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Power of Praying Scriptures over your Marriage: Special Patreon Release with Jodie Berndt   1 Thessalonians 3:12 (NIV) "May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other and for everyone else, just as ours does for you."   *Transcription Below*   Jodie Berndt is bestselling author of the Praying the Scriptures book series, which includes volumes for Children, Teens, Adult Children, and Life, plus the new Praying the Scriptures for Your Marriage (2023). Jodie has been a trusted speaker, Bible teacher, and prayer warrior for over thirty years. She and her husband, Robbie, have four married children, and they live in Virginia Beach, Virginia.   Connect with Jodie through her website or Instagram.   Questions and Topics We Discuss: What are some ancient truths from Scripture that stand out to you, specifically as it relates to marriage? Will you share a few of the helpful questions for couples that you write in the book? How have you seen kindness open the door to changes in a marriage?   Thank You to Our Sponsors: Chick-fil-A East Peoria and The Savvy Sauce Charities (and donate online here)   Connect with The Savvy Sauce on Facebook or Instagram or Our Website   Please help us out by sharing this episode with a friend, leaving a 5-star rating and review, and subscribing to this podcast!   Gospel Scripture: (all NIV) Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”   Romans 3:24 “and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”   Romans 3:25 (a) “God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.”   Hebrews 9:22 (b) “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”   Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”   Romans 5:11 “Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”   John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”   Romans 10:9 “That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   Luke 15:10 says “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”   Romans 8:1 “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”   Ephesians 1:13–14 “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession- to the praise of his glory.”   Ephesians 1:15–23 “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.”   Ephesians 2:8–10 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God‘s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.“   Ephesians 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ.“   Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”   *Transcription*   Music: (0:00 – 0:09)   Laura Dugger: (0:10 - 2:47) Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, where we have practical chats for intentional living. I'm your host, Laura Dugger, and I'm so glad you're here.   I want to say a huge thank you to today's sponsors for this episode, Chick-fil-A East Peoria and Savvy Sauce Charities.   If this is your first time here, welcome! You may be wondering what it means to have a special Patreon release. So, here's the scoop. Patreon was a platform we used to generate financial support for The Savvy Sauce, and we expressed our thanks to those paying patrons by giving them a bonus episode every month. But, in 2024, we transitioned away from Patreon when we became a non-profit called Savvy Sauce Charities. The podcast is part of this non-profit, which exists to resource loved ones to inspire growth and intimacy with God and others.   So, people used to pay to support us through Patreon, but now they can just donate directly to our non-profit. We spend thousands of dollars each year to record and produce these episodes, and we do pray that they're beneficial and that God sees fit to use them to be transformational in your life. If that is the case, if you have ever benefited from an episode of The Savvy Sauce, would you consider showing your gratitude through your financial generosity? Any amount is greatly appreciated. In fact, if every listener gave only $1 per month, it would completely offset our costs. We have all the details on our website, thesavvysauce.com, but feel free to also reach out to our team anytime if you want to partner together. Our email address is info@thesavvysauce.com.   And now I'm pleased to share this episode with you that used to only be available to paying patrons. Jodie Berndt is my guest today. She is the bestselling author of the Praying the Scriptures book series, and today we're going to focus on the powerful way to pray the scriptures for our marriage. And I just want to give you a heads up that you may hear a lot of airplanes in the background during our conversation, but I hope it doesn't take away from all the goodness Jodie is about to share. Here's our chat.   Welcome to The Savvy Sauce, Jodie.   Jodie Berndt: (2:49 - 2:53) Laura, thank you. It is just a huge treat to be able to chat with you today.   Laura Dugger: (2:54 - 2:59) Well, will you begin by just first telling us a bit about yourself and the work that you get to do?   Jodie Berndt: (3:01 - 4:19) Sure. Yes. Well, like you, I have four children. Mine are grown now, though. I have three daughters and then a son at the end, and they're all adults and married and having kids of their own. I met my husband back when we were in college. We both went to the University of Virginia and got married right after college, kind of jumped into the whole marriage and family thing. By today's standards, it seems ridiculously young. I look back and I think I don't know what we were thinking. But as Robbie, my husband says, when you meet the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, you want the rest of your life to start right now. And I think we both kind of felt that way. And so, we've been married now, I guess, nearly 38 years.   Your listeners may know that I write books. I write the Praying the Scriptures books. I've done others as well. But those are the ones that I am primarily focused on now. Praying the Scriptures for Your Children, your teens, your adult children, your life, because we needed ourselves too. And then most recently, Praying the Scriptures for Your Marriage. So, I never set out to become a prayer writer or even a book writer. But golly, I have realized the power of prayer and my desperate need for God's help in all things. So, I think it sort of fell backwards into it. And it's been a fun journey.   Laura Dugger: (4:20 - 4:37) Well, and I first encountered that book that you mentioned, Praying the Scriptures for Your Children, when I was a new mom, and it was so powerful. So, when you look back to that one, what are some of the stories or takeaways that really stand out from that resource?   Jodie Berndt: (4:38 - 9:31) Oh, gosh. Well, thank you for asking about that one. That was a book that was sort of born, as I said, out of my own need for the Lord, because nothing reveals your flaws and inadequacies and need for help beyond yourself as much as having children does. At least for me, that was the case. I'd grown up in a Christian home. Prayer was a natural part of life for me but not sort of the specific intentional prayers and not praying the scriptures.   And for anybody who doesn't know what that means, it just means taking the words that we read in the Bible, the things that God actually says to us there and using them to shape how we think about things, how we long for things, kind of creating our desires as based on what we read and then animating our prayers so that, as Jesus says in John 15, he looks at his disciples, he's getting ready to go to the cross, and you think of all the things he could have talked about. He chose to drill down on staying connected to him primarily through our prayers. He says, "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you." And then he explains why. He says, "This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples."   And I think I read that chapter in those specific verses, probably a hundred times over my life without fully comprehending what he was talking about there. And I think what he's talking about is that as we abide in him, as we remain in him, as we stay connected day in and day out, whether we're doing the laundry or running a carpool or anything else, we can allow the things we read in the Bible to shape our thoughts, shape our longings, and then give voice to our prayers. And when we do that, that really is the secret to living a difference-making, transformational, impactful life, to bearing fruit.   I loved being able to kind of look back over a 20-year history. And the stories in that book, in all my books, are real-life people who have real-life struggles and real-life prayers. And some of them have very happy endings. Some of them are still being played out. All of them represent times when we're having to trust God. And as I looked back over 20 years of praying parents and watched these families, where when I first was interviewing the mom or the dad, their kids might be five or seven or ten years old. And now, you know, these kids are in their 30s, some of them. And I'm like, wow, God, you know, it's like watching hair grow sometimes when we're praying and we don't see the needle moving. But with the perspective of history and time, you can see how God works. And so that was a huge blessing to me that I didn't expect when I went back and re-read the book and updated the book to be able to see what God has done.   And one particular chapter that I loved in that book was the chapter on praying for your child to promote God's kingdom. And there's a story in there about two little second grade boys, Brandon and Eddie. And I was part of a moms in prayer group at the time. And we were praying a verse, Ephesians 5:16, that our kids would make the most of every opportunity, that they would be wise in the way they live. We really didn't know how God would answer that prayer. But what parent doesn't want their child to be wise in the way they live and to make the most of the opportunities? Well, sure enough, we prayed that prayer. And two weeks later, one of the moms in our group came in and told the most jaw-droppingly beautiful story of how her son, a second grader, as part of an in-class assignment, had chosen to write a persuasive essay. And you can imagine what a second-grade essay looks like. But most of the kids in the class thought, I'm going to persuade my grandmother to give me a bicycle or I'm going to persuade my mom to let me stay up late and watch a TV show, whatever it is. This child chose to write to one of his classmates, who had been known as a real troublemaker in that class and in the school, about why he should accept Jesus as the Lord of his life. And he put these 10 points, things like, you know, God loves you. Jesus loves you. You can have anything you want in heaven. Just is a second grader's viewpoint. And I'm telling you what, I did that interview and wrote that story 20 some years ago. And still today, as I look back on that child and again, getting to watch him grow up, he's now a father with children of his own. And seeing how God has worked in that child's life in answer to that Ephesians 5 prayer that our child will be wise, making the most of every opportunity. I'm just dumbfounded. First, by how God answered that in a second grader's life and how he's continued to have the answer to that prayer unfold over this young man's life as he's grown. It's just we never can know when we pray what God will do.   Laura Dugger: (9:33 - 9:53) Absolutely. Because the fruit looks so different than the seed. And that's incredible to have that gift of perspective. But now with your newest title, Praying the Scriptures for Your Marriage, first of all, how do you even respond to someone if they ask you, why does prayer matter in marriage?   Jodie Berndt: (9:54 - 12:29) Yeah, well, that's actually a question that I get more than you would think. And especially from people who aren't super comfortable praying. Because a lot of us, even if we've grown up in church-going Christian homes, the idea of praying with our spouse just might not come naturally. And even for Robbie and me. But I'll tell you one of the reasons we want to do it is because prayer really does matter. As I jumped into writing this book, I started doing some research and secular research points to all of these benefits that it reinforces the idea of prayer does that you're on the same team. Psychologists have found that prayer increases a sense of satisfaction in your relationship. It heightens your own sense of emotional well-being. If you're mad, it gives you a chance to calm down. It can lower your blood pressure. And there have even been studies done that shows that when couples pray together, it even leads to better sex. And so, you get all of these things that are completely separate from maybe the spiritual side of why God would want us to pray. This is just the secular research.   But when you take it a step further and look at why God wants us to pray, oh, my goodness. You know, it opens the door to intimacy, both with ourselves and with the Lord, because honestly, it's being vulnerable, isn't it? When we pray, you know, that is asking God for help. That's acknowledging our dependence on him, admitting we can't always be kind or selfless or forgiving on our own. And, you know, I don't know any husbands or wives who can do those things because we're all inherently flawed. We're broken. We're selfish people. And we can kind of start to shrivel up under what pressure to just get it all right, you know, to be a good wife, to be a good husband. And we can feel like we're failing. And yet, when we realize that through prayer, we've got this vehicle of inviting God into the mix, into our relationship, of letting the Holy Spirit step in and do the things that only he can do to work in us, giving us, as Philippians 2:13 says, the desire and the power to do what pleases God. I mean, that just changes the equation. It removes the burden from our shoulders of trying to build a strong marriage or be a good husband or wife. And just says, God, you know what? I can't do this on my own. I need you. Our marriage needs you. And that just opens up the runway, I think, for us in marriages and really gives us a new intimacy and a new confidence in our relationships.   Laura Dugger: (12:30 - 12:45) Well, and Jodie, you did so much research on marriages in preparation for this book. So, what are some of the ancient truths from Scripture that stand out to you specifically as it relates to marriage?   Jodie Berndt: (12:45 - 16:24) I'll tell you, an ancient truth that runs throughout Scripture is God's desire for us to talk to him about all of the details of our lives. There's nothing too big or nothing too small for him to care about. And I know you shared with me that you loved the Isaiah 7:11 verse in The Message translation, which is when Ahaz and the Lord are talking together. And God says, ask anything, you know, be extravagant, ask for the moon. And that's God's invitation to us to ask big. But there are also verses in Scripture where it says, you know, he delights in the details of our lives. He bends down to listen. So, we really can talk to him about the smallest things.   And I'll tell you, in terms of what you term ancient truths, I would say, and your listeners, I'm sure, know this, that the Bible is kind of one big story of God's love for us. And the covenant of marriage really is designed to reflect that. You know, we say this in our marriage vows, but I've yet to meet a bride or groom who really knows what they're talking about when they say those vows. I know for Robbie and me, we were just starry eyed and in love and speaking these vows without even really thinking what it would mean for better, for worse, you know, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish all of those things. But I'll tell you what, marriage gives us a chance to live out the gospel every day in a million little ways.   I love what Tim Keller says about the gospel. He says the gospel is this. It's that we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe. And yet at the very same time, we are more loved and accepted in Jesus than we ever dared hope. And, you know, isn't that a picture of marriage? Because nothing reveals our flaws and our sins as much as taking two inherently selfish people and bringing them into close proximity with each other day in and day out. We are going to love against each other. We're going to be aware of our brokenness. Nobody knows my weak points as much as my husband. Nobody knows his as much as I do. So, we're so aware that we're flawed. And yet within the covenant of our marriage, we can honestly say, OK, we are more loved and accepted than we ever dared hope as we do what Christ did and give ourselves up for one another.   Ephesians 5, it's that classic New Testament passage about how human relationships are supposed to work. And Paul starts out, he says, Ephesians 5:2, "Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." And you may blow by a verse like that because it sounds very theological and holy. And you think, OK, what does that really mean in my human relationships? And more specifically, what does that mean for our marriage? OK, walking in love, giving yourself up. It could be something as simple as getting out of bed to let the dog out so that your husband or your wife can sleep in. It may be going to the in-laws for dinner when everything in us wants to stay home because we know that's what our spouse longs to do. Anytime we choose to put our partner's needs and desires ahead of our own, that's partaking of the gospel. That is giving ourselves up for them as Jesus gave himself up for us. Even as we do that in the little decisions of our lives every day, we get to live out that gospel. And what a beautiful opportunity. So, if I had to take one ancient truth from all of scripture, it would be that the Bible is one big love story of God's love for us. And in our marriages every day, we can live that out in a million little decisions.   Laura Dugger: (16:26 - 16:50) Well, in your book, you open up about your journey of learning to listen to your husband instead of interrupting him. Oh, yeah. And just a crazy side note. I'm just going to quote you here where you write, the average person pays attention for about eight seconds and can only go 17 seconds before interrupting someone. 17 seconds.   Jodie Berndt: (16:50 - 19:53) Yes. I mean, I read that in my research. I think that was out of Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, I think was the source there. But when I read that, I thought, oh, my goodness. A, that makes me just mortified. But B, it makes me feel better about myself because I am an interrupter. I always think that I have the answer, the solution or something that's going to be really either interesting to say or solving to say whatever it is. And I had to learn to give my husband space to speak because like a lot of men, I think he's not super verbose. He's not going to be letting his words tumble out. And so, I have to give space and time in our conversations for him to be able to get his words together instead of just leaping to a conclusion and saying, I know exactly what you mean or stepping in and trying to finish his sentence because he may have something that he's concerned about or worried about.   You know, I tell a story in the book, too, where when we taught a marriage class, we had to rate each other on all kinds of things, 20 different topics on a scale of like zero to four. I think it was. And he gave me a zero in meeting his emotional needs. And I thought zero, but that's not fair. I didn't even know you had emotional needs because you are such a steady, reliable, non-mercurial person. And I realized just because he's steady and not all over the map, doesn't mean he doesn't have fears and worries and concerns and emotional needs just like I do. I had to learn to kind of let him express those. And for his part, he had to learn to let me speak without immediately jumping in and wanting to fix something. I think men, a lot of our husbands are natural fixers. They love us. They want to solve our problems. They want to help us analyze what's wrong. And there have been times where I have had to just look at Robbie, sometimes even take a space in my hands and say, OK, I just want to tell you something. And I don't need you right off the bat to fix it. I just need to be heard. I need to know that you understand. So, will you just listen without trying to solve or analyze or fix and let me express myself, communicate? And that's been a really good listening tool. So so, between me trying to interrupt and him trying to solve and fix, we have really had to learn some some tools and some strategies that we talk about in the book for becoming better listeners.   And I think it only makes sense, right? We are not ever taught to listen or taught to speak. I've got grandchildren here and it's really fun to watch them at age one and two and three learn to mimic what we say when we say, can you say yes, please? Can you say, you know, I love you. And it's delightful to watch our children learn to form words. But nobody ever says to us, OK, let me teach you to listen. Let me teach you to wait. Let me teach you to reflect. Let me teach you to ask questions to help you understand more. All of those things may not come naturally to us. And so, there are things we have to be intentional in marriage and in every relationship about learning.   Laura Dugger: (19:54 - 20:07) Well, are there any of those game changing tools that you would like to elaborate on if someone really hasn't been trained to learn how to listen? Well, what has helped you and Robbie really listen and love?   Jodie Berndt: (20:07 - 22:13) Yeah, well, me not. Number one, expecting him to be a mind reader. I think sometimes we girls, because we intuit things, we think, oh, surely he'll pick this up. And I've had to learn that I need to really be clear in my communication. And just like I said earlier, you know, if I just want him to listen without fixing, I need to say that. And we've also had to learn things like I think sometimes listeners can try to reassure other people. We can minimize the problem saying, oh, it's going to be all right. You know, don't worry. That happened to me once, too. And while we might think we're doing someone a favor by that, what we're really doing is undermining their need to express themselves, to be heard, to say they really are afraid or concerned.   And so, I think a good listener doesn't just jump in immediately with the reassurance or another bad habit is deflecting, you know, saying, oh, yeah, that reminds me of the time I. And we think, oh, good, we're going to take their mind off the problem by telling them another story. And no, they don't maybe need to have their mind taken off it right then. What they might need right then is to know that they're being heard. Or even another bad habit that we had to learn to avoid is intellectualizing something or explaining something. You know, well, the reason it didn't go well for you at work today, honey, is that you probably started by just saying exactly what you felt without giving everybody else in the room a chance to speak or whatever it is. You know, we're going in trying to armchair quarterback our spouse's life by explaining and intellectualizing when, again, they just need to know we're listening, we're hearing, we're willing to be sympathetic and empathize, and we're willing to pray. And we don't have to have the answers.   We can say, gosh, that must be hard. You know, why don't we just stop right now and just say, God, we don't know what to do here. Just like Jehoshaphat had said, you know, he was facing vast armies. He said, God, I don't know what to do. We don't know what to do. But our eyes are on you. And we can say that in our marriage saying, I don't know how to help my spouse. We don't know what to do about this. But God, we're inviting you into this mix. And that's what a good listener can sound like. Sometimes you don't have to have all the answers.   Laura Dugger: (22:14 - 22:36) And I would even add, I guess it's part of the hope of this podcast, even, to ask really great questions. And our tagline is Practical Chats for Intentional Living. And the hope is that anyone listening would be inspired to also ask great questions and have their own practical chats for intentional living.   Jodie Berndt: (22:36 - 25:28) Yes, I love that you bring that up. Because in the book, there are questions at the end of every chapter. I didn't start out to write Praying the Scriptures for Your Marriage. But after these other four books came out, I kept hearing from people on Instagram or via my website saying, when are you going to write something about marriage? You know, I'm in this most important human relationship. And we are grating against each other. You know, we need God's help when it comes to knowing how to handle conflict, how to handle our finances, time with our in-laws, intimacy issues, or learning, as you and I have been talking here, how to talk well, how to listen well, how to communicate, how to make friends. You'd think that would come naturally, but sometimes it doesn't. And couples struggle to find people that they want to do life with.   So, all of these things, leaving our legacy, parenting, are things marriages want God to be involved in. And so, these are what the different chapters, the topics. And at the end of each one, there are questions that we can ask our spouse. You know, hit the pause button and say, you know, say it's the chapter on having fun together. We might get to the end of that chapter and say, what's something you'd like to do that might surprise me? Because we don't always know what our spouse's idea of relaxation or fun or laughter would look like. And so, the questions in there are designed to elicit conversation. And you know what? If your spouse isn't interested in talking to you about any of those things, you can talk to the Lord about them. You can open your journal, and you can just write things out. You can listen to God. So, the discussion starters are in there for husbands and wives to use together or for you to use in your own quiet times with the Lord.   And I'll tell you, this is the only book in the series that Robbie has really written with me. He read every word of every chapter before I would send it off to the editor. And time and again, he would come back to me, and he would say, Jodie, I don't think a husband's going to really know what you mean by that. Or I don't think you have dug deep enough on this one or been as helpful as you might be on that one. And that made it hard. I mean, talk about a chance to have conflict with your spouse, invite them to edit your book. But it was so valuable because it has created a resource where I think a wife might buy the book. But I really do think a husband now might be willing to pick up the book. And even if the husband's not digging deep into the stories of every chapter, any husband or any wife can pick it up. Pray the 10 or 12 verses at the end of each chapter or just pray one verse that seems to resonate. And then avail themselves of those discussion questions and conversation starters so that it can help communication both between husband and wife and between you and God. So, thank you for bringing up that part about questions, because that really is something we need to do more about in life. We can't ever know someone without asking those things.   Laura Dugger: (25:29 - 26:18) I agree. And so, we've covered now how listening is that one important ingredient in communication. But in addition, you write, it is still important to stay current with our spouse by also talking and sharing what's going on within and around us. And you write on page 49, The things we don't say can become wedges in our relationships. Communication involves two parts, talking and listening, and we need to be good at both. And Jodie, I think that you model a helpful way to think about this through something that you taught your children. So, will you share that illustration of serving the ball and hitting it back and how that applies to conversation?   Jodie Berndt: (26:18 - 29:16) That's so funny that you pulled that out. And its funny right now because I just read that in a very important intellectual article that showed up in my inbox from one of these institutes. I follow on family studies and different things. I thought that Robbie and I had invented this idea of serving the ball. Our son was an athlete and not much of a talker. And because he was an athlete all year round, he would go to different tournaments, different places. And I remember him being a young teen and not being super eager to engage in conversation. But because we had four kids and you can relate to this, we were not always taking our kids to all the different tournaments and activities. A lot of times they'd be riding in a car with another adult, another team dad or mom. And on one occasion, I remember popping him in the car with a friend of ours who was going to go meet a lacrosse team, you know, another state away. And we knew he'd be in the car for three or four hours. And we said, OK, you know, when Mr. So-and-so asks you a question, you can't just answer with one word, you know, like I'm good or yes, sir. We want you to hit the ball back. We want you to think of something that you can ask him. Think of a conversation. That's our son's name. We said, like you're in a game where the ball has to go back and forth, like say something to keep it in play. And for him, that was a real eye opener for how to learn to talk when he mostly knew how to hit balls back and forth.   And researchers noticed that couples who paid that attention, you know, if a spouse, if a husband said, hey, look at that bird. Isn't that a pretty bird? If the wife didn't even notice the bird, that planted a seed of contempt or indifference, coldness, the cold shoulder that could grow, whereas if the partner said, wow, gosh, that is a pretty bird, and, you know, that reminds me of the one we saw last week on our walk, and, I mean, that's a silly illustration, maybe noticing the bird, maybe it's a sunset, maybe it's saying, wow, this, you know, hamburger is really good, whatever it is, whatever the little tidbits of conversation, when we pick up, when we hit the ball back, when we pay attention and say, you know, yeah, that creates an interest in our spouse and a kindness.   Laura Dugger: (29:17 - 35:00) And now a brief message from our sponsor.   Did you know you can go to college tuition-free just by being a team member at Chick-fil-A East Peoria? Free college education. All Chick-fil-A East Peoria team members in good standing can take advantage of this incredible benefit. If you're looking for a workplace that invests in your future, Chick-fil-A East Peoria is the place for you. You don't have to go into debt for college. Visit Chick-fil-A.com/EastPeoria and click on the career tab. And if you aren't located near Chick-fil-A East Peoria, make sure you check with your local Chick-fil-A restaurant to see if they also participate.   Jodie Berndt: And I'll tell you, when I started doing the kindness research, I said to Robbie, do you think some people are just more naturally kind than others? And he said, yeah, I do. I think some people are just naturally more kind. And I think he's right, but I don't think you put a period there, because kindness is a fruit of the Spirit, right? Galatians 5:22 and 23, it does talk about how love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness is what the Holy Spirit does in our lives. And researchers have found that kindness actually works with them like a muscle. It gets stronger in our lives the more we commit to using it. And I love what folks at the National Marriage Project discovered. They discovered that when we are kind to our spouse with these simple things, you know, bringing them a cup of coffee in the morning, it doesn't even have to be super important, that creates an atmosphere in which generosity toward one another can flourish. And what it does is create an upward spiral. You know, we all talk about downward spirals and how we can just descend into contempt or coldness. We can also ascend. We can create that upward spiral through simple, small words and gestures that communicate kindness in marriage. And it can change the whole climate and allow intimacy and love to flourish.   And I will tell you what, Robbie and I are in the empty nest years, and we have friends who are in our same season, and a couple of couples in particular. For the last maybe four or five years have confided to us that they're not as kind to one another as they would like to be. Their marriage is strong. They're not getting a divorce, but their kids are raised, and they each have kind of their own lanes they're in, and they're in the empty nest, and they're recognizing that they just don't treat each other with the generosity and love in their words and in their actions that maybe they did when they were younger. And you would say, oh, what a shame. Except that it's not a shame because these couples have committed to praying about it and to inviting other couples who will keep that confidential into their lives to say, hey, will you pray this for us? And I will tell you what, we are seeing the needle move in our friends' lives. It is a beautiful thing to watch someone in their 60s who thinks, you know what, I'm just not that kind, actually begin to soften and change and be kind as the Holy Spirit goes to work. So, if you're listening and you're thinking, you know what, I'm just not that nice of a person. I'm just not that kind. Or my spouse, they've been kind of cool or cold all these years. Don't give up. Keep praying. Keep trying. Keep relying on the Holy Spirit. Invite other couples into the mix who can come alongside you and pray for you and even maybe hold you a little accountable saying, okay, you know, that word was maybe harsher than it needed to be. And watch what God can do. Kindness really matters.   Laura Dugger: (45:06 - 45:45) Yes, it does. And my husband, Mark, and I love to ask questions of couples who are in the next season of life. So, we have some friends at church who are empty nesters, and we've asked them similar questions around kindness. And it was really helpful that they said what really enhanced their marital satisfaction and enjoyment of one another in those years was their tone. And I thought that was a really practical application, just to be mindful of our tone. At any season, I think of us raising little ones as well to watch our tone with our kids and our spouse.   Jodie Berndt: (45:46 - 46:16) Yeah, absolutely. And even when we speak in a tone that might, you know, I believe me, can blurt something out and it comes out sounding snippier than I meant. And I have to recognize that and say, I know that came out like I was challenging you or that I was correcting you or whatever. I didn't mean it that way. That was a genuine question of, you know, do you think we should do this or that? And I'm sorry it sounded snippy. So, we have to be aware. And when those things slip out to quickly correct that and say, gosh, sorry, let me try that again.   Laura Dugger: (46:17 - 46:38) Yeah. And I guess it's reminded me of one other quote that was really helpful. On page 63, you shared that one husband was giving a really practical definition for respect. And he said, respect looks like paying attention when I am talking, even if you have better things to do.   Jodie Berndt: (46:39 - 48:11) Yeah, I remember that couple. And I'll tell you, this was a great illustration. I'm glad you brought that one up because this is a wife who loved her husband deeply, respected what he did, said good things about him publicly and in front of people. And she would think, well, so of course he knows I respect him. Like I just praised him in front of our small group, or I just told him what a great job I thought he did on that presentation or whatever he told me about from work. And she thought, so of course he knows I respect him, but he's watching their day in, day out encounters and realizing that like so many women, you know, we do five things, 10 things at once. And he's thinking, I don't even think you're paying attention to me because I'm over here talking and you know, you're cooking the dinner or checking something on your phone or whatever. And you're listening with kind of half an ear. And she had to learn that to him, respect meant stop what you're doing and pay attention to me. And of course we can't do that all the time. Like especially if we've got little kids and they're grabbing our legs and stuff, we might have to say, hold on. I really want to pay attention to what you're saying. Can you give me five minutes to, you know, get the child settled with a coloring book or put the baby to bed or get some food in this toddler, whatever it is, because this is important to me. And I want to pay attention. So sometimes when an important need for respect is, is happening, we have to just set the stage to reassure our partner that yeah, I love you. I want to listen. I want to pay attention. I want to respect you. Let me set it up so I can do that really well. So yeah, good one.   Laura Dugger: (48:12 - 48:17) Well, do you have any other favorite stories or lessons that stand out from your book?   Jodie Berndt: (48:18 - 51:06) Well, I think a big takeaway for me is the importance of community kind of at every stage. You know, the Bible says walk with the wise and become wise for a companion of fools suffers harm. You know, that's a proverb. And I think it's really true that we need to be intentional about who we surround ourselves with. Certainly, as we're starting out young in our marriages, there's going to be adjustment phases. Even the most well-suited couples come from two different families. And as we're trying to blend our expectations, our needs, our desires, our histories, they're going to be bumps along the way. And you want to be surrounded with couples who will be able to almost laugh with you and say, yeah, you know, we had that too. And let me just tell you, here's how we navigated that. Instead of somebody who will say, oh my gosh, my husband drives me just as crazy. Like literally, I had a running group one time where I realized that there was a lot of husband bashing going on in the early morning hours as we would get out on the street, you know, before the kids went to school. And I thought this isn't really healthy. We need to change the channel on this conversation. And so, you know, and sometimes that was doable by simply changing the topic of conversation or saying something positive or just saying, “Hey, let's all list three things we're grateful about, about our spouse.”   But I think how we surround ourselves with couples really makes a difference also in the empty nest years. And I think our friendships change. Robbie and I have had friends change significantly many times over the years. Sure. There are those people that we can look back on college roommates that we're still in touch with, and that's wonderful. But we have had cross country moves four times. We have had different seasons with our kids where all of our friends might be the ones we're on the bleachers with because we are seeing them two and three times a week and traveling on the weekends to games and things like that. And now we're in the empty nest years and our friends are starting to go visit grandkids. They are in retirement, some of them and traveling for fun. Others have taken up new hobbies, new volunteer commitments. So that landscape has shifted and we've had to say, all right, let's look for life giving people, be intentional about who we want to invite over to our house for dinner, who we'd like to co-chair a project with, something where we are constantly thinking about how we can surround ourselves with people who share our faith, who will sharpen us. Again, that proverb about iron sharpening iron, our friends really matter. We want to be around people who keep us sharp and who will be intentional about pouring into our marriages. So, you know, they say divorce is catching, and it really is. If you're in a community where people are just quick to give up or quick to bash their spouse, change that, change that in your life. Look for folks who are leaning in and helping one another love well.   Laura Dugger: (51:07 - 51:27) And I think you're very encouraging to those couples that are entering or in the midst of the empty nest phase of life. And you drew out a proverb that I'd never heard in The Message version in Proverbs 4:18, where it says the longer they live, the brighter they shine.   Jodie Berndt: (51:28 - 51:58) Yeah. Isn't that a great one? I mean, you could read Proverbs 4:18 and in the NIV and the ESV and the King James, all that. And it's always good. But boy, when I hit it in The Message, and I don't know, I might've seen it around my 50th birthday or something, but I thought the longer they live, the brighter they shine. Amen. God, I want to put that on my refrigerator. Just remind me that, you know, you don't necessarily have to have all the Botox to keep shining bright. You can just have the Holy Spirit living in you and through you animating your life and making you radiant. So yeah, I love that one. I'm glad you called that out.   Laura Dugger: (51:59 - 52:06) Yeah. Are there any other ways that you see that play out as people do start to navigate these empty nest years?   Jodie Berndt: (52:07 - 53:52) I think you can become kind of insular as you get older. If we weren't being intentional about trying to have new experiences, make some new friends, your world can start shrinking because maybe your responsibilities at work aren't as demanding. So, you have more time away from work or your kids are gone. So, you're not seeing all the friends that you've done life with all that time. So, emptiness can be a time of loneliness for couples. And it can be a time when you are thinking, gosh, I'm not as active or having as much fun. But we have a friend named Jim Burns. He's written a lot of books on marriage and family issues. And he writes, he says, who would have thought that the most intimate times in a marriage aren't necessarily in the first few years, but in the empty nest. And he and his wife have navigated this transition so successfully. And I think it's in large part because they have been intentional about having fun together, about trying new things. And another couple, I know Susan and Johnny Yates, they're in their seventies. And they were like, Hey, we've never gone snowmobiling. You want to try it? Yeah, let's try it. And I just think, you know, the more we're willing to get out there and try new experiences, a new place to visit, it might even be as simple as a restaurant we've never been to, but just kind of ensuring that your world stays bigger, your friend groups stay bigger, and that you can be leaning into the fact that, you know, I think about Job where it says, God blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the former. And there is a real, a real beauty to knowing that you have a lot of runway left when you hit the empty nest years and asking God, how do you want to use me in my family, in my church, in my community, and being open to the things he puts in front of you?   Laura Dugger: (53:53 - 54:02) I love that. And Jodie, you are just such an encourager. So where can we go online to learn more from you after this conversation?   Jodie Berndt: (54:03 - 55:19) Thank you for asking that. My website is jodieberndt.com. And I would really encourage people to check that out and kind of scroll around. There's an area called resources and printables where there's a lot of free stuff like 31-day prayer calendars. You can download and print to help you pray for your marriage, a verse every day, or pray for your children or your adult children, your teens, your life, all of those calendars are on there, as well as little prayer cards, things you can tuck into your kid's lunchbox or leave on their bedside table. If you have a teenager who maybe would roll their eyes, you know, if you want to walk in there and say goodnight prayers, you might say, well, you know what? I'm just going to leave this little thing on their pillow, so they know that mom or dad is praying. And again, even if they're acting like they don't want it, I've never yet met a teen, my own included, who used to sometimes roll their eyes who will now tell me, you know what mom? I really was listening. I really did appreciate that. So, a little hang in there strategy, but yes, at jodieberndt.com all those resources. And then I'm pretty active on Instagram and that's just @jodie_berndt. So, if people want to follow there, I love to share different prayer prompts or encouragements. People can DM me with questions and it's just a fun way to, to make friends in a digital way that you might not ever be able to see someone in real life, but we can all learn from each other.   Laura Dugger: (55:19 - 55:40) Well, we will add links to all of those places in the show notes for today's episode. And you may already be familiar that we're called The Savvy Sauce because yes, I love it. I love it. And savvy is synonymous with practical knowledge. And so, as my final question for you today, Jodie, what is your savvy sauce?   Jodie Berndt: (55:41 - 57:21) That is such a great question. I love that you asked all your guests that I think for me, this might sound boring or even holier than thou, but I don't mean it that way. For me, a scripture is my savvy sauce. Like I turn to the Bible for my answers. I turn to it to shape my prayers. Like I can be so given to worry about something. I can just naturally go to a place of panic or uncertainty. And yet in the pages of scripture, I find promises that I can hold on to in a way that I can exchange my panic for peace and just trust God's provision. And the circumstances might not have changed, but what has changed as I lean into the Lord and read of his faithfulness in the past, they can help me trust for the future and it doesn't have to be this long. Like the other thing is there was a time when I thought, oh gosh, if I don't spend a half an hour, an hour, you know, reading my Bible with a candle smelling up the room and a nice cup of coffee and my journal open, it's not going to count. And I really, especially when I had younger children, it was so beautiful. An older woman, older mother set me straight. She said, Jodie, you know, you can talk to God in the carpool line. You can read three verses of scripture and meditate on those during the day. That may be more transformational than reading an entire book of the Bible and just having permission to take that in small bites, especially if you've got little ones. I think that is a great savvy sauce. Just find yourself a verse or two, hold onto it, write it out on an index card and meditate on it during the day and see what it does.   Laura Dugger: (57:22 - 57:43) That is so good. And going back to what we had talked about earlier, I experienced so much kindness in you and have really enjoyed this conversation and appreciate all that you've brought to encourage marriages. And I'm wondering if you would just close us out now with a prayer over all the marriages that are represented right now.   Jodie Berndt: (57:44 - 59:43) Oh, I would be so honored to do that. And right back at you. I mean, you're just, your voice is so very kind and welcoming. I just know your listeners love tuning in because it's like,  just having a conversation with a dear friend. So, thank you for that. But I would love, love, love to pray.   Heavenly Father, I just thank you so much for this conversation. I thank you so much for every marriage, every household represented as folks who are listening. And I just want to pray that prayer that I think I start the book with because it just jumps out at me day in and day out from 1 Thessalonians 3:12, "May our love overflow and increase for each other and for everyone else." That's something that Paul prayed for the Thessalonians. And I just want to pray it over all of our marriages, over all of our lives, over our parenting, that our love would increase, that it would overflow for one another, for our families, for our communities. And that that would be the sign that people can look at and say, you know, that as that old song says, they'll know we are Christians by our love. And it is so true in the way that we love one another, in the way that we are kind to one another. That just speaks volumes, Lord, about your love for us. I pray that we really would, as Paul writes in Ephesians, make the most of every opportunity. I pray we would live lives marked with wisdom, that we would, as he goes on in that same chapter, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Let our marriages, let our families, let our friendships be marked by that mutual submission, by that desire to not look just to our own interests, but to the interests of others, just being humble, God. Let us live humble lives, glorifying you, looking out for one another, and growing in the knowledge and grace of your son, Jesus Christ. It's in his name we pray. Amen.   Laura Dugger: (59:44 - 59:47) Amen, Jodie. Thank you so much for being my guest.   Jodie Berndt: (59:47 - 59:55) Laura, thank you so much, and Lord bless you in the work that you are doing to just equip and encourage so many. It's just wonderful.   Laura Dugger: (59:55 - 1:03:39) Thank you. One more thing before you go, have you heard the term gospel before? It simply means good news. And I want to share the best news with you, but it starts with the bad news.   Every single one of us were born sinners, but Christ desires to rescue us from our sin, which is something we cannot do for ourselves. This means there's absolutely no chance we can make it to heaven on our own. So, for you and for me, it means we deserve death, and we can never pay back the sacrifice we owe to be saved.   We need a savior, but God loved us so much. He made a way for his only son to willingly die in our place as the perfect substitute. This gives us hope of life forever in right relationship with him.   That is good news. Jesus lived the perfect life. We could never live and died in our place for our sin.   This was God's plan to make a way to reconcile with us so that God can look at us and see Jesus. We can be covered and justified through the work Jesus finished. If we choose to receive what he has done for us, Romans 10:9 says, “that if you confess with your mouth, Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”   So, you pray with me now. Heavenly father, thank you for sending Jesus to take our place. I pray someone today right now is touched and chooses to turn their life over to you.   Will you clearly guide them and help them take their next step in faith to declare you as Lord of their life? We trust you to work and change lives now for eternity. In Jesus name we pray.   Amen. If you prayed that prayer, you are declaring him for me. So, me for him, you get the opportunity to live your life for him.   And at this podcast, we're called The Savvy Sauce for a reason. We want to give you practical tools to implement the knowledge you have learned. So, you're ready to get started.   First, tell someone, say it out loud, get a Bible. The first day I made this decision, my parents took me to Barnes and Noble and let me choose my own Bible. I selected the Quest NIV Bible and I love it.   You can start by reading the book of John. Also get connected locally, which just means tell someone who's a part of a church in your community that you made a decision to follow Christ. I'm assuming they will be thrilled to talk with you about further steps such as going to church and getting connected to other believers to encourage you.   We want to celebrate with you too. So, feel free to leave a comment for us here. If you did make a decision to follow Christ, we also have show notes included where you can read scripture that describes this process.   And finally, be encouraged. Luke 15:10 says, “in the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” The heavens are praising with you for your decision today.   And if you've already received this good news, I pray you have someone to share it with. You are loved and I look forward to meeting you here next time.

