I've now have learned to tweak my language. Um, in that I used to feel this immense pressure to be like constantly on top of everything and turning things in early. And then I got to a place where I was just like, that's not who I am like, I get things done right. Don't get me wrong. It's not like don't want to get things done. It's just that I had a different relationship with deadlines. Right and Undergrad I had a, I had a instructor who was like, you just, you just think the world is supposed to like rise or like revolve around you. I was like, no, I don't think the world should revolve around me. However, if you have a stated policy and you had a stated rule in a due date, then I feel like you should abide by it. So if you, I'm a type of person that if you say like something I have two days. I had until like Friday at 11:59 PM to do something or get something done. Best believe, like nine times out of 10 I'm going to take all the way up until Friday at 11:58 PM to do it is I have the attitude like if you wanted it done earlier or if you wanted me to give it to you earlier, then you should have set the real deadline that you have. And, or you could have been honest with me to say like, you know, it's, it's due at 1159 on Sunday, but is it possible that you'd get it to me by Saturday afternoon? Right. I'm just looking for some communication. But if you don't tell me those things, then I take what I thought was the allotted time. So I used to be very much like, I don't care about your feelings. It is what it is. Right? And you can't, I've learned that, you know, rubs people the wrong way sometimes. And so now I do my best at the beginning of a project, whoever I'm working with, someone else to say like, what is your, what is the deadline that you need this by? Is it your real deadline? And like what is the best and what do you need from me in terms of communication? Cause I'm also a person who likes to just take it once I understand what's expected of me, I go and I do my own thing. And you may not hear from me unless I have like questions and then I present it to you because I think part of that is that I'm operating off of things are flexible, deadlines are flexible, requirements are flexible in that if you're asking me to do something that you're not expecting, the final, final version that what I'm going to produce for you is open to discussion to a, I dunno, interrogation or criticism like we all need a starting place. So if you are asking me to do a project, I'm thinking like that first due date you give me is just our starting point and we're gonna change things around and the final version isn't due till much later. I know that means that I'm making an assumption that people have it together and they have a plan and they see the bigger picture. And I know that not everyone operates like that, but that's just how I am. So I went on a whole tangent about who I am, how I show up to say that. Um, um, a lot of people will see that as a very severe procrastinator and that I do procrastinate. I am not going to sit here and say I don't want that. I always meet deadlines. No, because I procrastinate. I'm recovering. I mean, you know, I'm working my steps, I'm doing the program and the whole me communicating ahead of time. It's about me being in recovery instead of being someone who is not actively procrastinating. Okay. Um, maybe you can relate to that. Um, do you consider yourself to be a procrastinator and maybe it's not like in all areas of your life and maybe when you come to like class assignments or writing or turning drafts into your chair, maybe you procrastinate on those things or maybe you haven't unpacked your bag in a whole week. I see that. Or maybe you, you know, the dishes have been in the sink for a few days now and maybe you hadn't did that or maybe you did your laundry two weeks ago and the clean clothes are blending into the dirty clothes and you're not really sure what's what but you just don't go off the smell because that's life. I don't really know what your brand of procrastination is what I'm wondering for this episode though, is how do you talk to yourself in the middle of procrastinating? What are the messages you're thinking to yourself and it's the way that you're talking to yourself, sort of reinforcing the cycle of procrastination that you're probably in right now. And one of the biggest things that I have said to myself that I hear other people saying to themselves in some form of or other is it doesn't matter. So like it'd be something simple like, oh I'm know I said that I was going to read that article today, but it don't matter. I could do it tomorrow cause I got a time. I don't feel like it today. Or you may say something like, I know I sat down and wrote this long four page plan out about how I was gonna Map out my whole dissertation proposal and that I was going to have it done in two weeks. But you know, it's beginning two weeks and I could just start tomorrow because it doesn't matter. Like I got the time and maybe you're not saying that exactly. It doesn't matter. Maybe you're saying something similar as like I don't feel like right now I got all this time, I could do it this way or I can move such and such around and how you know, you're saying it doesn't matter. And one of his form is that particularly if you're only saying like rearranging or rescheduling something in your brain and you don't go to whatever you use to track your time, whether it be a calendar or planner or whatever system you're using. If you don't immediately get up and go and actually schedule like I know I'm supposed to do this thing today at four o'clock but I, for whatever reason I'm not going to do it at four o'clock if you don't physically get up and change it to a new date and time or you don't put it in your planner for a new date, then, you're sending yourself unconsciously and consciously. You're saying that your goal or whatever you were supposed to do doesn't matter. So your dissertation doesn't matter and subconsciously your brain continues to store that information and and then a future is going to be even easier for you to put things off or to watch that next episode on Netflix or to go out with your friends to Chipotle because you already told your brain that like, in this situation, your dissertation doesn't matter or those clothes, they don't matter or whatever `it is that you were supposed to do, doesn't matter because you keep putting it off and so it's no wonder that when you do decide like, okay, today is the day I'm going to write, I'm going to fold those clothes is it seems like the most difficult thing in the world to do, to take the first step. Cause your brain now is confused. It's like well girl, you told us it didn't matter. We had all these plans, we were all set to go and when it came down to it, you put it off or you said that we didn't need to do it then. So this is not a priority. And what's more of a priority is watching Netflix because that's what we do all the time. What's more of a priority is going out to Chipotle cause that's what we do all the time was more of a priority is checking those emails cause we always put that ahead of everything else. What's more important is going to scroll on Instagram because we do that all day, every day. Or talking to so and so. Whatever you are putting ahead of what you're supposed to be doing or what you'd need to be doing then tells your brain that that's more important. And so then your brain will fight and program yours like you to react on a subconscious level and an automatic response to do those things that you keep putting before the thing that you need to get done. So no, it's not going to. Now when you're like, Oh let's sit down and write and no it doesn't. Your brain doesn't want to write. It's kind of, it's confused. It's like that's hard. We're not used to doing that. That takes too much brain power. Let's just go back watching Netflix or scrolling Instagram cause that's easy. We know how to do that. We don't know how to do this writing thing. And so I just want you to think about and how many ways are you constantly telling yourself and very well the small ways or big ways. How often are you telling yourself that it doesn't matter because they started to add up over time. Yeah. So I'm gonna leave it there. Like I said, I was going to keep this short and this is something I'm probably, will keep coming back to over on Instagram. Um, even though I just talked about you procrastinating on Instagram. Yeah, it's work in progress. Um, but I just feel like you could do those things when you schedule it out, like if you have, so I look at Instagram is like my reward. Cause now I feel like I'm going down a tangent, but go with me. I look at Instagram as my reward. So I, every morning I get up and I, um, write out three things, three small tasks that will take me roughly less than like five to 10 minutes to complete each. I write those out and those are my like must do things that I have to do for the day. And once I get those things done, I can do whatever else I want it. So I can watch all the Netflix Watch, like be on Instagram as much as possible because I did those three things. And that's what keeps me moving. And I guess that's a good point to bring up in, which contributes to the procrastination is that a lot of times we will put too much on our to do lists and there's this pressure to feel like you have to cross out everything. I get to do lists every day. And w what ends up happening is your brain can only make so many decisions in a day. It only has so much energy throughout a day before it's like "I need a break" and it shuts down. And it makes you engage in activities that are not, um, probably like productive or conducive to crossing out things on your list. And it's probably [inaudible] but it is something that your brain needs to do to take a break. So if you had like 10 15 things on your to do list for the day and they all required massive amount of time, energy, brain capacity, there's only so much your brain is going to let you do. You might get through a half or maybe one of those things before your brain is like, and we're done. Cause probably like to take even some more steps back. How you wrote out your to do list is probably, it's huge tasks that have multiple steps within them. And it probably takes two, three, four hours to complete one of those things. So if you're trying to do 10 to 15 of those things, one, is out of hours a day and then two, your brain just can't do that. And so that's why I set up my schedule in a way of I choose three things. I'll take five to 10 minutes. So, let me see, what was on my list today. I'm gonna find my little plan here. But like I like I've seen small things I'm not trying to like, so like today's was I needed to call the dentist to schedule my cleaning and fillings. I needed to update my W2 forms at work and I needed to check my business email like, and check it means, cause I write this out and we used to read each one, delete the junk mail and respond to clients. Now the gmail, like all of these things, the call to the dentist took maybe five minutes if that, the W2's took five minutes. And then the g-mail probably took the longest, which was like 10 to 15 minutes. Cause I've been doing good about staying up on it and not procrastinating. Ha Ha. Um, so I feel accomplished because that helps me keep things moving. So I'm doing things for myself. I'm doing things that I need to do that I've been putting off like the dentist, but I need to do it updating W2's and then the client stuff is to keep my business going. Well what's not on this list is I didn't say I need to check all my emails cause I have a personal one. I have a business one, I have one for clients to like or like people who are like, yeah one on one clients are respond to me. Um, I have one for like other programs or education materials or organizations I'm a part of. I don't have my work email and so I don't say check all of those at one time cause that's a whole lot. I've done that some days and it just takes a long time and that's probably the only thing I would do for the day. Um, I don't have, let me go write all these blog posts, let me go do this project for work. Like I don't have all that on the list cause that's too much and my brain can't handle that. I have these three small things that combined takes me less than an hour. You will resist this at first because you'll be like, oh that's not enough. I need to do more than that. You don't understand Marvette. Like, I have so much I need to get done in your day and I can't just identify three small things because that's not going to get me anywhere. And what I'm saying to you is if you think by putting all those things on the list, it's gonna make you want to do them more. You're wrong. And if so I want to, I want you to take a look at your life like are you getting those things done? If you are, how do you feel like, do you feel like you, you're good. Do you feel alive? Now there are very few people who thrive on that and getting a bunch of things done and that's their jam. And I'm willing to bet like most of you, you're not feeling real good. You're not ready to go do some cartwheels and jumping jacks and like fill in the best. After doing all those things, you probably feel real cranky. You probably resent that, you don't get to do other things like other people. You probably been putting off sleep and eating and just enjoying the summer. Right? Cause it's the summer when I'm recording this. If you are able to feel like you get to get things done and enjoy yourself without feeling stressed out, then yes, I'm gonna applaud you however if you're like anything like me and you try to do, all these things that are on your to do list and when you're trying to do all the things, you personally, your health, your wellbeing suffers. Or if you're focusing on your health and wellbeing and your to do list suffers, then I invite you to try out this strategy because it is helpful and when I do this, I am the most productive ever. I get so much done because usually what happens is I'm not fried and my brain isn't tired and so I'm able to do other stuff throughout the day because I'm riding off the momentum of that. I know if I don't do anything else, I got those three things done and on the days when I'm just not feeling it, it's a bad like mental day, health day. I just know I need to show up and do those three things and I'm good. And sometimes those three things are like brush your teeth, wash your face, drink your water. Sometimes that's all it is because sometimes those things are very difficult to do on a daily basis. So I tell my clients to do this, they still look at me like probably how you're thinking right now. Like that's not going to work. And then once they get into it in a week or two, go by like they're amazed, amazed at one how they feel and all the things they've been able to accomplish. So I invite you to try this. You're gonna wake up every morning, you're going to write out three things are going to take you five to 10 minutes or less to do for each item. You're going to say, no matter what happens today, I'm doing these three things. And then at the end of the day you want to come back and say, did you do them or not? And that's it. You don't need a complicated thing. You don't need to write out all these massive fancy to do listen priority programs and project management or you don't need to do all of that. It's just these three things, especially if you're in a deep hole of procrastination like you've been putting things off, especially if you're like I don't know how to go back. I disappointed so many people. I've been putting it off so long I dug a deep hole, especially if it's that and I'm going to invite you just for tomorrow or even today. What are three things that you can do that will take you an hour or less to do all three things. What is something that is so easy but moves you in the direction, a step closer to the end goal. What is, what are three things that you can do and if three is too much, what is one thing you can do just to get started? Okay. For Real, I said this is going to be short, but we're here so I would am curious to know what you thought about this episode. Please come over to Instagram at @marvettelacy and let me know any takeaways, any ah-has. I would love to continue the conversation with you over there and then until next time, do something to show yourself some love. I will talk to you next week. Bye for now.

netflix map ac so i'm haha chipotle bye for real netflix watch w2 right cause cause i'm

104 : True Transformation (w/ Rah Thomas)

Expand The Business with Casey Eberhart

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 13, 2019 25:00

Zach sits down with Rah Thomas, a managing director in Accenture's Infrastructure Operations practice with over 15 years of experience. They discuss his role with the company and what it looks like to create access for other black and brown folks that are coming behind him. Rah also shares a few points of advice for today’s young leaders.Connect with Rah on LinkedIn and Twitter!Search open positions at Accenture.com.Check out Accenture's Inclusion and Diversity Index!Connect with Accenture on the following platforms: LinkedIn, Twitter, IG, Facebook, YouTubeTRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate. Now, look, again, y'all know what it is. Y'all should know by now, okay? We've been doing this thing for a few weeks, but again, if you don't know, you're about to know. Living Corporate has partnered with Accenture to feature some of their most black and brown--senior black and brown managing directors to share their journeys. My hope is you listen to these, check 'em out, and you peep the links in the show notes to learn more about each of them, including our interview for the day, today, Rah Thomas. Rahnold, Rah, Thomas is a managing director in Accenture's infrastructure operations practice with over 15--that's right, 15--years of experience. His primary focus is digital workforce transformation and infrastructure transformation to the cloud. Okay, that sounds, like, super fancy, I recognize, you know what I'm saying? But just come on. Vibe with me. Rah is also the national co-lead for the African-American employee resource group. He works across all inclusion and diversity workstreams, meeting with senior executives to improve recruitment, progression, and retention of top talent, okay? So this interview is gonna be dope. Listen, okay? He got the insight. He got the juice. He has the technical know-how, the background, and he's plugged into these spaces to have the real conversations, okay? That's why I'm really excited to talk to Rah today. The core to both of these positions is seeing past the optics and standard view of people, process, technology, and then streamlining that into maximizing the real underlying value, okay? With that being said, let's get to it. [pause] Zach: Rah, welcome to the show. How are you doing?Rah: Man, I'm feeling great out here, man. Feeling blessed, feeling blessed.Zach: Amen, amen. So look, for those of us who don't know you, would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself?Rah: Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I'm from the Bronx. New York.Zach: Okay, okay. Yerp. Let's go. [both laugh]Rah: I think by day I'm a managing director or partner for Accenture. I lead some of our diamond clients in technology and innovation, and then I also run the national African-American employee resource group for Accenture. So I'm helping shape our major diversity initiatives.Zach: That's incredible. So look, can we talk a little--can you unpack that a bit? Like, you have--you just said that you're one of the major partners for your diamond clients, and then you said you're the national lead for the African-American ERG. So those are two huge roles. Can you talk a little bit about both of those and what those actually mean?Rah: Yeah. Definitely. Definitely, man. I think--I think that being--on the technical side, I think that's sort of my craft, right? So I do cloud, right? I do service management, digital workplace automation, sort of helping do innovation for our clients. I have about four or five diamond clients that I help sort of push the line of innovation, which is a great segue into what I do from a diversity and inclusion perspective because I help our people of color--I mean, I'm the African-American lead, but I work with the Latinos, I work with our Pride, I work with all of our diversity and inclusion folks, and I help sort of shape that. You know, like, what is it from our targeted's perspective? You know, how do we handle things like escalations [and] things of that nature? So I go across the gamut nationally for all of that.Zach: That's incredible. You know, I love that because--when you talk about the fact that you're working across, because I think while every experience, every non-white experience, is unique, there's commonality in the fact that--and there's commonality in being some type of--just having a non-white experience, a non-majority experience, and so the fact that you're working across there is beautiful. And in fact, what I also think is interesting--and I'm late to the game, Rah. I didn't really learn until I was, like, in high school and college that the black diaspora is spread so far. So, like, when you talk about partnership across the Latinx spaces, so many Latinx folks are also black, right?Rah: Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Well, so my wife is Ecuadorian, and my kids--so, like, trying to sort of help my children grow up and stuff like that, it's fierce out here.Zach: It is. It is. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So let's talk about a panel you were on last September for Black Enterprise. You participated in--what they called it was "a real conversation about succeeding while black and the dangers of truth and perception in corporate America." So, again, you keep dropping bombs, and that's kind of been a--that's been really, frankly, a theme across all of these leadership interviews, but can you talk about what brought that discussion and what that discussion was really about? Can you unpack that a bit?Rah: Yeah. I mean, I think--so I know you can't really see me out here, you know, but, I mean, I am a black man with dreadlocks.Zach: Yes, sir.Rah: And I am a partner at the #1 consulting firm in America. Globally actually, right? So the challenges that I had to sort of come against--you know, I got kicked out of board rooms. I've had some real real experiences, and I had to talk about sort of some of the authenticity that I had to bring to the table. Being unapologetically black, however still giving way for comfortability for people to understand my point of view and helping them innovate and move their bottom line. So it was really a dialogue about, you know, how do you do that while trying to break the glass ceiling? Which keeps changing. Glass ceiling, rubber ceiling, concrete ceiling. You know, it keeps changing on you, right? So you're trying to unpack all of that. So it was--it was a good discussion with a lot of successful black men where we delved into that.Zach: Now, wait a minute. Now, you know, Rah, I can't let you just slide that by. You said you got kicked out of a board room?Rah: [laughs] Yeah, man.Zach: You gotta--I need to hear that. I gotta hear that.Rah: Oh, you're [?]? [laughs]Zach: I mean, you--you opened the door. I'm trying to understand how you got kicked--I want to hear that story.Rah: Well, I mean, it was just--you know, I think I'm one of the best at what I do, and I'm confident, and I walked in with my client and I was like, "Listen, this is what we got," and, you know, my client's boss, who was a C-level executive, was like, "What are you doing in the board room here with dreadlocks?" And I'm like, "Well, you know times are changing," you know? And then I started my presentation and he was like, "Listen, you sit down." He was like, "Actually, don't say another word or you'll never work for this company again," and I was like, "What?" And my client was like, "Yo, Rah. Hey, back down a little bit. Back down." So I let it ride, but--and that experience, which was crazy, wasn't the crux of [?]--I mean, it had an experience on me, but it was how my company responded to it that really pushed me to be like, "Yeah, this is what I need to do," because what happened was after that, then my company then came to me and said, "Hey, Rah. If you don't ever want to work in this space again, we don't have to do that. We know you're good at what you do. We know that you can change the world and innovation, so if you don't want to work with this client anymore, we don't have to." And I was like, "Wow, man, that's powerful."Zach: Dang, that's crazy. So the client was talking to you crazy, and then Accenture was looking back at the client like [haha sfx].Rah: Yeah, just like that. Exactly like that. [laughs]Zach: "Haha." [both laugh] That's wild. So okay, okay. Well, look, I know that was--well, it really wasn't a non-sequitur, because you opened the door, and I wanted to hear about how that happened. Okay. So in my experience, in the instances where there are black and brown folks who make it to senior executive roles, they're often leading in, like, a technical specialty, right? So they solve--this is from what I've seen, Rah. I'm not saying this is the way of life. I'm saying this is something I have observed. So they observe a particular problem, and they solve a particular problem in a particular way. So I believe your role is a little bit different in that you're having to lead strategic conversations and work to connect the dots across a variety of specialties to deliver the most effective solutions. Can we talk a little bit about your experiences in such a connected and integrated role and what you've learned in navigating these spaces?Rah: Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing about it is--right now I think folks can't see the future. Folks cannot see the future right now, and if you look at it, 50% of the Fortune 500 companies over the past 15 years have gone bankrupt. So right now they're all scrambling, right? Normally they'd like to look around 5, 10, 15, 20 years in advance, and they can't see that. At any given time, a Google or an Uber can pop up and change the game. So right now all of these senior executives are really looking and saying, "Hey, we need to absolutely tap the best of people. We need to tap the best talent period. We don't care if it is white talent. We don't care if it is black, Latino, Puerto Rican, Asian, whatever," right? "We need the best talent, because we don't know where that next idea is gonna come from." So that's primed for diversity right now, right? That's where we live. So I think that that's sort of at the crux of where we're at right now. So yes, I understand from a technical perspective I'm good at what I do and what I have to--I have to reinvent myself every three or four years, so I gotta keep being on the edge of things, but more than ever I have to--I wear the extra hat to inspire other people to be authentic so that they can unpack that untapped potential, because they might have the next great idea, and it might come from a hard-working single mother who's been doing 15 years working at Target trying to, you know, do 1-2-3 at Target as a manager, raising three or four kids in the Bronx, and that single mother might come up with the great new idea that runs the world. So it's, like, understanding that. You have to think differently about how you do business.Zach: Now, that's incredible. You're so right, because with technology brings a certain level of, like, a democratization of innovation, right? Like, it's not--it's not just gonna be reserved for this certain group over here. The access is opening up, and I really--I'm curious about this. What does it look like for you, being in the position that you are, to--what does it look like for you to create access for other black and brown folks that are coming behind you? Like, what does it look like for you to lift as you climb, and how does that practically work in your position?Rah: I mean, I think--yeah, I mean, like I said, I started the call with "I'm blessed," right? I mean, I'm blessed because God has given me the opportunity to actually have the ability to create opportunities for people, right? I mean, which is--it's amazing, and I actually--you know, I got put on--I advise corporate CEOs, and I'm advising our CEO, I'm advising our C-suite and letting them know, "Hey, listen, you know, this is what a population is feeling, and this is how a population wants to evolve," and they're, like--and they're listening. They're actually coming to the table, and they're like, "Wait, we had no clue," and I'm like, "Yes." So it's enlightening. It's enlightening and humbling.Zach: That's incredible. That's awesome. So, you know, it's interesting--to that point--we're seeing shifts in how we're being represented. I would say as millennials continue to expand their corporate footprint. We're seeing the largest group of black and brown leaders in the workplace, right? So, like, millennials, we're not the youngest, sexiest kids on the block no more--sexiest kids? That's mad problematic. You know what I mean though. What three points of advice would you give to young leaders today?Rah: Hm. All right, so I would say--three things? I would say be authentic, be vulnerable, and have the dialogue, okay? But I almost have to unpack that, right?Zach: Please.Rah: So I say "Be authentic." You gotta say it with your chest, right? Be unapologetic. Be black or Latino. Be whoever you are, because it is--it is that thing that might propel you to the next--you know, next plateau. "Be vulnerable," because sometimes when you share some of these deep stories and you work through--I started sharing stories about my family, and all of a sudden I got--you know, a Jewish person in Middle America is just like, "Wow, wait a minute. That same thing happened to me." I'm like, "Whoa, really?" So you start doing that. You start connecting with people. And then have the dialogue, 'cause--I'll bet it might be uncomfortable, but you have to have the conversation. We owe it to our ancestors to have the conversations and build these connections, because sometimes people don't actually know. That's what ignorance is. The definition of ignorance is not knowing, right? So people don't actually know, and if you could sit down--if you can muster within yourself to sit down and have that dialogue, man, you can really, really change the world.Zach: Man. "We owe it to our ancestors." Hold on. [Flex bomb sfx]. I had to drop that. Man. Come on, man. "We owe it to our ancestors," man. That's real, man. So let me pause for a second, 'cause we have these questions--you said earlier about being unapologetic in who you are. Do you have any practical examples of coaching that you've given somebody--I'm not asking you to out nobody--around, like--what is some advice you would give in terms of how folks can be more unapologetic? Because we've had episodes--and the reason I ask is we've had episodes in the past where we talk about respectability politics, right? Like, the concept that if you behave, dress, speak a certain way, that majority folks will forget that you're not in the majority, that in some way that is some type of covering or camouflage for you. What does it look like for you when you give coaching and advice and direction and guidance to black and brown folks at Accenture? What does that look like for you to encourage them to actually be themselves? 'Cause you've talked about a little but, but I want to hear--Rah: You want the meat, right?Zach: Please. Please.Rah: [laughs] You know, I think it's--it's actually different, right? And I'm learning. I want you to--you know, I'm not the full expert on it, because I think that I have to be humble and learn on it, but I think that there's--it's different for black, and it's different for Latino, right? For black, which is one in the same, that--it's more about the visual aspect, right, and bringing your authentic self from a visual perspective, and then from Latino, you have to recognize that it's bringing your authentic self from a listening and an audible perspective, right? So I try to make sure that as I'm coaching folks I try to take in multiple lenses, but I feel like me doing what I do can unconsciously give you the ability to do what you do, and I think--I was a keynote for one of these speakers at a women's empowerment conference, and I went there, and I wore my Ecuadorian jersey, and I had my suit coat on, and people were like, "Wait, what is he doing?" And I'm like, "No, I'm being me. I'm wearing my Ecuadorian jersey, and I'm wearing my suit coat, and I got my [?] on, and I'm me," right? But it was so amazing. I even--I talked about my father being in prison. I talked about some of these crazy things, and people were like--you know how many people came up to me and were like, "Wow! Wait, you're in corporate America and you've got family members that are in prison?" Or "Wait, you're in corporate America and--" Pow. I mean, I had transgender, I had everybody come up to me saying, "Wow." Like, "I want to talk to you about my situation," and I was like, "Pow." But it was me being able to be myself that unlocked other people's ability to be themselves, if that makes sense.Zach: No, it does, and you're absolutely right, Rah. So I know for me, coming in--I'm one of the first men in my family, on my mom's side of the family, to start and graduate from college, and I'm one of the few people in my entire family in corporate America. So not really seeing a model of what--how to practice authenticity, you know, in my immediate familial circle, coming into the workplace and seeing an example of that, it is empowering. And, like, you will never forget--you'll never forget those experiences or those--when you see it, and so that's incredible. This has been dope. Now--Rah: I was gonna say it's almost like the line, you know, "when keeping it real goes wrong."Zach: Yes.Rah: We have to almost combine that with recognizing [?], like, "when keeping it real goes right."Zach: Real talk. Well, a lot of us--a lot of times we think that, you know, if we do something too wrong it's gonna be like [record scratch sfx], right? You know what I'm saying? Like, [?], right?Rah: Yeah. [laughs]Zach: But it's not, right? Like, we actually have--we actually have a lot more power than I think we've been in some ways conditioned to believe, right? Rah: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.Zach: Okay, so last--so I got just a couple more. Now, you've also talked about the fact that you sit down with executives. You're having these conversations. They're actually listening to you. Based on your experiences, what would you say that organizations who are seeking to improve their engagement with black and brown talent--what are some things that they need to be thinking about and considering as they--if that's a pivot or a move they're trying to make as they seek to be more diverse and inclusive?Rah: Yeah, definitely. So I think the first thing is there is a lack of trust from the black community with corporate America across the board. So I think the first thing that you need to do in order to start building that trust is transparency. So when we start talking about the demographics, we start talking about compensation, we start talking about numbers, we start talking about, you know, what are our targets to make sure we can change things, that level of transparency is the start of a conversation, right? It's not the end all, like, "Hey, we published numbers and demographics. We're there." It's really around the start, and then the next thing is that we need to start talking about "Hey, what does good really look like?" "What does the utopia of the world really look like in corporate America, and how do we really achieve that?" And making sure that we're--we just did a leadership conference this past week, and I learned something completely new about transgender and the fact that they're struggling with bathrooms. And I'm like, "Wow." Wasn't even thinking about it, right? So it's--like, we have to listen to our people. So yes, be transparent and publish your information and start getting that level of transparency, but then second is sit down and listen. And when you start listening, "What?" [both laugh]Zach: No, you're absolutely right. And it's funny because--and by funny I mean it's frustrating, and often times infuriating, that, you know, when black and brown folks--when non-white cis heterosexual folks, when they're sitting down--able-bodied, non-able-bodied, disabled people--when folks in the minority speak up and they share their experiences, like, there's a huge level of emotional labor that comes with that. So I agree with you. It's imperative that if you're gonna have folks who have the courage to share something, it's not enough just to kind of nod and be like, "I empathize." It's about "Okay, well, how do we meet you and figure out ways to actually make sure that our culture is inductive to you being comfortable and thriving here," right?Rah: Yeah. So can I drop--I'm gonna drop one more on you right here.Zach: Come on. [both laugh]Rah: You're pulling me out. "Bring him out, bring him out!" [both laugh] So I think that it's not enough to be unapologetically black. You have to also accept those that are authentic in their world when it conflicts with yours. Okay, I'ma throw that back one more time.Zach: Say it one more time.Rah: [laughs] Right? It's because you can't let other people's inability to comprehend your greatness define how you're gonna be great, but you have to give them a way to be themselves as well. Because if we can't understand their opposition, they will never be able to understand our plight. So we have to come down to the table and say, "Listen, I need to talk to you, and I understand that everything you stand for is against what I stand for, but let's sit down and have a conversation." And when you do that you're like, "Wait, we've got more in common than we have apart," and that's when you start building bridges and connections.Zach: I love that. And I would imagine, Rah, because of the role in which you sit--you know, you're a MD for diamond clients, so you're having to work with all types of folks every day.Rah: Yes, sir. Yeah.Zach: And so it's about that relationship building. I'm gonna go off script one more time. [both laugh] So when I think about your brand--and I know what you look like, right? I looked on LinkedIn. I've seen the video where you talk about your hair and you talk about your faith. You know, what does it look like to manage--to manage relationships with folks who are not expecting a Rah when you walk through the door? And really what does it also look like when you--considering your position and your influence and your authority, what does it look like to really manage relationships with folks who might not be comfortable with a black--I'ma just say, frankly, with a black man telling them what to do or telling them what he thinks frankly. Like, what does that--what does that look like? How do you--like, I'm really curious about that, because I worked at Accenture some years ago--and I only knew, like, a handful of MDs at the time, and none of them were [?], so I'm really--like, this has been a question I've actually been wanting to ask just for myself. I've been wanting to know this personally. Like, what does that look like? 'Cause I'm just--I just believe that the folks that are running the diamond accounts--I'm sorry, the folks that are these executives, they're not used to--I just don't think that they're used to a black person telling them what they should be doing. So I'm just--I want to know. I really do.Rah: Yeah. So I gotta answer that in two ways, right? So first I gotta say sometimes I walk into a room, and I sit down, and I try to plug in my laptop, and I crawl under the desk and plug in my computer, and you get up, and I've had people be like, "Hey, can you go fix the projector for me?" And I'm like, "Wait, I'm actually the dude who's presenting." Right? [both laugh] You know? Right? So you have to--you can't get discouraged by that part, right? So that's the one hand that you have to experience, and you have to--you can't be like--you can't get mad and get your aggressions out. You can't do that, right? Because then I've also experienced a white male Catholic, you know, dudes that invite me to a male empowerment in the middle of America, and I went in there--I was like, "Wait, why is he asking me to go here? This could be dangerous." Zach: Straight up.Rah: [laughs] Right?Zach: They'd be like, "Hey, we'll go meet you out in the middle of the woods." You'd be like [never have the chance sfx].Rah: [laughs] Right? But I went out there, and I walked into this meeting, and there was about 20, 25 white males, and they walked up to me and they gave me a hug. And I was like, "What? What is--" I'm from New York. "What's going on here?" Right? And they started sharing stories, and they started giving me insights in my life. Like, I travel a lot, and they were like, "Yo, hey, if you travel a lot, you know, you should call your daughter on FaceTime so that she doesn't get disconnected from you." I'm like, "Wow," and I'm like, "Wait, why am I connecting with these white male Catholic Middle America Republican folks more than I'm connecting with some of these people that are in the hood that are trying to do different things," right? So I'm like, "Wait." You have actually have to sit down and have the dialogue. Zach: Hm.Rah: Pow. [both laugh] Zach: Rah, man, you are fun, man. I'm loving this. [both laugh] Okay, this has been dope. Before we get out of here, any parting words or shout-outs?Rah: Yo, this is dedicated to the youth, respectfully dedicated onward and upward. [?]! Sorry, had to throw that out there. But yeah, man, I just--I appreciate it. I do this for the people, and, you know, I just appreciate you having me on the show man.Zach: Man, I appreciate you as well, and man, look, we gotta--you know, we dropped a couple of Flex bombs. You know, I've been working on this soundboard, Rah, so I'm trying to, like--I'm trying to, like, add a little pizzazz to the show, you know what I'm saying? So I'm also gonna drop these real quick. [air horns sfx]Rah: Oh! [both laugh] Oh, man.Zach: Oh, man. Rah, we consider you a friend of the show, and man, I hope we can have you back.Rah: Definitely. Definitely, man. Thanks for having me, man.Zach: All right, peace.Rah: All right, peace.

Track 18 - Targmart VS Walget

Aux Cord

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 8, 2019 91:59

“'Cause I'm at the end of my wits with half the sh*t that gets in I got a list, here's the order of my list that it's in; It goes, Reggie, Jay-Z, Tupac and Biggie Andre from Outkast, Jada, Kurupt, Nas and then me But in this industry I'm the cause of a lot of envy So when I'm not put on this list the sh*t does not offend me That's why you see me walk around like nothing's bothering me Even though half you people got a f*ckin' problem with me” - Eminem-- Hey, fellas! Don’t you HATE when women hit you with that “You make time for what you want to make time for” line?! Maybe we just want to chill! Well...Ant and AO do too. In today’s episode Jazzy Miotti doubles down on her comments from last week’s podcast and threatens her “Savagery”. We also discuss Diddy and Lori Harvey, Jazzy Miotti’s dreadful trip to Walmart, and of course that notorious “List” smh. Plug in!

ant ao nas jay z walmart plug outkast tupac diddy savagery kurupt cause i'm lori harvey

22. Three Lies That Are Holding You Back From Finishing Your Literature Review (Part 2)

Naturally Surviving

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2019 25:58

This episode is part 2 of a 3-part webinar presentation. Transcript of Episode: 5%. I believe that me telling you how to write your literature review or knowing the difference between a conceptual and theoretical framework or trying to figure out what's the best methodology. I believe all those types of questions and things are only 5% of what you need to finish your proposal. I'm going to say that again. I believe content-based things like how to write a literature review, how to choose a methodology. What's the best topic, are these great research questions. That's just 5% of what you need to be concerned about. Now remember you said that you were going to keep an open mind. I could tell you exactly what you needed to write. Your chair could tell you exactly what you needed to write, how to frame your questions. What's the best methodology, exactly what you need to do and what you write. I have done it for people. I can tell you and you know what? You still won't do it. I could tell you exactly what to write and you still, when you sat down to go and write it, you're going to argue. You're going to feel the need to go and research. You're going to feel the need to go back and forth about why it's not right and it's hard to make a choice and it won't matter. I can like literally your chair can sit down with you right now one-on-one until you exactly what you need to write to pass. They can guarantee if you did these things, you would pass and you still won't do it. So while this presentation is titled, How to, like do your literature review, we're not gonna to spend time on the like nuts and bolts of literature reviews because it doesn't matter. You need it to pass into write it. But if you don't do the other 95% of stuff, it won't matter. It won't matter. If you know how to do a literature review, you'll just be like caught up in the same cycle of consuming, consuming, consuming information. You'll listen and you won't do it. It is not because you can't. It's not because you're not capable. It's because you're so busy focusing on his content and this like, what do I need to do that? You're not focusing on how to do them, like not like how to do it from like using the right words, but like who do you need to be? How do you need to think? What type of environment do you need to be in? Who do you need to have around you in order to write what you need to write. Because remember if you go back, I already said you already know everything or at the very least you know how to get to the information you need to know. You don't need me to tell you how to do a literature review because you know how to do it and the thoughts that are creeping out right now and I saying, but I don't. That's why I'm here, but I don't know. I'm still learning. That's not true. It's your doubts. It's your mindset and that's what I'm going to be talking about for the next few minutes. That is the focus, the basis of my coaching. I am talking about all the other stuff that nobody else wants to talk about that they think doesn't matter, that they think is a waste of their time. But it's the biggest reasons why you can't, write. Biggest reasons why I failed that publishable paper defense. Biggest reasons why I was able then two and a half years later to show up in my defense ready. The other stuff, cause nothing like as far as knowledge, yeah, I had a couple of more research classes. Sure. But if I'm being honest, I didn't really remember like I remember stuff but I didn't remember it and that was not what I leaned on and those three and a half months when I was finishing a dissertation at warped speed, that is not, I didn't go back necessarily to my classes and be like, I need to know exactly it was all the other stuff that I'm going to talk about and get it done framework. That was important. This is why this is so important. Now listen, if this is your, like if this is your area of expertise, do not come at me. I am just explaining this next set of information and the way that works for me in best ways that works for clients in a very simplistic way. Okay. I'm sure it's more complicated. I got you, but and, let's focus on the spirit of what I'm saying. All right. Let's see. We're keeping an open mind, so your brain at its most basic forms wants you to survive above all else. It wants you to survive and it wants to make sure that you're able to survive with the least amount of effort as possible. What does the have to do with your literature review? If your main, if the main goal is survival, right? Then the main thing that the brain is looking for is threats to that survival, like what is popping up in our environment or in our world? What are we noticing that is a potential potential threat? Potential threats are usually something that's new. It's not like regular schmegular happening every day. It's unfamiliar. We don't know, that seems real off is looking for things that are offered different and it's constantly scanning in the like in the background, even though you're not conscious of it, it's constant scanning your environment and the things that you're taking in for something that's new or unfamiliar because if it's different, new or unfamiliar, then your brain says there's a high chance that that's a threat to our survival and we're going to die. There's a higher chance because that's a threat. It's different. We are going to die and we need to figure out the best way to avoid it or to incorporate it as quickly as possible and make it normal so that it's no longer a threat. Your brain is simply just trying to save you from danger. And any time that you come into contact with something that is a threat that's unfamiliar, doesn't feel good. Your brain is like, how do I switch to autopilot or to something that feels good? Because right now I'm feeling real scared and your brain cannot distinguish between, there's a lion, I don't know, he's a lion. You're jumping out of the bushes and about to attack you and you sitting down to write cause they both feel the same in the body, right? Cause when you sit down to write, you get, maybe you me, if you're like me, you get really anxious. You're real nervous, you get real confused. You're not sure what to write. You're not sure if it's going to come out right. The stakes are so high that if you don't do this right and you're not going to pass and you're not going to graduate and you have wasted all these years for nothing, it is very scary. Or it can be very scary to sit down and write in a blank document on your laptop, not being sure what you should say exactly. Right? And your brain again, just wants to save you. And so what it does as you sit down to writing, you're like, but what if I said it this way, but let me go look this up. But like, like all these thoughts and you get flooded with something that you were just fine a minute ago, but now you sit down in front of his laptop and you're, and you started to get really nervous and anxious. Your brain, then says, this is a threat. We shouldn't be sitting here because when we sit down at our laptop to type, we get real nervous and that clearly means that's wrong. It clearly means we're going to die. So how do we switch to doing something else? So then your brain begins to lie to you because it's trying to save you. It begins to tell you things or send you signals to try to get you to do something else that you enjoy more. Maybe that's social media, maybe that's TV, maybe that's eating, maybe that's sleeping. Maybe that's talking to someone. It gets you to do things so that you can stop the scary thing which is sitting in front of your laptop typing and do something that's more familiar like eating or watching TV that's more enjoyable and that feels better and we know what to expect and we don't have to think that hard when we do those things. Your brain lies to you and I'm going to talk about three major lies, especially when it comes to writing that your brain will do. Let me know if you agree with this. I want you to type yes in the comments. Lie #1: The longer I work, the more I'll get done. So the more, excuse me, so you know who you are. Those of you who are having these a marathon writing days, you're like, mmm, I'm going to cancel everything on my schedule. I'm going work from 12 to eight. I'm not gonna go somewhere, I'm gonna order food in so I don't have to spend time going out and I'm just going to work. I'm go to my office, I'm gonna just work. I'm gonna work and work and work at work. Because if you feel like if you can block off like eight hour days, 10 hour days, 12 hour days, and you can write more, you'll get more done because you'll be uninterrupted and you won't have to worry about anyone else or anything else and you can just write, Right? That's a lie because if you've done it then you definitely know it doesn't work out that way. If you've blocked off, like blocked off those that time and you actually manage to show up to your office to ride for the eight hours, or you showed up to the writing group to work this 12 hours, then you know you didn't spend eight hours or 10 hours or 12 hours writing. Two hours was spent on getting set up. So making sure you had the right snack, talking to your friends another two hours. It was like rereading what you wrote the last time, maybe another two hours. It was that, oh, you forgot something at home that you need to go make a run or you needed a new notebook so you went to the store or you had a craving for something else. And then you go get a drink from like Chipotle or something and maybe you spent a good hour, two hours writing. Like if you're going to be honest about the time you spent, maybe it was two hours out of that 10 hour day or are you sat there and you just stared cause you didn't even know like okay I have everything but I don't know what to write. But so instead of trying to do these series of marathon days instead, think about your writing goals. Now most people will just say, well I'm trying to have chapter two by then and I'm a write chapter three in a week. It needs to be more simple than that. Okay. If it needs to be more simple than that, how do you simplify our writing those so that it's more about what you could do realistically in a day instead of trying to figure out how can write a whole chapter, how can you write one section of chapter two, how can you write one to three pages in a week or a writing session? Cause I know some of you just then are like, a week?! One to three pages will never get done. That shows then we need some more work. But like how do you simplify your writing goals to think about, okay, how long is it gonna take me to write chapter two, how can I break that up? How can I make sure if I'm hitting these three main points, how long is it going to take me to hit each point and that trying to do everything in one session because you may say to yourself, I'm just saving myself time or I'm being efficient if I do more on the front end as last I had to do on the backend to editing and that's a whole other thing. Well, what also happens when you do these marathon, marathon days, then you'd have no time for yourself. How can you set up your schedule where you can consistently make progress on your writing? ....and have time to spend with family, with loved ones going to work out watching TV and doing those things without feeling guilty? Cause I'm sure a lot of you do those things. You do go out. Especially now it's summer. At the time I'm recording this, people will go out, but you'll feel guilty. You'll feel like, oh I'm supposed to be reading something. Oh I should be writing. Oh I can. And then you really don't enjoy yourself. So you don't enjoy yourself when you're out doing what's supposed to be fun. Cause you feel like you're supposed to be writing. And then when you are writing you're feeling like, oh this sucks. I'm sitting here for 10 hours and I could be with my friends. And you're never present in the moment. So how do you set up your life where you simplify your writing goals and you take time for yourself? Because when you're able to balance those two things, that's when you get more progress. But you're able to have simple achievable goals where your brain isn't like, we're gonna die, we're gonna die. You can then get more done cause you're spending less brain power and energy trying to fight off up quote unquote potential threat. That's not a threat. As you said, you've got at your laptop writing. When things are very small and manageable, your brain is in freaking out. So then it allows you to use that energy that you would have used on being stressed and anxious on writing so then because you're using less time to be freaked out or procrastinating. You're using more attack, like less to right. Then you have more time for yourself. You have more time to be with people that you love to be with. You have more time to do other things that you may need to do that you've been putting off, and when you have that imbalance, then you're able to accomplish so much more. Less is more. It's cliche, and it is true. So based on that baseline, the system, your schedule, how much you write, how much of a balance that you've had between getting writing done and helping yourself. I want you to rate yourself on a scale of one to five, one being, oh, I need a lot of work who are working on my schedule and balancing my life out. And Five being like, I'm good. I got a good balance. I see who I need to see. I don't feel guilty when I go out. When it's time to write, I show up and write. I don't spend hours writing. I'm on a consistent routine and schedule. I'm good. On a scale of one to five, how would you rate yourself? I want you to write that down because it's important because we're gonna come back to these numbers. I want you to write it down. How well would you rate your system? Remember one being needed, a lot of work, five being and I'm good.Okay. You have that down. Lie #2: If I had just had a writing plan, I could finish my proposal. It's like all I need is somebody to help me organize like five time and help me like plan out. That's to simplifying the goals and the chapters. I be good. If they could just give it to me, I'll be good. No, no, no. Remember going back to the beginning of what I say, like I help people and I tell them this way, you need to write is how you can say it. Choose this. The same concept applies. It doesn't matter if someone, I can give you a plan right now. I'll tell you what to write. I could tell you what to do. I could tell you how you should structure your time. It won't matter. It won't. Um, because you'll feel good. You'll like go out and buy a planner. You'll put all your little like, like you little writing sessions in there and you're like, I'm good to go. And then you'll show up for the writing session and you still won't feel motivated. You're like, I just need something to get me going. What can I do? And maybe you're like being go find a video. I'm an inspirational video, a good motivational video. Find something to get me together. I'm going to get my favorite snack. And you're trying to do all this things to build up your motivation. Okay? But you have to keep doing something outside of you to get that motivation. Instead, you need momentum, right? Because the brain comes back, the brain is like, oh my God, I can't do this. I don't, I don't feel like it. I'm tired, man. I'll just put it off until tomorrow. Oh, we'll start that on Monday. Oh, I have enough writing sessions throughout the week. I don't need to do it today. Oh, well this show came up and I forgot I was supposed to watch the show or something. So I want to go get something to eat and I haven't seen them in a long time. These things are going to start to come up and then next thing you gotta know, like, I mean, yeah, you plan a date and you have a good plan, but you didn't follow it. Instead, you need momentum. Remember, I'm about small steps every day. How can you make the habit of writing, writing your literature, review your proposal so small, so ingrained in your day that it becomes routine? Because success is in your routine. If you could show up and do that small step and your brain doesn't even have to think about it, it's on autopilot. You're good. Think about it like you eat every day. You brush your teeth every day, right? You get dressed every day? It's these small steps. Like most of these things you do on autopilot, your brain doesn't even have to think about it. Like you go into the bathroom, you instinctively like grab for the toothbrush and toothpaste and you just do it and then you go about your business. The way that you start to write your dissertation proposal needs to be the same way. That's what I talk about. Having small steps in a writing system. That's how they needs to feel that you show up every day and you do these small steps and you do it over and over and it becomes second nature with all the, without all the stress and the headache. That's the second thing. So I want you to rate yourself again, one being it needs a lot of work. Five being I'm good. Rate yourself on the following statement. I feel good about writing and consistently making progress on my draft. How good do you feel about your writing progress? How good do you feel about your ability to do that in a very small but building momentum way that you can sit down at your laptop right now, open up and you have a system that was take you from opening up your laptop to writing in five minutes. That in 30 minutes from now you can have a page or two of content written for your proposal. How confident are you in your ability to do that right now in this moment? If I asked you to do that on a scale of one to five, that's what I'm asking you to rate yourself on. Write that number down and let me know. Lie #3: I can get more done when I work by myself. Now how many of you said that I can get more done when I work by myself, I don't like working with a lot of people. They just going to distract me ain't nobody on my level. Right? And you go and you seclude yourself by yourself. You go to your favorite writing spot or whatever and you still don't get anything done. Now we all have friends where we go and then we right away and we do more talking than we do writing. Sure. Is that what's happening with you? Are you a part of writing groups but y'all spend more time socializing than writing? When you get around a good, like a, like a group of people who are serious, like who are actually about accountability and writing that people who socialize on you get around a good group of people, you will stop, have a, what I call Shiny Object Syndrome. You will stop jumping from topic to topic. You will stop, oh this methodology look good or this method looks good. Oh I can do an interview few. Oh what have I do? Action Research. You will stop that because you'll be in the company of people who are serious. That they know, like we're making a decision, we're committing to it. We're showing up every day. We'll put it in or work, so cause we're graduating. You will also get people who will give you cost of feedback. You can bounce ideas off of each other. They're going to build you up when you need it. They will getting your butt when you need it. Good. Now, for y'all who don't know that term, that just means they gonna call you out when you need it. With love though. That's what I'm talking about in terms of being around good people because if we are, maybe we heard like we're the sum of the five people we hang out with the most. Who are you hanging out with the most? Whether that's online or in person? Who are you listening to the most? How much are they helping you become better writer? A better student? A better scholar? Do you want the results that they have in their life? Do you want to be how they are? Do you want to show up as them? Because that's what's happening when you spend all your time with them and who in your circle do you want to be more like, do you wish you had the discipline they had, the productivity that they had? How much time are you spending with them? Okay, So this last thing I want you to rate yourself on your community. My community helps me be a stronger scholar by supporting and keeping me accountable. On a scale of one to five, how true is that statement for you? Remember being it needs a lot of work and five being I'm good. How would you rate your community, your scholar community? Okay. Now look at your numbers. Remember I asked you to look at your systems like your schedule, your goals, how much you're writing, as to look at your ability to crank out pages. Like can you sit down at your laptop right now and write something out? How good you feel about your ability in your system for doing that. And then this third thing I asked you to rate your community. How would you rate them? Their ability to support you, keep you accountable and make you better. How are those numbers looking? How are you feeling about your numbers? Are you like Spongebob over here? And for those of you who cannot see it, it's the gif of Spongebob trying to do all the things. He's cleaning, he's ironing. He's cooking, he's vacuuming. Do you feel like you have all these projects going on and you're just all over the place or are you like Blue over here, chill and she's at the pool is a picture of her on a yacht and pool. Had a little mocktail purse, and glasses living her life. Which one are you? Which one do you want to be? Who Do you want to be? When you're thinking about your dissertation, if you're like Sponge Bob or somewhere in between, then you know that your current strategy is not doing anything for you, but keeping you stuck, confused and overwhelmed. There's something about, like even if you don't completely feel like spongebob or you didn't completely have all ones, but you know there is a voice inside of you there like something's not right.I need to do something better. If you're still watching this video series and you know like something is not quite right. And that's what I'm going to be talking about for the rest. I'm going to talk to you about my "Get it Done" framework... To be continued in Part 3 of the webinar presentation next week!

tv god rate write lie shiny object syndrome biggest chipotle spongebob transcript action research who do cause i'm

Caren Glasser - The Super Boomer Lifestyle

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 16, 2019 59:26

My guest today is Caren Glasser, host of "The Super Boomer Lifestyle" show and founder of TheSuperBoomerLifestyle.com. Caren is also the author of 4 hit books, founder of the Spark It Network, and creator of the global movement called "The Little White Lie." Caren has invested the past 40+ years being of service to the community by sharing her gift of song and media. Learn more about Caren Glasser: Visit her website: https://thesuperboomerlifestyle.com/ Follow Caren Glasser on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/caren.glasser Twitter: https://twitter.com/carenglasser Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carenglasser/ Remember to subscribe, rate, and review the "Expand the Business" podcast. The show is available on all major podcast platforms! Follow Casey Eberhart on Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CaseyFan/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-eberhart-6642ba19/ Join the Resource Club Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheResourceClub/ Learn More and Get Your Free Referral Generating Gift at: http://expandthebusiness.com/ Episode Transcription: Casey: (00:05) Yeah. Well good afternoon. Good morning, good evening, good day everybody. I want to welcome you to this episode of expand the business where we help entrepreneurs take a deeper dive into all things in expanding the business. So today I am so beyond thrilled and excited for today's episode and I think you're going to get to see why I'm so excited as throughout the entire episode on this show, we really aim to bring to you guys valuable tips, techniques, tools, and a deeper dive into marketing processes, products, people, all things that are really going to help you expand whatever business you're in, whether you're in a traditional brick and mortar business and network marketing business or a digital business. And so I am so thrilled and excited for today. I can hardly stand it. So let's jump right into it. Today. I am so beyond, I'm honored to have Caren Glasser as our guests. Casey: (01:08) Now Karen is and you're going to see what's going to be funny about this is so often Karen and I talk a lot and we'll probably actually forget that this is a podcast that as we take a deeper dive, so I will try to keep us, I'll try to keep this on track and in a in scope. So Caren Glasser is one of my very best friends slash confidence slash therapist slash mentors slash people that I look up to learn from, collaborate with, partner with fight with, scream at, get screamed at by a, she's very much a sort of like my sister and your mother. I was very clear, very clear. If you guys, Karen has an amazing background and I can't wait to kind of share her with you, um, in how her mind works. So Karen was a child singing sensation. She traveled around the world singing when she was a kid with some very famous musicians all around the world and became a performer. Casey: (02:09) She's a cantor at a synagogue was, I should say. She is no longer there, but she still sings and has a career. And I know that's one of the things she loves to do. And here we are today and she is literally known around the planet as the digital diva. And so I can't wait to get in and really kind of dive in and really ask her and uh, dig deeper and why we even have the digital diva brand name. Um, but, uh, I feel very fortunate in that I get to nickname her or I had the pleasure of kind of coining her mama minutia, which we kind of known, uh, no as m squared. And so we'll, we'll kind of touch on that. So Karen, welcome to the show. Well, after an intro like that, I think we're all done. I don't know. Casey: (02:57) Well, awesome. So Karen, you and I have obviously been friends for many, many years. We've been through some ups and downs together. We've worked together on projects, we, we've helped each other out. We've kind of consulted on each other's projects. And so I, I kind of want to just go to the wayback machine and really kind of just talked to you about where you got your start. Because I think as entrepreneurs we all have a journey. We all have a story that we start on. What kind of brought you into the entrepreneurial experience in the very beginning? Caren Glasser: (03:29) Well, I like to say that I was an accidental entrepreneur in the very beginning because when I left my position as the candor of a synagogue in Los Angeles and moved up north, I found myself without a job, without knowing anybody and really struggled as to how I was going to get to know people. And so I did what any normal person would do not. I started going to networking events actually with no business. I had no business at that point. I just went to networking events so that I can meet people and from that point on, and I would introduce myself as I'm an accidental entrepreneur because I don't have a job right now and that's how I would introduce myself. And I think that because I was so vulnerable that way by actually saying I don't have a job, a lot of people are embarrassed to say that. And I just said I don't have a job and I'm looking for my next, next. And I got involved with digital technology and I like to say the rest is kind of a history because from that point on I was able to use this technology for everything that I do moving forward, which is why I got my name digital diva. Casey: (04:32) Well, so let's talk about that. So if we go back in the, in the way back machine, when you were going to those networking events, um, well I have two, two distinct pals. I want to go down with this. So I think a lot of people would, like you said, be a little bit scared to just roll into a networking event and go, I got nothing. I'm just going to here like looking for my next path or looking for my next opportunity. Would you say that back then you were going, I'm looking to help build out a network maybe that didn't exist at the time? Caren Glasser: (05:06) Yeah, I think that because I didn't have something going on, I actually was in a good place because I could listen. And I know that's what you teach is that we should go to a networking event more as the, um, the buyer, not the seller. And so when I went to these events, I literally was looking to enhance and enlarge my network, which there was nobody there at that point. I had people in friends down in Los Angeles, but certainly nobody up there. So I went to these events with the intention to expand my network and therefore maybe hear what was going on out there, see what the needs were, what were the problems. So when I came back to the table, however, months later I could have some solutions. And by that time I had a relationship with these people. And we know relationships are what so Casey: (05:52) absolutely. I mean relationships and, and the network and the influence that we build, obviously usually important. So back in that at that time, um, I know that you had a huge success in a network marketing opportunity that no longer no longer is there. Yeah. Was that what you kind of found when you went on that quest or it had that already wrapped up by the time you were looking for something? Caren Glasser: (06:18) I actually had just started. I, so I, I kinda told a fair, I said I didn't have anything going on. I had this, I had just jumped into a company at that point. It was called comment by, and it was a digital technology company, which of course that was my thing. I loved it. And I was an, as I moved into that, I saw that I was able to help people because of that. So I did have a little something, but I wasn't even sure that, that my, that little something was going to actually solve a problem because if you're not going to solve a problem, why are you even doing right? Casey: (06:50) Yeah. So one of the big takeaways from Karen already is, um, understanding the problem that you solve. If, if what you are doing and bringing to the marketplace doesn't solve a problem, it becomes much more difficult. Caren Glasser: (07:06) Yes, yes, exactly. Exactly. And because I was dealing in technology at that point, um, I actually was an, it's not smart to be the smartest person in the room, but I was actually the smartest person in the room because it was so new too to all of us out there. Although in the early nineties, Casey, I was live streaming my temple services to the shut-ins. So I, I had already dipped my toe into the whole technology thing. So I was, but I was in a great position because I could, uh, introduce people to something they had never heard about before. Casey: (07:39) Okay. So let's, let me take a deeper dive. Let me take a deeper dive in that. So when you were a cantor and you were at the synagogue, you said that you were live streaming way back. Yes. So, so obviously that was really when kind of live streaming and being able to broadcast over the Internet was literally, I mean, I remember back in those days, it was, it was, it was, it was amniotic fluid. It wasn't even an embryo yet. Exactly. Um, how, how did that and that experience and that, um, rush up and handholding with technology help you kind of make that transition into the next, into the next stage of technology? Caren Glasser: (08:24) Well, back in the 90s, it wasn't like right now, right now, you can literally pick up your, your Facebook, right and you can on your phone, put click a button and you're live, or you can go to youtube and you can go to periscope. There's so many different platforms. Back in those days, none of that existed. So I wish I had taken some pictures. We literally had these humongous, uh, hard drive computers. We had, um, wiring that went all around the sanctuary so that it would hook up into the cameras and then it would bounce off somebody else's computer and somebody else's place. All of this just so that we could reach, um, uh, an audience that couldn't get to the temple when I move forward and actually moved up north. And then I got into comment five, I realized, oh my gosh, if we had only had this technology, um, almost 20 years prior, it would have been a whole lot easier. And so for me it literally was the entry for me. So when I saw how easy it was now that was easier. What we do now is like a breath of fresh air. Literally we push a button and we go live. So I have seen, and we all have seen those of us in the, in the technology where we have seen the growth. It has been and it's growing faster and faster now. So you don't have to wait as long for the next thing to come. Casey: (09:40) Well, so let, let me still stick in the synagogue a for just a minute. When you were livestreaming and you were figuring that out, it sounds like it was kind of a, a patchwork of solutions. Like it feels like it was very much staple of chaps and glue stick and Caren Glasser: (09:57) yes, it very much was and it was actually really funny because even there was actually a time that they live stream. I was sick, didn't go to services that night, so they were live streaming and I got on my computer and watch the services and you could text and comment just like we can do on Facebook now, but it was a little, obviously a whole lot more clunkier and I could talk to the person that was sitting there in the booth live streaming and it was, it was pretty cool to be able to see the other end of it, but certainly it was clunky. It was, it was, you're right. Bandaids, we band aided it together Casey: (10:29) and so I know that you were a cantor in that role, but I know that there was an entrepreneurial spirit already burning inside. You say that that technology and your fighting through the problems and fighting through the headaches and fighting through all of that was more accident or on purpose? Caren Glasser: (10:51) I think it's actually on purpose. I think that I was very focused on and I've always been very focused on learning as much as I can about the technology and where we are in that moment. I pride myself on always being at least 10 steps ahead of where everything else is. And as I get older, I'm not ashamed to say it is harder to stay 10 steps ascent 10 steps ahead. But I think it was really very much on purpose that I, that I did this. Um, Casey: (11:18) well let me ask a, let me, let me go down and kind of maybe just a different question. Okay. It would seem to me that folks in that space that may even have been entrepreneurial may not have embraced technology in a way that you guys did. I mean, it seems like it's, you know, it seems like some people either are scared of technology that makes a little nervous. They don't really know, you know, can you teach a dog old dog new tricks type thing? What was it inside you that was like, look, we're a, we're trying to Caren Glasser: (11:54) get the message out. We're trying to, we're, we're getting, we're going to fight through this and we're going to play in the digital space rather than fold back to, you know what, we're just going to fold paper envelopes and we're just going to kind of go the traditional route that I think a lot of businesses kind of get stuck in. I think we, I think a lot of people get scared. They get scared and they're afraid to take the risk and I like to say, and I do everything this way. I asked myself the question before I take that risk and I step into something new. I say, what's the worst thing that can happen? Let's just get down to brass tacks. What is the worst thing could happen if I do this? If I take that next step, if I jump into the technology, if I do whatever it is, and then the next question I ask is, can I live with it? Casey: (12:35) Can you live with, can you live with the worst case scenario? Caren Glasser: (12:38) Exactly. And if I can, I'm full board ahead. I will just jump in with both feet and I will do whatever it takes with knowing that if it doesn't work, I'm okay because I've already decided I can live with it. If though, on the other hand I say, this is just too uncomfortable, I don't think that this makes sense, I will walk away and never take another step forward in that direction. It doesn't happen very often because I tended to say yes and then figure it out later. I know you do the same thing, but I found this, I found first of all, exciting to be first to the party, exciting that we were going to be able to provide something to people that really, really needed something like this. They couldn't get out of their hospital rooms, they weren't assisted living. So for me, I really felt from a clergy position, I was providing something that nobody else could. Now, if you go out now and look at all the synagogues out there, every single one of them to a person is live streaming their services. So I feel like I was kind of like ahead of the curve. We kind of started it and now people stepped in and did it. Casey: (13:42) And so the first time that you kind of use scotch tape and duct tape and glue sticks and kind of got the thing by, I'm assuming that, well, I was going to go the opposite. I was gonna say, I assumed that it was perfectly lit. Everybody sounded looked amazing. The camera took 30 pounds off and everything just worked absolutely smoothly. And you guys were dynamic and amazing and there were no flaws or mess up. Caren Glasser: (14:08) No. Yeah, right. Not so much. We, we, we fumbled the constantly. We fumbled constantly, but it didn't matter because the people on the other end, the, the end user was so appreciative that we were even attempting to reach out to them. So it was a win win any way you did it. And as we move forward, we tightened it up and I wish I was, sometimes I wish I was back there because it would be so easy right now just to say, okay guys, let's go live right now. Yeah. Casey: (14:38) Yeah. I mean it really being able to broadcast one's message over the Internet in any way, whether it was through social media or just on a platform that's really sort of leveled the playing field and make everybody have the same opportunity internally, publishing content and finding a tribe and engaging the tribe, marketing to the tribe. So, so we left, we left the synagogue, we kind of just brought it out on our own. We, you had built a network marketing team and an organization and lots of customers and lots of folks. How important was that in the journey moving forward for you looking back? Caren Glasser: (15:17) So important because in doing that, I also wanted to find a, a unique way to educate and to ultimately sell. When that happened, this technology and the only way that I felt that we could do that was to show people the value. And so I did a couple of things. I volunteered to go to other people's events and I would live stream for them. I would take the technology, I'd sit in the back of the room, I would live stream. We actually would sell packages online for the people. So just to show people what could happen. But then as you know, my next step was, okay, how do I use this technology to build the business and also give more people visibility and promote. Your passion was born from that. Casey: (16:05) Absolutely. And I want to move to promote your passion and Biz bantering in a second. One of the things that was a light bulb for me in knowing you was when our good friend and colleague Bruce Waterman, uh, used the technology of live streaming to live stream of all things a pampered chef party. And I remember this clear as it was like I, even though it was more than a decade ago, uh, I, I remember watching the live stream and watching the little number of how many people were watching it live versus how many people were in the room. And if you don't know what pampered chef is, it is a direct sales party plan organization where they sell amazing kitchen, your texts. I'm a huge fan of pamper chef kitchen. I feel like it's a pampered chef kitchen owned by Warren buffet of all things. So, um, I just remember thinking, oh my gosh, here was a way for a party that had the hostess, um, the presenter and there were probably five to 10 people in the room as I remember. Right. And over time, the last time I had asked Bruce, and this was probably, you know, a decade ago, there had been over 400 views of that same, of that same party. And that's when I think for me, kind of hitching my, my wagon to you and just saying, okay, here is a, here's a really smart entrepreneur that understands how to break that message into a larger audience. Casey: (17:38) This is where we're going. Caren Glasser: (17:39) Well absolutely. And I remember back in the day you would say, I'm low tech. Big Check, right? That was your thing. And I, I remember we would have, not arguments but serious discussions about, yeah, that's all good. However you can reach more people and you can do more good and you can create more relationships when you are reaching more people at the same time. And that was the live stream. And I know you don't say that anymore. You actually say high-tech, even bigger checks. Right. I think that's what you say now. And it's, but it's true. It is true because you are reaching the masses. And I know you and I went and did a Tupperware party, didn't we? I think we streamed a Tupperware event. You were the, I think you were the speaker. You did the event and I ly stigma for a bunch of Tupperware ladies and men. I think it wasn't just ladies what an experience that was, but it goes to the point. That's the whole thing with pampered chef and Tupperware. And I did, I mean this is what we did. Bruce did it a lot. We did it for the promote your passion events. That became the mainstay of what we did. People could buy tickets and I know you do this now. People could buy tickets and attend in person or they could watch it live. How amazing is that? Casey: (18:53) I mean, everything that we do now, um, is live streams. So our groups, we sell tickets, so people, we can have people kind of watch over our shoulder as we do a live meetup group and we usually charge 10 bucks or whatever. But that essentially allows us to broaden the audience and at the same time get the message to people that don't have access to it, number one. And number two frankly, it also helps, um, cover a cost and cover cover some of the stuff we do. So before we talk about before, well let's talk about promote your passion. So promote your passion was um, a multipronged approach. I think you took to kind of your next evolution. I know we had, you had a book called conversations with experts that that was, um, inside the promote your passion brand. We, you did live events or I should say we all have you explain why in a second. I know you did a cruise with that. Talk to me a little bit about, um, the evolution as an entreprenuer kind of always being two or three steps ahead almost ahead of your time. Really. Caren Glasser: (20:03) Yeah. And I don't think I knew that back then. I just thought that I was struggling along with everybody else. Right. And I, and, and I do think I was ahead of my time and I actually think I still am ahead of my time at this point. I don't really know what's coming next. I'm not a mind reader, but I can see some stuff that's happening there. So I'm already kind of trying to jump on that. So, you know, I like to repurpose everything and I think that as I was doing this, I didn't want to work harder. I wanted to work smarter even though we all worked very, very hard to do this. And so as I looked at this, I looked at the events, how could I repurpose the events? Um, how Casey: (20:39) before before that, I'm sorry to interrupt, go back and tell us the premise of what promote your passion was, what did included so that we have some context in terms of what we're actually repurposing. Caren Glasser: (20:49) Absolutely. You know, one of the things that I am not, is shy. I'm not shy and I'm fearless. And so I was introduced to a company, an organization called Club Corp. And Club Corp is a business institution. They're amazing. It's for a very high, uh, financial demographic. All these very, you know, high level, um, business owners, entrepreneurs, and they have these places all across the country. Uh, either high rises or resorts. And I connected with them and I just asked, I, you know, I, my feeling is if you don't ask, you don't know. So I said to them, and I didn't have this at the time, but I kind of made it up. I said, I had this great group of people, they're business leaders, they're entrepreneurs. They talk on different subjects, marketing, sales and mean we networking. We have to the whole thing. How would you feel if I brought this program that didn't exist yet, by the way, to your, your, um, facility. Caren Glasser: (21:43) You can invite your people that are already members. So it's a win win for them. They're now providing something for the members and we're going to sell tickets and can we do this? And they jumped on it because, because I, I think they saw some benefit for their members and I was first in the party. Nobody had ever done that. And so we did these events all across the country back and forth. We Ping pongs how many events we did, and I will talk about that, but we did these events and we had anywhere between 40 to 50 people that showed up at each one of these events, which at that time people were always saying, how do I get butts in the seat? We dialed it in, we nailed it. We knew what we were supposed to do. And part of it was the live stream. Caren Glasser: (22:24) Part of it was the ability to fill those seats by getting amazing speakers who again were looking for exposure and we were able to give that exposure to them. Uh, David Asarnow is one of those people and we'll talk about that. And we would bring these people in. I also, how's the panel? I would go into the community and say, which one are, you guys know some people that might want to come see you in an event. We'll put you on a panel and now we got the entire city engaged. It was a, it was a really, really exciting time and exhausting all at the same time. And I like to say that I'll never do that again. Casey: (22:59) So let's, let's, let's, let's unpack that a bit because we, there was a lot in that that I was really, really fortunate and honored to have been a part of that 20 cities, uh, in what felt like 22 weeks. I mean we really did go out on the road. Yeah. And for those of you that are, are looking to do events and looking to kind of do some of this, you know, a couple of the issues that most producers or promoters run into the number one, how do we get people in the room? Number two, where do we do these events and your relationship with Club Corp at the time, I mean I remember they were thirsty to have content provided to their members. It was a value add for them. And because it was live stream and promoted club court inside a pinch bed, it also allowed them to get extra exposure for potential new members. Casey: (23:52) So take away partner with your venues and don't just be a tenant when that, when that occurs. Number two, I loved what we did with the panels where you went into a local marketplace, found influencers in that marketplace. Said, hey, come on down and sit on a panel, but I need you to bring five friends. And it really allowed us to get access or gain access to the local influencer market that was right inside of that community. And we live stream to end, you know, just a huge shout out. You know, I'm just thinking back to the event we did in Boston, of all things, Caren Glasser: (24:33) that was wild. Oh my gosh. I, that was one of my favorite ones actually. Casey: (24:37) That was one of my, well it was clearly one of my favorite ones because that particular event was one where we had an influencer in the room. I done the research and well, I in my, by me saying I did the research, you told me what I needed to know. We had a high influencer or a high influence network, a high influence marketer essentially in the room. Her name was Sheila. We did the event. I sat next to her because I basically begged Karen, just sit me next to Sheila. I pretended I was basically auditioning for Sheila the whole time. Ended up going on. Sheila ended up bringing me into an organization to both speak at MC. And from there it really opened up a lot of doors in terms of my own career in terms of meeting all of the gang at digital marketer like Roland Frasier and Perry Belcher and Ryan Deiss and having the opportunity to work with them over the several years. Caren Glasser: (25:31) And that's because you said yes and that's because you said yes. You didn't think, oh, she's not going to pay me. How am I going to do this? I don't know what I'm doing that this doesn't, you said yes. And I think that is a huge point that our listeners need to understand. Sometimes you just need to say yes and figure it out. Casey: (25:50) Yeah, it was, I mean it was, look, it felt very awkward and Gawky and we didn't really know what we were doing and you know, I, we could re, I mean it was, it was as close to being on a rock and roll tour as, as anything and it was so much fun and it was an incredible amount of work. Um, both for the partners you had on the ground in the market place that the market that we were in, but also on your end, what would you say is your biggest lesson or a couple of lesson takeaways that you could take away from that whole experience? Caren Glasser: (26:27) Well, there's so many. Um, probably the first most important lesson that I took away, and we talked about it afterwards, but we were already down the road, was not to have another event already scheduled in that city that you could with those people that were sitting in the room, you're never going to have a better chance when they're already hyped up, already excited, already have known how much they've learned. Nobody has sold to them. That's another thing. We never did a hard sell. In fact, it was basically a no sell a, we just wanted to help people. And so I think the first, you know, lesson on that was um, I totally lost my train of thought. Casey: (27:08) Um, you were, you were talking about not having another event set up and I think we did 20 different cities and we've maybe done you may, Caren Glasser: (27:18) was it? Yeah. And it was more to the point we were bouncing across the country. We would do an event in Boston and whoever thought this was this great idea, me apparently we would then go back to California and then we would go to Texas and then we would go to Atlanta and that, so a couple of lessons always have another event plan so you can sell into it and maybe make your itinerary a little closer to each other. There's, you know, you can still accomplish the same thing. You don't have to bounce back and forth. We all burned out. I think by the end of the year we were like, oh my gosh, if we have to do another one of these, just shoot me now. Casey: (27:52) Yup. And as I, as I remember that there were you, it was sort of like you had almost, you had a template set up for each city and the template, as I remember it was you had a couple of speakers that you brought with you sort of all the time. Then you plugged in different speakers depending on either what the marketplace wanted or as I would say now looking back, it was leveraged to see who you could bring into influential network of folks that you could leverage later when you're writing. Caren Glasser: (28:27) No question about that. No question about that. In fact, I think that's how we ended up all meeting David Asarnow, um, because we knew were his background was form and where he came from. And when he joined us at that Boston event, which by the way, you know, we also met Susan Roman at that event. She's one of the Instagram queen. Oh my gosh. So that was an amazing event. Casey: (28:49) Yeah, I remember Sue's Zimmerman. She and I are having an intern. It's funny, she and I have since talked about this. We, I, she spoke at traffic and conversion a couple of times and I remember very clearly at that Boston event going at the time she had a little beach shop. She wasn't selling out of the beach shop. He had just started using Instagram. And so she and I had an entire conversation about how she should take Instagram and leverage that to sell her stuff in an in an off season tourist market. And she will, she has much nicer things about me then that I'm going to give myself credit for. But um, that Boston event was a special event. There were lots of, lots of people that I look back going, oh my gosh, if that were today, we're all grown up fairly. Lots of people at that event were, were huge, including David Asarnow, who is a double double comma click funnels funnel. Massive builder, right. I mean, he's one of the most astute, amazing marketers kind of our, at our time. And that was he and i's first meeting was at that, was it in Boston or Atlanta? Caren Glasser: (29:58) I think it was Atlanta because that's another event that ended up being so unbelievably good and that was just an accident. I actually had no idea who I had put on a panel. People were recommending them and I was like, okay, great. And we put them on and I remember you walking your and saying, do you have any idea who those people are that are sitting on this panel? And I was like, no, I had no idea. They were all the movers and shakers and I felt proud about that at that moment because I realized the fact that they wanted to be at this event gave us some validity that we just couldn't do ourselves. You Know Mohammad Siddique and we had breads felon on that thing on the panel. It was crazy leak off. I mean we had these people that were like, you know, they were just at our level. I like to say that we were there too. And that's the other thing we talk about all the time. We don't realize back then how much we really knew and what we really were doing back then. And it was a game changer I think for them, for us back then. Casey: (30:59) Well, so let's, so let's kind of, so, so we did those events. Um, you came out with a book that you utilize folks that were at the event, if I wrote to do, to kind of put together a compilation book again before it became all the rage, talk about that project. Caren Glasser: (31:15) So in that particular case, and that was an Atlanta event, that was actually the second Atlanta event that we did at the carb. Um, at the cub. What is it called? The, uh, no, it's down to oh, with each, every cob to get Cobb gallery up. So that's what we did. The event and what we did, we added an extra thing to it cause I had been introduced to the world of, of publishing. And so I went to all of my speakers and the panel members and I said, I would like to gift you this, would you please? Would you be willing to write a para, a chapter for this compilation book? And we will then hand them out as a gift to all of the people that are at the next event. Everyone said yes, of course, because it, it wasn't, you know, it was easy to do and that was my foray into the publishing world and that began a whole whole nother avenue. Casey: (32:10) And that book is available today still on Amazon, I believe. Conversations with experts. Correct. I'll drop, I'll drop a link in the show notes. You guys. Um, it was, uh, it, it was, what's really funny about that book cause I just cracked it open, uh, literally a couple of weeks ago and I was flipping through and I was looking at all of the people that contributed to that book and I was like, oh my gosh. It was like, it was like we were all childs actors. Stars. Exactly. Now we're all like grown up and there are some amazing people at, if you're listening to the show, you would know if you're in the marketing space at all, these names will all ring a bell. It's actually kind of so and so we, you even decided to do a cruise. What was the, what was the, the launching point for the cruise? What were your thoughts behind the cruise? Caren Glasser: (33:00) Well, about a halfway through the year, um, I've done several crews before, before I had done promote your passion, um, I had done several cruises and I love to cruise. So let's start it at with, I'd love to go on a cruise. Wouldn't it be fun to do a promote your passion event on a cruise? We connected with Helen Brahms who is like an amazing, uh, cruise coordinator. She, she's the one who coordinated this for us. We had over 50, 55 people were on this cruise. We had some of the same speakers that had gone with us. That was kind of thing. We invited those people to come on as a special thank you for actually participating and being involved in the ground and the ground swell. And we brought these people on. We did a lecture and one of the use of the word lecture, but we did the discussions and the teaching on the c days. And it was so amazing. I have such fond memories about that. We have pictures of us all wearing tee shirts that said, uh, I am passionate. I remember that the way the, the, the logo or the, and the insignia was on the shirt. It just looked like we were all asses. Caren Glasser: (34:08) We were ashing it. So it was kind of, it looks kind of funny but wonderful memories, Wonderful Memories. And I think everyone went away from that. Again, we were kind of at the head of the curve there. There were a couple of cruises out there, the marketers cruise, and there were some other things that were out there. But as far as an entrepreneurial crews of people that were business owners, it was pretty much the first of its kind. And again, I didn't know what I was doing other than I was really good at putting on events. So I figured, well it was good there. I'll figure it out here on the cruise. And it was phenomenal. Casey: (34:40) And, and so moving forward, you know, those, it always seems like you're a half step ahead, you know, and always try new things. And, and ready to ready to risk it all. One of the, one of my more proud endeavors as an entrepreneur was saying yes to business banter. Yeah, that was fun. And you know, that came out of promote your passion and it was essentially, as I remember it, a podcast that you had produced and you were kind of the, the Mama Hen of the, of the show and you were the of the show and you actually asked, um, David Asarnow and I to kind of Co host a show that had sort of the three of us bantering and once in awhile or maybe half the time we would bring in other guests and you would produce all that. What was, what was the thought behind that and why? Why would you know? I'd never even asked you this as my friend or whatever. Why, why me? Why David? Why the format? What was the purpose? Caren Glasser: (35:43) Well, first of all, we use youtube live. So I always believe that if you're going to do anything digital it, if it, if possible, do it video first. You could always strip the audio and create something else. So this was actually right. Casey: (35:56) Well, it's like we're doing this podcast, this podcast is being done on zoom and it will end up being, the video version will be on youtube, but audio is just going to be pulled out of this. And that's what we'll go up on. iTunes, Spotify and all those. Caren Glasser: (36:08) Exactly. And back when we were doing this is back 2012 I think 2008 this is where we're going back a time youtube live was, was the thing they had just launched. And so we started doing this on youtube live and it was, it was fun. The reason why I, well first of all, you had been all over the country with me. Okay. And I could think of no, close your ears. Cause I'm now going to tell you how wonderful you are, but truly I could think of no better host than you because when you show up, first of all, you're very, very engaging. You're very, very funny. Um, and you have the ability, I know, I know. Um, just, you know, it's just loading up the head. You have the ability to talk to people in a way that they don't go running away scared because you're not using big words. Caren Glasser: (36:55) Right. And I don't mean that you don't know the big words, but you know how to get down and talk to people where they are, meet them where they are. David Asarnow had worked with Tony Robbins and and was was actually one of his coaches. So he came from the more what we would say at least I would say more that traditional coaching, what we all thought of as coaching. So I felt there was a good game to Yang, um, that he was going to bring to the table. He also was very involved in sales and, and the whole idea of how to do sales. You were very much involved at that time and still are in the networking aspect. So it was a really, really good mix and I'm really proud of it because from that show we had an amazing guest and I know that from that show I launched into another show. You ended up using live streaming and all of your stuff moving forward from that because I think that at that point we all saw the value. Casey: (37:47) Yeah, it was, it was, it was a, it was a really fun time. And you know, it's interesting because I know you've done several podcasts since then. You know, I went on to do a solo podcast called the double your check club that we ran for literally seven years, right? Every single weekend. Here we are. It's kind of funny that we both are now running, running new podcasts. Yours is that you, you know, I want to talk about yours, um, here in a second, but we're kind of coming into our own again about podcasting because it really allows you to help an audience find their voice, help an audience move the needle forward. In this case, you know, we're, we're showing or hoping that we can help business owners move the needle forward on expanding business, whatever business that is. Yeah. So your, your, your kind of Solo podcast or the show that you kind of started, I know that you had started a, a digital network, almost like a digital TV show conglomerate, if you will, a digital network called spark it network. And in that also launched the little white lie. Caren Glasser: (38:54) Well actually actually before that at launched the passion point and that was, that was the precursor and actually from those shows, I don't, I think, you know, cause I think you're a chapter we, I actually created two books based upon the passion point. It was the passion point, you know, volume one, the passion point volume two. And so again, repurposed in materials. So that was at an interview show where I interviewed what I called Passion East as small around the world who were following their passion, making a living, doing what they love. Those shows ended up on the spark network. Now the spark network was sort of, I used to call it the, um, think of Huffington Post, a collaborative blogging site. But for all of us regular people that would never get asked to post in Huffington Post. And the reason why that's so valuable as a collaborative blog as you know, you can leverage everybody else. Caren Glasser: (39:45) And so my shows were there. I, we, I literally, uh, people, um, hired me or, or paid me to get on the network. And to this day, even though we're not actually doing live shows on that network anymore, we, I'm very, we have a less than 4% bounce rate on that site because it's a collaborative blog and people go down the rabbit hole, they go in because of one article and they end up going all over the place and we still get thousands and thousands of views a week. So that was kind of a cool thing that we did on the site. Casey: (40:19) I remember, I remember the passion point now, so little white lie. Let's, let's, let's, let's, let's talk about what, uh, what little white lie was and how it became kind of the story launch point. Yeah. What I would say sort of where you are now with over lifestyle. Can you take me back to when I went white, my little white lie where it came from and kind of walk me through the evolution and as entrepreneurs, you guys, what I hope you're taking away from this conversation is that entrepreneurs manage the relationship between risk and reward. And if you're stilled, if Karen was still a cantor at that synagogue just doing live stream, she wouldn't have the global footprint that she has today. So really look about this call, this, this, this show is really about expanding the base, expanding the database, expanding the influence, expanding the network, expanding the reach, your technology and expanding the business. So you've got little white lie. Caren Glasser: (41:27) So, um, when I turned 60 Aye, how a come to Jesus moment with myself, I realized that I had been sitting on a live stream for weeks and weeks and years at a time talking about and with authenticity and showing up as your real self. And yet here I was at that point with my dark black hair that I had been coloring since I was 30. So fast forward 30 years. Um, I realized that I had to change and so I said, I'm going to let my hair grow out, and it became a little white lie. It's that the lies we tell ourselves, but then I realized, oh my gosh, I'm like camera now. Every week, what am I going to do? My hair is going to grow out on camera. I think I'll wear a hat. I did that once and I realized how ridiculous is this? Caren Glasser: (42:11) I'm inside my office and I'm wearing a hat to cover my little white lie. From that point on, week after week, I started doing the show. I interviewed, it was still an interview show, but I brought on people in the I'm pro aging world, I'll say for lack of a better word, that we're my guests and every week I would do my reveal. I put my head down like this and I'd say, here it is, and literally I have a video now of my hair growing out and that became the little white lie and a new website was created. It's the site where all the lives live. I believe in re-purposing, I take the shows off of Facebook and I then put them over on my website. I create blog posts out of them. You, you're in my funnel, you know what I do with all of this and it has been pretty amazing. But that morphed as well. Casey: (42:58) Yeah. And that side is the little white lie.com. Correct? Correct. Correct. And um, if you're listening to the show, you really want to check out the little white light.com because the evolution of Karen's career and the influencers that she has surrounded herself with and who have surrounded her in their network, uh, all kind of live inside the little white lie.com and it's a, it's a fantastic sort of resource of pages and shows and different things. So you did that as a podcast, as a show and that sort of evolved a little bit, um, and got maybe a little bit more sophisticated as you found an audience and you found kind of that tribe. Caren Glasser: (43:42) Absolutely. And also realize that if I'm going to put the time and energy into doing this, I had to figure out how to monetize it, right. Because other than that, it's just a passion project and it took way too many hours to be a passion project without anything coming back. And I don't mean monetization necessarily in dollars and cents. I mean monetization and growing my list. I mean, you know, creating the relationships. So for me that was a huge, huge thing for me. And when that show morphed into the super boomer lifestyle show, um, it, I now have viewers around the world. I mean we get anywhere between 10 to 15,000 views in the first week. I have a huge following in Italy. I don't know why, but I do, I'm considering, I think we move as all to Italy. Casey: (44:30) Maybe that's because you were a below deck Mediterranean addition. For those of you that don't, ah, below deck. Karen was on Mediterranean, uh, below the deck, the Mediterranean edition. Um, and I, if you want to go back and watch it, I believe if I'm not mistaken, it was season two, episode two, season one, season one, episode two, Caren Glasser: (44:53) episode six and seven. We were actually on two different episodes. We were known as [inaudible] Casey: (44:57) most. And by the way, as a show host, you just make it up and they'll correct you. So Caren Glasser: (45:01) correct. Yeah. But we, they call this the golden girls because we were the oldest charter that went on. We were a bunch of old ladies, so it was kind of fun. Casey: (45:09) So, so all of that, I know that one of the women that were was on the show with you, it was a group of digital entrepreneurs, um, all women. It was a fantastic group of people. I'm very fortunate that I know several of you as friends and I was like, oh my gosh, to be a fly on the wall of that yacht going around the Mediterranean. I'm one of those people ended up becoming one of your partners in the super boomer lifestyle. So talk to me a little bit about kind of how that show started, the partnerships that you have and then I wanna I wanna kind of wrap up and kind of the process that you go through and getting that show up in live and running, running what you do. Caren Glasser: (45:47) Absolutely. So the super bloomer lifestyle was born and, and season one started last October. We're now in season four. I do about eight shows a season. And then I, and then I continue on, um, Kathy Stober who you're talking about, she is one of our partners, um, who, she's a an amazing, we'll first of all talk about digital divas. This woman just puts us all to shame. She is an internet marketer from the word go. She's an affiliate marketer. And so she came on to create the store that we now have called the super boomer lifestyle.com. And between her and my, my partner partner, which is Joey Garrity, she's a marketing genius. She comes from Hollywood. So we put her resources, her brilliance together with my, uh, I'm known, I'm the talent. That's what they got. You're the talent. Just go do your show. Joey markets it, and then Cathy makes sure that um, our marketing or advertising is happening. She makes sure that the store is loaded up with some great stuff. And we are three. What I like to say, how we're full super boomers. We are, we're in it to win it. Casey: (46:53) And what is, what is a super boomer? Caren Glasser: (46:56) So my death, Mike. Yeah, that audience. Well, we've all heard of the boomer generation, right? And I think it's 1943 to, I don't know, 19 something. We're, I'm a boomer. You're a boomer. We're a boomers. But there's something about being a super boomer, meaning that you just go be a above and beyond. You are not, you don't just rest on while I'm a boomer, because I was born during this period of time. I'm a super boomer because I'm fearless. I don't talk about when I'm going to retire because I'm just going to sit around and eat bon bons all. If that's what you want to do, that's fine, that's great. But I talk about my next, next super boomers talk about what they're going to do next in their next time they move out to something new. They're fearless. They show up as they who they are. Caren Glasser: (47:42) They're not going to be told what to wear, how to wear it, what color hair they're supposed to have. You're too old to do technology. You can tell I'm passionate about this because I, I my, I say, just watch me. You tell me. Not that I can't do this now, just watch me. So the whole premise is, is that those of us who are ignoring the whole age thing, it's not about the age. I don't believe that the 50 is the new 30 that that doesn't even mean what is 30 what does that mean exactly? We are pro age. We are celebrating our age. We are celebrating who we are. Casey: (48:16) And so the super boomer lifestyle show and store sits inside of the little white lie.com correct. Caren Glasser: (48:23) Well, if there is a link to it, it's actually a separate site. You can go straight there to the super boomer lifestyle.com. You can actually go straight there. But it is, it is, it is integrated into it. Meaning if you're a super boomer, you like the shows and you want to be a super boomer and see what that really means, you can go check out the store. Casey: (48:42) Awesome. So this brings up a question that I think a lot of solo maneuvers and micropreneurs and even entrepreneurs have. And that is, you know, I'm fortunate enough to know the three of you, uh, that, that are kind of makeup that show core. And I know you have other people at this point as a shows you've had to add on some marketing people and kind of outsource some of the tasks that it takes to bring a show like that to bear. You're obviously not scared of partnerships and collaboration. No. Um, talk to me about that because I think a lot of entrepreneurs are really afraid of scared. They may be been burned in the past. How important are partnerships and collaborators for you as you grow and expand the brand, the show? So on and so forth. And ultimately the store, Caren Glasser: (49:33) well, first off, let me, let's just be real. I've been burned. You've been burned. So the fact that you might get burned is not unusual because it does happen. And that's because when you do show up in service and all you wanna do is just support somebody, there are people out there that will take advantage of it. And that's, so, let's just put that aside, but you know, I, I just think that, okay, collaboration is, you say king, I say Queen Collaboration is queen. I would much rather be working with somebody rather than sitting at my desk all by myself looking at a screen all day long. I live in the blue ocean of abundancy, not the Red Sea of scarcity. I get excited when somebody says, Ooh, I like what you're doing. And I see what they're doing and go, you know what? We compliment each other. You bring your skill set in. I, yeah, make sure you have things in writing guys. When you do things like this, make sure that you have put your intentions in writing, that everybody understands what you all agree to. But from that point on go forward. I just think collaborations are the only way to do business boring. Would it be to sit here and just, you know, look at ourselves. Casey: (50:50) Yeah. And of course, you know right towards the end of the show you have to have technology in the hall of fame and it wouldn't, it wouldn't, it wouldn't be technology without some, um, extra extra layers. And it's actually hilarious because I think I'm the last person in the world that has a landline in my office and you can't make it stop. Well not only should I not make it stop, it's connected to my fax machine. Oh, it's actually ringing. So it's is you want to go, why on earth would you have a fax machine? Well, you know, because I live in the relative age. So Karen, as that show, I want to sort of wrap up over the next couple of minutes just talking about some of the tools that you use to bring a show like super boomer lifestyle to bear. I know that you have a project management software that you liked, like give me some, give me a couple of tools that you use to repurpose and that, you know, you would highly recommend for people that want to do a podcast or a show or at least expand their reach. Caren Glasser: (51:45) So I use Trello, um, for this particular show. I use other project management software for other things, but Trello works really well for me because I'm able to move the show from when I first booked somebody across the way until the show actually airs and then what we do afterwards. So Trello is awesome. It's free. Um, so it's a great platform and you don't lose anything because it's free. It's just a great platform. So that's the first thing. The second thing is I happened to use a platform called [inaudible] live, which is my streaming platform. Um, it allows me to have, um, a scrolling, you know, lower third. I can put comments up from the people that are watching. It's very engaging. So that's a great tool. By the way, guys, if you're interested in getting, um, some, a free trial of it, let me know. We can get you hooked up. Casey: (52:38) And then that's B as in B, e l I v E. Dot. T v B live.tv and understand when Karen is talking about a streaming, that show starts off as a video production and then take the audio and Caren Glasser: (52:54) exactly. So everything I do is video first. There's no reason not to do it that way. Um, you know, look, and for those of you are saying, I look terrible on camera and snap out of that, you look exactly how you look. Everyone sees you as Zackly how you just get used to it. So we do that. Um, so it's Trello and then we do B life. From that point on, I use another resource called repurpose dot. Io. I know that you rep that. So you might want to put up, Casey: (53:18) I will tell you that it is, it is one of the coolest things. Um, here's my affiliate link to it. It's lives to tube.com l, I v, e s t o, t, u B e.com. And what it really does is it allows you to take a Facebook live and put it directly up on Youtube. You can take the podcast and strip the audio out and the audio can go right on wordpress. It can be, it's an a mic go. Caren Glasser: (53:42) It's so cool. It is, and it's on it's autopilot. So some of the things that I have going had been set up. It takes some time. You set them up and then your hands off, your hands off. So I use that. There's a couple other things that I do after the show. I transcribe the show and because you can do lots of things with the transcription, um, I send it to a rev.com. They have a, a a 10 cents a minute. So you know, if you're shows 30 minutes, you're paying three bucks to get the transcription. It's dirt cheap and then you take that, I create a blog post out of it. I take all the links that I had used in the show, I put them into the blog post. But more importantly, I take the live show and embedded into the blog posts. Why is that important? Caren Glasser: (54:27) Every time somebody opens that blog and starts to watch that show, the count goes up on Facebook. The other platform, the other software that I use is called simple social, I believe. And that takes my show and sends the entire show over to wordpress with the comments. How cool was that? Now you don't, you can have a blog that goes live and there's always, there's already conversation going. I could go on forever. You can stop me. We can give in the pub, some other stuff later on. But you know, I use, I use a program from Instagram. I use a great program from my, from my Twitter posting. Um, and then I do a lot of stuff that's manual. Casey: (55:04) Yeah. And so gang, look, here's, here's the deal. As you're listening to this, you have, you've been listening for a, for a quite a quite a while. And the two things that I can kind of take away from this chat, Karen, is number one, there were always moving. And as an entrepreneur you're always kind of swimming through the waters and looking for opportunities to make your job and your life easier, expanding your reach, what can you do to really collaborate and move and spread out that sort of digital diva footprint, right? I'll kind of finish the con kind of finish with this. I know where you are today. Where do you see yourself next? What's the next, what's on the forefront of where you go, where you amazing women are taking super boomer lifestyle? What's, what's that? Caren Glasser: (55:56) Well, first of all, we are going to do a Superbowl, my lifestyle cruise next year. That's first. Um, secondly, uh, my intention is to take this show because uh, and take it to a different kind of media, uh, like a, like, um, a Hulu or a, uh, Netflix because traditional media as we know right now is going away. How many of us go and watch, um, CBS all day long. We don't, we, we have our Netflix and we have our, our Amazon prime are watching outside of what would be considered traditional media. And so my intention is to get enough visibility in enough eyeballs on what we're doing that we can take the show and become one of those lie, I call them real reality because we're not just a reality show. It's not scripted. Whatever comes out of our mouth is what comes out of our mouth. And to put it on a Netflix or, or a, um, uh, a Hulu or something of that nature. So that's my next, next, that's where I hope to take this and I don't just hope to, I fully intend that will be on one of those platforms in the near future. Casey: (56:57) Absolutely. And so Karen, I just want to wrap up and say, you know, it has been an absolute blast having this conversation and I know that you are in involved in, you know, working on, on some unique and some cool things bringing to the marketplace both on the corporate side as an a consultant side as obviously as talented your show. And for those of you that are listening, don't, um, don't wait another minute. You have to get connected to Karen and watch what she's doing. She is one of the world's best at expanding her reach, expanding the, the base that she has. You can check her out@thelittlewhitelie.com. You can go to super boomer lifestyle.com as well and you can kind of see what she's up to. She's all over every social media platform. Caren Glasser, Karen with a c and um, Karen, I just really appreciate and am grateful to have the time sharing with you and I look forward to the next 20, 30, 40 years, uh, collaborating, partnering, um, having a therapist, having, I knock me upside the head. It's, it's really been awesome. Caren Glasser: (58:10) Well, thank you and I want to congratulate you on, on this new show that you're launching. I think that it's going to, it already has a lot of value just because you're in it, and I'm not saying that again to explode your head, but it's true. Anyone that knows you knows that when you come to the table, you come to the table with this much to the point that it's almost being firehose, right? And so I know that this is going to be very, very successful. Some regulations on this. Casey: (58:33) Awesome. Thank you Karen. So you guys, if you want to check us out, we're all over iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast. This show is, I'm in need of your reviews where one of the very first episodes of this show, each and every week, we're going to bring things to help you expand the business. If your business needs referrals or you're looking to expand the business, you want to get updates on the show. What we're doing, who we're having as guests, head over to expand the business.com drop your name and email address in there. We've got some goodies for you over there if you want. But we're really excited about the launch of this new show, and I just could not think of anybody better than a first first guest up, uh, Caren Glasser. So if you're listening, I want to thank you very much for being on the show, listening, participating. Hopefully your hand hurts from writing notes, or if you're on a treadmill, we're almost done to start your warm down. If you're in your car, you know, pull over, take some notes, we'll get ya. We'll get you the links in the show notes here. So with that, you guys have an amazing day. Now go give somebody else an absolutely awesome day. Chomp telling that sign.

