Podcasts about Chicken soup

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it's Wow Wednesday. I always try to share awe-inspiring or surprising stories with you on Wednesdays, so I went back to one of our older books and found a couple that I really love from one of our biggest bestsellers, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Touched by an Angel. They are both about what I call “deathbed miracles.” We do get a lot of stories about miraculous things that happen even during an awful time, the death of a family member. It's nice to hear these stories that provided so much wonder and comfort to family members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. I'm continuing to share stories with you from our new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Self-Care Isn't Selfish. We made this book because this is such an important truth for us all to embrace. I'm sure you've been through plenty of things where you have NOT put yourself first, where you didn't even put yourself on your to-do list AT ALL. And that's not good. It's bad for you and it's bad for all the people you take care of too. Because you're no good to them if you're frazzled and exhausted and starting to get resentful because your needs are not being addressed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and it's Friend Friday, which means I'm chatting with someone interesting from the Chicken Soup for the Soul world. Today I'd like to introduce you to Liz Palmer, who wrote an inspirational story for our latest book about cats, and also has such an interesting background that I wanted you to meet her. This is pretty amazing. Liz is an athlete and coach, but here is what blew me away. She was Ms. Nevada Senior America for 2022 and Ms. California Senior America for 2024. And she was 3rd runner up to Ms. Senior America in each year - 2022 and 2024, for the whole  country. And talk about athletics, too. Liz is the current American record holder in the 60-meter hurdles for women over 50. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stephanie O'Brien formed her company, Coach Client Connection, 13 years ago to help coaches and experts connect with the people who need their services. She grew up in Manitoba Canada. She says that as a child she had great difficulties in developing relationships with her fellow children. As she said during our conversation, she tended to be too clingy among other things.   She began writing at an early age and wrote her first full-length novel at the age of twelve. She has written 14 books, four of which she self-published. As she matured, she began connecting with writers online and found that she could create relationships with them. She then learned how to make others around her feel interesting and thus also began learning how to establish real relationships with others.   As she tells us, she also began meeting with coaches and others to improve herself and her self-esteem.   We talk quite a bit during this episode about coaching and how Stephanie has created a program to help coaches better interact with clients and others. She even gives us a free gift to help us learn how to choose and interact with coaches.     About the Guest:   Stephanie O'Brien, founder of Coach Client Connection, has been helping coaches and experts to connect with the people who need them since 2013.   Throughout her childhood, she struggled to make connections with others. As the kid who was always sending invitations to the other kids, and seldom being invited herself, she knows what it's like to feel invisible and unwanted.   She immersed herself in her writing, and completed her first full-length novel at the age of 12. She went on to write 14 novels, four of which she self-published as ebooks (she calls the rest “teenage practice”).   As she began to connect with other writers online, she gradually honed the art of building relationships by making the people around her feel interesting, wanted, and understood. She also sought healing through coaching and therapy, and experienced firsthand the transformations coaching can bring. This gave her a passion for helping coaches to share those transformations with more people, so those people can enjoy the same freedom, joy, and recovery from old wounds that she did.   Since then, Stephanie has spent over 10 years helping coaches to get noticed, connect with the people who need them, and turn their expertise into coaching programs that their clients can easily understand, implement, and turn into real results.   When serving clients, she draws on her decades of practice in writing fiction and nonfiction, her ability to see both the big picture and the little details, and her experience as a client of both great coaches and coaches who left her discouraged and disappointed. She also uses the relationship principles she discovered to help set coaches at ease, draw out more of their expertise than they even knew they had, and make the process of creating their programs easy and fun. Ways to connect with Stephanie:   https://www.coachclientconnection.com/ https://www.instagram.com/stephanieobriencoaching/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-obrien-program-design/ https://www.facebook.com/StephanieOBrienCoaching   Free Gift: https://www.coachclientconnection.com/How-to-Pick-a-Coaching-Topic-that-SELLS/   About the Host:   Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening!   Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast   If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset .   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review   Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.       Transcription Notes:   Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:21 Well, hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of unstoppable mindset. We're going to try to be unstoppable today as much as much as we can. Our guest is Stephanie O'Brien. O'Brien, good Swedish name Stephanie. I couldn't resist. It's a it's pleasure to have you here, and it's a pleasure to have all of you listening. Stephanie has been involved in coaching and connecting coaches and clients for 13 years now, my gosh, a long time, and we're going to learn all about that. And I know that Stephanie's got a lot of words of wisdom to talk about. So without further ado, as it were, let's get into all of this. So Stephanie, welcome to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 02:03 Thank you so much. I really appreciate you having me here. I'm looking forward to this,   Michael Hingson ** 02:07 and as I told Stephanie earlier, the rule of the podcast is you got to have fun. So, you know, we do our best. But anyway, let's start out with kind of the early Stephanie, growing up and all that. And you know, just to learn a little bit about you if we can   Stephanie O'Brien ** 02:22 sure, a big part of the reason why later came to have a focus on helping coaches connect with people was because for me, connecting people was connecting with people was really difficult. When I was young, I'd be the kid who on Saturday morning, I'd get on the phone at a call each of my friends one by one, only to be told that they didn't want to hang out. And I was seldom the one who got a call in return. So I had a really hard time connecting with people. Admittedly, I could be a bit clingy and boring, so I have to recognize my own faults and where I had to grow from there, but at the time, I didn't really know how to fix that. So yeah, I had a hard time connecting with people. Eventually, I started connecting with people through writing. I was a pretty prolific novelist. I finished my first novel when I was 12 years old. Terrible novel. Mom told me, Steph, don't delete it. And I tell her, no, no, it's so bad I'll never want to see it again. Mother knew best. I shouldn't have deleted it. But I went on to write 14 novels, four of which were good enough by adult needs standards, to Self Publish. And while I was doing all this writing, I started connecting with other writers, talking with them about their stories. I got very good at building relationships and asking the right questions to keep the conversation going, but I just kind of learned how to connect with people through trial and error. Though I've been still worked with some mentors to get better at it still. So now I use that experience, the writing experience, the ability to phrase things in a way that's easy to understand and connect with that experience. With building relationships, I help coaches to connect with more of their ideal clients now.   Michael Hingson ** 03:49 So have you always been in Manitoba? Yeah,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 03:53 I've always lived in Manitoba. Sometimes vacations are traveled outside if it always lived here, oh   Michael Hingson ** 03:58 yeah, lot of snow in the winter, oh   Stephanie O'Brien ** 04:01 yeah, it's been less severe lately, like it's in the last few years, we've had more 30 degree days in summer, fewer 40 degree below days in winter. But it still can get pretty cold.   Michael Hingson ** 04:14 Isn't that crazy? Well, but, and of course, some people say there's no such thing as climate change. So what do you do?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 04:20 You put out the pictures of me trick or treating as a kid versus me at Halloween this year, like I went from trick or treating in blizzards to walking on grass in November one. There's a difference.   Michael Hingson ** 04:33 Well, so you you went to school? Did you go to university? Or any of that? I   Stephanie O'Brien ** 04:38 was actually homeschooled, and I went to Athabasca University online, but I didn't take a full formal university education. Instead, I learned. I took courses from various coaches and business owners to learn how to run an online business. Wow, Peter, if you're gonna do a secondary education, you may as well learn from someone who's doing what you want to do, and to teach you how to do it   Michael Hingson ** 04:57 well. And as long as that, we're. For you that that's a good thing to do.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 05:01 Yeah, you've got to choose your education based on what you're trying to learn and what you're trying to accomplish. I don't like the cookie cutter model, or you got to get a college education because, yeah, learn what's relevant.   Michael Hingson ** 05:13 Well, I think there's value in college and or university, absolutely. And I went, I went to to the university, and I think for me, probably it was the best thing to do, because back in well, in 68 to 76 when I was at the University of California at Irvine, there weren't a lot of alternatives other than college for getting access to material, accessible stuff wasn't there. In fact, majoring in physics, my books had to be transcribed into Braille and and that that was a challenge, because professors didn't always want to provide information about what books they were going to use until as late in the process as they could, just in case a new book came out. And that that didn't work for me, and so one of the things that I learned was how to work with professors, and when necessary, use higher authorities than professors at the university to get them to provide what needed to be done. So that was that was useful, but the material wasn't accessible without me making a major effort. So probably college was would have been, anyway, for me, the way to do it. But obviously what you did worked for you. And so, you know, I figure it's important to   Stephanie O'Brien ** 06:29 just go to figure out what you want to do with your life, figure out what information or courses you need on that, and then, you know, pick the source that is most appropriate to provide it. It's there's no one size fits all,   Michael Hingson ** 06:41 no, and I agree. What do you do with people who say I don't know what I want to do with my life?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 06:48 Those generally don't tend to be our target audience, but I can help them in a few ways. I can give them a few questions that they can answer. You know, they can look at what is something that they really love to talk about can't get enough of talking about so they could study this forever. Is it something that they could you know, an area where they can help get results for people. Let's say they are really into relationships. They're fascinated by human relationships. Can they help people to communicate better? Can they help people to find better, healthier partners? Can they help them to avoid common conflicts with other people? Or, you know, what's a problem that they've solved for themselves, that they've healed in their own life. You know, maybe they had a really rough cancer journey and found out, you know, what went wrong, what went right, what could have gone right more to make it easier for them. Now, I know one person who she got through breast cancer and now teaches other people how to navigate that journey a lot more smoothly than what she experienced. Yeah. So, yeah, I encourage people to, you know, look at their lives. Look at what you do for free, if you had the option, if money wasn't an object, what fascinate? See what you're passionate about, and just see, is there a way you can use that to make other people's lives better?   Michael Hingson ** 07:54 Well? And that makes a lot of sense. And we, we all should do a whole lot more introspection and analyze what we do and and even ask ourselves why we do it, because we we tend to just move ahead and do stuff and we don't think about it. And the other part of what happens as a result of that is that we try to control everything that we do, we don't think about what we're doing, and we're a lot more afraid than we should be, and then we need to be, if we would only take the time to really be introspective and learn what is it that really is going on? Why do I feel this way? And as you're pointing out, what can I do about it? But if we really take the time to analyze. Then we figure out somewhere along the line, you don't need to worry about what you can't control, just focus on the things that you can and your life is a whole lot better anyway. Oh yeah,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 08:54 yeah, at Holyoke, give me the strength to control, our strength to change what I can the grace to accept what I can't, and the wisdom to know the difference, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 09:02 well, and the reality is that one of the things that I talk about a lot is the mind's a muscle, and you need to develop it whoever you are, and the best way to do that is to think about what you do. I've learned that I'm not my own worst critic, I'm my own best teacher, and that's the way it should be. But I have to be open to learning and letting me and my inner voice teach. But if I do that, then I'm oftentimes, as I think back on it, very amazed at what I suddenly discovered that I didn't know before because I wouldn't take the time to think about it and study it.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 09:40 Yeah, we can get so busy, so caught up in our day to day lives, so ingrained in our routine. Sometimes it can be challenging to rattle ourselves out of that, and sometimes we need another set of eyes, or someone asking the right questions,   Michael Hingson ** 09:53 yeah, and then, and we need to take that time so. So for you. You, you studied, you worked with people. And so you what? Well, what kind of jobs did you have early in your your job world? Or did you always coach?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 10:12 Um, my first jobs, that was actually a waitress for a restaurant my mom owned, along with a couple other people. They were going to run the restaurant along with us. They were going to be the main ones owning the restaurant, and then they just kind of ditched us and left us with a restaurant we didn't know what to do with. So I was a waitress there for a bit before we sold the building and moved on. Then we tried owning rental properties for a bit, and honestly, no, never again. We were not cut out for that. It   Michael Hingson ** 10:34 was terrible, scary thing. Yeah,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 10:37 yeah, it's done. I can still lose like I'm fine with being responsible for me. I don't need theory to be responsible for me and all the tenants who call me during supper to mediate between their fights. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 10:50 this only so many hours in a day, and people need to take responsibility for themselves. So I hear you. So what did you do after that? That   Stephanie O'Brien ** 10:57 was after that that we started getting into coaching. You I'd been writing novels for pretty much as long as I could write, and I was going with mom. She was becoming a coach. She was studying under Mary Morrissey, so I went with her to learn how to use my fiction writing skills for business. And I started studying under Brendan Norman and then Ted McGrath. And yeah, they it was actually Brenda Norman who introduced me to the world of writing for marketing, and, you know, knowing how to focus on the results that people care about instead of the process that they don't really care about, how to phrase things in terms of the actual experiences that they long for, instead of just giving dry, vague descriptions issues kind of my gateway To the world of marketing.   Michael Hingson ** 11:37 So you you really, essentially came by the whole concept of coaching pretty naturally, by by just the the evolution of of what you did, which is pretty cool. How about your books, though, are, are any of them still available for people to get?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 11:56 Yeah, got four novels on my website. It's Stephanie O'Brien books.com where I host my novels, my short stories, my comics, my art, basically all my creative stuff that isn't coaching. And I've also got one non fiction book, one month program builder up on my website. I have written another one tell people with their marketing message, but that one needs to be updated. I'm planning to update and republish it eventually, but it just hasn't been   Michael Hingson ** 12:20 a top priority. So have you published all of your own books? Or have you worked at all with traditional   Stephanie O'Brien ** 12:26 publishers? It's all been self published. A lot of the traditional publishing route just seems like too much of a pain for them, still expecting me to do Mark most of the marketing. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 12:35 that's one of the things that has happened, is that publishers tend to not do nearly the marketing that they used to, which is, which is fine for those who really do know how to market, but there is also value in publishers doing a lot more to help than I think probably a lot of them do, but it's the way the world is going that we've we are so steeped in social media and everything now, people think that's the only way to market and it's not.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 13:06 Yeah. Anytime someone says their way is the only way, I immediately get suspicious, like they instantly lose credibility. There are so many different ways to market yourself and grow a business. The important thing is finding a way that works for you. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 13:21 And ultimately, one of the tests of whether it works for you is whether you see results or not. But, but true, it is still there is not just one way to market or sell for that matter,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 13:32 yeah, and if you're not having fun doing it, you know, it's kind of like your podcast, if you're not having fun doing it, especially because, yeah, I found that if I try and commit to a marketing method that I just really hate doing, I will struggle every day to get it done. I'll wind up procrastinating, I won't do it as consistently as I should, and I won't get results. So yeah, when you're choosing your marketing method, you gotta pick something that even if you're not totally ecstatic about it, you at least enjoy it enough that you can do it consistently   Michael Hingson ** 14:00 well, and you may discover later that you really do enjoy it, and that's that's part of it. We don't always necessarily know everything in our own minds the way we ought to. But if we, if we keep looking and we keep trying things and we find something, well, this is working. I'm not a great fan of it, but 10 years from now, you may discover that you learned a lot and you really love it.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 14:23 Yeah, you can always just experiment with it. You'll give it a 90 day shot it, don't. You don't want to just poke at it and then go, Oh, it didn't work instantly. But, you know, give it a be a good old college try. Give it a 90 day genuine try. And if you're really hating it, if it's not getting results, be willing to let it go. If it's getting results, if you're enjoying it, keep on going, working on refining it   Michael Hingson ** 14:42 well. And if you're getting results and you don't enjoy it, then it's probably worth exploring. Why don't you enjoy it? Yeah, that might be very telling also.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 14:53 And if it's something that can be outsourced, then you might want to look at outsourcing. Actually, it depends on the nature of what it is you.   Michael Hingson ** 15:00 Yeah, there is that. But if it's working that that, in of itself, is something right off the bat. Yeah, you   Stephanie O'Brien ** 15:06 don't want to ditch what's working unless you got something better to replace this.   Michael Hingson ** 15:10 That's that is always true. Well, so anyway, so you started studying, and eventually, when did you start your your business, and start coaching, seriously.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 15:24 Um, see, I kind of, I was kind of half probably coaching, partly writing for people, as early as 2013 that's where I got my start. And then just kind of gradually got more and more into coaching, as opposed to writing for people. So of course, even the other process of writing for people still involves a certain amount of coaching, because you have to help them understand, Okay, here's why I'm doing it this way. Here's what we need to communicate. Here's what you need to communicate as a follow up afterward. So there's a certain amount of coaching involved in that too, but it's been the last few years that I've shifted my focus more fully to helping people create their coaching programs, as opposed to, you know, writing marketing materials for the programs they already have. Now,   Michael Hingson ** 16:00 you've written a number of fiction books, right? Tell me about that that I'm still trying to figure out how to write a fiction book   Stephanie O'Brien ** 16:10 for me. Most of the time. It starts with me having a few ideas for scenes or relationships, etc, and then spending the rest of the time trying to justify their existence. Like here are a few really great scenes, and now I need to figure out all the other plot points that lead to this moment the books I've published so far. One of them is called cat girl roommate. It takes the concept of a cat girl, except that instead of being the stereotypical sexy cat girl, she's a cat girl who actually acts like a cat and thinks like a cat. I've owned cats pretty much as long as I can remember, so I just took a whole bunch of their ridiculous shenanigans, and put them into this one cat girl, like, how she'll, you know, the her roommate who's taking care of her, he'll make the same meal for both of them. But she doesn't want her. She wants his. It's the exact same thing, but she's sure that his is better. Such a cat thing to do another it's called a heroic lies. It's, um, kind of a dark twist on the superhero genre, where you've got this villain who keeps on kidnapping people, keeps on trying to fight the hero, except that there seems to be nothing in it for him. It kind of explores that whole Why is the villain putting so much into the fighting the hero instead of making his own life better with his own genius, and kind of puts dark twists on it? Oh, shoot. That's why.   Michael Hingson ** 17:20 Cute. Well, and speaking of cats, see who I have on the back of my desk chair here. Yeah,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 17:28 I noticed him moving around. But enough, I got one sitting in a chair right over there.   Michael Hingson ** 17:32 Well, stitch usually isn't in with me, but our house is being cleaned, and so her bed is is under attack, as far as she's concerned. So, so she came in here, which she usually does, and she'll just stay up on the chair. She's fine,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 17:48 yeah? My cat tape laundry day sometimes I finished, you know, laundering the sheets and making the bed. Okay, Brandy, your bed is ready.   Michael Hingson ** 17:56 Yeah? Well, stitch, stitch copes pretty well. And then there's my guide dog, Alamo, who's down on the floor. You can't see him, but he's he's down there and quite content. But stitch seems to be pretty well. She moves around a little bit, but she's planted herself on the back of the chair. And I didn't even think about it when I bought this desk chair to get something wide enough so that she could be on it, but it's worked out really well.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 18:23 And yeah, she seems very cozy and   Michael Hingson ** 18:25 content she is. And for those who don't know, stitch is my, my main coon rescue cat. We've had her now for 10 years, over 10 years. So since the bed is is being made and washed and all that. Then she's in here and she's fine. She'll get bored eventually,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 18:47 Hey, as long as she isn't wandering around screaming, as mine sometimes does.   Michael Hingson ** 18:50 Yeah, yeah, that's the big issue. Well, so you you got into this whole business of of coaching, and how did you start or working with her? How did you decide to start working with other coaches and coaching them in terms of dealing with clients and so on. While   Stephanie O'Brien ** 19:11 I was accompanying my mom to all these the training events, I just started falling in love with coaches and coaching. I saw all these amazing people who are trying to be their best selves, live their best lives, break free from their old patterns and beliefs and ways of being, instead of just being ruled by them their whole lives, and trying to help others to do the same. I just fell in love with it, of the idea of the ripple effect I could make by helping these people. I also became a client of some coaches, and I found it was really it really changed my life in a lot of ways, like helping me to overcome the emotional difficulties from that childhood I described, where people didn't want to be around me, where I couldn't make friends seeing the change it made in myself. I wanted to help more people to experience those transformations, and I wanted to help the amazing coaches who were making such a change to have more success and joy in their own lives, too. Yeah. But you know, as I was interacting with them, I found that I think they were in some ways, kind of too educated for their own good, because they say stuff like, I help you shift your paradigms. And I think I might have mentioned that earlier, but yeah, they they didn't realize that these things that had so much meaning for them wouldn't have the same meaning for someone who didn't have their training. So, you know, they here shift your paradigms, and they can instantly mentally connect it with a result, whereas the lay person here is that they can kind of speculate about the result that they don't immediately look up and say, Yes, that's the exact change I need in my life. But I was kind of the universal translator from Star Trek, helping them translate their coach speak jargon into layperson's terms and into the terms of here's what the people actually want.   Michael Hingson ** 20:42 If you were to define it, what would you say is the definition of a coach? What is a coach?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 20:50 I'd say it's somebody who that works. Doesn't just put a training program for someone to go through on their own pace. It actually works directly with the person. You're helping that person find the answers that they need, helping them to work through their own minds, their own circumstances, their own desires, and helps them ask the right questions is someone who helped them to figure out their own life or some specific aspect of their own life. They don't just give education. They also receive what the client has to say, and help the clients to work through it and understand it.   Michael Hingson ** 21:21 Yeah, I once heard a definition the difference between a coach and a therapist, mainly is that a therapist helps you find the answers, but the therapist knows the answers and can give you the answers, but a coach guide you, because you're the one who really has to discover the answers and figure out what it is that you need to deal with. So the coach will guide you and help you discover, but you have to be the one to do with the coach doesn't necessarily know nor provide the answers.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 21:56 Yeah, and when I'm working with coaches, that's definitely the case where you know they're the subject matter expert on whatever they're trying to teach on. I'm just the person who knows which questions to ask to draw out their expertise and help them to share it in a more effective way and to come up with it. Or you could draw it out of hiding in a more efficient way, instead of spending weeks trying to figure out what to say. Yeah.   Michael Hingson ** 22:19 So in general, what I you've talked about a little bit, but what are some of the challenges that you first saw in dealing with coaches when you first started?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 22:29 Well, there was the one I mentioned, where they didn't really know how to explain their services in a way that resonated with people. You know, they talked about the process they took them through, or the amount of content they were going to give them, or the amount of time they were going to spend with the person. Thing is, you're asking for a bunch of a person's time. That's not a selling point. That's a chore. You're you're going to spend five hours of your weekend on this. That's an anti selling point by helping if they one of those challenges then was, you know, not knowing what it is that their clients really want and addressing that. Another is time. Is a huge issue, I think, in the business world in general. So a lot of people struggle to find the time to create their coaching programs, or what time they have they don't use it officially, because they don't have a system for quickly and easily drawing out all that content and organizing it. Another is money. A lot of coaches are having trouble finding the right clients, connecting with them, conveying the value of their products and services to them, so that they actually go get those clients and get the money. So those I find, are three of the big challenges that coaches run into.   Michael Hingson ** 23:31 Yeah, I can say, having observed a lot about it, that a lot of people seriously undervalue or don't recognize the value that they bring, and so as a result, when they're creating courses or coaching or whatever, they undersell and don't charge what they're necessarily really worth. And there are reasons to avoid that and really charge what you're worth, but you also have to learn how to do that and learn how to figure that out. But people do tend to sell themselves short way too often.