What does it really take to build and lead a successful multi-location optometry practice? In this episode of 20/20 Money, I'm joined by Dr. Andy Yaryan, Dr. Jeni Kohn, and Dr. Patrick Curran, three experienced practice owners who offer an honest look at what is happening beneath the surface of a growing practice. We discuss the challenges that remain even after achieving visible success, including rising expenses, staffing and culture, shrinking margins, associate recruitment, and the danger of becoming complacent.   We also explore how each owner evaluates investments in the practice, why the desired return is not always financial, and how priorities can shift from maximizing income to creating more time and freedom. Our conversation covers the metrics they watch most closely, from operating profit and staff costs to new-patient growth, retention, and revenue-cycle management, as well as the importance of building strong leaders, delegating effectively, and having difficult conversations before unresolved issues begin affecting the entire team.   Finally, Andy, Jeni, and Patrick share some of the lowest points in their ownership journeys and what helped them move forward. Their experiences are an important reminder that sustainable success rarely looks as effortless from the inside as it does from the outside, and that practice ownership requires continued learning, honest self-evaluation, and the willingness to keep working through difficult seasons.   Have a podcast-related question? Contact our team here!   Resources: Book a Triage call with Adam Download the Practice Owner's Financial Toolkit 20/20 Money Ultimate Financial Success Masterclass OD Mastermind Interest Form Check out Adam's book: How to Buy an Optometry Practice Yaryan Eye Care Center — Dr. Andy Yaryan Moses EyeCare Centers — Dr. Jeni Kohn Johnson Curran Optometry Centers — Dr. Patrick Curran The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Multiplication by Subtraction by Shannon Waller and Jayne Stymiest   ————————————————————————————— Please rate and subscribe to 20/20 Money on these platforms Apple Podcasts Spotify ————————————————————————————— For past episodes of 20/20 Money with full companion show notes, please check out our episode archive here!   Check out Adam's other podcast! The Optometry Success Podcast  Subscribe on Apple Podcasts: https://bit.ly/4tttng6 Subscribe on Spotify: https://bit.ly/4tuf0YM 

I denne episoden av Sinsyn dykker vi dypt inn i det essensielle temaet om selvomsorg, som Kovie beskriver som grunnlaget for alle de andre vanene i "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". Her begynner vår utfordring: Hvordan kan vi forny oss selv og unngå å bli tappet for energi av livets krav? Vi bruker metaforen med tømmerhoggeren som, uten å slipe øksen, sliter mer og mer for å felle trær. Dette illustrerer hvor viktig det er å pleie vår egen helse — fysisk, mentalt, åndelig og relasjonelt — for å opprettholde energinivået vårt.Vi tar en nærmere titt på de fire dimensjonene av selvomsorg som Stephen Covey presiserer. Den første dimensjonen er fysisk helse. Vi diskuterer viktigheten av regelmessig trening, sunn ernæring og tilstrekkelig søvn. Ved å fremheve teorier fra Aaron Antonovsky og James Gross, får vi innsikt i hvordan vår fysiske helse bygger motstandsdyktighet og reduserer stress.Den andre dimensjonen handler om den åndelige siden av oss. Her utforsker vi betydningen av å komme i kontakt med våre kjerneverdier og søke mening, enten det er gjennom litteratur, kunst eller meditasjon. Vi tar for oss Viktor Frankls eksistensielle psykologi og hvordan søken etter mening kan gi oss styrke, selv under vanskelige omstendigheter.Når vi beveger oss videre til den tredje dimensjonen, den mentale, tar vi opp temaet om læring og nysgjerrighet. Vi utforsker hvordan en "Growth Mindset" ifølge Carol Dweck fremmer vår evne til å tilegne oss nye ferdigheter og tankemønstre, noe som er avgjørende for både kreativitet og problemløsning. Vi snakker også om hvordan dette bidrar til hjernens helse og motstandskraft mot aldring.Til slutt diskuterer vi den sosiale og emosjonelle dimensjonen, som er essensiell for vår psykiske helse. Her understreker vi betydningen av nære relasjoner og tilknytning, og hvordan positive forbindelser med andre gir støtte og velvære. Vi trekker inn Barbara Fredrikssons teori om positiv følelser og hvordan fellesskap bidrar til personlig vekst og motstandskraft.Som avslutning understreker vi viktigheten av å prioritere disse fire dimensjonene i hverdagen. Ved å ta ansvar for vår egen helse, skaper vi ikke bare ressurser for oss selv, men også for dem rundt oss. Å ta vare på seg selv er ikke en luksus; det er en nødvendighet for å kunne bidra meningsfullt til samfunnet. I løpet av denne episoden oppfordres lytterne til å reflektere over hvordan de kan slipe sin egen øks, for å leve et liv som er både rikt og tilfredsstillende.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week, we take a brief detour from our series on psychosis for a special Book Club episode. Our host and guest discuss Stephen Covey's classic The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, exploring the seven habits and the ideas behind them.The conversation also considers how some of Covey's principles can apply to pediatric practice and the everyday work of caring for patients and families.Next week, we'll return to our series on psychosis with the Q&A episode.The Virtual Curbside is a podcast of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Utah Chapter (UTAAP), connecting pediatricians and subspecialists through practical, accessible pediatric education. Learn more about UTAAP at aaputah.org.

Your child loves reading… but now the books feel too mature. Do you step in, or risk shutting it down altogether? This episode tackles the tricky middle ground between protecting your child and preserving their love of reading. Discover how to set boundaries without constant battles, why pushing back can backfire, and how to guide your child toward better choices—without losing connection. Plus some great book recommendations below! KEY POINTS: Why boundary-pushing is a normal (and necessary) part of growing up The tension between encouraging reading and managing content The risk of shutting down a child’s love of reading How to guide without controlling—and reduce power struggles When to hold firm boundaries—and when to soften Shifting from protecting kids to preparing them QUOTE OF THE EPISODE: “Get curious, not furious—because the moment you push, they pull away.” RESOURCES MENTIONED: The Keepers Trilogy by Leanne Tanner The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Clean romance suggestions for 10-12 and 12-14 year olds (from @thekidsbookshop) Two Hearts - Australian middle-grade romance series Romance Novels for Tweens - compiled by author A.L.Tait (@yourkidsnextread) Top 48 reads for kids aged 9-12 - free download from @bookswithbecandjane ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS: Protect your child’s love of reading—even when the content worries you Have regular, low-pressure conversations about what they’re reading Ask more questions instead of shutting things down Offer alternatives that align with their interests (not just “better” options) Set clear boundaries where it truly matters—and explain why Focus on teaching values so they can self-regulate over time See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Brett McCollum ran his own investment operation for a decade, did hundreds of deals, and thought he'd made it, until back-to-back contractor issues and a market shift wiped out over $1 million in a little over a year and took his business nearly to zero. In this raw and honest episode, he shares what actually pulled him out, and it's not what most people would guess.Now leading REI growth at PropertyRadar and hosting the On the Clock podcast, Brett opens up about reacting instead of responding, abandoning his Profit First discipline to juggle buckets, and the marriage conversation that became the real turning point. He and David also dig into why most investors waste time with AI, and how PropertyRadar's distress scoring and court-sourced data help you reach real sellers first. If you've ever hit rock bottom or wondered if you should quit, this one is for you.Timeline Summary[2:20] – The biggest shift Brett has seen from getting a behind-the-scenes look at top investors[3:10] – His contrarian take that most people don't know how to use AI to produce real revenue[4:00] – Why AI gives you a dopamine hit and sends you down time-wasting rabbit holes[4:58] – The both/and: using AI to complement human performance, not as a crutch[6:38] – Why you should only take AI advice from someone who can prove it on a P&L[7:23] – Getting back to fundamentals first, then layering AI in[8:12] – The setup: buying 22 houses in under three months at the top of the 2022 market[9:34] – Contractor fallout and market signals he missed, costing multiple six figures[10:36] – Trying to fix it alone instead of asking for help, and reacting emotionally[11:00] – Breaking Profit First protocol by paying from different buckets to cover losses[11:42] – Losing over $1 million in a year and going nearly to zero, back to back to back[12:06] – The toll it took on him as a husband and father[13:17] – His father's pattern of quitting and the childhood poverty and homelessness behind it[13:57] – Setting pride aside, making phone calls, and finding great organizations to work with[14:19] – Tom Krol's line that rock bottom is a very firm foundation[15:41] – The "finish" tattoo and the decision to never be the guy who quits[16:02] – His wife's turning-point words: if we're right, we'll figure out everything else[18:10] – David on why seeing a counselor monthly is the engine behind his own ability to travel and work[20:56] – No man is an island, and the distinction that no one does the work for you but people are there for you[23:34] – Why Profit First is really the put-first-things-first principle applied to your whole life[23:53] – Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection on courage, compassion, and connection[24:50] – What PropertyRadar is and its simple approach to seller data[26:00] – The distress score built on real signals, not arbitrary list stacking[27:03] – The dynamic, AI-driven lists that refresh every 15 minutes and auto-run outreach[28:03] – The court-sourced divorce and probate data that arrives before it's ever recorded[31:14] – Brett's Profit First advice: delayed gratification and discipline over reacting5 Key TakeawaysMost Investors Waste Time With AI — After seeing behind the scenes at hundreds of top operations, Brett's take is that AI has become a shiny object. Only take AI advice from someone who can prove it made them money on a P&L, and get your fundamentals right first.Reacting Instead Of Responding Kills You — When deals went sideways, Brett reacted emotionally, abandoned Profit First, and started juggling buckets to cover losses. That lack of discipline is what turned one bad deal into a million-dollar hole.Rock Bottom Is A Firm Foundation — Brett went nearly to zero but refused to quit, set his pride aside, and made the calls he'd avoided. Had he reached out a year earlier, he'd have saved himself a year of panic attacks and heartache.Your Marriage Is The Real Engine — The actual turning point was his wife telling him that if the two of them were right, everything else would follow. Investors who bring their spouse along and protect that relationship have the foundation to get through anything.Profit First Is A Tool You Have To Use — The model only works if you keep the discipline when the rubber meets the road. Follow it and a sideways deal won't hurt as badly. Abandon it under stress and you end up at zero.Links & ResourcesPropertyRadar (5-day free trial) — https://www.propertyradar.comOn the Clock podcast (hosted by Brett McCollum) — https://www.propertyradar.com/on-the-clockSimple CFO — https://simplecfo.comProfit First for Real Estate Investing by David Richter — https://profitfirstrei.comThe Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown — https://brenebrown.comThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey — https://www.franklincovey.comEnjoyed This Episode?If Brett's honesty about losing everything and clawing back gave you the nerve to pick up the phone and call the person you've been avoiding, then do it before you do anything else. Share this episode with an investor who's hiding in a hole through a hard season, and follow the show and leave a rating and review so more real estate investors can hear that rock bottom really can be a firm foundation.

