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Unlock the secrets to boosting your Amazon sales without crossing the line with product inserts as we team up with our Freedom Ticket instructors, Kevin King and Rafael Veloz of Share It Studio. This episode is your ticket to understanding how to legally and effectively use product inserts to build your brand and keep customers returning for more. Ditch the confusion and stay ahead of the competition with actionable insights and real-life examples, including Kevin and Rafael's success stories with calendar sales and customer-retaining newsletters. Prepare to transform your customer experience and drive repeat purchases with inventive strategies that resonate with your audience. We'll reveal the power of no-code apps as lead magnets, the smart use of QR codes, and how to craft calls to action that balance immediate sales with long-term loyalty. Rafael's Telly award-winning expertise shines as we navigate the nuances of customer engagement, ensuring your marketing efforts are not only effective but also compliant with Amazon's stringent policies. Wrap up with a toolkit of marketing finesse, from leveraging QR codes for product-related apps to utilizing calls to action that truly speak to your buyer persona. Whether it's offering warranties, discounts, or even prize draws, we've got you covered with legal and effective strategies that hook customers in. This episode is brimming with tactics and takeaways tailored to help you master the art of Amazon product inserts and skyrocket your e-commerce success. In episode 564 of the Serious Sellers Podcast, Bradley, Kevin, and Rafael discuss: 00:00 - How To Build An Unbreakable Brand With Product Inserts 00:59 - Advanced Amazon Product Inserts Discussion 08:57 - Leveraging Mail Leads for Calendar Sales 09:09 - Maximizing Sales Through Package Inserts 13:59 - Strategies for Amazon Product Insert Cards 18:10 - Enhancing Customer Feedback With QR Codes 26:35 - Amazon Review and QR Code Guidelines 27:15 - Prohibited Methods for Soliciting Reviews 31:02 - Generating Effective QR Codes for Customers 34:45 - Dog Treat Sample Pack Promotion 36:34 - QR Codes and Call to Actions ► Instagram: instagram.com/serioussellerspodcast ► Free Amazon Seller Chrome Extension: https://h10.me/extension ► Sign Up For Helium 10: https://h10.me/signup  (Use SSP10 To Save 10% For Life) ► Learn How To Sell on Amazon: https://h10.me/ft ► Watch The Podcasts On YouTube: youtube.com/@Helium10/videos Transcript Bradley Sutton: Is it okay to do product inserts on Amazon? If so, what can and can't you put on those? We bring on Kevin King and expert guest Rafael to answer these questions and more. How cool is that? Pretty cool, I think. Bradley Sutton: Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Serious Sellers Podcast by Helium 10. I'm your host, Bradley Sutton, and this is the show that's completely BS-free, unscripted and unrehearsed, organic conversation about serious strategies for serious sellers of any level in the e-commerce world, and we have our monthly special. This is called Seller's Edge, and this is actually a unique one, a new thing that we're doing, where we recorded live a module that's actually going to go mainly in the Freedom Ticket program about advanced Amazon strategy, and this one's going to be all about Amazon product inserts. There's a lot of misconceptions out there and so we brought on some people to talk a little bit about it. Now, the main core of this workshop that we did is actually in Freedom Ticket, all right. So. if you guys don't have a Freedom Ticket, any Helium 10 paying member has access to it. So, if you're a Platinum member, make sure to go into your Freedom Ticket account or your Helium 10 account and then hit Learning Hub. You can get the full details. Bradley Sutton: What we're going to have here is some clips from that training and then we're going to have a lot of the Q&A. What we did we did this live, where a lot of people were watching this training and they were giving a lot of questions like hey, what's okay to put in inserts, and can I send people to another website, and can I do this and can I do that? Kevin King got a little riled up there a little bit on some of the questions we were asking. So again, we're going to just give you some of their presentation just a little bit, and then mainly focus on the questions that you guys were answering. I'm positive. A lot of these questions are the same exact questions that you might have on inserts as well, so let's go ahead and hop into it. Kevin King: So I met today's guest Rafael around 2019, maybe 2020. But it was in 2020 where I really first got to know him. The guys over at PickFu actually came to me and said, hey, we're going to run this contest with like four different agencies and we want to feature your product. And at that time I was doing a hand sanitizer as a company called Germ Shark and I said I'm sure they said these guys are going to compete, they're going to create videos, they're going to create images, they're going to create A plus content. And then you get to go through it all, Kevin. You get to decide which one you like the best, and then it's up to you whether you want to go with them and pay them or not, if you, if you like it enough. And so, uh, Rafael's company, uh, Share It Studio was one of the winners. There was two, two companies that actually kind of came close uh, real close to each other, and one of them I liked one of their things and then them I liked the other thing, but a Share It Studio did the best job overall and they ended up creating a really a kick-ass video for us and a whole bunch of really cool content. So that's where I got to know him and you know this guy. His background wasn't necessarily an Amazon seller. He was a three-time telly, award-winning marketer and filmmaker, and then he decided to go out on his own and he saw this need in the Amazon space, where there's just not a lot of good agencies creating good, good imagery and video content. So in 2018, he founded Share It Studio and as a marketing Amazon specific marketing agency. Kevin King: Now they do a few things. It's not Amazon, but they focus on Amazon and it's they really want to set themselves apart, but not just saying, okay, we'll create some pretty pictures and we'll make some nice videos, but it's data driven. So they're actually looking at the data, looking at what it is that they actually need to do. What are the trigger points that are going to make people buy? Not just create a beautiful video that looks great, but what can they say, what can they do? What about those first three seconds? And just create a really custom, bespoke package of creative services just for Amazon sellers on the Amazon platform. They look at everything from. They do everything from PPC videos, premium A plus content, images, branding and a whole lot more, and they're really good at what they're doing so. Kevin King: Rafael is going to be coming on in just a minute and sharing us today specifically on package inserts, and before I bring him on, I want to talk about package inserts for just a second, because there's a lot of, what I believe, misinformation out there when it comes to package inserts. There's a lot of people that say you should not use package inserts on Amazon. You will hear that on Facebook groups. You will hear that from some of the people that help fight against Amazon. They say don't use package inserts, don't do it, you're putting yourself at risk. I 1000% disagree with that. 1000% disagree with that. I think there are certain things that you should not do on a package insert. Those anything you know people say well, you can't direct traffic off of Amazon. Bs, yes, you can. What you cannot do is put your package insert or your URL. If you read the terms of service carefully, Amazon says you cannot direct traffic off of Amazon, but that's on Amazon. That means that don't put your URL in your product photos. Don't put something in, don't email you know, using the customer follow-up something to take them off of Amazon. Anything on the Amazon platform in imagery or text. You cannot send them off of Amazon to do something that is against the rules. But when it comes to your package insert, all the big brands look at Sony, look at any of the big brands they have package inserts for warranty registrations, for accessories, for different things. It's totally fine in my opinion. But there is a line you have to draw and this is where a lot of people get in trouble and some people don't understand where that line is. Kevin King: You cannot do anything to influence reviews on Amazon, and that means in the old days people would say please leave us a five-star review, click here and they would take you to the review page. You can't do that. You can't put a smile and five stars. Five stars is a kind of a trademark icon of Amazon. That kind of indicates give us five stars. You can't do that. You can't say something like if you have trouble with this product, please email us. Don't contact the buyer, don't contact Amazon or contact where you bought it. If you have trouble, contact us. Otherwise, please leave us a review on Amazon. That's directing negative traffic to you, even though that's a good thing to do. You want to take care of the situation that's indirectly directing negative remarks that might have been a bad review to you. There's other ways to say that. You can say something like if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, something like that that has no indication of. If there's a problem or there's something wrong, we want to fix it. And I understand you're trying to steer bad things away and you're trying to be good, but that can be seen as as as a negative. Or what happens a lot of times is people will have some sort of innocent package insert and then they will, they will send that and send it to a warranty page or some sort of registration page and then in the follow up sequence so everything is clean, but in the follow up sequence there's something that's a little gray or shady and that's where people get into trouble too. So but if you're doing the package inserts right, and I think you're totally fine and there is a way to do them you know I get a lot of Amazon packages and a lot of times I throw the package inserts out. Kevin King: I mean, it's one of the first things. I used to look at them to see what other people were doing. But now, obviously, I probably get 20 Amazon packages a week. I probably look at one package insert and that's what Rafael is going to show you today is some ways to make sure that that yours is the one that I'm looking at, and there's a reason that I only look at. One is because most of them suck. They're little business cards or they don't have good graphics, or they don't catch my attention or they're buried in the package in the wrong place. There's a whole number of reasons that I don't look at where there's no value to looking at it. It's just a bunch of text, or they all look the same. There's ways to stand out, and I use a package insert, and my calendar business is one example that I like to give, and what I do is I put a four by six card in there and I say congratulations, you've won a free calendar. That's what the package insert says, and what that package insert then says, because I'm selling calendars. Calendars are like selling milk they go bad. Kevin King: So right now we're in May of 2024. Most people don't want to pay full price for a 2024 calendar. The year started five months ago, so it's hard to sell them. So if I have extra calendars left over, I got to get rid of them. I can throw them away, I can donate them somewhere, I can try to liquidate them, but what I do is I use my extra calendars as a premium and so I say congratulations, you've won a free calendar. Just pay $10 shipping and handling and you can go to my website and get the URL out there and enter this code to get the calendar for $10. Or you can send a check or money order in the mail. A lot of people send checks or money orders in a physical envelope in the mail to my post office box and it works really well and I get a lot of leads that way. What do I do with those leads? The next year I've got 17,000 people on this list. The next year, when my calendars come out, calendars are pretty much bought between mid-November and mid-January. That's the big two months that most of the sales happen. You're selling 400, 500, 600 a day of some titles, but in September people aren't really thinking about 2024 like last year, so they're buying like two or three calendars a day. But that's where I use my list and I send them out. Kevin King: If I have their email, I send an email and I also send a physical postcard through the mail to them and says hey, the new calendars for 2024, or, in this case coming up 2025 are out. You can buy them directly from me and pay $9.95 shipping and handling, or you can go to Amazon, if you're a Prime member, and buy them on Amazon and get free shipping. And what does that do? It allows me to launch my product completely with no PPC, no launches, no having to do Vine reviews, no, nothing. Because people go and I have four different titles and a lot of them. They buy all four, so that gets them in the frequently bought together. And then they also buy other calendars so they might buy a motorcycle calendar or something like that. So then I start showing up on these motorcycle calendars as customers who looked at this or viewed this or those sections. And I started this flywheel going and I'm selling two or three a day in September and I just ride that wave all the way up and I do zero PPC for these calendars. I do zero launch and that's the power of a package insert. And then I can sell these guys other calendars that are not available on Amazon. Kevin King: I do it for my dog products with a dog sample packs. I do it with a lot of things, but in nowhere in there and no my emails, nowhere do I ever ask for a review? Do I ever indicate five stars? Do I ever indicate anything that's manipulating the system? It's all above board and I've been doing this for 20 years and there's nothing wrong with it. Usually, if you dig deep and someone says I got in trouble for package inserts, I didn't do anything, look deep into their package insert or into their funnel and you're probably going to see that there is something that's a little on the edge there. So if you keep your nose clean and do this right, it can be powerful. And so Rafael is going to come on right now and he's going to spend some time showing you some really cool ways to actually do package inserts. Hey Rafael, how are you doing, man? Rafael: How's it going, man? Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. It's an honor. Kevin King: Appreciate you coming on and doing this man, this is going to be great. I'm looking forward to seeing what you got. Learn a few things myself, hopefully. Rafael: All right guys. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate your time. I am the Founder and CEO of Share It Studio. Actually, my background was in law. I went to law school. I did four years of law school in Venezuela and then I went to filmmaking because I hated law so that's like a really little fun fact. And then I started working and I graduated from filmmaking. I started doing filmmaking, I moved to New York, etcetera. I worked in a lot of companies CNN, Nickelodeon and then in 2018, I was working for Nickelodeon and I decided to quit because I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to get out of that rat race, which I think a lot of us maybe were there and wanted to escape. So, yeah, so let's get started. Rafael: So this is a little bit of what we do at Share It Studio. I just wanted to give you a glimpse. I'm not trying to sell you anything. I'm just trying to give you a glimpse of what we do. So we only focus on creating content. Why I feel like a jack of all trades is a master or none. We like to specialize in one thing, one thing only, and anything that has to do with visual and visually enticing or visually manipulated. You could say a little bit that buy or that conversion, so anything that has to do with videos, listings, et cetera. So what are product inserts? You can read this, I know you can, but in my own words it's a way to give the customer more experience, right, to give them more value. The more value you give, the more value you're going to get in return. So it's a powerful tool, obviously, to enhance the customer's experience. You can request feedback, you can promote your repeat purchases. It's all going to depend on the product itself. It's the same thing to have a product insert for supplements for a hand sanitizer than for a garlic press, for example. Those are consumables. You can repeat them. The garlic press, you can probably buy one when it breaks. But if it breaks too fast, it means the bad quality garlic press, right? So, depending on your product, I would say try to steer and try to analyze and strategize that product insert. Rafael: Okay, let's keep going. So do's. Some basic do's. Deliver value. This is like just a general thing in life. Let's go into newsletters. I don't read newsletters. I find newsletters actually very boring or they're all the same. But I came across and I'm trying to plug this in in any way. But I came across one a few months ago which is Kevin King's newsletter right, the Billion Dollar newsletter and there's so much value that I actually enjoy reading them. That's because it's given me value, like a bunch of value. If it wouldn't give me value, I just would discard it, archive it or read it or delete it, et cetera. So make sure you deliver value. It's the most important asset. If you do not deliver value, you're not going to get anything in return. Some ways you can deliver value additional usage guidelines, care recommendations, general insights, coupons, customer experience. There's a lot, a lot of ways. Right, make sure you maintain informativeness, meaning that you are talking about your product's advantages or attributes on the product. That's dependent on the product. Again, these are all dependent on the product that you have. It's gonna. It's not a, it's not a one. It's not a cookie cutter, it's not a cookie cutter template, it's more of a. What do I have? What fits into this mold type of situation from my point of view, at least in my experience? Rafael: Encourage reviews. You want to avoid 100% encouraging any positive reviews or avoiding getting, or encouraging avoidance of getting negative reviews. Like Kevin said at the beginning, that goes against Amazon's TOS and, just like the taxman, the Amazon man is also going to find out at some point. Okay, so I would say, steer away from that. So politely, solicit feedback from the customers. As simple as your feedback matters could help. Extend support. Again, it depends on the product, but extend support If it's maybe it's a product that it costs I don't know a hundred bucks, most likely if that product is a little bit faulty or people don't understand that because it's hard to assemble, or something you can extend support, maybe a video, maybe a hotline, maybe an email I don't know something that gives them support. Um, cross selling if your product, you can match it with other products. For example, I'm going to show you an example in a bit of a baby product. But let's say you sell in the baby category and there's a lock and you're selling a lock um securing mechanism for the door for babies, right, and you and you can also cross promote the outlet protector for babies. So you know you kill two birds with one stone. Rafael: Don'ts. Avoid soliciting positive reviews, guys. Do not do that. That's like bad, bad, bad. Referring from cherry picking reviewers, such as what Kevin said, like hey, if you're having a bad experience, you know, come back and we can help you before you leave a bad review. That's a no-no. Steer clear from external links. Like Kevin said, Amazon wants everything in their ecosystems. What I've seen recently, though, is that they send them to a landing page, but the payment processing takes them directly back to the Amazon page. So what does that mean? That means that, from the product insert, it takes you to the landing page. You gather data from there, like the pixels, the Facebook pixels well, that's not Facebook anymore, it's the Metapixel, et cetera. Now you have marketing data from there, and then it redirects them back to Amazon. I've seen that recently. Eliminate misleading information, false hesitations, exaggerated claims, deceptive details. You want to be as transparent as possible and as truthful as possible. Remember, giving value is about being real, maintaining real, and abstain from manipulation. Definitely abstain from manipulation, because that's also you're trying to cherry pick that review. Okay, and avoid interfering with packaging. This is more on your end. You don't want to have a package that's extremely hard to open because of the product insert, because it's not going to give value to the customer experience, and customer experience is everything. All right. So it's a simple thank you enough. It could be, but you know it's there's not more, so it's basically wasting your money. Rafael: So if you want to win and if you want to actually get results, you should definitely take action. So things you should include you in your insert cards. Things I would include that we've included with our clients is warranties, how to guides, how to take care of the product, benefits of our products, guidelines, but it's going to depend again on the product. I want to make sure that everybody understands that it depends on your product. But, in summary, if you want to get value, you should get value. That's a rule of thumb in life. Actually, we should all get value in life, so we can get something valuable as well. So type of products, inserts or strategies. So review hunting that's like the most basic one, right? You want to get reviews. The most reviews you get, the better. I'm gonna show you some examples afterwards. You can put up a QR code and ask for feedback. You can use jokes, for example. So you put the joke and then you put the answer. Kevin usually actually does this. He puts stump bases in the beginning of the email newsletter and then at the end, he gives you the answer. This allows him, this allows that you read through the whole thing and then you have a reward at the end, which is kind of cool. So, for example, for this one, this is plainly emotional. Hey, scan this QR code and speak your mind. That's it. I just want your feedback, and your feedback means the world to us. It's very important. You're being sincere, trying to be as sincere as possible. Rafael: This is some of the content with this. For this seller, we also did that his packaging and he inserted it. And also, you added more value. He's not in a lead generator. So if you want to watch this video, it's time to install this. Watch this video, right? So you scan this QR code. Basically, it takes you to a landing page. It asks you for your email to unlock or to send the link of the video to that email. So, right there, you're getting more information. A simple joke is cool. So what type of candy is never on time? Chocolate, you get it, I didn't know. So ChatGPT helped us with that, by the way. So, yeah, so after they peel it, okay, and then, hey, since we're here, share your experience with our candies, and then they scan your codes. You know you're asking for it. All right, this is for stickers. Rafael: And another type of strategy is free purchase marketing. So there's a couple of things you can do. You can add custom coupons and you can add also cross-selling. So a coupon is you'll we all know what well, maybe there's new or sellers. Here's coupon is just basically a way that you give them something, a discount or, yeah, a discount for the next purchase or the new purchase or something, and cross-selling or it could be even an external coupon and cross-selling is when you promote something, another product, okay, based on that product, that at least simulates or in some way it connects with the main product that they just bought. So, for example this is the example I was going to give you it's a baby clear outlet plugs, right, and the baby toilet plug. So, welcome to Parenthood. Since you bought this, we want to help you. Here's more things that you can get and you're going to get these products. You head to storefronts and you get some offers from those products. Boom, so they're buying this, but they're also, oh, these guys also sell this, because maybe when they get this through their Amazon. They're like oh, I also need this. So you're cross-promoting that seller. Okay. Rafael: So list building it's extremely important as well. As we all know, Amazon is their own ecosystem and they have the last say in everything. So, like Kevin was saying about his calendars, it doesn't matter if he sells them on Amazon or not. He has a list. So Kevin doesn't even need PPC because he has a whole list already. So that's one of the things that you should be doing list building. So it's basically just as a gift. You can create a strategy. Number one is a gift. Basically, you create a lead magnet from your website or app and you just tell the customer like hey, you want this, we need this in return, and they gave you this, which is this well, you can ask for several thousand information, email, phone number, et cetera. Or strategy to a newsletter. You know, create a newsletter with interesting content to promote, to promote it and put it in your insert card. You're giving value. For example, we have a client that he sells bonsais. I didn't know this, but bonsais are very much. It's like a culture, like there's like a thing for bonsais and people are really into it. So they read newsletters, they read articles, they see videos, they watch videos. Part of this newsletter is giving value to them, so that's how they're building their list, also through social media. Rafael: This is, for me, the best strategy up to date, which is an app. Why? it's also going to depend on the type of product you have. But why the app? Because the app you're always going to have them there. There's nothing more intimate right now, technology-wise, than the phone for a human. It literally holds our work, our life, our secrets, our laughs. Like, if you leave your house without your phone, most likely you're gonna return back home just to get your phone, because it's literally a third arm that we don't have. So by having that, you have so much access to that particular buyer. For example, this is QR an app that it's going to help you, you know, work out and it's going to give you a workout. It's a workout app, right? This is the one I'm using for to get ready to for BDSS in Hawaii soon Kev. I'm just kidding, I don't have a six pack, so this app is going to help you that and there that you can promote also other types of products. For example, I have another app which is a scale. I bought a scale and that scale helps you track your weight through the app. And through the app, sometimes I get push notifications which is hey, we just launched this product, would you like to look into it? Or hey, we saw that you're hitting your fitness goals. We have this new product that can help you reach those fitness goals, et cetera. So there, you're going to give a lot more value. And what are they doing? They're just cross promoting, they're cross selling. So that's, I mean, I think that's brilliant. Rafael: Remember, one step at a time. It's depending on your level of being a seller. If you're in stage one and you just launched your product, focus on reviews. If you want to do everything at the same time, great. But if not, if you want to take it step by step, focus on reviews, then focus on repurchase marketing and then build in a list all right, but this is a must at the end. If you want to build a brand, building a list is a must. Another thing if your package is, you don't want to create it in any way possible, like you know, maybe you don't want to destroy or interrupt this opening process you can add it to a label like the top, because you all know that it can only be a sticker, for example, every bottle or not every bottle. Most of the bottles have a seal on top right, so if they have a seal, why not put it there? They either way have to open it up, so why not put your discount or give them that value there? For example, these are supplements. Hey, next bottle you get 50% off. If I like them, I'm going to use that 50% off coupon 100%. Rafael: So another thing that you could be doing, which I love this one is A-B testing. Marketing, just like life, it's not one plus one equals two. Marketing is just trial and error. Trial and error. Obviously, you're spending a bunch of money. You're investing a bunch of money into your future, so you want to mitigate that fail as much as possible. For example, when we were doing Kevin's videos for the Germ Shark, we ran like 100 pick food tests. We were actually the company that ran the most pick food tests. Why? Because we want to mitigate the most amount of errors as possible. We didn't come out of the studio we're like, oh, let's just create this, it's going to be a winner. No, we tried it out a lot of times. So what you could do is, in your packages you can have two QR codes and see which one converts the most, depending on your product. Again, and you know, get creative and that's it. Um for overachievers, make sure that you're evaluating your KPIs. So repeat purchasing metrics. Are they buying this again? Is this working? Is it not working? Brand loyalty metrics. Are they going back? Are they not buying back off Amazon influence, Amazon attribution, advertising and sales. Percentage of off Amazon sales. For example, Kevin gets a lot of off Amazon sales because he has that list right and that is it. Kevin King: That was good, good stuff, Rafael. I want to just do something real quick before we get into answering specific questions. Come and listen to what I'm about to say. You, absolutely positively, can send people out of the Amazon ecosystem. Okay, you do. You can put your social media links. You can put a link to your website. You can do that. Quit following for the misinformation that's all over Facebook that people are talking out their ass, that don't know what they're talking about are doing. Quit it. Quit spreading this stuff. I see this in the chat and it pisses me off because you're wrong. This is one of the reasons I created Freedom Ticket back in 2017, when Manny Coats came to me and said hey, do you want to create Freedom Ticket? One of the reasons I did is there's so much misinformation out there. Quit falling for it. You can absolutely do it. There's certain things you cannot do. Raphael showed you that Bradley just posted in there like you, don't want some people to go buy this on Target instead or Amazon's competition, but if you're going to create an app, that's a brilliant thing. You can create apps with no code software now, with AI, you don't even have to be a programmer. You can go and create a very basic app and say it's a great lead magnet, download this app. You know, he said he showed the example of the one that's for monitoring your weight. Um, which is probably a little bit more elaborate, but you can create a very simple little app. People are more likely to download a cool app that goes with their product than they are. Um, you know, if I'm doing dog treats, I could do a dog training app. You know it's got a few videos embedded in it and it's a great lead magnet. Kevin King: You can send people off. What you cannot do is anything around reviews or influencing reviews or something like that. But you can send people off, you can capture information. Just don't do anything that would hint at influencing reviews. That means putting five stars. That means saying leave us reviews and then putting five stars under it to say, kind of imply that you want five stars To say if you have a problem, contact us. Otherwise, go leave a review on Amazon. Don't do anything, don't offer discounts. If you leave us a review or if you do that, I'll give you a coupon. Don't do anything like that to incentivize reviews on Amazon. That you cannot do, and don't even do it on your own website, just so that there's no gray area there. But you can send people off and they can buy things on your website too. Okay, so I want to get that straight. Okay, so quit falling for the misinformation, quit. Bradley Sutton: All right, tell us how you really feel, Kevin. But let me start pulling up some questions. First of all, we answered Oleg. Oleg says Kevin answered my question before I even asked. That's perfect, all right. So let's just-. Kevin King: No, I think Kane says you can't. Yeah, they don't want you sending to other marketplaces, like that's what Kane just said here. You can go to your own website and they don't want you sending people over to Target or to eBay or over to a competing website. I would steer clear of that kind of stuff. Saying our product is available and you put the Amazon logo, the Target logo, the Walmart logo, that is a no-no. But taking them to your own website to do after-sale warranty, to get an app, to get some sort of other accessory for your product that's, an add-on to the product, or to grab a coupon for their next order on Amazon, all that is fine. Kevin King: Hope says that coupon codes last for 30 days on Amazon. Then you have to create a new one. So you can't. What you do is you put a, you create a QR code you can use Bitly or whatever your favorite QR code tool is and create one that goes to a specific landing page and then you update that page every 30 days. You create a new coupon and you just update the page. You update that page so that QR code stays the same. So even if your product doesn't sell for a year, you're updating the page, not the QR code to a specific place. That's an easy workaround. Rafael: Yep, and also not even coupon codes. Maybe you want to offer something new now, that QR code that Kevin's saying that you can update. You can do whatever you want with it. It's your QR code, basically. Bradley Sutton: I have one here. I know what I saw here that would have got this flag, but I just want I'm curious about what Kevin saw. Maybe you saw this one. But Maria says hey, I know somebody who had an insert that said let us know how we did Leave us a review on Amazon. We value your opinion. With a QR code below which said for a free book on the dangers of what their product was working to protect. Scan the QR code and Amazon close the listing, force the seller to remove these inserts. The seller did not ask for positive reviews. Is it not okay to ask for reviews at all? I know what I saw here, that that might have triggered it. What about you, Kevin? Kevin King: That's an incentive. You're basically I mean it doesn't directly word for word say it, but that can be read as an incentive that if you leave us a review, we're going to give you this free book. You can't do that. That's a no-no and that right there is an example of you've got to keep your nose super clean on anything around the words reviews and you're tying them together. They didn't say hey, go leave us a review and we'll give you a free book, but they tied them together in that same paragraph and you can read into that. That's kind of what they're implying. Don't do that. That will get you in trouble. As far as number of QR codes, I would never do more than two and put them on opposite sides of the page or opposite one at the top, one at the bottom, or opposite sides on the bottom so they don't get crossed. But I would never do more than two. One is best. You always want people to take one directed action. One action is always better than multiple and confusing them. But if you have a valid reason, you could put two, and I think that would. That would be okay. Bradley Sutton: All right. Mahak said how do I generate QR codes to direct customers? So there's, you know, any QR code generator can do it Helium 10 Portals. If you have access to Helium 10, you've got access to Helium 10 Portals you can create the QR code there. You know, Rafael showed some examples of QR codes in his presentation, but pretty much any QR code. Rafael: And also Mahak, it's not just creating the QR code. Make sure it's something like Kevin said, like it's in their face, like they want to see it, they want to scan it and it's not just like scan this, because most likely they're not going to scan it. You want to get, I would say, 5%, 10% of those QR codes scanned at least. If you're getting less than that, you should re-evaluate how you're presenting that insert packaging. Kevin King: Hope what you just asked is a no-no. Can I ask for an honest review in an email follow-up after they enter the review on a landing page? No, don't do that. Basically, Amazon will see as like you're filtering reviews. So you're saying, go leave us an honest review on our own landing page. They're typing it and, even though you made the confirmation page, may automatically say, uh, please, uh, you know, be kind and post this to Amazon or somewhere whatever. Amazon could see that as that you're filtering. Like if they left you something negative, then you're not asking them to do it, and if there's something positive, you are asking them to do it. So don't, don't do that. You can ask, you can say on your we love reviews, please leave us an honest review. That general wording by itself, with nothing else around it. Any other stuff about a free book or something is like way down the page or somewhere else or not even on there. That should be okay. You got one um. Bradley Sutton: Marcy says how many QR codes per insert do you think is acceptable? I've got one for my YouTube and one for my Facebook group. I want to add one for man. She wants QR codes all over the place. I want to add one for a 10% off, a coupon with an attribution tag so I can get the brown referral bonus. What do you guys think? Kevin King: Uh yeah, I just answered that. I said don't do more than two, don't do more. Rafael: Okay, I would present it. Marcy, maybe I would present the 10% in a different way. Maybe not a QR code, maybe it's just like literally just a code. But again, that does expire, like Kevin said. But I'm with Kevin 100%, I wouldn't do more than two. Like you saw in the light bulb example that I gave you, there was one at the top, one on the bottom. It wasn't next to each other, because it can get tricky like that. You want to separate. Even the color was separated in the package. It was like a different color in the background. So you want that separation as well. Kevin King: Tadara is asking can we add samples of other products and inserts or offer to send free samples? Yeah, you can add samples as an insert, especially with little accessories. Here's a free. If you're selling something sewing, here's a free button kit. Or here's a free bead kit or something. You know we have 16,000 other colors available on Amazon. Here's a free sample as a gift. You know there's little gifts like that work. I mean there's a video. Rafael will understand this there. Back in the day before that everything was digital, I had to order to do all of our video production. We had ordered beta tapes and we had ordered these big beta tapes, uh, and HD tapes, uh, these, you know, they're big like squares that you put in the big cameras and we'd order them out of this company in Philadelphia and every time they would send me these, these packages, uh, with my shipment of 10 tapes you know these tapes were like a hundred dollars a piece or something I would get two little packages of M&Ms, like you see at Halloween, the little, tiny, little sample size packages of M&Ms, and during the summer they didn't put those in there because, but instead they put a note sorry, due to the heat, these might melt, you know, and so they wouldn't put them in and it would always tick me off that I didn't get those two little packages of M&Ms. These are, you know, 20 cents. But the fact that I would get those in there was a thing so surprising people with a gift can be great. Kevin King: Another thing that I've done with a power to insert on my dog products is I've offered us I've had where I sell antlers, I sell bully sticks, I sell duck treats, I sell a variety of other dog treats, and what I'll do is I'll make a sample pack and I'll say get a free sample pack of all of our seven dog treats on Amazon that we sell on Amazon. I'll put a picture of the Amazon listing photo and actually you know and put it, put it on there and say we'll send you a sample pack with this along with a coupon. Just pay $7.95 shipping and handling. It costs me like $4 to send it out. $3 basically covers the cost. I send them a sample pack through the mail. That way. They have to give me their address, they have to give me their phone number because I'll say this is for how we deliver delivery, updates and shipping tracking numbers is by phone, so give me a valid phone number and then we send that sample pack out and in. There is a sample pack, and then there's a coupon that says get this on Amazon. I mean 20% off your first order, your first bag, use this coupon, it works really well. And then I capture their name and email address and I'm driving stuff back to Amazon. I'm creating this whole circle and it works really, really well. Rafael: Amelia has a good question. Bradley Sutton: So Amelia said here can you improve our current package design? If yes, would the insert card and the package design be connected to our current branding design and what would the creative process be behind this? Rafael: okay, um, I don't want to do any sales right now, but yeah, we can help you. But just in case, um, the insert, I would say that you do need to, um, to keep it harmoniously, um, I would say like it should be aligned to your branding. That's why it's a branding. It should be aligned to your branding. And if you can actually put it within the packaging, maybe you wanna save money in the insert cards and you wanna put it on top of the lid of the box or something like that. You could do that depending on your budget. So many questions that I have to be able to answer that correctly. But, yes, and the process you do it is what I was talking about. You should have understanding the product, the niche, the buyer persona, their needs, their troubles, their fears, everything that you can gather from them and give them to that, okay. So maybe if it's a fitness product, I'm trying to get fit for BDSS. Okay. So for me, it was getting something to help me maintain my weight scale, understanding where I should eat, what time I should eat. So when I was looking through products to help me with that, the insert cards or the products like the hero images gave me that it was like, oh, this scale has an app. It was through the hero image. I was like, okay, let me check this out, and that's how I got hooked on that scale. So yeah, I hope that answers your question, amelia. Bradley Sutton: All right, we got a question from Joseph, who's got a scenario here. He says all right, I've got this QR code. Says something to the effect of learn more about the benefits of our product here. Takes them to an about page on our brand website, which website is also a Shopify D2C website that has a shop page. Is that permissible? Kevin King: That's a gray one right there. Um, I would that. That's a gray one that one could be seen as either way. Um, I would probably, if I would probably, cordon off that Shopify page. Uh, I think Shopify allows you to do this. I think Esther Frystone has a landing page that goes on top of Shopify that allows you to corner off the rest of your Shopify site, like to focus it on a single product. Um, I mean, if they get creative and they hit a bunch of buttons and they might go back to your homepage, but I would avoid any confusion there. That's a gray one. Rafael: A question really quick from Henry. He says that all products need to have warranties. I'm not saying that your product shouldn't have a warranty, definitely if you want to include warranties. 100%. But what I'm saying is that what's going to take action to scan that QR code? Is it going to be the call to action for a warranty or is it going to be a call to action to like hey, for your next product, if it's a vitamin, for example, that you know they're going to repeat the consumption, here's 10, 15% off. I'm not saying don't include it, of course, 100%. If you want to include it, I include it. But when you say the call to action, what's going to be that action that's going to make them scan it? Is it going to be the warranty or is it going to be, depending on the product? That's what I'm trying to say there, just in case. I don't want to make any confusions there. Bradley Sutton: I was just saying Lance is wondering how to get in contact with Rafael. You can be connected directly to them at hubhelium10.com and just type in ShareIt Studio. They're all over social media as well. Rafael's on LinkedIn. If you're in Helium 10, the easiest way is just go to hubhelium10.com and enter ShareIt Studio and you'll be able to even see. Maybe if you're a certain member of Helium 10, you might get certain discounts with them as well if you're logged in on that page. Rafael: If you're seeing this, this is my insert card. If you're seeing this, if you say Bradley and Kev are the best, we'll give you a really good discount. Bradley Sutton: There we go. I like that. Kevin, you had a question you said you wanted to answer, or was it someone else? Kevin King: I just saw one. Someone said they're doing a. Where did it go? They offer a 100-pound Amazon voucher prize draw each month. It's an image or video tagged on Instagram or TikTok. Each image uploaded gets one entry in the drawing. Opinions, please. Yeah, I don't see any problem with that. That should be totally fine and that's good marketing. Yeah, so you should be totally fine with that. Rafael: Angela Reategui. I hope I'm not butchering your last name, Angela. She asked can I include a QR code for free e-book? Uh, yes, we've done it with clients, especially in the home and kitchen, like food sector. It's worked really well with them. Uh, so yeah. Kevin King: Kane's like says can we offer discounts only on Amazon? Can we offer coupons for our own website? Um it, you can offer a coupon for your own website but, like for accessories or something, I wouldn't do it for the same product. I wouldn't say, come and buy, you know this exact same product. Or you don't want to do stuff where you're putting people into their, into your flow. You know, if it's a subscribe and save type of product, Amazon's probably not going to like it too much that if you're trying to get them to come to your subscribe and save on your Shopify site versus you're on Amazon, that that's a gray area, and so I would. I would just stay away from something like that. But offering them a discount hey, you know you just bought this blender. We have an accessory kit. As an Amazon customer, you get 20% off. It's not sold on Amazon, it's only available directly from us. Then yeah, that should be fine. Bradley Sutton: All right. Well, guys, thank you for all the great questions. We're going to be back here next month with another guest, Rafael, Kevin. Thank you so much for joining. Don't forget to reach out to Share It Studio, hub.helium10.com. All right, guys, hope you enjoyed that training. Don't forget again, the full, actual detail of the training, without the Q and A and all that other stuff, is in the Freedom Ticket course. So go to your learning hub inside of Helium 10. And if you have no idea what Freedom Ticket is, want to get more information, just go to h10.me/ft for freedom ticket. And let us know if you're watching this on YouTube or somewhere else. What other advanced topics would you like us to do? A deep dive, Q & A and bring an expert on with Kevin? Let us know in the comments below if you're watching this on YouTube or another place. Until then, we'll see you guys in the next episode.

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means to be a man. Kevin Powell - Re-defining Manhood: A Message to Men, to Boys, to Us All | Bioneers 2018 Keynote To find out more about Kevin Powell and his work, please visit his website. This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to learn more.

In the Final hour of the Joe Rose show, We have Miami Beat Reporter from the Miami Herald Anthony Chiang as we talk about the NBA Playoffs from Minnesota Upsetting the Defending Champs. We talk more about Tua contract extension and we end the show with Dolphins talk on what Omar Kelly thinks 

Wolf and Luke ask why the media is acting like Kevin Durant is in a bad situation and talk to Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Mike Fitzgerald. 

"When trading, are you more interested in being right, or are you more interested in making money? And I ultimately just look at it like ‘I just want to make money, and…make the best returns I can', and so therefore I need to stay open to different ideas.” - Kevin Muir--This week's episode features another one of Chase's greatest mentors, Kevin Muir. Kevin is a prototype of the kind of investor we're trying to highlight on this podcast. He's a markets scientist who isn't afraid to explore new ideas and find himself wrong after that process. His open-mindedness has led him to some great theories that we dig deeper into for this episode. --Timestamps:-- (00:01) - Intro-- (03:19)- Kevin's Charity: Covenant House-- (04:39) -Why Kevin loves the markets-- (05:39)- James Aiken's philosophy on overload-- (10:56)- How Kevin discovered MMT wasn't the stupidest thing he ever heard-- (15:10)- Tim Urban and the “high rung” approach to ideas--(17:41)- How do you intentionally stay open to new ideas?--(23:55)- Systematic Investing Flows--(30:01)- Tried and True Indicators can't always help (Yield Curve Inversion)--(39:25)- Must Read Books for Traders --(45:27)- Between Two Pines--(53:25)- Simple morning rituals set you up for a full day of markets, and you should adjust your reading to the macro environment--(56:18)- Different life priorities led Kevin from working at a bank to operating the Macro Tourist --(1:01:43)- “New techs” cause mini-rolling bubbles and never underestimate the stupidity of regional bank CEOs--(1:07:14)- Plugs--This Episode's Charity:The Covenant House of Toronto aims to serve youth who are homeless, trafficked, or at risk. They're located in the heart of Toronto and offer youth ages 16-24 essential services such as medical care, food, and shelter. Kevin and Chase raised $100 for charity this week! --Referenced in the Show:What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies by Tim UrbanIs Inflation Ending: Are You Ready? by A. Gary Shilling and Kiril Sokoloff The Logical Trader: Applying a Method to the Madness by Mark FisherThe Alchemy of Finance by George SorosKevin's Interviews of Jim Leitner on The Market Huddle: Check out this episode's blog post--Guest Plugs:Kevin's The Macro Tourist SubstackKevin's X: https://twitter.com/kevinmuirKevin's email: kevin@themacrotourist.com--Pinecone Macro Research aims to provide unique, well researched analysis of the global markets using a macro framework. Find us here: www.pineconemacro.com Follow us and the show on Twitter: @PineconeMacro &

Wishing all our listeners a very happy St. Patricks Day.  This episode is a little different.  Firstly John caught up with the Team in Bee Media, Kevin and Abby.  They talked about social media and content creation.Then James covered whats in the news.The article came from Agriland this week;https://www.agriland.ie/farming-news/over-360000-passports-issued-from-genotyping-programme/An update on The National Genotyping Programme by the ICBF.https://www.icbf.com/national-genotyping-programme/The Sod Pod; https://ie.timacagro.com/podcast-the-sod-pod/

Adam Crowley and Dorin Dickerson fielded a caller that had a voice that resembled that of this former Steelers' GM. What do you think?

Dr. Wing Lim hosts Physician Empowerment Masterclass Faculty Member and Certified Financial Planner Nick Giovannetti on the show today. Wing and Nick talk about Individual Pension Plans, or IPPs, breaking down how they work, who qualifies, and what sorts of benefits they provide for physicians. Nick has a wealth of knowledge about CPPs, RRSPs, and IPPs that he shares in this episode.Nick Giovannetti explains that IPPs are not a new financial tool, they've been around for over thirty years in Canada. But RRSPs have been around longer and are less complicated than IPPs to administer. There are more complex forms and filings to fill out for the CRA where IPPs are concerned and Nick says the lack of awareness about IPPs and the fear associated with the complexity prevents some accountants and planners from informing their clients about the IPP benefits. So Wing and Nick dive into exactly what an IPP is and how you can best benefit from it. They cover everything from contribution limits and family member beneficiaries to buyback and defined contribution versus defined benefit pension plans. This episode gives an overview of why Individual Pension Plans are worth exploring.–About Nick Giovannetti:Nick is a Certified Financial Planner® with a fully Integrated Wealth Planning Team. His approach to financial planning centers around a deep understanding of clients' goals and objectives, fostering long-term relationships built on trust and transparency.Nick is one of Physician Empowerment's professional Masterclass Faculty members.__Resources mentioned in this episode: “Kentucky Fried Pensions” by Christopher B Tobe and Kenneth C Tobe--Physician Empowerment: Physician Empowerment MasterclassLive Conference 2024--TranscriptDr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:01] Hi, I'm Doctor Kevin Mailo, one of the co-hosts of the Physician Empowerment podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're dedicated to improving the lives of Canadian physicians personally, professionally, and financially. If you're loving what you're listening to, let us know! We always want to hear your feedback. Connect with us. If you want to go further, we've got outstanding programing both in person and online so look us up. But regardless, we hope you really enjoy this episode. Dr. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:35] Hi everyone, so glad to have you out tonight for another webinar featuring the topic of IPPs, Individualized Pension Plans, which were in fact established by the federal government back in the 90s. They were not very well known until last 5 or 10 years when they've started to take off. But there are a lot of ins and outs to using these properly, and they have certain advantages over RRSPs that incorporated professionals really need to be taking a close look at. So to go on this deep dive, well, I shouldn't say it's that deep a dive, the deep dive is going to come with the masterclass. So if anybody's interested in that, do reach out to me and we'd be happy to talk further about having you join the masterclass, because this topic is dense. So Wing is going to take us through it tonight, and he's going to do it with one of our masterclass faculty, Nick Giovannetti. And Nick is an Integrated Wealth Planning Specialist, holds a lot of designations, and he and our other masterclass faculty member, Simon Wong, have done a ton of outstanding teaching on topics like this. Because you want to know what it is you're you're using when it comes to wealth creation and advanced tax planning. That's where these topics are so, so powerful to cover, like we're going to do. So again, if you have questions, you're interested, reach out to us. But let me take it from there, Wing, and hand it off to you. If you want to go ahead and introduce Nick to everybody. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:02:08] Sure. So good to see everybody and hear everybody's voices later. And yeah, this is very exciting episode in December this year. And we thought we'll wrap up the year by something that is really important. And that's about the RRSP, IPP, and the pension world. And like we said in the intro on social media, we're going to unpack this mystery box. So our guest today for our fireside chat is Nick. And Nick has a lot of designations. And he's actually also a multi-talented Renaissance man, I guess, he was previously an international recording artist. You might want to explore that on the different dimension of him. And we just talked about one of his designation is about cash flow personalities. Right? And we'll probably do an episode on that, definitely will be a lot of fun. But today we're going to talk about this project, sorry, this platform. There's RRSP that everybody probably heard about and some people do RRSP, some people don't believe in RRSP. Right. But then there's IPP pension world. So Nick, maybe you should walk us through, when we talk about this, you said you got to bring in CPP too, so may as well bring in CPP, RRSP, IPP. So walk us through a little bit of a history lesson and how it's pertaining to incorporated professionals. Nick Giovannetti: [00:03:33] For sure, yeah, thanks for having me, everyone. Like Kevin had mentioned, you know, the Individual Pension Plan, it's not a new financial tool. It's actually been around for over 30 years here in Canada. And as we know, the RRSP or the Registered Retirement Savings Plan has has been around even longer than that. It's been around since the 50s, and it was actually something introduced by the Canadian Medical Association because physicians even back then, yeah, physicians even back then were saying-- Dr. Wing Lim: [00:04:02] -- one for us-- Nick Giovannetti: [00:04:04] -- hey, we need a retirement vehicle. We need something tax sheltered. They'd done a lot of research back then, and to them it made sense to say, hey, where can I put money now, get some tax relief today, invest and grow that pot of money in a tax sheltered environment? And then I can strategically, you know, pull it out in the future and give myself predictable and secure income, something that I can count on in the future. So that's really what happened in the early 90s, was that small/medium business owners, they wanted pension plans. You know, a lot of people look at especially medical professionals around the hospital, how many of your coworkers and colleagues in the hospital have pension plans? And that's something that I think a lot of physicians look at and say, what if I could have that? What if I could even just contact the Healthcare of Ontario or OMERS or Teachers Pension and say, hey, can I just contribute to this? Can I become a plan member? And then I can also have a defined benefit pension in the future. Nick Giovannetti: [00:05:07] So physicians are not alone. Business owners have been wanting that, self-employed people have been wanting that. So in the early 90s, the first ever one of one, so one person to one company pension plan was allowed by the Income Tax Act. And it's called an Individual Pension Plan. So you could be one business owner, have one pension plan, and you're the only plan member, but you can take advantage of all of the rules that all the other pension plans in Canada follow. So everything that everyone is very fond of, federal government workers, teachers, firefighters, police, you can benefit from those same retirement savings rules. So from contribution limits to tax deductions to predictable guaranteed income in the future, you can create your own. And it's been around a long time. So if you're a physician that is incorporated, you should really look at this as part of your overall planning. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:06:05] So how does it compare to RRSP that everybody knows? Nick Giovannetti: [00:06:09] So there's a few key takeaways or few key differences and one would be that the RRSP happens on a personal level, and the Individual Pension Plan happens on a corporate level. So what I mean by that is if you want to participate in an RRSP, you're going to have to pull money out of your corporation, pay some tax, and then you're going to have to then contribute to an RRSP with your after tax personal income, and then hopefully get a tax refund on the personal side. Now the RRSP is also limited to a certain amount of contribution room, so I'll touch on that in a second. The Individual Pension Plan side, it works a little bit differently. So you can actually earn money to your corporation and if you have a pension plan, the corporation can right away save that money into a pension before any tax has ever happened on those dollars. Okay, so that's one of the big key advantages. So then the second one I touched on was contribution room. So Registered Retirement Savings Plans are capped to 18% of your salary that you pay yourself or bonus, so it's got to be salary or bonus, on the personal level, defined benefit pension plans can get as high as 30% of salary, which is a big difference. We get into, you know, a difference of 30 grand a year to 50 grand a year when it comes to maximum savings room. And on the pension side, because the government really treats pension plans favorably, you have a lot of additional ways you can put money in a pension plan. So I'll touch on a few of those. Nick Giovannetti: [00:07:46] First one is, the government cares about what the rate of return in an Individual Pension Plan is, and what they want to see is a minimum 7.5% rate of return and a maximum ceiling of it's about 9.375. They want to see pension plans grow in that window, averaging every three years. And if your pension is not growing at that rate, you're actually allowed to put in more money. When we look at the RRSP, nobody cares if your RRSP grows at 7.5%. You care, but the Government of Canada is not going to let you put more money in if your investments are not performing well enough. So you got a fail safe there. And you can also do strategies like dry powder hedging, where you purposely underperform your investments so that you can put in more money. So there's some unique strategies there. I would say another one is, defined benefit pension plans your income is based on a formula. So you know, very predictably, what are you going to have as an income stream in retirement, whereas your RRSP, it's totally up to you how you want to pull the money out. Some people pull out a lot quickly, some people don't pull out enough, some people just do the minimum that the government wants to see you pull out. So there's a lot of room for error on the RRSP side, where the Individual Pension Plan can be more predictable and easier to plan around because it's been created for you by a formula. Now there's a few different, Wing, that we could dive into. But I'll punt it back to you and we'll see where we go. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:09:28] So I guess it's a good time to talk about these formulas. Who writes these formulas? Who dictates these formulas? Nick Giovannetti: [00:09:36] It's a great question. So it's a legal framework that goes back to when the first Income Tax Act was created. Your pension plan could be structured in a way so that you're going to have, you know, a flat benefit. So it might be I paid myself this much salary, I worked for my company this many years, I'm this certain age, so I get a flat benefit based on a formula of a couple factors like that. There's also another factor which could be career average earnings. So it doesn't matter if you paid yourself lower salary in the beginning and then you upped it later on, you know your pension could be calculated on an average. You could also do it so that it's a final or best average earnings. Or a percentage of contributions. So these formulas, when you set up and register your Individual Pension Plan, the CRA actually has a registration form. And on the form you're going to check off these boxes of how do you want that formula to be identified. And it's in the Income Tax Act as to how that calculation will be made. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:10:41] Right. So this is way more complicated than RRSP. Right? So maybe we could just maybe help, maybe I will use a layman's way to bring everybody on the same page. So basically if you work for a big firm you have a nice pension plan. Right? And the employer and the employee are different people. But now with this IPP platform, they allow professionals or business owners to actually be the same person, that the employer/employee is the same entity, well same person, right, different entities. But to ensure that the benefactor of the pension plan gets so much dollar sometimes guaranteed and so that's why they have these elaborate formula. Right? But then who is funding it, well in our case it's the PC. So if you come to our masterclass, the whole series is called Fat PC Skinny, right? So you want to have a fat PC but you want a skinny me, but not a starving me, right? So you definitely want the money to come out, especially in the golden years, right? That you've done your hard work. And so you want the pension to come. And now is a way to efficiently fund this piggy bank called IPP. Right? And so that's why there's a lot more calculation than RRSP. So let's look at, yeah there's some difference. What about some similarity? At age, what, 71 both plans have to kind of be put an end to it. Can you elaborate on that, Nick? Nick Giovannetti: [00:12:11] For sure, yeah. So the similarity there is that the government of Canada, so the Income Tax Act wants you to have to start pulling money out of either an RRSP or your pension plan by age 71. You can, in an RRSP, decide to pull it out earlier, and you can do so with a pension plan as well. Some pensioners I've seen start an IPP and actually turn on their pension income as early as their mid 40s. So you have a lot of flexibility there as to when you want to start drawing the money out of these accounts. But traditional retirement age in Canada is 65, and you can delay that to 71 if you want to push it off as far as possible. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:12:55] So with IPP, you still have to do the like the RIFF and all that, right? Like there's to pull the money out there's no difference whether you have RRSP, IPP. Is there a difference the way that you pull the money out past 71? Nick Giovannetti: [00:13:07] Yeah, that's a great question. So with an RRSP it gets converted to, you mentioned it, it's called a RIFF. It turns into a Registered Retirement Income Fund. And the government will have a calculation as to how much you have to pull out each year as you age. And you're going to be doing that through wherever it is, your money managers, your trading, what have you. You have to pull out that minimum, but you could ultimately pull out whatever you want. With an Individual Pension Plan, you actually have three different options to how you want to pull the money out. So the first option is whoever's managing your Individual Pension Plan, you're going to just instruct them and sign the form that I'm retiring from my corporation and they will ask you, how do you want to pull out the money? Do you want monthly installments based on your defined benefit formula, or do you want a one year, once a year, lump sum, boom here's my payment? So that's the first way you could. So the money manager continues managing your money. Same with a RIFF and you're just getting your distributions. Okay? The second way, if you don't want any market risk, you can actually take your defined benefit pension that you save for yourself and you could go to a life insurance company and you could actually buy something called a copycat annuity. Nick Giovannetti: [00:14:24] So these are available even now for teachers, firefighters, police officers, doesn't matter. If you have a defined benefit pension, you can go to an insurance company and buy something called a copycat annuity. Now the word copycat means whatever your income you are guaranteed to have, so the distribution let's just say it was 200 grand a year of pension income, the annuity will guarantee you that paycheck every year for a certain chunk of whatever your investments were in that defined benefit plan. And then depending on interest rates and annuity rates, you might actually have a little extra so you'll get paid a bit of cash and you'll have this guaranteed income the rest of your life. Now, the third way is you could shut your Individual Pension Plan down entirely and go right back to RRSPs. So we call that a wind up. So you could shut it all down back to RRSPs or into a RIFF, and you're going to have a certain amount of your pension that's allowed to transfer. So it's a tax free transfer back to the old way. But generally speaking, you will have a chunk of money that is extra that can't transfer back to an RRSP. So you'd have to take that as an income the year you decided to do a wind up. But you actually have three different ways that you could collect. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:15:47] Right. Okay. So you got more choices, more diversity, right? More versatility. That's great. Let's talk about defined benefit versus defined contribution: DB versus DC. Because as physicians we haven't heard a lot about it, we just know that most people nowadays have a defined contribution plan meaning that the company would match you. Right.? Some of you may, listeners, may be working for a big hospital. You might be in a pension plan already. So defined contribution meaning that they define how much you contribute. They did not define how much you get, which is the benefit. And way back, there's every plan is a DB plan and now who's left with these juicy DB plans indexed with inflation? Well, our Premier, our Prime Minister, a lot of politicians do, but most corporate owners they only define a contribution not define benefit. So let's talk about DB and DC in the IPP world. Nick Giovannetti: [00:16:46] For sure, yeah. So a defined contribution pension, I think you already touched on it, Wing, the only thing defined is the amount you can contribute. And it's actually the same contribution amount to that of an RRSP which is 18% of your salary up to the maximum allowable each year. So you can put in 18% of your salary. And then when you retire, it generally just turns into a RIFF. So same as RRSPs, right? So you're going to have the choice of taking out the minimum that RIFF allows or as much as you want, but whatever you pull out of that is going to be taxable income when you pull it out. So there's nothing really more predictable about a defined contribution pension than that of an RRSP. It's just that defined contribution pensions you can contribute through your corporation, whereas an RRSP you contribute personally. Now defined benefit pension, what's defined is your benefit, the predictable guaranteed income that you're going to receive for the rest of your life. And Wing touched on it, it could be indexed to inflation, meaning that if the cost of living goes up 3%, then your pension distributions next year will go up 3%, right? That just happened with Canada Pension Plan. Everybody got a 6.5% bump to their income because inflation changed in Canada. It was a big bump to the cost of living. So everybody collecting those defined benefit Canada pension plan cheques got a nice bump. So defined benefits are formula based on what you're going to receive in the future. Defined contributions are really a corporate version of an RRSP. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:18:30] I guess some people have a fear that if they're stuck in a DB thing, that they, if they don't have a good year, they can't contribute. Right? But you say that it's just like the RRSP, right? And if there's a year, let's say you fallen sick or you had a bad year, you took a sabbatical, and you cannot contribute that much into the IPP, would it collapse? Nick Giovannetti: [00:18:52] That's a really great question. So it was, I believe it was the end of 2020 where if you're a connected person to your IPP, meaning I own 10% or more of the shares of the company that is sponsoring the IPP, so in most cases for a physician, it'll be your MPC sponsoring the company, you own all the shares, or hopefully you own at least more than 10%. You're what's called a connected person. You don't actually have to contribute to your IPP at all because you're a connected person to that pension. You own majority share of the company sponsoring it, or at least 10% of it. Your family members are also connected. So if you added a spouse or children, you don't have to contribute for them either. So a lot of the fear, Wing, of having to contribute to an IPP to top it up or boost it up, if you go on sabbatical you're behind, maybe you don't have the cash flow that year, a lot of those fears are now gone. If you were to have an IPP set up and you didn't own the company and somebody set that up for you, they would be liable to fund it the same way that if you worked for the hospital, teacher, firefighter, whatever, they have to top it up, right, General Motors, big union companies, they have to top up their pensions. So you have some flexibility as the owner. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:20:08] Right. And for the years that you didn't contribute full amount, then there is buyback or catch up. Right? There's this feature? Nick Giovannetti: [00:20:16] There is, yeah. So even if you've been incorporated let's say for 15 years and you've never had an IPP and you decide to open an IPP right now, they can do a calculation and they look at pension adjustments, your RRSP room, your your current RRSP balance, how much you paid yourself in the past and they can go back in time and say, okay, Doctor Lim, you have a catch up of 300,000 just for setting up a pension and never paying yourself salary again, but you just have, you still currently have 300 grand of room. And then you could pay yourself a salary that year, have a percentage of salary and carry forward. So you do have the ability to buy back, but it will be offset if you took care of some, if you were contributing to RRSPs. because they're going to do a pension adjustment to offset what did you put in RRSPs? What were your unused room? How well did the RRSP perform? And then that will work into the calculation of the buyback. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:21:17] So if you have had an RRSP and you're contemplating starting IPP, so what happens to the RRSP once you start the IPP? Nick Giovannetti: [00:21:25] So if you want to participate in the buyback, then they're going to use your RRSP balance as part of the calculation. And what will happen is, high level example, when you have 500 grand to buy back but based on the pension adjustment calculation, you have to take 250 grand from your RRSP, and it's called a qualifying transfer, it's tax free, you have to move 250 grand from your RRSP over to your pension, and then it would allow you 250 grand room to contribute. The rest of your RRSP, whatever's over and above that minimum transfer, you could leave it external, leave it as an RRSP, or you could bring it into your pension under a secondary account known as an additional voluntary contribution account. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:22:15] Right. So there's a lot of flexibility. And then there are certain age related benefits, right? With the room, contribution room versus RRSP. So when does the gap start to widen big enough to be meaningful? Nick Giovannetti: [00:22:30] Yeah. So, defined benefit pension plans, the formula of the matching of the salary is about 12.5% of your salary when you're 18 years old for a defined benefit plan. And RRSPs are 18%, and defined contribution plans are 18%. But by the time you're 38, the defined benefit matching curve has caught up to the 18% already. It's a little over 18% by the time you're 38. And then from the age of 38 all the way to 71, it gets as high as almost 30% of salary. So really, you'll see a lot of people heavily look at Individual Pension Plans if they're going to do the defined benefit schedule. A lot of people will heavily look at it when they reach 40. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:23:18] Right? So 40 is kind of the turning point. Nick Giovannetti: [00:23:21] The turning point for most, unless they have one of the combination registrations, so their pension has both types. You can have it where you have both types, a defined contribution and defined benefit. So if you registered it that way, a lot of those professionals will just start whenever they start, because you don't lose contribution room and you can just convert it over whenever it makes sense. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:23:43] Right. So you talk about a lot of these calculations that have to be done right. And if it is not, I heard that there's very stiff penalty from CRA. Right? And so who does all this, all these calculations? Nick Giovannetti: [00:23:59] Yeah. So when you have a pension plan it's really important to have a good team. So as part of that team you need actuaries. There's got to be an actuary or a team of actuaries that's calculating all the math behind these complex pension calculations. And there's a lot of them out there, lots of different companies doing that. So it's important that's kind of step one. You could go a step further and make sure on that team you have pension lawyers. And it's good to have pension lawyers because they can also help with a lot more of the compliance factor of your pension plan, because you will be registering it with CRA as Doctor Wing Lim pension plan, registered pension plan. So it's important to have a team that is familiar with pensions, they're able to help you manage the non-investment related factors, and then you'll have an investment team that takes care of the money. And hopefully you have an accountant and a planner that help you with the distribution and the planning side. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:24:56] So the beneficiary of these plans, so it could be me, the doctor, the spouse. What about kids? Nick Giovannetti: [00:25:02] Yeah. So you you can, you can absolutely name your children as beneficiaries, and you can even add children to an Individual Pension Plan if they work at all or have any level of employment with your corporation. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:25:17] So if they're employed, not a dividend, not T5, but they have to be T4 as well, right? Nick Giovannetti: [00:25:23] That's right, yeah. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:25:24] Right. Then they could be part of the IPP itself. But for the beneficiary let's say after you turn 71, right, you want to take money out. So kids probably well grown up by then, so they don't, do they have to be employed by to get the benefit, they don't have to be, right? Nick Giovannetti: [00:25:40] So if they, if you wanted to make them a beneficiary so if you passed away where would all these assets go, no, they don't have to work for your company to be a beneficiary. But if they wanted to be a plan member because you're looking for some different intergenerational wealth benefits, then at some point they would have to have an employee relationship with your company. I've seen the employment income as low as $3,500. I've seen some people hire their kids to do admin and social media work. Maybe they pay them 10, 15 grand for that. Whatever you do, they just have to be paid at least minimum wage for whatever job it is that they're doing. And they could be added with just one year of service. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:26:23] One year of service. And this applies not just to kids, but to the spouse as well. Right? Nick Giovannetti: [00:26:28] 100%. Yeah. So a lot of professionals and business owners will find work for their spouse to do, and then they can add their spouse to their pension plan, and the company can contribute to that spouse's pension plan. Right? Because most likely a pension plan contribution room will be quite a bit higher than that of an RRSP. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:26:49] Right. Yeah. And so this, we talked about TOSI in other episodes. Right? Test on, Tax On Split Income. So it's pretty harsh, but IPP is just one really smart, astute and legal way that you can do the income splitting, especially in the latter days, when you're drawing money out. Nick Giovannetti: [00:27:06] Exactly. Yeah. It's a very black and white way to get money into your spouse's hands by paying them legitimate T4 income, so salary or bonus, and saving for their retirement. And in the future you mentioned pension plans you can do income splitting on the income that comes out of it. So these are very CRA-approved registered pension plans that there's a lot of peace of mind knowing that that part of your strategy is ironclad. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:27:37] Right. And so who are not eligible for IPPs? Nick Giovannetti: [00:27:41] So those that wouldn't be eligible are those that are paying themselves out of their corporation dividends or capital gains. So if you're doing pipelining, capital gains stripping, and that's your only source of income out of the company, or non-eligible dividend, then those would not qualify for pension contributions. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:28:02] So if you have done T5 all along, right, and then you have never given yourself T4, then there is no room. Is that true? Nick Giovannetti: [00:28:10] So that means you won't have any buyback room. That's correct. Now you could change today. So you could say, because pensions are based on current year, RRSP contributions are based on previous year income, so you could decide in the year I'm going to pay myself salary this year and open a pension that year and participate in the pension that year. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:28:31] What about if you're not incorporated? If you don't have a PC, you're sole proprietor. Can you do IPP? Nick Giovannetti: [00:28:37] No. So you do need to have a corporation. Now another corporation could do an IPP for you. So if you worked for another clinic and they were employing you, they could register one for you, but you would now be a non-connected person. So they would have to fund that pension plan. And a lot of employers wouldn't do that because of the risk. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:28:58] Right. Yeah. I want to point this out because there are always exceptions to the rule. Right? And so that's what because some of our listeners, they, the first five years of practice, they haven't even incorporated yet, or they say the accountants told them there's really no reason if you spend it all, then you don't need a PC. And I have a colleague, 30 years after they started the practice, the accountant still says no need for PCs, and all these benefits, these powerful strategies, don't apply to them. Right? Or my personal story, my accountant way back said, no, don't believe in T4, only give yourself T5. So the first 20 years of my practice I only got T5, zero T4. So by the time I knew about IPP, my buyback is really small amount, right? And I wish I knew, right, I wish I knew earlier. And so that's why for people who are in the early or mid part of your career, this is something to plan. Nick Giovannetti: [00:29:52] Yeah. And I've heard all kinds of stories. And you bring up a good point because your accountant didn't only talk you out of being able to participate in your own IPP, but your accountant also doing what they did for you there, they talked you out of participating in Canada Pension Plan, because when you make the decision not to pay T4 income to open an IPP or an RRSP, you're also shutting yourself down from getting any Canada Pension Plan. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:30:20] Now this is really interesting because a lot of accounting accountants of my vintage, right, 30 years ago, but even newer ones I'm shocked to hear as they now you invest better than CPP. Do you want to make a comment on CPP? Nick Giovannetti: [00:30:36] Yeah, I mean, I've heard all kinds of very competent investors think that they can outperform Canada Pension Plan. Um, Canada Pension Plan is probably one of the best run pension plans in the entire world. And in order for you to compete with that, we could dive into that maybe in the masterclass or in another session, but if we wanted to calculate what you would have to earn, consistently guaranteed every year from now all the way till you pass away, to be able to recreate what Canada Pension Plan created for 6 to 7 grand a year worth of savings, it would be a very, very difficult thing for anybody to do, even an astute investor. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:31:19] Right. So CPP is a good thing. Right? And so when you offer RRSP and IPP, you also offer CPP right? Nick Giovannetti: [00:31:26] You do by default, you get two pensions. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:31:28] Yeah. Now, so then let's go back further about this accountant thing. And I'm not trying to belittle or badmouth any accountants. But a lot of accountants and advisors are so against IPP or so ignorant about IPP. Why is that? Nick Giovannetti: [00:31:46] That's such a great question. And from what I've come across, a lot of it is lack of awareness and fear. Or they're looking for something easy because it's easier for an accountant to pay a dividend. Right? There's a little more work involved if you pay T4 and you got to remit tax at source, they got to make sure they account for Canada Pension Plan, they got to do your pension adjustments, like there's reasons why it simplifies their life. And I've actually heard an accountant one time say to a physician, I was on this joint call, I don't mind paying you salary but I'm going to have to download all that work to you, Mr. and Mrs. Physician. It was the most unbelievable comment I'd ever heard. And sure enough, they asked me after the call, can you help introduce me to an accountant that would do this work for me? So it's not that big of a deal. A lot of it is very simplified. They do it for a lot of other business owners, because a lot of other business owners do have IPPs, so they have to do the salary. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:32:48] I'm just saying that this is a few years ago, 2020 before Covid, right? I read some stats that of all the eligible people in Canada for IPP, which is like millions, only 2% were implemented, right? The market penetration is like 2%. That's abhorring right? Nick Giovannetti: [00:33:08] Yeah. And again, a lot of that is it's lack of awareness and fear. So I've seen, I've seen what kind of benefit an accountant that is forward thinking and stays on the top of their game with pension plans, how well their clients have done and they stand out from the rest. And that's probably some of the 2%, because why would a business owner know to ask for an Individual Pension Plan if it didn't come from their accountant or their planner? And a lot of financial planners know very little to nothing about Individual Pension Plans. And where I say the fear comes from is because there is filings with CRA that need to be done. It's either done by your administration team or your planner or your accountant. And if they screw up, I've seen people wait years to get their pensions off the ground, and there's all this compliance problems and they're just not doing it properly. So again, if you're working with a team that's familiar, this stuff is like cakewalk, right? They do these things in their sleep and you get a lot of benefit. Why so many are afraid is because it is complex. It's more advanced planning. And just not everybody's prepared for that. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:34:17] So don't just find somebody that would just wing it, just by my name. This is not a place for somebody to wing it. This is complicated stuff. It has to be done properly. Nick Giovannetti: [00:34:28] Yeah. I've seen the big banks steer away from things that are complicated because they can't scale. So why do they push RRSPs even? It's because it's easy. You just sit with them, you meet for five minutes, you sign a form, boom. You got an RRSP, right? That's scalable. That's easy for them to administer. So even the big banks have participated in why only 2% of the eligible population are doing it because a lot of people deal with the bank. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:34:59] Exactly. Now. So this is awesome, Nick. Final question topic is messy one. Pension world. So if we can now do our own pension plan, what about different badging together like MEPs of the world? Even our medical associations are tapping into this thing. Can you just give us a quick overview of what that is about? It's a very mysterious world. Nick Giovannetti: [00:35:23] Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of different pension types out there. There's Individual Pension Plans, there's Multi-Employer Pension Plans, there's Joint Employer Sponsored Pension Plans, there's Specified Multi-Employer Pension Plans. So pension plans are a complex world. They're actually an entirely different section of the Income Tax Act than that of the RRSP. It's got its own section because there's so much complexity of how you can put these together. And I'm sure you'll see if you dig into this world, there's so many different ones out there. And the biggest thing that I find is that a lot of pension plans have been rolled out, and they may claim to be something that sounds great and polished, but until you know the underlying way it was registered and all those little details of how much do I contribute, does my company sponsor it or do you sponsor it? Who has control? What if I don't like how you're managing it? Can I take it and go somewhere else? Can I add my kids to this plan? So there's so many things there. What about indexing, right? What happens if there's a market correction? So there's so many things out there that you do need to make sure you're aware of. And one thing I find that most business owners and professionals want is flexibility and control. And the IPP generally checks off both those boxes. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:36:52] Right. Because there are talks, right, because we're busy professionals just nose down, bum up, working to our bones. And so we don't have time to think about, oh, if some big brothers sisters come and create this plan, even our own association or a fragment of our administration, right, we thought then they must do a better job just because there's bigger group of people, more asset under management that the sexy term AUM. But like you say it may not be managed well. Right? So I listen to podcasts and there is a book called The Kentucky Fried Pension. And this is a guy who is a whistleblower, which is actually a paid job in the US, and he was investigating the Kentucky State Pension and how screwed up, this is like you say, the firefighters, nurses, policemen, that how not just mismanaged, but there is just hankie panky mismanaged, like funds got stolen, siphoned to Wall Street, some favorite pals, you know, who worked there and get whatever kickback. It's just, bigger doesn't mean better. Nick Giovannetti: [00:37:59] That's so true. And you know what I, the most interesting thing I've heard recently, Wing, was there's a pension plan out there that is saying that they're going to give you a defined benefit income stream. So predictable guaranteed income stream. But when you look under the hood and the mechanics of how it's built, it's built like a defined contribution pension. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:38:22] Mhm. Nick Giovannetti: [00:38:23] Well defined contribution pension plans don't have any of the defined benefit fail safes. If the pension underperforms you can't put more money in. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:38:34] Mhm. Nick Giovannetti: [00:38:35] Right? Based on my age I can't put more money in. If there's massive market problems, can't put more money in. If I retire early, right? All these fail safes that define benefit pensions have to give people security in retirement, because anything could happen. Retirement could be 30, 40 years. Right? Look at Sears. Those pension plans were mismanaged and people lost their pension. So it matters. What are the fail safes? And if you claim a defined benefit income for the rest of someone's life, but you don't have any of the fail safes, and your contribution schedule is that of a lesser contribution room, how could you promise that? Dr. Wing Lim: [00:39:19] Right. I just want to address one more misconception, and then we'll move on to the next one, which is Q&A, and that is, there's different brands of the IPP. And you may have heard even in the physician world. And they package them, call themselves something else, but in front of CRA, there's only one thing. It's called IPP, right? You can say mine is curry chicken, mine is kung pao chicken, mine is coconut Thai chicken, curry chicken, but at the end of the day, there's only chicken. CRA only recognizes chicken, right? Not the fancy brand. And sometimes they mislead people. I don't know if it's consciously or subconsciously but that's what we want to educate on our listeners what is an IPP. And that's just it, right? There may be different ways they twist it, but at the end of the day, IPP is an IPP is an IPP. Nick Giovannetti: [00:40:14] Well, and I can give you a good example. Everybody here I would assume is familiar with the term Group RRSP. Group RRSP is not defined in the Income Tax Act. It's a made up term for RRSPs that are pooled benefits through a group. But if you look up Group RRSP in the Income Tax Act you won't find it because the underlying what CRA recognizes as the investment is just RRSP. You could call it fancy banana, but it's an RRSP. So again IPPs will follow the IPP rules and registration. They could be registered as defined benefit only or as a combination. So that might be one kind of flexibility piece. But just be aware of how it's registered. Dr. Wing Lim: [00:41:03] Right on, okay. So I want to thank Nick for so much wisdom, so much knowledge, so much information and the perspectives. Right? So we actually blown by quite like instead of half hour, way over. So we'll stop here the official one. Dr. Kevin Mailo: Thank you so much for listening to the Physician Empowerment podcast. If you're ready to take those next steps in transforming your practice, finances, or personal well-being, then come and join us at PhysEmpowerment.ca - P H Y S Empowerment dot ca - to learn more about how we can help. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with a colleague or friend and head over to Apple Podcasts to give us a five-star rating and review. If you've got feedback, questions or suggestions for future episode topics, we'd love to hear from you. If you want to join us and be interviewed and share some of your story, we'd absolutely love that as well. Please send me an email at KMailo@PhysEmpowerment.ca. Thank you again for listening. Bye.  

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Nick talks about whether it feels like Kevin Stefanski is really in control and former OSU LB/NBC Sports analyst Joshua Perry joins the show to talk Ohio State, Big Ten. 

It's the Season 2 finale, and the Glee club takes New York! This was the first time the Glee cast shot out of state, and Jenna and Kevin have so many memories of their time on and off the set. Like Kevin missing his flight, the cast having to be barricaded during filming because of paparazzi and fans, and the actors getting in trouble for not remembering their lines towards the end of the shoot.  Plus, they share their thoughts on the songs performed, how Jenna spent her birthday while shooting in NY, and what they're excited to see in Season 3! **We stand in solidarity with our union, SAG-AFTRA, during the strike. For more information, go to SAGAFTRAStrike.org.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit in this captivating episode of the Land Academy Show! In episode number 1,954, we delve into the topic of surrounding yourself with successful individuals, featuring Land Academy member Kevin Farrell. Discover Kevin's remarkable journey and his invaluable contributions to our community as a long-standing member, Discord manager, and consultant. We also explore the intriguing subject of undoing term sales. This episode holds a special place in our hearts as we bid farewell to Kevin's active role as a moderator and consultant, while celebrating his continued dedication to the land business and Land Academy. Stay tuned as we discuss our plans for a fitting replacement. Don't miss out on this insightful discussion! Plus, as always, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum and review land acquisitions from our weekly webinars. For a sneak peek into our vibrant community, visit landacademy.com. Have a burning question? Text us at (480) 530-7383, and your question might just be featured on our next podcast episode. Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show. Steven Jack Butala: This is episode number 1,954, and today we are talking about how to surround yourself with successful people like Land Academy member, Kevin Farrell, and a little later on the episode, we'll be talking about undoing term sales. I have to say, this episode is near to me because Kevin's been with us, Kevin Farrell, has been with us as a Land Academy member since we started, pretty close to since we started. He's been active in the live events. He's a Discord manager, Discord moderator, has been since long before we even had Discord, and really active in there, and the icing on the cake is that he's held a consistent weekly on demand consulting calls for people that are stuck at some point in their land investment career, and he's retiring from his active role as a moderator and a consultant, but certainly not leaving the land business or Land Academy, but geez, what an amazing compliment. Jill and I have arranged for, and we'll talk about it in a second, a sort of attempt at replacing him, but we'll talk about it in a minute. Jill K DeWit: Is this near and dear to your heart because you're thinking about doing all these things? Steven Jack Butala: No. No, I'm not. Jill K DeWit: I thought that's where you're going. I'm like- Steven Jack Butala: No, I just really like Kevin. Jill K DeWit: Oh, who doesn't? Steven Jack Butala: And I like his contribution and I think he deserves a- Jill K DeWit: We're going to talk all about that. Steven Jack Butala: He deserves an episode. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. I have a lot to say about this, too, and I'm going to, but I thought that maybe that's why you brought all this up. You're talking about, boy, that sounds attractive. Steven Jack Butala: No. Jill K DeWit: Okay, because I've had those jobs. Steven Jack Butala: No, no, no. The retirement part sounds attractive. Jill K DeWit: Oh, yeah. Steven Jack Butala: That's what- Jill K DeWit: Yes, it does. Steven Jack Butala: There we go. Jill K DeWit: There we go. No, no, no. Not that you want to take over and be the moderator and you want to do all the consulting. I know how that goes. Steven Jack Butala: Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It's free. Jill K DeWit: If you would like us to answer your question or would like help getting involved with our community, simply text us at (480) 530-7383. We read all the texts, and your question just might be answered here on our next podcast. Greg wrote, "Okay, folks. I've been feeling like it's pretty slow on the acquisitions,

Join Steven Jack Butala and Jill DeWit in this captivating episode of the Land Academy Show! In episode number 1,954, we delve into the topic of surrounding yourself with successful individuals, featuring Land Academy member Kevin Farrell. Discover Kevin's remarkable journey and his invaluable contributions to our community as a long-standing member, Discord manager, and consultant. We also explore the intriguing subject of undoing term sales. This episode holds a special place in our hearts as we bid farewell to Kevin's active role as a moderator and consultant, while celebrating his continued dedication to the land business and Land Academy. Stay tuned as we discuss our plans for a fitting replacement. Don't miss out on this insightful discussion! Plus, as always, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum and review land acquisitions from our weekly webinars. For a sneak peek into our vibrant community, visit landacademy.com. Have a burning question? Text us at (480) 530-7383, and your question might just be featured on our next podcast episode. Transcript: Steven Jack Butala: I'm Steven Jack Butala. Jill K DeWit: And I'm Jill DeWit, and this is the Land Academy Show. Steven Jack Butala: This is episode number 1,954, and today we are talking about how to surround yourself with successful people like Land Academy member, Kevin Farrell, and a little later on the episode, we'll be talking about undoing term sales. I have to say, this episode is near to me because Kevin's been with us, Kevin Farrell, has been with us as a Land Academy member since we started, pretty close to since we started. He's been active in the live events. He's a Discord manager, Discord moderator, has been since long before we even had Discord, and really active in there, and the icing on the cake is that he's held a consistent weekly on demand consulting calls for people that are stuck at some point in their land investment career, and he's retiring from his active role as a moderator and a consultant, but certainly not leaving the land business or Land Academy, but geez, what an amazing compliment. Jill and I have arranged for, and we'll talk about it in a second, a sort of attempt at replacing him, but we'll talk about it in a minute. Jill K DeWit: Is this near and dear to your heart because you're thinking about doing all these things? Steven Jack Butala: No. No, I'm not. Jill K DeWit: I thought that's where you're going. I'm like- Steven Jack Butala: No, I just really like Kevin. Jill K DeWit: Oh, who doesn't? Steven Jack Butala: And I like his contribution and I think he deserves a- Jill K DeWit: We're going to talk all about that. Steven Jack Butala: He deserves an episode. Jill K DeWit: Exactly. I have a lot to say about this, too, and I'm going to, but I thought that maybe that's why you brought all this up. You're talking about, boy, that sounds attractive. Steven Jack Butala: No. Jill K DeWit: Okay, because I've had those jobs. Steven Jack Butala: No, no, no. The retirement part sounds attractive. Jill K DeWit: Oh, yeah. Steven Jack Butala: That's what- Jill K DeWit: Yes, it does. Steven Jack Butala: There we go. Jill K DeWit: There we go. No, no, no. Not that you want to take over and be the moderator and you want to do all the consulting. I know how that goes. Steven Jack Butala: Each week on the show, we answer questions from our Land Academy member Discord forum, review land acquisitions from our weekly member webinars, and take a deep dive into two land related topics by popular request. If you want a sneak peek of our Discord forum, go to landacademy.com. It's free. Jill K DeWit: If you would like us to answer your question or would like help getting involved with our community, simply text us at (480) 530-7383. We read all the texts, and your question just might be answered here on our next podcast. Greg wrote, "Okay, folks. I've been feeling like it's pretty slow on the acquisitions,

Players Choice Open Gym is the peoples' show. Viewers are invited to join and get their NBA hot takes off. Tune in live to Open Gym every Tuesday & Thursday @ 9AM PST/12PM EST and Friday @ 2PM PST/5PM EST.

The day Kevin Holtry was shot (Ep. 95), it was Brian Holland who stopped the threat. This amazing story has an even more amazing beginning. Brian grew up facing more adversity before 18 than many adults see for an entire lifetime. Like Kevin, he persevered. Avoiding the gang life and dealing with a father in prison for murder, Brian's mother gave him the advice that would carry him forward for the rest of his life.  Join us at Patreon.com/gameofcrimes for great content you won't hear anywhere else Donate at paypal.me/gameofcrimes or go to paypal.com and use our email: gameofcrimespodcast@gmail.com Go to GameOfCrimesPodcast.com for more info and merch Follow us on... Twitter Facebook Instagram

The day Kevin Holtry was shot (Ep. 95), it was Brian Holland who stopped the threat. This amazing story has an even more amazing beginning. Brian grew up facing more adversity before 18 than many adults see for an entire lifetime. Like Kevin, he persevered. Avoiding the gang life and dealing with a father in prison for murder, Brian's mother gave him the advice that would carry him forward for the rest of his life.  Join us at Patreon.com/gameofcrimes for great content you won't hear anywhere else Donate at paypal.me/gameofcrimes or go to paypal.com and use our email: gameofcrimespodcast@gmail.com Go to GameOfCrimesPodcast.com for more info and merch Follow us on... Twitter Facebook Instagram Part 1 is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/GOC and get on your way to being your best self.* *As a BetterHelp affiliate, we may receive compensation from BetterHelp if you purchase products or services through the links provided.

297: Freedom & Running [00:00:00] Angie: All right, so today we're continuing our series about how running is connected to our core values. And today we wanna talk about how we like to connect freedom to running because we believe that running can bring so much freedom into our lives and help us live a life without limits. But unfortunately, we see so many runners actually losing that freedom because they're training without intention and direction. They get caught up in the grind, shackled to a training regimen that isn't right for them. I had to say it for you there, guys. I think you did. It's a great line. tied to a goal that no longer matters, right? Like they're just tied to this goal and this training plan, and it doesn't bring them joy. They're not into it anymore and that can lead to feeling stuck or trapped, which is the opposite of that freedom that so many of us are looking for. Some people think that running with a plan restricts them, and today we wanna talk about how being intentional and creating a plan that's right for [00:01:00] you can actually bring so much freedom into your running and into the rest of your life. [00:01:04] Kevin: Yeah, I mean, you got so many good points there, angie, just in the intro, just in the intro, like , Angie put the, the outline for us together for us this time and, and your line that that gets me is, is shackled to the running. Like I just, it makes me think of, Christmas, Carol Uhhuh with Marley, like carrying around the chains behind us. Jacob Marley. Yes. Where it's . Is that, is it Scrooge McDuck doing? [00:01:28] Angie: I don't know. That was a really poor accent. Whatever was think was the pretty, that was Scrooge, I think it was, but I, I don't know what [00:01:34] Kevin: what we're going for there. Great. but that's what I picture is trying to run, which is, you know, physically taxing, but doing it well, feeling like you're literally dragging behind the, like the weight of, of the run itself. Not just like the physical challenge going out and running it, whatever, whatever the pace is, but just of like, you have to go out and do the [00:01:53] Angie: thing. Yeah. And that's not a good feeling. And I know that some runners definitely get to that point if they're in a [00:02:00] training cycle, whether that is a half marathon training cycle, a marathon training cycle, or maybe you're not exactly training for anything right now. And we're gonna kind of get into all of those points within the episode today. So we wanna start off by just. Making this point that running gives you wings. Like I know that's kind of the, old Red Bull. Is that still their slogan? I think that's still their slogan. Yeah. Yeah. slogan there. But like we, God, I hope they don't sue us. Oh, I didn't say Red Bull. I said running. Oh, okay. Running gives you wings. I hope they sue us [00:02:29] Kevin: and we get like super notoriety because of it. [00:02:31] Angie: Actually because of one line from a random podcast. Yes. Yeah. I just don't think we're on their radar. but we believe that running can give you that freedom. We believe that running gives us freedom in so many different ways. And the thing that we see a lot of runners. Doing here, like we said before, is like feeling stuck and why, what makes you feel stuck? What makes you feel trapped? A lot of times I think it's that feeling comes from focusing on what you can't do versus what you [00:03:00] can do, and also not realizing the progress that you've already made. Like, I think that we get into our running journey and we start setting goals, and we start following plans and we wanna just keep getting faster, running longer. All of those things are fantastic, but if we're not making that progress that we wanna see right away, or if we are just like looking at those goals and seeing how far away they are, like so that, you know, I've just, I can't do that yet, or I'm not able to run, you know, the pace that I wanna run. if we're focusing on the stuff that we can't do versus on the things that we can do, that can definitely lead to that feeling of stuck and trapped. [00:03:44] Kevin: Oh yeah. Cuz you feel like you're not actually making any progress. Yeah. Cause if all you do is look forward to goals that you haven't made it to yet it feels like you're always missing. Yeah. If you periodically take time to look backwards and you're like, oh wow, I've, I've done all of this. Like, I mean [00:04:00] this, this episode kind of makes me pause for a second of like, to think back of the years and years of running that I've got like , I remember my first run, I was like a mile into it and I'm like, This is really, really hard. And at the time I was basically running as hard as I possibly could. For as long as I could. Like, that was, I was 14 and just going for it. [00:04:19] Angie: Poor training philosophy. [00:04:20] Kevin: Poor training philosophy. I had no clue what I was doing. Like I had no coach. My dad got me shoes and said, all right, we're, we're gonna go. So I just took off. Yeah. but to see like the progress from there to here is, is crazy how far that is. Mm-hmm. so, well, there's goals that I'm like, man, I, I wish I was at that point to look backwards. It's, it's phenomenal how far I've actually progressed. [00:04:43] Angie: Yeah. And so we think it's really important to what, you know, when you're looking at the freedom that running can give you to really just stop and acknowledge yourself for how far you've already come. If you're stuck in this cycle of not feeling like it's enough or not feeling that like you're where you want [00:05:00] to be yet, just take a quick pause and look back on your running journey up to this point and think about where you used to be and think about how far forward you are now from that point, right? And acknowledge where you are and then kind of take stock and assess where you are right now. We've talked about the importance of this, previous podcasts, about the, you know, really understanding where you are in your running right now and getting clear on that before you try to set goals, before you try to make any plans to move ahead, you have to know where you are and what I would love to encourage all of you to do, and I would love for you to reach out to me on Instagram at real life runners and let me know what you come up with here. But I would really like for all of you to just take time to list three wins on your running journey and or ways that you're running has improved your physical or mental health. Because if you really think about it, you have come far. I don't [00:06:00] care if you started last week or 10 years ago, right? Like if you started last week, A win is, I started, right? Like I got out the door, I bought my first pair of running shoes. Like there are so many different things, right? Like if you think about it, how many pairs of running shoes have you gone through if you've been running for 10 years? Oh my word. Right. Well, I mean, that's always the fun thing of like the, the shoe that I'm in has a number on the backend, it says that version. Mm-hmm. . I've been in that shoe since before that shoe existed. Mm-hmm. . So the fact that it's on like the 18th version means I've been in that shoe for more than 18 years, which is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So, take time to do that. You know, I, I said come up with three, come up with as, as many as you want. You know, like 10, 20, 25, 30. I mean, you could probably come up with a lot, especially if you're looking at some of these little wins along the way, like we mentioned. I mean, [00:06:52] Kevin: you have a great one there. Like if you just started last week, getting out and running is a big thing. Going to like a specialty running shoe store [00:07:00] and talking to the people there and buying running shoes. Yep. You've gotta make this big acceptance thing of I'm going to financially invest in myself and put myself in a place where I might not feel super comfortable. Yeah. Because going into this store where there are quote unquote real runners mm-hmm. and what if they look down on the shoes that I walk in with? Yep. Like, do I have to have the right socks to even go into this store? Mm-hmm. , I don't even know what's going on. Right. Like that could be a big hurdle for some people's, even just trying to go through the process of buying appropriate running shoes. [00:07:30] Angie: Absolutely. And so if you have. Bought running shoes and have started out the door, those are both wins, right? And if you are much farther along in your journey, just kind of take time to look back on some of your favorite moments in your running journey and really look at all of the freedom that you really have gained in your running journey. Because what I want all of us to understand is that there is good and bad in all things, in all situations. So it all [00:08:00] depends on what you want to focus on. So if you. Right now are focusing on all the things that you haven't done yet, or the goals that you haven't achieved, or how long it's taking you to achieve these things, you're going to feel very negative. You're gonna feel very stuck and trapped and limited and restricted. Whereas if you look at all of the wins, all of the progress that you've already made, you can already start to see some of the freedom that running has brought into your life already. [00:08:27] Kevin: Yeah. I mean that that everything in life has both sides to it. Yeah. So being able to, to choose [00:08:33] Angie: life is 50 50. [00:08:34] Kevin: Right. And you get to focus with side which side you want to focus on. Which side do you want to give more attention to you could stare at the negative side or, or you could look at all of the positives going on. Look at all the progress that you have made. If you keep taking into account and being grateful for all the progress mm-hmm. , you're going to start seeing more progress. If you keep looking at things that you haven't made yet, I bet you can start adding to that list just almost [00:09:00] as easily and you're not gonna get to a happy place that direction. Yeah. So keep looking at the things that you can be grateful for, that you like, I've done this and this and this. Look at all of my accomplishments and it'll start the momentum going that direction. [00:09:11] Angie: Exactly. So it makes me think, you know, when I think about this idea of focusing on what I want or what I've already accomplished, focusing on more of the positive things it makes me think about training my dog. Okay, so we've got a miniature poodle. She's adorable. Her name is Indie and she is two years old. And we got her when she was about 12 weeks old, right? 11. No, yeah. We got, we got kind of got thrown like we were supposed to get her at one point it kind of got pushed back, but somewhere around that, around that range. I decided I was going to train her myself. And so I bought a dog training program because I knew nothing about training a dog. And so I found a fantastic dog training program. Shout out to Baxter and Bella. So those of you that if you have puppies, go check out Baxter and bella.com. I'm totally not being paid to say that they're just a [00:10:00] fantastic company and really helped me learn how to train my dog. but they focus on positive reinforcement. So their big thing is don't tell the dog what not to do because they don't understand that. Tell them what you want them to do instead. So if they are currently doing something that you don't want them to do, Give them something else to do. Tell them the behavior that you want for them. So say, you know, someone comes and rings the doorbell and the dog starts barking, instead of saying no or quiet you, I'm gonna tell them, go to place. Right? Like, we have a, a place where Indy's supposed to go when, the door rings. And so she's supposed to go to her place. And at first, when that happens, when you're trying to teach her this, you tell her what to do, and then you treat her, you give her that reward. So we're focusing and we're rewarding the behavior that we want. And so if we are as runners, like our minds, although we are much smarter than dogs, they still operate on similar principles. There are things [00:11:00] that we can use like opera and conditioning, classical conditioning, ways that we can reward ourselves to allow to create habits, to create new habits and new associations, positive associations with certain things in our brain. So if we are looking at our running and we're constantly focusing on the negative, we can understand why we're gonna start feeling negative about our running, but if instead we look at all the positive things and all the ways that running has brought more freedom to our lives, that's gonna be, you know, we're gonna have a lot more positive feeling toward our running. [00:11:31] Kevin: Yeah. I mean, that works with so many people. I think. Yeah. It, it works very much with runners. You know, we, you say that we're certainly smarter than a dog, but many miles into a long training run. Mm-hmm., I am Right on the same level. Like, tell me what to do and then give me a gel and I will just like, oh, and now tell me what else to do and gimme another gel. Yeah. And, you know, it's very, very similar. I don't think it's, it's all that different from the dog brain. [00:11:55] Angie: Well, and this is just habit formation. Yes. You know, like 1 0 1 habit [00:12:00] formation 1 0 1 is there's a cue, there's a behavior and there's a reward. That's how you create a new habit. Mm-hmm. . And so, yes, we can see it very clearly with dog training, but it also works with us as humans. [00:12:11] Kevin: Yeah. But the negative also works. Yes. Like if, if you. If you keep associating whatever the, the repetitive pattern is mm-hmm. with negative thoughts, you're going to just keep bringing up those negative thoughts over and over again. [00:12:24] Angie: Right. So, look at your running and decide which, what do you wanna focus on? Do you wanna focus on all the negatives and where you aren't? Or do you wanna focus on all the positives and how far you've come up to this point, do you think, which one do you think is gonna motivate you to actually get to where you wanna go? Because a lot of times people think that, well, if I'm hard on myself, if I tell myself that I'm not good enough, then that will motivate me to do more. And they've actually done studies that, and, and shown that that is not true. That more people are inclined to you know, continue forward, reach higher, do more when they [00:13:00] are built up along the way, not when they're pushed down. [00:13:02] Kevin: Yeah. I mean, this kind of reflects how we coach our cross-country team. Yeah. Like, At the, at the end of the race, whatever the times are that Kings come across with, we always are trying to get them to tell us something positive that happened out of that. Sometimes the answer is they ran their fastest time for a 5K ever. Yeah. But sometimes they didn't. Mm-hmm. and you can see it in on their face that they are pretty down on themselves. Yeah. And it's pretty easy to turn that around. You just ask them, what do you, what do you wanna remember about the, about this race? Mm-hmm. that you did really, really well. Yeah. And they can come up with it, you know, they might have to push a little bit, but if you do it after every single race, you do it after workouts, you do it after an easy run, after a long run, whatever, it'll start the brain thinking, Hey, what positive thing just occurred? Right. Because running has positive aspects to it. [00:13:48] Angie: Absolutely. I also like to think about running as giving us freedom to dream big, freedom to challenge ourselves and freedom to explore. Freedom [00:14:00] to explore on a couple different levels. Like, I like exploring, like in, you know, practical terms. Okay. Like actually exploring on foot, like going to new places and really exploring, new cities by running, you know, running around the new city and kind of just checking out different things. I think that that's a really fun way that we can explore just the world outside of ourselves. But I think that running also allows us the freedom to explore who we wanna be and, and what kind of a person we want to choose to be in this world. Because I think that a lot of times, you know, runner. Kind of limit themselves without even realizing it. Maybe they want to set a goal, but they end up procrastinating and just not setting that goal, not choosing a race, not, you know, really working towards something and not, not to say that you have to race to be a runner because you obviously don't, but. Someone that has this desire within them to do something with, they're running and they're just kind of not [00:15:00] committing to a decision. [00:15:01] Kevin: Yes. They have this idea that they'd like to run a marathon or a half marathon. Yeah. They even have a goal time, but they just keep putting off when they're going to actually start trying to directly chase that goal. Yeah. It seems like a good goal for a little bit later. Yeah. For down the road. Also, you're liking to explore new cities on foot. I, I cannot get on board with that one. Why? I've heard so many people on different podcasts, they're like, oh yeah, new City and then I like to talk around the city. I hate stoplights. Oh, okay. I hate stoplights. Yeah. It's honestly, it's why I like running so early in the morning cuz you get to a stoplight and there's no cars there. Mm-hmm. . So if you want to just go across the street, just go across the street. Okay. [00:15:40] Angie: Well what about if it's not a city, what if it's a more, suburban or like country type of area. Sure. Like more nature. Sure. [00:15:48] Kevin: Gimme As long as it's safe country roads. Yeah, I could, I could work that. Yeah. Exploring new cities just sounds like the worst way to try a new city. It's like, oh, one block at a time. . It's just not, it's not me. [00:15:59] Angie: Yeah. I [00:16:00] just like to see different forms of nature also. You know, like, because here in Florida we're so used to the beach and the heat and flatland, so when And the heat you go and the heat . So like I love running in California. Mm-hmm. because the terrain is so different, the weather is so different. Like I love, you know, running in the hills because down here we have none of that. So that to me is, sure we do, there's that overpass and the other overpass exploring on, but yeah. But a lot of times people kind of hold themselves back because they don't set a goal because they're not sure if they can achieve it. So we don't wanna commit to it because I don't know if I really wanna put it out there, I'm not a hundred percent sure if I'm going to achieve it. And that can lead to this feeling of like, Unsatisfaction and not feeling fulfilled because you never actually set a goal for yourself. You're never actually chasing something to see if you're able to accomplish that thing, or kind of the flip side of that people do set a goal and they end up chasing a goal that no longer [00:17:00] matters to them. Right? They just pick a goal to pick a goal so that they can just set like an arbitrary goal. And it doesn't actually mean anything. And then they just feel like, well now I've set this goal, so now I've committed to it, so now I have to continue down this path, even if I don't really wanna do it. [00:17:15] Kevin: Right. And that goal may have meant something when they set it, maybe didn't, maybe it didn't. Sometimes people just set completely arbitrary goals, but sometimes you start with a goal that really does mean something to you. Yeah. But over time, it turns out that, you know, maybe you grew, you evolved, maybe your life changed, life changes. Right. You just view running differently now. Mm-hmm. , like you found a different aspect of running that you like more, and that goal just doesn't it? It doesn't light the fire the same way that it used to. Yeah. So at that, Why are you still trying to pursue that goal? You probably are actually kind of halfway between these two things. You've got this goal that's kinda like pulling you sort of, but you're also not even directly aiming towards that goal. So you've got this goal, but you're not [00:18:00] working your way to it as a great way to feel unsatisfied and unfulfilled is there's a vague goal that you're not moving towards. [00:18:05] Angie: Right. And I think it often leads people to feeling very restricted also oh yeah. Because if they don't really connect with that goal anymore, whether they did in the past or never did you know at all. if they feel like now I'm just stuck chasing this goal, I'm restricted to like this one thing only. [00:18:23] Kevin: Ooh. Yeah. Like if your, if your goal was like a half marathon time. Mm-hmm. there's no point in trying to race for a really fast 5k. Right. Because how is that fast 5K going to perfectly set you up for the half marathon. Mm-hmm. . I just have to be so head down and driven. Half marathon only. Right. Maybe I run four half marathons during the year aiming for my best. Mm-hmm. . Takes away the chance to go have like a family fun run Turkey trot or like Right. The jingle Bell jog and L thing. They all seem to be holiday Racistly, . But you know, it takes some of that fun away or just you're out [00:19:00] on vacation instead of just being able to explore the trails of wherever you went to. Mm-hmm. , you're like, no, no, no. I've got this plan that I've gotta stick to because I've got the half marathon race coming up. [00:19:09] Angie: Yeah. Like, I have to do this tempo workout, Uhhuh because this is on my race plan. Yes. And that race plan ends up being very restrictive instead of giving you more freedom, which is what we're gonna talk about in our next section. But what we want you guys to realize here, if, if this is resonating with you or if you know people that you know might fall into this category, there's a saying that my friends and I use often , and it's one of those sayings that can apply to a lot of different situations. And that is, it's just running. Yeah. It's just running like this is a hobby that you've chosen for yourself so you can change your mind anytime you want to like, you don't have to be locked into one goal. If that thing no longer lights your fire, change it. Right? Go pursue [00:20:00] something else. None of this actually matters, and it all completely matters all at the same time. That's the weird paradox of all of this. [00:20:09] Kevin: Yeah, I mean that's the, it's just running is a great line. But the second one, I love this line is none of this really matters, but it's also incredibly important. Mm-hmm. because when you have a goal, it is super important. It's super important to you. Really important, but really important to you. Mm-hmm. in the grand scheme of the world and expand it, the universe, you hitting a PR is not actually changing the universe Right. All that much. So it really doesn't big picture matter, but to you and maybe to those people close to you, you know, we had our, our Family Connection episode last week. It might matter a lot to that group of people so it is something that helps drive you, that helps push you forward, that helps try to extend you outside of your, your current boundaries that you're putting on, on yourself. Mm-hmm so that does [00:21:00] matter a heck of a lot, the very specifics of what that goal is, and whether you do reach it or you don't reach, it does not matter. Right. Striving towards the goal matters a whole heck of a lot more than achieving it. [00:21:11] Angie: Yes. Having a goal matters, striving toward the goal matters. The person that you become in pursuit of that goal matters, but the actual goal itself. it doesn't really matter because that number is different for every single person. You might have a race distance, you might have a race time, and it's completely arbitrary. You're the one that decided that that was your goal, and that is a beautiful thing. So we are not saying that it doesn't matter because it does to you, and that makes it very important. But whether or not you achieve that goal specifically doesn't actually matter because it is in the pursuit of that goal that you challenge yourself, that you dream bigger, that you explore what you're actually made of, or who you want to be you. You [00:22:00] get an insight to how you deal with adversity, how to become more resilient, how to pick yourself back up when things aren't going well. Like all of the lessons that we learn in our running journey, we learn in pursuit of a goal, not by actually achieving that goal. So whether or not you achieve that goal means nothing about you as a human unless you want it to, like, if you decide this means that I'm this kind of person, okay, fine. You get to make that choice. But it doesn't actually mean that you're just the one that attached that meaning to that goal. And I would argue that it's not an a achieving that thing that you become that kind of person or that kind of human. It is in the pursuit of that goal that you become that kind of person. [00:22:47] Kevin: Yeah. I mean this is, there's a thing about like climbing a mountain. You spend most of your time on the side of the mountain. Mm-hmm. and very, very little time at the actual top of the mountain. Yeah. So you really gotta focus on the [00:23:00] whole climbing the mountain thing. Mm-hmm. not standing at the peak. Right. Like, it's great to have a goal, but you are doing a whole lot of steps. Mm-hmm. up the side of this, you know, mountain essentially. And then maybe you make it to the top or maybe you don't, but most of the journey is spent on the side. Yeah. So that's really where your focus needs to be. [00:23:19] Angie: Right? Because I think a lot of times, like if you've ever fallen into this trap or know anybody that has, where they don't, like, you're nervous to set a goal because you're like, well, I don't know if I can actually do it. I don't know if I can actually achieve it. Who cares? Who cares? If you set a goal and you don't achieve it, you do. That's it. You are the only person most likely that cares whether or not you achieve that goal. Your family, your friends, might be there supporting you and they might want it for you. Yeah. Right? Because they know it's important to you. So they're on board with you. Right. They're, they're supporting. Like if you, if you achieve it, they're there to celebrate you. If you don't achieve it, [00:24:00] they're there to try to pick you back up. Mm-hmm. . But they care about it because you care about it. So the only thing that you're actually worried about, if you really break this down, Is the judgment that you're going to place on yourself. You are going to judge yourself if you don't achieve that goal, that's what you are worried about. Like if you find yourself not wanting to set a goal because you're not sure if you're going to achieve it, the only thing that's there is your judgment of yourself. If you really start to dig really deep and get down to the core of it. So if you understand that it's just running and that you can choose to judge yourself or to not judge yourself however you would like, then running can give you the freedom to explore and set big goals and try new things and decide who you wanna become in the process. And that's what training with intention will give you the freedom to do. When you understand that, when you put an intention behind it, when you set a goal for yourself, when you have a direction for [00:25:00] your training, it allows you the freedom to like say, all right, this is where we're going. Like, let's see what happens. [00:25:06] Kevin: Yeah. And, and you can change your mind. Yes. And I mean, this is, when you started this, you said that there were, we gotta make sure I've got the, the wording on this right? There's, there's goals that might, might not matter to you anymore. And this is, this is a number that, it was a number goal that I put out there was running a marathon in 2 37 in Change. It's running a marathon at six minute per mile pace. Mm-hmm. . And for a long time, like I was pushing myself towards that goal, but. after really trying to figure out why and where that goal came from. I broke down all of these things that I had built up, that I had raised this 2 37 as some sort of like, if I can run that right, if I run it, then I actually have validated myself as actually a fast enough runner as actually good enough. Cuz it goes back to like this experience I had in college where I didn't feel like I was fast [00:26:00] enough on the college cross-country team. And there was, there was a long run that we were on and Coach said, you guys are on 2 36 pace for a marathon. And everybody else joked about it. Like, well, okay coach, but we're training for an eight K. And you know, to me that stuck with me of when I was there, I was that fast. So if I could be that fast, if I could complete a marathon in that pace, then I'm, then I'm good enough. Mm-hmm. , but I've given up that I need to hit that time to be good enough and I've just accepted that I'm good enough , so [00:26:35] Angie: I'm curious. What your thoughts are now, now that you've kind of broken this down and really examined this goal. Yeah. What are your thoughts on your marathon pr? Because what I want you guys to understand is that Kevin's marathon PR is only a minute slower than this. Like it is, he's run a 2 38, which is a 6 0 2 pace. Yep. Right. Which, and before was not [00:27:00] good enough. Right. Like, that was not your goal. You're like, that is not my goal, that's not what I was going for. So how do you feel about that now? Like that performance? I mean, obviously you didn't achieve that exact time, right? [00:27:11] Kevin: I didn't achieve the, the actual number, but I'm, the longer I run, the less connected I am to the actual numbers on the clock. Mm-hmm. . And it took a long time to get there, and I don't know if I'm ever gonna completely disconnect from the numbers on the clock. [00:27:24] Angie: I don't think you have to completely disconnect. I, I don't like it's just keeping them in perspective. [00:27:28] Kevin: Right. Yeah. And you know, it was, it was remarkably close. But I, if I look at it that way, I always think that it was close, but came up short when I think about it, of like, man, I really pushed myself, I really went really hard that day. I went out aggressive. I tried to stay up to the front. I pushed myself good pacing throughout. I wanted to walk and I just kept pushing and grinding. Like all, everything that should happen in a marathon, I'm getting exhausted. My legs feel like lead and I'm so [00:28:00] dragging myself. I'm catching up to half marathoners and I'm like, okay, just pass this person now, and now pass this person. I had a finishing kick in that race. Mm-hmm. , which I don't often have much of a finishing kick, like everything. [00:28:12] Angie: Which race was that one? Was that Space? Space Coast. [00:28:14] Kevin: Yeah. had an actual finishing kick in it. Like there are things that didn't go correctly in that race, correct. Fueling wise, ideally. Oh, okay. No, literally correctly. Oh, okay. Like there are things fueling wise that didn't go correctly cuz I, I checked out the map and went all the, like the gels and drinks and things. Oh, oh, right. I got to like, where I was gonna take my first gel and they didn't have them to pass out mm-hmm. , they gave me a cup of water and so it mess with my fueling pain. Right. So that also then just messes with my head, this was like, you know, I'm trying to figure out how to do this whole thing. Yeah. And I, that didn't have anything to do with it, but it does start you down a negative path. I mean, maybe it did. Sure. You know, there were, the, the little bit of energy would've been helpful. Mm-hmm. [00:29:00] or just knowing that I was staying on plan. Right. Would've also been helpful. Right. Either of those. [00:29:04] Angie: So was there a physical or a mental Or both. Or both, [00:29:07] Kevin: yeah. But either of those could have been enough to knock off Two minutes. So does that mean that I, I. at best, A 2 38 marathoner. No. I could probably go faster, but I don't need to go faster anymore. Mm-hmm. and a few years ago I literally, I needed to, like, if you asked me like, how, how much do you want this? I'm like, no, no. I need to go another minute faster than I've run before. Mm-hmm. . [00:29:28] Angie: Yeah. And so you have changed your goal Yeah. Over time into, I want to get faster into, I just wanna keep running longer and challenge myself in that direction. [00:29:40] Kevin: Yes. [00:29:41] Angie: So when, when you look at your one hi 100 mile goal now, , right? Because I know that when we talked about this before and you know, if you guys are curious about Kevin's journey to a hundred miles, we've did, we've done like a couple podcasts about that. When was that? Last year. We we're in 2023 now. [00:30:00] So he attempted his first 100 mile race in May of 2022. So you'd have to scroll back a while in our episodes, but there's some episodes that talk specifically about that, and like kind of everything that happened surrounding that race. But spoiler alert, he didn't get to a hundred miles in that first attempt. And so when you think about it now, I know that, you know, at that time you had thought of it as, I don't know if I can actually do this. Right? And that was the intriguing part to you is Yes. Is actually putting myself out there not knowing if I'm actually going to be able to do this thing, right? [00:30:36] Kevin: Like, I know that I can run 26 miles, I had to pick it to the end of marathon. How fast is it, is the question mark. Right? But can I actually make it the, the complete distance of a hundred miles? Mm-hmm. , that's a whole different, that was the question. That was the unclear. [00:30:49] Angie: So what are your thoughts on that now? [00:30:51] Kevin: That it's still an unclear mm-hmm. and that's what I find most exciting. Yeah. I find that more exciting than how fast can I run a marathon right now? Like [00:31:00] that right now is where I'm most intrigued. [00:31:03] Angie: Yeah. So I think that that's really important because, do you find a freedom in that? . I find excitement in that. Okay. I don't know if freedom is the right word for it. [00:31:13] Angie: But when you have a big goal like that, do you feel like it gives you the freedom to just like challenge yourself and try new things and like let's just see how this goes? [00:31:23] Kevin: Yeah. Like I don't feel. Restrict. I don't feel held back by that goal. Yeah. Because the goal's almost so big that it's like, well, I mean, let's just give it a shot. Mm-hmm. , like, it's, I think that's why everybody needs to have this, like, all right, here's what I think I could get, and if I followed a plan, I could probably get to this. Mm-hmm. , there's like your reasonable goal, but I think having the big goal helps you release the need for this, like step-by-step plan. Mm-hmm. , because honestly, the step-by-step plan, it's not perfect. It's not magic. Like there, there's not gonna be like, you know, input A, B, C and get the output of of X, Y, Z. Like that's not exactly how it [00:32:00] works. So sometimes having this goal that's so big that you're just like, I don't know. I think that if I do these things, I can get close to the goal. Let's give it a shot. That's where you get that excitement of. Let's, let's get so excited about trying to strive for that goal. Mm-hmm. that the goal is cool and if I get to the goal, awesome. And then I'll come up with some other crazy ridiculous goal. But the goal so far out there mm-hmm. that just chasing it seems so exciting that it's just like, I think these things are gonna work. I think this is my best way to go for it. And I mean, I've put in a whole lot of effort into trying to figure out what it is the best way to train for it. I think that you as, as much as you were very supportive of me in this, I think from a Angie is my coach perspective, she might have been more satisfied that I didn't get to the finish line on attempt number one because it's head to completely overhaul the way that I train. [00:32:55] Angie: Wow. Oh, I, I don't think that that's necessarily true. [00:32:59] Kevin: At [00:33:00] the time, you were totally supportive and, and super disappointed and like comforting and with me and like this is, you know, all along [00:33:07] Angie: I was disappointed because you were disappointed. Like I wasn't disappointed in you. [00:33:10] Kevin: No, not disappointed in, yeah, disappointed because I was disappointed. [00:33:13] Angie: Like for you. Yes. Yeah. Like I was sharing in your disappointment. [00:33:16] Kevin: Yes. But I honestly, I thought about this on my run today and I tell me, I was like, I'm gonna bring this up on the podcast. Oh, here we go, . I think, well, you know, I like putting people in uncomfortable situations, so Of course. and let's do it. And, and, and it's not uncomfortable. I just think that part of you was sort of like, I. Not like, haha, I was right. Mm-hmm. , but on some level, haha, I was right. You're not wrong. I know you're not wrong. I know, and it wasn't haha, but it was kinda like, because we have a different support level here, right? Like, but if we are, if I'm being completely honest, like yes, there was part of me that believe that you should have done different things in your training leading up to that point. Right. And so there was an element of like feeling [00:34:00] justified, which again, did not diminish my desire for you to achieve that goal at all. No, not at all. Like, like once I was like, okay, well we're going [00:34:11] Angie: for it. Once you were in, I was like, all right, let's go. Like we're all in. What can we do at this point to, you know, help give you the best chance to achieve that goal. Right. But it would've, it's not like I would [00:34:21] Kevin: sabotaged if you . No, God, that would've been awful. I mean, you could not have been more supportive. Yeah. But. . It would've been very interesting if I had made it to that finish line, if I would have changed my training plan the way that I have. Hmm. Or would I have essentially been like, look, I made it. Now I just need to do a little bit more of this. Mm-hmm. , which is su such a trap that we've talked about on so many podcasts, is I did pretty well with this training plan. I just need to do a little bit more of this training plan. Yeah. Instead of being, of taking the, like the brave jump of what if I did it differently? Yeah. [00:34:57] Angie: Well, and that's really hard jump to do. Like that's a [00:35:00] really hard leap to make for a lot of people. And I'll, I'll be honest [00:35:03] Kevin: with you. It's freeing though. [00:35:05] Angie: That's true. That's true. but I will be honest with you, part of me wished I was. Right? Yeah. Too, like part of me, , , [00:35:14] Kevin: the part that had to climb into [00:35:15] Angie: the car. So like, I'll tell you guys, like, you know, there's like a lot of behind the scenes that happens between Kevin and I. Like Kevin helps coach Kevin, coaches me, and I coach him. We coach each other and somehow we make that work, you know, with, with our marriage, thank God. and it's not, it's not an easy balance because there's, there are times that I'm like, can I speak to you as a coach, not as your wife, right? Yep. And I think that that was the big differences. And we had multiple conversations about this leading up to that 100 mile race of there are times that I'm gonna be coach and then there are times that I'm gonna be your wife. Yeah. And, and how do we know the difference and how do we na navigate that, you know, so that both of us are, are on board on the same page, understanding that, and that's all about [00:36:00] communication. and so there. , like in the discussion of Kevin's training for that a hundred mile, there was a big thing that you know about nutrition, about gaining weight, about gaining muscle. That I thought he needed to focus more on, more strength training, more weight gain to get him, more fuel reserves to before he got to that starting line. [00:36:20] Angie: Mm-hmm. . And that's not what happened. That's not how he chose to, to train. And that shows you that even if you've got a coach that is also your wife, you also get to make your own decisions. And that's what Kevin did, right? Like Kevin trained. in the way that he thought was going to best serve him to, to achieve this goal. Yep. And he and I happened to disagree on what that exactly looked like. [00:36:46] Kevin: Right. So then in the post race, we also slightly disagreed on why I didn't make it to the finish line. And I think we have, months removed from it, accepted that both of us [00:37:00] are right and neither of us are entirely Right. That's. I think that's what we've come [00:37:04] Angie: up with. Yeah. We're both right. We're both right. [00:37:06] Kevin: Yes. Yeah, Absolut, because afterwards I was like, oh, well it had to do with my hydration and my fueling strategy. And you're like, yeah. Or you could have lifted some weights beforehand and it's both. And that, that's the thing is it's both. It was entirely both. So, [00:37:20] Angie: and it's what each of us chose to focus on. Yes. Like kind of going back to what we were talking about before. [00:37:25] Kevin: Exactly. Right. Where do you, where do you wanna put your focus? Yeah. Because I would've seen that as my issue. And then just doubled down on that. Tried to fix more of the fueling and the hydrating strategy. [00:37:34] Angie: Well, and I agreed that fueling was the issue. You just thought it was during the race fueling. Yeah. And I also said it was your fueling in the months leading up to the race. Right. That you didn't put on enough weight, in my opinion, to, and, and who knows, maybe that's wrong. You know, like maybe this time around now that you're lifting weights, now that you're eating more. Will you be the same weight on the starting line? Maybe. We don't know. [00:37:56] Kevin: Right. I I think it's far less dependent on [00:38:00] the number on the scale at the starting line. Correct. Correct. And far more like overall fitness. Yes. Like bringing a certain level of strength to the starting line is totally different. So there's, there's that. But yeah, I think we, we dove down that, that rabbit hole for quite a while and [00:38:13] Angie: which is fantastic, you know, and I think that like, I don't know if there's a bunch of people out there that listen to the podcasts that are thinking about ultra-marathons, so maybe you can connect with one of my examples, which is my first half marathon. Like when I first saw Kevin run his first half marathon, that's what got me even remotely thinking that I wonder if I could do this right. And it was that big goal, being able to set that bigger goal for myself of, because at that time, you know, I had all these stories about the type of runner that I was and all these things, but setting that big goal for me of a half marathon, completing my first half marathon, was a very freeing experience because it allowed me to break down [00:39:00] some of my walls and some of the stories that I was telling myself about what I could or couldn't do. Yeah. And I think that that's one of the big things that setting that bigger goal will give you the freedom to do, to say, okay, well if I'm gonna set this goal, then I've gotta actually do the things that are going to give me the best chance of achieving this goal. And that means that I'm going to have to, you know, actually say that I'm a runner, actually follow a training plan, actually, you know, have structure to my weeks and try to get faster, try to run longer, like try to do these things. And it really helped to break down my beliefs about myself as a runner. It helped to break down my beliefs about what I could and couldn't do, what I was and was not capable of. And if I hadn't gone on that journey, I don't know if I would be where I am today. And ongoing on that journey, it then opened up even more freedom to challenge my, [00:40:00] my thoughts, challenge my beliefs about myself being a slow runner, right? Like I had labeled myself as a slow runner for a long time. Okay, now I can do a half marathon, but how fast could I get? Right? And so for me it was, can I break 24 minutes in a 5k? And I didn't know if I could do that. I was definitely not a hundred percent confident in my ability to do that. And, but I trained as if I was going to be able to, yep. And that's the key, is believing that possibility of that outcome in training. To give you the best shot to get there. And I'm happy to say that, that I did do that but again, it wasn't in the achievement of that, that achieving that goal. Yes, it did. Like crossing the finish line of that half marathon, crossing the finish line of that 5K under my goal time, like gave me that like shot of like, heck yeah, I did that. Right? It's that extra shot of confidence. I did that. But even if [00:41:00] I hadn't gotten that exact time, I probably would've kept working for it because I still had that goal. I still had that belief. And just because you don't get it that first time around, doesn't mean it's not possible. [00:41:12] Kevin: Excellent. For those of you keeping track at, at keeping score at home, the the examples Angie put in are her half marathon PR and breaking 24 minutes, and the examples that she put in for me are not running my marathon goal and not completing my hundred Mile race. Just for those of you keeping score at home, Angie did write the outline for this particular episode, just in case we're curious. [00:41:35] Angie: That's hilarious. I didn't even think about that. Okay. So what about a goal that you achieved that helped you? [00:41:40] Kevin: No, no, no. Let's move on to the next one because you discussed something that I think is super important. [00:41:44] Angie: Oh my God, that's so funny. [00:41:46] Kevin: In training for your half marathon in training to break 24 minutes. Yeah. You said, I've gotta start doing the things that, that runners do. That a half marathon does that, someone that a fast runner would do. And part of that is following a dedicated training plan. Yeah. [00:42:00] So you get all these runners outta here that are like, okay, but if I follow a dedicated training plan, then I've gotta, I'm, I'm trapped. I have to do this plan. Mm-hmm. I feel so shackled to the plan, shackled to the plan, restricted by the plan. I can't just go out and do whatever I wanna to do. Like what if I feel tired on this day, the plan says I still have to go out and run six miles. Right. Like, So many people don't wanna follow a plan because they feel the plan will hold them back. Because they feel restricted and shackled, if you will, by the, by the plan itself. Right. And that's just not the point that, it's just not how that works. [00:42:33] Angie: Yeah. Cuz they, they, instead of following the plan or having exactly everything planned out for them, they wanna just go out and do whatever they want on any given day and that leads to them not making the progress that they want, which actually makes them feel stuck and restricted. So it's like this vicious cycle. It's like, oh, I don't, I don't need a training planner, or I don't want a training plan because that feels too restrictive. I wanna be able to go out and do what I wanna do. But then you're not making the progress that you wanna make so [00:43:00] you feel stuck and restricted and. Round and round you go. Right? And so what we want you guys to understand is that a plan actually gives you more freedom. Yeah. [00:43:09] Kevin: Because a plan doesn't have to be, this is exactly what you need to do at eight o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And then this is what you're doing at nine 30. And like it depends on what works for you. Very good point is your plan needs to have enough structure that. it, that the structure actually gives you freedom. Mm-hmm. , it has enough kind of constrictions to it, enough rules that you're following that you're like, oh, well as long as I follow those rules over the course of the week, I can almost move things wherever I want. Mm-hmm. , like, I like It's is like matrix style. Yeah. Like there are certain rules that that exist and there's other rules that can be bent and there's some rules that can be just completely ignored. Mm-hmm. , but within some essentially framework, well, that's how training plans work. There has to be an overall framework, right? That everything exists in, but then you know, there's [00:44:00] some rules that you can bend a little bit and there's some rules that you can move and adjust some plans a little bit. [00:44:04] Angie: There is no spoon. [00:44:05] Kevin: There is no spoon. [00:44:06] Angie: Right. Because there is no hard, there are no hard and fast rules for what makes a perfect training plan. Okay? The perfect training plan for you is the one that makes you feel the most free, that gives you the most freedom to go out and actually see progress and actually work into your lifestyle and to with your priorities and with what you want to achieve because there is something so freeing about not having to figure it out every day, right? The, A plan can give you freedom of mind because you know exactly what you need to do every day. You don't have to try to figure it out. You don't have to think about it. You just need to go out and execute, and there are so many, there's so much freedom that comes from that. There's something, you know, there's so many different studies out there about how many decisions the average human makes per day, and it's somewhere between 6,000 and like [00:45:00] 80,000. Like the range of like number of decisions that we make, it's a lot per day's so huge, right? [00:45:05] Kevin: I try and make as few as possible. We've actually had this discussion this morning. , Angie makes all decisions as we're getting ready for school. She literally wakes up all the other humans in the house and then prepares food for the small people. I do nothing. Like I get my, you get yourself ready. I get my own food for lunch and breakfast and kind of say hi to everybody else in the house. That's it. That's my, that's what I'm responsible for. Angie's responsible for every other thing that takes place. [00:45:32] Angie: And it becomes a lot, you know, but like a lot, that's why I've also created a structure for school lunches. Yes. This is actually a, a perfect example, right? I know that every day my kids get a main course. So that could either be, you know, maybe it's chicken nuggets one day it used to be chicken nugget Friday, but it's lent now. So we have chicken nuggets on Thursday now, chicken nugget Thursday. We don't eat meat on Friday for the, the next six, six weeks. You know, ham, rollups, like [00:46:00] salami, they, they can like a little charcuterie in there, but they have like a main item that's, that's kind of the, the main, main event. And then they get a fruit and then they get a vegetable. And so I just have to like, okay, I have to just fulfill these three categories. Yep. And that makes it easier versus like, okay, I have to pack a lunch. What do we have? It's like boom, boom, boom. Check, check, check. Yep. So creating that structure makes the lunch packing process much easier and many less decisions have to be made. I have to make a couple, but [00:46:28] Kevin: You have to make a couple but you have a, you have a guideline. Yeah. Same thing happens with my particular training week. I actually don't have the, the laid out structure all week long of this is exactly what I'm doing on each day. Yeah. I know this is what I'm gonna accomplish over the week. Mm-hmm. , I know that I'm probably going to lift on Tuesday and Friday, and I don't, when I know that I'm lifting, I just follow exactly what the plan says. Mm-hmm. , like, I follow Angie's Lifting plan. I do this, this, this, and this. I have it listed. This is exactly what I lifted [00:47:00] last week, so this is what I'm going to lift this week. No thinking on that. But like my, my speed workout is gonna fall somewhere in the middle of the week. Mm-hmm. , depending on how other days go, depending on if I get enough sleep the night before, it can kind of get moved around. Mm-hmm. . And then what it is also kind of depends on how I'm feeling that particular day. Like, do I feel like my legs are gonna get some good turnover? Then I'm gonna push the higher end speed. Am I just dragging this week? Has it just been mentally a tough week? I'm gonna try some workouts that are mentally easier for me. Mm-hmm. , because I'm also kind of far removed from my next race also. So I have even greater freedom in that. [00:47:36] Angie: Right. You have more freedom because you don't have that like very specific race right now that you're training for. Like you're in more of a base building more mode. Right now you're in a strength building, so it's important for you to still maintain certain mileage, certain speed. Yeah. But that's not the focus of what you're doing right now, and it's more of that strength so you're, you're very closely following your strength plan. Yes. Because that is the focus. Yeah. So that's what you foc you [00:48:00] focus on executing. And so the beauty of this training plan, or any training plan really is that you just figure it out once and then you just have to follow it. Yeah. And you can modify. And so Kevin likes his to be a little bit looser. I am more structured with my training plan. I do an easy run on Mondays. I do a speed workout on Tuesdays. I lift on Wednesdays, I do a run on Thursdays. And depending on what I'm training for, like if it's a base building, it'll probably be just another easy run. if my legs are feeling really good and I wanna throw in some extra speed that week, I can do that, depending on what my training load looks like. Or if I'm training for a race. Then I'll throw a second speed workout in that week. And then, Friday's my rest day. Saturday's my long run, and Sunday is a strength day, so I know exactly what I'm doing every single day. I don't have to figure it out. I don't have to know, you know, well, okay, what am I gonna do today? Like, I already know, this is just my week. And that structure just gives me so much freedom [00:49:00] because I don't have to think about it all the time. And that's why I love following a training plan. I just look at it, I'm like, okay, well this is what I'm doing today, or this is what I'm doing tomorrow. [00:49:08] Kevin: Right. And then if something comes up because life comes up. Yeah. This is the real Life runners podcast stuff comes up. Having a, a more laid out plan for you actually gives you greater freedom to adjust. Yes. The more clear your plan is, like, oh, well I do this on Monday, I do this on Tuesday, do this on Wednesday. Tuesday just exploded in my life, so I don't have a run on Tuesday anymore. Mm-hmm. , I don't have a run, I don't have a time for a strength. There's like, the kids are doing this, this and the other thing, and this one is sick and I don't have Tuesday. Yeah. So now looking at my time, where am I gonna move Tuesday to, mm-hmm. I don't have to like, now guess my whole week. It's like, okay, do I move Tuesday or do I just skip Tuesday? and then, you know, it gives you some options that you can work with. Mm-hmm. , and then you go from there, like having the plan is you're set up to being able to make just one more [00:50:00] decision. Do I move it, do I skip it? [00:50:01] Angie: Yeah. Because you have guideposts Yes. You have guiding principles that allow you to make that decision and not feel bad about it. Right. Like if you do decide, okay, this one I'm just not gonna be able to fit in based on what else is going on the rest of the week, then I just have to drop this. You can let go of that judgment or of that guilt for skipping a workout and saying, okay, but I might miss this one, but I've got the rest of the week planned out. I'm, I'm good to go. I think that following a plan. also gives you the freedom of progress because you put in the work and then you get results. And those results are not always linear. Those, those results are not a math equation, right? It's not like if I follow this plan to the T, this is exactly what's going to happen. I'm for sure 100% going to run. That's sub two hour, half marathon. That's not what we mean, but if you're following a plan, you should be seeing results. And there's a lot of freedom in that, knowing that if I'm putting [00:51:00] in the work I am, Going to achieve a certain outcome. I'm, I'm actually going to see something. It might not be the exact result that I want. It might not be the exact timeline that I want, but I will still be moving in the right direction. [00:51:14] Kevin: Yeah. And you know, this leads to a couple of of good examples that you have put out here, which is another PR that I didn't get to. No, I'm kidding. [00:51:20] Angie: No, another good example of that, like smokes me in all prs. So, you know, [00:51:26] Kevin: it's fine. [00:51:27] Angie: There's always that. [00:51:28] Kevin: Not, not, if we tried to plank off against each other, that would not even be close. No, I've got you on that. All right, so great example here is a school handbook. I have been part of trying to recreate the school handbook at my school. I think you brought this one up on behalf of the girls, but within the school handbook. I think it's over a hundred pages. I think it's 146 pages long. Yikes. Because it provides very clear expectations. Mm-hmm. , all of the scenarios that could be laid out, they're all there. These the exact guidelines under this scenario. So there's no gray area. Yeah, there's no like, well, I wasn't quite [00:52:00] sure. Oh really? Because here on page 123, it says exactly what was supposed to happen. Mm-hmm. . It provides clarity. Yeah. And clarity. Well, people are like, oh, I feel super restrictive from that. No, no, no. Clarity means you don't have to think about it. That provides a whole lot of that freedom of mind that we've talked about here is it's very clear what it is that you are going to do or are not going to do. [00:52:19] Angie: Yeah, and I think that there are the, we still maintain a freedom of choice no matter. Plan we have in place good points. No matter, you know what expectations there are, we always maintain a freedom to choose. We always have the freedom to follow that plan or to not follow that plan. That is a given choice every single day. But if you decide, no, no, no, this is what I want. Now here's the freedom, you know that I just have to follow this and then I know that I'm gonna be not, I don't wanna say doing the right thing, but on the right path. [00:52:53] Kevin: In terms of like school handbook. Yes. Yes. If I would like to not get a detention, I just follow the rules, laid out in the handbook, boom done. [00:53:00] If I want to aim in the direction of a race pr, I'd like to run a farther distance. Here's the plan, here's the path. If I follow the steps, yeah, I might not get exactly to the goal, but I know that I'm gonna make solid progress towards that goal. [00:53:12] Angie: Yeah, and the other thing I think about too, when I think about how structure can provide freedom is like, A clear job description. Like if you are going into a job and you know exactly what you're responsible, responsible for, and you have clear markers of success, that's gonna be a lot easier for you to do your job and to have freedom within that job because you're like, okay, I know that I am responsible for x, y, z metrics, so how am I gonna get to that? And it, it, it kind of gives you that freedom again to maybe explore a little bit depending on what you're doing. Of course. Like if you're a factory worker on a, an assembly line, you, you not a whole lot not exploration there. Yeah. Like you're, you're responsible for that one thing. Right. But I think that it can make our jobs a lot [00:54:00] easier because you understand what you're supposed to do every day. So how would that job be if you didn't know what you were supposed to be doing every day? And I think that that's what makes entrepreneurship so tough. A lot of people go into business and wanna become an entrepreneur or start their own business because they think it's going to give them more freedom. And it does in a lot of ways, right? I have the freedom to choose what I do every single day. I have the freedom to help whoever I wanna help, but the choices are so many, so broad. A lot of people feel very like stuck and overwhelmed because it can be very overwhelming to try to just decide, okay, well what kind of business am I gonna start? Am I gonna have a coffee shop? Am I gonna start a coaching business? Like the possibilities are endless. And when possibilities are endless, though that seems like the definition of freedom. Of freedom, it can actually make you feel very stuck because you're not sure what direction to go. [00:54:59] Kevin: And you're [00:55:00] not very satisfied. Like this is something that I just read the other day and I tried to figure out where, like whose Instagram I, I saw this off of, but it was talking about like job satisfaction. And they said one of the biggest keys to job satisfaction is employees knowing what is expected of them. Mm-hmm. having a very clear job description is you're responsible for this, this, and this. And then, Not having managers just like hover over them and micromanage. Just saying, these are your responsibilities. And then having the expectation that those responsibilities are gonna get taken care of. And the opposite of it, having really vague boundaries of what, like success at this job does leads some of the greatest levels of job dissatisfaction. Some of the mm-hmm. The greatest, like burnout and, and desire to quit the job. [00:55:45] Angie: Yeah. But how do you think satisfaction links to freedom then? [00:55:49] Kevin: I think the more freedom you feel within your job. Like I, there are restrictions I have within my job. Mm-hmm. , like, there just are like, I have to be in the classroom. Like, I can't [00:56:00] just be like, eh, you know what? For a third period today, I feel like, coffee break. Like, that's just not how it works. Yeah. There's going to be kids that show up. So there are certain rules that I have to follow. There's state standards, so we have to be able to cover certain material and stuff like that. Right. But, outside of like, here's overall what needs to get covered. No one tells me what needs to get covered on Tuesday of the third week of school. Yeah. Like I don't have that. No one's checking in on me on like a daily basis to make sure that I've Oh, have you given, have you given your first test of the semester? Mm-hmm. , have you given your second at this point, like, that's not where it's at. It's you need to make sure that the kids learn this stuff. Go for it. Mm-hmm. And that's essentially what I've got. And then I have a lot of support coming from the people around me, which is, yeah, kinda the benefit of having a coach also is they kind of give you like a good path and then help support you when other issues come up. [00:56:49] Angie: Yeah. So apparently our, our wonderful dog here, if you guys can hear, I don't know if, because Zoom has a very good filter. Like I, hopefully there's not getting a lot of squeaks under the, we we record on Zoom our, our podcast. So [00:57:00] hopefully you guys aren't hearing all of the squeakiness. But of course our dog decided now is the time to, to play with this doggy toy. But anyway, I think it all kind of comes down to how you want to define freedom in your life and, you might think that freedom means having the choice to do whatever you want, whenever you want. And I mean, quite honestly, we all have that choice, right? Yes, we do. Like we all can choose, like you could choose not to go to work tomorrow. That's true. Like you have that choice, but then the consequences of that choice would come after it. Like, exactly. You would probably get fired, which means that you wouldn't get a paycheck, which means that that would affect, you know, the, our, our family's finances. Like there are consequences of all of those choices. [00:57:39] Kevin: I'm not gonna be p be able to pay, raise entry fees. [00:57:42] Angie: Ultimately that's what it comes down to is I can't pay the race entry fees. But you do have the freedom Yes. To make that choice. And I think that it's about how we look at freedom and how we find freedom in our life. And we think that running can help you with that freedom to give you the freedom to explore within yourself, the freedom to [00:58:00] explore the world around you, the freedom to set big goals and challenge yourself and that a plan can give you the freedom to go out and execute the freedom of mind that you don't have to think about it. The freedom, knowing that you are doing something that is good for you, that's going to help give you the great

Kevin Costner's ranch is available to rent and TN wants to visit. Also, Todd and Maria say farewell to a daytime talk show charlatan. Produced by The Host With The Most, LLC.

On this Thanksgiving-themed episode of CzechXicans, the boys discuss what they're thankful for this year in life, work and fandom. We raise a glass to Kevin Conroy and Jason David Frank, childhood heroes gone too soon. Kevin provided the voice for Batman/Bruce Wayne since his 1992 debut in 'Batman: The Animated Series' in a 30+ year career that spanned animation, video games, and even led to a cameo in the CW's 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' storylines as an alternate universe Bruce Wayne. Jason David Frank burst onto our screen in 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' as Tommy Oliver, the Green Power Ranger. Jason David Frank continued to be involved with the franchise for nearly 30 years and appeared in various iterations of the Power Rangers story, including the 2017 reboot. Like Kevin, Jason traveled extensively to various conventions around the world, greeting and signing autographs for thousands of fans who loved and were inspired by their performances as Bruce Wayne and Tommy Oliver. Hector shares his experience accompanying Kevin Conroy to a convention while working at one of LA's voice-acting agencies. James Gunn and Peter Safran will lead DC Studios as Co-CEOs. In these roles, James and Peter will be responsible for the next ten years of storytelling and are currently mapping out what the DC Universe will look like across film, television, and animation. This will hopefully give the brand a singular, unified voice that will lead to the return of some of the most beloved characters while also bringing new, never-before-seen characters to the screen. Details are vague, but Gunn is expected to share these plans with Warner Bros. Discovery soon and has also been active on social media to shut down any news or rumors that are false. In a shocking turn of events, Bob Iger is back at The Walt Disney Company. Bob Chapek, Iger's replacement, has been removed as CEO of the company after two years of service that was met with mixed results and responses from investors and fans worldwide. In his new two-year term, Iger will be tasked with turning things around for the company and finding a new replacement to take over as CEO. Watch this episode on YouTube and subscribe to the channel. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/heroesreforged/support

This episode made our faces hurt from laughing so much. The Dan Bell jumps back on the podcast to give us an update on training, life and to make fun of Tom and Tom      SPONSORS @pioneer_fit www.generalleathercraft.com Song intro by- Joshua Brown & The Hard Livin Legends -LETS GET STUPID Manscaped code -STUPID Show Hosts @tomkal1 @huckfinnbarbell @hfbapparel @letsgetstupidpodcast @smartstrengthofficial letsgetstupidpodcast@gmail.com www.huckfinnbarbell.com www.smartstrengthofficial.com

Dr. Kevin Mailo welcomes Past President of the Canadian Medical Association (CMA), Dr. Katharine Smart, to the podcast. Dr. Smart shares how leadership roles can enhance the success of wellbeing within our careers. Dr. Smart details how the child health program she spearheaded in the Yukon came to be, and explains how wellbeing for patients and physicians alike is balanced in her program. She carries a lot of passion for the work and is a passionate person by nature. This passion helped Dr. Smart when she became the President of the CMA just as the pandemic was getting extremely difficult. Her authenticity is what she carried into that role, and as she advocated for colleagues she worked to state clear facts and distill where things were truly at.In this episode, Dr. Kevin Mailo and guest Dr. Katharine Smart really dive into what wellness looks like for physicians in the dark time healthcare is currently experiencing. Dr. Smart believes that having a voice and connection to work through leadership opportunities is a vital part of avoiding burnout. She explains the variety of ways leadership can take shape. She also addresses releasing the fear of failure to realize that what we call ‘failure' is really a necessary part of growth. Drs. Kevin Mailo and Katharine Smart have an enlightening conversation about burnout, mentorship, and the power of letting go of perfectionism in this must-hear episode.About Dr. Katharine Smart:Dr. Katharine Smart is a pediatrician in Whitehorse, Yukon and Past President of the CMA. Her work is centred on developing collaborative partnerships with community and government services to serve marginalized children using a model of social pediatrics. She works primarily with children who have experienced trauma and adverse childhood events, and she witnesses the broad and lasting impact these events have on children and their development daily. She is passionate about improving services for marginalized children in an effort to change their life trajectory.In addition to her community-based work, Dr. Smart enjoys acute care and provides on-call services to the hospital. Before moving to the Yukon, she was a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary. Dr. Smart is the past president of the Yukon Medical Association.Resources discussed in this episode:Canadian Medical Assocation (CMA)—Physician Empowerment: website | facebook | linkedinDr. Katharine Smart, Pediatrician and Past President of CMA: website | instagram | twitter__Transcript:Kevin Mailo: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, and you're listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. At Physician Empowerment we're focused on transforming the lives of Canadian physicians through education in finance, practice transformation, wellness and leadership. After you've listened to today's episode, I encourage you to visit us at PhysEmpowerment.ca. That's P H Y S empowerment dot ca to learn more about the many resources we have to help you make that change in your own life, practice and personal finances. Now onto today's episode. Kevin Mailo: [00:00:35] Hi there. I'm Dr. Kevin Mailo, one of the hosts of the Physician Empowerment Podcast. And today I am extremely, extremely excited to introduce everyone to Dr. Katharine Smart. And Dr. Smart is the past president of the Canadian Medical Association, and her term is recently expired as president of the Canadian Medical Association. She is kind of a super doctor. She is a pediatrician based in the Yukon with a practice centered on the emergency department, as well as community based clinic. And I'm honored and excited to be joined today by Katharine. Katharine, why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:01:17] Sure. Thanks, Kevin. Excited to be here as well. And thank you for all your work. So, yeah, I've been in pediatrics now for over 20 years. I started my career as a pediatric emergency medicine physician at the Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, but I've always done work in northern Canada, time in northern Manitoba, I had the opportunity to work in Nunavut as a pediatric resident, so I've always had a passion for rural and remote medicine as well. And an interest in First Nations health and Indigenous health. So I had the opportunity to move to the Yukon five years ago to create a child health program there. At that point in time, they had an amazing group of six pediatricians who were coming up twice a year for four days a month and providing services to kids in the territory. But as you can imagine, four days a month of pediatric coverage, no call coverage, nothing to support acute care was probably not really enough. And and in talking with those colleagues, they definitely saw the role for for more supports for children. So I moved there with my husband, who's an orthopedic surgeon, and the two of us built two new programs, me in pediatrics in him and orthopedic surgery. And that's what I've been doing clinically for the last five years. So now we've got four pediatricians, child psychiatrist, a social worker, a neonatal and pediatric medevac program, outreach to all our Indigenous communities, lots of partnerships with schools, mental health and our First Nations communities. And I'm really proud of our program and the work that we do to serve kids and families in the Territory. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:40] That sounds absolutely outstanding. Now, I'll always just kind of pitch, but are you guys recruiting? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:02:46] Not currently. We're actually fully, fully staffed at the moment. Yeah, I think it's a testament to our program. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:53] I would absolutely agree. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:02:54] Yeah. Kevin Mailo: [00:02:55] I would absolutely agree. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:02:57] So, you know, Kevin, I know one of your passions is wellness. And when we designed the program and just the way we operate our clinic, that was one of the foundational principles for me. And I think one of the advantages of creating a program we've already been working for a long time is you kind of see the pitfalls. So I thought a lot about that and the way we structured the way we work. And we work as a team, the four of us, we support each other. The person who's on covers all the patients, they cover the inbox, the EMR, any emergency. Kevin Mailo: [00:03:24] So when you're off, you're actually off. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:03:26] You're off. Yeah. And we still schedule in such a way that there's a lot of continuity. You know, most patients are follow ups. It'll be the same pediatrician, but they're always covered. So if something comes up, something's unexpected. There's no holes in care. But exactly for us workers, when we're off, we're off. And we have that total confidence in our colleagues, they're covering. So that structure, I think, has made it quite desirable. Another... Kevin Mailo: [00:03:49] Isn't that amazing. It's rare. It's rarer than it should be. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:03:53] The other key piece I think to our success is, you know, I knew that we'd be dealing with a variety of challenges and a lot of our patients have a lot of social challenges. So I was able to negotiate with the government an alternative payment model. So we get paid a combination of a daily rate plus fee for service for after hours coverage. So I think we're well remunerated. It covers our time. It allows us to work in different ways, right, being very patient centered. Kevin Mailo: [00:04:20] Creative. If it needs a phone call... Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:04:22] It needs a phone call, a video call, an email, doesn't matter, right? Because we're just being paid to look after patients. And we do it in the right way that works for patients. Kevin Mailo: [00:04:30] What a great example of how when the economics of health care align with well being and best patient outcomes. Isn't that wonderful? I love it. It's so important. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:04:39] Yeah, it's so important and it's made it possible for us to recruit and retain, but it's also made us desirable for locums because they know they're coming into a well run clinic. Kevin Mailo: [00:04:47] Oh yeah. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:04:48] With a clear plan, clear ways things are covered. They're going to be well paid for their time. So it, and like you said, the win of that is now it's sustainable. We have great people. We're all aligned. We know what we're doing. We know our purpose and those things have come together. And that really links to me to one of my principles, which is I think solutions have to work for patients and physicians. And when they do, that's when you get the best wins. And I think our program is an example of that. Kevin Mailo: [00:05:11] I absolutely love it. Let's talk briefly about your work as president of the Canadian Medical Association, because what really caught my attention was listening to you speak so boldly and courageously about the crisis facing our health care system. And I think we're all feeling that. I know we certainly get word through Physician Empowerment about physicians coast to coast struggling to deliver care under a health care system that's, frankly, under-resourced. So first off, I want to sincerely thank you for that advocacy because, you know, it's there, but we need to start talking about it. And you have done such a powerful job. And I would encourage anybody to look up Katharine's media interviews at CBC and some of the others that have been just remarkable in terms of crystallizing some of the issues that we're faced with. Do you want to just talk a little bit about that briefly, because the crisis isn't about to go away. We always try to create evergreen content, know things that are going to be relevant ten years from now. I worry this podcast is going to be just as relevant in ten years. If I can be blunt. So tell us about what's going on in Canadian health care. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:06:14] Yeah, for sure. I worry about that too, Kevin, and thank you for your kind words. Yeah, it was a really interesting journey into this role and it's quite a long landing kind of launchpad into becoming the CMA president. You know, there's the election, it's few years before then, you're the election year present, etc. So, you know, when I put my name in for this, it was pre-pandemic, when I found out I won the election, it was just like the month before the pandemic was declared. And then I came into the role of president-elect sort of a few months into the pandemic and then became the actual president kind of a year into the pandemic when things were really starting to get difficult, I think we were starting to see a lot of less social cohesiveness around how we were approaching the pandemic. There was, you know, vaccines were out, vaccine passports that was controversial, mandatory vaccines for health care workers. We were starting to see that narrative shift from health care as heroes to a lot more harassment and intimidation of health care workers, protesters outside a hospital. So things were really heating up. And of course, at that point, we were deep into the ICU crises with hospitals being overwhelmed, people not being able to receive care. And it was a really tense time. So I would say that the role I ended up being in was certainly not what I thought I was going to be doing when I when I took this on. But I felt an immense sense of privilege to be able to speak for my colleagues, because what I would say is, you know, whenever as a physician, I felt so proud of my colleagues because of the tremendous work they've done over these past two years. I mean, always people are doing tremendous work, but people have really had to rise to this challenge in a way that we haven't seen. And to be the person out there representing this profession to the public and publicly, I took that very seriously. And it's really meaningful for me to hear feedback from colleagues who felt that I did it justice. And that was my goal. And my personality is, I'm a straight shooter. If you ask my opinion, you're going to get it. I'm not always right, but I'm going to tell you what I think. And I tried to carry that authenticity into my role as CMA president because I felt my job was to state the facts and to state what I was hearing from colleagues and to put it out there, really distill for people this is where we are. And I, your question, what's the state of Canadian health care? I mean, I don't think it is an overexaggeration to say we are at, I think the low point that we've probably ever been at in our system. And it's not in one place, right? We are now seeing this across the system. It doesn't matter what you're talking about, from community clinics to emergency departments to inpatient wards to long term care to home care, it doesn't matter. There's no part of the system that's working well. There's no group of physicians who would say to you right now, I can deliver the care I want for my patients, Everyone is struggling. And the problem is fundamentally about access and being able to deliver care to patients in a timely way. And in none of those settings is that happening. And I think that's leading to the burnout and moral injury that we're seeing amongst not only physicians but across health professions. And that's now leading, I think, to the staffing challenges we're seeing as people are starting to walk away because they just can't compromise themselves any further, you know, both professionally, ethically, physically, mentally. The toll has been massive. And I always say the health care system, to me, it's the people. A hospital bed means nothing without the expert care of the staff. And it's not only doctors, as you and I know, it's the nurses and other parts, pharmacists and cleaners and everyone who comes in and supports that patient. And the fact that we have a system now that is eating those people alive and spitting them out is deeply worrisome because that is the most precious resource. And right now we have not invested adequately in the people to make them feel valued, and we're paying that price. And these are not resources that are easily recaptured. Kevin Mailo: [00:09:58] Like when I think about my incredible nursing colleagues, for instance, that have decades of experience and I rely on them in the emergency department for their intuition and their experience and their knowledge. I mean, when somebody like that walks, there isn't going to be suddenly a replacement. There's no money for that. Do you know what I mean? And we're faced with this across the health care system. And, you know, the term that's getting thrown around in the Western world, kind of in terms of people being dissatisfied with their jobs are struggling, is that quiet quitting, right? You know, it's that person that decides to retire. It's that family physician who decides to retire this year instead of three years from now because she's burnt out. Do you know what I mean? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:10:42] Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Kevin Mailo: [00:10:43] It's, you know, a nurse that doesn't want to pick up that overtime shift because she or he is burnt out. Right? These are the things that are happening quietly and leaving fewer and fewer of us to work in a system that's putting more and more pressure on frontline staff. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:11:02] 100%. And that's the vicious cycle, right? Because now the people showing up are showing up to a system that's struggling more and more and more. So it just keeps building. And I agree. I think the other thing that people don't understand enough I mean, you and I understand it as providers, but the public doesn't understand is just what you said. You know that nurse who's been there 15, 20, 30 years in an ICU or an emergency department, that the skill of that person. Kevin Mailo: [00:11:26] Goodness. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:11:26] The knowledge, you cannot replicate that. And then the mentorship that they provide. Kevin Mailo: [00:11:31] Oh, my goodness. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:11:31] Not only to junior nurses, but junior doctors. Right. How many times did you have your butt saved as a junior doctor by - and even as a senior experienced doctor - by experienced nurses-- Kevin Mailo: [00:11:41] -- how about as a staff -- Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:11:42] -- like all the time, even today, right. Like Kevin hey, I think you missed this or that dose was wrong or actually this. Like, the reality is we all need each other. And when we lose those people, experienced anyone in any of the health professions, with them walks wealth of experience, insight, compassion, ability to mentor others. And that's what creates resiliency and safety in our system. And it's intangible, right, because we don't have a way to really track it. Kevin Mailo: [00:12:07] It's our culture, it's our folklore, it's our essence. It's in the health care system. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:12:13] And it's irreplaceable. And those are the people we're losing. Kevin Mailo: [00:12:16] It is, right? And also, you know, another thing that we've noticed is physicians that are exiting the public health care system and working more privately because they're burnt out and they're struggling with working conditions in the public health care system. So these are huge challenges that we're faced with. Huge challenges. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:12:35] Absolutely. And I think the real, at the heart of this is that providers are tired of having these systems failures downloaded onto them as individuals, both to be held to feel responsible for trying to prop up a broken system, to feel responsible for the bad outcomes that are coming from this broken system and at times being held liable and medically responsible for outcomes, which are nothing to do with them and not their fault. Kevin Mailo: [00:12:59] Yeah, these are system-based issues, you know. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:13:02] 100%. So there's huge risk right now for people as well. I think both emotionally but also legally, all of these things. So it's, I think it's a really challenging, challenging time. Kevin Mailo: [00:13:14] So you mentioned, you and I have talked about burnout and clearly we're both very passionate about it. Today's topic is fascinating, that you brought forward is leadership as an antidote to burnout. I'm fascinated. I want to hear it, about this. What does this mean? How is leadership an antidote to burnout? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:13:33] Well, what I've been thinking a lot about, right, is just what you and I have been saying. Like here we are, things are dire, but what we know is the people in the system are amazing. They're resilient, they're highly competent, they bring really an incredible skill set. Anybody in health care to me is the type of person I want to be friends with and have over for a beer, right? They're just my people. So what I've thought a lot about is so many of these things are out of our control, right? The systems pieces. In some ways we can't make it totally different tomorrow. SSo what can we do and where can we be putting our efforts or framing up our roles and our moments in the system to feel like we can regain some control and choose things and pass forward that make us feel like we're still contributing to making things better when it can feel so hopeless. And for me, and that's part of been, part of my experience in my journey as a leader, as president of the CMA and now as past president, has been through leadership. And I think what I would like younger doctors to consider is, is developing your leadership skills a way that you can feel you can start to position yourself to harness some control over what happens next. So maybe that's in a small way, in the way you design your clinic, the way you run your department, the way you show up in your staff meetings, in your hospital, in your community. Maybe it's more broadly as a representative in your PTMA, maybe it's getting involved with the CMA. There's all different things people can be doing, but I really believe that having those leadership skills, starting to see yourself as a leader, so that you start to feel you're someone who could be part of that change, however small. I think those are those steps to regaining sort of our power and feeling like we can be part of the solution. And I think to me it can be that antidote to hopelessness or burnout is that sense of, okay, it's not perfect, but I'm part of the conversation and I feel like I've got the skills to show up that way. And I think developing those leadership skills is really important so that you feel you can be at the table. Kevin Mailo: [00:15:27] I think that's incredibly powerful because it is a source of burnout when people feel disconnected from their workplace. And that's not just specific to health care, that's across multiple industries, right? People don't feel like they have input, feel like they have a voice. And so giving yourself a voice by becoming a leader can be very, very powerful. What are some practical ways that people can do that? Right, like you mentioned, getting involved, but people say, Well, I've never been in a leadership position before, and I'm a big believer in at some point everyone has to jump, right? You know, at some point we have to deal with the uncertainties that life throws at us. We do it in medicine all the time, but we don't think about it in other aspects of our life, whether it's finance or leadership or practice management. But, you know, talk to us about, like, practical, small steps that we can take to get involved without feeling we're in over our heads and without that fear of failure, which I think is another thing we struggle with in the profession. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:16:22] Yeah, absolutely. I think those are all great questions. And I think the first thing is, you know, be flexible with yourself about what being a leader means, right? It doesn't always have to mean being the top person or having a really prominent role or even a role with a title. Being a leader might just be how you show up with your colleagues that day. You may just decide I'm going to show up and I'm going to make a point of really checking in with people authentically and leading that way within my cohort of friends and colleagues. That may be how you show leadership. I think find a mentor, right? Look around you, look at people who you admire or just show up in a way at work or in a leadership role in a way that you think, Yeah, I respect that, I'd like to be like that, and talk to them about their journey, what they've learned. I think people have a lot of wisdom to share that have been doing this longer that can tell you These were some of the pitfalls, these are things I wish I would have known, these are things that helped me. So don't be afraid to create that network. I think we're getting better at that as physicians, we're finding each other in these different informal and sometimes formal groups, like minded people, and we're trying to build each other up. Right? And I think that's really, really important. So lean into those opportunities, look for them. I think there's also some more formal opportunities. You know, the physician leadership courses that are available can be really helpful. And I've taken some of those myself over time that I found really valuable in terms of crystallizing my skills. I think we all come with a variety of skill sets, some things to help us, sometimes things hinder us. But the more you have insight into yourself and your own personality, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and can start to kind of put a framework around some of the challenges that we encounter as physicians and as leaders. I think that can build your skills and you show up feeling more confident and it gives you, just like you show up to a code with a plan, being able to show up to difficult communication situations, difficult, you know, organizational situations. If you come there with a framework of how you're going to deal with it, I think you feel less afraid, less intimidated, less afraid of failure because you actually kind of have a plan about what you're going to do. So I think building all those things can really put you in a position where you feel more empowered to take those leaps of faith and take things on. And then I think it starts to build from there, right? Once you see how you do, then you can start to build the confidence to take on more and more roles, and eventually you'll probably find yourself mentoring other people. And there's a lot of learning in those opportunities too. Kevin Mailo: [00:18:43] Absolutely love it. Talk to us about the importance of passion when it comes to leadership roles, and I'll mention that I could really sense passion behind your vision of setting up the pediatrics program in the Yukon and serving those communities and serving your patients. So passion fuels leadership. But talk to us a little bit about what that means in our lives. Right? It's not just about sitting on a hospital committee so we can say we sat on a hospital committee. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:19:10] Yeah. So important. And it's funny you ask me about that because I've self-diagnosed myself with excessive passion syndrome. I call it hashtag EPS. So other people are welcome to join me in that diagnosis. Kevin Mailo: [00:19:22] I love it. Yeah, I love it. That's why I spend all my time in Physician Empowerment. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:19:27] Yeah, No, totally. So, you know, in terms of passion, I think for me that's been something that I've really recognized I need to lean into in my career because it's really, I think, what makes me me, right? So again, I think part of figuring out how you want to show up as a leader, as a physician, is understanding yourself and what really drives you. So what I know about myself, that's why I've created my own DSM criteria for myself, is that I am a very passionate person. Now sometimes that gets me into trouble. Passion is not, doesn't always play out well, right? Because sometimes you're so passionate about what's going on that it can be overwhelming for people. Kevin Mailo: [00:20:00] That was my question? Yeah, how do you navigate that when other people are like kind of lukewarm? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:20:05] Yeah, it could be a lot, right? And I know that I can be sometimes a lot and sometimes it can make you very emotional and sometimes, you know, tempering that so that it's not overwhelming or that it's appropriate, right? Because we don't always get what we want by being super emotional. Not that that's always good or bad. But again, it's just realizing, right? It's good and it's bad. It's got pros and cons. But for me, when I'm doing things I'm passionate about, that's when I hit my flow, right? That's when I know I'm doing the right things because that's where I feel excited, I feel that meaning, I can see myself being successful. I can see myself achieving things because I think often that passion is contagious. It gets people on board with you. You feel people find you authentic because they can tell you're really committed to it. And I think things I've been able to do where I've had success have been because I've fueled that with the passion that I feel. And for me, passion directly relates to purpose, right? Because I think that's the other value that really matters is you have to know your why and what your purpose is. And again, the beautiful thing about health care is there can be a whole variety of purposes for people. For me, I like building things. I really enjoy finding problems, trying to solve them, looking for solutions, and feeling like I'm creating something. So for me, that's kind of my why and it gets fueled by my passion. So that's why the Yukon opportunity was sort of perfect for me. I think I was at a point in my career where I had enough wisdom, having seen the health system for a long time, I knew kind of things I thought would work and not work. It was an environment that I felt passionate about. It was a patient population I felt passionate about, and I could see the ways to bring the various components of the system together in a way that could really serve patients. And I could feel like we were making an impact, but also doing it in a way that allowed me to feel like I could create a job that I felt I had some reasonable life balance in. I was, it was meaningful. I was able to create a group of colleagues that shared my vision and passion, and we have shared our values and view of how we wanted to deliver care, and then create that. And so that, for me, really kind of ticked all those boxes. But I think when you bring passion to your purpose, that's kind of the magical thing. And that's where I think things really start happening. And I think those are, again, why, in my view, leaning into leadership for people who are interested in that can really create those opportunities. Because once people start seeing you as a leader, you're able to make more things happen because people come to you and you have more opportunity to share your ideas and solutions and then you start to be part of seeing things change. And I think once we start to feel things changing and getting better, even if it's small, that fuels a lot of hope. And I think that's what people need right now in the system, is hope that it could actually be different. Kevin Mailo: [00:22:38] Talk to us about failure and setbacks, and I'll frame it a little bit in terms of the broader medical culture. And one of the things we struggle with in medicine is failure, right? I mean, we're highly selected against it and we're not used to having setbacks. We're not used to failing. And we often try to fail privately. But leadership roles mean public failures. Right? And it can be as much as you get shot down at a committee meeting, it can be a giant flop with your clinic, it could be a major dysfunction at a hospital level, right? I mean, there are scales of failure, but failing. How do you approach failure or what wisdom do you have in this space, Katharine? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:23:20] I think that's so critically important. And I think our fear of acknowledging failure as an unavoidable part of career development, personal development, growth across the spectrum is actually a real problem, right? Because we all are going to fail. No one's perfect. The perfectionism in medicine, I think, is part of the weird hidden curriculum that drives all sorts of strange behaviors and interactions and ultimately, I think often doesn't create the best patient care because we're doing things that are performative just because we want other people to think we're good, not necessarily because it's the right thing to do. So I think that that fear of failure is really behind a lot of problems. You know, and I've absolutely had failures. I've had failures with relationships with colleagues, I've had clinical failures where I've made the wrong decision or the wrong diagnosis. I've had personal failures, where I've let down people that I care about in my life, or haven't shown up maybe the way I wanted to. I think like everyone I've had all those things happen. But how I try to approach it, and I think partly why I am where I am today is because of some major challenges I had at one point in my career professionally, with colleagues, where I was just in a clinical situation that I really didn't feel comfortable in and I had to make some major decisions about what I was going to do with my career at that point. But I really leaned into that as an opportunity for self improvement, right? I really reflected on that moment in time in my career and thought, you know, why did this turn out the way it turned out? What do you feel proud of in terms of how you handled it? What do you wish you'd done differently? How could you have made this more positive? What could you have done that would have been better and gotten a better outcome? And I took that as an opportunity to really develop some additional skills. I thought, okay, I don't think I communicated as well as I could have. So I took a course on communication. Right? I thought, you know, I don't want things to be like that again. So I took a course about getting to understand yourself better and how you show up as a leader. So I really tried to take that as not an opportunity for the blame and shame for anyone involved -- Kevin Mailo: [00:25:23] -- or to retreat -- Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:25:24] -- including myself -- Kevin Mailo: [00:25:25] -- or to retreat -- Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:25:25] -- or to retreat. But I really leaned into it, right? I was like, You've got to lean into this failure. Like, what could this mean for you and what can you take from this? And how do you leverage this moment to improve yourself? Because I think everything in life has a lesson in it, and you can either choose to be made smaller by it, you can choose to let it defeat you, or you can choose to not own your part in it, right? Because no matter what happens, you always have a role. And I thought, I've got, I'm either going to let this sort of destroy me or I'm going to lean into it and I'm going to come out better. And I think I did come out better. And I suspect I probably never would have became the president of the Medical Association had that not happened to me. So I think that we shouldn't be afraid of our failures. I think we shouldn't be afraid of knowing that we're never always going to be perfect. And that's okay. But we've got to stay open to what's the lesson here for us and how can I emerge from this a better version of who I was? And be okay with the fact that it took a failure to get there. Kevin Mailo: [00:26:22] Wow, absolutely love that. And even just celebrating the journey and the process. And that's another thing in medicine, we're very goal oriented, like, okay, I just want to set this up or establish this or have this new process of doing things. But the reality is, is that we may not get there. Right? But in the process we've learned something about the system we work in or we've learned something about ourselves that allows us to become more powerful as leaders and more effective in communicating that vision and that passion. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:26:53] I totally agree. Kevin Mailo: [00:26:54] It isn't just a saying that failure is an ingredient of success. Failure truly is key to success. You haven't tried if you haven't failed. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:27:03] I agree, and I don't think you're going to find any successful person in any walk of life who hasn't failed multiple times across spectrums of their life. That's just the journey, right? It's not a straight line from A to B, it's up and down. And again, I think the most interesting people are often the people that have been through some really hard things. And that's where we find ourselves, often, and find who we really are. And I think we have to be open to that. And again, I think this is why community is so important, right? Being able to talk honestly about this with each other, normalize, normalize failure, right? Be like, hey, man, this is part of it. Like, you know, one of the most powerful things that happened to me - I'll never forget this - I was a new attending, so I was a peds emerg doc in Calgary. I'd done my fellowship there. So on June 30th I was a resident, a fellow, and then July 1st I was attending physician. We've all had that transition. But, you know, in my case, like a pretty straightforward transition, right? The department I trained in, worked in, I'd had a lot of independence as a fellow, so it wasn't really all that different. But all of a sudden my anxiety around what I was doing was like ten times what it had been the day before. And I was just like perseverating about all the patients I was seeing, potentially making mistakes, and it was getting overwhelming, like it was like anxiety that was like I couldn't sleep, like it was a problem. And I talked to a colleague, a good friend of mine who's still a close friend, a more experienced emerg physician, and she said something to me that was really helpful. She said, Katharine, if you imagine the best doctor you know, like someone you really respect clinically, you think they're excellent. I was like, okay. She's like, Do you think they're right 100% of the time? And I was like, No, that's impossible. She's like, Right, so say you're amazing and you're right 98% of the time, which no one's even that good, you know that, right? That still means every month you're seeing thousands of patients, there's going to be several like 20, 30 or more patients where you were wrong. Now, most of the time we're lucky that the natural history of things is nothing untoward happens or people come back and there's this second go and it's fine. But other times, sometimes, bad things are going to happen and you're going to wish you'd done something different. She's like, What you have to understand is it doesn't matter if you're the very best of the very best, that is part of this work. It's always going to happen. It happens to all of us. And you have to let go of this pursuit of being perfect because it's impossible. And that was so powerful for me. It really allowed me to step back and go, You're right, I'm going to have, and even mistakes I don't know if that's even the right word, right? Kevin Mailo: [00:29:23] I mean, it's a process of self forgiveness and learning to forgive ourselves before the event happens. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:29:30] That's right. And that really helped me. And then what I realized and what I tried to really march forward with from that in my career was, Okay, instead of seeing this as as bad and blaming, let's see this as learning, right? So when I had a case that bounced back or something went differently, really, honestly, look at what happened and ask yourself, could I have done something differently? And sometimes the answer is no, right? Sometimes you look at the care you gave and you're like, Given what I knew in that moment, I wouldn't have done anything differently. Other times you're like, You know what? The patient told me X and Y and I didn't really listen or I didn't pay enough attention -- Kevin Mailo: [00:30:03] -- I was distracted -- Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:30:04] -- and I should have done something else. Right? But I committed in that moment to really look at these, if you want to call them failures or misses or even going to term them, as opportunities to become better. And so that really shifted the way I felt about it from blaming and shaming myself to being like, No, I'm a continuous learner. I'm going to lean in to these moments. I'm going to make sure it makes me a better doctor, and I'm going to talk to my learners about this, right? I'm going to be overt with them about how I think, how I approach the things I do. And hopefully give them a framework too that allows them to be kinder to themselves. Because some of this is about kindness to yourself. Kevin Mailo: [00:30:40] Absolutely. And just creating a culture of humanity within our health care system. We are not a bunch of metrics. Right? And it is not just about tracking a bunch of bounce back rates or whatever, a bunch of statistics. It's about creating a human health care system that ultimately is there to support the frontline workers and it benefits patients, right, when you're not paralyzed with fear going in to work. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:31:08] 100%. And I think the problem is operating from a place of fear iin medicine actually can cause a lot of harm. Because doing unnecessary things to people because you're anxious or fearful is actually harmful. Right? So we need to acknowledge that as well. Kevin Mailo: [00:31:22] Yeah, without question. Without question. So I think we should probably begin to wrap it up. But we'd love to have you back on again because there was just so much here. Katharine, do you want to share any kind of closing thoughts or reflections or just something for physicians to take away with them today? Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:31:40] Well, I think if I could say anything to physicians right now, it would be a resounding thank you. I mean, people have just shown up incredibly in this time. They've shown up in the system. They've shown up for their colleagues. They've shown up as leaders in the media and social media for their communities, for the country. I mean, I think it's really been incredible just to see how people have stepped up in this unprecedented time of a global pandemic and just tried to look for any way they could make a contribution. And people have done it in so many different ways and all of it's been needed and necessary. And I've felt so proud to be a physician. I've felt so proud and privileged to represent all of you as my colleagues. And I just really want to say thank you to people for the work that all of you are doing and continue to do, and that I hope that we can continue to support each other, even though it feels like dark times. I know the only thing that's going to get us out of this is the people in the system. So make sure you're looking after yourself. Don't sacrifice yourself on the altar of medicine. That is not the solution here. But continue to show up the way that works for you. Lean into your passion and purpose and most importantly, lean into your colleagues, who I know will be there to to support you when you need it. Kevin Mailo: [00:32:49] Wow. Absolutely amazing. Again, I really want to thank you for being here today and speaking to us, Katharine. And again, I think on behalf of many, many physicians across the country and patients as well, thank you for your advocacy in getting us through the pandemic. But afterwards as well, and everything you do to improve this, the public health care system that we all love and cherish. And so, again, thank you so much,Katharine. Dr. Katharine Smart: [00:33:17] Thanks for having me. Kevin Mailo: [00:33:19] Thank you so much for listening to the Physician Empowerment Podcast. If you're ready to take those next steps in transforming your practice, finances or personal well-being, then come and join us at Phys Empowerment.ca P H Y S empowerment dot ca to learn more about how we can help. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd really appreciate it if you would share our podcast with a colleague or friend and head over to Apple Podcasts to give us a five star rating and review. If you've got feedback, questions, or suggestions for future episode topics, we'd love to hear from you. If you want to join us and be interviewed and share some of your story, we'd absolutely love that as well. Please send me an email at KMailo@PhysEmpowerment.ca. Thank you again for listening. Bye.  

Guest: Dr Moira Junge, CEO of the Sleep Health Foundation Is co-sleeping with your kids a bad idea? Plus, do we really need eight hours of sleep every night?   Jean Hailes for Women's Health is a national not-for-profit organisation dedicated to the health of all women, girls and gender diverse people. For free, accessible, evidence-based health information visit www.jeanhailes.org.au Produced by May Jasper Sound Engineering by Andrew Callaghan

There is a growing movement to redefine manhood, and to address ways that violence is baked into our cultural expectations of masculinity. Courageous, visionary men are rising to the challenge. One of those men is activist, writer and public speaker Kevin Powell. In this half-hour, Powell boldly and bravely discusses his experiences with toxic masculinity and his journey to redefine what it means to be a man. This is “Climbing Out of the Man Box: What Does Healthy Manhood Look Like?” Featuring Kevin Powell, a leading figure in the movement to redefine manhood and in contemporary American political, cultural and literary life as well as in the hip-hop arena, is the product of a single mother, absent father and severe poverty in his youth. In spite of those challenges he has become an acclaimed, prolific writer, authoring 13 books, including his autobiography, The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood. Resources Watch the full keynote and learn more about Kevin Powell and his work | Bioneers 2018 Keynote This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast

Like Kevin, have you recently retired from an office job and are bothered by back pain? Doctor Power explains what you can do to bring relief and more. Join us now!

Like Kevin, have you recently retired from an office job and are bothered by back pain? Doctor Power explains what you can do to bring relief and more. Join us now!

With the Jags' season gearing up, it's more and more common for Jeff to be out, and this was one of those weeks. With him in Atlanta, the episode was in the capable hands of Capt. Kevin and Capt. Kirk. That's a good thing, because they had plenty of outstanding fishing to talk about.If you're a buffet kind of person, you're going to love this show! So many calls, so many topics, and all kinds of info, insight, and stories. There's something for everyone in this one. Like Kevin says...GOOD STUFF!Here's your L.V. Hiers gear tip of the week: Inshore fishing season will soon be upon us. Time to gear up! Here's a perfect combo: Shimano Stradic 4000 with PowerPro 20lb braid. You can find it at Strike-Zone Fishing JacksonvilleHere's your Ring Power CAT tip of the week: Deer Season is coming: be sure to check all your ladder stands and their straps! Harbor Freight has ratchet straps for just $12Here's your Kirbyco Builders Inc. cooking tip of the week: Kevin says this week's "Salmon Tidbits" recipe is one of Carrie's favorites out of her favorite cookbook. Check out the recipe on our Facebook page!

Today, I am excited to interview Kevin Namaky of gurulocity.com.Kevin shows us how he used his expertise in brand management to create a business selling trainings and workshops.Kevin Namaky Case Study Kevin is featured in my new book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job. Below is the case study from the book where Kevin is featured. This comes directly from the book:This is what Kevin Namaky does. This is how he used his job to quit his job. Kevin worked for twenty years in marketing and brand management before starting his business at gurulocity.com. Kevin now works full-time hosting training workshops for corporate clients where he teaches brand management. In these trainings, Kevin and his team focus on one particular subject or skill related to brand management, depending on the needs of the client, such as “how to write a great creative brief”. In his live training, he works directly with the client's creative team to provide constructive feedback on the company's marketing and branding campaigns. Kevin simply took his job, and his expertise from twenty years in brand management, and turned it into a training workshop that he sells B2B.This can be your business model. You can use your job and the skills you learn on the job to create a business selling trainings and workshops. The best part is, your professional network is your client list. Like Kevin, you can reach out to your connections on LinkedIn, tell them about your career change (not selling or being pushy) and let the clients and referrals flow in.This Interview This interview is part of a series of case studies that I will be publishing to The Entrepreneur Ride Along Podcast over the coming weeks as I interview successful entrepreneurs in the online business space. These interviews and case studies will be featured in my newest book Use Your Job to Quit Your Job.Resources MentionedResources mentioned in this podcast episode:·         Use Your Job to Quit Your Job (the book)·         Kevin's Business: gurulocity.com

Team-by-team looks at who is draftable.

Episode 159 - Be Like Kevin Kevin Cronin is the lead vocalist and front man for the ridiculously awesome rock band, REO Speedwagon. He's a great performer and a great guy. But that's not why I want to talk about him today. I want to talk about how great he is on social media. Brands, businesses, professionals, people...everybody likes listening to Kevin and his legendary band perform, right? But not everybody knows how much they can learn from Kevin about how to use Facebook, Twitter and the like. It was more than 40 years ago when I saw REO Speedwagon at the Boston Garden. They put on a spectacular live show then, as I am sure they still do today. Yes, they're still touring, and I would love to see them again in concert. But in the meantime, I enjoy following Kevin on Facebook where he is as much a star online as he is on stage, documenting where the band is on the road, what they're doing and how he's feeling. That's how to do it on social media. Give people a look behind the scenes, an up-close and personal view of your life, both personally and professionally. And yes, believe it or not, whether you're a rockstar like Kevin or not, people are interested in your everyday goings-on. That's the lesson to be learned here. That's branding. That's marketing. That's the bonding that comes along with the fact that you're sharing what you're doing day in day out on social media with those who care so much about you.

Kachow! https://bit.ly/MoviesAreDopeOnPatrickHWillemsOnKevinSmith2 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/moviesaredope/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/moviesaredope/support

This week we talk about some of our favorite directors. Who is better? Pixar or DreamWorks, and what Director gives you the ICK. Yes We are gross. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/was-that-in-good-taste/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/was-that-in-good-taste/support

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Isaiah, Theo, Vincent and Danielle discuss misogynoir and the death of the controversial and toxic Kevin Samuels. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

All good things must come to an end!Like Kevin and Sean said on the previous anime podcast they will be discontinuing the Hip Hop portion of the podcast. Which means after today's episode they will be an anime only podcast. Of course they will mention hip hop here and there on the podcast because they absolutely LOVE hip hop music.  But Kevin and Sean want to focus more on growing the podcast and in doing that they want to have more of a niche and the Tapeworms seem to be consuming the anime episodes at higher rate then the hip hop episodes. But the guys didn't want to leave you all hanging on this last hip hop episode. They thought the only appropriate way to end this portion of the podcast was to bring in the guys they started this podcast journey with, BG and Aymen! This was a great episode with the guys talking about some of their hot takes when it comes to hip hop and some gripes they had about past episodes.  Kevin and Sean were definitely grateful having BG and Aymen back on the show. This is a BIG episode that you will not want to miss! The best way to move on to the future is first acknowledging the past. Check out this episode and say farewell to the further Hip Hop episodes with the Shonen Tapes Gang!Follow us HERE to keep up with The Shonen Tapes on social media and your favorite podcast sites!This episode includes: Tyler the Creator, Jack Harlow, Kanye West, Eminem, Russ, Jay-Z, Pusha-T, Hip Hop, Doja Cat

On May 10, 1990, 4 year old Jessica Martinez was playing out front with her brother while their stepfather supervised through the window. He turned his back for a few minutes and Jessica was gone.On May 21st, her tiny body was discovered by a farm worker less than 15 miles from her apartment complex.Who murdered Jessica Martinez? Today, Kevin from The Jury Room Podcast joins us to discuss this heartbreaking case. If you have any information on this case, contact Detective Christopher Feola at the Bakersfield Police Department at (661) 327-7111 or (661) 326-3513.Like Kevin as much as we do? You can check out his awesome podcast here.#truecrime #podcast #truecrimepodcast #unsolvedmurder #murder #jessicamartinezYou can follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.If you'd like to help support the show, you can join our Patreon here.Don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen. Thank you so much for listening!SOURCES:https://www.bakersfield.com/columnists/jose-gaspar/jose-gaspar-a-moms-plea-please-dont-forget-jessica/article_23bb7512-af57-11eb-8198-a32e23dc40a7.htmlhttps://mysteriesrunsolved.com/2020/10/unsolved-murder-of-jessica-martinez.htmlhttps://bakersfieldnow.com/news/investigations/investigator-police-overlooked-suspect-in-cold-case-murderhttps://bakersfieldnow.com/news/investigations/police-man-out-to-sea-couldnt-have-killed-bakersfield-girlhttps://www.turnto23.com/longform/jessica-martinez-story-27-years-laterSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/MurderOnMyStreet)Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/MurderOnMyStreet)

  We are sure you will recognize our guest today from TV and film! Today Greg Kelley interviews Kevin Sorbo!  He is a well-known actor who recently starred in several powerful faith-based films.  Best of all, he is a man on fire for Jesus! We get the opportunity to listen to Kevin's testimony and he shares his journey to share Jesus with as many people as possible throughout his career. We think you will be inspired by his passion to reach all people with the love of Christ. Like Kevin, there's nothing more important that you can do with your influence then to share the Good News of Jesus to someone who doesn't have access. Make sure to listen! Links: Subscribe to our Podcast  Learn more about A THIRD OF US and the 1:11 Prayer Challenge  Download the Great Commission Action Guide Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow us on Facebook   Become an Advocate  Learn More About Kevin Sorbo and his latest Film work

Rex Walters joined Baskin and Phelps and talked about where the Cavaliers sit this season, what they can do to make up for the loss of Jarrett Allen, and what he's seeing out of the Western Conference teams. He also previewed March Madness and what he's watching out for in college hoops. 

We All Writing a Book , what s' your book looks like? - Kevin Hart Kevin Darnell Hart is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Hart began his career by winning several amateur comedy competitions at clubs BECOME BUSINESS ANALYST: https://sfbatraining.com/ BEST HIGH TICKET AFFILIATE PROGRAM: https://webonlinesuccess.com/ BLUEPRINT TO MAKE $20/MONTH ONLINE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhD8M... HIGH TICKET AFFILIATE MARKETING TRAINING: coming up soon... PLAYLISTS: HIGH TICKET AFFILIATE MARKETING : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sifzx... INSPIRATION & MINDSET: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQOKG... HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN THE US: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CilMF... SALESFORCE BUSINESS ANALYST TUTORIAL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tslPG... BUILD BUSINESS CREDIT TO GET FUNDING: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAgKL... HOW TO START A BUSINESS WITH NO MONEY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7vNr... IMMIGRATION: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R3Bw...

This week on the podcast, we are welcoming a few members of the team back to discuss one of our favorite Christmas movies, Home Alone. Have you ever considered what you would do if you were left Home Alone as Kevin McAllister was in the 1990 film?  This is a fun and light-hearted look at how each team member would respond in their type and a reminder that there are many ways we get activated during the holidays.     Mentioned: 25 Facts About Home Alone Follow Your Enneagram Coach on all the socials: Facebook Instagram Twitter You Tube   Show Credits: Music by Sleeping at Last Edited and Produced by Angie Elkins Media

Daryl Ruiter talks about the Browns' win over the Ravens, the continued offensive struggles, Baker Mayfield's comments about the conservative approach in the second half and more.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week on the @supadupapod we talk about our Thanksgiving leftovers, the ITIS, and getting ready for Chrismas. We also talk about @KevinHart4real new movie True Story and take a look at his rise to stardom.  We also talk about his inspiring interview with the @breakfastclub and what we learned from it.   Follow us on instagram or online at www.hp53productions.com. Please like, subscribe and share!   Music by: J. Kwest   #HP53Productions #SouthsideDNA #SupaDupaPod

Outdoor activities are all the rage here in Arizona. Besides climbing, hiking, biking and off roading, rock climbing is at the top of the list. I had the absolute pleasure of hanging out with Kevin Berk of AZ on the Rocks, a local rock gym here in North Scottsdale. Let's just say, the 31ft in his gym is nothing compared to his outside accomplishments.  AZ on the Rocks https://www.azontherocks.com/ Go Big or Go Small there is room for all at Az on the Rock. We went last week and had a BLAST! Like Kevin said, all ages, experience levels and ages accepted.  Tummie Time Seminar https://fitfamilypt.com/event/webinar-tummytime/ Fit Family Physical Therapy (www.fitfamilypt.com) serves the Greater Phoenix and Scottsdale areas, providing in-home, concierge physical therapy and personal training to patients of all ages and life stages - orthopedic, pediatrics & adolescents, athletes, pre- & post-natal, and seniors! Hosted by pediatric PT expert, Maggie Mills (MMR mom), the first topic of the free webinar series is “Real Talk: Tummy Time" — it's geared toward parent & pediatric populations. Please pass this along to anyone in your community who may benefit from learning a little more about tummy time and pediatric developmental milestones! FREE Concert Series at Scottsdale Quarterhttps://scottsdalequarter.com/events-news/event/2021/09/11/default-calendar/fall-concert-series Bring your lawn chairs and dancing shoes for a FREE concert. Starting this Saturday through Oct 23, enjoy a free concert from 5-7pm.

Kevin Berk, owner of AZ on the Rocks, is such an adventurer. Not only does he climb the highest walls in his business, but some of the tallest mountains in the world. Hear this adventurer seekers journey in life.    Calendar of EventsThis month's calendar of events is brought to you by Notre Dame Prep. Notre Dame Prep is a Catholic High School with the shared values of Reverence, Respect, & Responsibility.. Check them out on the web at ndpsaints.org AZ on the Rocks https://www.azontherocks.com/ Go Big or Go Small there is room for all at Az on the Rock. We went last week and had a BLAST! Like Kevin said, all ages, experience levels and ages accepted.  Salt River 9/11 Stair Memorial https://nfff.akaraisin.com/ui/saltriver In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, The National Fallen Firefighters Fund 9/11 Memorial Stair Climbs is a way to honor and remember the FDNY firefighters. Each participant pays tribute by climbing the equivalent of the 110 stories of the World Trade Center. When I checked, there were still spots left to go and honor those who lost their lives that day.  FREE Concert Series at Scottsdale Quarterhttps://scottsdalequarter.com/events-news/event/2021/09/11/default-calendar/fall-concert-series Bring your lawn chairs and dancing shoes for a FREE concert. Starting this Saturday through Oct 23, enjoy a free concert from 5-7pm.

Kevin Berk, owner of AZ on the Rocks, is such an adventurer. Not only does he climb the highest walls in his business, but some of the tallest mountains in the world. Hear this adventurer seekers journey in life.    Calendar of EventsThis month's calendar of events is brought to you by Notre Dame Prep. Notre Dame Prep is a Catholic High School with the shared values of Reverence, Respect, & Responsibility.. Check them out on the web at ndpsaints.org AZ on the Rocks https://www.azontherocks.com/ Go Big or Go Small there is room for all at Az on the Rock. We went last week and had a BLAST! Like Kevin said, all ages, experience levels and ages accepted.  Salt River 9/11 Stair Memorial https://nfff.akaraisin.com/ui/saltriver In honor of the 20th anniversary of 9/11, The National Fallen Firefighters Fund 9/11 Memorial Stair Climbs is a way to honor and remember the FDNY firefighters. Each participant pays tribute by climbing the equivalent of the 110 stories of the World Trade Center. When I checked, there were still spots left to go and honor those who lost their lives that day.  FREE Concert Series at Scottsdale Quarterhttps://scottsdalequarter.com/events-news/event/2021/09/11/default-calendar/fall-concert-series Bring your lawn chairs and dancing shoes for a FREE concert. Starting this Saturday through Oct 23, enjoy a free concert from 5-7pm.

This episode we have a special guest, the creator of the podcast logo Brandon. On the show we come up with ways to help lower the innocent victim count. We hear about a man in Singapore who got enraged by a naked coworker, a woman who decides the best way to get rid of bed bugs in her car is by fire. We talk about how the rap game is flooded with Lil, Youngs and Babies, so we need a rapper that wants to be a normal guy, or regular. Poop is discussed far too long, but it's for the love of heath and good living. Anthony is drunk as hell again, get ready because it gets crazy.Fanmail@soberingthoughts.wtfHatemail@soberingthoughts.wtfInstagrams:@soberingthoughtspodcast - Us@rockstartony - Anthony@mcp. pants - Matt@finzworld - BrandonSupport the show (https://www.patreon.com/soberingthoughts)

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Comment Below. Love To Hear YOUR Thoughts On THIS audio Don't be shy! Join the fun! RSVP http://omgtalk.com​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​...​ PS Future Speaker Helpline To craft a speech in 30 seconds!! 24 hours 7 days a week 365 all year I never STOP working for you! Call 866-443-0873 Try it and hope to meet you in person via zoom or in person in future!! Happy Networking!

If you like UFC and follow anything about mma online , you indubitably have come across a video or watched the whole fight ( on khabibs stream , which he did next to Dana ) of Kevin Holland just not shutting up during his fight. Well is it effective is the question ? was it too much  ? should he recite Shakespeare Othello next time ? These are my thoughts and they are amazing and definitely worth more then contemporary poetry.Support the show (https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/cauliflowerdonations)

The sports “dead zone” continues, and so do your Sports Lordz as we’re back with an all new episode! This week Kevin and Herb get the coronavirus vaccine and we talk the vax! We discuss English muffins and Kevin shares stories from his risky trip over the weekend. We then look back at what was the NBA All Star game, what needs to improve, and how it went down in our hometown of Atlanta. Then we discuss fight sports and talk a little UFC, reminisce about boxing, and Diego talks about Shaquille O’Neal wrestling this past week on AEW and attending his birthday party. Later we discuss some updates on Papa John Schnatter and how he’s been putting in the hundred thousand hours during the pandemic and discuss and of course discuss major New York ghoul, Andrew Cuomo. Like Kevin, get your vaccine if you can and keep wearing your masks. Stay alive folks! Today’s episode is brought to you by The Royals. The Kansas City Royals! Baseball is almost here folks! Follow us on twitter, Instagram and Twitch @SportsLordz

The sports “dead zone” continues, and so do your Sports Lordz as we're back with an all new episode! This week Kevin and Herb get the coronavirus vaccine and we talk the vax! We discuss English muffins and Kevin shares stories from his risky trip over the weekend. We then look back at what was the NBA All Star game, what needs to improve, and how it went down in our hometown of Atlanta. Then we discuss fight sports and talk a little UFC, reminisce about boxing, and Diego talks about Shaquille O'Neal wrestling this past week on AEW and attending his birthday party. Later we discuss some updates on Papa John Schnatter and how he's been putting in the hundred thousand hours during the pandemic and discuss and of course discuss major New York ghoul, Andrew Cuomo. Like Kevin, get your vaccine if you can and keep wearing your masks. Stay alive folks!Today's episode is brought to you by The Royals. The Kansas City Royals! Baseball is almost here folks!Follow us on twitter, Instagram and Twitch @SportsLordz 

Plus, Steve tells us about an Adam's Family spin-off that may just whet your whistle.

Grocery stores did very well during the pandemic. In 2020, Lafayette grocery stores pulled in just over $300 million, a 10% increase over the previous year. It makes sense. Restaurants shut down. People stayed home. Supplies were key to surviving a stay-home order.  Now, imagine that there wasn't a grocery store near you. Imagine you lost your job, or you were furloughed. Maybe you don't have a car and the nearest grocery store is five miles away. If that's your situation, you live in what researchers call a food desert. And that's not just a problem during a pandemic.  Having access to healthy food is essential to a good quality of life. And more and more people now live in food deserts. They live shorter lives with higher rates of chronic disease. It's a serious social problem and it disproportionately impacts poor and historically black neighborhoods.  On this edition of Out to Lunch Acadiana, Christiaan Mader's guests are working to bring healthy food to communities without it, specifically on Lafayette's northside.  Kevin Ardoin comes from a family of farmers, but he didn't become a farmer himself until he had an epiphany. He quit his job in retail and got to farming. He now owns Zydeco Farms — a 43-acre produce farm in Evangeline parish. In 2020, Kevin launched Fightingville Fresh, the first farmers market in Lafayette's Fightingville neighborhood and its mission is to make good, healthy produce available to folks living in a food desert.  While Kevin is working in Fightingville, Tina Shelvin Bingham is planting all kinds of seeds in the McComb-Veazey neighborhood of Lafayette. Tina is Executive Director of the McComb-Veazey Neighborhood Coterie and the Community Development Director for Lafayette's Habitat for Humanity. She's worked to grow prosperity in the neighborhood since 2012. And that includes creating a community garden, where McComb Veazey residents grow and share produce. Like Kevin, Tina's current career path was a detour. She was trained as an engineer and is now engineering a brighter future for her neighborhood.  See photos from this show by Jill Lafleur at our website. And here's lunch-table conversation about sugarcane and crawfish farming in Acadiana. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to another episode of Asked and Answered for the Players Brawl on the Brawl Network. Hosted by former NFL linebacker Erin Henderson and former NFL Safety Jamarca Sanford. These two former teammates have their former teammate former NFL Linebacker, now Detroit Lion's Linebacker Coach: Tyrone McKenzie. This episode is fun and interesting. We loved hearing Tyrone McKenzie's journey going from a player to a coach. Enjoy! Please subscribe, rate, and review the podcast. Drops Every Monday! Intro music by Lennox Henderson. Produced by Sports Comedian, AMarie Castillo. Powered by Manscaped & Draft Kings.

Welcome back our beautiful people! We are delighted to be in your ears again!In today's episode:How do you feel about your partner having 2 cellphones?Is the issue 2 cellphones (the physicality of it) or, that they may have 2 diff numbers, accounts, emails and etc?Having backups in relationships...Communicating while angryAnger is exhausting and draining.Thank you all for tuning into another episode with us and we hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to follow us on Twitter (@realtalkssispod) and now Facebook! Rate, like, download, review us! #SpreadLove #AlwaysVibrateHigherIntro song: Sleepless Nights - Trey Songs ft. DavidoOutro song: Last Time - Gideon ft. Snoh Aalerga Hosts: Chanel (@chanelly.xo) and Jojo (@joanna.nassif) @realtalkssispodcast

Question from Johnnie in Tucson, AZ

Today’s episode is provided by Future and Warby Parker. Sign up for Future today at TryFuture.com/ambition and get 50% off your first month. That’s Try Futuredot com slash ambition for 50% off your first month. Order a trial pack that includes six days’ worth of contacts for only $5 – and then receive $5 off your next Warby Parker order. Learn more at warbyparker.com/action. Today’s guest is Ron “Boss” Everline. He trained for the royal family throughout Europe, Africa and the United Arab Emirates. His celebrity client list is growing by the day, including award-winning comedian and actor Kevin Hart; Grammy Award-winning R&B artist and actor Ne-Yo; singer, actress and host Christina Milian; former "Cheetah Girl" and star of Empire Girls Adrienne Bailon; and R&B artist and actor Trey Songz, to name a few. Today, Everline is taking his vision to the next level by incorporating youth fitness into his constantly growing Just-Train brand. Let’s get to it!

Subscribe, 5 ⭐ And Please Write A Review! The funniest or biggest hater reviews are likely to get a shout out on the show.   Listen, Watch, Review, and Share With A Friend!   Law Smith is an SMB Consultant, Digital Strategist, Stand Up Comedian and President of Tocobaga Consulting. Eric Readinger is a Website Producer, Video Editor, Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist, Artist, and Partner at Tocobaga Consulting.

In a weekly podcast, Mark Immelman reviews the most recent PGA TOUR event and highlights lessons you can glean from the world's leading golfers. In Episode 32 Mark revisits the 2019 Shriners Hospitals for Children Open at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, NV. Mark looks into Kevin Na's approach to success on and around the greens. Learn how to practice, prepare, adopt a winning mindset, handle pressure, and make more meaningful putts on the greens by examining how tournament-winner, Na, did it. Kevin Na also made a number of prudent course-management decisions en route to his win and Mark highlights those to help you improve your on-course decision-making.

Last episode we left our adventurers in a room with a creature that may or may not be a dwarf child. As I was sitting here thinking of how best to describe the party's imminent destruction, I did what any professional episode describer does and got distracted by the internet. There I found an article about D&D enemies that appear weak, but are really nasty. Interesting, especially given the situation our team finds themselves in! But then, I saw the image they tagged on to it. A glorious squirrel wielding an axe and a shield, riding through a battlefield on a frog. Now they had my full attention!Scrolling through the article revealed no dwarvish girls that are clearly a death trap. In fact they even had a vampire on there which was unexpected seeing as how we know one is waiting to just obliterate our adventurers at the end of this mausoleum. Sure they may look harmless, but even our team of not-quite heroes knows vampires are bad news. "Odd", I thought, but I scrolled on as my sights were set on the majestic war squirrel. And despite all the horrors we've witnessed in this current dungeon, the true horror of this story is how I came to the bottom of the article with no mention whatsoever of this beautiful warrior. I had been struck down by the biggest fiend of them all, the clickbait! So yes, things happen in this episode. Many of them are awful. Like Kevin's lost heroic moment. And Kyle's lost time making encounters our team skips right by. I'd love to tell you all about that, but right now I'm too busy researching Squirrelfolk for my next D&D character. Grab your acorns, and get ready for winter! Not because of anything that happens in this episode, but you know, squirrels.Are you enjoying the show? Please help us grow and tell someone about it!Join the party members and other listeners on Discord discord.gg/H3fhhA7, Reddit www.reddit.com/r/IntelligenceCheck/, and Facebook www.facebook.com/intelligencecheck . Email us at intelligencecheckpodcast@gmail.comWant to help support us? First off, you're wonderful if so! Merchandise is available at tee.pub/lic/18PfY6FQeuc and you can contribute to equipment and hosting costs at https://ko-fi.com/intelligencecheck !Theme song by Jet 'n' JobyLogo designed by Ed Rempfer 

Crystal rejoins the boys this week in a discussion about Hobbies. What are some of your hobbies? Do you use them to get your mind off of certain things, or simply because you enjoy doing them? Kevin describes his love for golf, and while it can be frustrating at times, it's a lifelong hobby of his. Sully agrees that golf is one of his as well, and he used to get frustrated, but quickly realized he wasn't the next Tiger Woods, so he learned to just enjoy it. Kevin says he uses golf as a way to improve over the years and that's what keeps him playing. He talks about how much hes improved and that keeps him coming back for more year after year. Crystal asks the boys if eating is a hobby, because that's what she likes to do. This leads the discussion into the crews favorite candy bars and more. What's your favorite candy bar?? Kevin's is Snickers, Sully's is Kit-Kat and Crystal said she doesn't discriminate... if there is a candy bar, she will eat it. They bring up how music and attending concerts could be considered a hobby. Like Kevin's infatuation with Taylor Swift, or as he now calls her, "Tay Tay". He says he would love to have her on the show sometime, so that if he ever went to her concert, she would recognize him and they would be instant BFF's. Crystal tells him she'd probably get a restraining order against him. This episode is the OG's from the start of the podcast, and it'll bring you right back to the feeling of when Hellbound with Halos Podcast started. Enjoy! Thank you to our sponsors- K Bar Soap Company "Ditch the Bar, Grab a Grenade" Use "Hellbound" at checkout for a discount! MyBookie Bet. Win. Get Paid. Use http://bit.ly/MYB-Halos to have MyBookie DOUBLE your first deposit up to $1,000!

I remember the first time I met Kevin was at a coffee shop in downtown San Diego, late of 2016. Then I received a direct message on Instagram roughly 4 months later where he invited me to grab coffee. I never would have thought that to this day, one of the most humble man I knew is still a friend who's alway been there for me. Not only is Kevin approachable, he is easy to get along. As chill as the sea breeze, he can hold up to a good conversation and is honest about how easy or as hard as it gets. Kevin was fairly new to SoCal when I first met him but that didn't hold him back in finding ways to serve the local community. Found friends that also became a consistent part of his athletic disciplines and outdoor escapades. Then about a year before this conversation, we had lost touch. Random as the wave goes, Kevin and I picked up where we left off. In this conversation I found out how life crashed on Kevin and how his perseverance led him to find a new direction in life, out in the horizon. About Kevin: https://www.instagram.com/malaysiaywam19/ Work: http://ywam.org.au/centres/brisbane/ Connect: https://www.instagram.com/ozzyvibes/ Show Produced by: JB Norman Verances @ https://jbnorman.com/ Show Music by: JB Norman Verances, #Jeduthun created with https://ampifymusic.com/groovebox/ Like Kevin, will you allow me to hear your story? We can do that over a cup of coffee or a slice of pizza. It's on me! If you want to share your story, let me know by leaving a voice message with the link below --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/patternsoflife/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/patternsoflife/support

Subscribe, 5 ⭐ And Please Write A Review! The funniest or biggest hater reviews are likely to get a shout out on the show.   Listen, Watch, Review, and Share With A Friend!   Law Smith is an SMB Consultant, Digital Strategist, Stand Up Comedian and President of Tocobaga Consulting. Eric Readinger is a Website Producer, Video Editor, and Partner at Tocobaga Consulting.

After watching the NBA Finals in which the Golden State Warriors squared off against the Toronto Raptors in a best of seven series, I was prompted to do this impromptu episode when the Warrior's star player, Kevin Durant, severely injured his leg. Kevin Durant was a unique player - not because of his almost 7 foot height, andand not not only because he was an amazing basketball player, but because of the fact that he was actually very sensitive to what other people would say about him even though he was a major celebrity.  Kevin injured himself about a month before the Finals and could not play.  Perhaps succumbing to the pressure to play again in order to save his team from elimination, he ended up playing.  From everything we knew it seemed like a bad idea in that he wasn't ready to play. He ended up playing.  I cringed every time he had the ball.  Sure enough, not long into the game, he ended up tearing his Achilles heel, perhaps because he was injured and playing when he should not have been.   In this episode, I explore how giving in to what other people want can ultimately lead to your demise. Good luck and best wishes to the kind soul known as Kevin Durant.

I talk about a lot of music that came out, the difference between being sincere vs being greedy, Jay being the 1st billionaire in hip hop, NBA Finals, WWE news and why Super Showdown was trash, Why Future needs to move on from Ciara and Russ, A Fuck You To AEW fans, RIP Bushwick Bill, my Top 5 and DNOW. Peace out ✌

What would it be worth if you had the ability to understand what high performers and high achievers do differently than what you’ve been trained to do? In this episode, our guest expert is Alan Stein, Jr. He is a coach, speaker, and author with expertise in improving organizational performance, cohesion, and accountability. He’s spent over fifteen years working with and around some of the top basketball players, athletes, and business people in the world. Some of these have included NBA superstars, Kevin Durant, Kobe Bryant, and more. Alan now travels the world teaching organizations and business owners like you how to raise your game and utilize these strategies in business. Don’t miss out on this episode!

Is Kevin Stefanski THE RIGHT choice for the Minnesota Vikings at offensive coordinator or is he THE ONLY choice for them? KFAN's Aj Mansour discusses in this episode of the State of Purple Podcast.

Kev & Sully start off discussing the Michael Cohen ordeal and the lawyer being found guilty. They talk about how he probably won't do jail time for it, but if we did what he did, we most likely would. Kevin talks about his busy schedule with marketing for the podcast and how it absorbs a lot of time. They also have small talk on other recent news items. Then the boys move onto the meat... Do you believe in superstitions? In this episode, Kevin & Sully discuss Superstitions. What exactly is a superstition? Superstition is a pejorative term for any belief or practice that is considered irrational: for example, if it arises from ignorance, a misunderstanding of science or causality, a positive belief in fate or magic, or fear of that which is unknown. "Superstition" also refers to actions arising from irrationality. (Source- Wikipedia - 2018) Out of the "true" definition most people believe that it gives them power to change their own fate, based off of an action. Like Kevin, he taps the outside of a plane before he gets on. He says it's like a "get me there" type reasoning, even though he is not afraid to fly. Sully says his, with planes, is moreso two beers beforehand because he's always stuck next to the fattest guy on the plane. So what are more? Breaking mirrors, black cats crossing your path, knocking on wood and more! They take a look into each "superstition" and its origins. Breaking mirrors - People often think that breaking a mirror may bring you bad luck for 7 years. Mirror superstitions probably evolved from the time when the first humans saw their reflections in a pool of water, believed that the image in a water was their actual soul and to endanger it would mean risking injury to the other self. An ancient myth was that mirrors have magical powers, including the power to foreseen the future and are thought to be devices of the Gods. Thus breaking a mirror would terminate its powers, the soul would be astray form the body and misfortunes would be brought upon the one whose reflection it last held. Black Cats - The Middle Ages, also called the Dark Ages, in Europe, was a time of many superstitions that resulted from early spiritual beliefs and a lack of scientific understanding about nature. The persecution of people accused of being witches is a clear example. Many people believed that witches and black cats worked together. Supposedly, the devil sent the black cat to assist in the witch’s evil deeds. Additionally, witches were able to turn themselves into black cats so that they could slink around in the shadows casting spells on unsuspecting people. Knocking on Wood - In many cultures, it’s a common superstition for people to knock their knuckles on a piece of wood to bring themselves good fortune or ward off bad luck. Yet while the phrase “knock on wood”—or “touch wood” in Britain—has been part of the vernacular since at the least the 19th century, there seems to be little agreement on how it originated. One common explanation traces the phenomenon to ancient pagan cultures such as the Celts, who believed that spirits and gods resided in trees. Knocking on tree trunks may have served to rouse the spirits and call on their protection, but it could have also been a way of showing gratitude for a stroke of good luck. Yet another theory is that people knocked on wood to chase away evil spirits or prevent them from listening in when they boasted about their luck, thereby preventing a reversal of fortune. Christians, meanwhile, have often linked the practice to the wood of the cross from Christ’s crucifixion. So, are you superstitious? We think most people are, and aren't afraid to admit them, but on the other hand, people may have them and not even realize it.

Some thoughts about games with kids leads into a Christian version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Then Virgil is back to tackle some Bible Trivia questions!

Episode 11 - Moonlight David and John discuss Moonlight, winner of the 2016 Academy Award for Best Picture and Award Wiener Golden Frank Award for Winner of the Year. On the Red Carpet How our hot dogs were dressed: John's dog: the old fashion - the original hot dog was a pork sausage on a roll - no condiments. Like the movie, sometimes you need something original.David's dog - the chef's special - Like Kevin's meal, this is made with love and some Cuban flair. It consists of chicken hot dogs with rice and cilantro. Serve it with a side of black beans. Like Chiron - a grill is the way to go with. Mentioned In This EpisodeAn interview with Barry JenkinsThe art of Kehinde Wiley - "Wiley’s signature portraits of everyday men and women riff on specific paintings by Old Masters, replacing the European aristocrats depicted in those paintings with contemporary black subjects, drawing attention to the absence of African Americans from historical and cultural narratives."White Helmets - winner of the 2016 Oscar for best documentary short. Cast Your Award Wiener BallotCheck our Facebook Page in the near future for the next Award Wieners ballot. Up next:Amadeus

In the heavy multi layered podcast. I had to talk to my day one friend Kevin Martin aka HK Domino from CT (Connecticut). We talk about his creation in podcasting the Domino Effect, 3 Ninjas Podcast & Round 12 Gaming YouTube show. We discuss about Avengers Infinity War movie, video games & horror movies. Kevin takes the wheel and asks me some PERSONAL QUESTIONS in a orderly fashion nothing held back. Like Kevin said when the Domino Effect speaks he brings the best outta people. Nothing held back but had to give it to you RAW & UNCUT. Urban culture unites and disclaimer words are shared with transparency and passion. SORRY FOR CURSING!!--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rory-mitchell8/support

In the heavy multi layered podcast. I had to talk to my day one friend Kevin Martin aka HK Domino from CT (Connecticut). We talk about his creation in podcasting the Domino Effect, 3 Ninjas Podcast & Round 12 Gaming YouTube show. We discuss about Avengers Infinity War movie, video games & horror movies. Kevin takes the wheel and asks me some PERSONAL QUESTIONS in a orderly fashion nothing held back. Like Kevin said when the Domino Effect speaks he brings the best outta people. Nothing held back but had to give it to you RAW & UNCUT. Urban culture unites and disclaimer words are shared with transparency and passion. SORRY FOR CURSING!! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/rory-mitchell8/support

"In order to go fast, you've gotta go slow," says Kevin Wilson on Episode 94 of the podcast. Oh, the intro is back. The oral surgery disaster is ongoing, but I'm powering through. Might lose my bone graft because my stupid body won't pump blood to it. It's friggin' bullshit, but all I can do is keep my fingers crossed that the surgery wasn't for nothing. There are some podcasts that make me want to go out and be a better man and Kevin Wilson, back for his second at-bat for The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, is one of those guys. He's president and founder of KWBaseball. He's a hitting coach to developing players and several pros. His second book, Finding Clarity: A Mindful Look into the Art of Hitting, sounds like a baseball book. I know what you're thinking, “Brendan, I don't like sports. I don't care about baseball. WTF, man.” Like Kevin's #Goodbatting book we spoke about on Episode 32, “Finding Clarity” has so much value to anyone in any discipline. You can overlay your own experience onto the wisdom Kevin shares. You can read the book over a cup of coffee, but spend several hours journaling over the quick-hit questions at the end of the chapters. I'm telling you, give this one a chance. He talks about finding his “Why” Intentionality Sharing Failure Listening And slowing down to go faster If you don't already subscribe, consider subscribing on iTunes, Stitcher, or Google Play Music. I'd deeply appreciate a rating or a review on iTunes if you can spare the time. Show notes are available at brendanomeara.com. There you can sign up for my montly reading list newsletter. It's a fun bit of goodness that hits on the first of the month. Once a month. No spam. You can't beat that. This show is produced, hosted, booked, and edited by me, Brendan O'Meara. I'm on Twitter and Instagram @BrendanOMeara. The podcast is @CNFPod on Twitter and @CNFPodcast on Facebook.

The boys are back to discuss all things Halloween from horror movies and pranks to parenting and perversion Plus they get into the best and worst from Mikes epic Halloween party and dive into Kevin Spacey not like THAT and the ongoing Hollywood scandals

http://mwge.orgTron is a classic movie about the authority problem: the idea that you can author yourself instead of accepting that you are perfect as God created you. Kevin Flynn is a video game developer who believes he created a digital world and is now trapped in it. Fast forward twenty years, and we see Kevin's son, Sam, looking for his father in the digital world which has degenerated into competition, hatred, and death. Like Kevin, we seemed to have projected the original thought of separation outwards and invented a world apart from our Source. Now we must pull back the projection entirely and return our awareness to the Kingdom of God.This edited movie gathering ("Tron") with David Hoffmeister took place at the Living Miracles Monastery in Duchesne, Utah on May 16, 2017 during the Tabula Rasa Mystery School.For more inspirational movie talks, please go to:http://mwge.orgTo learn more about the Mystery School or future schools, visit: http://nondualityonline.com

No one is safe from this man's tongue - Steve Allen takes to the airwaves on LBC every weekday morning from 4am until 7am and on weekends from 5am until 7am. Hear all of Steve's show with the news, travel and breaks taken out.

This week on The Awkward Minority: Jesus Shuttlesworth & Lady Godiva answer all your burning questions. This is the last half of the Awkward Mail special. Follow us on our Instagram (@TheAwkwardMinority) and Twitter (@MinorityAwkward) and Facebook (TheAwkwardMinority). Be sure to use hashtag 'TheAwkwardMinority' to join the discussion about this episode.

Rochester Libertarian Party Vice Chair, Kevin Wilson, on what are Sanctuary Cities and how he feels about them in the grander discussion of immigration policy. Like Kevin on facebook.com/KevinWilsonRoc Support the show at Patreon.com/alexmercedSupport the show (http://www.patreon.com/alexmerced)

What we cover: The one thing we all have in common is that no one is immune. We will all go through periods of adversity. That fact is the great equalizer. What sets us apart however, is how we choose to handle the adversity.   Today’s episode might just be one of the most important conversations I’ve had. Not just in terms of this podcast, but in the bigger picture as well. We all have a choice – every day – to be the kind of person who squeezes the juice out of the gift of life that we have all been given. Or we can be a moaner and a groaner and a grumbler and a victim. Roy McBeth is joyful and happy, and he spreads optimism. He isn’t a complainer. And yet, for many years he was growing increasingly ill on account of kidney disease. He saw members of his family succumb to the same disease, and rather than use the possibility of this eventual fate as a crutch, the reason for him to opt out of life and be miserable, he chose to use it as the opposite. It catapulted him forwarded. He is an elite cyclist and an unbelievable triathlete. He’s also a detective with the Domestic Crimes Unit with a police force in the Vancouver area, about an hour outside this city, in Abbotsford. And he talks to us about he maintains perspective in a job that is obviously heartbreaking at times. And, of course, after being the recipient of a healthy new kidney, a gift that altered the trajectory of his future, today he’s avid organ donor advocate. This is not the episode for people who may be suffering from kidney disease. Or who may be in need of a donor. Or who may be thinking about becoming a donor. This, quite simply, is the episode for every one. Literally, the demographic of today’s episode is absolutely anyone on the planet. Because, as I said, we are all going to go through hard times. And we would all do well to heed Roy’s life philosophy. To suck the marrow out of each day. When Roy was so so so sick, he was the living embodiment of what is possible even in our darkest days. He took off to Asia, with only 16% kidney function, and qualified for the XTERRA off-road triathlon World Championships in Maui. Today, on the other side of a successful transplant, he is the living embodiment of living big – of making each day count when you’ve been given another chance. Which is something we’re all given. Each morning when we wake up, we’re given another chance. Roy’s is a story that exemplifies the best of humanity. It showcases just how important the living donor program is, and what kind of person actually steps up to save someone’s life. We hear all about Kevin, the hero of this story; the colleague who changed Roy’s life when he basically said: “Here, you can take one of mine. I don’t need two of them.” On January 14th, we say Happy kidney-versary, to Roy and Kevin. And at the same time, I will say a Happy 1-year kidney-versary to my mom, Sheila, and to my mother-in-law, Jane, who share a similar story to Roy and Kevin, when my mom donated a kidney to Jane last November 30th. See? I am surrounded by greatness. There’s a lot of sniffling in this episode. While I do live with two toddlers who’ve had colds for the better part of the last couple months, the sniffling is because often I just couldn’t hold back the tears. Despite the beauty and emotion in this episode, the part I just adore above and beyond the obvious, is an added plus. For anyone out there -- we’re at the start of a brand new year -- who might have a goal they want to achieve but who feels it’s bigger than they are, Roy walks us through what it was like to be someone who couldn’t swim one length of a 25-metre pool and then go on to clock a kooky fast 1 hour 6 ironman swim just 11 months later. He walks us through the psychology of that transformation. The net take-away? We are all capable of so much more than we give ourselves credit for. Wherever you are listening from -- today we have people joining in from nearly 50 countries – please let your family know your intentions to be an organ donor. Sign the back of your drivers license. Or, take that act of heroism a step further and pop into your local hospital to learn more about how you can become a living donor. Like Kevin. And like my mom, Sheila. Unrelated, but every bit as important, Roy and I talk about his role in Domestic Crimes. If you are experiencing an unhealthy relationship, and a growing sense of isolation, please reach out to someone as soon as you can. Do not suffer in silence. Keep in touch with me at MJDionne.com. And check out the Podcaster tab for all things pertaining to Roy and in particular, how you can learn more about organ donation.  

Comedian Dan Soder (Billions, Comedy Central's Not Special) joins COOKIES hosts Ben Detrick and Jordan Redaelli to discuss Steph Curry's triumphant return, sympathy for Kevin Love, the comedy pickup ball circuit, and impressions of Nick Nolte in Blue Chips.

Listen and Learn… This episode is brought to you by PROPRICER, the Gold Standard for Cost Proposal and Government Evaluation Software. In this Special Episode, Kevin interviews Garth Arevalo, CEO of Lukos, LLC. Like Kevin, Garth is also a former Contracting Officer who spent time at Special Operations Command. Listen in on their conversation and learn about Garth’s journey from contracting officer to CEO of a small business as well as his “top 3 things I wish I had known when I was a contracting officer”. We enjoyed learning from Garth so much that we broke this episode into two parts. You’ll hear Part 2 next week in Episode 050.

There has been another irreparable breakdown of trust between the ECB and Kevin Pietersen. James and Nishant sit down to discuss if anything can be done to reunite Andrew Strauss and KP, the worst love story since Twilight. Also, we recap the prospect of an India vs Pakistan series, and answer listener questions. Sponsored by RM Renovations, London : http://www.renov8.co.uk/ Theme music courtesy Mike TV: http://miketvmusic.bandcamp.com/ Audio post-production by Wicket Wolf : https://www.twitter.com/wicketwolf Additional support from MyMyk quality audio equipment - "Actions speak louder with words" : http://www.mymyk.com/

Welcome to The Lazy Geeks Podcast, here on the Lazy Geeks Network. This is our weekly podcast discussing the biggest news from the previous week for the week of August 4, 2014. Opening Story/Random – Batman v Superman Footage Leaked - Steve thinks lame, Adam is excited TeamSpeak 3 Take My Money Section Guardians of the Galaxy News – Movie/TV News Steve: Big Bang Cast Signs Up Major Deal Adam: People Upset about Latest TMNT Poster Gaming News Steve: EA Offering Xbox One Subscription Service Adam: Promised Stained Steam Keys No Longer Being Given Out Comic News Steve: Sony Bringing A Female Superhero To Spidey Franchise Adam: Howard the Duck is Back in Print Technology News Steve: GBA4iOS First Approved Emulator Adam: Logitech Reveals the G402 Hyperion Fury Gaming Mouse This week's This Bitch - Union Street Guest House This week's HashtagEpic - Chris Pratt Wanna Donate to our Beer Fund: Donate to our PayPal Venmo: @thelazygeeks_1010 Contact Us: Blog: https://thelazygeeks.com/ Email: themailbag@thelazygeeks.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelazygeeks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thelazygeeks Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelazygeeks/ YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/c/Thelazygeeks --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/thelazygeeks/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/thelazygeeks/support

Like Kevin, Eric The Car Guy is an educator who enjoys sharing his knowledge with the world. Eric's YouTube channel offers tips and tricks for car maintenance and repair to nearly a half million subscribers, with new videos every week.[...]

Where Does the Strength to Run Come From? Recently, I had the opportunity to show one of my favorite movies of all time to my two younger kids, and one of them thought she had seen it before. Chariots of Fire came out in 1981. I love that movie. Its about Eric Liddell, a Scottish missionary, who gave his life for the Lord, died in a Japanese internment camp in 1945. There's a couple of moments in that movie that my logical, exegetical mind has trouble harmonizing. I think the movie is internally inconsistent. But that's okay. There is no promise of inerrancy on movies, so that's all right. But there is Eric Liddell after running a race and he's having a witnessing opportunity. He's standing to a small crowd that's gathered around the track where he won the race, and he's witnessing to them, which he did frequently, that's true. And as he's sharing, he's talking about the life of faith, and he says he wants to compare the life of faith to running in a race, which the Scripture does multiple times actually. He says, "It's hard. It requires concentration of will, energy and soul," he says. And then he asked this question, which is really very powerful and comes up again later in the movie when he's winning the gold medal in the 400 meters, "Where then does the strength come from to see the race through to the end?" And then he says, "It comes from within." And then he quotes the Scripture, "Jesus said, 'Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.'" Well, the first time I heard that, no big deal. I'm glad he's saying "Jesus." I'm just excited the name "Jesus" is in a film, especially a popular film. But I frankly like better a later moment in the movie that answers the question... I think a little bit differently. Remember the question, "Where then does the strength come from to see the race through to its end?" I think, if you remember that movie, the scene I'm talking about, very powerful. Before he runs in his 400-meter final, at Sunday, he has the opportunity to preach in a church of Scotland there in Paris. And he chooses as his text Isaiah Chapter 40. And it's very, very strong. "Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary, and He increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint." I think that's a better answer to the question. The strength, the power to see the race through to the end does not come from within me, it comes from outside of me. It comes from the eternal God who never gets tired, who never grows weary, this infinite power source that's available for us. And it enabled Eric Liddell to win the gold medal. He was a sprinter, and he had to extend out a greater distance in the 400 meters. It wasn't his natural best race. His natural best race was the 100-meter, but he chose not to participate in that because it was on a Sunday and his convictions wouldn't allow him to run on a Sunday. The problem is the 400 is an eternity for a sprinter. And he was in the far outside lane, the eighth lane, and so he never saw another runner, which was good because that means he won the gold medal. But he was kind of running scared, and so he went out like a sprinter and ran hard, made the curve, and on the back stretch, he gave everything he had. Well, there's still half a race to go. And you come around the curve and all he could do was just turn to God for every step. And he finished and set a British record in the 400-meter that stood for decades. And if you ask Eric Liddell, "Where did the strength come from to run that last 200 meters?" "It came from God." Well, in our text today, we have an answer to the question. After talking about false doctrine, which I mentioned in the last message, I want to get to this one phrase that's been much on my mind. "It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace and not by ceremonial foods." So, after an incredible 12-chapter journey in this epistle of grace, the author now, having given us the supremacy of Jesus Christ, how He's superior to everything the Old Covenant had to offer in every way, the eternal Son of God, the radiance of God's glory, the exact representation of His being, the one who sustains all things by His powerful word, this Jesus, this perfect mediator, has brought to us a New Covenant. A New Covenant He bought with His own blood, which He offered once for all time, never again to be repeated, this once for all sacrifice, of the Son of God. And He, having provided purification for sins, He ascended into Heaven and now sits at the right hand of Almighty God. And there, He ministers on the basis of the finished work that He offered once for all. And so He has brought us a superior covenant. The superior mediator, Jesus Christ, has brought us a superior covenant, a covenant by which our sins are actually forgiven, by which we are actually transformed. He writes His laws on our minds and writes them on our hearts, and we're given a whole new nature, the heart of stone taken out, a heart of flesh put in. And we are adopted as sons and daughters of the living God, and we will live with Him forever and ever on the basis of that New Covenant. Having given us that New Covenant, it then results in a superior life, which we've been looking at, the life of faith from Hebrews 11. And celebrating that life of faith, and the author is giving us now, in Chapter 13, many practicalities, specifics of the Christian life. And the way that the Christian life works is that God speaks words to us, He speaks promises, the promises of God, the promises of the Scripture such as in verse 5 of this chapter, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you." That's a promise. And then in verse 6, "So we say with confidence, 'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?'" And again, in verse 8, "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." These promises of God, such as, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you," are the basis of our faith, and God works faith in us, the receptor of these promises. And so we can receive the truth of these promises, and then live accordingly by faith. And so by faith in this promise, such as, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you," we can, in Verse 1, "Keep on loving each other as brothers." By faith, we can do that. By faith, in the promise, we can love strangers and show them hospitality, in verse 2. By faith, in the promise of God, we can minister to those in prison and not forget them those that are afflicted, verse 3. By faith we can honor marriage and keep the marriage bed free from sexual defilement, in Verse 4. By faith in this promise, we can keep our lives free from the love of money and be content with what we have. All of this, by faith in the promise of God. And all of this flows the well spring of this pulsating strength for the Christian life, this is the dynamic, the Word of God taken in by faith, renewing and restoring our hearts, and enabling us to live again that life that's glorifying to God, that's the rhythm of the Christian life. That's the foundation of the text we're looking at today. Look at Verse 9, "Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings." He says that because it's doctrine, it's good teaching, right teaching, that's going to be the avenue of grace to strengthen your heart. So, "Don't be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace and not by ceremonial foods," the NIV gives us, "which are of no value to those who eat them." I. What is the Heart? For me, I'm thinking about this flock that I'm privileged to shepherd, I'm thinking about people in it. I'm thinking about people, I've met with, people I've talked with, situations I know. And I know that there is a need for strengthening among you people today. I know, I feel it. And if you're honest, you feel it regularly, maybe daily, some of you feeling it hourly, "I need to be strengthened by God. I'm under attack, onslaughts going on, I feel weak, I don't know that I can keep making it here. I need you to strengthen me." And so, if we do nothing else today, just ministering strength to weak people who are then renewed in their strength is a good work. Amen? So that you people who have come today, that I also will be strengthened, enabled to resume this Christian race that's set in front of us. So, I want to take it very, very carefully and look at it and try to understand it. Let's start with the word "heart." It says it's good for our hearts to be strengthened. So, what is the heart? The strength that this passage commands us, heart strength. Not physical strength. We're not talking about physical strength here, although it results in some cases in physical exertions. But what is it? What is the heart? Well, the heart is the inner man, the inner nature, the inner person, the new self which is created to be like God. The key passage for me on the heart is Ephesians 3:16 and 17. There, Paul prays for the Ephesians, Christians, he says, "I pray that out of His [God's] glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith." That's it. The focus of that prayer is on the inner person, the inner man, the soul, the heart. And he prays, there, the very thing related to this text here, that it may be strengthened by faith through the Spirit, by the power of the Spirit. Strengthen, that's what he prays for. 3:19, "So that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." That means you've been strengthened now. Ephesians 3:19, you now have been strengthened, you are filled to the measure of all the fullness of God, that's what you feel inside. That's the heart, the inner man. Or in Romans 7:22, "For in my inner being I delight in God's law." That's that new nature, that delights in the law of God. So, the strength we need is the strength of the inner man, the heart, the new nature. The heart is the part of you that thinks, the part of you that feels, the part of you that decides, the part of you that feels, the part of you that trusts. That's the heart biblically. The word "heart" is connected with all those verbs and others. It's a dynamic inner part of you, your heart. And out of that heart, you do everything in your life. As it says in Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the well spring of life, from it flow the springs of life." II. Why Does the Heart Need to be Strengthened? All right, so that's the heart. Why does it need to be strengthened? That, it needs to be strengthened you all feel acutely. I do. Why? Why does my heart need to be strengthened? Well, I'm going to give you three answers to that question. First is because you're a creature, not the Creator. The big difference, in Isaiah 40, between the Creator and the creature is this issue of strength. Isaiah 40:28 "Do you not know, have you not heard? The Lord, the Creator of the ends of the Earth does not grow tired or weary." You see that? He never gets tired. His arm is infinitely powerful. Whatever His arm is lifting right now, it's not trembling or shaking, it's not soon going to let up that weight. It's just not the way He is. He is omnipotent. He has all power. He is infinite in His majesty. He is a great God, majestic, the Creator of the ends of the earth. And before Him, the nations are as a drop from the bucket and dust on the scales. That's the Creator, that's not you. Even the young men grow tired and weary. Even the youths stumble and fall. In the movie, they show one of the main figures, Aubrey Montague, who's running the steeplechase, tripping and falling on the barrier, and going down on the ashes. It was an ash track, cinder track, and all muddy because of the water of the steeplechase, and he finishes, not last, but close to last. And he's just the picture of dejection as he sits there in the rain while the scripture is being read. He's a human being. He gets tired, he stumbles, he falls. And so God has ordained it that you need to be renewed and refreshed. He's ordained it so that you don't get arrogant and be independent and think you don't need Him anymore. He has created you to need oxygen. He doesn't need it. He's created you need water. He doesn't need that. You need sunlight. He doesn't need that. You need food. Not as much as you eat, but you need food. He doesn't need that. He doesn't need anything coming from the outside in to keep Him existing. That's because He's the Creator. But He created a dependent universe, that depends on Him for everything, and that includes you. So, the reason that you need to be renewed in your strength is God has designed it that way so that you do not get arrogant and be independent. "I am the vine," said Jesus, "you are the branches." And "apart from Me, you can do nothing." He can do plenty of things apart from you." That's humbling, isn't it? But it's just the truth. He is the mighty God, and we are dependent. So, you need to be strengthened, the heart needs to be strengthened, because God has ordained it that way. Strength for the Internal and External Journey Secondly, the heart needs to be strengthened because the two infinite journeys that are in front of us are so immensely difficult. God has set great challenges before the church, not small ones. The two infinite journeys, in case you haven't been here a lot, we talk about them here, this is how we organize the thinking of what we're trying to do here in ministry. And so we are here for the glory of God. Over everything is the glory of God. How do we glorify God? By making progress in two infinite journeys. What are those two infinite journeys? The internal journey of sanctification of growth in Christ-likeness, of becoming more and more like Jesus. Jesus says in Matthew 5:48 that like your Heavenly Father, you must be perfect. That standard will stand over you the rest of your life. It's relentless. He never accepts anything less than perfection, wherever you have come short of perfection, and you know it, you must confess it as sin. Well, that's relentless. The New Testament is relentless. "Do everything without complaining or arguing." It's relentless. Single verse from an epistle, it's just the way it is. That's the internal journey. The external journey, there are billions of people who aren't Christians, who haven't heard the Gospel or not within earshot of the Gospel, unread people groups, and that is a relentless upward call for us. God has set before the church immense tasks, not small ones. They're far greater than we can do. As a matter of fact, these things are so difficult, the journey is so difficult that I contend you can't make progress, a single step of progress, apart from His sovereign grace. You must have His grace at every moment. So, you need to be renewed, because just the journey is so hard. This is a hard race we're running here. And it's a long one, too. It's a marathon we're on. And thirdly, you need to be... The heart needs to be strengthened, because it's under constant assault from enemies. This isn't a peace-time jog. This isn't even an Olympic marathon. It's harder than that. It's harder than that. It lasts longer, it's more arduous, and we're under fire the whole time. I've likened it to an image that's in my mind, World War I, no man's land, with barbed wire on the left and the right, and it goes from the North Sea down to the southern part of Europe for hundreds of miles, and we're called on to run between that and not get killed. We were under assault. The flaming arrows of the evil one are coming at us every day, and frankly, when we don't lift up the shield of faith, and one of those flaming arrows gets through, it weakens you. Doesn't it? Don't you feel weak when you miss one of those and it gets through? It doesn't kill you. It can't kill you, much to his immense frustration. We can't kill him, much to ours. And so here we are, in this incredible battle with the devil, and he's so clever and he's fighting us every step of the way, and he's concocting, crafting special temptations for us, studying our hearts, and coming after us in our weakest spots. And then there's this ingenious world system that's just set up to allure us and entice us. Talked about materialism a few weeks ago, it's just set up to allure us and help us to cause us to love material possessions. It's assaulting us in the lust area, just the world all the time. And then the worst of all, in my opinion, is the flesh, that enemy within, that part of me that opens the door for Satan and lets him into my life. What a wretched man I am. The very thing I hate, I do because I'm insane, the flesh. This is an arduous journey, friends. That's why you need to be renewed. That's why you need to be strengthened. Don't marvel at it, don't wonder why. Because you are a creature, and because you have these two infinite journeys, and because you're under assault as you try to make progress, you will need regularly to be strengthened, rest of your life. III. What Does it Mean to be Strengthened by Grace? What does it mean then for the heart to be strengthened by grace? Well, the word "strengthen," in many places, means to establish or confirm. But I think that a better use of the word here is in Colossians 2:6 and 7. "Therefore as you received Christ Jesus, the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving." So, it's an idea of resources flowing to your soul, to your heart, to strengthen it up in Christ so that you can make progress. It's a spiritual energy, like you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you'll be my witnesses. Or think about Samson when a young lion leaped at him, remember, and the spirit of the Lord came upon him powerfully and he ripped that lion apart with his bare hands. Isn't that awesome? It's a strength and energy that comes, that renews and re-establishes the heart that gives it energy for progress. Maybe a more poignant example is in 1 Samuel 30, where David comes back to find that his wives and the wives of his fellow soldiers had been... There had been a raid by the Amalekites and everything was gone. They're all gone. And they thought they were dead, plundered, gone. And David sat down and wept, and they all wept for their wives and their children. And the men were talking of stoning David, you remember that? It's his fault. There's this little phrase that said, "But David found strength from the Lord his God." That's you, that's me. I don't know what you're going through. I know some of the things that you folks are going through. You need to do that. Whatever you're going through, do that. Find strength in the Lord your God. Stop. Pray. David wrote a lot of psalms about this. "My soul finds strength in the Lord alone." And so you just go. That's what I think it means to be strengthened, to be renewed. I can keep going now, I got it, I'm back on the journey again, I'm not going to give up, I'm going to be renewed. I'm ready. I can keep going in this internal and external journey. Well, what does it mean for the heart to be strengthened by grace? Well, grace is that commitment in the eternal mind of God to do you good, when you deserve eternal condemnation. It's his commitment to do you good, and not just a little good, but to do you infinite good, to do you eternal good, to give you every blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, to be lavishly generous to you. It's a commitment in the heart of God, that is pulsating commitment inside the soul, the heart, the being, the very center of the being of God, that's what grace is. It's a commitment in God. But grace comes to us through certain pipelines or avenues, what we call means of grace. So, it's in God, those means themselves are displays of God's grace, but they are pipelines or conduits, and grace is just this golden lighted liquid flowing from heaven down into your soul. But it comes along certain pipelines. The greatest and best of these is the Word of God. The ministry of the Word is a pipeline of grace. I hope it's happening for you right now, that as you hear these words, as you hear the Word of God, your heart gets stronger again for the journey. And this grace just flows in and does you good, and it gives you energy and strength as grace does. And there are different kinds of grace. It depends on the need. Whatever the need is, He gives you different kinds of grace. He gives You more grace, more and more grace. More grace. Do you need that? I need that, I need more grace. I'm not done with grace now. And so wherever I'm at, and I'm weak and I need to be strengthened... There's different ways I could do this, but look at it in a time point of view. As I look back, I need covering grace. And as I look forward, I need what John Piper calls "Future Grace." So, looking back, what makes me feel weak is a good estimation of my own sinfulness and my failures and my weaknesses, and I just feel ashamed for those things. And I feel like I've missed opportunities, sins of omission, things I should have done, or things that God forbade and I did them. And I feel ashamed of that, and I look back and I'm just... I need grace for that. And so covering grace comes from Psalm 32 Verse 1 and 2, "Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord does not count against him and in his spirit is no deceit." You know where that grace, the covering grace, it flows from what Nathan preached about so beautifully last week, the cross of Jesus Christ. It just flows from the blood of Jesus. The value, the infinite value, the precious blood of Jesus covers all your sins. And so you are there, don't deny in whose spirit is no deceit, you say, "I have sinned against you, oh, Lord. I have failed you. The very thing you commanded me to not do, I have done. And, Lord, I have failed you. You commanded me to do good to my neighbor, to share the Gospel, or to care for the poor and needy, or to do this or that with my family, and I have not. Oh, God, forgive me. Forgive me." And as you're confessing your sin by faith, and as you're going again back in your heart to the cross, as Nathan preached... Thank you for that last week, it's been ministering to me all week, thank you for that word, Nathan. It just strengthened me. But as we go back to the cross of Jesus Christ, you get strengthened again and you're covered, 100% covered. And having done that, and having learned the lesson that you need to learn, don't do that again, that kind of thing. There's nothing more to do with the past, friends. Forgetting what lies behind now, it's time to get up and do the things that are ahead. But now we need a different kind of grace. It's daunting, isn't it? It's like, "All right, I know I'm forgiven for that, but I still have that same weak nature. I know I'm still vulnerable in those areas. I know it. Oh, God, how do I know I'm not going to fall in that exact same way the next time temptation comes? I don't even want to move, I'm paralyzed." No, no, no, no. You know how you move? You move by faith in future grace. You move by saying, "Okay, I know that when I get up and I put one foot in front of the other, God will give me the grace I need to keep going. He's going to give it to me." And I'm not going to keep adding day upon day upon day. Don't do that. That's Satan's trap. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Amen? So, don't stack them up and say, "Oh, the infinite journey is looking really infinite." Well, really infinite. Forget it. You can't say it, it's infinite. It just is. It's going to be in front of you the rest of your life, but don't live it like that. You've got today to live, you don't even know if you'll have tomorrow. Let's live today for the glory of God. And I know that as I get up, God will give me the grace I need to get through this sermon or get through anything I have to do today, He'll give me the energy and the strength I need to serve Him. So, I'm not going to be overwhelmed, I will not be discouraged, I will not be dismayed, because He has promised me, "I will never leave you and I will never forsake you." What that is, is a promise to give you the grace you need to do the will of God, to do the good works He has for you to do. Is there going to be enough grace for the church to finish these two journeys? Yeah, there is. And it flows from the cross, it flows from Jesus. There's enough grace. We're going to finish. Amen? I wrestled for a long time with the word "infinite." It's not entirely true. We will finish. There's a finish line. I guess it's infinite, because it's only an infinite source of grace will do it. Infinitude of God's grace is sufficient for it. And we will finish. IV. By Grace, Not by Food All right. So, it's good for our hearts to be strengthened. It's good. Do you feel the goodness of it? It's good food. Like Kevin said, "It's just the pure milk of the word, it's good to have your heart strengthened." It's good to have your heart strengthened by grace and not by food. Okay, now I'm going to meddle. I'm going to meddle a little bit, because there's just probably too much consumption of comfort foods in this church, and they just don't do much for you spiritually. They don't. Now, I've already said, we've got to have physical food to keep living. You've got to. God created you that way. You can't keep serving him without eating well. Eating nourishing foods. I'll give you a clear picture of this from the Bible, from the case of Elijah. Do you remember how Elijah took on the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and just an incredible triumph? And then he prays fervently, intensely prayed that it would rain. And it did rain, and the rain came. And then he hit stop his cloak and he runs ahead of a chariot, and all the way, and just... You've never had a day like that. And none of us have ever had a day like that. The energy output was immense. And then Jezebel, Queen, finds out about what happened to her prophets, and she's enraged. And she vows to make Elijah's life like one of theirs by tomorrow. Well, he hears, and unlike him... Elijah, where was there ever any fear in him, but he was afraid of Jezebel. And so he ran for his life, it says right there in the text. "Elijah was afraid and ran for his life." It's right in the Bible. And so he's out there in the desert, and he's laying under a broom tree and he can barely move in the desert. And he starts to pray. It's similar prayer to Jonah's, but it's different, it's a different thing. He says, "Take my life now, because I'm not better than my ancestors." I have nothing left to give. I'm done." And God sends him an angel with a biscuit and a jar of water. "You know what you need? You need a biscuit and a jar of water, and a good sleep." And so he eats and drinks and falls asleep. And then the angel wakes him up again, and gives him another biscuit and another jar of water. And he says, "Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you." Yeah, we need to eat. I don't know if I'm advocating biscuit and jar of water, but whatever it is that gives you physical strength, you need to do that. But the kind of strength the author has in mind here doesn't come from food. It doesn't come from food. As a matter of fact, there's a verse in Corinthians that says, concerning food, "We are no worse off if we don't eat and no better if we do," which bothered me. That verse, I didn't think, had the right parallelism. There should be an advocacy of food on one side and not food on the other. No. Both sides don't advocate food. You're not really helped if you eat, and you're not hindered if you don't, that's what Paul says, both sides of it. Talk about meat sacrifice to idols there. The strength the author has here doesn't come from food, that's what he's saying. It comes from grace. Now, there's all kinds of diets and convictions on diets, and different things you can do. There's a low-cholesterol diet, and there's the low-fat, low-sugar diet, and the gluten-free diet, and the Miami Beach Diet, and the Maker's Diet, and the vegan diet which basically says if we just go back to the Garden of Eden and stop eating these animals, we'd be fine. We won't have all these health problems. Or, the Maker's Diet, that has similar mentality. I'm not advocating any of these. I think good nutrition is a helpful thing. I personally have never walked into a GNC store. I don't know if any of you have. Health from a big jar that costs $86. I don't know what they cost, but I think you could spend a lot of money in a vitamin store. I don't know that it's a bad thing, but what the author is saying is, the strength he has in mind does not come from eating anything, neither does it come from fasting. It's not about the eating. Context: Ceremonial Foods Associated with the Sacrificial System If you look at the context, it says, "Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace and not by food, ceremonial foods," the NIV adds the word "ceremonial." "…which are of no value to those who eat them. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat." The author is talking there about the Old Covenant legalists, the priests who never left the Old Covenant sacrificial system, they have unbelief all through their lives they should have known that the time for animal sacrifice was over. Instead they continued to minister at the tabernacle and they, because of their unbelief, have no right to eat at our table. Well, what is our table? What is it? It's the table of grace spread by Jesus Christ. It's a feast of grace. Jesus shed His blood on the cross so that we would have a feast, a river of grace. And we can, as Jesus said in John 6, feed on His flesh, eat His body and drink his blood spiritually to get renewed through that. The words he speaks to us is spirit and their life. That's the table Jesus spreads. V. Jesus Suffered to Spread a Banquet of Grace Next week, I'm going to talk about where that table is. It's outside the gate. It's outside the camp. That's where He spreads that grace. We're going to talk about that next week, a very important message. I was going to combine it with this, but it's just too important to combine it. We need strength because He's inviting you to leave comfort, inviting you leave the city, and go out where He is. We'll talk about that next week. But Jesus suffered to spread us a banquet of grace. VI. How Can We Be Strengthened by Grace Every Day? How then can we be strengthened by grace every day? Well, first, if you have never come to faith in Christ, and you're here as a guest, the strength I'm advocating here is just the strength of life. The Bible says, that apart from Jesus, you are dead in your transgressions and sins while you live. You're alive enough to come here, but not spiritually alive until perhaps this moment. So, hear then the Gospel of Jesus Christ. God sent His son into the world, who shed His blood for sinners like you and me. We have violated the laws of God, but God is willing to forgive if you just repent of your sins and turn in faith to Jesus, all of your sins will be forgiven. And then you'll be alive, born again by the power of the Spirit." Just put your trust in Him. You don't need to move, you just need to trust. Put your trust in Him. And if you have already trusted in Christ, now you're wondering, "How can my ever-weakening, constantly weakening heart be strengthened by grace? How does that work?" Well, first of all, desire it. I would just simply say it all starts with desiring to be strengthened. Acknowledge, "I am weak right now. I feel my weakness. I feel it in my susceptibility to temptation. I feel it in my discouragement and the fact that the two infinite journeys look like I can't make a single step in either one. Overwhelming. I feel weak." Start there. And then bring that weakness to back to God in prayer. Paul said in 2 Corinthians, "When I am weak," what does he say, "then I'm strong." Why? Because the weakness caused us to go back to the source of our strength and say, "I can't do this." When you're strong, you're weak. Say, "I don't need Jesus. I got this one, Lord. I'm good at that, I can do that." He said don't think like that. So, when you're week you're strong. So, yearn for strengthening. Then understand the imagery that Jesus, by His death on the cross, has opened for you a doorway, an access way into the throne room of grace. It says in Hebrews 4, "Let us draw near to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need." The time of need is when you are a weak. That's all the time, friends. You're always weak. Always. You are the bruised reed and the smoldering wick. And the amazing thing is God can take weak people like us and make, as He says in Revelation, a pillar of us in the house of his God. We can be made strong by grace. Isn't that awesome? We, who are bruised reeds, can be made pillars in the house of the living God. So, go through that doorway that is Jesus. And you know who you'll find there? You'll find the God of Isaiah 40, the one who sits in throne above the circle of the earth. And you'll find Him there ready to be gracious to you, to give you infinite strength. Look back for covering grace. Be honest about your sins and ask for forgiveness, confess those things to God. Look ahead for future grace, that God's going to give you what you need to get through your trials. Get your hearts ready for your specific trials, and ask him for specific help. If you're having trouble forgiving someone of their sins against you, then say, "God, I'm feeling very weak as a forgiver. I'm feeling weak. Would you please enable me to forgive so and so? I'm probably going to see him today, I feel a hardness developing in my heart toward that person, will you please enable me to forgive them?" Or when it comes to witnessing, you just say, "Lord, I'm not much of a witness. I hardly ever say anything that takes any courage for Jesus. I want to be a witness, I want to come outside the gate and bear the approach. I want to be where you are, but I'm just so weak. I'm afraid of what people will think. Will you please strengthen me? Please give me a witnessing opportunity so easy even I could do it?" There's a good prayer. Pray that one and see what God does with it. It's like, "Fine, now we're honest." He'll give you one. One that... Just toss a little toss and you might hit it out of the park. Ask for that little toss. Just, "God help me. Help me in finances. We're struggling financially, we're struggling with anxiety. We're struggling to find a job or to make ends meet. We're struggling. Please help me, I'm weak in this area, would you strengthen me?" Struggling with weight, food... My God... I'm acting like my God is my stomach, too much on the comfort foods. "Would you please help me to be disciplined in what I eat? And give the extra money I've been spending to give it away on missions or to the relief of the poor? God, make me strong. Please strengthen me, and make me a different person." And then when you've been strengthened, Hebrews, the Book of Hebrew says to strengthen your brothers and sisters. Care about each other, look around, find some other weak people. And the strength, encouragement, you've received from God, use it with someone else. It says in Hebrews 12, "Therefore, strengthen your [and each other's] feeble arms and weak knees. Make level paths for your [each other's] feet, so that the lame may not be disabled but rather healed." I know I'm adding the "each other," but that's definitely the mentality the author has. He's thinking corporately about all of them together. Strengthen one another. Close with me in prayer.