Take This Personality Test (018)

House Academy Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 3, 2019 14:39

Take This Personality Test (018) Transcript: Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi there. Steven Butala: Welcome to The House Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk, I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about taking a personality test. What do you think this is really about, Jill? Jill DeWit: This is how I took it and I've got a few questions here I'm going to ask. To me, this is about the personality test that will help you decide if this is something for you, if you should be in the house flipping world in some way. Steven Butala: I'm going to take it with everybody and chances are I will score lower than most the listeners. Jill DeWit: I've got five questions [crosstalk 00:00:41]- This is really good. Steven Butala: Before we get into it, let's take a question posted by one of our members on the HouseAcademy.com online communities free. Jill DeWit: Stanley asked, “How do you finance your house deals?” Steven Butala: We finance our house deals in one of the following ways. Self-funded ... By the way we almost always ... in fact, I can't remember a time when we didn't actually close on it. We are wholesalers, but we buy the property and resell it. We take title to it. We either buy it ourselves, we buy it with another partner in our group or we ... if it's a really smoking deal and it's got unvolved subdividing or development, we syndicate it out into our closed group, not to the public by any stretch, and raise capital to do some project like that. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: We're doing that right now on a small apartment building that we will resell immediately when it's done. Jill DeWit: Thank you. And I would encourage you, listener, to do all or some versions of that, in addition too you can roll in things like House Academy deal funding because it's a thing we're doing [crosstalk 00:01:49]. I'm doing deals now. Steven Butala: Yeah [crosstalk 00:01:50]. If you go to House Academy, we have multiple deals that we review all the time. Jill's reviewing a bunch right now, right after the show. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: If you go to HouseAcademy.com and click on somewhere in the Tools, I think it is, you'll see Get Funded- [crosstalk 00:02:04] Jill DeWit: Deal Funded [crosstalk 00:02:05], yeah. Steven Butala: ... or Deal Funding and just fill out the form if you have a good deal ... it's got to be a good deal. Jill DeWit: It's got to be locked in. Steven Butala: Yeah. It's got to be- [crosstalk 00:02:10] Jill DeWit: It's got to be- [crosstalk 00:02:10] Not just a theoretic deal, nothing that you just found online. It's like you did [inaudible 00:02:15] the right thing, "Hey guys, this is $50,000 below what it should be-" Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: "I need the cash to do it." That's what you ... and I've got to sign- [crosstalk 00:02:23] Steven Butala: We love those deals [crosstalk 00:02:23]. Jill DeWit: That's what you submit. Steven Butala: We do tons and tons of these deals and it's one of the big ... I guess we don't talk about it enough. One of the huge benefits to being a member is being able to ... you don't have to start with any money. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: We don't talk about that enough. Jill DeWit: That's true. Thank you. Steven Butala: Here, sometimes, this is what happens ... I got to blow some steam. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Every once in a while, some person will leave out the adjectives, looks up a bunch of property on the MLS- Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: ... and says, "Here's these six properties. I can buy them for X, which is the MLS listing price-" Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: "because I have nothing to lose because you're going to fund 100% of this, let's just see how stupid Steve and Jill are." Jill DeWit: And then we go, "No, thank you." Steven Butala: And then we're done forever. Jill DeWit: Yeah. [crosstalk 00:03:05] Steven Butala: [crosstalk 00:03:05] Consider the bridge burned. Jill DeWit: Don't do that. Steven Butala: Because the rest of the financing world asks you to put 20% down, 30% down, 40% down, or pay points up front, the whole hard-money lending business, we despise it as much as you do. Jill DeWit: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Steven Butala: And so, we want to get away from that, but there's always one guy- Jill DeWit: It's got to be a good deal. Steven Butala: There's always one guy that just decides they're going to try to burn it down. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: That's your way of saying, "Dude, move on." Jill DeWit: "Move on!" Steven Butala: Today's topic: Take this personality test. This is why you're listening. Jill DeWit: Okay. Who's going to be successful doing this? Right? That's ... I would like to think that's why you're listening. And so I developed a few questions that I'm going to ask Steven first, and you can follow along and take this quiz at home. Steven Butala: I'm concerned. Jill DeWit: This ought to be good. Steven Butala: What if I don't pass? Jill DeWit: Well, let's see how you do. They're numbered 1 to 5. Okay, you ready? Here we go. Number one, "Do you break out in a cold sweat when you hear the word 'data?'" Steven Butala: No! Quite the opposite. I drop what I'm doing. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Do you want to elaborate on that? Steven Butala: I love data. I think this is a whole ... That's why we're here. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: We're all here because these data-driven acquisitions that I generate and then Jill closes, so ... When there's some piece of the puzzle that's missing in anything that we do with these businesses, these subscription businesses we have, these sass real estate models that we have, the buying and selling of the real estate itself and all that, when there's something I don't know the answer to, I stop what I'm doing and I intensely search online and have what I call a research session- Jill DeWit: That's true. Steven Butala: ... online to find out if there's some way I can buy the data- Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: ... to solve this and take all the mystery out of it. People have asked me my whole life, "Is that so risky buying and selling houses? How do you do that all day?" There's no risk in this! There's no risk! I don't see any risk. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Like, zero risk. So, no. You asked me to elaborate, I can keep going. Jill DeWit: That was good. No, I have four more questions. This is good! [inaudible 00:05:16] You answer and then we'll both talk about. Steven Butala: How about can I ask you that question? I mean, does data freak you out? Jill DeWit: No! Steven Butala: Okay, good. Jill DeWit: No, I get excited about different data, but it doesn't scare me. No. Okay, so question number two, "Do you think excel is a form of migraine medicine?" Steven Butala: Like Excedrin? So, in other words, "Do you know what the hell excel is?" Jill DeWit: Exactly. [inaudible 00:05:48] Steven Butala: It's hilarious! You sit there and feverishly writing this stuff before the show- Jill DeWit: I did! Steven Butala: I'm like, "What is she writing?" Jill DeWit: I did! Steven Butala: And then she's laughing. Jill DeWit: I am. Steven Butala: Now I know. Jill DeWit: All right, here we go! I think that needs no explanation. You listeners, you know how you answered that! Steven Butala: So hold on. We're taking a personality test about real estate flipping- Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: First question involves data and the second question involves a computer software program. Jill DeWit: Yup, I'll get some more. Steven Butala: When do we get to the real estate? Jill DeWit: Oh, it's coming! Steven Butala: Oh, maybe the real estate doesn't even matter. It's all about data. Jill DeWit: This is true. It's kind of true. I have a few other things that are important, but you are on the right path. Are you ready for number three? Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: Okay. Number three is, "Is your idea of high tech upgrading going from your old Motorola to a Jitter Bug flip phone?" Steven Butala: I know what you're getting at here. Jill DeWit: High tech. That's what you think is high tech. You got rid of the Motorola and now you have a Jitter Bug. Steven Butala: I don't even know what a Jitter Bug is. Jill DeWit: I had to look it up. I'm like, "Okay, what could somebody walking around with that they think this is high tech, in their pocket, that could do what they need to do, and access what they need to access when they're out in the field? Or a call just comes in and they need to really look at stuff." You gotta have the right tools. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: And I mean, not even just the mental tools and the software tools, but you kind of need a few physical tools, also. I will be honest, we're always out- Steven Butala: Always! Jill DeWit: At lunch, I'm looking and I'm like, "Hold on, let me get a personal fact." Or, "Hey let me look at this." Steven Butala: Yeah, always. Jill DeWit: You know- Steven Butala: We go anywhere in the car and I mean, to the grocery store. One of us is driving and the other person either has the phone or a tablet looking at price- looking at personal fact, as we're driving, and finding out what dirt is around us ... dirt in houses and what it's worth. Jill DeWit: Right. Exactly. Thank you. Steven Butala: Am I saying you should do that? No, but that's just in our soul. Jill DeWit: Yup. Okay, question number four, "Is your idea of running your own business involve Venmo?" Steven Butala: Venmo? Jill DeWit: Do you know what that is? Steven Butala: No. Jill DeWit: You know what so great about that? There's a reason why you're like, "What the heck is that?" Or, "What is that?" Steven you're data, and knowledge, and tack, and industry, and what you do is up here and not everyone's up there. And I'm just kind of pointing out, you know, stating the obvious, really. If you want to be successful, this is the stuff you gotta know. Not only do you know how to deal with Venmo, you need to know how to set up your own ... you know, in some situations, a credit card check out system on your website. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: And if that hurts and you don't think that's even possible, I'm here to tell you A, it's possible and B, you need to be thinking about this stuff. Steven Butala: I just got out of a meeting where we were self developing a sequel application, you know, a web enabled sequel application to do some amazing, amazing, stuff. Long story short, this is what it is. We always have deals coming in. We want people in House Academy to be a part of this sequel application so we can send them deals, so they can complete it and we can split it. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: That's what I'm involved in. Jill DeWit: I love it. Steven Butala: What is Venmo? Jill DeWit: It's a payment system. I think I did it once where through your phone you can kind of put in your account and send money. I think I did it once for a washer and dryer, like years ago. Maybe a year ago, because that was the way the person was able to take payment. Steven Butala: So, it's PayPal, but not. Jill DeWit: I've used it one time, that was it. Steven Butala: What's the difference between that and PayPal? Jill DeWit: It's easier. I think it's just a little app. It's a pretty little app. Steven Butala: It's pretty. Jill DeWit: It's a pretty little app [crosstalk 00:09:30]. Steven Butala: You answered my question. Jill DeWit: You're welcome. Steven Butala: Hey, I haven't gotten any real estate questions yet. Jill DeWit: Nope. No! Have you noticed that? Okay, here's the fifth and final question, "Do you approach all of your buyers and sellers as someone you would date?" Steven Butala: Absolutely not. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Absolutely not. I have completely different criteria! Jill DeWit: Thank you. Well, for two reasons. One, the obvious, but two, my point on this one here ... just like these people, you want to get to know them, but not that much. Steven Butala: That's the greatest thing I've ever heard. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: It's like a perfect marriage. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: I'd like to get to know her, but not that much. Jill DeWit: Not that much. Steven Butala: I don't need to know everything. Jill DeWit: And then number two is, you need to look at these transactions like that, too. You need to be thinking of these as a line item. It's really true. When you're dealing with assets and whether or not you're going to buy it, you can't see if you live there. Who flipping cares? You need to be thinking about- Steven Butala: Yeah, it has nothing to do with you. Jill DeWit: Right? You need to think about the general public. Steven Butala: Nothing. Yeah. Jill DeWit: And it's funny because I'm dealing with this right now. We just talk about House Academy deal funding, offers come in and I'm looking at them like they're a line item and I don't think the person that presented this on to me recently is thinking that way. 'Cause I'm having to reply back with some of the basic questions that I don't think they thought about. All I think they see is how pretty is it! Steven Butala: That's what I think! Jill DeWit: And I'm like, "It's not about how pretty it is!" Steven Butala: That was my question, too. Jill DeWit: I need to know the numbers. I could care less. I don't know if it's yellow, or green, or purple, I don't need to know that. Steven Butala: Amen, sister. Jill DeWit: It's a line item. Steven Butala: I need to know that it's $20-$50 per square foot less than surrounding houses. Jill DeWit: There you go. Steven Butala: And then I'm going to look at the asset and see if it's ready to explode. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: If it hasn't been on fire, ready to explode, I'm in. Jill DeWit: There you go. Steven Butala: I don't care what the inside looks like and I think you lose, I think, 80% of the house flipping crew ... the house flipping environment out there, I think you lose probably 80% of them. Because of this topic. Jill DeWit: They don't see it like that. Steven Butala: 'Cause they look at the asset before they look at the numbers. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And they have a feeling. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: And they have a good feeling or a bad feeling. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: Instead of just doing math. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Exactly. That's my personality test. Let's, hang on a minute. Let me add up your score here, Steven. Guess what? You got 100%. You scored 5 out of 5. Steven Butala: Wow! Jill DeWit: Let me see, wait, wait, wait ... just like Cosmo, let me turn the page, that makes you an expert in your field and a top dating contender. Steven Butala: Like Cosmo? Jill DeWit: Like Cosmo! Wait. 5 out of 5, that means you are an expert in your field and good in the sack! That's what [inaudible 00:12:19]. Steven Butala: Does it really work like that? Jill DeWit: Yes. That's exactly how those dumb tests go. Steven Butala: Do you ever sit around and read like that ever? Jill DeWit: Not anymore, I used to. Steven Butala: Like when? Jill DeWit: Oh my gosh, ten years ago. Steven Butala: Ten years ago? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Exactly. Steven Butala: Wow, we should have tests like that. Jill DeWit: Okay. Steven Butala: Have the people who started listening aren't listening anymore. Jill DeWit: They're gone. Speaking of going dark ... All right. Steven Butala: Hey, well we know your time's valuable, thanks for spending some of it with us today. Join us next time for the episode called, "Appointment Setting." Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions, post on our online community at HouseAcademy.com. It is free. Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Some classic stuff, though. Jill DeWit: Thank you. These are actually ... these topics were kind of ... sometimes I like your topics when they're real specific. Because I know, "All right, I know exactly what we're going to talk about today." And then some of these topics like a few this week, they were pretty open and I'm like, "Oh, I could take this however I want and now I'm having fun with it." Steven Butala: I'm going to ask you a co-host personal question. Ready? Jill DeWit: Ready. Steven Butala: Do you think it's easier or harder, or the same to do this show as the Land Academy show? Jill DeWit: Easier. Steven Butala: I think this is harder. Jill DeWit: Oh! Interesting. Steven Butala: Here's why. Jill DeWit: Go. Steven Butala: Buying houses is so simple, it's silly. There's like six things to do. Jill DeWit: That's why I think it's easier. Steven Butala: So, doing the show is easier? Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: There's not as much stuff to talk about, that's why I come up with these silly games. Jill DeWit: That's what makes it fun. That's why it's easier for me, fun for me. Steven Butala: Buying land is a ... there's so much more to it. Jill DeWit: True. Steven Butala: But you have the opportunity to knock it out of the park. Jill DeWit: There's so much to talk about. Steven Butala: Houses, it's so easy to make $20,000 - $30,000 per unit. Just bang! Pricing and stuff? Forget it, it's so easy. That's just how I see it. Jill DeWit: We're just peeling back the layers of the onion. There's going to be a lot to talk about. I have no doubt, we're going to have show 1,000 before we know it- Steven Butala: Yeah, for sure. Jill DeWit: Hang in there! Wherever you're listening, or wherever you're watching, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill. Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information. Jill DeWit: And Inspiration. Steven Butala: To buy under valued property.

long speaking tools nope houses southern california forget hang 'cause yup absolutely paypal mm cosmo pricing mls easier venmo amen motorola cause i'm get funded

We Create A Family Mission Statement

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2019 41:56

Having a mission statement for your family isn't required but it can be very beneficial for creating and maintaining the culture of your home. Jennifer and I have never created a mission statement before so we thought we would make one while you listen. If you have been blessed by the Marriage After God podcast please consider supporting it by picking up a copy of our book titled Marriage After God. https://marrigeaftergod.com READ TRANSCRIPT [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today we're gonna do something fun and we're gonna talk about creating a family mission statement. Welcome to the "Marriage After God" podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just "Happily Ever After". [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as "Unveiled Wife". [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as "Husband Revolution". [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years, through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one full of life. [Aaron] Love. [Jennifer] And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is "Marriage After God". Firstly, we want to just thank everyone for joining us on this podcast today. We're super excited just to have you join us 'cause this is gonna be an interesting episode. We have a lot in store for you, but first we just wanna ask that you would take a minute to leave us a review. It's easy, you just scroll to the bottom of the app and just leave us a star rating review or comment review. This is one way to support the podcast "Marriage After God" because it allows other people to find the podcast, and we wanna do that. So, please take a moment to help us out there and thank you. [Aaron] Also, our book's out. Our new book, "Marriage After God", is available. It's been such and awesome ride seeing the response we've been getting, and if you have not picked up a copy yet, we'd love for you to go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, and pick up a copy today. One of the most powerful ways you can support us, is by buying our book, and it also supports your marriage and your life. We wrote the book for you. We wrote it to encourage you in the ministry that God has for you and your spouse, so go grab a copy today. [Jennifer] Okay, so we are going to start off here with an ice-breaker question, and Aaron came up with this question, so I'm hoping he has an answer. What is the ideal family trip or vacation? [Aaron] I actually didn't think about it when I said it, so I don't have... Okay, let me think. Ideal family trip. So, I can look back on something we have done that I really enjoyed, when we went to the East Coast, but we did like a plane-drive, plane-drive. [Jennifer] It was over a period of a week and a half, two weeks. [Aaron] Yeah, and I thought that was a lot of fun 'cause we got to fly the portions that I thought would've been boring, maybe. Get to a new area and then drive around, stay for a day or two, go to the next place-- [Jennifer] And here, you said, "Ideal family trip". That doesn't sound ideal for any family. [Aaron] For me! Oh, are you saying ideal for everyone? [Jennifer] Yeah, I don't know if that was your question, but I'm just thinking everyone listening right now is probably shaking their heads, no. [Aaron] I thought that was a fun trip for us. [Jennifer] I think the majority of families, especially with young children, would say flying and driving multiple times in one trip would be a difficult challenge. [Aaron] Okay, I didn't know it "ideal for everyone". Ideal for everyone would be like, going somewhere awesome and staying there for a while. Like, with a house that's comfortable and you have all your family with you, and there's a pool or a beach. [Jennifer] Where would that place be, Aaron? [Aaron] Maui? I don't know. [Jennifer] Awesome. [Aaron] What's ideal for you? What would that be? [Jennifer] So, I think you and me just like adventure because I really had fun that time too, that we went to the East Coast, but I think an ideal family trip is visiting family in California. I think that's just because I know it's something the kids enjoy. We usually hit up the beach. We stay there all day. [Aaron] Yeah, that is fun. [Jennifer] I think it's just an easy, kind of, go-to is when you're visiting family somewhere, you're staying with them, and you're just doing something simple. [Aaron] All right, that's good answer. [Jennifer] Relaxing. [Aaron] I'm sure everyone listening has their own ideal. Like, staying home. Eating ice cream, that sounds ideal. [Jennifer] Now that it's summertime, I'm sure there's a lot of people traveling and doing, you know, maybe family vacations or summer trips. [Aaron] Camping. So, we hope you guys are, and we hope that if you can spend that time with your family and doing something fun, even if it's local, like camping in the backyard, you're doing it, 'cause those are memories that your kids will love forever. [Aaron] Oh yeah. So, I just wanna, before we get into the main topic, I'm gonna read a quote from the book "Marriage After God", and it's about this idea. It's from Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] About what idea? Just that you clarify. [Aaron] Yeah, it's about the idea of creating a vision statement or mission statement for your marriage. It says this, "Casting a vision together for the future "of your marriage is an intimate experience "where hope for the future "stimulates perseverance for today." What's awesome about that is, when we create a vision for the future, it doesn't mean we're necessarily planning to the "T" everything that's going to happen in the future, it's just saying like, "This is where we'd like to be." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "This is what, you know, "the trajectory we want to be on as a family." It helps in those moments when it's tedious; when it's hard; when you're going through something and you say, "Well, we're in this together. "We're going the same direction. "We know where we wanna be, and even if we never get "to that exact point in time, or ideal situation, "we're going there together." [Jennifer] Yeah, and in Chapter 13 of "Marriage After God" we really, you know, drive home this idea that this is an intimate experience that you guys get to do together, and it's something to look forward to casting a vision together and having hope for your marriage and hope for your future together and for your family. This is something that we've kept as a valuable thing in our marriage for years, and I enjoy it. I enjoy the process with you, and so even though in "Marriage After God" we don't strictly talk about creating a family mission statement, we do talk about casting a vision together. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] And in the back of "Marriage After God" we even list some questions for you to sit down and have one of those date-night conversations and be mindful of the next five years, the next 25 years and what that looks like, because when we look to the future of things, there is hope there. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think that's important. [Aaron] And we have, like you said, we've always cast vision, planned for the next 60 days, next six months, next year, five years. [Jennifer] We kinda do seasons. [Aaron] We do seasons of that, but we've never sat down and actually wrote down a family vision statement. [Jennifer] Yeah, so even thought we kind of operate out of this same understanding, we've never sat down to do it, and it was actually because of the "Marriage After God" podcast series, which if you guys haven't checked that out, we've been going through-- [Aaron] Yeah just-- [Jennifer] Yeah, 16, 17 episodes about this idea of 'Marriage After God' but several people who we interviewed brought up this idea of creating a family mission statement, and how it has impacted their marriage. I know people share about it online too. So, we just kinda wanted to use this time to, first, encourage you guys in your marriage. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] Encourage you guys to have hope for the future as you vision plan together, but even more so create a family mission statement. That's our challenge for you at the end of this episode and because Aaron and I have never officially done this before or wrote it down, we thought it would be fun to-- [Aaron] We're gonna do it with you. [Jennifer] Do it with you, so-- [Aaron] We're just gonna start talkin' about it in this podcast episode, and we're gonna start coming up with kinda the foundational ideas for our own mission statement. [Jennifer] This was an idea that I had after having those interviews and being encouraged by people because I thought, "So often we hear people say, "'We did this thing. "'We created this family mission statement "'and here it is, or it's still a work in progress.'" [Aaron] That sounds wonderful. Good for them. [Jennifer] That's awesome, but where's the example of doing it? Which I don't know if everybody needs an example of that but sometimes it's helpful to go, what does that actually look like in a conversation? [Aaron] Yeah, how do you have that conversation with you spouse? I feel like every time a couple that we interviewed brought it up, we looked at each other and we're like, "We need to do that!" We wave our hands like, yeah, we just need to do that. [Jennifer] So, the unique part of this episode today is actually that we're gonna be jumping in here in a bit to kind of experience it with you guys. This is like a behind the scenes kind of-- [Aaron] We have not talked about this before recording this. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, you'll hear the candid conversation about how we see our family, where we see we're gonna go, yeah. So, you're gonna join us on this little adventure with us. [Jennifer] Okay, so-- [Aaron] Before we start, why don't you read that quote from "Seven Habits of a Highly Effective Family" by Stephen Covey. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] 'Cause it's in his whole book about creating a mission statement. [Jennifer] So, I will let you guys know that we actually haven't read this book, but I just jumped on really quick and I typed in Google and said, "family mission statement". [Aaron] This is a part of the process. [Jennifer] Yeah, I encourage you guys to do that too. So, we haven't read this book. We probably will in the future, but there was several people who were quoting this from his book, and it says, "A family mission statement "is a combined unified expression from all family members "of what your family is all about, "what it is you really want to do and be, "and the principles you choose to govern your family life." [Aaron] That's cool, and that's essentially what we're doing. We're not doing it with our kids this time. Our kids are, I think, too young. They'll eventually get older and then what we'll do is we'll probably sit down with them and invite them in and we'll adjust 'cause maybe our kids will have other perspectives they wanna bring in. I know that we have families that they have large families, lots of kids, and they bring their kids in, their older kids, and invite 'em to be a part of this vision planning and mission statement. [Jennifer] So, two things, since we're being candid here. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] The first one being, I don't think our children are too small to be incorporated, even at this stage of the game because it's not finalized yet, right? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] This is our initial go at it. And so I think-- [Aaron] And Elliott is pretty smart. [Jennifer] Yeah, Elliott's smart. [Aaron] He'll be like, "Why don't we..." [Jennifer] But I think... Okay, so our kids are six and a half, four, two, and eight months. So obviously, Truit's not gonna say much. [Aaron] I don't know. [Jennifer] But having a family fun meeting, where we're saying, "Okay guys, here are some questions "mommy and daddy have for you", and getting them involved. Maybe even if some of the questions are over their head, it'll still be a fun time to spend together and maybe we'll be surprised." [Aaron] Let's write down the funny answers and then we'll keep those for the future and say, "This is what you said when you were four." [Jennifer] Maybe we'll be surprised by them. [Aaron] That's probably true. [Jennifer] So, I do-- [Aaron] I concede. [Jennifer] The second thing is I wanna encourage those listening, if you do have children, that you do find a way to incorporate them in this process because they are a part of the family; and if you're doing it and you don't have kids yet, that's okay too. You and your spouse-- [Aaron] And I guess it's gonna give them more ownership and be like, "Hey, you are members of this family, "not just people that are in it." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] "You're part of it." [Jennifer] Yeah, and I think what I've gathered from trying to understand this family mission statement saying, is that it's not something that is like, "here are the rules", you know. It's more of something that's supposed to encourage the family unit to be in agreeance and have the same understanding of what those family core values are. So, even though this quote up here says "to govern your family life", I think there's freedom in that. It's not like a list of rules, but it's something creative, a creative way to establish standards and core values. [Aaron] Okay. So, should we do it? [Jennifer] I think we should jump in, yeah. [Aaron] Should we start working on this? I know our kids aren't here but we're gonna start at least with the foundational stuff, maybe? [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Answer some questions. [Jennifer] And just again to preface, this is not something that's... There's not a final answer to. We're kinda just jumping in to show you guys how the conversation could go. [Aaron] Well, it's gonna go. [Jennifer] Well, it's gonna go. This is it. [Aaron] This is our legitimate conversation that we're gonna talk about our mission statement as a family. [Jennifer] Okay. You might hear keyboard typing 'cause I'm taking notes. That's how I'm doin' it. [Aaron] Yeah, so you have a question there, but I guess I wanna start with the first one. I know we kind of hit it up, but when you hear "mission statement"... 'Cause I'm sure everyone has their own little definition of it, and you even had to Google it, like, "What's everyone do?" Everyone's got a little different take on it. When you think mission statement, what do you think? Like, is this our one word phrase or few words phrase? Like, when we are out and about we say, "This is who we are!" [Jennifer] Yeah, we get t-shirts made, right? [Aaron] Yeah, we can get some t-shirts made. [Jennifer] That's not a bad idea. The word that comes to my mind is it's a motto. It's a way of being. It's a way of doing life together, and I do think it is something that should be shortened and concise so that it's easy to remember. [Aaron] I agree. [Jennifer] There might be portions of it that are expanded upon, but I think it should be something that is easy to remember. [Aaron] Okay, it's almost like a statement of faith on our website [Jennifer] Exactly! [Aaron] It's like, "This is what we believe, "this is who we are." [Jennifer] Exactly. [Aaron] Yeah, and this is how we're gonna live. Of course, because we're believers and we love the Lord and we love the Bible, that's probably gonna be a big part of this. [Jennifer] Well, yeah. I would assume that Christians who create a family mission statement, it's built upon the Word. [Aaron] Right. Okay, so we're gonna have to have some verses and we'll get to that probably. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, here's the first question. What are some words that describe our family or what we want our family to be? [Jennifer] Hmm. [Aaron] I'm just gonna throw out the first thing-- [Jennifer] Okay, go. [Aaron] I thought of is generous. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And for those listening, a lot of the things we're gonna say, because we kind of have just walked in certain things over the last 12 years that we've been married and even before then. I think there's just gonna be some natural things that come out of us. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But now it's gonna be solidified as, "This is who we are." So, generosity is something I believe has been a mark of our marriage for a long time. [Jennifer] I like that. A word that comes to my mind is, I think I already said it, but "adventurous". Meaning that we find the fun in things. [Aaron] Write that down, "we find the fun in thing", 'cause there could be lot's of different "adventurous." Adventurous like, we like to take financial risks. Or adventurous like-- [Jennifer] No, more like, we do fun things. [Aaron] Okay, that's a different kind of adventur-- [Jennifer] We like to explore. We like to eat. We like to go-- [Aaron] We love change. [Jennifer] We love change. [Aaron] Not too much change but we like new environments. We like-- [Jennifer] Yeah, I would say, not change so much to our rhythms and routines, because those are important but more so just experiential. I don't know how to explain it. [Aaron] Like new environments. [Jennifer] New environments. [Aaron] It goes into the adventurous side of... We like to go to new places. We like to be around new people. [Jennifer] I don't know if we've shared this before but we've kind of done these Saturday adventure days with the kids throughout the summer time. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] 'Cause we go through seasons where it's just easier. [Aaron] We did a podcast about the adventure days. [Jennifer] Okay. So, that's an important thing. When I think of adventure, I think time set aside where we know we're gonna be doing something with the kids, whether it's local or maybe a-- [Aaron] Out of the norm. So, like, we have our normal flow. We have our normal rhythm, and then we're gonna go do something 'not'. [Jennifer] Go on a hike. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Go look at the river. Go whatever it is. [Aaron] Go for a long drive to a new place through a rose garden or apples. [Jennifer] I do, I make... You guys don't know this about me. I make Aaron go out of his way for me all the time because-- [Aaron] She's like, "I found this orchard "on the other side of the mountain. "Can we go?" And then like, it's not open or... I'm just kidding. No, we've actually had a lot of cool adventures just 'cause you Google and find a cool place to go see. [Jennifer] Yeah, even like, we were in Portland this time last year. I remember it was hot and only Elliot was awake, the other kids were napping. I was like, "Will you just pull over and let me go see "the rose garden? "I've been wanting to see it." You know, but it was a fun little detour and it worked out for everyone. I like that kind of stuff. [Aaron] So, adventurous in the fun kind of way, in the environmental kind of way, the experiential kind of way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] I would say another word I think of is community. [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] I know it's like an easy buzz word for Christians. [Jennifer] No, it's good. [Aaron] We've made big decisions in our life and one of the main criteria in that decision was community. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Often. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] When moving, our prayer was, "Well, we can't move until something changes "in our community because we have these relationships, "we have these connections. "God has us here." [Jennifer] So, being loyal. [Aaron] Yeah, I like that word, loyal. We walk with people and we don't just say, "Well, "they'll get over it, we're gonna move on "and find new friends." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Not that we've been perfect at this, but community's been a huge part of how we make decisions. Even now we think, "If we ever had to move, "who's are we gonna convince to move with us?" And it's not that we don't like being... Like we couldn't do it on our own. We know that community is so important and we want to take it with us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, I would say a part of that is also walking in light, and we've done this time and time again where it's just being transparent, being able to communicate-- [Aaron] Oh, put that word, that's a good word, transparent. [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] I guess it is tied to community, but it's transparent in other things too 'cause our online communities we are transparent with and we don't know any of them. [Jennifer] If nobody knows what he's talking about, we have these online communities who are amazing people. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Who have been following us [Aaron] Facebook, Instagram. [Jennifer] For eight years now. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] It's so awesome. [Aaron] Yeah. So, we try and be the same person to every person we meet. Would that be like-- [Jennifer] Integrity? [Aaron] Integrity. [Jennifer] I like that. [Aaron] I don't know if that's in-Integrity's like being the same person when no one's around. Right? [Jennifer] But also when different people are around. It's all the time. [Aaron] Right, okay. Say like, I'm not showing this person that face, and then that person this face. [Jennifer] I only show you different faces. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I used to have to work on this. [Aaron] Showing me like... I'd be like, "Why do you give everyone the 'good' face?" And then when you get home I get that face. [Jennifer] Yeah, you said, "I want the best of you." [Aaron] Yeah, that was-- [Jennifer] 'cause I had a problem with showing you too much-- [Aaron] Well, I think it's normal. Just as a little tangent. It's easy to let down the face you have on for everyone else, when you're around the person you know loves you. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But we should really say, "No, I'm actually gonna work harder to give the best "to my closest neighbor, my spouse." It doesn't mean we give the worst to our other neighbors. [Jennifer] Everybody else. [Aaron] Yeah, I guess it's just-- [Jennifer] I needed balance in my life when it came to that. [Aaron] Yeah, it's learning how to be real. Like, when you're around someone, you could at least be real and say, "I'm not feeling good right now" or "I'm not"... Anyways, that was a tangent. So, transparent, I like. That's a good word. That's something that's always been, we've always prided ourselves in... I don't wanna say "prided ourselves". Just being transparent. Not wanting to hide things, be open. Integrity is a good word. So, I think community, transparency, generous, let's think... [Jennifer] I would say faithfulness to our Christian walk, to being obedient to God's Word. Our faith is foundational. [Aaron] I like faithfulness though as the word, because it's easy to say faith. Faith's important, but faithfulness means to our faith and to the Word, and to God. [Jennifer] It's like active. [Aaron] Yeah, it's like a movement word. Is that a verb? It's an action word. What are some... I feel like there's other words that we often say. [Jennifer] Just real quick as a side note to those listening. [Aaron] Extraordinary. I just wanted to say before I forgot it. [Jennifer] Okay. That's fine. [Aaron] Extraordinary is a big word for us. [Jennifer] Yes. Do you wanna explain why? [Aaron] Well, we talk about it a lot in the book "Marriage After God". [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] But it's this idea that we've always had a heart to not just be normal. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] And that doesn't mean that our goal was to be special and like how we wanted to have this... 'Cause starting this ministry online wasn't even an idea in our hearts when we first got married, but our idea was like, "Well, let's just do what God wants "and that's going to be extraordinary." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] We went to the mission field for a while and then we went to Canada, and we went to Florida, and we did all these different little things. [Jennifer] I can actually see how even smaller decisions in our life, like buying this house, that wasn't a small decision, but-- [Aaron] It was at-- [Jennifer] But I just think of decisions that we've made together and we've even out-loud said to ourselves, "Well, that's extraordinary", or "That's not the normal way!" [Aaron] Right, well we could do the ordinary or we could do it the extraordinary way. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] And the reason you brought up this house, for those that don't know, they can actually find a YouTube video about us doing the house process. We bought a, I wanna say a fixer-upper. [Jennifer] Decrepit. [Aaron] But it was a beater-upper. It was really bad. We had to tear down most of the house to fix it back up, but when we thought about it we were like, "Well, this is how we're gonna get what we can afford." [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] "And then we can make it ours." Which, lot's of people do that, but it was extraordinary in my mind. So, extraordinary is a good word for us. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, when you paused back there I was just gonna note that that's okay when you're doing this process together. There's gonna be times when something might be on your heart or right at the tip of your tongue, and you don't know how to explain it. I think that's why the majority of people will say, "You don't just sit down and write a mission statement. "It's a process, and the process is what counts. "The process is the important part "because you're actually communicating with each other "on what matters most to you." [Aaron] Good tip. [Jennifer] Yeah. So, you just mull it over and come back to the drawing board over and over and over again until you narrow it down. [Aaron] Yeah, and I think after we go through this, we'll be able to see these words and think of better words. [Jennifer] Probably. Or use the good old dictionary! [Aaron] Or just the thesaurus. [Jennifer] Thanks, Google. [Aaron] Thesaurus. [Jennifer] Okay, so are there any phrases that we repeat often or say? [Aaron] Yeah, there's a-- [Jennifer] I know one! Go ahead, what were you gonna say? [Aaron] We do hard things. [Jennifer] Yes! That was what I was gonna say! [Aaron] That was... But you know what? That's a phrase that we only started saying when our kids started getting older. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] But-- [Jennifer] To encourage them we would say things "We're the Smiths and we do hard things." [Aaron] And so they own it, and they say, "Oh, okay. "This thing that I said is hard, we do those things." [Jennifer] Yeah. What's cool is they've recognized when we're doing Bible time, certain stories in the Bible of people doing hard things they'll recognize and go, "Hey, David does hard things!" [Aaron] Yeah! So, I think "We do hard things" is a important phrase, and we didn't come up with that of course. [Jennifer] But we use it. [Aaron] We use it often. [Jennifer] I don't know where it came from. [Aaron] And it doesn't just remind our kids, it reminds us because how many times a day do we get to this point of like, "Ugh, I don't wanna do this right now." And they're like, "Ugh, we do hard things." [Jennifer] It's the fight against the flesh. [Aaron] Yeah, we just did our lawns for the first time this season, and I just kept wanting to quit. I was like, "I did enough. Next week I'll finish the weeds." And I'm like . And then I go through and I'm like, "Oh, I'm just gonna go "a little bit further and make this look nice. Then I'm like, "Ugh, I just wanna give up." And then I go a little bit further, and I just kept telling myself, "No, I can finish this. "It's like my first time ever doing this, I should be fine." [Jennifer] That same conversation happens to me every single time I go to work out. It's like, you have ten squats on the list to do and you get through four and you're like, "Ahh!" [Aaron] "I should be able to do this." [Jennifer] "Okay, I'll do one more." And then you want to bail out but then you just keep going, you keep going, you keep going. [Aaron] I think it's a good phrase. What's another phrase that we say? Oh, it's kind of a word but we use it as a phrase. [Jennifer] What? [Aaron] "Gotta have self-control." [Jennifer] Oh, self-control. [Aaron] So, it's a word but-- [Jennifer] Self-control. [Aaron] We use it in a sense that we say it probably a million and a half times a day to our kids. "Are you having self-control? "You need to have self-control. "Remember self-control!" [Jennifer] We say it to each other now, too, because in conjunction with "We're setting the example. "We're setting the example". [Aaron] One of us will be having an attitude about something, just tired or exhausted or frustrated; and I'll be like, "Okay, are you self-controlled right now?" We say it a little quieter to each other. [Jennifer] Okay. So, what-- [Aaron] Is there any other phrases? We say other things. [Jennifer] I'm sure there are and we can come back to this if we think about it, but I was gonna ask, "What is it that we value? "What are some things that we really value?" [Aaron] The Word of God. We have to start with that. I know that sounds like the default answer, but it has to be the number one thing we value. It's what we tell our kids is the most important thing, it's what we try and teach them, we try and live it. So, I think the Word of God is... Now, I will say this, and it's something I've been convicted on recently and something that God's been convicting me on for my whole life, probably. I think this, and then I'm like, "But do I actually show this?" Am I in my Word as much as I could be? I don't want to say "should be" because I don't think there's a number or how many chapters or how many words or how many verses, or whatever; but I know in my heart when I'm in and out of it. I know when I'm giving God's Word the attention it deserves in my life. We could feel it. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Recently you've been kind of just overwhelmed with the book launch that-- [Jennifer] Lots of stuff to do. [Aaron] Lots of stuff to do and I was just thinking to myself, I'm like, "I wonder what-I didn't say this to you, but I was wondering when you were in the Word. [Jennifer] It's so funny, it's not funny, it's... Wow, this is really convicting because I know exactly the moment in that conversation where I had this thought that, "I wouldn't be feeling this way "if I was in the Word", and-- [Aaron] When was it? 'cause I was thinking about it. I didn't say it to you, I was just... 'Cause I was just encouraging you and comforting you and letting you know it was gonna be okay. [Jennifer] No, it was really impactful for me, and I've been in the Word since. I think sometimes we just get in these ruts or seasons where we're busy or we're going strong on certain areas of our life, and we don't realize when another area have kind of-- [Aaron] Yeah, we've neglected an area. [Jennifer] Been neglected, and that was happening with me for a couple days. I'd say about a week and a half. [Aaron] Well, me too, and I was feeling... Remember I told you how I was feeling? [Jennifer] Yeah, I think it was compiling. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] I think the Lord is good. [Aaron] Well, I was just thinking on Sunday, the message was about... Actually the message wasn't about it, but Matt said, "Hey, we can't know all of this in one sitting. "We have to just go line by line, verse by verse, "chapter by chapter, over years of reading and reading, "and re-reading and re-reading, and re-memorizing "and re-stating, and chewing it over." Then this morning, I was listening to J. Vernon McGee, and he was in Isaiah and he was bringing up the scripture that talks about "precept upon precept, line by line", and he was saying... You know, it took five years for J. Vernon McGee to teach through the Bible. That was just him going through one time. [Jennifer] Mm-hmm. [Aaron] Five years. How much do we go 'precept by precept'? Are we just reading through it? Laying on the knowledge that we're getting out of it. That was another good tangent, but Word of God I think is the most valuable thing. It needs to be-- [Jennifer] Bolded? [Aaron] Yeah, bolded and-- [Jennifer] Italicized? [Aaron] Italicized, highlighted in green, but I think it needs to be more evident in our own lives for our kids sake and for our own sake. [Jennifer] Yeah. What a great tool, this mission statement, to remind us to do that. If this is gonna be a foundational thing that is in front of us by maybe putting it on a plaque in our house or however we're gonna display this once we do finalize it. To be reminded of that, you know, every single day. [Aaron] Yeah, "Let's go back to the Word of God. "What does the Word say about this situation." [Jennifer] So, what other things do we value? I feel like we value-- [Aaron] Stewardship? [Jennifer] Stewardship. [Aaron] Is that a good word? [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] Like we value-- [Jennifer] I'm gonna write that down. [Aaron] Being good stewards, which we talk a ton about in 'Marriage after God'. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Because of how important it is to our ministries. [Jennifer] It's like the whole book's message, really. [Aaron] "Are you stewarding the way God's given you well?" That's the whole book actually. [Jennifer] I guess part of what I was gonna say goes along with this. I don't know if you would agree, but recognizing our need verses want in minimalism. Not that we're minimalist people because we have stuff. We have stuff, but I don't feel like we exaggerate and go outside of what we need. Does that make sense? [Aaron] I would agree. I think there's been seasons in our life that, because of discontentment or dissatisfaction or whatever, we've chased after things. [Jennifer] Or acquired. [Aaron] Collecting things, or buying things that we don't need. That's rarer, I would say. I'm not gonna say, "It's not super rare", but we tend to get what we need and not much more. Again, there's plenty of things that we have. [Jennifer] I think we've been good over time of challenging each other or encouraging each other, you know, "Maybe we don't need that thing right now", or "Hey, if you are gonna go get that, think about this." [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] You've done it with me with kids clothes before. "Hey, instead of buying off that website "can we just try and"-- [Aaron] "Because they're not gonna fit in it "in six weeks." [Jennifer] "Or they're gonna be stained up." [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Or whatever the reasoning's were. That was just the first thing off the top of my head. I think that... [Aaron] Stewardship minimalist. Yeah, I agree. We're not minimalist, but we definitely think on a more, "What do we need verses what do we want? "And what do we want, is it something we need, "and is it something we can use and is it gonna be"-- [Jennifer] We're willing to be confronted by that, for sure. [Aaron] Right. What is other things we value? Relationships? [Jennifer] I was gonna say people. [Aaron] People, yeah. I would say this goes up higher. [Jennifer] You can even see this in our kids because Olive really values relationships. [Aaron] Mm-hmm. [Jennifer] All of our kids do, but I could just see it in them. [Aaron] Yeah. Well, it's of course, the Word of God points us to-- [Jennifer] God's relationship. [Aaron] I would say that's almost the number one message in the Bible, other than Jesus Christ and him crucified, which everything points to that, is why he died for us is to give us relationship with the Father, and then through that gives us relationship with other people, right? Like, John 17, which we should put down because the next thing we're gonna talk about is scripture, but John 17 is a major one, which is the high priestly prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and for everyone who believes in the message that the disciples bring to the world; is that we would be one. That we'd be unified just as Christ and God are unified. [Jennifer] Yeah, but before we move on to the scripture section, I had some things I wanted to share about the values. So, 'cause this is all about brain-dumping and just getting out of our minds and heart what we believe to be true about our family, to build up this mission statement. So, words like 'creativity'. I feel like we value. Inspiring each other towards greatness. [Aaron] Can I throw in a word? Creating. [Jennifer] Creating, okay. [Aaron] I mean, we've done the self-publishing thing, the blogging, the social media. It's just kind of been a part of what we do. So, creativity, inspiring, but we also create. It's part of us. [Jennifer] Mmm, that's good. [Aaron] Elliot loves to draw, Olive loves to paint. [Jennifer] Yeah. That's good, lots of Lego building. [Aaron] Lots of Lego building! By the way the Lego thing you built yesterday is awesome. It's like this huge city. [Jennifer] It was supposed to be Bleecker St. in New York. [Aaron] Okay. [Jennifer] I just didn't get to finish it. [Aaron] I didn't see the signs. [Jennifer] Oh, go back and look at it. So yeah, some of the things that we value are experiences where, being able to go to a museum if we're near one, or-- [Aaron] I feel like that falls under adventure, adventurous, right? [Jennifer] Okay. Yeah, but it's like learning experiences. [Aaron] Well, put learning then. That's a good word. [Jennifer] Learning. So, whether that's-- [Aaron] Learning is a big thing-- [Jennifer] Experiences or books, resources, pretty much anything I can get my hands on for us or for the kids that encourages growth and investment. [Aaron] All the educational films like Marvels, Avengers, and Iron Man, those are really for us. [Jennifer] For us. [Aaron] For us, yeah. Yeah, I think learning is a great word. So, under value... [Jennifer] Does food count? [Aaron] Oh, you know, can I say wisdom? [Jennifer] Wisdom, yeah. [Aaron] And you actually should put food on there because that is a huge thing for us. Food. We love food! [Jennifer] Not just food. [Aaron] God loved food. [Jennifer] I know but the experience of food, like the actual tasting good and figuring out what flavors are there, but then the experience of eating with people. [Aaron] Yeah, so actually food kinda encompasses all these. [Jennifer] Okay so, on our family mission statement it's gonna say, "The Smith family", and then in bold right beneath that-- [Aaron] "Food." [Jennifer] 'Food'. [Aaron] That'll be our... It's short. [Jennifer] Semi-calling Gods word. So, it's like both, right? It's like the Word of Life. [Aaron] Well, God's Word is the bread of life. So, it just literally all fits in. Everyone here that's listening, our mission statement is [Jennifer And Aaron] Food. [Jennifer] This is how our conversations really go in real life, to you guys. We're not makin' this up for you. [Aaron] I'm pretty sure I can fit every single one of those things into food. [Jennifer] We'll figure it out. [Aaron] Yeah. Wisdom, what I mean by wisdom is, wisdom is the application of knowledge. [Jennifer] Yup. [Aaron] 'Cause you can know lots of things and do nothing with it. [Jennifer] Not ever implement it. [Aaron] Yeah, wisdom is like, "Oh, I actually know how "to navigate this kind of relationship, "therefore I'm going to navigate it that way." Or, "I know that I should keep my mouth shut "in this situation", so I could choose to act on the knowledge or not. So, wisdom is taking the Word of God, taking life experiences and letting it teach us and then saying, "Oh, last time we experienced that. "Let's make a different decision this time." [Jennifer] Mmm. [Aaron] We were actually just talking about this in the car. All the experiences the God's given us, hard ones that have taught us things. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That a lot of people won't ever experience. [Jennifer] Right, but everyone listening has their own set of experiences that-- [Aaron] That no one else will have. [Jennifer] No one else will have. [Aaron] That God wants to use to teach them wisdom. [Jennifer] Yeah, but wisdom is saying, "Okay, I'm going "to learn from that, and not just learn from it, but"-- [Jennifer] Apply it. [Aaron] "I'm gonna apply the knowledge to my life now "regardless of how easy it is or how it feels to my flesh." [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Right. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, wisdom is a big one. [Jennifer] Okay, cool. So, moving on, were there any more scriptures that you wanted to share? [Aaron] Think of some scriptures... [Jennifer] One, you brought up generosity earlier, and so one of the scriptures that came to my mind was 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, it says, "The point is this: whoever sows sparingly "will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully "will also reap bountifully. "Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, "not reluctantly or under compulsion, "for God loves a cheerful giver." So, I just thought about that. [Aaron] That's a great one. Cheerful giver. [Jennifer] I think it defines how we give, which I love. [Aaron] Yeah we don't ever, I mean we try not to give out of compulsion. As in, "Oh, we must do this!" No, we'd be like, "We want to do this." [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So, that's a good one. Another one I think of is the Great Commission in Mathew 28, where Jesus literally tells the church what it's job is. It says, Mathew 28:18, "And Jesus came and said to them, ""All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, "baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son "and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe "all that I have commanded you. "And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Jennifer] I love that last portion. [Aaron] Yeah, and we can take this as our individual mandates, but really it's the mandate for the church as a whole, 'cause there's all these different functioning parts. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] Discipling, evangelism, teaching-- [Jennifer] Baptizing. [Aaron] Baptizing, all these different things, and we sometimes get to do all of them, and sometimes get to just play at planting or watering. [Jennifer] A portion of it, mm-hmm. [Aaron] It's what the church's job is and I think it should be what our job is. [Jennifer] I feel like if I could summarize that whole verse, it would say, "to make Him known", you know? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Like, to know Him and to make Him known. That's such a big-- [Aaron] Put that down. That's a awesome thing, make Him known. I think that should definitely be in our statement because that is our life. We want our children to do that. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] We want our children to know Him. [Jennifer] Right. [Aaron] And then we want our children to make Him known. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Is our desire. [Jennifer] Okay, so we want to encourage you guys that as you do jump into experiencing this process of creating a family mission statement, to go to scripture, to see where your family values line up according to His Word, because it is foundational to how we live our lives and do what we do. This was just to give you guys a glimpse into the behind the scenes, Aaron and Jen, and how we communicate through things like this. Being able to share your vision for your family and life, being able to come up with, and create a family mission statement. It's supposed to be a unifying experience of togetherness, intimacy, understanding one another, identifying "who are we" and "what are we doing"? [Aaron] Yeah, "Who are the Smiths?" [Jennifer] Well, "who are they listening, who are you?" And kinda just build this missions statement to look forward to sharing it with your family. [Aaron] Yeah, and we're not done with this. We are going to on our own, now, finish this up; but this was our getting started. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] We started it out. We're glad that you got to join us on this candid conversation of us trying to think out "who we are and what we're about". [Jennifer] Yeah. I did want to share a couple practical things. When you do do a family mission statement, based off of what I've seen and you guys have probably seen too. Some fun ways to have this experience and share it with each other is use a whiteboard, or get some poster paper, or a pen and paper, or like we just did, use your computer, your phone, whatever it takes to make those notes. You can brain-dump and then cross stuff out as you go, but have fun with it. Also, some examples of making it visible in the home. I have some people say, "In this house", and then they list all their words. [Aaron] So, once we're done with it we can put this up somewhere so we're always seeing, "Hey, look what we... "We're not acting the way we say we're gonna act." [Jennifer] Exactly. Some people do the last name in bold at the top and then share the core values or the mission statement. Some people put it in a frame. Some people put it on script, on canvas. There's so many different ways that you can visibly show it in your home and the great thing about that is-- [Aaron] Tattoos, that's a really good one, right? [Jennifer] Just tattoo it on our backs? [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] No, but this is a great thing, like you said, to be mindful of how we operate as a family. We can even share as our kids get older, and teach them through it like, "Hey, we're the Smith's and we do hard things. "See it says it right there." So, those are just some things and we wanted to encourage you guys in that. [Aaron] Yeah, and I hope you had fun with us, too. We had fun. We're gonna finish it up, we'll probably do it on a date night or over the next... It doesn't have to be done right away, right. It's something that we can evolve with us. [Jennifer] It's a work in progress and so many people who have shared theirs with ours have said, "It's still a work in progress, "and you can change it and alter it as you go." Remember, you can incorporate your family, your kids and everyone to participate in it, but we did wanna challenge you guys with doing it. Even if it's just the initial go at it like we just did. [Aaron] Start it on your next date night. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] That's the reason, you're like, "Oh, we have to go "do our mission statement. "Oh, we'll need a babysitter! "Let's go do this." [Jennifer] Have fun, have fun, have fun! [Aaron] Yeah, and then invite your kids into it also. Not on date night. Go to date night, start it, come home, invite them in afterwards, or on another day. [Jennifer] And you guys don't need a specific set of questions to figure out. What we just did is we just said, "What are some phrases "and words that define our family, "of what we know of our family already?" [Aaron] We just started. [Jennifer] We just did it. Ask each other hard questions. [Aaron] Cool, so we like to end our episodes with a prayer, and so, Jennifer, would you pray for us? [Jennifer] Sure. Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of marriage. May we continue to walk in obedience to Your Word as we seek to fulfill Your will for our lives and our marriage. We pray, we would consider the purpose You have for our marriage and we pray we will work together to communicate what our family mission statement is. We pray we would humbly submit it before You and that it would become a pillar in our family and in our life, that reminds us what we are doing and where we are headed. May this family mission statement build up according to Your core values, be an anchor for our marriage and family, motivating us to live our lives on purpose. May the experience of considering and building our family mission statement be a time of togetherness intimacy and understanding. Thank you for the hope You give us every day. May we honor You with our lives. In Jesus name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen. So, we just want to thank every one for joining us this week and listening to this episode. I hope you had fun with us. It was a lot of fun for us, as I said earlier. But go, start a mission statement with your spouse and with your family, and see what happens. See how it focuses you. You might end up finding out that you're participating in things that don't even line up with what you guys believe as a family. That might be cool. Or you might realize that there's opportunities out there that you could be tapping into because of it. We just wanted to thank you. We look forward to having you next week, and if you have not yet went to shop.marriageaftergod,com and picked up a copy of our new book, "Marriage After God", we'd love to invite you to do so. We thank you for everything. You guys are awesome. All the reviews, all of the comments and stuff we get on our social media, and just all the listens. You guys listening to these podcasts, we just so appreciate you guys. We look forward to having you next week. See you later. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes, also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com, and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

House Wholesaling Explained (HA 008)

House Academy Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2019 15:11

House Wholesaling Explained (HA 008) Steven Butala: Steve and Jill here. Jill DeWit: Hi. Steven Butala: Welcome to The House Academy Show, entertaining real estate investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala- Jill DeWit: That's a mouthful, and I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California. Steven Butala: Today, Jill and I talk about wholesaling houses explained. Jill DeWit: That's a lot [crosstalk 00:00:20]- Steven Butala: Wow. Jill DeWit: That was a lot. Steven Butala: This seems like such a basic topic. Like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, you wholesale a house. You buy it for cheap, you sell it for more. Get out of there. Go do it again." Jill DeWit: Do you think you use this term when you describe yourself anymore because I thought- Steven Butala: No, heck no! Jill DeWit: Yeah, isn't it funny? I used to say it, it used to mean something. And it used to mean something good. And you know what, there's always one bad one that ruins it for the rest of us! Jill DeWit: I'm just kidding. But people have got confused by what wholesaling is, and then some people are, I think, not doing it right and now we have to describe what we do a different way and let them run with that. Steven Butala: There's a lot of meat in these deals and because of that, there's a lot of people who have no shame and no real respect for real estate or money and the process and have come in and really- Steven Butala: They haven't even put a dent in the industry, but they just get a lot of notary because they're not doing it responsibly, so- Steven Butala: Here's a prelude to the rest of the show. What we really are, are acquisition experts for people who own a lot of property. Whether they're landlords or house flippers or whatever. So if you walk into an big company that's real estate driven, like a McDonald's or a banks with bank branches, they have buildings. Or a home-builder, they have buildings full of an acquisitions staff that help them buy an expense property that fits their acquisition criteria. And I cut my teeth in that corporate environment and now we do it for ourselves. Steven Butala: So what the show really should be called is "How to Set Up an Outsourced Acquisition Department for Landlords." But if we call it that, you will be the only person who's listening to this show. Jill DeWit: Could you imagine! That would be awesome! "Hey you gotta check out this show!" "What's it called?" "It's great! Little hard to find, because if you misspell one of the words, and there's a lot of them, you'll never find it." Steven Butala: So then I went to a podcast national event onetime, and we had a show like that. And everybody's like looking cross-eyed at us. Jill DeWit: Like what Steven Butala: Why are you, why do you call it that? What the heck are you talking about! You lost me at the third word. You lost me at acquisitions. Jill DeWit: That's my favorite! Steven Butala: Before we get into the topic, lets take a question posted by one of our members on the houseacademy.com online community...it's free. Jill DeWit: Jeff asks, "I just flipped a property in Kansas City and I made twelve thousand dollars. I know I left a bunch of money on the table. How do you deal with this?" Jill DeWit: Move on. Steven Butala: You know...I'll tell you what. Jill DeWit: Well you surely can't call back and say "Hey, oops, by the way..." Steven Butala: Well I think what he's saying is "You guys", meaning Jill and I, "what you teach or what you explain on how you do it is to make 10 or 15 or 20 grand on the thing and just keep moving." Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: And that's right. So how do I deal with leaving money on the table? Because Jill and I leave money on the table on every single deal. And land deals too. That's part of the business model. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You need your buyers to just beat your door down Jill DeWit: And now they will. Steven Butala: And yeah! Jill DeWit: Congratulations! That fire won't- Steven Butala: If you're going to charge them close to retail, they're going to do one deal with you and never talk to you again. And then you gotta go through the whole thing again instead of just texting them. Jill DeWit: And what you just did, you just created a buyer for life. Congratulations! That's what we all want. We don't want to gouge them. You want them coming back for more and more and more and more and more... Jill DeWit: And then you guys have each others number and it gets easier and it goes faster. So, every time you have twelve thousand dollars, you might do twelve thousand a week, maybe even more than that. And that's just fine. Steven Butala: We live in this culture in this country where we've watched our parents or everybody do real estate deals and real estate agents don't help this at all. In fact, they're probably the problem. Maximize price. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You know, they believe that, and I don't know who told them this, but their job is to go in and get the highest dollar price that they possibly can. Jill DeWit: Isn't that a bummer. Steven Butala: Even if it means, you know, taping the whole house together. Slapping a coat of paint on it and charge them more. Jill DeWit: Exactly. Steven Butala: And so, and if you ask them about it, they'll say "you know, I mean, what am I suppose to do?" Jill DeWit: Isn't that amazing? Steven Butala: "That's what I'm suppose to do. I'm suppose to represent the seller and get as much money as I can!" Jill DeWit: I know. They want to-every time I hear the terminology about resetting the price in that market, it just makes me sick inside. You don't want to be that guy. Steven Butala: No. The fact is, you're going to pay six percent...as a seller you're going to pay six percent to that real estate agent. And if it's a $300,000 house, which is that national average, that's eighteen grand. And, you know, if you sell your own house, you save $18,000, you don't have to pay the fees and everybody wins. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Today's topic: House Wholesaling Explained. This is why you're listening. Jill DeWit: I only think $3000, 3%. Steven Butala: 6% of $300,000. Jill DeWit: I'm not paying 6%, I'm paying 3%. Steven Butala: Well, it's 3% to list and then 3% on the other side as a seller. Jill DeWit: I'm only doing 3%, the last one I did. Maybe because I spelled it out. You can do 3-6%, how's that? I tried to stick to that. Steven Butala: When you list your house, as a seller, and you say "we're going to pay the buy side..." Steven Butala: We did a fixed price listing, so it's only 3%. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: If we did a traditional listing- Jill DeWit: That's what I'm saying. Steven Butala: It would be 6. Jill DeWit: Yeah! We're saying the same- Steven Butala: Oh, oh I'm sorry Jill! Jill DeWit: Yeah, yeah. Me, I'm always selling- yeah okay. Steven Butala: If we're forced to use a broker, which is almost never the case, we do pay the 3%. Jill DeWit: That's what we're talking about. Steven Butala: And we always regret it. Jill DeWit: Yeah. We do. So when we're doing these, and we're selling our homes, by the way. I'm coming in and I'm the seller, its me. My boots on the ground, putting a lock box on the- Jill DeWit: I just talked to someone about this the other day. We're putting a lockbox on the door, we're making our own flat-rate listing, and MLS and they're probably going to bring in a realtor on the buyer side and we will totally pay the commission of course. And it's up to 3%. Steven Butala: So what is this business of wholesaling houses? What are you guys really doing? You know, there's probably, if you've gotten to this episode of this show and you're a new listener, you've gotten so much conflicting information by now that I'm going to clarify it all in less than twelve minutes here. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Steven Butala: Here's three ways to wholesale a house. Or three types of business that theoretically fall under wholesaling. We explained it a little bit earlier. Steven Butala: Number one. You send a bunch of mail out or you put banner signs out or however you establish and inbound flux of potential lead pipeline or whatever. There's lots of different words for it. You contact the seller. The seller does want to sell you his house or her house for $150,000, you know it's worth two-hundred. So you have now three choices. Steven Butala: Number one: you can market it up $10,000 and sell it to people that are in the market that are going to do something with it. They're going to sell it, they're going to clean it up just like on HGTV and retail it out with they're real estate agent and they're going to stage it and light some candles and bake some cookies and take it to the end. Jill DeWit: And am I doing that as an assignment? How am I doing this? Steven Butala: Well, you have a couple choices here. That was number one. And you're just going to get paid out of escrow. You're going to sign it to this person. Person on HGTV, they're going to pay $10,000 on the buy side and you're going to go on your merry way. Jill DeWit: Am I going to - I have some questions. Am I getting a purchase agreement that gives me equitable title? Steven Butala: You are getting a purchase agreement that is assignable to the HGTV person. Jill DeWit: Thank you. Okay. Steven Butala: Second way is- Jill DeWit: Cause I'm not representing anybody, I just want to make it real clear. Steven Butala: Good, good. Jill DeWit: Okay thanks. Steven Butala: Second way is to buy the house. And you don't have too much talk about it with the seller. You just say "I'm going to buy your house for $150,000." When you're done, you resell it to a group of people that you've already pre-established as credible buyers with money in cash, and they'll have their own team of probably inspectors and all kinds of stuff. Professional real estate people, but you have the luxury of charging a little bit more than that because you're in control on the deal. Steven Butala: Are we price gouging? No, but we control the deal and these deals take slightly longer, but you have- you know, you're not - you're making more than ten grand, lets say probably in a case like this twenty-five. And you're still well below what the house is worth. Steven Butala: The third way is to institutionalize this. Like I eluded to in the beginning, where you're really truly acting as an acquisition arm for the HGTV people or the - you know, Jill and I do a lot of land deal with like bank branches and stuff. Where we're heading up their acquisition of the vanguard part of their acquisition deal. So, really kind of a hybrid of the last two. Steven Butala: But the confusion comes with this wholesaling business because we get there first and we have control of the deal, but we never gouge. We never ever gouge it. So this is what, this is wholesaling explained. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: You can't price gouge because you got a great deal. You have to spread the fact that that's a great deal, spread it out with your customers. Jill DeWit: Yeah, you have to. Or your not going to be doing this very long. Steven Butala: Yeah. Jill DeWit: You won't have buyers, that's the whole point. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: You could do a couple of them. It's very different here and this is where you are opposed Steven. Steven has taught me a lot about volume and maximizing volume. And you know, it's true and this sings to me. I have to tell you, I love doing houses because in my heart, even with land, but in my heart, I want this guy to make more money. I mean we're going to be best friends for life. He's calling me all the time, "what do you have? What do you have?" That's what you should have. And by just mark it up a fair amount and you know what, it's pretty much out there. Everybody can look up, cause we take total ownership, they can see we bought at 4, they call look up and see if we sold at 4. Nobody's unhappy. Steven Butala: Right. Jill DeWit: I did the hard work, by the way. I set up the mail, I paid for the data, I paid for the mail, I talked to the seller, I've handed them a property on a silver platter because it's an investor to investor, by the way. I did the hard work. So, in their mind too, my 25 or whatever it is, little thousand profit on there is well worth it, because it's still way below how they could've got it with a lot less hassle. And they're coming in and we get our deals done, you know, in days. Which is great. They come in with cash, I've already got the work done, I paid extra for a hold-up policy in escrow and it is quick. Steven Butala: "So that's great Steve. I'm just brand new at this or I used to be a real estate agent, which means I failed as a real estate agent and I don't have any money! I am forced to choose option one. I can send out mail, I'm happy to talk to the sellers, but I have to send it to the guy who's going to buy it and get paid out of escrow 10% or $10,000 or whatever" Steven Butala: No you don't. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: There's a ton of programs. Our house academy group is packed full of people who just want to be money partners. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: So, in that example, what you do is this - you get a whole purchase agreement for that $150,00 acquisition price. You know the property is worth $200,000 in its present condition. You talk to everybody on the house academy forum. Jill DeWit: And the deal board. Steven Butala: And a deal board. And you say, "I've got this deal, and I'll split it with you." And so now, you're splitting. You're buying the house, you're marking it up twenty or thirty thousand dollars. Calmly and collectively and you're - Jill DeWit: In control. Steven Butala: Yes! And you're not trying to hide stuff until escrow and all that. None of that. You're splitting a margin, probably making a little bit of more money. And now the money guy is dying for more deals, you're buyers- Jill DeWit: Because you did all the work. Steven Butala: Yeah! And this business of assigning these properties is truly, well it's truly you're doing it in haste. You don't care about now because you're not buying it. You don't care about the inspection. In fact, you're tendency would be to cover the inspection up. Jill DeWit: Good point. Steven Butala: So all this stuff gets rushed and it's wrong. And it not professional and this is what's giving wholesaling a bad name right now. Jill DeWit: Right. You're not taking any of the risk. You're just quick, like you said. I agree with that. I love the way you just explained it. Steven Butala: So that's wholesaling houses. You know, that's how I explain it. I grew up in an environment - in a professional commercial real estate environment and all everybody was doing was dying for deals. And that's what I did, over decades, divide the system of having a jam packed pipeline full of transactions so you can pick the best ones. Jill DeWit: Right. Steven Butala: And pick the most willing seller and to put the deal- here's the end game in the whole thing - where everybody wins! Jill DeWit: Yep. Steven Butala: You win. The financial guy wins. The buyer wins. And end users got lit candles in their bathroom when they're done. Jill DeWit: And a chandelier. Steven Butala: And a chandelier in their bathroom. Jill puts chandeliers in bathrooms. Jill DeWit: We've done that! Steven Butala: Hey, we know your time is valuable. Thanks for spending it with us today or a little bit of it with us anyway. Join us next time for the episode called "Why Most House Rentals Fail." Jill DeWit: And we answer your questions posted on our online community thehouseacademy.com. It is free. Steven Butala: You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Jill DeWit: I want to make sure you know this- if you want us to read your question. You're listening to us, this is all new to you and foreign to you and you have a burning question, go put it in there and tag it. You know, say "Hey guys, can you hit this up on the show?" And we will! Steven Butala: You know this is show number eight for us on The House Academy show. Jill DeWit: Yeah. Steven Butala: But on our other show The Land Academy show, it's like show number eleven hundred or something. So, no question will scare us. Jill DeWit: That's true! Bring it! Wherever you're listening or wherever you're watching, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill Steven Butala: We are Steve and Jill. Information Jill DeWit: And inspiration- Steven Butala: To buy undervalued property.

setup mcdonald congratulations professional southern california hgtv kansas city mls maximize slapping landlords calmly cause i'm

Episode 8: 6-Figure Coaching Must-Haves

Unfiltered

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2019 14:23

You know when you're scrolling through that Facebook group... Or looking at someone's testimonial page... Or stalking some big entrepreneur on Instagram... And you find yourself wondering "Why the hell don't I have these results?! What am I missing? Why is this so freakin' hard, but they make it seem so easy?" But then, you burry that idea deep down and never admit it to anyone... Because that would, well, make you look sorta lame. So instead, you just keep showing up. Sharing content. Pitching people you think would be a good fit for your offers. Occasionally hijacking someone else's Facebook group in hopes of it getting attention. Making random edits to your website. But deep down...doubting. So, I'm gonna give it to your straight. This is what you're missing. Cause I'm sick and tired of everyone keeping this stuff a secret! If you actually want to be one of those success stories that makes $10,000 + every month, here's what you need, BS-free. ✅ Get Our Fast-Track System To Sign 10 Clients In The Next 30 Days: https://click.lenaelkins.com/first_10_clients

pitching sharing bs occasionally cause i'm

S1E15: Being An Ambassador of IT Within Our Religious Community

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 18, 2019 23:44

Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general and the internet, smartphones, and "screens" in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc see the power these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and "spread the word". On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address, and even "fix", those issues. In this episode, Josh Biggley, Keith Townsend, and Leon Adato explore what it means to be a tech expert in the pews. Listen or read the transcript below. Kate: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion (or lack thereof). We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:24 Religious communities sometimes have a fraught relationship with technology in general, and the Internet, smart phones, and screens in particular. On the one hand, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, etc. see the power that these technologies have to build, grow, and maintain contact with the community and spread the word. On the other, technology is often perceived as a cesspool of evil inclinations and a scourge that is destroying families and minds. As IT professionals within our religious communities, we're often asked to address - and even fix those issues. In this episode, I'm joined in discussion by Josh Biggley. Josh: 00:59 Hello, Leon: 01:00 And also our returning guest, Keith Townsend, Aka CTO Advisor. Keith: 01:04 Hey there, Leon: 01:05 And we are going to tell a few of our stories in this. Right. Now before we dive into any of that, I need to right a past injustice and give Keith a chance to tell everyone a little bit about himself and CTO Adviser, and what you're all about. So shameless self promotion time, Keith. Keith: 01:19 Oh, you know what it is the Technically Religious podcast so we'll start with that. I am a Christian and I've been a Christian for almost as well... yeah, almost as long as I've been in IT. So I've been in IT a little bit over 21 years, and I've been a Christian for about 21 years. I blog and stuff, mainly talk to CTOs or infrastructure architects, and you can find all that goodness on http://theCTOadvisor.com. Leon: 01:50 Fantastic. Alright, and the next thing I'd like to do is point out for people who have been listening to this podcast for a while - this is actually episode number 15, if you're keeping track - that this episode is sort of counter to our normal style or story. Usually we talk about our life is an IT person who is recognizably or somehow visibly connected to a faith, moral or ethical worldview. And yet today we're going to turn that on its head. Today we're going to talk about our life within our community of faith, but being someone who is recognizably a geek. You know, somebody who is associated with technology in some way. And where I'd like to start the conversation is what is good about that? What is good about being a geek in the pews? Josh: 02:35 So I just want to point out that I thought you were going to say that today we were going to be witty and insightful and funny. Leon: 02:43 You are always all three of those things. I don't know. I mean and self deprecating, so it's all good. Right? Keith: 02:49 You should'a known that that wasn't the case because you guys, you guys had me back on the show. Leon: 02:54 Oh the humility, the humility is just a rife around here. So, okay. No really what does it... what's good about being a geek, you know, at our church or our synagogue or whatever? How does that help us? Josh: 03:09 I mean, we're usually the first ones to know the Wifi password. Leon: 03:13 Okay. And we can share it with others. Yeah. And usually help them get their devices on. Josh: 03:18 What do you mean share? Keith: 03:19 And then when you know everyone, I think everyone's service is going to the point where they're using PowerPoint presentations to drive the sermon, which is, you know, kind of crazy. So whenever the PowerPoint doesn't progress to the next slide or the screen goes blank, after about five minutes, you can get up and walk up to the AV guys and usually get it sorted out in 35, 40 seconds while everyone looks at you awkwardly. Leon: 03:46 Got It. Okay. So I just want to hold down my leg of that conversation and just say that within the Orthodox Jewish community, this is actually not a thing. First of all, on the Sabbath, you can't touch any of that stuff. So certainly no PowerPoint presentations at that point. But also it just, you know, weekday services tend to go very fast. They're very businesslike. So none of that. Keith: 04:09 So that's interesting. Do you guys have AV at all? New Speaker: 04:12 I will say for the most part, I say certainly there's AV because there's lectures and discussions, but in terms of worship? No worship is still a very analog experience. In fact, there's a big push in a lot of Jewish spaces and certainly orthodox spaces to have people leave their screens, their cell phones and things, outside at the door and not even be tempted in between certain parts of the prayer or davening to even be tempted to look at their phone while it's going on. You know, you're there to talk to "the boss," you know, as just as, you wouldn't go into your CEO or CTOs office and in the middle of a conversation say, "Oh, hang on, I just got to check this text, oh wow, this is Facebook message, this is awesome!" Like, you wouldn't do that with your boss. Don't do that with the big boss. Keith: 05:05 That is a pretty good lesson. Josh: 05:07 When I was a Sunday school teacher we used to have a box of technology, it was a box that we would put on the table and when the kids would come in - this was at the height of the Clash of Clans craze... ( that's really hard to say.) - we used to make them put their cell phones in the box. Otherwise it was "Clash of Clans on your lap or underneath your scriptures or it was just a thing. Keith: 05:39 You guys have inspired me. I think I'm gonna start leaving my phone in the car so that I'm not tempted at all. I really don't pull it out after service, that's for sure. Cause I'm usually talking and ministering, et cetera. But you know what, I do use it to look up scripture and you can get kind of sidetracked like, "Oh, you know, I'll check Twitter or whatever." And that's a good point. New Speaker: 06:11 I think one of the things that resonates with me. So in Mormonism, there are four books of scripture: The Bible, the King James version of the Bible; also the book of Mormon; the doctrine covenants; Pearl of Great Price. Um, in the Book of Mormon, there's a prophet, King Benjamin and in Mosiah 2-17, which every Mormon out there, is going, "oh yeah, I know this verse", right? It says... Leon: 06:39 (laughs) "I know this! I know this one!" Josh: 06:39 "I had to memorize this one!" Right. "...And behold, I tell you these things that ye may learn wisdom; that ye may learn that when ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God." And I think that that whole idea of serving our fellow man is intrinsic that's what God wants me to do. So when it comes to fixing technology, it's something that we know how to do and we're really good when we see that person fumbling with our technology, our natural instinct, or at least my natural instinct is to reach out to them and say, "Hey, can I help you with that?" Or you see them, they're starting to get frazzled and you know, Mormons use technology in their lessons and you see that individual up there and they're trying to get that PowerPoint presentation or that streaming video to work and knowing that you can just step up and in a couple of seconds have it up and running and going. That's very reassuring. That feels right to me. Leon: 07:33 And I think the best part of that is we all understand that they're not there for the technology piece. And so we're watching is the technology is pulling them away from the holier moment. They're there to teach a lesson. They're there to share a thought. They're there to share some of their experiences and they're getting hung up, their rhythm, their pacing, their confidence is being hit. And you don't want that and you can help get that back on track. And I think you're right. That's a great way of looking at it. I think the other thing is that as representatives of technology, we can help sort of de-escalate people's feelings about technology. I said in the intro that a lot of times in faith communities, technology is looked at as something to be mistrusted. And we have a chance to be an ambassador of technology in the sense that we are part of the community. We are a trusted voice. We understand the rules of the road. You know, at no time... I'll speak for myself... are we going to say, "Yeah, no, Playboy is okay. Just read it for the articles." Like you're not going to do that. You're not going to say, "Oh, it's okay. It's..." Whatever. If it's not okay, you understand that it's not okay. And they understand that you understand it. So when you're giving advice, you have a chance to point out where something is a true risk and where something is only a perceived risk. Josh: 08:57 Yeah. So, you know, one of the big challenges that we have as religious people, is sometimes we're perceived as being anti science or even anti technology. So, nuclear medicine is a fantastic innovation. But nuclear medicine and a nuclear bombs are cut from the same... chemical engineering is wonderful. It transforms our lives in ways that we now in the midst of chemical engineering. And I had read a great book in the last year or so about the CRISPR technology. Crazy stuff, right? But chemical weapons are horrible things that kill people and maim them. And then of course, because we're geeks, we recognize that of course the Holy Trinity of Geekdom is a Star Wars 3, 4, and 5... Uh, wait, no, 4, 5 and 6! Right? And Jar Jar Binks is... uh, I think the word that you wrote here is "an unholy abomination." Leon: 09:59 Yeah. Yeah. And I will say the character is ill-conceived. The actor is fantastic and I do not want to contribute to his struggles because he really... actors sometimes get jobs they don't expect to go the way that they go. But yeah, I'm not a fan of the first three movies. Going back to CRISPR, it's interesting because there was just a segment on NPR today that was talking about somebody who's creating CRISPR babies and they thought they would make a person, a human that was HIV resistant. And it turns out that there's all sorts of downstream consequences. However, that same technology can be used to correct some amazingly impactful diseases when used. So even within the same technology there's a balance there. And I think that being a technologist within a faith community allows us to help point out that these are opportunities to make moral, ethical, I'll say "righteous" or a "higher-power-directed" decisions about a tool. Whether that tool is a hammer or a CRISPR. Keith: 11:08 I think the other thing that we hadn't talked about is that personally, the discipline of being a technologist gives me the ability to ask critical questions. And even critical questions on my own faith so that, for people that spread the word of just believing in God - and we get challenged on that - as technologists actually come with a reputation of being critical thinkers. So I think it gives us this moral authority to speak on faith because we're reasoned in our approach to our faith in most instances. Speaker 2: 11:46 And it also lets us debunk. So there's again, the debunking of, "No, that's actually, you know, the IRS is not going to call you and ask you for your password" and things like that. There's a story that's told in Orthodox Jewish circles that I hate. It's one of those apocryphal stories, but frequently in Orthodox circles, when you're talking about technology that comes out. So there's a, there's a Kollel guy, a guy who learned scripture as his job, all day long, eight, 10 hours a day. This is what he does. And he needs to make a living. And so he goes and he gets a job and they put him in an office, and they give him a computer, and the next weekend he is violating the sabbath! And he's doing drugs! And he's having an affair! And...they tell it every time and every time you can hear my eyes rolling in my head and you don't want to contradict rabbinic authority, but you have to stand up and say, "I think there might've been a couple of other problems with this guy. I don't think the computer was really the thing that threw him over the edge, if the next weekend he was violating the sabbath and doing these things. And it sounds a little far-fetched, anyway." So it gives you a chance to be, like you said, that critical voice that pushes back a little bit. Josh: 13:10 Yeah. We call those "faith promoting lies" in Mormonism. I don't know what else... Leon: 13:14 Okay. I just call them "glurge". Keith: 13:20 This happens in technology too. We have this desire to further our point and not necessarily stretching the truth, but... and this happens on social media as well, not just technology. Our minister last week gave an incredible sermon on basically social media and revealed this fact that 70% of the stories [ed. about his religion] shared on Facebook are fake and in fact fake news. But it is an example of our bent on wanting to promote our version of the truth. And that is, I think, the thing that we enjoy about the technology space that you can spread information extremely fast. But also, part of that story is that you can spread false hoods or stretches of the truth extremely fast as well. Josh: 14:25 Twice in a row, now, Keith, you've now made a comment that's made me think of a book that I'm reading. It's entitled "The Case for the Real Jesus" by Lee Strobel. And Lee is a journalist. Also was an atheist and then converted to Christianity, and he meets with someone who actually lives over in Nova Scotia. So I live on the east coast of Canada and he meets with this historian and professor. And he's talking about the stretches of truth that have happened within Christianity since the time of Christ, and how we're looking at these gnostic gospels that have come out over the last 50 or 60 years, they've really come to light, and challenging this narrative of Jesus, which was the Coptic Gospels... with these gnostic gospels, and saying, "Oh my goodness, these things that were written a hundred years after Jesus was on the earth, but they're saying that Jesus really had three eyes!" (I know that that's not what they're saying), but it's that idea that we can make these allegations and it's really hard to back them up because the disinformation out there is there. It's really difficult. And I will point out that there is one area in which this information I think really needs to be clamped down on. And that's IT Security. You should use a password manager. Like, it is not just a scary thing. Do not use the same password on every single website. Use multifactor authentication. These are things, it's not just the boogie man. You should do that. Leon: 16:14 Yeah. And I think that goes back to debunking things that are patently untrue. Reinforcing good behaviors. I think that that allows us to do it. The other thing is that because we are representative technology, it gives us a chance to model good behavior. To quote Bill and Ted, to "...be excellent to each other" - online as well as in the pews, in our faith, building. There's a local Rebbetzin - a rabbi's wife - who is an author and a blogger, and she is known around here for saying that the only time she posts on social media is after she's asked herself three things about the things she wants to say. 1) Is it true? 2) Is it kind? And 3) is it necessary to say it? And whenever she says that, the immediate reaction from the audience is "well then I wouldn't post anything!" And she holds up her finger and says "Right. Exactly!" Maybe you should think about all the things that you're posting. And I love that. And I aspire to it. I can't say that I always meet that aspiration, but I like it. So it gives us as technologists a chance to say, "yeah, you can be in these spaces and use them to uplift, to, to shine a light, do all those things." Like, you know, you can do that. Josh: 17:43 Wait, so based on those three rules, are you announcing the end of the podcast? Are we are disbanding? Leon: 17:50 I believe that everything that we have talked about in our episodes is certainly kind, and true to the best of our ability. And I think it's necessary. Josh: 18:01 Okay. I'm willing. I was, I was just concerned. I thought you were firing us. Keith: 18:07 But it was a very kind way in which he did it. Leon: 18:12 And that's the other thing is that, you know, everyone I think has become aware that people say more online to people than they might say face to face. And I don't know your side of it, but I know that Judaism has very specific rules about what they call "rebuking" another person. You know, when you want to give them a little bit of a correction. And that's: you are not permitted - in fact, you are commanded not to rebuke somebody unless you are able to do it in private, to do it with only love in your heart, and to only do it when you are certain that the other person will hear you. So, if the other person is not in a head space to understand what you're going to be saying, you are commanded to keep your mouth shut. And the same thing, if - in saying it - you are going to become agitated or unhappy or upset, you're not allowed to say it. All those things. And I think that again, social media gives us a chance to practice that and to model it. Speaker 3: 19:16 Yeah. I try to be an example on social media. I am a bit of a pot-stir-er, to say it mildly, but I try to be provocative about being offensive, is the goal. And I think one of the things that I personally, like a personal failing of mine in which I wish I can get better, and I've kind of stepped away from talking politics for a little while, especially as Melissa's sick, and I'm trying to focus on positivity for awhile. One of the areas that I fell is: I'm very passionate about systematic challenges of minorities. So whenever something happens politically in that space it's really hard for me to balance Christianity and my desire to - and this a is not a godly desire - to get justice. Because it's not for us to get, if, from a Christian perspective, that's for God to provide. And so I try and model that and sometimes people will... I get a lot of compliments on my ability to just have very difficult but yet respectful conversations. But I have to be honest my heart is not always coming from a great place. But it's really great advice to be the change you want to see. Leon: 20:54 Well, and I will say that at first of all, struggling with, or wrestling with something is the work. So the fact that it's not easy, it means that you're at that point of growth, right? You aren't in the easy space where everything is just simple. You're pushing yourself. But I will also say, just having watched your social media accounts, that you focus on issues and you focus on events, but you don't focus on people. You are willing to go after an idea, and you're willing to go after - to call out - an event or an attitude, but you don't call out a person. And I think that... now some people may feel threatened by you challenging an idea, whether that's about virtualization or social justice or any of those things. But that's what they brought to the table. You're just calling out this situation, this design, this architecture, this financial structure - this is not, this is suboptimal. And they don't like that. Keith: 21:57 And I think the comments from our space, from being able to look at myself and people have shown me in the past where I just wasn't Christ-like. Like in loving other people. Christians, we have a very difficult time with the concept of homosexual-ality and, and sexual identity. So we look at that as a different weighted sin than other sins. And I've had that struggle in my past. And then to not look at people with the same love of Christ that I looked at. So I try and address issues and not people. Because if I treated people... if people treated me the same way that I treated people in the past when I had those views, then I would have never have changed. So I try and give people the same grace I was given, which is, "you know, what, this person has the capacity to change. And if we focused on the issue, then hopefully they'll have the space to change." So we have to give the space to have the conversation. And this is going back to technology. Technology gives us the space to have the conversation, but we have to model what that looks like. Leon: 23:11 We know you can't listen to our podcasts all day. So out of respect for your time, we've broken this particular discussion up. Come back next week where we pick up our conversation with the things that challenge us as ambassadors of IT within our religious community. Speaker 4: 23:25 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect with us on social media. Josh: 23:39 A Jew, a Christian, and a Mormon walk into a mosque... Keith: 23:42 And none of them knew how to fix the router!

S1E13: Disaster Recovery

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later May 28, 2019 35:31

Weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as he Notre Dame Cathedral, burned. While this event was notable for many reasons, one of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was the protocol used by emergency responders: Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure, in that order. We know what can be rebuilt and what can't.” In this episode, Josh and Leon compare and contrast that disaster recovery process to the ones typically used in IT. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:00 Hey everyone. It's Leon. Before we start this episode, I wanted to let you know about a book I wrote. It's called "The Four Questions Every Monitoring Engineer is Asked", and if you like this podcast, you're going to love this book. It combines 30 years of insight into the world of IT with wisdom gleaned from Torah, Talmud, and Passover. You can read more about it, including where you can get a digital or print copy over on adatosystems.com. Thanks! Leon: 00:25 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating, and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh - or at least not conflict - with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Josh: 00:45 A few weeks ago, the world watched helplessly as one of the iconic buildings in Paris, the Notre Dame cathedral burned. While this event was notable for many reasons. One of the things that struck us here at Technically Religious was a response by one of the bystanders, who understood what was happening on the ground. He said, Leon: 01:04 "The fire department in Paris followed a protocol. Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure. In that order. They know what can be rebuilt and what can't." Josh: 01:17 Now that smacks of a disaster recovery policy to us. But I think we in IT might look at it differently. Which is what we're going to do in this episode. Joining in the discussion with me today is Leon Adato. Leon: 01:31 Hi everyone. And of course, the other voice that you're hearing is Josh Biggley. Josh: 01:35 Hello. Hello. Leon: 01:36 Okay, so I think the first thing, because we're talking about disaster recovery, is let's get our terms. Let's define our data library and differentiate between redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, risk mitigation, all those things. So do you wanna take a crack at it? Do you want to just collaboratively? Do this? Josh: 01:58 I love redundancy. And in this world of cloud, I think redundancy is the thing that we do really well now because you know, you can set up a system that is in two regions and so if one of your regions fails here, the region will pickup, you can do a multisite region. Redundancy to me feels like a descriptor that actually bridges across HA and DR and risk mitigation. Um, yeah, redundancy feels like a catchall term, right? It's not something you can achieve. I don't know. What do you think, Leon? Leon: 02:36 All right. All right. So I think redundancy at its simplest is "there's another one of them." There's another Josh: 02:42 Oh, like RAID Leon: 02:43 Yeah. Okay. Right. There's like RAID, you know, having multiple disks - RAID 0 - which is just having two discs, one backing up the other constantly. Or RAID 5... any of the other flavors of raid. So I think redundancy means "having more than one" and yes, redundancy can fit into a high availability plan. But high availability is more nuanced. High availability means that no matter what happens, the "thing" - the service, or the the network, or whatever, is going to be available. That can also be done by doing load balancing. It can also be done by, you know, in networking terms, channel bonding, so you can have those. So redundancy by itself is just "more than one of those at a time." So if one fails, the other one is still going or can take over. But high availability I think has more flavors to it. And then you have disaster recovery. That means that all your beautiful efforts at high availability have failed and it still went down. And so now you're left trying to recover from the failure. But at that point the failure is done. It has occurred, the system has crashed, you know, the meteor has hit the data center. Whatever it is and now you're trying to rebuild or pick up the pieces or whatever it is. Then you have risk mitigation, which sounds a little bit like, "We believe that this disaster could potentially occur, and we want to see what we can put in place to completely avoid the disaster, but we're going to do that ahead of time." So in the case of the Notre Dame fire, it might've been, you know, a sprinkler system. Just something like that. Like that would have been a nice little risk mitigation idea. Josh: 04:37 You know, I wonder how many of those risk mitigation things that we do on our lives are really, uh, to make us feel better. Leon: 04:46 Okay. So like the, you know, security theater kind of stuff, Josh: 04:50 Right, right. Yeah. Like, um, you know, locking your front door. I mean, if someone really wants in your house, they're just going to kick your front door down. I mean, if the police want in, they're going to get in, you know? No deadbolt you pick up at home depot is going to keep them out. Right? Leon: 05:08 No. Um, and, and I know this is a topic that Destiny Bertucci would love to be part of because this is one of her big things. But, so the thing about the dead bolts in the house, it's first of all, they don't need to kick down the door because you have windows. And I don't mean the computer system... Josh: 05:24 Ha ha, ba dum bum! Leon: 05:26 Yeah, we'll be here all week folks. So the thing about deadbolts is that it is way of avoiding, I guess, avoiding risk. It's a deterrent. It's not a protection. I saw some statistics recently that said, unless there was something specifically in your house that that individual wants - you have a Renoir, or a priceless Monet painting, or something like that - then they're just looking for what can get quickly and easily and a deadbolt is absolutely an effective deterrent because breaking a window is too risky and too loud and too noticeable. And if the door can't be easily opened, they'll move on to the next house or structure, where the pickings are easier. Or they'll walk around the house. And I've seen the statistics in neighborhoods where I've lived, that's occurred. Where they tried the front door, they tried the side door, they went around to the back door and "oops!". That one didn't have [a deadbolt. because], "who would go to the back door?!?" Everybody who wants to get in your house would go around to the back door. YOU go around to the back door right when the front... So everyone goes around. So having a dead-bolted system on all of your doors is the most effective deterrent to that. But I think we've gotten a little off topic, you know, in terms of Notre Dame. So I think we've defined redundancy, high availability, disaster recovery, risk mitigation... but what they're talking about, what they talked about in this whole, "first save lives and then save the art, and then save the...", you know, that's different. Josh: 07:05 Yeah, it is, isn't it? Because they almost - well not almost, they gave a priority to specific items. Right? And I appreciate the fact that they said "save lives," lives are irreplaceable. So..., and there are things, there are some beautiful things in that cathedral that were also irreplaceable. Right. But you know, to their credit, human lives come first. Leon: 07:31 Right. And, and I think that that's a pretty obvious one. After that though, taking the priority of lives, then art, and then, um, sorry I'm going back and looking at it... right. "Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save the furniture, then focus on the structure." So, you know, why did the roof, you know, get so hot it melted? Because it was just not part of the protocol... They hadn't gotten to that part of the protocol yet. And also what was said later was that not only is that protocol in place for overall, but it's in place room by room. Josh: 08:06 Oh, interesting. Leon: 08:09 I think there's an order of which rooms they tried to get to first. Again, looking for people. Once they knew all the people were safe throughout the structure, then they were going to specific rooms and looking for specific things to make sure that they could get those out before they moved on to the next category or even the next room. So I find it all fascinating. But the other thing is, do we do that in IT? Do we set up a protocol for which things we save first? Josh: 08:42 You know, I'm thinking back and I don't recall ever having a, "Howell moment" and by Howell I'm referencing Gilligan's island and the Howells and the, "Oh deah save the furniture first!" you know, Leon: 08:58 Save money, save the money! Josh: 09:01 Yeah. I don't know that we've ever had one of those situations. Now, I will say though, we've taken risk mitigation efforts. Back in the days of doing tape backups, you would keep.. now if someone here isn't, you should, but you keep your backups offsite, you would move them to iron mountain and other similar facilities. Leon: 09:26 Well, and, and bringing it forward a little bit, the 3-2-1 policy for backups, which is you have to have three separate backups, physically discrete backups, on at least two different kinds of media, with one of them being offsite. And offsite can be cloud, that's okay. But you know, 3-2-1" three backups to different media, at least two different media. One that is not where you are. So I would say that there is an order, but I think it's almost so self evident that we don't bother elaborating on it, which is: Save the data first. Josh: 09:59 Oh absolutely. Leon: 10:00 Yeah. So data in... Okay, and we're not talking about a fire in the data center, which changes the nature of everything. But you know, the first thing is save the data. The data equals lives in the Notre Dame protocol. If we, if we want to say it that way. And maybe the application is, you know, art, if we want to think of it that way, like the next thing. Once we know the data is secure, then save the applications, make sure, and by save I mean make sure the application can keep running, post disaster, post outage, whatever that is. So, we're both network folks and, we'll say "the network has gone down," All right? The main circuit out to the Internet, to our customers, whatever that circuits gone down. So what's the first thing? Let's make sure the data wasn't corrupted. Now, we might make sure that that happened before the outage by making sure that the system of rights is, you know, won't get caught in the middle of something that we're doing. Whether it's the particular kind of logging on the database or what have you, that those things are taken care of. But make sure the data's fine. Then make sure the application can get out to... "the signal must flow." The signal has to keep going. So can make sure the application is okay. Maybe the next thing in an IT version of that protocol... Uh, I don't know what would it be? Josh: 11:32 So, you know, we've talked about keeping the data, we've talked about getting the application out there. Then it's, "can I get the people who need to be connected to it, connected to it." So one of the things when you have a major disaster, is you're often worried about addressing your largest customers and getting them back. But maybe you've got a remote workers and you don't have the VPN, so they're not going to be terminating in your, your new data center. Or swinging those circuits, those VPN tunnels from your original data center to your new data center. Maybe that wasn't part of your disaster recovery plan. So all of those things I think that's the, "Okay, now, now go get all the bits that make the, make your application experience comfortable. And again, I'm a remote worker, you're remote worker. So being able to connect and provide the support to the business is very important. Leon: 12:32 And I can get behind that in terms of, like, we're the furniture. Josh: 12:34 Yeah. I mean we've been sat on before. It's all right. Leon: 12:39 Right. Sat on, stepped on, brushed aside, Josh: 12:43 and knocked over. Leon: 12:43 Yeah. Right. Yeah, sure. And I think the structure is, it literally that, it's the organizational structure. Make sure... but that's last because it's the thing that can be rebuilt easiest. The other thing about the Paris, the Notre Dame issue was the other comment: They knew it could happen and by that they knew it would happen again because Notre Dame was trashed back in the French Revolution or "The Terror" as someone referred to it. But the thing that was interesting was they weren't making any meaningful changes to Notre Dame even though it had happened before, and they knew it could happen again. And again, I find this fascinating. I've talked and written before about black swans in IT. You know, that really big event where "the application crashed and we couldn't sell widgets to our customers and we lost blah, blah, thousands of dollars." And you know, all that stuff. "And now we need to make sure that never happens again!" Okay. Yeah. But it was a meteor falling on the earth. I can't... why are we spending time even talking about it? And yet businesses spend lots and lots of time trying to protect themselves from the next Black Swan, which is going to look just like the last Black Swan, even though that one is a black swan because it was unpredictable. So why would they not make meaningful changes? Josh: 14:09 So, I wonder about that, right? Like why would we not make meaningful changes when we know that something has happened? And I think you've nailed it there. These are black swan events. The chances that, the realistic chances of "The Terror" happening again, were reasonably small in the grand scheme of things. They also knew that the cathedral itself, although it is iconic, it can be rebuilt. So get the things that will go into the new building and in the new building will have new designs. So here, a tale from Mormonism. The Salt Lake Temple was one of the first buildings that was built in the Salt Lake Valley - major building that was built in the Salt Lake Valley after the Mormons moved there from Nauvoo. And when they got there, they built this temple out of stone that was quarried from the nearby quarries. That temple has stood the test of time. It's, it's been there for, uh, geez, I don't even know how many years. Well over a hundred years at this point. They are shutting the temple down in the center of Salt Lake because they are going to make some changes. They're going to redo the foundation, which at one point had cracked, and then they had to tear it out well before the temple was finished and then put it back in and then finish the temple. But they're going to protect the temple from seismic events. And not that, not that there's ever been a major earthquake in Utah, but you know, there could be, and it's hard to take such a landmark off the grid. People literally from around the world to see that that temple and downtown Salt Lake. So I imagine those changes to the Notre Dame cathedral would have been equally... uh, no, let me rephrase that. They would have been more impactful to a tourism around that facility and the worship services that go on in there. Leon: 16:21 So, yeah, not that Notre Dame doesn't undergo renovations. In fact, this all occurred during a renovation. They certainly were renovating. I just, I wonder about, why not a sprinkler system or whatever. Although, as I sit there and I say it to myself, again, working in IT, well, why don't we put sprinkler systems in our data center? Oh, that's right. That's why we don't do that. And you know, the art, the paintings, the whatever, you know, maybe Josh: 16:51 The servers Leon: 16:52 The servers. Yeah. The wiring, the electricity. A water suppression system would probably be be more damaging than not, than the fire, which I guess people feel that they can outrun. And they did, in large part. You know, they really did. And also that the next step up, a halon system is simply not possible in a structure the size of Notre Dame. Josh: 17:27 I think the key here, though, is don't make any changes because once you make changes, you introduce variables that you can't control. Like really, "no deploy Fridays"? They're a thing. I mean, they should be a thing. Leon: 17:39 So I hear that, although I think that Charity Majors, from Honeycomb.io, is on a campaign for getting rid of that. But... Josh: 17:48 I'm just going say she was the one I was thinking about when I said that, I was thinking "Charity is totally going to kill me." Leon: 17:53 But I will say also that she is presupposing that there is a vastly different architecture in place than A) the kind of structure that Notre Dame is; and B) the kind of day to day small, medium, even large size businesses, but sort of the, the monolithic businesses that we, you and I, are used to working in, I think that she's presupposing that's not the case. Josh: 18:21 Most definitely not. Right. I think if the equivalent of a of honeycomb in architecture would be something akin to.... Boy, I can't even, I I have no idea. I'm like what, what would change as often as an environment monitored by honeycomb? Leon: 18:43 Yeah. So neither one of us is architect enough to come up with a good analogy, but... Josh: 18:50 I have one!! Leon: 18:51 Oh, go ahead. Josh: 18:51 What about a 3-d printed house, one of those ones you can build in a day that like puts the concrete down? I think if you had something like that, Leon: 19:01 ...if that was the case then you wouldn't worry about you. Yeah. You'd deploy changes all the time because you just reprint your plans, right? Josh: 19:09 "Oh honey, I think we're going to put an addition on this afternoon." "Okay. Hit print." All right. There we go. So Honeycomb is like a 3-D printed house. Leon: 19:20 There we go. I'm going to tweet that and see how quickly Charity jumps on there to tell us "erm, no!" Okay. Um, Josh: 19:30 I have a question. You mentioned to me, when we were talking about this episode, about this comment about the "long now in action" and how that resonated with you. Tell me only, what was it about that phrase "the long now?" Leon: 19:45 I loved the idea - and just to put it in context from the tweet (and we'll have it in the notes from the show.) But the original comment, "They know what can be rebuilt and what can't." (I'd said that before) "...the protocol has been in place since the last time the cathedral was destroyed. Sacked during the French Revolution. The steeple and beams supporting it are 160 years old. And oaks for new beans await at Versailles, the grown replacement for oaks to rebuild after the revolution. This is the long now in action. It's what happens when you maintain civilization." So a few more pieces here about why the protocol is in place and how they do it. They actually do have a sense of disaster recovery. They're growing it! There are trees. And in the thread of the tweet that we quoted, the gentleman who tweeted it posted pictures of Versailles with the oaks that have been grown to replace pieces. Now, of course that's also meant to replace pieces that just wear out after a while, or become decayed or something like that. But the entire idea is that they have their disaster recovery. They have their replacement process in place. But the idea of calling it "the long now" - I think in American we call it the long game, right? But the long game has a whole different flavor than "the long now." The long now means that life is happening - now. We are in it - now. But I'm not just looking at this moment. I'm not living for just this moment. I'm living for this moment, and also to ensure that every other moment is able to be sustained or maintained like it. That my children will experience THIS now. They will walk into iconic structures like Notre Dame and have the same experience I'm having in in large part, if not completely. So I just like that. And from an IT perspective, I think that we would do well if we could build in awareness of the long now - and by the way, which things don't need it. Which aspects of our architecture really are momentary and shouldn't be given the "long now" treatment, like Y2K is a great example of not doing that. You're not thinking about the long now, and you're not building in obsolescence into your code to say, "No! At the end of five years, this has to go away. It has to, we have to do something else with it." So that's the opposite of it. I just, I was just enchanted with both the terminology and everything poetically that seemed to be wrapped in with it. Josh: 22:31 Yeah. And, and as I, as I've listened to you wax eloquent about that idea, I do think that that is it. That is really an enchanting idea. Maybe to make it a little more base and brutish. It's that whole argument of pets versus cattle. And I think Netflix was one of the first companies to really push that idea. Don't get so attached to your tech that you can't kill it off. Right? We've got this dog, her name is Mabel. She's a Boston terrier. She's the purebred. And she is literally the most expensive gift I have ever purchased for my wife. Not because she was expensive to buy. But in the first year of her life, she is undergone close to $4,500 in surgery because apparently Boston's have bad knees. Who would have known?? And so for my pets, for this pet in particular, we're willing to literally move heaven and earth to make sure that she's comfortable. Right. But I also enjoy eating cows and I would not move heaven and earth to save a cow. Leon: 23:47 You might spend extra for a really tasty cow, but that's a very different thing. So I have long said both in IT context and also in my home that it's not the cost of the puppy that's gonna get ya. It's the cost of feeding the puppy. Josh: 24:02 Children too, actually. Leon: 24:04 Yeah. Well that's, it's all of them. Right. Iit's like "but you know the puppy's free!" No, it's not. It's not buying the puppy, it's feeding the puppy. And I think that again in IT, we would be well served to remember which of our projects, which of our architectural choices, which of our things that we do during the day, which of our activities, are cattle and can be really sort of thoughtlessly left to the side. And which of them are pets. Cause I'm not gonna say that all of it is cattle. Not, not everything in it can be treated like cattle. We want to do a certain level of commoditization, but it's always gotta be the things that are intrinsically not valuable that, that we can change it. Another corollary in the Dev ops mindset that, since you've brought up Netflix. Netflix is named, but also, uh, other companies are referenced in a book called "The Phoenix Project." And the Phoenix project also mentions this thing called Disaster Kata. Now a kata in karate terms is simply a set of actions that you take, and you do them over and over and over again until they just become muscle memory. And so they do disaster recovery or emergency or chaos kata. So they practice being in trouble and getting themselves out of it when it's not really an actual problem. So that when there's a real problem, you have that muscle memory, you jump into the situation. And that's true of military training. That's true of true disaster responders. They do the same thing. They practice certain behaviors, so that they don't have to think really hard about them when they come. And I think that we see this in the Notre Dame cathedral experience also. Is that they had done their kata. They had figured out the protocol and practiced it or talked through it so they knew what they were doing. And this was an example of it. And again, we in IT would be well served to think about which types of failures, which types of disasters and recovery actions we would be well served to practice beforehand. You talked about backups a little bit ago, you know, practice your restores. Otherwise you have what has become affectionately known as "Schrodinger's backup." The backup is both there and possibly not there, and you won't know whether it's there until you try to restore it. And if it's at the worst possible time and the answer is "the cat in the box is dead," then you're going to have a problem. Josh: 26:42 What you have is you have a branding problem. If you don't know if your backups are there or not there, what you really have are "quantum backups!" You won't know what state they're in until you observe them. So just as long as you don't observe it, then you can assume that they're there. Right? Leon: 26:58 Um, that's, I, I'm, Josh: 27:00 I'm trademarking that too late. Leon: 27:02 That's fine. Quantum backup. It just makes it sound far more exciting and sophisticated, and also then management may want to buy more of it. "Don't check it. Don't check it! You'll let the quantum state out! That's we're paying for. Josh: 27:18 I love it. See, were gonna be millionaires. Millionaires! Leon: 27:21 We are, but we're also not going to be able to show her face in IT conferences ever. "THERE THEY ARE!! GO GET THEM!" All right. So I want to turn this around to the religious perspective and talk about you know, this idea of disaster recovery, this idea of, what we protect and what we don't protect. Now you talked about how the Mormon temple is being restructured because clearly they don't want to lose it. They can't 3-D print the temple in Salt Lake City. So yeah. So they're not gonna even try to do that. And also they know the hit to the community that it would represent if something bad happened to it. Josh: 28:03 And historically, the LDS church has been ransacked right? When they were in Kirtland, the Kirtland temple was destroyed. It was literally burned with, well, I won't say burned to the ground, but it was, it was burned and desecrated. So there's, there is a history in Mormonism, even though it's a relatively new religion from a religion perspective, you know, founded in 1830 of having, it's it's sacred objects desecrated by people who were against them. Leon: 28:35 Right? Okay. So, so in terms of disaster recovery - and again, we'll presume that every church and every synagogue and every temple of whichever stripe or flavor we're talking about, has their own structural, organizational protocol for what to do if the building is on fire - if that happens. But there's other things that had been disaster and disaster recovery. So there's two I'm thinking of, one big and one small. And the big one was the destruction of The Temple (capital letters), The Temple in Jerusalem. And not only was it the building that got destroyed, not only was it the entire organization of the priesthood that was effectively demolished with the loss of the temple and the single focal point of sacrifice, but the religion - Judaism itself - took a hit because at the time Judaism was a sacrifice based religion that, you know, when you wanted to say, "I'm sorry" or "I messed up" or "thank you", the method that you did that through was to go to The Temple, and bring a sacrifice, and the priest would sacrifice on the altar either all or in part, and you would either eat some of it in celebration or not. And there's all sorts of wonderful flavors of that. But you couldn't go do that in your backyard. That was absolutely not an okay thing to do for a variety of reasons that would take too long to go over. There's some wonderful videos that I might link to in the show notes for this episode. But what's Judaism going to do now? The Temple's gone. There's no longer away to say I'm sorry or I messed up or thank you or I'm happy. There's no longer a way to do that. So does the, does the religion just disappear? No. There was a pivot. First of all, the location moved from a Jerusalem to a town of Yavne. And also what happened was a philosophical change that instead of sacrifices on an altar, it became sacrifices of the heart. That prayer took the place of the sacrifice. First and very, very literally by reading the laws of sacrifice. It was analogous to doing the sacrifice. And so every morning in morning prayers, still to this day, Orthodox Jews will read through those laws of sacrifice and the process and the protocol to do it as a way of metaphorically or philosophically saying this is still alive. But also prayer itself. Also, everybody's home has become an altar that on Shabbat, that Sabbath offering that we bring the two loaves of bread and the wine and everything has taken the place of it. So the religion was able to pivot from a very visceral, physical experience of divinity and connecting to the divine to a very, I'm going to say, intellectual and mental connection. And that was a big change. And for the religion to be able to do that was really remarkable. Not to have people just say, "Oh, well yeah, the building's gone. Yeah, that's it. I guess I'm going to be a, you know, I dunno, a pastafarian or, you know, whatever. I'm not trying to offend any pastafarians. The giant invisible spaghetti monster is a fantastic being if or if it does not exist. So that's the big one. The little one though, the little story is actually in the middle of disaster and having this protocol and how it saves more than you expect. So a friend of mine here in Cleveland was telling me a story about his grandfather. His grandfather was a young man in Morocco and, very hilly, you know, a lot of mountains and stuff like that. And they were sort of look in the low lands I guess. And in the spring, you know, the spring melt and the water was coming in. And I guess one of the rivers overran its bed, and the grandfather could hear the water coming at the town, like a flood was coming and he could hear it. And so what do you do? He ran to the synagogue and he grabbed the Torah because you know, that's the thing like, just make sure you have the Torah. Like again, we're not going to worry about the structure. Nobody was in the building, so he grabbed the Torah. Now the thing that you need to understand is: many people have seen a Torah and they see this parchment that is rolled between two scrolls and then covered with a cloth. That is not what a Sephardic - or people from the Middle East, the Spanish country. There, it's in a box. If the scrolls are strung between two poles, but then that's all wrapped in a box itself. A wooden case. So he picks up this case and he realizes he wasn't fast enough. The water is now there. It's coming into the synagogue and it's rising really fast. And he's waiting through this water with this Torah, this huge boxy Torah in his arms trying to get out, and the water just completely sweeps him off his feet and now he's going down the street, you know, still holding onto the Torah. Which is a big wooden box. That holds air inside. And so he's holding it and now the Torah is holding him up. He's floating down the water, this, this deluge holding on for dear life, both metaphorically and physically to this Torah that is keeping him afloat. And it saved him. And on top of it there's a saying that many people say in Hebrew "etz chayim hi lamancha zikim ba" - "It's a tree of life to those who hold fast to it." And that story was passed down generation by generation that in making sure he followed this protocol, making sure he saved that thing, that one artifact, made sure that he was able to survive also. Josh: 35:11 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious, visit our website, https://technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect with us on social media. Leon: 35:24 We didn't start the fire, Josh: 35:26 ...but you can be damn sure we're going to be asked to pull an all nighter to fight it.

MAG 015: How We Are Stronger Together In Marriage

Eugene Wood: My Life - Living The Entrepreneurial Life

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2019 42:14

Your Marriage Has An Impact!!! Join the Marriage After God movement today. https://marriageaftergod.com"A husband and wife chasing after God knows every aspect of their marriage is for proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ, they are not ashamed to share about it, and they are confident in the impact they are making in the world around them." - Marriage After God book"The two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness."Marriage After God bookPrayer:Dear Lord, Thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use this intimate bond to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You are the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a cord of 3 strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy. We pray against his evil ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill your will. May your will be done in us and through our marriage.In Jesus’ name, amen! READ TRANSCRIPT- [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. - Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. - [Aaron] And today, we're in part 15 of the Marriage After God series and we're gonna be talking with Adam and Katie Reid about how we are stronger together. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. - [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. - [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. - [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. - [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. - [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. - [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith everyday. - [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. - Love. - And power. - [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. - [Jennifer] Together. - [Aaron] Thank you for joining us on this journey as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. - [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. Thank you guys so much for joining us on this podcast today. We wanna encourage everyone listening to just leave us a star rating review, that just helps the podcast get out into the world. And so, if you wanna support this podcast and you've been inspired by it, would you take a moment just to leave that review? Because it helps people find marriage after God. - [Aaron] Also, and we also wanna let you know the whole reason we've been doing these interviews, the whole reason this podcasts exists is because we wrote a book called Marriage After God, my wife and I and we're excited to get it in your hands. If you would take a moment after this podcast is over or take a pause in between and just go shop.marraigeaftergod.com and pick up a copy of the Marriage After God book. It's our newest book, we've written it together and we wrote it for you and your marriage and we're excited to get it in your hands and hear what you think about it. - [Jennifer] So, today, our special guests are Adam and Katie Reid. Hi you guys, thanks for joining us. - [Adam] Hey, thanks for having us. - [Katie] Thanks so much, we're glad to be here. - [Jennifer] So, why don't you just take a moment to introduce yourselves to our listeners, I'm sure a lot of them already know who you are, Katie, and your book. But just touch on that and then how long you've been married, how many children, what you guys do together, that kinda thing. - [Katie] Yeah, well, we're Adam and Katie Reid. I mean, Adam can probably share some things about himself too. But he's the lead pastor at our church, I'm a speaker and writer and we have a marriage show we do together called Stop Hammock Time on Facebook Live. And we have five loud and wonderful kids, we are not usually bored. - Awesome. - [Adam] Yeah, no, we stay busy and did you say that we've been married for 17 years? - [Katie] No, I did not. - [Adam] Yeah, we've been married for 17 years, it'll be 18 this summer and five kids ages ranging 14 to 2 1/2, almost three. And so, yeah, we definitely stay busy. - [Katie] Lots of life experience. - [Aaron] Yeah, that's awesome, we're aspiring to that. We're on our way, we're at year 12 and we got-- - Four. - Yeah, four kids. So, we're on our way. - Yeah. - Okay, guys, so, we always like to start with an icebreaker, this just helps everyone get to know you just a little bit more, so we're going there. What's your guys' most embarrassing marriage moment? - [Katie] Oh, man, so-- - [Adam] How do we choose? - [Katie] How do we choose? So we were part of a discipleship program at a Christian camp and there was a guy on staff that looked a lot like Adam and sometimes Adam let his twin, named Matt, borrow his vehicle. And one day, I was at the grocery store and I saw Adam's vehicle there. I'm like oh my goodness, I am going to totally pull the best prank. So I climbed into the back, like the trunk area of the car. And I'm like I'm gonna jump out, like maybe after he's driving, this is gonna be so funny. Well, all of a sudden, I'm kinda peeking and it's taking forever, it's really hot. And all of a sudden, I see our friend Matt walking towards the car and I'm like oh, this is gonna be awkward. And so, I'm like how do I get out of the truck area before he gets there? And so, I can't get out but I'm like hey, I thought you were Adam and I was gonna jump out. That was definitely embarrassing. - [Adam] Yeah, that was-- - [Aaron] That's really funny. - [Jennifer] What a terrifying prank. - [Adam] It was a great story to hear when she got back to the house. But another one that we just had happen just a couple days ago, we've been getting a bunch of snow and ice here in Michigan. So a lot of ice the last few days and I was watching something online teaching you how to walk on ice. And how when it's icy out, you should walk differently than your normal stride and keeping your center of gravity over your feet. And they said you should walk like a penguin because the penguins, they kinda have things figured out and they're on ice and snow often. And so, we were going to a funeral, Katie and I and we dropped our kids off at our in-laws. We walked out and the driveway was really slippery and so, I said, hey Katie, walk like a penguin. And so, we're both kinda waddling with our heads down and our center of gravity over, our toes turned out walking like penguins. And we look up and there's a guy walking his dog right at the end of the driveway and he kinda looked at us like we were really nutty. And Katie says, we're trying to walk like a penguin, trying that technique out on the ice. And he just kinda like okay. Just kept walking. - [Aaron] No context, no context. - [Adam] Yeah, we got in the car and laughed really hard about that one. - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Aaron] That would have been awesome to see. - [Adam] You guys gotta be able to laugh at yourself. - [Aaron] Yeah, being able to laugh is joy, that's joy. Being able to laugh at yourself, that's good. So, we're gonna go into, thanks for sharing those embarrassing moments. Adam, I just really wanna, I think that was an awesome prank you played on your wife, that you-- - [Adam] Best prank. - [Aaron] In the car when she was with, that's funny. - Yeah-- - So, we're gonna go into-- - [Adam] Didn't know if she said but it was a Jeep. And so, she wasn't climbing in the back of a car and closing the trunk on herself but it was the back of Jeep and it was so hot and she was dripping with sweat and that made it even more funny. - [Aaron] So we're gonna get into a quote real quick from the Marriage After God book in chapter 15. So we're gonna share a quote from chapter 15, Stronger Together in the Marriage After God book and this is the quote, the two of you serving God together will always make a greater impact than the two of you could make alone striving for your own accomplishments and happiness. So, real quick, we can just talk about that for a second, do you feel like this, do you see this in your own marriage? - [Adam] Absolutely, yeah, I look back at my life before marriage and completely different person, different way of doing life and different way of ministering and that definitely comes from learning and growing because of being married to Katie. And I think, I don't wanna speak for you, but I think you can say the same thing, Katie. She has strengths that I don't have and I have strengths that she doesn't have and that's the beauty of marriage and God's design For that is making each other better and not really making each other better, I think, but the husband and wife combination there, not just husband and wife but male and female combination there, I think, gives a much clearer and more accurate picture of God's character and who He is. And so, there are things that Katie is very good at that I am not and she fills in those gaps there and vice versa. We are much better person together than we are apart. - [Katie] Well, I think we learned this over time too because at the beginning, I'm a very driven person, semi-organized, getting more organized since we're trying to implement some of the tidying up techniques in our home. It used to drive me crazy that he wasn't like me in that area, it's like I just thought you see the world through your own lens. And so, to me, the thought of not turning a paper in in time in college stressed me out so much that I think I wrote his paper for him because he's just gonna turn it in the week it was due. - [Adam] It may have happened once. - [Katie] Just one time. But then there's things that he is really good with people. I can sometimes be too blunt, he has a great way of making people feel like they're important. And so, we've learned over time to appreciate the strengths in others instead of just trying to wish we were more like, they were more like us. I think we've looked at, okay, I have weaknesses and strengths, you have weaknesses and strengths and how can we blend these together to be more effective? - [Jennifer] I love that picture of complimenting each other in that way. And how God, He has a mission for all of us to do and work for all of us to do and each one of our marriages is so unique and yet, paired together, we compliment each other for all of those things and to be able to fulfill them. - [Aaron] Yeah and your guys' marriage doesn't seem anything like ours. I'm making a joke 'cause I, Jennifer is always like why won't you just, I do it this way, why don't you do it that way and we've had to get to this point of, well, I might do something differently and that's gotta be okay sometimes. Now-- - Learning to appreciate, knowing the value of that is really important. - [Aaron] Yeah. - [Jennifer] And I think that a marriage after God definitely has their eyes open to those differences and sees the value in them. - [Aaron] Yeah and also growing in them like there's some things that we do need to change in, for sure. But that's a really good testimony. Has there been any standout moments in your marriage? We're talking about this stronger together, the unification, us moving in the same direction in one mind, one spirit in our marriage, has there been any standout moments in your marriage where you realize the two of you were stronger together? Any personal stories-- - Well, for us, we are in vocational ministry, I know that's not the case for everyone but we have led multiple camps together, like a youth camp. We do cousin camp with our nieces and nephews and just being able to tag team. If I just did it by myself, I'd be completely burned out by the end of the experience and same with him. But learning, I think, to let each other lead and we are not perfect at this by any means, we're both first borns and a lot of times, stubbornness or determination, how ever you wanna spin it, comes with that. - Determination, so. - Yeah. So there are times when we butt heads and somebody bends so the other can lead but we kind of do this clumsy dance and learn how, are learning how to do that more and more. So I think, for us, ministering to kids has been a way that we've been able to do that. But I was just telling someone the other day, now that Adam is lead pastor, there are some changes we're implementing at church but we also need mindful of the culture. But my tendency is like sweet, we can change a hundred things at once, won't this be great? Well, it won't be great because there's a culture and you wanna respect that. And so, Adam's help reminded me let's celebrate the one thing that we're doing right now. And so, for me, kind of my side writing and speaking thing gives me creative outlet to drive and go and get it done without driving him crazy that I'm putting all that energy into what he and I are doing together. - [Aaron] I like that. You guys have recognized that in the pursuit of what God's doing, you're stronger together when you allow the other person to operate in the strengths and gifts that they've given them in that proper order, I love that. And you also finding out, as a team, ways that you can have the other outlets in ministry so it's still working together but even if it's in different ways, does that make sense? - [Katie] Right, and like if I'm gonna go speak somewhere, do something outside the home, like a lot of times, Adam will watch the kids. And so, sometimes I think ministering together doesn't always look like side by side, we're both doing everything together-- - [Adam] In the same physical space, yeah. It can be her, the things that God has called us to as a family, when she goes and speaks, we are ministering with her by allowing her to go do that and vice versa. Katie and the family allow me to go and minister to people by picking up and doing things that need to be done. And so, ministering together, again, I think that's a good point. Ministering together doesn't always mean that you are right side by side with each other but more allowing each other to minister within the calling that our family has and within the good things that each of have individually. - [Jennifer] That's great, so for people listening, just as an encouragement to them, could you guys share maybe like one or two practical ways that a husband and wife can support each other in whatever thing that God is inviting them to do? Specifically, like how can a wife support her husband, how can a husband support his wife, practically? - [Adam] I mean, I think we're walking through that right now, Katie writing and speaking is a relatively new thing over the last few years, three years maybe. Me and the kids supporting her looks like allowing her to have the time to go write and it's our expectations, we take those expectations on, we take those things on so that that frees up her time to be able to go write. And there were multiple times when she was writing the book that she would just go away for the weekend and she was able to accomplish a lot of things and it was really time for her writing when she was able to do that. So trying to pick up some slack and take some of the responsibilities on so that she was allowed or able to go do that. And then also with her speaking now, it's hey, we'll be home, I've got the kids while she's allowed to, she's able to, not allowed to. It's not like I'm giving-- - That sounds-- - [Adam] I'm giving permission to go do this. But she's able to go do that and not have to worry about getting kids to soccer practice and swimming and these types of things where she can just go and focus on what God's called her to do ministering to other people through the book and through speaking. - [Katie] And I think a big part of it is communication. It's sitting down together as a couple and saying, what does God want our family to be about? I mean, Aaron, Jennifer, you guys are a great example of this, of you clearly know the mission God has put before you, it takes different forms at times, whether through podcast or encouraging people one on one or retreats or books or all of those kind of things. But I think asking God to help give you a vision for your family where He comes first, your marriage comes right under that, right? Marriage after God and-- - Yeah. - [Katie] And communicating what is God calling us to and how do we pursue that in this season? I think there are different seasons in lives too where it can look differently. We've had an elderly friend and they had a vibrant prayer ministry and they did it from their recliners in their living room. And would call people and wish them a happy birthday and they were literally side by side in their living room doing that. But earlier on-- - [Jennifer] That's awesome. - [Katie] When they were younger, it looked like doing that in person. So I think knowing the vision for your family and then communicating what does this look like practically? If we're gonna do this, what are we gonna say yes to and what are some things we're gonna say no to so that we can serve together? - [Aaron] So, what you guys are saying right now is so perfect in the whole message of what we're talking about in Marriage After God. And I just wanted to go back to, you were talking about how right now, this new season, and we love the seasonal mindset knowing that there's gonna be seasons and like the Bible teaches us this and learning how to operate within seasons. And you guys were talking about right now, Katie, you're writing and speaking, and Adam, you'll stay home and let her go do that. And that only works, and I'm assuming 'cause, Katie, you brought up communicating but you guys sat down and said, what is that God wants to do? But then, are we in agreeance? It's not like, Katie, I'm gonna be a speaker and a writer, let me do my thing. And, Adam, I'm gonna be doing this ministry over here, let me do my thing. That would conflict, you guys wouldn't be able to get anything done which goes back to the quote of you guys being on the same page, communicating what's the Lord doing right now this season? Writing and speaking and Adam's like Amen, I agree and I'm gonna participate where I can to make that happen. Versus you both pursuing your ministries-- - [Jennifer] Individually. - [Aaron] Individually in this heart of you're in my way. And I love that you brought that up because some might be listening right now thinking God's put this thing on my heart and I need to do it. And I don't care if my husband, if he's drug along or is out of the way or vice versa. No, I'm doing this thing over here and I don't care what my wife's at. Rather, hey, let's lay it on the table, what's God doing and let's be on the same page with each other. 'Cause then you can work as a team, right? - Yeah. - Yeah. And we just had a conversation yesterday, right outside the door here at church. And I had felt like God was leading me to write another book but Adam and the kids were not ready for that. And so, that was hard because sometimes you do feel that pull of God, sometimes it's like I think God wants me to do this. But I talked to some mentors in my life and they said, you know, Katie, you have a Godly husband, Godly family, I don't think that he's gonna ask you to do something if your family's in opposition. Like that doesn't follow the model that God has laid out. Not to say that there's definitely, everything's not black and white. But so, my friend encouraged me like with Nehemiah, right? When he saw that the wall was broken down, he went and fasted and prayed before he went to the king. And so, my friend encouraged me like Katie, if you're really feeling like God is wanting you to write this book, why don't you fast and pray and then when you feel clear what God's saying, go to your husband and talk to him about it, ask him what he thinks. And so, we just had this conversation yesterday because if your family isn't on board, you are not gonna be stronger together, it's going to be divisive. But when you're on the same page, I mean, there's a difference. There's been times when we had adopted our fourth child and, I, again, felt from the Lord like we're supposed to do this. But Adam was praying, he's like I just don't have a peace about it yet. For us to just go ahead and do that, like we would have been divided and disjointed but when the time was right and Adam's like yes, I'm confident that we should do this. It was so much sweeter because we had that unity and that's a picture of Christ and of the Trinity and what, He once used marriage as a picture that the world will know Him. - [Aaron] Yeah and I just, it's perfect, it's a beautiful illustration of what we're talking about. Because to be honest, God could have put on your heart, might have put on your, did put on your heart that He wants you to write another book. But at the end of the day, He wants us to do the things He's given us to do His way. - [Jennifer] And in His timing. - [Aaron] And in His timing. So it could have simply been, you're gonna go this but I want you to walk this out well. And so, His challenge to you is to do it right versus, no, God's told me to do something, I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it my way, I'm gonna do it and everyone's gotta get outta my way or jump on the train. And any one of us could do this, Adam could be walking this, I could be walking this, Jennifer could be walking this but God's like just because I have something for you, doesn't mean I have that thing for you right this moment. And we see that all throughout the Bible with Moses and the people of Israel. With all of the prophets not being able to see what they were promised. - [Jennifer] David anointed-- - [Aaron] David and his anointing as a king. Like we see like, so it doesn't mean it's a no, it might mean it's a yes but later. And I love the process that you guys walk through and we can all take from this example. Saying, okay, Lord, I feel this is something You put on my heart but even though You put it on my heart, I'm still going to offer it to You and ask that You show me how You want it done and when You want it done. And a part of that is getting counsel like you said and then going to your spouse and saying here's what it is, what are we gonna do about this? - Fasting and praying. - Let's pray about this together, let's be on the same page. I wanted to encourage you, that was really good, I love that. - [Jennifer] So you've given us this picture of unity, you said being on the same page with each other makes us stronger together. Can you guys just talk a little bit about oneness and unity and how that makes us stronger for the ministry that God has for all of us? - [Adam] I mean, again, I think unity is so important in marriage, the enemy uses little things to drive wedges between us. And in Song of Solomon, I'm loving the Song of Solomon right now, that book is fantastic. There's this message of catch the little foxes, it's sometimes just the little things in a marriage that the enemy uses to drive a wedge between us and it's important that we are communicating often and on the same page. Recognizing little things that we say, hey, this is something that we might wanna look at and pray about and talk about and maybe even we gotta get rid of this because it's driving a wedge between us. There are things that we need to recognize and remove or at least be aware of and be communicating about to be able to stay unified. The other thing I was gonna say is, again, marriage being a picture of the church and Christ. And Christ being the bride/groom and the church being the bride and Christ wanting perfect unity between Him and the church. And, again, we're sinful people. And so, that some day will be accomplished but that unification, that pure unadulterated unity is something that like Katie said before, the world is going to see Jesus by the way we do our marriages. And if we're divided, that says something to the world about God and about Jesus and vice versa. If we're unified and we're on the same page and we're communicating, that communicates something very important as well. - [Katie] I was just gonna add too, the other day, we had a really hard conversation because honestly, we are both tired, we have busy lives. And so, we would just kinda zone out on our phones at night and we are kind of slipping into this pattern of kind of coexisting, doing things during the day, kinda saying a few things and then like zoning out, escaping on our phones and then going to bed. And we had a hard conversation where there was lots of tears. Honestly, Adam, he's a go with the flow guy but I know when he brings up something that I need to work on, it's a big deal 'cause he waits a long till we have to say it. But we were just realizing like I could almost see this path we are going down of like had we kept going down that path, we would have lost a lot of that unity and oneness. Because honestly, unity and oneness is hard work. We have the Holy Spirit, obviously, to help us but it's those hard decisions that aren't always convenient and aren't always comfortable but they bring him the most worry. - [Aaron] So, I was just thinking, Jennifer and I literally just had a conversation similar a couple nights ago. And with this book coming out and the podcast and all the things that we're trying to be obedient in lately and with God. I was just mentioning to her, I was like hey, Jennifer, we need to be extra protective over our intimacy, over our time alone. Because in these seasons of us walking in obedience and chasing after these things, this is where we're gonna be attacked, this is where we're gonna lose focus. Is in our physical intimacy, in our spiritual intimacy, in our times alone when we should be recharging each other, being recharged in the word. And so, I just mentioned to her, I was like we need to be extra vigilant in protecting this part of our unity because if that goes, it doesn't matter what else we do. And so, it sounds like we were on the same journey. - [Jennifer] Well, I think everyone listening too can relate to this 'cause as you were talking, Katie, I think I can picture all the listeners on their end looking at each other if they're listening together as a couple. Well, with these downcast basis, like yeah, that's us. Everybody has access to social media and their phones and other things too that get in the way of that intimacy-- - [Aaron] That take our attention from each other. - [Jennifer] That take our attention away from each other and I love that you brought that up just as a reminder. So if everyone can just drop this note down, it would be to get our eyes off of our phones, off of the things that draw attention away from each other, look to each other and look to God of what He is doing. 'Cause He is doing something in this world and He's doing it through His people, He's doing it through us. So I love that you brought that up and I appreciate the encouragement to other people. My next question for you guy, oh, go ahead. - [Adam] That's not something that is kind of a one time conversation either, that's something where sometimes-- - Right. - It's continual. - [Adam] Those conversations happen often because we can easily slip back into old patterns, we can easily slip back into things that are just easy and avoid the tough conversations and honestly, tough change and tough challenging. Katie, part of the reason Katie is in my life is to challenge me and make me better and vice versa. I believe that God brought me to her to make her better and together, we're better. But changing the way that we are and changing the things that are easy takes work and it's not fun. And so, a lot of times it's easier just to escape into something else and just avoid those conversations. And that is a conversation, obviously, that could probably happen more often than it even does and would make us better, so. - [Aaron] Yeah, so, thinking about those conversations, those corrective course changing conversations that need to happen often. Our pastor always says in conversations about raising our children, 90% affirmation, 10% correction, those 10% corrections need to happen. Like you said the other night, you just were like hey, we're at a point where this needs to be addressed and changed tonight. But the 90% affirmation side, how important and how integral has affirmation played a role in the building of unity in your marriage and for those listening that we need to be recognizing that affirmation is important? How does that look? - [Katie] Well, one example that comes to mind is actually with our kids, so I'm not the most tidy housekeeper as I may have alluded to early on. And so, when it's time to clean, I kind of turn into like housezilla. It's just like I'm barking orders, I'm like come on everybody! 'Cause I'm so stressed by the amount of what needs to get done. So, my son, he's 12, sometimes he'll just stop and go, mom, you're so beautiful. And later on I thought he's being manipulative because it would change my attitude and all of a sudden, I would stop and realize how horrible I was being and when he pointed that out, it made me feel good inside. And so, the picture when, if Adam sends me a text just saying I appreciate you, I love you, period. It does, it builds into that and I'm more guilty of saying, hey, could you pick up this on your way home? And hey, how about this? But even when he goes and cashes his paycheck, trying to say thank you for working hard to provide for our family, just those little things in texting can be great with that. Sometimes even when you're at your house, of course you wanna talk face to face but if you're in the other room, just say, hey, I love you. I think that's huge because those corrective things, if that's happening all the time, it wears us down and we get discouraged. But building into our marriage in those ways, I don't think can happen enough. - [Adam] That's a good point, I think we can put so much weight and a burden on each other when we're heavy on the corrective side of things and vice versa. We can really lighten things up and make things more alive and life-giving when we're heavy on the affirmation side of things. And so, yeah, I think we both, that scenario, we can both grow in, for sure. - [Aaron] Yeah, us too. And it makes for, and so, affirmation is proaction and I see correction as reactive. So it's the thing like well, when it's necessary, we should do it 'cause correction needs to happen. But the affirmation makes a lot of the correction much less because we're being affirmed in the correct directions. We're being affirmed in the word of God, we're being affirmed to continue in the faith and to continue in what we believe and what's true. And how, like you said, you're beautiful. And you're like oh, I am beautiful and I need to be acting like what I am. Yeah, the affirmation is so important to us, just continue to move the right direction and keep our marriages and our ministries full of life and full of love and peace and joy. So, Jennifer, why don't you ask this one last question and then we'll get to the last last question. - [Jennifer] The last last question. Okay, so, in this chapter of Marriage After God, we share this idea of contrasting, what the world says about love. That you and me against the world so it's kind of like internalized love versus God's picture and desire for the mission of our marriage which is you and me for the world. What does this look like in your guys' marriage? - [Katie] Well, first of all, I just love that idea, it's powerful. And it reminds me of like let's say you're trying to push a big wheel, like if we're pushing against each other, we're gonna get nowhere. But if we get on one side of that wheel and push it, like my kids were helping me push my van that was stuck in the driveway this morning. - Oh no. - Oh no, 'cause the snow. - [Katie] You're combining your strengths and I think there's so much hostility and division out there in the world. I think, again, back to Nehemiah when they were trying to rebuild the wall, they said fight for your families. And I love the picture, it was all the people that were building this broken down wall, were doing it, it said, shoulder to shoulder. And I love that picture in marriage, are you serving shoulder to shoulder? Again, whether you're in the same room or not, are you going towards one goal which is to honor God? - [Aaron] Yes, yes. - [Katie] Because we've had friends recently die, like several and it's reminding of how fleeting life is. And God has given each marriage a purpose and that purpose could look different but all of purposes combined are to advance the kingdom. And like you said, husband and wife for the things of God. - [Adam] I think what I would say to that is it sometimes take a change of mindset as well. Because we as Christians, it can be very easy to slip into a mindset of oh, the world is attacking my faith, the world is attacking my God, the world is attacking me, the culture is doing these things. And so, it can be very easy to get defensive and put walls up and say, okay, you're attacking me, I'm coming after you. When really the mindset that God has given us is He said don't be surprised when this stuff happens, they hated Me. Jesus said they hated Me and they're going to hate you because you're aligned with Me. But He also said lay down your life for those people, sacrifice for those people, serve those people. And so, it could just take, again, conversations, how are we becoming more passionate to be like Jesus in loving and laying down our life for the world? As opposed to how do protect ourselves against the world? - [Jennifer] I love that perspective. And I also can't get that imagine of pushing a wheel out of my mind, I love imagery. And so, that's really powerful to me and I just think of husband and wife on either side like you said, Katie. And as pushing with all of our force and using all of our strength and then feeling super defeated because it has not moved at all, it doesn't work. And so-- - Well, actually, to take that analogy further, when one does get weak, what happens? The wheel rolls right over 'em. And so, we harm our marriage and instead of working in the same direction and actually getting somewhere, we also don't destroy our marriage. We don't destroy our partner, our spouse, the one that God's given us to be one with, so those are great-- - Perspectives. - Perspectives, yeah. So let's get to this last question, we've asked this to everyone. In your own words, what is a marriage after God? - [Katie] Rock, paper, scissors. - [Adam] We're both playing it to tell ya, hey, you take the part of this one. But I think, again, I love the duality of the title there, a Marriage After God, meaning we're seeking to follow God, we're seeking to be in alignment with His design for marriage, we're seeking to be in alignment in His purpose for marriage. But we're also, lost my train of thought there, but-- - [Katie] Well, that we want our marriage to be, go ahead. I was just gonna say, we want God to be first, right? Our marriage comes after God but then we also want our marriage to pursue God and the things of God. 'Cause like bed, this life is but a vapor and there's eternity if we are in Christ, we will live eternally with Him but we really have a limited time on this Earth. And there's so many petty things, I think Elizabeth Elliot, I've heard through the grapevine she had said this. That I think Jim Elliot, her husband who is martyred, he used to snore. Well, that could have been the thing that just drove her crazy but then afterwards, when her husband wasn't there, she missed that snoring. I always joke with Adam that he's gonna miss when I'm gone because I fall asleep during movies and he's not convinced that he will miss that. But I think it's do you want an internal perspective-- - [Aaron] Jennifer, you fall asleep during movies too. - [Katie] Is God the head of our marriage? Is He giving us our directives and are we going after the things He's laid before us? - Amen. - Amen and amen. That is so awesome, thank you so much for answering that. And just so you guys know, we're super encouraged by you and the ministry that is coming out of your marriage. You guys compliment each other so well and the Lord's using it to impact this world for His kingdom. And so, we're cheering you on and we just wanna give you an opportunity to share a little bit more about where people could follow along, you guys do these awesome interviews together. So why don't you share a little bit about that. - [Katie] Well, first of all, thanks so much for having us and I hope everyone gets a copy of Marriage After God, I know it's gonna be a wonderful resource to strengthen marriages, so-- - Thank you. - You're welcome. So we do a live show called Stop Hammock Time, 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday evenings on Facebook Live and you can find that if you go to Katie M, M as in Martha, Reid, R-E-I-D on Facebook. And we do those, and sometimes it's just Adam and I, sometimes you interview people. We have a great interview with you guys on there but it's a way to encourage marriages. And then we also have a Facebook group called Hammock Time Hangout Hub and we just kind of go a little deeper with the people in that group and share things like about your guys book or about an article we read or a question. But we just wanna encourage couples to grow closer in the relationship with the Lord and the relationship with each other. - [Aaron] Awesome, we thank you guys and we're gonna go into a time of prayer for a second and then we're gonna close out. - [Adam] Yeah. - [Aaron] Dear Lord, thank you for the gift of companionship. Marriage is such an intimate friendship that blesses us. We desire to draw closer to each other and to use the intimate mind to bless your name. Thank you for being intertwined in our relationship and at the center of it. You're the reason we are stronger together. Please continue to strengthen us as a chord of three strands. We pray that you would use us to do hard things as we build up your body and build up your kingdom. Be our strength as we persevere. May we be intentional in encouraging each other in marriage so that we do not grow weary. We pray against the enemy, we pray against his ways. Thank you for being our refuge and our shield. Thank you for equipping us and empowering us to stay strong and to fulfill Your will. May Your will be done in us and through our marriage in Jesus' name. - [All] Amen. - [Aaron] Hey, so we just wanna thank you guys for joining us. And we wanna thank everyone that has been listening. We pray that this conversation has blessed you and your marriage and we pray that your conversations will be fruitful from this conversation. And you know what, we have one more episode in this series. So please stay tuned and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? If you did, it would mean the world to us if you could leave us a review on iTunes. Also, if you're interested, you can find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

Motivational Hit 2019 EP123 - Tommee Profitt, Jung Youth - Only One King

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2019 13:29

Welcome to the 123rd episode of Motivational Hits 2019, this podcast is all about playing one motivational song every day. The songs I will play mean something to me and I want to try use music to motivate more people. Today's band is called Tommee Profitt, Jung Youth and the song name is Only One King Enjoy https://open.spotify.com/track/2qzl10bAolDzYE505AWfIV?si=w8JTZm3LRi62Uhb25bCVDg Find me on Social Media: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Steemit Dtube [Verse 1] Yeah As a boy, always knew I'd One day have the courage to be king Time flew and I grew up Now I’m ready for the promise that it brings You only wanted me to screw up But that's something that you're never gonna see Everything that you hoped for It was only in a dream Now I go on a roll on the road And I know that I’m never breaking down I control all the flow in my soul Pull the sword out the stone in the ground She always said it'd be someday Seeing castles in the clouds And one way or another When I step in the room, everybody better bow [Pre-Chorus] So be careful how you talk to me [Chorus] 'Cause there's only one king And there's only one crown And there ain't enough room for us both on the throne So it's 'bout to go down So you better start running So you better start running So you better start running Because I’m coming right now ’Cause I'm coming right now [Verse 2] Huddled masses talk in whispers Situation’s getting tenser You should probably pay attention Boy, you know I'm born to win it Ever since I had the vision When I speak, my people listen We could start a new tradition All the children, men and women Gather 'round to burn it down We gon' start the kingdom from scratch Far too many may take advantage But it ain’t gonna happen like that Time and time again I wake up and Enemies might attack, but All that matters in my opinion Is that the dynasty lasts [Pre-Chorus] So be careful how you talk to me [Chorus] 'Cause there's only one king And there's only one crown And there ain't enough room for us both on the throne So it's 'bout to go down So you better start running So you better start running So you better start running Because I'm coming right now 'Cause I'm coming right now [Bridge] There's only one king And there's only one crown And there's only one king And it's looking like me So you better start running So you better start running So you better start running So you better start So you better start [Chorus] 'Cause there's only one king And there's only one crown And there ain't enough room for us both on the throne So it's 'bout to go down So you better start running So you better start running So you better start running Because I'm coming right now 'Cause I'm coming right now [Outro] I'm coming right now I'm coming right now I'm coming right, coming right 'Cause I'm coming right now #podcast #podcasting #motivation #motivationalhits #tommeeprofitt

verse tommee profitt huddled cause i'm

Yes, brown people can get skin cancer too with Dr. Candrice Heath

Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2019 50:12

Lets Talk about skin cancer... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Candrice Heath. Dr. Heath is a board-certified dermatologist and actually comes tripled boarded in Pediatrics, Dermatology and Pediatric Dermatology. She is a nationally recognized best selling author, and speaker and this week she lends her expertise to the Lunch and Learn Community for National Skin Cancer Awareness Month. Dr. Candrice gives us the ABCDs of skin cancer, teaches us what to expect when we go see the dermatologist and helps me try to break down some of the misconceptions associated with skin cancer and people of color. Dr. Candrice also lets us in on some exciting upcoming news about her company My Sister’s Beauty. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member. Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify Sponsors: Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10) Pierre Medical Consulting (If you are looking to expand your social reach and make your process automated then Pierre Medical Consulting is for you) Dr. Pierre's Resources - These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media Links/Resources: Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/drcandriceheath/ Instagram – https://www.instagram/drcandriceheath Dr. Candrice’s Clinical Pearls - www.drcandriceheath/clinicalpearls Skin Care Line – www.mysistersbeauty.com Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community - https://www.drpierresblog.com/joinlunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/lunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on twitter - http://www.twitter.com/lunchlearnpod - use the hashtag #LunchLearnPod if you have any questions, comments or requests for the podcast For More Episodes of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry Podcasts https://www.drpierresblog.com/lunchlearnpodcast/ If you are looking to help the show out Leave a Five Star Review on Apple Podcast because your ratings and reviews are what is going to make this show so much better Share a screenshot of the podcast episode on all of your favorite social media outlets & tag me or add the hashtag.#lunchlearnpod Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I’m your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com and as well as Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. This week we bring you an episode with Dr. Candrice Heath, who is an amazing person and most importantly is going to be talking to us about skin cancer. And you know, just to kind of caveat before we get into her bio and how amazing this person is. For those who may be listening, especially Lunch and Learn community. I've kind of referenced this before on a previous episode where we talked about skin cancer. I felt like this time I wanted to bring an expert and kind of get their expert opinion on to disorder, right? And if you want to know why this topic is so important, we're actually in skin cancer awareness month and when we talk about the number of cases of skin cancer that occur per year, it outnumbers the number of cases of lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer combined, right? So it's an extremely important topic that I think a lot of times doesn't really get the fan fair especially because a lot of times when we think about dermatology tend to think about the aesthetic aspect of dermatology. But we really don't think about the fact that they are really in high demand when it comes to pathology and disease process and education, which is why I felt, you know what, let me bring this amazing guest here. And again. I just want to kind of read her bio just so you guys can understand, how important and how specialized this person is, Dr. Heath. She is a highly respected dermatologist. She's board-certified in Dermatology, Pediatrics and Pediatric Dermatology. And ladies and gentlemen, I mean she is triple certified in her specialty, right? Just so you can guys can get an idea of how amazing, especially she is. She got her undergrad degree at Wake Forest University. Her medical degree at the University of Virginia and her pediatric training at Emory. And then she ended up getting her dermatology training at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City. She was elected to achieve dermatology resident during her final year of training and she went on to serve a role at John Hopkins University, Department of Dermatology. And as well as a pediatric dermatology fellow as well as a dermatology instructor. If you didn't get that right, just understand that this is definitely a very highly specialized person that we're bringing onto the podcast, really to educate the Lunch and Learn community. And most importantly, and this is what I love. She’s the founder of My Sister's Beauty, the official skincare line of the woman of color and founder of a vibrant online community associated with skincare and beauty tips for women of color. So amazing person, Dr. Candrice Heath. Again, she is a personal friend of mine as well. And she has blessed us with the opportunity to talk to us today just about skin cancer. And really, you know, what we should be thinking about when it comes to skin health, right? Because I think when we talk about empowering ourselves for better health, right? We got to understand that the whole body has to be working in unison, right? And I think a lot of times we forget about the skin. Again, I talked about the numbers, more cancer cases worldwide and the majority of these cancers put together. So you know, ladies and gentlemen, get ready an amazing episode. Again, I have Dr. Candrice Heath and we're going to be talking about skin cancer and skin cancer awareness. If you have not had a chance, remember, subscribe to the podcast, leave me a five-star review. And you know, when we leave the links for Dr. Candrice, go ahead and follow her and let her know how she did an amazing job this week. Episode Dr. Berry: All right, Lunch and Learn community. Again, thank you for joining us for another amazing episode. Again, this month being, you know, skin cancer awareness month. I was thinking long and hard and I said, you know, who can I get to really educate you to get us on far, to get us, get those bad thoughts that really shouldn't be in our mindset when we talk about skin cancer but really educated us and you know, kind of go through a lot of the fluff that I know that's out there. So of course if you listened to the bio, you know, we have Dr. Candrice here who is an amazing person in general. This is just an amazing person, an amazing physician. And I was just glad that, you know, she was able to give us some time to talk to us today, Dr. Candrice thank you. Dr. Candrice: Oh, thank you so much for having me today, Dr. Berry. Dr. Berry: We did a little bit of your bio in the introduction, but you know, for people who may not know you and you know, this is their kind of first entry into your world. Who is our Dr. Candrice? How are you going to get us together today? Especially when we talk about this discussion of skin cancer that even when I was doing like, you know, the little research that I did on skin cancer, I didn't realize how serious it was. Still the people a little bit about you that, you know, they may not have gotten from your bio, but you know, they will get, just have to listen to this episode today. Dr. Candrice: So I guess, I mean there are lots of things out there about Dr. Candrice, but what people really want to know or need to know is that I truly love being a dermatologist. I've learned on my journey that not a lot of people can say that they're passionate about what they do. They love it. But I truly love being a dermatologist and I enjoy all aspects of that from the education to what happens in the exam room, with the patients. And I realize that not only am I providing a diagnosis, treatment education but that I am actually impacting how someone feels about themselves. And that is a huge win for me. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love that. And of course, especially for Lunch and Learn community who may not realize, like when we talk about medical specialties, dermatology is one of those upper echelon specialties that if you're able to get through the rigors of medical school and conquer and do what you need to do, right? Like you can attain it, right? So again, this isn't a specialty that people just kind of walk into. Like they really have to put some work in. And again, I know Dr. Candrice as a person. I know her, I noticed she's an amazing person. I do want to really illuminate the fact that we got really a special person to talk to us today about skin cancer, right? Which again is, first of all from the numbers. Just from a sheer numbers standpoint, it was common cancer in the world, right? Boom. Like if that alone doesn't get your ears up and ready to educate yourself on this topic, I'm not sure what is. But Dr. Candice again, I’m an internist. I'm a hospital physician and you know, they've kind of heard the back story of how I got into there. What made you fall in love with dermatology? Like what was the path that kind of led you here to be able to grace us today? Dr. Candrice: Growing up, my older sister has something called nevus of Ota and it's actually a green birthmark that covers one side of her face. And so not only did we spend time going to our regular checkups with our pediatrician. We also would yearly visit our dermatologist in our local town. And I can still recall how excited and with anticipation. We would anticipate these visits because we would hope that they would have something to share that could take this birthmark away. And year after year, appointment after appointment, we were met with disappointment because there were, the technology hadn't really caught up so people with skin of color were not able to use the laser devices that were coming out to take away things on the skin such as my sister's birthmark without leaving significant scarring. But despite the answer being, "no, not yet," there's no solution yet, the dermatologist would take time to address my sister's self-esteem. And those few minutes actually really made the difference to me. And I said, wow, you know, dermatology, that is true, this is a different kind of doctor’s experience. So I could definitely experience what it was like to have a family member that had an ailment on the skin that everyone can see. So it's not like diabetes or having a heart problem where people may not be able to tell from your exterior that you're having issues inside of your body. But to be able to walk around with something that the general public can see. Man, that is an experience. Okay. So I took those observations and thoughts and also that experience that we had in the exam room. And then that's when I became interested in this whole dermatology, this skin disease. So if you can imagine, you know, 10-year old walking around and saying, hey, I want to be a dermatologist. That was me. I did not know about the uphill battle that we're following at it, know about how challenging it would become. And yes, I did set that goal based on my personal experience and I persevered to cross the finish line, but it wasn't easy. So people have to continue to follow me as I share more about that story. The great news is that yes, I am a dermatologist today and I'm so grateful for that so that I can live in my passion. But it was definitely a journey of perseverance to get here. Dr. Berry: I think that's telling because I think a lot of times when I think the common person, kinda hears about dermatology. I think they get kind of skewed, right? Because, they kind of think of more of the aesthetic, the Botox, that type of feel not realizing like no, there’s a lot more things that you know, it's scary. Right? You know, it can be disheartening especially from a self-esteem standpoint. So the pathology alone, right? Like and when we were talking about mythology, we talk about like disease courses, right? The amount of diseases that either originates from the, that show up on the skin is so vast. Again, I'm always impressed that you know, by my dermatologist because I know how much work, when did they put to get there as well as how much work they got to do while they there. Right? Like it's not a nine to five, you just chilling your junior year injecting people and then you're kind of keeping them, you know, a beautiful and healthy whole day. Right? There's a lot of clinical diagnostic procedures and treatment and discussions that go on a day to day basis. Right. Which is why I'm definitely such a fan of the field in general. Not so much offended. I wanted to be a dermatologist but enough that I can appreciate it from the outside. Dr. Candrice: And I definitely, thank you so much for highlighting that I think our other physician colleagues understand the scope of what we do. Yes. I do have colleagues who only do aesthetics, the only botox and fillers and things like that, but there is a large breadth of things that we do under the dermatology umbrella and I'm happy that our physician colleagues are excited that we can actually help them with their patients. Now the general public may just see us as, you know, a skin doctor or pimple popper or something like that, but in actuality, on a day to day basis, I am taking care of people who have severe disease and like brought up Dr. Berry as a dermatologist. It's amazing. I can go into the exam room, I can look at someone's skin and I can say, hmm, I wonder if this patient has diabetes. I wonder if this patient has thyroid disease. I know this patient has an autoimmune disease. And so it's amazing because, you know, the medical students are thinking, how would you know all of this stuff? My mind is trained to look at the skin, look at the hair, look at the nails, and come up with conclusions based on the patterns of recognition that I've seen over the years. So it is amazing. And yes, we do more than just acne and dry skin. We do lots of things and we take care of patients who have a serious disease. Dr. Berry: That was interesting. I know, and I know we're definitely gonna talk about it, you know, a little bit late on this show is the fact that you were introduced to the field very early. Cause I'm being honest, right? Like I've never been to a dermatologist, right? Like I'm 35 years old. No, don't hate me. Don't hit me. Right? I know, I know. I'm bad. I know. Trust me. You know, doctors make the worst patients, right? But I've always felt like, well, what am I going to do it here? This my skin looks okay. Right? So, I'm actually very happy that, you know, you guys were very introduced very early because I think a lot of times we hear, well, you know, let's say, skin color, you know, your dark skin, it is really nothing after you to do, there isn't nothing that he can tell you. I read the books, right? A lot of times when I'm reading books and I'm trying to get the description and I'm like, well what does this look like on a black person? Right? What does it look like on me? I don't know what this rash would look like on myself. Right? So I always kind of struggle with that. And again, we're definitely gonna talk about that later on. But I'm definitely kind of happy that, you know, you got introduced very early. Dr. Candrice: Yes, it is. It definitely has been a passion for a long time and yes, we do need more educational resources that highlight people with skin of color who had these specific things that we're trying to educate our colleagues about and the general public about. Dr. Berry: So with, with me, right, obviously we're recording this right? This is a skin cancer awareness month. I'll kind of all wrapped into one when we talk about skin cancer awareness. Like why for one. Right. Because this is the question I always get when we have these like health-related month. I like why does it stay made a whole month? Right? So like that I, I post you, right? Like why does skin cancer really need a whole month for us to be aware of? And what kind of says, you know what, I need to take this mantle and make sure I'm educating everyone about like skin cancer. Not to say that all your packages are nothing but skin cancer. I, but why is this like particular subjects such an important, I think for everyone to kind of know about it. Dr. Candrice: Skin cancer awareness month is a very important topic and yes, it should span the entire month of May and as a dermatologist, every day is skin cancer. Well you know, I could be a little biased. I mean, the thing is we all have skin and so sometimes we have been ingrained with these things that say, Oh, if you have brown skin, you don't have to worry about, you know, getting skin cancer. You don't have to worry about these things. So you just kind of tune it out. But I hope that every year when the month of May rolls around that people, regardless of their skin tone, learn something new about something that can potentially affect them, which is skin cancer. So it's all about educating, educating, educating. And if we only get 30 days out of the month to do that, or 31 days out of the month and do that, I say, let's go forward. We all have skin and we can all be infected regardless of skin tone. Dr. Berry: When we talk about just like the sheer numbers, right? I kind of alluded to it being the most common type of cancer in general, which is funny, right? Because me being an internist, I hear a lot about long, right? I hear a lot about the prostate, right? I hear a lot about breasts, I hear a lot about those things, but then when I'm looking at the numbers and they're like, whoa, those skin cancers, like I was pulling it out of water. Like I think that was more shocking to me. Obviously, you're in the field so we're probably not gonna be a shocking you. But like I thought that kinda hit me. I was like, oh I have this many people like dealt with like skin cancer. What are some of like the numbers, the stats, you know, Lunch and Learn community loves numbers from a statistic standpoint. Like, like how many people like are dealing with cancer and especially on a worldwide basis. The United States, you know, black folks, some women. Like what are some of the numbers that you kind of run across? Dr. Candrice: So I'm really, the numbers are usually broken down into the number of cases of melanoma that are diagnosed every year, which is a specific type of skin cancer than the most deadly type of skin cancer. There is the other group which is non-melanoma skin cancers. And often non-melanoma skin cancers, you're going to probably get about 5.4 million cases that had been treated in an average year. So that is a lot of cases of cancer. And then if you dive deeper into the statistics, you will find that one in five Americans by the time that their age 70 they're going to develop skin cancer that's taking all comers, all ages, all races of people putting them in the pot and you're coming up with the one in five Americans. So yes, it is definitely way more common than you think. And even when we really dissect out to the most deadly type of skin cancer, which is melanoma, it is predicted that there will be an increase in the year 2019 unfortunately by almost 7.7% so this is something that is not going away and it is definitely increasing. So we have to be on the lookout for it. The prediction of the number of cases for 2019 is over 190,000 cases are predicted to be diagnosed this year. So we definitely enough to be on the lookout for this. Dr. Berry: And what's interesting especially, and I am not sure if it's because it doesn't get the fanfare right? Like again I know we talked about breasts, we were talking about lung and just for Lunch and Learn community just from a number of sake, you know she was talking in the millions, right? When we talk about cases I'm like lung cancer, breast cancer, those are like in the 150 to 200 thousand. Just to give you an idea from a sheer numbers standpoint. How much more common it is right to have skin cancer than it is the other cancers, right? Not to say that no one is better than the other, but just when we talk about media and we talk about the influence of it, but then we had Dr. Amber Robins talked about the influence of media on our health care. This is one of the things that we see, right? Like we, we see like this is an issue that probably should get like more than a month if this many people, right. Ideally, with a skin cancer wet, you know, we got a month so we're gonna focus on and kind of do it here. And you talked about the different types of skin cancer, right? Like especially in your training when you're dealing with the melanoma and again, melanoma, we, you know, I know as an internist, you know, that's a bad word for us, right? We were as the one that's kind of scary for us as one, we tend to see exhibit an in a lot of different functions and especially when we're talking about when it starts spreading everywhere. When you're talking about melanoma versus the non-melanomas type skin cancers, right. And you just kind of start breaking those down. What is it that people should be doing? Right? Like again, what should I do? Should I start like scan to my skin now? Because now I'm getting kind of scared, right? All these people are against cancer, I'm getting kind of scared. I need to be worried about it. Dr. Candrice: Well definitely really the first step is to educate yourself. So you landed in the right spot. So we talked about melanoma being the most aggressive, a type of skin cancer. And then there are also those types which include Basal Cell Carcinoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and even a rare to very rare type that we don't talk about that often called Merkel Cell Carcinoma. So there are various types. And the best thing that you can do is to definitely see a dermatologist once a year to get a head-to-toe, a skin check. But then right in your home you can actually go ahead, advocate for yourself, taking a mirror and looking at your own skin. The first step is to really get to know what is living on your skin already. You know, time and time again, I may ask a patient, how long has this been there? And they, so I don't know. I haven't seen my back in two years. That’s unacceptable. I want you to get to know what is on your skin regularly. That way you can be a better, this hectic just in case something changes or comes up, you can say hey you can go to your primary care doctor and say look I need a referral to a dermatologist because this is changing. This was not there before I'm concerned. Dr. Berry: Okay, get in tune with what your skin is so you know what their baseline is and you do recommend just like once a year? Like I said clearly I'm overdue. Right? So you're just saying just like you're doing your regular annual checkup, you should be seeing your skin screening as well? Dr. Candrice: Yes, I do recommend that people get skin checks and definitely you know if you had lesions on the skin, moles, etc. They should be checked. And people with skin of color, of course, we have to be very very careful because skin cancer can happen on areas of the body that you may not expect. So for people with skin of color that means anyone with non-Caucasian skin, non-white skin, the risk of your skin cancers are going to be higher. When we were talking about melanoma on the soles of the feet, the palms of the hand inside of the mouth. So those are areas that people may not even think about that can be effect by skin cancer. And yet that's where we find the most deadly type of skin cancer in people of color. Dr. Berry: Are we've already dealing with more aggressive types of skin cancer or is it our lack of, you know, just being aware and following up on the skin cancer? Like what would you, if you had to lean one way or the other? Dr. Candrice: The number one thing for skin cancer and people with skin of color is late detection and delayed diagnosis. The patient doesn't believe that they can ever have skin cancer, so that may delay treatment. Also, there are some primary care physicians who are uncomfortable with things on the skin and that stems from just, you know, how physicians are taught and what they're exposed to. So they may not actually get a lot of teaching in dermatology during their training. So it's an area that they may not feel as comfortable with. So it may not be on their radar to even look at the hands and feet of someone with the skin of color and to refer that patient. So basically, usually by the time that patient with the skin of color lands in my office, regardless of the cancer type, it is usually at a higher stage. So it is going to be the worst case scenario I'm walking in. So versus someone else who may have been trained from a child to say, you know, we can get skin cancers, you have to protect your skin from the sun, you have to do this, you have to do that. So they're more aware that things can go wrong on the skin. But if you have no clue that 'that' could happen, you have definitely, there's a long time lapse between when that appeared on the skin when you can actually get your diagnosis. And that definitely affects your prognosis. Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. All right. Dr. Candrice, she's getting us together. So yeah, I'll know until right now, next week, I am scheduling my dermatology exam because it is clearly serious. And again, this is if, if you, if you had one month to choose to like do your routine skin screening exams, why not let it be in the month of May when you know, skin cancers around us. The spotlight is on from a media standpoint is on it. So this is definitely the month you should be thinking about, you know, calling your primary care doctor like right now. And if you're in Florida, fortunately in Florida, you don't even have to get a referral. You can go straight to your dermatologist. Thank you for Congressman Wasserman for that standpoint there. That's great. So I taught, I hear about skin cancer, I read Baskin cancer a lot. And I always see this is the A, B, C, D, E of the skin cancer. Right? What is that? And you know, how could my Lunch and Learn community, you know, derive and be educated and you know, get on the ball with, in the car and in regards to at ABCD’s of skin cancer. Dr. Candrice: The ABCD’s are really A, B, C, D, E. Now we've actually added E to that as well. (Okay.) It is a reminder for you when you're looking at your skin, what are some of the things that I should look for as warning signs or things that are going wrong on the skin? So let's say you have a mole on the skin and if you were to look at, if you were to imagine splitting the mole in half with, you're just with your eyes a little line. If one side does not look exactly like the other side, we say that that is asymmetrical and that is a warning sign. That lesion should be checked. So A stands for asymmetrical. One side doesn't look like the other, that could be significant. The B stands for border. So if it has a round, nice, crisp border, then we're not going to worry as much. But at the borders brace squiggly and not a very crisp, that could be a problem. Also, the C stands for color. So if your mole all of a sudden goes from being brown to having brown, gray, pink, white, basically changing in color, that could be a problem. So that's something that could trigger you to get that checked out. D stands for diameter. So typically, melanomas are in other things that are going to be problematic are the greater than this, the head of an eraser. Now I've definitely diagnosed things that were smaller than that. But anyway, it's part of the warning signs. So that may be something else that can prompt people to come in. And then the last E has been added in the last several years and that stands for evolving. So basically what that means is even if you don't remember the A, the B, the C, the D with those things stand for if you have a mole that is evolving or changing in any way that may be one that we need to look at more promptly. Dr. Berry: Okay. All right. They added E. I've been out of school for a few years. So when it was my time and they just stopped that d and maybe even add something new. Again, this is why, Lunch and Learn community I tell you all the time I get just as educated from my guest as you guys also. Like I said, I'm getting myself together, get myself mentally prepared, to see this dermatologist, right? So when I do not, again, just like when I go to see this dermatologist, like what happens? Right? I know what happens when I go and get my wellness check and I talked to my doctor about the flu. But what happens when I go to see different charges? I've never been to. So what happens when I go to the dermatologist for the first time? Dr. Candrice: Well, you have to expect to show your skin. I was not born with x-ray vision. So we have to get you out of those clothes and into a gown. Now they usually will ask you, you can leave your undergarments on if you like to make you feel more comfortable and then you will be placed in a gown. And during that visit with my patients, what I do in a very systematic way is that I look over the entire surface of the skin from head to toe looking for anything that stands out. That could be something that is an abnormal and abnormal lesion on the skin. So I definitely will take a look at every area in the extremities, the back, the chest, the scalp, the face, all of that looking to take a look to see if there's anything that looks unusual that needs to be biopsied. So yes, number one is to do expect to actually get out of your clothing, including your shoes and socks and get into a gown. And I think some people… Dr. Berry: Is that something you run into, like people in that really unexpected that part? Dr. Candrice: Yes. Roll up the sleeve, will pull up the pant leg and I said, look, I'm a dermatologist. I need to see the complete picture. You know, that part is very helpful because everybody's moles may not be textbook the same as someone else's. So I need to know your body is making molds and that can actually help me to determine. Is that something that needs a biopsy? Is this just how your body's making them? I need to get a sense of all of that. So I need to see your entire body surface area. Dr. Berry: Okay. I like that. And anything, out there, tips and tricks, get our patients to have it? To get them a full dermatology evaluation? Dr. Candrice: Sure. You know, don't ever be afraid to ask or you know about things that you may be concerned about. Sometimes dermatologist, you know, we lay over the completely benign things, but I often use that as a teaching moment. So I do give those things names and I educate the patient about what those lesions are. But it is important that you get your questions answered as well about specific things that you're concerned about. I think, you know, one of my, some of my favorite instances as a dermatologist is to walk in and you know, there's a someone there for an exam and I start to examine their skin. I see like five circles on their skin with a marker and I'm thinking, hmm. Basically, every time I inquired, basically it's usually a wife that has circles, these lesions because she wants to know exactly what those are and what's the, make sure that those species are okay. So even if you don't have a wife, this makes circles on your skin and there are a few things that you are concerned about. It’s okay to make a list of those things so that we can make sure that we address those specifically so that you leave feeling empowered about your skin. Dr. Berry: I love it. We love empowering here. Because especially when they come to see, you know, the general family practitioner or internist and they're asking a lot of questions. Like I do wonder like what type of leeway do they have when they go in to see their dermatologist? Right? Because again, obviously, you're the expert, right? And you know, if something's like, oh no, that's nothing, but they just want to know, right? Like they read it in a book, they read a blog, they've heard a podcast and they say, oh no if it looks like this, you're supposed to do something about it. Do you run into a lot of that where patients are, you know, they're empowering themselves to be an advocate for themselves. But sometimes you almost have to educate them away from doing extracurricular things that you wouldn't necessarily need to do. Dr. Candrice: Absolutely. I think that's our job as physicians to provide the education and say, this is by all accounts, this is a something that it's benign. It's something that can be observed, you know, you don't have to remove it. So I think just spending time to educate also can be helpful for them as well. Dr. Berry: All right. So I'm in the dermatology again and just kind of preface it. Because again, I remember when I was studying in dermatology type questions for boards and everything else and my number one question was always, well you know what? Like yeah, I understand like how it looks, raised, bordered, redness. Like I already understand how that looks. But like for a person that looks like me, right? Like how does that look? Does it look the same? Should I be worrying? Like is it different? Is it the opposite? I don't know. Do you, when you take care of patients of color and they're coming to you with skin related issues as well, do you tend to find that more difficult or is that just feed your training? You're aware of it? Like I always, because I always want to know, cause obviously when I'm reading a book I don't tend to see too many skin colors and I looked like mine that is examples. Dr. Candrice: Yes. I have specifically sought out training in the skin of color. So I was excited to be able to do my dermatology training with some skin of color experts. And actually my program had a skin of color center as well, so we were known for that. So that allowed me to be able to see dermatology on multiple different skin types. And you're right, yes. Some things do not follow the descriptions in the book at all. So you have to go to someone if you do have the skin of color, go to someone familiar with your skin type so that you can get a more expert exam when it comes to that. Dr. Berry: And when we talk about this is skin cancer in general, especially for skin of color. I know you talked about us 10 being caught later. So does that mean like we're from skin cancer total wise, we're dealing with it a lot more frequently or we just happen to catch it at a much later stage? What are some of the numbers especially for skin color and people with skin of color when we talk about skin cancer and diseases of alike? Dr. Candrice: And this is actually really sad, but people of color, we are less likely to get skin cancers. But for an example with melanoma, the one that is the deadliest tight. When we think about the five-year survival rate after someone has cancer, they, you know, was always these statistics. They go out to say, well, in five years, you know, what's the likelihood this person being alive for an example. So for melanoma, when you compare black patients to white patients, white patients have, you know, it's like over 91% of those patients will have a five-year survival rate. And for blacks, it's only a little over 60% or about 65% or so. So that is drastic, a very drastic difference. And so that goes back to the point of late diagnosis. Particularly when we talk about the most deadly type of cancer. Yes, we don't get skin cancer that often, but man, when we do get it, the prognosis is horrible because it's often caught very late and it has spread beyond just the skin at that point. Dr. Berry: And I can tell you from an internist standpoint, some of the patients I've taken care of, unfortunately in a hospital, you know, we've had skin cancer shows up in the lungs, we've had skin cancer show up on the GI system, we’ve had skin cancer show up in the brain, you know, Lunch and Learn community, give you an idea like this isn't a benign disease that you know a little, you know, biopsy cuts and get outta here. Like once if it does what it's, you know, set to do, it can really cause some problems. Dr. Candrice: Yes, it is very devastating and it definitely will be called metastasizes, which is what you definitely explained. It can go all over the body. Dr. Berry: So, and when we talk about this, some of the reasons why we're coming late, right? The reason why we're not seeing Dr. Candrice earlier, basically for people of color. Like I honestly, I was like, oh, what do I need? Like I'm protected, right? Like, well, you know, I'm protected from the sun, like from it from my peers and my skin color. But what are some of the biggest misconceptions that are out there? People like me, it's getting people of color really need to like kind of erased from their mind when it talks about, you know, just skin cancer and skin disease in general. Dr. Candrice: Please erase the fact that your brown skin and your melanin can embrace all potential harm. Is not true. You can get skin cancer. Let me just hit on my mic to make sure they heard me. Look with brown skin, yes, you too can get skin cancer. Take it from me. If you don't believe the statistics. I am triple board certified dermatologist that looks exactly like you. And yes, I see devastating cases. So please, please, please. It's just, it's not true when people say that it doesn't affect us, it's just not true. Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community I hope you I heard that. She’s a triple boarded, right? So again, this is, this isn't just you're running the mill like a physician who was trying to like, no, this is a person who really knows what they're talking about and especially for, I have a lot of listeners of color. You know, if you have not, right, again, don't be like me, right? Like, get just skin check done ASAP. Right? The month of May, get it done by the end of this month. Like, make sure that happens like today. And then make sure you bring family members too right. We didn't talk about, but make sure you bring your family members and get them some chopped too. Because I know a lot of us, a lot of y'all don't already like coming to see us for the world has visited. Right? So if y'all already not seeing us for the wellness visit, I know. Yeah. Not going to see yourselves for that, the skin can visit. So please do that. And you know, kind of get out of that mindset. Right. So, you know, Dr. Candrice can kind of help get us together and get us earlier. Again, that's sad though. 60% of us on a little bit over two-thirds of us are actually making it within five years once we're diagnosed just because we're not being seen early and it has a problem. Dr. Candrice: Yes. Devastating statistic. Dr. Berry: So let's talk about skincare, self-care and I wanna know, right? Like I wanted to know because obviously again for Lunch and Learn community even those who don't know, Dr. Candrice and I, we've been friends for about, like three years now. You know, medical always together. I know how amazing this person is and as she does so much education. That's why I wanted to bring her on the show. Right. So Dr. Candrice tell us about skincare, self-care, and why we need to be with it ASAP? Dr. Candrice: You know, I see so many manifestations of stretch in the skin, in hair disorders, lots and lots of things. And so what I thought about was sometimes for people the moment in the morning before the day gets crazy and they're in the bathroom doing whatever they need to do, that may be their only time for self-care. So I developed this concept, this really kind of mindset that yes, skincare is self-care. So focusing on your skin is a way of taking care of yourself. You walk around with your skin all day, every day, so why not take a few minutes to take care of your skin in those moments of the day when you actually have time to do it. So that really was the impetus to all of this. Just, you know, people stressing out and a lot of, and seeing all these diseases on the skin that all you have to do is cleanser or moisturizer. It's like a really quick fix, right? But people were not taking those few minutes of the day because they said, oh, that takes too long. I don't have time for that. I'm busy. I'm this, I'm that. Well, you at least can you give me three minutes a day to be able to care for your skin? And man, what I saw happening was that yes, people, skin disease improved, but also their attitudes improve. Once I started to pitch it as a self-care, their self-care moments of the day, things began to change. They saw it from being something that was cumbersome that they had to do to something that they actually look forward to doing. Dr. Berry: A highlight of their day to take care of this again. Dr. Candrice: Right, exactly. And you say that with some hesitation, but it’s dermatologist, yes. Dr. Berry: Oh no, my way, she’s about to make up that now. So I already know that when she's in that mood. I don't even mess with her. Go ahead, do whatever. I'll wait. I'm in no rush. I ain't going nowhere anyway. She got a whole routine. It's funny because she's got a morning routine, she's got to go on the bed routine as I'm like, wow. Oh, and of course I'm naive, right? And like I gotta ask you a question like, especially when it comes to men, I'm naive, right? And I'm like, why can't you just wash your face? And they're like, no, you gotta do this and this and it's so it's too funny. That's good care. So can we definitely here for that. I got to ask, right? Because I know obviously Lunch and Learn community what about the men, right? Like how much men are you seeing in your practice? How can we get, and we just, we have this issue just getting them to do their wellness checks, right? Like how are you getting them to come to check their skin out? Dr. Candrice: I see men all the time in the office and as soon as I walk in, I know whether they are there by choice or force. I don't care how you land in there. I'm just happy to see the men when they do come in because it is important for me to have those conversations with them. And then we talk about some of the things that they don't really like. People talk about how, Oh, if I wear sunscreen and, and I'm working out or doing something, and I sweay, it gets in my eyes and this, that and the other. So we have conversations about, okay, well how can we overcome some of those things? Some have been cumbersome for you to get around to kind of get on the bandwagon of protecting your skin. So I really enjoy those conversations. And so I had that segment of men that come in for skin checks. But then also what I'm finding is that even just for general skincare things that men actually care about the way they look. They may not tell you or emphasize it and you know, but they do care about it. They may be coming in for ingrown hairs on the face or a little bit of dry skin here, there. Just you know, things that cap into, to happen to come up. And I've definitely given my male patients permission to actually ask about those things. I'm very active on social media and when I look at the statistics and some of my followers, I was surprised that like 20 to 30% of my followers are men. And no is not because I'm so fabulous myself. Right? (Part of it, maybe.) No, it does not because I am definitely an, I make it a point to really give tips along the way about really, really realistic, you know, short steps that you can do to really take care of your skin. And I said, wow, you know, the guys are actually benefiting from this as well. And they make me feel good that my information can be valuable for both women and men. Dr. Berry: Okay. I love it. Before we get you out of here, I always ask my guest, how can what you do really help empower people to take better control to skincare? Dr. Candrice: I understand that my words are powerful. I understand that my interaction with every patient is important. I can remember being a child in the exam room with my physician and if that physician gave some words of encouragement to me. Oh, you want it to be a doctor? Oh, that's great. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You may have understood that depending on where on the neighborhood that you work in, that you may be the only physician of cover that this patient ever sees. I may be the only physician that ever takes a second to encourage a child, encourage their child. And that one piece of information can be the thing that drives them through their entire schooling to become a doctor because somebody told them that they could. So I always had that in my mind. So I know that I'm empowering that way. And then also empowering beyond the exam room currently. So I know that when I'm giving information to women who come in with hair loss and brown spots and this and that and the other, that I encouraged them to talk to their families about it, talk to their girlfriends about it, talk to other people at the hair salon about it so that my words can travel just beyond, beyond well beyond just my patient, but also to a community. And so I love it when patients come in and say, oh so and so referred me or Oh I heard about you at the hair salon. Oh, I heard about you at church. I love it when that happens because it means that I've done a great job of taking something that can be very scientific and complex and making it very simple enough or just my patients to be able to say, look I saw this dermatologist and she told me x and you should get into. That to me is super empowering. I have now turned my one to one patient experience into a one to many experiences. Dr. Berry: Oh, I love it. Absolutely love it. So Dr. Candrice, how can someone follow you, get educated. Like I said, again this is just one episode but this isn't, this is more of like a blip. Like cause you're doing this all the time and I want to make sure my Lunch and Learn community kind of follow along with you. Where can people find you? When's your next speaking engagement? Let us know some details so we can make sure we get you right. Dr. Candrice: I can be found @drcandriceheath on all social media platforms. That's @ D, R, C, A, N, D, R, I, C, E, H, E, A, T, H, that's @drcandriceheath on all social media platforms. Also. I have launched a beauty line called My Sister's Beauty. So I hang out there a lot as well www.mysistersweetie.com. What we really focused on simple skincare. That is also of course self-care. You know my motto, love that. Very simple. You have to tell your wife about that. And then for my people in the medical community who are always asking me about how do you get these speaking gigs, how do you do that exactly? Why are you so comfortable? How do you do that? I finally put everything into a portal. Okay. So I am debuting very soon, www.drcandriceheath.comf/clinicalpearls. So that you can actually be able to go right there. www.drcandriceheath.comf/clinicalpearls to find out what I am doing in the speaker realm for medical professionals. Dr. Berry: And Lunch and Learn community, all of this link will be in the show notes. So you know, if you're driving, take a shower, whatever you do it, you'll be able to get access to it. And I was just about, I let you go, but you gotta tell us you gotta you can't just like a drop that, you know, beauty line comes and just let you go. Right? What about that right? I know we're talking about skin cancer, were on the self-care now. Let's get us right. Dr. Candrice: I am so, it brings tears to my eyes because this has a long journey to launch this line. And really the primary focus is based on all these experiences that I've had with women. Like I told you before, you know, people feeling overworked, too busy to, you know they have the kids hanging off of one arm, the job doing this and you know the taking care of the home depot, all of these things but yet and still they want to look great, they want to feel great. And one of the main things that people often come in about it, they talk about brown spots on the skin. So I know I wanted to develop something that could definitely help to brighten the skin, give people more, even skin tone. All those things they look for so that they do look refreshed and feel refreshed. So I'm excited about the cleanser that we have. It is amazing. I cannot wait for you all to try it and it is packed with a fruit acid called Mandelic Acid and it definitely helps address those dark spots. And I'm really thrilled about it. It's packed full of botanicals so you will see ingredients that you recognize and like in the line including bringing tea. But moisturizer is my group, My Sister’s beauty. Recovery cream is packed full of aloe and it is just amazing. Like I'm so super excited about this. I have a launch party coming up in my city. I cannot wait. So it's, it's been amazing. It has definitely been a long journey and amazing journey and basically, the best is yet to come and I am just excited to finally be able to birth the thing that has been, working on for so long. And yes that really the focus of all of this is about self-care and that's the most amazing part of this whole thing. So I'm ecstatic. Dr. Berry: I love it. Whenever the launch date we'll make sure we promote. We'll make sure we let the world know Lunch and Learn community where they can get that because that's awesome. Absolutely amazing. Dr. Candrice: I would love that. Thank you so much, Dr. Berry. I would love that. Dr. Berry: So again, Dr. Candrice thank you for really enlightened us, educate as getting us together. I'm like, I said next week this skin care is being made. I'm not sure I'm going to see. I know dermatologist is busy. I might not see off for a month, but the appointment will be made at least. So we were going to get us together. Dr. Candrice: Wonderful. Wonderful. Dr. Berry: And again Lunch and Learn community, you know, this person's amazing. Please. Her information will be in the show notes. Please follow her again @drcandriceheath at all social media outlets. Wherever she's at, wherever you're at, she's likely at as well. Or she'll get there so you know, please make sure. This is a person, a friend that I value her opinion or her expertise or knowledge. And now she's about to drop a line and we're going to make sure we get some from the wife because we're going to get everyone together. Dr. Candrice: Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much Dr. Berry and your awesome Lunch and Learn community. You really know who I am at this point. I am Dr. Candrice, your favorite fun board-certified dermatologist. I am your go-to girl for everything - healthy hair, skin and nails. Dr. Berry: I love it. Thank you. Have a great day. Dr. Candrice: Thank you. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Motivational Hit 2019 EP88 - Bryce Fox - Stomp Me Out

Eugene Wood: My Life - Living The Entrepreneurial Life

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 29, 2019 14:02

Welcome to the 88th episode of Motivational Hits 2019, this podcast is all about playing one motivational song every day. The songs I will play mean something to me and I want to try use music to motivate more people. Today's band is called Bryce Fox and the song name is Stomp Me Out Enjoy https://open.spotify.com/track/7qXTeIDkqZIexgdCXrxIrB?si=MqOtBnkfS0WsrrXqn5uMMA Find me on Social Media: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Steemit Dtube "Stomp Me Out" I got the sunset in my pocket, and I'm not afraid to use it Now I'm feelin' superhuman, that's the point of the illusion Like: I'm the man, I'm the man 'round here I'm the man 'round here I'm the man on demand 'round here I'm the man 'round here Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Shots fired on me! Shots fired on me! Can't stomp me out, you can't stomp me out Shots fired on me (Woah-oh) (Woah-oh) (Woah-oh) If you find a change of heart I might forgive you (I might forgive you) But if you keep running that mouth it just might kill you (Just might kill you) Cause I'm the man, I'm the man 'round here I'm the man 'round here I'm the man on demand 'round here I'm the man 'round here Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Shots fired on me! Shots fired on me! Can't stomp me out, you can't stomp me out Shots fired on me! Shots fired on me! Can't stomp me out, you can't stomp me out No, no (Woah-oh) (Woah-oh) (Woah-oh) Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Baby, you can't stomp me out You know you can't even slow me down You know I spread this wild around So if you're sure, you better show me now Shots fired on me! Shots fired on me! Can't stomp me out, you can't stomp me out Shots fired on me! Shots fired on me! Can't stomp me out, you can't stomp me out No, no #podcast #podcasting #motivational #brycefox

baby shots woah cause i'm bryce fox

#08 - March Update

Noclip

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 13, 2019 43:58

A bit of a change of pace this episode as Danny & Esteban get together to chat about their recent trip to NetherRealm Studios, and all the stuff coming to Noclip in March. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclipvideo Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,666 Patrons. -------------------------------------------------------------- - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about the people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer and this week, man, if you thought we went real casual with some of these recent podcasts, you've never seen casual like this week's. I'm joined by Esteban Martinez, a producer for Noclip, he's don't a bunch of work for us, including making his own documentary near the end of last year, our Spooky doc, a great insight into the fighting game community. Esteban's up in Philly, how ya doin', my friend? - [Esteban] I'm so casual right now, I'm just laying out on this couch in my pajamas ready to podcast. - [Danny] Is that how you edit? Do you sit on a couch, is that why your back is broken? - [Esteban] Yeah, pretty much, I just lay down and you know those like cool like lazy boy sofas, that's me, that's just the image of me with a laptop and that's how I edit. - [Danny] How do you actually edit because I edit, I've always, I did the standing thing for awhile and then edits take so long and I sit in like, I have a really nice desk that does do the standing stuff but when I bought my chair I didn't buy a particularly ergonomically sound one, I just bought like a nice leather one. - [Esteban] Yeah, I've been to your studio, I remember that chair, that chair hurts. So for me at least, not to get too deep into it, but I did spend a lot of money on the chair and the desk 'cause you're here at it the whole time so I've got a nice desk that can go from standing to regular position real easy and then like, I bought one of those Herman Miller chairs, the Aeron chair. - [Danny] Oh, yes, la de da! - [Esteban] It is the best purchase I've ever made in my entire life. Everything is just so comfortable, you focus more, my back doesn't hurt anymore, 'cause I used to have one of those $20 office chairs from Staples and I was like, this thing's actually killing me. Like, you know, you read all the reports of like, sitting too long will shorten your lifespan. I actually felt my life force draining from my body as I was sitting on this chair. It's like, all right, you know what, things are good, I'm in a new apartment, let's just bite the bullet and buy this chair. And I bought it and, look, I know you've had a child recently and I'm sure that's wonderful and joyous, but this chair, nothing's better than this chair, my first born will not be as good as this Herman Miller chair. - [Danny] God dammit, I got chair envy now. - [Esteban] It's really good. - [Danny] It's wise, its an investment in yourself, it's an investment in future medical bills that you will not have to pay. So really you're just, you're really investing in yourself. Fair play, we got a bunch of stuff to talk about today. This podcast is not just the two of us yammering on about ergonomics. We're gonna just kind of, I don't know, I feel like I need to clean the slate on everything we've done over the past couple of like weeks, like six weeks 'cause so much happened, and what's happening in the next 'cause there's also a lot happening. Like, I'm in the eye of the storm I feel right now and I kinda just wanna talk about all of it. So first of all, let's talk about the thing that both of us did, which is we just returned from Chi town, sunny Illinois-- - [Esteban] It was anything but sunny. - [Danny] Jesus, it was like, yeah, what was it, it was one of those temperatures that like, in like European it was minus 12 I think, so I think it was like, what was it, 15 or 20 in Fahrenheit? - Yes. - It was bloody freezing. Like, when we were flying in it was just frozen lakes. Every lake was frozen. - [Esteban] I mean, not even just flying in, when you stepped off the plane it was like, oh no, I messed up, I'm in the wrong place. - [Danny] Yeah, I had my, I had like a big jacket but I had it stuffed in my camera bag, in the bag with the lights in it, just to basically keep the lights from getting rattled around in the plane so when I got off the plan I wasn't wearing anything warm and that little gangway was like fucking, I felt like going through the six layers of hell, well the opposite of hell, freezing hell, which apparently is Chicago. But we were there to talk to mister Ed Boon and his friends about Mortal Kombat 11. It was like a press event, influencer event, and I've been kind of askin' him about maybe doing something post release, just kind of getting into, nothing confirmed or anything, but just kinda like askin' around just to see and they said, well, we don't know but there's this influencer and media thing goin' on if you wanna come. And I think that was like five days earlier and I emailed you and were like, are you free on Monday? I think you had just gotten back from Japan. - [Esteban] Oh man. - [Danny] Yeah, so kind of it all came together last minute. We were in and out, one day. We turned up, went to a diner, talked to Ed Boon, back on a plane, back to our respective cities on the East Coast, but what did you think, I wanna ask you what you thought of the game, 'cause we don't really cover that so much in the thing 'cause we're not doing fuckin' impressions here on Noclip. - [Esteban] Yeah, I get to put my journalist hat on now. Here's your preview of Mortal Kombat 11. - [Danny] Well you're like the fighting game expert here in my social life as well, but I also wanna know if like, I don't really consider MK a fighting game, to me it's always just like a fun arcade game I buy every time it comes out. - [Esteban] You just offended so many people right now. - [Danny] It kicked Smash off Evo. - [Esteban] That's right, get outta here, it's Mortal Kombat time. The game is great from what I played and what we can talk about but, you know, I've been a fan of Mortal Kombat, especially going back to the arcades, I was a big arcade kid growing up in Brooklyn so I played a bunch of the Mortal Kombats but especially coming from 9, like 9 was kind of like the big rebirth of Mortal Kombat or like the renaissance of the games. So they had a good track record with like 9 and then X was very good and now 11 just looks to be continuing that streak of just really quality games, lotta good single player stuff, good graphics, controls well, and man have the upped the scale on like Fatalities. - [Danny] Yeah, they're pretty wild, I didn't really appreciate how nuts they were when I was watching the trailers because like, that type of grotesque cinematography you're kinda used to in trailers a bit but when you're actually doing the fights and it happens, like, I love those those X-Ray things that were in, was that X or 9? - They were in both - They were in both, okay. Yeah, but they, I really like that, I guess they have the Fatal Blow system which is, they're basically just like mini Fatalities that happen during the fight. And then they have the Fatalities which are just like so absurd, there was one that I wish I recorded. It's Scorpion pulls the head off one, you know, the classic one. And the face, the like disembodied head with the like, almost looks like a tail hanging out of the bottom of their neck was just, like I laughed it was so disgusting. Did you have any favorite ones that stood out to you? - [Esteban] I mean, it's the one that's going around so much now, it's the Johnny Cage one. Not only is it, if you haven't seen it's homage to I think his Mortal Kombat II fatality where like-- - [Danny] Yeah, you punch off multiple heads. - [Esteban] Yeah, he just uppercuts you multiple times and just multiple heads came out in the old school games, like it made no sense. So in this one he uppercuts you and you hear a director off screen like, cut, cut, 'cause you're head's supposed to come off I guess, and so it's just multiple takes like in a Hollywood production and it's a really cool idea of merging his background lore to also this silly fatality existed in these older games. There was that one and Kano's is just, it's very simple where he just headbutts you and your head just explodes on the third one, very simple, very bloody, but just funny, it just made me laugh. - [Danny] Yeah, there's something about the slow mo thing that they do in this game where when the last strike that makes the person dead, as if they're not already dead at the previous couple of strikes, it just slows down in this comically grotesque way and then the word Fatality pops up and everyone on screen, either the person who's dying or the person who's just murdered them has just like the weirdest, the worst freeze frame face. So it's every, it's just so ridiculous, I absolutely, yeah, I'm really into it, no wonder, it's perfect like 2019 social media fodder as well. Like everyone's just sharing gifs of this stuff all day. - [Esteban] Yeah, I mean it's going everywhere, even in the Designing a Fatality, our video you put up, the Baraka one of him where just like, you're dead, you're already dead, he's already cut you up, he's cut you're face off, everything dead. No, he's just gotta go in there, stick in, grab your brain, and he like bites it and eats it and that's the last frame you see. - [Danny] That's what kills you, it's not the removal of the brain from the head, it's when Baraka had it for lunch. - [Esteban] He's hungry man, you know, all that fighting burns a lot of calories, you know, you just make the best of both worlds, two birds with one stone. - [Danny] The Johnny Cage stuff reminded me of when people ask what should Duke Nukem be in 2019? There's something about the tone of these games that they, they're like weirdly self serious in terms of their lore but they're so in on how stupid the whole thing is. Like just how stupid like, they just made these characters in in the early '90s based on what was popular in movies and ninja movies, both western and eastern, like Ninja Squad and some of the stuff coming out of Japan and they'd invent nothing and they had to sort of shamble a story around it but now they have to shamble a story around with like people who do motion capture and like famous celebrities doing VO but it's the same troop of like nutter, like what the fuck is Baraka, he's just a troll or-- - [Esteban] He's a Tarkatan soldier or general, Danny, don't you know the lore? - [Danny] God dammit, it's amazing. Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing it, they seem to be cramming a bunch of different stuff into the single player as well. Which I guess is the problem every time they do it, it's just that most people just wanna pick up and play but I guess they're stickin' a bunch of stuff into the towers. I didn't get to experience that much, what was that like? I know we can't talk about the campaign stuff at all but what was the towers like? - [Esteban] So the towers are returning from, I believe in MK9 they kind of started working on that feature and then they brought it to X. But the towers are essentially, think of like the old school arcade mode where you play like one character and you make your way through a tower of opponents. But they've added a bunch of stuff in terms of like, you have consumables, so you can summon Shinnok's hands to do like an attack or call in a drone strike or something like that, or even call in an assist like a Marvel 2, Marvel 3 style of like, you know, Scorpion comes and he throws his chain and then that sets up a combo, so it's pretty wacky and the computer for some reason at the press event that computer opponent was set to an incredible high level of difficulty for some of them. They had one where you fought the entire Cage family one on one on one, it was like gauntlet and you had like one life essentially and you just had to beat four people. But for a press event I was like taken aback for like how high the computer was set. So they're definitely gonna be challenging and they're definitely gonna be a lot of fun for, that's a bus, gimme a second. Philadelphia. They're definitely gonna be challenging and they're definitely gonna be a lot of fun for single players but I think that's, I think if anything Mortal Kombat and NetherRealm have leaned into the single player, right. We think fighting games in terms of like, just always two people or you go online and you play ranked or what not. But they really know that not everybody can do that or not everybody wants to do that so let's give them a story mode, let's give them these towers, let's give them the Krypt. Like the Krypt last game was essentially like Skyrim, like it was crazy, it was like a first person, or more like Amnesia, it was a first person horror game. I couldn't play, I'm bad with horror games so I couldn't play the Krypt 'cause things will just jump scare you all the time so I never unlocked anything in Mortal Kombat X. But they do that, they lean into the single player and I think that's what really sets them apart, outside of the gameplay, outside of the graphics, what really sets NetherRealm apart lately is them leaning so hard into the single player aspect. - [Danny] Yeah I guess it's some learnings maybe they've brought over from their little flirtations with DC but I was even, I went back and played the arcade collection, which actually isn't on Steam anymore, but I found a key for it, I bought it through Amazon weirdly and it spat out a Steam key at me and then I guess I installed it and realized I think the reason they pulled it is that it's got all that Games for Windows Live shit embedded in it so you have to create a local profile and do all that to get to the main menu. But I played through a bunch of the first three of them again just to get a bit of gameplay capture and just have a bit of fun and yeah, it just reminded me of like, oh yeah, this is what fighting games used to be, and also this is what most fighting games are to me still. It's like way harder difficulty, especially the arcade ones 'cause they were the arcade ports. Way harder difficulty and then it's you against, you know, just a stream of people, it's like a rougelike. in a different way. - [Esteban] How long can you survive on this one quarter, that's all you got. - [Danny] Right, so yeah, it's funny how these games are just like, yeah, it's all about setting up the scenarios. Like even the different fighters, they just do such a good job of like setting up the scenario even with the quips that they talk about at the start, you know, like having Baraka and Johnny Cage shit talk each other before is, it's funny. Yeah, sure, and it makes you wanna like, I don't know, do all the different duos up against each other and stuff so I'm lookin' forward to it, there's a beta open near the end of this month I think. - [Esteban] There's an online stress test I believe next week, so the weekend of the 15th I believe. - [Danny] Excellent. - [Esteban] So they did it with Injustice 2 last go and it worked pretty well, it was a little rough with the stress test but that's why they do it and I remember hearing good things, or decent things about Injustice 2's online netcode. So hopefully that comes true for MK11 'cause I know a lot of people wanna play it. - [Danny] Yeah, all right, let's move on from the game I guess, before we get into everything else, what did you think about NetherRealm and the studio? It's in like a weird office park, right? - [Esteban] Yeah, I remember us getting there and we were very confused 'cause, I think the biggest thing that confused me is like you have NetherRealm on one side and then you have like a kinder gym or daycare center on the right, and like man, these two things don't go together at all but all right, cool. - [Danny] And there's like a big sign, it's not like NetherRealm studios is written in like, you know, Impact on a bulletin board with all the rest of them, it's a fucking, it's the biggest sign on the, you know, the list of businesses and it also just says like NetherRealm Studios written in the gnarliest font ever. - [Esteban] Yeah, it's not hiding, it's making you well aware that it's there. - [Danny] We got a nice tour of the office. It kind of reminded me of like a bunch of Japanese studios, just a lot of, what do you call them, cubicles, not much light, the folks there seemed pretty cool, a pretty nondescript canteen, might get very high in our top 10 canteen video. But the sound stage is pretty cool, they have a really large motion capture stage, it's in the Ed Boon video. But yeah, apart from that though, I guess there was that main area, right, you filmed a bunch of with the-- - [Esteban] Yeah, I think the main area was kind of like what took the cake for me at least where they just had, you know, it's like a little small museum of just NetherRealm's past, they had like, I think the coolest thing I saw there is they had the original, I don't wanna call them figures, but originally the statues they used to make Motaro, Goro, and Kintaro and stuff like that and I forget who was giving the tour, but they said like, hey, we have these encased 'cause if we even touch them once they'll basically disintegrate, that's how old these things are. And they had props from the movie, they had the Goro head from the movie and they had all the various toys. They don't have an Amiga copy of Mortal Kombat II, Danny was very happy about that. - [Danny] Well they might, they said had a DOS one but he did say they cycle them out. So maybe they do have one, I almost brought my copy of MK2 on Amiga 600 for Ed to sign. His office was like right there, and also you said you noticed, I didn't recognize what they were but they were like these long rectangular logos and you said they were the cabinet heads, right? - [Esteban] Oh yeah, so they had the marquees, like the marquee titles for like Mortal Kombat 1, II, and 3 right next to like the museum, or the foyer I guess and they just had 'em right there and I was like, oh that's really cool, they even took pieces of the cabinet. You know, they have their own arcade too which we didn't get to go in but I saw three stations of the Grid which is like so rare to find even one. I was like, man, if it wasn't for this press tour I'd be in that arcade right now. - [Danny] Yeah, that was pretty cool actually. There was a lot of people on that tour so it was kinda hard to actually see anything and I felt like there were other people there who were way more jazzed to be there who were like long time fans or something so I was kinda happy to hang back and hang out weirdly with a bunch of ex press people that I know from London and San Francisco so it was kind of like a weird meet and greet as well which was really cool to catch up with some folks. - [Esteban] Yeah, it felt like you came into NetherRealm, you signed whatever you needed to sign, and then you said hi to Danny, that seemed to be the course of events as people were coming through the door. - [Danny] That's 'cause we turned up early as well 'cause they were all staying at a hotel I guess, we paid our own way of course so we kind of walked 10 minutes in the snow, sorry about that again. - It's all right. - To get there. What have you been up to outside of Noclip stuff, 'cause there's a bunch of Noclip stuff I need to get into in a second and I'm conscious I'm just gonna be rambling so what've you actually been doing? How was Japan, you we're at Evo, right? - [Esteban] Oh man, you know, not to go too far behind the scenes, but like, you asked me what I've been up to and I actually had to take a minute and just be like, what have I been up to? 'Cause I feel like the couple of weeks have been a blur. - [Danny] You've been nonstop, man, yeah. - [Esteban] Yeah, the biggest thing has been Evo Japan. I went to Tokyo for a little bit to do some work and also to just hang out before things got busy and then I went over to Fukuoka, which is a place I've never been before but it was very cool and I got to go to Evo Japan and shoot some stuff there and that was pretty awesome, I'm still recovering from jet lag, it's getting better. - [Danny] Well you were there for a while, you were there for like over a week, right? - [Eseteban] I was there for like a week and half, two weeks. - [Danny] Yeah okay, that's gonna take awhile. - [Esteban] It has been taking awhile. - [Danny] Yeah, East Coast US is also like the worst, it's like 13 hour difference or something, right? - [Esteban] Yeah, it's like they're like a whole half a day ahead essentially. So, Evo Japan was pretty cool but for the most part I've been, we went to Chicago, we did the NetherRealm thing, I've also been kinda skipping around on other secret missions on my own, I'll be able to talk about those eventually. - [Danny] Oh, you're gonna do that, yeah? - [Esteban] Yeah, I gotta do that, I'm gonna big time you right now, I'm so sorry. But the biggest thing I've been doing outside of editing and shooting is just getting back to playing games. Which is something I haven't had the chance to really do until recently. - [Danny] Yeah, I've not over the past month so please tell me what the fuck I'm missing 'cause all I've been doing is playing like Astroneer and Hades for gameplay. Sorry System Era and Supergiant, not that I don't enjoy those games anyway but, you know, I don't know nothing about Resident Evil 2 and the only game of Apex Legends I've played was like the day it came out, so what have you been up to? - [Esteban] I think the biggest game I've been playing recently has been Resident Evil 2. - [Danny] Oh, cool. - [Esteban] I got the remake the day it came out before I left for Japan or what not. And I kind of, I ran through the first campaign with Leon and that game is incredible. Especially coming from somebody who didn't like, I know of the original and I played a little bit of the original but I never like beat it, I just watched all these speed runs, stuff like that. But to see how they took the concepts of the original and evolved them for this remake and not one to one either, like you don't go through the same hallways you did in the same order or even if you do the same events might not happen at the times you expect them. They did a really good job of keeping everything familiar but not one to one copying it and just kinda pushing it forward. Like, if you look at what Resident Evil 7 did Resident Evil 7 brought Resident Evil back but it also pushed it into like a new realm, like it learned from things like Amnesia or it learned from things like Soma, where Resident Evil 2, this remake, is taking all the lessons they've learned from that game and trying to make the ultimate Resident Evil, trying to make that Resident Evil that when people talk about Resident Evil they're trying to capture that essence and that feeling and put it into this game and think they did a really, really good job. It's hard too, there are some mean moments in this game. And I know everyone's posting clips of Mr. X, he's one of 'em, he's just one of 'em, but there's some mean stuff and some mean tricks they pull in this game but otherwise I had a really good time playing this, I'm gonna go back and do Claire next soon. - [Danny] Rad, yeah, I'm looking forward to, I got it and played maybe two hours, actually that might be generous, maybe closer to one hour, and yeah, I was kinda taken aback. I'm one of these people who, like I completed the first Resident Evil a bunch of times, like I've played through that one loads. Res E 2 was never really my jam so I only played the start of it. And yeah, I actually didn't realize until I guess the week it came out that it wasn't just an HD remake of Res E 2, because Res E 1 have been HD remaked like four times by the time this one came around so I was like, oh, they'll just do the same thing. But yeah, now actually I just want them to go back and do this to the first game. - [Esteban] Yeah, I know a lot of people have been talking about that, a lot of people have been talking about Resident Evil 3. Resident Evil 3 was like the first real Resident Evil I actually played all the way through. 'Cause I'm really bad, I mentioned before, I'm really bad with scary games, even like, Resident Evil's not horror scary, like jump scare every five seconds, but it's like that sense of it could happen, like something could attack me at this point. But Resident Evil 3 was the first time the series really leaned into action where you're constantly on the run and Jill's armed to the teeth really. So I played through that, so a lot of people have been talking about, well what if they did what they did with this remake to Resident Evil 3, they already got the thing that's chasing you all the time and they've got the police station so I kinda hope they do that with 3. It's probably too soon to do that with 4 but I love 4, but it could use a little streamlining too. It's on everything, pretty sure it'll be on my phone in like five seconds. - [Danny] It's so much bigger of a game though I feel like. Like, Resident Evil 2 is like one where it's so confined, like the design of it is, you know, I mean, eventually, but it's not like Nemesis or Veronica where now these larger scale sort of things where you go off into parts of the environment. So yeah, I wonder, would it have the same effect 'cause that's what's so cool about this is that it's like, they've made the world of that police station and the city just richer, it's not like it's, you know, they've just made it more detailed than the way that modern games can and with mechanics as well, like adding a bunch of different stuff so it's a bit more emergent than the first one was. 'Cause the first games are just like horror Sudoku really, you're just collecting one thing and going to another. What else have you been playing, aside from your remakes? - [Esteban] I've been playing a lot of Tekken, getting back into fighting games. I haven't played, while I was in Japan they updated the arcade version 'cause it's been back a couple of characters and stuff like that so I actually got to play in arcades again. Part of the reason I go to Japan so much outside of work is 'cause I just like playing in arcades and it's hard to play in arcades in the states 'cause they don't really exist anymore. So playing a lot of Tekken over there, getting better, getting my fundamentals back, becoming a competitor, I might compete, we'll see we'll see. And then Apex Legends, I think everyone's been playing Apex Legends. - [Danny] Yeah, people have just been asking me to make a documentary about it, that's all, over and over and over again. I think mostly because we were just at Respawn for the Half-Life thing, we interviewed Vince Zampella presumably while they were chipping away on that thing. Yeah, that's cool, like I said, I only played an hour or two the day it came out. Have you consistently been still playing? - [Esteban] I play at least for an hour every day. - [Danny] Oh man, really, god, everyone's playing this game. - [Esteban] And it's like the first, we've played PUBG and stuff like that and that was okay, I could at least call people out and be like, oh, we're getting shot from over there, by the way, I'm down. - [Danny] I played PUBG yesterday. - [Esteban] Oh, look at you. But this is like the first, I really like Titanfall 2, in fact I still, Apex Legends had made me buy Titanfall 2 on PC even though I own a PS4 copy and play that nonstop so I'm switching between the two all the time. - [Danny] It's real good. - [Esteban] The gunplay is so good, not even talking about the campaign or the multiplayer, just the core of the game itself, but the gunplay is like insane. And then when you take that and you move that to like a battle royale, and yeah, you lose some movement stuff, like you can't run across the walls or anything like that, you don't have a double jump, but the speed of the game is still pretty quick. I think my longest match in Apex is maybe 25 minutes. And that's like getting to the end, that's last two squads. - [Danny] Which I think in PUBG I wanna say that's closer to 40. - [Esteban] Yes, PUBG's a much longer game compared to Apex but in Apex you have so many more options for engaging and disengaging with all the character abilities and the ability to use the terrain to your advantage. So like, you carry momentum when you slide down terrain and you can use that to jump further or, you know, when you're running and healing or walking and healing you can't run but you can slide down so using terrain to, if you're losing a fight, oh we can disengage, I can create a smoke field or whatever, get outta there and we can come back and try to figure out a way. - [Danny] Ah, this is why I'm scared of getting back into it now 'cause now like, I still haven't figured out guns and you're all learning how to be fucking ninjas in this thing and it's just gonna be like week two of Gears of War when suddenly everyone's figured out the timing of that shotgun kill and you're just like a lamb to the slaughter. - [Esteban] It's not that hard, like I went away for two weeks to Japan after the game came out and that's all we were talking about. Outside of fighting games we were like, man, everyone's gonna be really good by the time we get back, this is really bad. But when I came back I got like two wins Like, it's not hard to adjust and especially, you know, you're a really good shot so there's some weapons that you can take advantage of that other people can't, like long range fights are kind of rare. I feel like this game is more mid range to close range so they just updated some of the guns so that might actually change. But if you've got the reflexes or if you're just a good shot you'll be fine and then balancing that with this pinging thing, like this pinging system is so good in this game. I have not talked to anybody, I play randomly. All my wins have been from random teams. - [Danny] They're adding it to Fortnite now. They're actually like literally adding the same. To me it's the pinging system from Portal 2 just in a different game. It's contextual stuff to use. - It's super contextual. Like it's contextual to the point where like if we're in a building and someone hits me through a window or something like that I can hit the H key and my, or whatever key I have it assigned to, and my character will be like, I'm being hit from somewhere with a sniper rifle. - [Danny] Yeah, I'm doing like a day off tomorrow. I decided to turn the $20 tier on Patreon into I'm just going to like play games all day and stream it. - [Esteban] Yeah, I think that's a really good choice. - [Danny] Yeah, just to take some time off more than anything else. To have some like work dedicated time off 'cause otherwise I'll just never do it and I'll keep editing and keep burning myself out all the time. So yeah, maybe tomorrow I'll give a go at that. Let's get into what's coming up on Noclip and what's already come up on Noclip 'cause it's been a crazy couple of weeks here. The second episode of our Hades documentary has gone up, that was a lot of fun to put together. Shout out to Jeremy Jayne over in Berkeley for putting that one together. The name of it has already escaped me, what is it, what did we call it, we called it episode two? The first one is called, How Supergiant Secretly Launched Hades, the second one's called, the Chaos of Patching Hades, that's right, so it's basically all about them adding the Chaos update and the one that came after that. We kind of split the difference over a couple of months. We're at work on the third one which will be up in about six weeks time, we have like a, five weeks time actually, we have a calendar we're sorta working with that we're gonna make public soon enough that'll show you what's coming out for the rest of the year. There's also a Patreon Q and A video we shot with them which will be going up, I think probably closer to the end of this month and then also we have the behind the scenes from episode two, the deleted scenes rather, sorry, which will be going up, it's already been edited, just going through clearance with them to make sure that we didn't show a screen we shouldn't have and then it'll be up at some stage next week. The Astroneer documentary's up as well, delighted to get that one done and dusted. Shout out to Joe Dorada over at System Era and Samantha Kalman, a friend of Noclip for putting me on that story I guess two years ago. That was a hard one to edit, it's probably one of the more difficult human stories we've covered on Noclip and it was kind of a sensitive topic so I'm kind of, as relieved as anything else that we didn't sort of drop the ball on that one. People seem to like it which is good. Have you had a chance to check that one out yet? - [Esteban] I have not, I downloaded it for my recent flight and then I lost my iPad on the plane so. - [Danny] No, you didn't! - [Esteban] I also cried for my human interest story. Yeah, I got it back though, I got it back. - [Danny] Oh, thank god. - [Esteban] But yeah, I wrote up a bunch of cool stuff and like cool project stuff, got off the plane, got in my Uber, realized I totally left it in the little, you know, where they keep the magazines at. - [Danny] Yeah, how'd you get it back? - [Esteban] So, not to get too nitty gritty, but American, they automated everything, like they're lost and found stuff so you just fill out a form online. You know, hey, this is what it looks like, this is where it is, this is where it was last seen. And they either hold it for you at the airport or they can ship it to you. I was luckily coming back to the same airport and they found it and they gave it to me. - [Danny] That's nuts. I had those Airpods, I held out on getting Airpods for like forever 'cause I just thought they were needlessly expensive and ridiculous and then when you have a kid and not having dangly things in front of their face sometimes when you're around and doing stuff, it's kinda handy just to have one in while a podcast is on. You know, while you're playing with them with the toys for like two hours. So, god, I'm a bad parent, so I got them, but I was in the airplane and I fell asleep with them in my ears and I woke up and both were out of my ears. - [Esteban] Oh no. - [Danny] Yeah, and it was when we were like deplaning so it was, I was like jumping up around. I eventually found both of them but I had an absolute heart attack. Well that Astroneer doc it's up, it's about 50, 45 minutes long I think. The Jeff Gerstmann podcast is coming next after this one. It'll be next week I guess, from when you're listening to this, if you listen to this when it was the week it went up. I did a vote basically on what people would like to see from our backlog of bits and bobs we've yet to finish and this was the far and away winner so getting that done at the moment. It'll be more of the story style podcast we started out with and it's a long one, about an hour and 20 I think is what it's gonna land on. A lot of trips coming up for the rest of this month, I'm off to South by Southwest but before I talk about mine you're also going, right? - Yes. - But now with Noclip. What are you doing? Can you say? - [Esteban] I'm trying to figure that out right now. - [Danny] Okay, you're doing something. - [Esteban] I'll be at South by Southwest helping out with a stream for a very large company, that's all I can say. Apple, IBM, there we go. - Sure, why not. - [Danny] Yeah, get those International Business Machines. Is that what that means, I don't know. - [Esteban] That's right, buy stocks now. - [Danny] I'm gonna be there doing a panel at South by Southwest Gaming called Noclip, Convincing Gamers to Love Developers, which is not Noclip, Convincing Gamers to Make Love to Developers, which was the original rejected title. It's part of the game and design development track. I went on their website and they said it was, level beginner, which-- - That doesn't make sense. - [Danny] They don't know what I'm gonna talk about, I could go up there and talk about fuckin', I don't know, object oriented programming, we'll see what they think then. - [Esteban] Hit 'em with the intricacies of god rays. - [Danny] Yeah, we'll go straight into LUTs, an hour on LUT talk. Yeah, I don't know, I have like three version of that talk in my head and I'm basically gonna do a show of hands and start to see if people are either developers or working in PR or are just game players, not just game players, but you know, just game players, and then I'm gonna do it from there. I've got a couple of meetings as well and there's a couple of other reasons I'm heading out there. And the other reason is that it piggybacks right onto GDC and this our biggest ever GDC. This is the Game Developers Conference in sunny San Francisco. We are all heading out, well Jeremy still lives there. I'm heading over, Esteban is coming too. Jeremy is currently resting up at home 'cause he broke his foot, kicked a chair while he was making food apparently. - [Esteban] Shoulda bought a Herman Miller. - [Danny] He shoulda, yeah. - [Esteban] You guys are making mistakes. - [Danny] You can kick that thing all day, it just takes it. - [Esteban] Oh, it'll break your leg, it's made out of steel. - [Danny] So he's resting up at the moment. So that's, that's not the only reason you're coming but it was definitely like, we had like a mounting amount of interviews and I was like, we really need to bring Esteban, we're not gonna be able to do all this just the two of us. And then we kept getting more and more and more and I was like, yeah, we're probably gonna do that and then he broke his foot and that day four more people confirmed and we were like, yeah. I like called you up I think and was like, can you definitely please come to GDC? - [Esteban] So I woke up that morning and the first thing I see is a Tweet saying from Jeremy where he's like, I broke my foot, dammit. And then I was like, I bet in 15 minutes I'm gonna get a text from Danny that says, hey, are you free for GDC, are you still free? And then like 10 minutes later you were like, hey, are you like free for GDC still? And I was like, yep, yes I am. - Amazing. We have a ridiculous calendar so this is, we did this two years ago and it was really fun and we got a bunch of these little mini interviews, we called 'em Noclip Sessions then. We're not gonna brand them this time, we're just gonna make a bunch of smaller vids, kind of like the Corey Barlog one or the Ed Boon one. Just like a little, I don't know, not super long ones but interesting little chats. I'm looking at my calendar right here, man, and I mean, they're all between 10 and four during the day, we've got the studio of Patreon booked for basically the entire week. Now we have everyone from like mid tier developers, some massive indies, folks from Japan, some big western devs, and a bunch of interesting indies that people have been asking us to talk to, folks to do a unionization and, it's a crazy murderers row of names, some of which people would be very familiar with and some of which people won't. If you're gonna be at GDC we're not gonna be around that much but we will be at the showing of our Half-Life documentary as part of the GDC Film Festival, which is on at 4:40 p.m. on I wanna say the Tuesday, I closed my calendar like a silly boy. That's gonna happen at Yerba Buena I think it's called, yeah it's on the Tuesday, that's the 19th of March. It's gonna be at the Yerba Buena, I think it's called film, cinema or whatever, I forget what it's called, it's just that little one that's right there in the park. And yeah, we'll be around before and after to hang out and talk and stuff. I think myself and Jeremy are gonna get up on stage afterwards and do a Q and A or something, so that should be fun. So we're not an official meet or anything, we just kinda can't, like I used to work in SoMa in San Francisco and getting a bar for 20 people will be impossible. I feel like if Noclip did a meet up at GDC we'd get like 100 people so I just can't do it. So we'll be at the, if you're at the premier or the showing, it's not a premier, you can literally watch, almost a million people have watched it on YouTube already. - [Esteban] I don't know if you know, Danny, but that video's been out for quite awhile. - [Danny] We did this last year too with Horizon and it was amazing, sadly they had to turn people away. So that might happen this year again. The weirdest part about this is that the film festival's sponsored by Valve, who did not talk to us for the documentary. - [Esteban] Oh man, I'm sure they love this. - [Danny] Yeah, so this is gonna be a little awkward. Yeah, so we'd love to see you there before and afterwards, before or afterwards, whatever works for you even if you can't go watch the movie we'd be happy to come up and say hey. If you're not going to GDC though we're doing something weird, we're doing something new on our Patreon. They have this special offers thing which I didn't really ever want to do because I feel like our tiers our fair and cool and what not but just considering how big we're going at GDC this year it would be helpful to get a little bit more cash in the kitty as it were, so what we're doing, if you want, is we're gonna add this thing called an event pass, very careful not to put GDC in the actual name of that 'cause I'm sure we wouldn't be allowed to do that. Although, GDC tickets are pretty expensive. How much did it say when you, like $2,500 or something? - [Esteban] It was like 25 to $2,800 and you sent me this link that was like hey, just sign up for this. And I saw it like, GDC has like a little checkout and I saw $2,800 and I was like, is he out of his damn mind? - [Danny] Yeah, we have press passes so he didn't, you literally-- - [Esteban] You go through another page and then it makes it like zero, like a coupon code but you gave me a heart attack at once point. - [Danny] You literally get a coupon code for like $2,500. - [Esteban] It's crazy! - [Danny] Yeah, like can I redeem this somewhere else maybe? - [Esteban] Yeah, can I buy a mortgage? Can I put a down payment somewhere else with this? - [Danny] Can I buy 10 of these chairs, or three, I don't know how much they cost. But yeah, we're gonna put that in the $10 tier. If you're already in the $10 tier or up you'll get all this already but if you're in the five, if you wanna jump up. Basically what we're gonna do is live check ins every day so we're in the studio from Monday to Friday and I'm also there Sunday and Saturday, we might do those days too but we're definitely gonna do Monday to Friday we're gonna do little live streams from the studio. I was thinking about doing them longer day but I don't know how good the internet is in the studio so I don't wanna commit to it but we're definitely gonna do these live check ins where we basically host a little live stream and let you know who we're interviewing that day, stuff like that, like kinda insider bits which we kind of wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable broadcasting to the entire wider world but it'll be fun to do for some of our Patrons. Yeah, and if you have any questions for those people or questions for us we'll all be there. So that's our, yeah, Noclip at GDC event pass, Noclip games development event pass, let's call it. - [Esteban] Early access Noclip GDC buzzword keyword search influencer pass. - [Danny] There'll be a post about it in the next few days anyway, yeah. - [Esteban] It's the battle pass for Noclip. You can start it for free and then pay $10 later and get all the costumes. - [Danny] I did think about doing loot boxes at one stage where we do like a real world loot box but it's always got something good in it but then I like ran the numbers on it and was like, no one would ever pay money, the amount of money it would take to make everything be really really rad no one should ever have to pay blind. I think loot boxes are inherently evil so even with all good intentions I couldn't figure out a way of doing it. It's a bit of a shame. Yeah, so you'll be there too. You've been to San Francisco but not to GDC, is that right? - [Esteban] I've been to San Fransicso but I've never been to GDC, I've always wanted to go to GDC, I love the talks that they have there and it just seems like a cool place to be. - [Danny] Yeah, it's super cool. I'm not sure how much time we'll have to actually go to the Moscone Center, what I'm trying to do is make it so on the Friday at least we've got a bit of time so we can run in for awhile. But also we can so stuff in shifts, like I'm sure we won't need all three of us all the time over at Patreon but it's gonna be a lot, man, we're gonna come out of that thing with like 20 interviews and then we have to figure out how to cut them and who's cutting them and which ones are coming out and what not so a lot of stuff comin' to Noclip. And that's a podcast, basically. Just wanted to give an update to what we're doin'. That Jeff Gerstmann one will be up next, you know, you've heard all the stuff that's coming depending on whatever tiers you're in. Esteban, where can people follow you and watch you play video games? - [Esteban] So I, you can follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/TheBesteban, that's where all my stuff is at. I'm also getting the habit of streaming at least once a week, nothing like crazy like Ninja like every day but trying to stream at least once a week. - [Danny] He's hanging out with Neymar at soccer games now, he doesn't have time to stream. - [Esteban] Yeah, come on. But I'm here to take his spot now, dyed my hair red and everything. So you can follow me at Twitch.tv/TheBesteban 'cause branding and I'll be up there, you know, it's casual, once a week we just play games. Right now I'm downloading Devil May Cry 5 actually as we're speaking. - Oh sweet! - [Esteban] As soon as that thing hits midnight. - Is that out tomorrow? - Tomorrow, yeah. So I'm probably gonna actually play couple hours tomorrow, get into that game, 'cause I love Devil May Cry, so that's it for me. - [Danny] I like those Nigerian movies, the trailers for the-- - Yeah, they're cannon now. It's crazy, I can't believe Capcom made them cannon. - [Danny] I mean, they fuckin' might as well be. Like, they make as much sense as the official lore as far as I'm concerned so. - [Esteban] Oh man, now the Devil May Cry Reddit is on fire, way to go, Danny. - [Danny] All our Patrons who love DMC are out. I did really like that Ninja Theory one though, that was quite fun. - Oh no, what have you done. - [Danny] @Dannyodwyer on Twitter, @noclipvideo if you don't follow us there. You know the drill, we're all over the internet, r/noclip on Reddit, we got a Patreon in case you didn't know. This podcast is on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, loads more, and we have a YouTube channel, Youtube.com/Noclippodcast. We also make video game documentaries at Youtube.com/noclipvideo if you didn't know that. Patrons get all that stuff for the show early, this show early, sorry, for five bucks a month. Thank you to all of those folks for supporting our work, see you next time, Jeff Gerstmann will be up and then we'll probably do a post GDC wrap up as well but we also have a bunch of developer interviews coming over the next couple of weeks as well so stay tuned. Thanks, Esteban for hanging out. - Thanks for having me. - No worries, and we'll see the rest of you next time.

chicago japanese japan pr berkeley american spotify amazon apple washington dc war south stitcher hollywood twitch horizon impact european games san francisco marvel injustice cage tokyo chaos tweet vo east coast nigerian philadelphia dos resident evil ninja designing mortal kombat fortnite pubg amnesia ipad uber 'cause reddit spooky skyrim amiga google play steam so i'm apex nemesis patrons game developers conference smash capcom devil may cry soma pc southwest herman miller scorpion dmc grid staples half life evo kano duke nukem portal baraka gdc valve gears mk titanfall tekken ibm apex legends hades airpods playstation 4 developers x ray netherrealm studios neymar fatality sudoku krypt supergiant netherrealm mk11 johnny cage ed boon respawn dwyer luts goro fukuoka yerba buena aeron lut evo japan fatalities mk2 noclip make love mortal kombat x cause i'm windows live astroneer danny it ninja theory jeff gerstmann danny how moscone center esteban martinez danny is mortal kombat ii danny o'dwyer danny no kintaro danny you vince zampella samantha kalman mortal kombats danny yeah danny okay east coast us

Motivational Hit 2019 EP45 - Imagine Dragon - On Top Of The World

Eugene Wood: My Life - Living The Entrepreneurial Life

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 14, 2019 15:04

Welcome to the 45th episode of Motivational Hits 2019, this podcast is all about playing one motivational song every day. The songs I will play mean something to me and I want to try use music to motivate more people. Today's band is called Imagine Dragon and the song name is On Top Of The World Enjoy https://open.spotify.com/track/4eLSCSELtKxZwXnFbNLXT5?si=r6erAjZ-QIaKYeoaWVfdpw Find me on Social Media: Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram LinkedIn Steemit Dtube Here are the Lyrics "On Top Of The World" If you love somebody Better tell them while they're here 'cause they just may run away from you You'll never know quite when, well Then again it just depends on How long of time is left for you I've had the highest mountains I've had the deepest rivers You can have it all but life keeps moving I take it in but don't look down 'Cause I'm on top of the world, I'm on top of the world, Waiting on this for a while now Paying my dues to the dirt I've been waiting to smile, Been holding it in for a while, Take you with me if I can Been dreaming of this since a child I'm on top of the world. I've tried to cut these corners Try to take the easy way out I kept on falling short of something I coulda gave up then but then again I couldn't have 'cause I've traveled all this way for something I take it in but don't look down 'Cause I'm on top of the world, I'm on top of the world, Waiting on this for a while now Paying my dues to the dirt I've been waiting to smile, Been holding it in for a while, Take you with me if I can Been dreaming of this since a child I'm on top of the world. 'Cause I'm on top of the world, I'm on top of the world, Waiting on this for a while now Paying my dues to the dirt I've been waiting to smile, Been holding it in for a while, Take you with me if I can Been dreaming of this since a child And I know it's hard when you're falling down And it's a long way up when you hit the ground Get up now, get up, get up now. And I know it's hard when you're falling down And it's a long way up when you hit the ground Get up now, get up, get up now. 'Cause I'm on top of the world, I'm on top of the world, Waiting on this for a while now Paying my dues to the dirt I've been waiting to smile, Been holding it in for a while, Take you with me if I can Been dreaming of this since a child I'm on top of the world. #podcast #podcasting #entrepreneur #motivation

waiting cause i'm imagine dragon

The Importance Of Doing A Marriage Devotional Together

gift american dream life statement god earth marriage love ministry investment lord wife bible his word pride christians cultivating weeks parts gospel 'cause walk groups victory husband opened ephesians jesus christ highly reconciliation remind pray praying firstly forgiveness lift woohoo companionship good fight amen god's word jennifer smith fruitfulness love letter that'd be brave faqs tagged so aaron your word dear lord your husband in jesus set yourself apart lead by example devotionals words matter cause i'm jennifer it your marriage aaron you aaron what god send god's purpose jennifer thank perfect posture jennifer so aaron no aaron it aaron so aaron well intimacy with god sacrificial love marriage after god husband revolution stimulates your wife aaron all aaron thank jennifer yeah aaron yeah aaron hey wife after god omgoodness your holy spirit jennifer oh unveiled wife jennifer well aaron like aaron to drawing closer

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2019 39:50

Get the Husband and Wife After God 30-day devotionals today. https://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/husband-and-wife-after-god-devotional-bundle Quote From Husband After God on page 16 “Marriage is an opportunity to bring glory to God as you share with the world His testimony by loving your wife the way Christ loves the church.” Quote From Wife After God on page 117 “Being a submissive wife is beautiful, as it reflects God’s divine order. When a husband loves his wife like Christ loves and a wife submits to her husband, that reflection clearly represents God’s grace-filled love story. The benefits in a marriage like this are extraordinary. Why its important to do a marriage devotional together: Cultivating oneness and intimacy Get on the same page Growing in the word of God together Stimulates conversation Being ready in and out of season give an answer for the hope that you have Investment for marriage Example for our children you have something to pass on suggesting do this... Firstly, we wanted to share this information with you today because we are going into a Podcast series starting next week about our upcoming book Marriage After God! We hope you are pumped for this, we are and we cant wait for this book release! This series launching next week will give you insight into the book and of course, leave you with wanting even more! So before we get into that series, we thought we would dive deep into our devotionals for husbands and wives BECAUSE those of you who have already been through them have asked us what's next...which was a catalyst for us to write the marriage after God book...and also for those of you who havent had a chance to go through these devotionals yet or any of you who want to go through them again, we wanted to let you know that right now is the perfect time to do them leading up to the Marriage After God book release. We have about 4ish months till then which is ample time to get through the 30-day devotionals. A few things people have said about these devotionals: "Life changing - This book is truly a godsend! My marriage is better using the books! My husband and I read them daily and it’s helping us to grow in our marriage and closer to God! We were just recently baptized December 31, 2018 and this has been an awesome read for us to continue to have God at the center of our marriage. Daily this book hits home and I’m learning more about being a good wife!! Thank you so much for this book and I truly hope all Christian couples read these!" - Diamond S. "Just what our marriage needed! Awesome! It brought us closer together while also enhancing our individual walk with God. Opened our eyes to things we were and weren’t doing and being accountable. Very powerful devotionals! Highly recommended! A+++++" - William M. "Simply AMAZING I bought both bundles; Husband/Wife After God and 31 Prayers for your husband/wife and my husband and I are doing both together. OMGOODNESS, it really is good. Very well written and when I say these will open up your eyes, I'm not kidding. And get your steel toe boots on. These two books have helped us start off in a place where God can show up and take over. We have only been doing these less than two weeks, and God shows up every day relating these books to our daily lives. God speaks through people and uses people to minister to others and boy has he here. If you want God to show up and you really want to love God through your spouse and how to do it. These books right here is where you start!!" - Krystal W. *Dear Lord, Thank you for creating marriage. Thank you for considering our counterpart and complement. Thank you that we do not have to endure life alone. Not only do we get to live with the presence of Your Holy Spirit and our spouse, but we also get to benefit from living in community with other believers. May we walk together in unity as You have always intended us to. Please continue to draw us closer to Yourself and closer to each other. Continue to transform our hearts and our minds, so that our character reflects your character. Help us to intentionally invest in marriage by learning how to fulfill our roles as husbands and wives. Thank you for revealing to us why You created marriage and the purpose it has in this world. May this purpose motivate us to walk righteously every day. Remind us daily that our marriage is a symbol to this hurting world of Your powerful and unconditional love. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives, we aim to minister to one another in our marriages by being obedient to all that You have commanded through Your Word. May we be prayer warriors who do not neglect to pray for one another. We pray that as we make ourselves known to You and to each other, that we experience extraordinary intimacy. We pray for your will to be done in our marriages and through our marriages and may You be glorified. In Jesus’ name, amen!* READ: [Aaron] Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. [Jennifer] Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. [Aaron] And today, we're gonna talk about the importance of doing a marriage devotional together. Welcome to the Marriage After God podcast, where we believe that marriage was meant for more than just happily ever after. [Jennifer] I'm Jennifer, also known as Unveiled Wife. [Aaron] And I'm Aaron, also known as Husband Revolution. [Jennifer] We have been married for over a decade. [Aaron] And so far, we have four young children. [Jennifer] We have been doing marriage ministry online for over seven years through blogging and social media. [Aaron] With the desire to inspire couples to keep God at the center of their marriage, encouraging them to walk in faith every day. [Jennifer] We believe that Christian marriage should be an extraordinary one, full of life. Love. And power. [Aaron] That can only be found by chasing after God. [Jennifer] Together. [Aaron] Thank you for joining us in this journey, as we chase boldly after God's will for our life together. [Jennifer] This is Marriage After God. [Aaron] Hey, thanks for joining us this week. We wanna invite you, as always, to leave a review on the podcast. The reviews, the star ratings, those all help other people, other marriages, find this podcast and get the content,. So if you enjoy what you been hearing, and you haven't done it yet, would you leave us a review today? That'd be awesome. [Jennifer] Also, if you've been enjoying this podcast, we would like to encourage you and ask you to shop on our online store as a way to support this podcast. So if you go to shop.marriageaftergod.com, you can see all of our resource there. We just want you to know that we wrote those for you guys, but also it helps support things like this podcast, so thank you so much for shopping with us. Also, I'd just like to highlight the discussion that we're going to be talking about today happens to be on marriage devotionals. So be sure to check out Husband and Wife After God. [Aaron] Yeah, those are our two devotionals that we wrote for husbands and wives to go through together. They can go through them separately, too, right? Yep. But we'll talk about that. [Jennifer] But if you're shopping on the store, you can check those out, and there's more information there for you, specifically on those devotionals. [Aaron] Awesome. So, icebreaker question, all right? [Jennifer] Dun dun dun. [Aaron] What is your definition of "and they lived happily ever after?" [Jennifer]Okay, so, we've talked about this before, but we're not really into this phrase. It's a hopeful and a happy phrase, for sure. [Aaron] Yeah, it's-- [Jennifer] But at the end of my book-- [Aaron] It's got a dead end on it, I feel like. [Jennifer] Well, I think at the end of my book, the end of our story, I'd much rather hear the line, and "they entered heaven, "and God said with a smile on His face, "well done, my good and faithful servants." To me, that's more powerful. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] Than happily ever after. Which means that we used our marriage for His purposes, and not just our own, and in the process being happy is a byproduct of Yeah. serving Him. Yeah, just, it-- It might mean-- It feels one goal focused, and word focused of we're just going to be happy for the rest of our lives, and I don't, first of all, it's not even possible. The Bible tells us that we will endure trials and things like that, so when I think of it, I actually wanna reword it and say, "and they lived joyfully ever after God." [Jennifer] Oh, there you go. [Aaron] Like as a marriage, we're chasing after him. [Jennifer] Kinda the same thing. [Aaron] Yeah, but its with joy, which is more of, it's something that exists even when we're not happy. Because when things aren't easy and hard, we can have joy, but instead of just "happily ever after" like the white picket fence, just the American Dream, or just things going well for the rest of our marriage. We have a bigger purpose of, it's not just to make us happy, but it's to pursue God and what He's doing in His kingdom, so I would just change. Yeah, we've never really liked that phrase. It's not that it's a bad phrase. [Jennifer] No. [Aaron] It just doesn't feel deep enough Or complete. Or long, or long-lasting enough, yeah. [Jennifer] It's not complete. [Aaron] Alright, we'll move on to the topic. That was an okay question, we'll have a better question next week, one that's funnier I think, 'cause those are usually funny questions, huh? [Jennifer] Not always. [Aaron] So we're gonna be talking about our devotionals a little later, but we have some quotes from them to start off the episode with, and this is a quote from my devotional Husband After God. It's on page 16, it says, "Marriage is an opportunity "to bring glory to God as you share with the world "His testimony by loving your wife "the way Christ loves the church." [Jennifer] Okay, and I'm gonna share my quote from Wife After God, it's on page 117. "Being a submissive wife is beautiful, "as it reflects God's divine order. "When a husband loves his wife like Christ loves, "and a wife submits to her husband, "that reflection clearly represents "God's grace-filled love story. "The benefits in a marriage like this are extraordinary." So they kinda mirror each other, they go hand in hand. [Aaron] Well, now that's the reason we wrote the devotionals, was to highlight for the husband and wife, why they're married and why God has His order and His ways for us to follow. It's because we have a message to proclaim. [Jennifer] Mm-huh. [Aaron] We have a purpose in this world. Which again goes to the bigger picture of what we wrote Marriage After God for, which comes out in June, which is just that. That our marriages are a ministry and that when we walk the way the Bible calls us to walk. We actually proclaim His message to the world, which is pretty incredible. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] To think about that, our marriages have much more to do in this world than just make us happy, which goes back to our question, really. But let's start off the topic with why it's important to do a marriage devotional together. 'Cause I'm sure there's a lot of marriages out there, people listening, that are wondering like, "hey, we do our devotionals separately, but what benefit could it be for us to do one together? [Jennifer] Or maybe they're not doing any together or any at all, and they've been waiting for something, they're looking for something. We're hoping that this catches their attention and maybe inspire them to get started on one today. [Aaron] Yeah, so let's talk about some of the benefits, some of the things that come to mind that could be, that could come out as fruit, [Jennifer] Okay. [Aaron] from doing a devotional together. [Jennifer] So the first thing that comes to mind is just cultivating oneness and intimacy from the experience of doing it together. Right. So, focusing and being intentional in the act of doing something together like a marriage devotional. [Aaron] Right, 'cause usually, if we have books that we read at night, often it's just to ourselves. It's, we're the only ones benefiting from it, or enjoying it, but a devotional that we can do together. If it's in the evening or in the morning, or in the afternoon, whenever that works. It's an intentional time to be together in the Word of God. It requires conversation, introspective thinking, dialogue, lots of stuff that would go on, that which cultivates more and more intimacy. Yeah. Right? Instead of us just, I work, come home, how was your day, awesome. We actually can go deep and say, hey, what did you think of that scripture or how does that make you feel or hey, that reminds me of when I was a kid and... [Jennifer] Yeah, and just to take it one step further, when you consider a devotional, you're usually gonna find those kind of journal questions or discussion questions or, like you said, to think introspectively, that you can use as conversation starters. 'Cause some people, they want to share their hearts with their spouse, but they don't really know how to-- That's a good point, yeah. or where to start, and so a marriage devotional will usually take the hardness out of the equation and say, here talk about this. Right. [Jennifer] And both people can look at the paper and go, oh! Or look at the book or look at whatever they're looking at and say, that's what we have to discuss, so we're gonna talk about that right now. [Aaron] Yeah, so they could stretch our intimacy muscles. How deep can we go in the conversation? The things that we could talk about. Those questions are usually formulated to cause deeper discussion than you would normally get into. It's a good point, and you know what? Growing spiritually is a very intimate thing. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] The deepest part of us is our spirit and we're cultivating that with each other. Praying with each other is an extremely intimate thing. We're entering the throne room of God together, we are praying together, we are lifting each other's hearts up, we're hearing each other's hearts, and then discussing the Word of God together, those are super intimate things. [Jennifer] Yeah, growing in the word of God together, that's a powerful thing for a marriage to be doing. I think that we all should be doing that. [Aaron] Okay, well, of course. Like as Christians, we're called to grow and mature, but as marriages, as a single unit, as one, we should be growing and maturing together also. Not growing and maturing separately only. That should be happening, but growing together, and I think what's awesome about doing a devotional together, also allows us to be accountable to each other. Yeah. Right? If we've been discussing, self-control, or our anger, or anything that this devotional might be calling out of us, we can actually pay attention together instead of me trying to work on it privately, [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] and you don't really know what I'm working on. We actually could say, hey, remember the devotional last night we were just talking about this, like hey, let's working on that. [Jennifer] That's good. [Aaron] And I feel like you might've forgot the thing that we've committed to because of that question we answered the other night. So it helps us to be working on similar things throughout the day and keep each other accountable, and look out for each other's growth and maturity. [Jennifer] Another benefit is being an example for your children, and when those children become adults and they're married, you can say, have suggestions for them. Hey, we did this marriage devotional, we did that together. You and your spouse should try that. [Aaron] Yeah, and then they also see us, especially if we do visible, like in front of them, periodically, maybe not every day, but, hey, mommy and daddy are gonna do our quiet time together now, you guys can look at your books or go play quietly with your legos, and they know that that's an important thing to us, that we separate time to be in the Word together. It actually kinda convinced me thinking about it right now, we should do that more. [Jennifer] Yeah, we should. [Aaron] We should be getting away more together, so let's start doing that. [Jennifer] Okay, deal. [Aaron] I was gonna say, another thing I think about is, again, going back to the main purpose why we, our marriage exists, what God wants to do in us, is that there's a message to be proclaimed, there's a mission to be accomplished. I think of that scripture that tells us to be ready in and out of season, it tells us to be ready to give an answer for the hope that we have in us, and doing a devotional together and growing together on the same page, in the Word of God and learning what He has to say to us and what he wants to do through us. It helps us be ready for when our neighbor says, "hey, what's so different about your life, "why do you believe in this God of yours?" We're prepared together, instead of maybe you not-- Not knowing or... Not being ready or me not be in the same place. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's good. [Aaron] Yeah, but we would both be prepared to give an answer for our faith. [Jennifer] Yep, and the last thing I think of with all of these things that we've already shared about the importance of doing a marriage devotional together is simply that it's investment for your marriage. So, the quality time you're spending together to do it, the intimacy that you are cultivating when discussing difficult things or very deep things, and, like you said, being ready to share the hope that you have. All of these things are an investment into the marriage relationship, and when you invest into your marriage, you're growing in that relationship, you're building trust, you're building closeness, that bond between you, and I feel like that will strengthen a couple to go even further. [Aaron] Yeah, and keep going. [Jennifer] Like year after year after year. So I just wanted to make that note. [Aaron] That's good, so and the end result of pursuing God together, growing and maturing together, growing the Word of God together, doing a devotional together, all of these things to cultivate the oneness and intimacy and strength. The benefit and result is becoming and living as biblical men and women. [Aaron] We become more like what the Bible says. We represent that more, which has benefits also. When we just become the kind of people God desires us to be. There's benefits, and what are some of those? [Jennifer] So, you know, I just think of advancing as a Christian, and we get to do that together. So we see areas of our life that are weak, and maybe doing a devotional together could point to an aspect of our lives that needs to be transformed or worked on or practiced. Or cut out altogether. [Jennifer] Or cut out altogether, and we get to see us take steps towards growth in those areas. So we're moving forward not backwards. [Aaron] Yeah, when we walk in the way that the Word tells us to and calls us to, we experience more love, we learn about it more, we're filled more with God's love in us. So our marriage, we benefit from that, and our children benefit from that. [Jennifer] Totally. [Aaron] And our neighbors. The people that we interact with, there's more joy, more love, more peace. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] All those, you know, fruit of the spirit is in us. [Jennifer] Yeah, it's good. [Aaron] And that's a huge benefit of walking in obedience to the things that the Word calls us to. [Jennifer] Yeah, some other benefits are just, when you're working on areas of yourself to be more like God, I feel like He draws things out of your heart that need to be worked on, like being healthier with choices that you make, or being wiser, you know, like those kinds of things. [Aaron] Be better stewards of our resources, our money. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Which all benefit our marriage, our life, our relationships, and then the most important thing, and we brought this up a moment ago, is the Gospel, the good news about Jesus Christ and what He came to this Earth to do for us is spread because we are in His Word and we're growing. And we look for opportunities to talk to people about God, and to love on people for God, and to share our story with people. That's the fruit that comes out of us, it's an overflow of what God puts in us. So we're talking about the benefits of doing a devotional, of getting into the Word of God together, but is that, I think of the devotionals we made and how can we share with them more about our devotionals and whether or not they might wanna jump in today. Just getting in the Word of God. 'Cause even if you don't get our devotionals, ever, or anyone else's devotionals, being in the Word of God together is more than adequate. It's what God wants us to do, Yeah. invest in His Word. [Jennifer] And we don't have to over complicate it, like seriously, just open up the Bible, read a chapter or two and talk about it. Ask each other the simple question of what stood out to you, start there. [Aaron] Yeah, and we try and do that. Sometimes, some nights I just read out loud. We don't talk about anything, we just, I read out loud until Jennifer falls asleep, or until we're just like, okay, awesome. And usually it ends up in a really great conversation about something that was triggered by what we read. You know, oh that made me think of today when, or last week I forgot to mention, and we have these really good conversations around the Word of God, but you know, we've had a lot of people over the years ask us about devotionals and want things to do together, and we made two devotionals, Husband After God and Wife after God, separate ones, because there are some marriages where the spouse isn't in the same place and so, we've had many people just buy just the devotional for themselves and start going through and start praying for their husbands or getting into the Word of God. [Jennifer] Or sometimes they buy the bundle in hopes that the other person will read theirs. [Aaron] Yep, we've seen that a lot also. We've actually seen people say, "hey, I didn't think my husband was gonna do it," And then he did. and then he totally started doing it. But the main point is that you do it together. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] You get these devotionals, you read through them, and so let's talk a little bit about these devotionals. Why don't you start off and then we'll just dig in to some of the information about them and maybe people will love the idea. [Jennifer] Yeah, so like Aaron said, our biggest thing here today is just to give you guys a little bit of insight to our marriage devotionals, but overall just encourage you to be doing something together, because it will cultivate that intimacy and oneness. But we wanna give you some insight into our devotionals, just to give you an option and show you what's out there. So, I wrote Wife After God. The subtitle is Drawing Closer to God and Your Husband. It's a 30 day marriage devotional. I wrote this back in 2013, right after I had Elliot. That was a long time ago. [Jennifer] Yep, and, I wanted something that a wife could hold in her hands that would help her better understand God's purpose and design for marriage and her role as a wife and to see that reflection, that picture, that's talked about in Ephesians 5 of Christ's relationship to the church. [Aaron] Yeah, it started off with, we wanted to, you wanted to show wives the ministry they had in their marriage Yes. toward their husband. Yes. [Aaron] Which is what the Bible shows us on both sides that the husband has a ministry to his wife and the wife has a ministry to her husband, and the symbol, like you said, it shows to the world. [Jennifer] So I'm just gonna read couple of these, I'm not gonna read through all of them, but these are just some of the chapter titles, so that they can get an idea for it. God's Purpose for Your Marriage. The Need for Companionship. Ministry of Reconciliation. Perfect Posture. [Aaron] That's a good one. You actually get a lot of comments about that chapter. I do. Wisdom Calls Out. Who You Are Called to Be. The Parts of Marriage. Fruitfulness. Intimacy With God. Love Letter to Your Husband. That's what it ends on, which I love that one. But that's just a handful of them and we'll get to the Husband After God. [Aaron] Yeah. [Jennifer] After we kind of, summarize Wife After God, 'Cause I want the guys to hear what's in yours, which is, Yeah. it's just as good. So anyways, the way that I outlined this is share about a page to a page and a half of whatever that topic is. [Aaron] And it's usually story-driven, it's either from our life, or another story we've heard to illustrate the point. [Jennifer] Yep, and then it goes into a prayer for that day specific to that day, and then you'll see a challenge, which is usually a challenge for you and your relationship with God or you in your relationship with your husband. So hopefully those inspire you guys just to do something you either have never done before or maybe haven't done in a really long time to cultivate that intimacy. Then there's the status update, which I don't know if a lot of people see in books, but we've decided to put the status update challenge in there for people who want to share this message that they're learning with people on social media. That's another way that this message of Wife After God gets out. It can be a catalyst for people to ask, hey what are you doing? What is that thing that you keep posting about? And it just gives a real quick glimpse in one sentence of that day's topic. [Aaron] Yeah, it's also a way of solidifying and vocalizing some of the things you're choosing to walk in. So you're stating it publicly. I'm going to be or I'm going to do, and then it makes it a real thing. Instead of it just in your mind, you're like oh, I'll work on that some day. [Jennifer] And what I love seeing is when people tag me in these and they post a picture of their wedding day with it, or a recent picture. They do that a lot. They post pictures from their wedding day, which is awesome. [Jennifer] Or a recent picture of them together. [Aaron] Yeah, I love that. And it encourages other couples, they say, "oh what is that?" And they want to be a part of it, and it's just a neat way of spreading the Gospel, spreading the message of being a godly wife, being a godly husband and what that means. [Jennifer] And each day has specific scriptures that support the topics that we're sharing, which I don't want to skip over, but just so you guys know, the reason we didn't quote the scripture in there is because we want you to get into the Word of God yourselves, so we just list the scriptures. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause people always ask, "what version of the Bible did you use in the verses?" All we say, well, we just put the references, not the actual scriptures, so it's all our content, and what's awesome is it requires you to open your Bible. [Jennifer] Yep, and-- [Aaron] Which is the focus. [Jennifer] The last thing I wanna share is one of my favorite parts of these devotionals and it's the journal questions after each day's, at the end of each day, and you can use these. We gave space under each question that you can fill it out right then and there or you can use them and fill it out in your own personal journal, or you can use these as discussion questions either in a group setting. So if you're doing this with a handful of other wives, or you can use them as discussion questions between you and your spouse to answer. [Aaron] Or all of the above. [Jennifer] Or all of the above if you wanna, that'd be awesome. [Aaron] So, I'm going to go through the Husband After God and pull some of the points. It's formatted exactly the same way, but the content is complementary. It's different content focused on the husband with some different topics, but some of the topics are similar, but with different content, if that makes sense. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] So you could totally do this with your spouse and you would have different questions that you can go back and forth on. You would have different stories and different points to pull from, even different scriptures, but the themes might be the same in some areas, so I'm gonna read some of the topics. Marriage By Design. Lead By Example. Your Wife is a Gift. Sacrificial Love. Set Yourself Apart. Be Brave. The Good Fight. Pride. Everyone loves that chapter, I think. Forgiveness. Words Matter. Prayer For Your Wife. Avoiding God. Walk in Victory. And then the last one is The Husband Revolution, which is a fun one. It's proclaiming that mission that we have as husbands and that ministry we have. But yeah, there's a point in the beginning, a couple, a page and a half or two pages, and then there's a prayer for that day, specific to that topic. There's scripture to read. There's questions for you to answer. There's a status update, like this one says, "I will strive to reflect the image "and character of God in my marriage." That's status update, so it's like a statement. Statement, yeah. I'm going to do this and you're telling all your social media friends that you're gonna do it, and then it also let's people know, wait what is he doing? It says #HusbandAfterGod, what is that? [Jennifer] Yeah, what is that? [Aaron] Yeah, there's a challenge on every chapter. This one says share and discuss with your wife what you are learning about the purpose of marriage. So boom, right there, there's an intimate moment that I get to have with my wife where I share with what I'm learning, what God's teaching me about the purpose of marriage. 'Cause imagine if I sat down, or you sit down, husband, with your wife, and you say, oh, you know, I'm learning that God's purpose for our marriage is that I would love you like Christ loves the church. She's gonna be like, what, that's amazing! [Jennifer] And yeah, imagine what that would do to a wife's heart? I know personally, it just makes me feel like, oh my goodness, he cares about me, he loves me, he wants to do this with me and with God, and I don't know, I just love that. [Aaron] I wanna read another challenge. This one's from, what chapter is this? This is from day 21, Prayer For Your Wife, and the challenge is this. Spend time praying for your wife. Share with God why you are thankful for her. Lift up any needs she may have. Pray for her character to reflect Christ, and petition God to protect her. So, the challenge is go find some quiet time and just pray for your wife. [Jennifer] Which we all need those reminders. Every single one of us. [Aaron] So that's the Husband After God devotional. And the topics in each one of them are focused on the wife's role, scriptures that are aligned with that, and then the husband's role and scriptures that are aligned with that, but at the end of the day, what they're doing is they strengthen the marriage overall, making the ministry of that marriage more powerful, and more focused on what God wants for it. [Jennifer] And there's 30 days or 30 topics, so you could easily do this in a month's time. [Aaron] Yeah, well that would be the challenge, is do it every day for a month, for 30 days. [Jennifer] Yep, so I just, real quick, wanna jump into a couple reviews that people have left for these specific devotionals, just so that you guys get an idea of the kind of impact that it's making from other people, and other people's lives. So Aaron, you wanna read the first one? [Aaron] Yeah, this one's from Diamond S. and it says this, "Life changing! "This book is truly a Godsend. "My marriage is better using these books. "My husband and I read them daily and it's helping us "to grow in our marriage and closer to God. "We were just recently baptized December 31st, 2018," which is incredible, [Jennifer] Wow, recently! [Aaron] Yeah, "and this has been an awesome read "for us to continue to have God "at the center of our marriage. "Daily this book hits home and I'm learning more "about being a godly wife. "Thank you so much for this book "and I truly hope all Christian couples read these." [Jennifer] Awesome. [Aaron] Which, I was like, yay, makes me feel good. [Jennifer] Okay, I'm gonna read the next one. It's from Crystal W., "Simply amazing. "I bought both bundles, Husband and Wife After God, "and 31 Prayers For Your Husband and Wife, "and my husband and I are doing both together. "Oh my goodness, it is really good! "Very well written, and when I say these will open up your eyes, I'm not kidding. "And get your steel-toed boots on, "these two books have helped us start off "in a place where God can show up and take over. "We have only been doing these less than two weeks, "and God shows up every day, "relating these books to our daily lives. "God speaks through people and uses people "to minister to others, and, boy, has He here. "If you want God to show up and you really want to love God "through your spouse, and how to do it, "these books, right here is where you wanna start." [Aaron] That one's a good one. I like that one, she said "put on your steel-toed boots." [Jennifer] I know, it's great. [Aaron] Alright, so this last one is from William M. "Just what our marriage needed, awesome! "It brought us closer to God while also enhancing "our individual walk with God, opened our eyes to the things "we were and weren't doing and being accountable. "Very powerful devotionals. "Highly recommended. A++++." [Jennifer] Awh, some people are just so kind, and it always encourages us and we feel like, awesome. We have given couples a catalyst to get into God's word together and to do something that's impacting their relationship, and I'm just praising God. [Aaron] Yeah, and our goal all along, has not been to replace the Bible. Our purpose of these books was to point people to the Bible. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Always pointing back to the Bible, always pointing back to God. [Jennifer] Awesome, okay, so I wanna move into this next, sort of, sessions. [Aaron] These are kinda like questions, Q&As. [Jennifer] Yeah, Q&As on... [Aaron] Oh no, they're FAQs, that's what it is. [Jennifer] Okay, on the topic. So, can these be read together at the same time or not? [Aaron] Both! We recommend them being done together. They could be read separately, or they could be read together, taking turns, but our sentiment is, hey, do them, and then come together and discuss the chapter for the day, discuss the thought for the day, how you answered the questions, do the prayers together, pray- [Jennifer] Sometimes they pray the prayers out loud, too. [Aaron] Yeah, so I would say both. Like we said earlier, there's some marriages where the husband or the wife are not there, they're not doing it. So the other spouse is just doing it on their own. [Jennifer] And the great thing about these devotionals is you can utilize them more than just once, go back through it again, you know? It's really good content, so it's not wasted, just keep going through it again. [Aaron] Yeah, they're good reminders of what the Word says about who we are and what God's called for us. The next question is can they be used to lead a small group? [Jennifer] And the answer for that is, yes. So, some tips for this. If you're gonna do, host small group, let's say that you have five other wives who wanna go through Wife After God together, we would suggest everyone gets a copy, just so that they can go through it on their own throughout the week, and then meet up, once a week for a month or two, depending on how you want to do it, and just use the journal questions, in the back of each day as the discussion questions to talk about. [Aaron] Yeah, and you might be able to break up the chapters, so like the first four chapters on week one, and the next four chapters or five chapters on week two. [Jennifer] Yeah, and you don't have to use the journal questions, You can just simply say, okay, what have you been learning? What stood out to you? That kind of thing. [Aaron] Ideally, they would, whoever has these devotionals, the people listening, if they have these devotionals or if they're going to get them, when they're done going through them, they should invite married couples over to their house, and start a little marriage Bible study with those couples. [Jennifer] That would be awesome. And here's the other tip, if you guys were to do this soon, there's even enough time, by the time you finish that small group, Marriage After God will be out. The new book, yeah. The new book, and then you could do that same group study With that book. With book. [Aaron] Yeah, 'cause that book is significantly different than these devotionals. [Jennifer] Okay, so I want to give one more tip and this is just a fun thing to do with your group, if you're gonna do a group. I did a small group, which actually led me to writing this devotional. I did it for three months with a handful of wives from my church, we were all young wives, kind of in the same season of life, and-- [Aaron] No one had kids yet, back then. [Jennifer] No one had kids yet. One friend had one young, young baby. So, anyways, we got together weekly, once a week, for three months, and the second to the last, or maybe the third to the last one, we made handmade invitations for our husbands. [Aaron] Oh, this is definitely a good idea. [Jennifer] We planned and prepared a dinner that we were gonna host for our husbands on that last evening and talk about the discussion questions and what we learning on that night with everyone. And so we thought it was gonna be fancy, we thought we wanted to dress up, we thought we all wanted to cook together. So we made these handmade invitations and then a couple weeks later, we all got together, we got there early, set the table, got flowers, made the dinner, and all the husbands showed up, dressed super nice, we were just at a friend's house. [Aaron] That, I remember this. That was a lot of fun and I felt really honored. [Jennifer] Everybody just, everybody felt honored. Everybody had smiles on their faces and what's really cool about that night is the guys actually, because they knew it was coming, they all talked and prepared on how they were gonna encourage us women and share how they've seen us change over that time we'd been meeting together. So then at the dinner table, everyone went around and shared. It was incredible, it was so awesome. [Aaron] It was really powerful, and very enjoyable, and the food, I can't remember what it was, but I remember it was really good. [Jennifer] Yeah, so you could do something fun like that together. [Aaron] So last question is, why should they read these devotionals now, as a primer for the Marriage After God book coming out in June? [Jennifer] So, first thing you guys should know is, we did write these devotionals a couple years ago, and when we get people who have been through them asking us what's next, we want to give you something. We've been wanting to give you something since they first came out. [Aaron] We've had four kids since then, so... [Jennifer] Yeah, we've been a little busy, but this was a catalyst, you guys asking and desiring this has been a catalyst for why we wrote Marriage After God. So I feel like these devotionals are the brief version. [Aaron] I think they're the first stepping stone. [Jennifer] It's like a stepping stone, because then, I feel like your hearts will be ready. More unified. And more unified for jumping into the message that is in the book, Marriage After God. [Aaron] Yeah, the Marriage After God book. You're going to be hearing a lot about this, so we're starting to talk about it more because as it gets closer to launching, we want you all to know what it's about, and why we wrote these books. And we wrote Marriage After God as a culmination of everything that God's been teaching us over the years about the ministry that God has for our marriages. And so these devotionals are step one in that. [Jennifer] Yeah, they'll get you thinking about the purpose of your marriage in light of God's Word. [Aaron] Yep, and by the time the book comes out, you'll be ready to take that next step into what God has for your marriage and where He wants to take it. 'Cause that was the whole purpose of writing the book was, we want marriages all over the world who claim the name of Christ, who love God, to recognize the power in the ministry that they have in Christ as a marriage, as one. And so we're super excited about that. [Jennifer] Yeah, I think another thing is, is if you do these devotionals together, it will start to build that habit of spending time together and reading together and asking each other some deep questions. So that when the Marriage After God book comes out, that habit will already be there and you'll want to replace the devotionals with the book. So I think that it's just a natural step. [Aaron] Yeah, and I wanna go, I got really excited about something. I wanna go right back to the small group subject again. I love that idea, and I actually wanna challenge our listeners. We weren't planning on doing this, but I want to challenge our listeners to get a copy of our devotionals, the Husband and Wife After God devotionals. Go through them, and at the end of the 30 days, during the 30 days, be praying and asking God, what other couples are in your life that He wants you to invite to a study at your house, a Marriage After God study? And then invite them to get the books. It could be two couples, it could be one couple, it could be five couples. I wouldn't do more than maybe six couples, that's a lot of people. Do multiple studies, maybe, but I just wanna challenge you to be praying through the books as you do them, and asking God who it is. You might be thinking right now, oh my gosh, I have this friend, these friends, they would love to do this with us, and start a Bible study and walk through these studies, these books together and see what God has for all your marriages. What we're trying to start here is a movement of marriages after God, of marriages who desire to grow the kingdom of God, to see Him move through their marriages, and that we would use our marriages for ministry for Him. That's why we started the podcast. That's why we started our blogs. All of this goes back to that, that we're moving the kingdom forward with God, and that we see our marriages as the ministries He's given us and the tools that He's given us to serve Him. [Jennifer] Mmm, that's good. [Aaron] So would you agree with that challenge? [Jennifer] I agree, I like that challenge, and just to simplify it and make it easy for them to understand. Just tell these people it'll be four or six weekS, whatever you want the timing to be on it, which is not a long time to meet together. It's not at all. [Jennifer] It's once a week, for four weeks, or once a week for six weeks. [Aaron] Try the four weeks, I think the four week one, just one month to see if it works, see if you're like wow, this is awesome. And but first, I would say you go through the devotionals as a couple first. And during that 30 days, you pray, and fast if need to, and you ask the Lord. Say, Lord, reveal to us, who is it? And I know the Lord will. The moment we ask God, like God use me, He's like okay, He wants to use us. [Jennifer] Marriages need it, you guys, that's why we're doing this, because marriages need the support, the encouragement of other believers, they need to know why God has them together. [Aaron] The reminder of not just happily ever after, but it's that we're chasing after God together, that we're building His kingdom together, that we have a mission in this world and our marriage is the tool to accomplish the mission. Yeah, and going back to the message of the Marriage After God book, that's what the whole book's about, what is the mission God has for us? [Jennifer] And if you guys have already been through these devotionals, and this is old news to you, because you've already been through these, I want you to go dust them off, go get them, and go do exactly what Aaron is challenging you to do right now and consider- [Aaron] Let's start our movement. [Jennifer] Yeah, consider who you can invite over to go through them with you. [Aaron] Ooh, how can they let us know if they're doing it? 'Cause actually I would love to know. I'd love to see the groups-- Groups, a group photo! We wanna see a group photo- Tagged! [Jennifer] @MarriageAfterGod. [Aaron] Yeah, tag @MarriageAfterGod and #MarriageAfterGod, and we will look 'em and actually I think we'll repost them. [Jennifer] Yeah. [Aaron] Not all of them, but we'll repost a lot of them. So if you do this, please let us know. We'd love to be praying for you, being part of it, and we are praying for you, but if you're going to be doing a group, we want to pray for your group, we want to pray for your Bible study. I'm getting all excited, okay. [Jennifer] Okay, so last note before we go into the prayer for this episode, and that is, get ready, because we have 16 weeks ahead of us of a book series for Marriage After God that we're going to be diving into starting next week with the introduction. [Aaron] That's true, and you know what's awesome? We forgot to mention this, this is episode 52. This is, we've been doing this for one year. Woohoo! Today. [Jennifer] Thank you guys for following along, and listening, this is awesome. [Aaron] Yeah, so for the next 16 episodes, we're going to be talking about content from the book. [Jennifer] And it's actually 17, 'cause it's 16 chapters, plus the introduction, so 17 weeks. [Aaron] So you're going to be learning a lot about the message of the Marriage After God book, which is essentially of the Marriage After God podcast, and how our hearts is to start a movement in Christian marriages around the world. And we'd love for you to be a part of that, and to take ownership in that, and know that God's gonna do something amazing. And we're excited to see what that is. So before we close, as always, we've dedicated to pray for you and your marriage and for what God's doing, and so Jennifer would you like to pray for us? [Jennifer] Dear Lord, thank you for creating marriage. Thank you for considering our counterpart and complement. Thank you that we do not have to endure this life alone. Not only do we get to live with the presence of Your Holy Spirit and our spouse, but we also get to benefit from living in community with other believers. May we walk together in unity as You have always intended us to. Please continue to draw us closer to Yourself and closer to each other. Continue to transform our hearts and our minds so that our character reflects Your character. Help us to intentionally invest in marriage by learning how to fulfill our roles as husbands and wives. Thank you for revealing to us why you created marriage and the purpose it has in this world. May this purpose motivate us to walk righteously every day. Remind us daily that our marriage is a symbol to this hurting world of your powerful and unconditional love. We pray that as Christian husbands and wives, we aim to minister to one another in our marriages by being obedient to all that You have commanded through Your Word. May we be prayer warriors who do not neglect to pray for one another. We pray that as we make ourselves known to You and to each other, that we experience extraordinary intimacy. We pray for Your will to be done in our marriages and through our marriages and may You be glorified. In Jesus' name, Amen. [Aaron] Amen, thank you Lord. We're excited to see pictures. We're excited to see what God's gonna be doing in your marriage through these devotionals, through the Bible study that you're gonna start, I'm making it a definitive. [Jennifer] And tag @MarriageAfterGod so we can see and cheer you along! [Aaron] Yeah, and just start praying and asking God how He wasn't to use you and your spouse. That's our heart, that's our goal, that's why we do this, is that you would recognize the place that you have in the body of Christ, and that it's a significant one. Doesn't matter who you are, doesn't matter where you live, God's got a plan for you, He's got a purpose for your marriage, for your life individually, and you are a part of the body of Christ. And God's got work for us to do, [Jennifer] Let's do it. [Aaron] as his children. Yeah, so let's do it and we love you guys. We thank you for joining us on our 52nd episode, one year in, here's to another year, and we'll see you next week! Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at MarriageAfterGod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

I Surrender

SocietyFringePodcast's podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2019 4:17

My brain isn't working my body is broken I'm in the abyss I'm a sacrifice She's his like a liar controlled by her greed And the sun is another one cursing my life ----- It's over it's over it's all fucking over I'm nothing clear back to a different man's ghost Use vengeance as anger and life as a weapon Cancerous here leading my self doubt to grow He is the cancer she is the cancer And he is the cancer but I I am not The water keeps rising the sirens are wailing I'm sweeping up cities and making them rot I surrender ----- Who's the disease spreading and razing Chewing up tissues and spitting out ghosts? My brain's in retreat my body is bleeding I'm giving up everything neither or both My blood it tastes funny upon my tongue It's laughing and darting and staring the sky I surrender already I don't have the passion I don't feel the need to even ask why I surrender ----- Everyone's blameless and gone is the passion I don't have the strength or the caring to cry I don't care about the ending or even the middle Once upon a time a man simply died I don't want no punishment taught as a lesson I don't need to learn any new god damn things I'm turning my mind off I'm turning my heart off I'm going to sleep 'cause I've nothing to bring My brain isn't working my body is broken I'm in the abyss I'm the sacrifice The war and the battle teamed up and beat me Humiliated and timid with life Leave me be Let me lie Lie on back Bathe my pain I'm headed down That lonesome spiral Ain't never gonna see me Ever again I have peaked I am meek I am weak I can't sleep I surrender I pretend or I'm the problem From the rostrum Now I'm gone Like this song 'Cause I'm wrong Dave - guitars, vocals, keyboards Brian - bass, engineering, mixing Andy - drums and percussion Ian - mastering Painting by Steven Belledin

leave painting lie bathe chewing humiliated sfp sfpodcast cancerous cause i'm

172: The Power of The Hold Me Tight Conversation with Sue Johnson

Relationship Alive!

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 17, 2018 92:50

How can what we know about attachment and the power of our emotions, create deeper intimacy and resolve conflicts with your partner? In today’s episode you’re going to learn about a particular kind of conversation that you can have with your partner that can change everything. This week, our guest is Sue Johnson, author of Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love, and the founding director of the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy. In Hold Me Tight, Dr. Johnson shares her groundbreaking and remarkably successful program for creating stronger, more secure relationships and she’s going to share some of her wisdom on that topic with you today. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Also, please check out our first three episodes with Sue Johnson – Episode 100: Attraction – How to Sustain It and How to Revive It – with John Gottman and Sue Johnson, Episode 82: How Safety Leads to Better Sex – Sue Johnson, and Episode 27: Breaking Free from Your Patterns of Conflict with Sue Johnson. Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored an amazing company with a special offer for you. Our first sponsor today is Audible. Audible has the largest selection of audiobooks on the planet and now, with Audible Originals, the selection has gotten even better with custom content made for members. As a special offer, Audible wants to give you a free 30 day trial and 1 free audiobook. Go to Audible.com/relationship or text RELATIONSHIP to 500500 to get started. Our second sponsor is one of my wife Chloe’s favorite online clothing retailers, ModCloth. With the year wrapping up, it’s time to put a bow on 2018 and...think about new outfits, and the new you! Whether you’re still craving cozy sweaters or you’re ready to start stocking up for spring, ModCloth is your go-to. To get 15 percent off your purchase of $100 or more, go to modcloth.com and enter code ALIVE at checkout. This offer is valid for one time use only and expires on March 3rd, 2019. Resources: Check out Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight Online course Visit Sue Johnson’s website to learn more about her work. Pick up your copy of Sue Johnson’s book, Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/sue3 to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Julie Henderson. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome, to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. We've spoken a lot on this show about attachment, and the way that attachment influences how we operate in our lives and in our relationships. And I wanted to bring back one of the masters of showing us how to use what we know about attachment in relationship to the show, to talk about her new online program, and also to answer some questions from you, because we had some people in the Facebook group chime in with questions for this illustrious guest, who has been with us several times before. Her name is Sue Johnson. You probably know her as the creator of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy or EFT, which is how we'll refer to it in this episode. She was here in Episode 27, talking about how to break free from patterns of conflict. She was here in Episode 82, talking about how creating safety in your relationship leads to better sex. And we had the double hitter in Episode 100, with her and John Gotman, both talking about how to sustain and revive attraction in your relationship. Neil Sattin: Today, we're going to focus on Hold Me Tight, which is one of Sue's breakthrough books that explains how couples can take this journey, these several conversations that they can have, that lead them into deeper intimacy both in terms of understanding themselves in relationship, also how to work through conflict, forgiveness, sex, you name it, it's there in the book. And this has all been rolled out recently in an online program called Hold Me Tight Online, we're going to talk more about that. Sue also has a book coming out right around the beginning of 2019, on attachment theory in practice. And this is using emotionally focused therapy with individuals and families as well as couples. So, we may touch on that a little bit, and hopefully we'll also get to have Sue back to chat when that book comes out. Neil Sattin: I think that's enough from me. In the meantime, if you want to download a transcript of this episode, please visit neilsattin.com/sue3, so that's S-U-E, and then the number three. Or as always, you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get the transcript for this episode and our other episodes. Neil Sattin: Also, if you are interested in the online program that Sue is going to be talking about, you can visit neilsattin.com/holdmetight, and that will take you to a page where you can find out more about Sue Johnson's Hold me Tight Online program. Sue, thank you so much for sitting through that long introduction and it's such a pleasure to have you here again with us on Relationship Alive. Sue Johnson: Oh, it's always nice to be with you. Neil Sattin: Well, we have a lot to talk about today, and we'll do our best to be succinct. And I also want to encourage you listening that we're not going to go over all the finer points of what we've already talked about, those other episodes are there for you to listen to. But Sue, maybe we could start by just talking about what is emotionally focused therapy, what makes it unique from other ways that people might be used to working with therapists or understanding themselves. Sue Johnson: Emotionally Focused Therapy, as the title suggests, it basically works from the premise that the most powerful thing in a relationship is the emotional music that's playing. The emotional music is what structures a relationship, it's what organizes a relationship, defines, leads the partners to dance in a particular way with each other. So it's sort of dedicated to the idea that, if you want to understand relationships, and if you want to shape your relationship intentionally, whether to repair it or whether to just simply keep it strong, it's very important to understand the emotion that's going on when you dance with your partner. It's important to be able to deal with that emotion in a way that pulls your partner towards you. It's important to understand the impact you have on your partner. So EFT, really has focused on making emotion the couple's and the therapist's friend, and shown therapists and couples how to understand that emotion, how to deal positively with emotion, and how to use emotion to feel more connected with your partner. Sue Johnson: And I think the fact that we know how to use emotion, and we honor emotion in our work with couples, is one of the reasons why... The other special thing about EFT, is that we have a fantastic amount of research on outcome. We have over 20 studies, positive outcome studies, which makes us unique in the field of couple therapy. We're the gold standard of research in couples therapy. We do not have a problem with relapse in our research, which is pretty amazing, really. It always surprises me every time we do a study and we find no evidence of relapse, because all the sort of elephant in the room in couples therapy is that even if you can create change with a couple, you see them in a month's time or in six months time and they've kind of relapsed, they've gone back to being distressed. And that's not the case in our therapy. Sue Johnson: It's unique in that it's based on research, in terms of intervention. We've been doing this for 35 years now. It's unique in the way it deals with the most potent thing in the room, which is emotion. But in the end, the real thing that I think makes EFT different is that it's not based on somebody's idea about what love is or what relationships are all about. It's based on hundreds and hundreds of studies of adult bonding. It's based on a science of love. And so we have a map to what matters in relationships, what goes wrong, and exactly what you have to do to put it right. And that means that the EFT therapist is on target. We expect to create change, we expect our partners to grow, we expect our couples relationships to look not only a little happier, but more secure and be more stable at the end of therapy. Sue Johnson: Obviously I'm biased here, because I'm talking about my own work. I'm talking about 35 years of research and clinical work. But the truth is that we're the only approach to couple and family therapy that's based on a real science of relationships, and that science is attachment and bonding. And I think also, because of that science, in this model... The model suggests that together we're much more powerful than we are individually, and it values and honors connection between people. And so EFT practitioners and ICEEFT, the International Center for Excellence in EFT, which is our not-for-profit organization; basically, the headquarters are here in Canada. We've created communities all over the world. I think we have about 66 right now, affiliated with us to support therapists and health professionals to learn EFT, to get together and support each other, to help each other grow, to help therapists in those communities contribute to relationship education. Sue Johnson: We believe in creating community and I think that's something special about EFT. We do that wherever we go. The latest community that looks like it's going to take off is in Iran. Neil Sattin: Wow. Sue Johnson: And that's fascinating. Because of course, attachment science is about who we are as human beings. Attachment science applies to all of us, regardless of tribe, religion, political persuasion, race, gender. Attachment science, basically, is based on biology, and it tells us who we are as human beings, what our most basic needs are. So that's a bit of a mouthful, but that's what's special about EFT. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Right. Sue, I asked you for the short version. Come on. Sue Johnson: I'm sorry, I'm sorry. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: Okay, well, that's very hard, Neil. You know how passionate I am about what I do and how successful we are, so how can I... I'm sorry, that's the shortest I can manage, okay? Neil Sattin: No, that's great. And one thing that I really appreciate about the experience that you offer couples who are going through EFT, is that it literally does bring them along on an experience that allows them to feel each other in a different way. To feel each other's emotions in a different context, and to have that experience of getting through situations that are really tender, or challenging, or triggering and get to the other side in a way that is really constructive for their relationship and for their bonding. Sue Johnson: Yes. And we're talking about therapy here, but I know that later in the program we're going to talk about Hold Me Tight. Neil Sattin: Yes. Sue Johnson: The Hold Me Tight educational program is based on my book Hold Me Tight. And I put that relational program together. There's groups all over the countries, and all these communities run by therapists, or even people who aren't therapists. Pastors, anyone can actually buy the program and run the group, a Hold Me Tight group. And what always blows my mind when I go and do one of these groups, I think the biggest one I've ever done was with 100 couples at a time in San Francisco. And what always blows my mind is, people come up to you in the groups... Usually I do them over a weekend. And they go through the conversations that we teach them in the book. And people come up to you and they say things like, "Well, we just came cause we were curious. We don't even have any real huge issues in our relationship. And I thought that our relationship was pretty good, but this group experience has taken our relationship into places I never even knew existed." Sue Johnson: I just had one of these beautiful ones last week. This person sent me an email: "We didn't even know that we could have this kind of closeness and this kind of emotional connection. And we feel like it's changed how we'll be with each other in the future, so thank you." And I think what they're talking about is the profound, profound effect of being able to help people move into profound, bonding, conversations. They are the conversations... This is biologically prepared, powerful, experience. These are the conversations that our nervous system is wired to resonate to. These are the conversations that our brain says, "Yes, this is safe, and this is close, and this is what I want and need. This is what gives me the ability to stand up in the world and be strong." And people resonate with them. They are powerful, powerful experiences. And that's why we don't get relapse. Because you're brain... If you know how to have these bonding conversations, you remember them. They're not just something you put aside and say, "Oh, that was interesting but I don't think about it anymore." Sue Johnson: Your whole nervous system zings with the memory of them. And once you've had these experiences, your brain wants you to go back there. So bonding experiences are... We remember them all our lives. We remember the moments when we were vulnerable and our father turned and held us and said something to us. We remember that all our lives, we hold on to it. We go back to it when we're unhappy and sad. We go back to it with a thrill of joy. These experiences are core to what we need as human beings. So when you help people move into them in therapy or in an educational group, or even online together in the privacy of their own home, there's something very profound about that, and truly growth producing for individuals and for couples about that. And attachment science has shown us how to get there, how to... If we really understand who we are as human beings, of course we can craft powerful, transformative, experiences. Right? And that's the thing that keeps me passionate about this work. I think it keeps... EFT is passionate in general. Neil Sattin: And I want to take our listeners on this journey, a little bit, today. We'll give them a taste of this kind of experience. But before we do, I'm curious about how do you get when someone isn't along for the ride? [chuckle] Neil Sattin: And this is often the case in a couple, right? Where one person hears Sue Johnson on Relationship Alive and says, "We gotta find an EFT therapist, or we gotta buy this book Hold Me Tight." Or whatever it is, right? And the other person is maybe just like, "Yeah, I don't buy that therapy stuff." Or, "Sounds really like unhealthy co-dependence." When people come at it with their negative bias about it, or maybe they're just stonewalling and they're shut down to the influence of their partner at this stage in their relationship. How do you help enlist the partner in actually wanting, or hopefully, inviting them to participate in something like this? Sue Johnson: Oh, well that happens quite a lot. Even when people come for therapy sometimes, they're kind of being dragged there. Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: You can tell they're waiting... They're in the room with their teeth gritted, and they're... [chuckle] They're just wanting to wait for you to stop talking so they can explain how they've got to leave now, that's how you feel. What we do in EFT is what we always do. We start where people are. It's an incredible mistake from an EFT point of view to start telling people to be different. You just become dangerous when you do that, and they'll protect themselves against you. So, we start where we are. And I can give... For an example, I just did a session with an an Inuit couple, and we started with the fact that to sit and talk to somebody like me is definitely not part of Inuit male culture. And we talked about the fact that from his point of view the very best way of dealing with any problem was to go hunting. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: And I talked about that with him. I didn't explain therapy. That's the wrong channel. He's not interested in getting information from me, he's not even interested in it. So we talked about hunting, and we talked about what that did for him, and how when he hunted he felt competent. And he was out in a bitter environment but he was somehow in charge. And we talked about how strange it was for him to even think about sitting and talking about his emotions with someone like me, or reading the Hold Me Tight book. And as I joined with him, and listened to him, and had him teach me about how he dealt with his emotions, engaged other people, dealt with his needs for closeness, how he dealt with his vulnerability, which is... You can't get out of those things, they are universal, right? Unless you're a lizard or something, you have to be actively engaged with those three things. As we sat and talked about it he became more open. And I said, "Alright, well it sounds like your hunting has saved your life. It sounds like your hunting has really done a lot for you. And I think it's wonderful that you've been able to do that. And you're right, I can't offer you that experience. So would you like to talk to... Are you curious at all? And maybe I can help you feel some of the same kind of sure... " Sue Johnson: Cause he talked in words like "sureness" and "ground under his feet". He used these images. So I said, "Well, maybe I could help you find some of that sense of sureness and ground under your feet, when you're talking to your lady and you see that she's disappointed with you, which I'm hearing is one of the moments where you decide to go hunting." [chuckle] Sue Johnson: And I'd listen to him, he'd listen to me. He experienced me as safe. I wasn't telling him how to be. And so he said, "Yes that would be interesting." And he starts to look me in the eye and he starts to look up at me more, and he starts to... He's suddenly engaged. And we begin. We begin with what would he like to change in his relationship and what is happening to him in those moments in the relationship? We begin with his pain, we begin with the dilemmas that he would like a solution to, and we go slowly because in his culture that's the way it works. You speak slowly and you deal with things at a slow pace. I'm sorry, I'm getting interruption here, I forgot to turn off my phone it'll stop in a minute. Neil Sattin: It's okay. Sue Johnson: So we go slowly. And gradually he comes, he becomes curious. So you start where people are, you validate their uncertainty, their reluctance. If you think about it just in very human terms, the last thing you want to do if you are uncertain and vulnerable, is to go to talk to some strange professional person about that. You're worried about being shamed, you're worried about them telling you that there is something wrong with you, you're worried about what they are going to tell you about their relationship. You don't feel safe. Neil Sattin: Right. And of course what's challenging about these conversations when they happen just between partners in a relationship, is that they are so often very quickly triggering conversations. Sue Johnson: That's right. That's right. The partner hears, "Well, you don't even care enough about our relationship to go and talk to somebody about it, so that just proves what a creep you are." And people get stuck there. But what we are talking about is also another reason why I went to all the trouble to try and create the Hold Me Tight program, educational program. Because I assume that even though couple therapy is becoming a bit more normative, there are a huge number of people who would rather have their feet roasted in an oven than come to couple therapy, right? And they won't come. So I said, "Okay, then maybe they'd come to a group put on by their pastor in their church. Or, maybe they'd come to a group put on in the local hall with 10 other couples." And then it went to, "No, there's a whole bunch of people who won't come to that either." [chuckle] Beause in our culture, we hide our vulnerability or our uncertainty. And so I went, "Okay, well then there is a whole bunch of people, maybe they'd do an online program that's friendly and fun, and they do it in their own homes where they feel safe and private." So then of course that leaves us putting all the energy into creating an online. Sue Johnson: And I think what we are talking about here is the EFT commitment. Well, I'll just make it personal, my commitment. The commitment in this model, and if you are an attachment theorist, is not just to create a very good model, research it, and teach people about it. Which is big enough. We've been doing that for 35 years. The commitment is that as a psychological approach, that we have something to offer society and that we can help society learn to honor and value relationships, shape better relationships. That's what we're trying to do. So therapy, education. I think the main issue here that we're up against, where the person asked the question, is that our society, our culture, has not seen love relationships as something that are understandable, are shapeable, that you can shape, that you can learn to create, that you can nurture deliberately with intention. We don't talk about love like that. We say you fall in, you fall out. And we've basically had a very narrow mistaken view of romantic love relationships, and I think who we are as human beings. So people, they really don't see... They not only, "I'm not sure a therapist can help or a group can help." They really don't see love as something that you can craft and shape and understand. And we're trying to change that. We're trying to have an impact on that. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I think that's one reason why we resonate, you and I, so much is that that's definitely part of my mission and Relationship Alive's mission in the world as well. To affect that transformation. Because that is definitely a big deal, that there are a lot of people who don't quite understand that you can actually adjust things in ways that are actually helpful. Sadly, I think a lot of people have this story that they know of a couple that tried therapy and it just blew up their marriage or that sort of thing. It's just one positive experience at a time, I think, and the way that that ripples out in to the world. That people get the sense of, "Oh actually we know a lot more about how to do this than we did 20 years ago." And that's why we are having this conversation. Sue Johnson: Right. And that's the message we keep trying to get out there. And you know it is so interesting, the news is always focused on bad news. That's what the news wants to report. But I always say I don't really understand, it's beyond me why at some point, it hasn't been all over the front of the New York Times, that we now have a science of romantic love, of love period. That we now understand it. We have an incredible theory and science about what it's all about, that attachment started off with looking at the bonding between mother and child, and now it's grown. In the last 15 years it's been applied to adult relationships, and it really has so much to say about who we are and what we need to thrive and survive, and how we are relational beings, and how to create good loving relationships. And surely, this is revolutionary. Surely this is at least as important as understanding DNA, I think so. Neil Sattin: It's at least page two, if not the front page. Sue Johnson: I think it's the headline. I think it is much more important than us putting all this energy into going in rockets to the stars. Why don't we learn to become powerful, bonded, connected, cooperating human beings on this planet? Maybe we wouldn't need to go to the stars. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah, I hear ya, I totally hear you there. And this makes me wonder too, because there needs... I want to befriend to that person or persons who decide what goes on the front page of the New York Times. And if I meet that person I'll put in a good word for you, Sue. Sue Johnson: For sure, okay. Neil Sattin: And I am thinking that often what brings light on a particular subject is not how amazing it is, although sometimes that is true. But often it's the controversy that accompanies it. And that makes me wonder for you, your own perspective on what I think some people do still perceive as a controversy between attachment theory in relationships and how important it is to understand the science of bonding, and differentiation, and people learning to stand on their own two feet, and taking responsibility for themselves. And the interplay of those things. Yeah. So go ahead. Sue Johnson: Well, basically I think we in psychology have a huge responsibility here. Because we didn't know enough and so we set those things up. We set up being a strong individual and acknowledging your need for others as dichotomies. We set them up like they're on opposite sides of a long line. Like they're opposites. And of course they're not. That is a mistaken way of looking at it. All the research, and I'm talking about thousands of studies now. All the research since about 1960 points to the fact that the bottomline is the more securely connected to others you are, the more sure you are of yourself, the more... If you like, the more securely connected you are, the more articulated, coherent, and positive, your sense of self is. So, you find out who you are, you differentiate with others, not from others. If you look at the differentiation literature, it almost implies that there is a point in time where you just decide to look in the mirror and define yourself and tell yourself you're great, and that you can self soothe and you can do all this for yourself. This is nonsense, this is not who we are. We never get to that point. Sue Johnson: And the only people who look in the mirror, and totally define themselves and tell themselves they're wonderful and don't need other people, we call them psychopaths. And they are not particularly known for being wonderful members of society or particularly happy. It's a mistake we made because we didn't have the big picture. We just saw a little foot of the elephant that said that our needs, if they are expressed in negative ways, can get us into trouble. Our needs for others can get us into trouble, And indeed, that's true. But that's what we saw. So in family therapy for example, we focused on issues like enmeshment. And that's so interesting because we don't do that when we work with families in EFT. We focus on how people deal with their anxiety, and we help them move into that anxiety and hold it and regulate it, and be able to express that anxiety in ways that are not cohesive to other people, and not demeaning for themselves. And ways that pull the other people close. And they grow, and the relationships grow. That's what we do and we do it all the time. Sue Johnson: We don't find enmeshment or co-dependency particularly useful concepts. We just see it that people are stuck being anxious about the safety of their relationships. And when you're anxious, you either get all upset and try to yell and scream and demand and control things, or you tend to shut down and numb out. And neither of them are useful. They don't get you what you need. I think what I'm saying is, it's a much more integrated and rounded out and complete picture of differentiation and individuation and self soothing that you get from taking the whole picture of attachment and bonding in context. It's the little child who knows the mother will come if he calls, who goes out and believes that he can run down the slide, and who manages his distress if he finds that maybe he falls off the slide. He knows that if he calls his mum will come, he's in a safe universe where he feels loved and held, and his mother has come a number of times. So he's learned that distress is manageable and that he can manage it, and that he can call for another. He's internalized that sense of safety in the world. And he will grow up with a stronger sense of self and a stronger ability to go out into the world and take risks. Sue Johnson: This isn't a theory, there's thousands of studies on this now, this isn't a theory. Securely attached people who know how to trust others and reach for others, and who believe that others will be there for them, consistently have a better self-image, they are more able to take risks, they're more able to face the world, they're more resilient. They're basically, if you like, more differentiated. So this dichotomy is a false one, and it's really about the old theories of human functioning which are kind of in boxes. We've never had the whole picture coming up against the new approach to looking at human beings, which is attachment. And it's really the conflict between the old and the new there, and there doesn't have to be a conflict at all is what I'm saying. Neil Sattin: Right. I appreciate that. That you've, I think, shown very clearly how they include each other. That one comes with the other. And as soon as you split them apart that's when they start, either one, starts to become a little dysfunctional. Sue Johnson: I think on emotional level it really isn't about that. I think on an emotional level, it's about the fact that we all know that if we need another, that introduces a level of vulnerability. And I think, and especially in our society, we don't want to talk about that vulnerability. We want to believe that we're invulnerable. And society says you're supposed to be able to soothe yourself, deal with everything, live life at 50 miles an hour, have everything. So we want to believe we're invulnerable. And what attachment really says is, "That's not the way to real strength." Real strength is to understand where you're vulnerable. Understand the essence of your vulnerability, which is also a beautiful thing in human beings. Understand their need for closeness, the way they be able to tune into others, and you're own need for closeness, and accept that vulnerability. And then know how to deal with it positively. That is really strength, not the denial of vulnerability." Neil Sattin: Yeah. And this makes me think of the Hold Me Tight conversation. Sue Johnson: Yep. Neil Sattin: And I love how in our very first conversation where we talked about changing your conflict patterns, we talked a lot about discovering your demon dialogues, and the first three conversations that are part of the overall Hold Me Tight sequence. Sue Johnson: Yes. Neil Sattin: But then I'm thinking of the fulcrum, really, of Hold Me Tight sitting in the middle. So could we talk for a moment about what is the, 'the', Hold Me Tight conversation that happens and why is that so important? Sue Johnson: Well, what happens in a Hold Me Tight conversation is you have already... If you're helping a couple create one, it doesn't matter whether you're doing it in therapy or in an educational group or in an online program. Before you ask people to go into a Hold Me Tight conversation, you have helped them create a certain safety and sense of trust in their relationship. Because you cannot do a Hold Me Tight conversation while you are vigilant for danger, waiting for a negative pattern, like some sort of... Waiting to deal with an attack from your partner, or just waiting for your partner to let you down. When you're on guard, you can't move into a Hold Me Tight conversation. So you have to have a certain sense of safety first, and we've learned to take you there in EFT, and all the various forms of EFT. But once you have that, really what a Hold Me Tight conversation does is it moves people gradually into the three elements that we know are key to a bonding conversation. Sue Johnson: What defines the safety of a bond in a relationship is how emotionally accessible, responsive, and engaged you are. A-R-E; Accessible, Responsive, and Engaged. And I always relate it to, that the key question in a lot of relationships is, "Are you there for me?" A-R-E. Are you accessible? Are you open? Are you responsive to me? Will you tune into me? Will you move towards me when I call? Am I important enough that you'll tune into me and pay attention to me? Do you care about my needs? Will you engage me? Will you come and meet me on the dance floor? Maybe struggle even if I'm struggling with me? Are you committed to really being with me in a dance, even we are caught in a negative dance? Hold Me Tight conversations really create that emotional openness, that ability to send messages to each other that evoke empathy and caring, help the other person respond, that help us see that vulnerability in our partner and respond with what they need. And help us stay engaged even when that engagement gets hard. And it's really about being able to talk about... In the end, it's a conversation about your fears. And we all have the same fears in relationships, we're all terrified of rejection and abandonment. Sue Johnson: Those things are wired in, it doesn't say... It's nothing to do with personality strength or anything, it's to do with the fact that we're bonding animals, and abandonment and rejection are danger cues to our mammalian brain. They're life threatening, literally. We're born so vulnerable, when our brain is being formed, we know how to take our next breath, that if we are totally rejected or abandoned and left, we die. We know we're at risk. And we never lose that sense. So this vulnerability is wired in, and we're all afraid of rejection and abandonment, so we have these fears. And how we deal with these fears really has a lot to do with how we end up engaging others. And then it's not... But it's not just about how we deal with our fears, it's about whether we can actually know how, or have had the experience of being able to actually pinpoint our needs for connection, comfort, support, caring. Our needs... Just to share our reality to find out how valid it is. That's such a human need. Sue Johnson: To be able to share our needs, pinpoint them, and share them in a way that our partner can hear them and pulls our partner close to us. In the end, a bonding conversation is about sharing your vulnerabilities, your fears, and your needs in a way that helps your partner respond and come close. And helps you and them become accessible, responsive, and engaged on an emotional level. And that is the essence of bonding. And powerful conversations that can change the way you see yourself, the way you see other people, the way you experience your world. Neil Sattin: So this conversation that's about talking about your fears, sharing your needs and your vulnerabilities with your partner. And I love how you... The important thing comes at the end there, which is, in a way that invites your partner closer. Sue Johnson: Yeah. Neil Sattin: And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about what allows that to happen versus... 'Cause I think some people might hear that and think, "Oh god, my partner's already so needy and vulnerable. They're needy all the time. So I want them to be more needy? How's that going to work?" Sue Johnson: No, it's not about being more needy. It's about being able to hold on to your emotional balance and own your needs, and then ask for them to be met. And that is very different from what most of us see as the norm in relationships. Which is, "I expect my... " For most of us it's like, "I expect my partner... If my partner loves me, my partner already knows my needs." That's a huge myth in relationships. And what we want to do is we want our partner to respond to those needs without us having to actually show that we need. Because in our society we've been taught that showing that you need is somehow shameful or not okay, or it means you're immature, or whatever it means. It means you're not an independent adult, whatever that is. So most of us don't want to show our needs, and we don't quite know how to talk about them. And so then of course we're massively surprised that the message doesn't come across to our partner. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: It's quite humbling to write these books and do all these training tapes and do all these studies, and then talk to your own partner, or your own children, your own son, and hear yourself doing exactly the same things that we all do, and that couples do. You just hear yourself rather than turning and telling your partner that you are feeling upset by something and you would like to be reassured and comforted, you hear yourself turn and get accusatory or demanding or give advice or start telling your partner they should know better, having been married to you all these years, and read Hold Me Tight a few times. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: They should know better and they should be more supportive right now. Which of course I'm asking for support in a way where I have a hammer in my hand and so my partner just looks at the hammer and backs off. We get stuck in these dances because we're not tuning into our own emotional music or our partners. We don't make it easy often for our partner to see what we really need, and then when we don't get what we need, we're not very good at keeping our emotional balance and dealing with that. We get very agitated and attack or criticize, or we shut down and numb out. And neither of those things work. It's what a good science does, is it tells you how to look at basic phenomena in the world and understand them and how they work. Sue Johnson: And attachment science tells us how we work emotionally, and how relationships work. And giving advice to your partner, telling your partner what to do, explaining to your partner that they're somehow inadequate, [laughter] that doesn't work. That might be more comfortable for us than pausing for a minute, taking a breath, getting our emotional balance and saying, "What is happening with me, why am I getting so agitated here?" Then realizing that we are off balance, we're on our back foot, and we need someone to reassure us or just calm us for a moment. And being able to slow things down... And that's a lot of it actually, that emotion is fast and sometimes it's overwhelming for us and we either numb it out or we get carried away with it. Sue Johnson: Being able to keep your balance and slow things down and say, "Oh, I'm finding that very difficult, getting this letter that is telling me that I'm maybe not going to be considered for this promotion. I was pretending it didn't matter to me but in fact I'm finding it very difficult indeed. And what I really need is to be able to tell my partner somehow I feel kind of small right now because I expected to get an interview immediately, and I expected everyone to be delighted to interview me. And I'm feeling pretty small and I just need some support and reassurance." That's not what occurs to us. We get irritable or... So there's lots of ways not to connect, unfortunately. There's lots. And we do them anyway, even when we sort of know lots of information in our prefrontal cortex, we still get stuck. Neil Sattin: Right, because that part of our brain is turned off when we're in those moments of distress. And I'm wondering, for you, especially because you so graciously pointed out that you may have moments where you don't act quite by the book, What are your... Sue Johnson: Of course. Neil Sattin: What are your best ways, what are your favorite go-tos in your relationship for regrouping when things have gone off the rails a little bit? And I'm looking for your specific ways you bring yourself back into balance, ways you take responsibility for what just happened and corral the interaction back into a more generative space? Sue Johnson: It's interesting because basically I tune into all the things I've learned in EFT, but I can't... That takes a while. So if you ask me what my fast route out of that is, I'm usually able to see the few minutes of interaction, and I'm able to see the negative pattern, that I'm not actually asking for what I need. I'm usually able to see it. I should be able to do this after watching thousands of couples and all kinds of research studies. And so I'm able to see. My vision expands, if you like, from the little tiny piece of interaction that I just had or my feeling of frustration that I'm feeling. I listen to what I just said to my partner and I'm able to hear it in a broader context or see, " Wait a minute, that doesn't work, this is not the dance I want to be in." So I somehow have to have a sense of that. That I'm somehow getting stuck in some sort of narrow place that isn't going where I want to go, which is to feel safer, sounder, more connected, reassured. Somehow I know I'm going in the wrong direction. Sue Johnson: And then one way of thinking about that I've been thinking about lately, and I've written about it in my new book that's coming out in January, which is a professional book. Is I change channel. I change channel from just coping with the emotion and somehow putting it out to my partner in a way that I'm just putting it out and I'm not actually thinking about how to really connect with him with that emotion. But I change channel. And usually what that means is, I change into listening to my emotion differently, and being able to stay with the softer feelings. And I think that's what people do in general when they can do these things. They move from somehow lecturing their partner or complaining or pointing out issues or just saying a few things and hoping their partner are going to guess. Sue Johnson: They move into being able to name their emotions and to say... Or describe them in very simple ways. Like, "I feel small," or, "I feel uncertain right now," or. "for some reason I'm feeling really uncomfortable, maybe even a bit scared, and I don't quite know why." They trust themselves enough, they trust their partner enough, that they can go into those softer feelings. And when they do, when they move into that emotional space, emotion just... It's like the picture evolves. It's like what you're scared of becomes clearer, what you need becomes clearer. And when you turn and change channel into that deeper more open emotion, you give different signals. It's just natural if you stay there. Saying to someone, "For some reason that conversation I had with that person left me feeling really, really, frazzled and uncomfortable, and even a bit scared and I don't know why." That is an invitation to empathy and connection. That's completely different from, "I've had a bad day and you're not helping. I thought you were going to cook supper. And what I hope is underneath all my bad temper, you're going to see that I really need some help and comfort. But unfortunately you don't." [chuckle] "You just see that I'm dangerous and you avoid me." Right? Neil Sattin: Right. Which is exactly what you don't need in that moment. Sue Johnson: Yeah. We are not wired to deal with our vulnerability by ourselves. We can do it if we have to, for short periods of time. But we're not wired, and it's not the most efficient and effective way of dealing with our human vulnerabilities. It's not the strongest or best way to deal with our human vulnerabilities. We're wired, we're social bonding animals. We're wired to connect with other people. We're stronger together. Neil Sattin: What I hear you saying too is that, by changing the channel, you're basically going from the channel that's all about, "I'm having this emotion and I'm expressing it on you." To the channel of, "I'm realizing that I'm having this emotion. And if I wanted to connect with my partner in this moment, and around the fact that this is how I'm feeling, how would I do that?" Which invites maybe a totally different course of action in that moment. Sue Johnson: Yeah. But I don't think it's as deliberate as you're making it sound here. Usually in the first instance, people are being reactive. They're actually coping with softer emotions by shutting down or being very... Just giving facts. Or getting angry and becoming demanding. They're actually... Those are coping devices, really. The real core emotion underneath is not spoken, and so then the partner doesn't see it and doesn't see the need that that core emotion speaks to. There's a lot of conversation about this too. There's all kinds of conversations in our field about how empathy, and how empathy is a skill and you have to teach empathy skills, you have to train for it, I'm sorry, I don't think so. Sue Johnson: Empathy is right into us, it's there. What we have to do is understand what blocks it. And the main thing that blocks it is, I can't be empathic to my partner if I'm too busy dealing with my own overwhelming emotions. If most of the glucose going to my brain is dealing with my own discomfort, fear, uncertainty, I don't have any room to tune into my partner's emotions. I don't think we teach empathy, we model empathy, I guess. In Hold Me Tight groups and in the online program, people will see models of couples interacting with empathy and connection, but in the end, it's really about what blocks it, how you put out your message that blocks your partner's natural empathy, or how you can talk to your partner in a way that evokes that empathy. People are naturally empathetic and responsive, so in the EFT we just understand the blocks. And we help people dance in a way that those blocks don't come up or to see beyond those blocks. I guess that sounds a bit abstract but I think it's clear. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and I think that's getting at the heart of the question that I asked you a few minutes ago, around how do you have the Hold Me Tight conversation? A conversation where you're able to tell your partner about your vulnerabilities and your fears and your needs, without it coming across as being a demand or being needy, that it comes out of that place of being aware of your feelings and seeking, I think you've said it a couple times now, the softer emotions that are underneath the things that are on the surface. Sue Johnson: Yes. And I think the other thing about that is, a big part of EFT is it's a lot easier to do that if you grasp those emotions, and you have the normalized and validated, and you don't see those emotions as somehow proof that you are somehow not strong enough. Or that you're somehow not mature enough or that there is something wrong with you. A lot of EFT is validating, honoring, and holding people's emotions. Walking, setting up experiences where they walk into those emotions gradually, and at the same time are safe in that experience because they are given a framework where those emotions are understood, honored, validated. And our society hasn't been very good at that. We don't teach kids in schools about their own emotions or about the impact they have on other kids, and how to have safe conversations. We don't teach that. It's insane, we teach kids trigonometry but we don't teach kids what I just said, and so that's nutty. There are thousands of couples out there in the world. Sue Johnson: I'm just going to give a talk, public talk, in a few weeks in Toronto in December, called "What Every Couple Needs To Know", at the big Museum in Toronto. And I really believe that this stuff is what every couple needs to know. There are thousands of couples out there who have no way of understanding the dances they're caught in. No way of understanding even their own needs. You say to people, "What do you need?" And they say, "I need her to stop nagging." Or, "I need the conflicts to stop." Or, "I need... " These kinds of... "I need my partner to have more communication skills." These are huge. They don't know how to really go to the core of what they need and what they want. And we have taught people to be ashamed of them. So, a big part of EFT is we help people understand their own emotional lives, their own... The terrain of emotion. And who we are as bonding animals. And when you can accept those needs, when you can accept that we're all human beings who need comfort and security, and life is so huge. We all need to put our hand out in the dark and call, "Are you there?" And have a reassuring hand come and meet ours. And when we can do that, we can deal with the dark. And that's just the human condition. Neil Sattin: That makes me think too that that must be how EFT approaches couples where one partner or another has a deeper trauma history. Sue Johnson: Absolutely, that's right. And I think EFT is particularly suited to helping traumatized couples, traumatized individuals. Well, in fact what's interesting is we're talking about Hold Me Tight educational groups, that's only been around for a while. And this is what happens in EFT. Things have sprung up. There's now a Hold Me Tight educational group called, "Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go", for teens and their parents. There's a Hold Me Tight educational group based on the Christian version of the book Hold Me Tight, which is called, "Created For Connection." Which looks at how Christian beliefs fit in with attachment science and the link between those two. There's a Hold Me Tight educational group for in medical settings, which is very interesting. The biggest one we've just done, which we've just got a huge grant for, in Canada, is the Big Heart Institute back in Ottawa has asked us to adapt the program, and I hope one day we'll adapt the online program for this, too. Adapt the program for couples we're dealing with where one person's had a heart attack, because the research says that the best predictor of whether you'll have another heart attack, is not the severity of the first heart attack or even the damage done to the heart, it's the quality of your most intimate relationship. Sue Johnson: And so the cardiologist actually read this research. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: And said, "Oh, we're a relational human beings." "Ah, relationships really impact health." "Ah, we better get this crazy lady in and she can adapt her educational program to cardiac patients." So we did that. It's called, "Healing Hearts Together", and the preliminary data on it says it's great, really works. I ran a few of those groups and they blew my mind, they were wonderful. So everybody needs to know this, and the uses of creating this knowledge about what matters in love and how love works and how to repair it and keep it, has infinite, infinite usefulness. Whether it's in therapy, in educational groups, and for sure, we've got to take this stuff online. The Hold Me Tight Online was a huge project. Took us four years and oceans of grief and work. And there was a number of times when I really thought, "What on earth am I doing this for?" But you have to do it. If you feel that we all need this, and that we... This is sort of very basic information for us thriving and surviving. We have to make it accessible for people and so many things are online now. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And having gone through the course online, I can say that it's clear how much effort that you put in and how you tried to address different learning styles and give people lots of different examples, and make it entertaining at times. Sue Johnson: Yes. [chuckle] We even have cartoons, which at first, when my colleague said, "We need a cartoon couple." I said, "No, no, no, no, no." But yeah, we've got cartoons and we've got music and we've got images, and we've got me giving chats and other experts giving chats, and we've got exercises that we tailor to you. It was a lot of work. But hopefully, the couples... The idea is that it's accessible to everybody, then. What I would like, which is a complete silly dream, but... Oh no, it's actually not a silly dream. What I would like is for our western governments, the government of Canada, for example, to say, "Okay, Sue, we'd like to make the Hold Me Tight Online educational program available to all couples in Canada, or everyone who's just gotten married or something. We'll make it incredibly cheap. Will you help us do that?" And I say, "Of course." And I was just going to tell you that's impossible, and I forgot that actually a much simpler version, not at all the online program we've got now, but a much, much simpler, pared-down version. The government of Finland, has actually just helped my Finnish colleagues make their version of Hold Me Tight Online, a very simple version of it, available to almost all Finnish couples, which blows my mind. Neil Sattin: Wow. Sue Johnson: But they've done that because they believe that stable loving relationships and stable loving families, create stable, caring, positive, thriving societies. And of course, they're right about that. That's the way to do it. So. Yeah. Why am I talking about this? I don't know. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: Hold Me Tight online was a lot of work, but at this point I'm quite proud of it. And I'm glad that you enjoyed it and that you found it very... We wanted to make it fun. We made it for the people who would never dream of coming for therapy or even reading my book or even going to a group. So we thought, "Well then, we better make it fun because these people are used to having fun online." We did our best. I think it's pretty good. It's just like everything we do, we're very pleased with it for about a year and then we find ways that we could have done it better. This is kind of classic. I know that I'm going to feel the same way about my book, my therapy book that is coming out in January, which is EFT For Individuals, Couples, and Families. But it's really a book all about attachment. I know that I'll be pleased for about a week, and then I'll read it, and by next Summer I'll have found all the ways that I could have done it better. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Well, fortunately, that ensures new editions or new books or new versions, and new conversations for the podcast. So I feel totally fine about that, that you're... Sue Johnson: Do you? Neil Sattin: Yeah. That you'll be constantly improving. Sue, you've been so generous with your time and wisdom. And I do want to ensure that everyone has the links so that... They will be, of course, available on the page for this episode which is Neilsattin.com/Sue3. And then you can also, if you're interested in the Hold Me Tight online program, you can visit Neilsattin.com/holdmetight and that will take you to a page where you can find out more about the program. Sue, I'm wondering if we can... I have just two quick questions for you. Sue Johnson: Sure. Neil Sattin: They can be quick or not, it's up to you, But if they're quick it's totally fine. The first was another take on when I asked you what are your favorite ways of coming back when your conversations have gone off the rails, and you brought up changing the channel. Often, because we're such astute observers of our partners, it happens that we notice that our partner is totally triggered about something. Sue Johnson: Yes. Neil Sattin: And so I'm wondering, when you notice, "Oh, my husband is... He's triggered right now." What do you like to do in order to help bridge the gap in that moment? Sue Johnson: That's a nice question. I think the best guide to this is what we naturally do with beings where the vulnerability is not so hidden, I.e. Children and dogs. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: If you watch people with little kids, or you watch people with dogs, which I find fascinating, okay? They naturally, if they see vulnerability, if you watch them they slow down, they lower their voice, they lean in, they give more attention, they give a focused kind of attention, they might ask a question or they might reach with their hand. You know? It's fascinating to me... Let's just take dogs, if you watch dogs. I remember sitting in a Starbucks, I can't remember why I was doing this, years ago. And watching all the people look on their cellphones, and all the people completely avoid contact, and was thinking, "Goodness, me. This society, we're becoming lonelier and lonelier." And then I sat and watched and there was a line of dogs tied up outside the Starbucks on these posts, right? So they're all sitting there, it's a Saturday morning. So you watch all these people come out with their... They've looked to their phones the whole time, they're carrying things, and they're busy and distracted, and it's a busy street so they've got to stop, right? And they look down, and it was so fascinating to me how many people looked down, and if the dog looked back, particularly if the dog was kind of small and didn't look very happy. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: These distracted, distant, disconnected people would... I couldn't hear what they were saying, which I think helped actually, because... You would think. I remember watching this man who put his coffee down, and leaned down, and talked to this dog. He was obviously comforting the dog, you know? Like, "Oh you're waiting for your master, you don't want to be here." Then he reached out and patted the dog on the head. He gave the dog more focused, soft, slow, connected attention than he'd given anyone in the Starbucks for whenever, right? Neil Sattin: Right. Sue Johnson: So we know how to do it. It's a question of tuning in and giving it. Unfortunately, sometimes we're not very balanced so we'll turn and say, "What the hell's wrong with you?" [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Right, right. That's why I love the way that you put it. Cause I'm so used to saying you see your partner and they're triggered, but I love your articulation of when you see vulnerability. Because that is what you're really seeing in that moment, is your partner in a vulnerable space. And if you know that your partner is the kind of person who, when they're vulnerable, needs space, is there an adjustment that you make to how you would respond to that? Would you just give them space and then revisit? Or is there a way to bring it out that doesn't... Sue Johnson: No, I'd reach and then give them space. Neil Sattin: Got it. Sue Johnson: I'd reach to say, "I'm saying I am accessible, I am here, I see you. But I'm not demanding that you turn to me right now. I see you, and I see that sometimes you need time when you're in this space. So I'm just seeing you and I'm here." That's a very powerful thing to do. Good parenting is that. Good parenting, parents know their kids style. And they do that. They say, I've seen people do it in therapy when they start to really mend their relationship. They say, "Well, I understand this is hard for you to talk about, and I see that and maybe when I was your age I couldn't talk about these things at all, and I just want you to know that I'm going to be here. And I see how hard it is for you and I want to help you. And I'm right here when you want to turn around and talk." This is amazing. This is an amazing invitation, right? And people can do that, they really can. They can offer each other that kind of space and that kind of empathy. I take account of your style of response. But for me to do that, I have to be feeling pretty safe. Otherwise, I'm busy dealing with my emotions about the fact that you don't talk about anything and that leaves me alone. And if I'm stuck there, I'm not going to be able to accommodate you. I have to have my own balance, if I'm dancing, before I can accommodate to you in that way. Neil Sattin: Right, right. Yeah. And so that brings us full circle to how we take care of ourselves when we recognize that we're in distress and take responsibility for how we're feeling in the moment. Sue Johnson: Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: And I think a lot of it is, many of us are dealing with relationships which happen very fast in a busy world where there's lots of demands on us. And I think the central issue is that many of us don't even know what's possible. We've never even seen the kind of relationships that we talk about in these programs, and in EFT and therapy, where people can diffuse conflicts, stand together against a negative pattern, find a way to be accessible, responsive and engaged. People haven't even seen it. They've see a bit of it in Hollywood, which is usually infused with sexual infatuation. They've seen little moments of it, which I think is great. Okay? I think that's great. Right? One of the ways movies and books have always civilized us, right? In some ways. But they don't really know how to get there. So, lots of times we're trying to create relationships where we really don't have a model of what's possible at all. And that's why I hope therapists who like EFT will maybe think about running Hold Me Tight groups, will maybe try the online program themselves and tell their clients about it, or tell their communities about it. Because so many of us don't even know what is possible in our relationships. Sue Johnson: We haven't even seen that these conversations can happen. And when we know that, the world changes. Our sense of what is possible with other people changes. This is a huge thing. Right? Neil Sattin: It's true. And I've definitely seen that in my own connection as well, as it's evolved through our patterns of conflict and beyond, which has been nice. And your work has definitely been helpful for us as well, so I'm so appreciative of that. Sue, my last question... And you talk about dance a lot, and... Sue Johnson: Yeah. Well, that's because I dance Tango, that's why. Neil Sattin: Yes. And I think we've even talked about it on the show before cause my partner, Chloe, and I do dance as well. But I'm wondering, for someone who's listening and they're like, "This all sounds great and amazing and I want to try, and it also sounds a little heavy, a little intense." What do you recommend for people in terms of keeping things light? And are there actual ways that you incorporate lightness and play and fun into how you work with people? Sue Johnson: Well, sure. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Sue Johnson: Well, I do couples therapy because it's more fun and more interesting than anything else, personally. And when I run Hold Me Tight groups, I think it's fun. I certainly hope our online program's fun or we've completely failed. It doesn't have to be heavy all the time. Learning can be fun, it can be intriguing, fascinating, surprising... Neil Sattin: But you know, when couples feel like, "Ah, we're so stuck and it's going to take all this work." And there's some truth to that, right? It's going to take some work for them to shift their patterns. And yet, yeah, I think it's more about... Sue Johnson: Discovery. If you're feeling... I think it all boils down to a sense of safety. My sense is couples come to see me and in the first few sessions it's not fun at all, because they're scared and they're worried. When they start to relax with me and we can play, and we can look at the dances they have, and we can look at how normal they are, and we can play with them and share them, and we can look at how stuck they got, and see how silly it is in some ways. EFT is not always heavy at all. We have a lot of laughter. And people not launch themselves into these huge heavy conversations. They're very gradual, and we make safety as they do it. So, yeah, it's not all heavy. It's you take it at your own speed. And for sure, people find it intriguing. Sue Johnson: The dropout rate in EFT is really low. In our studies and clinically in practice, the way people report to us, people stay. Sure it's heavy sometimes, but people stay because they're learning so much. And it's an amazing journey, they're learning about themselves, they're learning about their partner. And there's a huge amount of fun in there. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and you're reminding me that some of... Honestly, some of the funniest moments, I think, in my relationship, are when we... After we've recognized a pattern, which is one of the early things that you suggest couples do, is how they identify what are the patterns that they typically end up in patterns of conflict. And then when you're able to see it happening, and you're able to have those moments of like, "Look at us, we're doing that thing, that... " Sue Johnson: Yes. Neil Sattin: "We're just doing it again." And it can be hysterical. Chloe and I will be in the middle of it. And we'll just break out laughing, from a place of pretty intense conflict when we have those moments of, "Oh yeah, that's us just doing that thing again." Sue Johnson: That's right. It's like I can think of a dance analogy. You can be dancing with a partner who you trust a lot. And the partner tries a very tricky move. I can think of one where my teacher who's a fantastic dancer tried a very tricky move. And I sort of got half way through the move, where he was going, and then I got my high heel caught in the hem of my pants. [chuckle] Sue Johnson: And as we both nearly fell down flat. Okay, we nearly

Metaradio

Cierre del Estraperlo - #SábadoEnLata

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 8, 2018 50:25

Vídeo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN_A4co-eYU SHREK Written by William Steig & Ted Elliott SHREK Once upon a time there was a lovely princess. But she had an enchantment upon her of a fearful sort which could only be broken by love's first kiss. She was locked away in a castle guarded by a terrible fire-breathing dragon. Many brave knights had attempted to free her from this dreadful prison, but non prevailed. She waited in the dragon's keep in the highest room of the tallest tower for her true love and true love's first kiss. (laughs) Like that's ever gonna happen. What a load of - (toilet flush) Allstar - by Smashmouth begins to play. Shrek goes about his day. While in a nearby town, the villagers get together to go after the ogre. NIGHT - NEAR SHREK'S HOME MAN1 Think it's in there? MAN2 All right. Let's get it! MAN1 Whoa. Hold on. Do you know what that thing can do to you? MAN3 Yeah, it'll grind your bones for it's bread. Shrek sneaks up behind them and laughs. SHREK Yes, well, actually, that would be a giant. Now, ogres, oh they're much worse. They'll make a suit from your freshly peeled skin. MEN No! SHREK They'll shave your liver. Squeeze the jelly from your eyes! Actually, it's quite good on toast. MAN1 Back! Back, beast! Back! I warn ya! (waves the torch at Shrek.) Shrek calmly licks his fingers and extinguishes the torch. The men shrink back away from him. Shrek roars very loudly and long and his breath extinguishes all the remaining torches until the men are in the dark. SHREK This is the part where you run away. (The men scramble to get away. He laughs.) And stay out! (looks down and picks up a piece of paper. Reads.) "Wanted. Fairy tale creatures."(He sighs and throws the paper over his shoulder.) THE NEXT DAY There is a line of fairy tale creatures. The head of the guard sits at a table paying people for bringing the fairy tale creatures to him. There are cages all around. Some of the people in line are Peter Pan, who is carrying Tinkerbell in a cage, Gipetto who's carrying Pinocchio, and a farmer who is carrying the three little pigs. GUARD All right. This one's full. Take it away! Move it along. Come on! Get up! HEAD GUARD Next! GUARD (taking the witch's broom) Give me that! Your flying days are over. (breaks the broom in half) HEAD GUARD That's 20 pieces of silver for the witch. Next! GUARD Get up! Come on! HEAD GUARD Twenty pieces. LITTLE BEAR (crying) This cage is too small. DONKEY Please, don't turn me in. I'll never be stubborn again. I can change. Please! Give me another chance! OLD WOMAN Oh, shut up. (jerks his rope) DONKEY Oh! HEAD GUARD Next! What have you got? GIPETTO This little wooden puppet. PINOCCHIO I'm not a puppet. I'm a real boy. (his nose grows) HEAD GUARD Five shillings for the possessed toy. Take it away. PINOCCHIO Father, please! Don't let them do this! Help me! Gipetto takes the money and walks off. The old woman steps up to the table. HEAD GUARD Next! What have you got? OLD WOMAN Well, I've got a talking donkey. HEAD GUARD Right. Well, that's good for ten shillings, if you can prove it. OLD WOMAN Oh, go ahead, little fella. Donkey just looks up at her. HEAD GUARD Well? OLD WOMAN Oh, oh, he's just...he's just a little nervous. He's really quite a chatterbox. Talk, you boneheaded dolt... HEAD GUARD That's it. I've heard enough. Guards! OLD WOMAN No, no, he talks! He does. (pretends to be Donkey) I can talk. I love to talk. I'm the talkingest damn thing you ever saw. HEAD GUARD Get her out of my sight. OLD WOMAN No, no! I swear! Oh! He can talk! The guards grab the old woman and she struggles with them. One of her legs flies out and kicks Tinkerbell out of Peter Pan's hands, and her cage drops on Donkey's head. He gets sprinkled with fairy dust and he's able to fly. DONKEY Hey! I can fly! PETER PAN He can fly! 3 LITTLE PIGS He can fly! HEAD GUARD He can talk! DONKEY Ha, ha! That's right, fool! Now I'm a flying, talking donkey. You might have seen a housefly, maybe even a superfly but I bet you ain't never seen a donkey fly. Ha, ha! (the pixie dust begins to wear off) Uh-oh. (he begins to sink to the ground.) He hits the ground with a thud. HEAD GUARD Seize him! (Donkey takes of running.) After him! GUARDS He's getting away! Get him! This way! Turn! Donkey keeps running and he eventually runs into Shrek. Literally. Shrek turns around to see who bumped into him. Donkey looks scared for a moment then he spots the guards coming up the path. He quickly hides behind Shrek. HEAD GUARD You there. Ogre! SHREK Aye? HEAD GUARD By the order of Lord Farquaad I am authorized to place you both under arrest and transport you to a designated resettlement facility. SHREK Oh, really? You and what army? He looks behind the guard and the guard turns to look as well and we see that the other men have run off. The guard tucks tail and runs off. Shrek laughs and goes back about his business and begins walking back to his cottage. DONKEY Can I say something to you? Listen, you was really, really, really somethin' back here. Incredible! SHREK Are you talkin' to...(he turns around and Donkey is gone) me? (he turns back around and Donkey is right in front of him.) Whoa! DONKEY Yes. I was talkin' to you. Can I tell you that you that you was great back here? Those guards! They thought they was all of that. Then you showed up, and bam! They was trippin' over themselves like babes in the woods. That really made me feel good to see that. SHREK Oh, that's great. Really. DONKEY Man, it's good to be free. SHREK Now, why don't you go celebrate your freedom with your own friends? Hmm? DONKEY But, uh, I don't have any friends. And I'm not goin' out there by myself. Hey, wait a minute! I got a great idea! I'll stick with you. You're mean, green, fightin' machine. Together we'll scare the spit out of anybody that crosses us. Shrek turns and regards Donkey for a moment before roaring very loudly. DONKEY Oh, wow! That was really scary. If you don't mind me sayin', if that don't work, your breath certainly will get the job done, 'cause you definitely need some Tic Tacs or something, 'cause you breath stinks! You almost burned the hair outta my nose, just like the time...(Shrek covers his mouth but Donkey continues to talk, so Shrek removes his hand.) ...then I ate some rotten berries. I had strong gases leaking out of my butt that day. SHREK Why are you following me? DONKEY I'll tell you why. (singing) 'Cause I'm all alone, There's no one here beside me, My problems have all gone, There's no one to deride me, But you gotta have faith... SHREK Stop singing! It's no wonder you don't have any friends. DONKEY Wow. Only a true friend would be that cruelly honest. SHREK Listen, little donkey. Take a look at me. What am I? DONKEY (looks all the way up at Shrek) Uh ...really tall? SHREK No! I'm an ogre! You know. "Grab your torch and pitchforks." Doesn't that bother you? DONKEY Nope. SHREK Really? DONKEY Really, really. SHREK Oh. DONKEY Man, I like you. What's you name? SHREK Uh, Shrek. DONKEY Shrek? Well, you know what I like about you, Shrek? You got that kind of I-don't-care-what-nobody-thinks-of-me thing. I like that. I respect that, Shrek. You all right. (They come over a hill and you can see Shrek's cottage.) Whoa! Look at that. Who'd want to live in place like that? SHREK That would be my home. DONKEY Oh! And it is lovely! Just beautiful. You know you are quite a decorator. It's amazing what you've done with such a modest budget. I like that boulder. That is a nice boulder. I guess you don't entertain much, do you? SHREK I like my privacy. DONKEY You know, I do too. That's another thing we have in common. Like I hate it when you got somebody in your face. You've trying to give them a hint, and they won't leave. There's that awkward silence. (awkward silence) Can I stay with you? SHREK Uh, what? DONKEY Can I stay with you, please? SHREK (sarcastically) Of course! DONKEY Really? SHREK No. DONKEY Please! I don't wanna go back there! You don't know what it's like to be considered a freak. (pause while he looks at Shrek) Well, maybe you do. But that's why we gotta stick together. You gotta let me stay! Please! Please! SHREK Okay! Okay! But one night only. DONKEY Ah! Thank you! (he runs inside the cottage) SHREK What are you...? (Donkey hops up onto a chair.) No! No! DONKEY This is gonna be fun! We can stay up late, swappin' manly stories, and in the mornin' I'm makin' waffles. SHREK Oh! DONKEY Where do, uh, I sleep? SHREK (irritated) Outside! DONKEY Oh, well, I guess that's cool. I mean, I don't know you, and you don't know me, so I guess outside is best, you know. Here I go. Good night. (Shrek slams the door.) (sigh) I mean, I do like the outdoors. I'm a donkey. I was born outside. I'll just be sitting by myself outside, I guess, you know. By myself, outside. I'm all alone...there's no one here beside me... SHREK'S COTTAGE - NIGHT Shrek is getting ready for dinner. He sits himself down and lights a candle made out of earwax. He begins to eat when he hears a noise. He stands up with a huff. SHREK (to Donkey) I thought I told you to stay outside. DONKEY (from the window) I am outside. There is another noise and Shrek turns to find the person that made the noise. He sees several shadows moving. He finally turns and spots 3 blind mice on his table. BLIND MOUSE1 Well, gents, it's a far cry from the farm, but what choice do we have? BLIND MOUSE2 It's not home, but it'll do just fine. GORDO (bouncing on a slug) What a lovely bed. SHREK Got ya. (Grabs a mouse, but it escapes and lands on his shoulder.) GORDO I found some cheese. (bites Shrek's ear) SHREK Ow! GORDO Blah! Awful stuff. BLIND MOUSE1 Is that you, Gordo? GORDO How did you know? SHREK Enough! (he grabs the 3 mice) What are you doing in my house? (He gets bumped from behind and he drops the mice.) Hey! (he turns and sees the Seven Dwarves with Snow White on the table.) Oh, no, no, no. Dead broad off the table. DWARF Where are we supposed to put her? The bed's taken. SHREK Huh? Shrek marches over to the bedroom and throws back the curtain. The Big Bad Wolf is sitting in the bed. The wolf just looks at him. BIG BAD WOLF What? TIME LAPSE Shrek now has the Big Bad Wolf by the collar and is dragging him to the front door. SHREK I live in a swamp. I put up signs. I'm a terrifying ogre! What do I have to do get a little privacy? (He opens the front door to throw the Wolf out and he sees that all the collected Fairy Tale Creatures are on his land.) Oh, no. No! No! The 3 bears sit around the fire, the pied piper is playing his pipe and the rats are all running to him, some elves are directing flight traffic so that the fairies and witches can land...etc. SHREK What are you doing in my swamp? (this echoes and everyone falls silent.) Gasps are heard all around. The 3 good fairies hide inside a tent. SHREK All right, get out of here. All of you, move it! Come on! Let's go! Hapaya! Hapaya! Hey! Quickly. Come on! (more dwarves run inside the house) No, no! No, no. Not there. Not there. (they shut the door on him) Oh! (turns to look at Donkey) DONKEY Hey, don't look at me. I didn't invite them. PINOCCHIO Oh, gosh, no one invited us. SHREK What? PINOCCHIO We were forced to come here. SHREK (flabbergasted) By who? LITTLE PIG Lord Farquaad. He huffed and he puffed and he...signed an eviction notice. SHREK (heavy sigh) All right. Who knows where this Farquaad guy is? Everyone looks around at each other but no one answers. DONKEY Oh, I do. I know where he is. SHREK Does anyone else know where to find him? Anyone at all? DONKEY Me! Me! SHREK Anyone? DONKEY Oh! Oh, pick me! Oh, I know! I know! Me, me! SHREK (sigh) Okay, fine. Attention, all fairy tale things. Do not get comfortable. Your welcome is officially worn out. In fact, I'm gonna see this guy Farquaad right now and get you all off my land and back where you came from! (Pause. Then the crowd goes wild.) Oh! (to Donkey) You! You're comin' with me. DONKEY All right, that's what I like to hear, man. Shrek and Donkey, two stalwart friends, off on a whirlwind big-city adventure. I love it! DONKEY (singing) On the road again. Sing it with me, Shrek. I can't wait to get on the road again. SHREK What did I say about singing? DONKEY Can I whistle? SHREK No. DONKEY Can I hum it? SHREK All right, hum it. Donkey begins to hum 'On the Road Again'. DULOC - KITCHEN A masked man is torturing the Gingerbread Man. He's continually dunking him in a glass of milk. Lord Farquaad walks in. FARQUAAD That's enough. He's ready to talk. The Gingerbread Man is pulled out of the milk and slammed down onto a cookie sheet. Farquaad laughs as he walks over to the table. However when he reaches the table we see that it goes up to his eyes. He clears his throat and the table is lowered. FARQUAAD (he picks up the Gingerbread Man's legs and plays with them) Run, run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man. GINGERBREAD MAN You are a monster. FARQUAAD I'm not the monster here. You are. You and the rest of that fairy tale trash, poisoning my perfect world. Now, tell me! Where are the others? GINGERBREAD MAN Eat me! (He spits milk into Farquaad's eye.) FARQUAAD I've tried to be fair to you creatures. Now my patience has reached its end! Tell me or I'll...(he makes as if to pull off the Gingerbread Man's buttons) GINGERBREAD MAN No, no, not the buttons. Not my gumdrop buttons.

3D小丑女你会来参加我的叛逆派对吗木木的3D音乐实验室

3D催眠【睡前精神按摩】

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 15, 2018 4:06

I don't behave, I don't behave, oh eh 我不守规矩我行为乖张 I don't behave, I don't behave, oh eh 我不守规矩我行为乖张 I don't behave, I don't behave, oh 我不守规矩我行为乖张 Are you going to the party? Are you going to the show? 你会来参加我的叛逆派对吗？你会来参加我的杀戮盛典吗？ Cause I'm only a man, do what I can, oh 但我不过是血肉之躯我只做力所能及的事 Cause I'm only a man, do what I can 但我不过是血肉之躯我只做力所能及的事 Are you going to the party? Are you going to the show? 你会来参加我的叛逆派对吗？你会来参加我的杀戮盛典吗？ I did something bad, maybe I was wrong 我做了坏事也许吧 Sometimes people say that I'm a big time bomb 总有人说我是个巨大的定时炸弹 But I'm only a man 但我不过是血肉之躯 And I do what I can 我只做力所能及的事

164: How Love Can Dissolve Conflict - Relationship Magic with Guy Finley

Relationship Alive!

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 25, 2018 77:19

They say that love can conquer all - but how do you really tap into “the power of love” to resolve conflicts in your relationship? On top of that, how do you learn what you need to learn so that you don’t keep repeating the same fights over and over again in your relationship? This week, our guest is Guy Finley, author of the new book Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together and the international bestseller The Secret of Letting Go. Along with getting juicy tidbits of Guy’s wisdom in a deep dive, we’re also going to walk through the process of transformation, so you can experience for yourself how to make the shift from conflict to love as you listen. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Along with our amazing listener supporters (you know who you are - thank you!), this week's episode is being sponsored by two amazing companies, with special offers for you. MyLola.com offers feminine hygiene products that are made with 100% natural and organic ingredients - so you don’t have to wonder what’s going into them (or...you)! They are offering you 40% off any subscription if you visit mylola.com and use the code “ALIVE” at checkout. Babbel.com is the world's best-selling language learning app - making it easy for you to learn French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Danish - and many more languages. Is there a language you've always wanted to learn? Try Babbel for FREE at Babbel.com and discover how easy it can be. Resources: Visit the website for Guy Finley’s new book Relationship Magic for special bonus content Visit Guy Finley’s main website FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict… Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) www.neilsattin.com/magic Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Guy Finley. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. On this show, we've talked a lot about what happens when you get triggered and what to do and what not to do, and we've talked about it from this perspective of like, a neurobiological perspective, and we've touched a little bit on the perspective of trying to find love in those moments. What would love do when you're in the middle of, let's say, a conflict with your partner? But what if the power of love allowed you to dissolve conflict with your partner? And what if it not only allowed you to dissolve conflict, but it allowed you to truly learn the lessons that are there for you to learn so that you can get past the kind of pattern of arguing, and tension, and resentment that's so easy to foster in a relationship? And that's the strangest thing, right? Because it's love that brings us together and yet somehow we find ourselves there with this person who's the apple of our eye, when they are just annoying us to no end. Sometimes it's the very things that drew us to that person that then drive us crazy. Neil Sattin: So, there's some purpose behind all of that. And today's guest is going to help not only reveal the purpose behind all of that, but help us work a little magic in order to transform it. His name is Guy Finley, and you may be familiar with him, he's the author of The Secret of Letting Go and his new book, Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together is all about what I've just been talking about, how to wake up and dissolve the conflict, the resentments, the things that seem to keep you connected and yet painfully separate from your partner. The book is new and if you want to find out about Relationship Magic, the book itself, you should visit relationshipmagicbook.com. We're going to dive in and we're going to talk about all of that. And of course, there will always be links available to you in the detailed transcript of today's episode, which you can download if you visit neilsattin.com/magic as in Relationship Magic. Or you can always text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. I think that's enough from me right now. So, Guy Finley, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Guy Finley: Thanks Neil, I'm glad to be with you. Neil Sattin: Well, it's such a treat. And one of the funny things that I was thinking as I was reading Relationship Magic was how much I wished that I had had like say two more weeks to just sit there after reading the book, and really let it all digest and percolate. So a lot of the questions that you're probably going to get from me are really raw from my experience of having been in the book and I'm still waiting for some of that magic to occur, but I feel like I'm on the cusp of its potential, and so I'm really excited to have you here to chat about your book and this idea that love and pain are these forces that can't coexist really, and yet so often we find ourselves stuck in pain with our partner. Why do you think that's so? Guy Finley: First, your reaction to the book is perfect in a way in that if you ever go to a concert or if you are a seeker of some kind and read something about love or principles, and the moment you hear that music or feel that idea you're like, My favorite image. We had a Rottweiler, and every once in a while I would say something to her to try to communicate something and she would start tilting her head left and right, knowing that she was hearing something that she didn't understand, but that she wanted to which indicates that there's a corresponding part, in this instance, in all of us when we read or hear something that resonates in such a way that indicates, "Boy, there's something much deeper here that I'm getting immediately and I want to know what it is." And then that waiting period or the re-reading period, a time of contemplation is the way in which we communicate, actually commune with that higher part of us that already understands what we are now wanting to know. Guy Finley: And so, I just wanted to corroborate that, Neil, so that everyone can understand those moments, not just in hopefully reading this book with the principles that it presents, so that we have a little way to realize that something in us is listening and if we learn to listen even a little more carefully, we can start to understand what that part of us that's pulled to that moment wants to understand. Now to tie that in with the last part of the question, it isn't that pain and love can't coexist, it's that they have a relationship that we don't understand and until we can begin to realize within ourselves why it is that someone we love can be so incredibly exasperating will blame them for the pain instead of understanding why that moment has appeared the way it has in our relationship. And that's principally what my book is about. Neil Sattin: Yeah. You're speaking right to me and I'm remembering the part in the book where you talk about how the principle is there, let's call it the love principle, it's already there illuminating your experience, that that points to its existence as if you were... You need the sun in order to see your shadow and it's like, "Well, the sun is shining right there behind you." So you know it's there. Guy Finley: I love that you have pulled out of the, at least, in part out of the book. One of my favorite sections that I thought might be difficult to grasp, but I had to put it in there. Listen, yes, as hard as it is to understand, and we can continue with a metaphor, we sit here, I'm sitting here in southern Oregon, you're in Portland and it's a beautiful sunny day, it's about 70 degrees outside and we look out and see the trees or the wildlife that I'm looking at and we see the objects, but we don't see the light that actually reveals them. We don't see the light that actually reveals them, we don't actually see light other than those moments where we might look at a sunset but even then, we don't see light, and we don't see the fact that light isn't the static affair, that light is a steady stream of waves and particles from that glorious orb that we are sustained by, and it never stops raining down on us; in one sense, making everything that's visible, visible and at the same time giving life to everything that's revealed by it. See, I think love is like that. Guy Finley: I think we stand in it, we're related to everything through it, we're connected because of it, and yet we don't know anything about it other than to say, "I love you," when somebody does what we like, or pleases us, or we have that moment of sentimentality, which isn't too different from sometimes saying, "I love milk shakes," or "I love pizza." I know, and it is, it's humorous in a way. Actually, if one has a proper detachment to our present level of consciousness, it's all pretty funny. But it's sad in a way because with the same ease that we can say, "God, I love you. My love, you are my heart, thank you for being you." And then two minutes later because he or she looks at us askew, there's no remembrance at all, that the moment before we were joined by something that now seems to have disappeared, obliterated by a flash of a negative reaction, and we don't understand the negative reaction and because we don't and take the feeling of it as being viable and real, meaning that it confirms that something's wrong with our partner, we lose touch with the fact that love never separates, love never alienates, and certainly love never has an enemy. Guy Finley: So these are the things that we want to examine but not just intellectually, moment to moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, in the throes of those moments as you said at the start, where the reaction is ruling us and ruining everything and all we can do later is say, "I'm sorry, this book is for people who want to get past saying I'm sorry." Neil Sattin: Right, right. And I'm thinking of this thing that happened the other night, that was such a clear example of the difference between how love acts, let's say through me and when I'm in a negative place, and when that negative energy comes through me. So my wife Chloe and I, we'd had a great day, a fantastic day, and we were wrapping up and in fact, we had put a little bit of energy into resetting our kitchen which is something we've wanted to do nightly for years now. And finally, we're on it, so every night, even if we're exhausted, we're in there just making sure the dishes are clean, counters clean, like it's all good. So we went through that whole thing this one night, a few nights ago, and then maybe I took the dog out. I'm not sure I'm remembering the exact sequence of events, but it's not important. What is important is that I came in and Chloe picked up this little corner of a wrapper that had been left on the table and she asked me where does this go? And I looked at her and what I could have done is just said, "Oops, I guess I missed something." 'Cause we're on the same team in trying to reset the kitchen, and honestly, just those little corners of wrappers, if they're not thrown in the trash, they do add up, you start finding 'em all over the place, especially when you had a couple kids to the mix. They seemed to have a knack for leaving corners of wrappers everywhere. Neil Sattin: So anyway, I took it from her and I had to laugh at myself after reading your book because the very next thing I did wasn't just throw that away and give her a big hug and laugh about it. What I do was, I saw that there was a wrapper from a stick of butter that had been left on the counter. Guy Finley: Oh, god. Neil Sattin: And that wasn't my doing, of course. That was Chloe's doing and so what did I do but I grabbed the wrapper on my way to the trash and I said, "I guess I'll throw this in the trash too." Guy Finley: Yeah. Neil Sattin: And for us, we live this stuff so we're typically very tuned into when we're triggered, and calling a stop to things, and getting back into balance, and at the same time there we were. And it's something that we've actually been talking a lot lately is feeling like there's something new for us to discover here around the ways that those little resentments have found their way into the nooks and crannies of our coexistence to drive us crazy. Guy Finley: Yeah. Neil Sattin: And so I read in your book about this tendency of a negative when one of you is in a negative space to meet it with negative energy and just how ridiculous it is to think that that's going to actually lead to anything positive. And I just laughed at myself thinking about that incident and that didn't end up being a big blowup between me and Chloe. I think we're long past the big blowup stage of anything like that, but at the same time I was like, "Oh, yeah, there's something else here for me to learn." Guy Finley: This is such a perfect story 'cause you'd have to be physically dead not to relate and understand the example, the way in which couples partners or the way in which the standing in line at the supermarket, and somebody makes a comment, or the cashier's going at the speed of molasses. And something slips out of the mouth that seems to be justified because the individual has said or is doing something that has produced pain in us. So let's go through this. I don't know if you got to the section of the book, Neil. Neil Sattin: Oh, yeah, I read the whole thing. Guy Finley: There's actually a story in the book that is the long hand explanation of what happened and we'll look at it together. So first, when... And everybody look, everybody, we have to understand, we are in no way or means judging ourselves or others, there's far too much of that. You can't judge and learn, it's impossible. In this life, whether we realize it or not, is a school for our higher education particularly that love provides, if we're willing to take the curriculum, which this book is about and what Neil and I are speaking about. So Neil, if and when out of your mouth comes the, we'll call it the initial contact. Your wife made the first contact that evening bringing up a wrapper that was out of place. Pretty small thing. But if and when we do that, and point something out to our partner about where they miss the mark in some way, is it because we're happy and content in that moment? Or is there some kind of pain in us that prompts us to point a finger so that there's something to blame for our pain? Neil Sattin: Right. Where we are pointing the finger so that we can blame for the pain. Guy Finley: That's right because something has suddenly stirred in us a certain kind of resistance or pain that we did not know was in us the moment before. For instance, I'm just going to walk through it when Chloe points out the wrapper, she wasn't initially negative about the wrapper, but when the wrapper appeared, meaning she saw it, something in her in pain wanted to find a way to reconcile itself because in essence, the wrapper became the reason for the pain. Following me? Neil Sattin: Yeah. Guy Finley: But the wrapper isn't the reason for the pain in Chloe, the pain is brought in to the present moment in Chloe and in all of us in an unconscious nature, a body of experience whose residue never reconciled or healed sits there like strange objects in a closet until something bumps one of them and then out comes this comment or this action. Now, she didn't know. And then that pain looks at you and finds an object to blame, she points the finger at you and throws the grenade, passive-aggressive comment meant to point to you, look what you've done, you've missed the mark. And then what happens when Chloe's pain pushes on Neil? Was Neil in pain the moment before that? No, I had a good night, we were doing pretty good. But all of a sudden, I'm nuclear, but I don't want to go nuclear. I know that's not right. So, my mind, now in pain, blaming the pain on Chloe looks around and finds the butter and then it throws the bomb back. The point being that the moment of pain is not Chloe's pain and not your pain, it is our pain, it is a pain that goes into the moment before us that we don't know is there and that becomes this continuation of a string of conflict and resentments that feed each other in a pattern that never goes away, because the unseen instigator, the real cause of that conflict lies unseen in our consciousness. Guy Finley: Now if we can understand that much and let me stop and ask you, are we on the same page? Can we see this together? Neil Sattin: We're definitely on the same page and where my mind is going with this is to that concept of the debt that we owe each other and how we carry that with us as part of the burden of that pain. Guy Finley: Yes, yes, it's intimately connected to that without our knowing it, which is the point of our existence in one respect 'cause when we started we said, "Well, how can pain and love be in an actual relationship?" Without our knowing it, living concealed in all of us, not just as a result of growing up with the parents we had, our experiences in high school and college, not the relationships that gave us a broken heart, not those individual instances, but sort of a composite conditioned consciousness. We live, Neil, with a kind of unseen expectation. It's built into our present level where, again, as example, I'll speak about my wife, I know you would say the same of Chloe. I've been with my wife for nearly 40 years. I remember when we first met, it was all roses. We couldn't talk enough about stuff, we had those conversations that go for hours on the phone. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Guy Finley: The sex was divine and intimate, the time together was precious, everything that was quirky about her was my greatest delight, everything that I did somehow had no problems in it at all. My idiosyncrasies were fascinating. This is the beginning of love because we're drawn to each other as the result of, she revealing in me things I don't know about myself that are delightful. I love the way I feel when I'm busy loving what my wife reveals to me about myself. She loves what I reveal in her to her about herself and there is a magnetic power. Everybody understands that, but part of that relationship and part of that magnetics includes the fact that gradually, the things that we were so enamored with, for what she could show me about myself starts to change. The thrill is gone, BB King used to say. And now the little things that were never a problem start to have a little edge to them. And here is the point: Why do I love the things my wife shows me about my nature that I feel are positive and good and accept as being a part of myself and on the other hand when she shows me things about myself, I don't see it as being about myself, I see as being about her? Guy Finley: When we can answer that question with honesty and responsibility, we begin to recognize that, yes, when it comes to love our partner is a mirror that shows us the most positive, empowering, and beautiful things that the human heart can hold. Love makes that possible, but it is also a fact that love makes it possible for that same human being and their same idiosyncrasies to show us what is concealed in us that is limiting our love, so that until we are present to what has been concealed in us by the actions of our partner and accept the revelation of that moment as an invitation to let go of and die to those parts of ourselves we will continue to have the fights, blaming, later resenting without ever realizing we are caught in a loop that is actually a kind of system that this present nature with all of this residue that's been carried over insists on repeating it, literally reincarnates itself at the cost of a new and higher kind of love. Neil Sattin: Okay, so there's so much there in everything that you just said. What's that? Guy Finley: I say let's take it apart. Neil Sattin: Let's do it. And maybe a vehicle for that would be the wrapper. Guy Finley: Sure. Neil Sattin: So for one thing, what I'm hearing from you is that the love and the mirror of relationship makes it possible for me to see all these things reflected back at me that I think are glorious. Guy Finley: Right. Neil Sattin: And however it also allows me to have reflected back at me the ways that I fall short. Guy Finley: Not reflected back at me, reflected as being an unknown part of me. I don't know that I have pain when I'm holding my wife's hand and we're having a glass of wine, but if she said, "You've had two glasses, that's enough." What happens? Neil Sattin: Right. The collapse. Guy Finley: Boom! Neil Sattin: Yeah. Guy Finley: She didn't produce the conflict, she revealed within me is this sensitivity about too many wines. Don't eat that piece of bread. You're really going to have more butter? Why are you driving that way? Do you know where you are. I mean, all of these little questions that you call triggers are actually revelations that we have within us parts of us that we don't know. And to the point here, does love... Let's see, how shall I start this? When I want to lash back and we don't have to Pollyanna it, in fact, she said something that hurt me, I'm throwing the grenade back. Would love throw a grenade? Neil Sattin: No. Guy Finley: This is so important, listeners, please. And we're not idealizing love, I'm not making it some religious or iconic image. I'm just saying that you and I, if we're a human being know that there is a love that cannot hurt anything, that would not harm anything, that love is the love that we and each and every one of us live in and through and buy at all times without knowing it. These moments in passing time with our partner allow us to see and then begin to use consciously the very thing that ordinarily we mechanically do I.e. Neil throws back the butter comment. Now, if love would not harm anyone, and I know that love would not do that, is it really I, is it my truest nature that launches the attack back? Or is pain responding to pain? And this is important, is the pain of something in me, maybe when I was a kid I was teased, maybe my parents called me on the rug for things that they were in pain over and didn't know what to do with and abused me psychologically so that the smallest question of my character by anyone else produces instantaneous conflict? You're not going to disrespect me. Guy Finley: Now, we all know these parts live in us, and if they are there and they are acting in our stead, we have to recognize that something has been stirred and has stepped up and out of our mouth that feels like us because it's part of our past but that cannot be who we are in reality or at least who we know we ought to be, and therefore, we have to do something that this book is all about. We have to recognize that love would not make anyone suffer. Another way of putting it. Why is my suffering in that moment more important than your suffering? Why is what I am suffering over if I love you, why would I want to add 1 ounce of more suffering to your life? Neil Sattin: Right. Yeah, this is something that I found really profound in, if you can recognize that... And this was what you wrote about, that if you can recognize that the pain in your partner is what probably produced that comment in the first place, like if you saw a defenseless creature in pain you would show up to try and help that defenseless creature, you wouldn't kick it in the head, right? Guy Finley: And you wouldn't even know if it tries to bite you, that it couldn't do anything else. Neil Sattin: Right. Guy Finley: You would know it. And knowing that, which is, see, look, my new book is the culmination of 40 years of writing and speaking. It brings about a very simple point that if we're willing to receive it, it makes change possible in the moment, not as an intellectual exercise by which we hope going into appointed moment we won't punish somebody. And certainly not afterwards as a retrospective event where I blame myself or think I could have done better, what I call a reflective event. I understand that in me is a pain I didn't know was in me. It was concealed until you said what you did. Now I'm going to pick up the tab, I'm going to do the one thing I've never done in my whole life with someone who has said the cruel comment or done something that upsets me, I'm going to live with my own pain. I'm not going to blame you for it, I'm not going to point it out to you, I'm going to in effect go quiet inwardly in that moment so that rather than listening to voices that then become my mouth speaking what causes others to suffer, I'm going to listen to my own voices, how they want to leap out, how they want to have an enemy, someone to make feel bad for the bad way they made me feel. And in that patience, which is a keyword. You know the original, the ancient meaning of the word patience, Neil? Neil Sattin: No. Guy Finley: To suffer myself. Neil Sattin: Yes. Guy Finley: I think that's the most beautiful thing in the world, because you see, if I can in the moment, my wife throws the... Did that wrapper, did that just manifest itself on the counter? And we can all hear the tone, we know what sarcasm is. Right? Neil Sattin: Right. Guy Finley: It's instantaneous and bang! Like that, comes up, this pain I didn't know was there. Neil Sattin: And to be fair to Chloe, she actually was very light and almost joking about it, like it wasn't even sarcastic, it was light and yet it did hit me that strongly. Guy Finley: Yeah, but see, if there wasn't pain behind it, would she call it out or just pick it up? Neil Sattin: Right. She would have just picked it up. Guy Finley: I mean obviously, and I'm not, again, there's no condemnation in this. All of humanity, all of us live in this level of consciousness that doesn't know what to do with its pain. So to the point, here I am, and in that split second if I can bear myself, meaning bear what has been revealed in me by the comment, the sarcastic, intended or not, comment in that split second something had happened that is the true magic. And here it is, I don't return unkindness for unkindness. And when I don't return unkindness for unkindness, my wife, Chloe, whoever it may be, is left holding the bomb they threw. In fact, they're shocked because the part of them that pronounced that cruel or otherwise sarcastic comment suddenly has nothing to validate its pain because now, Neil, Guy is not returning pain for pain, and the pattern has a chance to collapse on the spot so that the whole thing is revealed in that heartbeat when one of us as a partner agrees to bear the responsibility of the pain that's been driving the pattern. Guy Finley: Boy, we're talking about hard work and lots of missteps but man, can I tell you after 40 years the beauty of this because now my wife, my husband, my partner has space to see themselves as they are, instead of mechanically blaming me for their pain because of what they say I am. They get to meet their own limitation, which is this unconscious negative reaction instead of it being validated by my unconscious reaction to their commentary. It's a game changer in the truest sense of what love has always intended for us to do and be with each other, which is to work as polishing stones so that what comes out of the moment is shinier, truer, better, a more pure reflection of what love intends for us and by the way why it brought us together to that end. Neil Sattin: Okay, so there are two things jumping out at me right now. Guy Finley: Yes. Neil Sattin: One of them is, I would love to distinguish what we're talking about from maybe the flip side pattern that can happen in a relationship where there's never conflict, and yet it's not a system that's fostering love. In fact, it fosters resentment because things aren't being surfaced. So that's the first part. And then... Guy Finley: They're being surfaced, Neil. Neil Sattin: Go ahead. Neil Sattin: They're just being ignored. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah, great. Guy Finley: Yeah, that's a very important distinction because what you just said is the slow motion death, not of love, the slow motion death of the possibility of two people awakening through and with each other, to a higher order of their own being that love makes possible. So, example... Neil Sattin: Now, I wish I had read the book before the wrapper moment happened because I'm hoping that we can also paint a picture and maybe that's what you're about to do with this example of how that unfolding might take place. You used strong language earlier, which was like, we want those parts to die, the parts of us. And I'm curious to know what that actually... What that looks like, what that experience is like, and what that might have been like in the kitchen that night with me and Chloe. Guy Finley: Alright, so here I am, I'll play Neil, okay. Neil Sattin: Okay. Guy Finley: And everybody can play Neil, at least as far as we're able to follow this. My wife drops the bomb. Doesn't look like a bomb, and in fact, she's trying to make it not look like a bomb, but it's a bomb, and suddenly I have a reaction. Now for the longest time I can't begin to encourage the listeners to understand this. We don't know that we're combustible. Were you thinking Neil, prior to that? You're in this contented state, you're working together, getting the kitchen set, having a nice dialogue, working together as men and women should, as partner should. Does Neil know there's something combustible in him? Neil Sattin: No, and in fact this is why I love the shift that I feel like your book is creating in me. Because not only did I not know it was there but because I combusted and immediately my thought was, I want to blame her. If she knew how to act in a situation like this, then that... Exactly. So that's the pattern that I personally want to see end in myself. Guy Finley: Yes, exactly. So you said you have children. Neil Sattin: I do. Yeah. Guy Finley: How old are they? Neil Sattin: They are nine and eleven. Guy Finley: That's perfect. Okay, so let's say just for grins I don't know what it would be, maybe you're out with one of them and maybe it's... You hand them a fishing rod, and say, "This is how you cast the lure, you throw them a football and they can't catch it 'cause their hands aren't big enough. Would you get angry at your child for not being able to catch a football that you throw at them? Neil Sattin: No, of course not. Guy Finley: No that would be ludicrous, why? Because the child has limitations. I'm not going to blame my child, for the fact that it can't hold on to a football yet or thumb the reel when it cast the lure. Neil Sattin: Right. Guy Finley: It doesn't have the capacity to do it yet. But when we blame our partner for producing this discontentment in us, for being the seed of this conflict, are we not in essence saying, You know what, you have this limitation, Chloe. You could have been like this, and if you've been like that then you would fulfill my expectation, and it would be no more pain. Yes? Neil Sattin: Right, yeah, exactly. Guy Finley: So we see the person who is producing in a sense, this moment of disturbance. We see the problem as being their limitation. They're not meeting our expectation, we don't know that we walk around expecting that our husband or wife, or partner be at all times, everything that we have written a list for them to be. What would happen if, this won't happen directly, but one day you'll see it, everyone will who will work with these ideas. My partner says something to me, the little offhanded comment, and then instead of, as I usually do, responding with resistance mechanically, a tit for tat. I was able to, have literally appear in my hand this list that says, "The 444 things that no one is ever supposed to say to me." Well, we laugh at it 'cause it sounds silly, yet with God as my witness, that's what we have living in our nature. Neil Sattin: Right, right, yeah. Guy Finley: So then I start to realize, hold on a second, the limitation isn't my wife's it's mine. 'Cause I only know how to respond by letting this list tell me how people are supposed to be and this isn't even my list, it got made over time. It was produced by a host of painful circumstances that I never was able to figure out. So all I could do was think about them, in other words, now formulate them, get them into something I could live with and then I think that gets buried and goes away, but those moments don't go away. They live as objects of thought, literally formations in our psychology that when the proper circumstances appear, much as a seed sprouts when the nourishment it needs happens, up comes this list and the item on it and then by God, I know I'm right and you're wrong. Guy Finley: We're saying, "Can we understand now that within us lives this lower unconscious unloving nature, and that when stimulated by circumstance, it's going to do the only thing it knows to do 'cause if we can know that this is what Christ called Metanoia, this new knowledge, a new understanding that allows us, literally the translation of the word repent, to turn around in the moment and see what we're actually looking at instead of what something in us wants to point to for our pain. "Cause if we can do that, Neil, then we can begin to understand our tendency, and then we take our awareness of that tendency into that moment with us and then we begin to wake up. We begin to let the moments that beat us up, become the moments that make us better, because we're agreeing to see our own limitations, what Love is showing us is keeping us from being truly loving. Neil Sattin: So when I notice that I am in a moment and experiencing pain and in fairness to Chloe, it could have just as easily been me saying... Having something to complain about... Guy Finley: Of course, of course. Neil Sattin: To start it all off. So when I notice, okay, I'm experiencing pain and I want to fix something right now, what... what do I do... I'm right there in that moment. Guy Finley: I know, I can hear you, man. Look, you said the... Exactly the... "And I want to fix something." I'm going to fix Chloe. Chloe is going to fix me. And nothing gets fixed other than a growing body of resentment from conditions never resolved consciously through love. So here's how it gets fixed. I stop trying to fix my partner and I stop trying to fix myself. Instead, and this is an exercise 'cause we're getting to that point where we need something where we can get our hands on a practical set of actions. You might want to write it down, listeners. I call it stop, drop and endure. Neil's ahead of me. Stop, drop and endure. All right, I know my proclivity, all my wife has to do is say, "You know that shirt's a little tight on you. Really, you're having another helping? Why don't we drive out to the winery in Jacksonville instead of go to the place locally? Guy Finley: Any one of a thousand things can be innocent as the day is long and maybe not even intended as you indicated to be a cutting remark because she may be just asleep psychologically, just saying what comes to her mind. But it's already interwoven. So here's the reaction, bang. So what's the first thing, Neil? Bang, come to a stop. What does it mean come to a stop? It means I know because I have been interested enough to think about it, to contemplate it, then my tendency when my wife or partner says whatever they do, is that I have a thousand tender spots. Let's use this another way, I have a dozen places in me that have never healed. They never healed. The way that my former girlfriend, husband, wife let me know that she's leaving me, it never healed. All I could do was hate my partner, regret my situation, despise myself for not being good enough to keep or to hold in place whatever it was. Guy Finley: These places have never healed. And all of this unhealed, psychologically divided mind and heart goes forward in time with me. Then I have a new partner. She says, whatever it is, and the sore spot is stimulated. Come to a stop. I know it's there, and I'm going to absolutely stop. Now, what does it mean, stop? That's the next word, drop. When I come to a stop, the intention is to see everything in me that wants to keep moving. I want to see and hear these thoughts and feelings without being mechanically identified with them and what they are trying to do as they want to fix the moment. I'm not going to fix the moment. Physician heal thyself. Instead, I'm going to drop every last one of those thoughts that come in and that want to point to my wife, my partner that moment as being the source of my pain. And if I can come to a stop and sit there and drop all of these thoughts and feelings, I'll begin to notice something extraordinary. Guy Finley: They won't let me drop them. My intention is to be the observer, the conscious witness of what love is inviting me to see, that's been concealed in me. And something doesn't want me to see anything other than who's to blame for the pain. Hold on a moment, what is that about? I say I want to heal. I say I want to be a loving partner, but now I realize there is a flood loosed in me that wants to free itself, by putting someone else into a cage. Stop, drop. Now you tell me what endure means, Neil. It means I'm going to suffer myself. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. I'm feeling the waiting, basically. Guy Finley: Yes, yes. For as long... Listen to this, 'cause it answers an earlier question of yours. I'm going to suffer myself, meaning I'm going to sit and observe these thoughts and feelings instead of identify with them. I'm going to suffer myself patiently for as long as it takes for me to finally see what love has brought this moment about for, and what is it brought it about for? For me to see that there's no love in that nature. That is not who I am, and that is not who I am going to manifest. I will not incarnate what has passed and its pain and its false plans to fix things, instead I'm going to incarnate what love is asking me to incarnate in that moment, which is the revelation that the me that came into this moment, that has been revealed by it, is no longer necessary. And that Neil, is what it really means to die to ourselves because love makes it possible. Neil Sattin: Don't hate me. Guy Finley: Oh no. Neil Sattin: What happens next? 'Cause I'm imagining this, and in fact, the sense that I feel is actually a whole lot of grief. That's the first thing that comes up for me, is like seeing all of that, all of that pain and all of the ways that I would want to lash out and recognizing that that's not love, and... Guy Finley: Yeah, isn't that extraordinary? And by the way, that's... At a certain level of development, which I'm glad to speak with you as you're experiencing this. Isn't it phenomenal that when I hear about what it means to love my neighbor as myself, that no greater love does a husband have than laying down his life for his wife, or vice versa, whoever the partner may be. And that my response to that part of me that can hear that, but doesn't... Is grief. What would grieve for the loss of something that only wants to produce the continuation of pattern? Yeah, isn't that beautiful, Neil? Man, this is what... Whether it not... Anybody here with us listening, it doesn't matter to me. I'm... Obviously, I want everybody to hear this, but what a marvelous point of connection for you and I, to unfold something so that I can actually suspect for the first time, maybe good God, there is something in me that's grieving over not having a good reason to be mad. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and as I'm really tuning in, I think some of it also is a sense of shame that... Guy Finley: I get it. Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Shame that that's what I've done or where I would want to go, or... Yeah. Guy Finley: Yes, yes. I'm greatly enjoying the conversation. Look, everybody write this down, please. There is no such thing as a bad fact about yourself, there is no such thing as a bad fact about yourself. Facts are friends, but we have a nature conditioned over time, that's more interested in appearance than it is in being. Being is the moment-to-moment expression. Love is the moment-to-moment relationship between facts. So as we grow to understand these things and begin to have some of these wonderful exchanges and experiences, whether it's just first with our minds, and then with our hearts, it doesn't matter 'cause we can start to understand. We are the last section for the book, we are in training. You don't punish someone who's in training unless you don't know you're in training. So when we get this and start realizing, God I can see... You know what, I can feel it in the deepest part of myself. Guy Finley: Not only have I missed the mark, I didn't even know what it was. Then everything's explained in that moment, because... And now to answer your question again, what happens next? This is my favorite part. Can a pattern go on if any part of the pattern is changed in the truest sense of it? Neil Sattin: It seems that it would be different from that point forward. Guy Finley: It cannot go on. It's even... Physics states it this way, "Change the observer and the observed changes." That's some theory or another that the observer changes what is observed by him, or her. So here I am, and let's just say for the sake of argument that I catch what we've been talking about in the middle of that moment. Maybe I'm on the freeway and here comes somebody barreling up behind me or someone cuts me off or someone passes me in the fast lane, and then drives slow to punish me. In that moment, can I see that the condition has not created the pain, but it's revealing a part of me that is sure that it has expectation and a list that this isn't supposed to be this way and therefore wants to respond with unkindness. If I can just see that much and even think... Wait a minute... This is the moment I've been waiting for. In that split second I am no longer the man or the woman I was, leading up to that moment. Because something... A bit of light, bit of love has come in to interrupt the pattern. Guy Finley: Maybe I go on and lose my temper. Maybe I say the passive aggressive remark. Maybe I stew, but the fact is, now I'm more aware of what has happened after the event than I was before. Because I realize the repercussion is actually the continuation of this unconscious nature that I was unable to not express in that moment. And here is the final word, at least as far as this question. If I change, my partner has to change. If I'm not the same, they have to see where they're being the same and have a chance to step out of that space. As I change, I give my partner the space they need to change. So in those relationships where nothing is said and all is this sort of horrible compromise building into a ball of resentment that ultimately boils over. One little change produces the possibility of a greater change. It's the most wonderful thing in the world that love makes possible. But it always begins with us, not with our partner, not with what we act out toward them, but what we see in ourselves and then accept as our responsibility to be present enough to to witness that a change can take place in us first. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I think that would probably be the natural question that many of you listening would have, which is like, "Well, something like how much of being treated this way am I supposed to tolerate? How much stopping, dropping, and enduring am I supposed to do in this situation? Guy Finley: Exactly. And there's, again, there's a whole section in the book about that too. You're not on this planet to let anybody abuse you. In fact, any abusive relationship that we stay in is because we're enabling it, we have a part of ourself that would actually rather live with someone to resent than to be on our own and not know who we are through that resentment. The only thing that troubles us about other people, Neil, in the end is what we want from them. And when we start to understand that most of what we want from others is a way in which we can keep these debts running, then we want to pay the tab. And if someone continues to abuse us, and I mean if anybody abuses you physically and you say, "That's that. Don't do that again or I'm gone," and then you're not gone, it's your fault. "I know, well, I have kids and I've gotta know what'll happen to me." Do not stay with people who abuse you, period. They will never change until you change. It's the only hope that abusive person has 'cause they don't know, good God, do you think a parent would deliberately abuse a child if the parent knew for a split second the child wasn't responsible for the pain they're in, that's producing that horrid outcome? Guy Finley: We are complicit in relationships where pain keeps itself alive because we use it to prove the other person's responsible. So, no abuse of relationship continually. No. But neither do we sit and live with a mind that says, "You know, she keeps bringing up that I shouldn't have that second glass of wine, she's abusing me." No, she may have a point. Then it's up to you to discover that, use those moments and become a different kind of person, which might include by the way, not wanting the intoxicating cup. Neil Sattin: Right. While I'm stopping, dropping, and enduring what might I communicate to my partner? Is there anything that you think is helpful? Guy Finley: I'm glad you asked that. Yes, you do not say, "Listen, I'm enduring you Guy Finley: This is not meant religiously, but it's all part of this beautiful golden thread that winds through our life and relationships. Christ said, when you go in the closet, when you pray go in the closet, do not let anybody know you're praying. Same thing, Buddha, all the great saints, prophets, all spoke of the same thing. If I'm going to change, I can't announce it because the change hasn't taken place yet, I'm agreeing to go through it and if I point out to my wife or partner, "Look, I'm going through this change because of you," I've just thrown the passive-aggressive comment out, haven't I? So I have to learn what it means to be silent and I might just say, "You know what, let me if you want, if we have to have a way to deal with it, look, I'm just not going to take part in an argument, I'm just not going to do it. And you may not think that what you said was hurtful, but it hurt me but I don't want to hurt you back. So for now, I'm just going to put this down. You do with it what you want to do, but I'm done with the fight." And if you really mean it, not because you have an image of yourself as someone who wants to be like that, but who agrees to put down the fighting nature, you will see in yourself and you'll be shocked at what happens to your partner if you actually say to them, "Do you want to go on with this, that's your business. I'm done with it." Guy Finley: And listen to this, Neil, 'cause you even said it, when you said suddenly I feel grief while hearing these ideas, your partner when you say to them, "I'm not going to continue this negativity," they're going to say, "What's wrong? You don't love me?" And you're actually doing what you're doing for the sake of love, and you know it, but they can't see it yet. Can you sense some of that, Neil? Neil Sattin: Yeah. Well, one thing that I think is the gift here is, in some respects it takes that pain and it depersonalizes it so that I could see in a moment like that, and hopefully before those moments happen, being able to talk to your partner and say, "Wow, you know, I just read this book by Guy Finley," or, "I just heard this podcast episode and I'm seeing how like pain exists in me, in us waiting for an opportunity to like spring." Guy Finley: I love it, Neil. I love it. Neil Sattin: So in a moment like that, being able to say, "Whoa! The pain in me just reared its head," and almost like, "This isn't about you. I just need to step back from this for a moment." And there's something in me, Guy, that wants more around the enduring like, I'm going to stay here, I'm going to endure, I don't know what happens at that point. Guy Finley: Yeah. You know what? You can't know. You can only be. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Guy Finley: See, I want to know 'cause I want to be safe, I want to feel secure, spiritual, intelligent, loving on top of it. That's where all the pain has come from, that nature that wants to know going in how things should be, or that already knows how things should be going in. That's where the conflict is. See, here this will help maybe, Neil. Neil Sattin: Great. Guy Finley: 'Cause this book actually, I swear to God, this book came out of an experience that I had when I first fell in love, which I'm almost 70. So what was that? Fifty-three years ago, I fell in love and I already, I'd been on the path. My spiritual life started around the age of 6, that's another story. But I didn't understand much of it, but I was with my partner and I said to her, "You know what?" I said, "Let's agree, you and I, that love is more important than any of the personal issues that want to pull us apart." I'm not even sure what I'm saying. I said these words, and yet I know that we'll have disagreements. "Let's agree that when we have a disagreement, love is going to be more important than what wants to pull us apart. Can we do that?" And of course she said yes and I said yes, but we weren't mature enough to even understand. I didn't understand what I was talking about, 53 years later I understand. Guy Finley: That you can say to Chloe, listen, I'm having some revelations, I'm seeing new stuff and I never want to hurt you as long as I live, I never want to hurt you, and I know you love me and I know you never want to hurt me. So let's agree right now that we're never going to hurt each other. And then because I also know, as I'm sure you do, that while our aim is lofty, we live from a nature that isn't going to be able to live up yet to what love is prescribing as our partnership and the way it grows. So instead of them blaming each other when we can't live out our agreement, we will step back both of us and see the parts of ourselves unable to keep the contract we have with love, then we're not going to blame each other and we're not even going to blame ourselves. We're going to be different people because we see on one hand, where we're compromised and because of the revelation of the compromise itself will know what we can and can't do next time. Yes? Neil Sattin: Yeah, I'm soaking all that in. You can't see my head nodding but I'm just reveling in those words, yeah. Guy Finley: This is so important, God help us. Look, anything that's right, bright and true in this world, no human being is the sponsor of. We are the instruments of what is right, bright and true including love. When we understand that an instrument can be played by something that serves its own interests and that its interests don't serve love, then we stand in a place where we can start to recognize this is an ill wind that's starting to blow through me and by God, I'm not going to share it with my partner, I'm going to let it buffet me so I can die to it. And then we have something real to work with. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I think we might have to... So for those of you at home who are listening to this, my wish for you is that you're able to experiment with what we're talking about. And of course, there are more nuances that Guy writes about in the book, Relationship Magic. And please send us your feedback, neilius@neilsattin.com. Or, there's a Relationship Alive community on Facebook, tell us about your experiences. I could envision a follow up at some point, Guy, where we talk about what happened after. What happened after we endured? Guy Finley: Yeah, you know what, ordinarily I do so many interviews, but I would... If you want to follow up, it's done. Neil Sattin: Great. Great, well, we will keep in touch about that. Guy Finley: Alright. Neil Sattin: In the meantime, it is such a pleasure to have you here and an honor to be able to talk with you about this book that's the hot off the presses, and yet the culmination of 40 years or more, 53 years of experience, Relationship Magic: Waking Up Together. You can visit relationshipmagicbook.com, and if you order the book, you can go there and you can instantly get an audio version of the book. Are you reading that, Guy? Guy Finley: I'm sorry, say that again. Neil Sattin: Are you the person who's reading the audio book that people will get? Guy Finley: Yes, yes. Yes, I've... It is I. Neil Sattin: Great. So you can get the audio book and I saw that there are a bunch of other bonuses that you can get. So a lot of special gifts for purchasing the Relationship Magic book, and you can also visit guyfinley.org where you can read more about Guy and his work. What's the name of your center again, Guy? Guy Finley: I live in southern Oregon, and I teach at Life of Learning Foundation three times, four times a week, open to everyone. People come from all around the world, and there's a body of 50 or a hundred students who actually live in the area now, and a $3 donation at the door, no one's turned away, nothing to join. Just a group of men and women just like Neil and myself who want to understand a little bit more about how love works. Neil Sattin: Well, I appreciate you illuminating a little bit more of the journey for me and for us here on Relationship Alive today, so thank you so much, Guy. And just as a reminder, if you want to download the transcript, you can visit neilsattin.com/magic. We'll also have all the links that I mentioned or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444, and follow the instructions. Such a pleasure to have you with us here today, Guy. Guy Finley: Thanks, Neil. It was just a really good conversation.

Let's Talk About Social Media And Marriage

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 17, 2018 37:17

We haven't figured out how to perfectly navigate social media in our marriage and family which is why we wanted to talk about this subject today. We talk about a few strategies to build healthy habits with social media in our home and we will talk about areas that we struggle with social media. We think it is time to start evaluating how social media is affecting our families and daily lives. There is a lot of good that can come from social media but there is a lot of unhealthy things as well. Aaron gets personal and shares his own addiction to social media we share stories of things our kids have told us because of us being on our phones in front of them and we both share how we can be better at how we engage with it on a daily basis. “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything." 1 Corinthians 6:12 -- Take our 31-day marriage prayer challenge today and join the 1000's of couples who have done it. https://shop.marriageaftergod.com/products/thirty-one-prayers-bundle -- FOR MORE MARRIAGE ENCOURAGEMENT https://marriageaftergod.com https://instagram.com/marriageaftergod SHOP MARRIAGE RESOURCES https://shop.marriageaftergod.com FOR WIVES https://unveiledwife.com https://facebook.com/unveiledwife FOR HUSBANDS https://husbandrevolution.com https://facebook.com/HusbandRevolution READ: Hey, we're Aaron and Jennifer Smith with Marriage After God. Helping you cultivate an extraordinary marriage. And today we're gonna talk about social media and your marriage. Hey, thanks for joining us today. As usual we want to invite you to subscribe to our channel so that you're notified each time we upload a new episode. So I brought up today's topic to you and I said, "Hey, we should talk about social media." Not because we've conquered this beast, or have figured it all out, but more so because we're in the midst of trying to figure it out with having kids and seeing the impact in our family life using social media, not that our kids are using it but how we use it and they notice, but also using it for work and things like that, I just felt like it's an important conversation to have. So I thought, hey, we'll bring up the topic today, and those listening can maybe further the conversation in their own marriages at home because chances are they either want to be talking about it, or they've already been talking about it. Yeah, and a big part of us doing this podcast is to start the discussion in our own home. We've talked about it in the past, and we've tried implementing things, so we're gonna bring up some strategies, and things that we're still struggling with. And hopefully, we can find more healthy habits when it comes to social media, especially in a world where everyone's doing it. It's like social media is just a part of life right now. We were discussing before we started the podcast, when we were talking about the notes, that we grew up in a world that social media like didn't exist and then boom! Social media was everywhere, and there was no training for it, there was no preparation for it, there was no studies on it. It just was, and I also grew up, I don't know about you, but I didn't have a cell phone until I was like 18. Yeah, I was like 18, 17 or 18. But now every single person has a cell phone. Every single kid has a cell phone, and every cell phone is a smart phone, and it's got social media on it. And I think it's just about time that we start evaluating our home life and our use of social media, and the potential dangers of it for our marriages, for our kids, for our health. And just so those listening know, when we're talking about social media, I think everybody uses it in maybe a little bit different way, but it can be-- Or all of it. Or all of it, yeah, some people use one platform, some people use all of them. But we're talking about Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. Twitter, YouTube. Snapchat, LinkedIn, there's so many. Snapchat, there's a bunch we don't even know about that people use. Yeah, YouTube, did you already say that? Yeah, YouTube, yeah. And so those are all just different avenues that we can have social-- Connections. Connections online, and it's become a way of life, but the question is how are we approaching it in our homes, in our marriages, and what's healthy, what's inappropriate, and I think we should talk about all of those things. Yeah, and I don't want this episode to seem like a downer because it's not. There's a lot of good that comes from social media. Obviously, we've been able to share ministry online in this way and so there's a lot of good that comes from it. A lot of relationship building, a lot of connection and healthy connection through using social media, and I think a lot of people using it would attest to that, but I think they also would agree that there are some negative sides and cons that we need to figure out. Yeah, and I want to start with a scripture just to give us an idea about this because it's not like we're saying social media is bad, you need to just get rid of it, no. For some of you that might be the case. We've had friends that just got rid of their social media accounts and just totally checked out, logged off. Yeah, or at least for a season they did, yeah. But the idea is to have a biblical perspective, a right perspective, a healthy perspective, a sober mentality about social media, so this is in 1 Corinthians, chapter six and it's verse 12. Paul is saying this. He says, "All things are lawful for me, "but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful for me, "but I will not be dominated by anything." And so this idea of yeah, as Christians, we have this freedom in Christ. This isn't necessarily bad, it's not a bad thing. May be lawful for us, but is it beneficial? May not be lawful for us but are we being dominated by it? And so those are some questions we can ask ourselves and it just helps us look at it and be like okay, may not be a bad thing but are we in control of it or is it controlling us? And so this is just one little bit of scripture that Paul gives us to have a better mentality to be approaching this with. So why don't we share just like a general overview of like where we're at with social media? Yeah, our life? Yeah. Yeah, because we're never on social media. Never. No, actually what's funny is social media is a part of our job, right? Which we, I often use as an excuse. I do too. Why I'm on social media. It's definitely one of those justifiers like, well, I have to do this. Yeah, like I need to keep up, I need to make sure that I'm watching what's going on and responding to people. Because we do legitimately use social media for our ministry online. Everyone that's watching and listening to this episode probably found out about it through social media, so it's definitely important to what we do but it's not everything we do. And so right now I would say I personally definitely have an unhealthy relationship with social media. I would just say that outright. It's actually something I'm currently, I was literally just laying in bed last night, praying about it. Oh, really? Yeah. So it's something that needs to be dominated by me and not dominating me, as that scripture in 1 Corinthians says. Yeah, that's good. And so it's something that I'm trying to adjust and figure out. I can definitely tell that I've got an addiction to it. Like I said, we grew up in a generation where social media just came out of nowhere and we weren't trained, we didn't have parents that grew up with it and said oh, you know, limit face time, limit screen time, limit all this stuff, and we didn't have any of that so it just happened. There's something about that infinite scroll where you just like, I don't know about you but-- Mindlessly scrolling? Yeah, sometimes I stop myself and I'm like what am I doing? I'm not even looking at what I'm scrolling through, I'm just addicted to the scroll. Yeah, like what's next, what's next? There's this, there is actually those pleasure hormones being released when you're on the internet. Studies have shown that it can be addictive. They haven't done enough studies on it but they're doing more and more and they're finding that it's social media itself, social media use is being tied to mental health and depression and anxiety and we can see that on a small level because there's times that we see someone else's life. We're like oh, that's nice. Get stuck in comparison. Yeah, which absolutely if we do that day-to-day and like if we don't have a healthy relationship with the Lord or with our family, like that could just fuel a fire that doesn't need to exist. But where I'm at is I definitely am on social media way too much and the reason I know that, because I can easily justify and say well, I need it for work and I need to be on. You know, yeah, it's unfortunate that I need to be on so much but some examples I can give you and you could probably pull out some examples too, being on the phone doing nothing, just mindlessly scrolling when I should be hanging out with my kids. When I'm supposed to be working, mindlessly scrolling. Like in bed next to you at nights when I could be with you or talking with you or being intimate with you or having a conversation or whatever, I'm scrolling. Okay, so can I share a story real quick? I just thought about this. I wasn't going to share it but 'cause I didn't know until you just said that. If I don't like the story, I'll cut it. Okay. But just go ahead. So the other day, it was probably like two weeks ago now I think, I was walking out to the car and you were already in the driver's seat waiting for me and you were looking down and I knew you were on your phone. Because I'm always on my phone. Well, yeah. And I got in the car and I remember saying hey, can I tell you something and you're all "What?" And I'm like, well, I used to really like it when I'd be walking out to the car and you'd be watching me because I would try and do something funny like dance or make a funny face or just knowing the fact that you're watching me walk out to the car, there was something, I don't know, reassuring and loving about that. Well, I think you're missing it 'cause you know, now you're recognizing it existed and now it doesn't. Exactly and so now there's even times where I go to dance or go to do something and I realize you're not looking at me and so then I feel kind of foolish but then I feel sad. Which is really sad. And I just remember telling you that I like it when your eyes are on me and I think that's one of the detriments to social media is our heads are always down, the eye contact is lost, and we miss those little opportunities or moments to be with each other even if we're walking to the car. I know it sounds silly but-- Well, it's ironic it's called social media. I feel like it's antisocial media, it's like-- Disconnection. Yeah, we have less real connections in life and I have a bunch of friends on Facebook. You know, oh, so many people liked my comment and my wife sitting next to me not liking what I'm doing. You know? It's really unfortunate. And this is us really talking about what we're dealing with. How are you, what's your relationship with social media right now? I would definitely say that I spend too much time on it and that's after cutting out, like being aware and trying to cut those times out so that I'm not on it as much. And having four children now, I am recognizing that my time is limited and very valuable and so I've been trying the last couple weeks to leave my phone in the bedroom during the day when I'm with the kids so that I'm not even on it but I still find myself looking for it or going back to it and bringing it out, asking one of the kids to go get it for me. But one of the biggest things that I've tried to implement recently was when I had Truitt, I had the baby. And with all my past babies while nursing, I would scroll on social media 'cause it was like downtime. I don't know why I just saw it as like this time where I have a free hand, the baby's nursing, everyone's fine, I could just scroll. Yeah, like what's the big deal? Yeah, what's the big deal? But with this-- When people used to read books and like learn something new or... Yeah, I'm just mindlessly scrolling. But I realized very quickly that with this experience with nursing, it's been incredible. I haven't had any like pain or hardship with nursing and so I've really enjoyed it, so I found myself not picking up my phone and then making that a more intentional thing, so now every time I go to nurse-- Like watching the baby, talking to him. Yeah, I keep my phone away from me and I look at him, I make eye contact with him, and I feel like there's this connection that needs to be there especially with nursing moms. And so that's just been a huge encouragement to me and a recognizing of I need to stay off my phone more. Yeah, another example of why it's probably super unhealthy, our relationships with our phones, is when we don't have our phones, the anxiety we feel. Yeah, that's a problem. Where, I don't have my phone. Where is it? Okay. Where is my phone? I think I do that every single time we get in the car. No, you do this. You're like, Aaron, I think I left my phone in the house and I go inside the house and I come back, you're like nope, it was in my pocket. It was in my pocket, I'm fine. It's happened like 100 times. Sorry. You're so kind to always go back and-- I know, I go look for it, I'm like it's not where you said it was. And you're like, oh, it was in my jacket pocket, I'm so sorry. But yeah, those anxieties you're feeling. And I bet everyone that's listening has experienced that. Like oh, where's my phone, or mindlessly scrolling. Like it's a common thing now. I almost feel like if we didn't do it, like if we just turned our phones off, right, I know we would go through withdrawals because I felt it before when we tried going like no technology for a day. It's hard. But we'd be weirdos. What? Yeah, because you'd go hang out with friends and all your friends are gonna be on their phones and you'd be like hey guys, you want to talk? Okay, this has happened to me before and I remember looking around going, okay, I guess I'll just go on my phone. Because everyone else is. Everyone else is. Oh, so I want to give an example. You just brought something to memory. Yeah, the one that just happened? Yeah, it just happened. So we have a really good friend over and she's, we haven't seen her in a while either, and she's talking to us about something, she's just telling us a story. This is why it's so bad, I don't remember what she was talking about. She's telling us a story and I'm on my phone. I didn't even realize I was on my phone. And I heard myself going huh, yeah, yeah. And she stopped and she said "Am I just talking to myself?" And Jennifer was on her phone. No, I wasn't. You weren't listening though. I was with the baby on the couch. Yeah, but I think you were looking down or something. I was not zoned in, yeah. But I was on my phone and Jennifer was like focusing on the baby or something and she just stopped and she said "Am I talking to myself right now?" And she was very kind about it and kind of funny and I looked up and I was all oh my gosh, I'm really sorry. I put my phone down, turned it off, pushed it away. Don't you just want to throw it away at that point? I felt like a jerk. You're just like let's just set this thing on fire. She was literally standing right next to me and I couldn't even listen to her. And I hadn't seen her in a while and it was so disrespectful. How often does that probably happen and people don't say "Am I just talking to myself?" They probably just move on and feel like not valuable. Yeah, Simon Sinek did a TED Talk. I was gonna bring this up. Was it TED Talk or was something else? It was some sort of viral Facebook video. And it was so convicting. And he was just saying, he's like the moment you pull your phone out. Even if you're not on it-- You're telling everyone in your presence that they're not as important. And it's so true. And I know like the feeling I had when she said "Am I talking to myself right now?" Because she literally was talking to herself. I was ignoring her and I was standing right next to her. And how many times has that happened with our kids? Yeah, okay, you gotta tell them the story with Elliott. I didn't want to point the finger at you. Guys, we have a bunch of really sad stories when it comes to social media because of how bad it is and this is why we're talking about it. But this is how people feel. Like people feel this way, kids feel this way, so share. Elliott's five. Go ahead. He's five years old and I don't even know, was it while he was five? Yeah, it was this year, you were outside. I'm outside and I walk out there and he's playing and he always wants me to play with him. And I have my phone in my hand of course and he just he goes, man, kids have a way of like stabbing you right in the heart. So he's like "Dad, what do you love your phone more than me?" And that was a legitimate thing he said and it wasn't like he'd ever heard someone say that before. That was hims telling me like hey, I'm right here and you're on your phone, what are you doing? Like I want you to play with me. That was a wake up call for both of us. I don't know why my son has to be so intrinsically like thoughtful, like the way thinks and he's just got a way of being, he's super intelligent. And I looked at him and I said no. I said of course not but Elliott, you're right, there's no reason why you would think otherwise. And I put my phone down. I said of course I love you more than my phone and I'm gonna work on not being on my phone in front of you. And so just we're not getting to our strategies yet but one of the things that we've done is we've told our kids that they're allowed to tell us to get off our phones. Yeah, well, because we're-- Dad, get off your phone. We're like in training as parents. We're like trying to figure this out. Yeah, we have to figure out how to rightfully and correctly and soberly use our phones. Because social media is not bad but it's bad. And we have to know that we're setting an example for their hearts. Like how are they gonna feel as they grow up when they get their phones? They're gonna remember mom and dad are even still always on their phones and I don't want to be like that. I don't want to be that way. And it's bad. So because of these kind of events that have happened, we're becoming more aware of it and we have got to figure something out. It's got to be fixed, like we've got to put our phones down. And we've tried making rules like not having our phones on us when we're around the kids or not having them in our bed. You know, we've dropped the ball on a lot of those just because of how connected we've been to social media. But I am, as sad as these intimate moments have been with these people that we absolutely love, I feel like they've been wake-up calls for us and I feel like that is what's starting the change. And I'm glad that you're willing to share some of those stories because I feel like people listening will hear those and think, oh man, does my child feel that way or does my friend think of me this way? And maybe they just haven't said anything. And maybe that would be-- Well, lots of people feel that way. I know even though I do it, I feel that way when someone does it to me. I'm like hey, I'm like are we talking, what's going on? Are we gonna be on our phones? Something that we've kind of incorporated within the group of friends that we have is saying who you hanging out with right now? Yeah. And it's like this cue of like, hey, we're all doing something together and you're on your phone. Are you hanging out with your phone and people on social media, or are you hanging out with us? Are you being present? And so it's like our cue to like, oh no, I'm not hanging out with anyone, put it away. Sorry, I'm hanging out with you guys. You guys can use that if you want. Yeah, that's a little tip for your friends. Yeah, who you hanging out with? Just a little vocal reminder of like get off your phone and hang out with us. We know some people that have done like phone baskets where everyone puts their phones in but we haven't done that but I know other people have. Yeah, okay, so moving on. Do you have any stories of like social media and specifically our relationship and maybe how it's caused some either tension in our relationship or temptation for sin? Well, yeah, like I've struggled with pornography my whole life and social media didn't make that any better. Gave more access. It gave me more access to things and it's still a danger and can have temptations involved with it, but I don't give in to those temptations now. But one of the things that has always been hard is like you would be on my, 'cause we have access to each other's phones, you just knowing like oh, he's following that girl or who's that or who's that? And just the things that you would see might make you feel insecure. And then I remember for a while, there were certain people that you would follow and I would ask you like why are you following that person? And we had a good conversation about it a while ago. What was that about? So yeah, there's this girl that I was following and I was following her because I liked her lifestyle and I liked how she looked. It was all vanity in my opinion but I didn't realize that I was even doing it. And I don't know if I was talking about her or he looked over my shoulder and saw that-- I think I looked over, you were in bed scrolling through her feed. Scrolling through her feed and you just asked me like, well, can I ask why you're following her? And that was the first time that I had to stop and consider why I was following someone and really think about it. And I wanted to really think about it because I thought it was an important question. And I thought, you know what, I was even honest with you. I said I don't know why I keep going back to her feed but I'm jealous of her. I think she's really beautiful, she has a beautiful family, they go on these vacations. Did you feel like you'd coveted like what she had? I did, I did. And I would often go back especially in times where I felt discontent or whatever and I don't know why it made me feel better just to go look and see what is she up to? How is she happy? And I remember after telling you that, you said you should evaluate whether you should be following her or not. And after that, I decided not to follow her and it's actually been healthier for my heart. Yeah, not that that woman was doing anything wrong. No, it wasn't her fault, it was my own heart condition and I had to check it. Yeah, and there's a lot of things that we do. Like so something that I've made a commitment to on my social media and I told you about this is I went through and I unfollowed every girl. Not that any of them were immodest or anything like that but I just, I made a decision. I said there was first of all no reason I needed to be following any girls. That was just for me personally. Like if it was a friend of ours, right, because I even unfollowed our friends, I followed usually their husband. And if there was something that I needed to see, you followed them and you'd be like hey, so-and-so did this, did you see that? Or you could share it with me. But I just realized, I evaluated like why am I following certain people, which this goes back to how social media is developed and evolved and what it's convinced every single person of. It's convinced us that if we don't like someone or follow someone, then we must not be friends with them. Right? When I have a lot of friends outside of social media that I don't follow on social media and I actually have great relationships with them. Do you feel like it forces you to stay in communications in other ways with them? Yeah, I mean-- Like better ways? In some ways, but again like the women, I wouldn't contact them privately. Oh, right. So why would I be following them privately? So I got to, I just realized, I evaluated who am I following and why am I following them? You know, is it actually adding benefit to my life? Do I need to be following them? Like I like to follow family and some friends and to see what's going on their life because I can't keep up with them all the time, which is totally fine. So I unfollowed all the girls on both Facebook and Instagram. You've been through there. You've seen there's no girls anymore. And in reality, I didn't need to. If I needed to know something about a friend of ours' wife, you'll let me know. And usually I don't need to know, thanks, it doesn't matter. But that's just one thing that I did and that was something I did for myself and also something I did for you 'cause I was like I don't need my wife feeling insecure about anyone I'm following. Not that you are trying to be insecure or that you're jealous but doing those things inadvertently do cause those situations. And I'll be honest, knowing that you've struggled with pornography in your past, knowing that you had social media accounts was in itself an insecurity because I would always question what are you doing? Who, why? And that was hard for me for a really long time but regaining that trust with you and seeing that you haven't been with that struggle for a very long time now, that we've rebuilt that. And so I'm not as insecure. But you've also seen me make decisions with social media that match that purity. Like you having access to it, me showing you, me talking about it, me not messaging people privately, me not following girls at all. Those are just fruit of the way I'm walking in. It's my way of protecting myself because if I know I'm prone to something, I'm like, well, I should avoid that, right? And so trying to find those healthy boundaries. But again, even on the not being tempted with the lustful stuff, I still struggle with the scrolling. Which could be just as destructive, you know. Yeah, okay, so in talking about social media, one thing that you really wanted to touch on was idleness. We both have struggled with this at times and so-- Right, it lines up with the idea of just mindless scrolling. So the word idle, a lot of times we usually define that as like doing nothing, right? But it's actually broader than that, it's more than that. It's doing something that's meaningless or doing something that's fruitless, right? So it's not just like sitting in your chair doing nothing. That's not necessarily being idle. Being idle is doing things that are worthless. So filling up your time with things that don't matter. With busyness, right? And so in Proverbs 19:15, it says "Slothfulness casts into a deep sleep, "and an idle person will suffer hunger." So there's just this idea of like, the Bible talks a lot about laziness, a lot about idleness, a lot about slothfulness, and this idea that like don't be unwise, a foolish lazy idle person. And there's another scripture I'll get into. But it says an idle person will suffer hunger, right? Now we can look at that and just on the practical reality side, an idle person that's filling their time up with nothing, like I'm just doing hobbies. Well, I need time for my hobbies. They're not gonna be productive, they're gonna, you know. We live in a city that is known for its adventure sports and we always hear about like during the summer, people calling in sick because they want to go bike riding. Or in the winter, people calling in sick because they want to go snowboarding. And that to me is idleness. Eventually someone who has an attitude of that is just gonna get fired, right? So just on the practical side, being idle is not gonna produce income, right? You're gonna be lazy, you're not gonna have a job. But the other kind of hunger I think of is the word, right? An idle person that's filling up their time, me, and this is what I've been struggling with is I'm scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Then I realize, I'm like why did I just sit here for 20 minutes scrolling when I could've been in the word of God? I could have been praying. That's good. I could have been spending time with you. So the hunger, I look at on a whole 'nother level of like spiritual and emotional and physical, right? You know I hunger for time with you and yet I don't give you time. That's really good, babe. So I look at the the depravity and the danger of idleness and that could be what social media is for many people. I know it is for me and I'm just confessing that, that I can find myself being idle and I'm recognizing it now. Now I go in the bedroom, I'm like oh, I'm gonna read my Bible, I bring my Bible and I bring my phone in too. And then you get a notification, ding. And like I just gotta quickly, ding. And then like 30 minutes went by and like what did I just do? I just wasted my time. So the next scripture is also in Proverbs. It's in Proverbs 31 and this is talking about the Proverbs 31 woman, right? But it's just another way of describing what I'm talking about. 31:27. "She looks well to the way of her household "and does not eat the bread of idleness." Right, so we go back to like a Proverbs 31 woman looks well to her home and doesn't eat the bread of idleness, right? Which is funny 'cause the last one talked about hunger and this is saying you're eating the bread of idleness, like idleness is a food you're eating but it actually gives you no sustenance. That makes sense in what you were sharing and how it's not that you're just sitting there not doing anything, you're doing some-- It's an activity you're doing. You're eating something, it's just not filling you with nutrients. Right, and so in this situation for this woman who's trying to manage her home well and bless her husband and her children. Are you hinting at me? No, well, maybe. This is for both of us, right? I know, I know. You know, she is sacrificing the health and well-being of her home for nothing. That's literally what she's doing. That's insanity. It's crazy. It's crazy. So we just want to like look at these and say okay, are we being idle? Is this fruitless? Is it taking away from my relationships, my relationship with God? Is it's getting in the way of my relationship with my children? And those are some serious questions we can ask ourselves about social media. It's something that I'm asking myself currently, something that I'm praying about regularly, and I'm trying to make changes in. And so maybe what we can go into is some of the strategies that we've implemented, some that we want to implement, just to give like a good idea because the people that are listening and watching might want them because I'm sure that they deal with this too. We just live in social media-ville. It's like life right now. It's true. Okay, so one of the first ones that we started out doing when we first got on Facebook was we share passwords and we're very transparent with giving each other access to each account. And this is just a good overall, being one in your marriage and protecting each other is access. Like my wife knows that she can get on my phone, we have the same password for our phones and for our computers. She can look through my search history, she could be on my phone, she can see whoever I'm following, she can see things I've liked, she has access. Now we've had marriages and people say I don't need to do that, they just need to trust me and blah blah blah. Like they take it to a negative level. That's fine, you want to be that way, go ahead. I'd rather be safe. I'd rather my wife feel like she can trust me, I'd rather my wife. Now you almost never even check. No, but in the past there has been moments where I'll see something that triggers this curiosity of like do I trust you and what are you guys talking about? And I'll click on stuff or visit and then turns out it was nothing and that affirms me. And yeah, I'm at the point now where I don't really need to check in but-- And the goal even if you did-- But I know that I can. Even if you did check in, the goal shouldn't be to see if I'm wronging you. The goal should be to see if I'm sinning because you are my wife and you're my helper. And the advice for us, I shouldn't be checking because I'm like jealous and I want to make sure that you're not talking to anyone. I'm checking to see if you're being safe and my whole goal would be to reconcile with you and to help you walk in purity and vice-versa, right? Not because I just want to see if I'm being wronged here. And so sharing passwords and giving access and verbally giving access, meaning hey, if you ever want to grab my phone. Our pastor does this often. To the men, he's like you have access to my phone. Like he wants the other men to be accountable or him to be accountable to us and he just says if you want to look at my phone, go ahead. I mean, that's what's good about being a part of a good community. So what's the next one? Another one is talking about your experiences on social media, so this is kind of a two-parter. So it'd be like, hey, I saw so-and-so on Facebook say this or do this, did you see? Or you know, just inviting each other into those spaces. So the other part of this is sharing your experiences from social media and feelings that you have because of it. If you're wrestling with insecurities or comparison or-- Or getting mean messages from people. Yeah, are you talking to your spouse about those things and are you inviting them into that space and just talking about it? Yeah, so being open and transparent with your experience with social media so that it's an open conversation, that's good. So what's the next one? So another one is permission to ask questions. This is one that I feel like you're really good at, that we're both really good at in our relationship and it has helped protect our marriage and protect our hearts. And that's just, you know, asking those hard questions. When you asked me why are you following so-and-so, that's a hard question and it made me really consider why. Yeah, and when you're asking the questions, is that before you ask the question on both parties, the husband and the wife, ask yourself why you're asking the question. Are you asking because you're insecure yourself or you're jealous or you're fearful, or you're asking because you actually are interested in the well-being and the purity and the holiness of your spouse? Which doesn't mean if you feel those other things, don't not ask it, it means reconcile first and say okay, I'm feeling a certain way, I need to let them know that. Hey, I just saw you looking at such-and-such and actually I'm feeling a little insecure right now and I want to know why you are following that person or why you were looking at that. And we've had couples, we've had wives and husbands talk on both sides, say hey, my husband just won't stop following these girls that I've asked him not to follow. And he says why, they're friends from school, it's not a big deal. Wives following old boyfriends and vice versa. So there's got to be an openness not only for the questioning but also a permission to be like hey, I actually would appreciate if you didn't follow so-and-so. And that's one of the other ones was being willing to delete those relationships that are just really unnecessary. Because your marriage is the most important thing. Yeah, and here's a good warning sign. If we're being defensive about unfollowing someone on social media, there's a problem. There's a problem. Because guys, it's social media. Unfollowing someone and unliking someone's page and not seeing their posts online does not make you not like that person. Doesn't mean that you don't have a relationship with that person. Now if the only relationship you have is online, then all the more, why is it a big deal? So if there's a defensiveness welling up like what's the big deal, you need to ask yourself why you're being defensive. That's really good. Like why are you trying to protect this social media thing over here versus your spouse who has a concern? So recently I've been telling the kids when they're arguing over a toy or just upset at each other, I always tell them that toy is not more important than your brother's heart. It's true. And so I just think about that in context to marriage and social media and just think like social media is not more important than your spouse's heart. It's not. Guys, marriages existed for thousands of years without social media. It's probably better off without it. Right? So we just remember that social media is, if we're getting defensive, there's probably an addiction there to the platform itself. There's probably some sort of connection to whoever you're being asked to stop following. You got to ask, you got to pray through those things. You got to ask yourself why am I being defensive with that? Another way that we've been really good at protecting our marriage through social media is whenever someone messages me that is a man, I'll usually say please contact at Husband Revolution and I'll tag you right away. Or if it's a friend of ours, we'll just tag each other in that message so that everyone's a part of it and there's transparency there. Yeah, we haven't been perfect doing this every single time but again we talk about things so if someone messages me that's a friend of ours, I'll let you know. Hey, so-and-so messaged me, just want you to know. And so there's an openness there. We have a pretty straightforward rule on just not having private communications with the opposite sex online. So you know, I get people, being on social media, being a social media ministry, I get women all the time messaging me and I usually give very short answers or no answer at all, right? So there is no long-term communication. If they ask for advice, I don't give advice. Just say oh. So one thing I'll answer and this is an example, just so you know. Someone will ask like what Bible version I use. I use ESV. Yeah, really like to the point. Yeah, there's no conversation, there's no, okay, cool. If you want to know more, message Unveiled Wife. And so very short or no answer at all and that's just kind of where I've landed the plane on not getting myself in trouble. Yeah, nope, same here. Okay, so the last one that I have on here is be willing to put it away, whether that's a season of like not logging in or if it's just a daily hey, I'm gonna go put my phone away because I want to be with you, I want to be present with you, I want to be with our children, and be willing. Yeah, I think I would take that. So the willingness should be good, like this is another thing. We've given each other permission to say put the phone away. Which is hard because we get defensive, like what's the big deal? I haven't had, I've been on all day. Okay, okay, I don't sound just like that. And we're like fighting. I didn't say you did. You just told everyone you do. I know, I do, you guys. I get really defensive sometimes. We both do. You'll ask me to put it away and I'll be like I'm not. And then I recognize I'm being defensive and I'm like So giving permission to tell each other please put the phone away. But the willing to put it away part, I think it should go even further and we should be proactively putting our phones away, getting off social media. I think I need to be putting in the other room and not having access to it when I'm with the kids so that they don't see me picking up my phone and you know, oh, it's checking it. 'Cause I'm always checking it for no reason. Like there's nothing. And like I said, like Simon Sinek, you're just letting everyone in the room know that they're less important than your phone. It breaks my heart, you guys, it's so sad. Such a good quote. Actually the whole document, we should link to it. Yeah. So that's what we have for you guys today and, you know, we just want to remind you that a marriage after God is one that values their marriage relationship and like I said earlier, social media is not more important than your spouse's heart. Social media is not more important than your heart, Aaron. I know. And I want to treat you with that respect and love and concern and value. Ditto. And so from this day forward. Till death do us part from our phones. I promise to do a little bit better. -We are gonna work on it. We are. We have to work on it because I don't want my kids growing up feeling less than because of our phones. And I don't want to feel less than. I mean, I don't want you to feel less than, both. Yeah. The other thing a marriage after God should be willing to do is to evaluate these things and look at every aspect of our lives and say okay, what needs to be changed? What needs to be cut out? What needs to be destroyed, put away? And so social media might be that or at least needs to be re-evaluated and put into check, right? Which means as we wrap up this episode, go call your spouse or unless they're watching this with you, listening with you-- Yeah, watch this first and then put your phone away or your computer. Oh, 'cause they're on social media. My point is go have that conversation, go talk to each other about some of the strategies that you can implement that will help protect your marriage. Yeah. Alright, we thank you for joining us this week and we look forward to having you next week. Did you enjoy today's show? Find many more encouraging stories and resources at marriageaftergod.com and let us help you cultivate an extraordinary marriage.

How Devan Kline is Helping Women Take Care of Themselves Through Fitness

#WeGotGoals

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2018

From the way he talks, you'd think Devan Kline (co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp and author of Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness By Mastering Your Psychology) grew up in an idyllic suburban community, with plenty of room to play T-ball and adoring parents who cheered him on from the sidelines as he played baseball from elementary school all the way through a minor league stint with the San Francisco Giants. You'd be way, way wrong. As Kline will matter-of-factly tell you, he grew up in an abusive environment in Battle Creek, Michigan. "It was rough, you know? It forced me to grow up really quickly at a young age. Twelve, 13 years old I was dealing with mental and emotional stresses that I see some of my peers at the CEO level in the fitness industry struggle with." But maybe it's a testament to his perspective on life that Kline has grown to appreciate the silver lining in wanting to spend as little time at home as possible. "I pretty much knew what was waiting for me at home on any given day. I used the field to escape. I played basketball and football, but baseball was my passion. I knew that if I left early and got home late, I could avoid some of the turbulence that would be going on in the household." Today, Kline is the co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp, a female-focused gym with 153 open locations (and growing every day). That nationwide phenomenon that boasts over 40,000 clients across 37 states? It started in a parking lot, with Kline handing out free t-shirts to any woman who said they'd work out with him. Glamorous, right? Kline's focus on women stemmed from his days as a professional baseball player, when he was sent to live with host families while on the road (and which you can read more about here). He recognized what the women he lived with often couldn't — that they spent so much time taking care of others, they often neglected taking care of themselves. "Sometimes it was very apparent that there was some unhappiness, and I started thinking... the self-love wasn't there a lot of the time. You largely saw lack of energy, lack of motivation to move their body, lack of nutrition knowledge, lack of desire to even gain nutrition knowledge." After noticing this unhappiness, Kline realized that he could serve as an inspiration for these families he was staying with — and thus, a lifelong passion was recognized. And while the conversation of women "having it all" seems to tend towards a "balancing" metaphor, Kline outright rejects the concept of a balance beam. That's because he sees that analogy as implying that in order to add something to your life, you have to take away something else — and often something you love. Instead, Kline operates from a philosophy of abundance, or what our newly minted improv expert Jeana Anderson Cohen would call "yes, and." His argument? There's always room for more things you love — and often, you feel more energized by adding those passions to your life rather than limiting them in the interest of having more time. Listen to Devan Kline's episode of #WeGotGoals to feel inspired by his journey from an abusive home to CEO of the fast-growing fitness franchise, Burn Boot Camp. Want to see if there's a Burn Boot Camp near you? Check their locations here — and let us know how it went. You can listen to #WeGotGoals anywhere you get your podcasts — and yes, that now includes Spotify! And make sure to listen all the way through, because we heard from a real-life goal-getter just like you. (Want to be featured on a future episode? Send a voice memo with a goal you’ve crushed, a goal you’re eyeing, or your best goal-getting tip to cindy@asweatlife.com.) --- Start transcript: [0:00] Jeana: Welcome to We Got Goals, a podcast by asweatlife.com, on which we talk to high achievers about their goals. I'm Jeana Anderson Cohen. With me, I have Maggie Umberger and Kristen. Kristen: Good morning Jeana. Maggie: Good morning Jeana. Jeana: And Kristen this week you talked to Devan Kline, co-founder of the fitness franchise phenomenon, Burn Boot Camp. Kristen: Yeah. So, I spoke with Devan Kline who've featured on asweatlife.com before. But it was great to get to talk to him. To learn more about how he came up with the idea for Burn Boot Camp. And he's also just come out with a book. So, he's a new author. And he wrote a book called Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness by Mastering Your Psychology. Maggie: And he was pretty open about, you know, where he came from and what his childhood was like and how he ended up where he is today. What can you share about that experience and listening to him? Kristen: Yeah. So, Devan had a really rough childhood and he will tell you very openly that he grew up with abusive parents who were alcoholics and addicted to violence in a really poor area of Battle Creek, Michigan where he's from. And part of the reason he became such a gifted athlete. He ended up playing in the minor leagues for the San Francisco Giants if you weren't familiar. But part of the reason that drove him to that success is because he knew if he left the gym and went home, there was a really solid chance that he was gonna get beat up. So he would stay late at the gym. He would practice. He would lift. He would work on his techniques. And the work that he put in during those hours really affected his ability to play college baseball and get noticed by the baseball professional scouts. So, it was a horrible situation for him to be in. But it was amazing to me how he was able to find that silver lining and connect back to how his childhood had a good impact on him, even when it was such a depressing and traumatic situation for a child to be in. Jeana: And today Burn Boot Camp serves a lot of women across the country. And he found sort of this love and respect for women for a lot of reasons. But mostly one main reason. Can you speak to how he found that reason and what that reason is? Kristen: So when he was in the minor league for the San Francisco Giants, these minor league players. I don't think this is a widely known fact, but they stay with host families to help keep costs down and to assimilate with living in that new area. So, he sort of found his passion for training and for helping others by watching his host moms. And noticing how they spend so much time taking care of everybody else in the family first. That they put themselves last. And he wanted to help his host moms, you know, learn how to take care of themselves first. And he cited the airplane oxygen mask situation. You know, like you need to be able to put on your own oxygen mask before you can help those around you. So throughout that... as he sort of conceptualized Burn Boot Camp and reached out to his first clientele. And even now that they have countless franchises and clients. Women are still his main focus because he feels so strongly about teaching them as he called it, "To be selfless by being selfish." So I thought that was a really interesting way of, you know, viewing taking care of yourself. And a different method of self-care is that it allows you to take care of other people as well, once you sort of get your own self on lock. So today if you go into Burn Boot Camp, you're going to see that the majority of their clients are women. And that's all because of Devan's focus and of his experience of staying with host families. Maggie: And in terms of trying new things or adding to your passions, Devan has a pretty interesting view on what balance means. Can you talk a little bit about that? Kristen: Yeah. And I think this is something that also comes directly from his working with women most of the time. Is that there's this idea of being on a balance beam and, you know, how does do it? How does she balance it all? How does she juggle it all? And a lot of that mentality assumes that if you want to add something in, you have to take something else away. And he comes from what I would call more of a philosophy of abundance. Where he argues that there's always more room for the things that you love without having to take away from other things you love. And I think that's a really important concept. I know we all feel in this room that they are only so many hours of a day and so many hours in which you can accomplish certain things. And I just love the idea of feeling more connected by adding more to your life. Instead of rushing to take away things to make room for something else. So that's definitely something I am carrying with me throughout the rest of my life after working with Devan on this episode. [4:55] Jeana: What an inspiring interview. I can't wait to hear from Devan, author of the new book Stop Starting Over and CEO of Burn Boot Camp. Here is Kristen with Devan. And stick around goal-getter. At the end of this episode, you'll hear from someone who's out there achieving big goals or setting big goals, just like you. Kristen: Welcome to the We Got Goals podcast. My name is Kristen Geil and with me over the internet, today is Devan Kline. The co-founder and CEO of Burn Boot Camp. The fastest ever growing fitness franchise in the nation. And recent author, new author of a book that recently came out in August called Stop Starting Over: Transform Your Fitness by Mastering Your Psychology. Devan, how are you today? Devan: I'm doing fantastic. And thank you so much for having me. That was an excellent intro and I really appreciate you having me on. It's a privilege. Kristen: Of course. We had spoken with you, I think earlier this year. I think Maggie spoke with you about the Burn Boot Camp franchise. And we're excited to dig into that today. As well as, learn a little bit more about how you approach goal-setting. Because you've had a really interesting life. And it seems like you just keep setting this higher and higher milestones for yourself and you keep hitting them. So, I think there' s a lot that we can learn. Devan: Yeah. No, I'm excited. I hooked up with you guys not too long ago. We have a mutual friend and we have some Chicago area locations. And I know that's where your home base is. So, we flew up and met with you guys and had a nice little workout. And we walked around the downtown streets of the windy city and recorded some stuff. It was really, really fun. It's been great to get to know you and the team. Kristen: And if I'm not mistaken you are from the Midwest area originally, correct? Devan: Originally I'm from Battle Creek, Michigan. And I played baseball at Central Michigan University which obviously kept me in Michigan for... in the Midwest. Ended up getting the opportunity to play with the San Francisco Giants which broadened the scope of geography a little bit. I was able to, you know, see most of this country. And some of the Western Hemisphere and that ultimately led me to Naples, Florida where I stayed and began my personal training career. And then, you know, fast forward 18 months after that, I'm 24 years old and starting Burn Boot Camp literally in a parking lot in Charlotte, North Carolina. With no connections, about $600 worth of rusty dumbbells and a whole lot of ambition, that's for sure. Kristen: Well, I want to get in deeper to that story. That was a great overview. Tell me about growing up. Were you always an athlete or was that something that you worked hard at over the course of your childhood and through high school and college? Devan: Yeah. My father and his father were both very good athletes. So, there is some genetics that come. I wasn't as talented as they were before me. So, I really had to work hard. And I had a pretty rough upbringing, you know. And I never tell this story for sympathy. I only tell it to make the rest of the story contextual. Growing up in Battle Creek, Michigan in, you know, what most people would call the ghetto with parents who were addicted to drugs and alcohol. And more of the effect on my life was their physical violence addiction they had to each other and myself and my siblings. It was rough, you know. I mean, it forced me to grow up really quickly at a young age. 12, 13 years old I'm dealing with mental and emotional stresses that I see some of peers now at the CEO level in the fitness industry struggle with. And I was able to... I pretty much knew what was waiting for me at home on any given day. And so I used the field to escape. I played basketball, football but more importantly baseball was my passion. And I used the field to escape. I knew that if I would leave home early and get home late that I could avoid some of the turblance that might be going on in the household. And, you know, but I just thought that's how it was. I thought that's how kids lived. And it wasn't until I got outside of Battle Creek, Michigan and outside of my home til I realized that normal American families problems weren't drug abuse, for the most part. Drug abuse and physical violence. But moreso, lethargy and lack of happiness due to fitness and nutrition. So, I always worked hard, you know. And that, I'll never change my ubrining because it taught me how to be a man. It taught me. Like if I would've had the parents that I wish I would've had now. I wouldn't be the man that I'm proud to be today. And so I'm always, always, always gonna be grateful for that. [9:28] Kristen: Well thank you for sharing with us. It sounds like a very harrowing childhood and it's really amazing to see how you've come from that background to be such a positive influential figure in the world. Not even just in the health and fitness industry. How were you able to stay so goal-oriented when you were growing up in that abusive environment? It seems like it'd be so easy to just do what it takes to skate by, you know. Do the bare minimum in baseball practice or homework or whatever you were doing at the time. How were you able to achieve such great goals when you were growing up that way? Devan: Yeah, and I write about this in my book Stop Starting Over. And it's really a decision that you make and like I said when I was a young kid, I was a little bit more grown up than I had to be. Because of the things I was going through. But life's circumstances, the events that happen to us that really condition who we are. Each one of those events and there's usually a few of them that are significant in all of our lives. I'm sure you can think back and think of a couple events that helped define who you are today. Like all of us can. You know, for me it was about being conscious and understanding that life is a blessing depending on the angle. And I always had the mentality. Like once I found that I was good at baseball, I knew that was my ticket. I knew that my upbringing led me to being on the field. Which led me to, you know, having some baseline talent. But really getting to the level that I played at which .0002% of college baseball players even get to was the fact that I had work ethic. And it was built into me. So I think it was really just a decision that I made at 12 or 13 years old once you start to become conscious about your surroundings and you start to make friends in different parts of the city. You start to take a look at your life and say like what is this... what does this mean. Yeah, this event is happening to me. Does this mean that I'm a bad kid? Does this mean I have shitty parents? Does this mean that I was put in this position so that I could overcome this to then inspire teammates? And inspire other people that I'm surrounded by? And I really took the later and I ran with it. I defined my situation as something that was going to progress me through my life and teach me the principals spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally. That I needed in order to excel at a rate that was in congruency with my ambitions. And so, I was always a very ambitious kid. An entrepreneur at a very young age. Flipping... you know, I used to flip. I don't know if you remember pogs. I used to flip and sell pogs. Kristen: Yes. Devan: Pokemon cards. I used to sell. When I was sixteen I had a car flipping business. I sold like 5 cars over a summer. And you know, so that's always been in me. And so, it was a combination of things. You know, being broke was never fun and I wanted to utilize the situation I was placed in to do good for the world. And not utilize it to complain. Because that's what a lot of people do. And I wanted to show them there's a different light. Kristen: Well, I think you've done that and then some. I would love to hear a little bit more about your story of being drafted by the San Francisco Giants. Can you tell me a little bit about, you know, maybe that last year of playing college ball? Like when you first started to realize that you had a real shot at this. And then what it was like being drafted, playing and staying with the host families. That I know impacted Burn Boot Camp. Devan: Yeah, so between college and the professional ranks. I played in the minor league system. I just want to make that clear. Some people... Kristen: Sure. Devan: When I, you know. They're like "Oh, you're in the big leagues, I never heard of you." I'm like, "You never heard of me because I played the minor leagues with the other hundred guys that you've never heard of." But, nonetheless, it was a shot that I'm grateful for. And when I got drafted. Actually, when I was a sophomore in college I knew that I was good enough because people were telling me that I was good enough. Kristen: Mm-hmm. [13:21] Devan: And I got the opportunity to travel the country during the summer, every year in college, that I was there. I was there for 3 years. And I would stay with host families and host families are basically, for those that don't know. They're basically a family that will take you in and treat you like their kid. Like their son for a summer and, you know, when you're there half the time and on the road half the time. But when you're there, helping you out with your laundry and making you food and just taking care because we're putting our heart and soul into the game. And I started to realize these people that I'm staying with are so grateful for life and they're so grateful for their family but there's still a similar unhappiness that I'm feeling here that I felt in my family. But it's not apples to apples. Like what is it? What is it that's causing some anger and overwhelm and frustration within the households that I'm staying at. Because you can sense those things when you're staying in someone's house. I mean, you get full access. It's like a reality television show. And you know, sometimes it was very apparent that there was unhappiness. And just started thinking. You know, it wasn't abuse. It wasn't physical violence. It wasn't drug abuse. It was unhappiness. Like the self-love wasn't there a lot of times. Like people didn't... they didn't love themselves. And this is an observation of me staying with dozens of host families. And I have stories traveling around and staying with them. You largely saw like lack of energy, lack of motivation to move their body, lack of nutrition knowledge, lack of desire to even gain nutrition knowledge, you know. And so I realized because I had, had to put that work in. You know, being a less than talented athlete to get to where I was. I had to eat well. I had to hit the weight room. I had to take care of my body and I was just doing it. And my host families, some didn't really care and I didn't really see them much. But most of them who were bought in, who loved the game, who wanted to come and watch our games and be bought into our lives. I was an inspiration to them without really even trying. And that's when I knew that I had a God-given talent to motivate people, to move people to real action and to influence their lives. And so when I got drafted by the San Francisco Giants that same thing continued because you still travel in the summer, you still stay with host families in the minor leagues. And, you know, it wasn't like. They weren't like aha moments as I'm there. Cause I'm focused on baseball, right. Like I had no Plan B. It was like make the big leagues and that's it. And so once I got released. You know, I really reflected on what else I was passionate about. And it wasn't long before I realized that helping people live a happier life was my mission. Kristen: Devan, one of the questions we ask everybody who comes on this podcast is what is a goal that you've achieved in the past, why was it important to you and how did you get there? And I'm really interested to hear your answer considering the past that we just discussed. Devan: So I think the most memorable goal achievement that I've ever had was two of them really. The biggest one in my mind was becoming a nationwide franchise. I think that when I first started Burn Boot Camp in a parking lot like I had mentioned. I had $600 to my name. We had 0 resources in the Charlotte area meaning we didn't know anybody. You know, we didn't have any leverage. We didn't know any media contacts. And you know, to start in a parking lot. Grow a movement, more than. I think it's a movement more than a brand. And grow it to the point where you're talking about 1,000 locations coast-to-coast. And being one fo the most globally dominant fitness brands on the planet that ever existed. I mean, that's my biggest accomplishment professionally. Is finishing what we call the FDD, the Franchise Disclosure document. That creates a platform for you to be legal to award franchises in all the states. That moment in, this was, October 2014. This was about 2 years after I got released. I stayed in Naples, Florida as a personal trainer for about 18 months. Moved up to Charlotte as I mentioned about 8 months, 9 months or so. And we started working on the franchise. October 2014 rolls around, we start it and we finished it in February 2015. And the first, I had a franchise coach who was helping me out with all of my legal documents. And he basically was like, "Yeah, Devan. Your concept's pretty good." And he's like if you do 3 in your first year, you know, you're really, really successful." And in my mind, it's like "okay, this guy is full of shit. I'm gonna do 3 in my first week." So, I ended up actually doing 10 locations, awarding 10 locations in my first, my very first week of announcing. So, it was... it was an incredible jumpstart. It was surreal. It created momentum. It's something that I'm always going to look back on and be like. I think goal achievement exists because of decision-making. And the decision that we made to take this route and to scaling this brand. Not only benefits my wife and I. You know, and able to grow fast and become financially free. But also just seeing how many clients that we impact on a daily basis. Reading all of the emails. Like people who are on the brink of suicide sending me emails and saying a video or a podcast or, you know, a blog post changed their life and shifted their mindset. All of that because of one decision to become a franchise and to scale the experience fast. I'm always going to be most proud professionally of that one decision to go for it. Because it's a scary thing to do. Franchising’s very capital intensive and a lot of franchise systems fail, so. No failure in our eyes though. Kristen: One thing that I think is really interesting too is you balancing, on one hand, you've got this incredibly fast growing franchise with I think over 20,000 clients and counting. But at the same time. Devan: I want to make a correction right there. 141,118 but who's counting. Kristen: Holy cow! Oh my gosh. Well, my stats were outdated so awesome. That is amazing to hear. So, how do you balance that with a strong sense of community and family that I know is important to you and your wife in founding this company? [19:40] Devan: I think the question is great. And I did write about this in Stop Starting Over. And I think the reason, why a lot of the questions I get, and it ended up going into the book is because of our mindset. And it's not of balance. Like we're not trying to balance being a big brand versus being a family-oriented brand versus having our own family versus our work and professional and personal lives. Like we... Morgan and I believe in holistic integration. And it's something Arianna Huffington talks a lot about it. She's well known for this. But it's like taking everything that you care about in your life and making sure that you don't have to put big thick walls between your personal and professional life. We want to have an atmosphere where we love what we do. We love the people that we do it with. They love us back. And every day we can get up. And no matter how big we get, it's not going anywhere. Because everything starts and stops with the leadership of an organization or a family. And Morgan and I are the leaders and we genuinely and authentically believe in our hearts that our members are our family. Like they're our family. In my speech last night at my book launch the last thing that I said was, you know, "Thank you guys for showing me what family truly means because I've never had one like this before." So, family is built into the culture, authenticity is built into the culture. And Morgan and I are leading, and that's just who we are as people. So, I think it really trickles down through our franchise partners to our head trainers to their support trainers to our, what we call, brand ambassadors at our front desks. And through our clients and then even through our clients to their families. Which I think is one of the reasons that we're growing so fast because we're really able to take an emotional and mental approach and spiritual approach. Not just a physical approach. Which creates a whole different dynamic and a lot of people will be like, "I love Burn. I've never exercised before and I don't know what it is. There's something different about it and I love it." And you hear that all the time, over and over and over. And I think it is because of that reason. We just don't, we don't try to balance things. The nature of a balance beam is in order to have, you know, it even, you have to take away or add to. And I want all of the areas in our life to be in the black, if you will. I don't ever want to withdraw too much from my spirituality to run the business or withdraw too much from my family to focus on a book. Or focus on a book so hard that I lose my own fitness. So it's just integrating everything so that, you know, you can do two things at once. I can have a conversation with Morgan at night and bond with her over what's going on in the business and it makes life a whole lot easier. Kristen: I love that. It's a philosophy of adding in instead of taking away things. And I think that's really valuable. You also touched on this when you said the leadership trickles down not just within an organization but also within a family. And I know that a big part of your Boot Camp philosophy is making the moms' health a priority in families. Because so many times, moms have the tendency to be the caretaker for everyone else but not their own physical or emotional or mental strength. So, I'd love to know more about how you came to that realization. What influenced you to make that focus on women and moms, specifically, and empowering them through Burn Boot Camp? [23:06] Devan: Yeah, no it started when I was staying with all of my host families as we talked about before. And I think that was really, like I said, it wasn't an aha moment where I was like man, you know, I want to be a trainer that focuses on families health. And, you know, if you take a look at family dynamics like, as much as us guys don't really like to admit it, our wives and the women in our lives are pretty much the rulers of the world. And they're the leaders. And so, realizing that if you could impact a mom's health. You can impact a mom's mentality. You can impact more so her happiness. Well then you're really able to get through to the family because, you know, they always say, "Happy wife, happy life." It's so cliche but it's so true. And when the mom of a household is living in vitality. When they're living in energy. When they have, when they feel like they're giving and giving and giving but their also filling themselves up too so that they can give more. I think that's really what changed the game for a lot of clients originally here in Huntersville, North Carolina. Just north of Charlotte where we started. Who really helped me create a voice surrounding moms. Like so many, so many moms. Gosh, it's really frustrating sometimes and also an opportunity. But also frustrating to hear moms say, "I'm just a mom." Like, I just want to take a moment to address this real quick. Any moms listening to this because if you think you're just a mom, you have to know that you're so much more than that. You're a caregiver. You're a nurturer, a chef, an entertainer, an educator, a taxi driver. I mean the list goes on and on and on. You do so many things and you excel at each one. That there's no way to justify that thought that you're just a mom. You are a freaking rock star and you need to own that. And when I started leading Burn Boot Camp in the parking lot, I told my clients, I told my moms. I'm going to change the world and I don't care who's in my way. I'm gonna help change this world and leave it a better place than when I found it. And people thought I was crazy. The program originally started as Fit Community of Moms, which we kind of dropped that tagline because now we are accessible to men and women and children. But that was really how it started. That was the grassroots concepts. Just because I noticed how prevalent the just a mom mentality was. So to the women of Huntersville, North Carolina, if y'all are listening to this. Like you guys have created a movement and y'all banded together. And you've gotten rid of those poisonous thoughts for yourself and now you're helping millions of other moms do it. And, you know, moms aren't saying around here that they're just a mom anymore. Now they're like, they're the all star, they're the rock star and I shout them out, put them on a pedestal. And I think every mom who realizes that selfishness is not selfish whatsoever. When you're doing it for the right reasons. You don't have to be a selfish person. You don't have to be, in the truest sense of the word. You can be selfless by being selfish when you are pouring into yourself. When you put your oxygen mask before applying the oxygen mask to other people. You breathe life in your self first, so that you can give energy through them and you don't have to try hard. So take care of yourself. Make yourself the number 1 priority in your own life. Above all else. And I know how difficult that is over spirituality and over family. But you have to because if you don't, how are you ever going to find the energy to give outwardly. Kristen: Wow. I'm not a mom but I feel really inspired right now. To go, go out and take care of myself. So, thank you. Devan: It starts before you're a mom by the way. But it just gets harder when... Cause I have kids now. And I started this movement before I had children. And it definitely gets harder but I know that there's no excuses now. Cause it used to be like, "Devan, okay. I get you can say that. You're a 24-year-old kid that's not even married yet. And you don't have kids, you don't understand." Well, it's all about the paradigm, right? How are you, what lens are you looking at it through? And so, when I started having children. I have two, Cameron and Maxwell. She's 2 and he's 7 months. I felt it. But it was about adjusting and it was about adapting. And so, it's definitely possible and people are doing it all over the place. So don't think you're an anomaly if, you know, you have kids and it becomes a struggle. But, start practicing before kids, alright. Because once you get there, you don't want that radical shift. You want to be able to kind of progressively ease your way into children and healthy lifestyle. Kristen: Yeah, let's go into that a little bit more. Cause that was actually something I wanted to talk to you about because a lot of listeners are women who maybe aren't married or don't have kids yet. So how would you encourage them to set strong goals and habits now to set them up for success, if and when they do have a family down the line? Devan: Yeah, no I think ultimately. And I talk about this a lot in Stop Starting Over. This concept of the North Star. I've utilized this, I actually have a tattoo on my back to prove it. Kristen: Oh my gosh, you've committed. [27:52] Devan: Yeah, I committed a long time ago. As 21 or 22 years old playing baseball. I committed to this concept. And the concept was that I have an outcome, a singular outcome that I want my life to be. And I have, I answered the questions what do I want, as simple as that sounds. And why do I really want it? And create clear definitions surrounding those two questions because that gives you clarity. It gives you a GPS as you're going through your life. On a daily basis, we have the opportunity to create rituals in our lives. And those rituals, which most people call habits, things you do repeatedly over and over as a ritual. And are those in alignment with this North Star concept in your life or are they not. So I've always had kind of top of mind. And I put it in the book literally as North Star. And I branded the book with stars and everything because I thought it was super important to realize that no matter where you are in your life today, you have to be doing things that align with your ultimate outcome of your life. Like there can't be internal conflicts. If there are, then you have to make sure that you're self-aware enough, which is a highly underrated skill. If you're self-aware enough to take a look at your life from a 30,000 story foot view. And say, look dude or dudette this ritual, this thing that I'm doing in this life isn't getting me to this ultimate outcome that I'm after. You can also visual a North Star like a perfect day. Like if you had to live a perfect day what exactly would you do. If you had to live a day over and over again with no limitations, no consequences. What would you do when you get up, what would you do then next, and what you do at lunch and what would you do next. What would your day look like. And that is a great exercise because you get an opportunity to look at your life with no limitations. Like we, some of us struggle so hard to find our passion when it's right in front of us. Answer that question, if I had to live a perfect day over and over what would it look like with no limitations. That will give you an opportunity to define what you're passionate about with you having to ask yourself that weird question, what am I passionate about. Because you're gonna do the things over and over every single day. Only the things that you love cause you're stuck with them. So one of those two things or both and I write about both of them in the book, can give you that guidance throughout your life. So, I can't sit here on a podcast and tell anybody that exercising 5 days a week and eating only plants and a little bit of protein. And, you know, like the generic fitness stuff. I can't tell them that because I don't know if that's what makes people happy or not. I know that my personal decisions align with my outcome and part of my outcome is to live a long time so that I can see my great-grandchildren grow up. But I can't tell people you should exercise 3 times a week for 15 minutes or 6 times a week for an hour. It's like you have to do you. I know people, including myself that you're so freaking busy all the time. And it's a real thing. Like real business. Not like thumbing through Instagram or Facebook or something. And sometimes you can only get 10 minutes or 15 minutes in a day. But it's a must that you do it. That's your own decision. So you, I think people have to work backwards. That's my answer. You have to look at what you want your life to be in 50 years from today. Realize that we all have decades left, we all can grow. None of us are perfect. And you have to reverse engineer that life so there's internal conflicts. So that, you know, you can't complain about your job but then also binge watch House of Cards for 5 hours every night. You can't do that. If you're happy binge-watching House of Cards who am I to tell you that you shouldn't be doing that. And that's what I'm all about, is finding ways to create happiness. But if you're complaining about your job and you're watching House of Cards, now there is an internal conflict. So, I'm just really, really passionate about reverse engineering and becoming self-aware along the way. Kristen: And how does that concept of reverse engineering tie into the Stop Starting Over mentality that you titled your book after? Devan: Yeah. So many people, think about it. You hear it all the time, right? Oh, I'll just start next Monday. Or I'm starting a diet plan tomorrow. Or, you know, it's New Years. It's New Years resolution time. I'm making a new years resolution. But you've made the same one the last 7 years. There's no progression there. So, reverse engineering really ties into Stop Starting Over because what you do is you create this North Star that I'm talking about. Again, what you really want, specific to you. And why you really want it, specific to you. And that becomes, that becomes this outcome. For example, I think, it put it into context. For my life, I want to live past 90 years old because I want to see my children grow. And during my life, I want to be a business builder because I know that it'll provide for my family financially the way my parents could never provide for me. And my wife is the most important thing to me in the world and I want her to feel proud of her life and proud of what she does for a living and what her identity is. And, you know, why do I really want it? Well, because I think that love is the most important thing. And the only asset that we truly own and that we can control. And so then you just got to work backwards from there. You got to say, okay, alright. That's my ultimate outcome of my life. Okay, today is going to the cupboard and eating a whole bag of Oreos gonna help me live til I'm 90 years old. And the answer is no, so there's an internal conflict there. And so, reverse engineering and having that North Star, it's basically a GPS on your way to get to your ultimate outcome. It's giving you a way to make decisions throughout your entire day. Answering the question, does this align with my North Star. And that's all reverse engineering really is. So Stop Starting Over is basically teaching you philosophically how to do that. If you're looking for a 30-day meal plan, 30-day exercise program, don't even buy my book because it's not gonna help you. This is for people who are at rock bottom, who really need direction with their lives and don't have a mentor like I didn't when I was young. Or people who are living life at a really high level that want to take it to the next level. It's not gonna speak much to people in the middle who are just content with mediocre. Kristen: One thing that you've also said across your book and across your platforms that I've really honed in on is that success is 90% psychology and 10% strategy. I would love to hear a little bit more about how you came to realize that and it seems like that ties in perfectly to the Stop Starting Over. Because if you get your mind right. If you get that North Star clarified in your brain then that's got you almost all the way to success already. [34:36] Devan: It's all about belief. I mean, if you really look at successful people versus unsuccessful people it's the amount of conviction that they have in their own belief system. And a belief is nothing more than thoughts you continue to think over and over and buy into. And, you know, 90/10 rule. 90%, you know, success is 90% psychology and 10% mechanics is basically saying that the reason why you're starting over and over and over and over is. Because you're 90% focused on the mechanics and you're 10% focused on the foundational psychology that's gonna allow you to create belief systems and delete old belief systems that were installed into you from a young age. You know, inappropriately by a parent or a teacher. Or you had a dad who told you, you were the fat kid and now you identify as the fat kid and now you think that it's all about losing the fat. When really it's about taking a step back and saying. Psychology is the foundation to success, period. I wish I could say it's 100% psychology and 0% mechanics but strategies do take a part. You know, you have to work out and you have to eat right. But look if I asked a room full of 1,000 people is it true or false that you have to eat healthy often and exercise often to become a more healthy person. How many people would say true? All of them, right. So if 100% of people understand the knowledge and then our obesity rates and our rate of overweight American citizens is nearly 70%, 5% higher than it was 5 years ago. Then there's a serious disconnect there, isn't there. Kristen: Yeah. Devan: Everyone knows what to do but nobody's doing it. I mean, that's a pretty big void. That's a pretty big problem. And that's what I wanted to do with this 90/10 rule is address that. The reason that you know things but you're not doing them is cause you believe in your head, your thought processes tell you that knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power, knowledge is only potential power and unless you take action on top of that knowledge then it's never going to, you're never gonna make any real changes. So it's about putting priorities in order and Stop Starting Over really gives foundational principles spiritually, mentally, emotionally, physically that allow people to examine their own psychology. It's not my job to tell you how you should think. The best leaders in the world ask the best questions. And so, throughout the book, you're gonna to see questions being asked of you and exercises for you to do. There's a workbook that goes along with it that you can download on my closed Facebook page called Stop Starting Over. And, it really is a tool for people to really start to understand 90/10. And if you don't have 90/10 rule down and you don't believe it, well then you're gonna to believe things like it is what it is. I'm just overweight, it is what it is. Or I'm not a fitness person. You're gonna have these types of beliefs because you've never questioned them. So I'm getting people to question the way they think. Kristen: Well speaking of big questions, I think we've got just enough time for me ask you the last question that we ask everybody who comes on our podcast. And that is, what's a big goal you have for the future, why is it important to you and what steps are you taking to get there? [37:52] Devan: I am a big thinker. I think anybody that follows me or is a part of our organizations know that. We have 400 franchise partners, 800 trainers, 36 people on our headquarter team and they all know that the crazy stuff that Devan comes up with usually comes to fruition a year or two down the road. So maybe we should start believing him a little bit more when he's talking crazy. But with my energy, with my wife's energy, with our team's energy that we all have collectively with the momentum of all of our clients out there in Burn Nation. We have this 15 and 15 rule. 15,000 Burn Boot Camps over the next 15 years. And we live by that. We truly believe it. We really believe it with conviction that that's going to happen. We're already legal in Canada. We'll begin awarding franchises in Ontario, in Toronto specifically, in Vancouver. We'll be in the UK, some countries in Europe, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, New Zealand, Australia. Those things are all coming and they're coming very, very soon. Like within the next year. And so, it's already starting. So for me, I want to continue to impact people and use Burn Boot Camp as a distribution platform for positivity and for kindness and for psychology and for education. I want to control. I want to take the conversation away from big marketing companies, big food marketing companies specifically and big medical companies. And I want to shift the conversation to our side because the number one reason why I believe that, especially America, is where it is today. Isn't because people try to sit around and be fat, sick and lazy. We're not trying to do that. That's not our ambitions. But the conversation, the education, the knowledge that we're being fed is largely misleading. I think Facebook, Instagram, YouTube do a beautiful job of commoditizing distribution platforms to get people's voice, like mine, out there in the world. And I think a combination of wanting to lead the charge conversationally, in terms of health and real change. And having a physical platform for people to partner with me to do so in our Burn Boot Camp franchise system is a perfect storm to create the next biggest franchise that's ever existed, fitness franchise. Kristen: Well I can't wait to see Burn Boot Camp in a neighborhood near me. Devan, thank you so much for coming on today. Before you go, can you tell us where our listeners can find you on the internet? Where they can download your book? And where they can find a Burn Boot Camp? Devan: So, Stop Starting Over right now is on Amazon. If you liked this podcast and you want to dive deeper, my podcast also goes into a lot of concepts. You can search it iTunes, GooglePlay, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, pretty much any syndication platform. I'm really everywhere, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, anywhere, IGTV. Wherever you feel like you hang out the most and content platform that you like, I'm there. The quickest way to get a hold of me is to just DM me on Instagram. I answer a lot of those. I'm pretty active over there. And, you know, I really look forward to helping people. My wife and I sit in bed every night for 45 minutes to an hour and share stories of clients who we're communicating with and help people. And it's just part of our lives and we love to do it. So, chances are... I can't get to all the DMs nowadays. I used to be able to. But chances are that we will have a conversation at some point if you really want the help. So reach out. Cindy: He goal getters, Cindy Kuzma here. Just popping back in to let you know that we are about to play a goal from one of you, our listeners! We would love to hear from you, that's right you! If you'd like to be featured on this podcast just record a voice memo with a goal that you've crushed, a goal that you have for the future and how you plan to get there or your best goal-getting tip. Email it to Cindy@aSweatLife.com. And you could be featured on an upcoming episode. Here is one of you with your goals. Zajana: I'm Zajana Das and I'm from Chicago, Illinois. Ana: My name is Ana and I'm also from Chicago, Illinois. Zajana: So, Ana and I both have a love for healthy foods. And it's something that we've talked about since the day we met. On our first day of adult work. We've been discussing this year about how we can start a brand that really represents us and our passion for health food. Ana: Yes and so we kind of looked at what we want to share with the world and with our community and we looked at it from being active, authentic and ambitious. And then just sharing those three different qualities through a lifestyle and through the food that we put out there. Zajana: And how we plan on getting there. I think it's been a little bit of trial and error. But something that we've come to learn about ourselves and A Sweat Life helped us learn about during one of the Breakfast and Learns is that we have to tell other people about our goals. So you know, I told my goal to Ana and she kind of echoed that was one of her goals as well. So that accountability has led us to really step up and come up with a game plan and a business idea for our goals. Ana: Yes and to add to that I will say that for both of us it's important to be detailed. And not just have a big grand goal out there. But kind of set up steps that will help us achieve that goal. So, you know, whether it is making a big business plan or setting up a marketing strategy, creating a brand image that we believe in. So taking concrete steps along the way to make it happen. Zajana: Definitely. Cindy: This podcast is asweatlife.com production and it’s another thing that’s better with friends. So please, share it with yours. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts including on Spotify. And while you’re there if you could leave us a rating or a review we would really appreciate it. Special thanks to Jay Mono, for our theme music, to our guest this week, Devan Kline, to Cathy Lye for editing, to TechNexus for the recording studio, and of course to you, our listeners.

Episode 56 - Dear 9 to 5 People

My Trip To Reality

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 17, 2018 20:32

Working 9 to 5 ? 5 Days a week ? 6.... days a week ? I feel you, I honestly do. Cause I'm working those numbers of days each week now in July. Do you enjoy your job ? Does it have these glimpses of happiness? I feel you... I explain why I can't and wont settle for 9 to 5. For more information you can visit Website - http://www.dennisforsbergphotography.com/podcast/ Instagram - Dennisforsbergphotography YouTube - https://bit.ly/2HN26Ou

Success Smackdown Live with Kat

You just do it. One foot in front of the other. Thats how its done. It's the only way.

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 6, 2018 25:47

[Silence for 25 seconds.] Hi. Hello. Welcome to the Katrina Ruth Show. Where anything could happen and probably will [inaudible 00:00:34]. You're gonna like it. It's gonna be fun for everybody. Or maybe I'll just be super sweet and nice. I'm pretty sweet. I mean I feel like life is sweet, like sweet. But I feel like I'm pretty sweet. I feel like this morning ... I hate ... Oh my golly gosh. Oh, no it's okay. I thought I left my Nike hoodie at the gym, but I found it. Brandon Marshall? Brandon Marshall,I fucking knew it. From that first live stream. I fucking knew it. Probably everyone else did as well. I definitely did. I was like, I see exactly what's happening here. Kelly and I took a photo of ourselves this morning. And we just decided that we looked so beautiful. We were like, look at us we're so pretty. And then we were like, will you listen to the sounds of us. One of us said, I won't tell you who said what. Damn intuition. I know all the things. One of us said, "We look so pretty." And the other one said, "We should be super models." I'm not gonna tell you who said what. Why don't you just guess? But we just looked really pretty, I think. 'Cause of the pinkness and the sweetness. And because we just, we were just like two sweet pretty little girls. Like just little girls. Little girls talking about naked sensual dancing. Actually, may have been video shown of one person doing a naked dance in front of a mirror. Maybe, maybe not, maybe I'm just making shit up. Guess who that was as well if you like. So anyway, I don't think that's got anything to do with what we're here to talk about. What are we here to talk about? Oh, you just put one foot in front of the other. It's a whole story, right? I'm sort of quoting Elizabeth Taylor. She says, "I just put one foot in front of the other. I just got up everyday and put one foot in front of the other." Something like that. That's what I did. That's the only way you could ever do it. That's just how it's done. Something like that. And I really love that quote. A lot of the time I feel like it's just total flow and ease. And I'm dancing, I'm playing with life, and astro travelling, and sitting in a beautiful surrounds at the outdoor section of the shopping mall here, for example. And having the best flow day ever just live streaming into one of my client groups just now. And then there's, you know, and everything just like comes through, and you just know what to do, and where to go, and how to move. It's like being in a dance, on a dance floor, and just knowing how to move your body, right? Or maybe sex. You know in sex where you just, like it's just like super flow. And you know, you just know, like from working. And then there's other times where you're like, should I move my leg like this more, or like that more. And you're like this is stupid. Why am I even thinking about it? And then you're thinking about why you're thinking about it. And then you're like, I think I'm not good at sex. I'm probably thinking that I'm not good at sex. And then it's just like a mind fuck. And it's definitely not flow. So it's kind of like that. Life is like that. Life is like sex. Or sensual dancing, same thing. Or just normal dancing, or writing. It's all the same. Sometimes it just kind of comes out. And it's like, oh this is fucking magic, and it feels so good. And clearly everybody's having the best time ever because this is amazing. And then other times you're like, do it do it this way, or that way? Do I dot the I like this, or cross the T like that? Maybe I shouldn't do it. Maybe I shouldn't do it at all. Maybe I'm stupid at this. Maybe I'm not good enough for this. Mind fuck. So just now. I was kind of like, I'm a little bit cold actually. Been sitting here for a while and I'm a little bit cold. And then I was like, maybe I'm a bit hungry. Maybe I should go and get a quick 30 minute massage before I have to go to the dentist in 43 minutes. Which I'm so excited about. I've decided that I'm gonna have the best experience ever at the dentist. Calling it in. Why would I not? And I didn't really necessarily feel like going live. But then I was like, well really am I going to fuck around here. I'm like, but what am I gonna do? Am I gonna walk in to Sephora and buy a freaking eye liner? Or am I gonna do a livestream. Am I gonna bullshit myself that I don't have time to doing a livestream? To do a livestream before I go to the dentist. Am I gonna like tell myself the story that it's too cold to sit here? Am I gonna say, "But I don't really have a topic title anyway that's coming to me right now." I've been like, going at it hard all morning. By going at it hard I mean I spent three hours sitting having coffee with my best friend Kelly, and talking about sex, and life, and business, and money, and sensual dancing, and all the things. But I did write a blog. And I did three or four pages of journaling. And I did go to the gym. And then I did a livestream for my members. And I've answered a bunch of comments and questions. So I've done many things, about many things. And so I have been going at it hard. And so then I was like, well maybe my brain is a little bit fried, right? Maybe I should go up to grilled burger place and get a burger. Maybe I should go in to Sephora. Maybe I should go over there to jbsports.com that's over there behind me. Where I do wanna go? Maybe I should go and buy a new, you know like a hoodie to fit my big breasts that I now have. 'Cause none of my clothes now really fit me. I'm wearing the same exact Nike hoodie all the time. But it's just 'cause I love that hoodie. And I wear it obsessively everyday anyway. I have like a wardrobe that's worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I just get around town like a semi homeless person. With a Nike backpack and the same Nike hoodie on every single fucking day. Like I don't have any clothes. So then I was like, maybe I should do that in my spare time before I go to the dentist. I don't really need to go live, you know? I'm sure I can do it later. I'm sure I'll be more inspired later. I'm sure my brain won't be fried, besides which maybe I'll have a little cool new top that I get to wear. And then I was like, you shut the fuck up Kat. You kick your own ass right now. Who cares if there's 25 people walking past you on the other side of the camera looking at you like a crazy person. You waving your hands around in the air and getting a preacher mode on for the last hour and a half, talking to your members. Man the fuck up and do what you're supposed to do. And here we are. That's roughly how it happened. It's roughly the entire story. It's roughly the entire story of how I created my whole business and life. What do you think? What say you [inaudible 00:06:29]. Or any of the, get a float. I so have to get a float. I could float anywhere with these new breasts. I would just bobble around. I could to the ocean and just bobble around. And just float everywhere. [inaudible 00:06:43] Sephora is always a great idea. Well it is right there. I get lost in there. I get into a little bit of a mild panic when I'm in there. It's very overwhelming. I already have way too much makeup that I don't wear or use anyhow. So I definitely don't need to go and buy more. But I don't need to go to a flotation tank to float. I've got these babies now. I'm just gonna float. I'm sitting in a pod. 'Cause I'm a space person. Have you seen my top? It says, "Follow your soul." It's backwards writing, but it says, "Follow your soul it knows the way." I'm reclining in a pod like an alien. I'm at the shopping mall. I'm a mall rat. At least one day a week I come and I be a mall rat. A pretty wealthy one, but still a mall rat. There's a gym right up there. I have a membership at every good gym on the gold coast. So that I never have to worry about driving to the gym and just go wherever I wanna go. So go to the gym. And then I come and sit down in my little pod. Then I was doing a livestream for my Break The Internet members. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Where am I from? Well it's a very deep question. I'm from the place where our souls meet and collide and come together as one. I'm from the same place as the soul of my soulmate clients. Our souls were formed in the same soul bucket. Mim put the comment in. Put the comment in. I'm gonna talk about the comment. I'm from places from far and near. I'm from the places that are inside all of us. I'm from the places where we travel to in our dreams and in our prayers. I'm from your wildest fantasies but potentially your deepest nightmares. It really depends on the day of the week. Who can say? Anyway, did you see that I launched the Millionaire Mastermind? Did you see? Did you see? I believe that you have two days, minus 22 minutes left to join it. Can we all just take a moment of silence for the fact that it's 12:22 pm. If we cut off the 1, then it's 222. 1 2222, sounds pretty good. Brandon just 'cause I'm in a relationship doesn't mean I can't mingle. We're gonna need to have clarification around that I'm afraid. Gonna need to understand and clarify the terms of this agreement please. Please outline your policies below. So, did you see that in two days, minus 22 minutes, the Millionaire Mastermind closes again? Again? It only just fucking opened for the first time ever. So it will close for the first time. It's never closed before. Because it never opened before. It only opened a few days ago. Screwed the whole thing up, I forgot to launch. Then the sales page went down for most of Sunday, and nobody knew 'cause it was Sunday. And we were all off to the races, as you do on a Sunday in Australia. Having a great Sunday session. And then on Monday. What did we do on Monday? Oh, Monday we realised we didn't even write the freaking outline of the offer properly. We put it like a little after thought somewhere. And we didn't clearly explain what it even was. And it was very confusing to [inaudible 00:09:35]. So then we're like, fuck this shit. Countdown timer goes till midday on Thursday. Which is two days minus 23 minutes from now, 23. How may hours in a two day period? 43? 48. So, 47 hours and 37 minutes are left. You better get your ass over there. You could wait. You could wait to join my high vibe as fuck Millionaire Mastermind. The mindset and the strategy of how to crush it online. For driven entrepreneurs and crazy creators. I don't know many of them myself, but I feel like it's a thing. Crazy creators who just want more. More what? Stupid question. If you have to ask, well more what? You don't join the programme. If you go to the Katrina Ruth Show.com forward slash Millionaire Mastermind. Let me make sure that's correctly ... I was giving out the wrong link for a while. If you go to The Katrina Ruth Show.com forward slash Millionaire Mastermind, and then you read the tag line. And that is the right link. One hour, 23 hours, 35 minutes, and 38 seconds. That just blew my mind, 'cause I was like, no it's 47 hours. And then I'm like, 30's the same as one day 23 hours. So when you read the tag line and it says, "The mindset and strategy of crushing it online for driven entrepreneur and crazy creators who just want more." If your mind sense it, but more what? Then you leave, you leave straightaway. You take your questioning friends with you. And you do not return, alright? Just telling you. 'Cause I can't even with people that ask silly questions. And I only want the right people in there. And there's not gonna be any need for any explanations about anything. 'Cause I'm just gonna impart knowledge to your soul. That's how the whole programme works. Well not really. My team are also gonna teach you everything that we do behind and in front of the scenes at the Katrina Ruth Show. All of the marketing, all of the funnels, all of the strategy, all of the selling. Monthly fucking report on exactly what we're doing and how it's worked. You're a founding, founding, founding member. Triple founding. Triple X. A EMC squared member, why not? I think we should have black diamond members. Do you reckon? [Brandon's 00:11:43] a black diamond member [inaudible 00:11:44] as well. Not sure who else. Lisa [Mitchell 00:11:48] [Mackell 00:11:47], no I don't know how to say your name Lisa. I just feel like I've never said your surname out loud. Okay, so you can go there, you can check it out. You could wait. Like I said, you could wait. Because maybe you're one of those people who's like, yeah I know exactly what I want out of life, and I fully know what's aligned for my soul. And when I get to heaven I believe that I can have it all. But I'm just like, I'm just gonna think about it. I'm just like, I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna think about it. [Helen 00:12:12] I'm so glad you're in. Yeah, I'm just like, I'm gonna think about it. 'Cause you know, I don't do fast action taking. I don't do fast action taking. I like to think about things. I like to, you know, sit on it. And it sounds uncomfortable. And talk it over with my partner. And the dog. Then I like to look for signs. Like I like for a vestal virgin to come down from the mountain above, and to deliver me with a scroll that says, "It's time." I gotta make sure it's the right phase of the moon. So I gotta wait. I can't take fast action. I don't do fast action taking. If you're that person, you should leave. But first you should tell me all your excuses and reasons, 'cause then I can turn them into sales copy and sell more places. Please comment below with any thoughts that you have along those lines. And otherwise, just join the fucking programme. Go read the page. And it's either going to speak to your soul. Or it's not gonna speak to your soul. But if it speaks to your soul please don't be the person who's like my soul speaks to me, and then I don't take action. 'Cause that's definitely embarrassing for you. Why would you listen to your soul, and then not act on it? It's actually like really stupid when you say it out loud and think about it. Black diamond membership. We're gonna have to think about what black diamonds membership involves and includes. I feel like it should be a mix of slightly terrifying and slightly amazing. I can definitely handle that. What else? This is a membership programme. We do like a huge crazy ass discount to be a founding member. Which means you're going to pay only 16.666 devil numbers. I don't know why, that happened by accident. 16.666%, or something like that to join up for the first month, like a trial. Fish slapping. Yeah, that expression came from my dad. My dad says, "Would you like a slap in the face with a cod fish?" And I'm like, "Well who wouldn't, really?" I don't know. He never said it as a mean thing. It was just funny. But it made its way into the blog this morning. So you should get a slap in the face with a cod fish if you thought you needed to think about it. That'll wake you up for sure. Anyway Peter [Gregory 00:14:09] [inaudible 00:14:11]. Shout out to my dad the pilot. He's just flowing around the earth, slapping people in the face with a cod fish if they're not paying proper attention. Wouldn't you just hate to be his copilot? What if you weren't paying proper attention, you'd get a fish in your face. You should deserve it too. Alright, I'm trying to get to the point, I'm not sure what the point was though. Oh that's right. I am the fucking point. We all are. I'm trying to tell you about the programme, but I'm just like a little, I'm in my crazy mode obviously. It's off the hook, I can see that it's off the hook. 'Cause it says it right here in the pinned comment. But I can't read the rest of it. Definitely off the hook. It's definitely fucking amazing. It's definitely like, the most bad ass deal to be a founding member. 'Cause I wanna get you in, and then I wanna reach into your soul, and I'm gonna grab your soul. Your soul and mine are gonna become one, in a really non-creepy way. And then you'll be thrown out. I won't throw anyone out. But you'll throw yourself out. Maybe I will throw someone out, I shouldn't say that. I will if necessary. You'll either leave, because I don't know why. But you're probably not gonna leave, because your soul will know whether or not you're meant to be there. And then obviously you stay on. And it's a monthly membership programme. Where you learn all the things, all the time, from all the ninjas. Specifically my cat ninjas, who do all the things in my business. And then I, I, will just come in like a rockstar. When I feel like it. Straight up, I'm just gonna tell you. I'm gonna come when I want, how I want, and with who I want. I'm gonna do what I fucking want, in my own programme. So if you wanna know what I'm gonna bring, you're gonna, I don't know. I have no fucking idea. But it will be fucking amazing, and I will dazzle your [vagazle 00:16:25]. I hope we do get that one person here. Well that was fun. We had that moment in the [inaudible 00:15:48]. It was quite hilarious and shocking. So I will just come in, when the mood strikes me. I'll come in with some bad [inaudible 00:15:56]. I'll bring my energy. I'll bring my presence. You'll be like, wow I can't even look at it, it's too blinding. Get me away from it. But it's fascinating, what is that? And I'll be like, it's me, Katrina Ruth, hi. So you know, I'll probably be in there a lot. Just dancing and prancing. And doing whatever I wanna do. I promise nothing, at all. There's nothing I'm promising at all, nothing. But I'll deliver everything. I think I said dazzle your [vagazle 00:16:23]. You know [vagazles 00:16:25], like when you get little diamond on your vagina. It just came out. It just popped out. I don't really have an explanation. I can't excuse myself, there's nothing I can say further. Maybe that's what you get as a black diamond member. You get some [vagazle 00:16:45]. You get a little sequin that you can put on your ... Well I'm sorry [Brandon 00:16:48] you're gonna have to give it to [Rebecca 00:16:51]. Or we'll find a manly version. I'm sorry. I'm not really sorry at all. I'm having too much fun. So isn't it just the best creation ever? Aren't I a genius? Don't you just think I'm a genius? I'm selling a programme where I'm promising nothing. I'll do whatever I want. I'll turn up like a rockstar when I feel like it. It's fine, because anyone who knows me knows I over fucking deliver all the time. And really it's the energy. It is the energy. I will allow you into my soul. I don't allow everybody into my soul. I wrote about that in my blog this morning. I said, "It's a hell no with every cell in my body." I'm gonna give a shout out to [inaudible 00:17:32] because that was her line. And she let me use her line for my blog title a few weeks ago. In an audio she was telling me about it, something a story in her life. And she said, "It's just a hell no from me. With every cell in my body." And I was like, goddamn it that's the best blog title I ever heard. And I said to her, "You should use that in a blog title." She goes, "I'm not going to. You can use it if you want." I was like done and done. And I wrote it down, and I saved it on my desktop, and then I forgot. And then this morning it came back to me. It was like smack. It was like not a smack in the face with a cod fish. Okay just slapped myself with two hands whilst at the shopping mall. And I'm in the kind of designer area, like where, like [Harolds 00:18:08] is right there. Coach, don't care for Coach. Don't bring a Coach purse if you come to see me. It's not my favourite. [Ermez 00:18:16] is just around there. I'm in the designer area slapping myself. [inaudible 00:18:21] It's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be beyond next, next, next, next level. You get all my ninjas. We're actually including like tech support for you, and Facebook advertising support, and all the market, like all the things. I'm super fucking excited about it. Had some control issues. I had some control issues. It required some prayer. It required some wine. And as I put on the sales page. Oh Channel is just up there [inaudible 00:18:51]. Hang on, is it up there? Yeah. And it required a little bit of sexual healing. Before I was able to release the control issues that I had around, me not being the only rockstar of the show. Because I'm letting my team all be rockstars as well. So you know, I had to like, this is embarrassing. 'Cause I just gave a whole lot of shit to people who sit on things and don't take rapid action. Like I don't do fast action taking. Mirror, hello. Yeah, I didn't take very fast action on this. I sat on it for ages. What a flake. But now here we are. And it's fabulous. What else should we talk about? Is there anything else to even say? Don't you think it's just divinely delightful, that you can launch and amazing bad ass membership programme. Where you can bring your whole team in. And allow them to share their gifts with the world, and support your amazing bad ass clients. That's a big deal to me. It feels very special. It feels like I'm letting my little birds, they probably don't really prefer to be referred to as little birds I imagine. But it feels like I'm letting my big eagles free from the nest. Well I suppose if you had a nest full of eagles they'd probably be doing whatever the fuck they wanted anyway. And not flying free from the nest. The truth is, my team do do whatever the fuck they want a lot. But I just trust and know that they're gonna do what is aligned and profit-full. I really don't wanna know what they're doing. Like I don't want a fucking report. As if I care. I just want the outcome, right? So it is a special thing to be able to give you my team. But isn't it just divinely delightful, that I get to just give me. And I don't even have to say in advance what little piece of me you're gonna get. Like what am I gonna do? You know on the first Monday of every month you get a piece of my elbow. On the second Monday of every month, you get like a little demonstration of my soul. On the third Monday of every month, you get access to a makeup tutorial from Channel. What am I gonna do? Am I gonna pre-package all the little parts of my life and who I am? Or am I just gonna show up like a star, on the stage. And whatever needs to come out for my members will be the full power and the glory, and the exact soul flow message that was meant to be delivered that day. That feels a little more fun and interesting. My goodness. Six years ago, ten years ago, even two years ago. I would have thought, you can't sell that, you can't sell nothing. Well I guess I'm not selling nothing, there's a whole lot of fucking promises on that sales page. And we haven't even told you the half of all the plans as well. That's just a percentage of it. But, we're kind of selling nothing as far as my role. I'm selling that I'll do whatever I want. I'm pretty happy about it. And I think that I'm pretty happy, or grateful I should say, to my community to you. To have that level of trust. Even for people who've only just met me and come across me. My soul spoke, and your soul said yes, and now here we are. Or maybe you just created me. Maybe your soul created me. In which case, I gotta give you props for being such a bad ass creator of such a bad ass character in your story. I think you were very creative with this one. So maybe you just created me, and maybe right now this is you talking. Like this is you talking. I am talking to you. And it's actually you. Well done, get out of my soul. Without prior access or permission. Go read my blog from this morning. 'Cause I talk about who gets to be my soul, and who not. So you know who you are anyway. You already know. I think that's really all that I have to say. I think maybe I will go to freaking Sephora. I think I'll go to Adidas, or Adidas, or whatever it's called. I can see it over there. I think I'm gonna go up there. I'm gonna buy something that fits my large bosoms. And then I'm gonna go to the dentist. And I'm gonna have the best time ever. Because I decided to. And I'm probably gonna meet an amazing person at the dentist who's gonna change my life. And I'm gonna change their life. And then we're gonna have an argument over who created who. And then that person's gonna join the Millionaire Mastermind. And then I'm gonna be like, I told you about that already in advance on the livestream. And then after that I'm gonna talk to some of my clients. And then I'm gonna do another Muay Thai session. 'Cause who doesn't like to back up a Muay Thai session in the ring every two days, less than a week after having breast surgery? Me, that's who. Then I'm gonna have my hair done, and it's gonna look amazing. So I'll probably need to livestream again. It already looks quite amazing, just a bit sweaty. That's the whole story. If you didn't read my blog from today, I'm gonna give you that link now. 'Cause that was a must read. Here's this, everyone needs to do this now, no wining excises. You should listen to your soul, and you should do what your soul says. You should go read my blog from this morning it's called, "It's a hell no with every cell in my body." I feel quite happy with the ass [kickery 00:23:22] tone of it. My battery of my laptop is down to only 6% though. Which feels problematic and troublesome to use a word that's recently been reminded back to me. I'm going to try and share that blog for you before I go. But It doesn't wanna share. So maybe it's not divine to be. So go to my personal Katrina Ruth page and read the blog from this morning. It is gonna kick your ass. It will metaphorically and energetically fish slap the fuck out of you. Okay I just found it, don't worry I'll bring it over for you. Hello, hello hello. I will not try closing and reopening my browser window. You try closing and reopening your browser window you stupid thing. Do you think it's normal to talk to your laptop? Well we should give my dad a shout out for providing some good coffee. Alright, and then the other thing is, read the comment. Go to the comment. It's not really another thing we already talked about it. The Katrina Ruth Show.com forward slash Millionaire Mastermind. Maybe you're wondering. Maybe you're new and you're like, where is the show then I wanna watch the show. Well this is the show. It's happening right here. It will be happening at the dentist in not too long. In 22 minutes in fact. So I probably should get up and go. Alright, in one minute when this thing fucking loads for me. I'm gonna give you the link so you can go read my blog. 'Cause I like to make your life easy and fabulous. When you really could just go there and read it anyway. So I'll pop that link in for you. Have an amazing epic rest of the day. Wherever you are in the world. Thank you for playing. Thank you for allowing my silliness to come out. I wasn't expecting it. I actually said at the start of the livestream that I was gonna be giving you an ass kicking today. Actually I did give you an ass kicking. You're welcome. You're welcome. It was with pleasure. I'm just here to serve. I'm just here to serve. But I didn't think I was going down the stupid silly route. That just happened. I'm happy about it 'cause it makes me feel hyper. And now one of my favourite songs is on. Havana, I left my heart back in Havana. They play the best music here. Why would you not want to be a mall rat and work here all day. Okay this link is coming. It's coming for you right now. Don't go anywhere. Read this mornings blog. Read the pinned comment. It is going to expand your beautiful mind. Your soul will know exactly what to do. Do it. And don't forget Life is Now. Press Play.

Either way, you WERE born to win, so do what you want, yeah?!

Success Smackdown Live with Kat

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 2, 2018 29:19

Good afternoon. Hi beautiful people. Hello to the people of the world, come onto me there, come hither to me, I can't just sit here on a big rock all by myself talking into space. Well I could, it would be nothing that's completely unusual. Oh hi people who are jumping onto Join Me. Check it out, I'm on a rock. I'm sitting on a rock. I'm a lizard on a rock. Good morning from Canada. Holler! Holler or Hola? I'm going to go with Holler! Hey Lana, hey Claire, hey Sarah Ashley. I love how Facebook randomly invites me to bring some people on, but not others. So Facebook's invited me to bring Sarah Ashley on. So I'm sitting here on a rock. Where am I? I'm in ... what's country is this? America. And it's the state of Florida. Okay I do roughly know where I am. I don't know. I don't always stay on the human earth, I write about that last night. Sometimes my body might be here, the physical me is here. The rest of me, you just don't know, you don't need to know. I know you would know what I mean, who read my blog post last night? It was pretty fucking huge for me to release. I was like you know when you've unleashed some art that is just next level powerful and you kind of like spent ... it's the best word for it. Diana says, "Just read your blog and oh my God, so me right now! I'm dealing with all of that." If you didn't read my blog, I think I even going to go get you that link and pay sitting here so ... Nadia, right. Thank you Emma. So the blog was about I get anxious ... what did I called it? I get anxious ... and I don't think I said bitchy, but that's definitely true. And agitated a lot of the time in how ... I'm sorry I'm just looking at my computer while I'm sharing the post ... in how I kind of hate people a lot of the time, which is not typically something that you want to say on the internet when you're talking to people. But then I know that you guys get it, right? And so I want to give you that link now. I don't want you to obviously go read it now, but if you did miss it, I feel like it's going to be pretty powerful. Oh here we go! "I'm sensitive and anxious" ... I called it. "I'm sensitive and anxious, easily agitated and kind of really hate people, a lot of the time." And so I'm here at an event. I'm hiding. I'm hiding from the event although presumably if anyone at the event wanted to see where I am, they could just put Facebook on and find me. But this is where I'm at. It's kind of beautiful. So it's actually a Disneyland resort where they're hosting this event at, cause it's like three and half thousand people here. I did not in fact go to class today at all. Today was a day for me to recharge my soul batteries. And so I want to talk about that a little bit. I want you to go read and read that blog like I said later if you not had chance to read it yet. So here's the link for it right now, it's coming. There it is. Because I think that this is really important for us, for people like us. Yeah I'm at ClickFunnels. So I went yesterday and attended. And it was fantastic. I got so much value out of it. I will write and share my thoughts at some point, no doubt. I really just enjoyed the sessions and I really just allowed myself to be open to being inspire by other stories, and I find it super inspiring to hear other people's stories. Today I look at the schedule and it's more Funnels and that sort of [inaudible 00:03:41] stuff. And my brother who's the chief operating officer of my business is here with me and he got to go today. And you know I looked at the schedule and I was like, "I know that if I went along, I would get epic value out of being in the room." Because I always get value from what I chose to do. So it's no doubt that I would take what I needed from the sessions and if there were any sessions that didn't resonate with me, I would just sneak out the back door as I do ... it's why I have sit near the back. But when I tuned in I was like, "What is it that I'm meant to do today?" Am I meant to go sit in that room because obviously I flew and travelled in theory from Australia to be here all day ... many other things I'm here for on this trip. And come to the event, and paid for the event. And one of the things that I have long ago, given myself permission for and that I want to talk, is to just follow whatever is actually needed for me. Right? So little people would come along to something like this and they're like, "Well I paid to be here and I want to get my money worth." Or "I want to get my value." And for me it was never about that. It was actually more like, I thought for my brother. It would be cool for him to come because he's relatively new, I guess, to the online marketing world, well a couple of years in. But newer than me. And my best Kylie is here as well and so I was like yeah, "Cool, you know I'll come along and I'm sure I hang with some cool people. And I'm sure I would get some value out." But I was never like I want to come to the event and be at the event the whole time. That wasn't my intention. But even had it have been, I've long ago given myself permission to do whatever I need to do in any situation and time. And it's worked out really, really well for me. And that's what I want to talk about, so I did the title for today, "Either way you were born to win no matter what." Or I think it wasn't that long, but my title is essentially, "You were born to win no matter what, so why don't you just do what you want." Right? So for me, like from these perspectives now, from my perspective on the rock, I know when I look at my business, some of the results that I have with money. Building a multi-million dollar [inaudible 00:05:29] business online ... Hey Mandy! We're going to be hanging very soon at my event! Did you guys know I'm doing a one day VIP, very intimate high level soul shift and soul creative flow money making event next week one day in New York? It's going to be next Tuesday in New York. And then one day in San Diego. Then a week after which I believe is also Tuesday, either way it's April 3. Message me over on my personal Katrina Ruth page if you would like the details to be at those events. There are filling quite fast, so there's only a few places left. They're very small, high level intimate one day events. Super excited about that. And I just thought of it cause Mandy just signed on and she just said, Hello, on the live stream here. So yeah when I look at my business now, when I look at ... okay my business makes more than seven figures per year. It continues to grow. I truly believe I have one of , if not the most [inaudible 00:06:18] fucking tribe on the internet, right? Like I just, I mean, okay. If you want to be internet markety about it, my conversion numbers and my engagement tells that story. Right? Actually the income that my, the revenue that my business makes for the size of my email list and my following is quite astonishing. And it's kind of unheard of whenever I talk to normal internet people. But like putting that aside, you fucking see it and feel it, right? And whenever I'm in a room with my clients and my clients get to meet each other for example like at an inner circle events or over the [inaudible 00:06:46] event in New York next week and San Diego the week after, the clients and my tribe ...like when they interact with each other are always kind of astonished but not. But just kind of blown away at how instantly every single person in the room connects with every single other person in the room. You know I have been in business for nearly twenty years now, and have been marketing online for twelve years of that. And I've never experienced this before. You don't go to an event or retreat or seminar or hang out in a group online and every single person adores every single other person and is like a soul sister friend. So I know that I've done a pretty damn good job of building my tribe and calling in the correct alliance of people. And that post last night and the resonance that came through from that and the feedback that I had of messages and comments is just like, I think I've actually going to extend it to a book. Cause I just really feel that this is such a powerful topic. And I think that's what I'm going to do today, is really dive deep into writing a big piece of that book instead of going to the event. So yeah, I know I've done a good job of calling my tribe and it's reflected in energy that I have in my online audience. It's reflected in how I feel. It's reflected in how much genuine joy and love and utterance I have for my clients. And it's also reflected in the fact that I love spending time with my clients as suppose to my hating people thing that I write about on the internet last night. I've truly allowed myself to call in and create. I've a soul tribe of women and some men who are exactly the same sort of person to me. And who get it. And who were not born for this world and we're born to dance between the realms [inaudible 00:08:23]. Like we travel in our sleep and even during the day to other worlds and other places. And then we create new worlds inside of us. And if we put ourselves into an environment with people who are not ... like whatever you want to call it, astro travellers, indigo children, magical light workers, healers, like you know, the ones who are sent from other places. Us. If we hang with the other people too much or if we just around like noise or a load of city type stuff or electro magnetic stuff or just a load of energy that's not ours or it could be just being really busy. That's going to deplete us. And I'm not just talking like introvert depletion, well that's part of it. Cause I'm a big ass introvert and I know most people here are. But it's going to deplete us. Just on all possible levels. And what would happen is if you don't respond to what your soul needs, not just in like that moment, like what do I need right here. Okay I need to get out of this room. Or I need to go sit on a rock in the sun and live stream to my people, because right now ... here's a little secret for you guys, right. I'm already playing hooky on the whole day. There's a very specific reason why I just went live right now. It's because everybody just went to lunch five minutes ago. You can start to see them walking pass. Three and a half thousand people just went on their two hour lunch break. I know that from the schedule. I don't want to talk to them, so I'm live streaming here, so not only am I avoiding the event, but I'm going live to make sure that I don't get caught up in a conversation and then I have some client calls starting at the next hour. Like at the top of the next hour, so I'm super ...like I know what I fucking need and I'm creating my life around it. I'm literally on a rock right now, because I'm pretty sure that my brother or some of the people that I know is going to walk pass me soon cause this is like somewhat near our room and I'm like, well shit if I go back to the room, they're going to want to talk to me about the event. And tell me what happen this morning. I'm not available for that right now. I'm in Florida, I'm at the Funnel Hacking event. I'm not available for that right now. And I want to hear about the event. And I hear about it at dinner. And I'm excited to hear about what was covered and what my brother learned out of it. And that sort of thing. But energetically I'm not actually available. Like I would not cope right now with getting into a conversation and having an update about what happened in that room. My soul is not recharge yet. We've been with people non stop for the past week or ten days like nonstop twenty-four hours a day, travelling with people. And people who I love and I adore. And doing a load of stuff, which I consciously have chosen to but having a bit less time to myself of the normal. And it's just like ... no, Kat if you don't take today and recharge your soul batteries, you're going to start next level bitch on everybody's ass, which started to happen last night. It was not [inaudible 00:11:07] I was turning into a sly asshole and I write about that a bit in my post. But it could be something else. It could be like binge eating, right? Or whatever it is. And I just know what I fucking need. And here's what else, and here's why I'm doing this livestream on this topic, I don't have fear of scarcity around missing out. This waiting for me to start talking about these things even more than usual. I think I've talk about them a lot before. Cause all this stuff comes in phases. Like if I went back through my blog posts, I've definitely written posts about not liking people and like similar sort of stuff I think I might go and find those posts. And even include them in this book that I'm writing. So yes, I don't have fear of scarcity, right. Like as I was saying, a lot of times if people would travelled to an event ... and like I said my intention was to never that I had to attend the whole event anyway. But regardless people would be like well, isn't it kind of stupid that people think it's stupid or irresponsible or they will actually think that it's a sabotage to them playing hooky and not attend at all. And it's not an ego thing, I'm fully aware that I'll get value from being in the room, there's amazing speakers at this event. There's many, many speakers whose businesses have grown far beyond mine. And you know what, I kind of don't care because I know that I'm going to do it anyway. And I know that I'm going to do it in my own way. And I know that I'm going to have the perfect alliance, support, or learning, or growth, or inspiration just come along exactly when I need it. So yesterday afternoon, it was so align and perfect for me to be in the room. And I was so happy to be there and I got incredible value out of it. Today if I would have gone along, because I look at the speakers and I was like well there's some good sessions there that I think I would enjoy but have I gone along, that would have been coming from fear. That would be coming from FOMA, right. That would have been coming from well what if I missed out on that one weird thing that's going to hack my freaking funnel and make me another million or the next million or ten more million or whatever. And I just tune into that and I was like, but I'm going to win no matter what. I was born to win. I was born to succeed. I was born to do something extraordinary in the world. Just like each and every person here. And I also know that I always make the right decision, because I chose that as a belief. So therefore it's true, cause I chose it and I've locked it in for long enough now that's it fucking true. I know that everything always work out perfectly for me. I know that I always choose the correct action to take. I always am moving forward perfectly on my path. I know that all things are coming together for my greater good. I know that I'm building a multi-hundred million dollar empire. I fucking know that I'm not going to look back in ten years and say. "Well gee I was here to change the fucking world and share my message and create amazing art and build a multi-hundred million dollar empire, impact millions of people, but you know I played hooky that one day on March 21 at that event back in Florida and I guess if I have just have gone along, I could have live my destiny and live my purpose." Right? Like doesn't it sound ridiculous when you put it that way. But year every single day, we all make choices to do things ... well actually I don't anymore. Well maybe I do and I catch myself, but I certainly don't do it as much as I used to. Make choices to do things that are not aligned. Right? That are not feeding our soul, because we're scared. We're scared ... well what if do miss out on something that could have completely change my business or something that I just had to know that I didn't know. Or meeting the right person or whatever it is. Right. And it's like well what if you miss out on living your fucking life? Because you responded your entire day in and day out through all decades of your life from fear and from a scarcity mentality that says do what other people tell you. Go along. Follow the crowd, just in case. The only thing that you need to guide you is soul flow. And I'm quite certain I'll be guided back into that room at some time over the next few days. And I'm quite certain that if that doesn't happen, I won't even go back in. And I still am in massive gratitude and appreciation for the event, for the organisers of the event. For the people who are here, and for being here, and I'm glad I came. I'm enjoying the environment and I'm enjoying sitting on this rock. And I'm enjoying speaking to you. And there's a great gym here, so that makes me happy. And I'm exactly where I need to be. I'm exactly where I need to be and everything is perfect and everything is where it's meant to be. And what I want to, I guess, pass onto you is well what if you chose to feel that way. What if you chose to feel always that you're exactly where you need to be? That you always make the right decision. That everything always works out perfectly for you. That you're moving forward on your correct path with beautiful perfect alignment right now. That you were born to win. And that nothing can stop you. And so therefore, you get to do what you want. Now getting to do what you want, really what I mean about that, following soul desires. And soul flow. And I want to talk about that a little bit more, but let me see what comments you said. Zuckerberg, what did Zuckerberg do? Cause ... don't even tell me now, I'll read it in the news later, but I saw something about him and then I ignore it. "This is my mantra from my coffee this morning, stop comparing. Yes oh my God, thank you. ", says Keyona. "One of my current [inaudible 00:16:12] kiss ass and why don't you explore resistance around that. You must be missing some soul [inaudible 00:16:17]. I'm like oh okay. Right like I just think that one of the most powerful shifts through people like you and I who are very different like we're the ones who ... for example, I can be in a room with three and half thousand entrepreneurs, which I was yesterday, and I in that room feel like, well you guys are the normal ones. And I'm the weird crazy one in this room, cause I'm the one who travels to ... I know there are others who are like me but I don't necessary know who they all are or where they all are. But I know that ... like I look at that room, and I go well you guys are the normal ones, right? And then it was funny cause they did like a slide on being the crazy ones and the misfits and the rebels, and the not normal ones. And I was like, no you are the normal ones. You're the internet marketing people. And then I'm like, oh but I guess, it's a room of entrepreneurs so technically the whole room is the not normal ones. But then I think that we, you and I. This kind of person is super sensitive person who reads and feels energy. And who is highly psychic, highly intuitive who does travel to other worlds, who does work magic, who does create from within, who does need to be within a very high majority of the time, we are the not not normal ones in a whole different way and I don't mean better, worst, anything, at all. I just mean I know who I fucking am and I know who you are. And I know that it's an extraordinarily rare thing. And I don't even know what my fucking point was right then actually. It was something about being normal. What was it? Oh! We always know what we actually need for ourselves. I mean that's kinda my big message, right? So when somebody's like, well you know you have resistance, like this being many things that I've ever had resistance to over my business journey, where coaches or I guess other people that I maybe did follow online at the time before I fully kind of figured this out and got on my own path. Or when I would have come to events that I would've been thrown off my path, because I would have bought into the stories. Right. It would have been like well shit maybe I should do it that way and maybe I should change what I'm doing because my way is like pretty fucking messy and chaotic and so on and so forth. And i did, I fought that battle for some many years, I fought a battle against being me. And eventually it got to a point where I was exhausted of that but where additionally I started to look back through my success history in my business and in my life and I was like well shit. All this success that I've had, which was significant but all the real flow [inaudible 00:18:51] success had not only been like an amazing result but that I've found easy is when I just completely created from inside of me. When I just reached in and ... well reach in and grab my audience by the soul actually. It's one of my favourite blogs that I wrote of mines, it called "Reaching and Grab them by the Soul", on how to build a cult following. But when I reach in and grab hold of my own soul and responded to that when I kind of heard what everybody was saying or doing and then was just like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. And even long before I prove myself with my results and business to where I can now sit here and say this is what I think and by the way I've got the fucking results to back it up so don't try to me that I'm wrong. I don't care if you do anyway. But long before that, I would go to events, even like twenty years ago, right, when I was like 18 years old, 17 years old, even yeah like 20 years ago, or like when I first got into personal development in a big heavy way was when I was 17, so 21 years ago. But really I started when I was about 11, reading books and that sort of thing. And I would go to events, like I went to Landmark when I was 20 for example, and I walked out at like 11:00 am on the first day. And I'm not saying Landmark is no good. I'm just saying I knew I didn't need to be in that room. And I did not have the results to back it up either. Right. And I remember that to this day and I remember that they gave me an exit interview, they wouldn't actually let me out of the room. They kind of barricaded me in and made me answer a bunch of questions about my life before they would allow me to get out. They were like, "Well do you have any problems with your father?" And I was just like, "Nope." And no matter what they asked, I was just like, "Nope, my life is perfect." Cause I just wanted to get out of there. And then I remember walking out and I was like, "I'm free! I'm free at last!" And I think I went to the art gallery or something. And it's always been that way for me, I can remember so many freaking seminars ... like NLP stuff, and personal development stuff, and two days stuff, and one day stuff, and you know selling stuff, and marketing stuff, and I would go with my friends well before I had this business. Even before I started to build this business, even before I was online, I was always going to personal development seminars and I was always fucking leaving, right? I was just always leaving my friends. My friends would stay, I would make it through like a day tops. And I would just be like, "I can't be here. I'm just going to go." Because I would feel like claustrophobic. And then all the people. And then all the noise. And then, I don't know you get your value but you get to a certain point where you're like, now my value is going to be me being along, doing what I need to do for me. Going within and creating from that place and space. Because ultimately that's where all my success comes from. "Yeah going to [inaudible 00:21:30] conference this summer, I make sure to take solitary time for me." Right, well another thing that I've learned is that when I run my events and retreats I never start the day until 10:30 or 11:00 am because I know how my clients are and I know they need to get their morning shit like done and take care of themselves before they come and hang with me. So even our events start ... the New York one day next week and Sunday the week after starts at 11:00 for example or if I do like three day things, which I do on occasion. Or two day things like in my inner circle then I always give a break in the afternoon from like 4:00 pm through 8:00 or 8:30 pm because I use to think that people would want me to just go straight through because then it's like more value or something and then when I started really truly calling in my soul alliance clients, I noticed they were all just getting ... or just straight up telling me like getting completely depleted. And it was actually higher value to give a massive gap of time in the afternoon for them to go and do their thing. And then when I think of how I've shown up even in events or masterminds where I did want to be there the whole time and I did stay in the educational side of it or the seminar side of it or whatever the whole time, that I definitely skip out on as much elements of stuff that I could. Not cause I didn't think it was going to be good or fun, but because I knew that I needed to go and do my stuff for me and I've always wondered how people can maintain that energy of being around other people the whole time and I just think like I wrote about in my blog last night, of course you can chose that. Of course I could chose that. Of course I could be like, I'm going to bring it and I could, but at what cost? Right. The cost could be some short term binge reaction or sabotage reaction or dealing with anxiety or whatever it is. Well I'm not available for that shit, but also ultimately it comes down to, I'm no longer available for that shit. I just choose what I know I need. But also it comes down to well in the end, do you believe? Do you believe that you are born to win? Do you believe that you're going to achieve your goals? Do you believe that you're going to successful? Do you believe that the vision inside of your head is going to come to life? Like actual question right now. Type it in to the comments. Do you have that faith? Do you believe that what you see inside of you is real? And that your vision is coming to life? So say like something. Give me something. Or give me a [inaudible 00:23:39] if you believe that. Or give me an amen, right. Because here's what real, when you believe that the vision inside of you is true and you just have that faith and don't forget that faith is a choice. When you believe and you have that faith, guess what? You can do and you should do and you must do, whatever the fuck you want, which is fabulous. And I don't even mean it in the sense of being a rebel, or a black sheep. Like I just think I'm like black sheep or rebel but that's just because I was following my soul. I never set out to be a black sheep or a rebel, right. That was just always me doing what I knew I needed to do for me. And then we end up labelled that way. And then you know I kind of use the labelling cause it's like cool or whatever. I think it's fun. But it's like, yeah my intention was never that. My intention was never to be a black sheep. It just kind of happened because it's how I am. Well doing whatever you want, just means you can't screw it up. You can't go wrong. It's literally impossible for you to screw it up. You know that vision inside of you is real. You know that it's going to come to life. So what you gotta do to bring it to life? Keep focusing on it. Keep sending that intention, keep tuning into it through your through your [inaudible 00:24:45] through your journaling and then your task, as far as what action to take through your day, through your business, through your life is to tune the fuck in and listen to what your soul is telling you. And this is the biggest thing that I come back to repetitively. It's the number one piece of advice or conversation that I come back to repetitively with my private clients. My hiring clients who pay me a significant amount of money obviously to work with me. This is the biggest thing I teach them and we come back to it over and over again. I actually wrote about in another blog, which I've not published yet, which I put up later today which I wrote this morning. And it just makes it so easy, right. Because I know that I'm going to succeed. I know that my entire vision is coming to life. It's always been that way. And I know that system [inaudible 00:25:25]. So all I need to do is to tune and to follow soul flow. That's it. There is literally nothing else required. And isn't that just the most beautiful glorious thing in the world, because it means that when you are somewhere and you suddenly feel like you need to be there, you not going to screw it up by leaving. It's going to be perfect. I'm not going to like limit my growth or limit the value that I got by spending the day tuning in, being in my own space and place, being with you. Doing what I need to do for me and that is true on day [inaudible 00:25:55] basis for every single area. Every area, not just business and money, but even how you chose to exercise and eat. How you take care of your body. Whether you should travel, whether you should stay in that relationship or not, whether you should say that crazy thing to that person you're in love with. Like you can't screw it up. This just makes it so easy. So fucking easy. And there's so many examples, even recently, and from years back where I just feel like I continually go against the grain or go against what people tell me is the right way to do something or what's going to work or what makes sense or what the supposed proven method is but in the end I know that if I follow what's coming through my soul, it is impossible for me to get it wrong. Like impossible. And to the contrary, if I don't follow what's coming from my soul. Like even to the point of what I've explain for how I spent my time today. Had I've gone against that, what I would be saying is, that I don't trust. That I don't have trust. That I don't trust that the vision inside of me is going to come to life. That my belief is I need to make sure I have the right external influences in order to be successful. So how do you think that carries on? There is carry on effect to every choice that you make. If we continually make choices to go against our own soul or just the soul flow and to show that we don't trust, we're going to rewarded accordingly, which is to say not with the things that are actually available to us in infinite balance and flow. So if you want it all, if you want it on your terms, if you want to bring every element that vision inside of you to life, you know that that's available to your impossible. And it's only going to happen when you say yes to your soul. So for me, it's become a daily practise. And for clients it's become a daily practise to run everything through this [inaudible 00:27:41]. From the smallest, tiniest decision about any different thing in your life to the biggest things in your business and in your personal life and in your finances. And whatever it might be. And it just makes it fucking easy. It makes it fucking perfect. And it makes it fucking flow. So that's what I wanted to share today. Thank you so much for the comments. I'm going to come back and read them a little later, probably while I eat my lunch, please do leave me a comment, if you didn't already. I love to see your thoughts and hear if this resonates with you. And if you in New York or would like to be in New York and spend a day with me next Tuesday, April 27th, I'm doing a one day VIP intimate high level event. We're doing deep dive soul shifts and identifying where your massive wealth and impact is going to come from based on being all of the chaotic, crazy, other worldly person that you are. I can send you forward written details or if you even go over to my personal page. And ... or I think it should be even on this page, click on my blog post from yesterday. You're going to see a full description at the end of that blog, but you can just message me on my private page, Katrina Ruth. And I'll send you details and we'll go from there. So it's New York, April 27th, next Tuesday. And then I'm doing the same thing again in San Diego on April 3, which is the Tuesday after I believe ... I think it's the Tuesday after. So both of those events are filling, there are very limited numbers. If you would like to jump into that or know more about it message me now, also it's coming up quickly obviously. I'm going to go and get some amazing food and I might even talk to some people, now that I've done what I needed to do for me. Have an amazing rest of the day and don't forget, "Life is now, press play."

Get Anything You Want with BlueFish's Steve Sims

10,000 "No" s with Matthew Del Negro

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 30, 2018 68:41

"Cause I'm a firm believer that anyone can get their foot in any door now... the trick is to be so irresistible that that person doesn't want you to leave." Steve Sims simply doesn't hear the word "No". His company, Bluefish, gets people like Elan Musk and Richard Branson experiences that mere money can't buy. Find out why Forbes magazine called him "the guy with the coolest job in the world". But aside from his accomplishments, colorful take on life, and high end friends, he's a guy who gave me not just one shot, but two... as he agreed to sit down with me a second time after a technological breakdown during our initial interview. Luckily, Steve was just as interesting the second time around. He is also the author of Bluefishing: The Art of Making Things Happen. If you like what you hear, please Subscribe, leave an iTunes review and spread the word. You can also listen to all episodes at www.10000nos.com

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Issue 92: Jessica Jones Season 2 Review (feat. Katie from Tea Time with Katie and Chelsea!)

And Sometimes Rob

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2018 103:43

This week on The Comic Box: In what may be our longest episode ever, Katie from Tea Time With Katie and Chelsea joins Rob to talk Jessica Jones season 2 and far too many other topics! The Pull List: Finish up JJ Season 2 DC and Looney Tunes on Hoopla? Where to find this week's guest: Twitter: @ladykatharinep Where to find this week's guest's show: teatimewithkc.com Twitter:@teatimewithkc Instagram: teatimewithkc Facebook: teatimewithkc teawithkc@gmail.com Where to find the show and send in suggestions: Twitter:@ComicBoxCast Email: TheComicBoxPodcast@gmail.com Where to find Rob: Personal Twitter: @Knowby BEHOLD! The Geek to Geek Podcast Network: GeektoGeekCast.com Geek to Geek Podcast RunningShoes.tv Geektitude Tea Time with Katie and Chelsea Youtube: Geek to Geek Slack: GeektoGeekCast Reddit: /r/geektogeekcast Dig this podcast? Show your support by subscribing or adding a star rating or review on iTunes! If you don't, you'll stop thinking about Zach Efron (did I spell that right? Cause I'm not going to check.)

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Ep 15 Running Out and Other Stories

Topics in Endurance Sports

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2018 94:09

I review the book "Running Out" and read listener-contributed original stories! Apologies for the lack of editing on this one. Listen at double speed! Note mistake about location of Running For Tyler 5K on Mar 31. It's in OHIO, not GEORGIA. Click to Download RSS Feed Here is the YouTube version of the podcast! Same exact content, just put on YouTube for those who don't do podcasts. See the pictures while I talk. Please donate to keep this show going! THANK YOU! Running Out, by Dave Essinger More about author Dave Essinger here. Get his book here. Poem by Brandi Canann: I know it seems drastic from your point of view, I want to eat fresh air and drink that morning dew. You ask, who is this girl all laced up in her shoes? Where did she come from, which path will she choose? You'll find me deep in the woods, howling up at the moon, But I promise you babe, I'll be home soon. Cause I'm a wild one, with a wild heart, Please don't try to tame me, it'll rip me apart. I'll be lost on that trail, reconnecting with me, But don't worry love, with you is where I'll always be. I've just got this urge, and it's pulling me on. I need the dirt underfoot, to feel the blaze of the sun. I want to traipse through the desert like that horse with no name, Bounding wild and free over rocky and unforgiving terrain. But at the end of the day, when the journey is through, Don't doubt for a second that I'm coming back to you. I've got to push this animal body to its limit, and make myself proud. I long for that wilderness where I can be primal, uninhibited and wild. But don't worry love, because I can promise you this, When this race is over I'll greet you with the most tender kiss. So forgive me if I wander and chase down these dreams, I know they are lofty, but not as crazy as they now seem. I'm still just a girl with a wild and open heart, With a hunger for the pain and the courage to start. Write up about Bill Kenley's novel, High School Runner (Freshman) Screen captures about Tyler Becket (from @CrossProb on Twitter): There has been a 5K/scholarship created in his name. The first Running for Tyler 5K Run/Walk will be March 31, 2018 in Marietta, OH. (I said GEORGIA in the show. It's right here in my state of OHIO.)

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Ep. 5 -The Power Couple: Part 2 - Feat. Dustin & Maria Starr

Motivated AF with Katee Forbis

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 19, 2018 74:02

"I think I'm more of a person that's like... tell me that I can't do that. Cause I'm totally gonna do that." On this episode, it's part 2 of my interview with “The Power Couple,” Dustin and Maria Starr. I have received some really positive feedback from listeners who enjoyed part 1, so if you haven't listened to part 1 yet, I want to encourage you to go back to ep. 4 and give it a listen. In part 2, we switch gears a little & discuss Dustin & Maria’s love - well, Dustin’s love, of fitness & how Maria & I push ourselves to go to the gym even though we don’t always love it. D&M give listeners a few tips on what motivates them to stay in shape & why it’s important to track your progress. We talk about how it takes both passion & discipline to reach your goals, even though most of us tend to be naturally stronger in one or the other. And as my first guests, they're also the first to be a part of the new “My 3 Songs” segment of the podcast! All this & more! I'd love for you to check it out!

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Ep100 - The Best of The Full Circle Music Show

Made It In Music: Interviews With Artists, Songwriters, And Music Industry Pros

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 30, 2018 52:48

We are celebrating our 100th Episode by bringing you portions of the best podcasts selected by the FCM Team. Stacey, X, Jerricho, Logan, and Seth are all interviewed regarding their favorite FCMS episode and share why that guest was the most memorable for them. We want to thank all of our listeners for their continued support. We will return all new and all fresh on Monday, March 26th with our MADE IT IN MUSIC Podcast.————————————Episode 100Full Circle Music Show– Hi, I'm Seth Mosley from Full Circle Music, and man am I excited, this is episode 100 of our Full Circle Music Show podcast, and not only that, the day that we're making a massive announcement. And what is that announcement? It's that we are re-branding. Yes, we're changing the format, the title, everything of our podcast to make it even more packed with value, for free, for you guys. And the new title, drum roll please, is the Made It in Music Podcast, by Full Circle Music. It's resources for music makers just like you who wanna go full-time in music, and stay in. So I just wanted to do something a little special on this episode to go along with the announcement of the Made It in Music Podcast, episode 100, and what we're doing this week is we're bringing you a best of episode. We picked our very favorite moments from the Full Circle Music Show and broke down just some really key points, things that we think you would get a lot out of, things that we personally got a lot out of. I'm Seth Mosley, thank you so much for listening. Here with Stacey Willbur, VP of publishing and A&R here at Full Circle Music. Man, I loved that you picked the Ginny Owens episode, 'cause it was one of my favorite not only podcast episodes, but what a lot of people who're maybe gonna go back and listen to this clip don't realize is that it was recorded at one of our Full Circle Academy songwriter retreats. And man, if I haven't told you already, the people that you have relationships with that you've been able to bring in to pour into our students is just absolutely incredible. So Ginny was one of those, she was at our last one, and I feel like I probably got more feedback on her than a lot of speakers that come in. That's where this podcast was recorded at. So what stood out to you about that, what made you pick that as your favorite moment?– Well, it was my favorite moment because, obviously 'cause we were there, we were actually in the moment, it was an experience. It was Ginny talking about very simple things, three key elements of songwriting. But what I loved about it is that she weaved her own story into all three of those elements. I loved hearing her story wrapped up into all of that.– Yeah, she talked about it being, something that I had not heard, and I think you said the same thing, that she compares songwriting to being a journey with a friend.– A journey with a friend, that was like an a-ha moment, I think, for so many, because I don't think everybody looks at it that way. It's a job, it's this, but as a friend, and the closer you get to a friend, you get to know each other, you get to know their hearts, you get to know their stories, and the same thing with songwriting. The more you spend time… Writing every day, getting to know your craft, understanding the different elements of songwriting, the better you become and the better you know yourself as a songwriter.– Yeah, and she talks about how it is a sought after treasure, too, I thought that was such a cool way to put it. What did she mean by that?– Well, it was interesting 'cause she said it was a sought after treasure pursued by an enemy. Which, the enemy, as she describes, are distractions. The distractions in your life that keep you from doing the thing that you love doing. So what are those things and how do you keep those distractions from keeping you from doing what God's plan and purpose is for your life, which is songwriting.– Yeah, and I think, man, she just… There's podcast episodes that we've done that I feel like I just kinda wish I had like a notepad the whole time, 'cause she just kinda drops quote after quote after quote, and one thing that you shared with me, that I totally agree with is that good is the enemy of great, and perfection is the enemy of creativity. That was, I thought that was brilliant when she said that.– Yeah, and I think, especially in this industry, we hear a lot of, oh, that's a good song, that's a good song, that's a good song. And we tend to leave it there, and we don't encourage each other to strive for the great. I think striving for the great is harder. ‘Cause it takes going back and rewriting, it takes time and effort. The good is, yeah, this is good, you know. But the great, I think, is you dig it in a little deeper. And she really shares that in the podcast, she shares the struggles that she went through as an artist. And just in her life personally to get to that point.– Yeah, so good. Well I'm really glad you picked it 'cause it's one of my favorite moments too.– Awesome.– Here's a clip from Ginny Owens on the Full Circle Music Show live from the Full Circle Academy songwriter's retreat.– [Ginny] I want to offer, just based on my experience as a songwriter over the past billion years, I wanna offer three key elements of a life of endless songwriting bliss. So three key elements to maintaining a songwriting life. So the first one is, songwriting is a journey with a friend. Show up every day so that you can go a little further together. Songwriting is an art form. The more you know the rules and master the skill, the freer you will be to let your heart guide the process. And, songwriting is a sought after treasure guarded by an enemy. In order to capture it, you must fight every day of your life. Listening, like, two different types of listening that I call active and passive listening. So, I really love pop music, so active listening for me is like, when I work out in the mornings, just rolling the Apple, new Apple, like whatever, pop playlist, or what they're playing at Apple List or Spotify, you know, playlist, and learning. What are they doing in the songs that you're hearing that you like? How are they creating hooks? What do the rhythm things sound like that they're doing. Things like, Chainsmokers came along and they sort of created this chorus, where you don't have to soar up in the top, you just do this, like, ♪ Baby hold me closer in the backseat — ♪ I probably shouldn't be singing that at the Christian — But you know, it's just this tiny little space of a chorus. So there are trends that you start to see as you listen to music. If you're a songwriter-ish type person, more of a James Taylor type person, then you can listen to current people that do that, like James Bay or John Mayer. Hear what they're doing, sort of study their technique. But the other thing is passive listening. And what I guess I mean by that is falling in love with music. One of the things I've recently discovered about myself is that I'm too busy thinking about… Analyzing songs, and I actually need to go fall in love with music again, 'cause it's just too easy to be critical. And so what I've learned is, probably the easiest way to do this, which is not something that streaming really lends itself towards, but to go get people's albums. And just listen to the full album and continue to immerse myself in it, and be patient. ‘Cause I'm sure, maybe some of you guys are like this too, I'm so impatient. I'll listen to half a song and then I flip to the next song. That does not create and inspire love for music. I think those things are key for deepening our skillsets, growing our skillsets, educating ourselves. And then there's another aspect, just as we talk about kind of this skill of songwriting. It's really simple, but I think it's really important, especially for new writers, and I kind of call it the accessibility scale. So on one end you have the more cerebral, the more personal kind of songs. Those are the songs you write for your grandma, or your brother, or a wedding. And then on the other end are the more super-commercial songs. So like, Bon Iver is super cerebral. Taylor, super commercial. Andrew Peterson is pretty cerebral. Tomlin, Jordan Feliz, super commercial. And so the more cerebral a song is, the more it's kinda written to please the writer. So most of those things fall kind of more in the middle, they're not generally purely one or the other. But the more cerebral, form matters less, it's kinda in the writer's head, and obviously the more commercial a song is, the more singable it is, the more melodic, the more many people can kinda follow what you're doing. You gotta know the difference. If you wanna write commercial, study it, learn the techniques, listen to the Full Circle podcast every week, because there's an art to expressing yourself that way. But if you're gonna write about family, if you're gonna write something super personal, don't let that out for critique, 'cause you don't want to hurt yourself in that way. You know what I mean? Protect the things that are really personal to you. And the more you kind of know the skill and the art of songwriting, the more you're gonna know how to do that. Skill, taking the journey, ultimately helps with our biggest challenge as songwriters, which is fighting for your songwriting. And if you don't believe me, I bet you do. Everybody probably believes that it's a fight. Songwriting is a treasure that's guarded by an enemy. And so in order to capture it, you must fight every day of your life. Not to be all dark and wage war-ish, but, we gotta wage some war. The hardest part of songwriting is what? Songwriting. You know, you always got something else to do. Or there's always a voice in your head that says not to do it. And I promise, lest you think it only happens to new writers I have this happen every day. I've just finally learned, oh, this is part of it. This is what I'm gonna fight every day. And especially when you've been doing it a long time, you can kinda even get more in your head, 'cause you're like, what if I don't know how to do anything current? So if you give up, then the enemy will win. So what exactly is the enemy? I do like how Kevin Pressfield, who wrote the Legend of Bagger Vance, but he has a book called The War of Art which I would highly recommend you all read. There's some swearing, but read it anyway. But he calls the enemy resistance. And he says any act that entails commitment of the heart is a reason for resistance. In other words, any act that rejects immediate gratification in favor of long term growth, health, or integrity, or any act that derives from our higher nature instead of our lower, will elicit resistance. Resistance cannot be seen, touched, heard, or smelled, but it can be felt. And the more important – get this. The more important a call or action is to our soul's evolution, the more resistance we will feel toward pursuing it. Ouch. And resistance takes all different forms. Sometimes it's you, right? It's the lack of discipline. That's what it is for me, a lot. I just wanna do all the other fun things. And I wanna think about songwriting, really I do. But, maybe I'll get to it. That's why scheduling is so key. And there are voices in your head, and that's why scheduling and showing up every day is so key. It diminishes the voices, I promise you. Sometimes it's 'cause you got a eat, and so you gotta work. So that's also why finding that time every week and putting it on a calendar can be so awesome to do. Another key in fighting resistance is knowing the people who are in your space. Knowing the people who are awesome and can hold you accountable, like probably some folks you've met here, and learning the people who are not safe for you to play music for. Another way to protect what you're writing, and who the safe people are not, when you're fighting resistance. Now, for those of us who are believers, who are people of faith, we know there is a deeper resistance from an enemy that is full-on against you. And especially when it comes to pursuing a gift that God has given you to inspire others.– X O'Connor. I love it, we're here in the studio on this exciting day, episode 100.– 100.– Recapping some of our favorite moments from the Full Circle Music show, and… Tyler Bryant.– Tyler Byant, man.– Good choice.– Man, my favorite, dude, we sat down with him, I remember it was kind of last minute, I got a call early in the morning like, hey, I think we're gonna do some Tyler Byrant interview today. So I remember driving down, and I was super pumped, I'd loosely known him from being in bands around Nashville and I was like, I love this dude's music, I'm excited to talk to this guy. And to sit down with him, he's a young kid, you know, and he's just got his head on in a way that very few other artist, songwriters, any musical person does, he just realizes that hard work comes above all else, everything in life. And this guy, his band is successful, but not necessarily at radio. No real radio number ones, no nothing like that, but he plays hundred thousand seat venues. It's like, that blows my mind. And to just hear him speak about hard work. No one's gonna work harder for you than you're gonna work for yourself, so take every opportunity that you've got and just make something out of it.– Yeah, I love it, and I think he even shared in the episode something about, they do a lot in Europe.– Yeah.– And I think a fan, they were playing somewhere in Spain and a fan had like, tooken a night train like across…– Across the continent, literally.– The entire continent to get there, and they were so pumped about it. And you can just tell that when an artist is engaged, and the fans can tell that you really care, as the artist, they're gonna care.– Yeah, absolutely, and… that was something that he also spoke about a lot in this interview is relationship building. Not just with the people around you, but with the fans. The fans can feel that level of commitment that you have to them. But then on the business side, too. They've been around labels and all that stuff a lot, and I just love the mentality of, be honest with the people you're with. Even if it's a hard conversation to have with somebody, the honesty is gonna preserve that relationship in the future. I think he talked about them leaving their label to kind of go out on their own, and the conversation he had with the label after the fact, like, hey, you guys are still always on the list at a Shakedown show, come out any time, you guys worked hard for us, just, it's time for us to go do something else. And I love that mentality.– Yeah, and we went and saw them in Nashville at… Was it 12th?– 3rd and Lindsley.– 3rd and Lindsley, which is a really cool venue. And it was one of the best live shows I think I've ever seen.– Yeah, they go for it. It's so tight, but it's just raw rock and roll. It was a fun night, I hadn't been to a show like that in a while.– No click tracks.– No click, it's just guys on stage just going for it, rock and rolling. I loved it, man, it was so much fun to just sit there and just, be like, yep, these guys own it. This is great.– Inspiring.– Inspiring, for sure.– Well here's a clip from the Full Circle Music show episode with Tyler Bryant of Tyler Bryant and the Shakedown.– [Tyler] We've talked about it a little bit, but I come from a blues background, I learned to play from an old bluesman in Texas. Even as a kid, I was offered a record deal, and it was like, we're gonna set you up with other kids and we're gonna start a band, and I was like, no, man, I just wanna play the blues. I wanna make, like, I remember Lyric Street records gave me a little $10,000 check to go make some recordings. I think they were legitimately upset when I handed them back like three Freddie King covers that I had made. You know, it's like, what did you expect, man? And I still kinda have that mentality where, I don't know if you guys ever have dove into this on your show, I'm sure you have, 'cause it's something that I feel like a lot of artists struggle with. It's mixing art, something that really moves you, and commerce. Let's eat and let's survive, and so all we try to do in our band is have a little bit of both, you know?– [X] Yeah, yeah. So touring has been your bread and butter. Let's just talk about that, how do you get invited out on a AC/DC or Guns ‘n Roses Tour without radio, without big number one chart topping songs?– [Tyler] It's hard to say, honestly. I think one, you gotta believe in what you're doing, you have to be convicted every time you put on a guitar. Whether it's in a writing room, whether it's in a coffee shop. That's what, you know, I have kids ask me at our shows who have bands, like, how do you get on these tours, how do you get these shows going? And it's like, you literally play every show you get offered. Whenever I was starting out, I had a fake email account. And I was the band's manager, my name was like Sarah, or something like this, and I represented, this was before the Shakedown, I represented Tyler Bryant.– [X] What's the Spinal Tap manager?– [Tyler] Yeah, and it would, there was another time where it's like, I literally called the box office of the House of Blues. This is when I was younger, I called them every single day until they finally told one of the booking agents, this guy won't stop calling, he wants to play. And he called me and was like, dude, you can't call the box office and book a show. And I was like, but, can you book me?– [X] Yeah– [Tyler] And he's like send me some recordings. So I sent him some recordings and some videos and he put my band on for Dickie Betts. And then I called the Dallas morning news, and I was like, my band's playing, opening up for Dickie Betts of the Allman Brothers, I think you should come film it and do a story. And they did, and it's that kind of hustle that I think is, what I've learned that we have to do because it's, any time we've waited on someone else to do something for us we fall short, and so it's, I think those, it's funny because we were at CAA, the booking agency for a long time, and they did great things for us, and after about a year and a half of not touring as much as we'd like, we thought, let's make a change, let's move agencies. But we had such a good relationship with our agent that he'd become family, it's a guy named John Huie. And so we left. We were on the road supporting Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top and I get a call from Huie going, he's just like, I love you guys and I wanted to know if it would be okay if I pitched you for the AC/DC world tour. And, of course we said yes, but this is someone who's not our agent. So that's where… Maintaining relationships, and always shooting people straight, and even if it's a tough conversation going, like, I think we have to move somewhere else, because we're not getting the love here. They kill it with country acts out of Nashville, and I'm sure that the rock department does great, too. We just weren't getting the love that we needed. Because maybe what we were doing didn't move them there, but I think even when a relationship has to stop, it doesn't – professionally, it doesn't have to stop emotionally and I think that's, you know. We're all from the South and believe in Southern hospitality and shooting people straight even when it's a tough conversation, and I think that's helped benefit our band.– [X] Well I love that, because there's so many bands that we come across that are just constantly complaining about their teams. They're like, my label's not doing this, my manager's not doing this, we don't have our publisher getting songs on sync, our publicist is not scheduling – it's just excuses and complaining about people not doing stuff for them. And what I'm hearing you say is like, screw that, do it yourself.– [Tyler] Oh yeah, absolutely. We just made our own record, and I called a few of the people from Universal Republic after we got out of our deal, and it was sort of an, I think both parties were like, this isn't really working for us. We weren't giving them what they need to do what they do best, and they were like, you guys just aren't setting yourself up to win. But I talked to a few people from the label who were like, wait, you guys aren't with us anymore? It's like hey, listen, you're always on the guest list at a Shakedown show, you guys come out, thanks for putting in the work, man. Because it's hard to find people to work for you, and it's hard to find people who will work as hard as you will, so you have to do it yourself. Or at least, even like when it comes to making music videos or setting up photo shoots, or finding the direction. I feel like that has to come from the artist, because I feel like a lot of artists fall short when they're waiting on someone else to show them the direction.– Here at Full Circle Music studios with Jericho Scroggins.– Hey, hey.– Thanks for being on the show today, buddy.– Thank you for having me.– I love the clip that you picked, it was a Michael W. Smith interview, it was honestly one of my favorite ones to do. Why don't you talk just a little bit about what stood out to you from that, and why people should go back and listen to it?– Yeah. The initial part of it is how he was talking about the start of his career, and even how that's when he got married with Debbie, that was like in '81. So when the Amy Grant thing and all that kind of stuff, it was a very busy time for his career. And so they saw a bunch of marriages around that time falling apart. And so he does think it's hard for people to tour 200, 250 shows a year and keep a healthy marriage. So it was super cool to hear how he… One thing I didn't know about Michael and his career was, he was never away from his family more than two weeks. And it was just, like, mind-blowing to me thinking about that, just knowing his career and that kind of stuff. And so just how he goes through and talks about the priorities of that. You do have a career, but you also have family, and making sure they know where priorities lie and stuff like that, and his family always came above his career.– Yeah, and we get to interview a lot of super achievers on the show, so it's always cool to see that, you know what, they've not only got their stuff together on a career level, 'cause obviously Michael W. Smith's the top of the top, but he was really good about keeping accountability in place, as well.– Right. Yeah, that was definitely another part of it that I really liked, because, it's not only, like, when you go out and do your thing and that kind of stuff, still keeping a good group of, a team around you, that makes sure you're still doing what you're supposed to be doing. Whether it's heart-wise, faith-wise, even mind-wise, you know what I mean? Like making sure it's, even having them help him keep accountable to making sure he makes it home every two weeks. Or being a servant on the road, and things like that.– Yeah, and another really cool thing that I think you mentioned was this idea about talking to the younger you. What did you mean by that?– Yeah, there's this cool part where, it's the giving the advice to the younger you part. And it really stood out to me when he said, if I could tell the younger me, I would say it's not about you. And what he means by that is like, just earlier on realizing… Yeah, you're given these gifts and stuff like that, but realistically the gifts help other people, it's being a servant, making sure you're using the gifts for the right reason. Everybody wants to be successful, but it's like, how you wanna be successful dictates a different way in the way you look at it, and that kind of stuff, and that's his thing. Earlier on he looked at it a little bit differently, like, how many CDs does he sell, how good was the merch and that kind of stuff, and he realized pretty early on after that, he's like, it's not about that. It's not about you. Is he reaching the lives, is he reaching other people, and I think that goes across anything we do. The stuff we work on, even we don't go out there and tour with it, but it's still putting in the 100%, because at the end of the day, it's not about me.– That's right.– It's about that.– Yeah, that's good. Well here is a clip from our Full Circle Music Show episode with Michael W. Smith.– [Seth] Thinking back over all the years being an artist I think one of the things that I struggle with and a lot of young artists, or writers, or producers struggle with is the whole balance of being a creative versus being a good family man. How have you found balance over the years to kinda keep all of that together, what's the secret for that?– [Michael] Well, we made the rule, Deb and I, when this thing started really taking off, in the Amy thing, and then did the Friends tour, Big Picture tour, we started having children.– [Seth] So you were married early.– [Michael] I got married in '81 to Deb, so it'll be 35 years this year.– [Seth] Congratulations.– Thank you.– That's amazing.– [Michael] She's awesome. But we knew, I think we probably really knew, probably when I did the Lead Me On tour, which was… Probably the most successful, other than the Change Your World tour it was probably the most successful tour I've ever been a part of, 'cause we sold out arenas, me and Amy, all around the country, and in other countries, as well. And we just started seeing people in our genre and in other genres, when it came to being entertainers and all that sort of thing that marriages were falling apart left and right. And so we, I remember just having a talk with Deb and just going, you know… If we don't make some rules, there's probably more chances of us being a casualty than not. And we're not gonna be a casualty. And so we just made the rule, I'm not gonna ever be gone more than two weeks from my family, ever. Even if I had to cross the pond, and come back, and cross it again. And I was never gone from Deb and the kids for more than two weeks. Had a little aircraft, and I don't talk about that much, it was worth every penny, I thought, I've gotta get home to my family. And a lot of times I'd do a show and I would literally walk off stage, and got in a car, and I was on the jet and I was home at midnight and I'm driving carpool at 7:15. I did that for twelve-and-a-half years. And I think if you talked to my kids, I think, I think if you could have a private one-on-one, I think they would all say, we were more important to my dad than his career was. And now I got all these young bands, I got some of these young kids are all starting to come to me and ask me exactly what you asked me. And I think that's part of my role in the future is to sort of be a fatherly role and try to help kids. I just don't think you can do 250 shows on the road and keep a family together. And they say, well, we gotta pay the bills, we gotta make the house payment. My response is, then buy a smaller house.– [Seth] Wow. Is there anything that you would kinda say to the younger you when you were first getting into it that you're like, okay, you might wanna do that a little differently. Is there anything that kinda comes to mind like that?– [Michael] Well, I think heart-wise, I mean, obviously, we all grow up, we all make mistakes. If we really are seeking the Lord, we all get a little wiser as we get older, but I'd probably go back and tell myself at 23, 24 years old, I'd probably just say dude, it's not about you. That's probably the first thing I would say. I was so, like, how many records did we sell, and did we sell any t-shirts, and it was just so like… And it's hard, 'cause you're excited, and you wanna be successful and I think I just wish I'd have seen the bigger picture a little bit. And that's probably what I'd say to these young kids going, why are you here? Reconnect with why you're here, because you're not here to be a superstar. But there's nothing wrong with being successful, at all, but it just can't drive you, it can't just encompass everything that you do, it just can't. I always say, what's your contribution, think about… Even in the hard times, and trying to get the thing off the ground, are you making a contribution, are you changing somebody's life? So, it's that kind of stuff I'd probably say, and then, if I had to say something on the musical level, I'd say it all starts with a song.– X O'Connor sitting here with Mr. Seth Mosley, founder of Full Circle Music. Getting ready to talk a little podcast action. So, your favorite episode out of the, we're at episode 100 now.– Crazy, absolutely crazy.– Yeah.– And your favorite one was with Chris Houser under very interesting circumstances, from what I remember, kinda spontane, spontaneous.– It was very spontane, I like that slang.– You know, it's kinda like pre-Fontaine, that runner guy, but it's spontane, it kinda flows off the tongue.– This was a spontane moment, we were in the car, actually on a radio tour, and one thing that I've learned by doing a podcast is, we're really, as sort of journalists, trying to bring interesting stories to our audience about stuff that they'll actually care about, you kinda just have to be ready at all times. So I've got this little pocket recorder and a couple microphones, I stuck it in the bag 'cause I felt like we might have some interesting conversations on this Matt Hammitt radio promo tour. I went out with him at the beginning of the year to promote his first single, ‘Tears', off his record. And so I just brought it with me, and we were spending a lot of time in the car, so I was like, okay, there's gonna be something good. So it was under interesting circumstances, but I think, what I've loved about our podcast is when our guests kinda just go off the rails a little bit and just feel free to tell stories, and just crazy. And Chris is such a great story teller. So it was one of my favorite episodes. And not only because of the episode itself, but really because of my story and how I met Chris in the first place. And one thing that he did that stuck out to me that I'll never forget, we touch on that in the podcast, as well.– I love it. And he's known for hitting as many radio stations as humanly possible in a very brief time. I believe you said he has a record. Do you remember what the record is?– He does have a record, he said he hit 13 stations in three days.– Now, were you a part of that 13 stations in three days?– I think we did, maybe, we might have done eight in two days.– Eight in two, that's still rather impressive.– It was a decent few. But I love it because, so often in this business we think about the result more than the relationship. And one thing that he drove home that you'll hear in this clip is that he talks about, really what he does for a living is to get to go talk to his friends about music that he loves. He actually cares about the people. And there are very few people that I know in life, let alone in music, in anything, that have spent three decades serving one group of people. And that's just dedication.– Man, you said it right there.– Yep.– It's powerful.– I'm ready to go back and listen to the episode myself.– Me too.– So let's jump into this episode with Chris Houser.– [Seth] You talked about you started tapping into your skillset which, I don't even know if you remember this but when I first moved to Nashville, I talk a lot about this on our podcast that my first record that I got was Newsboys, Take Me to Your Leader, and my first label record I produced was this one called Newsboys Born Again which you were working on.– Yes.– [Seth] And I think I met you once, maybe at Wes' house. Then I saw you, I don't know, a month later or something and you were like, hey, Seth, it's good to see you, and the fact that you even just remembered my name —– Oh, wow.– was huge.– [Seth] To me, your competitive advantage is you actually care about people and you're great with relationships.– [Chris] Thank you, man. That means a lot, and again, it's a, this is a small industry we're in, and I'm in my 30th year of promotion, radio promotion. And I think I'm starting to get it figured out, but every once in a while something comes along and surprises me, but I've seen a lot of people come in and go out from this industry, and one of my favorite clients, Brash Music, who had Aaron Shust, and Gunger, their MO was life's too short to work with jerks. And I also believe very strongly that you reap what you sow, and whatever you sow, you reap way more, and you reap way later. It's just the way it is. You can go out to a field with a handful of seeds and throw it out into the field, you don't go out the next day and say oh my gosh, look at all the growth. It takes a long time, but all the growth that comes into a field from one handful of seeds. And so I've always tried to be about sowing good seed, doing my best to love people well, and not losing myself in the process, which at times has been a challenge for me. Yeah dude, I don't remember meeting you, and I wish I did, but it's been an amazing thing to watch your trajectory as well, and to be doing this. We're on a promo tour right now.– [Seth] Yeah, that's the fun thing right now, we're out with an artist named Matt Hammitt.– [Matt] Yeah, what's up?– [Seth] We're actually promoting his new single, Tears. So this is what you do all the time, right?– [Chris] Yes, so these radio stations, we're visiting six, seven radio stations in two days, my record is 13 stations in three days.– [Seth] Wow.– [Chris] That was up in the Midwest, that involved taking a high-speed ferry across Lake Michigan, from Muskegon, Michigan over to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, dropping off one rental car, picking up another rental car and continuing to go. But these radio stations have a hard job, they've got 50 to 75 singles getting work to them every week by 30 to 35 record promoters, both between labels and indies. And so one of the ways that we get noticed is by bringing artists directly to them. And Matt is so beloved for, you know, radio stations are gonna play Lead Me every day until Jesus comes back. It's just a matter of fact, no one's gonna get tired of Lead Me by Sanctus Real. And so I never worked a Sanctus Real record, I've watched them from afar and been so impressed with them and their ministry, and so, there are other people you could go to. But you came to me to take this record to radio, I'm very honored by it, but in addition, I'm moved by it. I have to love, this is what I tell people. I make a great living talking to my friends all day long about music I love.– [Seth] That's a pretty good job.– [Chris] So I turn down the records I don't love. I take the records that move me, and the records that I love, by artists that I respect. And, I'm calling my friends, I'm not calling adversaries, I'm not talking to people at radio that I have to buffalo, or steamroll, or belittle, or slam a phone down and swear, and call them jerks behind their backs. I love these people, these are my friends, so I get to just go bring Matt and you, Seth, to my friends for the next two days. And these are people who work hard, like me, back in the day, they do it way better than me but none of them are making major amounts of money. They're doing this for love and calling, and yet, they're the venue, they're the avenue that we will go through to get this song on the air. And it's already impacting countless, thousands of people around the country in a very, very short amount of time.– [Seth] Yeah, well even, on the Sirius Highway, or Sirius XM The Message, they debuted the lyric video, we were just looking on the way up here and it's already at 37,000 views and 893 shares, which is a pretty substantial metric for a brand new label, essentially relaunching an artist.– [Chris] Yes.– [Seth] So that's a huge thing.– [Chris] Yes.– [Seth] Are you ever surprised and shocked with like a song that you think is gonna work doesn't work, or a song that you don't think is gonna work just blows up?– [Chris] Yes. I would say, my joke on that is, through years of therapy I've been able to mellow out a little bit. But there were times 10 and 15 years ago that I was sure a song was gonna be a smash, and nobody wanted it. It's like these 115 radio PDs got together in a smoky room somewhere and all decided what they were going to tell us promoters for the next year, and then they'd all go like, break! And they'd clap hands and they'd walk out. And so when I would get this massive pushback on a song, in the early days of this kinda promotion, I would go like, I don't know what a hit is anymore, I've lost it. And then I would go to the next step, I'm like, Am I even a Christian? And then I'd go all the way to like, God, are you even there, if I can't… And so, again, years of therapy have helped mellow me out, and life experience, just to get into a better spot of going, you know what, sometimes I'm wrong, a lot of times I'm right, and sometimes it's the radio stations that will say, oh, no, that's not a hit. I try to slow the no, I try to slow them down, because it's like, if you make a pronouncement, a negative pronouncement on a song this early, it's gonna be that much harder for you to admit you're wrong eight months down the line, six months down the line, let's just calm down, you tell me no now, that's fine. I'm just gonna find 20 people that you respect and get them to play the song, and we'll come back around, we'll just keep talking about it.– [Seth] And those people they respect, is that other radio promoters?– [Chris] No, no, other radio stations.– [Seth] Radio stations.– [Chris] Other radio stations. So then they're watching around to see who else, 'cause it's all defensive posturing and maneuvering. It's all, they don't wanna add a record, a radio station will say, we'll never be hurt by a record we don't play. Do you get that?– [Seth] Wow.– [Chris] We can never be hurt by a record we don't play, meaning, we might be hurt if we go too early on a song that our listeners end up not liking. So we'd rather watch the landscape and see what people are playing out here, and it's like, okay, that's fine. There are leaders, there are followers. If you need to be a follower on this, no harm, no foul, we're just gonna keep working this.– So I'm sitting here with Logan Crockett, VP of marketing for Full Circle Music and, man, what a ride it's been, we're on episode 100 on the Full Circle Music Show and we're talking about our favorites, favorite moments, and why listeners should probably go back and listen to some. And I love that you picked the Tony Wood episode. So what stood out to you about that, and why should people go back and listen?– Yeah, for sure. So with me, my perspective on the podcast is probably a little bit different from a lot of the rest of the staff. I've been around for just over a year, now actually working for Full Circle, but initially, listening to this podcast, I was, completely from the outside looking in, I was just, kinda like a lot of the people probably listening and/or watching this, someone just trying to kind of find their lane, their path in the music industry. And this episode with Tony Wood and this clip that we're about to play just really stuck out to me as something that I've never, ever forgotten. For so long, I mean I've been pursuing the music industry for years. And it always felt like, man, if you can just get kinda that one meeting with that publisher or that record later, or whatever company, just meet that right person and get that connection. If you can just do that, that's kind of hopefully the gateway to greater things, that kind of, getting that meeting, basically. But in this clip, Tony explained that it was so much more about getting meeting number two than about getting meeting number one. Because it really does make sense, getting meeting number two means that, if you had meeting number one, they have to like you enough to invite you back. And the way that Tony explained it in this clip, it was just, it was such a massive mindset shift for me because it just, it reformed my entire strategy for what I was trying to do with the music industry. It became so much more about okay, yes, meeting one obviously has to happen, but actually that's the easy part. So my goal was how do I get meeting number two? Meeting number one kinda flew out the window, and everything became about how do I score meeting number two, no matter what relationship I'm building, no matter what opportunity I'm pursuing. The goal became meeting number two.– Yeah, and in music, it's often about finding someone who is really where you want to be. And kind of emulating them. Wasn't there something that stood out in the episode about that, in particular?– Yeah he, Tony had kinda got his start thanks to someone named Tom Long, who was kinda that first person who really believed in him and helped introduce him to other people. And that was another big mindset thing for me, too, was this idea that, there's a lot in the music industry that you can control, there's a lot of things that you can do yourself to push yourself forward, but, it's going to be really, really, really difficult to get where you ultimately want to be if you're not finding someone else who can kinda elevate you. You need to find a champion, or a guide, someone who can get you further along the steps that you need to go.– I love it, and there's also this concept of, do your homework that Tony hits on, what did you mean by that, 'cause you were saying that that stood out to you.– Yeah. So yeah, again, all this stuff is in the clip that we're about to play, but Tony, it's a very kind of quick comment that Tony mentions, but when he was first meeting these other writers around town, and other publishers, he said that he did his homework on who they were and what they were up to. So basically, that really stood out to me 'cause now working for Full Circle, we have a lot of people who come through a lot of our events and things like that, but it feels like a lot of them haven't done their homework. A lot of them don't know like even, who is Full Circle and what are the different things that we do, what songs have we been working on, things like that. Normally I'm on a lot of calls with people through our academy and things like that, normally I have to completely explain almost from ground zero, what it is that we do, who we are, things like that. Not the case for everyone, but all that to say is if you are pursuing the music industry, before, and this kinda goes back into meeting one versus meeting two but before you get meeting one, make sure you do your homework, so that way you're giving your best first impression, and you're having amazing talking points when you do finally have the opportunity to sit down and have those interactions.– That's good. One thing that I love that we get to do with the academy, with our events, with courses and all of this stuff that we're doing is that we're helping dreamers, essentially. And there's kind of this common thread that we've heard, and I think you mentioned that Tony hits on this in the podcast. But this concept of, just trying, just giving it a try.– Yeah.– And why is that important, do you think?– Towards the end of the clip that we're about to play, Tony mentioned kind of his ultimate motivation towards, the big jump to moving to Nashville and pursuing all these opportunities. And his whole thing was like, you know, there's so many great opportunities in life. You don't have to be in the music industry, not everyone is meant to be in the music industry. The music industry is very competitive, not everyone who wants to be in it is going to be in it. But Tony's whole point was, that just really resonated with me was this idea of man, like if I don't just try and kind of give it everything that I have, a no is okay. Like if I meet the right people, and if I'm perfecting my craft and it's not good enough to be where it needs to be for the industry, then at least I tried, and I can live with that. But his big thing was like, man, if I don't try and give it all that I have, I won't be able to live with that. And that just resonated so much with me at the time, 'cause again, this was like, I think early 2016. So again, at the time, my involvement in the music industry was a little limited, I'd recently gotten out of college with my music business degree. I had a really great marketing job, but I wasn't that involved in the music industry, I was like running sound with my church and some things like that. But I knew that… In my being, I'm like, the music industry is where I ultimately want to be. And I was in a place where I kinda had a good job and all that sort of thing, but it was like, man, can I live with it if I don't do all that I can to get myself down to Nashville, to pursue these opportunities. And Tony just saying that, it's like, it was like he was speaking for me in that moment. Like yes, like that is ultimately where I'm at and I decided, there is no way that I will be able to live with it if I don't try, and give it all that I have, no matter what the outcome is.– And here you are.– Indeed.– Fruit of the podcast, that's awesome. Well here is a clip from Tony Wood interview on the Full Circle Music Show.– ASCAP was real helpful to me early as a songwriter, there was a conference that they offered like about five or six Monday nights in a row in October, where they brought in writers, producers, publishers, some great instruction. Something in that that was so significant, songwriter Dwight Liles said, the hardest meeting to get in Nashville with a publisher is not the first meeting, the hardest meeting to get is the second meeting. And it just killed me in that moment, 'cause I am such an introvert. And they would use the word networking and I hate the word, 'cause networking feels like, walk across this room and introduce yourself to this stranger, and tell them why they need to get to know you. And it's like, it's against everything within me, I'd rather just take a beating than do that. And I was like oh, no, if the hardest meeting to get is the second one, I'd better be ready when I get that, when I finally get the nerve up to go introduce myself, I gotta know that I'm ready. So that sends me into a month or so of panic about what do I do, what do I do. And I came up with this idea, Tom Long was the head of membership at ASCAP at that time, and he had put the conference on. The conference had happened three or four months earlier and I'd been stewing on that. And so here was the first professional initiation for me, I picked up the phone and I called Tom. And I said Tom, in the course that you moderated, somebody said the hardest meeting to get with a publisher is not the first, the hardest is the second. I need to be ready, I need somebody to tell me if I'm ready. And here comes the ask, Tom, will you be that man for me? And Tom says well, nobody's kinda ever asked me that, but okay, I tell you what, every couple of months, give me a call, bring me some of the lyrics that you're writing, and I'll take a look at them and tell you. I can't tell my story without such gratitude to Tom, Tom Long, for that. So I take the first meeting with Tom Long, walk in, the three current pieces of paper that I've typed up, put them on his desk, sit there, quietly feeling my organs separating while he's reading them all, just the tension, just dying right there. And Tom reads three and says, I've got some people you need to meet, get in the car. Drove me around to four publishers. I had done my homework, I knew who the publishers, I knew these people, I knew who their writers were, I knew the songs that they were having success with at that point. The first three dismissed me pretty quickly and go, eh, thanks but no thanks, and the fourth one was Michael Puryear who was with a small company, Lorenz Creative Services that was going at the time. They had just signed Steven Curtis, though before his first record, that was his first home, and they had recently signed Marcus Hummon who wrote God Bless the Broken Road. So it was kind of this small little boutique thing that was going, and Michael is more of a lyric guy, and he said, oh, why don't you start hanging around here some, and let me see if I can get some of our guys to write with you. And that was… The life changing moment for me, I'm so grateful to Michael for early belief in me.– [Seth] Sure. So, backing up, 'cause just the move to Nashville is such a huge leap of faith in the moment, I don't wanna gloss over that, for you and your wife. I'm sure that was just like a monumental thing. How does somebody know when they're ready to do that.– [Tony]Nobody knows, there is no knowing, there is nobody that's gonna say the time is right. It is that line between faith and foolishness. That's so close in there, you don't know. But I remembered, there was a point when I was finishing up school and still writing frantically, accumulating lots of sheets of paper. And they were in a box kinda under a bed. Early 20s, and I remember thinking, I can't imagine hitting 50 and not knowing, and not trying. I could live if I dared to show those to somebody and they said, ah, thanks but no, there's really not a place for you. But I couldn't live with myself if I didn't at least try. I remember sometimes feeling almost claustrophobic at that thought like, if I hit 50, and I've never at least tried, I almost couldn't breathe thinking about that. So that was some of the motivation that, you know if they had said, no thanks, go away, I could've lived with that, I could've gone and gotten, I could've worked at a church and been real happy with that, knowing that I tried. But not trying just was killer.– [X] Hey everyone, this is X O'Connor and you've been listening to the Full Circle Music Show, they why of the music biz, hope everyone enjoyed our episode 100, the special episode. It's impossible to believe that it's been 100 episodes already. And again, this is our last episode for a little bit, we're gonna be coming back at you with our brand new, re-imagined, rebranded podcast, the Made It in Music podcast, it's gonna be starting Monday, March 26th. It's so exciting, we're so pumped. So again, remember, March 26th, that's a Monday, that's gonna be the official beginning of the Made It in Music podcast. And we have some huge names already lined up for this, you guys are gonna be super excited about what we've got to come. It's gonna be more great content, for free, for you. We're looking forward to seeing you Monday, March 26th.The post Episode 100: The Best of The Full Circle Music Show appeared first on Full Circle Music. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Cause I'm An Adult#81

Cause I'm an Adult

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 16, 2018 86:08

In our final episode, Nez, Nathan, David, and Deven reminisce about our time on Cause I'm an Adult! Enjoy and thank you!

adult deven nez cause i'm

Episode #017 - The Fall Guy

Pilot Season Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 4, 2018 67:14

*"I might fall from a tall building, I might roll a brand new car. 'Cause I'm the unknown stuntman That made Redford such a star..."Lee Majors' "The Unknown Stuntman"...best 80's TV theme song ever? Discuss.This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

tv discuss redford cause i'm pinecast

27: By Application Only...

Secret MLM Hacks Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 23, 2017 16:25

What's going on everyone. This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So here's the real mystery. How do real MLMers like us, who didn't cheat and only bug family members and friends, who want to grow a profitable home business ... How do we recruit A players into our down lines that create extra incomes, yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives? That's the blaring question and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larsen and welcome to Secret MLM Hacks Radio. What's up everyone. Hey, I'm super excited for this episode. I got something really cool to share with you. This is Secret MLM Hacks Radio. So, today I want to share with you a hack. This is something that I have been doing that is ... honestly, it's all around us and I just don't think many MLMers think about it. So I want to share with you something really cool. First off though, I ... You guys gotta know I barely graduated high school. That's not a joke. I got straight D's in all of math, all of science, all especially of Spanish, all of ... I mean, I really, and a lot of times it was like I got a 60.1 percent. I'm pretty sure that some of the teachers a lot of times just felt bad for me so they would just not, I don't know, they would just let me go on. You know what I mean? I showed up. I was there. I was consistent. I just never did homework or if I did it was just always wrong. There was something in my head that just did not click on for a long time. I had not learned how to learn. You know what I mean? So when I get to the end of my senior year and it's time to go to college, I had been applying and these colleges are like yes, no, no, yes, no, no. It's more like one said yes and all the others said no. But it's pretty fascinating to watch the application process of these colleges or any kind of institute. Let's say you're applying for health insurance or life insurance. Or your applying for to get into some program. You know what I mean? It's fascinating because I would sit there and I would write out these applications. And I didn't really want to go to college at that time. I'm grateful that I did. I'm grateful that eventually I learned how to learn. I ended up getting straight A's, which is awesome. I got one of the entrepreneurship awards from Hale graduating class which is awesome in college which is super exciting. So that was fun stuff, but I had to learn how to learn, which is it's own skill. I just kind of have never stopped since then. Anyway, about the application stuff though. It's fascinating to watch the process that they go through. Often times, there is an application fee. So you go and you're filling out this application and you're showing them what you've written to everybody, and everyone's critiquing your essay that you have to apply with it and everyone's critiquing this and that and they're ... you know what I mean? There's so much stuff that goes into a single application. Right? And you sit back and you're like, "Dang. My Gosh. I just spent like a week just putting together this application." And they wanted a fee, and they wanted this, and they're not gonna get back to me for a solid while. And I don't even know if I got in. And there's no implication yet if I actually got in at all. And I'm like, "Dang. That's pretty crazy." You know, when you think about that. And so you sat back and you think about it. And you think about it. And you think about it, kind of think of it cynically almost like man your convincing somebody why they should take your money. That's basically it. I'm glad that I went to college. I will tell you that even though I got a marketing degree, none of what I learned do I actually do. There ... what I learned at college pretty much was to prepare me to become like an analyst at a corporate marketing firm. You know what I mean? And I don't do any of that kind of stuff, which hopefully helps some people who think that they need a marketing degree to do what I do. It certainly gave me an environment to learn, however, I mostly am self taught. So, anyway ... But back to the application. You think about that. You are convincing the other person why they should be allowed to take your money. You're like, "What?! That's crazy!" It's a commitment. You're gonna be there what? Like only 60 percent of people even finish college. So these guys are banking some serious money they don't even have to dish out the final thing to you after a while. You know what I mean? And I'm not bagging on the education system. I'm just using it as an example. Think about that though. Let's think about how we could model that whole process inside of an MLM 'cause that's what I've been doing. That's what I've been putting together more formally. I've had one kind of informally for while but as far as formally though, I've been building out what we call an "application funnel", an application styled sales funnel. Where somebody has to prove to me why they should be admitted into my program. And typically what we'll do is we'll use these funnels for like high end coaching programs where someone's charging 10 grand or 25 grand, or whatever, 50 grand. And the person is trying to convince the coach why they should be allowed into the program. Right? You're like, "Whoa! Wait a second. That is literally spinning on it's head the whole sales model. You mean I don't have to know any hardcore sales tactics?" Nope. "You mean, I don't have to know tricky little one sentence things to say or little tiny body language things to get them to go crazy and join," It always drives me nuts when other people post that kind of stuff in the MLM word. Five techniques, five things you should say to get them begging to join or something like that. It was like, come on, that doesn't really, you know ... How 'bout we actually give real value? You know what I mean? So, that's what I've been doing is ...there's page number one, web page number one. It goes through and says, "Look. I'm only looking for the best of the best elite marketers. If you think that you can, if you want this group, if you want to be part of my down line which is this group of elitists. We're very open, very loving, very ... it's not that we're judging anybody or anything like that. But there is an application to join my down line. You know what I mean?" And so I have a spot where people can do that. And they go through and it says "Number one. Hey, let me know. If anything you can just fill out the application and then let's get on the phone and see if you're an actually good fit. And be aware, we do actually turn people away." And so they put their name and their email and phone number in. And on the very next page it says, "Hey. Why do you think you should be considered?" Another question is like, "Hey. Steve Larsen's crazy busy. What do you think you can offer? We believe in give and take, we'd love to be able to give you all the stuff. But we also need to know what you could bring to the team. What is it you bring?" Obviously the questions are worded much better than this. I'm just ad libbing the ones that I'm remembering. But you know what I mean? It says, "Hey. Obviously there's a financial commitment to join the MLM. It does not go to Steven Larsen. It goes to the MLM to actually set up your actual entity with them and get your position. Are you okay with that?" You know what I mean? It's stuff like that. But there's an application that's eight or nine questions that you go through that helps me see where you are before you join. Isn't that interesting? And it's a totally different set of approach, a completely different kind of approach than what my MLM the first time ever, ever showed, ever. At first, it's like this hard core. It's not that the other tactics of getting on the phone and asking people to join don't work, it's that it takes for freaking ever, there's usually a lot more heartache. I lose more friends doing that. I don't lose any this way. And I attract a kind of person, when they apply, that's awesome. You know? The kind of people who are solving problems in my team that I didn't know that they were there. You know what I mean? When you go out and you find a team like that. Then I turn around and I give that whole system that actual application style system to my down line. So think about that. I'm not pitching you on joining. I want you to know what I do. I want to flip it on it's head. So page number one. Right? Hey, this is only for the elite of the elite. But if you think that you're a marketer that wants to join us just know there's applications out for 'em. Go to step two here and they put in their email address. Step two, the next page, is a video and there's an extra application form next to it. And then the third page, after they actually submit the application, it is a form that says, "Look. Obviously positioning does matter inside of MLM to an extent. You know what I mean? I know a lot of people join what I do and it's great it's fun. I really, really, I like it. So first come first serve is a huge deal." This is pretty much what the page says. And it says, "So, if you're really interested and want to skip the line because we just call people down the line as we get applications. We get several a day. So if you want to skip the line. Go head. Heres the phone number, just call us." And I'll tell you that the people that who call you, there worth like eight times more than the kind of person that you need to call out for. It puts the sales power back in your hands. Not that you're trying to be domineering again or anything like that. But that's the application style funnel that I put inside there. And there's email automation and there's full sequences in the back. And there's all the super sexy stuff, which is amazing, that happens on behind the scenes as well, which is really, really cool. It's just, you gotta understand that you're nothing new at first out of the gate compared to everybody else. But man if you're telling 'em that you can't join unless you apply and when you do apply, you get X,Y, and Z. And I actually created an offer out of applying. Holy Crap, that's sexy. So start thinking how you can use that inside your MLM. Start thinking about how you can, what can you do to make ... I think it was last episode, I talked about scarcity and the different mental triggers that are out there. I think that was last episode. But anyway, start thinking about what ... start thinking about what you can do to inject ... That's one of the ways that I inject scarcity, and community, and authority right into my down line. So start thinking about that. It's like, you know ... What kind of person do I actually want to join my down line? Where do I want them to be in their life? What problem sets do I want them to be addressing in their life at that time? If their problem set is that they can't rub two pennies together, they're not probably ready for what I've got. It's not that they can't be successful, but the road is longer. I'm not really looking for that kind of person. I'm looking for the kind of person who is out there, who wants to be successful with this marketing, who is interested in putting together marketing systems that amplify their MLM. Right? Who actually ... you know what I'm saying? And when you do it that way and you approach it that way and you start getting really, really clear on who it is that you want, you'll start attracting those people. And one of the ways that I do it is by making people apply. I want the kind of people who are fighting to join me. Does that make sense? And if somebody I can tell is fighting, but maybe they don't have a lot of experience, that's okay. Then I'll let 'em join. If someones like, "Hey. I don't have this experience. I don't have this or this or you know, I really am broke or whatever, but I've got passion out the wazoo." That's the kind of person I want. And I want to be able to vet that person out of the rest of the crowd. Does that make sense? One of the other things that I've been doing ... So, that's what I do. Then we get 'em closed up and we get 'em the marketing systems that they need. Then get 'em started in the success paths that I have. I've got little blueprints and stuff like that. And that's how I on board people. It's totally different than what my MLM provides, totally different than what any MLM provides. So, that's how I do it though. What MLM makes you apply to join? They're not that way at all. They're all like, they're so open that they end up being exclusive, excluding, sorry, they exclude people. Right? And so instead, what I do is I actually intentionally do that and I make people apply. One of the things that I been doing is ... I'm trying to figure out right now. 'Cause I'm building out the more official version of this application styled sales funnel. But what I've been doing is when someone actually joins, I'm gonna take that data, which is gonna be so cool, and I'll put it on a google sheet. That way people can see live ... just the first name. I'm not gonna give out any personal details obviously. But I'm thinking what I'll do is I'll embed in like a little window on the page, a google sheet. And you'll be able to see the people who have been applying and those who have been accepted and brought in. And obviously, again, there's gonna be no personal data or anything like that shown in there. But how cool to be social proof. Right? That's why I'm doing it. So that you can see how close you are to the top. So you can see how fast it's growing. So you can see how fast ... Does that make sense? And it causes this ridiculous frenzy like, "Oh my Gosh! That's so freaking cool!" You know what I mean? I'm not gonna tell you the MLM ... sorry, I'm not gonna tell you the URL to it yet. Just in case you guys want to go check it out, again, I am not pitching. If you love your MLM, my gosh, stay in it. Okay? I'm not hear to take sides, that's not at all what I do. I'm here to just share with you what we do inside other industries to make prices increases, to make anticipation go through the roof, to make people beg to join you. Does that make sense? That's why we do what we do and that's why I'm doing it right now. And that's why I'm sharing with you what I do 'cause it's super, it's crazy powerful. So, those are all tools and systems that I use as almost like a rewards system like, "Hey. When you join, have comfort in knowing that this system is also yours. You know what I mean? You don't have to go reinvent the wheel." You know what I mean? So that's how I create myself as a new ... that's one of the tons of ways that I create myself as kind of a new opportunity to MLMers. Otherwise, you're kind of the same as everybody else. You see what I'm saying? So, when they're applying, I'll go on through say like, "Hey. By the way, you're gonna get this. You're gonna get this. You're gonna get this. You're gonna get this, if you get accepted. And we truly do turn people away. So, go ahead and apply and then let's jump on the phone, or jump on the phone with one of my team leaders or whatever. And we'll answer any questions that you might have. And see if it's a good fit. If not, that okay and we'll give you like a little thank you also and stuff like that." Obviously be cordial about it. We're not saying like, "Get lost" or whatever. So that's what we do. That's what I do. That's what I've been building is the more official version of that. And trying to see if I can get this cool google sheet to get embedded so real time you can see the applications coming in. How cool is that? Oh my gosh. So, anyway that's what I've been doing guys and that's why I do it. I just kind of spin it on it's head and turn it into a marketing activity rather than a begging activity. That's what I felt like the first time I was calling people or I'd go ... I went down Main Street asking people to join. Whatever it was, it was such a ... if you had a heart beat, I was asking. I wasn't clear on who I wanted. And because I wasn't clear on who I wanted, it meant I was targeting nobody. You know what I mean? So I had to get real clear. Anyway, I feel like I'm just saying the same thing over and over again now. That's what I've been doing. Shortly here, when it's done, when a few of the things that I'm waiting for happen. Then, I'll tell you guys what that URL is just so you can see what it is. Again, I'm not .. Oh gosh, please just know that I am not here to pressure you at all. I just want to show you what it is that I'm doing, so that you can see it and you can model it on your own. Whatever that is. All right guys. Have fun the rest of this day. Go crush it. Go kill it. Remember if you do what is easy, you're life will be hard. It's a good quote. I got a big quote filled wall, so sometimes I just look up and say one of them. So that's one I just looked at. Okay. If you do what is easy, your life will be hard. Whoo! Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to subscribe and leave feed back. Would you like me to teach your own down line five simple MLM recruiting tips for free? If so, go download your free MLM masters pack by subscribing to this podcast at SecretMLMHacksRadio.com

086: Lisa Meets the Drunk Mom feat. Amy Wright

Honestly Lisa

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 7, 2016 68:41

Your life is completely different. Even than that person you thought was you. Amy Wright and The Drunk Mom She took a bunch of business courses, and nothing ever happened for her. She kept at it because she thought she was supposed to. "Hustle More!" She ran herself into the ground for 7 years trying to make it work. She is raising a teenager, and trying to be a perfect parent. Why isn't anything working out? She snapped 5-6 months ago, wasn't enjoying what she'd done in her life lost her mind. "You know what would be really cool? Cause I'm a genius!" - Amy She told her husband she wanted to make videos about all the things moms do but don't want to talk about. He was worried for the kids sake, but then she just went ahead and made the videos. She didn't tell her husband for months. "I don't want to die with any regrets" - Amy The videos were extremely well received, and she said her first step was to make a facebook page with videos she thought were totally hilarious. She hit 5000 likes within a few weeks, and her previous business page was torture. People loved this. She gets emails from people who were having a hard time with their kids and lives. The way I went viral, Share Ross, told her facebook live would grow her page fast. No regrets, let's do this! She locked herself in her bathroom, sitting on the toilet talking about real life. "The time I shit my pants and the story of imperfection." We are cautious about what we put online, sometimes its really scary. Did I just put very real stuff out there? 26000 followers in three months. It's crazy. People love that its real life, and it makes them feel normal. She shared how nasty her car was after driving the kids around for a few days. My husband had a barbie shoe stuck to his butt. The one that went viral: shit my pants drunk dancing gas station blocking diagram Not doing anything but creating, not marketing anymore. Amy had a baby when she was young. Invited on a talk show, not really what she wanted to be doing, but it was a step in the right direction. Now she just looks like s sad drunk mom on this show they ask her. People fall down, it's so much more entertaining. Where did we get the idea that we shouldn't show our imperfections? - Lisa "That shit has been communicated so long" Amy on expectations of moms to hide their imperfections. "We feel like it's our fault if everything's not perfect." - Amy "We live in this hidden society" - Lisa My boyfriend covering up his farts with the coffee grinder. "when you're not your true self, you just get depressed" - Lisa "I'm not a huge fan of rejection." - Amy How did your husband not find out? He's fairly busy and they have 5 collective kids. Once things got going, and she got comfortable stepping into the role of playing honestly. "I have this gut feeling, you can call it appalling or whatever, but I can't settle for a 9 to 5 job. I can't ignore the fact that I'm somewhat entertaining. I can't continue to push that down and ignore it, and not share my god given gift with the world." Raised by hippies. Bong on the coffee table, mirror and straw and razor. Successful parents, but very loving and accepting of people. It was just normal life for me. Trying to communicate two different worlds into one. "I've never been able to work for somebody" - Lisa on never being able to keep a job. There's more than going somewhere you hate every day. She doesn't know if it will ever make sense to her husband. Unless its raking in the dough. Just making something and putting it out there has just turned into something amazing! "If you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing it will be hard, if you're doing what you're supposed to be doing it will be easy." She will make several videos a day when she sets aside time. She comes up with these ideas in her shower and keeps the ideas in an app on her phone. She films in her laundry room. She edits her own videos still because she wants to make sure it comes out the way she means for it to. "Until I know my standards, I really can't delegate that out." - Amy Live streams as much as possible whenever she feels like it. She talked to her kids about what she was doing so they wouldn't be surprised or embarrassed. She started with her oldest. She explained to her kids how it will help people. "I want my kids to see my following a path that's something I want to do. I want them to see me being fucking brave!" - Amy Somebody let a man with a foot fetish into my show. He was groaning while I was barefoot on stage. Amy wants to hire someone to go through and delete all the horrible comments. That's the first thing she will delegate when she can hire someone else. People making shitty comments "you're a terrible excuse for a mother" nasty things, and stalking those mean people! "You're not going to come in my living room and take a shit and leave. i'm gonna smear your face in it first, and then i'll escort you out the front door" - Amy Folding the fitted sheet- first video she ever published! "I see other people's linen closets and i'm like, I don't get it" - Lisa Wanting to take control of all the things you should be doing, vs. doing what you do. Share Ross- amazing, living as her real self. "It was going to rock the boat too much, it was more change than i was willing to make at the moment." -Amy I never wanted to perform again after my boyfriend showed up at a show where I totally talked about him. Dinner: Dead or Alive OPRAH!!!! Oprah came from some serious shit. More deplorable shit than any of us can imagine. She over came it as a black woman in the United States, struggled with her weight-- over and over and over again. "I love her resilience--it'd be Mama O!" How do you imagine your death? It's part of life... I always thought I would die young, it's always been the driving factor in life. "perceived as untimely." I want a funeral that is packed full and I don't want it to be solemn. Rocking music, play the jack in the box over the casket. "I don't want to leave this world without making a huge impact, is the bottom line" Asshole grandparents. Dealing with the different generation and time in history. Amy asks, "When did your pubes start to turn grey?" Lisa replies: Skunk stripe early on. Then I died it. why. Then I vajazzled. Pube sisters! Lazer your chin hairs while they're black! The white ones won't be lazered! full pubic growth - bob ross - Amy Orgasm loss around peri-menopause " I'm going to be a fucking bitch for a while" -Amy Verbal Rorschach horse - rider taco - vagina electricity - lightening peanut butter - silly jeans - really tight love - heart deer - in the headlights chinese food - cat brave - Merida clothespin - laundry open door - open door policy from corporate days What's your favorite bush? My bush!!!!!! BobRooohhhh How to leave a love note on iTunes for my Podcast. From your computer: 1. Open the iTunes software on your desktop. (Not the web version.) 2. In the search bar (upper right-hand corner), type in “Honestly Lisa”. 3. Click on our album cover that pops up towards the bottom of the screen. 4. This will take you to the homepage for our show, but make sure you don’t accidentally select one of our individual episodes instead. 5. Right under the show description, you’ll see three tabs. “Ratings & Reviews” is the second one listed, and this is the one you want to click on. 6. On that page, there should be a button called “Write A Review” and if you click there, it will hopefully let you create a post with your thoughts! From your iPhone: 1. Open the “podcast” app that comes pre-installed on all current apple smartphone devices. 2. In the lower right-hand corner, you’ll click on the magnifying glass “search” button and type in “marriage is funny”. 3. Click on our album cover that pops up towards the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the homepage for our show, but make sure you don’t accidentally select one of our individual episodes instead. 4. Select the “reviews” tab toward the top of the screen, and you’ll see a purple “Write a Review” button on the next page. 5. It might ask you to log in to your iTunes account, but otherwise, this will open a form where you can enter your thoughts!

united states oprah winfrey write open iphone raised select merida bong lazer share ross skunk rocking invited asshole pube ratings reviews amy wright amy how cause i'm lisa i'm honestly lisa

#AskGaryVee Episode 191: Influencer Marketing, How to Go Viral & Vlogging

The GaryVee Audio Experience

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2016 30:41

#QOTD, from Lauryn: Where do you guys see Snapchat in the next two to three years?#QOTD, from Sara: Do you guys think Twitter is dead? Cause I'm really liking it. #LINKSSara's channel https://www.youtube.com/user/saradietschyLauryn's channel https://www.youtube.com/user/MissSkinnyShow

snapchat qotd cause i'm

PULPWATCH 1994: American Crime Story: The People V. O.J. Simpson Ep6

Pulp Nightmare | Tales of The Unaccountable | Comedy | Weird | Movie Commentaries

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2016

"'Cause I'm for real! Hear me? I'm The Juice!" Know what this is? This is The FX's tombstone, because we've already planned it's funeral. In yet another edition of outrage, madness, and inexplicable confusion, the boys of Pulp Nightmare engage the medium of television for the sixth installment PULPWATCH 1994, trying to decipher the incoherent messages of AMERICAN CRIME STORY: THE PEOPLE V OJ SIMPSON. And between a credit sequence that just won't appear, a love story that doesn't seem to be a love story, racism and sexism interwoven together in such a way that it's practically a new level of offensive, and the single most perplexing use of Seal's "Kiss From A Rose" ever attempted, the PN alumni sure as hell have their hands full. Why was there so much dancing? Why was the Nazi presented to look sane? What in God's name is Ryan Murphy doing with the camera? Is it drunk?! The answers will never come. They just won't. Escape the murderous gloved claws of OJ by downloading the episode here!

I Feel Free

Promised Land Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2016 66:58

Cause I'm a man, Turned 21 This world is funky This world is not my home