I denne syvende episoden av serien om "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" dykker jeg ned i den sjette vanen: synergi. Jeg begynner med å male et bilde av en regnskog – et komplekst, men balansert økosystem hvor alle elementer spiller sammen for å skape noe som er mer enn summen av delene. Dette er også analogt til menneskelig interaksjon; når vi møtes med åpenhet, nysgjerrighet og respekt, frigjøres en kreativ energi som løfter oss alle.Stephen Covey påpeker at effektivitet ikke nødvendigvis handler om å konkurrere, men om å skape et miljø der forskjeller beriker oss i stedet for å splitte oss. Jeg drar inn både psykologiske og filosofiske perspektiver for å belyse hvordan synligheten av forskjeller kan legge grunnlaget for en berikende synergi. Fra teoriene om fellesskap og psykologisk trygghet til dialog og relasjonell vekst, ser vi hvordan samarbeidet kan gi resultater ingen av oss kunne oppnådd alene.Videre reflekterer jeg over hvordan vi kan implementere denne synergien i våre liv, enten det er i familielivet, blant venner eller på arbeidsplassen. Eksempler fra eget liv viser meg hvordan synergi oppstår, og jeg fremhever nødvendigheten av å skape et klima av tillit og åpenhet. Et fellesskap der medlemmer føler seg trygge er essensielt for å oppnå den type samarbeid som fører til ekte synergi.Samtidig trekker jeg paralleller fra holistisk tenkning og systemteori, hvor helheten er mer enn summen av delene. I psykologi beskriver Kurt Lewin individets atferd som et resultat av relasjonene i gruppen, noe som understreker viktigheten av gruppeprosessene i å fremme synergi. Jeg bringer inn Martin Bubers dialogfilosofi, hvor ekte møter mellom mennesker åpner for nye ideer og transformasjoner.Synergi er også en terapeutisk kraft i fellesskap. Jeg utforsker hvordan tilhørighet i grupper og den åpne utvekslingen av ideer kan gi dype og meningsfulle helsegevinster. Dette knytter seg til moderne forskning, som viser at deling av ideer og risikotaking innen trygge grupper fører til innovasjon og læring.Avslutningsvis gir jeg konkrete strategier for å kultivere synergi i hverdagen, som å bygge tillit, anerkjenne forskjeller, belønne samarbeid, være nysgjerrig og delta i fellesskap som fremmer åpen utveksling. Jeg ønsker å inspirere lytterne til å se synergi som en livsholdning, der det ikke lenger handler om å konkurrere om å skinne alene, men om å løfte hverandre. Som i regnskogen er det det nære nettverket av forbindelser som skaper frodigheten; en påminnelse om at vi vokser mest når vi vokser sammen.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What if changing your attitude starts with changing the questions you ask yourself? Stephen Shaner has taken a remarkable path through music, the military, firefighting, air traffic control, technology, leadership, magic, and public speaking. Along the way, he became fascinated with how people respond to life and why some people remain positive when things go wrong. Stephen and I explore how attitude becomes a choice, why focusing on what you can control can reduce fear and frustration, and how simple changes in vocabulary can shift your outlook. We also talk about gratitude, energy, service, leadership, passion, and discovering who you are beyond what you do for work. Stephen shares lessons from Stephen Covey, Toastmasters, his own leadership experiences, and everyday moments when one different question changed everything. I believe you will find some useful ideas here for building a more positive attitude and making choices that help you move forward. Highlights: 02:58 – Follow Stephen's unusual path from music and the military to leadership and speaking. 10:21 – Discover why knowing who you are matters more than defining yourself by your job. 13:44 – Learn why attitude is a choice, even when circumstances are difficult. 22:42 – See how changing your words can shift the way you experience everyday challenges. 30:21 – Hear how gratitude can quickly change your focus and mood. 52:30 – Learn how one different question can turn a negative situation into a positive one. About the Guest: Stephen Shaner has been studying the concept of “attitude” for more than 35 years. Specifically, his interest has focused on how attitude affects people, and the people around them. He has incorporated learning experiences from a multitude of sources, research, and training relative to behavior, attitude, ethics, and business and personal relations. Stephen, as a facilitator of Stephen Covey's “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" for 15 years, was able to gain powerful insight. These opportunities led him to design informative and relevant presentations. Coupled with his contagious attitude, his extensive experience has made him a popular resource for keynotes, seminars, workshops, private sessions, newsletters and articles. He is a sought-after mentor for business professionals and individuals seeking for meaningful and lasting improvement. In his professional life, after 20 years of employment with HealthPartners, Stephen recently retired as the Manager of the Regional Technology Center in Duluth, Minnesota. He has been an active member of Toastmasters International for over 23 years, where he has held many leadership positions, including District Director for a membership base of approximately 5,000, and Region IV Advisor, with responsibilities covering six U.S. states and four Canadian Provinces. Stephen currently lives with his wife in Tennessee. Stephen continues to incorporate his leadership and communication skills to help professional and private entities meet their specific demands and goals.  His success is based on delivering personalized training, guidance, and entertaining messages, and his passion for teaching and sharing his knowledge for the benefit of those around him.  As an award-winning international speaker, his presentations have reached around the globe to businesses including England, Germany, Canada, the Philippines, and India.    Stephen is also building a successful podcast titled, “Are You Awesome Today?” He will soon be releasing his 200th episode, all featuring a truly international cache of professionals, covering a myriad of relevant, interesting and dynamic topics.   Stephen has developed presentations that reach to the core of what attitude is and how having the right one can dramatically change lives professionally and personally. You are invited to explore all Stephen has to offer, or contact him to discuss a presentation that fits your needs. Ways to connect with Stephen: Website: www.awesomeattitude.net LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenshaner/ 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/ 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  00:04 What if the biggest thing holding you back isn't what's in front of you, but rather what you believe? Welcome to Unstoppable Mindset, where inclusion, diversity, and the unexpected meet. I'm your host, Michael Hingson, speaker, author, and advocate for inclusion and possibilities. This podcast explores how the beliefs we carry shape the way we live, lead, and connect with others. Each week, I talk with people who challenge assumptions, face adversity head-on, and show what's possible when we choose curiosity over fear. Together, we focus on mindset, resilience, and the small shifts that lead to meaningful change. Let's get started. Hi there, everyone. Wherever you happen to be, welcome to another episode of Unstoppable Mindset. I am your host Michael Hingston, and today we get to chat with Stephen Shainer. And Stephen is a person who's going to talk a lot about attitudes. So we ought to have a great discussion about cats. Then we'll see. Anyway, Stephen, welcome to Unstoppable Mindset. We're glad you're here. Stephen Shaner  01:23 Well, thank you so much, Michael. It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Michael Hingson  01:26 Actually, my cat does does pretty well. My cat has developed this habit that she likes to be petted while she eats, and I'm the one that has to pet her since now I'm the only one in the house. But literally, she'll yell and won't eat until I go in and pet her while she's eating, it's it's really funny. Stephen Shaner  01:45 Ours was abused in two homes before we got her by both people and animals, and we got her from the shelter. She had very little fur from the anxiety. They told us she was a medium-haired tabby, and we got her home, and she just went poof, and just this giant fur ball. And it turns out she's part Norwegian forest cat, but she's just a little angel. She just her favorite place to be is on one of our laps, and she she doesn't get into anything. She doesn't scratch furniture. She has no interest in people, food. She just wants to be held and likes to purr. Michael Hingson  02:14 Well, and that's what counts. Well, we rescued this one. We rescued Stitch 11 years ago. Now it's actually getting 11 years and almost a month. And people lived in the apartment next to us, and the the wife died, and it was the wife's cat basically because the husband decided to go live in an assisted living facility and had absolutely no interest in the cat. Just told his caregiver and his sister who were moving out his furniture, take the cat to the pound. I don't want anything to do with it. We learned about that, and we said, "Well, we'll find it a home, because we didn't want a cat at the time. We was all we were living in apartments and had two golden or two Labrador Retriever dogs, a guide dog, and the dog's mother, who was also a service dog for my wife. And so we said, "We'll find it a home, and as I love to say, I then made the mistake of asking what the cat's name was, and they told me the cat's name was Stitch, and I realized that this cat was going nowhere since my wife had been a quilter since 1994. Stephen Shaner  03:15 That's a great story, Michael Hingson  03:16 and Stitch has been now with us for over 11 years, and it's and it's great. And my wife has passed away, but you know, Stitch and my current guide dog Alamo keep an eye on me. And I'm sure my wife is monitoring from somewhere, so I got to be a good kid, or I'm going to get in trouble. Stephen Shaner  03:32 Yep, good. Michael Hingson  03:33 So you know, it kind of works. Well, tell us about kind of maybe the early Stephen growing up. Let's start there. It's always great to start at the beginning. Stephen Shaner  03:41 Wow, way back there. I know Michael Hingson  03:43 a long time ago. Stephen Shaner  03:45 Yeah, early. My my dad played guitar professionally for many years, and he's done some other things as well. But that was his primary love, his passion. And growing up, I learned guitar a little bit, and then by the time I got to elementary school, I had picked up trumpet and did well with the trumpet. Had fun with it in high school. By my 10th grade, I was playing in the the college jazz band, and then when I graduated from high school, I joined the army and I went through the Navy School of Music and graduated from that. I played trumpet and guitar in the army for three and a half years. The Michael Hingson  04:17 boogie woogie bugle boy of Company B Stephen Shaner  04:20 did a lot of funerals. Yes, I did. I was a bugler and got out of the army and didn't do much with music after that. But I I got a job at the mines, copper mines there in Arizona. Worked there two weeks and we had a cave in one night. And okay, that's the end of that. Were you out near Bisbee Michael Hingson  04:37 or where were you? Stephen Shaner  04:38 I was out near Superior. Michael Hingson  04:40 Superior. Okay. Yeah, Stephen Shaner  04:41 that that area. So then I became a full time firefighter EMT, and did that for a couple years. I left that job through something less stressful. I became an air traffic controller. Michael Hingson  04:53 Yeah, that was less stressful, right? Stephen Shaner  04:55 It was, yeah. Good job. So that was in San Diego, and did not like. The job and ended up going out to Florida, Daytona Beach, Florida, and it was in San Diego. I started picking up Magic a little bit, and went to Florida and went to Embry-Riddle Air Natical University for a year. Didn't care for that. I got hired by GE to do some computer type stuff and worked with them for a little bit. Then I was accepted to Magic College, and they only take so many students a year, and I was accepted. They were in Los Angeles, you know. So I went San Diego, Florida, then went back to L.A. I went to Magic College, spent some time Michael Hingson  05:31 at the Magic Castle, of course. I Stephen Shaner  05:32 worked the Magic Castle for a few years while I was out there, and just had a good time and left L.A. Went up to Washington State and got back into computers, and continued to do the magic, and then I ended up getting a job at the Nevada Tuss Site. So I worked there for five and a half years, along with Area 51, a little bit, and then. So, are there are Michael Hingson  05:52 there any aliens out there? No, Stephen Shaner  05:53 it's it's a great subterfuge, though. I know people think that's it. They don't know what's really going on out there. So, I was out at Michael Hingson  06:03 Roswell several years ago speaking somewhere, and it was fun to to make jokes about the the aliens. And I'm sure that they stored them out there somewhere. Stephen Shaner  06:12 Yeah. So, and then when I when that job, they stopped doing nuclear testing about three four months after I got there, and so my company went from a little over 10,000 employees, and over the next five and a half years, they were doing, you know, reduction in forces every six months, and we got down to about 1800. And I was like, you know, there's no future here. So we went to Minnesota, and I took a little time off, figure out what I wanted to do. When I grew up, at that point, I had I had two Oracle certifications, Oracle programming language, and so I got to Minneapolis then and got a job with the U.S. Postal Service as a contractor and helped them develop a national training database. And then I went to work for a healthcare company when that project was done, and I was with them for 20 years. Michael Hingson  06:58 Wow! Stephen Shaner  06:59 And they eventually moved me up to Duluth. They asked me to go relocate up there. They're going to open a new IT facility up in Duluth, Minnesota, and they asked me to consider relocating up there and managing this new facility. So did that, and I ran that place for about 14 years before I retired in 2019. Now I'm down here in Tennessee, speaking and doing magic, and I've got the podcast. I just published my third book and doing a lot of emergency communications on radio and that type of stuff and having a good time. Michael Hingson  07:27 I, when I was doing computer sales, especially the last few years, worked for Quantum Corporation, so we were the manufacturers of a lot of the digital linear tape technology and tape libraries and so on, and it was fascinating to to see all the things that the companies were doing. Wall Street used a lot of Sybase much more than Oracle, and I guess it all had to do with the fact that they were not formatted fields so much in Sybase. And I'm not quite sure what the advantage of that was, but people seemed to like Sybase at least for a while. Stephen Shaner  08:02 Yeah, I I knew some people that did both at at I don't remember what companies were at, but they were doing both Oracle and Sidebase, and there were some you know pros and cons for both. Michael Hingson  08:13 Yeah, is Sybase still around today? Stephen Shaner  08:16 That I don't know. Michael Hingson  08:17 Yeah, I don't either. I mean, Oracle certainly is, but yeah, Stephen Shaner  08:20 Oracle. It's been Michael Hingson  08:20 a long time since since I was involved with it all. It kind of really ended a few months after September 11th for me, so I've never really checked. I should go back and check and see if Sybase is around. I know it it was it would it would definitely be a problem for for blind people to do a lot with with Sybase when they were not formatted fields, but there are some technologies that even can handle that today, which which is kind of cool. Yes, but Oracle definitely certainly made life great for Larry Ellison anyway. Stephen Shaner  08:52 Yeah, it did. I met him. We were at a. It was a different company. It was a company that manufactured the computerized maintenance management software that we use at the Nevada test site. We was having a user group meeting in Dallas, and he came in during the last day and talked to us for a few minutes. It was when they were promoting Oracle Personal Seven, ah, and so he came in. So I did get to beat Larry Ellison. He's a he's a different guy. Michael Hingson  09:18 Well, that's cool. So so now today, what do you do exactly? Stephen Shaner  09:23 Well, along the way, along through all of those travels, I really became a people watcher. I just loved watching people and and how they acted, how they reacted, how they proacted, and the vocabulary they use, and just how they how they interacted with other people, I was fascinated by that, and that's how I kind of got caught up into this this attitude stuff, and learned quite a bit along the way just by watching people. I got involved in Toastmasters about 24 years ago, and kind of went up through the ranks there, and and was a what they every club is in an area. Are in a dis in a division. Every division is in a district, and the districts are pretty large. And the top three people in in the district are what they call the district trio. And I ended up serving in those three positions. First, I was the what they called the lieutenant governor of marketing. So I spent a year marketing Toastmasters. I created 16 clubs, new clubs for our district. Our district was most of Minnesota, North Central Ontario. It was big, and had over 5000 members, almost 300 clubs at that point. And then the next year, I was Lieutenant Governor of Education training, so I was working on you know training district leaders and club officers and those those programs. And then I was elected district governor. As district governor, I had 10 division governors, 58 area governors, and a leadership team of about 30. Did that for a year, and just loved it. What a great experience! And then I was immediate past district governor for a year, and then the board of directors, Toastmasters, appointed me to be a region advisor, and I did that for a year. And I had I had Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, part of Wyoming, part of Nebraska. I had Montana, I had Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Western Ontario. Michael Hingson  11:06 Wow! Stephen Shaner  11:07 Yeah, so and that was a fabulous experience. Yeah, then after that, done a lot of mentoring. Been mentored by a lot of people. I served as a past region advisor on the past region advisor council, where we looked at the past the Regent Advisor program, then I spent two years serving on the International Disciplinary Committee. So I've done done a lot of things in that organization, but my whole focus has been you know speaking on attitude and and those types of topics. I I do I have a real passion for helping people find their passions. Too often you know, ask somebody who are you, and they'll say things like, "Well, I'm a computer programmer. I'm a lawyer. No, that's what you do. Are you? And they don't know how to answer that question. Or, or you ask them, "What are you passionate about? And you get a blank stare. So, I I developed a program called Find Your Peace, which is your passion, your purpose, your potential, and your personal mission. And it's a month long, and it just takes these people through a exercise of self discovery, and they discover really who they are and why they do the things they do and think the way they think. And it's just it's really a lot of fun watching them go through that that transformation. Michael Hingson  12:10 Stephen Covey been a pretty significant influence for you. Stephen Shaner  12:14 I met him, and that that was yeah. I I was a facilitator of Stephen Covey's Seven Habits when I got to the healthcare company I worked, they that was a mandatory class for all new employees, and I had been using it for years before that, and had taught some of it to a few people here and there. Nothing formal, but after I took the class, they had they had six certified instructors there at the company, and the head guy came to me and he says, "You know this stuff better than we do. Would you be willing to help us teach this stuff? I said, "Sure. Shortly after that, four of the other instructors left the company, so it was him, me, and one other person. Then the other person left, so it was just him and me. And then he said, "I'm just too busy take it over. So, so I was running that program for a while until the company dropped it. But in I don't remember what year it was was when Stephen Covey released the Eighth Habit. He was doing a seminar in Minneapolis, and I and I went to that, and there was about 250 of us in attendance, and they brought in box lunches for us. And so I ate lunch, and I walked out to the lobby. This was at the Minneapolis Convention Center, and I walked out to the lobby, and was throwing my lunch stuff away, and I turned around and he was walking up. So I stuck my hand out and I shook his hand. I said, "Thank you. And he smiled. He says, "What are you thanking me for? I says, "Your seven habits have changed my life in so many ways. And I thought that would be the end of the conversation. It wasn't. He put his arm around me and he pulled me over to the corner, and he said, "Tell me your story. And so I told him, you know, about my life, pre-seven habits, and some things I've been doing since. Then he asked me a question I wasn't expecting. He says, "Which habit do you think is most important? I says, "Well, for me, habit one, be proactive. He said, "Really? Why one? I says, "Well, I think if you master habit one, you'll have huge successes with the other six habits. I says, and if you don't, you may have some successes, but nowhere near the level, you know, that you could. And he he smiled and he says, "You get it. Then he then he says, "What's your name? I says, "Stephen. He goes, "Oh, great name. But the the lesson for me was, if somebody like Stephen Covey can make me the most important person in his life for 10 minutes, you know, how should we be treating the people we that we interact with. Michael Hingson  14:23 Yeah, where does attitude come from? Stephen Shaner  14:25 You know, this is a this is this is a thing that when I when I talk about it, I get a lot of you know people looking at me like no, no, no. So, but here's here's here's the way we feel, and I felt this way for a long time too. It's okay. I'm this way because of my parents or because of my grandparents. Okay, I have a negative attitude because it's Monday, or because it's you know the sun isn't shining, or because so and so is in the White House, or whatever. So many people feel like attitude is placed upon us. I'm this way because of what's going on around me. When the fact is, attitude is a choice that we can make. And that's the whole habit. One be proactive, you know. He, Stephen Covey, teaches us that between stimulus and our response, there is a space, you know, where we can choose what our response is going to be, and we're the only animal that can do that. I mean, if I if I'm hiking through the woods and I accidentally walk between Mama Bear and her cub, she's not going to be proactive. She's she's going to react, and so so those those or she or Michael Hingson  15:25 you can say she's going to be proactive and get you out of the world. But yeah, I hear you. Maybe Stephen Shaner  15:29 yeah. So but and I was working for a guy when I when I first started looking at some of the stuff. I was working for a guy who took credit for everything I did, and he wasn't shy about it. We'd be sitting in a meeting, and I'd be sitting next to him. He'd go, "Yep, I did this, and I did this, and I did this, and I just sit there quietly. And one day, he, the whole day long, is over there typing on his computer. Finally, he's the printer, and he he comes over and he hands me. He had just he had just redone his resume, and he handed it to me. And I'm I'm looking at this, and I'm thinking, you know, I could put my name at the top of this resume. It would be perfect, and it got to the point. So you imagine the emotions. I mean, those negative emotions come in-the frustration, the anger, and those types of things. And I decided it was time to move on. But before I did, I took some time. I went out into the wilderness, and I took Seven Habits book. I took Tony Robbins' Awaken the giant within. I took my scriptures and I took my journal and I took some food and water and I just went out there and and so I'm reading Stephen Covey and he's telling me that if I'm having a bad day, it's because I decided to, not what I wanted to hear. Then I'm reading Tony Robbins and he's telling me frustration is a good thing and it's also not what I wanted to hear. But then as I read my scriptures and and was writing my journal, I kind of came back to this concept of being of service, and I came out of that weekend with a huge breakthrough. And it was like, so what? So what if he's taking credit for what I do? Is it my job to make him look good? You know. And so my attitude completely changed because I asked different questions, and I and I decided that, you know, I can have good attitude anyway. Went back to work. He continued to do that. Didn't matter. I I had a better attitude. I was more energetic. I had fun at the job, and it was because you know it was all on me. I had to make a decision and decide. So so I've learned, and I've helped a lot of other people realize that you know if you're having this, and Stephen was right, if you're having a bad day, it's because you decided to, and yeah, bad things do happen, okay, to us. But it's still, if we decide to be in a negative mood, that is because we decided to. I know people have gone through divorce, have been thrilled, you know, and it's just it's it's how you look at it. The questions you ask are so important. Michael Hingson  17:38 Well, I know everybody talks about September 11th. What a horrible time it was! How stressful it was, and so on. And yeah, it was a bad thing. On the other hand, as as I point out to people, people ask me all the time, "Well, you survived. What do you think about that? And I said, "Well, I know there were people who who did not, and I am I'm sad about that. But by the same token, the very fact that I survived really means what I need to do is decide how I'm going to live my life and what I'm going to do with that. And we were very blessed. I think almost immediately the media got a hold of of my story. That happened because we we started by talking with the person who was in charge of information at Guide Dogs for the Blind, where I've gotten all of my dogs, and she wanted to put out a story, and that got to the media, and I chose to start to answer questions that people wanted to ask from the media. What I learned was that was much more therapeutic than in going to any kind of counseling sessions would be because you never knew what they were going to ask. Some people asked really good questions. Some people asked really dumb questions. But the point is that that allowing myself to be subjected to all of that taught me how to how to think and deal with all of it. And and the reality is, what I learned was ultimately for me, it's what am I going to do with my life because I survived, and then phone calls started coming in from people saying we'd love to have you come and speak and talk to us about what we should learn from the World Trade Center, which over the years has evolved to a lot more than what happened on September 11th, but why I got to the World Trade Center in the first place, and the the lessons to be learned from all of that, and the bottom line is that that I learned, as as you pointed out, how much of it is really choice, and I could be negative about the World Trade Center or not. Certainly, it was a not a very very positive thing, but how I deal with it is really the issue as far as my personal life is concerned. Stephen Shaner  19:47 Yeah, you get it. That's that's exactly it. We have we have that opportunity to make that choice. I Michael Hingson  19:53 met someone who had a brother who was a police officer. And died at the World Trade Center. He was a fireman, and he switched and decided he wanted to become a police officer because he wanted to go kill terrorists and he wanted to capture them and put them in jail and maybe get a chance to kill them. That was his choice, and that always struck me as that's not going to help. On the other hand, I can certainly talk to to people here and anywhere about the World Trade Center and how we deal with our lives, and we can talk about God and where God is in all of it. People always ask me if you know if I think that God just really blew it that day, and and again, my my point is, why do you think that? You know, the reality is, everyone has a choice in the world that they can make at any given time, and and we need to make those choices, and we need to live by the choices that we make. Stephen Shaner  20:54 Yes, absolutely. And there's some other things we can do when we find ourselves in those negative places. Number one is ask different questions. Sometimes negative things happen, and we're asking the wrong questions. You know, why me? You know, those those types of questions. And guess what? We'll get the answers. So, and it seems a funny one. I had a when I was working up in Duluth. My my direct report manager was down in Minneapolis, so we were about 160 miles away, and every now and then my team would make a mistake of some kind, and there was a senior director down there that every time that happened, he would immediately go to my boss, you know, and and question this, and then I get pulled in later, and I just I would get so frustrated that he wouldn't come to me with this stuff, you know, and this went on for a long time, and one day we had we'd made a mistake, and so he sent an email to my boss. Look what they did this time. So my boss forwarded to me, and he just simply typed in Stephen question mark. You know, of course, as soon as I saw it, you know, I was like, I was so frustrated, and I kept asking, does he go to my boss? Why doesn't he come to me? Why did you know? And it was just these negative anger, frustration. And finally, I calmed down. I said, "Okay, why am I really upset here? Am I upset because my team made a mistake? No, they make mistakes. They're exceptional at fixing problems and making sure they don't happen again. That wasn't. Was I upset that my boss knew? No, I'd already told him, you know, he needed to know. Okay, so that wasn't it, and I kept coming back to this. Why does he go to him? Why did he come to me? And then finally, I changed a little bit, and I said, Why would he go to my boss? And I thought, I was, well, they've known each other for years, they have a relationship, they have trust, and I said, maybe he doesn't even know he can come to me. I was just thinking that. Stephen Shaner  22:42 Yeah, all of a sudden, I was like, "Okay, I'm in control again. So I called or I replied to the email. Here's what happened. Here's what we've done to fix it. It won't happen again. And I said, "If anything like this happens in the future, please let me know. Okay. I set that off. I then called this this gentleman and I and I set up a one-on-one with him that we could meet every two weeks, and I could start building that relationship with him, build the trust. And after a while, he didn't go to my boss anymore. He came to me. But by changing the questions, Michael Hingson  23:10 yeah, Stephen Shaner  23:10 you know, we'll get different answers. If Speaker 1  23:16 you enjoy Unstoppable Mindset and would like to help us continue bringing these conversations to you each week. We've created a way for you to support the show. Your contribution helps us cover production costs and continue sharing stories, insights, and ideas that inspire people to live with purpose and possibility. If supporting the podcast feels right for you, you'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you for being part of the Unstoppable Mindset Community. Stephen Shaner  23:48 Well, and and then there's you know the vocabulary we're using too. Michael Hingson  23:52 I was Stephen Shaner  23:52 sitting at a Toastmasters conference one night, Friday night dinner, the round table. There's I think eight of us at the table. So it was me, my wife Nancy was next to me, and my former boss was next to her. He he and I joined Toastmasters at the same time, and and this was right when I was getting ready to become the district governor. And I and I looked over at at my former boss. I says, "Are you going to be an area governor next year? And him being him and his sense of hearing, he says, "Well, why would I want to do that? So I replied, "It's the best job in the district. You get to visit clubs, you get to give presentations, you get to organize speech contests. It's a lot of fun. And at the same time, then a lady across the table I just met, she she piped up. She says, "Well, a lady in my club is an area governor, and she hates it. And I said, "Really? Why? She says, "Well, she has to go visit clubs, and she has to organize speech contests, and she has to give presentations. And you see the difference. I was saying you get to do these things. She was saying you have to have to do these things. Yeah. How do you feel when you have to do something? You know, versus get to, and we can change our vocabulary just that simple, and it it makes a. Huge difference. If I say, "Oh, this is devastating, what am I going to experience? Devastation, whatever that means to me, you know. And I used the words like that. There's something bad happening. I'd use those negative words, and now I've just I've switched it up. So something like that happens. I just I just go, okay, this is entertaining because that changes me instantly because being entertained is a completely different experience than being devastated. Okay, so I can look at whatever is going on completely differently from an entertaining standpoint, and it takes me in a completely different direction. So vocabulary is huge. The the words we use, and I and I always tell people: take if you're in a negative place, what do you what are you watching? What are you listening to? What are you reading? You know what were you with? You know, take a look at those things. For years, I would watch the news programs on Sunday, you know, and I just scream at the TV. And I haven't watched news on on television now probably in going on 20 years. You know, I don't need that because most of it is negative, you know. And I can get my news into, you know, as much as I need where I want to get it from, and and do it that way. So I watch Michael Hingson  26:11 I watch the news, but I also recognize something, and you're you're alluding to it certainly, which is it's it's all about how you choose to deal with what you see. When I was running from the collapse of Tower Two, the first thing I thought of when I started to run was God, I can't believe that you got us out of a building just to have it fall on us. And as soon as I thought that, I heard a voice in my head as clearly as you hear me that said, don't worry about what you can't control. Focus on running with Roselle, and the rest will take care of itself. And I also had this absolute perfect sense of conviction that if I and my guide dog Roselle worked together, we would be fine. And I have lived by that concept for now the last 24 and a half years, which really is one of things happen. There are a lot of things that we don't have control over. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't necessarily be aware of them, but it does mean that we don't need to let those things be things that we worry about because we're not going to have any control over them anyway. And that's 90 to 95% of what comes across in our lives, so it's it's for me. I don't mind watching the news. I I expect not very much from all of it, and I know they're going to come through every time. So it works out really well. But but the fact is that it's one of the ways that I have to get the news since I don't read newspapers directly. I can read. I can get the L.A. or the New York Times online, but still the news is is there, and I'll take what I can learn from it and move forward. But it is it gets back to again. It's a choice, right? Stephen Shaner  27:53 Yes. And you just you just nailed habit one. Be proactive. Yeah. There's a lot of things going on in the world. Okay. All the things of all the things we want in the world, some things we don't care about. Okay, but there are some things that concern us. Okay, so we we we pay more attention to those. There are a lot of things out there. They have no concern about that. And then inside all those things that concern us, there are things that we can influence and things that we can't. Okay, so proactive people focus on the things they can influence, the things they can control primarily themselves, okay, right? And yeah, reactive people. Where do they focus? They focus on the things they have no influence over, and they yell and scream and gripe and and do all those things like I used to do, and and that's the difference. That's really habit one in the nutshell. Yeah, focus on the things you control, and I and I work with people all the time, and I had one here recently. The guy was very frustrated about some things other people were doing, and and was just you know upset and frustrated. And I said, "Look, I says you have no control over those people. Don't worry about them. Focus on the wonderful things that you do every day for people, you know. And immediately his demeanor changed, his attitude changed, and and it really can be that simple, you know, just by changing, you know, asking different questions, using different vocabulary, and and especially if you focus on the things you can control, primarily yourself, it's huge. Michael Hingson  29:13 Yeah. Well, and and the reality is that just so many people just seem to enjoy worrying about all these things, and all they're doing is creating fear in their lives, which is which is so unfortunate, and we fear so many things, and and there's nothing that we're going to be able to do about most all of them because they're not really affecting us, or are touching us in any way. So it doesn't do us any good to to go off and continue to fret, but we do, and we we need to learn not to do that. And it's one of the the things I talk about in my my latest book, "Live Like a Guide Dog, which is all about learning lessons from dogs. You know, dogs don't do what ifs when something happens and it's over. It's over for the dog. They don't they don't go back. Well, what if. This had happened instead. They don't do that, and and it makes such a big difference. There's so much we could learn from observing our dogs. I don't know about cats. No, I do. Cats are good too, but but you know we we can learn so much from the way dogs behave. Dogs are are open to trust. I'm not going to say they're trusting all the time. I do think that dogs love unconditionally, but I don't think that they necessarily trust unconditionally. But they're open to trust, and that's the thing that we have forgotten how to do: is to be open to trust. Stephen Shaner  30:33 Very true, very true. Michael Hingson  30:35 And it is something that we really need to learn to deal with it, and hopefully, over time we will we will do more to catch on. I mean we've got all the stuff going on with politics today, and yeah, it doesn't matter what side of the the spectrum that you're on with with all of that. The bottom line is deal with what you can control, and don't worry about the rest. It makes such a big difference. So the problem is negativity is so much all around us. How do we get ourselves out of a negative mood? I think I kind of know where you're going to go with this, but I think it's a relevant question. How do we how do we get ourselves out of feeling negative all the time? Stephen Shaner  31:15 Touch on some of them. You know, change your vocabulary. You know, take a look at what's going on around you. See if you can eliminate what's causing that negativity, gratitude is huge. Michael Hingson  31:24 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  31:25 and in any given situation, there have been times when I've you know been okay, I've been down or there. But if I just take a breath and say, okay, what am I grateful for right now? You know that that can turn you around instantly. And in my workshops, I'll I'll ask that question. We'll go around the room, and people say, "Well, I'm grateful for you know my health, or my family, or my wife, or my creator, or whatever it may be. There's all these different things, but I take it a step further, and I say, "Okay, all of those things that you said you're grateful for have a relationship associated with it. Okay, so if you say you're you're grateful for your health, well, that's a relationship with yourself, perhaps your doctor, perhaps your creator. If you're grateful for your family, that's a relationship. Your employees, there's these relationships behind that. And then the next question I ask: Okay, so all those things that you're grateful for, all those relationships you're grateful for, do they know? And we miss that part sometimes. We miss Michael Hingson  32:19 that part. Stephen Shaner  32:19 Yeah, and if we if we are truly grateful for a certain thing in our life, and there's that relationship with it, let that person know, and that includes you know being grateful for yourself. You know, give yourself a pat on the back from time to time, and be grateful for that. In my book, I have the line, you know, every day above ground is a great day. Yeah, and and I was at a seminar, and there was a the guy in attendance that was you know three piece suit, Italian suit, you know the fancy shoes, and and the seminar leader asked him. He says, you know, do you consider yourself to be successful? He says, well, no. He says, well, how do you know when you're successful? The guy says, well, when I have a you know four and a half million dollar home and a and you know a $200,000 car and and all this stuff he listed off he says well how much or and he made and he he wanted to make an income of you know it was like you know 5 million a year or something he says well how much you make now he says well I'm at about 3 million a year you know and how much is your house well it's only about 2 million you know but he didn't consider himself successful and then there was another guy there in jeans, cowboy boots, a cowboy hat, and and the the some earlier asked him. He says, "Are you successful? He says, "Absolutely. And he asked him. He says, "How do you know you're successful? He says, "Every day above ground is a great day. And there you Michael Hingson  33:33 go. Stephen Shaner  33:33 And it's just and it's so true. But gratitude is huge. Just taking, like I said, take a step back, take a breath, and okay, what am I grateful for right now? And you can always be grateful for something, and that can change your attitude instantly. Michael Hingson  33:48 Well, and I think there's a lot of merit to that. I know for me, I'm grateful because I get to do what I think I've always wanted to do. I've always wanted to be a teacher. I didn't get to teach for the longest time directly, but since September 11th, that's really what I do. I teach about life and philosophy. I get to teach about disabilities and help try to educate people. And most of the time, I think it probably goes over most people's heads. But every so often, you just never know when you might strike a nerve or you might say something that somebody just goes off and thinks about, and you've you've scored points and you've helped, and so I think that's that's extremely important. I I hear what you're saying. Every day above ground is a is a good day. There's no question about that. Stephen Shaner  34:32 And I don't want to make light of people that you know life through any illnesses and stuff like that. But again, in those situations, Michael Hingson  34:38 if Stephen Shaner  34:38 you if you think about what you are grateful for and have a positive attitude, you'll get through those situations a lot easier. That's for sure. Michael Hingson  34:46 I had a situation last year. Actually, it started in 2023, but I had a a or 2024. I had a a pain in my left arm, and it turns out when we finally. Dealt with it, and and and I had to take some blood tests, and discovered that we had a very elevated heart enzyme called troponin. I had a bad heart valve, and I knew immediately I have two ways to deal with this. I can be scared, fretful, why me? Or I can say, okay, we're going to fix it. And for me personally, I choose the positive way. I'm going to we're going to deal with it and all that. And and we did. I went into the the hospital for an operation to to replace the valve, which they did, And so this operation was supposed to take like two hours or two and a half hours, and it actually only took about an hour for me because, as I love to tell people, I have good veins and good arteries, so no problem. So they they went in, they replaced the the valve, and I wake up and I've had colonoscopies before, so I had some experience with this. I wake up, I'm listening to them, and so I I figure I had to to deal with these guys a little bit. So I started kind of moaning, and I said, "Gee, Doc, do you ever think I'll be able to play the violin? Unfortunately, somebody knew that one, and they said, "Probably. I said that's good because I never play it before. But but then I said, but you know what the doctor said is he sewed himself up, right? Suit yourself, and and you know they said you came right out of that anesthetic, didn't you? And I said, yeah, I told you I was going to come right out of it. But but you know it's been great ever since the valve got replaced, and and I was told that if I hadn't done it, I would have lived anywhere from six months to at most two years. But the valve was replaced, and I still get to to be around my guide dog Alamo and and my cat Stitch. So you know, Stephen Shaner  36:54 yeah, my wife Nancy here is a little over a year ago now. She had an episode where her her blood pressure was going up, but then it would come back down. So we're about there. There's a hospital about a half hour from us, but they don't have all the the fancy facilities and stuff. the The nearest big hospital is is about an hour from here. So I called the paramedics, and they came in and they got her hooked up the KG and were kind of monitoring everything. He says we're going to take her down to Cookville because they've got a good cardiology cardiology department at that hospital where they don't have one here locally. So halfway there, her blood pressure just dropped, and she went unconscious. Michael Hingson  37:40 So Stephen Shaner  37:41 they got her stable license, sirens rest the way in. So she was in that hospital for four days, had every heart test known to man, and you know I would go visit her and and spend a little time with her. And one of the visits, one of the nurses cornered me in the hallway, and she says, "Can I ask you a question? I said, "Sure. She says, "How can you be so positive during all this? And Alex Troy says, "Okay. I says, "Suppose I was very negative and very grumpy about all this. How would that help the situation, right? And I says, "Or if I was grumpy and in a negative mood, how would that help Nancy? And she just said, "You know, I never thought about it that way. And when they were checking her out, the the doctors and all the nurses came in and thanked both of us for for being so positive and friendly and nice with everything that was going on. So little things. And what did they finally decide? Nothing was wrong with her heart. So she has since now this year she had some more heart problems. She started having AFib issues, so they put a watchman in, and that kind of you know plugged that hole in the left ventricle so that she won't get the blood clots. So she doesn't have to be in a blood thinner. And about six days after that, her heart was kind of not working so well with it, so they put a pacemaker in. So she had two heart surgeries in about six days. But now, sounds like what what's going on is all of these problems are being caused by the COVID shots. Ah, and so because her heart was fine, you know, before, but now all of a sudden she's got these. But right now she's doing great. In fact, she had an appointment last two weeks ago, right before the ice storm, and the Cardia says everything's looking good. We'll see you in a year, so so things are going well now. Michael Hingson  39:32 Interesting. Well, you know, I've I've heard that some people have had reactions to the COVID shots, son, but I've never bought into the concept that they're just injecting you with a bunch of trackers to follow you wherever you go. I remember the first few times we had vaccinations, they did it in our in our cars, and so we drove up, and they would come out and they gave injections, and after they gave the injections, I'd reach over with my left hand. I go wait a minute, and I'd hit my right shoulder where they did the injection. I said I was just getting one of them little things that tried to get away, and you know, and the and the nurses finally say, "You don't really believe in those trackers, do you? And I said, "Heck no, I'm having too much fun, you know. Stephen Shaner  40:15 No, it's a Frank Stein monster you stuck in there that scares me. That's right. Yeah, Michael Hingson  40:20 but but you know, and you know, I I I do get vaccinations. I get the COVID vaccinations, and I asked someone when I I think it was November that we went in and had one. I travel enough that I'm always going to take no chances, so it's better to get vaccinated, and I don't have any reactions to them. But I asked if people still come in and talk about the trackers and all the the horrible things, and she said, "You just wouldn't believe how many people still buy into that. It's crazy. Stephen Shaner  40:49 Yes, indeed. Michael Hingson  40:50 If you really want to scare them, then you can tell them that AI helped develop the vaccinations and see what they do with that because it's true. But yeah, I Stephen Shaner  40:58 know everybody's loving AI. I said, yeah. Just go back on what 2001 of Space Odyssey and see how you feel about it. Yeah, right. Michael Hingson  41:05 Open the Pod Bay doors, Dave. You know what are you doing, Dave? Oh gosh, people are amazing, aren't they? Stephen Shaner  41:13 Yep. Yes, they are. But that's what makes life fun. You know, it's just the fact that people are different. It makes life fun because if everybody was the same, it'd be a boring place. It Michael Hingson  41:23 would be a boring place, so it's more fun to have people who are different and people who are not necessarily thinking the same way you are and intend to be negative. And maybe sometimes you can change some of those people, which is good. And it's always fun to to try. That's the Stephen Shaner  41:38 goal. Yeah, that's the goal. You know, be an example and show there's a different way. Michael Hingson  41:42 So, do questions matter? Asking questions matter. Stephen Shaner  41:44 Absolutely. Like I shared, you know, with the questions I was asking about this this this manager that was going to my boss, you know, just by asking different questions. And another thing is is I've had a lot of fun with this word, awesome. My company is awesome attitude, and I'm the bottom of all my emails, you'll see a "You are awesome, and I type that in every time. Michael Hingson  42:07 It's Stephen Shaner  42:07 not part of my signature, so I might say, "You know, thanks, you are awesome, or you know, you know, whatever message. I've gotten Michael Hingson  42:12 those. Stephen Shaner  42:13 Yeah, you are awesome, and people don't realize I type. In fact, I misspelled "awesome" one time when I sent the email, and the guy, the guy wrote back says you need to fix your signature. Awesome is misspelled, and I replied, "Oh, I says that's not part of my signature. I typed there time. And he was like, "Wow, personalized awesome messages. But it's amazing because people will respond to those emails, go, "Well, thank you so much. I wasn't expecting that. And barely a week goes by where somebody doesn't send me a text or something that they saw the word "awesome" somewhere, like recently, the guy was walking his dog, and he came across on the sidewalk where kids with chalk had had written "You are awesome" on the sidewalk, and he took a picture and he said, "Thought of you, and this happens all the time, and is another one of those vocabulary things, and and I'll share how the question changed that. In my first book, I talk about you know how are you today, and you think about all the different responses you can get to that question, and some are like I'm fine, you know I'm or I'm good. They're just pretty routine answers. I had one guy ignore me completely, just walked past me, you know. Then I had a guy one time. I was like, "Well, I'm alive, you know. So you get this variety of answers. And I had a guy one time. He asked me, "How are you today? And I said, "I'm awesome, thanks. And I kid you not, he looked at me and says, "That's too bad. I'm sorry to hear that. And and I smiled, and and he realized what he had done, and he says, and he apologized again. I was not sorry. He says, "I'm so used to hearing negative responses. I automatically assumed you said awful. Michael Hingson  43:47 Oh, okay. So, Stephen Shaner  43:48 so, and again, we asked that same question over and over. How are you today in this video? How are you? How's it going? What's up? You know, what's new? We we asked that same question. So I changed the question. The question is, "Are you awesome today? Michael Hingson  44:05 I know, and that's oh yeah, Stephen Shaner  44:07 that's it's unexpected. People don't expect that, and they think, "Oh, you know, yeah, I am awesome. That's the the title of my podcast: "Are you awesome today? And when I answer the phone, you know, it's, "Are you awesome today? Or if I call somebody and they answer the phone, I'll say, "Are you awesome today? And it's completely different. It gets them thinking differently, and it gets them. Yeah, I am awesome today. You know. So rather than the the same old, how are you today? I'm fine. It's yeah, I'm awesome. Thanks for asking. You know. So questions do matter. Michael Hingson  44:35 When people ask me how I am, I just say I'm lovely, and I learned that from a friend, and I love it. It's great, you know. And and I've had some people who go, "What? But but you know, awesome. Yes, absolutely. But I do love to say I'm lovely, and I love Stephen Shaner  44:52 that. And it's different. People don't expect it, and no, it'll make their day. Believe it. It has an effect. Had a young lady on ham radio, teenager. And I'd always, whenever I talked to her on the radio, they said, "How are you today? Or this was, you know, this back when I was asking that question, and she would reply, "Dandy, thanks. You know, there you go. Yeah, and it was just, it was so much fun. It was like that's the kind of things we like to hear. Michael Hingson  45:14 You still a ham operator? Stephen Shaner  45:15 Oh yeah, yeah. I've I'm the emergency coordinator for Macon County, and I'm the district emergency coordinator for 13 counties here in Middle Tennessee for Aries Amateur Emergency Services, and president of our local club, and so very active. I just did some some Poda before I got on on here with you. Parks on the air got three contacts: a guy at Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Michigan. Michael Hingson  45:39 If I got industrious, I would get an antenna and connect my Kenwood back up. It's been a while since we moved down here, and I haven't had this running at all down here. And I really need to get it get it back up on the air. I've been a ham operator since 1964. I got my novice license in '64. My dad could have gotten his at any time. He wanted to wait until I could get mine, so we got them at the same time. Nice. And then in '65, got technician, and then soon after that, general class. Nice. And we we set up rigs at opposite ends of the house, and we would talk to each other and drive people around the whole town crazy because we would be talking about the weather. You know, I'd say, "How's the weather over there? And he'd say, "Oh, it's raining over here, and people knew that we were at opposite ends of the same house. I say, well, it's really nice and sunny here, and just drove people crazy. Stephen Shaner  46:27 I bet, but yeah, Nancy's got her. She's a she's an extra amateur extra, and we've got our VE credential, so we give the tests, and we just have a blast with the hobby. It's a fun hobby, and then when you can do the committee service too, it's it's great. Michael Hingson  46:39 I used to do things with races and also with Mars. Stephen Shaner  46:42 Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:43 and it's been a while, but I really need to get the antenna up and get an antenna in here and get back on the air. I think it'd be a lot of fun to do. Stephen Shaner  46:53 Contact a local club. I'm sure some people help you get that. Yeah, Michael Hingson  46:55 I just really need to do that. Yeah. So, how does energy affect attitude, and how do I get more energy? Stephen Shaner  47:02 Ah, boy, you know that's such a great question. That's a that's Michael Hingson  47:05 a that's a detailed one, isn't Stephen Shaner  47:07 it? It is, and I awesome Michael Hingson  47:09 question. It Stephen Shaner  47:10 is. I watch people; those people that are positive all the time. You you know, we meet them. They're just no matter what's going on, they're always positive. They always seem to have a lot of energy, and and I found that if we we want more energy, what we need to do is give energy. What I mean by that is is movement. Okay, if we find ourselves kind of low on energy, the battery is a little low. Just get up and move. And it doesn't have to be anything, you know, strenuous. Just in my office, I had a sit stand station, which meant I could take my whole computer and to monitor everything, raise them up. I could stand for you know, and I would stand for hours during the day. They gave me energy. Take a five minute walk, you know. And music is huge. If you know, play some music, dance in your cube. You know, sell tickets, have a little concert in your cube, fight your coworkers, and have a good time. But but just get up, move. That's really all it is. I get up at four a.m. every day, and I do an exercise program called the Five Tibetans, and then I do Tai Chi, and then you know read or work on the computer, whatever, and do until Nancy gets up around seven. And but that those two things give me energy throughout the day. And if I find myself in a slump, just getting up and taking a short walk will boost my energy level up Michael Hingson  48:18 every time. Stephen Shaner  48:20 Yeah. So I Michael Hingson  48:21 we didn't design our house this way, but we have a long island, but separating the family room living room area from the kitchen. And now, since it's just me, I will do I will put an audio book on and just do laps around the island, and I can get up to 15,000 steps without any great difficulty, just reading a book and and doing it, and it's a great way to get energy. And to I Stephen Shaner  48:45 bought Nancy a walk pad. These are these are fairly new. It's like a little miniature treadmill. There doesn't have the big handle thing sticking up. It's just a flat treadmill for walking. They're designed so you can like sit it under your desk and you can you know take some steps while you're at your computer or something. Yeah. But but because it's you know a little rough for her. It's pretty hilly out here to to get us up. So she's got a nice level place that she can just you know walk for 2030 minutes every day in the house. Where especially when it was our ice storm going on a couple weeks ago, you know, stay in and stay warm and not slip and fall. And but there's there's ways to do that. And like I said, even just standing up, I did a presentation at the local chamber of commerce this morning, and when I was in my presentation, rather than go back and sit down, I went to the back and stood the whole time. And at church on Sunday, I stand through the entire service in the back and just keeps my energy up. So Michael Hingson  49:36 I don't always do that, but I oftentimes stand, and I've been to to many meetings, and I'll just stand in the back of the room. And frankly, given some of the speakers, it's better to stand and get a little bit more energy. But but a lot of times, it's just good for me anyway to to do that, which is cool. Stephen Shaner  49:54 Yeah. Michael Hingson  49:56 So, do you think? People generally tend to truly understand gratitude, or is that still a hurdle that a lot of people need to work to get through? Stephen Shaner  50:09 I think they, like I said, I think they say the word, you know, and I say, you know, I'm grateful for this. But what does that mean exactly? I don't think they take it down to the the detail. Okay, and like I said that there's relationships there. So if I say you know I'm grateful for my health, what does that mean? Okay, well you know I'm I'm grateful that and and I come from a every male on my dad's side and every male on my mom's side has had heart disease, died of heart disease. My dad had his first bypass surgery at 48. He had a second. He died of a heart attack. You know so I'm 67 and I take no medications. Okay, so I'm grateful for my health. You know, so and the relationship there, me, my family is affected by my health. You know, my friends, my coworker, everybody that is is in my life is affected by my health. I'm grateful for. I don't go to the doctors very often because I don't need to, but I'm grateful that you know you had a heart valve problem, and our medical system for those types of things is second to none. Michael Hingson  51:11 Yeah, Stephen Shaner  51:12 you know. So and even though I'm an hour away from a big hospital, I'm grateful that that is there if I do need it in in some way. You know, exactly, exactly right. Michael Hingson  51:21 Same thing for me. Stephen Shaner  51:23 Yeah. So we don't. I don't think we say, "Yeah, I'm grateful for that. But what does that really mean? And I think you're right. We don't. We don't take it deep enough and really think about. Okay, what does this really mean? And and again, with those relationships, okay, I'm grateful for my wife. Does she know? I hope so. You know, because I I do tell her frequently. I say Michael Hingson  51:42 telling her helps. Stephen Shaner  51:43 Yeah, it does. It really really does. So, Michael Hingson  51:48 and likewise, I'll bet she's grateful for you. Stephen Shaner  51:51 I think so. I hope so. So we've been we've been married. It'll be 45 years in July. So Michael Hingson  51:56 we were married 40 years before Karen passed. Karen was in a wheelchair her whole life, and the body just eventually slows down. I I learned from her sister that I've I've never heard this from my wife, but her sister told me, oh, they never thought she was going to live live past 30. Well, she lived to be 73, and the reality is, I I'm not sure. I totally buy that that that what her sister said was true because I've never been able to to verify it anywhere else. But Karen Karen lived a good life, but as I said, the body eventually does slow down, especially dealing with a wheelchair and all that, and things happen. But I know that we have 40 years of wonderful marriage memories, and as I said, she's out there monitoring. And if I misbehave, I'm going to hear about it. So I don't even chase the girls. Stephen Shaner  52:48 Yeah, I would Michael Hingson  52:49 point out they don't seem to be chasing me either. No, no reference to anything on the podcast, folks. Just saying. So, Stephen Shaner  52:56 and I think attitude plays a huge role in your health too. And I know there's a lot of literature out there that would back that up. Michael Hingson  53:04 So clearly, a positive attitude is a wonderful thing, and I'm sure that that given all that you do with a positive attitude, you you by definition affect a lot of other people as well. Stephen Shaner  53:16 It's it's amazing how many people just make comments. You know, comment I'll make. Oh, I wasn't expecting that. Thank you so much, or anything like that. I was in a, I was out running errands one day for work at lunchtime, and as I was heading back to the office, I got rear-ended, and pretty substantially. And so I got to the side of the road and and kind of shut everything off. I took inventory. I was okay, but those negative emotions, you know, the frustration, the anger, and those things started to creep in, and I finally just I took a breath and I said, and I asked a question. The question

Send us Fan MailRear Admiral Michael N. Parks, United States Coast  Guard, Retired, assumed the responsibilities in April 2015  as Regional Executive of the Northern Ohio Region of the American Red Cross. In this capacity he oversees five  American Red Cross Chapters covering 31 Northern Ohio counties serving 5.3 million people. From 2010 to 2013, Parks was based in Cleveland and served as Commander, Ninth Coast Guard District, responsible for leading and directing all Coast Guard operations throughout the eight-state Great Lakes region, including the 1,500-mile international border with Canada. In that capacity he led more than 6,000 active, reserve, civilian and auxiliary (volunteer) personnel at 75 operational units. During his 35-year Coast Guard career, Parks was deployed in 2010 in support of the U.S. Southern Command to help direct emergency response following the devastating earthquake in  Haiti, working directly with the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He also deployed in response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, providing port security, search and rescue, and support for recovery efforts. While serving for over a decade in the Red Cross, Parks has deployed around the country more than a dozen times supporting major disaster relief efforts. Parks has a Bachelor of Science degree in Government from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, a Master of Public Administration degree from George Washington University, and a Master of Science degree in National Security Strategy and Policy from the National War College. He and his wife Cynthia have two daughters and live in Bay Village. A Few Quotes From This Episode"It takes time to care... you can't care on the cheap.""Bad news doesn't get better with age.""Talk to people, not about people. Think the best of people. And don't overreact."ResourcesBook: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Book: Failing Forward by John Maxwell About The International Leadership Association (ILA)The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Attend The Global Conference in Toronto, October 28-31.About  Scott J. AllenWebsiteWeekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for LeadersMy Approach to HostingThe views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.♻️ Please share with others and follow/subscribe to the podcast!⭐️ Please leave a review on Apple, Spotify, or your platform of choice.➡️ Follow me on LinkedIn for more on leadership, communication, and tech.

I denne episoden dykker vi inn i en av de mest undervurderte, men essensielle ferdighetene for å oppnå meningsfulle relasjoner: kunsten å lytte. Vi reflekterer over vanen nummer fem fra Stephen Coveys "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", som oppfordrer oss til å "søke først å forstå, deretter å bli forstått". Det har aldri vært viktigere å mestre denne kunsten i vår informasjonsoverfylte tidsalder, hvor distraksjoner og hjernekamp om oppmerksomhet kan gjøre ekte lytting til en sjeldenhet.Vi utforsker hva det innebærer å lytte med empati og, ikke minst, hvorfor dette kan være så vanskelig. Mange av oss går inn i samtaler med egne agendaer, klare til å tilby løsninger før vi forstår hva den andre egentlig kommuniserer. Dette kan føre til misforståelser og avstand i våre relasjoner. Gjennom samtalen tar vi opp hvordan vår kultur fremmer ytring og synlighet, ofte på bekostning av kvaliteten på våre interaksjoner.Ved å bruke metaforen til en optiker, viser vi hvordan den kloke lytteren nærmer seg samtaler med et åpent sinn, i stedet for å påtvinge andre sine egne "briller" – det vil si løsninger og perspektiver basert på egne erfaringer. Jeg deler personlige anekdoter om hvordan denne tilnærmingen har ført til bedre relasjoner, både privat og profesjonelt. Det handler ikke bare om å høre ordene som sies, men om å forstå intensjonen og følelsene bak dem.Vi diskuterer også betydningen av å være til stede, både mentalt og følelsesmessig. Dette krever en viss grad av empati, der vi må vise oppriktig interesse for andres perspektiver. Gjennom aktiverende lytting kan vi speile hva andre opplever og gi dem en plattform til å utforske sine egne tanker og følelser uten å føle seg dømt eller misforstått.Med praktiske tips som å stanse autopiloten under samtaler, reflektere tilbake på det som blir sagt, og å stille åpne spørsmål, tilbyr vi lytterne konkrete verktøy for å forbedre sine egne lytteferdigheter. Det er viktig å huske at ekte lytting ikke er en mekanisk ferdighet, men en holdning preget av genuin interesse for den andre, noe som vi kan trene opp over tid.Vi avslutter med en invitasjon til å bruke disse prinsippene i hverdagen, enten det er med partnere, venner, kolleger, eller til og med i samtaler med oss selv. Å lytte med hele vårt væren kan åpne opp for dypere forbindelser, ikke bare mellom oss og andre, men også i vårt egne liv. Dette er en reise mot å bli bedre mennesker, og det begynner med evnen til å lytte.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Richter, author of Profit First for Real Estate Investing, delivers a back-to-basics whiteboard walkthrough of the entire Profit First system in this solo episode. If you've heard the term thrown around but never understood the actual mechanics, this is the overview that makes it click.David breaks down why Profit First is just the pay-yourself-first principle from Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Richest Man in Babylon with a real system behind it, and then draws out that system account by account. He covers the income account, the "golden trio" of profit, owner's comp, and tax, and the operating expense account most owners live in. Best of all, he shows why it's nearly impossible to mess up if you keep it simple. If numbers make your eyes glaze over, start here.Timeline Summary[0:26] – David introduces himself and frames the episode as a full overview of Profit First[0:46] – What Profit First actually is: a cash flow system for putting money in your pocket[1:04] – Why it's an offshoot of pay-yourself-first ideas from Kiyosaki, Babylon, and Covey[1:42] – Reassurance for the investor who's "allergic to spreadsheets"[2:02] – The only two ways Profit First fails: never setting it up or making it too complicated[2:22] – How the system is the envelope method applied to business bank accounts[2:56] – Why most owners put profit last and how to protect it instead[3:37] – Giving every dollar a name so you're intentional instead of throwing money around[3:52] – Building the system: starting with the income account where all deposits land[4:15] – The three accounts under income: profit, owner's comp, and tax[5:05] – The operating expense account and why it's the one big account most people start with[5:45] – Why the profit account fuels the reason you started your business[6:05] – Taking profit quarterly, and using it first to knock out debt[6:33] – Why owner's comp is his favorite account and how it pays you consistently[7:15] – The tax account as the peace-of-mind account that kills tax-time stress[7:35] – Why it's called Profit First and the "golden trio" Harry Potter analogy[8:27] – If it feels like too much, start with just the owner's comp account5 Key TakeawaysProfit First Is Pay Yourself First With A System — The principle isn't new; it's straight out of Rich Dad Poor Dad and The Richest Man in Babylon. What Profit First adds is the actual how, a bank account structure that makes it real.It Only Fails Two Ways — Profit First doesn't break on its own. It only fails if you never set it up, or you make it so complicated you quit. Keep it simple and use it consistently.Give Every Dollar A Name — The system is the envelope method applied to business checking accounts. Naming your accounts makes you intentional instead of throwing money at marketing, hires, and expenses on a hunch.The Golden Trio Protects Your Money — Income flows in, then you transfer to profit, owner's comp, and tax first, before operating expenses. Profit fuels your purpose, owner's comp pays you, and tax is your peace-of-mind account.When In Doubt, Start With Owner's Comp — If the full system feels overwhelming, open one account and pay yourself from it consistently. Most owners don't pay themselves enough, and building that habit is where it all starts.Links & ResourcesSimple CFO — https://simplecfo.comProfit First for Real Estate Investing by David Richter — https://profitfirstrei.comRich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki — https://www.richdad.comThe Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason — https://www.penguinrandomhouse.comThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey — https://www.franklincovey.comThe Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey — https://www.ramseysolutions.comEnjoyed This Episode?If David's whiteboard finally made the Profit First system click for you, the next step is opening that first account today. Share this episode with an investor who puts their profit last, and follow the show and leave a rating and review so more real estate investors can learn to keep more of what they make.

I denne episoden tar jeg for meg den fjerde vanen fra Stephen Coveys klassiske selvhjelpsbok "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", med fokus på ideen om "vinn-vinn". I en tid der så mange av oss opplever at livet er en konstant konkurranse, både i arbeidslivet, vennegjengen og på sosiale medier, er det viktig å utfordre tanken om at andres suksess må bety vårt tap. Jeg tar en dypere dykk inn i hvordan denne konkurransementaliteten kan føre til stress, mistillit og isolasjon.Vi utforsker hvordan en vinn-vinn-mentalitet ikke bare er et overfladisk mål, men en fundamental holdningsendring som kan forvandle måten vi interagerer med hverandre på. Vi diskuterer den skadelige virkningen av sosial sammenligning og konkurransementalitet, og hvordan dette påvirker både relasjoner og vår mentale helse. Gjennom episoden underbygger jeg disse idéene med psykologiske og filosofiske perspektiver, inkludert teoriene fra Richard Sennett og Carol Dweck, for å vise hvordan en vinn-vinn-tilnærming kan skape rom for felles vekst, heller enn å perpetuere en knapphetsmentalitet.Videre ser vi på hvordan vi kan implementere vinn-vinn-prinsipper i hverdagen, uavhengig av om det er i jobb, vennskap eller familie. Jeg deler mine egne erfaringer og praksiser i å skape vinn-vinn-situasjoner med barna mine, der alle involverte kan oppleve glede og engasjement. Gjennom å invitere til dialog, bygge tillit, og forstå andres behov, kan vi transformere våre relasjoner fra konfliktfylte konkurranser til samarbeid der alle kan blomstre.Episoden avsluttes med konkrete råd for hvordan lytterne kan begynne å anvende disse prinsippene i sin egen hverdag. Vi ser på hvordan vi kan identifisere behov, bygge tillit og unngå den fristelsen som konkurranse kan bringe med seg, spesielt i stressende situasjoner. Gjennom å adoptere en overflodsmentalitet, der suksess ikke sees som en begrenset ressurs, oppmuntrer jeg lytterne til å se på livet som et prosjekt vi sammen kan utvikle.Denne episoden er en invitasjon til å revurdere hvordan vi lever og samhandler med andre, og hvordan vi kan anbefale oss selv til å være mer generous og inkluderende i våre forhold. Vinn-vinn er ikke bare en strategi, men en holdning som kan styrke båndene mellom oss og bidra til en sunnere, mer samarbeidsvillig og meningsfull tilværelse.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you have tried gentle parenting and still feel like nothing works with your strong-willed child, this episode is for you. New to the show? Start with our ⁠Start Here playlist⁠. Wendy Snyder was three years into motherhood, home with a colicky newborn and a three-year-old who got sent home from preschool on repeat, when she walked past a flyer for a free positive parenting class and took it as a sign. Fifteen years later, that same strong-willed daughter is a Division I beach volleyball player at a top ten school. In this conversation, Wendy and JoAnn get into why the strong will you are fighting is the exact trait that will carry your kid, and what has to shift in you first before any strategy will work. In this episode, you'll learn Why punishment, timeouts and "break their will early" advice backfire hardest on the kids they are aimed at The difference between a kid who is born strong-willed and a mild kid moving through a power surge season What autocratic parenting actually is, and why almost all of us absorbed some of it How releasing control over homework and grades produced a self-motivated straight A kid One tactical swap you can make today: replacing compliance statements with choices Resources mentioned in this episode Fresh Start Your Family: Powerful Parenting to Restore Peace in Your Home by Wendy Snyder Fresh Start Family Race to Nowhere, the documentary Wendy recommends for every public school parent The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, source of the subway story The 3 in 30 Podcast with Rachel Nielson, who introduced JoAnn and Wendy The Happy Mom Reset, our free class No Guilt Mom Inner Circle The Best Mom is a Happy Mom by JoAnn Crohn Protect your loved ones without spying on them. Go to https://heypolo.com/ngm or use code NGM and get 40% off your first year! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Emotion Well, Johanna Dunlevy talks with Kirk Trow, experienced leadership trainer and executive coach, as he shares his non-linear career path that has taken him from education to human resources and coaching, to entrepreneurship and, most recently, to life coaching and training with EFR. These may seem like very different roles, but listen as he shares the common thread in all these undertakings: understanding people, building relationships, and helping others perform at their best. From his lessons learned as a small business owner to the principles of Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People," Kirk reflects on his career and his goal of always helping people grow.You can watch the podcast here on YouTube.Read "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen CoveyExplore EFR's different benefits:Wellness BenefitsLife Coaching and Meet Our CoachesTraining Catalog

Hvor mange ganger har du kjent deg overveldet av alt som “må gjøres”? Kalenderen er full, e-posten tikker inn, telefonen ringer, og dagen raser av gårde før du i det hele tatt har rukket å stoppe opp og trekke pusten. Kanskje kjenner du også på en underlig tomhet i alt dette jaget – som om du er opptatt, men ikke nødvendigvis produktiv. Som om du er i konstant bevegelse, men uten å vite hvor du egentlig er på vei.I denne fjerde episoden av serien om 7 Habits of Highly Effective People skal vi utforske et prinsipp som kan snu opp ned på hvordan vi forholder oss til tid og prioriteringer. Stephen Covey ber oss om å sette det viktigste først – en enkel, men dyptgående idé som utfordrer måten vi tenker om oppgaver, mål og livets egentlige mening. Det handler om mer enn bare effektiv tidsstyring; det handler om å bygge et liv der det som virkelig teller, får førsteplassen.Men hvorfor er det så vanskelig å prioritere det som er viktigst? Hvorfor lar vi oss så lett fange av det som haster, men som egentlig ikke betyr noe? Hva skjer med oss psykologisk når vi lever på autopilot, styrt av krav utenfra og impulser innenfra?I denne episoden vil jeg dykke ned i tidsstyringsmatrisen som Covey presenterer, og utforske hvordan den henger sammen med moderne psykologiske teorier om selvregulering, oppmerksomhet og verdibasert handling. Vi skal også se på hvordan vi i hverdagen kan skille mellom det som bare bråker, og det som virkelig gir livet retning og dybde.Så bli med meg på en reise gjennom stress, distraksjoner og dypere innsikt – mot et liv der det viktigste faktisk kommer først.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of the Grow A Small Business Podcast host Troy Trewin interviews Brett Penager, co-founder of Chiro One Wellness Centers, shares his remarkable journey from four failed businesses and being forced out of a top practice management firm to building a chiropractic empire that grew from just two clinics and 12 team members to 164 offices across 13 states with over 1,000 employees. In this candid conversation, he reveals the highs and lows of rapid scaling, including a near-collapse that forced the closure of dozens of locations, the landmark $100M+ private equity deal in 2017, and hard-won lessons on culture, leadership, and accountability. Penager challenges the myth of work-life balance, stresses surrounding yourself with smarter people, and explains why complete personal responsibility is the true lid on any company's growth. He also discusses his book Larger Than Life and his new mission to support 5,000 entrepreneurs worldwide. Packed with practical wisdom for owners scaling past the 5–30 team stage, this episode delivers both inspiration and actionable insights. Why would you wait any longer to start living the lifestyle you signed up for? Balance your health, wealth, relationships and business growth. And focus your time and energy and make the most of this year. Let's get into it by clicking here. Troy delves into our guest's startup journey, their perception of success, industry reconsideration, and the pivotal stress point during business expansion. They discuss the joys of small business growth, vital entrepreneurial habits, and strategies for team building, encompassing wins, blunders, and invaluable advice. And a snapshot of the final five Grow A Small Business Questions: What do you think is the hardest thing in growing a small business? Brett Penager shares that the hardest thing in growing a small business is learning to set it up so you're no longer the source of everything, especially once you reach around 40–50 employees. He emphasizes putting capable people in place, staying out of their way even if they don't do the job exactly as well as you would, and accepting that acceptable results from others free you to focus on what you do best. What's your favorite business book that has helped you the most? Brett Penager shares that his favorite business books are The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Good to Great, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. If he had to choose just one, he says The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has been the most powerful for him. Are there any great podcasts or online learning resources you'd recommend to help grow a small business? Brett Penager shares that he listens to a wide variety of podcasts and online learning resources rather than sticking to just one or two regularly. He values hearing many different voices and perspectives, so he recommends exploring broadly across platforms instead of limiting yourself to a single show or tool. What tool or resource would you recommend to grow a small business? Brett Penager recommends the Landmark Forum (from Landmark Education) as the most powerful tool for growing a small business. He describes it as transformational learning that accelerates personal growth, helping entrepreneurs become the kind of leaders who can successfully scale their companies by gaining decades of wisdom in a much shorter time. What advice would you give yourself on day one of starting out in business? Brett Penager shares that he would tell himself on day one: "It's all going to work out." He encourages embracing the beauty of the journey itself, because the real magic happens in the process—not just at the mountaintop—and that mindset helps shorten the learning curve when starting over. Book a 20-minute Growth Chat with Troy Trewin to see if you qualify for our upcoming course. Don't miss out on this opportunity to take your small business to new heights! Enjoyed the podcast? Please leave a review on iTunes or your preferred platform. Your feedback helps more small business owners discover our podcast and embark on their business growth journey.     Quotable quotes from our special Grow A Small Business podcast guest:   Balance is a myth — when you're out of balance, it simply means you're doing things that aren't lighting you up – Brett Penager If it's working, it's on me. If it's not, it's on me. At the end of the day, the leader is the lid – Brett Penager Every problem has a solution, and every solution brings with it a new problem you could never have foreseen – Brett Penager      

Does writing down a goal actually make you more likely to achieve it or is that just motivational-poster advice? In this episode of Finerate, CFP® Anastasia Taber and 45-year investment advisor Bill Taber separate the research from the popular myths around goal-setting, and make the case for why a written plan changes financial outcomes. Anastasia and Bill dig into what happens psychologically when you put a goal on paper instead of just thinking about it, why specificity matters more than motivation, and how accountability plays a role in whether a goal gets achieved. They also build directly on the previous episode's conversation about visualization, exploring how belief and a written plan work together rather than as separate steps. In this episode, you'll learn: Whether the research supports writing down your goals Why writing forces specificity, and why vague goals rarely get accomplished How accountability changes the odds of actually following through on a goal How a written plan connects to visualization and belief What an effective written financial plan looks like The most common mistakes people make when writing down goals A practical first step for putting your own financial goals on paper this week Resources: Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Success Principles by Jack Canfield The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey The Franklin Planning System  Finerate is a financial education community helping people move from financial anxiety to financial confidence. Join the waitlist at getfinerate.com.

With all the excitement around AI, are we forgetting some of the business lessons that helped us become successful leaders in the first place? In this episode of the World Innovators Grounding AI Podcast, I talk about something I have been thinking about a lot lately. AI may not be what is creating confusion inside our companies. As leaders, we may be creating some of that confusion ourselves. We have spent years learning how to lead, communicate, build trust, make decisions, and understand our people. Those lessons still matter when we introduce AI into our businesses. I look back at lessons from four business books that have influenced how I work: Start With Why by Simon Sinek The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin The 4 Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling These books were not written about AI, but the leadership lessons apply. Before asking your team to use AI, do they understand: Why you are bringing it into the company? Do they know what you are trying to accomplish? Are you using it yourself? And are you continuing to coach your team after the initial training? One of the most important things I learned as a swim coach was that you cannot coach everyone the same way. The same applies to AI. Some employees are excited to try every new technology. Others need more time, examples, and guidance. Good leadership means understanding the people on your team and helping each person move in the right direction. In this episode, I discuss: Why AI adoption starts with leadership, not technology How to explain the "why" behind AI to your team Why leaders need to define what they actually want AI to accomplish How different employees may need different levels of AI coaching and support Why leaders need to model the AI behavior they want from their teams How regular AI discussions can encourage learning and implementation Why human experience, judgment, and business knowledge still need to guide AI How inconsistent AI use can eventually affect your marketing, sales communication, and customer trust A Simple Action to Take at your next team meeting, ask: Why are we using AI in our company? Then ask: What do we actually want AI to help us accomplish? Listen to your team's answers. You may find that people are not as aligned as you thought. AI should not make your business more confusing. Used with clear leadership, good judgment, and the business knowledge your team already has, it should help people work and communicate more effectively. If your team is trying to determine how AI fits into your business, I would be happy to talk through it with you. *** Reach out to dpeterson@worldinnovators.com if you'd like help building a marketing strategy that builds relationships and/or AI training for individuals or full teams.*** Visit www.worldinnovators.com for more resources on building stronger marketing and leadership strategies.*** Subscribe to the Grounding AI podcast for weekly insights into marketing, leadership, and the future of AI.

In this episode of the Ultimate Intimacy Podcast, Nick & Amy sit down with therapist Austin to unpack Stephen Covey's classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People—but with a marriage twist!We take all 7 habits and talk about what they actually look like inside a marriage, from taking responsibility for your own behavior to learning how to truly listen, creating win-win solutions, prioritizing your relationship, and continuing to grow together.Because a strong marriage doesn't just happen. It takes intentional habits.And one of the biggest takeaways? You don't have to have a perfect marriage to have a thriving marriage. You need two people who are willing to be intentional.Whether you've been married for 6 months or 30 years, these 7 habits will give you something to think about—and something you can start doing differently today.Listen now and ask yourself: Which of these 7 habits does our marriage need most right now?

Keith Gillispie is the founder of REI Automated, a platform that helps real estate investors build businesses powered by systems instead of constant chaos.He has helped hundreds of investors close more deals, generate millions in equity, and create true operational freedom through automation, using a practical, no-nonsense approach grounded in real-world experience.In this episode we cover:00:00 - Intro06:37 - Keith's Early Investing Lessons15:58 - Why Most New Investors Fail21:57 - When Chaos Starts Killing Momentum24:54 - How to Find the First Deal29:00 - The Mindset Traps Holding Investors Back38:14 - Keith's Favorite Activity To Get Into a Flow State40:32 - Keith's Piece Of Advice For His Younger Self42:42 - Keith's Biggest Challenges at REI Automated45:19 - Instrumental Resources For Keith's Success47:50 - What Does Success Mean for Keith Today49:50 - Get In Touch With KeithGet In Touch With KeithREI Automated WebsiteKeith Gillespie on FacebookBooks:Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert KiyosakiSeven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen CoveyTag Us & Follow:FacebookLinkedInInstagramMore About Akeel:TwitterLinkedInMore SaaS Podcast EpisodesSaaS ConsultantsHow To Value Your SaaS Company

I denne episoden dykker jeg ned i Stephen Coveys intro til «Seven Habits of Highly Effective People», hvor han presenterer et kraftfullt bilde på forholdet mellom vårt indre kart og det terrenget vi navigerer i. Mange av oss går gjennom livet på autopilot, med et indre kart som er både utdatert og unøyaktig. Vi konfronteres med forvirring og usikkerhet når vi møter tankemønstre og emosjoner vi knapt forstår. Hvordan kan vi navigere effektivt i våre mentale landskap hvis vi aldri tar oss tid til å undersøke kartet?Covey minner oss om viktigheten av å ha et presist og fleksibelt indre kart. Uten dette er vi dømt til å gå oss vill, ta feil valg og gjentatte ganger oppleve stagnering i våre liv. Det er lite nytt i denne innsikten, men den er universelt relevant. Ved å bruke Coveys metafor om å orientere seg i en ukjent by, peker han på at vårt indre kart representerer hvordan vi forstår oss selv og vår plass i verden. Når vi ikke har et nøyaktig kart, kan vi ende opp med en stigmatisert tilnærming til oss selv, våre følelser og livserfaringer.Et annet sentralt tema er det Covey omtaler som distinksjonen mellom personlighetsetikk og karakteretikk. Mens personlighetsetikken fokuserer på quick-fix-teknikker og overfladiske strategier for å oppnå suksess, inviterer karakteretikken oss til å finne de dypere prinsippene som gir oss varig mening og retning i livet. Det er her de virkelige verktøyene for selvutvikling til syne kommer — ikke bare å lære seg taktikker, men å virkelig kjenne seg selv og navigere i livet med integritet og empati.Vi knytter også Coveys tanker til moderne psykologi, særlig mentalisering, som handler om evnen til å forstå tankene og følelsene som ligger til grunn for handlingene våre. Mangel på denne forståelsen kan føre til at vi mister evnen til å skape avstand mellom oss og våre tanker, noe som kan gi opphav til angst, tvangstanker og emosjonell stivhet. En person med spiseforstyrrelser kan for eksempel miste forbindelsen til sine egentlige følelser ved å bli besatt av eksterne faktorer som vekten.Videre diskuterer jeg Carl Jungs syn på symboler, som fungerer som broer mellom vår bevisste og ubevisste verden. Gjennom jungiansk psykologi får vi muligheten til å utforske og integrere sider av oss selv som ellers ville vært utilgjengelige. Dette er essensielt i arbeidet med å utvikle et nyansert og fleksibelt indre kart.I denne episoden ønsker jeg å legge et grunnlag for de kommende ukene, hvor jeg vil dykke dypere inn i hver av Coveys syv vaner. Ved å revurdere våre indre kart, styrker vi ikke bare vår egen selvforståelse, men også vår evne til å navigere i det komplekse terrenget av livets erfaringer. Vi må erkjenne at våre tanker og følelser bare er fortolkninger av virkeligheten, ikke selve sannheten. Å utvikle denne distansen mellom oss selv og våre tanker er hjertet i psykologisk vekst. Dette er invitert til en reise av selvrefleksjon og dypere innsikt som vi alle kan dra nytte av.Vil du ha mer psykologi og flere dypdykk i menneskets sjelsliv?Vil du har en praksis for selvutvikling og hjelp til å dykke ned i ditt eget indre liv?Da kan BeBalanced.ai være noe for deg! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sales reps who cannot speak the language of business are going to get exposed fast.In this episode, John sits down with Kevin Cope, founder of Acumen Learning and co-author of Business Acumen for Sales Success and See the Big Picture, to talk about why business acumen is now one of the most important skills in sales. Kevin shares lessons from his time at the Covey Leadership Center, the start of Acumen Learning, and 25 years helping companies close the gap between functional expertise and real business understanding.If you are in sales, leadership, RevOps, enablement, or any role where you need to speak with executives, this conversation gives you a practical way to think about cash, profit, assets, growth, people, discounting, cashflow, AI, and how to connect your solution to the business results buyers actually care about.Want to build stronger business acumen and sell with more executive relevance? Visit www.jbarrows.com and learn how you can Make It Happen.What You'll LearnWhy business acumen is one of the first skills sales reps need to buildWhy round-number discounts can signal weak negotiation and weak business understandingHow a small discount can create a much larger hit to profitabilityWhy cash, profit, assets, growth, and people give reps a clearer business lensHow salespeople affect cashflow before and after a deal closesWhy AI research only matters if reps can translate it into business relevanceHow curiosity helps reps use AI as a learning tool instead of a shortcutKevin Cope is the founder of Acumen Learning and co-author of Business Acumen for Sales Success and the bestselling See the Big Picture. He built his career at the Covey Leadership Center, joining just before the release of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and later served as president of international for the combined organization following its 1997 merger with Franklin Quest to form Franklin Covey. Through Acumen Learning, Kevin helps organizations close the business acumen gap and connect everyday decisions to cash, profit, assets, growth, and people.Connect with Kevin Cope on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinrcope/) and grab his book, Seeing the Big Picture: Business Acumen to Build Your Credibility, Career, and Company, at https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Big-Picture-Business-Credibility-ebook/dp/B07DPWFK7T?ref_=ast_author_mpb, to build the business acumen that earns you a seat at the table. Learn more about Acumen:Website: https://www.acumenlearning.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acumenlearning/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AcumenLearningFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/AcumenLearning/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/acumen-learning/?viewAsMember=trueJohn Barrows is a sales trainer, speaker, and founder of JB Sales with over 25 years of experience in the industry. He has made hundreds of cold calls a week, led startups to acquisition, and trained high-performing teams at companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Okta. Through JB Sales, John focuses on practical sales execution—helping reps fill pipeline, close deals, and build trust with buyers in today's AI-driven sales environment.Connect with John Barrows:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnbarrows/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnmbarrows/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@johnmbarrows Check out John's Membership: https://learn.jbarrows.com/pages/individual-packages?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Join John's Newsletter: https://www.jbarrows.com/newsletter

What if 98% of people are just winging life, and don't even know it?We don't do book episodes often on Entrepreneurs United, but Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People earned one. We brought back returning guest John Mitchell, founder of the Center for Advanced Leadership of Self at the University of Texas at Austin, to go through the book habit by habit with hosts John St. Pierre and Rich Hoffmann.In this episode, the three of them talk about which habits actually shaped how they lead, why most people are proactive in theory but not in practice, and propose the eighth habit they think Covey left out of the original book.What you'll walk away with: why John Mitchell says 98% of people are winging life instead of living it on purpose, Rich Hoffmann's data backed case for why listening beats talking when it comes to real influence, John St. Pierre's take on Covey's big rocks story and why it still beats every modern productivity hack, the space between stimulus and response and why that pause is the real secret to self-control, and the eighth habit John Mitchell thinks Covey left out: learning to control your subconscious autopilot.If it's been a while since you've read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, this episode is your reminder to pick it back up.Connect with John MitchellHosted by John St. Pierre and Rich Hoffmann, Entrepreneurs United is built for founders and leaders who want straight talk on building businesses that actually work. New episodes every week.https://entrepreneursunited.us/links/

Abraham Lincoln is often credited with saying:  "Give me six hours to chop down a tree, and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." A  simple phrase my husband told our missionary daughter that has stayed with me: "Do what you can to be a sharp tool." It led me to ask : Am I working harder, or am I becoming sharper? In  Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we'll explore the principle of "Sharpen the Saw" and how renewing ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually, and socially allows us to better serve God, our families, and those around us. We'll discuss why so many of us aren't broken, maybe we're depleted. The Savior modeled the importance of stepping away to pray, rest, and reconnect with the Father before returning to serve. You'll also be invited to consider where God may be prompting you to grow and how one small act of renewal can make a lasting difference. If you've been feeling like you're pushing through life with a dull blade, this episode is a gentle reminder that renewal isn't selfish....it's essential! As we become sharper, we increase our ability to love more deeply, serve more fully, and create lives filled with greater purpose and joy. Join me as we discover how becoming a sharper tool can help us become more useful in the Lord's hands and more joyful in our everyday lives.

Leadership isn’t about managing time. It’s about making better choices. That is the central message from Christina Olivier, co-founder and Managing Partner of Excelerant, whose thoughtful conversation on Discover Lafayette challenges many of the assumptions we make about work, productivity, and success. Christina co-founded Excelerant in 2003 with business partner Elise Bouchner after realizing that growing companies needed more than legal advice or technical expertise, they needed leaders who knew how to develop people. What began as The Training Source evolved into Excelerant, an award-winning, woman-owned leadership development and organizational consulting firm serving organizations throughout Louisiana and beyond through executive coaching, leadership development, succession planning, team building, and organizational effectiveness. Excelerant quickly grew to include partners Jill Adcock, Phyllis Arceneaux, and Jill Meaux. Our conversation moves well beyond business coaching. Christina offers practical wisdom for anyone feeling overwhelmed by competing priorities, struggling to say no, or wondering why there never seems to be enough time. One of the first ideas she reframes is the phrase “time management.” Referencing Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Christina explains that she prefers the term “time effectiveness.” “We all have the same 24 hours in our day. It’s how we spend that time, and if we spend it as effectively as possible, that makes the difference.” Rather than trying to squeeze more activity into every hour, she encourages people to become intentional about where their energy is invested. “What I’ve noticed is that most people don’t stop to think about how they are spending their time,” she says. “You wonder why you’re tired, or you wonder why you’re burnt out, or you wonder why you’re not getting to those things that you want to do.” Throughout our discussion, Christina repeatedly returns to the importance of self-awareness. Before any planner, productivity system, or coaching exercise can help, people must honestly examine whether they’re spending time on what matters most—and whether those choices actually bring them joy. As an executive coach credentialed through the International Coaching Federation, Christina works with successful professionals who want to become even more effective. She explains that coaching isn’t about giving answers. “In coaching, we hold that our clients are whole and resourceful. We’re just helping them find their own answers.” That process begins by helping clients identify what success would actually look like six or twelve months into the future and then removing the obstacles standing in their way. Christina shares one of her favorite coaching analogies involving a small airplane that is too heavy to stay safely in the air. Every passenger must throw one “role” overboard to survive. Those roles might include committee chair, volunteer, employee, spouse, parent, or community leader. The exercise forces people to identify which commitments truly deserve their limited time and which have simply accumulated over the years. The lesson naturally leads to one of the most powerful themes of our conversation: learning to say no. Drawing again from Stephen Covey, Christina introduces the concept she and her team use regularly: “Integrity in the moment of choice.” “Every no you’re saying is because there’s a bigger yes inside.” That “yes” may be spending more time with children or grandchildren, caring for aging parents, protecting personal health, or simply creating space to think. The challenge is recognizing that every commitment carries an opportunity cost. Christina also speaks candidly about perfectionism, particularly among professional women. She questions the belief that “if it has to be done right, it has to be done by me.” Instead, she encourages leaders to lower unrealistic standards where appropriate, delegate more intentionally, and invest the time necessary to develop others. Her advice to leaders is straightforward: “You can’t be too busy doing the work to train and develop others.” Otherwise, organizations become dependent on one individual while employees never have the opportunity to grow. Another recurring theme is presence. In today’s distracted world, Christina believes one of the greatest gifts leaders can give employees, colleagues, friends, and family members is their complete attention. “Putting down the device when someone walks in… there’s also a great benefit and maybe a stillness that you receive by not multitasking.”She distinguishes between efficiency and effectiveness with a memorable observation: “With people, you can’t be efficient. You can only be effective.” That perspective extends into how organizations communicate across generations. Rather than criticizing younger employees for preferring text messages, Christina recommends “co-designing” communication expectations—meeting people where they are while establishing mutually beneficial ways of connecting. The discussion also explores practical ways to slow down in a fast-paced world. Although Christina once believed meditation wasn’t for her, she now incorporates grounding, centering, and intentional breathing into her daily routine. She emphasizes that meditation doesn’t have to be complicated. Sometimes it is simply placing both feet on the floor, taking several intentional breaths, and allowing yourself to become present before moving into the next activity. She also recommends what she calls a “transition pause”: Finish what you’re doing. Put down the device. Take three intentional breaths. Then arrive fully present for whatever comes next. That simple practice, she believes, helps leaders become more thoughtful, more connected, and ultimately more effective. Our conversation also explores succession planning, an increasingly important issue for Louisiana businesses. Christina describes Excelerant’s work helping family-owned companies, financial institutions, and publicly traded organizations identify future leaders through assessments, coaching, mentoring, and leadership development. Rather than assuming who should lead next, Excelerant helps organizations objectively evaluate strengths and prepare the next generation for success. Toward the close of our interview, Christina shares one final reminder that resonates long after the microphones are turned off. Sometimes the greatest productivity tool isn’t another app, another meeting, or another committee. It’s simply becoming aware. As Christina says, “The first step…is to be self-aware.” Whether you’re leading a Fortune 500 company, managing a small business, serving on nonprofit boards, or simply trying to create more balance in your own life, Christina Olivier offers practical insights that remind us success isn’t measured by how busy we are, but by how intentionally we choose to spend the time we’ve been given. To learn more about Christina Olivier and Excelerant, visit https://exexp.com/ or connect through their LinkedIn and Facebook pages. Discover Lafayette would like to thank Christina Olivier and Excelerant team members for all of their support throughout the years! You continually give back when requested!

There is no shortage of founders who have read Principles or Traction. Far fewer have built their business around what those books teach, week after week, when it is inconvenient to do so. In this episode, Marcus Cauchi speaks with Keith Gillispie, founder of REI Automated, about the discipline of turning ideas into working systems, and why that discipline is harder than the ideas themselves. Why this conversation matters Most conversations about business systems focus on tools. This one focuses on behaviour. Keith didn't just read about principles, operating systems and delegation frameworks. He applied them, tested them, and kept refining them long after the novelty wore off. For founders who are drowning in advice but starved of consistent execution, this episode offers something more useful than another framework: a working model of what it actually looks like to follow through. Major discussion points Discipline over information. Keith names two books that fundamentally shaped his business: Principles by Ray Dalio and Traction by Gino Wickman. What sets his account apart is not the reading list but what he did with it: he built explicit, testable principles into daily operations, and adopted Wickman's Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS) as the structural backbone of how his business runs. Writing and testing SOPs. Keith's method for creating a standard operating procedure is deliberately unglamorous. Do the task. Write down exactly what you did. Follow your own instructions the next time and notice everything you missed. Repeat this three to seven times until the gaps close, then record a video walking through the process. Only then does a task become fit to hand to another person, or to an AI agent. Where AI should not go. Keith runs a company that sells agentic AI voice agents for real estate sellers, so he has a commercial incentive to promote automation. He was candid about its limits. When he tested his own AI on a negotiation for his own property, reaching the point where the AI pressed him on price, he found the experience uncomfortable. His conclusion: AI handles information well, but emotional, high-stakes conversations still need a human. Hiring as a discipline, not an event. REI Automated filters candidates roughly one hundred to one. Keith uses the GWC framework from Traction (get it, want it, capacity for it) to decide not just who to hire, but who to keep, and applies a consistent SOP-based interview and onboarding process across every role. Cadence over intensity. Rather than reviewing performance monthly, Keith's team submits short daily and weekly reports, which are read and responded to using Claude, and quarterly goals ("rocks") drawn from EOS. He argues that weekly management gives a business fifty opportunities a year to course-correct, against twelve for a business run monthly. The absence test. Keith takes one week off every month with no calls, texts or Slack messages. During a recent house move that disrupted his usual routine for roughly a month, revenue held within a thousand dollars of the prior month. He was candid that the business currently sustains itself well in his absence, though he is less certain it grows without him. AI as a thought partner, not a shortcut. Keith's team members are expected to bring Claude fully into their process, including drafting their own SOPs when Keith does not have time to write one himself. He was clear this only works because the AI has deep context on the business and because his people bring genuine critical thinking to the exchange, rather than treating it as a way to avoid thinking. A moment of disagreement. Marcus challenged Keith's use of performance improvement plans, arguing that everyone should effectively be on one from day one, and that needing to formalise one is often a sign management has let something slide. Keith pushed back, drawing a distinction between personal development and performance accountability, and defended his position with a clear rationale. Practical takeaways Before automating or delegating any task, do it yourself first and write the SOP from direct experience. Follow your own SOP repeatedly until you have found and closed the gaps, then record it on video. Review your business weekly, not monthly. You get roughly four times as many chances to correct course. Keep team communication in shared channels rather than direct messages, so ideas get scrutinised by more than one person. Test whether your business can run without you before you assume it can. Use AI to draft and challenge your thinking, not simply to execute tasks you have not fully worked out yourself. Memorable quotes "Sometimes in order to be helpful, you have to say the hard thing." "When we're dealing with information, AI is fine. When we're dealing with emotion, that needs a human touch." "You always have to take away before you can add." Books and resources mentioned Principles by Ray Dalio Traction by Gino Wickman Essentialism by Greg McKeown The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Guest biography Keith Gillispie is the founder and CEO of REI Automated, which provides education, software and coaching to real estate investors on building automated, systemised businesses. He spent eight years on active duty with the US Marine Corps, during which he began investing in real estate and developed the systems-first approach that now underpins his companies. Subscribe If this conversation was useful, subscribe to TheInquisitor Podcast for more conversations that challenge conventional thinking on selling, leadership and building businesses that last.

The best retirement strategy starts long before you stop working. In this episode, Certified Financial Planner Ray Goodletsky shares practical strategies for building tax-efficient wealth, maximizing retirement accounts, and avoiding costly mistakes before and after retirement. From Roth conversions and inherited IRAs to long-term care planning and business-owner retirement strategies, Ray explains how thoughtful planning today can create greater financial flexibility tomorrow. Tune in to learn how smart financial planning can help you build and protect lasting wealth.   Key Takeaways To Listen For Why tax diversification may matter more than investment returns The retirement planning window most investors completely overlook How Roth conversions can reduce future tax headaches Overlooked retirement tools available to business owners and solopreneurs Why having a flexible financial plan beats reacting to market uncertainty   Resources/Links Mentioned In This Episode Retirement Planning Guidebook by Wade Pfau | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey | Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover  Atomic Habits by James Clear | Kindle, Audiobook, and Paperback   About Ray Godleski, CFP® Ray Godleski, CFP®, is a financial advisor and partner at Southeast Wealth Partners, where he helps individuals, families, and business owners build long-term financial security through personalized wealth management and retirement planning. With expertise in investment management, tax-efficient strategies, retirement income, and estate planning, Ray takes a comprehensive, client-centered approach to helping clients achieve their financial goals. Known for simplifying complex financial decisions, he is committed to providing trusted guidance that empowers clients to make informed choices and build lasting financial confidence.   Connect with Ray Website: Southeast Wealth Partners Podcast: Executive Retirement Compass | Apple Podcasts Email: info@sewealthpartners.com    Connect With Us If you're looking to invest your hard-earned money into cash-flowing, value-add assets, reach out to us at https://bobocapitalventures.com/.    Follow Keith's social media pages LinkedIn: Keith Borie Investor Club: Secret Passive Cashflow Investors Club Facebook: Keith Borie X: @BoboLlc80554  

What if some of the greatest investment opportunities weren't hiding in Silicon Valley or Wall Street, but inside small businesses that have been overlooked for decades?In this episode of The Conscious Capitalists, hosts Timothy Henry and Raj Sisodia sit down with Monika Mantilla, Co-Founder, President & CEO of Altura Capital (https://alturacap.com/), to explore how patient capital, purpose-driven investing, and entrepreneurial success can create extraordinary financial returns while strengthening communities. Over the past 21 years, Monika has built a proven track record investing in lower middle market businesses across low-and-moderate-income communities, demonstrating that impact and performance are not competing priorities, but mutually reinforcing ones.Monika shares why Altura Capital was intentionally built as an investment platform rather than a traditional private equity fund, allowing the firm to provide flexible capital tailored to the unique needs of growing businesses. She explains why patient investment horizons of three to seven years, combined with operational partnership and long-term thinking, consistently outperform short-term approaches. Along the way, she introduces The Altura Way, the firm's ten-pillar value creation framework that helps companies strengthen strategy, operations, leadership, governance, digital transformation, and community impact while building more resilient businesses.The conversation also explores one of the largest untapped opportunities in modern investing. Monika discusses research conducted alongside 29 of America's largest corporations that identified an estimated $590 billion in unrealized value within underserved business segments. She explains how diverse ownership, improved market access, and stronger partnerships with companies such as Walmart, Kroger, CVS, Merck, and Johnson & Johnson help unlock growth that traditional investors often overlook.But this episode reaches far beyond investing. Monika reflects on the influence of her upbringing in Bogotá, Colombia, the lasting impact of her mother, her faith-driven approach to leadership, and the philosophy that guides both her life and business: ser en el hacer—being in the doing. She also shares her unique 200-hour planning system, organizing life into fourteen categories across eight-week cycles, and explains why she considers leading Altura to be only her seventh priority after ensuring the rest of her life is aligned with her values.Listeners will gain insights into:Why the lower middle market represents one of the most overlooked opportunities in private equityWhat patient capital really means and why long-term investing creates stronger businessesHow Altura's ten-pillar value creation framework systematically scales growing companiesWhy diverse ownership and investing in underserved communities can generate above-market returnsHow market access and strategic partnerships accelerate business growthWhy values, intentional leadership, and disciplined time management are foundational to long-term successThe role conscious capitalism can play in creating both economic progress and social progressWhether you're an investor, entrepreneur, business leader, or simply interested in how capitalism can be a force for lasting value creation, this episode offers a compelling conversation about building businesses that deliver exceptional returns while expanding opportunity for more people.If you enjoy this podcast, would you consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify? It takes only a few seconds and greatly helps us get our podcast out to a wider audience.Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts / Spotify / Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.For transcripts and show notes, please visit The Conscious Capitalists. This show is presented by Conscious Capitalism, Inc.Chapters0:00 Introduction – Meet Monika Mantilla, Co-Founder & CEO of Altura Capital1:50 What Is Altura Capital? Overview of the Investment Platform3:51 Why "Platform" and Not Just a Fund5:27 Patient Capital: What It Means and Why It Matters7:12 Non-Financial Investment Criteria: Values, Purpose & Impact9:39 The Meaning Behind the Name "Altura" – Height & Vision11:24 Dignity as a Core Value12:52 Women in Finance: The Case for Parity in Capital Allocation15:56 Investing in Overlooked Communities: The Opportunity & the Returns21:41 Track Record & Above-Market Returns23:26 Market Access & Corporate Relationships as a Value-Add26:23 Impact Metrics: Jobs, Communities & the Altura Way36:49 What Made Monika Monika? Roots, Values & Spiritual Foundation41:33 Time Management: The 200-Hour / 8-Week Planning System45:52 Rapid Fire Questions46:05 Favorite Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Join us friends, for a real paradigm shift. Andrew and Craig's synergy reaches levels never before seen as they proactively seek to understand the meaning behind this self-help titan. We'll also discuss our most upsetting dairy-related prose since the Krampus egg-nog thing. Our theme music was composed by Nick Lerangis.Follow @overduepod on Instagram and BlueskyAdvertise on OverdueSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Love Your Career Podcast? Let us know!Most people don't expect a career crisis. Redundancy, restructuring, a change in leadership or the sudden realisation that your contribution is being overlooked can happen with very little warning. And when it does, important career decisions often need to be made at the worst possible time.In episode 283 of Your Career Podcast, I explain why proactive career planning matters and how giving regular attention to your career can help you avoid making rushed decisions under pressure.I share a personal story from my years in Singapore, when I arrived at the airport with my two-year-old daughter and discovered that my Australian passport had expired. What followed was a stressful race against time and a difficult arrival in Australia using my British passport without the correct visa.It was a powerful lesson in what happens when something important, but not urgent, is left unattended for too long.The Urgent Important MatrixI introduce the Urgent Important Matrix, a practical framework made famous by Stephen Covey in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and associated with former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower.The matrix helps you separate tasks into four areas:urgent and importantimportant but not urgenturgent but not importantneither urgent nor importantCareer planning usually sits in the important but not urgent category.That is precisely why it is so easy to postpone.Your career does not send you a reminder when your industry is changing, your role is becoming vulnerable or your professional network is growing cold. By the time career planning feels urgent, you may already be facing redundancy, burnout or an unexpected career transition.What proactive career planning includesI discuss the career work that is best completed before you urgently need it:understanding and articulating your professional valuegaining clarity about the direction you want your career to takekeeping your resume, LinkedIn profile and other career assets currentmaintaining relationships and nurturing your professional networkreflecting on your achievements, skills and changing prioritiespreparing for career change before circumstances force the decisionProfessionals who manage redundancy or career change well are not necessarily luckier than everyone else. Often, they have already invested time in understanding who they are, what they offer and what they want next.This preparation gives them greater confidence, perspective and choice.A restructure may still be unsettling, but it is less likely to feel like a personal verdict when you already understand the value you bring.Take control before your career becomes urgentYou do not need to wait for a crisis to pay attention to your career.By setting aside time for the important but non-urgent work now, you can make better decisions later, strengthen your professional confidence and respond more effectively when change arrives.What have you done to proactively manage your career before redundancy looms?- - - - - - - -Welcome to Your Career Podcast with Jane Jackson where I help mid career professionals overcome self doubt and gain career clarity and the confidence to create the life and career they desire. Book a Zoom chat with me at janejacksoncoach.com - I'd love to meet you and discover what's happening in your career! Support the show- - - - - -To discover how to make a successful career change and land the job you'll LOVE, take the CAREER SUCCESS QUIZ and within 2 minutes you'll have your results, analysis and recommendations for career success.  https://careersuccess.scoreapp.com/   

What if the fastest way to end an argument with your child is to refuse to join it? When emotions are running high, most parents instinctively step into the conflict, hoping to teach a lesson, fix the behaviour, or set things straight. But what if that's exactly the wrong move? In this episode, Justin and Kylie explore why children often invite us into arguments, why it's so tempting to accept, and how learning to pause can transform family relationships. Discover the simple mindset shift that helps parents stay calm, avoid power struggles, and create space for better conversations. Sometimes the most powerful parenting response is not responding at all. KEY POINTS Why children often bait parents into arguments The hidden cost of reacting in the heat of the moment How "high emotions = low intelligence" affects family conflict The power of self-regulation during challenging interactions A simple phrase that can instantly de-escalate tension Why many arguments don't need to be revisited later How calm, delayed conversations lead to better outcomes Teaching children emotional regulation by modelling it yourself QUOTE OF THE EPISODE "You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to." RESOURCES MENTIONED The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey The Happy Families approach to self-regulation and emotional coaching ACTION STEPS FOR PARENTS The next time your child invites you into an argument, pause before responding. Use a calm phrase such as, "We'll talk about this later." Keep your tone soft and reassuring, even when emotions are high. Create space for everyone to cool down before revisiting the issue. Ask yourself whether the problem still needs solving once emotions have settled. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Owners say they want freedom. Push on the word and most are describing relief - not being overwhelmed, not carrying every decision, not putting out every fire. That's real, but it's a short-term fix. Real freedom is different: it's what's left once the structure, the team, and the standards can carry the business without the owner in every room. Mike LoBue and Tommy Rohrlack separate the two, get into why a team learns to wait for the owner, why control is usually a standards problem and not a trust problem, and why most owners regret selling when they never planned the next chapter. It's worth knowing which one you're after before you plan an exit or a vacation.IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN:• Why “I want freedom” usually translates to “I want relief,” and why that distinction changes everything.• The question that quickly shows how owner-dependent your business is: what breaks when you leave?• Why most owners regret selling and the one thing the other group did differently• What separates a free owner from one who has quietly checked out DOWNLOAD THE LEADERSHIP GUIDE:‍ ‍Episode 194: What Real Ownership Freedom Looks LikeREFERENCES:John Maxwell: The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership (the Law of the Lid)Stephen Covey:The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and The Speed of TrustJocko Willink and Leif Babin:Extreme Ownership (prioritize and execute)Exit Planning Institute: State of Owner ReadinessHELP US IMPROVE THE SHOW: Take our 30 second Survey

In this episode of Paradigm Shifting Books, hosts Stephen and Britain Covey explore Habit 1, Be Proactive, from their grandfather Stephen R. Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Featuring archival audio clips of their grandfather teaching in the 1980s and 90s, this "Power Principle" episode reveals the difference between proactive and reactive living. Dr. Covey shares Viktor Frankl's discovery of the "last human freedom," the power to choose your response to any circumstance, and the story of a nurse who realized she had chosen her own misery and could therefore choose otherwise.In the second clip, Dr. Covey introduces the Circle of Influence vs. Circle of Concern through the story of Ben, an employee who transformed his organization by focusing on what he could control. Stephen and Britain reflect on why taking responsibility is not daunting but deeply empowering and why this timeless wisdom is more urgent than ever.Tune in to hear Stephen R. Covey's own voice teach these powerful principles and discover how one simple shift in focus can change everything.What We Discuss[00:00] Introduction[00:40] What makes this episode different[01:58] Habit 1 explained[02:26] The opposite of proactive[03:18] Viktor Frankl and the last human freedom[05:20] The nurse story: from prison to liberation[07:26] Why taking ownership feels daunting but is ultimately empowering[08:56] The circle of influence and circle of concern[09:19] Where proactive vs. reactive people focus their energy[12:00] The story of Ben[14:24] ConclusionResourcesParadigm Shifting BooksPodcastInstagram YouTube BookThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. CoveyStephen R. CoveyLinkedInInstagramBritain CoveyLinkedIn InstagramStephen H. CoveyLinkedInMentioned EpisodeViktor Frankl – Man's Search for Meaning

What if the entrepreneurial principles you spent your 20s and 30s learning the hard way — accountability, financial literacy, win-win thinking — could be baked into your kids' education from the very beginning? David Richter shares the story of how a conversation at a real estate investor mastermind led his family to discover Acton Academy, a nontraditional school with an entrepreneurial framework so aligned with how he runs his business that they eventually moved across the country to enroll their daughter.This episode isn't a sponsored segment — it's a genuine recommendation from someone who watched his six-year-old come home and propose a win-win negotiation without ever being taught the term. From peer accountability contracts and level-based progression to real-world apprenticeships and early financial literacy, David breaks down what makes Acton different and why the principles behind it translate directly to how successful investors build teams, hire by core values, and think about the next generation.Timeline Highlights[0:23] David introduces the episode: the question of how to pass down hard-won business lessons to your kids earlier than you learned them[1:03] The mastermind conversation that introduced David to Acton Academy and why the word "nontraditional" immediately caught his attention[1:35] The book that started it all: Laura Sandefer's Courage to Grow, and how both David and his wife reacted to reading it[2:38] Why Acton's model resonated with David's EOS-based business: accountability, buy-in, and team ownership over top-down directives[3:29] How David's family searched for an Acton campus, eventually relocating to Florida specifically for the school[3:52] The guide vs. teacher distinction: why Acton calls classrooms "studios" and instructors "guides," and what that signals about the learning philosophy[5:17] The peer accountability contract: how students write and sign their own code of conduct at the start of each year and enforce it with each other[6:16] Level-based progression instead of grades: how students move at their own pace by earning badges across academic and social-emotional skills[7:14] The apprenticeship program for junior high and high school students, and what that would have meant for a young real estate investor[8:16] Financial literacy built into the curriculum: from basic money concepts in elementary to reading a profit and loss statement in high school[9:09] The moment David's daughter, then six years old, came home and proposed a win-win solution — a concept he didn't encounter until reading the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in his 20s[10:04] David's closing encouragement: whether you're already enrolling kids or just starting a family, there are alternatives worth researchingKey TakeawaysThe same principles that make great business operators — accountability, buy-in, core values, and peer enforcement — can be taught to kids in a school environment designed around them, not just added on as life lessons later.Acton Academy's peer accountability contract mirrors what strong companies do with core values: students write the standards themselves, hold each other to them, and face real consequences for repeated violations. That kind of accountability, learned young, is rare.Level-based progression removes the arbitrary pressure of grade advancement and lets students move at their own pace while building a more honest picture of mastery — a more honest model than a lot of corporate performance reviews, too.The apprenticeship structure Acton uses in secondary school gives students the kind of hands-on, real-world exposure that most real estate investors had to pay a coach or mentor for in their 30s. Starting that exploration at 14 instead of 34 changes the trajectory.Financial literacy — reading a profit and loss statement, understanding a balance sheet — is embedded in the Acton curriculum. Most real estate investors learn this through painful trial and error. Teaching it to kids before they ever start a business is a significant edge.The best businesses invest in teaching their teams the things they need to know. The same logic applies to your kids. If your school isn't teaching entrepreneurial thinking, accountability, and financial basics, it may be worth asking whether there's a better option.Links & ResourcesActon Academy — actonacademy.orgCourage to Grow by Laura Sandefer — available at major booksellersSimple CFO Solutions — apply for a free financial discovery call: https://simplecfo.comClosingIf you've ever wished someone had taught you financial literacy, accountability, or how to think like an entrepreneur before you had to learn it the expensive way, this episode is worth passing along. Subscribe to Profit First for Real Estate Investors so you don't miss future Case Files and guest conversations, and if you're ready to bring clarity and structure to your business finances, visit profitrei.com to get started.

"A million dollars a shot is my price. But I only take one a year. The rest of the time I maintain my skills." That was Francisco Scaramanga, the villain in The Man With the Golden Gun, played by the superb Christopher Lee. Who, interestingly, was a cousin of James Bond creator Ian Fleming and a regular golfing partner of his. Now, while I certainly wouldn't recommend following Scaramanga's career path, there's a valuable lesson in that line. The reason Scaramanga could ask such a high price was not because he worked all the time. It was because he spent most of his time practising, refining, and maintaining his skills so that when the moment came, he could perform at an exceptional level. And that brings us to this week's question, which is all about developing, and more importantly, maintaining, your skills at managing your work and your time.   Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin   The COD Productivity Method  Learn more about the Quiet Productivity Method here   Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl's YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack  The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page   Script |421 Hello, and welcome to episode 421 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show.  There's a belief, held by many, that becoming better at time management and productivity is something you learn once and then you're set.  Or all you need to do is buy the latest productivity tool and all your struggles disappear.  Hahaha, it's not quite so easy.  Theoretically, it may be possible to add a new app or use a new process for getting your work done. Unfortunately, life doesn't fit perfectly into the little boxes we create. There's always something different or new.  This is why the idea of plotting out every minute of your day on your calendar doesn't work in practice.  Simple, natural things are not always predictable. You don't know when you will need a bathroom break, or if a colleague asks you a question, or perhaps you spill your coffee all over your desk.  If any of these things happen when you have carefully mapped out every minute of your day, your day is ruined.  The missing pieces are flexibility and practice, and that is where this week's question comes in.  So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week's question.  This week's question comes from Kathy. Kathy asks, Hi Carl, I've recently taken your Time Sector System course and loved it. One thing that's worrying me, though, is that no matter how well I plan my week, by Tuesday, my whole plan is ruined. Do you have any tips on staying on plan when things become hectic? Hi Kathy, thank you for your question.  This is a common discovery. Once you know the theory, putting it into practice can show up bumps in the road that cause problems.  One of the first problems people face is changing habits. If, for instance, you've never planned a week or a day, getting into the habit of consistently doing so is hard.  After all, you've spent most of your life so far without having a plan; skipping a daily or weekly planning session isn't going to cause too many problems.  Yet when you are building your system, it's that skipping that causes a problem. The more times you don't do it, the longer it will take you to build the essential habits.  The goal is to use your new knowledge automatically. When you're processing your inbox, you instinctively know what to do. It's like there's a voice in your head asking the three questions: What is it? What do I need to do with it? When will I do it? When you start, asking these questions can be slow. You're naturally thinking too much. But when you've done it consistently for a few weeks, you think less, and you automatically move things to their rightful place.  Today, I can process an inbox of twenty items in less than 6 minutes. When I first started following this sequence of questions, though, it would easily have taken me twenty to thirty minutes. I was overthinking and learning patterns.  In one scene in The Man With the Golden Gun, Bond and Scaramanga are having lunch. The lunch begins amiably, but soon turns hostile. At one point, Bond reaches into his coat pocket to pull out his gun. The camera pans to Scaramanga, who is pointing his legendary golden gun at Bond.  The surprising thing here is that Scaramanga had to build his gun from a golden cigarette case, a lighter, a fountain pen, and a cufflink. All Bond had to do was pull his gun from his shoulder holster.  How was Scaramanga faster? Practice.  How many hours would Scaramanga have had to practice putting his gun together to get that fast?  I know, it's fiction. But the point is, you get faster the more you do something.  This is why people who continually switch apps are also consistently behind on their work. They remain stuck at being slow.  What's happening there is they have to learn new ways of getting things into their system, and then moving tasks, and learning all the new features. And that doesn't account for the time it takes to move everything over to the new app.  It's dead time. Instead, sticking with the apps you already have forces you to get better and faster at using them.  Then we come to the realisation that no two weeks are ever the same. No matter how carefully we plan something, things will inevitably go wrong.  This is where practice and experience come in.  I have a client who travels for work a lot. Sometimes he travels domestically; other times he travels internationally, often to the other side of the world, which involves 20 hours of flying time.  He found the Time Sector System worked brilliantly when he was working from his office, but it fell apart when he had to travel.  When we analysed the problem, we discovered that he was trying to run things the same way while travelling as he did at his office.  How many times have you booked a flight, found that WIFI would be available for the flight and thought, ah, I'll catch up on my email and messages when flying, only to discover that the WIFI doesn't work? Now, you could respond to your actionable emails while flying, but you won't be able to send them until you get into a WIFI zone. But that disruption to your plans can leave you feeling very frustrated.  The solution in this case was to have a travelling routine. On days when my client was travelling, he reduced his task list to the essentials. Rescheduling or postponing routine tasks  He also set up a routine for international travel, using the flight time to plan and clean things up. None of which required WIFI.  The first few times he used this new process, he found he needed to make adjustments, but after a few tries, he had it working perfectly.  And that's the key part. Build in flexibility.  In my client's case, it was not to try and follow the same system when travelling as he does when at the office.  When you plan your week, allow for the unexpected.  One way to do this is to ensure that, when you plan your week, you have time for the essential things. That would be your core work and the parts of your life you have decided are important. Time with family and friends, hobbies and exercise, for example.  Once you have those on your calendar, then really you have the beginnings of a solid plan that should be flexible enough.  Hopefully, you have already locked in your core work.  When I was a teacher, I had an hour each day protected for class preparation. I was teaching around four to five hours a day; those times were fixed each month and were non-negotiable. I had to be in the classroom teaching.  The class preparation time did change from day to day, but it was always there, and I tried to fix it around the same time each day, which made it much easier to make it a habit.  The unknowns often come from project work. Projects, by their very nature, are unique. Each one requires something different. You will find that while you may not be able to plan precisely what needs to be done at a weekly level, scheduling time to work on your projects each week will help ensure you have enough time to keep these moving forward.  If you've ever read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, you will no doubt remember the chapter: Sharpen the Saw.  In the chapter, Stephen Covey uses the example of a wood cutter who's working so hard that they never stop to sharpen the saw. Over time, the time required to cut the tree increases, not because the woodcutter is getting weaker, but because the saw is becoming blunter.  Your time management and productivity skills operate the same way. Sometimes you have to stop and sharpen your skills.  For example, I use an iPhone, and every time Apple updates its iPhone operating system, I review my collecting methods to see if anything in the new software will make collecting faster.  For example, when Apple added the action button to their phones, it let me map that button to add tasks to my task manager's inbox. It's super fast, and after a few days it became automatic for me to tap the action button when I needed to add something.  The most productive people I know spend time improving their ability to produce. This is why athletes train, musicians practise scales, pilots rehearse procedures, and surgeons continually update their skills. The performance people see is only possible because of the preparation and practice nobody sees. This is also why the Scaramanga quote fits this question. His point was essentially the same. As he said: “The rest of the time I maintain my skills.” Scaramanga's version is darker, of course, but the principle is identical. Exceptional performance is not the result of the moment itself; it's the result of the time spent preparing for that moment. If you find that by Tuesday your plan for the week looks destroyed, allow for that when you plan your week.  One way you can do this is to plan your objectives.  What is it that you want to get accomplished next week? These could be: To finish an important proposal Get on top of your emails To clean up the garden  To exercise a minimum of four times To update your LinkedIn profile With these five objectives, you can then decide when you will do them.  One tip here is to front-load your week with these activities. This way, if you do get waylaid, there's still time to recover in the week.  This reminds me of a story from one of the world's top rugby coaches. When he joined a new team, he found that if the team got ahead early in the game, they invariably won.  However, when they went behind early on, the likelihood was they would lose.  When he analysed this, he found that the team panicked when they fell behind, dropped their plan, and spent too much of the game taking unnecessary risks to get ahead.  He reminded the team that it was an 80-minute game and that what really mattered was sticking to their plan.  Tackle aggressively, maintain their defensive line and minimise mistakes. If they stuck to that, they would likely end the game ahead.  You don't win games in the first twenty minutes. You win the game over 80 minutes. It's the same for you, Kathy; you don't win or lose the week early on. You win the week by sticking to your plan and making adjustments where necessary, without losing sight of it.  I hope that has helped. Thank you for your question. And thank you to you, too, for listening.  It just remains for me to wish you all a very, very productive week.   

“I'm so passionate about creating a world where fraud is rare and trust between a member and their credit union is a given.” - Shanthi ShanmugamThank you for tuning in to The CUInsight Network, with your host, Robbie Young, Vice President of Strategic Growth at CUInsight. In The CUInsight Network, we take a deeper dive with the thought leaders who support the credit union community. We discuss issues and challenges facing credit unions and identify best practices to learn and grow together.My guest on today's show is Shanthi Shanmugam, CEO of Casap. She joins me for this episode to discuss the winding path that took her from studying computer science at UC Berkeley to helping credit unions rethink one of the most stressful moments in the member experience: disputes.Throughout our conversation, Shanthi makes it evident that she is passionate about building technology that feels human. She shares stories from her time at Facebook and Robinhood, including the moment when she realized that she wanted to spend her career solving problems that genuinely matter to people. Hear how that mindset eventually led to the formation of Casap, an AI-powered platform helping credit unions reduce fraud losses, improve dispute resolution, and strengthen member trust without losing the human judgment these situations often require. We also dig into why disputes are far more than just operational headaches, with Shanthi explaining why they're “trust moments” that can determine whether a member stays loyal to their financial institution or walks away entirely.As we wrap up the episode, Shanthi talks about her love for custom suits, Bollywood dancing, Colorado Springs, and why Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People still resonates with her years after first reading it. Enjoy my conversation with Shanthi Shanmugam!Find the full show notes on cuinsight.com.Connect with Shanthi:Shanthi Shanmugam, CEO of Casapshanthi@casaphq.com casaphq.com Shanthi: LinkedIn Casap: LinkedInShow notes from this episode:Film mentioned: RatatouilleCharacter mentioned: RemyBook mentioned: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen CoveyIn this episode:[1:00] - When she was young, Shanthi dreamed of traveling worldwide through dance and teaching others to love it.[2:27] - After Berkeley and Facebook, Shanthi pursued product work that was focused on meaningful human impact.[5:01] - Learn how ChatGPT inspired Shanthi to launch Casap and reimagine trust-centered fraud prevention.[8:16] - Hear how Casap helps credit unions improve member experiences and reduce fraud via AI-powered dispute management.[11:13] - Shanthi identifies three major gaps in the dispute process - starting with credit unions needing more transparent support.[12:36] - The second gap is fragmented systems which weaken fraud decision-making.[13:57] - Thirdly, better dispute insights are needed to differentiate between legitimate cases and attempted fraud.[15:09] - Shanthi points out that disputes become defining moments that shape long-term member loyalty and retention.[17:49] - Shanthi illustrates the difference between agentic AI and other AI tools.[20:28] - I praise Casap for balancing fast automation with compassionate human support.[21:08] - Casap aims to become credit unions' broader AI operating system beyond just dispute management.[23:24] - Hear why Shanthi credits her mother with being a good leader.[25:36] - Shanthi reflects on a trip to Colorado Springs which offered her a refreshing conference experience outside the usual Vegas routine.[26:39] - Shanthi empathically believes that everyone should read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey.[27:14] - Shanthi reveals that monthly check-ins help her balance rapid company growth with family and personal priorities.[29:49] - Shanthi expresses gratitude for credit unions.

I don't end many podcasts by inviting someone to come hang out at the farm, but this was one of those conversations. In this episode, I sit down with Patrick Engasser, a bestselling author, speaker, and coach who's built and led a seven-figure sales team…all while being blind since birth.  This isn't a “feel good” story. This is a wake-up call. We talk about what it actually takes to succeed when the odds aren't in your favor, how to stay aware of opportunities most people completely miss, and why building the right systems is the difference between being stuck and having real freedom. Patrick also shares powerful perspective shifts around adversity- how the very thing you think is holding you back might actually be your greatest advantage. And yeah…we even get into guide dogs.  If you've been waiting for the “right time” or better circumstances… this episode will challenge that hard.   Find Patrick at www.TalkwithPatrick.com  If I Can Do It, You Can Do It!: Inspiration for Eliminating Excuses, Overcoming Challenges, and Succeeding in Business and Life by Patrick Engasser https://amzn.to/4cIg1VH    Things mentioned in the show: 10X is Easier than 2X by Dan Sullivan https://amzn.to/4mErRok  4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss https://amzn.to/4cB3XFF  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey https://amzn.to/489fc72  Goals: How to Get the Most Out of Your Life by Zig Ziglar https://amzn.to/4twO7mY  The Power of Intention by Wayne Dyer https://amzn.to/4cX7rUk    --- Click here to change your life- http://eepurl.com/gy5T3T   Hit me up for a one-on-one brainstorming session- https://militaryimagesproject.com/products/brainstorming-session-1-hour    Check out my Linktree for different ways to rock your world! https://linktr.ee/ruggeddad    Check out the sweet Hyper X mic I'm using. https://amzn.to/41AF4px    Check out my best-selling books: Rapid Skill Development 101- https://amzn.to/3J0oDJ0 Streams of Income with Ryan Reger- https://amzn.to/3SDhDHg Strangest Secret Challenge- https://amzn.to/3xiJmVO This page contains affiliate links. This means that if you click a link and buy one of the products on this page, I may receive a commission (at no extra cost to you!) This doesn't affect our opinions or our reviews. Everything we do is to benefit you as the reader, so all of our reviews are as honest and unbiased as possible. #passiveincome #sidehustle #cryptocurrency #richlife

Nobody jumps out of bed wanting to do a bad job. So why does the day fall apart by lunch? In this episode, Dwayne Kerrigan breaks down the actual mechanics of high-performance productivity — not the philosophy, not the mindset pep talk, but the specific rituals, systems, and daily habits that determine whether your week produces results or just burns time.In this episode:The Time Management Matrix — originally developed by Franklin Covey, which Dwayne taught for 35 years — and why the only quadrant that actually moves your life forward is Q2: things that are important but not urgent, including planning, training, creative thinking, and relationship buildingWhy weekly planning and solitude is the single most important hour of the week — what Dwayne looks at during that block, how he structures it, and why if you miss it consistently, everything else breaks downHow Dwayne uses a color-coded identity calendar — each role in his life assigned a color, from Chairman to Love Slave — so that every time block is set with intention, not just task completionThe AI accountability system: Dwayne sends his planned week and his actual week to an AI agent named Jarvis, who measures his efficiency against his seven-year mission and purpose — and tells him when he's gotten sucked into operationsThe 30-to-60-second rule for managing in-the-moment interruptions: handle it now if it takes under a minute, or put it on the task list immediately and review every two to three hoursWhy perfection is a fool's game — Dwayne's case for defining "good enough" before you start, launching at that standard, and building a continuous improvement process rather than waiting for perfect.Episode Highlights: 00:00 - Progress Over Perfect00:28 - Podcast Introduction01:05 - Productivity Not Time02:44 - Roles And Identities03:44 - Mindset State And Why04:56 - Strategy Culture Habits06:47 - Health Vitality Long Game08:32 - Vision Plan Action Framework11:33 - Weekly Planning Solitude16:07 - Time Management Matrix23:18 - Plan Your Week In Practice24:41 - Daily Planning29:09 - Handle Interruptions Fast30:33 - Email Tasks34:06 - Inbox Overload Fixes35:39 - Stop Chasing Shiny Objects36:39 - Eat The Frog First37:35 - Perfection Blocks Progress38:56 - Get Resourceful Ask Help40:09 - Break Tunnel Vision41:29 - Identity Based Weekly Planning43:08 - AI Accountability Feedback45:00 - Guardrails And Honest Feedback46:42 - Daily Execution Rituals49:46 - Urgent Versus Important Explained55:51 - Stop Unneeded Meetings57:17 - Prioritize Across Roles59:59 - Why Breaks Feel Hard01:05:23 - Calendaring To Reduce Stress01:09:17 - Wrap Up And DisclaimersResources mentioned: FranklinCovey Time Matrix, Plan and software (Dwayne's current task management tool)The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — book by Stephen CoveyExactly What to Say — book by Phil Jones2 Second Lean — book by Paul AkersByron Katie's four questions framework — "Is it true? Is it absolutely true?"Video text messaging - Todd Hartley and Paul Akers referencedWaking Up app — Sam Harris meditation appTony Robbins — six human needs framework referencedKeith Cunningham — "Progress is not only measured by yards gained, but sometimes by yards not lost"Quotes:“Don't mistake being busy for producing results” - Dwayne Kerrigan“ Lose two hours of your day out of an eight-hour day, it adds up to a 20% of your day all of a sudden disappears. Well, factor that out over the year, you've got 20% of your year that you've not been working at directing yourself to a target.” - Dwayne Kerrigan“The difference between excitement and fear is just the label that we put on it. Physically and physiologically, it's kind of the same experience in our body, but we put a label on fear versus excitement.” - Dwayne Kerrigan“ The biggest problem that we make is we let perfect get in the way of progress. We've gotta identify what is good. And I'm not saying lower your standards, but what I am saying is we can get stuck on perfection or our need for certainty, and we have what I call failure to launch syndrome.” - Dwayne Kerrigan“ We often overestimate what we can accomplish in a year and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade.” - Dwayne KerriganConnect with Dwayne KerriganFacebookInstagramLinked InWebsiteDisclaimer: The views, information, or opinions expressed by guests during The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Dwayne Kerrigan and his affiliates. Dwayne Kerrigan or The Dwayne Kerrigan Podcast is not responsible for and does not verify the accuracy of any of the information contained in the podcast series. The primary purpose of this podcast is to educate and inform. Listeners are advised to consult with a qualified professional or specialist before making any decisions based on the content of this podcast.

Perhaps one of the most aptly named individuals I've met, James Clear possesses a clairvoyant ability to articulate his understanding and mastery of habit formation.   His book Atomic Habits, which eclipsed the sales speed of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has sold nearly 20 million copies and is one of the top books recommended by high performers. However, he didn't set out to write bestsellers. James's journey from basement projects to a multi-million subscriber list is a testament to the power of resilience and adaptability. He turned early setbacks into a strategic advantage, proving that sometimes, the best plan is the one you never intended to follow.Building a brand is like building a new habit. Despite aiming for consistency, Clear emphasizes that success in habit formation isn't about rigid adherence but rather the ability to adjust. Rather than fragile, unwavering discipline, Clear's methodology is flexible enough to adapt to the relatable complexities of maintaining habits amidst life's inevitable changes. “The way to be consistent is actually to be adaptable,” he explains. Your best asset could be the flexible mindset that keeps you on track even when life's rhythms get a bit unpredictable. Rather than imploding upon routine and environmental changes, we should focus on accounting for the natural bouts of turbulence.“Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule,” says Clear, encouraging a flexible approach, adjusting the intensity of activities rather than skipping them entirely. This mindset is critical to avoiding discouragement and self-sabotage, which can derail long-term progress."Support the show

R' Shmuel Diamond is a Jerusalem-based educator, speaker, entrepreneur, and former internationally sought-after photographer whose work and teachings bridge the worlds of creativity, psychology, personal growth, the inner wisdom of Torah, and selfless Divine service.After a successful two-decade international photography career photographing high-profile Jewish families around the world, he transitioned toward education, mentorship, and spiritual teaching. Deeply influenced by Tanya, Chassidus, Kabbalah, psychology, and Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Shmuel is the founder of Bnei Aliyah and creator of “Journey to a Blessed Life,” a revolutionary new approach to self-mastery and the art of living. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and children. --Please rate and review the Empowered Jewish Living podcast on whatever platform you stream it. Please follow Rabbi Shlomo Buxbaum and the Lev Experience on the following channels:Facebook: @shlomobuxbaumInstagram: @shlomobuxbaumYouTube: TheLevExperienceOrder Rabbi Shlomo' books: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Four Elements of an Empowered Life: A Guidebook to Discovering Your Inner World and Unique Purpose⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠-⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Four Elements of Inner Freedom: The Exodus Story as a Model for Overcoming Challenges and Achieving Personal Breakthroughs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ You can order a copy on⁠ Amazon⁠ or in your local Jewish bookstore.

Perhaps one of the most aptly named individuals I've met, James Clear possesses a clairvoyant ability to articulate his understanding and mastery of habit formation.   His book Atomic Habits, which eclipsed the sales speed of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, has sold nearly 20 million copies and is one of the top books recommended by high performers. However, he didn't set out to write bestsellers. James's journey from basement projects to a multi-million subscriber list is a testament to the power of resilience and adaptability. He turned early setbacks into a strategic advantage, proving that sometimes, the best plan is the one you never intended to follow.Building a brand is like building a new habit. Despite aiming for consistency, Clear emphasizes that success in habit formation isn't about rigid adherence but rather the ability to adjust. Rather than fragile, unwavering discipline, Clear's methodology is flexible enough to adapt to the relatable complexities of maintaining habits amidst life's inevitable changes. “The way to be consistent is actually to be adaptable,” he explains. Your best asset could be the flexible mindset that keeps you on track even when life's rhythms get a bit unpredictable. Rather than imploding upon routine and environmental changes, we should focus on accounting for the natural bouts of turbulence.“Reduce the scope, but stick to the schedule,” says Clear, encouraging a flexible approach, adjusting the intensity of activities rather than skipping them entirely. This mindset is critical to avoiding discouragement and self-sabotage, which can derail long-term progress."Support the show

Quick SummarySonya Szabo is a Canadian business lawyer, former café owner, and entrepreneur who has never done things the conventional way — and that's exactly why it works. In this episode, she returns to the Rain or Shine podcast after eight years to share the full arc of her story: building and selling the Vic Café, going to law school at forty, battling imposter syndrome, and ultimately creating a law practice that reflects her values instead of the industry mold.In This EpisodeHow Sonya opened the Vic Café at 35 with three kids — and led with boundaries from day oneWhy she hired a manager before opening the doorsThe highs and hard realities of running a brick-and-mortar restaurant for eight yearsGoing back to law school at forty and navigating four years of imposter syndromeThe "90-year-old self" exercise Sonya uses to make every major decisionHer "quit week" in 2025 — what triggered it and what brought her backWhy in-person relationship-building has been her most effective marketing strategyWhat Zebo Law does and how to work with SonyaKey TakeawaysKnow your priorities before you open your doors. Sonya put a note in her very first employee handbook that said she was a mom first — and that transparency set the tone for every working relationship that followed.Build the business around your strengths, not your job description. She hired a manager before opening and stayed focused on owner-level decisions from the start.Your vision isn't a prediction — it's a decision-making filter. Sonya doesn't hold her vision because she expects it to happen exactly as planned; she holds it because it tells her what to say yes and no to.Think about your ninety-year-old self. When you filter decisions through who you want to be at the end of your life, the noise clears fast.A "quit week" isn't the end — it's a signal. Panic means something isn't working. Go back to your values before you go anywhere else.Memorable Quotes"Before we even opened our doors, we hired a manager. Traditionally that would have been the owner's job — but I knew I needed to outsource that and just be the owner.""When I hold a decision up against my vision and ask, 'Will this bring me closer to where I want to go?' — the answer tells me whether to say yes or no.""When people started connecting me and 'lawyer' together, you could see the relief on their faces — like, finally, a lawyer who doesn't make me feel belittled. Someone who makes me feel empowered."Resources MentionedThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. CoveyThe E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber (referenced)Sonya's Instagram: @askmeaboutcontractsSonya's Website: sonyaszabo.comKelsey's Website: KelseyReidl.comKelsey's Instagram: @KelseyReidlFirst Rain or Shine episode featuring SonyaVoxer app — walkie-talkie voice messagingAbout Sonya SzaboSonya Szabo is a Canadian business lawyer and the founder of Zebo Law, where she helps entrepreneurs and business owners navigate contracts, corporate structure, trademarks, and more — in language they can actually understand. After eight years running the Vic Café in Prince Edward County and selling it in 2023, Sonya went to law school at forty and built a practice rooted in her own experience as a founder, parent, and entrepreneur.

How can leaders move beyond the noise and overwhelm of AI to create value for their teams and organizations? In this episode, Kevin talks with Matt Kesby about why AI is not just a technology challenge, but a change management challenge. Matt explains why organizations should avoid chasing shiny tools and instead focus on the systems, processes, and repetitive work where AI and automation can create measurable "value impact." He also introduces the difference between makers, watchers, and blamers, encouraging leaders to act now by documenting tasks, identifying opportunities for improvement, and building clear procedures that both people and AI can follow. Matt's Story: Matt Kesby is the author of Untangling AI: Driving Business Success Through Enterprise Automation and AI Agents. He is a serial entrepreneur, AI transformation leader, and business strategist with over 29 years of experience helping organizations achieve triple-digit revenue growth and sustainable profitability. Based in Cebu, Philippines, Matt leads a team of over 1,000 professionals across 7 countries, using AI to accelerate operational, financial, sales, and marketing performance by up to 5x. Matt is the founder of GoTeam and Multiplai Tech, companies dedicated to helping businesses scale and people exceed. Additionally, he is Founder, Chief AI Officer and Master Coach at www.aicoaches.com. He has partnered with more than 300 businesses worldwide, building high-performing offshore support teams and embedding automation-driven solutions into their DNA. A member of the Forbes Technology Council, Matt is a trusted voice at the intersection of people, growth, and emerging technology. https://www.aicoaches.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattkesby/ Looking to Develop Stronger Leaders? Want help developing the leaders in your organization? Reach out to explore how the Kevin Eikenberry Group can support your team at info@kevineikenberry.com.  Book Recommendations Untangling AI: Driving Business Success Through Enterprise Automation and AI Agents by Matt Kesby The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life by Marshall B. Rosenberg The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling The Speed of Trust: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M.R. Covey Like this? The 4 Disciplines of Execution with Jim Huling How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth with Patrick Thean Growth Through Innovation with Lorraine Marchand Podcast Better! Sign up with Libsyn and get up to 2 months free! Use promo code: RLP   Leave a Review If you liked this conversation, we'd be thrilled if you'd let others know by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. Here's a quick guide for posting a review. Review on Apple: https://remarkablepodcast.com/itunes    Join Our Community If you want to view our live podcast episodes, hear about new releases, or chat with others who enjoy this podcast join one of our communities below. Join the Facebook Group Join the LinkedIn Group  

In this episode of Paradigm Shifting Books, hosts Stephen and Britain Covey take a deeper dive into one of the foundational ideas behind The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: the maturity continuum. Building on their recent conversation with Dan Coyle about flourishing and human connection, they explore the progression from dependence to independence to interdependence, and why so much of modern self-improvement culture stops short of the ultimate goal. Drawing directly from the teachings of Stephen R. Covey, they unpack why independence is often celebrated as the highest form of growth, even though life itself is inherently interconnected.Stephen and Britain reflect on how these ideas apply to leadership, relationships, teamwork, and personal fulfillment. They discuss the dangers of victim thinking, the rise of hyper-individualism, and the growing appeal of “monk mode” culture in a world that increasingly rewards isolation and self-focus. Through personal stories, sports analogies, and timeless insights from The 7 Habits, they make the case that true flourishing happens not in separation from others, but through meaningful collaboration, trust, and shared growth. This episode is a powerful reminder that independence is not the final destination of maturity, but the foundation that allows us to fully thrive together.What We Discuss[00:00] Introduction[01:43] The maturity continuum explained[02:13] Dependence: the starting point[02:58] Independence: personal responsibility and discipline[03:55] Interdependence: the highest level of the continuum[05:25] Reading from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: the limits of independence[10:16] Self-reflection: where are you on the maturity continuum?[11:13] The role of “monk mode” and private victories[13:08] Modern life: isolation vs. interdependence[14:53] Conclusion Notable Quotes[03:41] "Independence is the paradigm of I can do it, right? I am responsible, I am self-reliant, I can choose." – Britain Covey[10:03] "Strength is found in differences more than it is in similarities in a relationship." – Britain Covey[13:02] "Growth doesn't stop at independence. That's really just the foundation." – Stephen Covey[10:56] "Interdependence is a choice only independent people can make." – Stephen R. CoveyResourcesParadigm Shifting BooksPodcastInstagram YouTube BookThe 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. CoveyBritain CoveyLinkedIn InstagramStephen H. CoveyLinkedInMentioned EpisodeWhy We Need Other People to Become Our Best Selves (Part 1) with Daniel Coyle

Nicholas Lares is the founder of Insur3Tech, a syndicated insurance group built for real estate owners and operators. Before entering real estate insurance, Nicholas was one of the largest brokers for Amazon's logistics network. When carrier exits threatened his clients' ability to operate, he helped them build a collective, self-insured alternative rather than accept the market's terms. That same model now powers Insurer Tech, which enables property owners, operators, and investors to retain the profits traditional insurers keep, averaging $28 million in annual distributions per 100,000 units.     Make sure to download our free guide, 7 Questions Every Passive Investor Should Ask, here.     Key Takeaways The traditional insurance market is a negative feedback loop: rising premiums drive more claims, which drive premiums higher Every premium you pay includes broker commissions, administrative overhead, and margin that never comes back to you Good-risk operators are pooled with bad-risk ones and effectively subsidize the market's worst performers Captive insurance gives participants a co-ownership stake and returns annual profits when the pool performs well Residents can be enrolled in the same captive, turning renters insurance into a separate profit center Getting into a captive earlier compounds the financial benefit significantly over 5 to 10 years     Topics Why Insurance Costs Keep Rising Pre-2020, insurance was a manageable expense; post-Covid, premiums surged to the point where operators began questioning the ROI Policyholders started filing more claims to justify rising costs, which accelerated the cycle further Carriers facing unsustainable losses began exiting markets entirely, most visibly in Florida, California, and Texas How Traditional Insurance Actually Works Premiums are priced on pooled risk across millions of policies, not based on your individual property's claims history Every premium includes roughly 30% in administrative costs, 10-15% in broker commissions, projected claims, and a margin buffer on top When the pool outperforms projections, the surplus flows to carrier shareholders, not policyholders The Captive Insurance Model Captive programs have existed for decades, originally built for Fortune 500 companies and large industrial operators A captive functions like a controlled bank account, backed by a reinsurance program, where unused premium returns to the owner Insurer Tech builds group cell captives, making co-ownership accessible to operators who cannot support a standalone captive independently How Insurer Tech Works Unnecessary margin layers, including excess broker commissions and profit buffers, are removed and redirected to members Year-end surplus is distributed to participants; there are no external shareholders Members choose their risk level: with or without reinsurance backing, depending on portfolio size and claims history The Leverage Problem in Traditional Insurance Clean-record operators have almost no meaningful leverage to negotiate premiums because pricing is determined by pooled market behavior Captives realign incentives: when participants think like owners, they manage risk more carefully and file fewer claims Moving good-risk operators out of the traditional pool separates them from the bad actors they were subsidizing Who Qualifies Insurer Tech works across all real estate types, including multifamily, single-family, self-storage, and commercial, as long as a lease agreement is in place The resident piece (renters insurance) typically targets 50+ units to generate a net surplus for the captive Operators with fewer units can pool with other investors in their market to meet the threshold A Real-World Example An 80-unit multifamily property in Georgia: total property insurance cost was $14,000 per year After captive returns, the net cost dropped to approximately $11,500 per year Resident renters insurance through the same captive generated roughly $20,000 in annual profit The result: the owner's insurance cost is fully offset, with a net surplus of approximately $9,000 per year    

This episode started with the question: How do you approach working with clients and understanding their needs and goals? Suggested reading from this episode: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Each of us has a personal kingdom, or domain, for which we are responsible. Whether it's our home, apartment, or dorm room, we have a place where what we say happens. What does it look like, in the midst of a chaotic world, to bring order and shalom to our realm? This new five-part series begins with John, Blaine, and Allen talking about why God made us to rule, how we're meant to grow in this responsibility, and what role consecration and invocation play in banishing chaos from our domain.Show Notes: The books referenced are Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body by John Paul II and Michael Waldstein and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Send your questions about this series to questions@WildatHeart.org. Keywords: Spiritual Warfare, Emotional Regulation, Intentionality, Christianity, Prayer_______________________________________________There is more.Got a question you want answered on the podcast? Ask us at Questions@WildatHeart.orgSupport the mission or find more on our website:WildAtHeart.org  or on our app.Apple: Wild At Heart AppAndroid: Wild At Heart AppWatch on YouTubeThe stock music used in the Wild at Heart podcast is titled “When Laid to Rest” by Patrick Rundblad and available here.More pauses available in the One Minute Pause app for Apple iOS and Android.Apple: One Minute Pause AppAndroid: One Minute Pause App

Justin Humphries reveals his fundamental principles for rapidly growing opportunities and income in an uncertain job market.— YOU'LL LEARN — 1) How to multiply your inbound opportunities2) The simplest way to expand your professional network3) The key that keeps people coming back to youSubscribe or visit AwesomeAtYourJob.com/ep1149 for clickable versions of the links below. — ABOUT JUSTIN — Justin Humphries is a dedicated Loan Officer with experience since June 2021, specializing in VA, first-time homebuyer, and DSCR loans. A Nashville native, Justin is deeply motivated by personal and professional growth, drawing strength from his faith, family, and a passion for building meaningful relationships. He takes great pride in helping clients align their mortgage strategies with their life goals, aiming to support them in building long-term wealth. Justin values the opportunity to develop lasting connections with customers who return to him year after year for their mortgage needs.Beyond his professional work, Justin is actively involved in his church community, serving on the parish council and volunteering with the Society of St. Vincent DePaul to assist families at risk of homelessness. He is happily married to his wife Stephanie and is a proud father of three young children, including twins.• LinkedIn: Justin Humphries• Profile: Justin Humphries• Phone number: +1 615-438-8125• Email: jhumphries@loandepot.com— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW — • Tool: Claude for Google Chrome• Article: “Researchers Asked LLMs for Strategic Advice. They Got “Trendslop” in Return.” by Angelo Romasanta, Llewellyn D.W. Thomas and Natalia Levina• Study: “Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population” by John B. Calhoun• YouTube: Squat University• Book: Rebuilding Milo: A Lifter's Guide to Fixing Common Injuries and Building a Strong Foundation for Enhancing Performance• Book: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition by Stephen R. Covey• Previous episode: 184: Building Your Network Before You Need It with Dr. Ivan Misner— THANK YOU SPONSORS! — • Keepsake Voices. Get mom something special and save about $100 with keepsakevoices.com/pete• Scribe. Book a personalized enterprise demo with scribe.how/awesome• Narwhal. Treat your home to spotless, fresh floors with us.narwhal.com/pete.• Monarch.com. Get 50% off your first year on with the code AWESOME.• Gusto. Get three months free when you run your first payroll with gusto.com/AWESOME• Shopify. Sign up for your $1/month trial at Shopify.com/awesomepod• Vanguard. Give your clients consistent results year in and year out with vanguard.com/AUDIOSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Discover all of the podcasts in our network, search for specific episodes, get the Optimal Living Daily workbook, and learn more at: OLDPodcast.com. Episode 3524: Kathy Robinson reframes retirement as an active, purpose-driven phase of life rather than a passive endpoint, urging readers to focus on meaning beyond career identity. By shifting attention to what we can influence and taking intentional action, even small acts of service, fulfillment, connection, and well-being naturally follow. Read along with the original article(s) here: https://athenawellness.com/blog/2022/7/1/retirement-is-a-verb Quotes to ponder: "When we focus on The Circle of Concern, it can feel futile and result in reactivity and negativity." "Happiness and meaning are not found on bucket lists. Rather, they are the result of living a purposeful, healthy lifestyle." "Here's the key, the more we focus on what we can influence, the more change we can elicit." Episode references: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: https://www.amazon.com/7-Habits-Highly-Effective-People/dp/1982137274 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices