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A slew of Texas Democrats have decided to flee the democracy of their own state—which is promising to apply democratic principles to redistrict some of these Texas Dems out of their seats—and take the gold coins of a Leftie billionaire to hide out in Illinois, one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. The fact is that this is GREAT news for Texas, for Trump, and for America—because it's yet more evidence that the MAGA forces are WINNING the great existential fight for America's survival, and the Democrat party that has decided to bet its future on a political constituency that is hostile to the American citizenry is both figuratively AND literally ON THE RUN.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

SCOTUS Takes on Racist Gerrymandering in Louisiana v. Calais! Will Race-Based Politics Get the Boot? I dive into the explosive Supreme Court case that could reshape American politics! Louisiana's outrageous gerrymandering to create a black-only congressional district is under fire, pitting the U.S. Constitution's demand for racial equality against the Voting Rights Act of 1965's controversial race-based mandates. Is this the end of racist congressional redistricting? We'll unpack the high-stakes battle: Can the government keep dividing us by skin color, or will the Constitution prevail? This case could dismantle decades of discriminatory policies, following SCOTUS's recent smackdown of affirmative action in colleges. If you're tired of race-based politics oppressing any American, this is the show you CAN'T miss!  The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Within the last 24 hours two unelected black-robed tyrannical inferior district trial court judges, both appointed by President Joe “autopen dementia” Biden within the last four years, and both apparently DEI appointments suffering from estrogenic hysteria, have released immigration orders that are drowning in self-deleting empathy and violently counter to long-established immigration law and limitations on the federal district courts over immigration matters. Today, DC District Judge Jia Cobb, class of Biden 2021, has issued an order that is essentially a SCOTUS-prohibited universal injunction against the government's use of well-established expedited removal proceedings to deport illegal alien third-world invaders of our nation.  Rather than read the entire 84-pages of estrogenic hysterical nonsense, I'll highlight just some key portions of this order.Worse, and the focus of this show, yesterday California District Judge Trina Thompson—class of Biden 2022—has issued an even more insane order that denies the authority of the American government to impose the “temporary” provision of the “Temporary Protected Status” immigration program of the United States.  Judge Thompson both argues, first, that it is within the authority of unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior federal district court judges to determine when a person present under TPS is subject to deportation, and second, that the deportation of TPS aliens is essentially identical to the cross-Atlantic slave trade.  Judge Thompson's order we'll break down in its entirety.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

This past April Wisconsin Judge Hannah “Diner” Dugan obstructed the lawful arrest of illegal migrant third-world invader Eduardo Flores-Ruiz by ICE agents executing a lawful order of deportation.  Agents would ultimately have to chase Flores-Ruiz down a public street after his surreptitious release by Judge “Diner” Dugan, and secure his arrest.  Unfortunately for Judge “Diner” Dugan, her escapades were entirely captured on court house surveillance cameras.  As one might guess, this conduct is a violation of Federal law, and Judge Dugan was indicted for violating two federal statutes collectively good for 13 years in prison. She has been suspended from the bench pending her criminal prosecution proceedings in federal court.Hard facts make for a hard legal defense, and Judge “Diner” Dugan now finds herself having to raise the most outrageously ridiculous legal defenses in an effort to have the federal charges against her dismissed.  A federal magistrate has already produced a 37-page legal analysis breaking down precisely why “Diner” Dugan is not entitled to dismissal and ought to proceed to trial—but that's not the final decision on this question.The unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial judge assigned to the “Diner” Dugan case is Lynn Adelman, a rather infamous left-wing judge appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton in 1997.  Prior to that, Adelman was an infamously left-wing Wisconsin legislator.  Given the recent conduct of the federal bench in the law fare it is waging against Trump in general and the nation's immigration law in particular, one would expect Adelman to take an extra-judicially lenient view of “Diner” Dugan's demands for dismissal. In today's show we take a look at this week's most recent motion by Department of Justice prosecutors exposing why “Diner” Dugan's legal arguments for dismissal are without merit, and why she should face trial for her violation of federal felony crimes.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Rumors have circled the firearms community for years that the Sig Sauer P320 pistol may possess a manufacturing defect that allows the gun, under some circumstances, to experience an uncommanded discharge—an unintentional firing of a bullet—that would rather obviously create a substantial risk of death or serious bodily injury. Recently a US airman is reported to have died when precisely such an uncommanded discharge occurred, with the unintentionally fired round striking the airman in the chest, with fatal results.   Following this incident a large number of law enforcement agencies as well as civilian training institutions have banned the use of the Sig 320 pistols, of any variation, from use. One obvious reason that folks are banning these pistols is out of concern that their use could result in death or serious bodily injury to an innocent person—and surely none of us want something like that to occur.But there's a secondary, though still serious, risk that must be considered in evaluating whether the 320 platform should be permitted to be used—and that is the legal liability that's assumed by any department or training institution that fails to ban the platform. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

TOKYO: TSUNAMI  ALERT SYSTEMS CORRECT. LANCE GATLING, NEXIAL RESEARCH. @GORDONGCHANG, GATESTONE, NEWSWEEK, THE HILL 1957

Struggling to read dental x-rays with confidence? https://ivdi.org/rad Unlock the secrets of radiographic interpretation in our FREE training – perfect for techs and vets alike!   Want to stand out in veterinary dentistry? https://ivdi.org/inv Take your skills to the next level with the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program — our most comprehensive training yet.   -----------------------------   Host: Dr. Brett Beckman, Board Certified Veterinary Dentist   In this episode of The Vet Dental Show, Dr. Brett Beckman guides you through the essential techniques for successful veterinary dental extractions. You'll master periodontal pocket management, learn the importance of proper patient positioning, and discover the benefits of hyaluronic acid application for enhanced dental procedures.   What You'll Learn: ✅ How to identify periodontal pockets using a periodontal probe. ✅ The technique for curettage to remove granulation tissue from periodontal pockets. ✅ The application of hyaluronic acid for pocket management. ✅ Why hyaluronic acid is a superior alternative to Doxyrobe. ✅ Proper patient positioning for various dental extractions (mandibular canine, first molar, maxillary first molar). ✅ How technicians should assist in patient positioning for optimal exposure. ✅ Incision techniques for canine extractions.   Key Takeaways: ✅ Bleeding on probing indicates the presence of granulation tissue in periodontal pockets. ✅ Curettage is essential for removing diseased tissue and promoting healing. ✅ Hyaluronic acid is easy to apply and promotes tissue regeneration. ✅ Correct patient positioning is crucial for successful extractions and suturing. ✅ Proper technician assistance ensures optimal visibility and efficiency during procedures.   -----------------------------   What are your biggest challenges with managing periodontal pockets or performing extractions? Share your questions and experiences in the comments below!   -----------------------------   Keyword Tags: Veterinary Dentistry, Surgical Extractions, Radiographic Interpretation, Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program, Periodontal Disease, Dental Radiography, Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Brett Beckman, IVDI, Hyaluronic Acid, Curettage, Patient Positioning, Veterinary Dental Care, General Practice, Doxyrobe, Veterinary Dental Extractions

1 He who is often rebuked and stiffens his neck will be destroyed suddenly, with no remedy. 2 When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; but when the wicked rule, the people groan. 3 Whoever loves wisdom brings joy to his father; but a companion of prostitutes squanders his wealth. 4 The king by justice makes the land stable, but he who takes bribes tears it down. 5 A man who flatters his neighbor spreads a net for his feet. 6 An evil man is snared by his sin, but the righteous can sing and be glad. 7 The righteous care about justice for the poor. The wicked aren't concerned about knowledge. 8 Mockers stir up a city, but wise men turn away anger. 9 If a wise man goes to court with a foolish man, the fool rages or scoffs, and there is no peace. 10 The bloodthirsty hate a man of integrity; and they seek the life of the upright. 11 A fool vents all of his anger, but a wise man brings himself under control. 12 If a ruler listens to lies, all of his officials are wicked. 13 The poor man and the oppressor have this in common: Yahweh gives sight to the eyes of both. 14 The king who fairly judges the poor, his throne shall be established forever. 15 The rod of correction gives wisdom, but a child left to himself causes shame to his mother. 16 When the wicked increase, sin increases; but the righteous will see their downfall. 17 Correct your son, and he will give you peace; yes, he will bring delight to your soul. 18 Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint; but one who keeps the law is blessed. 19 A servant can't be corrected by words. Though he understands, yet he will not respond. 20 Do you see a man who is hasty in his words? There is more hope for a fool than for him. 21 He who pampers his servant from youth will have him become a son in the end. 22 An angry man stirs up strife, and a wrathful man abounds in sin. 23 A man's pride brings him low, but one of lowly spirit gains honor. 24 Whoever is an accomplice of a thief is an enemy of his own soul. He takes an oath, but dares not testify. 25 The fear of man proves to be a snare, but whoever puts his trust in Yahweh is kept safe. 26 Many seek the ruler's favor, but a man's justice comes from Yahweh. 27 A dishonest man detests the righteous, and the upright in their ways detest the wicked. Listen Subscribe: Proverbs Daily Podcast Psalms Daily Podcast

In this episode of 'Don't Cut Your Own Bangs,' host Danielle Ireland introduces John Kippen, a resilience and empowerment coach, magician, and motivational speaker. John shares his incredible journey of overcoming a life-threatening brain tumor and how it transformed his life and career.  Throughout the episode, John discusses his healing journey, the power of vulnerability, and the importance of facing one's limiting beliefs. He also reveals the origins of his unique phrase 'impossible really means I am possible' and offers a special gift to listeners. Tune in to uncover valuable wisdom nuggets and be inspired by John's story of triumph over adversity.   00:00 Introduction to the Episode 00:40 Meet John Kippen: A Multihyphenate Talent 01:23 John's Life-Altering Diagnosis 05:46 The Surgery and Its Aftermath 08:04 The Road to Recovery 13:30 Embracing the New Normal 17:29 The Power of Truth and Magic 29:14 The Power of Magic and Connection 29:31 Introducing Treasured: A Journal for Self-Discovery 30:44 The Magic of Personal Connection 32:59 Overcoming Personal Struggles Through Magic 34:38 The Journey to Self-Acceptance 35:42 The Importance of Asking and Vulnerability 50:24 The TED Talk Experience 54:34 Final Thoughts and Encouragement   RATE, REVIEW, SUBSCRIBE TO “DON'T CUT YOUR OWN BANGS”  Like your favorite recipe or song, the best things in life are shared. When you rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast, your engagement helps me connect  with other listeners just like you. Plus, subscriptions just make life easier for everybody. It's one less thing for you to think about and you can easily keep up to date on everything that's new. So, please rate, review, and subscribe today.    DANIELLE IRELAND, LCSW I greatly appreciate your support and engagement as part of the Don't Cut Your Own Bangs community. Feel free to reach out with questions, comments, or anything you'd like to share. You can connect with me at any of the links below.   JOHN KIPPEN: https://www.ted.com/talks/john_kippen_being_different_is_my_super_power_magic_saved_my_life   https://www.johnkippen.com   DANIELLE IRELAND, LCSW Website: https://danielleireland.com/ The Treasured Journal: https://danielleireland.com/journal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielleireland_lcsw TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dontcutyourownbangspod?_t=ZP-8yFHmVNPKtq&_r=1 Transcript:   John Kippen Edited Interview [00:00:00] [00:00:07] Hello. Hello, this is Danielle Ireland and you are catching an episode of Don't Cut Your Own Bangs. And today I have the great pleasure of introducing you to someone I can now call a new friend John Kippen. John is a multihyphenate. He has had quite a life and he's an excellent storyteller. So this episode you're gonna wanna buckle up. [00:00:31] It is so good. Get those AirPods in, go on your walk, get safely in your car, get ready to listen because this is just an absolutely beautiful episode. But let me tell you a little bit about John. John is a resilience and empowerment coach. He was and is the CEO of a very successful IT company. [00:00:49] He was a main stage performer at the Magic Castle in Los Angeles, so if that just gives you a little insight, is the level of his magic. He is a motivational speaker. He's a life coach, and. He has a TED talk that has received over a million views. And the heartbeat of this TED talk is how he triumphs over tragedy with a diagnosis of a tumor the size of a golf ball that is separating his brainstem and the procedure he needed to save his life, changed his life forever. [00:01:23] Doing the work of healing does not come easily to anyone, but as John so beautifully puts in this episode, if John can do it, you can do it. He's using his stories, his vulnerable and raw experiences, and talking about not only what happened to him, but how he moved through the impossible. [00:01:45] He actually coins a phrase that I love and I'm going to keep. Which is that impossible really means I am possible. So the ultimate magic trick, the ultimate illusion is what your limiting beliefs are about yourself, and how do you use facing those fears and those limiting beliefs to transform your life. [00:02:08] And in John's case, he takes that healing and offers it as a gift to us. As listeners to his clients and his coaching practice to the readers of his book, he has authored a book The Forward by None other than the Jamie Lee Curtis from all of the places. You know her most recently. The Bear where she won an Emmy, but everything everywhere, all at once. [00:02:32] She and John are buds, and she believes in him and believes in his work, and as a champion of that work, it just adds a little extra sparkle and fairy dust to the beautiful work that he's already doing to say that he's been vetted by someone who is so sparkly and magnetic and also deeply entrenched in holding space for the truth and honoring the truth. [00:02:52] This is a heartfelt episode, so what I would recommend. If you're in a place to do so is you might wanna jot some notes down because John drops some beautiful wisdom nuggets in this episode. And the book that he authored is playing The Hand You're Dealt. And what I wanna share too, we talk about it in the episode, but I wanna highlight this 'cause it's really important. [00:03:12] John is giving everyone who listens to the episode a free gift, but it is not linked in the show notes. It is only available to those of you who listen. It's a special little surprise embedded in the episode that you have to listen to find, but it is a free gift from him to you. So without further ado, get ready to sit back, relax, and enjoy the beautiful wisdom of John Kippen. [00:03:35] ​ [00:03:36] Kippen, multihyphenate resilience and empowerment, coach magician, keynote speaker, author, and all around. Nice guy. Thank you for joining me today on the Don't Cut Your Own Bangs podcast. [00:03:47] Danielle: Hollywood legend wrote the forward of his beautiful book, playing the Hand You're Dealt Forward by the one and Only Take It Away, John, Jamie [00:03:58] John: Lee Curtis. [00:03:59] Danielle: Jamie Lee Curtis. Yes. So you have to stay and listen to the entire episode because he's going to tease out a special little giveaway that will only be revealed in the audio. [00:04:10] So you gotta listen. It's not gonna be linked in the show notes, folks. So buckle up, sit down. This is gonna be a great episode with a fun gift for you, a special little dose of magic hidden inside. So, John, you, I mean, all the different fun things that we listed about what you do. You're a magician, you're a motivational speaker, you're a coach. [00:04:30] What I know doing the work I do as a therapist is the skills and trade that you're building your life on. Those were skills that they were. Hard one, like nobody chooses, in my opinion and in my experience, no one chooses to go into a helping profession that hasn't needed help in their life. It's like the, our healing becomes our medicine. [00:04:54] And I really wanna learn about not just what you offer, but your healing journey that put you in the unique position you're in to do the work you do. So, welcome and I'd love to hear from you. [00:05:05] John: So just quickly, the Reader's Digest version of my backstory. Grew up Los Angeles, middle class family, two great parents loving, no sisters or brothers, had everything I needed. [00:05:18] They sent me to a nice school and, I got into theater, started doing theater, in college. I studied theater and became the big man on campus because pretty much I grabbed every opportunity that presented itself. Started a computer company out of college. 'cause I'm a creative problem solver. [00:05:38] That's the thread that goes through everything I do in my life. [00:05:42] Mm-hmm. [00:05:42] John: I look at a problem, I say, how am I gonna solve that? [00:05:45] Mm-hmm. [00:05:46] John: And then in June of July of 2002, I was diagnosed with a four half centimeter brain tumor called an acoustic neuroma. [00:05:55] Danielle: Yes. And this was, so it was slowly severing your brainstem? Correct. [00:05:59] John: It was displacing the brainstem. Causing not only hearing issues, but dizziness upon standing or walking. [00:06:07] Mm-hmm. [00:06:08] John: I had to have something done with it. I would not have survived. [00:06:12] Mm-hmm. [00:06:14] John: And. It was a whirlwind , I went and saw the doctor who finally diagnosed it after seeing him the MRI films, and he, he had no bedside manner. [00:06:25] I remember sitting on the examining room table, right. And the, the tissue paper is crinkling under my butt. Mm-hmm. I could feel the, I could sense the temperature. I'm heightened sensitivity. [00:06:37] And he looks up at the MRI after talking to a neurosurgeon, and he turns around and says, John, you have a four and a half centimeter brain tumor. [00:06:46] It's killing you. We're operating you on Friday. You're gonna go deaf in your left ear, and there's a possibility for some facial weakness. We're gonna do everything we can to prevent that. And he left [00:07:01] Danielle: the room. So he knew, and in his own. Brash in abrupt way, essentially prepared you for the outcome and challenges that would come assuming the surgery was a success? [00:07:17] John: Yeah. He is a world renowned acoustic neuroma surgeon. He's one of the guys you go to, when you have this kind of tumor and that's all he does. Wow. But he literally left the room and I'm sitting there and I didn't bring anybody in and [00:07:31] yeah. [00:07:32] John: A tip to anyone who's potentially going in for a serious diagnosis. [00:07:36] Yeah. [00:07:37] John: Bring a friend or a family member. [00:07:39] Because it goes in one ear and out the other, you're in shock. Right. Right. When you get home and you say, wait a minute, he said that surgery gonna be four hours or 14 hours or 20. How, how long ago and you have all these questions. Yeah. And you know, getting ahold of the doctor to ask them again is just not the way our medical system works. [00:08:01] He's back to back, to back to back patients. [00:08:04] So, I checked in the night before, they did blood tests and I tried to get an hour or two sleep, 6:00 AM my clockwork the orderly came in and said, okay, get naked, get on this cold gurney. What a sheet over you and we're going take you to the operating room. [00:08:21] Danielle: I wanna pause your story for a moment. 'cause there's a couple things that I, I wanna tease out a little. So one is you, the way that you tell your story, so well probably because you've told it on stages, you've shared it with others, you've written about it. There is something about a trauma. [00:08:37] That really marks the sort of BCAD of life. And the way you shared, I felt like I was in the room with you when you were getting this bomb of news dropped on you so you were theater trained, theater kid, a creative person, a creative problem solver, and a business owner. [00:08:57] Like I, I think about that often when people are experiencing trauma. What, what was life sort of the, the illusion of normalcy. The, the, you know, the predictability of this is my life and this is my to-do list and this is my calendar. So before that moment, you were just a guy on the west coast running a business. [00:09:17] Is that right? [00:09:18] John: Very successful business. [00:09:19] Danielle: And I, I just wanna share briefly too, I haven't met too many other only children. Theater background 'cause that's me too. [00:09:30] John: Oh, really? [00:09:31] Danielle: I'm an only child and I was a theater major and started acting when I was 13, so before. But, the creative problem solver, God, my theater background has paid dividends in ways I didn't know at the time. [00:09:42] I didn't know that when I was preparing for this interview, but now that you've said that, it's like that thing that I couldn't put my finger on has clicked into place. [00:09:49] John: I love doing improv. [00:09:51] Improv is the, you know, everybody talks about being in the moment. [00:09:57] Yeah. [00:09:57] John: What does that really mean, being in the moment? [00:10:00] When you do improv, you have to be in the moment. Otherwise you fall flat. And everybody, you're doing improv looks at you going. Well, it's your turn. [00:10:10] Danielle: You've tapped in. Now you've gotta say something. How are you gonna move the story forward? [00:10:14] Exactly. I feel most alive when I'm engaged in moments like that. And I, it's, I'm not a, a adrenaline junkie, but I would say that's my high, it's the, rush of connecting with somebody like that. So you were running a very successful business. This bomb has dropped. [00:10:32] You can barely remember what you were told and what your life is likely going to be. Assuming everything goes well, what is going to happen when you wake up off your op? And how long was your operation? [00:10:46] John: 15 hours. [00:10:48] Danielle: And the surgery was a success. They were able to remove the golf ice tumor. [00:10:52] Yeah. So they removed the fall sized tumor. [00:10:54] John: I didn't have time to think, you know, I got one of my guys who worked for me told him that he was gonna be running the company for a month or two. He agreed. [00:11:05] Mm-hmm. [00:11:05] John: Had to shovel up some more money to get him to do it, but, you know, it is what it is. You do what you have to do. [00:11:11] Yeah. And then,, I just tried to think positively, hope for the best. Plan for the worst. You know, I had someone gonna stay with me the first week, make food because I just wanted to recover and I didn't know what it was gonna be like. [00:11:27] Danielle: Yeah. You're like, I just need a week to recover, and then I'm just gonna hop back into life, hopefully. [00:11:31] John: Rolling the gurney into the surgical, prep area. [00:11:35] The nurse saying, Hey John, you know, we know we have to shape after your head. You want me to do it now or after you're under. [00:11:42] Danielle: So you didn't even know that they were gonna shave your head. Well, I didn't think about it. [00:11:48] John: I mean, if I had thought about it, I got a shaved part of my head. [00:11:51] Danielle: Right. [00:11:52] John: I said to her, please. [00:11:56] Danielle: Yeah. [00:11:58] John: And so, they roll me into the operating room. You got these really bright lights, , blinding you, and you're laying there and they're like, okay, you're gonna count back toward five. [00:12:09] The next thing I know, I hear faint voices and it was like I was 30 meters deep in a pool. Struggling to get to the surface. And I remember this like it was yesterday, literally trying to swim to the service to regain consciousness. [00:12:26] And finally when I got enough, I realized that my dad was sitting on the edge of my bed holding my hand, [00:12:34] and [00:12:34] John: he was smiling at me, but I didn't see my mom. [00:12:40] So I asked my dad for my glasses and he handed me the glasses. And I remember trying to put the, and then I realized my head's bandage. [00:12:48] Danielle: Oh, right. [00:12:50] John: So I had to figure out how to get the glasses in Cockeye to get 'em on my face, right? [00:12:55] And the look on her face was one of horror. What did these butchers do to my son's face? And at that point, I didn't know my face was paralyzed. Because I have full feeling, I just can't move it. [00:13:10] Danielle: So you currently, you still have full feeling in your face. You just lost mobility, [00:13:14] John: so I didn't really understand what that look was. [00:13:18] Danielle: Right. How could you? [00:13:19] John: And then my mom handed me her compact makeup. [00:13:22] And I opened it up and I'm like, holy crap. And then, I'm still getting [00:13:30] accustomed to, the one thing I noticed is leading into surgery, I was constantly dizzy and that dizziness was gone. [00:13:38] Danielle: Wow. [00:13:39] John: And that was like, oh my God, what a relief. [00:13:42] Mm-hmm. [00:13:43] John: So the doctor finally made his way in and I was like, so when's my face gonna move? And he said, John, we were, successful. [00:13:50] The tumors removed. Right when we were close the incision, your face stopped moving. But we think it's just to do the swelling, and once the swelling goes down, your face should start moving again. So I'm like, okay. I can handle that. That's a, it's not a permanent thing. I can deal with it. [00:14:05] So I'm in the hospital a week and, they're like, when you can do three laps around the hospital floor, without a walker, we'll send you home. [00:14:16] So that became my goal. I remember getting outta bed and then they said, no, no, no. Wait for the, I said, no. The doctor said that I need to rock three laps around. [00:14:26] I want to get the hell out of here [00:14:28] Five days I got home. My dad drove me home and I sat on my couch and now I'm like, okay, I can start healing and check email here and there. And I was taking lots of naps. And then I coughed and I touched the back of my neck and it was wet. [00:14:45] Mm. [00:14:47] John: Oh, it was a spinal fluid leak on the base of the incision. [00:14:51] Whew. [00:14:53] John: So immediately I called the doctor's office and the said, oh, get your ass back here. And I went back to the hospital three times with them to redo the bandaging to try to prevent the leak. [00:15:05] Danielle: Wait, you call the hospital. Hey, their spinal fluid leaking out of my surgical incision. And they're like, yeah, you should get in a car and drive yourself to the hospital. [00:15:16] John: They didn't say how I should get to the hospital. [00:15:19] Danielle: Okay. Fair, fair. But that, [00:15:22] okay. Wow. ' [00:15:24] John: cause that's not good. [00:15:25] And there was potential for getting, spinal meningitis in that. From what I understand is one of the most extreme pains out there. [00:15:35] Okay. [00:15:35] John: I went back and forth three different times over that week. [00:15:39] They tried to, it was just as right behind my ear, right at the base of the incision. So, there was no way that they were going to be able to, put a pressure manage to keep that and so it could start healing. [00:15:51] Danielle: Mm-hmm. [00:15:52] John: So they finally said, all right, tomorrow you're gonna come in and we're gonna, redo the incision and pull more belly fat outta your belly to fill the hole. [00:16:01] And Yeah. This time they used staples, man, thick Frankenstein. [00:16:07] All the way up. [00:16:08] But then I'm like, I was only in the hospital for a day. And then, and I'm like, okay, I can relax. I remember getting up and brushing my teeth, you know, and I'm looking at the mirror and God, , I don't recognize that guy. [00:16:24] Yeah. And I got rid of all the mirrors in my house. [00:16:30] I didn't want a constant reminder. [00:16:33] My face was screwed up. [00:16:34] Danielle: I, there's so much specificity to what is uniquely your story. [00:16:46] Mm-hmm. [00:16:47] Danielle: But what I have found is when people. Are able to share elements of their experience. It's when you go into the specificity of what you experienced. I can see myself in so many elements of your story in my own, like when we get in deeper, it becomes somehow more accessible and universal. [00:17:16] And in that way, you're not alone, even though it happened to you and that detail about your removing the mirrors from your home. It, it brings me to something I really wanted to ask you about. You share by saying, and then also , by, actually demonstrating in your TED talk that, once you began the healing process of really addressing your depression after your operation, that, the story, it led you to magic, literally. And I also think in a more magical way, beyond performing an illusion. And I know not to call it a trick, I learned that from arrested development. [00:18:03] But, there's something you said that I wanted to quote that it's amazing how accepting kids are of the truth. You open up your TED talk, which I will link in the show notes so people can see. But that you mentioned that this in a way that your permission and your humor and your honesty, it created levity and lightness. [00:18:27] For something that would be considered maybe so precious and heavy. And what I wanna speak to, and open up a question if that's okay, is, I'm curious what your relationship with the truth is because I think humor in its highest expression is allowing us to laugh at something that we see the truth in. [00:18:49] And yet it's this razor's edge between laughing at someone or laughing at something versus inviting us to laugh at the, the human experience that we maybe don't know how to name or express in another way. But I wanna know personally for you, what your relationship is with the truth and the value of embracing it. [00:19:13] And then in your line of work as a coach, where do you see people struggle with it? [00:19:19] John: Truth is an illusion. [00:19:21] Danielle: Ooh, tell me more. That just, that was a zingy response that you popped right out. Please tell me more. [00:19:28] John: Yeah. Truth. Everybody has their own truth. [00:19:31] Danielle: Oh, well there you go. [00:19:32] John: Their own perspective, [00:19:34] Danielle: uhhuh, [00:19:35] John: And the truth is formed out of your limiting beliefs. [00:19:41] Danielle: So the truth is formed out of your limited beliefs, [00:19:44] John: your limiting beliefs. [00:19:45] Danielle: Limiting beliefs. Okay. [00:19:47] John: Yeah. [00:19:48] I just wanted to take a slight step back. [00:19:50] Danielle: Mm-hmm. [00:19:51] John: I told you this was gonna be the Reader's Digest version. [00:19:54] Danielle: Yes. [00:19:54] John: But it took me 12 years [00:19:57] To come out of that hiding. Wow. 12 years. [00:20:02] Danielle: How old were you when you had your operation? [00:20:05] John: 33. [00:20:06] Danielle: 33. Okay. [00:20:08] John: And fortunately for me, I could work from home. But I miss so many celebrations with friends and family. 'cause I just didn't want to have to explain it. I didn't want to have to deal with the looks, , and I tell this story on my TED Talk and in my book. You know, at a restaurant I wanted to get a burger at Tony Aroma's. And I'm sitting there by myself and in a booth, and there's a booth right in front of me and there's a family with a kid, two parents and a kid. And the kid's squirming and gets up and turns around and is now on his knees on the bench and looking at me. [00:20:44] And he gets up and he comes over and he says, Mr, what's wrong with your face? And in that moment, I didn't want to have a five or 6-year-old come over and Right. And I'm like, okay, I had the strength to come out and go to a restaurant. I have to deal with this. So I started talking to this little boy [00:21:06] Danielle: Mm. [00:21:07] John: And saying, I had a medical procedure that caused me not to with my face before I could continue his mom grabbing him [00:21:16] mm-hmm. [00:21:17] John: The arm and drug him back and said, don't bother him. The nice man, he has enough troubles already. And I couldn't leave it there. [00:21:25] Mm-hmm. [00:21:27] John: So I had to go to the little boy and I knelt down and I got eye level and I said, I love my new face because it's different. [00:21:34] It's different just like yours. And I remember it like it was yesterday, he took his fingers and he tried to distort his face to be crooked like mine. And he turned to his mom and said, look, mom, I could do that too. And then he went back to eating his meal. His question was answered. [00:21:56] He had no judgment. And his parents were like, holy crap, did we just learn a lesson? How to raise our child? [00:22:03] They whispered, thank you on their way out. [00:22:07] Danielle: But there is something I, there, there's something to that woman's response to you that really resonated with me. [00:22:14] And it also, highlights the point you made so well about the, essentially the truth being relative. Because she projected onto you what her perception of your life was. Don't bother the nice man one, she didn't know you were nice, though. You are. But she didn't know that. Right. And she also didn't know what your troubles were or weren't, and she assumed that. [00:22:39] John: But I always wonder what her motives were. [00:22:41] Danielle: Right. [00:22:42] John: was it to make me comfortable or was it to make her and her son comfortable [00:22:48] Danielle: it for her? I think so. [00:22:50] John: And that's how I took it. [00:22:51] Danielle: I remember. So I have two children and I was pregnant once before and lost that pregnancy. [00:22:57] 12 weeks in. And I haven't thought about this in a very long time, but I remember going into, a annual doctor's appointment and she saw on the chart that I was listed as pregnant and clearly now was not. And it was in her own discomfort of not, she was asking me about the baby thinking, 'cause she was not my ob, GYN it was a different type of doctor. [00:23:20] And, she caught. Oh, and then I had sort of explained to her what that meant, and then she said, well, I'm sure, you blame yourself and I want you to know it's not your fault. Like she took her discomfort and tried to turn it into, she positioned herself above as someone who knew what he was experiencing and wanted to offer me this sympathy that was, one, she was wrong. [00:23:45] I totally misplaced. Yeah. I didn't blame myself. And it, that, that moment was such an extension of her own inability to hold the moment and the discomfort of the moment, and, tried to offer it up as a gift for me, which that's, yeah. [00:24:03] John: It's your perception of how you deal with that. [00:24:06] Danielle: Mm-hmm. [00:24:07] John: Losing a child can be. Empowering because you know that you can try again and get a child that is not gonna have any kind of defects and is gonna have a good life. And you know whether or not you believe in God or not. [00:24:24] Danielle: Yeah. [00:24:25] John: Things happen for a reason and we don't always understand the reason for them. [00:24:30] Danielle: I don't know if it, what the reason was, but I can say a gift from that was that somebody who lived with a very active monkey mind and a lot of head trash and some anxiety in the experience of the early grief, not for very long, but there was a moment in time where my mind was quiet, not numb, but quiet. [00:24:55] And it helped me realize, oh, there's the observer within me. Then there are the different conversations that are happening in my head that aren't me, which are maybe the perceptions that I call truth sometimes I wanna bring that same question of truth, which you had an answer I was not expecting, which I love when I never see it coming, so thank you. [00:25:18] Where do you see your clients? Because you're a coach, right? You are taking your healing and offering it as medicine to people that are trying to make a connection in their own life. So where do you see people that you work with? Struggle with the truth? [00:25:36] John: Everybody's hiding from someone something in their life. [00:25:40] They have buried something so deep and it keeps them from moving forward in their lives. 'cause it erodes their self-confidence. [00:25:50] That's what I learned through my love for performing magic. [00:25:58] Going to the magic castle, sitting at a table with a paralyzed face. [00:26:03] Yeah. I'm this overweight guy with balding, balding with a paralyzed face. And I could sit at a table and have people come to me. I tell this story sometimes, that the Magic Castle is a place where you have to get dressed up to the nines, you know? And women love to get dressed up [00:26:22] Danielle: That's true. [00:26:23] John: They're wearing their best outfits, right? And all of a sudden I'd have five or six women sitting at the table, and their reactions are very guarded. [00:26:34] Hmm. [00:26:36] John: You know, they're sitting there with their legs and arms crossed. [00:26:39] Hmm [00:26:40] John: they're leaning back. They have a smile that's just more of a grin. [00:26:45] Mm-hmm. ' [00:26:47] John: cause I don't know what I'm about. Sure. They don't know if I'm gonna be inappropriate, if I'm gonna come onto them, if I'm what it is. So they have no expectations other than they're gonna see some magic. [00:26:58] Mm-hmm. [00:26:59] John: So I start my act saying, hi guys. My name is John and I'm doing magic all my life. [00:27:05] But in 2 0 2 I had a brain tumor. And when they cut over my head, they traumatized medication, nerve offense, a paralyzed face. But something happened to me on that talk table that day, Danielle. [00:27:16] Mm-hmm. [00:27:17] John: I'm not sure what it was because I was unconscious. All I know is I recovered. I realized I had acquired some new skills and I pause. [00:27:29] Yeah. And I wait for everybody to get on the edge of their seat. Like, what happened, John, what? Skills. Skills I could acquire. I'm having brain surgery. [00:27:40] Mm-hmm. I [00:27:41] John: looked to my right and I looked to my left like it's the biggest secret. [00:27:45] Lean in and I whisper in a loud voice as I am able to visualize people's thoughts. And then I do some mental magic mentalism. Love it. And what I just did was I turned my biggest challenge into a superpower. [00:28:07] Danielle: Yes, you did. And I wanna pause you because when you said that in your talk, have, have you read Elizabeth Gilbert's book, big Magic? [00:28:15] Yes. [00:28:15] Danielle: When she talks about trickster energy, I was like, John Kippen is a freaking trickster. [00:28:22] That is trickster energy that you can shift. Before someone's very eyes. It's like you are performing magic and you are performing magic. You shifted before them and you invited them, your audience to see beyond their own limiting beliefs, their own projected truth. [00:28:47] John: They were distracted. They wanted to know why it was paralyzed, but they couldn't ask, did he have a stroke? Did he have be palsy? What was the reason? So I found them being distracted when I was performing. So I got that outta way in the first two minutes. [00:29:00] Mm-hmm. [00:29:01] John: I explained why my face is paralyzed. [00:29:03] And now I treat it as the experience is now I'm able to do superhuman things. [00:29:10] And now they're like, okay, cool. So as I perform [00:29:16] I focus on the spectator. Magic happens in your mind as a spectator. [00:29:22] Danielle: Oh, I love that magic happens in your mind [00:29:26] ​ [00:29:31] If you've ever wanted to start a journaling practice but didn't know where to start, or if you've been journaling off and on your whole life, but you're like, I wanna take this work deeper, I've got you covered. I've written a journal called Treasured, a Journal for unearthing you. It's broken down into seven key areas of your life, filled with stories, sentence stems, prompts, questions, and exercises. [00:29:51] All rooted in the work that I do with actual clients in my therapy sessions. I have given these examples to clients in sessions as homework, and they come back with insights that allow us to do such incredible work. This is something you can do in the privacy of your own home, whether you're in therapy or not. [00:30:10] It has context, it has guides. And hopefully some safety bumpers to help digging a little deeper feel possible, accessible and safe. You don't have to do this alone. And there's also a guided treasured meditation series that accompanies each section in the journal to help ease you into the processing state. [00:30:29] So my hope is to help guide you into feeling more secure with the most important relationship in your life, the one between you and you. Hop on over to the show notes and grab your copy today. And now back to the episode.​ [00:30:44] John: Magic is what you see in your mind or someone else sees in their mind. [00:30:49] Magic is that thing that immediately makes you present. [00:30:56] Danielle: Yeah. [00:30:57] John: And your, all of your sensors are now in a heightened state , whether it's a sunset or a beautiful beach or a beautiful woman or a magic trick or whatever it is, there's that sense of awe and wonder. [00:31:15] So as I would start to take each spectator, I would learn their names. [00:31:19] And I would use their names throughout the show. [00:31:22] Danielle: People love that. [00:31:23] John: People, I ask them, the one word in everybody's language that they love to hear the most is their own name . and so I use that as a way of engaging the audience. [00:31:33] They start leaning in and now they've got real smiles on their face [00:31:37] and I can literally see this wall that women in today's society are forced to put up as a self-protection mechanism. [00:31:45] Yeah. [00:31:46] John: I see this wall start to grow as they start to identify with me and they're like, I'm okay being myself. [00:31:54] And then the end of this [00:31:56] they're asking permission to hug me. [00:31:58] And , having a creative mind, I wanted to understand. What that is. What that, what was going on. [00:32:06] Danielle: You also, not only through performing magic, inviting the curiosity you could see in other people's faces into your opening act essentially, or your sleight of hand. [00:32:17] I'm gonna show you this over here so that you can not see what's coming here. Vulnerability in its purest form is magic because it's the one thing sharing the story you feel like you couldn't share. Letting somebody see the one part of you that you would never let anybody see 'cause you were so utterly convinced you would be outed or you would be cast out by exposing that vulnerability is the birthplace of true connection. [00:32:47] Yeah. Which is the ultimate magic trick. It's, it's like what they say in nightmares, if you stop and face the thing that's chasing you, it, it can't chase you anymore in the dream. And so you spent a decade, did I remember that correctly, you wanted to be a main stage performer at the Magic Castle? [00:33:06] It took you about 10 years and you did it. [00:33:08] John: I did. [00:33:09] Yeah. [00:33:09] Danielle: 10 years. [00:33:11] John: Yeah. [00:33:12] Danielle: 10 years. [00:33:13] John: It was my creative coping mechanism. I had hit rock bottom, was I suicidal? No, not really. But I was unhappy. [00:33:25] Danielle: Yeah. [00:33:26] John: I was, my girlfriend left me, and, fortunately I had a job that I could focus on. But I needed something more. And through sharing something so personal and tying magic into it and making it a positive instead of a negative [00:33:45] people are attracted to it. [00:33:49] Danielle: Yeah. Well, because you're holding fire in your hand. Yeah. You're not just saying it's possible, but you're living. You're turning it into a performance, which I think for an artist is one of the most selfless, beautiful acts. [00:34:11] John: It's what separates great artists from mediocre artists. What is he giving me to care about? [00:34:18] Danielle: I never thought about that with magic. What are they giving me to care about? [00:34:22] John: Yeah. What do I want them to think when they leave the theater? [00:34:27] Ability to put your own life in perspective. If John can, so can I. [00:34:33] That's my true message. [00:34:36] Any different is your superpower. [00:34:38] Now, my facial paralysis does not have to define me if I don't let it. [00:34:44] You know, Danielle I live my life that it's better to ask for forgiveness than permission. [00:34:51] And that's bit me in the butt numerous times. [00:34:54] Danielle: I can also say the opposite, can bite you in the butt. I think I waited probably too long, many times for permission that wasn't really coming because no one can ultimately grant it. Right? Like, if there's a path you wanna carve, like the job that you built, all of the different things that you've done, there's no resume posted on LinkedIn. [00:35:15] No one's hot. Like that's an empowerment coach slash magician slash keynote speaker, slash documentarian like that. You have to get curious and still, and listen to that little voice inside and follow that curiosity to a path that may not make sense for anyone for a really long time. And I didn't do that. [00:35:40] And that can bite you in the butt too. 'cause regret's hard to hold. [00:35:42] John: Alex SBE came out on national television [00:35:45] to his fans, to the world and said, I'm scared. I am fighting the battle of my life and I'm gonna ask for everyone's good thoughts and prayers . of what I'm going through. I reached out to Nikki Trebek, Alex's daughter and I said, Nikki, I need to perform for your dad . we're having a 75th birthday party and we don't have any entertainment. [00:36:13] So if you wanna be the entertainment, and I was like. Damn. Yes. [00:36:18] Danielle: Well, yeah. I will go to his house and perform magic for him. a [00:36:22] John: restaurant, but [00:36:23] Danielle: Oh, a restaurant. Okay. [00:36:23] John: Wrote a unique magic show [00:36:25] With Jeopardy themes and the whole nine yards and he was actually at the table as one of my assistants. [00:36:33] Oh. Along with his daughter. so he was this, he needed to understand how things worked. [00:36:39] Was a genius. And so he was constantly looking at me like, wait a minute. That's not possible. Just embrace it, Alex. You're not gonna figure it out. Just enjoy it. [00:36:52] Danielle: That's awesome. [00:36:54] John: And there's, on my website, john kipp.com. There are some magic videos and there are two videos of me performing for Alex , sat with him, and I said, Alex, I need to share something with you that, when you came out so publicly about your diagnosis [00:37:10] I asked for everybody's support and love and prayers that resonated with me. I am here to give to you. You've been a part of my life and the lives of millions of people. [00:37:27] And your life's work is meaningful. [00:37:30] I just wanted to tell you that, 'cause I had a feeling that no one ever takes the time to say thank you for your life's work. [00:37:37] And he immediately started welling up. [00:37:39] Danielle: Well, anybody who makes something look easy that we do take for granted. [00:37:45] And I think that, like I appreciate so much in the telling of your story, you share not just the struggles, but the time you had a vision of yourself. On the main stage performing at the Magic Castle, like the most elusive place where magic is. And you didn't just wanna get in, you didn't just wanna get an audition, you didn't wanna just like get to per perform an illusion, like main stage. [00:38:23] You didn't just have a goal. You had the goal and you did it, but you also say that it took you 10 years. And there's usually themes that run with anxiety, about not enoughness and the crunchiness of time. There's never enough time. I'm not enough and there's not enough time. And not being worthy. [00:38:42] Yes, yes, yes. One of my main motivations when I started this podcast originally several years ago, was I was. Starting to increasingly feel, trapped in this sort of, world of before and after story. And it was no longer feeling inspirational. It was just another measuring stick for how not enough. [00:39:03] Yeah. 'Cause it, it's great to see where somebody was and where they are, but when I'm knee deep in my own struggle when I'm the caterpillar goo and the chrysalis, and I'm not the shiny butterfly, but I'm also not the caterpillar anymore. What do I do when my life is literally a shitty pile of goo this is something that most clients don't come right out and ask me like in sessions one, two, and three. But it inevitably comes well, I've been doing this for, so many months. How much longer is it gonna take? How long is it gonna take? And I just always, I appreciate when people can acknowledge. [00:39:41] The time and consistency that goes into healing [00:39:47] John: joy is in the journey. [00:39:48] Danielle: Mm. [00:39:49] John: Not in the destination. [00:39:51] And that's the thing I really focus with my clients. [00:39:55] I have clients come to me because they're holding themselves back in their life. [00:39:59] And it's my job to get that out of them by asking open-ended questions, by building a rapport, I can trust this guy. [00:40:08] Danielle: Yeah. Would you say that's your superpower as a coach? [00:40:11] John: Through my journey of reverse engineering who I am and who I wanted to become. Coming out the other side immediately understood that it's not about me. [00:40:24] Danielle: Yes. It's only true every single time. [00:40:27] John: The joy comes from helping others get that realization, [00:40:32] That they understand they are truly powerful and have a chance to shape their destiny. [00:40:40] That's why I talk about limiting beliefs. [00:40:43] And we grow up with our parents or whoever raised us, those are our belief systems. [00:40:49] And so that's what forms who you are. You stop dreaming. [00:40:54] That's what midlife crisis is all about. [00:40:58] Danielle: Yeah. [00:40:59] John: We got educated, we got a job, we built a career. We have a family. [00:41:06] Danielle: It's, I think the version of that I hear in my sessions is essentially I did everything right. Shouldn't I be feeling better than I am? Yeah. Like, I followed all the rules. I'm winning. Why does it not feel like I'm winning? Yeah. And finding our way back to that. [00:41:29] The unlearning and the unraveling. That is a, it's a process. [00:41:34] John: I'll talk to a friend. How you doing? And so many people respond automatically living the dream. But is it your dream? You're living? [00:41:46] Whose dream are you living? Because you're wasting your life by living someone else's dream. And that's why you get to that point in life where it's not enough. [00:41:58] Cause it's not your dream. You just finished the last 30 years building. [00:42:03] Danielle: Yeah. And the joy really is in the process and there's no way to enjoy the process of fulfilling the wishes of somebody else because you, what you're constantly chasing is when I get there, then the relief will come and then you're there and you're like, well, where's my pot of gold? [00:42:22] John: Yeah. I had, I spent 20 years learning how not to hide my face. [00:42:28] And what happened in March in 2020? The pandemic hit [00:42:33] now covering your face with a mask, became not only politically correct. [00:42:41] But government mandated and I'm like sitting there thinking to myself, what do I do? So I found a company who prints things on masks and I sent them a picture of my face and a picture of the lower part of my job. [00:43:01] Danielle: Trickster energy, John Kippen trickster. That's the new hyphen to your list of all of your accomplishments. [00:43:08] John: I would walk around and strangers would look at it and not understand. [00:43:12] Danielle: Right, right. But people who knew me [00:43:15] John: would do a double take. [00:43:17] Danielle: I will not hide. [00:43:19] John: Refuses to hide. [00:43:20] Even through a global pandemic. [00:43:23] Yeah. [00:43:23] John: I'm gonna live my life [00:43:25] Danielle: mm-hmm. On [00:43:26] John: my own terms. [00:43:28] Danielle: Yeah. I work too hard, too long to get free and I will not hide for you. Wow. Wow. And [00:43:37] John: when I share that story, people like, wow, John's done some soul searching. [00:43:44] Danielle: Which is why your clients come to you. [00:43:46] John: Yeah. [00:43:46] Danielle: Yeah. I unfortunately have come across many. People in the helping profession that haven't started with their first client, which is themselves. I put myself in that camp. I've talked about it on the podcast before, but I didn't start seeing a therapist until I became one, which is probably not the right order, but I didn't realize until I was sitting there trying to help people. [00:44:09] And then my own stuff was getting activated in the session. It's called Counter Transference. And, yeah, I was like, oh shit, I gotta look at the mirror. I gotta do a little more digging. But I think a, what leads a lot of people into helping professions is its desire to heal. And it sounds like in your case you did the herculean task of lifting your own self up before you said, now what can I offer you? [00:44:39] I wanna ask, just a purely curious, selfish question before we get to the very end I wanna ask. In your book playing the Hand you're Dealt how did you connect with Jamie Lee Curtis? The same way you did Alex Trebek? Did you just find someone and you DMed them and [00:44:55] John: you're like, her assistant worked for a production company [00:45:00] in a previous job. [00:45:02] Danielle: Gotcha. [00:45:02] John: That I knew. [00:45:03] When Jamie was like, I need it. So help with my computer. Her assistant said, I've got the guy for you. And I remember being at Jamie's house. [00:45:15] She knew me before my facial surgery, and after. [00:45:18] Danielle: So you have a history then? [00:45:19] John: Oh yeah. We met in 2000. [00:45:21] Danielle: Oh, okay. [00:45:22] John: So she saw me before. [00:45:24] She saw the struggle. Sure, she has two. Great kids. [00:45:29] And she adopted me as her third child. Wow. She saw the ability to help me. And so I had a filmmaker friend of mine reach out and said, John, I'd love your story. [00:45:45] I want to film a documentary on you. And I'm like, cool. So I realized I'm paying for the damn documentary. [00:45:51] Danielle: Oh. So I wanna offer you this gift, and by the way, here's the bill. [00:45:55] John: Yes, exactly. But at that point, I'm all in and I'm like, what do I have to lose? I'm a risk taker. I can afford it. [00:46:01] I've got money in the bank. [00:46:03] Let's make sure we stay on budget or close to budget, so there I am working on Jamie's computer and I'm staring at the screen and I'm summoning the courage. Ask Jamie. So I'm telling her the story. My friend Ryan's gonna direct this documentary about my life and my journey, and then I pause and I'm just staring at the screen. [00:46:23] I feel these eyes burning into the side of my head. [00:46:26] Mm-hmm. [00:46:28] John: And Jamie says, and [00:46:32] Danielle: I love that she didn't do it for you, but she made you do it. [00:46:36] John: And then at that point, I realized what the question was. I said, Jamie, will you be in my documentary? [00:46:44] And she goes, fuck yes, I will. [00:46:48] Danielle: Yeah. [00:46:49] John: She gets it. [00:46:50] Yeah. [00:46:51] John: Going through her sobriety, she wears her sobriety on her. Shoulder as a badge of honor. [00:47:00] And that is her message. [00:47:02] Yeah. [00:47:03] John: If she can get people to stop drinking by showing up for people. That's her ultimate goal in life. And so, she saw in me what I didn't see, [00:47:18] Danielle: and you asked the question. I think it's a lesson that I feel like I'm eternally playing a game of peekaboo with where I forget, and then I remember and then I forget and then I remember. But like the opportunities that you're asking for, you have to ask. [00:47:39] Yes. You have to say the thing. Right. Which is so brave and so vulnerable. But then the magic is sometimes when you ask, someone will say Yes. Now, in your case, she was essentially lovingly poking you until you, [00:47:55] John: asked. There was a point where I was debating plastic surgery. [00:48:00] Did I want to try to fix my face? Because at the end of the day, I wanted symmetry at rest. I wanted to be able to get rid of the droopiness and just, have a symmetrical base. That's all I really wanted. Sure. And because I would say, I hit my smile. And I've had friends come up and say, John, your first smile, we love your smile. [00:48:23] But I didn't love my smile. And until I, not up here, not in my head, but in my heart, accepted my smile. I couldn't move forward. I couldn't heal. And once I accepted my new smile, I found joy. I found that I could love myself. [00:48:46] And what's funny is when you get to that point, [00:48:49] yeah. [00:48:50] John: You overcome whatever that thing is that's holding you back. [00:48:53] Yeah. [00:48:54] John: And you want to share it with every person you come in contact with. [00:49:00] Danielle: Yeah. You are the love you're seeking. [00:49:02] John: Yes. Yes. And you are your acceptance. [00:49:05] Danielle: It reminds me of, something. He said in an interview, in, A New Earth, but author Eckert Tolle said that right before his essential death of the, he called it the death of his ego, but we could call it enlightenment or rebirth. [00:49:19] But he remembers the last thing he said before he went to sleep was, I can't live with myself anymore. And it wasn't about in the interpretation , of , taking one's own life . but what he realized is that he couldn't live with the self that was hating him. He couldn't live with that self. [00:49:40] And that self never woke up. But he did. [00:49:45] John: Through my journey [00:49:46] Of coming to accept myself for who I am. I immediately see others. [00:49:53] Yeah. [00:49:53] John: How they're hiding. [00:49:54] Before they recognize it. And so my coaching is all about not saying, this is why you're hiding. [00:50:03] That's what's holding you back. [00:50:06] Danielle: What you said about once you, you see somebody's wall so clearly because you understand your own so well. My less eloquent way of saying that to clients, it's once you smell bullshit, you can't unm it. It's the scent in the air and you're like, huh, what am I smelling? [00:50:23] Oh, it's bullshit. Well, John, I would love to know your, don't cut your own bang moment. [00:50:30] John: I'm backstage. There are a thousand people in the audience and I had theatrical training I had a talk memorized. It had to be 12 minutes long. [00:50:39] I'm doing a magic trick with other people that are coming up stage. I needed to control that. I got there early the morning of the TED Talk and helped the guys focus the lights so that it looked better. I'm all in. I want to shine in this TED Talk. , I remember I'm going up on stage and I'm saying, to the cherry picker operator, can I give you a hand? Because I have lighting experience. And I expected the presenter come and say, no, John, you're the actor. Go in your, the green room and there's some donuts and coffee , and we'll call you already, but you didn't. She knew that I was there to make the entire event better. And she let me do it, [00:51:18] That's awesome. [00:51:19] John: This is my first real speech. Okay, in front of a thousand people. And I knew that I had a limited time to get the audience on my side. [00:51:30] Get the audience engaged. How was I gonna be able to break their, going through their phone, talking to a neighbor, drinking, eating, snacking in a full day of speech? [00:51:41] Yeah. [00:51:43] John: So I said, I wanna go first. And everybody has said, great, but we don't, you can go first. And right before the mc went on stage to introduce me. I did a magic trick war. I turned Monopoly money into real money and then back again. [00:52:00] So as a magician, everything was possible. I turned monopoly into real money, but then I realized that's actually called counterfeiting he stays out for like seven seconds. I did that to the mc and now he just saw a miracle happen. [00:52:16] So he turns around and walks on stage beaming, and he told that story to the audience and said, Hey guys, your next speaker just did a miracle. He turned monopoly money into real money in front of my eyes. Pay attention to this cat. [00:52:37] Yeah. [00:52:38] John: So I walked on that stage. I had the love of everybody in the audience that everybody wanted to see what I was gonna do. [00:52:46] Everybody wanted to hear what I was gonna say, so I didn't have to warm up the audience. I got the mc to do it for me. Genius. And I do that every time I speak because it works but anyway, three quarters of the speech, I'm standing on my red circle and I'm delivering my talk. [00:53:08] And the front lights go out. [00:53:10] Danielle: Wait, you were three fours of the way done when they went out. [00:53:13] John: I'm standing in shadows. And my first reaction was, whoa. That Whoa. Got the lighting guy to realize, holy shit, I hit the wrong button, and he brought the lights slowly back up. [00:53:27] As the lights went back up, I went magic [00:53:32] and so I got an amazing laugh from the audience. [00:53:36] Because I cut the tension, I was doing improv. [00:53:38] I remember walking off stage and the producer of the event said, John, don't worry about, we'll edit that part out. And I said, don't you dare. That was my finest moment. Don't you dare edit that out. [00:53:54] I want that in the video. [00:53:57] She just smiled as I went back to the dressing room and sat down and then the adrenaline was like, whew. Walking out into the audience after the event and having strangers just come up to me and wanna hug me and say, holy cow, I resonate with your message. [00:54:18] And my message on the TED Talk was, treat people are different with respect to compassion. [00:54:23] That's what TED talks are all about. You want one key message and that was my message. [00:54:27] You never know, you might be in their shoes in an instant. [00:54:34] Danielle: I wanna add to that, another way to speak to the value of doing some self investigation, whether that's through journaling, through therapy, or seeking out a coach from someone like yourself is, because that expression of, treat other people the way you would wanna be treated. [00:54:53] What I know is that we don't treat ourselves all that well. A lot of us, many of us don't treat ourselves well, which is why accessing the compassion. Of treating others kindly is sometimes harder for us to find, jumping to criticism or judgment, because there's something we are rejecting in us. [00:55:13] So I think a way to do the thing you're saying , that beautiful treat others with kindness and compassion. The best way to do that is to look within. And I invite anybody listening to go to the show notes, visit John's website, seek out a coaching call, grab a copy of his book. There are resources that can help you be kinder to yourself, to lowering the walls, to lifting the veil, to seeing yourself in a new way, to performing the ultimate illusion, which is [00:55:52] to love yourself more fully exactly as you are so that we can be kinder to each other. 'cause we need that, we need a lot more kindness. [00:56:00] Thank you, John. Do we have the information we need for our listeners to get the special code? [00:56:06] John: John kipping.com. [00:56:08] Slash free gift. [00:56:11] Danielle: Ooh, you heard it here. John kipping.com/free gift. And this is only the gift for those of you who have listened this far. [00:56:20] So if you listen to the beginning and you just try to skip to the show notes, sorry. You ain't getting a gift. Thank you, John. [00:56:28] Thank you so much for joining me on this incredible episode of Don't Cut Your Own Bangs. I hope that you love listening because I thoroughly enjoyed making it. My favorite episodes are the ones where I get to learn something too. I'm also a listener. And benefiting from the wisdom and insights of all of the experts, creatives, performers, adventurers seekers that I get an opportunity to meet in this podcast format. [00:56:56] Don't forget to check out the show notes and please before you sign off , always remember rate, review, subscribe to the podcast when you interact with the podcast. It just helps send it out like a rocket ship to other people that are looking for the same value that you are. And it also helps create a conversation where I can continue to develop and cultivate something that benefits you more and is more fun for you to listen to. Feedback is great, and also if you just wanna throw a compliment, that's sweet too. But thank you so much for being here. [00:57:26] Your intention, your time mean the absolute world to me, and I hope you continue to have an incredible day. [00:57:32] ​

One of the damaging and yet commonly believed lies in America is that any person born on American soil under any circumstances is automatically an instant American citizen. This week we had yet another unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal appellate court—out of, of course, the 9th Circuit--repeat this lie in a feckless “legal opinion” that's zero percent law and 100% opinion. In fact, the simply being born on American soil has never been sufficient under American law for securing American citizenship, either under our US Constitution's 14th Amendment or under any statutory scheme passed by our Congress.  The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

The Trump administration is back at the US Supreme Court, with yet another soundly reasoned legal argument by Solicitor General John Sauer. This time the argument is whether an unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial court judge can order the Article II Executive Branch to continue funding an executive agency of which the judge is fond. Notably, this very question was decided by the Supreme Court only four months ago, in essentially an identical case with identical facts.But the inferior federal courts continue to act in open rebellion against the Article III Supreme Court, as well as against the Article I Legislative Branch and the Article II Executive Branch.In other words, the unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior federal district trial courts have seized a claimed authority that is superior to the entirety of our Constitutional order. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Send us a textYes, you read that right -- you can, indeed, wash your car with a brush. But it's got to be the CORRECT brush -- one that's safe on paint, like our Wheel and Body Brush. Or, our soon-to-be-released Perfectly Safe Brush (PSB). More on that in the podcast. Anyways, whether it's a wash mitt or a sponge or a brush . . . this is the podcast for you! What's your favorite wash media??PRODUCTS MENTIONED:COTTON CANDY DREAM WASH MITT: https://bit.ly/DIYWashMittFLUFFY WASH MITT: https://bit.ly/FluffyWashMittLEGACY SPONGE: https://bit.ly/LegacySpongeWHEEL AND BODY BRUSH: https://bit.ly/WheelAndBodyBrushWHEEL BARREL BRUSH: https://bit.ly/WheelBarrelBrushRINSELESS WASH: https://bit.ly/RinselessWashLEGACY SPONGE: https://bit.ly/LegacySpongeWebsite: https://diydetail.com/Podcast:https://bit.ly/DIYDetailPodcastJoin the DIY Detail Facebook Group!: https://bit.ly/DIYDetailFacebookGroupFind DIY Detail products worldwide: https://diydetail.com/pages/distributors#autodetailing  #diydetail #yvanlacroix #carwash #claytowel #detailing #detalingtip #howtodetailacar #detailing101

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Like poop that won't flush, unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial court Judge Paula Xinis has floated back up to the surface with yet another legally insane ruling in defense of Margarita-guzzling  illegal migrant third-world invader and designated terrorist, human trafficker, and spousal abuser “Maryland Man” Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia. Judge Xinis has stitched together a blatantly fabricated collection of half-truths and lies to weave a false legal narrative under which this designated terrorist who has had a final order of deportation from the United States for more than SIX YEARS is not only not subject to deportation by immigration authorities, but ICE is not even permitted to detain him being free to illegally roam out nation. Join me for a quick breakdown of Judge Xinis' insane order, as we break all the madness down to plain English. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Today on SPEAK! A Dogcast, we talk about Using the Correct Training Tools. We also answer the question of How Trained Should Your Dog Be? Then comes The History of Animal Mascots 101 featuring the University of Akron and Listener Q&A! You're in for a real treat!

Dr. Ming Wang plays the two-string Chinese violin, recorded by iPhone, at the Steinway Piano Studio, used with permission. A token of my appreciation is winging its way to a “clone” of the Grammar Girl for the recent podcast, her content number 1088 “What AI means for writers and editors with Daniel Heuman”The first discovery you make in listening to the podcast is that Danial is not an editor at all -- he's a software developer, by his own admission.Yes, this is an adventure in Losing Control of the language, since he's also a Brit, one could ask:“Who's Language?” Editors started to become an endangered species with the advent of Pagination.

Donald Trump, through his Attorney General Pamela Bondi, has delivered a slap to the face of the unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior district court judges of the New Jersey district for their ruling to discard Attorney Alina Habbas as toe Assistant US Attorney for that district.   It seems likely that Habbas will once again be assigned as the AUSA for New Jersey promptly, perhaps even today, for another 120-day period, pending permanent approval by the US Senate. Then in BONUS CONTENT we have BREAKING news and ongoing political context over Trump's increasingly credible claims that former President Barack Obama—or whatever his real name is—engaged in seditious conspiracy against the first Trump presidency.And in ADDITIONAL BONUS CONTENT we have more evidence that the 100 million illegal migrant third-world invaders infesting our nation—as well as the many millions of LEGAL migrants unwisely allowed into our nation—are a threat to the national interests of the United States and its citizens and should be deported back to their home nations immediately. Finally, a novel means of facilitating the recovery of America for Americans before we close out today's show. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Arthur McNeil, a young black male, is pulled over by a Jacksonville FL deputy, and within minutes he's being dragged from his car by a group of deputies, punched, driven to the ground, and forcibly handcuffed.   Now that same young black male has released the cell phone video he took of his interaction with police that day—and it's leading to public outrage over police violence. Now McNeil has retained Attorney Benjamin Crump, a four-star general of the racial-grievance industrial complex,  to leverage this outrage into a rich civil settlement that commonly amounts to many millions of dollars.But wait—does the cell phone video accurately describe what happened? Are there any circumstances in which police can throw fists at a traffic stop? Shouldn't today's law enforcement be kinder and gentler with the victim of a traffic stop? Fortunately, we have extensive body-worn camera footage of this event, which has just been released by the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, along with a statement by the Sheriff—who happens to be a black male himself—providing vital context favorable to the deputies involved regarding the stop and arrest of Arthur McNeil. Indeed, as is so commonly the case, the more we see and the more we know, the more this looks like just another of thousands of hoax claims of police excessive force.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Want to feel more confident reading dental x-rays? Join our FREE training on radiographic interpretation! https://ivdi.org/rad Ready to elevate your veterinary dentistry skills? Request an invite to the Veterinary Dental Practitioner Program: https://ivdi.org/inv  --------------------------- Host: Dr. Brett Beckman, DVM, DAVDC, FAVD In this episode, we tackle key aspects of surgical extractions and radiographic interpretation. Learn practical tips to enhance your dental procedures and improve patient outcomes. What You'll Learn: ✅ How to determine the best time to perform an extraction. ✅ Proper patient positioning for comfortable and efficient extractions. ✅ Optimal incision placement for effective flap creation. ✅ Correct instrument handling, from scalpel to diamond bur. ✅ Techniques for successful root tip removal. ✅ How to approach radiographic interpretation. ✅ Treatment options based on owner compliance and bone loss severity. ✅ The importance of curettage and hyaluronic acid in periodontal defect management. Key Takeaways: ✅ Knowing when to extract is crucial for efficient case management. ✅ Patient positioning significantly impacts extraction ease. ✅ Proper debridement of granulation tissue is essential for preventing disease progression. ✅ Owner compliance plays a vital role in determining treatment success. ✅ Hyaluronic acid can be a valuable tool in managing minor bone loss. --------------------------- What are your biggest challenges with surgical extractions? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments below! --------------------------- veterinary dentistry, surgical extractions, radiographic interpretation, vet dental show, Brett Beckman, DVM, DAVDC, FAVD, periodontal disease, dental extractions, veterinary education, veterinary CE, IVDI, dental radiography, root tip removal, hyaluronic acid, curettage, bone grafting, veterinary practice, general practice, veterinary technician

What has no beginning, end, or middle and touches every continent?If you answered, “the ocean”- Correct!Or the ‘living infinite', as Jules Verne called it in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. This latest episode of 2050 Investors is a splashy one as host Kokou Agbo-Bloua dives deep into the mysteries of the oceans aboard the modern-day Nautilus, the Nautile.In 2022, at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), 150 member states pledged to preserve or safeguard thirty percent of the world's oceans by 2030: or “30 by 30”. While a positive step in the right direction, more still needs to be done.Join Kokou in this daring adventure exploring the importance of the ocean in shaping Earth's climate, providing food and habitat for animals and humans alike, the economy and so much more!But be aware as the adventure does take a dark turn when we encounter the deep-water alter ego of the Great Pacific Garbage patch. We will learn about the devastating effects of plastic pollution, envisioning a Kraken monster born from our own waste.Later in the episode, we speak with Nisha Bakker, Director Partnerships at The Ocean Cleanup. The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit foundation working daily to rid the world's oceans of plastic. Nisha emphasises the need for a global effort to change the system of plastic production and waste management, mentioning the development of a Plastic Treaty. However, she's optimistic of growing awareness and progress in ocean and river cleaning initiatives.As the journey concludes, Kokou reflects on the resilience depicted in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea," leaving listeners with a poignant reminder that, despite the challenges, we can persevere.About this showWelcome to 2050 Investors your monthly guide to understanding the intricate connections between finance, globalisation, and ESG.Join host Kokou Agbo-Bloua, Head of Economics, Cross-Asset & Quant Research at Societe Generale, for an investigation of the economic and market megatrends shaping the present and future, and how these trends might influence our progress to meeting 2050's challenging global sustainability targets.In each episode, Kokou deep dives into the events impacting the economy, financial markets, the planet, and society. Through a magical blend of personal anecdotes, in-depth research and narratives overlaid with music, sound effects, and pop culture references, there's certainly something for everyone.Kokou also interviews industry-leading experts, personalities, entrepreneurs and even Nobel prize winners! You will learn from the best on a wide range of subjects on current affairs, market shifts, and economic developments.If you like 2050 Investors, please leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your support will help us spread the word and reach new audiences. If you're seeking a brief and entertaining overview of market-related topics and their business and societal implications, subscribe now to stay informed!Previous episodes of 2050 Investors have explored ESG-influenced financial assets, climate change, AI, greenflation, smart cities, globalization, plastic pollution, food, health care, biodiversity, the energy transition, and more.CreditsPresenter & Writer: Kokou Agbo-Bloua. Producers & Editors: Jovaney Ashman, Jennifer Krumm.Sound Director: La Vilaine, Pierre-Emmanuel Lurton. Music: Cézame Music Agency. Graphic Design: Cédric Cazaly.Whilst the following podcast discusses the financial markets, it does not recommend any particular investment decision. If you are unsure of the merits of any investment decision, please seek professional advice.Hosted by Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.

Send us a textTrump BUSTED in Epstein Files - Elon Musk CORRECT The Tony Michaels Podcast #954Buy Tony a Shothttps://linktr.ee/thetonymichaelsSupport Tony on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/thetonymichaelsTony Michaels is known as "The Rush Limbaugh of the Left"Venmo Chat Me NOW!https://account.venmo.com/u/thetonymichaelsJoin my Discord server now!https://discord.gg/5HyRwtwyZMThe Library of Democracyhttps://www.youtube.com/@LibraryofDemocracySupport Gabe on Patreonhttps://www.patreon.com/iamgabesanchezLink Your Amazon & Twitch Accountshttps://scribehow.com/shared/How_to_Connect_and_Subscribe_to_Twitch_with_Amazon_Prime__djkNTNdLSm6Sktblpz-43QThe Tony Michaels Podcast FULL EPISODESSubscribe to The Tony Michaels PodcastBroadcast live on TwitchApple PodcastsSpotifyOfficial Merch:store.thetonymichaels.comFUCK'EM Hatshats.thetonymichaels.comSupport the showSupport the showSupport the showSupport the showSupport the showSupport the Show.Support the Show.Support the Show.Support the Show.Support the showSupport the showThe Ryan Samuels ShowModern-day politics discussion and analysis. Conservative Political Commentator Ryan...Listen on: Apple Podcasts   SpotifySupport the show

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Donald Trump has filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal and others over a letter they published which they claim to have been written by Trump and sent to Jeffrey Epstein as part of a collection of birthday letters sent to Epstein by friends in 2003. The purported letter sounds utterly unlike anything one would expect to be produced by Donald J. Trump, a man whose public presence has made us all very familiar with his unique manner of communication. The letter, if believed, would suggest some deep and dark secrets between Trump and Epstein, however—particularly salacious given what we now know about Epstein, and given the recent kerfuffle and fizz-out of the purported “Epstein files” from Pam Bondi's Department of Justice.What's REALLY going on here? In today's live stream I break down the relatively brief libel complaint filed against the WSJ, Dow Jones, Keith Rupert Murdoch, and the reporters who authored the article.  I also share my personal thoughts on what I think is REALLY the goal behind this $10 billion lawsuit.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

This week in the TV and streaming podcast, Blaine gives an overview (0:02) before he and Donovan discuss how politics has invaded television (1:04) with the funding for PBS (1:06). The question is: does that matter (1:08)?The other big political and TV news came from Colbert this week who had a shocking announcement (6:37). The hosts dissect how Netflix got one release date perfect (12:09) before transitioning into what could be FX's big franchise hit (13:24). In non-spoilers, they discuss why 'Stick' continues its improvement (16:26) and how 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia' produced one of its best episodes in years (18:56). For spoilers, the guys talk about the tactics of solid TV from 'Stick' (20:46) and the cultural touchstones in 'It's Always Sunny...' this week (30:30). The two end the show with an idea for next week (39:15). If you enjoy the podcast or the happenings on The Alabama Take, we encourage you to help with the link here. If you wish to subscribe to the newsletter and not rely on an algorithm for updates, you can get that sent to your inbox with the sign-up link here at the website. Finally, all things related to The Alabama Take, including more podcasts, are at the link here.

TVC Darth Vader's Tie Fighter - Small Talk - Episode 144: The Correct Way to Fly by

In this episode of Red Menace, Breht and Alyson dive into Mao Zedong's pivotal 1957 speech On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. This foundational text offers insight into Mao's dialectical approach to politics, particularly in navigating the complex terrain of class struggle within socialist society. Together they explore Mao's crucial distinction between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and how this distinction can guide revolutionary praxis. The discussion includes an analysis of the “unity–struggle–unity” dialectic, the historical context and lessons of the Hundred Flowers and Hundred Schools campaigns, and the subsequent Anti-Rightist backlash. They also examine Mao's critique of Han chauvinism and draw parallels to white chauvinism in the contemporary U.S., as well as Mao's position on Tibet and the historical legacy of how that conflict played out, and how it is still weaponized today. ---------------------------------------------------- Support Rev Left and get access to bonus episodes: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Make a one-time donation to Rev Left at BuyMeACoffee.com/revleftradio Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Rev Left Radio: https://revleftradio.com/

Topics:  Big Question, Community, It Is Cake, Shock Jock, Correcting Everybody, Masterclass BONUS CONTENT: Forgiveness   Quotes: “Everything Jesus is telling us is for our freedom.” “The Cross is the only resource to draw on for forgiveness.” “That's not a set-up.” “You have to make community happen and then help keep it.” . . . Holy Ghost Mama Pre-Order! Want more of the Oddcast? Check out our website! Watch our YouTube videos here. Connect with us on Facebook! For Christian banking you can trust, click here!

This weekend Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, released hundreds of documents she says are evidence that a huge numbers of Democrat officials—including President Barack Obama—engaged in treason and seditious conspiracy against President Donald Trump.  Gabbard also says that she has referred the matter to the Department of Justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi for federal prosecution.The crime of treason carries a potential death penalty, and the crime of seditious conspiracy carries a sentence of 20 years in a federal penitentiary. DNI documents: https://tinyurl.com/yhfzy6e6Interesting, most of the response to these allegations by Gabbard are not denials of the misconduct.  Indeed, the Progressive Fascist Left appears to have largely conceded the legal merits of the accusations. Instead, the Progressive Fascist Left is resorting to a variety of legal and political deflections and misdirection in an effort to wave away the apparently incontrovertible allegations of treason and seditious conspiracy. There are at least four main avenues of legal and political deflections being used by the Progressive Fascist Left against these credible allegations of treason and seditious conspiracy. First, and the only one that even carries even the stench of a denial is that doesn't everybody know that it was actually proven that Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election, and therefore the claims to that effect by Obama and other co-conspirators were simply truths, not treason or sedition?Then we get to the non-denial deflections.Second, that even if Obama engaged in treason and seditious conspiracy, he has presidential immunity against any such charges.Third, that even if Obama and others engaged in treason and seditious conspiracy, the standard federal crimes 5-year statute of limitations has already expired on these alleged offenses. Fourth, that even if Obama and others engaged in treason and seditious conspiracy, all this is merely political theater to distract from the “Epstein files” kerfuffle, it doesn't matter because the Trump DOJ won't dare arrest or prosecute anybody, so this is all pointless.Each of these four avenues of attack on Gabbard's claims and document release are demonstrably 100% false—with the possible exception of the last argument about this being merely political theater, which may be half true—but that will be a matter within the control of Donald Trump.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Send us a textWelcome:In this episode, we unpack Paul's teaching on what true leadership in the church looks like. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 3:6 to 4:5, Paul gives us three vivid metaphors to describe church leaders: gardeners, builders, and stewards. Through these images, we are reminded that leadership is not about status, showmanship, or superiority—it is about humble, faithful service to God. The Corinthian church was dividing over personalities and styles of preaching, but Paul resets the focus. It is God who gives growth, Christ who is the foundation, and the Lord who judges and rewards faithfulness.Key Points:Leaders Are Gardeners (3:6-9):They plant and water, but only God gives the growth.Ministry is about patience and service, not celebrity.Leaders Are Builders (3:10-17):Christ is the only foundation.Ministry must be built with lasting, spiritual materials (gold, silver, precious stones).What is built will be tested by fire.Careless or corrupt ministry will result in loss or judgment.Leaders Are Stewards (4:1-5):They are entrusted with God's mysteries.Faithfulness is what matters most, not impressiveness.Final judgment belongs to the Lord, who alone sees and rewards rightly.Reflections:Have you placed too much importance on a leader or preacher, rather than on Christ?Are you building your own ministry or spiritual life with materials that will last?Do you find encouragement in the truth that faithfulness—not success—is what God rewards?Encouragement for Leaders:Be faithful with what God has given you, no matter how small or unseen it may seem.Don't be consumed by comparison, criticism, or the applause of others.Your praise will come from God, in His time.Encouragement for Congregations:Don't idolize or tear down preachers; they are servants, not saviours.Be grateful for those who minister to you.Look beyond the personality to the gospel foundation they lay.Application:Pray for your leaders.Examine your own heart for pride or comparison.Build your life on Christ, and serve with the right motives.Closing Thought:Don't waste time evaluating everyone else's ministry. Instead, be faithful. Serve humbly. Build wisely. And trust that your praise will come from God.Subscribe & Share:If this episode encouraged you, consider sharing it with someone else, leaving a review, or subscribing to hear more.Support the showTo listen to my monthly church history podcast, subscribe at; https://thehistoryofthechristianchurch.buzzsprout.com For an ad-free version of my podcasts plus the opportunity to enjoy hours of exclusive content and two bonus episodes a month whilst also helping keep the Bible Project Daily Podcast free for listeners everywhere support me at;|PatreonSupport me to continue making great content for listeners everywhere.https://thebibleproject.buzzsprout.com

Featured on WGN Radio's Home Sweet Home Chicago on 07/19/25: Founder and President of Perma-Seal Basement Systems, Roy Spencer joins the show to answer listeners' questions about insulation and the toxins that could be in your attic. To learn more about the services Perma-Seal provides visit permaseal.net or call 1-800-421-SEAL (7325).

American citizens have secured two more YUGE Second Amendment wins at the hands of President Donald Trump's Department of Justice. The first of these wins involves the news breaking yesterday afternoon that the Trump Department of Justice has dropped all efforts in its litigation against arm braces for firearms.  The Biden administration had sought to classify pistols equipped with arm braces as “short barreled rifles,” which would result in these firearms being treated in the same manner as machine guns for purposes of federal registration, tax laws, and criminal prosecution. The second of these wins relates to a federal court distinguishing between the class of persons who qualify for Second American protections, noting that the Second Amendment applies to the People, meaning American citizens (and perhaps permanent legal residents who have been accepted as such by the US government), but NOT to mere people (lower case) meaning even those who are illegally present in the US—the 100 million illegal migrant third-world invaders in currently infesting our nation. Both of these are important, but the second particularly so, as it highlights the distinction between People (upper case) and people (lower case) within the United States, which will also have important implications in the upcoming litigation around so-called birthright citizenship. Distinguishing these two classes of persons is essential to America's national survival—America is for Americans, it is not for all 8 billion people on the planet. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

As a property manager, you know the value you provide to real estate investors. You offer peace of mind, safety and certainty, and expertise. What if every investor found a property manager to partner with before even contacting a realtor? On today's episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with real estate investing author and coach Dustin Heiner to talk about building wealth through real estate investing and the role of property managers. You'll Learn [06:06] Dustin's Journey to Financial Independence [17:48] The Importance of Property Management in Real Investing [30:04] The Importance of Finding Clients You Want to Work With [41:42] Investing as A Property Management Business Owner Quotables “If you try to serve people, then your life is going to get better.” “If you don't have your business that could run itself, then you're going to be losing money.” “Your property manager is absolutely your quarterback.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive Transcript Dustin Heiner (00:00) this is the number one thing that I teach all my students, the first thing they always say, Hey Dustin, I found a great city to invest in. I've already got five realtors sending me deals. said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Let's say you bought one of those properties. Who's going to manage that? And they said, I don't know. I said come on. Like you, you're putting the cart way before the horse realtors are the last thing because you need to make sure that the   business is going to run perpetually without you. Cause the last thing you want is another job.   Jason Hull (00:26) All right, we are live. I am Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, and we have the world's leading and most comprehensive coaching and consulting firm for long-term residential property management entrepreneurs. For over a decade and a half, we have brought innovative strategies and optimization to the property management industry. At DoorGrow, we have spoken to thousands of property management business owners, coached, consulted,   cleaned up hundreds of businesses, helping them add doors, improve pricing, increase profit, simplify operations, and build and replace teams. We are like bar rescue for property managers. In fact, we have cleaned up and rebranded over 300 businesses, and we run the leading property management mastermind with more video testimonials and reviews than any other coach or consultant in the industry. At DoorGrow we believe that good property managers can change the world and that property management is the ultimate   high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. Now, let's get into the show. I'm hanging out today with Dustin Heiner who is successfully unemployed, according to his shirt.   it for those that can't see this later. So Dustin, welcome to the DoorGrow show.   Dustin Heiner (01:53) Jason, thank you so much for having me on the show. just love, I love property managers. I'm a real estate investor, bought property since 2006. Just, I don't know, I've got 30 plus properties, 750 apartment unit complexes and hotels I invest in. And I love not doing any work because my property managers are amazing. it takes a lot of time finding the right property managers, but in the end they make my life easier and I love paying them. They're only one of two people I love to pay, my accountant   and my property managers, because they make my life easier. I love that you have this show. I'm super pumped to be on, so thank you so much for having me.   Jason Hull (02:31) Awesome. I love the positivity because a lot of my clients get a lot of... How do we say it? Shit. Really. And you know, they feel unappreciated in a lot of... So I know there's a lot of listening. They're like, man, I want investors like this guy. But yeah, I love that you love paying property managers. I think I've said on one of my TikToks or reels, I said, the biggest mistake landlords make...   with rental properties is not hiring a property manager. And during this process.   Dustin Heiner (03:01) I don't want to deal   with tenants personally. I invested so that my property would work for me and I did not want to handle talking to tenants. In fact, I did at the beginning, I started talking to tenants, but I found out I'm a pushover because it's my property and I'm trying to be nice and everything like that. And it's so much better when there's a middle man that's going to be there. I tell my property managers, use me as the bad guy. Like say, this landlord, he's a jerk, but this is what we got to do.   I want to help them to make it easier on them, but in the end they make my life easier. yeah, I absolutely love that. Well, one thing you and I both know, property managers should be investing themselves too. They should be grabbing properties. if you know of a, if you're a property manager, you will eventually know somebody, an investor, who's going to be selling a house. Well, shoot. Instead of like, oh, point this over to investor, which I get lots of property managers sending me deals, say, hey, this guy's looking to sell. I'm like, great, and I'll buy it.   how much better would be if you guys bought   Jason Hull (04:00) Yeah, absolutely. I mean if you're a property manager you should really understand and know real estate investing like you're you're basically the advisor for your clients to do this and You have a pulse You know an understanding of the market that nobody else has and so leaning on a good property manager It can also be they could be an invaluable resource   of knowledge. if you before you get into a property one of the smartest things you could do is go ask the property managers is this a good investment or is this a good area or is this like is this a good idea and they're like no you should not have a short-term rental property out in the middle of the desert that nobody wants to go to like it's not you're not gonna cash flow but the you know the guru I'd listen to said I could you know yeah don't do that   Dustin Heiner (04:47) I've got, yeah, no, and you're 100 % right. So I personally, I've coached thousands of people to buy properties and I like buy and hold. Like it could be long-term, short-term, medium-term, even co-living, but we're gonna buy and hold these properties. Like we've got five kids. So I'll give these properties to my kids. I started investing back in 2006, just kept buying property after property. And then I realized when you get cashflow, when you get money coming in every single month from every single property, then you get financial independence and everything else on top of that is just gravy.   Jason Hull (04:47) Okay.   Dustin Heiner (05:15) And I consider my property manager, my quarterback of my team, like the football football team, they're going to make me money. They're going to protect me. They're going to make sure that everything is going right there. They're the, they're the quarterback of my team. And so when I find a good property manager, I hold onto them. In fact, I love find, well, here's what I do also. So in finding a good property manager, I do interviewing. I don't just grab first person because I personally feel like it's best to, you know, not everybody can work with everybody meaning   Somebody might not work well with me. I might have a bad personality of them. They're like, I don't like this guy. He's too hyper. He's got too much energy. Or they might say, hey, this is a great person to work with. And so what I love to do is when I grab a property manager and I just keep buying properties and keep giving it to the property manager, they keep doing well. But I mean, honestly, in the end, I wanted financial freedom and I knew that as I bought real estate over time, the value goes up. But the biggest thing is I invest for cash flow so that   Jason Hull (05:48) Bye.   Dustin Heiner (06:10) Money comes in every single month and give you case in point, your property managers are sending money. Like if you're a property manager, you're sending money to your investors, which is great because you're, making money, but you're also making them money. But at the same time, imagine that money coming into your pocket.   Jason Hull (06:27) Okay, I love this. think the clients listen to this or even property managers just listen to this and be like, I should probably send this out to all my clients so they should they can listen to this because this guy knows something and I want all my clients to see us in this light. This is a great light to see us in. So let's let's go back because we skipped qualifying you. Let tell us about yourself. Qualify yourself. Why should investors that   that these property managers send this podcast episode to and say, listen to this guy Dustin, you should be, you want to be like Dustin. Why should investors be listening to you?   Dustin Heiner (07:00) Absolutely, totally.   you know what, I'm even gonna tell you a quick story of what really shoved me into real estate investing. I started investing back in 2006, but I was not born with money. In fact, I was born into a very poor family, and I did what everybody is taught. We're taught this same exact path. You go to school, you get good grades. You take those good grades, and you go to college or university and get thousands and thousands of dollars into debt.   and then you get a piece of paper or a degree, that's what it's called, and you take that degree and you shop around and you try to find a job, a quote unquote career from someplace. And so I'm doing that exact same thing. In fact, Jason, I get the most stable, secure job you can ever think of. I got a job in the local county government in California doing IT. So California is not going away, government's not going away, and IT is definitely not going away, because I'm just like risk averse. Well, at the same time, I bought one rental property.   And that one rental property, I remember that check I got from the property manager. It was $317. Like, this is great. I need to buy more and more properties. But you know what happens? Life started getting in the way. My wife and I started having kids, after kid. Eventually, and this is what really got me to make sure I started investing. So I stopped because life got in the way, buying properties. But my wife and I started having kids. And when my wife had our fourth child, I went on paternity leave. That's where the dad stays home with the mom, changes poopy diapers, all that good stuff.   Well, after two weeks, I go back to work and on a Friday at 3.30 in the afternoon, I get a call from my boss's boss's boss's secretary, like the top dog. she says, Dustin, would you please come in the office? I said, sure. And I paused for a second. I hung up the phone. thought, why in the world are they calling me in the office? Like, this isn't normal. It's not normal. And I've also seen plenty of movies Friday at 3.30 is not a good sign. And I remembered a little bit before, right before I went on paternity leave.   Jason Hull (08:48) now.   Dustin Heiner (08:51) There was some rumors or some rumbly going on in the county that there could potentially be layoffs. And he really shook it off. said, there's no way I've got great seniority here. My boss is thinking of doing a great job. So I get up and I walked down the hallway to my boss's office. Now this hallway isn't very long. In fact, it's kind of short, but every single step that it took, felt like the hallway got longer and longer and longer. And it felt like my feet became lead bricks because as I was walking, I started thinking I could potentially get laid off while I get down the hallway.   Jason Hull (09:01) Amen.   huh.   Dustin Heiner (09:20) I turn the corner and I see my boss's door. His door is closed and I see his secretary there, super sweet, nice old lady. She says, Dustin, would you please have a seat? And I go and I take my seat and she's kind of sheepishly grinning at me, trying to console me with her eyes, because she knows everything about what's going on. I know nothing about what's going on. So I take my seat and I started thinking about my life. This entire plan that other people told me, I started thinking, if I lose my job, did I just waste my life doing this? And my goodness, we just had our fourth child.   Jason Hull (09:38) man.   Dustin Heiner (09:50) If I can't provide for our kids, does that make me a failure as a father? Does that make me a failure as a husband, as a man trying to provide for his family? Well, as I'm sitting there, my hands get all clammy, my forehead gets all sweaty because the nerves are just crushing me. Well, the door to my boss's office opens up and out walks a coworker of mine with a piece of paper in her hands. She is noticeably distraught, very upset. She's not necessarily crying, but you could tell her world has been rocked. She passes by me and my boss says, Dustin, would you please come in the office?   Jason Hull (09:54) Hmm.   Dustin Heiner (10:19) So I get up and I go into his office and I get laid off. And this is the government. Nobody gets fired or laid off from the government, but I did. And this is the reason why I tell the story. So I take that layoff notice and I go back to my desk and I realized two things sitting there at my desk, just getting laid off. Number one, I need to get another job to be able to provide for my family. So really blessed, praise the Lord to find another job in the same county, another department wasn't having those issues. Second thing I realized, I need to make sure this never.   Jason Hull (10:24) Hmm.   Dustin Heiner (10:48) ever happens to me again. I didn't make sure that nobody can take away my ability to feed my family. So right then and there, I said, I am an investor. It may so happen that 100 % of my money came from my job. That's now my part-time job. I'm a full-time investor. So quickly fast forward the story. Started buying property after property after property, each one making me 250, 350, $550 a month. I still own all of them. And now fast forward, I go to my new boss after 30 plus properties. say, Hey boss,   Jason Hull (10:57) No.   Dustin Heiner (11:17) I'm laying you off. laugh and it says Dustin, what are you gonna do? I said, I don't have to do anything. I own real estate that makes me money without even working. So last quick part of the story. Remember that short hallway that got longer and longer and longer? Well, I would walk to and from my car to my job a mile and a half every day. I was too frugal to pay for parking. Well, this last walk, I felt like I was walking on clouds because I knew I would never need a job again because I had money coming in from my property. So for you listening,   I want you to realize if you have your own business, if you're working for somebody else, if you have real estate that makes you money without even working grows over time. In fact, every 15 years, real estate doubles in value. mean, that alone is just should blow your mind. And then the cash flow that it makes. So in the end, what I suggest is if you make your own value coming from what you put into your own investments, IE rental properties, you're actually going to have   a floor of income. Now, just same thing with a property manager. You get your landlords and let's say you have 100 units. Well, you have a floor of income because that's normal income that comes in. Same thing with real estate investing. Let's say, God forbid, all those landlords to say this is not working out, we're moving. Well, you have your properties that has a floor of income coming in for you and then it takes so much stress off of you. So I'll pause the story because you've probably got plenty of questions, Jason.   Jason Hull (12:43) I love it. what a journey. there's always something that of thrusts us into a new state or even into entrepreneurism. I was suddenly a single dad trying to figure out how do I have time to spend with my kids when I'm stuck at a job at HP because I was in IT.   I'm like, I haven't even earned a week off yet. And I'm gonna get them for a week to spend time with them? How's that gonna work? How do I get to be dad? so, yeah, so sometimes I joke my kids are what made me finally leap to become an entrepreneur. so.   I love this idea of real estate allowing you to fire your boss or fire yourself from the job. Explain to people now what you do and your programs and all the stuff that you've built since, because you've done a lot of big things. I want people to make sure they understand Dustin's a badass and he knows a few things.   Dustin Heiner (13:36) Yeah.   Thanks, man. Well, here's what really   happened. So as I was quitting my job 2014 2015 inch I was 37 years old and I had so many people asking me how I was not working for somebody else and still making money if I feed my family I told them I invest in real estate and they would always ask the second question. Well, can you show me and so I just started showing friends and family members how to do it and then I realized two things number one was fun and number two I had plenty of free time because when you're not working for somebody else   When you're not having like, if you're a property manager, you have many bosses. Let's say you have 10 different landlords, working with 10 different bosses. That's really what it comes down to. And if you don't have any bosses bossing you around, you have 40 plus or more hours of your life back to do whatever you want. And so I just started helping people. So fast forward, I started a podcast, the master passive income podcast, you were on it. And that podcast in 2015, over 2 million downloads now with me just coaching. It's usually a solo show, like literally a solo show where I don't even   It's just me teaching how to do this, but over 2 million downloads because I just want to give this out. Then wrote three, no, four books, coach thousands of people. Now even have a live event, bring in hundreds of real estate investors together, but all for a goal. Here's the main goal. It's to help 1 million people to invest in real estate. And the big reason why I decided to have this goal was because the more people that I serve in my life, the more money they make and the more money I make in the end.   And so now everything from coaching thousands of people to having live events where we're just coaching even more and helping even more to books and podcasts, YouTube, you name it, like social media, Instagram, I'm over a hundred, 200,000, almost 200,000 followers on it now, just giving. And here's the big thing, a takeaway that I would love to share with everybody listening. For you listening, you need to realize if you serve and if you try to serve people, then your life is going to get better. The more people that I serve,   My goodness, I make so much more money, but the great thing is it's not a win-lose. It's not like somebody loses in order for me to win. No, it should be a win-win-win. And so now everything I do at Master Passive Income, to the free courses, to the paid coaching, all that sort of stuff, it's to help people to invest in real estate to get 40 plus hours of their life back and become successfully unemployed.   Jason Hull (15:59) It's amazing. And that's just really, really awesome. You're doing big things. You're doing big things. And you're not the typical property management client. How many different property managers do you have? Because your portfolio is spread out now, or is it all in your network? Five different states.   Dustin Heiner (16:14) Five different states? Yeah, correct. Five different states.   I think we have five main property managers. ⁓ Yeah, five main property managers that I work with.   Jason Hull (16:20) Yeah.   And how many units in total do you?   Dustin Heiner (16:26) So   single family home, like I might say single family, four units and below. So I would consider anything four units and below be residential. We have 33, 32, 30 plus single family homes, short term, midterm and even long term. Then we have two large apartment complexes, one's near Nashville, 350 units and other one's in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 325 units. And so we have great property managers for those properties. Then also,   I've invested in some hotels and so we have the, you know, the management company for that. But, what I found, and this is the number one thing that I teach all my students, all my students, lots of them, because here's what the first thing they always say, Hey Dustin, I found a great city to invest in. I've already got five realtors sending me deals. said, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. Let's say you bought one of those properties. Who's going to manage that? And they said, I don't know. I said come on. Like you, you're putting the cart way before the horse realtors are the last thing because you need to make sure that the   business is going to run perpetually without you. Cause the last thing you want is another job. In fact, this is the one big thing that I see when a mom and pop investor, somebody buys one property and then they buy a second or third, maybe they get to five, six, maybe seven or eight and they're managing it themselves and they cannot scale. And I know your audience, everybody knows about scaling cause you want to scale your business, the property management business. Well, you can't scale if you're the only person doing all this sort of stuff. And so,   Here's another question I get that people, other investors or even my students say, Dustin, how do you afford a property manager in your properties? I say, I don't afford a property manager. Like I don't pay my taxes on any of my properties. I don't pay my insurance. I don't pay for my property manager. I don't pay for repairs. Meaning I don't have to get a job to pay for any of that. My tenants pay that in the form of rents. And then I make sure I do not buy a property.   unless all of those expenses are accounted for even repairs, vacancy factor, and especially property manager. And that's the thing that most people don't do is realize, let's account for all those expenses, but then utilizing your property manager well enough. Here's the big question. And so all your audience is property managers. So they're going to, they probably rarely get this question, but here's my favorite question that I ever asked property managers. One of the first ones that said, if you would invest your money in this city now,   Jason Hull (18:37) Mmm.   Dustin Heiner (18:48) What area would it be? What zip code, where would it be? That is gold. I've asked actually the opposite question. Where should I not invest that city? And property managers say, I probably shouldn't answer that because discrimination and all that sort of stuff. so the question is better. Where would you invest your money? And then, yeah, you're gonna understand the entire market because the property manager, but you also Jason, we're awesome. The question is,   Jason Hull (18:51) Mm-hmm.   Yeah, wherever you...   Dustin Heiner (19:12) Would you manage this property not after you bought the property, but before you buy the property? That's a big thing. Cause a lot of people buy a house because they listen to tick-tock gurus and they just bought a house and they, Oh yeah, it should work out. Well, if you don't have any of the manage it, it's no longer an asset. It's a liability. So how much better is you ask the property manager beforehand, especially if you are investing, you're seeing, or sorry, if you're a property manager, you're seeing where the best properties are, where the best clients are, the best tenants, all that sort of stuff.   Jason Hull (19:19) Yeah.   Yeah, sometimes 100, 1000 times over. Like they have a lot of anecdotal data, right? And data data. So the bad path then is you kind of mentioned is to go to a realtor first, get a property, and then maybe go find a property manager. That's a really bad path. And that's kind of the default path that a lot of people would go down. And they're just headed towards a potential train wreck. Odds are   that the realtors incentive is not to just get you into the best investment solution. You get the most money on a deal and then you're going to you're picking this property and you have no idea if it's going to work out and then you might not even realize you need a property manager and you're saying start with the property manager. Ask them the area.   Dustin Heiner (20:16) No, it's to sell a property. That's all it is.   Absolutely.   Jason Hull (20:34) get their advice and clarity and find the property manager that you would want to be able to manage this. Like find a good property manager first and then make some good decisions. make some, let them help you make some good decisions.   Dustin Heiner (20:48) Well,   how I would explain it is I'm going to find the experts and it could be also definitely property management, but think of also inspectors, mortgage brokers, contractors, plumbers, handymen, insurance agents. I'm not the expert. In fact, like I said, I've coached thousands of people now to invest in real estate successfully. And sometimes they'll ask me, hey, Dustin, you invest in this city.   You're the expert. Tell me like, where should I? Tell me all this stuff. said, Whoa, I'm not the expert at all. In fact, I don't want to, I might know a little bit, but I don't want to be the expert. I hire experts. I hire them. So if you're a property manager, what you need to be thinking is, well, number one, you are the expert in that area because you're currently investing your time in your business to build up for landlords to utilize you. Well, that's number one, but who else would you actually want to start working with?   Now, personally, what I find is the property manager. so if you're not a property manager, if you're an investor listening to this, your property manager is absolutely your quarterback. I treat them as best as I can. Like I treat them so well because they take care of me and they want to take care of me. If I'm a jerk, if I'm like, you know, withholding, withholding money or like, we don't need those repairs. And they're trying to do their job and I'm holding them back from it. They're not.   excited about working with me. And so what I want is as best I can, my property manager to look favorable on me so they could take care of my property so I can have all my life back to play with my kids.   Jason Hull (22:15) Yeah, I mean this very much goes along with like Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan's idea of who not how. Like finding the right who instead of going around and trying to just find the what like a property. Go find the who that can help you figure out how to do this instead of trying to figure out how to do everything on your own. Which is the slowest path to growth. Period. You know, is to do everything on your own.   Dustin Heiner (22:39) Well, you can't scale that way.   Yeah, you can't scale. If it's all about yourself, you can't scale. can't get like all my 30 plus properties. I love saying this. So a lot of people have heard of the book, the four hour work week. Good book and all. Basically, the premise is make your life so that you only have to work four hours a week. Well, honestly, I think working four hours a week is for suckers. I don't want to work four hours a week. I don't even want to work four hours a month. I maybe work 30 minutes a month on all of my properties because they get the property management statements.   I verify everything that's good, but I'll say this also. My daughter who's 16 years old, because I've coached a thousand people now, I coached her, she's my oldest and all my other kids are going to do it. She bought her first property four months ago and I coached her. She now does all the bookkeeping, all the, basically instead of me doing the work, 30 minutes, I pay her to do it and she oversees her property as well. And it is so much better when you have the experts first. One quick last thing, because you mentioned a really key, most people, and I did this too.   Jason Hull (23:32) if   Dustin Heiner (23:36) I wouldn't write to how do we find properties? In fact, my most downloaded podcasts are because on Master Passive Income, have lots of like how to find properties, how to fund properties, how to find property management. Like literally, it's just coaching. And the most downloaded are how to find and how to fund. Those are by far because people think those are the that's number one things that they don't have, but they believe that they need, which is not necessarily the case. Same thing on my YouTube channel. The most downloaded videos I have one.   That's like think like 16 different ways to get creative financing. If you don't have money yourself, how to buy properties with creative financing. I'm the most downloaded, but that's here's here's what I definitely got to say this. If you don't have your business that could run itself, because I always talk about building your business first. If you don't have your business that could run itself, then you're going to be losing money. And they give you a quick example what that looks like. I buy a property that's going to be making me money every single month and I don't buy it unless all expenses.   Jason Hull (24:11) Yeah.   Dustin Heiner (24:34) property manager included, vacancy factor, repairs, all included. And I add on my profit. If I want to make $400 a month, I don't buy a house unless the price is low enough, interest rates right, all the expenses are right to where I'm making that profit every single month on that property. And then obviously rents go up. But here's what it's like if you do not build a business, you do not get the right people in place. Imagine a convenience store. You're to start a convenience store, know, candy bars and soda machines and all that sort of stuff. Well, you will not sign a lease on a location.   open the doors and set a box of candy bars in on the ground. You wouldn't do that. You go out of business in two seconds. But what you would do is you would get, you'd build the business first. You get the gondolas, the shelving units, and all the candy bars go on the countertops, cold storage, bank accounts, cash registers, insurance, managers, everything in the business before you buy any inventory. Same thing with real estate investing. You build the entire business, get everybody the right people in the business, and then every property that I own,   is a piece of inventory that I put into my business. When you start realizing that even though you're an investor, you are a business owner that has inventory. Because I remember in 2006 when I first started investing, 2008 happened. 2008 happened and the crash happened. I knew so many real estate investors went bankrupt. fact, still talk, if anybody was investing back then, most likely you ask them, how did you do in 2008? I went bankrupt.   Jason Hull (25:44) Thanks.   out   Dustin Heiner (25:57) Honestly, that's literally, that's conversation happen all the time. But for me, I made more money. I was blown away. In fact, I was worried because I was just new to this. And because I was solely investing for cashflow. Now appreciation will come. That's great. But I'm going to give these properties to my kids. But I was solely investing for cashflow, $500 a month, $600 a month. And because of that, sadly, people, they had to get foreclosure because of the economy and all that sort of stuff.   but what did to the pool of renters, the pool went up. So there's more demand, supply's the same. In fact, I just buy properties and there's more renters. So my rents went up. I made more money in the crash when everybody else was going bankrupt because I was solely investing for cashflow. One quick, let me say one more thing, because I definitely want you to jump in. One more quick thing. Imagine that candy bar that you would buy to sell. If you had a candy bar business,   If you can buy it for 50 cents and sell it for a dollar and you knew all day every day, you can buy it for 50 cents, sell it for a dollar. You think, how can I get more money? Well, you'll make money. But let's say this is a great thing about real estate investing. Let's say you didn't even have 50 cents. It took you 25 cents to borrow 50. Well, you're out of pocket 75 cents. You still sell it for a dollar and you make 25 cents every single time. You would do that deal every day and you would think, how can I get more money? You'd borrow it. But here's one thing you would not do. Same thing with real estate investing.   You would not buy a candy bar for $2 if you could only sell it for a dollar. You do not do business to lose money. So I'll pause it because you could probably have plenty of questions, but we want to build a business and make money.   Jason Hull (27:26) Perfect.   No, love your analogies. I love that you're equating it to like even just buying and selling candy bars, which maybe some of us did in elementary school as a side hustle, or our kids do sometimes. My daughter makes little rubber bands, like little bracelets with different colors, and she goes and sells them. And the materials cost very little. And then she's like building these bracelets and ask them what colors they want. And then she's selling them at a market. She's like, I made like 20 bucks, you know.   Dustin Heiner (27:48) yeah.   Jason Hull (28:00) Yeah, so, you know, we've done this as kids, but when you equate it to something so simple, because we look at raw real estate and the complexity and all the numbers and we're like, this might make sense in the long run with some depreciation and then like, yeah, and you're like, let's keep this really simple. Let's like equate it to a candy bar.   Dustin Heiner (28:21) Because all that will come   like appreciation, depreciation, tax benefits, market appreciation over time, forced appreciation. Like when you buy a house, you fix it up, you guys know it'll make more money or it'll be worth more. All that will come, but income does not always come. So if you buy for income every single month from your property, could be long term, midterm, know, 30, 69 days, short term, or even co-living. If you buy for that, you will always get wealth.   If you buy, I'm hoping it'll go up in value. Like I hope this candy bar, I'll buy it for $2. Hopefully from a dollar now it'll be a $3. If you hope you're going to be stuck holding the bag and it's going to hurt. And so what you want to do is you want to make sure that you are investing for income. Cause when you invest for income, everything else will always come. But if you invest for just appreciation, you will not necessarily get income. You won't necessarily get all the benefits of everything that comes with real estate.   Jason Hull (29:17) Yeah, the other thing is the property managers often are one of the first to know if an existing client or owner wants to sell that property off. So they're great people to know if you want access to off market deals. I'm sure the property managers you have would love to get all of their clients to sell their properties and give them to you because you're easy. You're like their dream client because they'll have a one off like super emotional accidental investor that couldn't sell the property that's like.   driving them nuts and like they want it to be a perfect time capsule for a year because grandma planted the flower bed and like Timmy has his height in the door frame and like they want it to be perfect so they can sell it a year later and they're like, and it's like 10 times to 100 times harder to deal with operationally for them. The operational costs are really extreme. It doesn't sound like you're calling your property managers all the time.   Dustin Heiner (29:53) Ha ha!   Let me just say this. I don't want to talk to my property managers like month after month after month. I don't want, I just want the money. And as long as everything's going well, which is here's another thing. So if you're an investor, you want to make sure that your property managers understand your systems and procedures and processes. Like I have different property managers. They all treat all their landlords, everybody differently. But I say, when you're working with my properties, here's exactly how I want you to do it. And it's very simple things like   Jason Hull (30:13) Fuck it.   Dustin Heiner (30:37) Hey, rent's due on the first, late after the third, then you put a three day notice on the door if they don't need to get a late fee. And then once that three day notice is up, you start the eviction process. Like that's clockwork. It's most non-discriminate, yes.   Jason Hull (30:47) And this is pretty typical.   This is pretty typical, like decent property managers are already doing this anyway. Like this is really standard stuff.   Dustin Heiner (30:55) They should be. But I don't want to talk to the property manager. They're great people. I don't hire them unless   I like them. But at the same time, leave me alone so I can play with my kids. I could go to golf. could go to, I'm going to South Africa tomorrow for an investor trip. You know, I just want to live my life. Property manager, you take care of it. And if they are doing what I honestly like, I, they don't do well, meaning if they, if there's, it's not getting rented or there's that's a month after month where we're not getting,   rents paid, if things like that, then I'm like, I gotta find somebody else. Cause I don't want to have to think about it. If I have to think about the property, then why do I need you?   Jason Hull (31:29) Yeah, this is a challenge. They're property managers listening right now. Pay attention to this. Because a lot of property management business owners that come to us, they're not setting healthy boundaries with their clients. Because their clients don't know what they need. And so a lot of times the clients will artificially create a worse property manager. Because they're like, I need like this and I need that. I want, how's the renting process going? And did you talk to some people? Did you show it? And like what they think.   and they want to be so involved in the whole process, they're trying to micromanage the manager. And the manager's way better at this than them. By their own admission, they suck at this stuff, and they don't like it. But then they're trying to micromanage the manager, and bad property managers let them do it. Like the worst property managers usually have the highest operational costs in their business because they give every tenant and every owner a blank check for their time.   call me anytime and they phone system stuff so you can call them anytime and ask any question and they don't have a good system and so then they're wondering why they have, I had a client company once with 600 units under management in their business and they were making zero dollars. Property management can easily be death by a thousand cuts. I have seen inside thousands of property management companies and there are a lot that are making very little money.   And then like my wife Sarah, she had a property management business with 260 units. She was pulling in 90, 60 to 90 % profit margin. It took her, it was a part-time job for her really. And she moved to Austin with me and she managed these remotely. And these were C-class properties in Pennsylvania. We're talking $1,000 rent or less. This is like ghetto, like difficult tenants, difficult situations. And she had such strong boundaries.   and such good relationships with their owners in setting those boundaries that if they got needy or whatever, she would tell them that she was gonna fire them. And they were desperate to keep her because most property managers suck because of some of these reasons. And so she set really strong boundaries. And so her business was easy. She eventually installed one part-time person boots on the ground to help her open up property, show property, whatever, because she couldn't be there to do that and to pick up the mail.   and she had 60 to 90 % profit margin. It's like ridiculous. And so this is one of the trainings we have in our platform that we coach clients on, but property management could be death by a thousand cuts very easily. so it's just as important as it is for you to find a good manager to partner with, for them to find good clients to partner with and to be picky about their clients.   or to at least set better boundaries and expectations with their clients to help them be more like you.   Dustin Heiner (34:16) Absolutely. And it has to be a beneficial event where you guys are working together, a relationship. And like I said in the very beginning, I try to serve as many people as possible. The more people I serve in this life, the better my life gets, better their life gets. And as long as it's a win-win, in fact, one of my property managers, I paid him 12 % of the rent. the rent used to be, yeah, like when I, so this is when I first started investing in, it was in Ohio in 2006.   prices of rent were like 500 bucks. from 10, 10 % to 12%, it was like, you know, five bucks. And I was like, yes, go ahead. Now these are renting for a thousand dollars, but it's a hard area. It's like D plus C minus. I mean, it's a really rough area. In fact, I don't suggest any of my students invest there anymore because it's really, really rough. It's hard to find, like this property manager, I found them diamond in the rough, they worked with them for 10 years and then he retired and his daughter took over. So she's doing great too, but   All that to say, what you need to do is as you're hiring, finding the right property manager. So if you're an investor and you were trying to find a right property manager, you really need to make sure that you're paying them accordingly. That's going to be like, like I said, 10 % to 12%. Exactly. Exactly. Like they're going to make my life easier. What I need to do as an investor, if I need to pay more for a property manager, I need to buy the property for less.   Jason Hull (35:26) Yeah, don't try to cheat out on them. Yeah.   Dustin Heiner (35:38) I don't buy the property unless it pays for that good property manager. If I have to pay 15 % for good property manager, I don't buy the house unless I can afford that 15%. And in the end, my property manager in that one specific area, that's like C or D, D plus to C minus, I don't talk to her because she's so fantastic and she just doesn't bother me. I just let her run with it she does such a great job. And so it's such a great beneficial environment.   Jason Hull (36:03) Yeah, love it. I'm biased, but obviously, but I believe DoorGrow creates the best property managers because we help them figure some of these really simple things that they need to get down in. Sometimes they can't even see. Like one of the things we've been rolling out with clients is a three tier hybrid model because different investors have different strategies. There's really three psychological profiles of buyers that are taught in pricing psychology and those are the cheapos, the normals, and the premiums.   And so you need a pricing model that is a better fit for them. And the cheapos usually are really hyper concerned about price. They're not really focused on the long term as much. They're short-sighted. And so they're looking at what's the lowest fee I could get and they're like, cheaping out and they're making some big mistakes in the long run.   Dustin Heiner (36:46) Let me add, let   me add one thing with the cheapos. The cheapos will be the worst clientele. They will be the most problematic. It's just how life is. In fact, I'll give you.   Jason Hull (36:53) Next.   Operational cost   is the highest with the cheapos and so So one of the things that we coach our clients on is to make sure that they have these pricing models that balance between The a la carte of a cheapo and like you're gonna pay for everything extra so that they because then you're they're trying to gamble against the house Property managers the house and the property management should be winning right but a lot of times what property managers mistakenly do   Dustin Heiner (37:00) Absolutely.   Jason Hull (37:25) is they subsidize all of their lowest rent properties and their worst owners with their highest rent properties and their best owners. And they have properties in their portfolio they're actually losing money on. And sometimes they don't even realize this because they're not assessing them individually. We're like, yeah, you should fire those. Like you should just let them go or raise the price. It seems that is so obvious, but.   Dustin Heiner (37:45) especially if you're losing money on it.   Jason Hull (37:50) A lot of property managers have an entire section of their portfolio that's like 80, it's like the 80-20 rule. It's 80 % of their stress and their work and their challenges and it's like 20 % of their profits.   Dustin Heiner (38:02) And so here's a fun thing, like a thought, as you were saying, this had gotten to mind if and when somebody is pulling their hair out, an investor pulling their hat over a property or multiple properties, they just, they're just going to sell and because they're not good at investing. In fact, that's what I love to do is I coach people how to be good investors, how to make sure we're buying it right, how we're finding the right people, all that sort of stuff. Well, what's great is let's say they, you're, you fire them as clients, you fire them.   And they're like, I pull my hair out. I'm just going to sell. then eventually a good landlord will buy it. Good investor will buy it and they'll start working with you. So you start cutting out the 80 % that is just wasting your time and money and keep going after the 20 % that are making the money, making your life easier. That's just going to help everybody. Like it's just going to keep rising because in the end, the bad landlords there, they should just not be owning property.   Jason Hull (38:55) Yeah, I've had some interesting guests on our show recently and one of them runs a company. Basically, he explained to me that investors outside of the US love the US for real estate investing because he said almost nowhere else in the world can you get a 30 year fixed rate mortgage that allows you to do a payment that's low enough you could cash flow on it and just start making money right away, month after month.   And so they want to be able to get access to this. And so they help them set this up quickly. Get an EIN in a week and like get everything set up. Because it's complicated for them to figure that out. There's another company. I had a gentleman named Lioran. Really cool guy. Originally from Israel. He's here in the US, investor. And he created a company called Blanket. There's this really amazing platform for property managers that they can white label and that they use that allows them   It's like kind of like a property retention platform. So it allows them to put their clients portfolios into it, get a ton of extra data on their portfolios, and then they can, if they decide they want to sell this property, allows all the other investors in the entire blanket network to be able to get this and they get to keep managing that property without having to give it up. So property managers can have the properties   turn over and go to different owners and different investors, but they still retain them as that property is in their portfolio to manage. And so there's just, there's some really amazing things out there now for property managers. There's amazing tools, systems. We've got a lot of clients getting AI maintenance coordination using some really cool AI maintenance coordination tools that's allowing, cause getting a maintenance coordinator in a property management business, hard.   Ideally, it's like they're a veteran of doing maintenance of like 20 years and they don't want to run their own maintenance company and they want to come help you figure out what needs to be done. But there's an AI maintenance coordinator company that has been programmed by a guy who managed 30,000 units coordinating maintenance, all the way from small all the way up to that.   a long lengthy amount of experience and the system has programmed into it probably by now over a half a million work orders. Like and so it knows how to handle this better than probably anybody that you could hire and once you tell it you still have to train it you have to teach it but once you tell it how to handle things it can do it. And it's now doing phone calls it's like doing emails it's doing text like it's the craziest thing ever. And so there's this this there's this weird sort of   AI revolution happening right now and the smartest property managers are already adopting some of these tools because it allows them to scale their operations effectively. Eventually it'll be so commonplace everybody's like yeah we're all using this stuff and we can all like it's cheap enough or whatever and who knows maybe we'll all be out of jobs including property managers who knows but right now there's a good opportunity that if property managers are on the bleeding edge of what's working   you get as an investor a better property manager. And if.   Dustin Heiner (41:53) Well, for me,   there are plenty of software out there. Turbo Tenants One, Avails and other, apartments.com, those are fine, but I don't wanna even do any of that stuff personally. Yeah, as an investor, I don't wanna deal with that stuff. I wanna hire a person. And honestly, I don't think that AI, even though there's great tools as a property manager to help your business better, I don't wanna have AI run my business because I want an actual person   Jason Hull (42:05) this part of the night.   Yes.   Dustin Heiner (42:23) that it's   going to make sure like they have the emotions and feelings that they know, okay, there's something here, there's something there. And I just know personally, and this is why I teach all my students is, hey, these software are great if you're gonna manage yourself, but you can't scale if you're managing yourself. What we need is to hire the right people. It's all about, like you said earlier, there's a book, it's who, not how. We don't want to figure out the how, we want to get the right people in place. And one last quick thing that I said this a little bit earlier,   But people always ask, well, Dustin, how do you afford this, that, or the other? And the way I don't afford it, I make sure I don't buy a property unless all those expenses are accounted for, like the property manager to taxes, insurance, and even my profit. I make sure that is in there before I buy the property.   Jason Hull (43:10) Yeah, we have a ROI calculator that some of our clients use that we built out that already has their fees built into it so that the investors can see what are the benefits of this. What are the tax benefits? How does the cash flow like all this? And then, yeah, and in that, if it's not going to math out, then you just change how much you're putting down, you know, or you're getting a different property, right? so, but the...   The property management fees, if you're smart, should already be built in.   Dustin Heiner (43:41) Absolutely, 100%. And on top of that, again, I have to say your profit. If you're just guessing how much profit you're making, in fact, I always like to be conservative in my expenses higher so I don't get surprised, oh man, I didn't have the, or, and, or my revenue or the income from the rents. I estimate it or be conservative on the lower end. So if I could rent it for 1300, I run my numbers maybe at 1250, maybe 1200.   just so I'm not gonna be like, man, I can't make any money out of this property. Because trust me, it's really easy to overlook something if you're not hiring experts. Like my property managers, they know, here's a good property manager. I'll say, hey, property manager, I'm looking to buy this property, know, number one happy street. Tell me about it. Will you rent it? How much will it rent for? What's the vacancy factor? Will you manage it? What's the clientele like? And the grit ones will say, you know what? I know that area. In fact, I have a property like one or two streets over.   We were trying to rent it for 1400 Zillow said 1400, but we couldn't rent it for that. We got 1300 for it. That's gold. That like, is so much better information for an investor. When a property manager is he knows he or she knows exactly what's going on in there on the ground. And that's going to make sure that you're doing everything right. So when you hire the experts, they're going to make sure you do it right. Because especially property managers, I would say realtors, we said that a little bit earlier. Realtors just want to sell, sell for the high smoke, but your property managers.   for the longevity of that property, they're taking care of it. They're constantly making sure that it's working for you. So always ask them before you buy the property.   Jason Hull (45:16) I love that. This is a great message Dustin. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing this. I'm pretty confident that our clients and property managers listening is gonna be like, man, like every investor should listen and do what Dustin says. This would make our lives so much easier. And it makes them feel so much more valuable as a property manager. So I appreciate you sharing a positive message to everybody here on the DoorGroves show.   Anything else that in imparting that you would like to say to property managers that might be listening?   Dustin Heiner (45:46) Yeah, so one thing that I mentioned a little bit earlier is having a floor of income that's outside of whatever your job or work, your business, having a floor of income coming in. And what I planned on was I asked my wife, how much money do I need to make every single month in order for me to quit my job? Like what's our expenses like? And I remember the number, plan is day $4,200, insurance, mortgage, food, like you name it, everything, all of our expenses. I thought, okay, to become financially independent,   Jason Hull (45:52) Yeah.   would probably be double   nowadays. Which would probably be double nowadays.   Dustin Heiner (46:14) What's that? Oh,   probably, probably. Yeah, definitely. And so I said, okay, this is just math. If I buy one property that made me $500 a month. Well, in one year, that's $6,000. 10 properties, that is $5,000 a month. Okay, I got 10 properties right there. Then it covers it. That's $60,000 a year in income. 20 properties, that is $10,000 a month. That's $120,000 a year. That's passive. That's cash flow. That's after expenses.   And I thought, my goodness, all I need to do is hit that certain number. And then once I do, I don't have to work anymore. But here's the great thing. I had 40 plus hours of my life back that now I only build businesses that affect me and my family, as opposed to working for somebody else or, you know, having 10 different bosses that are just pulling my hair out. Now, let's say you had properties that of your own and you had your own property management company, you can fire those.   Jason Hull (46:59) You   Dustin Heiner (47:10) landlords that are taking up so much your time. You're making five bucks a month. It's like, it's not even worth it. Fire them because you have a floor of income. You are able to move forward. So in the end, when you're investing in real estate, you're going to be able to have a floor of income, which is so much more amazing because you have so many more options. Options are what's going to help you to make sure you scale and level up in life.   Jason Hull (47:33) Love it. Yeah, I think it's it's there's few things investment wise that can have as big of a return as having a business. So property managers listening. Cool. Build your business up. Grow that. But if your primary goal is just to get more doors, that's to manage for other people that I think you're making a mistake like your primary goal should be since you know real estate investing and they say invest in what you know.   you should be stacking your own doors. You should be investing and putting that in just a much better store of income for the long term and it's gonna grow and it's also if you're making a cash flow, you've already got the systems, you've got everything. Like you would make way more money on those units. So you should be building up your own real estate portfolio. One of our clients, he fired most of his third party clients because he just focuses on using his property management business now as a honey pot or a fly trap.   people come to him and say, hey, I've got this rental property. He's like, cool, let me scare the crap out of you of the tax liability if you ever decide to sell it. And maybe you should just, you know, do seller financing with me without talking about seller financing. All right, and so he's just got all these properties. He's just stacking doors and he's making so much money, right? So if you're listening and he's in our program, come be in our program. You get to hang out with this guy and other really amazing people do amazing things. But if you're a property manager, build your business up.   Yes, but also build up your real estate portfolio because you're one of the best at this. You're an expert at this. And that puts you in a state of integrity anyway, like if you believe in this stuff. And then build up your portfolio of clients portfolio.   Dustin Heiner (49:10) Hey Jason,   would you mind if I gave everybody a real estate investing course completely for free just for listening to the show?   Jason Hull (49:16) I would not mind that at all.   Dustin Heiner (49:19) Awesome. I like I said, my goal is to help 1 million people to invest in real estate. want you to invest. So get my real estate investing course completely for free. If you text the word rental, R E N T A L rental to three, three, seven, seven, seven rental to three, three, seven, seven, seven. I'll literally give it to you for free. Or you can go to master passive income.com forward slash free course. All one word for it. Master passive income.com forward slash free course.   I'll show you how to find if you are investing your area, that's great, but let's say you want to go into another area. I love investing out of state five different states now that I'm investing in how to build a business everywhere, anywhere in the country, how to scale to become financially independent. You can also find me quickly. I'll just share that master passive income, the podcast. Like I just love giving out so much more coaching on the podcast. I've had people binge the entire 400 episodes now, Jason, binge all of them and like DM me on Instagram. They'll say Dustin.   just from listening to your podcast, I started investing in real estate. I'm like, yes, that's exactly why I have the show. So yeah, one quick last thing. If you want to DM me, The Dustin Heiner on Instagram. love chatting with people. I love helping people. And in the end, when we all invest in real estate, everybody wins because we have great properties that people need to rent. We make money, property managers make money. We have a floor of income coming in.   But in the end, my goal is to help a million people. it's just another way that I can serve. But honestly, in the end, everybody wins.   Jason Hull (50:51) I love it. So they can text rental to 33777. They can go to masterpassiveincome.com slash free course. And they can go to masterpassiveincome.com to check out your stuff. then the, the Dustin Heiner, H-E-I-N-E-R.   Dustin Heiner (51:14) Correct.   More than likely you'll find me. I'm probably the only the Dustin, like if you just type that in, but man, I've been working really hard at Instagram. find out I actually kind of like it. I do like it. I'm almost 200,000 followers now. I didn't buy any of them. Like literally just hard work, putting in just great content, helping people.   Jason Hull (51:29) Yeah,   you're crushing it, man. I'm at 8,000, so I've got to figure out how to 10x my goal to that. So I'm working on that too. very awesome.   Dustin Heiner (51:38) We could definitely chat some more.   I could show you at least some insights of what I've done, but no, it's been great. I would love if your entire audience, all your property managers realize, let's just, it could be as simple as once a year, you just keep one for yourself. You find one, you buy it, and just year after year, you get more and more properties. I think that's a minimum you should be doing one a year.   Jason Hull (51:42) All right, we'll keep going.   So how do we start matchmaking your best investors that get it with my best property managers that get it? This is something for us to think about maybe offline. I don't know.   Dustin Heiner (52:08) Mmm.   Yes, we can   definitely chat through what it really comes down to is areas, know, areas like what cities are they investing in? But let's definitely chat because I think we could have a really good, really good way because I might. In fact, I while we are on this call, you know, have I have slack and that's where the community I've got thousands of students now, but we're in there chatting. I saw one note pop up, Christina. She's been with me for years and years and years. She's doing really well. And she was like, man, in Cleveland, like I have this property manager. I'm not going to name their name.   they're falling apart, I need another property manager, and so what it really comes down to, maybe you just help me know where they're managing, and then I could just point them to my students.   Jason Hull (52:48) Or   tell that person, if any of your investors see this episode or whatever, tell them to get their property managers to go talk to DoorGrow. Just say, look, you're not doing a great job. I'm actually considering finding another property manager. I think you should go listen to Jason and go talk to DoorGrow and get your shit together.   Dustin Heiner (53:05) That's a fantastic idea.   Absolutely.   Jason Hull (53:08) Because here's the thing, property managers do not wake up in the morning saying, I want to have a shitty business today. But most property managers suck. So where's the disconnect? The disconnect is they don't have the right strategies for growth. They're trying to do a bunch of digital marketing. There's very little search volume of people looking for property managers online. And usually the ones that are are the worst. They're the cheapest owners that view them as a commodity. They're at the end of the sales cycle. Word of mouth usually captures all the good stuff.   So these are the shitty scraps that fell off the word amount table. they're built, so they're spending money that they don't really have to get clients that they don't really want. And then they have these portfolios that are really difficult to manage. so then customer service is the first thing to go out the window because they're struggling. And I call it the cycle of suck. Take on any client, you have bad clients. You take on bad clients, you have bad properties. You have bad properties to deal with. The tenants are not gonna be happy. So you have bad tenants. And then you're gonna have a bad reputation. And that sums, and then what does that do?   helps you attract more bad owners. And so this sums up the whole industry in aggregate and that's our mission at DoorGrow is to disrupt that cycle of suck and we have a different cycle, a cycle of success where you're filtering at each stage and improving things at each stage. yeah.   Dustin Heiner (54:22) Fantastic,   man. I'm super pumped. I'm glad you're doing this because we need good property managers and property managers need to be buying properties themselves. So I appreciate having me on the show,   Jason Hull (54:32) Awesome, thanks for being here. Alright, so appreciate Dustin hanging out with us. If you felt stuck or stagnant and you want to take your property management business to the next level, reach out to us at doorgrow.com or if you're an investor and you're tired of your property manager but there aren't any other good ones either, then send them to doorgrow.com. Also join our free community just for property management business owners at doorgrowclub.com.   on Facebook and if you found this even a little bit helpful, don't forget to subscribe and leave us a review. We'd really appreciate it. Until next time, remember the slowest path to growth is to do it alone. So let's grow together. Bye everyone.  

Hey sloots, it's Sofia your favorite water sign and it's my birthday! But the age I'm turning is confidential – please respect my privacy at this time. In case you haven't heard, we have a lot in the works right now at Sloot Media, so for the first time since the show's launch, I'm taking my birthday off and giving you a re-run of my 30th birthday solo episode! It'll ring some bells once you see the guest I have sitting in the chair next to me…Enjoy this special re-run and I'll see you next week xoxo Follow Sofia on:  Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sofiafranklyn   TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@sofiafranklyn   Twitter - https://twitter.com/sofiafranklyn    Threads - https://www.threads.net/@sofiafranklyn  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://ww.audacvinc.com/privacy-policy    Episode Highlights: 00:00 Intro 00:57 Correct birth date + wrong ethnicity 02:54 Career status 04:41 Blade flight + Europe trip 06:19 Episode re-run 08:12 Meet Miss B 09:35 Fluffy pink dress + turning 30 12:27 Birthday adventures 16:02 SWAF is off limits to the BF 18:31 Mad Sofia 23:37 Post hookup etiquette 25:21 Who was that? 32:02 Missing etiquette 34:43 Let's about etiquette 38:24 Setting + delusion 45:30 Question 1: Farting during orgasm 49:12 Question 2: Fetish talk 51:07 Question 3: Mom vs vibrator 53:18 Question 4: Cheating BF To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jase challenges the traditional view of Heaven's golden streets and gets into a grocery store showdown with a Goliath fact-dropper. Zach shares the powerful story of a listener whose life was changed through the podcast and his baptism at Zach's church. The guys reflect on Phil's resurrection hope, the oyster review that scarred him for life, and how the Prophets, baptism symbolism, and the song of Moses all point to the true treasure of being planted in God's presence through the resurrection of Christ. In this episode: Exodus 15, verses 11, 17–18; Romans 6, verses 3–10; Romans 8, verses 6–23; Hebrews 12, verses 22–24; 2 Kings 13, verse 21; John 10, verses 17–18; Revelation 5, verse 9; 1 Peter 3, verse 21; Acts 2, verses 22–24; 1 John 3, verse 2 “Unashamed” Episode 1128 is sponsored by: Control Body Odor ANYWHERE with @‌shop.mando and get 20% off + free shipping with promo code UNASHAMED at https://shopmando.com! #mandopod https://andrewandtodd.com or call 888-888-1172 — These guys are the real deal. Get trusted mortgage guidance and expertise from someone who shares your values! https://myphdweightloss.com — Find out how Al is finally losing weight! Schedule your one-on-one consultation today by visiting the website or calling 864-644-1900 https://tomorrowclubs.org/30camps — Join this disciple-making movement by sponsoring a Tomorrow Clubs summer camp! Just $1000 sponsors a full five day camp for 100 kids. Any amount will help Listen to Not Yet Now with Zach Dasher on Apple, Spotify, iHeart, or anywhere you get podcasts. —  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode of Red Menace, Breht and Alyson dive into Mao Zedong's pivotal 1957 speech On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People. This foundational text offers insight into Mao's dialectical approach to politics, particularly in navigating the complex terrain of class struggle within socialist society. Together they explore Mao's crucial distinction between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and how this distinction can guide revolutionary praxis. The discussion includes an analysis of the “unity–struggle–unity” dialectic, the historical context and lessons of the Hundred Flowers and Hundred Schools campaigns, and the subsequent Anti-Rightist backlash. They also examine Mao's critique of Han chauvinism and draw parallels to white chauvinism in the contemporary U.S., as well as Mao's position on Tibet and the historical legacy of how that conflict played out, and how it is still weaponized today. ---------------------- Follow, Subscribe, & Learn more about Red Menace & Rev Left Radio: revleftradio.com

Florida Representative María Salazar --whose parents were foreigners to America, and who still maintains her bonds to her non-American heritage by spelling "María" in the Spanish fashion using the "acento ortográfico" over the "i"—is leading a group of RINO GOP traitors in pushing her “Dignity Act” that would grant mass amnesty to millions of illegal migrant third-world invaders of our nation. In effect, María would have us extend "dignity" to illegal migrant third-world invaders who broke into our nation against our will and laws, and now demand to stay, with a fast-track to American citizenship—and the interim a status as a sub-class of menial laborers ineligible for full participation in American society.In other words, she's advocating for an illegal migrant apartheid in America.And this is GOOD news. Why? Because these RINO GOP traitors to our nation are exposing themselves to public view. In a nation where our own LEGAL immigrants are overwhelmingly in favor of deporting the 100 million illegal migrant third-world invaders in our nation, including deporting all the unlawfulness, gangs, drugs, violent crime, and consumption of billions of dollars of scarce American resources—including housing, healthcare, employment, education, and more—MAGA is perfectly equipped to politically excise GOP RINO politicians like María Salazar from Congress. Indeed, given that María Salazar is in a congressional district that is R +20, in the area of south Miami, her traitorous proposed legislation perfectly opens the door for virtually ANYBODY on the right to primary against her and win easily. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

In this recap of the conversation with Wendee Close, founder and CEO of Goals2Life, a personal development platform that helps people turn their dreams into achievable goals. Lesley Logan and Brad Crowell, dive into how burnout led Wendee to build a more values-aligned life and business, how planning can fuel purpose, and why taking bold, intentional action is the key to owning your next-level identity. If you've ever felt overwhelmed or stuck, this episode will help you get back on track one meaningful step at a time.If you have any questions about this episode or want to get some of the resources we mentioned, head over to LesleyLogan.co/podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/. If you have any comments or questions about the Be It pod shoot us a message at beit@lesleylogan.co mailto:beit@lesleylogan.co. And as always, if you're enjoying the show please share it with someone who you think would enjoy it as well. It is your continued support that will help us continue to help others. Thank you so much! Never miss another show by subscribing at LesleyLogan.co/subscribe https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/#follow-subscribe-free.In this episode you will learn about:Tips for safely storing your Reformer in a humid garage.What Wendee asks herself daily to stay aligned and focused.How asking for help can connect you to the right people.A powerful mindset shift to embody your future self now.Why sleep is your secret weapon for clarity and creativity.Episode References/Links:Agency Mini - https://prfit.biz/miniOPC Summer Tour - https://opc.me/tourOPC Summer Tour Calgary - Opc.me/CalgaryUK Mullet Tour - https://opc.me/ukCambodia October 2025 Retreat Waitlist - https://crowsnestretreats.comContrology Reformer - https://beitpod.com/reformerSubmit your questions - https://beitpod.com/questionsGoals2Llife Website - https://www.Goals2Life.com If you enjoyed this episode, make sure and give us a five star rating and leave us a review on iTunes, Podcast Addict, Podchaser or Castbox. https://lovethepodcast.com/BITYSIDEALS! DEALS! DEALS! DEALS! https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentCheck out all our Preferred Vendors & Special Deals from Clair Sparrow, Sensate, Lyfefuel BeeKeeper's Naturals, Sauna Space, HigherDose, AG1 and ToeSox https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/memberships/perks/#equipmentBe in the know with all the workshops at OPC https://workshops.onlinepilatesclasses.com/lp-workshop-waitlistBe It Till You See It Podcast Survey https://pod.lesleylogan.co/be-it-podcasts-surveyBe a part of Lesley's Pilates Mentorship https://lesleylogan.co/elevate/FREE Ditching Busy Webinar https://ditchingbusy.com/ Resources:Watch the Be It Till You See It podcast on YouTube! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gLesley Logan website https://lesleylogan.co/Be It Till You See It Podcast https://lesleylogan.co/podcast/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan https://onlinepilatesclasses.com/Online Pilates Classes by Lesley Logan on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjogqXLnfyhS5VlU4rdzlnQProfitable Pilates https://profitablepilates.com/about/Follow Us on Social Media:Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lesley.logan/The Be It Till You See It Podcast YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq08HES7xLMvVa3Fy5DR8-gFacebook https://www.facebook.com/llogan.pilatesLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-logan/The OPC YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/@OnlinePilatesClasses Episode Transcript:Lesley Logan 0:00  Don't beat yourself up. It's ask yourself very clearly, like, why haven't I done this? What has been in the way? Is this actually something I still want to do? Can I actually do it and then set new measurable goals, set new milestones and make it happen. Lesley Logan 0:14  Welcome to the Be It Till You See It podcast where we talk about taking messy action, knowing that perfect is boring. I'm Lesley Logan, Pilates instructor and fitness business coach. I've trained thousands of people around the world and the number one thing I see stopping people from achieving anything is self-doubt. My friends, action brings clarity and it's the antidote to fear. Each week, my guest will bring bold, executable, intrinsic and targeted steps that you can use to put yourself first and Be It Till You See It. It's a practice, not a perfect. Let's get started. Lesley Logan 0:53  Welcome back to the Be It Till You See It interview recap where my co-host in life, Brad, and I are going to dig into the purposeful convo I had with Wendee Close in our last episode. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, feel free to listen to that one first, then come back and listen to this one, or listen to this one and see if you agree with what we liked about that one. It's your choice. That's what's really important about the Be It Till You See It podcast, you choose. You choose how you want to listen. Today is July 17th. Brad Crowell 1:22  You choose very closely. Lesley Logan 1:23  Yeah, I hope you like that, Wendee. I'm sure she hasn't heard that before. It's like, my mom's last name growing up was Friesen, and like, she was super tall, so they would always go, how is the weather up there? Is it Friesen? Right, like, wow. I know kids are clever and cruel. Anyways, that's, I don't know why that popped in my head. Welcome to ADHD. So today is July 17th 2025 and it's National Tattoo Day. It was also another day, but obviously I have to pick this one, tattooing, the art of inserting pigment under the dermis layer of the skin. Brad Crowell 2:00  In case you didn't know. Lesley Logan 2:01  To create a decorative, symbolic or pictorial design or just a sticker on your body, permanent sticker on your body. Brad Crowell 2:01  Permanent sticker on your body. Lesley Logan 2:06  How I like to think of it. And on National Tattoo Day, July 17th, we set time aside to learn more about the tattooing process. It's a societal importance and history. Okay, here we go.Brad Crowell 2:17  I didn't know that. I'm in on societal importance. Lesley Logan 2:20  You guys, in case you don't understand the process of picking which day, it really is like what title speaks to us, and then we learn about the day as we read about it with you on air, and that someday could become problematic, but we'll edit it out then I guess you'll never know. So if you don't have a tattoo, you likely, or you're likely, to know someone who does. And if you've asked them how they knew at the time when they were getting inked whether they would still want that design on their skin years or decades later, you may have just gotten a peculiar look instead of an explanation. There is a certainly a fraternal connection between people who bear tattoos, a connection that those without ink can never really understand. We asked one correspondent to try address this phenomenon. He said, tattoos began as a ceremony, and they're still kind of like that. Once you're in an artist's needle, it's like a little it's a little like a religious experience. It's like the aha moment people talk about having in a business life. It illuminates something you didn't see before. I don't understand any of that. That doesn't resonate with me in any. Brad Crowell 3:15  Yeah, me neither. Lesley Logan 3:16  So first of all, I overthought my first tattoo, way too much. Brad Crowell 3:20  I mean, took me 15 years to get my first tattoo, because of the same thing. Lesley Logan 3:25  15 years from when you're 18 or like?Brad Crowell 3:29  Yeah, yeah, I didn't get one. So I guess that's not true. I wanted to get a tattoo in my teens. My parents said no, but I started designing it in my teens. Lesley Logan 3:38  Okay, okay. Brad Crowell 3:39  And then I didn't actually get one until 30 years old.Lesley Logan 3:45  Yeah, I got my first one on a blind date.Brad Crowell 3:48  You got one on a blind date? Lesley Logan 3:50  Yeah, we wanted something to do. Brad Crowell 3:52  Wow. Lesley Logan 3:53  I know. Brad Crowell 3:53  This is the first time I'm hearing this story, y'all. Do tell. Lesley Logan 3:57  Anyways. Brad Crowell 3:58  How'd that go? Lesley Logan 3:59  I never saw that person again. And I covered up that tattoo after I left my ex with the cherry blossoms that we then added on to, and then I just got others. Because once you get the first one, you kind of start to just get other ones and.Brad Crowell 4:21  Well, the hurdle has been left, you know, like, you're, you're, there's this weird mental block of like, I don't know if I want to keep that thing on my body forever. And then after, after you get your first one, you realize no one actually gives a shit. And then also you're like yeah, you know.Lesley Logan 4:38  We speaking on podcast or proponents for tattoos? Brad Crowell 4:39  Yeah, I'm not. I'm not that worried about it either. Because here's the other thing, you can also change the tattoo or you can cover the tattoo or you can remove the tattoo.Lesley Logan 4:50  Or you can remove it. Keith Davidson removed all of his tattoos. He is a complete blank slate. Google it right now. Brad Crowell 4:55  No way. Lesley Logan 4:56  Google it right now, because I thought for sure, it's AI and people were saying it's AI, and he has done actual interviews about it, and he there's no way it's makeup. He has, he spent $200,000 getting them all removed. And I thought that's all it costs to cover remove his entire body. Brad Crowell 5:12  I mean, he had a he had. Lesley Logan 5:13  His whole head to toe, like he was so covered. So anyways, our neighbor is shout out to Brieanna, Viva Vanish skincare, she actually removes tattoos. So like, to me, you could just remove it, right? Or you could cover it up, but you, you, you do overthink the first ones, and then you kind of just get them, and they just become part of you. Also, I've gotten, like, my dream catcher, my dream catcher tattoo. It is really funny. When I got it. Remember this, Brad, I got the dream catcher tattoo. It takes up my whole fucking arm. We came back from Cambodia.Brad Crowell 5:48  Upper arm, shoulder down to elbow. Lesley Logan 5:49  Yeah, shoulder to my elbow. We come back from Cambodia and, like, literally, no one notices. Like, no one notices. And I'm starting to think that like it, people don't like it, you know, and all this stuff. And so I'm, like, starting to make this through my head, and then someone who I've never met in person, they only know me through social media. I was at an event, and they're like, oh my god, is that a new tattoo? And I said, it is. Thank you. I just got it, I just got it right. And other people are like, that's new. And I'm like, yeah, there are people who, like, have known me for years, and I'm like, they're like, well, you're just, like, a person with tattoos. You just have tattoos. So anyways, all I had to say is, you know, I saw a reel or a meme. It was just like, tattoos are just stickers for adults. And, like, we like pretty things.Brad Crowell 6:32  I'm in on that. And I was looking up the Pete Davidson thing still, and I found something really interesting. He did an interview with Variety, why he decided to remove all of his tattoos, and apparently he's not removed every single one, but he's removed the majority. He said, on deciding to remove his tattoos, I used to be a drug addict and I was a sad person, and I felt ugly and that I needed to be covered up, and I didn't. And I don't think there's anything wrong with tattoos, but mine, when I look at them, I remember a sad person that was very unsure, so just removing them and starting fresh, because that's what I think works best for me with my brain. When I look at them in the mirror, I don't want the reminder of, oh yeah, you were a fucking drug addict. Like, that's why you have a Sponge Bob smoking a joint on your back. So good for him. Lesley Logan 7:18  Oh, I love that. But see, that's the thing. You can just remove it. So, you know.Brad Crowell 7:22  I mean, it's a process, but it can be removed. It's money and time, yeah. Lesley Logan 7:26  You know what? There's a lot of things you could spend your money on. I, don't get something you don't want. But also like. You. Brad Crowell 7:33  I like, I mean there's definitely sentimentality around the tattoos that that I have, have put thought into them. It hasn't been just like, on a whim, but also, too, the more like, as you get after you get your first one, the second one, the decision to get it was, like, much faster than the first one. Lesley Logan 7:52  Well, I also just want to say, like, you don't have to get them, and it's also fine if you get them and don't over, like, don't overthink it so much because it, because you kind of make it perfect and, like, you're trying to get all perfect. And it's, it's, like, it's, there's no judgment either way, like, you're gonna, life will go on. Brad Crowell 8:10  Well, we are very big proponents of ink and tattoos. We think they're really fun and cool. Lesley Logan 8:15  If it's part of your personality, like, and also, like, I don't, I don't think I remember my parents saying, you like, oh, you're gonna be so judged. You'll never get a job, like, that has never happened to me one time, and I have tattoos all over my hands and like, no one notices. Brad Crowell 8:17  Yeah, yeah. Lesley Logan 8:17  You know. So most of them are for me anyways, because when I have to look at myself in the mirror all the time, and I have to, like, look at what I do, like, or on a camera live all the time, and I'm like, I just want something to look at that's not just my family. Just my face. Like, I'm so tired of looking at my own face, I would like to see something else. So that was really a lot of it for me. Anyways. Brad Crowell 8:50  Anyways. Lesley Logan 8:52  Back to this podcast (inaudible) coming up. So, today we actually kick off Agency Mini 11. That's happening right now. Brad Crowell 9:01  Right now. Right now. If you'd have no idea what that means, and you were like, I need in on this, go to prfit.biz/mini. That's profit without the O dot biz slash mini. Lesley Logan 9:10  It's for Pilates instructors and fitness instructors who want to improve their business and attract clients that actually want to teach and make the money they want to make. So that sounds like you. You do want to sign up for this because the next one with our calendar, if it's possible being Q1 of next year.Brad Crowell 9:25  Yeah, we're, we've been literally, like, tentatively looking at February. Lesley Logan 9:25  Yeah and it could be the end of February. Brad Crowell 9:30  So it's not, we're not doing another one, we're not doing another one this year. And, and honestly, it's a killer program. So, and it's also not expensive, you should definitely do it.Lesley Logan 9:40  62.50 sign up today. Three days. First couple days of replays. There you go. All right. Then we are now really in the countdown of our Summer Tour the van has.Brad Crowell 9:52  We leave next week. Lesley Logan 9:54  I know the van has a new look. We have a huge tour going on. We have so many cities that are sold out. So many people are we're so excited to see in person for the first time, some we were seeing in person for the third or fourth time. We can't even wait. It's powered by Balanced Body, which means we actually bring some of the Contrology equipment with us. You can try it out. We have amazing prizes from them to give out, we're bringing Bayon. So it's opc.me/tour and then you can see all the different cities. And some of these cities, you are easily drivable. We have people who are coming to two cities, so you can do that too. Also, if you're having a little FOMO that we're not coming to a city anywhere in driving distance near you. And I just want to remind you, we are driving for several thousands of miles so you can drive a few hundred. Brad Crowell 10:38  Yeah, you can, it's okay, come join us. Lesley Logan 10:38  But it's like, if that's not an option, the Calgary event is a virtual event. And so it's in-person, of course, but there's virtual seats that are available, and they're limited. So you can get those at opc.me/tour, just pick the Calgary event. And then we come back.Brad Crowell 10:48  That's, I just want to call that again, if you weren't listening, we have virtual tickets for the summer tour for two workshops. Lesley Logan 10:51  Yeah, we've never done that before. Brad Crowell 10:56  Go to opc.me/calgary. To go directly to where you find them. Opc.me/calgary. Cool.Lesley Logan 11:05  Yeah. And then we come back rest up, unpack, repack, because we're going from summer to Scotland's fall, and we are going to be in the UK. We'll be in Leeds and in Essex. Brad Crowell 11:17  Yeah, we're running out of seats over there, y'all. It's exciting.Lesley Logan 11:19  Yeah, oh yeah. It's, well, at the time we're recording every time someone buys, it's like, this is, this stock is low. It's like, low it is. So Leeds only has a couple spots. Essex, we are offering day passes there, but every time someone buys a two-day pass, we run out of two-day passes. That's how that goes. So because it's a week during the week, because it's not nice, like, you can go to a whole workshop day during the weeks, plus, like, a vacation during the week, so go to opc.me/uk, I've had a ton of people going come do a tour in the UK. I'm like, I am, you guys, I'm coming in September. And we have a ton of our workshops that are happening at these locations. You can even do both locations. There's only like one workshop that overlaps, so opc.me/uk and then we'll come back at a couple weeks later, we go to Chicago for P.O.T., and then we go to Cambodia on our retreat. And it's not too late for you to sign up for our retreat for Cambodia, because we just bought our plane tickets.Brad Crowell 12:11  We just bought our plane tickets, and also we just had another person sign up, you know, so there's still time, absolutely, it's not like, you know, the plane tickets aren't getting overly crazy right now, which is nice. So pop in, come join us. Go to crows nest retreats.com. It's going to be a pretty small group this time, so I'll tell you (inaudible). Lesley Logan 12:11  If you don't like big crowds, it's the time to come, because I can't promise you it'll be a small group every time. In fact, I know 2026 has a ton of people, so you're gonna want to do this one because we'll have more time together. It's a lot of fun, and you can always come a day early or stay a day late.Brad Crowell 12:47  Well, we would encourage you to stay a day late, because we actually have two events that we can't include, quote-unquote, in the retreat. I mean, those events include going to see an elephant sanctuary, yeah. And then the second event is a waterfall excursion. And the reality is they're both just like, like, longer events that we couldn't fit into the flow of the actual retreat. Lesley Logan 13:08  Full day events, and also, like, especially the waterfall, we have to have a smaller group weather permitting, you know, all that stuff. So that's why they're extra so and on the extra days, and we're going to do them before we leave, so you should come, crowsnestretreats.com. Okay, we have a ton to talk about with Wendee, but we have an audience question.Brad Crowell 13:26  We sure do. @BrendaHornung1990 on YouTube asks, can I put a reformer in our garage? I'm in the southeast. So does it, so it does get hot in the summer southeast, probably like Georgia or Florida? I think I'd be more worried about the humidity. Lesley Logan 13:46  Good job, Brad, good job. Brad Crowell 13:48  Unless you've got a Contrology Reformer, which won't, you don't have to worry about the humidity as much. Yeah, there's no wood that's going to warp, right? Lesley Logan 13:55  Correct, because that's the thing. So, so the thing so one, I don't know which Reformer you're looking at that makes a difference. Two, so if you get a Balanced Body Reformer, that's wood, like a studio reformer, you have to worry about humidity for the wood. However, their springs have a coating on them, so you don't have to worry about the springs resting, whereas the Contrology, it's aluminum. And so you don't know. Lesley Logan 14:21  Or an Allegro 2. Lesley Logan 14:22  Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could do that. Brad Crowell 14:22  Allegro 2 is also aluminum. Lesley Logan 14:22  Yeah, so, uh, is it aluminum? I thought it's fiberglass. No, no, it's metal, I know, but is it alluminum, I don't think it's, it's white. Brad Crowell 14:34  Yeah, it's, it's aluminum. It's definitely not, it's not fiberglass. Lesley Logan 14:37  Really? We should (inaudible).Brad Crowell 14:37  It's definitely not fiberglass.Lesley Logan 14:37  Anyway.Brad Crowell 14:37  100% not fiberglass. Lesley Logan 14:37  Well, Brad is gonna, Brad is gonna, it's a prefab. I know that it's like the way they make it, anyways, the Contrology. I have friends who have them in Hawaii.Brad Crowell 14:50  Powder-coated aluminum. Lesley Logan 14:51  Okay, there you go. Brad was paying attention on the tour, not me. Anyways.Brad Crowell 14:57  I've also picked them up. I know what they freaking are. Lesley Logan 14:59  Yeah. So the Contrology, my friend has in Hawaii, and the frame is great. Nothing goes on there. Doesn't even rust, but the springs, well, you have to clean the springs, right? So. Brad Crowell 15:12  That's right. Yeah. I forgot about that. That's great. It's exactly the same, like, environment with humidity.Lesley Logan 15:18  I so I worry more about humidity anywhere. And then when it comes to, just, like, the hotness, I mean, obviously it's gonna pin like, are you gonna want to lay on a hot Reformer bed? Because it's gonna like, like, it's like, sitting on your car when the car's hot.Brad Crowell 15:34  Well, here's the thing, you can actually regulate the temperature inside your garage. Lesley Logan 15:37  Yeah, if you can, yeah, then I would do that. Brad Crowell 15:39  In Cambodia, we have these wall units for, like, air air conditioning. Lesley Logan 15:44  Yeah, I love this idea. We're helping you out, Brenda, so get a wall unit, and then I probably. Brad Crowell 15:49  Yeah, they're called a they're called, there's a specific term for them. What are they called? They're not a window unit. They're a wall unit. Oh, they call it a split, mini split. Lesley Logan 16:03  A mini split. Brad Crowell 16:03  Mini split. So that way, what it does is it actually takes the big air conditioning part of it that, like, you know, is loud and noisy, and it actually is outside, yeah, but then the inside is just a little wall.Lesley Logan 16:15  They're amazing. They're so quiet. The other thing I would just say is, like, I've never experienced this thing. I've never had to purchase one in my life. But a dehumidifier is something you can also purchase. I saw one in Brad's uncle's basement. I was like, what is this thing? He said, a dehumidifier. I'm like, I only know about humidifiers. Clearly, that's where I've lived in the world. So you can have a dehumidifier, and then that would make your equipment last a long time as well. Brad Crowell 16:39  That's true. Lesley Logan 16:40  Just something to note that, like Naugahyde and your leather straps, you know, those things can be affected by the weather. So if, again, if it's hot, cold, like, you're just gonna want to find a way to stabilize the environment a little bit so that it, you can have it for years, because that's all I want to make sure, like, we didn't leave my Reformer around the heat. I think my extra Reformers out in the in the garage for, like, in the shed for like, a year, but it was in a box protected. And then we're like, we got to get that in. That's probably not so great for it. So. Brad Crowell 17:07  Yeah, just because the the Naugahyde will eventually become brittle. Lesley Logan 17:10  I think the leather straps would also become, they would dry out as well because, like, they stay healthy because of the oils of the skin. So anyway.Brad Crowell 17:18  I just also found out that a mini split is, it's called a mini split because it's heating and cooling. Brad Crowell 17:24  Oh, well, there you go. Brenda. Show us the pictures of your garage with your new Reformer in it. Brad Crowell 17:24  You're amazing. Lesley Logan 17:24  You guys. If you want to ask us any questions, they don't have to be about Pilates, they can be about anything. You'll, you just have to go to beitpod.com/questions. You can also send us your wins. We can celebrate you. And you can hear about your wins on a day that you need to because they always happen to land on the day. You're like, my life isn't working. And then you hear a win you had, and you're like, Oh my God, it was, I just forgot.Brad Crowell 17:47  Stick around. We'll be right back. Brad Crowell 17:49  All right. Welcome back. Let's talk about Wendee Close. Wendee is the founder and CEO of Goals2Life, a personal development platform designed to help individuals create and achieve meaningful goals through detailed planning and execution. It's quite a comprehensive platform. It's actually kind of amazing. After 27 years in the B2C industry, she pivoted into the tech world to build a purpose driven SaaS platform aimed at transforming how people bring their aspirations to life. SaaS stands for software as a service. So the like a SaaS platform would be like Gmail or Google Calendar. That's a SaaS platform. In this case, she's making a tool that is software that'll help you bring your aspirations to life for real, known for her resourcefulness and her get it done attitude, Wendee now helps ground people break through burnout and overwhelm by aligning their goals with their values. And I think for her, that was, like, legit, because she was like, doing she and her husband had started a business that could she do it? Yes. Was she really good at it? Yes. Did it light her fire? No. Should she have been doing it? No, right. But she did it for decades, right? And after all that time, and they really did well, she still was like, I kind of don't like what I'm doing, yeah. And so that's what caused the shift to start this platform, you know, effectively starting a second career after her kids have flown the coop. She they're empty nesters now. So, you know, she's, she's definitely tackling a huge project. Lesley Logan 19:30  Bird launcher. Brad Crowell 19:30  She's a bird launcher. Lesley Logan 19:32  Yeah, I like, I know I said on the podcast, if not, I said her face. I am, like, immensely impressed that she has taken on this project because, like, it's so, like, I had no idea what starting OPC like, how much effort it is to have a platform like OPC. Like it is the amount of work we have to do on a daily basis for OPC is the amount of people who work on that site to keep everything. So like, when she was, when she talks, she's like, oh my God, that is the biggest project in the world. Like, I was just like, sitting there, from the experience of it, and she doesn't even see it as difficult. I mean, like, of course there's difficult times, there's hard days, but she always is like, excited for the challenge. And like, she takes it in, and then she figures out who she has to talk to to make it happen. And so anyways, one thing she said that I love, and I think it is why she can do what she's doing and take on this mountain of an amazing business, is when the vision is clear, you become it. So she is like, even though the project is still being built out and it works. She has tons of clients and tons of customers and tons of companies that work with it, but it was something that she's continuing to build and perfect and do. She isn't waiting for it to be ready to go out there and talk about it. She's talking about it because she's it.Brad Crowell 20:54  She's been talking about it, I mean, you know, before it was even ready to go. She understood what she was building, who it was going to help, and was out there sharing it with the world.Lesley Logan 21:04  I mean, if you haven't listened the episode, you have to, because it's truly a Be It Till You See It like it is, she is not waiting for the project to be ready for someone to deem the project ready for anything like that. She's like, I'm going to go out there, I'm going to talk about it and the questions I get and the things people need are going to help me make it even better. And that's what we are always trying to tell people to do inside of Agency as well. She said, when you believe in what you're doing, it becomes, it becomes easy to show up and say, this is who I am and this is what I'm doing. The vision is so strong, you live it. And I think, like, a lot of us, are sitting in the place where she was before in that B2C thing. Maybe you're not B2C but, like, was she good at it? Yes. Can she do it? Yes. It didn't light her up. And so I think a lot of people are struggling with, like, preaching, preaching out loud and and boasting about the thing they're doing because it's not the thing they really want to be doing. So they're not as excited. She is so excited about this. Every time I talk to her, I'm like, excited about what I do. Like, somehow, like, it reminds me this is why I do what I do.Brad Crowell 22:06  She lights everybody on fire. You know, I bet you, too, that all the things that she learned with her first business on, she managed a team. She, you know, worked with clients. She, you know, understood how to do every aspect of that business. There's like a direct translation for what she's doing now, even though it's a different project and a different product and a different goal, the skills she learned from the first one are absolutely setting her up to excel at this in What? What? So much faster, so much faster.Lesley Logan 22:42  Well, and also, like, every single even if the thing you want to do is something you were never trained to do, every skill that you've acquired along your journey is transferable. It's all. Brad Crowell 22:51  Story of my life. Lesley Logan 22:52  Yeah, it's really all so transferable. And there, most of the jobs that I well, the job that I currently have, there's, like, not like a degree in it. So, yeah, like, I think, like, we're all like, where's the checklist to go check? There isn't one. So get your vision clear and then talk about it. Don't be afraid to talk about it, because, just because people question it or and they might not be as excited as you, their questions help you deliver what you do better. You know? When we first started about OPC versus how we talk about it now, very different based on the questions we got from the way we talk about it, you know, like, so.Brad Crowell 23:28  Class starts at six. I think we even said that. I'm sure it was, like, new class on Tuesday. I really loved when she was talking about clarity and resourcefulness and her reminder about it, specifically around asking for help, right? She has no qualms to reach out to people and ask for help. She is very excited about what it is that she's doing, and because she knows what she's building, it gives her enthusiasm, right, and courage. And then when she goes and she asks someone for help, even if they say no, it doesn't matter. It doesn't deflate her enthusiasm. But because she has that, she can ask for help in a way that is compelling people actually want to help her. She said, every single day, I'm like, I don't know how to do the thing that I'm gonna do today. But what do I want to do? I want to impact lives. So she has a bigger goal. Like, for example, the conversation you were having was about going live on Instagram. She's like, I'm not a techie, you know, social media user, but I'm willing to learn this thing, even if I fail at it, if I fall flat on my face. Because if I can go live with someone today, and it's got to further my actual goal, which is impacting people's lives. And she said she just, she encourages everyone to just be, learn to be as resourceful as you can. Right? And she said, if you're honest and transparent about where you are and what you're trying to do, others will help you do it.Lesley Logan 25:03  Yeah, they will. They because they get excited. Because you're excited. People want to be part of the party. People want to be part of, that is how, for better or worse, people get involved in organizations like you know, they want it. I read the book Careless, careless people about Facebook and, oh, guys, it's a book worth, and if I could get her on, I would, but she's not doing any touring right now, but it's she talks about why she got involved with Facebook and why she was pushing for it to be around the world, because she want, she want to be part of the vision of connecting people, yeah, and helping people have all these and I know that's like the worst example, but also like getting so excited about your thing that people get excited to be part of your life, because they'll want to connect with the right people too, whether or not they can help you, like, Oh, I know, so and so. And then they're so excited about what you're doing when they talk about this to their friend, there's a trust transference, and all of a sudden you have the connections you need, you know. So no one gets to get their goals all done by themselves. It just doesn't happen that way. You want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.Brad Crowell 26:10  Well, yes, very enthusiastically delivered there. Oh, you mean that old thing. Okay, dad. That's hilarious. All right, well, if you are looking for some, Be It Action Items, stick around, because we're going to dig into those when we come back. Brad Crowell 26:33  Okay, finally, let's dig into those Be It Action Items that we had with our conversation with Wendee Close. What bold, executable, intrinsic or targeted action items can we take away from your convo? I'm gonna go first, because she actually went down all four like, right away, which is pretty awesome.Lesley Logan 26:53  Whenever anyone does that, I'm like, oh, you took the assignment to the next level.Brad Crowell 26:58  She did. She did. She said, hey, here's what's bold, own your next level identity, right? She encourages you to ask, what would my future self do right now, today, in this instance, and then take that action from your future you, right? And she said, that's super bold, you know, like, know where you're going, know what you're trying to do, and then you know, if you're faced with a tough decision, would you, would you choose yourself make decision A or decision B, right? And then she said, executable, take small intentional steps every single day, small intentional steps, right? Breaking down big goals into micro movements. And then ask, what's one step that I can take today, right now, and then go do that step. In fact, that's like half of what Goals2Life is is literally the execution element of it, because what they help you do is map out your goals and then figure out how to do them, actually, how to bring them to life, right? Lesley Logan 27:56  Yeah. You just, that's where the name came from. Brad Crowell 28:00  Goals2Life. That's where the name came from. Intrinsic. Align your goals with your purpose. Align your goals with purpose. She said, What? Ask yourself, why does this even matter to me? Like, if you have a goal of, let's say, doing a 5k race, you know. Why does this matter to you? Why you know do the seven layers of why you know, what is it that you're actually trying to do here? And then, when your goals are tied to your values, your commitment will deepen. So you need to understand what your values are. And then we need to find goals that are going to tie it all together. So, intrinsic. Align your goals with your purpose, targeted, set clear, measurable milestones, replace vague hopes with tangible outcomes. Ask yourself, how will I measure the progress? We would suggest deadlines. Deadlines actually give yourself by this time I will do this thing, you know, or by this time I will, I will have this finished or this piece, piece of it accomplished. Because then it gives you targets. Lesley Logan 29:06  I just talked to Agency members about this. I said, if with, like, you know, we're halfway through the year, right? And it's like, if you reflect on your goals, you wanted to have done this year, what you want to have done by now, and you're like, oh my God, I didn't hit the name. It's like, well, it's, don't beat yourself up, it's ask yourself very clearly, like, why haven't I done this? What has been in the way? Is this actually something I still want to do? Can I actually do it and then set new measurable goals, set new milestones and make it happen? You know? So I believe in those I love a deadline. Brad Crowell 29:35  Love a deadline. Yeah. What about you?Lesley Logan 29:37  Okay, so she said, and this goes back to what I was just saying, so I'll just translate. If something's a priority, if it's a goal, it needs to be on your calendar. And that's where a lot of people make mistakes. They're like, Oh, I'm gonna do this thing, but they don't even set aside time, like in my calendar. If you look at my calendar, it'll say, write this thing, do this thing, call this person. It is in my calendar. So there's not like, Oh, here's my three things I wanna get done today. And. I have a wide open day. No, every single work day is like it's full because I have now, of course, I can move things, if something comes up or whatever, but then it gets moved because if it's in your calendar, you'll reschedule it. So that's what's really important. She said, if it's not in your calendar, it's not a priority. And she didn't mention time blocking. I'm big fan of time blocking. I actually talk a lot about how we teach Agency members how to time block so that they actually move the needle forward in their business. She also said this is really important. She said she was talking about her burnout. She said no amount of movement, water, nutrition or meditation can make up for the lack of sleep, so sleep should be right there at the very top. And I think that is the most important thing. It's something I always talk about. When you come on a retreat to Cambodia, we actually like put your dream schedule together, and the first thing you actually put in there is when do you go to bed, and when do you wake up? It's your dream schedule. It's not your current sleep schedule. It's like what you desire to have as a sleep schedule. And it's the most one of the most important things to do is work towards that, because you cannot, like, biohack your way out of sleep you didn't get. Maybe one day, maybe two days, but you can't do it 365 days. Not gonna happen.Brad Crowell 31:16  Wendee and I definitely connected on that, because both of us just didn't leave ourselves sleep time or permission to sleep. And so, you know, definitely impacted me through college for sure, you know. And even today, you know, it's still a decision to make sure that that is a priority, But yeah, I love it. I mean, you know, Wendee is one of the most magnetic people that you'll ever met. Like when she walks into a room, you know it, whether she meant you to know it or not, you know it. And her enthusiasm for and her vision for her business, for Goals2Life, is contagious. And, you know, I think the product is, it's really amazing, and helping people actually move forward, instead of feeling stuck. And, you know, I'm excited, so y'all should go check it out. Goals2Life. The number two, Goals2Life.com, we'll put that link in the show notes, for sure, yeah. But yeah, if you haven't gone back yet, go listen to Wendee. She's amazing. Yeah, go listen to why we love her so much. Lesley Logan 32:25  Okay, I'm Lesley Logan. Brad Crowell 32:25  And I'm Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 32:25  Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. How are you going to use these tips in your life? We want to what your favorite takeaways are. We want to also know your questions and your wins. So beitpod.com/questions, I know that's confusing, because if you have a win, you're going to the questions, but I promise you, both columns are there. It's very easy to figure out and share this episode or Wendee's episode with a friend who needs to hear it, because that is how this podcast not only continues to grow, but also helps people be it till they see it. The more people around you that are doing that, the easier it is for you to be till you see it. It's really hard to be around a bunch of Eeyores, guys. So send them. Send them Wendee's. Send them Wendee's episode. And you know what to do. Brad Crowell 33:04  Time to be a Piglet, not not an Eeyore. Lesley Logan 33:06  Be It Till You See It. Brad Crowell 33:08  Bye for now.Lesley Logan 33:10  That's all I got for this episode of the Be It Till You See It Podcast. One thing that would help both myself and future listeners is for you to rate the show and leave a review and follow or subscribe for free wherever you listen to your podcast. Also, make sure to introduce yourself over at the Be It Pod on Instagram. I would love to know more about you. Share this episode with whoever you think needs to hear it. Help us and others Be It Till You See It. Have an awesome day. Be It Till You See It is a production of The Bloom Podcast Network. If you want to leave us a message or a question that we might read on another episode, you can text us at +1-310-905-5534 or send a DM on Instagram @BeItPod. Brad Crowell 33:52  It's written, filmed, and recorded by your host, Lesley Logan, and me, Brad Crowell. Lesley Logan 33:57  It is transcribed, produced and edited by the epic team at Disenyo.co. Brad Crowell 34:02  Our theme music is by Ali at Apex Production Music and our branding by designer and artist, Gianfranco Cioffi. Lesley Logan 34:09  Special thanks to Melissa Solomon for creating our visuals. Brad Crowell 34:12  Also to Angelina Herico for adding all of our content to our website. And finally to Meridith Root for keeping us all on point and on time.Lesley Logan 34:26  Oh my God. What if we got merch that like, Be It Till You See It is like being like, I don't know. Brad Crowell 34:32  I don't know if Piglet's the right character, but. Lesley Logan 34:33  I don't know. I don't know if it is either. But I feel like we need to figure that out. Like we need we need visual. We need visuals of what a be it till you see it and a versus a, not be it till you see it is. We need visuals.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/be-it-till-you-see-it/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The insane branch of the Federal bench continues to demonstrate its madness, in this case in the form of unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial court judge Indira Alwani.Alwani is yet another federal judge born in America with a remarkably foreign name. Weird how often that happens. She's also yet another federal judge whose parents were NOT American citizens, being born in India and Germany. One wonders why the American federal bench is apparently so loaded with first-generation Americans of foreign born parents, in a nation 250 years old with 340 million citizens. In any case, Alwani appears to have completely lost her judicial mind, and has been vomiting forth orders in defense of Planned Parenthood that are grotesque outside acceptable judicial practice and order. Why? Perhaps because her TRUE constituency is not American law, but Progressive Fascist political aspirations? The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

How many under-contract holdouts have there been in Steelers history? If TJ continues what he is doing through training camp, it would be a true holdout. The Steelers won't force TJ Watt to do anything. Poni calls it a “contractual act of war”. Poni also says that there are exceptions to the philosophy that players should make every dollar they can. Mullsy calls TJ Watt's 2024 season “mediocre” for his standards. Mullsy is not mad at the way TJ Watt is handling things. Donny and Mullsy both side with TJ Watt in this situation.

President Trump has scored another YUGE WIN with SCOTUS, once again over the cascading tears of a 19-page Justice Sonya “wise Latina” Sotomayor dissent, which was joined b y the usual cabal of Justice Elena “never married, never kids” Kagan and Justice Kentaji “I'm not a biologist, how would I know what a woman is” Jackson. In this case SCOTUS removal of this injunction will allow Trump to move forward with firing nearly 1,400 employees of the Department of Education, the weapon of ideological brainwashing and indoctrination that the Progressive Fascists have been wielding over America's school children for decades. In contrast to Sotomayor's overwrought reason-free 19-page dissent drowning in estrogenic hysteria, the six justices majority felt the legal rationale for their decision to once again overturn yet another anti-democratic injunction ordered by an unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial court judge was so obvious that it required neither explanation nor signature. Indeed, the majority delivered this additional win for the Article II Executive Branch President in a SINGLE SENTENCE knock-out blow to the Progressive Fascist regime desperate to maintain its ideological control over America's next generation.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

You are in for a real treat on this episode. My guest this time is Greg Schwem. Greg is a corporate comedian. What is a corporate comedian? You probably can imagine that his work has to do with corporations, and you would be right. Greg will explain much better than I can. Mr. Schwem began his career as a TV journalist but eventually decided to take up what he really wanted to do, be a comedian. The story of how he evolved is quite fascinating by any standard. Greg has done comedy professionally since 1989. He speaks today mostly to corporate audiences. He will tell us how he does his work. It is quite interesting to hear how he has learned to relate to his audiences. As you will discover as Greg and I talk, we often work in the same way to learn about our audiences and thus how we get to relate to them. Greg has written three books. His latest one is entitled “Turning Gut Punches into Punch Lines: A Comedian's Journey Through Cancer, Divorce and Other Hilarious Stuff”. As Greg says, “Don't worry, it's not one of those whiny, ‘woe is me,' self- serving books. Instead, it's a hilarious account of me living the words I've been preaching to my audiences: You can always find humor in every situation, even the tough ones. Greg offers many interesting observations as he discusses his career and how he works. I think we all can find significant lessons we can use from his remarks. About the Guest: Hi! I'm Greg Schwem. a Chicago-based business humor speaker and MC who HuffPost calls “Your boss's favorite comedian.” I've traveled the world providing clean, customized laughs to clients such as Microsoft, IBM, McDonald's and even the CIA. I also write the bi-weekly Humor Hotel column for the Chicago Tribune syndicate. I believe every corporate event needs humor. As I often tell clients, “When times are good, people want to laugh. When times are bad, people need to laugh.” One Fortune 500 client summed things up perfectly, saying “You were fantastic and just what everybody needed during these times.” In September 2024 I released my third and most personal book, Turning Gut Punches into Punch Lines: A Comedian's Journey Through Cancer, Divorce and Other Hilarious Stuff. Don't worry, it's not one of those whiny, “woe is me,” self-serving books. Instead, it's a hilarious account of me living the words I've been preaching to my audiences: You can always find humor in every situation, even the tough ones. You can pick up a copy at Amazon or select book stores. Ways to connect with Greg: Website: www.gregschwem.com YouTube: www.youtube.com/gregschwem LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/gregschwem Instagram: www.instagram.com/gregschwem X: www.x.com/gregschwem About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog. Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards. https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/ accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/ Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below! Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can subscribe in your favorite podcast app. You can also support our podcast through our tip jar https://tips.pinecast.com/jar/unstoppable-mindset . Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts. Transcription Notes: Michael Hingson ** 00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson ** 01:16 Hi everyone, and welcome to unstoppable mindset. Today we are going to definitely have some fun. I'll tell you about our guests in a moment, but first, I want to tell you about me. That'll take an hour or so. I am Michael Hingson, your host, and you're listening to unstoppable mindset where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. And I don't know, we may get inclusion or diversity into this, but our guest is Greg Schwem. Greg used to be a TV reporter, now he's a comedian, not sure which is funnier, but given some of the reporters I've seen on TV, they really should go into tonight club business. But anyway, Greg, I want to welcome you to unstoppable mindset. We're really glad you're here. I really appreciate you being here and taking the time   Greg Schwem ** 02:04 Well, Michael, it is an honor to be included on your show. I'm really looking forward to the next hour of conversation. I   Speaker 1 ** 02:10 told Greg a little while ago, one of my major life ambitions that I never got to do was to go to a Don Rickles concert and sit in the front row so that hopefully he would pick on me, so that I could say, Yeah, I saw you once on TV, and I haven't been able to see since. What do you think of that? You hockey puck, but I never got to do it. So very disappointed. But everybody has bucket list moments, everybody has, but they don't get around to I'm sorry. Yeah, I know. Well, the other one is, I love to pick on Mike Wallace. I did a radio show for six years opposite him in 60 minutes, and I always love to say that Wallace really had criminal tendencies, because he started out being an announcer in radio and he announced things like The Green Hornet and the Sky King and other shows where they had a lot of criminals. So I just figured he had to be associated with criminals somewhere in his life. Of course, everybody picked on him, and he had broad shoulders. And I again, I regret I never got to to meet him, which is sort of disappointing. But I did get to meet Peter Falk. That was kind of fun.   Greg Schwem ** 03:15 Mike Wallace to Peter Falk. Nice transition there. I know.   Michael Hingson ** 03:21 Well I am really glad you're with us. So why don't we start? We'll start with the serious part. Why don't you tell us, kind of about the early Greg schwim and growing up and all that sort of stuff, just to set the stage, as it were,   Greg Schwem ** 03:34 how far back you want to go? You want to go back to Little League, or you want to   Speaker 1 ** 03:37 just, oh, start at the beginning, a long time ago, right? I was a   Greg Schwem ** 03:41 very strange child. No, I you. You obviously introduced me as a as a comedian, and that is my full time job. And you also said that I was a former journalist, and that is my professional career. Yes, I went from, as I always like to say, I went from depressing people all day long, to making them laugh. And that's, that's kind of what I did. I always did want to be I majored in Journalism at Northwestern University, good journalism school. Originally, I always wanted to be a television reporter. That was as a professional career I was, I dabbled in comedy. Started when I was 16. That is the first time I ever got on stage at my school, my high school, and then at a comedy club. I was there one of the first comedy clubs in Chicago, a place called the comedy cottage. It was in the suburb of beautiful, beautiful suburb of Rosemont, Illinois, and they were one of the very, very first full time comedy clubs in the nation. And as a 16 year old kid, I actually got on stage and did five minutes here and five minutes there. And thought I was, I was hot stuff, but I never, ever thought I would do it for a living. I thought comedy would always be just a hobby. And I. Especially when I went to college, and I thought, okay, Northwestern is pretty good school, pretty expensive school. I should actually use my degree. And I did. I moved down to Florida, wrote for a newspaper called The Palm Beach post, which, don't let that title fool you. It's Palm Beach was a very small segment of of the area that it was, that it served, but I did comedy on the side, and just because I moved down there, I didn't know anybody, so I hung out at comedy clubs just to have something to do. And little by little, comedy in the late 80s, it exploded. Exploded. There were suddenly clubs popping up everywhere, and you were starting to get to know guys that were doing these clubs and were starting to get recognition for just being comedians. And one of them opened up a very, very good Club opened up about 10 minutes from my apartment in West Palm Beach, and I hung out there and started to get more stage time, and eventually started to realize at the same time that I was getting better as a comedian, I was becoming more disillusioned as a journalist in terms of what my bosses wanted me to report on and the tone they wanted me to use. And I just decided that I would I would just never be able to live with myself if I didn't try it, if I didn't take the the plunge into comedy, and that's what I did in 1989 and I've been doing it ever since. And my career has gone in multiple directions, as I think it needs to. If you're going to be in show business and sustain a career in show business, you have to wear a lot of different hats, which I feel like I've done.   Michael Hingson ** 06:40 So tell me more about that. What does that mean exactly?   Greg Schwem ** 06:43 Well, I mean, I started out as a what you would pretty much if somebody said, If you heard somebody say, I'm a comedian, they would envision some guy that just went to comedy clubs all the time, and that's what I did. I was just a guy that traveled by car all over the Midwest and the Southeast primarily, and did comedy clubs, but I quickly realized that was kind of a going nowhere way to attack it, to do comedy unless you were incredibly lucky, because there were so many guys doing it and so many clubs, and I just didn't see a future in it, and I felt like I had to separate myself from the pack a little bit. And I was living in Chicago, which is where I'm from, and still, still exist. Still reside in Chicago, and I started to get involved with a company that did live trade show presentations. So if you've ever been on a trade show floor and you see people, they're mostly actors and actresses that wear a headset and deliver a spiel, a pitch, like every, every twice an hour, about some company, some new product, and so forth. And I did that, and I started to write material about what I was seeing on trade show floors and putting it into my stand up act, stuff about business, stuff about technology, because I was Hawking a lot of new computers and things like that. This was the mid 90s when technology was exploding, and I started to put this into my stand up act. And then I'd have people come up to me afterwards and say, hey, you know those jokes you did about computers and tech support, if you could come down to our office, you know, we're having a golf tournament, we're having a Christmas party, we would love to hear that material. And little by little, I started transitioning my act into doing shows for the corporate market. I hooked up with a corporate agent, or the corporate agent heard about me, and started to open a lot of doors for me in terms of working for very large corporations, and that's pretty much what I've been doing. I stopped working clubs, and I transitioned, instead of being a comedian, I became a corporate humor speaker. And that's what I do, primarily to this day, is to speak at business conferences. Just kind of get people to loosen up, get them to laugh about what they do all day without without making it sound like I'm belittling what they do. And also when I'm not doing that, I work about eight to 10 weeks a year on cruise ships, performing for cruise audiences. So that's a nice getaway.   Speaker 1 ** 09:18 It's interesting since I mentioned Don Rickles earlier, years ago, I saw an interview that he did with Donahue, and one of the things that Don Rickles said, and after he said it, I thought about it. He said, I really don't want to pick on anyone who's going to be offended by me picking on them. He said, I try to watch really carefully, so that if it looks like somebody's getting offended, I'll leave them alone, because that's not what this is all about. It isn't about abusing people. It's about trying to get people to have fun, and if somebody's offended, I don't want to to pick on them, and I've heard a number of albums and other things with him and just. Noticed that that was really true. He wouldn't pick on someone unless they could take it and had a lot of fun with it. And I thought that was absolutely interesting, because that certainly wasn't, of course, the rep that he had and no, but it was   Greg Schwem ** 10:16 true. It is, and it doesn't take long to see as a as a comedian, when you're looking at an audience member and you're talking to them, it, you can tell very quickly, Are they enjoying this? Are they enjoying being the center of attention? A lot of people are, or are they uncomfortable with it? Now, I don't know that going in. I mean, I you know, of course. And again, that's a very small portion of my show is to talk to the audience, but it is something particularly today. I think audiences want to be more involved. I think they enjoy you talk you. Some of these, the new comedians in their 20s and 30s and so forth. Them, some of them are doing nothing, but what they call crowd work. So they're just doing 45 minutes of talking to the audience, which can be good and can be rough too, because you're working without a net. But I'm happy to give an audience a little bit of that. But I also have a lot of stuff that I want to say too. I mean, I work very hard coming up with material and and refining it, and I want to talk about what's going on in my life, too. So I don't want the audience to be the entire show, right?   Speaker 1 ** 11:26 And and they shouldn't be, because it isn't about that. But at the same time, it is nice to involve them. I find that as a keynote and public speaker, I find that true as well, though, is that audiences do like to be involved. And I do some things right at the outset of most talks to involve people, and also in involving them. I want to get them to last so that I start to draw them in, because later, when I tell the September 11 story, which isn't really a humorous thing. Directly,   Greg Schwem ** 12:04 i know i Good luck. I'm spinning 911 to make it I don't think I've ever heard anybody say, by the way, I was trapped in a building. Stick with me. It's kind of cute. It's got a funny ending. And   Speaker 1 ** 12:20 that's right, and it is hard I can, I can say humorous things along the way in telling the story, but, sure, right, but, but clearly it's not a story that, in of itself, is humorous. But what I realized over the years, and it's really dawned on me in the last four or five years is we now have a whole generation of people who have absolutely no memory of September 11 because they were children or they weren't even born yet. And I believe that my job is to not only talk about it, but literally to draw them into the building and have them walk down the stairs with me, and I have to be descriptive in a very positive way, so that they really are part of what's going on. And the reality is that I do hear people or people come up and say, we were with you when you were going down the stairs. And I think that's my job, because the reality is that we've got to get people to understand there are lessons to be learned from September 11, right? And the only real way to do that is to attract the audience and bring them in. And I think probably mostly, I'm in a better position to do that than most people, because I'm kind of a curious soul, being blind and all that, but it allows me to to draw them in and and it's fun to do that, actually. And I, and   Greg Schwem ** 13:52 I gotta believe, I mean, obviously I wasn't there, Michael, but I gotta believe there were moments of humor in people, a bunch of people going down the stairs. Sure, me, you put people get it's like, it's like when a bunch of people are in an elevator together, you know, I mean, there's I, when I look around and I try to find something humorous in a crowded and it's probably the same thing now, obviously it, you know, you got out in time. But I and, you know, don't that's the hotel phone, which I just hung up so but I think that I can totally see where you're going from, where, if you're if you're talking to people who have no recollection of this, have no memory where you're basically educating them on the whole event. I think you then you have the opportunity to tell the story in whatever way you see fit. And I think that however you choose to do it is there's no wrong way to do it, I guess is what I'm trying to get at.   Speaker 1 ** 14:55 Well, yeah, I think the wrong way is to be two. Graphic and morbid and morbid, but one of the things that I talk about, for example, is that a colleague of mine who was with me, David Frank, at about the 50th floor, suddenly said, Mike, we're going to die. We're not going to make it out of here. And as as I tell the audience, typically, I as as you heard my introduction at the beginning, I have a secondary teaching credential. And one of the things that you probably don't know about teachers is that there's a secret course that every teacher takes called Voice 101, how to yell at students and and so what I tell people is that when David said that, I just said in my best teacher voice, stop it, David, if Roselle and I can go down these stairs, so can you. And he told me later that that brought him out of his funk, and he ended up walking a floor below me and shouting up to me everything he saw. And it was just mainly, everything is clear, like I'm on floor 48 he's on 47/47 floor. Everything is good here, and what I have done for the past several years in telling that part of the story is to say David, in reality, probably did more to keep people calm and focused as we went down the stairs than anyone else, because anyone within the sound of his voice heard someone who was focused and sounded okay. You know, hey, I'm on the 44th floor. This is where the Port Authority cafeteria is not stopping. And it it helps people understand that we all had to do what we could to keep everyone from not panicking. And it almost happened a few times that people did, but we worked at it. But the i The idea is that it helps draw people in, and I think that's so important to do for my particular story is to draw them in and have them walk down the stairs with me, which is what I do, absolutely, yeah, yeah. Now I'm curious about something that keeps coming up. I hear it every so often, public speaker, Speaker experts and people who are supposedly the great gurus of public speaking say you shouldn't really start out with a joke. And I've heard that so often, and I'm going give me a break. Well, I think, I think it depends, yeah, I think   Greg Schwem ** 17:33 there's two schools of thought to that. I think if you're going to start out with a joke, it better be a really good one, or something that you either has been battle tested, because if it doesn't work now, you, you know, if you're hoping for a big laugh, now you're saying, Well, you're a comedian, what do you do? You know, I mean, I, I even, I just sort of work my way into it a little bit. Yeah, and I'm a comedian, so, and, you know, it's funny, Michael, I will get, I will get. I've had CEOs before say to me, Hey, you know, I've got to give this presentation next week. Give me a joke I can tell to everybody. And I always decline. I always it's like, I don't need that kind of pressure. And it's like, I can, I can, I can tell you a funny joke, but,   Michael Hingson ** 18:22 but you telling the   Greg Schwem ** 18:23 work? Yeah, deliver it. You know, I can't deliver it for you. Yeah? And I think that's what I also, you know, on that note, I've never been a big fan of Stand Up Comedy classes, and you see them all popping up all over the place. Now, a lot of comedy clubs will have them, and usually the you take the class, and the carrot at the end is you get to do five minutes at a comedy club right now, if that is your goal, if you're somebody who always like, Gosh, I wonder what it would like be like to stand up on stage and and be a comedian for five minutes. That's something I really like to try. By all means, take the class, all right. But if you think that you're going to take this class and you're going to emerge a much funnier person, like all of a sudden you you weren't funny, but now you are, don't take the class, yeah? And I think, sadly, I think that a lot of people sign up for these classes thinking the latter, thinking that they will all of a sudden become, you know, a comedian. And it doesn't work that way. I'm sorry you cannot teach unfunny people to be funny. Yeah, some of us have the gift of it, and some of us don't. Some of us are really good with our hands, and just know how to build stuff and how to look at things and say, I can do that. And some of us, myself included, definitely do not. You know, I think you can teach people to be more comfortable, more comfortable in front of an audience and. Correct. I think that is definitely a teachable thing, but I don't think that you can teach people to be funnier   Speaker 1 ** 20:10 and funnier, and I agree with that. I tend to be amazed when I keep hearing that one of the top fears in our world is getting up in front of an audience and talking with them, because people really don't understand that audiences, whatever you're doing, want you to succeed, and they're not against you, but we have just conditioned ourselves collectively that speaking is something to be afraid of?   Greg Schwem ** 20:41 Yes, I think, though it's, I'm sure, that fear, though, of getting up in front of people has only probably been exacerbated and been made more intense because now everybody in the audience has a cell phone and to and to be looking out at people and to see them on their phones. Yeah, you're and yet, you prepped all day long. You've been nervous. You've been you probably didn't sleep the night before. If you're one of these people who are afraid of speaking in public, yeah, and then to see people on their phones. You know, it used to bother me. It doesn't anymore, because it's just the society we live in. I just, I wish, I wish people could put their phones down and just enjoy laughing for 45 minutes. But unfortunately, our society can't do that anymore, so I just hope that I can get most of them to stop looking at it.   Speaker 1 ** 21:32 I don't make any comments about it at the beginning, but I have, on a number of occasions, been delivering a speech, and I hear a cell phone ring, and I'll stop and go, Hello. And I don't know for sure what the person with the cell phone does, but by the same token, you know they really shouldn't be on their phone and and it works out, okay, nobody's ever complained about it. And when I just say hello, or I'll go Hello, you don't say, you know, and things like that, but, but I don't, I don't prolong it. I'll just go back to what I was talking about. But I remember, when I lived in New Jersey, Sandy Duncan was Peter Pan in New York. One night she was flying over the audience, and there was somebody on his cell phone, and she happened to be going near him, and she just kicked the phone out of his hand. And I think that's one of the things that started Broadway in saying, if you have a cell phone, turn it off. And those are the announcements that you hear at the beginning of any Broadway performance today.   Greg Schwem ** 22:39 Unfortunately, people don't abide by that. I know you're still hearing cell phones go off, yeah, you know, in Broadway productions at the opera or wherever, so people just can't and there you go. There that just shows you're fighting a losing battle.   Speaker 1 ** 22:53 Yeah, it's just one of those things, and you got to cope with it.   Greg Schwem ** 22:58 What on that note, though, there was, I will say, if I can interrupt real quick, there was one show I did where nobody had their phone. It was a few years ago. I spoke at the CIA. I spoke for some employees of the CIA. And this might, this might freak people out, because you think, how is it that America's covert intelligence agency, you think they would be on their phones all the time. No, if you work there, you cannot have your phone on you. And so I had an audience of about 300 people who I had their total attention because there was no other way to they had no choice but to listen to me, and it was wonderful. It was just a great show, and I it was just so refreshing. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 23:52 and mostly I don't hear cell phones, but they do come up from time to time. And if they do, then you know it happens. Now my one of my favorite stories is I once spoke in Maryland at the Department of Defense, which anybody who knows anything knows that's the National Security Agency, but they call it the Department of Defense, as if we don't know. And my favorite story is that I had, at the time, a micro cassette recorder, and it died that morning before I traveled to Fort Meade, and I forgot to just throw it away, and it was in my briefcase. So I got to the fort, they searched, apparently, didn't find it, but on the way out, someone found it. They had to get a bird Colonel to come to decide what to do with it. I said, throw it away. And they said, No, we can't do that. It's yours. And they they decided it didn't work, and they let me take it and I threw it away. But it was so, so funny to to be at the fort and see everybody running around crazy. See, what do we do with this micro cassette recorder? This guy's been here for an hour. Yeah. So it's it. You know, all sorts of things happen. What do you think about you know, there's a lot of discussion about comedians who use a lot of foul language in their shows, and then there are those who don't, and people seem to like the shock value of that.   Greg Schwem ** 25:25 Yeah, I'm very old school in that. I guess my short answer is, No, I've never, ever been one of those comedians. Ever I do a clean show, I actually learned my lesson very early on. I think I think that I think comedians tend to swear because when they first start out, out of nerves, because I will tell you that profanity does get laughter. And I've always said, if you want to, if you want to experiment on that, have a comedian write a joke, and let's say he's got two shows that night. Let's say he's got an eight o'clock show and a 10 o'clock show. So let's say he does the joke in the eight o'clock and it's, you know, the cadence is bumper, bump up, bump up, bump up, punch line. Okay, now let's and let's see how that plays. Now let's now he does the 10 o'clock show and it's bumper, bump up, bump up F and Okay, yeah, I pretty much guarantee you the 10 o'clock show will get a bigger laugh. Okay? Because he's sort of, it's like the audience is programmed like, oh, okay, we're supposed to laugh at that now. And I think a lot of comedians think, Aha, I have just discovered how to be successful as a comedian. I will just insert the F word in front of every punch line, and you can kind of tell what comedians do that and what comedians I mean. I am fine with foul language, but have some jokes in there too. Don't make them. Don't make the foul word, the joke, the joke, right? And I can say another thing nobody has ever said to me, I cannot hire you because you're too clean. I've never gotten that. And all the years I've been doing this, and I know there's lots of comedians who who do work blue, who have said, you know, who have been turned down for that very reason. So I believe, if you're a comedian, the only way to get better is to work any place that will have you. Yeah, and you can't, so you might as well work clean so you can work any place that will have you, as opposed to being turned away.   Speaker 1 ** 27:30 Well, and I, and I know what, what happened to him and all that, but at the same time, I grew up listening to Bill Cosby and the fact that he was always clean. And, yeah, I understand everything that happened, but you can't deny and you can't forget so many years of humor and all the things that that he brought to the world, and the joy he brought to the world in so many ways.   Greg Schwem ** 27:57 Oh, yeah, no, I agree. I agree. And he Yeah, he worked everywhere. Jay Leno is another one. I mean, Jay Leno is kind of on the same wavelength as me, as far as don't let the profanity become the joke. You know, Eddie Murphy was, you know, was very foul. Richard Pryor, extremely foul. I but they also, prior, especially, had very intelligent material. I mean, you can tell and then if you want to insert your F bombs and so forth, that's fine, but at least show me that you're trying. At least show me that you came in with material in addition to the   Speaker 1 ** 28:36 foul language. The only thing I really have to say about all that is it? Jay Leno should just stay away from cars, but that's another story.   Greg Schwem ** 28:43 Oh, yeah, it's starting to   Greg Schwem ** 28:47 look that way. Yeah, it   Michael Hingson ** 28:49 was. It was fun for a while, Jay, but yeah, there's just two. It's like, Harrison Ford and plains. Yeah, same concept. At some point you're like, this isn't working out. Now I submit that living here in Victorville and just being out on the streets and being driven around and all that, I am firmly convinced, given the way most people drive here, that the bigoted DMV should let me have a license, because I am sure I can drive as well as most of the clowns around here. Yeah, so when they drive, I have no doubt. Oh, gosh. Well, you know, you switched from being a TV journalist and so on to to comedy. Was it a hard choice? Was it really difficult to do, or did it just seem like this is the time and this is the right thing to do. I was   Greg Schwem ** 29:41 both, you know, it was hard, because I really did enjoy my job and I liked, I liked being a TV news reporter. I liked, I liked a job that was different every day once you got in there, because you didn't know what they were going to send you out to do. Yes, you had. To get up and go to work every day and so forth. So there's a little bit of, you know, there's a little bit of the mundane, just like there is in any job, but once you were there, I liked, just never known what the day would bring, right? And and I, I think if I'd stayed with it, I think I think I could have gone pretty far, particularly now, because the now it's more people on TV are becoming more entertainers news people are becoming, yeah, they are. A lot of would be, want to be comedians and so forth. And I don't particularly think that's appropriate, but I agree. But so it was hard to leave, but it gets back to what I said earlier. At some point, you got to say, I was seeing comedians making money, and I was thinking, gosh, you know, if they're making money at this I I'm not hilarious, but I know I'm funnier than that guy. Yeah, I'm funnier than her, so why not? And I was young, and I was single, and I thought, if I if I don't try it now, I never will. And, and I'll bet there's just some hilarious people out there, yeah, who who didn't ever, who just were afraid   Michael Hingson ** 31:14 to take that chance, and they wouldn't take the leap, yeah,   Greg Schwem ** 31:16 right. And now they're probably kicking themselves, and I'm sure maybe they're very successful at what they do, but they're always going to say, what if, if I only done this? I don't ever, I don't, ever, I never, ever wanted to say that. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 31:31 well, and there's, there's something to be said for being brave and stepping out and doing something that you don't expect, or that you didn't expect, or that you weren't sure how it was going to go, but if you don't try, then you're never going to know just how, how much you could really accomplish and how much you can really do. And I think that the creative people, whatever they're being creative about, are the people who do step out and are willing to take a chance.   Greg Schwem ** 31:59 Yeah, yeah. And I told my kids that too. You know, it's just like, if it's something that you're passionate about, do it. Just try it. If it doesn't work out, then at least you can say I tried   Speaker 1 ** 32:09 it and and if it doesn't work out, then you can decide, what do I need to do to figure out why it didn't work out, or is it just not me? I want   Greg Schwem ** 32:18 to keep going? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.   Speaker 1 ** 32:21 So what is the difference between being a nightclub comedian and a corporate comedian? Because they are somewhat different. I think I know the answer. But what would you say that the differences between them? I think   Greg Schwem ** 32:33 the biggest thing is the audiences. I think when you when you are a nightclub comedian, you are working in front of people who are there to be entertained. Yeah, they, they paid money for that. That's what they're expecting. They, they, at some point during the day, they said, Hey, let's, let's go laugh tonight. That's what we really want to do when you're working in front of a corporate audiences. That's not necessarily the case. They are there. I primarily do business conferences and, you know, association meetings and so forth. And I'm just one cog in the wheel of a whole day's worth of meetings are, for the most part, very dry and boring, maybe certainly necessary educational. They're learning how to do their job better or something. And then you have a guy like me come in, and people aren't always ready to laugh, yeah, despite the fact that they probably need to, but they just they're not always in that mindset. And also the time of day. I mean, I do a lot of shows at nine in the morning. I do shows after lunch, right before lunch. I actually do very few shows in the evening, believe it or not. And so then you you have to, you kind of have to, in the while you're doing your act or your presentation or your speech, as I call it, you kind of have to let them know that it is okay. What you're doing is okay, and they should be okay with laughing. They shouldn't be looking around the whole time wondering if other people are laughing. You know, can I, can I? Can I tell you a quick story about how I drive that point home. Why not? Yeah, it's, I'll condense it into like five minutes. I mentioned that I worked on that I work on cruise ships occasionally, and I one night I was performing, and it was the first night of the cruise. And if anybody's ever been on a cruise, note, the first night, first night entertainers don't like the first night because people are tired. You know, they're they're a little edgy because they've been traveling all day. They're they're confused because they're not really sure where they're going on a ship. And the ones that have got it figured out usually over serve themselves because they're on vacation. So you put all that, so I'm doing my show on the first. Night, and it's going very well. And about five, six minutes in, I do a joke. Everybody laughs. Everybody shuts up. And from the back of the room in total darkness, I hear hat just like that. And I'm like, All right, you know, probably over served. So the rule of comedy is that everybody gets like. I was like, I'll let it go once, yeah. So I just kind of looked off in that direction, didn't say anything. Kept going with my active going with my act. About 10 minutes later, same thing happens. I tell a joke. Everybody laughs. Everybody shuts up. Hat now I'm like, Okay, I have got to, I've got to address the elephant in the room. So I think I just made some comment, like, you know, I didn't know Roseanne Barr was on this cruise, you know, because that was like the sound of the Yeah. Okay, everybody laugh. Nothing happened about five minutes later. It happens a third time. And now I'm just like, this is gonna stop. I'm going to put a stop to this. And I just fired off. I can't remember, like, three just like, hey man, you know you're you're just a little behind everybody else in this show and probably in life too, that, you know, things like that, and it never happened again. So I'm like, okay, mission accomplished on my part. Comedians love it when we can shut up somebody like that. Anyway. Show's over, I am out doing a meet and greet. Some guy comes up to me and he goes, hey, hey, you know that kid you were making fun of is mentally handicapped. And now, of course, I don't know this, but out of the corner of my eye, I see from the other exit a man pushing a son, his son in a wheelchair out of the showroom. And I'm just like, Oh, what have I done? And yeah. And of course, when you're on a cruise, you're you're on a cruise. When you're a cruise ship entertainer, you have to live with your audience. So I couldn't hide. I spent like the next three days, and it seemed like wherever I was, the man and his son in the wheelchair were nearby. And finally, on the fourth day, I think was, I was waiting for an elevator. Again, 3500 people on this ship, okay, I'm waiting for an elevator. The elevator door opens. Guess who are the only two people the elevator, the man and his son. And I can't really say I'll wait for the next one. So I get on, and I said to this the father, I said, I just want you to know I had no idea. You know, I'm so sorry. I can't see back there, this kind of thing. And the dad looks at me. He puts his hand up to stop me, and he points to me, and he goes, I thought you were hysterical. And it was, not only was it relief, but it kind of, it's sort of a lesson that if you think something is funny, you should laugh at it. Yeah. And I think sometimes in corporate America, my point in this. I think sometimes when you do these corporate shows, I think that audience members forget that. I think very busy looking around to see if their immediate boss thinks it's funny, and eventually everybody's looking at the CEO to see if they're like, you know, I think if you're doing it that way, if that's the way you're you're approaching humor. You're doing yourself a disservice, if right, stopping yourself from laughing at something that you think is funny.   Speaker 1 ** 38:09 I do think that that all too often the problem with meetings is that we as a as a country, we in corporations, don't do meetings, right anyway, for example, early on, I heard someone at a convention of the National Federation of the Blind say he was the new executive director of the American Foundation for the Blind, and he said, I have instituted a policy, no Braille, no meetings. And what that was all about was to say, if you're going to have a meeting, you need to make sure that all the documentation is accessible to those who aren't going to read the print. I take it further and say you shouldn't be giving out documentation during the meeting. And you can use the excuse, well, I got to get the latest numbers and all that. And my point is, you shouldn't be giving out documentation at a meeting, because the meeting is for people to communicate and interact with each other. And if you're giving out papers and so on, what are people going to do? They're going to read that, and they're not going to listen to the speakers. They're not going to listen to the other people. And we do so many things like that, we've gotten into a habit of doing things that become so predictable, but also make meetings very boring, because who wants to look at the papers where you can be listening to people who have a lot more constructive and interesting things to say anyway?   Greg Schwem ** 39:36 Yeah, yeah. I think, I think COVID definitely changed, some for the some for the better and some for the worse. I think that a lot of things that were done at meetings COVID and made us realize a lot of that stuff could be done virtually, that you didn't have to just have everybody sit and listen to people over and over and over again.   Speaker 1 ** 39:58 But unless you're Donald Trump. Up. Yeah, that's another story.   Greg Schwem ** 40:02 Yes, exactly another podcast episode. But, yeah, I do think also that. I think COVID changed audiences. I think, you know, we talked a little bit earlier about crowd work, right, and audiences wanting to be more involved. I think COVID precipitated that, because, if you think about it, Michael, for two and a half years during COVID, our sole source of entertainment was our phone, right? Which meant that we were in charge of the entertainment experience. You don't like something, swipe left, scroll down, scroll, scroll, scroll, find something else. You know, that kind of thing. I'm not I'm not entertained in the next four or five seconds. So I'm going to do this. And I think when live entertainment returned, audiences kind of had to be retrained a little bit, where they had to learn to sit and listen and wait for the entertainment to come to them. And granted, it might not happen immediately. It might not happen in the first five seconds, but you have to just give give people like me a chance. It will come to you. It will happen, but it might not be on your timetable,   Speaker 1 ** 41:13 right? Well, and I think that is all too true for me. I didn't find didn't find COVID to be a great inconvenience, because I don't look at the screen anyway, right? So in a sense, for me, COVID wasn't that much of a change, other than not being in an office or not being physically at a meeting, and so I was listening to the meeting on the computer, and that has its nuances. Like you don't necessarily get the same information about how everyone around you is reacting, but, but it didn't bother me, I think, nearly as much as it did everyone else who has to look at everyone. Of course, I have no problems picking on all those people as well, because what I point out is that that disabilities has to be redefined, because every one of you guys has your own disability. You're light dependent, and you don't do well when there's dark, when, when the dark shows up and and we now have an environment where Thomas Edison invented the electric light bulb, and we've spent the last 147 years doing everything we can to make sure that light is pretty ubiquitous, but it doesn't change a thing when suddenly the power goes out and you don't have immediate access to light. So that's as much a disability as us light, independent people who don't   Greg Schwem ** 42:36 care about that, right? Right? I hear, I agree, but it is but   Speaker 1 ** 42:41 it is interesting and and it is also important that we all understand each other and are willing to tolerate the fact that there are differences in people, and we need to recognize that with whatever we're doing.   42:53 Yeah, I agree.   Speaker 1 ** 42:57 What do you think about so today, we have obviously a really fractured environment and fractured country, and everyone's got their own opinions, and nobody wants to talk about anything, especially politics wise. How do you think that's all affecting comedy and what you get to do and what other people are doing?   Greg Schwem ** 43:18 Well, I think Pete, I think there's, there's multiple answers to that question too. I think, I think it makes people nervous, wondering what the minute a comedian on stage brings up politics, the minute he starts talking about a politician, whether it's our president, whether it's somebody else, you can sense a tension in the room a little bit, and it's, it's, I mean, it's funny. I, one of my best friends in comedy, got to open for another comedian at Carnegie Hall a couple of years ago, and I went to see him, and I'm sitting way up in the top, and he is just crushing it. And then at one point he he brought up, he decided to do an impression of Mitch McConnell, which he does very well. However, the minute he said, Mitch McConnell, I you could just sense this is Carnegie freaking Hall, and after the show, you know, he and I always like to dissect each other's shows. That's what comedians do. And I just said to him, I go. Why did you decide to insert Mitch McConnell in there? And I, and I didn't say it like, you moron, that was stupid, yeah, but I was genuinely curious. And he just goes, well, I just really like doing that bit, and I like doing that voice and so forth, but, and it's not like the show crashed and burned afterwards. No, he did the joke, and then he got out of it, and he went on to other stuff, and it was fine, but I think that people are just so on their guard now, yeah, and, and that's why, you know, you know Jay Leno always said he was an equal opportunity offender. I think you will do better with politics if you really want. Insert politics into your act. I think he would be better making fun of both sides. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And I think too often comedians now use the the stage as kind of a Bully, bully pulpit, like I have microphone and you don't. I am now going to give you my take on Donald Trump or the Democrats or whatever, and I've always said, talk about anything you want on stage, but just remember, you're at a comedy club. People came to laugh. So is there a joke in here? Yeah, or are you just ranting because you gotta be careful. You have to get this off your chest, and your way is right. It's, it's, you know, I hate to say it, but that's, that's why podcast, no offense, Michael, yours, is not like this. But I think one of the reasons podcasters have gotten so popular is a lot of people, just a lot of podcast hosts see a podcast is a chance to just rant about whatever's on their mind. And it's amazing to me how many podcast hosts that are hosted by comedians have a second guy have a sidekick to basically laugh and agree with whatever that person says. I think Joe Rogan is a classic example, and he's one of the most popular ones. But, and I don't quite understand that, because you know, if you're a comedian, you you made the choice to work solo, right? So why do you need somebody else with you?   Speaker 1 ** 46:33 I'm I'm fairly close to Leno. My remark is a little bit different. I'm not so much an equal opportunity offender as I am an equal opportunity abuser. I'll pick on both sides if politics comes into it at all, and it's and it's fun, and I remember when George W Bush was leaving the White House, Letterman said, Now we're not going to have anybody to joke about anymore. And everyone loved it. But still, I recognize that in the world today, people don't want to hear anything else. Don't confuse me with the facts or any of that, and it's so unfortunate, but it is the way it is, and so it's wiser to stay away from a lot of that, unless you can really break through the barrier,   Greg Schwem ** 47:21 I think so. And I also think that people, one thing you have to remember, I think, is when people come to a comedy show, they are coming to be entertained. Yeah, they are coming to kind of escape from the gloom and doom that unfortunately permeates our world right now. You know? I mean, I've always said that if you, if you walked up to a comedy club on a Saturday night, and let's say there were 50 people waiting outside, waiting to get in, and you asked all 50 of them, what do you hope happens tonight? Or or, Why are you here? All right, I think from all 50 you would get I would just like to laugh, yeah, I don't think one of them is going to say, you know, I really hope that my opinions on what's happening in the Middle East get challenged right now, but he's a comedian. No one is going to say that. No, no. It's like, I hope I get into it with the comedian on stage, because he thinks this way about a woman's right to choose, and I think the other way. And I really, really hope that he and I will get into an argument about to the middle of the   Speaker 1 ** 48:37 show. Yeah, yeah. That's not why people come?   Greg Schwem ** 48:40 No, it's not. And I, unfortunately, I think again, I think that there's a lot of comedians that don't understand that. Yeah, again, talk about whatever you want on stage, but just remember that your your surroundings, you if you build yourself as a comedian,   48:56 make it funny. Yeah, be funny.   Speaker 1 ** 49:00 Well, and nowadays, especially for for you, for me and so on, we're we're growing older and and I think you point out audiences are getting younger. How do you deal with that?   Greg Schwem ** 49:12 Well, what I try to do is I a couple of things. I try to talk as much as I can about topics that are relevant to a younger generation. Ai being one, I, one of the things I do in my my show is I say, oh, you know, I I really wasn't sure how to start off. And when you're confused these days, you you turn to answer your questions. You turn to chat GPT, and I've actually written, you know, said to chat GPT, you know, I'm doing a show tonight for a group of construction workers who work in the Midwest. It's a $350 million company, and it says, try to be very specific. Give me a funny opening line. And of course, chat GPT always comes up with some. Something kind of stupid, which I then relate to the audience, and they love that, you know, they love that concept. So I think there's, obviously, there's a lot of material that you can do on generational differences, but I, I will say I am very, very aware that my audience is, for the most part, younger than me now, unless I want to spend the rest of my career doing you know, over 55 communities, not that they're not great laughers, but I also think there's a real challenge in being older than your audience and still being able to make them laugh. But I think you have to remember, like you said, there's there's people now that don't remember 911 that have no concept of it, yeah, so don't be doing references from, say, the 1980s or the early 1990s and then come off stage and go, Man, nobody that didn't hit at all. No one, no one. They're stupid. They don't get it. Well, no, they, they, it sounds they don't get it. It's just that they weren't around. They weren't around, right? So that's on you.   Speaker 1 ** 51:01 One of the things that you know people ask me is if I will do virtual events, and I'll do virtual events, but I also tell people, the reason I prefer to do in person events is that I can sense what the audience is doing, how they're reacting and what they feel. If I'm in a room speaking to people, and I don't have that same sense if I'm doing something virtually, agreed same way. Now for me, at the same time, I've been doing this now for 23 years, so I have a pretty good idea in general, how to interact with an audience, to draw them in, even in a virtual environment, but I still tend to be a little bit more careful about it, and it's just kind of the way it is, you know, and you and you learn to deal with it well for you, have you ever had writer's block, and how did you deal with it?   Greg Schwem ** 51:57 Yes, I have had writer's block. I don't I can't think of a single comedian who's never had writer's block, and if they say they haven't, I think they're lying when I have writer's block, the best way for me to deal with this and just so you know, I'm not the kind of comedian that can go that can sit down and write jokes. I can write stories. I've written three books, but I can't sit down and just be funny for an hour all by myself. I need interaction. I need communication. And I think when I have writer's block, I tend to go out and try and meet strangers and can engage them in conversation and find out what's going on with them. I mean, you mentioned about dealing with the younger audience. I am a big believer right now in talking to people who are half my age. I like doing that in social settings, because I just, I'm curious. I'm curious as to how they think. I'm curious as to, you know, how they spend money, how they save money, how what their hopes and dreams are for the future, what that kind of thing, and that's the kind of stuff that then I'll take back and try and write material about. And I think that, I think it's fun for me, and it's really fun to meet somebody who I'll give you a great example just last night. Last night, I was I there's a there's a bar that I have that's about 10 a stone's throw from my condo, and I love to stop in there and and every now and then, sometimes I'll sit there and I won't meet anybody, and sometimes different. So there was a guy, I'd say he's probably in his early 30s, sitting too over, and he was reading, which I find intriguing, that people come to a bar and read, yeah, people do it, I mean. And I just said to him, I go, and he was getting ready to pay his bill, and I just said, if you don't mind me asking, What are you reading? And he's like, Oh, it's by Ezra Klein. And I go, you know, I've listened to Ezra Klein before. And he goes, Yeah, you know? He says, I'm a big fan. And debt to debt to dad. Next thing, you know, we're just, we're just riffing back and forth. And I ended up staying. He put it this way, Michael, it took him a very long time to pay his bill because we had a conversation, and it was just such a pleasure to to people like that, and I think that, and it's a hard thing. It's a hard thing for me to do, because I think people are on their guard, a little bit like, why is this guy who's twice my age talking to me at a bar? That's that seems a little weird. And I would get that. I can see that. But as I mentioned in my latest book, I don't mean because I don't a whole chapter to this, and I I say in the book, I don't mean you any harm. I'm not trying to hit on you, or I'm not creepy old guy at the bar. I am genuinely interested in your story. And. In your life, and and I just, I want to be the least interesting guy in the room, and that's kind of how I go about my writing, too. Is just you, you drive the story. And even though I'm the comedian, I'll just fill in the gaps and make them funny.   Speaker 1 ** 55:15 Well, I know that I have often been invited to speak at places, and I wondered, What am I going to say to this particular audience? How am I going to deal with them? They're they're different than what I'm used to. What I found, I guess you could call that writer's block, but what I found is, if I can go early and interact with them, even if I'm the very first speaker, if I can interact with them beforehand, or if there are other people speaking before me, invariably, I will hear things that will allow me to be able to move on and give a relevant presentation specifically to that group, which is what it's really all about. And so I'm with you, and I appreciate it, and it's good to get to the point where you don't worry about the block, but rather you look at ways to move forward and interact with people and make it fun, right,   Greg Schwem ** 56:13 right? And I do think people, I think COVID, took that away from us a little bit, yeah, obviously, but I but, and I do think people missed that. I think that people, once you get them talking, are more inclined to not think that you're you have ulterior motives. I think people do enjoy putting their phones down a little bit, but it's, it's kind of a two way street when I, when I do meet people, if it's if it's only me asking the questions, eventually I'm going to get tired of that. Yeah, I think there's a, there has to be a reciprocity thing a little bit. And one thing I find is, is with the Gen Z's and maybe millennials. They're not, they're not as good at that as I think they could be. They're more they're they're happy to talk about themselves, but they're not really good at saying so what do you do for a living? Or what you know, tell me about you. And I mean, that's how you learn about other people. Yeah,   Speaker 1 ** 57:19 tell me about your your latest book, Turning gut punches into punchlines. That's a interesting title, yeah, well, the more   Greg Schwem ** 57:26 interesting is the subtitle. So it's turning gut punches into punch punch lines, A Comedian's journey through cancer, divorce and other hilarious stuff.   Speaker 1 ** 57:35 No, like you haven't done anything in the world. Okay, right? So   Greg Schwem ** 57:38 other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln. Yeah, exactly. See, now you get that reference. I don't know if I could use that on stage, but anyway, depend on your audience. But yeah, they're like, What's he talking   Speaker 1 ** 57:50 who's Lincoln? And I've been to Ford theater too, so that's okay, yes, as have I. So it was much later than, than, well, than Lincoln, but that's okay.   Greg Schwem ** 57:58 You're not that old, right? No. Well, okay, so as the title, as the title implies, I did have sort of a double, double gut punch, it just in the last two years. So I, I got divorced late in life, after 29 years of marriage. And while that was going on, I got a colon cancer diagnosis and and at this end, I was dealing with all this while also continuing work as a humor speaker, okay, as a comedian. And I just decided I got it. First of all, I got a very clean bill of health. I'm cancer free. I am finally divorced so and I, I started to think, I wonder if there's some humor in this. I I would, I would, you know, Michael, I've been on stage for like, 25 years telling people that, you know, you can find something funny to laugh at. You can find humor in any situation. It's kind of like what you're talking about all the people going down the stairs in the building in the world trade center. All right, if you look around enough, you know, maybe there's something funny, and I've been preaching that, but I never really had to live that until now. And I thought, you know, maybe there's something here. Maybe I can this is my chance now to embrace new experiences. It was kind of when I got divorced, when you've been married half your life and all of a sudden you get divorced, everything's new to you, yeah, you're, you're, you're living alone, you you're doing things that your spouse did, oh, so many years. And you're having to do those, and you're having to make new friends, yeah, and all of that, I think, is very humorous. So the more I saw a book in there that I started writing before the cancer diagnosis, and I thought was there enough here? Just like, okay, a guy at 60 years old gets divorced now what's going to happen to him? The diagnosis? Kind. Made it just added another wrinkle to the book, because now I have to deal with this, and I have to find another subject to to make light of a little bit. So the book is not a memoir, you know, I don't start it off. And, you know, when I was seven, you know, I played, you know, I was, I went to this school night. It's not that. It's more just about reinvention and just seeing that you can be happy later in life, even though you have to kind of rewrite your your story a little   Speaker 1 ** 1:00:33 bit. And I would assume, and I would assume, you bring some of that into your ACT every so   Greg Schwem ** 1:00:38 very much. So yeah, I created a whole new speech called Turning gut punches into punchlines. And I some of the stuff that I, that I did, but, you know, there's a chapter in the book about, I about gig work, actually three chapters I, you know, I went to work for Amazon during the Christmas holiday rush, just scanning packages. I wanted to see what that was like. I drove for Uber I which I did for a while. And to tell you the truth, I miss it. I ended up selling my car, but I miss it because of the what we just talked about. It was a great way to communicate with people. It was a great way to talk to people, find out about them, be the least interesting person in the car, anyway. And there's a chapter about dating and online dating, which I had not had to do in 30 years. There's a lot of humor in that. I went to therapy. I'd never gone to therapy before. I wrote a chapter about that. So I think people really respond to this book, because they I think they see a lot of themselves in it. You know, lots of people have been divorced. There's lots of cancer survivors out there, and there's lots of people who just suddenly have hit a speed bump in their life, and they're not really sure how to deal with it, right? And my way, this book is just about deal with it through laughter. And I'm the perfect example.   Speaker 1 ** 1:01:56 I hear you, Oh, I I know, and I've been through the same sort of thing as you not a divorce, but my wife and I were married for 40 years, and she passed away in November of 2022 after 40 years of marriage. And as I tell people, as I tell people, I got to be really careful, because she's monitoring me from somewhere, and if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it, so I got to be a good kid, and I don't even chase the women so. But I also point out that none of them have been chasing me either, so I guess I just do what we got to do. But the reality is, I think there are always ways to find some sort of a connection with other people, and then, of course, that's what what you do. It's all about creating a connection, creating a relationship, even if it's only for a couple of hours or an hour or 45 minutes, but, but you do it, which is what it's all about?   Greg Schwem ** 1:02:49 Yeah, exactly. And I think the funniest stuff is real life experience. Oh, absolutely, you know. And if people can see themselves in in what I've written, then I've done my job as a writer.   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:03 So do you have any plans to retire?   Greg Schwem ** 1:03:06 Never. I mean, good for you retire from what   1:03:09 I know right, making fun of people   Greg Schwem ** 1:03:12 and making them laugh. I mean, I don't know what I would do with myself, and even if I there's always going to be I don't care how technology, technologically advanced our society gets. People will always want and need to laugh. Yeah, they're always going to want to do that. And if they're want, if they're wanting to do that, then I will find, I will find a way to get to them. And that's why I, as I said, That's why, like working on cruise ships has become, like a new, sort of a new avenue for me to make people laugh. And so, yeah, I don't I there's, there's no way. I don't know what else I would do with   Speaker 1 ** 1:03:53 myself, well and from my perspective, as long as I can inspire people, yes, I can make people think a little bit and feel better about themselves. I'm going to do it right. And, and, and I do. And I wrote a book during COVID that was published last August called Live like a guide dog. And it's all about helping people learn to control fear. And I use lessons I learned from eight guide dogs and my wife service dog to do that. My wife was in a wheelchair her whole life. Great marriage. She read, I pushed worked out well, but, but the but the but the bottom line is that dogs can teach us so many lessons, and there's so much that we can learn from them. So I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to create this book and and get it out there. And I think that again, as long as I can continue to inspire people, I'm going to do it. Because   Greg Schwem ** 1:04:47 why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't I exactly right? Yeah, yeah. So,   Speaker 1 ** 1:04:51 I mean, I think if I, if I stopped, I think my wife would beat up on me, so I gotta be nice exactly. She's monitoring from somewhere

There's lots of breaking news this morning about the pardons issued by former President Joe Biden that were signed by using an Autopen, rather than by the Biden personally.We're now hearing that substantial portions of this process of finalizing these pardons were done by Biden's staff.Does the use of the autopen make these pardons invalid? What about the fact that many of the pardons are open-ended, applying to any and all offenses, rather than specified offenses? What about where the pardons fail to specify individuals, but simply refer to a class of persons to be pardoned? The answer is that likely NONE of this makes ANY of these Biden pardons legally invalid.  I'll explain WHY, as well as WHAT WOULD BE REQUIRED for a presidential pardon to be deemed invalid.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior, federal district trial court Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong in Los Angeles has decided that it is she, rather than the Article II Executive Branch, who is in charge of managing the operations of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement.   She has issued an order that—essentially—instructs ICE that they are obligated to obey the law. More specifically, her order prohibits ICE from improperly profiling suspects based solely on their apparent race or skin color.  Such race-based profiling is, of course, unlawful already.  That said, profiling generally is not unlawful, the profiling must merely be based on lawful considerations beyond solely race or skin-color.  Profiling that incorporates additional factors unrelated to race or skin-color are perfectly lawful—such as presence in an environment known to be frequented by illegal migrant third-world invaders, the inability of the suspect to speak English, and other allowable factors. Indeed, ICE needs only mere reasonable suspicion to stop and investigate a suspected illegal migrant third-world invader who is located anywhere within a full 100 miles of a US border—and, of course, the entirety of Los Angeles falls well within this 100 mile range of the US west coast. Further, the unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior federal district trial court Judge Frimpong has also decided that she has the authority to micro-manage the operations of the Article II Executive Branch agency of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, contrary to the will of the Article II Executive Branch president elected by the whole of the American people to carry out our political will.The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Another week, and another week of America fighting its desperate existential war against the forces of global fascism seeking to destroy our great nation and subjugate Americans to billions of third-world migrant invaders, the virulent pawns being used to attack America through the machinations of the global elite and their American politician henchmen working their treason within our very borders. WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE! We are blessed to live not in boring and uneventful times, but in an era in which we have the great fortune to battle against evil forces waging war against our homeland—that's not an opportunity any of us should pass up! Join me as I break down some of the recent good news in America's existential war for survival, identify the nature of our enemy, and remind all of us what awaits our great nation when we emerge victorious from this battle for national survival, as we surely will. The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook

Don and Tom kick off this episode by responding to a one-star Apple Podcast reviewer who promised to upgrade to five stars—if they correct their allegedly false Bitcoin claims. Challenge accepted. Don clarifies his earlier “nobody uses Bitcoin” remark by digging into the actual numbers: only 15,000 businesses worldwide accept it, out of over 359 million—roughly 0.0004%, making it statistically more rare than a lightning strike. They also break down the real costs of converting Bitcoin to dollars: while some exchanges charge under 1%, Bitcoin ATMs routinely charge 5–25% in fees, with total costs sometimes exceeding 30%. Then, a listener calls in with a ChatGPT-generated portfolio featuring VUG, VEA, SMH, and AXON. Don tears it apart for being tech-heavy, overly concentrated, and missing broad market exposure—ironically, even ChatGPT agrees with him. Listeners also get advice on why ETFs are gradually replacing mutual funds, when (if ever) annuities make sense, and why indexed annuities are the financial industry's version of timeshares: opaque, overpriced, and always sold, never bought. Despite the facts and the humor, Don doubts his five-star redemption is coming—but if Greg's Mowing and Septic accepts Bitcoin, there's still hope. 0:26 Don confronts repeat negative podcast reviewers 1:35 NavRep's public offer: “Correct your Bitcoin lies and I'll give 5 stars” 2:31 Bitcoin rebuttal: 15,000 businesses accept it—out of 359 million 5:13 Teaser: Bitcoin conversion fees part 2 coming up after the break 6:26 Don admits his imprecise “nobody accepts Bitcoin” claim 8:19 Clearing up the 8% Bitcoin conversion fee claim—context was ATMs 9:49 Bitcoin ATM fees average 17.5%, sometimes hit 30% 11:04 Exchange conversion under 1% is possible—but not for quick cash 13:10 Volatility and impracticality still make Bitcoin a poor currency 16:00 ChatGPT jokes: “Beer at a Baptist wedding” & “Greg the mower” 16:49 Caller Jason asks ChatGPT for a portfolio; Don and Tom cringe 17:46 ChatGPT suggested a tech-heavy, overly concentrated portfolio 20:40 Better suggestions: VT, AVGE, DFAW—not VUG/SMH/AXON 21:50 Don's GPT criticizes Jason's GPT: “No bonds, no value, no real estate” 23:43 Caller Scott nails TRM's philosophy and nearly retires Don 26:12 The rare “pros” of annuities—and their bigger downsides 28:24 Indexed annuities: regular income taxed as ordinary income 30:02 Betting against the house: how annuity math favors insurers 31:44 Caller Jane asks if ETFs are better than mutual funds 32:05 ETF settlement is faster, but that's not a reason to choose 33:30 Vanguard accounts support ETFs beyond their own funds 34:51 Updated: mutual funds now settle T+1, ETFs also T+1 36:26 Jane warned about National Life Group's indexed annuity pitch 37:07 Why Don hates indexed annuities: high fees, low returns, opaque structure 39:27 Still selling like hotcakes: $27B in indexed annuities sold Q1 2025 40:35 Wrap-up: annuities remain unethical despite legality and popularity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Another week, another week of unelected, black-robed, tyrannical, inferior federal district court judges imagining that our Founders created a nation in which THEY are our fascist overlords over our Congress, our President, and ourselves.Today I have a couple of more examples of absolutely grotesque overreach by these black-robed little monsters—as well as more confirmation that Supreme Court Justice Kentanji “I'm not a biologist, how would I know what a woman is” Jackson is the dumbest person to ever be raised to our highest court. And before we dive into all that, a brief smorgasbord of more great news for President Trump, and America—as well as a quick reality check on the Epstein files kerfuffle currently in the news! The #1 guide for understanding when using force to protect yourself is legal. Now yours for FREE! Just pay the S&H for us to get it to you.➡️ Carry with confidence, knowing you are protected from predators AND predatory prosecutors➡️ Correct the common myths you may think are true but get people in trouble​➡️ Know you're getting the best with this abridged version of our best-selling 5-star Amazon-rated book that has been praised by many (including self-defense legends!) for its easy, entertaining, and informative style.​➡️ Many interesting, if sometimes heart-wrenching, true-life examplesGet Your Free Book: https://lawofselfdefense.com/getthebook