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 24:13 Yeah, when you're really immersed in your own expertise, can be so easy to start feeling like what you know is common knowledge, when in reality, it's stuff that a lot of people don't know. And even if they know some of the surface stuff, they don't know the same kind of depth as they don't know it in the same kind of depth as you do. Now, I've actually got exercises I take my clients through so they can kind of remind themselves of the depth of their own expertise and how much they know that their clients don't know. I'd be happy to share that if you want. Sure. Yeah. And for those of you who are listening, I hope you've got something to write this down and record this so I'm going to walk you through this exercise. Not only does it help you to really boost your confidence in your own expertise, it'll also help you come up with a ton of content for your coaching programs, your training programs, your content marketing, podcasts, newsletters, social media, posts. So, so yeah, definitely be ready to take notes on this. So your first step is to figure out what are the things that you can help people with. You know, just write it down in broad categories. Maybe you could say, I help them with marketing, with JVs, with getting referrals. So you put those broad categories, kind of break them down by the results. What are the results that you can help people get then pick one of those results. I like to use the example of a relationship coach who helps a single men to meet and marry the woman of their dreams. So the result is that this person has a loving marriage with the woman of his dreams, but right now he's single and lonely and doesn't know how to approach women. So then for step two, what you do is you'd write down the steps that you take your clients through, preferably in chronological order. I know not everyone can do chronological order, because some processes just don't happen in a specific timeline or a specific sequence, but if you can do it in chronological order, it's best to do so. So the steps that you'd write down say you're this coach you could write down, helping him to figure out what kind of woman he wants to meet, helping him to figure out where these types of women might hang out, how to approach her, how to have a conversation, how to get a first date, how to see if, how to conduct himself on that first date, and see if she's the kind of person he wants to keep dating. How to get a second date, if he wants and so forth. So once you've written down all these steps in chronological order, pick one of those steps and break it down further, this is where you really start to see the depth of the expertise that you have. So step one was figure out what kind of woman you want to meet. So you could ask questions like, what kinds of experiences do you want to have with your partner, and what kind of person would want to have those experiences with you? What kind of experiences do you not want to have, and what kind of person would give you those bad experiences? What kind of positive experiences have you had in the past that you want more of you if you need help to figure out what you want? Does Do you want a partner who wants to be a homemaker or a career woman or a business owner? Do you want a partner who wants to have kids with you, or who I'd rather stay childless? Does give them really specific questions that they can ask themselves to better understand you know what they wanted to better understand how they can go about this. And if you want to give them instructions for how to do something, make those instructions so specific that if an alien never even heard of your subject of expertise before were to read the instructions, the alien would know exactly how to do it. You don't feel like those software developers who go, okay, just click on this tab, this tab and this tab, okay, but how do I get to that tab in the first place? Don't assume that your clients know how to do the first few steps. Some of them will some of them won't. You don't want to leave that second category behind. And you can also look at what are the best practices they can use while doing this. What are some common mistakes? What are some examples you can give them of people actually doing this. And by doing going through this exercise, you can really get a clear view of just how much depth and detail you know about every single step in this entire process. And when you really break it down, every single step that goes into the process has so much nuance, so much detail, so many things that you could teach them, so many nuggets of wisdom you probably have that you might have even forgotten since it's become so second nature. I encourage you to do that exercise and remind yourself what an expert you are and come up with a huge amount of content at the same time.   Michael Hingson ** 28:22 Right? And then what happens? So   Stephanie O'Brien ** 28:27 what happens next? Of course, depends on what you're trying to accomplish. You know, if you once you've done this exercise, if you're trying to create a coaching program, you still need to figure out how you're going to deliver it, whether it's in group coaching calls one on one, a hybrid, or if you want to make a training program as opposed to a coaching program, you need to figure out how to price it, how what kind of posting software you want to use to deliver it. Those are some of the steps that come after. And of course, you need to figure out how to sell it, how to market it in a way that works for you   Michael Hingson ** 28:59 well. So coaches are human, like, like everyone else, at least, that's, that's the theory. And so you observed coaches having challenges. You've observed people not necessarily dealing with discovering the things that they should discover in order to be able to coach or to to progress. How do you find or how do they overcome those challenges? What do you do to help them overcome those challenges?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 29:31 It kind of depends what the situation is that's preventing them from progressing. So yeah, my first step would be, of course, to talk with them and figure out, Okay, what's stopping you from progressing? Is it that you feel you don't know enough to create a coaching program? In that case, let's see how we can draw out more information from you. Is it that you have too much information and you don't know which information to put in each offer because you don't want to try and shove it all in the same offer? It's just going to get cluttered, and people will feel it ripped off if they're paying for information they don't need. That might help them figure out if they. How many offers Do you want to make? What information goes into each offer if they're having trouble with time in my program, creation Made Easy. Course, the first thing I do with people is actually look at their schedule and figure out, okay, what are your priorities? What needs to be in your schedule, what can be paired out? Where can we make time to actually create your coaching program? So those are some examples of how I help people with some common challenges.   Michael Hingson ** 30:24 Do you find a lot of resistance people don't want to, or think they don't want to overcome the challenges because they don't really exist? Do you see a lot of that kind of challenge and that people just resist because they're really not thinking in as I put it, being introspective.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 30:44 I'd say one of the biggest challenges I find people run into that stops them from working with me is they want to do it on their own. And some people can do it on their own, but others wind up working on it for weeks on end. You say, Oh yeah, I'm working on figuring out this content. Then weeks later, I follow up, hey, how are you doing? I'm still working on it. We could have had it done in 60 to 90 minutes. Here, just one call with me, 60 to 90 minutes, and that could have been done. Yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 31:10 well, that's your expertise that brings that. And the result is that, again, people aren't thinking it through, and so the result is that they they continue to go in circles and not necessarily move to where they ought to be as quickly as they should. But at the same time, there's only so much you can do, because you can't force people to listen.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 31:39 Yeah, all I can do is, as with any business owner, work on getting better and better at communicating my value and helping people see why they're better off working with me.   Michael Hingson ** 31:47 Well, that's an interesting point. It's as much a learning experience for you, isn't it?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 31:55 Yeah, absolutely. Anytime you're finding that people aren't really responding here to your messaging, you need to look at your messaging or the way you're presenting it, and see, okay, Where can this be improved, and even if your messaging has been working, you know, things can shift to trends can shift. People can get overloaded on a certain amount of certain type of messaging. So you need to be prepared to adapt and to listen to people and see how their needs and their preferences are evolving.   Michael Hingson ** 32:19 Yeah, and I you, you bring up a really good point that I like a lot, and that is that things may be working. You may be doing something well, the question is, can you do it better? And I think that's a question that we should always be asking ourselves, can I even improve what I'm doing that takes humility to be able to ask that question. But it is still true. It's something that we should do, and that is really look at by doing this the best way I can. Can I improve it? And of course, that is something that you as a coach brings to it as well, because sometimes, if they consult with you, they can find out that you may approve of what they're doing, you may like what they're doing, but you can come up with other solutions that are even better. I love the whole idea of collaboration, and we don't. We don't see nearly as much of it as we should, and I think way too often, as you point out, people just want to do things on their own, but none of us are really an island.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 33:27 Yeah, I've had lots of mentors who helped me to get where I am, and I'm still learning from other people as I go, it   Michael Hingson ** 33:35 gets to be a real challenge. And again, you can't force people to do things that never is going to work. So you can't necessarily do that. And   Stephanie O'Brien ** 33:45 I hate that sales tactic where you try and force or bully someone into it, go run to the bathroom room and buy my stuff, or else you're going to be a failure in business forever. I am so over that, and if someone tries to pressure me into it, that tells me that they care more about their agenda than they care about me, and then they don't respect my boundaries in that point, their odds of making a sale pretty much hit the floor and start digging.   Michael Hingson ** 34:06 Yeah, you know, I learned a long time ago that people who really sell and do it well recognize that what they truly are are educators or counselors. You don't force people to do things. You need to really look at what a person needs and wants, and if you've got something to help them, then you you bring that into the conversation, but you don't, and you shouldn't force people. I've had so many situations where I sold a product and the product that I well, I should say I wanted to sell a product, but my product wouldn't necessarily do what the customer really needed. There were issues, whatever they are. So what am I to do? I could try to just continue to push our product on them, but I know that in the end, that's going to backfire. It's. Not going to work, people are then going to hate me or resent me, and they're never going to want to do business with me. So it's important to not push something that doesn't work. But I also took it a step further, more than once, which is to say, here's what will work, even though my company doesn't happen to have it, and when you really develop that level of trust by being honest with someone and pointing out this is what really works in the long run, that's going to earn you a whole lot more than you would have ever gotten any other way.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 35:34 Absolutely, it can make you more of a go to authority. I mean, people need something. They can come to you, even if it's not what you offer, you may not be the provider, but you know the provider, and it helps to foster good relationships with other business owners. If you have people that you know is trust and can refer to, I recently sought out a grant a person who's an expert in Grant. I've noticed her on a networking event, and I'm not really looking for a grant myself. Don't have much interest in grants at the moment, but I've had a few people for some reason, approach me and ask me, Hey, can you help me get a grant? No, not remotely. And you know, the first few times I had nobody I could even refer to, I tried to find some people who I could refer to, but couldn't really find anyone appropriate. So I finally find this one just, Oh, thank goodness you actually help people to find grants. Like these people wanted me to help them find a grant. Never mind, apply for it. Find one in first place, and I can't do that like I could learn, but I don't want to. But then here's this person who specifically teaches people how to do it, though, even though it wasn't my expertise or even something I needed, I sought her out just so I'd have that ability to refer people next time.   Michael Hingson ** 36:36 Well, that's pretty important to be able to do. I in my case, I'm thinking of a particular incident where we, I and a sales guy, one of my sales people, who had set up an appointment to go see a customer, and they wanted his manager to come, which was me, and we went. And I'm unusual anyway. I mean, how often do you see a blind sales guy coming in, holding a laptop projector and doing other things like that. And I actually did the presentation, and I also happened to be very technical, and so I asked a lot of questions, and learned that our product wasn't going to do what these people needed. But by the time we were done with the whole presentation, I said, and you can probably see our product won't do what you need, and here's why. But then I did, and that's the first time I really did it. I took the next step and said, but here's a company, and here's what product really will do exactly what you need, and here's why. The result of that was that two weeks later, we got a call from the same company saying we really took what you said to heart, and now we have another project. And because of everything you taught us, we know that what you have to offer is exactly what we need. Just tell us what it's going to cost, and we will order it today. We're not even going to put it on for bid, and that's what trust is all about,   37:59 absolutely,   Michael Hingson ** 38:01 and it's, and it's so exciting, but it's, it's unfortunate that all too often, people don't really look at the whole value of developing that trusting relationship, and that's got to be a volitional part of whatever you do in coaching, or anything that we do in business, or anything in our lives?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 38:21 Yeah, I've had too many people try and pitch me without first, building that trusted. And even if it's a free thing, like a free webinar, there's no such thing as free, yeah, even a free webinar still costs time that I won't get back. So it's like and see when COVID just comes crashing into my inbox. Pitch first that tells me they care a lot more about their agenda than they do about me, especially if it's something that's clearly in applicable, like, No, I am not going to join your group for single mothers. I've never had a kid. I mean, granted, I have this cat, and she is kind of a toddler, but I've never had the kind of kids you teach people to work with.   Michael Hingson ** 38:54 Yeah? So you've, you've never had kids yet.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 38:58 I'm not really planning to have already got cats.   Michael Hingson ** 39:00 Yeah? Have you gotten married? No, so you're not even in that but you've got cats. Well, that's fine. Now, when my when my wife and I got married, we decided that we were going to have kids. She was in a wheelchair her whole life, and she said that she was concerned it would have too much of a bad effect on our body. And what we decided to do, in addition to having dogs and cats, was to welcome nieces and nephews into the house, because we could kick them out at the end of the day, and that worked out   Stephanie O'Brien ** 39:31 really well, yeah, just hop them up on sugar and send them back. Yeah, that's what my grandparents did,   Michael Hingson ** 39:37 yeah. Well, worked for them, right? Yep, you seem to be surviving as a result. Well, I didn't die. Yeah, you're still you're still coaching. So that's pretty cool. Well, let me ask you this, if I can, if someone is thinking about being a coach or selling their expertise, how do they determine. Or how can you help them determine whether they're really qualified? Or how can they decide that they're qualified?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 40:07 I'd say the big thing is just to ask yourself, can I consistently get people results in this area? Now, obviously that depends on the other person actually doing the work to get the results. But do you know how people can get results in a specific area in a repeatable, reliable way. It could be anything from your relationships, improving your relationships, improving your health, improving your business, and it doesn't even have to be the whole journey. As long as you can help people take one significant step, you can help improve their lives, like even if you can't help a person go from single to married, if you can, say, Help married couples to stop having a specific type of argument. And for that matter, the more specific the problem you solve, the more people who have that problem. I want to see, oh, that's exactly what I need you. I don't need this generic relationship advice. I need relationship advice. I want this thing in particular, like, think about when you're, say, having a technical issue, and you want to say, let's say last night, I was looking for how to widen the navigation bar in a WordPress site, and I see all these results for you, how to improve your navigation bar, how to make a navigation bar, how to change a navigation bar. No, I just want it wider. The only result I'm interested in clicking on is how to make it wider. It's the same thing with your customers. You know, the more specific the result you can help them to get, the more the people looking for it are going to say that's exactly what I need. So don't assume that you're disqualified if you can't help them with their entire journey. Just focus on what is one big result that I can help people get. If you know how to get that, help them get that result, then you can help them to do that,   Michael Hingson ** 41:42 and it might also be that you do what you can do. But again, like you said about the lady who you've met who does grants, you can also get people in touch with other people who may be able to augment the successes or the results that you've already achieved, who may be able to do it better than you? So that you create essentially a teaming approach, even though each of you are working individually to help this individual? Yeah,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 42:10 absolutely. And you can do it kind of sequentially or concurrently. You could have someone be offer a guest module in your coaching course, if you say, you help people with nine steps out of 10, but it's one step in the middle. Isn't your expertise that you can have a guest expert come in and present in your course. Or if you help them with one step of the journey, but not the subsequent step, once they're done working with you, you can refer them to somebody else. Or if they're not ready to work with you, let's say you help people get on stages and present, but they that only really works and can be monetized if the person has something worth selling to sell. So if you meet someone who wants to get on stages but has nothing worth selling, though, you could refer them back to me, and I could get them ready for your services,   Michael Hingson ** 42:52 right? It's a process. And again, a lot of people don't think they're they're capable of selling. They they don't have the self worth, or don't think they have the self worth. And even the whole concept of this podcast, as I've said to many people, one of the main reasons that I love doing this is I get to show our audience members that they're more unstoppable than unstoppable than they think they are. And whenever I hear someone say, I learned this from this particular podcast, and it really showed me how I can be better than I thought I was. That doesn't get better than that. Oh yeah. And even   Stephanie O'Brien ** 43:35 if you're just starting out, just starting out, can actually be kind of a superpower, as I was mentioning earlier in this interview, people can get so ingrained in their own expertise, it can become so second nature. They forget what other people don't know, which can result in overly broad or vague explanations. Like I've seen some mindset coaches saying stuff like, notice what stories you're telling about the telling yourself about this situation, or notice what limiting beliefs you have well, if not, unless you're trained for that, you're not going to notice what the story or what's a limiting belief versus what's just a fact. You don't know how to tell the difference. So that's an example of how a coach who's really in their own expertise can totally forget that other people don't know how to do what they do. For someone who's just starting out and who remembers the very vividly what it's like not to know these things. It's less likely to make that mistake, more likely to be able to put themselves in the client's shoes, understand what the client does and does not know, and explain it in ways that a person who's new to this can understand. I thought to say a more seasoned coach can't do that, but there is that risk that they'll forget. So if you're just starting out, it can be just easier to relate to people who are also starting out and who are just a step behind you.   Michael Hingson ** 44:44 How do you teach people who are clearly experts in what they do, but who have forgotten that they weren't always experts in the people they're dealing with aren't experts? How do you teach them to go back and recognize. Recognize that and remember those things that they've clearly forgotten that would make them so much better, because they could then relate better to other people,   Stephanie O'Brien ** 45:08 mostly by asking questions. Do I kind of come at it from the standpoint as if I was their client? Okay, you just told me to do this, but how exactly do I do it? What are the exact steps I need to take, or what questions can you ask me to help me to figure this out. Now I basically act like I was there. We don't necessarily role play, but I do ask questions as if I was their client and didn't know how to do this thing.   Michael Hingson ** 45:30 Yeah. What do you do to help the person who's say, fairly new to coaching and doesn't think that they're good enough? And how do you teach them to recognize that really maybe they are or or maybe they'll discover that they're really not. But how do you how do you deal with that?   Stephanie O'Brien ** 45:50 Um, I take one of the things I do is I take them through that exercise I did earlier with you. Write out the list of steps you take. Break it down into sub steps. I often remind them how being new can be a superpower. I also invite them to look at the results they've gotten for themselves and other people in the past. Have you healed this issue in yourself? Have you helped yourself to lose weight? Have you helped yourself to raise your kids better? Have you helped yourself to improve your health? Or have you helped other people? Is this something that other people come to you for advice, and have those other people gotten results from working with you. Now, if you've never really gotten results for yourself or for other people, then you might want to make sure that you're able to actually get those results before try to teach people, because if you don't know how to get the result, then you're really not qualified to coach but if you can get the result, then you know how you got the result and can replicate that process with other people, then you are ready to coach people. You are ready to help them to do what you know how to do. One of   Michael Hingson ** 46:46 the things that I have always done when I hire new sales people, or even today, when I'm talking to people who are fairly new and something that they've decided to explore, take at least a year and be a student. You should always be a student, but especially for the first year, play the student card. Don't hesitate to ask questions. Don't hesitate even to ask your customer questions, because the more you ask, the more you'll learn. Because mostly people really want you to succeed, and they want to succeed, and you're bringing something to the party, you may need to figure out what it is, but if you start by being a student, then you're really at least half the way there to figuring it all out.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 47:35 Yeah, absolutely. And you know, having a podcast can be good for that. You can interview people and get there to share all this free information, and they get exposure. You get free information, you get content to share with your audience. It's a great way to open doors.   Michael Hingson ** 47:49 Well, it's true, and you know, in the it works both ways, because hopefully, for example, when I ask questions or we're talking about different subjects, hopefully you get something out of it too, and that's, that's what makes it really fair,   Speaker 1 ** 48:05 that's important to have win wins, yeah,   Michael Hingson ** 48:08 well, so clearly, you know, we're dealing with a lot of different kinds of environments, and you're dealing With a lot of people. What about the person who doesn't think they have the expertise and so they're reluctant to charge more or charge what they should be charging? I think I probably know the answer to this, but I'm going to, you know, ask anyway, what do you how do you help those people recognize, let's assume, that they do have the expertise to expertise, but they don't think they do.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 48:44 One thing I can help them to do is look at the results they get and see just how valuable it is for their clients. So for example, let's say you help somebody to sleep better at night and have more energy. Obviously, there are health benefits for that. Here, you are less likely to have diseases. You're less likely to get into a car crash because you were groggy. You're probably going to have a better immune system the breakdown. I could break it down by the various categories of life. What are the benefits in their health, of course, in their relationships, if they have more energy, if they're less cranky, if they're in a better mood, they'll be more pleasant to be around people who want to be around them more they'll probably have better relationships with their kid, their friends, their spouse, their boss, their clients, their coworkers, and understand relationships that's healthy. And also look at time. How much time are they wasting on doing things slow, hard way because they're groggy and brain foggy and unable to work well? Yeah, I encourage you to look at every different area of your life that it the client's problem is affecting and that would be affected positively by the solution you give. I think this will help remind you just how valuable your solution really is. And if you're not completely sure that you can help people to get results, you know, look at the results you've gotten for yourself. Look at the results you've gotten for others. If you. Do have a good track record of getting results, then you know that's the site that you already have proof that you can if you don't have a history of getting results, then you need to work on developing your skill set learning systems that can get results consistently, or look at some other area of your life where you've already gotten results. But yeah, the important thing is that you need to be able to get results. And of course, you do have to also be realistic about okay, you can teach people how to get these results. You can also do things with them to help maximize the chances that they actually do the things you're teaching them and thus get results. But you do have to recognize that some people are going to choose not to do the things, and they will therefore not get the results. So as long as you know that if your system is followed and will get results, you've done your part, the rest is also on them.   Michael Hingson ** 50:47 Yeah, and a lot of times they may not get results, and who knows specifically why, but it's really important that they understand why they're not getting results. And maybe it is only, and I don't want to mitigate it, but it's only they don't have the confidence to ask, or they don't have the confidence to to reach out to help somebody get the results, which is also part of what they need to work on.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 51:14 Yeah, one thing coach that I like did, instead of just asking, do you hold He did ask, Do you have any questions? But if the people on he was coaching with didn't in his group called, didn't have any questions, he'd ask them to give an update. You know, what were you working on this week? What results were you trying to get? What results did you get? And this often resulted in him finding things to coach on that the person hadn't thought to ask. So, yeah, it's important to check in with your clients to see what kind of results they're getting, what kind of results they're not getting, and if they're not getting results, then explore that with them. You know, why are you not getting results? What did you do the action steps? Okay, if so, did you do them right? Did you do them wrong? If they didn't do the action steps, why not? And how can we adjust your schedule so that you actually can fit them in? What kind of resistance is there against doing these action steps, and how can we clear that resistance? That's really important to stay in touch with your clients and to get consistent updates on what milestones they are or are not hitting and why they are not are not hitting them, and be be prepared to address those underlying issues. Because often, while you're working on doing something, questions will come up that you didn't think you had earlier. You you discover nuances to it that you didn't know about, or you'll meet mental resistance that you didn't realize you were going to have.   Michael Hingson ** 52:29 Part of it, though, is also the art of asking questions and the art of asking the right questions. I, for example, really don't like to ask yes or no questions, closed ended questions, if you will, because you don't learn much that way. And so that was also one of the things that I did with the customer we mentioned earlier. I'll always ask open ended questions, because I really want to get not only the information that they they have that I feel is important for me to have, but I also get to know them a lot better. When I ask open ended questions and get them to really give me a detailed response, I'll learn a lot about them as well, and I think that's extremely important.   53:12 Now that makes total sense,   Michael Hingson ** 53:15 yeah, because it's it's so important to be able to ask tell me more about this. Or what is it that you find doesn't really work here? Or why do you like that? And really get questions that will make people think that also helps keep me alert when I when I keep thinking of questions. So it works both ways.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 53:43 Yeah, I'd say the ability to ask the right questions is one of the most important things for a coach.   Michael Hingson ** 53:47 Yeah, and if you don't necessarily know the right question, again, asking some open ended questions, and sometimes you might even want to say, what else is there that you want to tell me about this, or tell me more about this, so that you get people to offer information? And I've been in situations where I wasn't sure what to ask, but I can always ask something that will get people to offer more, that will help me think about, oh, I need to ask about this. Yeah.   Stephanie O'Brien ** 54:18 And you could kind of write a list of the pieces of information that you need to know about your clients you know, like, say, going back to that relationship coach, example, the piece of things that you need to know in order to help someone

“Each child is different and learns differently.”  Homeschooling isn't just a backup plan—it can be a powerful, personalized education path that leads to extraordinary success. With the right tools, curriculum, and mindset, parents can create a customized learning environment that respects each child's pace, learning style, and interests. This episode unpacks how to break free from the one-size-fits-all school model and empower children through flexibility, one-on-one attention, and creative structure.  Deborah Parks Root shares her firsthand journey of homeschooling four children—including a daughter who was accepted into 13 top universities. She discusses how to legally homeschool in the U.S., build or buy your own curriculum, connect with local parent groups, and even integrate public school classes into a hybrid homeschool plan. She also reveals how physical activity, customized scheduling, and local resources can enrich both learning and socializatio Deborah Parks Root is the author of Homeschooling to Harvard, a book that guides parents through every stage of the homeschooling journey—from kindergarten to the Ivy League. A Mensa member and passionate educator, she has decades of experience homeschooling her own children to top-tier academic and career success. Learn more & connect:  You can find Homeschooling to Harvard on Amazon.  https://a.co/d/50zPKlp  Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!. 

Originally published in November of 2023, we are talking about hot topic/cold prose and when and why to write in the present tense vs. past. The story we share is written in the present tense, which gives readers the feeling that they're going through the situation with the narrator, in real time. Today's essay is by Dr. Colleen Arnold who is a physician and freelance writer in Lexington, Virginia. Dr. Arnold has written for Insider, Wall Street Journal, Chicken Soup for the Soul among others. She is a mom to three adult daughters and grandmother to a two-year-old. When she's not with patients or family, she's hiking with her dog, doing yoga, or camping in her minivan. You can find her on Facebook and on her Website. Writing Class Radio is hosted by Allison Langer and Andrea Askowitz. Audio production by Matt Cundill, Evan Surminski, Chloe Emond-Lane, and Aiden Glassey at the Sound Off Media Company. Theme music is by Justina Shandler.A transcription of this episode is available here.There's more writing class on our website including stories we study, editing resources, video classes, writing retreats, and live online classes. Join our writing community by following us on Patreon. If you want to write with us every week, you can join our First Draft weekly writers groups. You have the option to join me on Tuesdays 12-1 ET. You'll write to a prompt and share what you wrote. If you're a business owner, community activist, group that needs healing, entrepreneur and you want to help your team write better, check out all the classes we offer on our website, writingclassradio.com.Join the community that comes together for instruction, an excuse to write, and the support from other writers. To learn more, go to www.Patreon.com/writingclassradio. Or sign up HERE for First Draft for a FREE Zoom link.A new episode will drop every other WEDNESDAY. There's no better way to understand ourselves and each other, than by writing and sharing our stories. Everyone has a story. What's yours?

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and it's Wow Wednesday, when I share stories that are a bit surprising or miraculous or just plain weird. Since we've been reviewing some of the stories in our new book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, I thought it would be fun to share with you today a couple of stories about some very unusual cats, total neat freaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Matty Dalrymple talks with Kerrie Flanagan about ARTICLE WRITING FOR PLATFORM AND PROFIT, including practical strategies for finding paying markets—and why you should stop giving your work away for free. From her first paid piece in Better Homes and Gardens to her advice on researching and targeting the right outlets, Kerrie offers encouraging, actionable guidance to help writers turn their passion into income.   Interview video at https://bit.ly/TIAPYTPlaylist Show notes at https://www.theindyauthor.com/show-notes   If you find the information in this video useful, please consider supporting The Indy Author! https://www.patreon.com/theindyauthor https://www.buymeacoffee.com/mattydalrymple   Kerrie Flanagan is the author of The Writer's Digest Guide to Magazine Article Writing and creator of the online course, Magazine Writing Blueprint. She has also published twenty other books, including three sci-fi/fantasy series' co-authored under the pen name C.G. Harris. Her expertise and passion for teaching writers have led her to present at writing conferences across the country and teach continuing studies classes through Stanford University. Her dedication to her writing is evident in her contributions to numerous publications, including The Writer magazine, Alaska Magazine, Writer's Digest, and six Chicken Soup for the Soul books.   Matty Dalrymple is the author of the Lizzy Ballard Thrillers, beginning with ROCK PAPER SCISSORS; the Ann Kinnear Suspense Novels, beginning with THE SENSE OF DEATH; and the Ann Kinnear Suspense Shorts. She is a member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime. Matty also writes, speaks, and consults on the writing craft and the publishing voyage, and shares what she's learned on THE INDY AUTHOR PODCAST. She has written books on the business of short fiction and podcasting for authors; her articles have appeared in "Writer's Digest" magazine. She serves as the Campaigns Manager for the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and we have a new book I'm very passionate about. It's all about how Self-Care Isn't Selfish. This is such an important truth for us all to embrace. I'm sure you've been through plenty of things where you have NOT put yourself first, where you didn't even put yourself on your to-do list AT ALL. And that's not good. It's bad for you and it's bad for all the people you take care of too. Because you're no good to them if you're frazzled and exhausted and starting to get resentful because your needs are not being addressed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Today I'm going to share with you one of my most popular pieces on Medium. If you don't know what Medium is, it's a place where writers can get their short pieces published, either by themselves, or in someone else's publication. I started getting published on Medium in April, mostly in two publications which feature interesting stories and great writing. This story appeared in a publication called The Narrative Arc, and it's called Me versus the Male Directors of a Private Club and it talks about what I had to do to be able to play tennis on Saturday mornings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

"If you're going to sell a business the business has got to be able to operate without you.”  Starting and running a successful business isn't about one lucky break—it's about smart strategies, hard lessons, and being willing to do the janitor's work when you're the CEO. This episode lays out core entrepreneurial principles like spotting market gaps, reinvesting profits, and building systems that don't depend on you.  Stephen shares how a simple envelope business opened the door to packaging success—and how losing everything taught him his most valuable lessons. His emphasis on self-reliance, strategic delegation, and the humility to learn from failure provides a refreshingly honest view of real-world entrepreneurship.  Stephen Frankel is a business coach, author of Ten Steps to Starting and Running a Successful Business: Avoiding the Pitfalls, and founder of multiple ventures. With over 30 years of experience, he's guided startups and small businesses to navigate the challenges of growth and sustainability.  Learn more & connect:  Stephen's book: Ten Steps to Starting and Running a Successful Business: Avoiding the Pitfalls  https://a.co/d/iZ6N7Yf Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!.  www.Aaron.com 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. We are having so much fun with our latest book about miracles--because the stories are so surprising, and they are for EVERYONE, not just people who are religious. We have the most amazing coincidences in this book and I love sharing them on the podcast, so today I'm going to do it again, starting with a story from one of our regular writers, Tara Flowers, about the miraculous things that happened to her at a funeral that she didn't want to attend for someone she didn't know. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

– Nothing would deter us from enjoying our well-earned evening out.Ash-gray script swirled across the textured buff pages like hazy clouds crossing the sky at dusk. Marcia J. Wick is a blind, grey-haired grandmother, retired from a professional writing career. She writes freelance if it pays, for fun if not. Her work has appeared in the Motherwell blog, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Modern Dog Magazine, Guide Dogs for the Blind Alumni News, and Magnets and Ladders. Her essays reflect on parenting, caregiving, living with a disability, and adventures with her guide dog. When not reading or writing, Marcia volunteers, advocates for guide dogs and public transit, and enjoys the outdoors with family and friends. Contact her at marciajwick@gmail.com.

What does it really take to build a lasting author platform in 2025? In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, host Dale L. Roberts chats with indie author Kerrie Flanagan about what it means to grow and sustain an author brand in today's crowded publishing world. From mastering the tools that matter to balancing multiple genres under different pen names, this conversation offers practical insights for authors looking to deepen their reader connections and expand their reach. Sponsor This podcast is proudly sponsored by Bookvault. Sell high-quality, print-on-demand books directly to readers worldwide and earn maximum royalties selling directly. Automate fulfillment and create stunning special editions with BookvaultBespoke. Visit Bookvault.app today for an instant quote. About the Host Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale's inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube. About the Guest Kerrie Flanagan is an author, writing consultant, and instructor with more than twenty years in the publishing industry. She is the author of The Writer's Digest Guide to Magazine Article Writing, creator of the Magazine Writing Blueprint, and co-author of several series under the pen name C.G. Harris. Her work has appeared in Writer's Digest, The Writer, Alaska Magazine, and Chicken Soup for the Soul. A founder of Northern Colorado Writers, Flanagan teaches for Stanford University and regularly presents at conferences nationwide.

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and today I'm sharing a couple of stories about really cool coincidences from Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels & Messages from Heaven. I'm not a religious person but I love making these books because so many of the stories we get are truly miraculous, no matter what your beliefs, and they just go to show that wonderful things can happen when we least expect them. Like the first story in the book – and by the way I always put one of my absolute favorites first in every book. This story by Christy Hoss is about a place that is already miraculous, and that's Disneyland, but what happened to Christy's family was particularly inspiring. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shelby Wolstein (comedian, writer, formerly 'Keeping Records') and I chill out, whatcha yellin' for, lay back, it's all been done before....well, except for having her for a ninety-nine question interview. Join Shelby and I as we discuss her favorite comedies, Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, ordering for the table, summer camp, long division, distracting animals, the Spirit of Christmas as taught by Cher, fake meat, Bug the cat, & stumble into a SnoCap conspiracy.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠99 Questions on Instagram!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠99 Questions on BlueSky!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r/99questionspod on Reddit!⁠--ASK ME A QUESTION! The 99 Question Hotline!--732-592-9838 (aka REAL-WAX-VET)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠99questionspod@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠99Q Merch⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

“Happiness is not an event. It's a little step by step by step process.”  Happiness isn't something that just happens—it's something you build. The key lies in cultivating self-wisdom and deliberately shaping your inner world to respond better to life's external conditions. Real happiness grows from inside out, and the secret isn't in chasing thrills but in forming a happiness plan—simple steps you can take to make your life feel more fulfilling.  Carl Barney shares how a radical act of generosity—giving his inheritance to loved ones before his death—sparked the creation of “happiness plans” that transformed lives. He explains that the happiness experiment isn't just about fleeting joy, but about growing self-awareness and living intentionally with the support of coaching, reflection, and values-aligned action.  Carl is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who founded the Prometheus Foundation and authored The Happiness Experiment. Deeply inspired by Aristotle and Ayn Rand, he champions rational, life-loving philosophy and supports others in crafting lives of meaning and joy.  Learn more & connect:  https://carlbarney.com/category/the-happiness-experiment/  Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! www.Aaron.com 

Title: Chicken Soup for the Soul Passage: Genesis 21:1-7 God's Promises Bring Life God's Promises Bring Joy God's Promises Bring Hope God's Promises are Divinely Fulfilled

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm pleased to share new stories with you from Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, which is our latest best-selling book of cat stories. We spent two years collecting stories for this book and there is SO MUCH variety in terms of what people learned from their cats – about resilience, and forgiveness, and living in the moment, and just plain being clever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I've made a life of failing...The journey is the destination”  Chasing your dreams isn't always about dramatic leaps—it's about the small, consistent acts of creation and courage. This episode explores the power of storytelling, the importance of doing what brings you joy (even if it's not your profession), and how the pursuit of meaning can shape a rich and fulfilling life. Whether you're stuck in a job that doesn't light you up or thriving in your zone of genius, the principles shared here are a call to live with intention.  Actor Matt Drago shares how growing up in rural Virginia, building characters in his imagination, and grinding through New York City stage roles eventually led him to starring alongside Graham McTavish in Somewhere in Montana. From honoring local stories to embracing failure as part of growth, Matt brings raw passion and a practical blueprint for creative perseverance.  Matt Drago is a professional actor and founder of Dragon Hunter Productions. He stars in Somewhere in Montana and is focused on telling stories from overlooked communities.   Listen & subscribe:  Follow Matt at @mattdrago or visit mattdrago.com. Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author! www.Aaron.com 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it's Wow Wednesday and it's also Fourth of July week. And we just had Flag Day three weeks ago. So I thought I'd focus today on American ingenuity at Its Best During this Patriotic Week – with two stories from a book we made a few summers ago called Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and we're starting a series now on our new book Chicken Soup for the Soul: Self-Care Isn't Selfish. This is such an important truth for us all to embrace. I'm sure you've been through plenty of things where you have NOT put yourself first, where you didn't even put yourself on your to-do list AT ALL. And that's not good. It's bad for you and it's bad for all the people you take care of too. Because you're no good to them if you're frazzled and exhausted and starting to get resentful because your needs are not being addressed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm continuing to share some of the truly entertaining stories from our latest book called What I Learned from My Dog. These stories are not only fun but also eye-opening because sometimes I can't believe how heroic, or sweet, or comforting, or CLEVER dogs can be. I know with all those Instagram videos, which I watch way too much, we DO see a lot of smart dogs, but I think you'll get a kick out of these two stories today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“You can be a gardener trying to work against nature… or you can try and surf the wave of how nature works.”  Harnessing nature's intelligence and artificial intelligence together isn't just a good idea—it's how the future of regenerative land design will thrive. In this episode, we explore how one visionary designer has turned his passion for plant life, soil health, and sustainable farming into a system that helps landowners worldwide transform their property into high-vitality ecosystems. From the volcanic richness of the Azores to AI-powered plant mapping, the conversation covers deep principles of how to align with nature's laws for lasting abundance.  Guest Mathieu Mehuys shares how he scaled his expertise from a family farm in Belgium to projects across three continents, aided by a 9-week masterclass and a custom AI tool that generates location-specific planting plans. He breaks down the “law of attraction” in plants, why most gardeners are unknowingly weakening their soil, and how his award-winning book codifies 12 universal laws of nature for every landowner to apply.  Mathieu is an award-winning author and regenerative land designer. Raised on a farm, he holds a master's degree in landscape architecture and now teaches landowners how to design ecologically sound, AI-assisted gardens and farms through his book, masterclass, and international consultancy.  Learn more & connect:  12 Universal Laws of Nature: How to Get the Most Potential Out of Your Lands – by Matthieu Mehuys  Transform Your Garden in Just 30 Minutes with Matthieu's free 30-minute training:  www.gardenofyourdreams.com/freetraining  Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!.  www.Aaron.com 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it's Wow Wednesday. I have two really amazing stories to share with you today, ones that continue to be top of mind for me even though I've published more than 17,000 stories during my tenure as editor-in-chief of Chicken Soup for the Soul. These are stories about Amazing Life-Saving Coincidences that are almost impossible to explain, except that sometimes miracles really do happen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this solo episode of The Jack Canfield Podcast, I share a deeply personal and heartfelt message—one that marks a major turning point in my life and work. After decades of teaching, speaking, and leading transformational work around the world… I've decided it's time to slow down. While this may be the final episode for a while—possibly forever—I wanted to come on and share why I'm choosing (mostly) retirement, what's next for me, and how you can still stay connected as I enter this next chapter of my journey. I also share the exciting creative projects I'm still committed to (yes, I'm writing 6 new books!) and offer you the latest insights I've uncovered around success, spiritual growth, healing, abundance, and life purpose. This episode is filled with stories, wisdom, and the core truths I've come to believe after 80 years on this planet—and over 50 years of helping others live more fulfilled, purpose-driven lives. Whether you've followed my work through Chicken Soup for the Soul, The Success Principles, or our seminars and coaching programs, I recorded this episode as a love letter… to you.

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm pleased to share new stories with you from Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, which is our latest best-selling book of cat stories. We were overwhelmed with submissions for this book over the past two years, because it seems like every cat owner has a story about how their cat improved their life, made them a better person, taught them how to live in the moment, and other good things like that. Plus, lots of people wrote about their cats' intelligence and their special skills, but then there's another favorite topic for our cat-loving writers and that is their naughty cats. There's a famous quote by Missy Dizick about this. She said Some people say that cats are sneaky, evil, and cruel. True, and they have many other fine qualities as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anyone remember those “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books that were crazy popular in the 90s? Well…this conversation, just two Youngstown (Ohio) boys talking about protein beverages, entrepreneurship, and life, was my version of those heartwarming, motivating, and relatable stories included within those books. And that's because…I've always greatly respected (and been inspired by) Christopher Hunter, from his authenticity and transparency to his evolving professional journey and consistent personal alignment with the beverage brands he's built. And in this current chapter, Chris Hunter is leading the plant-based protein brand Koia…which was actually a “proof of concept” he initially discovered more than a decade ago when investing in better-for-you food and beverage companies. Though, more recently…Koia has grown into a market leader, expanding rapidly across the retail landscape, and pushing the boundaries of innovation. And with protein becoming more central to consumers…Chris Hunter has utilized crucial (personal insights) to identify gaps in the market and is taking Koia into new spaces (and formats) while staying true to what its target consumers want. Subscribe = Pour Decisions Podcast Thank You to Cognizin for not only being the Title Sponsor of The Beverage Forum 2025...but supporting this awesome piece of content!

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Today I'm going to share with you one of my most popular pieces on Medium. If you don't know what Medium is, it's a place where writers can get their short pieces published, either by themselves, or in someone else's publication. I started getting published on Medium in April, mostly in two publications which feature interesting stories and great writing. This story appeared in a publication called Crow's Feet, and it's called “My Determined, Distraught and Demented Dad” and it's about how self-care is not selfish, it's actually how you survive when you are engaging in eldercare, especially for someone with dementia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“There is no traffic on the extra mile.”  Creating a true “wow” experience in business isn't about massive spending—it's about shifting your mindset from transactional to memorable. That shift, done right, turns customers into evangelists. This episode unpacks how to go the extra inch, not mile, to stand out. The secret? Incentives with high perceived value and low actual cost. Whether you're a butcher, a banker, or a dentist, adding a dash of magic—what Disney calls the “plus one”—can radically transform customer loyalty and word-of-mouth success.    John Dwyer, founder of The Institute of Wow, drops pure gold with dazzling real-world examples. From giving away free vacations with home loans to turning a hotel into “the chocolate strawberry hotel,” he proves how creative thinking crushes traditional advertising. He shares how a Facebook contest and an AI robot helped a dentist convert over a thousand red-hot leads—and why the Happy Meal toy is the metaphor every business needs. John Dwyer is an Australian marketing wizard and the author of The Avalanche Leads Formula. He's worked with Disney, launched viral campaigns with Jerry Seinfeld, and helps business owners implement low-cost, high-impact incentives.   Learn more & connect:  Find his resources at theinstituteofwow.com and bookofwow.com.   Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!.  www.Aaron.com 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark and today I'm going to share a couple of very cool stories about miraculous coincidences with you from our latest Miracles book. If you are under the impression that Chicken Soup for the Soul is a Christian publisher, that is not true. We are for everyone, of every religion or no religion. We publish a book about miracles, angels, etc. almost every year, and some of the stories are by religious people and some are not. What unites these stories is that they make you say wow when you hear them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lone Lobos is back, this week Xolo Maridueña shares his latest birthday gift, a Labubu. Jacob Bertrand talks to us about his new lifestyle change and what he's learned from post-production for his film short. The guys discuss Jacob's little brother's wedding and wedding speeches. Our Lobitos Exclusivos can enjoy an extended conversation on Supercast.Immigrant Resources Links:Immigrant Defense projecthttps://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/raids/California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice https://www.ccijustice.org/rapid-responseFree Discord Access:https://discord.gg/KnDhbnBMCjJoin Supercast Today for the full episode:https://lonelobos.supercast.com/Follow Lone Lobos on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lonelobosFollow Jacob Bertrand on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejacobbertrandFollow Xolo Maridueña on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/xolo_mariduenaFollow Jordan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmkm808Follow Monica on Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/officialmonicat_http://www.heyxolo.com/Jacobs Channel: @ThreeFloating

Alyson Shelton and Lynn Shattuck join Let's Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing about sibling loss, creating an essay anthology as means to advocate for grief, taking care of ourselves while crafting work about loss, helping people tell their stories, laughter and making space for the rest of our lives, coping with rejection, creating a mosaic with essays, feeling empowered, self-acceptance building community, independently publishing as an act of defiance, and their new anthology The Loss of a Lifetime: Advice from Grieving Siblings.   Also in this episode:  -owning out stories -rejecting shame -how no can send us in new directions   Books mentioned in this episode: -Chicken Soup for the Soul by Jack Canfield, Mark Viktor Hansen and Amy Newmark -Encyclopedia of an Ordinary LIfe by Amy Krause Rosenthal -The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Anderon Always a Sibling by Annie Sklaver Orenstein ALYSON SHELTON is an award winning screenwriter and essayist. Her writing is widely published at outlets including The New York Times, Ms. and The Rumpus. She's anthologized in Comics Lit Vol. 1 (Accomplishing Innovation Press), No Contact: 28 Writers on Family Estrangement (Catapult 2026), Root Cause: Stories of Health, Harm and Reclaiming Our Humanity (Editor: Jeannine Ouellette) and The Loss of a Lifetime: Advice from Grieving Siblings (Contributor and Co-Editor). She's best known for her Instagram Live series inspired by George Ella Lyon's poem, Where I'm From where she's hosted close to 200 writers. The poem also provides the spine for her memoir in progress.@byalysonshelton on Instagram, Threads, Youtube. www.alysonshelton.com   Lynn has been publishing essays on the topic of sibling loss for more than a decade. She was a paid columnist at Elephant Journal for ten years; several of her essays on the topic of grief and sibling loss have gone viral. Lynn co-founded the website lossofalifetime.com, a hub of resources for those who've experienced sibling loss. She also co-edited the essay collection, The Loss of a Lifetime: Grieving Siblings Share Stories of Love, Loss and Hope; the book is expected to be available in June, 2025 https://www.instagram.com/lynn_shattuck/   Connect with Alyson: Alyson Shelton on The Body Myth podcast: https://ronitplank.com/2022/03/22/the-body-myth-from-childhood-gymnastics-to-puberty-to-motherhood-a-body-judgment-story-ft-alyson-shelton/ Website: www.alysonshelton.com   Connect with Lynn: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lynn_shattuck/   Get the book: https://www.lossofalifetime.com/book www.lossofalifetime.com – Ronit's writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer's Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts' 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit's Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social   Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll's Fingers

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. You know, we put out a book about miracles and other unexplainable things every year or so, and one of my favorite topics in those books is what people can learn from their dreams. We have a whole chapter about why you should listen to what your dreams are telling you in our latest book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels & Messages from Heaven. We find that people somehow access all kinds of useful knowledge in their dreams, and today I'm going to share two stories about that, one in which Kristi Adams is warned ahead of time about a potentially deadly situation, and the other in which Lisa Marlin receives some very useful advice from her late mother. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’re a Boy Meets World completist, you’ve probably seen “My Date with the President’s Daughter,” studied the crossover episode of “You Wish” and even seen Danielle rap along to Busta Rhymes. But if you haven’t read “Chicken Soup for the Kid’s Soul,” then we’re here to help!Danielle and Rider both wrote stories for this 1998 anthology of essays that promised to give you courage, hope and laughter, but now - it’s giving us a bonus episode!Hear all about Rider and his “first cigar” and Danielle’s reaction to finding a postcard from her co-host that started with the line,“Hey sexy…”Here’s some Chicken Soup for the Podcaster’s Soul, right now on a surprise Pod Meets World!Follow @podmeetsworldshow on Instagram and TikTok!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm pleased to share new stories with you from Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, which is our latest best-selling book of cat stories. We spent two years collecting stories for this book so there is a huge variety of topics in it, but I have to say that one of my favorite subthemes in any cat book we publish is what I like to call Time-Share Cats. Somehow these clever little furry pets, if you can call them pets – maybe we are THEIR pets, right? – well anyway these beautiful creatures often figure out how to live with more than one family at the same time, with no one the wiser. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Original Air Date: December 25, 2017 How do you find your purpose? Jack Canfield is co-creator of the worldwide phenomenon “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book series, which has sold more than 110 million copies and been translated into more than 43 languages. Based on the lessons in his New York Times bestseller “The Success Principles,” Jack explains how to align our vision and goals with the fulfillment of our purpose. “Everyone has a purpose on this planet,” Jack explains. “The key is figuring out what you really want, deep inside, by listening to your internal GPS.” 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it's Wow Wednesday. Which means that I'm sharing two really amazing stories – stories about how mothers keep helping their children even after they are no longer around. It's kind of reassuring for those of us who are mothers – that our influence and advice will persist even when we're not there to personally deliver the goodies —and it's reassuring for grown children worried about how they will keep navigating all those adult milestones without the counsel of their mothers. So that's why today's episode is called When Mom Is Gone but Still Being Mom. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“Sometimes people have trouble getting to sleep because they're thinking about all the things that happen during the day. So it's about finding techniques to help you let go of those, the things that are bothering you so that you can get a good night's sleep.”  Sleep issues aren't just nighttime problems—they often stem from daytime habits. Sugar, alcohol, stress, cluttered bedrooms, and poor circadian rhythm management can all disrupt rest. True sleep hygiene means looking at the whole lifestyle, not just bedtime rituals.  Sharon Fillmore shares how her nursing background and personal sleep struggles led her to help shift workers, healthcare professionals, and high-stress individuals get lasting sleep solutions. From pain and hormone shifts to screen use and pillow choice, her tailored strategies restore energy and well-being.  Sharon Fillmore is a lifestyle coach and registered nurse with 45+ years of experience. She's the author of The Vital Link: Nine Ways to Have More Health, Wealth and Happiness and specializes in sleep hygiene for high-stress professionals.   https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonfillmore/  Book a free session at Calendly.com/TheVitalLinkMentor.  Raymond Aaron has shared his vision and wisdom on radio and television programs for over 40 years. He is the author of over 100 books, including Branding Small Business For Dummies, Double Your Income Doing What You Love, Canadian best-seller Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul, and he co-authored the New York Times best-seller Chicken Soup for the Parent's Soul. Raymond's latest, co-authored book is The AI Millionaire's Path: Discover How ChatGPT‐Written Books Become Bestsellers and How They Can Make You a Millionaire Author!.   www.Aaron.com 

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm continuing to share some of the truly entertaining stories from our latest book called What I Learned from My Dog. Not only are these stories entertaining, but since we're Chicken Soup for the Soul there has to be some inspiration too, and we all know that dogs make their humans better versions of themselves… so here we go, with an extremely valuable lesson that we all learn from our dogs, and that is… HOW TO LIVE IN THE PRESENT. Isn't that one of the best life skills that dogs have? It's one that we all know we SHOULD HAVE, but of course we're not very good at it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Shiur given by Rabbi Yisroel Saperstein. Shiur recorded in Yeshivas Ohr Reuven, Monsey, NY.

Today, I'm joined by Robert MacPhee, and we're discussing Values-Based Leadership. Robert is the creator of the Excellent Decisions values-based leadership program and the author of Living a Values-Based Life. He is the former Director of Training for the Canfield Training Group and worked closely for many years with Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul Book series and the author of The Success Principles.  Robert is a knowledgeable, fun, and engaging speaker and facilitator. He is an expert in experiential learning, peak performance, values clarification, and leadership, and I'm excited to have him on the show to learn more about Values-Based Leadership. Show resources: valuesbasedlife.com Living a Values Based Life book Sponsors: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Cadre of Men⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Farrow Skin Care⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Salty Sailor Coffee Company⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Leader Connect⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Qualified Leadership Series⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ____ Get all of Jon Rennie's bestselling leadership books for 15% off the regular price today! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm pleased to share new stories with you from Chicken Soup for the Soul: What I Learned from My Cat, which is our latest best-selling book of cat stories. We were overwhelmed with submissions for this book over the past two years, because it seems like every cat owner has a story about how their cat improved their life, made them a better person, taught them how to live in the moment, and other good things like that. Plus, lots of people wrote about their cats' intelligence and their special skills, including for diagnosing serious illnesses, hence the name of today's episode: Dr. Cat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It seems we are living in increasingly stressful times of conflict and separation. Do you think it's possible to change the world in which we live? Maybe so, but how can that happen? We see devastating stories on the news constantly. Our world is filled with tragedies – violence, corruption, and endless suffering. This can easily make us feel helpless and hopeless. Yet, there's an innate desire, a profound longing in each of us, for a world that works. We feel we want to do something, deep in our hearts, deep in our souls, which will actually take our planet to its next evolutionary level. As we enter this third millennium, our job is the conscious creation of Humanity's New Story, namely, Heaven on Earth. Listen as today's guest Martin Rutte elaborates on his vision and how his organization is going about achieving this goal through Project Heaven On Earth.   Martin guides us through and asks us to contemplate three questions – and through those questions, we can begin to imagine and visualize a world of possibilities. Martin is an international speaker and consultant, and president of Livelihood, a creative leadership management consulting firm, in Santa Fe, NM. He is the co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work.”  For more than 15 years he has been exploring people's vision for the kind of world they long for – Project Heaven on Earth. His new book is “Project Heaven on Earth: The 3 Simple Questions that Will Help You Change the World … Easily.”  He shows us that change really is possible!  Info: www.projectheavenonearth.com

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul, and it's Wow Wednesday. We have a new book out about cats, and it's amazing how many of the stories in it are about miraculous events revolving around cats, including about weird coincidences, premonitions, and dreams involving finding cats and then coming across those same cats in real life. I'm going to share two stories today about the weird and magical way that some people adopted their cats, new family members that were truly meant to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We “love” all sorts of things. We love a friend's new hairdo. We love pistachio ice cream and travel to exotic places. Many times, the word itself loses all real meaning. It's like homemade chicken soup without the chicken…and without the soup. 1 John 3:16–18 says, “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” The Divine Word helps us yet again. Here we learn that true love means doing for others. Get involved. Don't just say you love your community. Show the community your love.Cleanup projects, running errands for a shut-in, taking your niece to the movies because her mother is working two jobs: you know what to do. You know the opportunities.Think you love those around you? Show them.Let's pray.Lord, there is so much good to do in the world! Please show us opportunities every day, so that we can put action to our words. In Jesus' name, amen. Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul and I'm continuing to share some of the truly entertaining stories from our latest book called What I Learned from My Dog. We always see how dogs make their humans better versions of themselves, but they also help their humans to get to know themselves better. And that's why today's episode is called “What My Dog Taught Me about Myself.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. Have you ever had a miraculous save from a potential disaster? Maybe even a fatal accident? We get these stories all the time from our writers, and we included some great ones in our latest book, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Miracles, Angels & Messages from Heaven. You don't have to be a religious person to enjoy these stories. They're just plain cool. And I'll be sharing a lot of them with you over the next couple of months because they make for great storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Amy Newmark with your Chicken Soup for the Soul. We've been talking all summer about how you can step outside your comfort zone and make your world bigger, and also feel empowered, energized, enthusiastic, and excited. Lots of good e words. We've heard about from our writers who tried lots of things that scared them, including parasailing, roller coasters, mud runs, zip lining and more. And today I have a story from you about an Albert Einstein impersonator who describes in fascinating detail his first and probably only time skydiving, and another story from someone who faced her fear of sharks, etc. and ended up communing with sea turtles as she tried snorkeling for the first time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Chicken Soup for the Soul was the brainchild of two motivational speakers who preach the New Thought belief system known as the Law of Attraction. For more than 30 years, the self-help series has compiled reader-submitted stories about kindness, courage, and perseverance into easily digestible books aimed at almost every conceivable demographic: Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul, Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul, Chicken Soup for the Golfer's Soul, and on and on. Since 1993, these books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide, becoming the best-selling non-fiction book series of all time. But in recent years, the company has become many other things that seem lightyears away from inspirational publishing: a line of packaged foods, a DVD kiosk retailer, and a meme stock. In this episode, with the help of journalist Amanda Chicago Lewis, we tell the story of how this feel-good brand went from comfort food to junk. This episode was written by Willa Paskin and Max Freedman and produced by Max. It was edited by Evan Chung, Decoder Ring's supervising producer. Our show is also produced by Katie Shepherd. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. Special thanks to Rachel Strom. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, please email us at DecoderRing@slate.com, or leave a message on our hotline at 347-460-7281. Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices